"Wake up!" A shrill piercing voice filled the air. Alex woke up with Gwen jumping up and down on her bed.

"Urg, again, why is she in Slytherin?" Alex muttered and shoved her pillow over her head.

"Beats me," Raven yawned.

She's not too bad. Alex thought. She has potential to be a normal person if she looked less like a cover girl and dropped the Voldemort's granddaughter emo bullshit.

Usually Alex liked to stab and slash her way through sues like someone in a low budget zombie movie, but it was her duty to report any sues who had potential for rehabilitation. She would save Raven for last and talk to her. Gwen was funny, but she would have to go, she just liked the attention to damn much to change.

And Arnold? So far Arnold hadn't shown any signs of being more than a two dimensional cardboard cut-out.

They were sitting at breakfast when Gwen's snowy owl landed gracefully on her shoulder.

"Good morning Luna!" she cooed. Luna hooted softly and glared at Raven's pet crow Hades, who was eating bits of toast and eyeing his mistress's nose ring.

Arnold continued to sob into his cereal, like a broken record. Yep, definitely a clique. It sometimes happened to characters if their Authors didn't bother to develop them, or abandoned them half way through creation.

"We need to set him up with someone," Gwen said gently.

"Who?" Raven asked sarcastically. "One of the House Elves?"

"That's not physically possible, silly," Gwen scanned the table. "Pansy?"

"She's with Draco dipshit," Raven sneered. Gwen shook her head.

"Not for long, not will all the others hanging around..." She looked at Alex and quickly clammed up.

"The other sues, you mean?" Alex asked. It was a gamble, but would she win? Gwen's mouth fell open.

"Are...are you a...sue slayer?" Her voice went high as she panicked.

"No," she lied. "If I were a slayer I'd hardly risk blowing my cover now would I?"

"And if you were a slayer you wouldn't exactly admit to it," Raven said suspiciously.

"If I were a slayer I wouldn't bother talking to you, I would have burst into the Great Hall and killed all of you with an Invisibility Cloak and an M16."

"Then what are you?" Raven asked. "No offense, but you don't exactly look like one of us."

"I thought about it," Alex smiled sarcastically. "But they way I see it, it never pays to stand out so I became a background character, that way I don't risk an unpleasant chat with the slayers."

"But, like, don't you want a boyfriend?" Gwen asked dismayed.

"There's so much competition, with you lovely girls around no one's going to notice little old me. Besides, I'm ok without a guy. I just got out of a relationship, not quite ready to move on."

Yes, that seemed like a good excuse.

"Oh you poor thing," Gwen cooed. "We should fix you up with someone nice!"

Alex and Raven rolled their eyes while Gwen recited a list of names. Then all the guy's head twisted in unison and they looked to see what was happening.

A girl glided between the tables, she was breathtakingly gorgeous, like a statue come to life. She had "flowing tresses of liquid gold" that went down to her butt, "seductive violet eyes" and "skin of finest porcelain." Her eyes locked onto Alex's for a moment and then she glided over to the Gryffindor table and sat down. Alex noticed that all the other sues seemed rather put off.

"Who is she?" Alex asked Gwen.

"She's Celeste," Gwen whispered, her voice was full of awe and fear. "Celeste Victoria Ophelia Jasmine Emerald Sapphire Rose. She was the top of the academy, came first in all the classes. I guess you could call her the Queen Bee."

"She's the strongest out of all of us," Raven told her. "We could all only seduce one guy at a time, she could make a whole room fall under her spell."

"Speak for yourself," Gwen put a hand on her chest. "I could seduce at least three."

"Doesn't she have to worry about the sue slayers?" Alex asked. She wanted to know why no one had taken her down before. "I mean, she's a bit obvious isn't she?"

"She's killed all the hunters who have gone after her. She says it's fifty but I think it's closer to ten."

Ten. Alex's blood went cold. Ten good hunters had died trying to bring her down. She had to warn Tobey.

"Wait, there's an academy for you guys?" Alex asked.

"Yep, only we're not supposed to remember," Raven told her. "They do something to us to make us forget that we're not the characters we were assigned, but for some reason Gwen and I remember the academy. I think we're the only ones. We don't remember everything, it's just flashes."

Oh great.

"What class do we have first?" Alex asked. She would deal with Celeste later, if she managed to convert Raven they could try taking her down together. She didn't want to face Celeste alone.

"Potions," Raven told her. "Don't worry, Celeste doesn't take that one. She likes to avoid as much actual work as she can."

Next they had potions with the Gryffindors. Alex hoped that she could use it as an opportunity to catch up with Tobey, but that was impossible with Raven and Celeste handing around. She saw him sitting next to Neville as well as a pretty girl with "deliciously soft curls the colour of acorns" and "lovely violet eyes." A ShyGirl sue probably.

