Chapter Two

Dudley's special education home tutor wore sweaters almost as ugly as the sweaters his own mother bought him. Though she would never say it out loud, Ingrid actually wondered privately if they went to the same shop. The tutor had cat's-eye glasses and long brown hair, she spoke in a soft little voice, and to top it all off her name was Miss Mellow.

Dudley would have a field day. Ingrid felt sorry for her.

The tutor appeared on their doorstep two days before Ingrid's official start of school. "I would just like to get to know Dudley a bit," she said in her soft, high voice, smiling hopefully, hands folded. "Really make certain he gets individualized care."

"Please, come in," said Aunt Petunia, smiling gratefully and stepping aside. On the surface, Aunt Petunia hadn't cried or yelled since that first afternoon, but she'd seemed more strained than usual. She always looked like she was trying to smile, or trying to seem annoyed, or trying to keep busy - but not really succeeding. She gave off an air of being troubled and distracted in the midst of anything, from making dinner to dusting a room. Ingrid watched, head ducked quietly but eyes closely observant and concerned, and stayed far out of her way. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon both seemed more irritable these days.

Ingrid knew it wasn't her - it was Dudley. She knew because from her cupboard she'd heard her aunt and uncle talking in the living room one night. "It's my side of the family," said Uncle Vernon, sounding exhausted. "I had an uncle who wasn't quite right. I just didn't think…"

And then there was a stiff, uncomfortable silence. Aunt Petunia's stiff lack of speech somehow said more than words ever could.

Ingrid had felt horribly relieved - there was no such history in Aunt Petunia's side of the family, where Ingrid and her deceased parents, the parents she didn't remember, had come from. Then she wondered at that reaction: was it a bad thing, to feel relieved? Did that make her a bad person?

Miss Mellow stepped now through the door and saw Dudley frozen on the staircase. "Ah. And are you Dudley?" she asked, in the kind of bright, delighted, condescending tone that made Ingrid frown slightly and silently from her paused place in the entrance hall where she'd been vacuuming the living room rug before the doorbell had rung and she'd turned the vacuum off.

Dudley paused, eyes wide - then he bounded down the stairs, threw himself on the floor, and started kicking and screeching.

That wasn't a real fit, Ingrid knew. He was actually being quite clever. Dudley was testing the waters to see how much he could get away with around Miss Mellow. And maybe, just maybe, he was nervous.

He could certainly get away with a lot more now around his family - and Dudley had always been indulged, so that was saying something. Aunt Petunia fixed all his daily meds for him in a cup with a glass of water. Anything he wanted was given to him the minute he threw a tantrum, all his tantrums being cooed at with heartbroken fondness. His overabundance of toys now bordered on the mania of a hoarder. He usually sat up in his bed during the day while he called demands and others waited on him. He actually had a bell he rang when he wanted something from his bedroom, like the rest of the house were servants.

"Why is he confined to bed? He's not physically sick," Ingrid had made the mistake of pointing out once, and she'd gotten a cuff around the ear.

"Duddy's health is delicate!" Aunt Petunia had said, fiercely protective of her ailing son.

Ingrid hadn't meant anything along that vein. She thought it might actually be healthier for Dudley to get out in the fresh air and be treated like a normal human being, maybe even try for slightly more intensive schoolwork. But nobody had asked her, and nobody would.

So she slunk into the shadows and waited to see curiously what Miss Mellow would do when faced with a Dudley tantrum. Miss Mellow called repeatedly and surprisingly firmly, "Dudley. Dudley, you must stop this. Dudley, this isn't good." She stayed out of the way of his flailing fists.

When Dudley didn't stop, Aunt Petunia made to move forward. Miss Mellow held out a hand, calm. "Dudley," she said. "Very well then. We shall just stand here until you work yourself out."

"But -!" Aunt Petunia's blue eyes, usually so steely and icy, were wide and concerned.

Miss Mellow shook her head minutely. "It's fine," she said.

Dudley eventually slowed down, screaming himself out, and stopped his tantrum in surprise, looking around in confusion from the floor as he wasn't spoken to or appeased. "Very good," said Miss Mellow, kneeling down beside him, brisk and businesslike. "So here's how this is going to work."

Dudley just stared at her.

"We are going to practice activities like painting, counting, and letters. We will also work on independent activities: shoe-tying, getting dressed on your own, and things of that nature. Sometimes we will go outside somewhere and talk about things like trees, leaves, and grass. How does that sound for starters?" She said it like all this was a great treat.

Dudley's vast, gleaming, reddish-pink face twisted and he lashed out with a fist. Miss Mellow dodged around the fist, seeming unsurprised.

"None of that," she said, frowning. "Or it's a time-out for you. So you don't like these activities? Well. I'll just have to investigate that and change your mind, shall I?" Now she sounded high-handed.

