"'It is time,' he said, 'for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything.'"
(Ootp, 735)
Since Quidditch turned out to be a bigger letdown than Halloween, Christmas break was the only thing keeping together the collective sanity of the school. Several teachers finally gave up on their students and decided to review previous material. Care of Magical Creatures, Arithmancy and Ancient Runes consisted of busy work for the two weeks prior to Christmas. The founders' classes, of course, did not follow suite. They each worked the students extra hard as though to make sure the students still needed to pull all-nighters to finish all their homework. Julian found it impossible to finish everything along with his detention from Slytherin for attempting to avoid homework use Legilimency.
"You complain, but-" Alice began as Julian left for detention on the last Monday of term.
"You told me so, I know," replied Julian through a groan. He sighed heavily as the Portrait shut behind him.
The rest of the week became very quiet between the fifth, sixth and seventh years; they literally did not have time in which to talk. Several stressed students received detentions for performing Silencing charms on loud students. Ravenclaw's last class became the last straw for many sixth years. She had been threatening them with a test over the Patronous charm, but settled for the Mobili-spells.
"I hate this, I really do," muttered Sylvia through gritted teeth. "It's terrible to spring such a test on us the last week of term," she added. Sylvia was still having problems moving the stuffed animal on her desk.
"You're not concentrating," said Alice. "Hold still a second, will you? Mobilicorpus!" Sylvia rose into the air just slightly and floated toward the stuffed animal. Maggie silenced her shriek of protests with a lazy wave of her wand. Alice jerked her wand to drop Sylvia on the desk, and Maggie did likewise to return her voice.
"I swear, I'll get you two one of these days," said Sylvia maliciously, rubbing her leg where it had hit the desk. Alice went to the back corner to try her luck with a heavy cabinet.
Unfortunately, Sylvia's involuntary levitation was not the highlight of the class. Aside from several objects flying at people, some students had difficulty pronouncing the spells. Abby Meadows, still determined to prove that Hufflepuff deserved the brief lead they had had in October, could not seem to remember which spell she was trying to perform.
"Mobilicorpio… no… Ilicondio… Incendio?" she shouted, stabbing the pillow on her desk, which immediately ignited in a gigantic flame. "Oh no!" she shrieked and tried to shoot water from her wand, but water had no effect on a magical fire.
"Miss Meadows, what did you do?" shouted Ravenclaw as the fire spread to the closest surrounding desks. "Everybody out!" she yelled to the class. The students ran to the door except for Alice, who had accidentally barricaded herself into a corner with all the cabinets. "Oh shit," she groaned, as she saw the towering flames approaching.
"Alice, just run out!" several people called to her. She gripped her wand tightly and prepared to do some of the fastest spell work she had ever done.
"Propello!" she cried, pointing her wand at the ground and propelling herself upwards. She landed on the top of a cabinet and surveyed the fiery scene. Seeing no path, she used the cooling charm from the beginning of the year in its full force to create a strong wind, which blew the flames away from a few desks. Without hesitation, Alice jumped from her cabinet and used her Propelling charm to hop from desk to desk until she reached the door. Ravenclaw and Gryffindor (who had arrived with most of his class from down the hall when he heard the commotion) slammed the door shut the moment Alice emerged and collapsed.
"Are you all right, dear?" Ravenclaw asked nervously.
"I think so…" said Alice from the floor as she pushed herself up and resigned to invent a Flame Freezing charm. The students gasped as she got to her feet. "What is it?" Alice asked.
"You- you don't feel it?" stammered Maggie.
"Feel- what are you talking about?" Alice demanded. The students collectively pointed at her arms. Alice looked and gasped herself; the outlined images of a feather and rose were glowing like coals, and both of her arms were still on fire, but she felt nothing.
"Alice!" shouted a few as she fainted.
After cleaning up the Charms room, Gryffindor returned to his office to find his great niece rather hysterical. She was pacing on the far side of the room from the fireplace. Her sleeves had been ripped off, revealing the feather on her upper arm and the rose around her wrist, each outlined in flames; they were glowing now.
"Uncle Godric, what's happening to me?" she demanded immediately. "My arms were engulfed in flames, but I felt nothing, and the skin isn't even damaged!"
