reviews! they are my life force. it may not seem like much, but every single one causes me to do a dance of joy that i would honestly prefer no one ever, ever saw. if the idea of that amuses you, please review, and i will definitely respond to you-once i put ice on my knee that i probably banged into the door frame with my dancing. needless to say, the Rs go hand in hand-so do read before you review, or we shall all be very confused.
-um, this contains two swear words, which are only swear words in some places. i advice caution because of the chance of suffering dangerous exposure to my brain, but nothing else. (if you object to the suggestion that a boy suggested that he might feel an interest, which could possibly be interpreted as non-platonic, in another boy...i have nothing to say to you but to suggest that you put your fingers in your ears and hum when it gets to that sentence, alright? (if anyone writes to tell me they actually did that, i will adore them forever))
ta.
There are very few Muggle things that the wizarding world cannot claim that they have a better answer for, and had had when the rest of humanity were still wandering about in furs and marrying each other's siblings, but kindergarten is one of them.
There are simply too few wizards in England for such a thing to be created, for one. Perhaps a few families with young children in each moderate sized city is just not enough for a proper localized school system. Hogwarts itself draws students from the whole of England to reach a reasonable student population, but there is simply no such thing as a boarding preschool. It's silly, and, though the idea has received the support of several prominent members of the Malfoy family, who would have done just about anything to have spent their childhoods away from their parents' loving care, no one has given it real attention. Until they are old enough to be sent away, wizard children must receive whatever education they can from their parents, or be sent covertly into an unsuspecting Muggle facility, rather like humanoid cuckoo eggs with sticky faces.
In the Potter household, Mr. Potter gathered up his two young sons and one small daughter every day after lunch, and endeavored to instill in them the heartfelt love of learning that he sensed the children should probably learn from someone or other.
He quickly gave up. The simple fact was that the children were far too intelligent to be properly instilled with anything, and they wanted to be outside playing catch far more than he wanted to be inside trying to remember the present imperfect, and what on earth was wrong with it. So the next day the Potter children were left to wander, with the slightly desperate reminder that there were copies of the second grade speller sitting around, should they ever want to take a look at them. Lily spewed milk across the table at that, and James rolled his eyes, given that he had had his father's dusty copy of Shakespeare's sonnets 1-87 sitting up in his room for the last year.
Albus Potter smiled toothily through his cornflakes, and once the dishes were cleared and his older siblings were in the back yard trying to wrestle each other into the dirt, set off toward the Muggle primary school. There he sat politely on the stone wall that ringed the yard, and waited for the afternoon recess to begin.
After half an hour or so the children he could see inside the small windows came streaming out to play. One small girl and a smaller boy came tearing across the yard, pushing to outstrip the other in the race to freedom. Behind them the other dispersed, and they pulled to a stop, twenty meters of so from where Al sat on the wall. They looked about, saw him, and the boy hollered, "Whatcha doing there?"
"Got nothing else to do," Al said cheerfully.
They looked him over. "Wanna play catch?" the girl called.
Al considered. "Okay," he said, and hopped off the wall. He and the other children played until a scrawny stick of a woman appeared to chivy them back inside, at which point he waved goodbye to them all, and returned to the wall to wait for the end of the school day.
When the children returned, they greeted him and he skipped off with the crowd, walking them home, and offering jokes and help with their homework as they walked. By the time the last of them wandered reluctantly to a doorway held open by a welcoming mother, Al had thirty or forty fast new friends, and some acquaintances who were fun to play with, but at seven or eight were far to old to really be considered friends. He returned to the wall the next morning, and every morning after that, until he was ten years old.
Which was how Al met pizza.
Or, more accurately, how Al first met a very nice young man who was also called Al, but whose real name was Alan, something of which Albus was terribly jealous. He'd been sitting on the wall outside the school building one gray November afternoon, waiting for the end of classes, when he was hailed by a blond boy on some sort of cranberry-colored conveyance which made rapid progress down the street, though it was smaller than most of the Muggle vehicles Al was used to. The boy lazily pulled to a stop, checked the brake, and meandered over to where Al was perched, a stack of odd boxes balanced on his hip.
Al nodded at him. The bigger boy sat down a little ways away and, after taking a long swig of coffee from his mug with the little sliding top, started chatting. They talked for quite awhile without any particular subject, and it didn't even occur to Al to ask for his new friend's name until it came up casually, halfway through a story about the chips shop at the end of Edgar Row. He exclaimed at it and the boy laughed, pushing his boxes to the side so he could turn more towards Al. They had a funny design on the top, in red and green, a depiction of a sort of round thing speckled with other things and what he supposed might have been mushrooms.
