AN: Not mine. Except the OCs, and I added this particular one for a reason.

(Note: I'm using colloquial American English here, and colloquial casual phrasing. It fits the character.)

Chapter 16

Bukowski Butts In

Allison Bukowski was the sort of woman nobody challenged.

Part of that was her height and breadth. She was built, as her grandma said, like a good sturdy farm girl should be. Everyone else in Chicago called her a brick… Well, a brick house, and leave it at that.

Allison was also unashamed to be intelligent, to adore science, to shun all that girly-girl stuff unless she genuinely liked it. (She did, in fact, adore unicorns, but she knew they were real.) She wore t-shirts with Marie Curie* on them, from age eight. She briefly adopted black-framed eyeglasses to look more intellectual. Her rooms always had posters of Einstein, Tesla, Newton, Halley, Planck, Heisenberg, JC Maxwell, and Bohr. She read everything she could about all of them. She never doubted she would become a physicist and work on great mysteries.

Along the way, she never asked why she could leap out of danger, without trying, when her nose was in a book while she was crossing a busy street. She accidentally turned her toenails canary yellow once when upset, but didn't worry about it, since it wore off the next day. At ten, she moved her dad out of the way when he failed to fix their gas-run water heater. That was all within the realm of normal, because her aunt and her great-uncles had things like that happen, too, and a few of her cousins. It was just part of her life, and the family. While sipping a beer, her great-uncle just moved his hand, and whee! The kids were swinging like they had a playground, with invisible equipment.

Then Aunt Irene sat her down, and said quietly, "Ala, kotek,** you have magic."

That was when Allison Bukowski saw her aunt transfigure into a small, terrifyingly accurate bear.

Once she calmed down, her love of physics demanded she understand the impossible, and that was that. She graduated top of her class, then attended U-Chicago, where she found out still another cousin (a history professor) was also a witch.

But there weren't many places where she could hope to teach both her beloved physics and her transfiguration, and so she finally found herself torn. Did she have to choose one world or another? It wasn't the rule, for life in general, but for her teaching… It was an either-or proposition.

That bugged her. Everyday life with magic was pretty easy. As her great-uncle said, "Don't blow it up in front of a non-magical unless you can blame it on something besides you."

As she wrestled her dilemma yet again, there came the odd notice via the academic grapevine.

Wanted: Teacher for muggle and magical academy, please apply.

Allison did, wondering to herself what a muggle was. That sounded like puggle, which was a baby platypus. Non-magical was most commonly used in the US, for example, or en-em for short. Mostly, though, people were just people, and you had to look for the beads or tattoos or flat-out guess.

(It turned out she was correct about someone she met in Vancouver being a shape-shifter, but that she learned when she introduced him to horseradish, and it turned out he had a very bad reaction.)

Allison then met Remus Lupin, and Sirius Black, and realized she had the chance.

She had her dream job.

In a dream location.

A girl who grew up in Chicago appreciated a tropical climate. Warm winters in Illinois were ones that didn't give you frostbite. Black Island was heaven. Hurricanes and all.

She loved her students, too.

She wasn't forced to deal with twenty or thirty at a time, but thirty in total. The whole school would never have more than forty or fifty, depending. Small classes of intrigued children, willing to learn anything, everything! Some hearing about the basics of weather, of all things, for the first time! They drank up information like they did fruit juice.

In other words, Allison Bukowski would die to defend those students, and never give up this golden opportunity without a fight.

That was all in her mind when she walked along the altered beach after the hurricane, casting gentle spells to reveal any dangerous debris.

Allison Bukowski, like Hermione Granger, always had a lot in her mind.

HP HP HP

What in the…

Bukowski did miss things about Chicago, no question. A good Polish dill pickle. Her mother's angel-wing cookies. Being near people who understand the curses she muttered when she stubbed her toe.

She didn't miss adolescent drama. With so many younger cousins and a decade in teaching, she knew every permutation of young love, young lust, young hate, and even young despair, but this? This was new.

Granger and Longbottom and Potter tended to clump up, being the only Brits, but they were currently moping in a group. It was impressive, considering there were no sports teams involved.

Longbottom managed in her classes. He did better if it had to do with plants, even in transfiguration.

Potter was good but not outstanding in any class she taught.

Granger excelled, but…

Face it, she's like me at that age. Fussy, frantic, pretending everything is fine.

Yeah, I'm done with that.

