AN: I've always wondered about this scene. It's not every day a boy ends up on top of a school building... and I'm sure the headmaster wouldn't be too happy about it. Yes, it's actually a headmistress that sends the letter home to the Dursleys, not a headmaster, but I just loved Hawthorne so much that I kept it the way it was. Forgive me, O canon. Enjoy, and please leave your thoughts in a review.
Disclaimer: Does anyone really think that people on here own the stories they write fanfiction for? Because I certainly don't.
The Curious Tale of the Boy and the Rooftop
"On the roof," Headmaster Hawthorne muttered, kneading his forehead wearily. "Tell me, Bridges, how the bloody hell a nine year old can climb onto the roof of a school building!"
The heavy professor collapsed into the expensive leather chair in his office. He leaned forward to look at the papers neatly placed in the center of the desk, thinking that he really should get a better paycheck for all he went through. Teaching at a children's institution—what had he been thinking? Of course he'd been too thick to listen to his wife, who now said smugly that he had brought it upon himself whenever he came home complaining about his students' latest antics.
"What was his name again?" he asked Bridges, whose position at the school he had to admit was not clear. His official title was something vague that gave away almost nothing about his duties—Senior Advisor for Student Activities. (Or something of the sort. Hawthorne could never keep it straight.) In reality, John Bridges chatted with the headmaster most of the day and occasionally wandered into the halls to catch misbehaving children, to whom he gave strict punishments.
"Potter. Harry Potter. Year five, I believe," Bridges said. He paused for a moment, then added, "Dursley's nephew, right? Wasn't he the one who tried to sneak food home once?"
"Yes… yes, he was. Tried to say that his aunt and uncle didn't feed him, didn't he?" the headmaster grumbled. "Load of tosh—the Dursleys are the most well fed family in Surrey, between you and me."
"you and me and everyone else who's seen them."
"Right you are," said Hawthorne with a grin. "But back to the Potter boy…" He stared at the report for a moment, squinting through his spectacles. He made a mental note to replace them soon—bloody things weren't working anymore.
"Found perched on top of the kitchen building," he read, "next to the chimney. His excuse… incredible! He said he was running away from his cousin, tried to jump behind the dumpsters, and then - I quote - 'got caught by the breeze.' The boy expects people to believe this?"
"I've always said it, Ernest," the Senior Advisor said while shaking his head regretfully. Hawthorne raised an eyebrow in irritation at the mention of his given name, which he detested. Ernest—was he stuck in Victorian times? "Boys are reckless and not to be trusted. Can't we just get the signatures on that penal code and knock some sense into them?"
The headmaster gave his colleague a stern look. "You and I both know that the parents would be horrified at the thought of their precious little angels being punished. Some of them think that detentions are outrageous." He sighed crossly.
"Perhaps we can make a special case for this one," suggested Bridges. "He was found climbing school property, after all. Surely there are some grounds for unusual punishment for such an unusual offense."
"Yes," Hawthorne muttered. He seemed to be thinking something over for a bit. Then he turned back to Bridges in an unexpectedly brisk fashion. "Send the boy in here, will you? I want to speak with him before I send the letter home to his family. Maybe he can come up with a better excuse this time."
He laughed derisively and began bustling around at his desk, searching for a fresh piece of paper as Bridges strode out of the office. "Pen, pen, pen…" he muttered, pudgy fingers fluttering over the cluttered surface. When he realized that he was talking to himself, he froze, eyes wide and mouth open in an almost comical "o" of surprise.
"These kids," he said once the bewilderment faded. "They're driving me batty."
Upon finally locating the elusive writing materials, he sat down again and began to copy the boy's information from his file.
"Potter… comma… Harry…" he murmured as he wrote in his signature messy scrawl. Age: nine. Year: five. Guardians: Vernon and Petunia Dursley. Misdemeanor: climbing school buildings. Punishment…
A timid knock came at the door. He looked up with a jolt, and then composed himself. When he had assumed his 'headmaster stance,' as he liked to call it, he called in a practiced imperial voice for the boy to come in.
The first thing he noticed about Harry Potter was how scrawny the boy looked. His hand-me-down uniform hung off his thin frame, which was all bones and knobbly angles. The large round glasses on his face were held together with tape, right below that funny scar he'd heard about.
He motioned for the boy to sit in the uncomfortable wooden chair opposite the desk. "Now, Mr. Potter, do you know why you're here?"
"The roof, sir," was his reply. Quiet, he noted, but not thick.
"And what about the roof?"
The boy looked up at him with an expression that was bordering on defiance. "They said I jumped on top of it. But I didn't. I couldn't've."
Hawthorne sighed. "Mr. Potter, I know that you know you were climbing on a school building. All I need is for you to tell me how you did it."
"I swear, sir, I didn't do anything," the Potter boy protested. "One minute I was running from – from Dudley, and then I tried to jump behind the big dumpsters behind the kitchen, because I thought I could hide, but all of a sudden I was next to the chimney and—"
"Enough." Hawthorne was becoming quite irritated with this nonsense. "Potter, if you continue to refuse to tell the truth, I'm afraid I'll have to punish you. As it is, your aunt and uncle will be receiving a letter home about this, and I'm sure you won't want to disappoint them even more."
At the mention of his guardians the boy frowned, but said nothing. He looked tiny in the headmaster's lavish office.
"It says here," Hawthorne said, glancing briefly at the report, "that you told Miss Cleary you think the wind picked you up mid-jump." He peered at the boy over his spectacles, watching his reaction.
"Yes, sir. That's what I told her." The headmaster could tell that Potter had barely resisted adding because it's true, which turned out to be a wise choice.
"And do you really think that this is possible?" Hawthorne sneered derisively. "Who have you been listening to, boy? Any fool should know that a breeze can't pick up a boy, even one like you. So I suggest you come up with a better excuse next time." Perhaps, in hindsight, Hawthorne had been a tad too harsh. But the boy was truly grating on his already taut nerves and he'd had enough of this tomfoolery.
"Sir, I really don't know what happened." The boy's voice became quiet but deadly serious, as if he was talking about a murder and not an elementary school transgression. The change intrigued the headmaster. "I'm telling the truth. I don't know how, but I just ended up there."
"Mr. Potter," Hawthorne sighed at last, "As headmaster of this school, I cannot allow you to be climbing all over school property, no matter how it came about. I will be sending a letter to your aunt and uncle shortly, and Mr. Bridges will determine how many detentions you will serve. This is final," he added when the boy opened his mouth to protest.
"Yes, sir," Potter muttered.
"You may leave now." As the boy quietly returned to class, he returned his attention to the paper in front of him and began drafting the admonitory letter. As stiff, prescribed words like "disciplinary action" and "behavioral code violation" worked their way onto the page, he still couldn't get one thought out of his mind.
How had the boy gotten up there?