Somewhere off the gloomy coast of Cumbria, there was an island.

It was not a particularly big island. In fact, it was small enough to appear on a map as a speck obscured entirely by the square that marked it – if it appeared at all. Near the south was there the only town was located, on the banks of a small river that ran down to the sea. Up north lay the moors, pinnacle of natural desolation and the bane of long-suffering geography students. A thick band of forest divided the two exactly in half, making the island look something like something one commonly finds on a dinner plate. If you wanted to, you could walk around the border of the island within a day or so.

Or, at least, that’s what the books said.