Bukowski spun some sand into a comfortable seat, dropped into it, and said, "Okay, yeah, I get it. Life is misery, adults betray you, grief sucks. What do you have that's new?"

All three teens stared at her in varying degrees of anger and irritation.

"Yeah, yeah, what does the fathead Yank know?" She cocked her eyebrows at them. "For starters, my family's got its issues with jolly old England, but we're mostly over it."

Granger stared at her, open-mouthed. Potter scowled. Longbottom looked somewhat confused.

"I grew up hearing how all the nice British wizards thanked my great-uncles for their service in the Royal Air Force and saving their butts in the air by arresting them and trying to send them to Azkaban, and then deciding Stalin was the soft option." Bukowski squared a jaw she knew to be rather square to start. "Lucky for us, someone knew how to brew a fast version of polyjuice potion, and they got out, but…"

"Is there a point?" demanded Potter with an arrogant lift of his chin.

Wow, Snape was right. You can be a spoiled little jerk.

Smirking, Bukowski applauded in slow, mocking fashion. "And there it is First teenagers ever done wrong by the world. Would you like to know what happened to me when I was fifteen?"

"Not really," sneered Potter.

Granger kicked his ankle.

Longbottom scooted away from both.

Bukowski leaned forward, aware that she'd have still more sunburn on top of sunburn if she wasn't careful. She flipped her hair out of its braids with a twitch, letting it cover her back. "So, when I was about your age, and going to a school for magicals, I get this notice from home that my great-grandpa that we all loved got hit by a car. I went to visit him in the hospital and my family were breathing down my neck. To fix him. Transfigure his damaged organs and bones to make them healthy."

Granger hesitantly asked, "Is that possible?"

"No. We transfigure non-living matter, unless you're an animagus, and believe me, that's a trick most don't manage. Now. Try getting around twenty-thirty family members screaming at you, and I mean screaming at you, telling you what a waste you are. How you're worthless if you can't save a life. How you aren't welcome home again if you can't fix death."

Tears stood out in Granger's eyes. Potter looked ashamed, uncomfortable. Longbottom frowned thoughtfully. It was the face he made when he realized plants grew whether or not magicals were involved.

Bukowski stayed silent, the post-hurricane surf sloshing hard behind her on the beach.

Yeah. Think about it, kids.

Hermione raised her hand, eyes wide. Her cat leapt onto her lap, nudging her with his head as he often did. "Professor? Did you ever go home?"

"When I was thirty."

Potter's face went pale, right to the lips. "Thirty? They didn't understand?"

"Some, yeah, but a dead great-grandpa? That was tough. Didn't help that I didn't stop feeling guilty."

"Ever?" squeaked Granger.

"No. Because once you decide it's your fault, you're the only one who can forgive you."

Granger and Potter reached out for each other's hands. Interesting...

"And I can't. Not all the way. My family loved him. I loved him. And why couldn't I transfigure damaged tissue? Simple, right? Only it isn't. All the physics I've studied, all the science, couldn't save him. Neither could magic. That's how it works sometimes."

She waited, watching.

Go on. Think it through. You can do that.

Bukowski prompted, "We're only responsible for what we do. I didn't run over my great-grandpa. So. Who did what here that has you three posing for a condolence card?"

Slowly, haltingly, bit by bit they told about Hogwarts and the rest of it, which was not exactly the same she'd heard from the adult Brits.

She nodded, said "Hmm" and "Ah" and generally let the story flow through her.

When they were done, she asked an elf to bring cold drinks and a snack. She received very sour lemonade, just as she liked it, and a blueberry muffin. The kids got various juices and cookies.

"Rested?" she asked when the final crumb vanished.

The three nodded.

"So, guess what wizard recommended my great-uncles go to Azkaban?"

She didn't think the trio could be more disenchanted, but they proved her wrong by their reflexive refusals, from Granger's wrinkled-up mouth to Longbottom's negating head-shake.

"Dumbledore," said Potter, and momentarily pretended it was grit in his eye. Bukowski knew that move. She used it.

"Of course. We weren't his kind. Or his boyfriend's. Grindlewald and his pals loved killing off people who weren't pure enough for them. Know what they called Poles? All Slavic people? Subhuman. Kinda the way some magicals look at non-magicals in your country, isn't it?"

Longbottom flinched but admitted hoarsely, "Yeah, kinda."