Mac had decided to enrol Tobey as a sixth year, because even thought he was fifteen he could pass for older. Professor Snape came into the room.

What the hell? Alex thought. Shouldn't Slughorn be teaching this? Then she remembered, a lot of writers wrote about the students in their six year before Half Blood Prince came out, so in many of the stories Professor Snape was still teaching the subject.

Another sue squeezed in between Alex and Gwen, she was a Gryffindor girl with "Inky black hair" and "emerald green eyes."

"This is Ariel Fiona Genevieve Monique Amber Rose Potter!" Gwen squealed excitedly. "We grew together and we're, like, best friends!"

"Potter?" Alex asked.

"Oh yes, I'm Harry's twin sister."

"Why haven't I heard of you before?" Pansy asked suspiciously, poor Draco's brain was fried from all the Mary sue energy directed at him and didn't say a word.

"Oh you should know that, silly!" Ariel laughed, her voice "tinkled like chimes in the summer breeze." "I'm sure Dracy-poo's told you all about me!"

Pansy looked like she was ready to strangle her.

"Enlighten us," Alex asked with a smile. "I'd love to hear all about you."

Those little words always worked like a charm for sues, especially the more self absorbed ones.

"Oh, the night our parents died Voldemort took me away with him, he told me I was his daughter and that he'd been in love with Lilly Evans. That's why he'd tried to spare her life the night she died..."

"Bullshit!" Raven coughed into her fist.

"I was raised with the death eaters and they trained me. Draco and I practically grew up together. Harry thinks I was rescued but he doesn't realise I've been secretly given orders to kill him..."

Alex felt like groaning, why didn't authors think things through? Surly there was a better way of stating a character's past or goals without them saying it out loud. In the highly unlikely circumstances that would happen, the last thing an assassin would do is blurt their mission out in front of people, no matter who they were.

"Good luck with that," Alex looked at the board and focused on the lesson.

"Did you hear her?" Raven snarled the moment class had ended.

"Yeah, isn't Voldemort supposed to be your grandfather?" Alex asked her.

"Yes, my mother was conceived before Tom Riddle became Voldemort. JK Rowling said Voldemore never fell in love, but she didn't say anything about sex."

Alex smiled. A sue with a healthy respect for cannon was as rare as a albino elephant.

"One of the rules of the academy was that no two sues could have the same back story or family members without being related. If you want to be Dumbledore's daughter then fine, but if there's a girl who wants the same thing then you have to work together and say you're sisters. You can't say you're his only daughter if there's another sue who says she's his daughter as well. There are plenty of sues who want to be Harry's only sister, or Sirius Black's only child, but they're not allowed to be inserted at the same time."

"But only you and Gwen remember the academy," Alex reminded her.

"Yes, but we all set up our characters and family members and that when we're in training, before we graduate and get inserted into the story, that bitch!"

"Don't worry, maybe you'll get lucky and the slayers will get her." Alex was already planning it.

Raven paused. "You know what Alex?"

"What?"

"Sometimes I wonder if we did this the wrong way."

"What do you mean?" Alex asked curious.

"Well, this whole sue thing isn't as fun as I thought it would be. I loved the idea of the power, having guys pay attention to me for a change instead of my prettier friends. I wanted to be feared, I wanted the power and respect I just couldn't get in the real world. I always loved the books and thought this would be the chance of a lifetime. But this doesn't feel real somehow, like it's just an illusion. I don't know Alex, but sometimes I feel like we're all just little girls playing dress up. Like this is a dream and we're going to have to wake up eventually. I think I should've done whatever it is you did, just sign up as an ordinary background person."

"Don't you hold any love for your fellow sues?" Alex asked innocently.

"God that was the worst part, I envy the girls who can't remember training. The whole time I wanted to just scream at them to get away from me, they're so friggin dumb. They're all beauty and no brains."

"Then why not switch?" Alex asked. "Become a slayer."

"Because some of these girls are kinda my friends, Celeste might be deliberately manipulative and bad but a lot of these girl are just innocent naive twits who thought that this is what they had to become to get boyfriends. I don't want to kill them and I don't want to spend eternity fighting some war."

Well there goes that idea. Alex thought.

"I'll tell you what, when this is all over I can have you inserted as a background character like me." Alex offered.

"That sounds good, but what do you mean when this is all over?"

"I mean, we all have to graduate eventually, when all the other sues have married the guys they were chasing after and have children, we can get out of here and start over."

And hopefully once she got back to headquarters she could keep her promise. She could get them to wipe Raven's memory and have her inserted as an ordinary background girl, someone who wasn't anything special and certainly wouldn't attract any attention, especially not from the sue slayers. In the meantime she'd have to kill the sues herself with only a rookie for help. She didn't want ask Raven to kill her former class mates if she was unwilling.