"It's not what's happening, it's what already did," Gryffindor replied calmly. "Alice, you must relax. Sit down, have some tea," he added, indicating the chair by his desk as he took out his want to Conjure a kettle of tea. He poured a cup for Alice and handed it to her.
"What is going on?" Alice asked again. She took a sip of tea and sat down.
Gryffindor opened a cabinet and took out a cloudy, gray colored bowl filled with cloudy, silver colored wisps; they were thoughts, for this was a Pensive. "Alice," he said, "this will all make sense, somehow. It will take time to understand. Bear with me."
"I just want to know what I am," she mumbled sadly.
"Alice, as you know, your parents were one of the first Pureblood and Muggle-born marriages," he began. "This caused a bit of an uproar in the Magical Community. Some were so offended that they made threats."
Alice shifted uncomfortably; "I don't quite see the connection…"
"You shall, child," Gryffindor explained. "One horrible night, a group of fanatical Purebloods led a raid on your house. Your parents put up a brave fight, but they were completely outnumbered," he continued. Alice looked as though something had mentally fallen into place. Gryffindor pushed the Pensive toward her, and she dipped her right hand into the silvery thoughts. Still overwhelmed by emotions, she did not realize that she was falling into her great uncle's memories.
Alice landed in a small, dark room from her nightmares. A dark haired, green-eyed man stood in the corner at wand point, held by two masked wizards in dark robes. Two more masked wizards held a blue-eyed, mousy brown haired woman. Five more laid unmoving on the floor in the center of the room, and yet another masked wizard brought out a small, mousy brown haired girl.
"NO! Not Alice!" screamed the woman.
"NON! Pas notre fille! Elle n'avait pas de fait torte!" shouted the man.
"You should have thought of the repercussions before, Ophelia," said the only other unmasked person in the room, addressing the woman and ignoring the man. It was too dark to make out his features, but his voice alone sent chills up one's spine. "The child was born from filth, is filth, and will never be accepted in either world."
"Mummy! Papa!"
"Unhand her! She has no control over her parentage!" shouted the woman, now livid with anger.
"Vous êtes MONSTRES!" added the man.
"Silence, commoner!" said the unmasked man evilly. "How dare you consider yourself good enough to marry into a pureblood family, especially one so noble as the Gryffindors!"
"Il faut que vous fermiez la bouche!" spat the man. The unmasked man turned to him and smiled a horrible smile.
"Fine then," he replied. "I never liked the French, either, and I've had enough of you."
"NO!"
"Avada Kedavra!"
"Jaques!"
"Mummy, what's wrong with Papa?"
"How dare you do this to my daughter?" Ophelia demanded recklessly, straining against those holding her. "You dare give an innocent toddler fodder for nightmares for years to come?"
"No, no," said the unmasked man in the shadows. "The evidence of such a filthy pair shall not live long enough to have nightmares."
"No…"
"Avada-"
"STUPEFY!"
"No; it's Gryffindor!"
"GO!"
CrrrRACK!
"Damn," said Gryffindor. He had burst through the door at the last minute and Stunned whomever he could, but the conscious masked wizards had grabbed their leader's body and Vanished with a loud crack. Ophelia ran to her husband's body. Gryffindor, being too familiar with the curse, turned his attention to the young girl. She was not moving and appeared to be Stunned. Gryffindor checked her pulse and breath; bother were present, but just barely. "She's breathing, Ophelia," he said softly.
"You were right, Uncle Godric," she whispered. "No decent magic could ever change a mind… Why did we ever put everyone in so much danger?"
"Ophelia, you should really-"
"If you hadn't gotten here, Alice would be dead because of our foolishness!"
"-look over here." Ophelia stopped babbling and looked at her daughter's nearly lifeless body; something amazing was happening. The girl's mousy brown hair was turning beautiful shades of dark red, bright red, soft oranges and gold. The flaming outlines of a feather and rose, familiar to the present day Alice, were just appearing for the first time on the Alice of the past.
"What does it mean, Godric?" asked Ophelia.
"I don't know…" he replied, stroking his chin. "Apparently, by surviving half of a curse that in its entirety should have killed her, Alice must have become some sort of human Phoenix. I have never seen anything like this."
"How will it affect her?" asked Ophelia as she collapsed by her uncle.
"Again, I do not know," answered Gryffindor, "but I expect she will not remember this night at all. I shall keep you informed."