"I know you're all shocked to pieces he's been lying and scheming all your lives…"

Potter interrupted, on his feet, fists clenched. "Pouring salt on the wound, then?"

She smiled at him, showing no teeth. She'd been told it frightened people.

It did, if Potter was any indication.

"No," she snapped. She stood, banished her sand-seat, and gave each her best you failed the exam glare. "Quiz time. Why does an old man want power?" She nodded at them, each in turn. "If you get an idea, then you know where I am."

"So that's it?" yelled Potter. "You give us this long stupid story…"

"About an old man who died," snapped Bukowski, pulling herself to her full height. "And an old man who lied. You're not stupid, Potter, you only act like it sometimes. Now, you each go, separately, please, and think. Granger, don't you dare even imagine helping them out. Longbottom, it's not going for a grade, you don't need to pass out."

Bukowski shook her head, rebraided her hair manually, and continued her trek down the beach, wand scanning quietly for anything that potentially posed a hazard to the students.

HP HP HP

Late that evening, Bukowski kicked back with the previous week's newspapers from home, riffling eagerly through until she saw what she wanted She laughed quietly to herself. There it was. Her brother's first byline on the front page of the sports section.

She reached to scratch the head of her familiar, a red lynx, a species capable of living from Canada to central Mexico. "Look at that, Rudy. Brother made good. Covering the Bears."

The lynx nipped affectionately at her fingers, then its ears flicked. She never had figured out why, occasionally, a gender-neutral animal popped up and then bonded with a magical, but Rudy had shown up when she was sixteen, and never left.

There was a knock at her door.

Ah. Rudy always knows...and hides.

"Enter," she called.

It mildly surprised her that Potter sidled into her quarters. Her expectation was Longbottom. He was born into the elite, after all.

From the way Potter crept in, he expected to see only heaven knew what. The folding screen that hid the bed soothed him immensely.

Does he think professors bounce naked on the beds? Rephrase and erase that from mind, please.

"There's a story," he said without preamble. "About three gifts from Death. Do you know it?"

"Ah, yeah, that one," agreed Bukowski, plainly shocking him. Yes, I can read, Potter. "And?"

Potter stood there, cramp-faced.

No, Potter, I don't spoon-feed teenagers.

She whistled softly for Rudy, who popped out from under her chair. The lynx lashed its not-tail, and zipped toward the bed. She just knew Rudy was taking up far more of her bed than an animal that size physically could, only re-proving her belief that cats defied the known laws of physics.

Known laws, she reminded herself.

"I'm completely confused!" yelped Potter.

"Good."

Potter groaned.

She grinned.

Potter grimaced.

"Now that's out of the way, Potter, tell me, do you think anyone can truly become the master of death itself, straight out of a story about three brothers and a river?"

He became, in an instant, an uncertain child. "I dunno. It'd be great to not have people die who didn't deserve it."

Do they not teach anything in that Hogwarts school? "Leaving aside the moral quandary of who deserves death? Would someone really be the master of death, or only delaying death?"

There it is. Light bulb moment. Snape said he got it, but now he's getting it more.

"Potter, are you afraid of what may happen if Dumbledore gets his way?"

Potter nodded vigorously, blotches of color on his cheeks. "Yeah. Even if he thinks he's light, what he's doing is bad."

"Then stop worrying about the deadly hollows." She used the wrong name on purpose, intrigued when he didn't correct her.

"Why?"

She flipped him a packet of tissues. She let herself soften. It was difficult, after years of staying chilly and brash. Sometimes, the façade became the fact. "Simple, Harry," she sighed. "Death is a natural process. The only way to master death is to overturn the laws of nature. Big no-can-do."

He stared at her with big shocked eyes. "The laws of nature govern everything? I thought you only meant gravity and stuff."

"Consider this and stuff." She waved him closer, and dug into the hidden pouch on the side of her chair. "You prefer chocolates, sourballs, or fruity-nutty stuff?"

"Chocolates, please."

"Excellent choice. No idea what makes it work, even with all the chemistry figured out, but chocolate is the best," sighed Bukowski, happily tossing him a few truffles in foil wrapping.

He let out a laugh, and nibbled one. His face brightened. "Oh, wow. That's amazing."

"My cousin runs a chocolate shop back home. What color was the foil?"

"Green."

"You got her mint and spruce tea with dark chocolate outside and inside. Nice surprise, isn't it?"

"I feel like I have winter in my mouth!" Potter replied with a grin.

