A/N (Author's Note – not essential to read but recommended):

I'll try to put as few of these in as I possibly can; I want this to be as authentically book-like as possible and in a book an author isn't allowed to jump in and explain herself halfway through. So with that in mind, let me get the basics out of the way and then I'll let you read.

Yes, I don't own any of the rights for the Wizards of Waverly Place franchise – but don't act like you've never accidentally stolen a pencil. My brain it- it sees these things and it just starts taking them and using them before it realises it's, well... making a drawing with a stolen pencil. I'm going to return it but some of the lead will be gone, okay? It's not like you need all of it. But yes, I am not entitled to make a profit from this and will not be – I'm not even sure how I'd do that via FanFiction but there you go.

In terms of what this story's about, well, it's what I think the movie would have been like if made for… HBO perhaps, rather than Disney Channel. It's not a new story: it's a retelling, a reboot – like those dark versions of fairy tales that are so popular at the minute. It's about bringing the subtext closer to the surface, adding in a few more realistic acts of teenage-ness (swearing, for example) and filling out some of the places where the plot was lacking (a backstory for Giselle the Parrot and some more references to the first two seasons, anyone?) - at the same time, keeping enough light-heartedness and humour to act as comic relief. And, just to make this blatantly clear, the pairing in this fan fiction is going to be Justin/Alex and no, it's not an AU (alternate universe). If you can't get your head around that, it won't be romanticised as ideal but… you may find this too uncomfortable to read. Conflicted feelings and confusion will feature.

Any necessary warnings, including any potential trigger warnings (but it's not that kind of reboot - there will never been anything non-consensual), will be included briefly at the beginning of each chapter.

Also, I will be using British spellings and formatting (we use single speech marks here, for example) but American language - I'm sorry but it's better than me trying to write it the American way and making a mess of it, right?

And with that, my friends, author out.

Warnings For This Chapter: Contains some use of strong language and implied sexual content. Max suggests feeding duplicates of himself to Justin's bag but don't worry - no clones were harmed in the making of this fanfic. Also, Alex seems to imply that she thinks protected sex is 'dorky' - she doesn't mean it, don't think this way people, be safe.

Alex tugged at the blinds of the Waverly Sub Station, peering out into the darkness. Harper wasn't here yet, she would have seen her if she was. Apparently she was going with a Madonna theme tonight and, knowing Harper, that'd mean a literal interpretation of one of her songs, so Alex was expecting either the Virgin Mary or a giant copy of Vogue to come walking down the steps at the top of the street. Nothing yet.

She needed entertainment. Closing the blinds, she grinned: see? Now she had a reason to look through Justin's bag - she couldn't be expected to be bored, could she? The Sub shop was closed, so she couldn't serve customers, and school had finished last week, so it's not like she had any homework to do (as if she was going to do it anyway if she had) - so what other choice did she have?

'Justin?' she whispered, 'I found your bag – mind if I tear through it and look at all your personal stuff?'

Maybe if she was lucky, she'd find a condom – he had been dating Juliet for a while now, and as gross as it was to think of her brother doing that and even though his girlfriend was undead and he could probably just use a spell to get rid of any infectious diseases she'd been carrying around since the middle ages, he was such a dork for protection that he'd have to have one – and then their devoutly Catholic mother, oh yes the wait-until-you're-married-even-though-I-was-four-months-pregnant-with-your-brother-when-your-father-and-I-got-hitched variety, would throw a fit and he'd never be 'the good child' again.

Of course she got no reply. ''Kay, thanks!' she dived for the bag sitting so innocently on the table. Thank you, indeed, she thought, but when she opened it she found something even better than she was expecting - the egghead hadn't even tried to cover it with a scarf or something. Right there, completely uncovered, was not only the family wand but The Book of Forbidden Spells. 'No freaking way!' This was incredible, he'd be grounded for life. Justin? Perfect little Justin doing magic without Daddy's permission – dangerous, powerful magic? For once, he'd actually be brought down to her level and-

'Ahh!' as soon as she'd touched the book, Justin's bag had snapped around her arm like a Venus flytrap and was now rapidly convulsing, opening and closing as it moved up toward her shoulder. She tried to use her other hand to pull it out but the bag swallowed that one too. 'Shit! J-Justin?' Really, all those times he could have walked in on her in the middle of going through his stuff, this one time could he not just catch her? She flung the bag around in the air but it would not come off. Panicking, she tried to resist as it pulled itself above her and she screamed as it engulfed her head. She couldn't see. She couldn't move. She stumbled into the tables, knocking something. Many somethings.

'What is going on? Is everything alright?' Crap. The muffled voice of that mother she was thinking about earlier reached her through the fabric. Hadn't she been trying to make things worse for Justin, not herself?