"Informed? Uncle Godric, surely you don't mean-"
"Yes, I do, Ophelia, you must leave this place. I know these fanatics, and they will be back."
Ophelia took one last look around her ruined home, at her dead husband and unconscious child, and she hung her head sadly. "I understand," she replied sadly. "Take good care of Alice for me. Please, do not tell her how foolish I was until she is old enough to understand." In another loud crack, a black cat sat where Ophelia had a moment ago.
"I shall write you with further detail," said Gryffindor to the cat. "We will tell Alice when she is ready." The cat burred and with another crack, she disappeared.
The memory began to dissolve, and Alice looked up to see her great uncle's office reforming around her. "So that's what happened," she said breathlessly. "That's why I can see thestrals, that's why these images are on my arm, that's why I can speak French…"
"I must apologize," said Gryffindor. "I took this memory from you before you awoke from that night. We did not want you to suffer from something you could not yet begin to comprehend-" he continued, but Alice cut him off.
"So my mother's alive? Where is she? What have you heard from her? Is she still in hiding? What happened to those masked wizards? Did you catch them? Are they-" Suddenly, Alice stopped short. Her eyelids fell half way, and she sank back into her chair. The teacup fell out of her limp hand and shattered on the floor. Gryffindor sighed; the potion for dreamless sleep had finally started working. He cleaned up the pieces of china with a quick wave of his wand, and then he scooped up his great niece and started toward the Gryffindor tower.
Alice woke briefly later that night. She recognized her bed, and she moved her wand from her pillow to her night table. She also slid her glasses off of her face and sat them next to her wand. Still feeling a terrible pain in her temples, she closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, when Sylvia started asking questions.
"Alice?" she said softly. Alice pulled the pillow over her head. "I saw your hand, Alice, I know you're awake," Sylvia persisted. "Are you coming to dinner?" Alice still did not answer, but Sylvia would not quit. "I don't know what went on after my brother carried you to Gryffindor's office, but you know we're all here for you."
Alice smiled briefly, but she still kept her silence. Sylvia finally gave up and left for dinner. Alice nodded back to sleep…
"Alice? Are you awake? Alice?" Alice slowly opened her eyes to see Sylvia peeking her head through the hangings. "Oh good, you're alive!" exclaimed Sylvia happily. She ran over to the stairwell and shouted to the Common Room. "Someone go tell Gryffindor she's alive and awake!" The girls heard the sound of thundering footsteps toward the portrait hole and the girls' spiral staircase, but then a loud alarm sounded as a boy apparently tried to climb to the girls' dormitory.
"Damnit," Julian could be heard whining. "I didn't know the stairs did that!" His sister came back over to Alice's bed and threw open the hangings to let in the sunlight.
"I can't believe I slept all morning," yawned Alice, judging the time by the sun's position outside.
"All morning? Alice, you've been asleep for days" coughed Sylvia as she sat down at the foot of Alice's bed. "You fell asleep Friday evening, and we started to get worried Saturday afternoon. Gryffindor said not to fret or anything, and that he had given you a sleeping potion, but on Sunday he was beginning to think, he had accidentally slipped you Draught of the Living Dead! I didn't even know he kept that one on hand!"
"What day is it?" asked Alice as she sat up and reached for her glasses.
"Christmas Eve, my dear," said Gryffindor in the doorway. Julian was just behind him.
"Good morning, Uncle Godric," said Alice through another yawn as she pulled on her dressing gown and sat up.
"You gave us all quite a scare this past weekend," said Gryffindor, smiling down at the children.
"Yeah, I'm sorry about that…" Alice mumbled, unsuccessfully hiding her embarrassment.
"No problems, my dear," said Gryffindor in a suppressed laugh. "I think you'll be just fine as soon as you eat. Sylvia, Julian, please bring Alice down for some lunch as soon as she's ready." With that, he left the room as suddenly as he had come. Sylvia and Julian exploded with questions the moment the portrait slammed shut.
"What happened in his office Friday?"
"Were you even awake when I talked to you before dinner Friday?"
"What did Gryffindor tell you?"
"What happened in the Charms room, anyways?"
"Would you two shut up?" yawned Alice as she fell back on the pillows. "How'd you get up here, anyways?" she asked Julian.
"Gryffindor took my arm and kind of… glided, I don't know," Julian trailed off. "What happened Friday?"
