Kagome Higurashi, miko, priestess, shrine maiden, guardian of the Shikon no Tama, herbalist, archery champion of the region and newly-graduated nurse sighed as she sank into the chair of the café. It had been a long day.

InuYasha had shown up. She'd reassembled the Shikon years ago, it was whole, pure, hanging around her neck, and Naraku was as dead as Kikyo. InuYasha only came through the well now to eat ramen before going back, able to tell everybody that she was still fine. He also made it his personal mission to annoy her every time he came through.

Hojo had stopped by the shrine as well, as if InuYasha visiting hadn't been enough. She had been turning him down for years now. Why didn't he understand that she just wasn't interested? For that matter, how the hell did he believe that she had actually been sick with her grandfather's diseases when she was in middle school? She'd been absent a lot of time absent, yes, but every time she showed up at school she'd been in the pink, health-wise, even if she was always stressed or exhausted.

Now she was supposed to be meeting someone for a job interview. She didn't know why they'd picked a café to have the meeting, or why they'd contacted her about the position, but it meant that she could buy a cup of something hot and soothing, so she wasn't going to complain. Maybe she'd get something made of pastry and covered in chocolate while she was at it.

Kagome smiled at that thought and picked up the menu that was on the table. Nothing chocolate-y. Not fair!

"Jasmine tea and two bonito rice balls please," Kagome said when the waiter came for her order.

He nodded and disappeared again.

"Higurashi-san?" a voice asked politely.

Kagome looked up. "Yes," she answered. "Potter-san?" she queried.

The man smiled and slid into the chair opposite the young woman. "I'm glad I got the right person the first time," he said. "It would have been so embarrassing, asking every person in the shop if they were you."

Kagome laughed. If his name hadn't given it away, his face, accent and admission did. Potter-san was a foreigner. "Did you want to order something Potter-san?" Kagome asked. "I just ordered tea and rice balls."

"I ordered before sitting down," the man admitted sheepishly. "So, shall we talk qualifications first, or what the job would involve?"

Kagome smiled. "You haven't done this before, have you?" she asked kindly.

Potter shook his head, smiling but obviously holding back laughter. "I am that obvious," he said, then looked back up at Kagome. "I am new to the post of 'employer'," he admitted. "But I feel that it is better to start on friendly terms, rather than with an inquisition."

"Well, I'm a qualified nurse, fresh out of school, and I know a lot of alternative remedies as well as all the latest medical practices," Kagome said with a smile. "That's my medical qualifications in a nutshell. Your turn."

Potter laughed quietly at that. "I'm looking for a school nurse," he said. "So I need to know how you are with kids as well."

"What age group?" Kagome asked.

"It's a boarding school for children from five to fifteen, with some students staying on for additional study until they're eighteen," Potter explained. "We've also got kids from all over the world, so I'm looking for people who either have at least two languages or are willing to learn."

Kagome nodded. "I understand English," she answered. "And some Latin, just because so many technical terms in medicine are Latin. I'm a fairly fast learner if the lessons are practical too."

Potter grinned. "Rather than books?" he suggested.

Kagome blushed but nodded. "Yeah, cramming books is one of my phobias," she admitted.

Potter frowned. "Any other concerns like that?" he asked. "My best friend wanted a job at my school too, but when I told him he'd have to work with spiders for the job he wanted he ran for the hills."

Kagome shuddered. "Okay, I'm not good with bugs either," she admitted. "I really don't like bugs. I can handle just about anything else though I think."

Potter nodded. "You shouldn't have too many bugs to worry about as school nurse if you get the job, except for the kind you can only see through the microscope of course," he said. "But what about the, ah, how do I say this?"

"Language or phrasing?" Kagome asked, aware that Japanese wasn't Potter's first language, even if he spoke it very well.

"Phrasing," Potter answered with a sigh. "My school is for children who are... gifted? Have special needs? Aren't normal?"

Kagome arched an eyebrow in wonder. "Potter-san, why did you specifically ask me for an interview? I only just graduated, school nurses are usually more experienced."

Potter shook his head. "You are the best choice," he said. "Your teachers said you understood alternative medicine better than anybody else in your class, and you're registered as living at a very prominent shrine with a history of ..." Potter trailed off, his brow furrowing as he tried to think of the best way to say what he was trying to.

"Dealing with the supernatural?" Kagome suggested.

"Yes!" Potter said, beaming.

The tea and rice balls arrived then – both Kagome's and Potter's, and conversation lulled while they both took a sip of their beverages and ate their first rice ball.

"You see, Higurashi-san," Potter said as he turned his cup in his hands, "my school is for children who are not 'normal'."