The boy, who Al guessed to be about fifteen or sixteen, and lanky for it, followed his gaze and explained that he was a delivery boy, and that he took the boxes, which Al gathered contained some form of food, all around the city, and for a measly handful of quid. Which was barely enough to cover the expenses he ran on his moped, apparently the name of the device, or as he mostly called it, or rather 'her', "that bloody machine." He said it rather affectionately though, and did not seem to mind having to explain obviously basic things to Al in the slightest.
"So, what're you doing here, anyways?" he asked after a bit.
"People-watching," Al said. "Or waiting to people-watch. No one's out yet."
"You don't go to school, then?"
"No."
"Ah." He didn't seem to think anything odd of it. "And your parents?"
"At work. They dunno I'm here," Al explained, then conscientiously added, "I don't think so," because there was always the possibility. One never knew, with Dad. Alan nodded in understanding.
"Watching for anything in particular?"
"Nah," Al said. "Just boring at home, some days." He paused. "Most days, sometimes."
Alan nodded again. "M' folks run a bookshop down in Turrey," he said thoughtfully, sipping some more coffee. "Bloody boring, most days. Old men in jumpers and leather patents, you know. Professors."
Al made a sympathy noise. Every now and then Hogwarts professors of one strain or another would be among his parents' many guests, and they were always very dull.
"Aw, my mam and dad're alright, just less'n fascinating. Wish I had siblings most of the time."
Al responded with something to the effect of 'yeah right,' and Alan looked questioningly at him. "What, you got a brother or something?"
"Just the one," Al said, pulling a family picture from his pocket, taken with a fortunately Muggle camera, "and my sis. But they're more'n enough. That's my dad," he said proudly, as Alan leaned over to look. "And Mum. Lily's got her hair all funny in this one."
The larger Al grinned appreciatively at the gathered Potter family, and rubbed a hand through his spiky hair, which Al was certain was not originally so blond. He asked questions about all of them and Al answered happily, though he decided not to mention that James, who Alan was for some reason quite appreciative of, was only fourteen. Somehow it made all the times James had locked him in the broom closet seem a lot more pathetic than if he let Alan think his big brother was rather older than that.
They talked for a long time more, until Al could see the sky turning faintly to dusk, and they both heard each other's stomachs rumbling. Larger Al grinned and opened one of his boxes, revealing a large rounded flat thing, covered in red and white blotches, which smelled very strongly of grease and vinegary tomatoes. Alan tugged on it until it separated into triangular pieces.
"Don't you have to bring those to somebody?" Al asked hesitantly, wondering whether he'd misunderstood, as the other boy offered him a large piece. Alan shook his head.
"This one's mine," he explained, separating an even more enormous triangle from the gooey cheese. "Dinner, or close enough to pass for it anyways. My mate Andy may be pissed, said I'd bring some back for him, but then he may be pissed already, out drinking again with Rod and that crowd." He shrugged and sank his teeth in. "Dunno why I bother with 'im really, so might as well not. And you look peaky."
Al didn't bother to deny this, as he was as small and scrawny for his age as everyone on his father's side, though Mum claimed he'd shoot up in a few years. He experimented with ways to curve the flexible dough for a minute, trying to keep cheese and driplets of oil from sliding off the top. Eventually he got it sort of balanced on his splayed fingers, up off his palm, and slid a bit of it into his mouth.
Al did not have much of a relationship with his mouth. It was mostly two dimensional, as far as he was concerned. He put food into it when his parents ordered him down to dinner, and the food went somewhere and hopefully didn't come back out again. It was just sort of there, on his face, whenever he needed it, and didn't give him much trouble when he didn't. But now, Al was discovering that his mouth had volume. It had dimensions. It had a whole range different senses that he had never contemplated before, of spaces, and most of them were now focusing one hundred percent on heat and spices and tomato sauce. There was a whole department for that, it transpired. Even mushrooms wasn't half as bad as he would've expected. Luckily Alan was an understanding type, and he merely grinned and took another piece while Al experienced his religious moment.
They continued talking, Al spluttering a bit around his food, and Big Al taking careful bites so that he could chatter without obstruction. Alan ate in dainty little bits, and motioned to Al that he was free to engulf another as he worked his way through his own first. Al did, making a note to copy Alan this time, who obviously had practiced eating efficiently while he talked.
"I'll see you here sometime," Alan called when he finally admitted he did have a tad bit of work left to do. "Call me any time, you've got my mobile."
Al was thrilled by the whole exchange. He was a naturally vociferous child, but he had a tendency to run out of things to actually talk about before he ran out of things to say, and he often simply fell silent in the fear that other people might think he was beginning to prattle. Alan, however, had no tolerance for awkward silences, and simply refused to recognize that they might exist. Al could tell that Alan wouldn't think any the less of him if he prattled on, and he resolved to be exactly like him when he was older. And this he went on to do.