"Will one of you hand me my robes?" Alice asked, totally ignoring his question. Sylvia handed Alice's robes to her and pulled the hangings shut. Alice dressed herself quickly and emerged a moment later. She hopped out of the bed and, true to form, overestimated her ability to function after trauma. She fell right back onto the bed. After sighing heavily, she asked her friends, "Mind giving me a hand?"
"Certainly!" said Sylvia happily. She pulled out her wand and cried, "Mobilicorpus!" Alice rose a few feet in the air as she desperately reached for her wand.
"I hate you right now," she said dully after Sylvia moved her out of reach from the bedside table.
"I told you I'd get you back!" laughed Sylvia. Julian dug out his own wand and returned Alice to a standing position. She succeeded at standing, but Julian had to help her down the stairs.
"So, what did Gryffindor tell you?" Sylvia pestered at lunch.
"Where's Luke? He usually sits with us?" Alice commented, ignoring the question again.
"Alice!" Sylvia whined.
"Sylvie, don't-" warned Julian, but she did not heed him.
"Why won't you tell us anything, Alice? It's like you don't trust us anymore!" Sylvia exploded. It echoed throughout the hall, which was empty because the few students at school for Christmas had already eaten and left.
Alice placed her fork next to her plate in forced calm. "Maybe I'm not ready to tell you," she said softly. "Maybe I don't want to know it myself." Sylvia tried several times to concoct a response, but after failing, she got up and left, presumably for the Gryffindor tower.
Julian moved closer to Alice and put his hand over hers gently. "Don't mind her," he said soothingly. "She doesn't understand- well, I don't either, but she's- we're-"
"Go strategize."
"Thank you."
With that, Julian ran after his sister.
Julian awoke lat on the night of Christmas Eve. He could tell something was wrong before he opened his eyes. He reached over to open the hangings just enough to see the clock; it was 2 AM. Sighing, he pushed the hangings the rest of the way open and climbed out of bed. He felt his way down to the Common Room where, as expected, he saw Alice sitting by the fire. She looked beautiful in the hearth light, even though the look on her face added an element of the tragic.
"A little late, don't you think?" said Julian quietly.
"I have all the time in the world," Alice whispered. Julian sat down by her on the brick. He almost put his arm around her, but thought better of it. "I still can't believe it," she continued. "I knew these-" she indicated her right arm "-were from when my parents disappeared, but I never thought…"
Julian hesitated as she trailed off, but decided to ask one more time: "What did Gryffindor tell you that afternoon?" Alice looked up into his dark eyes. Julian could tell she was sizing him up to see if he was trustworthy, and she seemed to be satisfied. Julian breathed a small sigh of relief as she settled in to tell her tale; they had been friends for all of his seven long years, but even one with no skill in Legilimency could see that Alice had closed herself off to most.
"Julian, I… I guess I'm not human. No one has ever had a similar condition, so no formal name exists," she started uncertainly, but quickly moved on to what she did know. "Great Uncle Godric says I'm like a human phoenix." She stopped to see his reaction.
"I'm listening," Julian said softly, doing his best to mask the utter shock he felt.
"Great Uncle Godric doesn't know what powers I have, exactly. We just know about the fire thing…I think I might have the Apparation-Disapparation, probably the healing properties in my tears. I feel like I'm going to start molting," she explained, her anxiety verbally rising with each sentence.
"Alice," said Julian in an attempt to calm her down.
"This is crazy! I ran out of a fire with a burning arm, and I felt nothing!" she exclaimed. "It's enough to be the butt of every joke because of advanced magic I can do, but now I'll be dodging whispers about being a bird! All this because my parents didn't think about the consequences of Wizard nobility marrying a Muggle born! Thanks to them, I'm a damn phoenix, my father's dead, and my mother was last seen in the form of a cat!"
Julian decided that it would be best not to aggravate Alice further with questions about her parents right now. "Alice, are you all right?" he asked instead.
She paused for a moment and stared into the fire. She stuck her fingertips into the magical flame. Upon removing it, she saw her fingers engulfed in flame, although her flesh remained intact. "I should not be able to do this," she said resolutely.
