#send heeeelp

She knew this because on the fourth day, at lunch, she heard Dudley Dursley before she saw him — a large, loud boy orbited by two others, the three of them moving through the lunch queue with the confidence of people who had never once been told no. She recognized Harry's address and gurdian details on the register and put it together.

She watched Dudley take someone's pudding. The dinner lady looked away.

She looked for Harry. Found him at the end of a table, eating methodically, alone, his tray half-empty in a way that suggested his portion had started that way, not that he'd left anything. He wasn't watching Dudley. He was watching the door.

***

By the third week she had a list in her head, though she hadn't written it down yet.

The jumper — always too big, always the same one or one exactly like it, worn at the elbows.

The shoes — trainers that didn't fit properly, the left one split at the toe.

The way he ate at lunch. Quickly. Neatly. Like someone who had learned not to draw attention to hunger.

The bruise on his forearm that he'd said was from falling. Which it might have been. Children fell.

The way he flinched — just slightly, just a small tightening — when she raised her voice at the class for something. She'd stopped raising her voice after she noticed that. She told herself it was good pedagogy. She knew it wasn't only that.

He was quiet. Not the shyness of children who wanted to speak and couldn't — she knew that kind, she'd been that kind. This was something else. He chose his words. He watched before he moved. He was careful in a way that no six-year-old should have had to learn yet.

But he was brilliant. That was the thing that kept catching her off guard. His reading was years ahead. When she did maths on the board he'd already done it in his head and was waiting, patient, for the others to catch up. He'd ask questions that made her pause — real questions, not showing-off questions. How can airplanes stay up if they’re so heavy? If the Earth is spinning, why don’t we fall off?

He wanted to know things. Despite everything she was quietly beginning to suspect, he still looked at the world like it might have answers worth finding.

She found that almost unbearable, somehow. The hope in it.

***

She went to Cora Meyers in week four.

Cora was the year three teacher, had been at St. Giles Primary for nineteen years, knew every family in a two-mile radius. If anyone would know about the Dursleys, it was Cora.

"Harry Potter," Nina said, in the staffroom, keeping her voice low. "Year one. Do you know anything about his home situation?"

Cora looked up from her marking. Something crossed her face — recognition, and then a kind of practiced neutrality. "Potter," she said. "Yes. He was flagged a few years back, I think. I was not his teacher, but I've heard."

"Flagged how?"

"Oh, you know. Concern was raised." Cora said it the way you said things that hadn't gone anywhere. "Nothing came of it. The Dursleys are very..." She paused. "Respectable. The mother keeps a very clean house."

Nina looked at her. "He comes in hungry."

"Children that age are always hungry."

"His clothes don't fit."

"Some families have less money, Nina." Cora said. Not unkindly. Patiently. The way you spoke to someone young.

"He flinches when—"

"He's a troubled boy." Cora said it simply, like she was offering a diagnosis. "I taught his cousin last year. Very different child. Harry's always been a bit..." She made a vague gesture. "You'll find your footing with him. They're not all easy ones."

Nina was not convinced but smiled. Said thank you. Took her mug back to her classroom.

Troubled boy. She sat with that for a long time. Turned it over. Looked at it from different angles, the way Harry looked at things, like there might be an answer in it somewhere.

Troubled like it was something he'd done. Something he'd arrived with, packaged and sealed, nothing to do with where he slept or what he ate or whose house he went home to.

She didn't go back to Cora after that.

***

She called social services on a Tuesday in November.

She'd written notes by then. Actual notes, in a small notebook she kept in her cardigan pocket — dates, observations, specific things. The split shoe. The lunch. The flinch. The Tuesday in October when he'd come in with a mark on the back of his hand he couldn't explain and looked at the floor when she asked.

She had it all written down. She was prepared. She was calm.

She picked up the phone in the empty staffroom and dialed.

And then—

She stood there for a moment with the receiver in her hand, the dial tone going, and she thought: what am I going to say, exactly?

She knew what she was going to say. She had it in the notebook. But the thought slid away from her strangely, like trying to hold water, and she found herself thinking about her lesson plan for Wednesday, the shapes unit, whether she had enough of the orange card—

She put the phone down.

She stood very still. She picked it up again. Dialed.

His shoes don't fit, she thought, very deliberately. He flinches. He ate half a lunch in October because someone had—

The thought went sideways again. Softly, like a hand guiding her away from something. Wednesday. Orange card. The shapes.

She put the phone down.

She was shaking slightly, she realized. That was strange. She didn't feel frightened. She felt— redirected. Like a river that had been turned.

She tried four more times that afternoon. Once she got through to a recorded message and opened her mouth to speak and simply couldn't remember why she'd called. Once she sat down to write a formal letter of concern and wrote three words and then got up to water the classroom plants, which didn't need watering.

The last time, she stood at the phone with her notebook open in her hand, the specific page, Harry's name at the top, and she read each entry out loud to herself quietly, like an incantation.

Consistent underfeeding. Inadequate clothing. Physical marks. Fearful response to adult anger.

She picked up the phone.

She dialed.

She heard it connect.

She said: "Hello, I'm calling to raise a concern about a child—"

And then she was sitting at her desk with her coat on and her bag in her lap and it was five-fifteen and the school was empty and she didn't know how she'd gotten there. The notebook was in her pocket. She checked. His name was still there, all the entries, her own handwriting.

She sat in the empty classroom for a long time.

On his desk, in the front row — he always chose the front, another thing she'd noted, easiest to see the board, farthest from the door — there was a drawing he'd left. A forest, done in pencil, with tremendous patience. Hundreds of tiny careful trees.

In the middle of the forest there was a small figure. She had to squint to see it. It wasn't doing anything. It was just standing in the trees, very small, looking out.

Nina Norton put the drawing in her notebook, between his pages.

She went home. She told herself she would try again tomorrow. She would find a way around whatever this was — whatever kept redirecting her, whatever kept turning the river. She would try again.

She meant it the way she'd always meant things.