Brother's Wish to Help His Sister Is Winning Formula in Essay Contest

He even answered a few questions posed by the principal about the essay, she said.

Principal Paige Fisher said some students were teary-eyed, but everyone clapped with enthusiasm after hearing the story.

"It was just so well-received," Fisher said. "I think it is a tribute to his sensitivity and not just for the fact that his sister has autism, but for the fact that he wanted to come up with a potion to fix everyone."

When he gets to London, Daniel wants to check out King's Cross rail station. That's where the boy wizard and his friends catch the train to Hogwarts from a track invisible to those who aren't bewitched.

Closer to home, he's looking forward to reading his four-paragraph essay to the board of the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District.

In it, he says he'd like to make a Laughing Potion that Suzie could drink so the sound of loud laughter wouldn't bother her and a Crowd Potion so she could go to places like Disneyland without crying.

But best of all, he said, "would be the Autistic Cure Potion. I would give some of it to Suzie, and then give the rest to other kids with autism. If Suzie didn't have autism we could go to the same school. She could just be a normal kid."

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Times staff writer Holly Wolcott contributed to this report.