"What about your cousin?"

"Arnold? I have no idea who he is really. That's how I know this isn't real and I don't belong here. I remember he's my cousin but I don't have any childhood memories of this world. Once I started thinking about it, that's when I started to remember the academy and who I really am. I think he's annoying, I wouldn't mind the slayers got him frankly."

"Oh, I feel the family love."

"I don't think he's a sue, or a stu or whatever." Raven said honestly. "I think he's a character created by an author rather than a real person who found a way to become a sue. Maybe he was supposed to be a stu, but without any kind of special skills or beauty he ended up in the background as a two dimensional cardboard cut-out. Most sues are and that's why they're sues but he hasn't got anything about him that makes him special. Whoever created him obviously didn't put a lot of effort into him. He's just like the same boring song on replay. It's kinda sad really."

"Then maybe the slayers should kill him to put him out of his misery," Alex said softly.

She finally met the infamous Celeste in transfiguration class as well as Summer Amelia Emily Rose Daffodil Cleopatra Ambrosia Woods, the long lost half-dragon love child of Professor Snape and Sirius black. She had "Radiant Auburn hair" and "dazzling topaz eyes." Her sue scanner identified her as a "prankster sue". A rare breed, a sue who pulled a lot of pranks but never got into trouble for it. She was often praised for being funny, but all her pranks were boring and unoriginal and usually involved little more than gluing feathers onto people. The ones that were interesting were ones taken from movies or other fanfics.

"So how did, you know, it happen?" Alex asked awkwardly. "I'd love to hear the story about how your fathers met."

"When they were at school Sirius thought it would be funny to turn Snape into a girl, but they ended up falling in love and Snape got pregnant. He was ready to be parent yet, so when I was a baby he gave me to the dragons who blessed me with their powers. Dragons live a really long time so I took a while to grow up and I'm older than I look. When I came here I found out I have a sister!" She introduced Alex to a sulky girl who had "hair of darkest midnight" and "eyes like bottomless pools on a moonless night."

"This is Melody Violet Marie James Lilly Heather Angela Snape!" Summer squealed excitedly. "I have a sister, isn't that the coolest?"

Melody didn't look too thrilled to be sharing her "father" with anyone.
"So, any boys you like?" Alex asked.

"Father has forbidden me from talking to Harry Potter," Melody sulked. "He told me how his father was cruel to him but of course it hasn't occurred to him that Harry's different. But I'm in Gryffindor so it's not like he can do anything about it."

"And you?" Alex asked Summer.

"I already have a boyfriend," Summer told her. "Fred Weasly and I met in diagon ally over the summer."

Poor guys. They leave the school and the sues still chase them. Alex thought.

"Pansy my dear, I have a gift for you." Alex whispered in her ear after class.

"What?" she asked grumpily.

"Don't you hate having all these girls hanging around your boyfriend?" Alex asked. "Well I can do something about that."

"How?" Pansy asked.

"Well I don't know about you, but something seems very fishy about the Potter girl, I doubt she's even related to Harry. She's just some tart looking for attention."

"That's the thing, one minute Draco says he's never heard of her and the next he's going on about the wonderful childhood memories they have." Pansy replied.

"Well I've found her real family," Alex lied. "And they desperately want her back but they don't want to make a fuss. We can't tell everyone she's a fraud because she's put a spell on everyone so they'll believe her over anyone else. I'm going to quietly send her back to her real family but I need you to keep Draco busy after school, make sure he doesn't leave the common room for at least an hour or two. I also need one of his hairs."

"Are you going to do something to her?" Pansy asked. "I don't mind if you do, but I won't let you frame Draco for it."

"That's why you're keeping him in the common room, so there are plenty of witnesses around to say he was there."

"I don't want to risk it," Pansy replied stubbornly.

"Do you want to risk him leaving you for her or one of those other twits that have been sniffing around him?"

Pansy shook her head.

"All I'm asking you is to keep him busy. Keep him in the common room and no one came blame him for anything." Alex whispered. "Once I get her alone I'll wipe her memory of him and this place, and send her back to her parents. To everyone else here it will be like she simply disappeared."

"Why are you doing this?" Pansy asked her quietly.

"Because I like to mess with girls like her, people who live in a bubble and think they're invincible. There's something incredibly satisfying about bringing someone down, someone who thought they were undefeatable."

"I'll get you the hair," Pansy told her. "Meet me in the library ten minutes into lunch."

Alex used lunch as an opportunity to catch up with Tobey.

"What did you find out?" Alex asked him. "Who is there in Gryffindor?"

