My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady- The Phonetics Professor and the Flower Girl

Harry Potter strolled onto the wet street of London from the theater. He stretched as the crowd brushed past him. Harry leant against the elegant Roman poll by the theater as he waited for the crowd to leave. Feeling rather tired, Harry closed his eyes and yawned.

Suddenly, Harry's rather trained ears caught a disgusting sound among the nobles standing around him. As a wizard professor of phonetics, Harry immediately knew that the sound came from no noble but from a commoner. A very uneducated commoner at that. Whoever this person was, she definitely came from some gutter of the most stinky street of some dirty cities save London.

"Flowers! Sir, a penny for a bunch of pretty flowers! Sir? Have you got a penny to spare? One penny and the flower is yours." A rather dirty looking bushy brown haired flower girl was provoking the elegant nobles standing by. Her accent was terrible. It was no proper English and the sound was more than most nobles could bear. Most people gave her a penny for her flowers just to shut her up.

Harry couldn't leave this wonderful opportunity of studying the disgusting English dialect slip past. Quickly, he drew his wand from the hollow gentleman walking stick he was leaning on. He muttered, "Recordantimos!" under his breath and began to record the girl's speech.

Now the girl was bothering a very tired looking blond gentleman near by, who like Harry, was also waiting for the crowd to leave. "One penny for flower. One penny and help a poor girl pay her rent. Sir, a penny to spare?" the girl bellowed into the poor gentleman's ears. The blond gentleman was clearly frightened by the girl's ugly seech. He reached into his pocket and gave the girl a shilling and begged her to go away as the girl tried to gave him her flowers.

Harry was so enjoying himself with recording that he had forgotten that Muggles were not used to see people walking around with wands.

"Miss?" an equally disturbing voice called out to the flower girl. "That gentleman over there is pointing a stick at you no matter where you stood."

Harry quickly slipped his wand back into the hollow walking stick as heads turned to him. He pointed his walking stick at the girl, pretending that was exactly what he had been pointing with the whole time.

"Sir, what have I done that you have to point that stick at me?" the flower girl wailed. "Look, this gentleman is pointing a stick at a poor flower girl for nothing and still call himself gentleman. I haven't done anything wrong, have I?"

Harry put down his walking stick and walked over to the girl. "You, my dear, had done wrong by not speaking properly." He turned around and addressed to the crowd around him. "Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter, condemned by every syllable she ever uttered. By law she should be taken out and hung, for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue."

The bushy brunette was clearly frightened by Harry's words. "Aoooow!" she moaned.

Harry continued his long speech of how proper English was disappearing through the ages. He was getting so worked up that he was going from person to person and ask them why they wouldn't teach their children to speak properly. "In France every Frenchman knows his language fro 'A' to 'Z'. The French never care what they do, actually as long as they pronounce in properly. Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning and Hebrews learn it backwards, which is absolutely frightening. But use proper English you're regarded as a freak. Why can't the English.... Why can't the English learn to speak?" Harry concluded exasperatedly. It was then that he had finally noticed that most of the crowd from the theater had already left and he was stuck among the poor and the lowly outside the theater. That is, if you don't count the blond man eyeing him with interests.

"You seemed to be a well learnt phonetician," the blond gentleman said. "Maybe you know of my friend, Harry Potter. We met in college but parted when he followed his dream with phonetics and me with my ambition in military."

Harry turned abruptly. "England, India, with a little mixture of France. Why, are you not my dear enemy, Draco Malfoy?"

Draco clapped Harry on the back. "I never thought you'd be here."

"And I never thought you'd arrive a day early," grinned Harry. "How have you been all these years? Never heard of you once since you left for India. Come, you are to stay on the Wimpole Street with me and fill me up with all these blank years."

Harry was just about to walk off with Draco when he was stopped by that annoying flower girl. "Sir, a penny to spare? One penny and you can have the last flower in the basket."

Harry glanced at Draco, who was holding onto the flowers he just brought with great embarrassment. "No thank you, Miss. I think those flowers are hideous."

Hermione was very much insulted. She bellowed on the top of her lungs with the worst accent she could manage, "You horrible nasty rat! My flowers are not hideous!" She threw her basket at Harry and hit him squarely on the back. "Take that! You can have the basket too if you have one penny. You insolent fake gentleman! You probably don't even have a penny."

Harry turned in mock polite and raised his hat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a several silver coins, which he thrown into the basket lying by his feet. He then turned and walked off with Draco. However, before he left, Harry turned and jeered at Hermione. "Listen, flower girl, one month and I could turn you into a shop keeper from what you are right now." Laughing hard with Draco, they walked away.

