Those Who Failed

Those Who Failed

Had Professor McGonagall's tea been a little warmer; perhaps her bun a bit looser or her shoes more comfortable, she would have approved The Letter to be sent to Jami O'Klare. But the professor was in ill temper; she had not finished the list today as she had hoped to, which meant a long day of paperwork on the balmy day following. She marked beside the girl's name "Rejected" with a flourish on the end of the r and the line of the d.

By the time she made it to her bed in the Teachers' Quarters, she would not have even been able to tell you Jami's first name.

For you see, contrary to popular belief, there are many shades of the power of a wizard, and the Book of Names at Hogwarts only writes those who are stronger than a certain predetermined strength. When Neville Longbottom said he was almost a Squib, he didn't mean he didn't almost make it into the Book; he meant he almost failed to make the Pre-Approved List. And what could be more horrifying for any pureblooded family than an interrogation of their child, a cold analysis to see if they were fit for the school they had always expected to attend?

Thus academicians such as Professor McGonagall made decisions about the weak ones, those with the spark but without talent for it. Would they be happier in the Muggle world, just learning to grow accustomed to odd events happening around them every once in a while? Or though they would be perpetually at the bottom of their classes, learning slower than even the most incompetent person who was on the Pre-Approved List in the Book of Names, were schools like these where they belonged?

Well, McGonagall was in the charge of making that decision for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and she decided Jami O'Klare was best suited to the Muggle world. The professor gave hardly any thought to her decision; after all, she made dozens of ones exactly like this every summer.

Of course, the following fall, Jami did not appear for the boat ride across the lake among the children who would have been her peers. Instead, she was being enrolled at Stonewall High, the local public school near where she lived. She heard rumors of a boy with dark hair and glasses who had never appeared for attendance, whose fat uncle had appeared the day term started and made up all sorts of wild excuses why his nephew could not attend.

His tales contradicted each other horrifically, but he seemed beyond caring. Who ever heard of owls delivering letters, anyway, especially enchanted ones that spoke and warned the man's family never to abandon their nephew like that again? The man seemed to regret speaking that, and stormed out like it was the Stonewall Headmaster's fault he had spouted crazy nonsense as such.

The Headmaster only sighed, as he crossed out Harry Potter on his list, and said it was probably for the best the daft man's nephew would not be schooling with them.

Jami indeed grew accustomed to lilies sprouting in her path whenever she dragged her hand along a trellis, and the way she could cool her tea down with a wave of her hand whenever she wasn't thinking about what she was doing.

And she would dream of a place for people like her when the children teased her and punched her in the stomach because they knew she was different. She would remember that crazy boy even until she graduated from school and went on to university.

Above all, she dreamed of Harry Potter and how he never came back to Stonewall, and she wondered if he found his place in the world, never knowing that the same people who granted him a happy life condemned her to one to which she was not welcome.