"You have a stupid name and you're ugly," said Dudley with force. Miss Mellow blinked.

"Well that's deeply unpleasant," she observed, like he was a specimen in a laboratory. "We'll have to work on manners."

"Mummy, I don't want to do this," Dudley whined, looking up at his mother with big eyes.

Aunt Petunia took Miss Mellow aside for a heated, whispered discussion. Ingrid couldn't hear what was said, but Aunt Petunia looked angry. Miss Mellow seemed unimpressed by whatever she heard in return.

Finally, looking as annoyed as if she had just lost an important battle - what exactly had Miss Mellow said to get Aunt Petunia to shut down? - Aunt Petunia walked back over to Dudley sitting plaintively on the floor.

"Duddy." She knelt down to his level, smiling weakly. "Unfortunately, this is just something you'll have to do for a while, okay? You must learn these things."

Dudley started up another tantrum. This one might have been a real fit, but if it wasn't that was deeply terrible, for Aunt Petunia rushed out of the room in tears.

Miss Mellow would begin coming three times a week, sometimes while Ingrid was at home. Miss Mellow, in spite of her high, soft, condescending voice and smiles and ugly sweaters, was never afraid of Dudley. She stood up to him, calmed him down, and taught him things, but she was never cruel.

Her eerie kindergarten teacher with a lab rat demeanor, however, kept her from ever becoming Ingrid's true or trusted friend. Ingrid was somehow wary around her, preferring to watch from a distance.

On the first morning of school, Ingrid got up early from nerves and packed her own lunch in the kitchen, standing on the stool as usual in the dim, growing early morning sunlight that filtered slowly over the back garden out the window. She never had very nice clothes, but today she had dressed independently and was trying to look her best. Somehow, the idea that she'd have a new place to make a first impression free of the Dursleys added extra weight to the importance of school.

When her aunt and uncle came out into the kitchen, she was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, her ready backpack and lunch beside her, swinging her feet. They looked her over disapprovingly but couldn't find anything to complain about, and she stayed quiet and said nothing in return.

"Your uncle will drive you up to the campus on the way to work," said Aunt Petunia. Ingrid knew without it being spoken that it was then her job not to cry or complain, and to find her way to the classroom herself. Just as the Dursleys still helped Dudley dress and prepared him food, they would have helped him find his classroom and let him cry. They wouldn't deliberately sabotage Ingrid, in part because it would make them look bad if she outright failed, but she would have no such assistance.

She got into the car beside her uncle and so began the long, uncomfortable, silent car ride to St Grogory's - her new school.

"Do well," said Uncle Vernon at last. "You're not…" He'd been about to say, You're not stupid. Ingrid wondered if he, like her, had then thought of his son and felt some strange sense of shame. He cleared his throat, clenched the wheel a bit harder, and continued driving.

"I'll be fine," said Ingrid at last quietly.

"Quite right you will," said Uncle Vernon, but absently, without his usual suspicion and forcefulness. He was still thinking of Dudley, Ingrid thought.

Then, to her surprise, Uncle Vernon continued talking to her. He usually never paid her much attention.

"What do you think of Dudley's new tutor? Miss…?"

"Miss Mellow?"

"I wasn't there. Stupid name," he added in a mutter.

"... Honestly?" said Ingrid hesitantly.

"Yes, girl, honestly!" he barked, impatient, and she jumped.

"Well." She put a hand to her mouth thoughtfully. "I think she's a good teacher for him and that's what's important. But… I also think she treats him like he's dumb, which maybe I guess she's used to doing with students, and I think she sees him more as… I don't know, as another student, or a patient, more than she sees him as… a person," she finished, watching her uncle carefully for signs of displeasure.

Uncle Vernon nodded, distracted, staring at the road ahead and looking troubled. "Alright. I… I guess that's something," he said finally, and Ingrid realized this was hard for him to say. Uncle Vernon was not used to settling, especially when it came to his prized son.

They drove up in front of the school building. There was a gate followed by a long concrete walkway, leading up to a massive concrete building, two vast stories but structured like an old fashioned school house. Of all things, it had a bell tower where the two roofs met in a point, and it had a chimney poking out of what had to be the cafeteria. Ingrid could see skeletal hints of playground equipment poking from around back.

"You have to go." Ingrid came back to herself and realized she had paused to examine her new place, sizing it up. "Do you… do you want me to go in with you?" She looked around in surprise. Uncle Vernon was gruff and reluctant. Perhaps he felt some weird sense of duty, since she'd apparently been at least a little helpful.

"No," she said quietly, feeling a new determination to figure it out herself. She didn't need charity; she could do it on her own. "I can find my own way. It's okay." Uncle Vernon had to go to work. He didn't have time to be showing her things.

Uncle Vernon looked relieved as she got out of the car.