Hermione quickly ran over to her basket and counted all the silver coins. One pound the insolent man had given her in total! She pocketed the money happily. She couldn't care less of what the man said to her. At least she was paid for her humiliation and she was used to it anyway.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Early next morning, Hermione was gathering flowers she was going to sell for the day. Suddenly, someone tapped her on the shoulder. She knew instantly who was there. "Seamus! Go away!" Hermione complained.

Sure enough, Hermione's good for nothing drunkard older brother and his equally corrupted friends, Neville and Dean, stood behind her, grinning like idiots. "Good morning, Hermione!" Seamus greeted.

"Go away!" Hermione turned. Doubtlessly, her brother and his friends were there to get money off her so they could get drinks.

"Hermione, please! I heard you were lucky last night. How could you see your own brother starve while you have so much money? Have a heart!" Seamus pulled Hermione's arm back towards them.

Hermione struggled. "Leave me alone!"

Seamus grinned cheekily. "Money?"

"Fine!" Hermione gave her brother a shilling. "Don't ever come back again!"

Seamus and his friends skipped away happily without even thanking his sister.

Hermione glared after her brother angrily. She vowed that she would never give him another penny if she could help it. But she had broken her vows so many times that she seriously doubt that she would keep it this time.

Hermione picked up her basket full of flowers and began another tiring day of flower selling. Secretly, she hoped that she would meet the crazy phonetic professor again even if he was a little odd. He was interesting, not to mention generous. She really wouldn't mind being made fun of by him again if he would only give her another pound. However, she seriously doubted her luck.

At lunch time, Hermione wandered back to the theater where she first met the professor. The last words of the professor rang in her ear over and over again. "Listen, flower girl, one month and I could turn you into a shop keeper from what you are right now."

A shop keeper! Why didn't she thought of it before? Being a shop keeper, she could earn a steady wage without being insulted. It would be a much nicer job and she wouldn't need to run in sweat all day long. But to be a shop keeper, she would have to speak clearly and that's where the professor comes in. A few days ago, Hermione would thought it was joke if someone told her that she could be a shop keeper. Now she had hopes. She knew that learning with the professor would mean that she would have to put up with his insults for a whole month. However, she was willing to take them. After all, the professor didn't seem too bad with his friend, the blond haired gentleman. Maybe the professor was only mean to those who weren't his friends.

Hermione put down her basket of flower and began to walk towards the Wimpole Street. A look of determination hung on her face as she moved. Nothing was going to stop her from learning to be a shop keeper. That Harry professor could taunt her, insult her, tease her, but he wouldn't be able to dissuade her from learning. She was going to be a shop keeper and that was final.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In Harry's lounge on Wimpole Street, Harry and Draco were having a heated argument over whether their magic college professors, McGonagall and Snape, should get marry or not. It was on the Daily Prophet that morning, announcing their engagement.

"Blimely, Potter, what is it that you have got against Snape? I know he was mean to you back at school, but it was only because you were in Gryffindor. Snape isn't that bad a person," said Draco.

"But McGonagall! She's Gryffindor! That just wouldn't work!" argued Harry.

"Well, I have to admit that it was a surprise. I never thought I'd live the day to see McGonagall getting married."

"Neither did I thought that I'd see Snape's," agreed Harry.

There was a knock on the door and Lavender Brown, another fellow Gryffindor and was now Harry's housekeeper, walked in.

"Harry? There's a rather dirty looking girl outside, demanding to see you. She had a very loud voice and nasty accent. Should I bring her in?" asked Lavender.

"Nasty accent, you said?" Harry's eyebrows raised with interests. It was very interesting that he should meet so many girls with nasty accent in two days. "All right, bring her in. We can study her a little."

Lavender nodded and walked out of the lounge to open the door for the dirty girl.

As soon as Lavender left, Harry turned and grinned to Draco. "Well, Malfoy, seems to me that you are in luck. You are about to witness a very thorough study of phonetics. Yes, even better than yesterday. We will look in depth of this girl's accent. Now, take out your wand and say, 'recordantimos" the moment she walked in. Point your wand at her all the time and record every sound she made. Is that clear?"

Draco saluted in jokingly. "Yes, Sir Potter!"

Both men were ready as Lavender and, assumably, the dirty girl's footsteps neared. Harry and Draco's minds were both focused on their tasks.

The door opened and Lavender walked in. Behind her, was a very dirty girl dressed in an ugly black dress covered in mud spots. The girl had bushy brown hair, dark chocolate eyes and rather large front teeth. She smiled gracefully (in Harry's opinion, disturbingly) and walked in front of Harry and Draco.

Harry studied the girl for a second and groaned out aloud, "Oh, not you again!"

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