Kagome heard the inverted comas around that word, even if Potter didn't make any motion of gesture to emphasise the word. A small flame of hope sprung to life in her chest. The only demon she'd seen in her time was InuYasha when he came through the well, though the no-mask had been pretty freaky, and that time she'd had those dehydrated demon plants and yams... yeah, that wasn't fun, but they'd also come through the well.

Potter smiled just a little. "I think you're the right person for the job," he said quietly. "Will you?"

Kagome smiled and nodded. "I'd love to."

Potter then pulled a folder out of his suitcase and set it on the table. "So, specifics," he said, smiling weakly. "The bit everybody hates because it involves paperwork."

Kagome laughed and pulled the folder towards herself to start reading.

~oOo~

Potter's School for the Gifted was a new establishment and highly 'exclusive', as far as the muggle world knew. Every country thought that it hosted the school, but really it was located on a private island in the Indian Ocean. Students were provided a portkey if it was required, and for most of them it was.

Harry personally visited the muggle-born or -raised children whose names appeared in his student ledger – a massive book which indicated any child, pureblood, halfblood or muggle-born, who had the potential to perform magic, as well as squib children and any demon children who were suitable to attend, which generally meant certain types of animal and elemental demons. No bug-demons, they were always unpleasant characters, and no demons who were human-eaters, but any other kind was alright. Even if they were obviously non-human.

Ron had been interested in helping out until Harry had mentioned the demons. That there were a lot of spiders who called the island home had just been the straw that broke the camels back.

Hermione had decided that Harry was crazy from the moment he'd bought the island for the school, but she was willing to help out. Until Harry said that as brilliant as she was, her learning/teaching method – cramming as many books as possible into her head – wasn't what he was looking for in his teaching staff. She'd not been pleased. Harry had consoled her by offering her the only position he could see her in if she wanted to be on staff would be the librarian. It helped that he also said that she was the only person who he could see filling the position. She knew more about books than anybody else he'd ever met after all. Mollified, Hermione had accepted and was joyfully stocking the library of PSG with books on every subject. Every subject. There was liberal use of expansion charms to fit all of the book onto the shelves and all the shelves into the library. Hermione had even created a magical catalogue book for herself so that she could find and return every book easily.

Harry had recruited Fred and George to teach potions and magical experimentation, Neville as the keeper and teacher of the greenhouses – magical and mundane, Harry believed firmly in knowing about caring for all sorts of plants, not just one kind – and then decided to put them in charge of all the other teachers who would also help to teach the same subjects. He wasn't going to lump a whole school worth of students on one teacher after all. He'd have one teacher for every subject for every year group, and there would be more than just magical subjects taught. Of course, there were also going to be classes in the various subjects that might have otherwise been learned from parents in the home – like using demonic powers, or even purifying powers. Harry had every intention of getting as many different people into the school as possible.

He'd already recruited several squibs who had education and teaching degrees to expound upon languages, arithmetic, science, and the arts. The magical world was woefully behind in the arts. They'd never even heard of science. Most of them barely understood economics. If it hadn't been for Harry's own habit of studying hard and then pretending that he was stupid – left over from the Dursleys beating him if he got a better score than Dudley, so he had to both fake his stupidity and make Dudley look like a genius – then he would be just as woefully prepared for adult life.

Harry was also combing through every law school and magical ministry looking for people who could and would teach the laws of the magical world and the non-magical world to students. Both in the form of 'to function in society you must know these rules' and for those who wanted to make a dedicated study of it for other reasons. This department was going to be quite large, as he was getting students from all over the world, and every country had different laws.

It took a year to get the school built, staffed and equipped to the standard of the strictest educational standards he could find, as well as getting all of the paperwork filled out for every country he was pretending that he was establishing the school in, and applying for recognition from the ones he wasn't – because there were some countries, he knew, where asking to start up a school of any kind was a way of getting shot. His teams of lawyers, secretaries and under-secretaries breathed a sigh of relief when it was all done. There would still be paperwork to do, but never that much ever again.

The next hurdle was getting students.

For every name that appeared in Harry's great book of 'potential students', he sent out first a brochure about the school which had a contact number, mentioned scholarships, and spouted the virtues of an education at PSG. That's if the child came from a muggle household. If they came from a magical or demonic household, then it talked of much the same things, but phrased it differently, and had a floo connection for the wizard houses rather than a phone number.

Harry also sent flyers to every student already attending another magical school. He wasn't above poaching students after all, even from Hogwarts.

~The Beginning~

yeah, that's it, no more. I'm horrible, leaving all you hungry readers in suspense like that.