"Be good," he said in his usual warning tone. That she'd slammed the car door shut and he'd vroomed away in a cloud of exhaust, leaving her standing on the sidewalk before the school building with her backpack on her back.

Luckily, she was far from the only student who was new today. All the years were accumulating, flooding the car park and the campus with cars, parents, and students, on this first day of the brand-new school year. Ingrid watched, still and uncertain for a few moments, her head ducked. She saw that most of the students with parents seemed to be her age, which did make sense.

She picked out a group of parents with new students and followed them from a safe distance into the school building, gazing around herself with shy curiosity. The chatter of older students and younger alike, cheerful and excited, colorful backpacks and book bags galore, rang off the linoleum floor and white concrete walls inside.

Down a hallway, following the hesitant, staring group of parents, and up to a blue door that she could see said 2B. Her heart gave a jump of relief. That was her classroom. She paused to make it seem like she hadn't been following anyone, and then went inside after her group.

The classroom was incredibly noisy. Loud and excited young students were yelling, bouncing off the walls and floor. The classroom was arranged into little rows of desks, a blackboard and a teacher's desk at the front. The play rug was deep blue and covered in a map of the globe, while bright posters full of letters and numbers lined the walls. Ingrid smiled, looking around herself in growing excitement, filled with the thrill of the bouncing, yelling students and talking parents in the room around her. The person who had to be the teacher, a young woman, was talking to a parent at the front by the blackboard.

Ingrid picked her way carefully across the room, dodging running and jumping students, and found her seat in the second row of desks. She set her backpack down and sat on the edge of her chair, looking in smiling excitement around her. For now, she was content just to watch the sea of color, rambunction, and noise.

"Hey! What's your name?"

Ingrid looked around. A group of girls was standing there, a curious and assessing brunette girl at the front. They all wore jangling bracelets and sparkly hair barrettes. The leader's expression reminded Ingrid of one of Mrs Figg's prouder and more potentially sour cats, the kind that could be purring one minute and claw you the next.

"Erm… Ingrid," she said, blinking in surprise.

"Ingrid. Do you like makeup?"

"I wouldn't know," said Ingrid uncertainly. "I think if my aunt ever caught me in her makeup, it would go really badly."

For some reason the girls laughed, not unkindly. "Your aunt?" said the girl. "What happened to your parents?"

"They died when I was one. Car accident," said Ingrid matter of factly. When the girls looked uneasy, she hurried to add, "Don't worry about it! I don't remember it happening. I just know that's where I got this."

She lifted her messy, ratty black bangs, pushing her short, practical hair aside, to show the distinctive lightning bolt shaped scar on her forehead.

"Wow…" The girls stared with wide eyes. "I bet that could go away with some makeup," the leader said knowledgeably.

"Maybe," said Ingrid, unbothered, lowering her bangs to cover the scar again - Aunt Petunia had always insisted. "I bet you look really pretty with makeup." She smiled shyly at the leader, eager to please. It was true enough. The girl was very pretty.

"Thanks," said the girl, smiling, and Ingrid could see that at last the girl had been won over. "You have nice eyes, very green and so exotic looking." A return compliment. Perhaps that was how this worked. "I was wondering about you, but you're alright. You can join our group. You mind if we take these seats?"

"No, go ahead!" said Ingrid quickly, not about to contest her new place in the social order, and the girls settled into all the seats around her, giggling and chatting.

When a boy ran up to Ingrid and laughed and pointed, saying, "Look at her! Why is she dressed so funny?!" Ingrid blushed right down to the roots of her hair because these were the best clothes she'd ever been bought. But the leader of the girl group jumped to her defense at once.

"I don't know. Why are you such a massive prick?" she said snobbishly, and the other girls laughed unkindly. Ingrid's eyes widened at the awful word, but she was relieved to see the boy run away.

Nobody bothered Ingrid again. She was protected from then on by approving public opinion. She was "okay."

"Don't worry," said the girl who'd spoken, grinning. Ingrid must have looked nervous. "You'll know lots of cool words around here soon enough. I learned that one from my Mum and her boyfriend."

"I… look forward to it," said Ingrid, smiling shyly. She did want to fit in, and she was looking forward to seeing what school had to teach her.

The teacher clapped her hands and cleared her throat. "Quiet, please!" Ingrid realized all the parents had left. Slowly, children found seats and silence fell. With that, school began.

The teacher began class by taking roll call. "Potter, Ingrid!" she called, and Ingrid raised her hand shyly instead of shouting as some other children did. The teacher looked up neutrally, gave a single nod, and checked off her name on the attendance sheet.

They started out with letters, numbers, history, and science. Counting things using building blocks, reading simple books and writing out simple sentences and short stories, learning about the world around them, learning about nature. The teacher tried to keep it hands-on.