Julian took hold of her hand and blew it out like a candle. The flames from the hearth reflected off the glass in her spectacles; she looked in her essence, bathed in firelight. Julian raised a hand and took off her spectacles to better look into her eyes. Alice looked back intently and instantly regretted it. Again, even an unskilled Legilimens could see her feelings. "Julian, I can't take this!" Alice finally exploded, and she let herself fall into him, taking him by surprise. "How do I manage this? How could I go so long without noticing that I'm a damn phoenix?"
Julian, much taken aback, pulled Alice into a hug. Alice buried her head in his shoulder and she finally allowed herself to cry. "Alice," Julian cooed, "it's fine, just try to relax."
"This is crazy," Alice repeated through her sobs. As the tears dried, she sat back up and wiped her eyes. "I really should start saving and selling this," she mumbled. "I'm sorry," she added with a fake laugh. "I don't really know how to react to this." Julian held out the spectacles to her, and she put them back on. "I suppose I should be getting back to bed, anyways," Alice whispered, staring at the ground.
"It's late," said Julian after a bit of hesitation. They both stood up and started toward the spiral staircases. Julian put a comforting arm around her, and she did not protest. Alice stopped and turned to him just as they reached the stairs.
"Thank you," she said very quietly. "You didn't have to-" she began to explain, but before she could finish speaking, Julian pulled her into soft, gentle kiss. It was not a kiss between close friends. Later that evening, Julian would worry that perhaps she had been too exhausted to protest, and he hope she did not think he was taking advantage of her vulnerable state, but at this moment, he was the happiest Gryffindor alive. Alice looked up at him when they finally broke apart; for the first time in days, her eyes smiled and lost the haunted look she had been wearing since the fire.
"Goodnight," they both whispered, and each wandered up his or her own spiral staircase feeling a horrific combination of happiness, confusion, exhaustion, influenza and elation.
The rest of vacation passed peacefully, for once. The Gryffindor Tower was deserted except for Alice and the Potters, so they rarely went to bed before daybreak and just stopped going down for breakfast. Julian helped Alice explain what they knew of her gifts to Sylvia, and after an awkward moment in which Sylvia asked why Julian was told first, all went well.
"Alice, do the candle thing again!" Sylvia pleaded once evening.
"Sylvia…" Julian whined, taking Alice's hand protectively. Alice took her free hand and stuck it in the fire. She pulled out her hand and stared at it as the flame continued to burn.
"Does it hurt?" asked Sylvia.
"No, I'm totally resistant," said Alice. "I'm getting used to it." She waved her hand around and watched the flame obsessively.
"You're not going to be some pyromaniac, are you?" asked Sylvia, watching the flaming hand closely.
"Are you kidding?" said Julian sarcastically. "She was born as one."
"Actually, I wasn't," Alice corrected indifferently as she willed the fire out. "All of this was the result of a Killing Curse interrupted."
"WHAT?" said both Potters as they turned to face Alice. She smiled and explained.
"No one liked that my parents were married since my mother was Pureblood and my father was Muggle-born. A few of the displeased attacked our house. They killed my father- that's why I can see thestrals- and tried to kill me, but Great Uncle Godric showed up just in time. It was after the interrupted curse that my hair turned these colors and I got these." She pulled up her right sleeve and showed her friends the images burned into her skin.
Sylvia sprang forward and grabbed Alice's arm, almost yanking it out of its socket. "That's so amazing!" she exclaimed. At the same time, Julian's eyes bulged and he looked at Alice quizzically. They had such reactions because Alice had never shown her arm willingly.
"I don't know what it means," she said as she twirled a lock of hair around her left index finger.
"Do they… do anything?" Julian asked delicately.
"Well, they glow when I do something Phoenix-y, like the fire thing," replied Alice. "Great Uncle Godric says I won't fully know until…" She stopped because she could not bring herself to say, "Until I die." The other two seemed to understand and nodded. Sylvia traced the rose around Alice's wrist while Julian's inspection of the feather evolved into gently stroking her arm. Sylvia looked up from the rose and saw Alice and her brother. Smiling knowingly, she got to her feet and left the Common Room via the spiral staircase.
Alice looked up at Julian sweetly. "I have to ask," she said, breaking the silence, "what would you call, er… us?"
Julian thought a moment before answering. "Well, I suppose I can't properly court you until we're out of school," he replied with a smirk.
"Oh, there's always summer," said Alice with a smile. "I'm sure Great Uncle Godric would approve." Julian smiled back at her and kissed her hand.
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