"There's at least six, and one of them is a Gary Stu."

"What do you know about him?" Alex asked.

"His name is Edward Jasper Emmett Carlisle Jacob Sam Quil Embry Seth Paul Charlie Phil Billy Harry Ron Severus Albus Sirius Black. People say he's the best quiddich player that ever lived and he's going to try out for the Gryffindor team."

"Why is that name familiar?" Alex asked.

"Because he's the brother of the one we pushed into the lake," Tobey reminded her. "He says he'll catch the fowl fiend who did it and make them suffer a death most fowl."

Alex sniggered.

"I know, he's very dramatic. He says the spirit of his sister spoke to him in his dreams and told him that it wasn't an accident."

"Oh great. Listen Tobey, after class I'm going to finish one off in the forest."

"I should come with you."

"No, this is a one woman job. At the moment I need you to stay in Gryffindor and study the ones there, I want to know who they're after, any canon characters they're related to and if they've got a tragic past. I don't think you should take on a sue on your own just yet. When we start going after the Gryffindor sues you can kill a couple, but only when I'm there, ok?"

He nodded.

"Good. I need you to tell Ariel Potter that Draco wants to talk to her and he'll be waiting for her in the great hall. She is not to stop or talk to anyone, she is to go straight there. It's vital Tobey, this plan won't work if I can't get her alone. I'm going to need Sirius this afternoon too, if this one can talk to animals I don't want the forest creatures defending her."

Pansy gave her the hairs and Alex spent the rest of the day preparing, class didn't really matter since she and Tobey didn't plan on staying.

She was glad that polyjuice potions were standard issue for slayers going into the Harry Potter world, there wasn't time to make it herself. It was then that she realised why Mac had refused to allow her to enter this world as anything other than a pure human. The potion might not have worked on a half vampire. She instructed Sirius to wait in the forest before she slipped into a broom cupboard and took the potion.

Thanks to her job, she wasn't unfamiliar to physically changing into another person, it was just the first time she'd switched gender.

I'll never get used to being a guy. She thought as she changed into a male set of robes she'd stolen. Well here goes nothing. She stepped out into the corridor.

I can't believe I'm trapped as this Nancy git. She'd never liked Draco and always thought he was a bit of a wuss and a mummy's boy.

She went to the great hall and found Ariel waiting.

"Hi Ariel." She tried to smile.

"Hi Draco!" Ariel cooed and fluttered her eyelashes.

"Would you like to come for a walk with me?"

"Sure!" she was practically bouncing up and down. She finally met the man of her dreams and he only had eyes for her!

"Great."

She put an arm around Ariel and led her into the forest. There was a joke amongst hunters that touching a Mary sue would give you their germs but this gave her the perfect excuse to whisper in her ear.

"You know I've been thinking about you a lot lately," she hoped she wasn't wrong in guessing who her target was.

"Really?" Ariel cooed awestruck as they disappeared into the trees. She tried to flutter her eye lashes but it just looked like she had a bug in her eyes. "I've been thinking a lot about you too."

"It's good to know that, the truth is Ariel I haven't been able to stop thinking about you." Alex let go of her and looked at Ariel face to face. Alex wanted to vomit but she knew the kind of thing the sues loved to hear. "I-I think I'm falling in love with you. I've always loved you Ariel ever since we were children."

When this is over, I'm going to bite off my own head.

"Really?" Ariel looked up at her.

"Truly." Alex whispered in what she hoped was a stupid love sick voice.

Ariel threw her arms around her. "I love you too! I've loved you since the moment we met!"

Alex then felt a wave of nausea when Ariel smashed her lips into hers. It's not like she hadn't kissed girls before, just never sues. She smelled too sweet, like sugar on fire. Alex kissed her back to keep her distracted, vowing to gargle with bleach when she got back to the castle.

She pulled out the knife she'd been hiding in her robes and shoved it deep into Ariel's slim young body. She pulled the knife back out and Ariel stared at her with a shocked look on her face, her mouth forming a perfect O.

"But...why my love?"

"Because I hate you," she replied smiling. "I hate your guts. I never loved you. Nobody could ever love you. I've already got a girlfriend thanks and she's much better than you."

This was the moment that made everything worthwhile, the horrifying moment where Ariel believed that she had been betrayed by the person she loved most in the world. She hoped it hurt, like the knife she'd just shoved into her gut.

The sue sobbed and gargled as blood went into her lungs. Alex leaned over her and cut her throat. Alex laughed and breathed in the smell of blood. Even as a human she loved that smell, it was like the sweetest wine to her, a smell that held her spellbound and arrested her with its sweet seduction. She remembered the dark night the sue hunters had found her and offered her the chance to channel her urges and skills into something constructive.