Ingrid noticed a lot of things during class even from that first day. She noticed certain kids who weren't going to do well. On the one hand were the rowdy kids who didn't seem to care about anything. On the other hand were the kids who raised their hands with loud voices every two seconds. In both cases, the rest of the class would exchange glances behind the person's back and roll their eyes, scoffing quietly.

Ingrid happily didn't fall into either of those pitfalls, to her utter relief. She was too quiet and shy to raise her hand much, but in a timid way she had the right answers and did her schoolwork well enough. Nobody seemed to have a problem with her, though she watched for one carefully, determined to change her behavior if it meant people didn't hate her the way they did at home.

During lunch she sat with relief in the cafeteria with the same group of girls she'd met before class had started. The cafeteria was wide and echoing, and Ingrid couldn't stop noticing everything, fascinated by the people-watching opportunities at the plastic blue lunch tables around her.

"What are you looking at?" one girl asked at last.

"The older children," she admitted, looking at a table full of children who seemed in her tiny eyes close to teenagers. They were probably about ten, and that seemed very old and experienced indeed to six year old Ingrid Potter. "I wonder what it's like being them?"

"Yeah, they look so cool," another girl admitted as they all gazed at the older table enviously. There were a few sighs.

Then: "That guy is cute!" Giggles. Ingrid smiled in cheerful amusement, not disagreeing.

"I also feel bad for all the people who don't have anyone to sit with," Ingrid admitted, watching child after child pause with their tray, staring around the cafeteria with the kind of psychic pain Ingrid thought she understood all too well. She felt embarrassed and sorry for them, as if their pain was her own, the same as at home.

"Charity cases," the leader agreed, and Ingrid's lips tightened slightly but she said nothing and tried to let what she thought of as the Dursley veil cover her face. "Let's invite one over. Maybe Ingrid's right. Hey!" she called to a girl with sparkly purple glasses who'd raised her hand loudly a lot. "Want to sit with us?!"

During recess on the playground, the group all started out together. They cut and formed a big, giggling group in the middle of the line to go on the slide set on wood chips. Ingrid felt a leap of delight as she slid against the slight wind down the slide, but then somehow they all ended up going in separate directions, following different people and making more friends. Ingrid befriended a tomboyish girl on the monkey bars, and even grinned and teased some boys who were sitting on a part of the jungle gym throwing wood chips at people who passed below. They grinned back, appreciative. Then she ended up talking to all the people who were swinging beside her on the swing set, then all the people waiting for their turn on the swing, and by the end of recess she felt brave enough to make a cheerful comment to almost anyone she passed.

She sat with different people, chattering and laughing, for the second half of class, and over the next few days she would form several groups of friends that she could walk over to anytime she wanted. Despite her poor clothes, she seemed to be kind, friendly, quiet, and agreeable enough to be generally likeable. She did well in school but wasn't obnoxious about it, when phys ed started she was pretty good at that too - really good, even, at sports that involved quick reflexes and running, having a small and wiry form - and before long she felt comfortable at St Grogory's, with many at least more distant friends, groups that she flitted to from one to another. They would be her friends that year, and then in the next class she'd make new friends, and each time she got better at it. At being open, smiling, and friendly, if rather soft spoken - kinder than she was confident.

On that first day Ingrid agreed to walk home with the tomboyish girl, who lived in her general neighborhood. She used the girl's cell phone to call her aunt back at the house. "I'm walking home with someone," she said. "No one needs to come pick me up."

"Oh, good, we're all incredibly busy," said her aunt, sounding frazzled. "Can you start doing that all the time?" Ingrid looked at the tomboyish girl and mouthed the question, raising her eyebrows. The girl shrugged and nodded.

"Sure," said Ingrid into the phone. "I can do that." She felt brave today. She didn't even add the obedient 'Yes, Aunt Petunia' that she might have before.

"Good." Her aunt hung up curtly, terse.

Ingrid had a good time walking home with her new friend. It was nice, walking through clean, sunny Little Whinging amid hordes of other released students, feeling independent. The girl agreed to show her back to Privet Drive, "since this is your first time walking home and all," she added agreeably.

Ingrid finally found her street, smiling and parting ways with the girl there. "I've just got to take you bike riding at my place," said the girl in shock. "I can't believe you've never been!" Dudley had been bought a bike but Ingrid hadn't, and she hadn't been bought swimming lessons either. "Come home with me tomorrow. We have a blow-up kid's pool for summers and it's still up, so I can show you swimming, too."

"That'd be great," said Ingrid, smiling. "As long as I'm home for chores, I'm sure my aunt and uncle won't miss me."

"Great!" The girl beamed and left, back toward her own block.

Ingrid squared her shoulders. Suddenly, she was all too aware of how nerve wracking her own home was - the sheer dread of it. She walked slowly, trudging, losing energy, back toward her own house.

She opened the front garden gate and walked down the pathway. The perfect house swallowed her tiny form up like a dark, open mouth.