'Alex?' Dad too? Just great. Just fucking great! By this time the bag had reached down to her legs so all she could do in response was tap her foot and wait to be saved by the Russo Wonder Child once again.

The Russo Wonder Child meanwhile, more commonly known as Justin – or the J-Man by his friends, you know – had been in the kitchen, helping Max. Or rather standing back with his arms crossed in only slightly boastful superiority as his younger brother created yet another one of his unusual – Max would call it ingenious – sandwich combinations. Today's special: lettuce, tomato, chicken burger and… wait for it, chocolate frozen yoghurt, deep-fried in a paprika and pickle-flavour batter. Oh yes.

Hearing their parents, the two boys exited the kitchen, Max's creation presented on a plate for them to sample, however he got distracted by the anthropomorphic bag in front of him and had to call dibs, 'Awesome! Dad, I don't know what that thing is but if it can survive on chocolate froyo deep-fried in a paprika and pickle-flavour batter which tastes faintly of chicken burger, can I keep it?'

Justin, finding Alex's predicament even more hilarious than the sentence which had just come out of his brother's mouth, glided past him to stand in front of his sister. Or her feet, anyway. 'Aha! I knew it!' he raised his finger in the air, signalling in triumph, 'Alex has been going through my bag, so I put a spell on it,' taking another step closer and crouching down to where the bag stood at his waist he whispered 'Deny it now, sis.' The little thief had been caught red-handed, no - red-bodied, good one! he thought, complimenting himself, there was no way she'd be able to wriggle herself out of this one.

Alex, hearing all of this and feeling rather less than happy by the revelation that it was Justin who was responsible for this (surprisingly sneaky of him), shouted 'Oh, fuck you!' and momentarily panicked when she remembered that their parents were still in the room. When no one reacted however she realised with a sigh of relief that the thing must be soundproof from the inside.

It was okay, she'd get him back momentarily. She may be currently stuck inside a bag but she still had hold of his stolen items.

Their mother, by now more than fed up with having three adolescent wizards under her roof – as if having your kids go through puberty wasn't already trouble enough, made a sarcastic comment (it runs in the family) and went back upstairs.

Jerry sighed, 'Justin, do it.'

'Let's watch her run around,' he said, feeling smug with the way Max's eyes shot up with anticipation at this, but then he looked at his father and chickened out – well, at least partially, 'Magic was used to protect the bag, reverse the spell, release the... hag.' He smiled, oh make-'em-ups, who said only Alex could have fun with them?

'Well,' Alex began after she'd got the bag off of her head. To be honest, she hadn't had quite enough time to work out a way to make herself look completely innocent so... accusations! 'Yes, I went through your stupid bag, which by the way, was just left out, for anybody to steal - you should be happy I'm not a jewel thief!'

'Alex, there were no jewels in my-'

'Ah-ah! I wasn't finished. Hag? Really?' she placed her hands on her hips, 'Your pervert of a bag didn't seem to think so, with the spell you put on it, feeling me up like- no!' Justin had been about to interrupt again, Alex could tell from the way his eyes were bulging out of his head, 'Still not done!'

Alex turned to their father, who had been standing there at a loss for words, and presented to him the wand and the book, 'But look at what I found. The family wand and the Book of Forbidden Spells,' she smiled, 'Justin took it out of the lair without permission,' she turned to the boy in question, 'You know what? My respect for you may actually be increasing.'

'I didn't take it,' as Alex's smile fell, the slight look of panic left Justin's face and he grew more confident, 'Dad gave it to me.'

'And it's shrinking again.'

Both siblings turned to their father – one looking extremely pleased with himself, the other extremely pissed off. The third was off in the background, trying to tempt Justin's bag with his sandwich, seeing if it had a taste for anything other than human flesh.

'Dad!' Alex exclaimed, drawing Jerry's attention back from what Max was doing, 'how could you give this to Justin? It's forbidden,' she moved around a table, waving the book around in the air, 'You said we're not allowed to touch this, we're not ready. Remember?'

Justin placed a hand on her shoulder and leaned in, 'I think by "we", he meant "you".'

Alex was tempted to flick his hand off and hope that it ended up smacking him in the head, at least that might wipe that holier-than-thou bullshit look he no doubt had off of his stupid face. Instead she merely crossed her arms, jabbing him in the ribs. Hard.

'Alex,' Jerry grimaced, 'if one day, possibly, you pass and-or show up to an exam, you can use the spell book and the family wand too it's just... well, they're extremely powerful and it takes a certain level of responsibility...' he trailed off, seeing that this wasn't having any effect on her expression and wondering what those noises were coming from Max's direction...

