Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series or any of its characters or plot.

The English Teacher

Korine often wondered, whenever she got caught up in old yearbooks and old class photographs, what had happened to that one odd boy who she—and only she—considered such a pleasure to teach.

Korine Anderson first met Harry Potter when he was ten years old, in a normal classroom, in a normal school, and in a normal neighbourhood.

Quite the contrast for someone so different.

In glasses that were too big for his face and clothes too big for his body, she barely noticed him at first. He always sat at the very back of the classroom, silent while she taught her English class. When she started teaching him, she didn't know he'd existed.

It was the tests that called him to her attention. Fail after fail after fail. She didn't know why, because as far as she knew he was no troublemaker; unfortunate and unlucky, yes, but not a troublemaker. She watched Harry, discreetly, the child whose green eyes were bright with innocence, and wondered.

It wasn't like he was stupid, because when she ever watched him, his grammar was fine, he seemed perfectly capable in maths, and apart from the fact that disaster seemed to follow him he was perfectly alright to her. So how was he so bad that he even fell behind Dudley Dursley, the school nightmare?

One day she asked Harry to stay behind. He looked alarmed, and when she asked why he was failing all his classes, he only shrugged.

"I don't know, ma'am," he mumbled—Korine immediately knew it was a lie. She asked even more questions, prodding him further, and I don't know turned into I can't tell you into The Dursleys don't like me ranking higher than Dudley.

Korine was appalled. There was the secret—Harry was pressured by his own relatives.

Of course, she wasn't blind. She knew very well that the Dursley family didn't like Harry—Harry didn't like them back, and did his best to hold his own. But if it was interfering with his own education...

She tried to persuade him to tell someone. He refused. Korine would have done it herself, but Vernon Dursley (while utterly vile) had a good, strong reputation, and if Harry would admit to nothing, they would get nowhere. Her word alone would never be enough.

But ever since that day, Korine fell into a kind of kinship with her student. He would stay behind a few moments after school to talk, or she would let him into her classroom to hide from Dudley and his gang. When he was ever having a hard time in maths or history, she'd do her best to tutor him; if she was ever in a dilemma with her class, or with lesson plans, or anything, really—it would be enough to just talk to him, this clever child who managed to dodge everything life threw at him.

The other teachers called her strange for it. She didn't care.

Then time went on, and she forgot about him, the scrawny boy with horrid relatives and little else, as she taught other students, some intelligent, some worse than Piers Polkiss had been.

But in a few years—four? five?—she heard the rumors circling again.

"All right, just tell me, what's been going on in this place? Everyone's buzzing," she said, one day in the staff room; she'd always been the late one in the gossip department.

Glen Bolt, who was the maths teacher alongside her and a good friend, told her, "You remember Harry Potter? He lives on Privet Drive, but people say he's turned criminal. Goes to St. Brutus' Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys. Come to think of it, I passed his street a few months ago and I swear there were bars on one of the windows."

Korine felt her heart squeeze a little. She lived a long way from Harry's street, so she'd never had the chance to see him. But still something wasn't right—Harry Potter, the one who had been ever so sweet, ever so polite, a criminal? "Oh? You're sure of that?"

Her tone was supposed to be casual, blasé; instead she sounded accusing even to her own ears.

Glen eyed her warily. "Look, Korine," he said, "I know you really liked Harry when he was a kid, and that's not a bad thing. I don't know if it's true or not he goes to St. Brutus', but there's nothing you can do about it right now, alright?"

Korine clenched her teeth together and looked away.

By the time she turned up at the Dursleys' front yard, Harry was gone. Ran away, his aunt said.

One particular day was very vague in Korine's memory. It was a few years later, and whenever she tried to recall it, everything seemed so blurry.

It was supposed to be an ordinary (read: boring) day of teaching, nothing special: get into the classroom, grade some papers, try to make the students behave, et cetera, et cetera. Nothing special.

But when she got to the primary school, everything was wrong. She remembered screaming, shouting, a picture of a green snake coming out of a skull, and—nothing.

The next and only thing she remembered was the aftermath. Glen, she remembered, had broken an arm, and two ten-year-olds had simply disappeared. She remembered fear, and she remembered asking the world what kind of people would hurt children for no reason at all.

The news marked it as a terrorist attack. She knew it was something worse.

She remembered the day the stories began again. This time, not because of Harry Potter, but because of Harry Potter's relatives.

"It's true! I asked them," said Rosa Green, who was the art teacher and loved the talk that ran around Surrey. "The Dursley family is supposed to be leaving in a few days."

"What?" Glen set down the paper he was grading. He hadn't believed any of it. "Why?"

"'On a vacation,' Vernon Dursley told me," Rosa said. "I don't know if that part's true; he was really nervous when he said it."

Korine continued setting her teaching plans. Since that day seven years ago when she asked Harry Potter to stay behind, she'd developed a kind of instinct to tune Vernon Dursley's name out whenever she heard it.

Years passed, and finally peace seemed to settle in Korine's life. No rumors, no terrorist attacks, no trouble at all. The Dursleys had moved back into Privet Drive; Korine fell for Glen, and they got married months later; there was absolutely no mention of Harry Potter, and Korine herself shushed her curiosity.

She got to meet him again, though; got to see what had become of him.

