The Children Who Lived and the Philosopher's Stone

The Strangest Of Things

Dates are not canon dates for these occurrences, I just chose them myself. After all, there are no canon dates for any of this stuff. They just happened. Also, many names in this are simply made-up names for classmates, including surnames for some of Dudley's friends.

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𝚃𝚞𝚎𝚜𝚍𝚊𝚢, 𝟷𝟶𝚝𝚑 𝙹𝚊𝚗𝚞𝚊𝚛𝚢 𝟷𝟿𝟾𝟿 (𝚈𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝙵𝚘𝚞𝚛)

When we walked into the classroom on our first day back after the Christmas holidays, it was to see a completely different person standing at the front of the room. Our teacher, Mr Farrow, was almost never ill (we had a supply for two days in October, but that was all). This teacher was a woman who introduced herself as Miss Hywater.

Anna was the first to put her hand up and ask about where Mr Farrow was. She was really polite about it, but Miss Hywater was very rude to her.

"I don't know where your teacher is, girl, and you don't need to either. Now get on with your work."

Luke, sitting at the same table as Anna, leaned across the desk to whisper something to her. When she noticed them doing their strange pencil-tapping thing, Miss Hywater got even madder than she had been before.

"Stop that!" she snapped, and everyone at the table looked terrified. Luke and Anna's table is the 'good people' table, with the six best people in 4F aside from my siblings. In fact, I think the person who gets in trouble the most on that table is Luke. "Silence!"

Dudley and his friends sniggered at the table next to theirs. Sophie, also on that table (which all four of us agree is extremely unlucky for her), seemed to be very focused on Miss Hywater, however -- giving her the sort of look that everyone in 4F knows means trouble. Hazel eyes sparkling with clear malice, but an expression that looks perfectly calm.

And then, slowly, the teacher's hair started to turn blue.

Anna stuck her hand into the air again, waving it around this time as people began to laugh loudly. I caught Sophie covering her mouth with her hand as she giggled too, and figured that if I was to at least look somewhat innocent I'd come out of this fine.

So I laughed too.

Indeed, only Anna and one of the girls at her table, Skye Ashton-Keir, weren't laughing. 

"Is something funny?" she snapped at Dudley after about five minutes of people failing to hide their snickers. 

"N-no," he said, voice impressively steady, before nearly falling off his chair when she turned away from him.

"Yes?" she asked, finally noticed Anna's hand.

"Your hair... It's blue," she whispered.

"Nonsense! You mustn't tell lies, you silly girl!"

And for the next two hours, she taught -- or tried to teach -- with her bright blue hair on full display. Every attempt to tell her that Anna wasn't lying, whether it be from Piers Polkiss or Melissa Cole, came with a variation of 'don't tell lies' and the comment being brushed off.

By the time we were sent to break, Skye seemed to have taken pity on Miss Hywater and produced a small mirror from her bag. She passed it to the teacher before nearly running out of the room, and the rest of the class followed suit.

It was strange, but the entire class chose, quite willingly, to spend that break sitting in a corner of the playground to talk about the prank. 

"Who did that?" Lucy Ryans asked, leaning against the fence. "And how? Nobody got up!"