"I'll tell her. I like her cardamom-orange ones. Taste like Christmas cookies."

They nibbled a few more truffles, and then Potter became a student again. "Thank you, Professor."

"You're welcome. Remember, magic is part of nature, we simply haven't figured out how." She silently added yet. "I think old Dumbly will discover that nature has some nasty surprises for him if he tries those hallows."

"Why?" asked Potter curiously, relaxing slightly again. "If I can ask."

"You already did, and the why is simple. In the legend, each of those items, one was given to a single person, right? Death never intended one person to have all three. That's the usual moral of that kind of story. No one person can ever have that power. Death itself makes that impossible, if I remember the story right."

He bobbed his head, his hair flopping. Bukowski sympathized. Her own hair tended to do what it wanted day to day, without any warning.

She decided to give his brain more to digest, so to speak. She was, after all, a teacher.

"In Polish legend, three brothers traveled a long way…"

His jaw dropped.

Yes, kid, like those three.

"In story, they each founded a nation. Now, your mythical three brothers? Each gets a hallow, right? So, a rock. Could be a hunk of anything shiny. And it's called the elder wand, right? So, what if it's just a stick made of elder wood? It makes a decent flute. Nice soft core."

His jaw dropped further.

"A cloak that makes you invisible? Just a cloak, when the magic wears off."

Potter's teeth clicked as his jaw snapped shut. She felt his headache beginning.

"Go talk to your friends. Oh, and take this." She reached into the pouch again, and tossed him a small box. "A selection of twelve. Go on. You'll need it."

HP HP HP

The next morning, she had the fifth-years for general science, and discovered that making paper airplanes was a very bad project idea. Sure, it taught about lift and flight, but it meant she'd introduced paper airplanes to teens who had magic.

She had taken refuge under her desk, and was nibbling a very pleasant lemon-blueberry-white chocolate truffle from her secret drawer, when the door to the classroom blew open.

She automatically tried to stand, hit her head, then cast a quick healing on the bump before she crawled out into open space.

Sirius Black, headmaster, lord, and (most importantly) employer stood there, eyes blazing like ice.

Nuts, she thought numbly.

"Class dismissed early," she said, "and five hundred words on what today's lesson about lift as it applies to magical flight."

Five kids groaned like twenty.

Misery loves company, kids.

Black slammed shut the door.

"That's your own door you're breaking," she pointed out mildly. "Something I said?"

"Do you really have to ask?"

"Nope. Gonna guess the kids aren't supposed to disbelieve Beetle the Bard, because, y'know, rah-rah hail Brittania!"

He growled.

He can actually bite me. I need to remember that.

"Headmaster, you didn't hire me to teach the students that the UK way is the only way. There is no only way, remember? It's etched in gold letters above the main building's entrance: The only way is the way of kindness. Not the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations and territories."

"I should blast you back to the mainland."

Resigned, Bukowski shrugged. "Okay, just let me get my lynx."

Whatever Black expected, that wasn't it.

Lupin entered, quietly, and said simply, "You can see why we have trouble in Britain, Allison."

"What do you believe?" she asked him.

Remus Lupin gestured in a minimal fashion, indicating vagueness. "That Dumbles believes. I traveled enough outside Britain to know almost every culture has some legend about beating or cheating Death, and it never works out in the end."

Fairly glowing with rage, Sirius conjured an image. It looked like a great pyramid from Giza, inside a sphere, with a stick acting as an axis. "This is the symbol of the…"

"Yeah, the hallowed hollows, whatever. And? You refuse my interpretation for what reason, Headmaster? And by reason, I mean better than because we believe it."

"Snape tells me that Dumbles has two of the three! If he finds the stone, he's virtually immortal! Then what do we do?!"

Her own light-bulb moment illuminated his fears. Belief is the core!

Bukowski then cracked up, in the laughed herself half-sick sort of way.

"You… Have… Granger crying fire opals… And you can't figure this one out?"

Lupin gripped Black's wand hand until all the knuckles of both hands whitened. "What do you mean, Allison?"

Bukowski whooped in air and let it out in coherent words. "Seriously? Fire opals. She can make 'em out of river pebbles. Sound like a story you might know?"

The two men exchanged a long, speaking glance.

"I know you're not idiots," said Bukowski, now very somber, and took a seat on her desk. "It's cultural blindness. We all have it. Throw him a stone. And she produces precious fire opal, to be precise. Not the traditional common fire opals that have no play of color."

