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“Wake up Ron! It’s your first day of muggle school!”
Ron opened his eyes, blearily looking around his room for the source of the voice. It was Ginny, who was standing in the doorway. She was already dressed and wearing her new school uniform; a white polo shirt, a blue tie, a black skirt, black knee-high socks and some shiny new patent leather school shoes.
Ron grumbled and pushed himself out of his bed. Ever since he was a child, he had always been ecstatic to go to Hogwarts, but after the Wizard Ofsted had come to visit and found out it’s history of student deaths and staff misconduct, the place had been promptly shut down and demolished. Ron supposed it could be worse, poor Ginny didn’t even get a chance to go.
Because of this, and there not being any other magic schools in the UK, the Ministry of Magic had declared that all young witches and wizards must attend normal muggle schools because they need to have an education.
Ron started putting his own uniform on, thinking about his worries. His mother had never really done a very good job at teaching him things that you would need in the muggle world. Because there were no wizard Primary schools, parents had to teach their children at home. She had only taught her children things beneficial for adult life in the wizard society, such as how wizard money worked, or who the founders of Hogwarts were. Ron didn’t know who the queen of rap was (or what rap was in general) and he certainly didn’t know what a Magna Carta was!
After he had gone downstairs, packed his bag and said goodbye to his parents, he and Ginny left the house to go to the nearest bus stop. Because they lived in the middle of nowhere, the bus was empty the entire ride.
Once the pair arrived at the school itself, the two parted ways and Ron navigated the bustling halls to his form room. Once inside, he spotted a few familiar faces.
“Malfoy? What are you doing here?” He asked, putting his bag on a nearby desk.
“What? Oh. It’s the weasel. I didn’t know they let just anyone in here…” sneered the blonde, straightening his tie.
“It’s a state school, Malfoy. They had to let me in,” Ron replied, fiddling nervously with a pen. If he was at Hogwarts, he would be playing with his wand but because he was ‘normal’ now, wands were prohibited. “What are you doing here anyways? I thought you were rich!”
Draco rolled his eyes and sneered again, crossing his arms with a pout.
“Yes. Well Daddy wanted me to go to Eton, but they don’t allow people in on short notice.”
Suddenly, the form room door opened and an unrecognisable girl strutted into the room. Rather than wearing the usual uniform, she was wearing a black puffer jacket, her skirt was incredibly short, she had gold hoop earrings in, and her face was several shades darker than the rest of her. On that face were two spiders coming off of her eyes and massive bushy eyebrows.
She stopped in the doorway. She stopped her loud and obnoxious chewing for a moment and reached inside her river island handbag, pulling out a bottle of what was likely a Victoria’s Secret perfume. After several hundred sprays from the bottle and after filling the room with the toxic fumes, she continued over to the two boys.
“Rah, where’s my baccy?” The stranger asked and as Ron got a glimpse of the familiar buck teeth of the girl that he came to the sad realisation of who it was.
“Hermione? What happened to you? Why do you look like that?” He asked, concerned for his best friend who happened to be a girl.
“God Ron, you deaf of somethink? I asked if you had a fag I could borrow.” Hermione berated, still holding the perfume in her manicured hand.
Ron’s eyes widened and his face blushed. Whether it was from shock or embarrassment from what his friend had just told him, he couldn’t tell.
“You can’t say that Hermione! My dad told me it’s a slur against-” the ginger boy exclaimed, jumping to his feet but not getting to finish his sentence. The door opened again and another stranger entered, this time a boy.
He had an Adidas tracksuit on and had a black backpack slung across his shoulder. On his head was a cap and in his ears were what Ron vaguely recognised to be AirPods. He could faintly hear the music blasting through them and although Ron couldn’t tell what it was, the boy was listening to Grime music.
“Ayo, wagwan blud.” Said the boy, not taking out his headphones nor turning the music down. He did, however, take off his hat and Ron realised it was the famed boy who lived, aka Harry Potter. He wasn’t wearing any glasses and so Ron supposed he was wearing whatever ‘contact lenses’ were.
Ron’s panic and confusion about what had happened to his friends and classmates wasn’t able to last long, as there was a knock on the door.
“Ron I think you have my pencil case.”
It was his sister Ginny, who thankfully hadn’t changed a bit since she’d stepped on the school property.
“Fuck, who’s this peng ting?” Asked Harry, pointing at the poor girl.
Ron’s eyes widened again and he nearly slapped the boy. “Harry, that’s my little sister! She isn’t even twelve yet!”
“Calm down bruv, it’s just jokes innit!” exclaimed Harry, a hint of anger in his voice. “You calling me a nonce, fam? Cause I’m not. Just banter, yeah? Just banter.”
Ron looked back to his younger sister to tell her that he did not in fact have her pencil case, but it seemed she had already left.
“Anyways blud, me and the mandem are gonna go get pissed in a warehouse somewhere. You coming?”
Ron looked around the classroom to see what everybody else was doing. Draco was talking to two other boys about how great Bojo was and how he would be transferring to Eton soon. Hermione, who was in a line beside three other girls, was simultaneously chewing gum, smoking a ciggy and also having a spray sesh. If he did ditch school on his first day, what would his parents think? Oh well, he could lie and say he got lost on his way there.
“Sure. Who are we meeting?” He asked, confident in his decision.
“My mate Ced and his girl down at his end. Some others too. Nobody else you know.”
And so, the two boys left the building and got on the train to Cedric’s ‘end’. After about half an hour, the two boys finally got there and started walking through the high street. Eventually, they turned down an alleyway and the houses stopped being nice and started getting smaller and more decrepit, the paint peeling off of the buildings.
“Harry, where are we?” Ron asked, starting to regret his decision.
“I told you fam, we’re in London innit.”
“Yeah, but where specifically?”
“Croydon.”
Ron shuddered. His parents warned him never to go to Croydon. He looked behind him, wishing he could go back to school. He couldn’t return on his own, he had never been here before and would be even more lost. Suddenly out of the corner of his eye he spotted two men run into the alley with them.
“This is a mugging, give us all your money!” They cried. They both smelt like weed and alcohol. One had a broken bottle in his hand and the other carried a knife.
Harry started to sprint away to god knows where, but Ron was frozen in place. Oh, if only he had his wand on him. His poor, malfunctioning wand…
“We said give us your money! Now, or we’ll shank you!”
“I only have five galleons, is that okay?” Ron nervously asked, seconds away from shitting himself out of fear.
The two men looked at eachother, trying to figure out if Ron was taking the piss out of them. They nodded to each other and started to stab Ron with their bottle and hidden knives, taking his bag and leaving him in the alley to bleed out. Ron’s vision turned to darkness and the noise of the street faded out.
“Wake up Ron! It’s the first day of school!”
Ron’s eyes shot open and he broke out in a sweat, sitting up quickly in his bed.
“What?”
“It’s the first day of school! I’m finally going to Hogwarts!” Exclaimed Ginny, standing in the doorway of his room, already dressed to go.
“Yeah… right.” Ron sighed in relief, getting out of bed to get dressed. It seemed as though it was all just one bad dream.