Lily Potter brushed her hair out of her eyes and smoothed her skirt. She looked a mess and she knew it. Her red hair was in disarray – even though she had tried her best to contain it in a ponytail, and her shirt had pasta sauce on it.
"Removio," she murmured, grabbing her wand from where she had left it in the fruit bowl and flicking it absentmindedly. The stain dissipated, turning into golden dust that flavoured the air with the slightest hint of basil. "Right," she grabbed her car keys, mentally preparing herself for what was about to come.
She was going to parents' evening at Harry's school. Meeting her seven year old son's teachers was bound to be interesting, simply because they were muggles. Lily was good with muggles. She had lived amongst them long enough to understand how they thought, and even though she had spent much of her life amongst wizards, she still knew enough to blend in without too much hassle.
Over the years she had grown very good at matching jeans with tops and sorting out her hair so that it looked decent without a pointed hat to hide it. It helped that she was muggle-born. At least she knew what jeans were and why electricity was used in the home – unlike her husband, James, who still insisted on reading by candlelight – "I've done it all my life, Pond Lily, I'm not stopping now!"
She could never decide if she hated her nickname or loved it. Adding the word 'Pond' to her name was hardly endearing, but it opened the floodgates for a whole host of frog related jokes – and who didn't enjoy an analogy that made one a princess and one's husband a frog their kiss can transform? James the frog and his beautiful Pond Lily; it was their private, magical joke. Even through everyone knew that the muggle story of frogs turning into princes came from muggles accidentally witnessing animagi.
She sighed, suddenly missing Hogwarts and Professor McGonagall, her animagus transfiguration teacher. The castle was her childhood in a nutshell and she missed its ethereal archways and walking suits of armour. It saddened her more than anything else in the world that Harry would never get to see the place.
Harry had been born a squib – a genetic anomaly. A child without magic born from magical parents. Hogwarts had refused to accept him, despite all the QuickSpell courses and imploring letters to Dumbledore, despite the years she had spent campaigning throughout Harry's childhood for Equal Rights for Squibs.
It had been a dark day when they had decided to send Harry to a muggle school. Dark, in the literal sense of the word. She remembered how the rain had lashed against the windows of their cottage in Godric's Hollow, how the wind had clawed its way down the chimney, threatening to choke the fire.
"James, we need to send him to a muggle school." There. She said it. Her husband looked at her, eyebrows raised. He was in the middle of connecting their brand new telephone to the ceiling, ("how else are we going to get any signal, dear?") and was perched precariously on a step ladder. His Cleansweep Seven was hovering nearby, and every so often he would touch it to keep his balance.
"Are you sure? You want to send him to a… a muggle school?"
"Yes," she placed her knitting needles down with a clack. "Harry is nearly four years old. Hogwarts has made it clear that they're not going to accept him when he turns eleven, and I'll be damned, damned James, if our son doesn't receive and education."
"Do muggles even have schools?" he asked, a smile twitching his lips.
"Of course they do! They're not cavemen!"
"Alright. Alright."
And so it had been decided. Magic at home, muggle life at school. They would teach Harry quidditch and football. He would know arithmancy and arithmetic, and be taught simple charms as well as the laws of gravity. Their son would get, quite literally, the best of both worlds.
Or at least, that was the plan.
Lily found herself doubting once again their decision of three years ago to send Harry to a muggle school when she walked through the double doors and sat herself down on a chair in the foyer. Parents of other seven year olds were all around her, watching.
"Miss? Miss, you need to sign in." Lily started humming to herself, wondering who the receptionist was talking to.
"Miss? Miss Potter?" She looked up with a start.
"Yes?"
"You need to sign in, dear."
"Oh." Conscious that everyone in the room was staring at her, Lily got up and approached the receptionist. She produced a quill out of her pocket and an inkpot from her handbag, and signed her name on the register with a flourish. "There you go," she beamed down at the receptionist, who looked quite affronted, and sat back down on her chair.
"Hey." A young man – single dad, by the looks of it, sidled over to sit next to her. "Do you have a name, beautiful?"
She raised her eyebrows at him, swishing her red hair back from her shoulders.
"I do have a name, as do most people. And it isn't a beautiful one."
"No, I meant that you're beautiful…"
"Mrs Potter?" Harry's teacher poked his head around the door of his classroom. "Mrs Potter, are you ready for our appointment?" She stood up, brushed down her jeans (which were stained with multi-coloured droplets from the time her Window Cleaning Potion had exploded) and smiled.
"I'm ready." Leaving the single dad blushing behind her – no doubt realising his mistake flirting with a married woman – she entered the classroom and sat down on a ridiculously small chair opposite Harry's teacher.