Lupin shot Black a nasty amber-hued glare, before asking her in his ever-polite way, "What do you mean?"

"In the New World, fire opals are just yellow or orange opals, that don't really have that shimmer, so they're fire opals. Precious fire opals are the ones Miss Granger produces. Rarer by far. Sound like something you can bait a hook with? I know the story says you have to be worthy to unite the hallows, but first of all, I don't believe they're real, and second, the moral was that you can't cheat death, right?"

"The wizards outwitted Death!" snarled Black, and something feral glittered in his eyes. His teeth were bared. "A worthy wizard…"

Lupin interrupted swiftly. "Worthiness is a matter of perspective. Dumbles thinks his way is the best way, he'd see himself worthy. Yes. Sirius, that makes sense. Think. Forget what the House of Black taught you. Learn."

Turning to Bukowski, Lupin then asked, quietly, "How do you know about the stones?"

Bukowski snapped her fingers. A book flew off the case across the room. "A comprehensive guide to rocks and minerals, including gems. Lopez's idea of detention was re-sorting his entire mineral and gem collection just using that book. Took three weeks."

Black sneered. "I should take your word? Some muggle-brained bi…"

Bukowski flipped her wand out of hiding. It was made of sycamore, and its core was braided sasquatch hairs. It purred in her hand. "Consider your next word carefully, please."

"I say what I want."

"You'd take me in a duel," hissed Bukowski, noticing he took up a traditional stance. Figures. "Go ahead. It won't mean you're right. It means you're left."

Lupin stepped between them.

"Do you or do you not want to stop Dumbledore? Stop him from turning all Britain into a playground for wizards, because wizards are superior, or not? I don't believe for a minute he won't expand to non-magical Britain. That sort never stop. Grindy proved it."

"Grindlewald…" began her employer.

"Wasn't he Dumbledore's best buddy and soulmate? What's that tell you about Dumbles? He's got followers who'll die for him. They'll kill for him! You worry he'll snatch Potter or Granger, but you won't weaken him!"

Lupin stunned her as Sirius lifted his wand.

In fairness, he had reason, like saving her life from Sirius Black, and it was a mild stunner, but Allison Bukowski did not take that lying down.

Okay, well, I am lying down, but that's not the point!

Lupin turned to Black, who was openly gloating at her inability to move. "Padfoot. Padfoot!"

Sirius Black regarded her with eyes like Lake Michigan in January. He all but shoved his wand up her nose. "Never speak to my godson or his friends without my permission again. I am withdrawing them from your classes. This is not your problem. Keep your advice and your American stupidity to yourself henceforth!"

Lupin more or less pushed Black out the door.

The stunner wore off.

Bukowski got to her feet, and saw Severus Snape silently, magically, mending the door and its frame.

"The answer to your question, as far as I am concerned, is yes. We should stop him," he said placidly. "We are, however, survivors of a war, and do not like to consider another."

"To avoid another war, Britain conceded a lot to Germany in the 1930s."

Snape inclined his head gravely. "Even so. You understand perfectly. Now, forgive my abrupt departure, I must teach potions to dunderheads."

He nearly left her with frostbite.

Right. Butt out, Bukowski. Got it. Not your business till someone blames you for not showing up sooner. Well, I tried. Sometimes, a fairy tale really is just a fairy tale…

With a heavy sigh, she began tidying the classroom for the fourth-years, who would today be learning about catalysts.

HP HP HP

*Marie Curie, born Poland, Maria Sklodowska, won Nobel Prize in physics with husband Pierre Curie, then again on her own for chemistry, and remains the only person to be nominated and win in two separate fields. Her daughter also went on to win a Nobel Prize.

**Polish for kitten. In my family's dialect, anyway. Those vary.

Note on the US: The Chicago Bears are the NFL (not-soccer football) team; the University of Chicago is, in fact, a treasure trove for pre-Soviet-era Polish lore and culture; there really is that legend about the three (or two!) brothers; and Polish men who flew for the RAF were, by and large, told to leave Britain after the war, preferably back to Poland, under Stalin. And, yes, the Nazis did consider Slavs to be Untermenschen: sub-optimal humans. It was a core piece of their propaganda. If you see a person of Slavic descent going all blood-soil-swastika? Appreciate the horrible irony, then kick 'em in the (ahem) pierogies.