My School Gothic That Could Totally Fit Hogwarts
- Teachers can tell you about your second cousin twice removed that went to school there twenty years before you were born in excruciating detail. They don’t remember your first name
- There’s that one corridor that everyone avoids because it is ‘too busy’ yet it still manages to be full everytime you pass it. Who is using that corridor? No one you know
- The Cool Teacher™ who has a basketball hoop and a tennis ball that is always in his hands and sometimes he gets you to shoot at it when you get a question right. It is embarrassing because neither of you can throw
- At 12:45 daily the seagulls and pigeons will start flying around your head. One option is to run, but they may dive bomb you in hopes of getting some food. The other option is to freeze until the dreaded minute is over, but that heightens your chance of getting bird poop on you
- That one kid that never seems to go outside??? Like you go to hand in a late assignment at lunch and there he is???? Just sitting at the desk?? He looks like he should have left at least seven years ago?? The teacher hasn’t noticed
- You’ve met the headmaster twice. You’ve seen him four times outside of assembly, at most
- Once was an accident. He lost track of time when talking to your first-period teacher then felt so awkward about it he pretended he was overseeing the lesson
- The second time may have been a dream. He was wearing a duck hat and several layers in the town centre. He used your full name but never asked why you weren’t in class. It was a Thursday in June at 2:10, 32 degrees
- There’s motivational quotes on the stairs. They make no sense. The paint has been chipping in the same spot for fifteen years
- You have an Eastern Block. No other areas of the school are named like this. It is two classrooms, one of them used for storage. It is in the west
- Meeting the kids that go to the local comprehensive is An Experience
- They tell you on their last school trip they stopped at Greggs. You tell them you don’t know what that is. They are appalled
- At Christmas and Easter, two people with very bland white names come to talk about religion. Several kids get out of it by claiming to be Jehovah’s Witnessess. They are not
- The bland whites sing about fish. You don’t know the words but you sing like you do. The loudest singer gets sweets from them, and you are nothing if not mercenary
- Once, when you were in second year, they stopped serving pasta for lunch. They took the cookies away. You were left with salad and crackers. There was a riot. You never saw that chef again
- The gardens have fresh fruit growing in them. You have never seen anyone pick one. Everyone has scurvy, but the nurse doesn’t care
- Your head of house doesn’t seem to know who you are, except when you are in trouble
- The teachers still call you by your siblings name. They left the school four years ago. Apparently, they were called by your name as well
- There is a gummy sweet permentally melted into one of the beds in your dorm. It was there when you started, and will be there for years to come
- You get tea at half three. You can have tea or juice. You are not allowed coffee. Everone has coffee
- When on a school trip, you are all forced to eat in the same McDonalds, all four hundred plus of you. Your teachers cross the road and eat in a nice café
- You have never been in the library. You were unaware you had a library until you accidentally wandered past it trying to find the head of house office. You have never found it again
- You have four classes a day, each forty minutes long. You spend the other three hours of the school day pretending to participate in a club. You are not sure what it is for. Your education is lacking
- The faculty put you in debate club. All you have debated on is how you pronounce scone. The international students are scared