The last thing that sparked a light in Korine's mind when you mentioned the name Harry Potter was The Reunion—and yes, with capitals.

She called it such because it stood out from all the other primary school reunions she'd ever planned nor attended. For one, she actually looked forward to it.

It was a tradition she'd never really understood; after all, since when did primary schools have ten-year reunions? Korine knew if hers ever had one, she'd never attend—too embarrassing. But nevertheless, she couldn't help the smile spreading across her face when she wrote down Harry Potter's address.

It was the eyes that alerted her.

Not the round glasses, not the messy hair that stuck up in all directions, not the I-don't-want-to-be-here expression on his face—not even the beautiful redhead at his side. But his eyes, no longer quite innocent but startling as ever, told her right then that this was Harry Potter.

"Harry?" She took him in. How he had changed; gone was the small boy with the taped-together glasses—this man before her stood with an air of confidence and contentment, and Korine laughed out loud. "You look well!"

Harry's brows furrowed for a moment. "Ms. Anderson?" he asked, almost tentatively, before a grin split his face and he wrung her hand with renewed fervor. "It's amazing to see you, ma'am, it's been ages, I didn't think—"

"Bolt, actually," Korine cut in, but she was wearing a grin to match his own. "I'm Mrs. Bolt now. And a mother of two."

"Bolt?" Harry's mouth fell, and he glanced at her fingers hurriedly; a simple silver ring rested gracefully on one of them. "You married Sir Bolt?"

"He's a sweet man," she said, laughing at her student's face. "But who's this lovely lady with you?"

The smile that reappeared on Harry's face could only be described as pure joy. "This is Ginny," he said, wrapping an arm around the smaller girl. "Gin, she was one of my teachers before we met—Korine... Bolt, but she was Korine Anderson when I knew her. Ma'am, this is—well—my girlfriend."

"Thought so." Already Korine liked her. She took the younger woman's hands in hers. "Better not let go of him tonight, dear." She sent Harry a knowing smile. "The ladies will be fawning over you tonight, that's for sure."

Harry didn't even blink. "They'll just have to find someone else, then," he said, beaming at Ginny, who smirked and slipped her hand into his as though it was routine.

She got sidetracked. By the time she'd talked to Veronica Whittle (bright girl, but got pulled in by the 'popular side'), spoken with Gordon Flouter (dull and as much of an idiot as ever, unsurprisingly enough), and caught up with a hundred other people she didn't want to catch up with, it was getting late into the evening. Knowing this was likely the last time she would ever see any of her students again, she looked for Harry's table, hoping for at least a last goodbye.

She was then met with a great shock.

"Dudley Dursley?"

Indeed, Dudley Dursley had changed a lot too. His figure, while not absolutely perfect, was slimmer, and he looked far more respectable than his father had at his age. He was seated across Harry, all previous disdain towards his cousin in childhood seemingly nonexistent, and if it weren't for the blond hair and the watery blue eyes, Korine wouldn't have recognized him at all.

Dudley looked up at her, smiling uneasily. "Uh, yeah, hi, uh—" she saw him glance fleetingly at her nametag "—Mrs. Bolt, I think?"

"That's right," said Korine, deciding it would do no good to bring up the past now. "Having a good time of it, I hope?"

Dudley blushed a little. "Yeah, but we were about to leave, actually," he said, gesturing to a fine-looking girl beside him; Korine could only assume that she was his girlfriend. "We really didn't expect to stay this long."

"That's alright," she assured him, and saw them out quickly before returning to Harry and Ginny. "I've been meaning to ask you a question," she said. "I was wondering which school you attended after primary."

Almost unnoticeably, Harry stiffened. "St. Brutus', ma'am."

Korine raised an eyebrow. "That's odd, isn't it, going to a school that doesn't exist? I checked, Harry."

Both Harry and Ginny looked staggered now. "Well—" Harry scuffed his shoes like a child caught in wrongdoing. "I went to a school up in Scotland—the same my parents went to," he said. "It's actually where I met Ginny."

Korine just knew there was more, but for once she let it slide.

For a long time, they just talked.

Korine learned that Harry had two best friends: one was a brother of Ginny's, and the other was a bright young woman whose hobby was to learn. Ginny's family, the Weasleys, Harry proudly told her, had all known him since he was eleven; all the children had gone to the same school. And when Harry was sixteen, he had snogged Ginny in front of at least a quarter of the school (Harry had smiled embarrassedly at this, but Ginny had relayed the entire story to Korine with great enthusiasm.)

Now, Harry maintained a well-earning (secretive) job in the British Army; Ginny was planning to tryout at a women's sport on a national level.

It was all a little overwhelming, but then, Korine always had known that Harry Potter would go far.

As the majority of the guests began to say their goodbyes and Korine saw Harry and Ginny off as well, she heard Ginny murmur, "I never knew you had an English teacher like her."

"Yeah. Best English teacher you could ask for, really. I swear she kept me alive. Don't think I'd be the same without her."

Korine's heart warmed. She would never understand the mystery that was her former student, but for now, this would be enough.

AN: This was an odd idea I got out of nowhere. Not too long, yes, but believe it or not, this actually took me some time to write. Sorry if I haven't updated my other story yet, but high school's being a jerk. A big, ugly jerk. Uglier than Umbridge.