He cut straight to the chase.
"I'm not going to beat around the bush, Mrs Potter. Your son is involved in an illegal crime ring. He's selling items on the black market."
James arrived at the Leaky Cauldron first. He headed straight for the bar and ordered a butterbeer from Tom, the bartender.
"Afternoon, Officer." Tom winked, plonking down his drink on the sticky surface of the bar. It amused Tom to no end that James had become a member of the Magical Law Enforcement ("and after all the time he spent loungin' in 'ere, drinkin' underage and causin' trouble."). James couldn't blame him. Sometimes it amused him, too.
"How are you, Tom?" He asked, casting a glance around the pub with a practiced eye. Two hags were sitting by the fire, ripping meat off an unidentifiable carcass. Three elderly witches sat right next to them, sipping tea and looking disgruntled. A few warlocks were watching the quidditch by sticking their heads down the fire and allowing the Floo Network to take them where the game was. Every so often they would shout with delight and perform a celebratory leg twitch. There was no immediate danger. The pub was safe.
"I'm alright, James, I'm alright." Tom swiped his cleaning rag through a puddle on the bar, grinning toothlessly all the while. "And yourself? How's Lily? How's young Harry?"
"They're fine. Lily's actually gone to see Harry's teachers today, else she would be here too. Something the muggles call… parent's evening? Yes, I think that was it. It's where the parents get a chance to meet the professors, and the professors get the chance to tell us how our kids are doing." He realised that Tom had been staring at him, open mouthed, all the while he had been speaking. "What's wrong?"
"Did ya… did ya say muggles?"
"Yes," said James evenly, not liking where this was going.
"Why is Harry in school? He's only…"
"Seven."
"He's only seven! Hogwarts doesn't enrol until they're eleven."
"Tom." James set down his butterbeer, amazed that the bartender, usually so well-tuned to the gossip of the wizarding world, didn't know this, "My son is a squib. We've sent him to a muggle school."
There was a very awkward silence. Tom busied himself with the bar, scrubbing repeatedly at a glass goblet that was already perfectly clean.
"Well?" James asked, finally. "Didn't you know?"
"I'd… I'd heard rumours. We'd all heard the rumours. But I dismissed it as some sort of sick, twisted joke, I did! James and Lily's son, a squib? Preposterous!" James felt the anger beginning to boil inside him. He encountered this sort of response every once in a while. For some reason, people hated squibs. They were scared of them. They treated them like second class citizens, even worse than the muggles and those who weren't born of pureblood. But he hadn't expected this from Tom.
"I'll have you know that my son is extraordinarily bright. He's the top of his class and he's an avid reader. I doubt that there's a book in the magical or muggle world that he hasn't read. His potions are superb and he is a natural born quidditch player. Better even than I was! My son is ten times a better wizard than you are, and although he can't use a wand for charms or transfiguration, it doesn't mean you have the right to exercise superiority. Lily has been campaigning for Equal Rights for Squibs for just this reason, to get obnoxious people like you to recognise that squibs are wizards too-"
Tom smirked coldly at him.
"Better than me, eh? Can your precious squib of a son do this?" and with a click of his fingers, the fire in the grate went out. The warlocks with their heads in the fire screamed in terror as they were sucked fully into the Floo Network, and James spared a moment's thought of worry about where they would end up. They hadn't offered a destination.
"You see, James? A squib is not a wizard. A squib isn't part of our community – they serve no purpose in our society! Your son is worthless."
It was the final straw. James lifted his mug of butterbeer, ready to hit Tom around the head with it, but then a noise made him pause. The doors to the Leaky Cauldron were shaking, as though someone was pounding on them from the outside. One of the three doddery witches drinking tea hobbled over to open them.
"No!" he shouted, suddenly apprehensive, "That's not a good idea-"
But it was too late. The witch threw the doors open and Sirius Black burst into the pub, out of breath and soaked to the skin, eyes flickering frantically. He shot into the room like a freight train, skidded around on his heel and threw himself back against the doors. He had almost got them closed when a huge boot appeared in the doorframe and a man wrestled his way into the Leaky Cauldron. A woman, who looked like the leader, and a team of gun wielding muggles dressed head to toe in black body armour stormed in after them.
"POLICE! Freeze!"
Sirius dived for cover. The hags screeched and disapparated. One of the witches fell off her chair with an explosion of curses. Tom looked from Sirius, to James, to the muggle Metropolitan Police Force standing in his magical pub, the one place the muggles couldn't set foot in.
"Afternoon, Officers."
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