A/N: This is quick, hope you like it.
By the time Anna retired, she had been a fifth grade teacher for 45 years. Over a thousand students had passed through her classroom. But some stood out. Greta Helming. Robbie George. Olivebranch Smith-McCartney. And Harry Potter. Salisbury Elementary School class of 1991. Anna was in her thirty-second year of teaching when she met Harry J. Potter. Harry J. Potter came with a cousin, Dudley V. Dursley. Dudley was also memorable, though not for his achievements in academics. Dudley was notable for his three hobbies: eating, being rude, and beating other children up. His favorite punching bag was his cousin, naturally.
And Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Dursley were quite as awful as their son, and Anna was rather inclined to put the all of blame for Dudley's behavior on their dubious parenting skills. They persisted in believing that the teachers were lying when they told them Dudley and a friend had cornered a second-grader after school and nearly landed him in the hospital. The staff listened in disbelief as Mr. Dursley expounded on the problems with educators today, and Mrs. Dursley sobbed and wondered why on earth a kindergartener would pick on her sweet innocent fifth grader.
Harry was quiet and reserved, so you would never know that he and Dudley had spent their childhoods together. Harry's parents, Mrs. Dursley had informed Anna testily, had died in an accident when he was a baby, and Harry had lived with them now. It was quite clear that the Dursleys much preferred their own son to their nephew, which was a shame, the other teachers said, because Harry was a sweet boy.
And sweet he was. Quiet and bright, he was one of Anna's favorites. But he was, unfortunately, an outcast. Anna knew, as all the teachers and recess minders did, that Dudley loved to rough up other students. And he seemed to have a particular liking for bullying people who showed the least bit of kindness to Harry. So Harry was not well-liked at SES. His classmates ignored him, or made fun of him, in the case of Dudley and a few friends.
Before the school year had come to a close, Anna arranged a meeting with the Dursleys on the pretense of speaking about Dudley's future. Anna shuddered when she heard Dudley's secondary school. Smeltings had a bad reputation. Harry, Anna was informed, would attend the local state school.
A few days before school began the next year, Anna visited Stonewall's principal to speak to her about Harry. She and Principal Walter talked for a full twenty minutes about Harry's future at Stonewall before the principal checked the roster to see what class he would be in. To Anna's surprise, Harry Potter had never been enrolled. Anna tried and failed to imagine the Dursleys sending Harry to a school that required tuition. Surely Harry was attending a different state school. But Harry was registered for neither Holly Spring nor St. Andrew's.
Anna called the Dursleys in Harry and Dudley's fifth year, asking how the boys were. After enduring a fifteen-minute lecture about Dudley's fantastic wresting achievements, Anna was rewarded with the information that Harry was attending St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys.
No such school exists.
A/N: Thank you for reading!
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