'But I am so responsible enough – I can be trusted!' she shook off Justin's hand, which still hadn't budged, 'You can't just... well, I for one think this is completely unfair on me and Max. Right, Max?'

Max, conducting a scientific experiment to see how the bag would react if he offered it his hand rather than the sandwich, had been almost entirely digested by the thing. A little further and the bag, with two feet waddling beneath it, would have looked like a penguin (thanks to Max, it would not be the first penguin to enter the sub shop).

'Dude!' she rushed over, 'Max! Come on, you are so not helping right now!'

Alex helped the bag to regurgitate Max, yanking it off his head. His reaction to this was to say 'Okay, I am so keeping this thing! I reckon, if I can just make a duplicate of myself everyday, I can keep it fed long enough-'

'Okay! I don't really have an opinion about the great wand disputa,' Teresa had come back downstairs, now also wearing a coat and necklace, cutting off whatever crazy plan Max had been about to reveal, 'But if anyone should be playing nice right now, it's you, Alex. Don't push.'

'Mm,' Jerry nodded, let their mother clear this one up, 'We better get going, honey,' he motioned to the door.

'Yes, dear,' she patted his arm, seeing through his avoidance technique instantly.

Justin, who had been patiently waiting for the moment that he could be at his maximum smugness, took this as his opportunity, 'I'm gonna need you to return the wand and spell book back to where you found them.' He grabbed the bag from where it had been dumped after Max's experiment and placed it in front of Alex.

She glared.

He smiled.

'Thank you,' Justin said when she reluctantly placed the wand back into his bag, watching the expression on her face so intently that he didn't notice when Alex kept the spell book behind her back.

'Fine. I didn't want it anyway,' she said. Total lie. Her brother may have some stupid wand but with this? She could find a spell for anything. 'Wait,' her father was opening the door, 'where's everybody going?'

'We are going to dinner - it'll be a nice change to be free from magic for a few hours,' Teresa sighed, then looked over to Justin and Max, 'I want you guys done packing by the time we get back.'

'Okay,' the boys replied in unison, and started to go upstairs.

Justin was excited. Two whole weeks without Alex? Two weeks without having to waste his magic saving her ass or being outshone by her every time she actually bothered to do something productive? 'Dude, this is gonna be the best vacation ever.'

'Are there gonna be volcanoes?' Max asked.

What? 'No.'

As Max argued that the only type of vacation worth going on was the lava-filled kind - did Justin remember that great trip to Volcano Land they went on when they were at Wiztech? - Justin heard that voice so prone to stalking him. Harper. What was Alex doing? She wasn't supposed to be going to Harper's until they left for the Caribbean. Suddenly Justin realised, That party in Brooklyn! She was planning to sneak out! Well, he smiled, no longer listening to Max's nonsense, there's no way Mum's gonna let her go to that, and entered his room.

In fact, just who did Alex think she was? Justin sat down on his bed, aggressively (sitting on a bed can be very aggressive). As a founder of the Alien Language League and ex-boy scout, Justin Vincenzo Pepe Russo had always valued respecting the property of others, whether human, alien or... Alex. Who was she to go through his bag, of all people's? Nothing but a disrespecting, thieving little... thief! Well, Alex had had enough chances! She had clearly learned nothing from being almost eaten by the piece of property she'd been pillaging and, as a moral citizen, it was Justin's job to teach his sister a lesson! Maybe if he could just teach her to feel empathy for others by putting her in a similar situation... yes, Justin would simply have to go through Alex's things and see how she liked it!

Halfway toward her bedroom, Justin heard a door slam and froze: if their parents had left and Alex had been banned from going to the party, wouldn't she be coming up here? The teenager was scary and, even if he did know more spells than her, he was still terrified of her pranking abilities. Not hearing anything else, he creeped down to the living room and along to the top of the stairs which led down to the restaurant.

'Oh it's okay, Alex. We can still find something super fun yet age-appropriate to do.' That bubbly voice. He leant forward, peeking over the railings. Was Harper dressed as... Madonna?

'Oh Harper, Harper, Harper. We're sixteen, unless you're Justin - who, by the way, still asks everytime if he's allowed to meet Juliet for a lunch date,' she sniggered, and Justin was just about to defend the importance of filial piety in a world of growing disrespect for one's parents when he remembered he wasn't supposed to be hearing this and closed his mouth, 'it's completely age-appropriate to go to a party your parents don't approve of.'

'But Max and Justin - who, for doing that, Alex, I think is a sweetheart even if it is for that man-stealing bitch of a vampire,' Harper side-tracked and Justin felt slightly scared, 'Sorry, what was I saying? Your brothers are just upstairs, Alex, and your parents said we can't leave the building.'

Alex lowered her voice and Justin had to strain to hear, 'Who said anything about leaving the building?'