Chapter 17: Repercussions
*****
As they entered the school, they could see that everyone had already started dinner. George immediately started for the door, but Alinora held back.
"Wait a minute George. I'm not quite ready." Alinora pushed her cloak back, over her shoulders, and her hair had fallen forward again to obscure her face. She carefully rolled up the sleeves on her robes and George was horrified to see the bruises on each arm, just above her wrists. Reaching back, she pulled her hair up into a twist and fastening it, turned to face him head on for the first time since they'd entered.
George gasped. The lower left side of Ali's face was a massive blue black bruise. He didn't realize he'd unconsciously turned to go hunt down Goyle for this until he felt Alinora grab his arm.
"George- let it go. I'm fine and hopefully he's got a nice one of his own." She laughed softly. He cautiously reached out a hand to touch her face, but withdrew it quickly when she winced. "I'd planned to let it heal on its own, but now I'm thinking I'll let Madam Pomfrey heal it tomorrow. This is likely to clash with whatever I wear to the ball." she remarked sarcastically.
"Okay, now I'm ready to go in."
George took her by the hand and together they entered the Great Hall.
As their fellow classmates caught sight of Alinora, conversations came to a halt. Whispers followed them as they walked towards the spot where Fred, Angelina, Katie and the rest were sitting, with equally angry and horrified expressions on their faces.
Before they could reach them though, Alinora noticed Professor Dumbledore beckoning them up to the teacher's table.
"Miss Roane, I'm glad to see you've returned. Are you feeling better now?" Dumbledore asked, a look of concern replacing his normally cheerful expression.
"Yes, Professor, I'm feeling much better. This has certainly not been one of my better days though."
"We have discussed the situation" McGonagall began, gesturing to her fellow heads of house as well as Professor Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey, "and we have agreed on additional punishments for Mr. Goyle." Alinora was slightly amused at her emphasis on 'additional', but quickly turned her attention back to what was being said.
"There is no precedence for this situation, but we've decided to deduct 300 points from Slytherin. It is distressing to place a point value on such a traumatic experience, but hopefully this will send a message that such actions will not be tolerated. Mr. Goyle will spend the night in Madam Pomfrey's care and will be sent home on the morning train. He will not be allowed to stay for the Yule Ball. We will discuss over the break whether or not he will be allowed back at all." McGonagall finally stopped speaking.
"One question Miss Roane." came the voice of Professor Snape as she and George were preparing to leave. "Is there a particular reason why you chose to physically defend yourself? You are known to be… very talented in Charms- surely it would've been easier to use a spell?"
Alinora took a deep breath and struggled to keep her voice and expression calm. "I would like to respectfully remind you Professor that we are constantly told that no magic is to be used between classes in the corridors."
"But if it would've kept you from being… hurt, as you so obviously have been?" he countered smoothly, gesturing to her arms and face where the bruises stood out lividly against her pale skin.
She smiled slightly, shaking her head. "By the time I knew what was happening and could've cast anything, this damage was already done. It'll heal- I've had worse." she said with an edge of bitterness. "What I was more concerned with was preventing further damage. My father insisted that I learn to physically defend myself from those who don't know how to take 'no' for an answer, or those who don't bother to ask at all. My guard was down today- that's my fault, I had a lot on my mind- but instinct and training took over and I defended myself."
Alinora consciously attempted to loosen the iron grip she had on George's hand, hoping they could get away soon. But Snape wasn't quite finished yet.
"But surely, by this time, magic would be as much of an instinct. Potions may not be your strongest skill, but you otherwise seem to live and breathe magic, more than any other student here. Why did you not just… stun him?"
Alinora lowered her head for a moment before rising up again to look at Snape. "I consciously decided to use physical force for many reasons. I consciously decided to not use magic for still others. I was afraid that if I did…" her voice caught and she took another deep breath, "that if I used magic, that I might lose control in my anger and seriously hurt him. Or even kill him. I was… very angry right then and my control severely strained."
Snape started to laugh, but stopped as he looked into her eyes and saw how very serious she was. Looking a bit startled, he glanced at Dumbledore questioningly.
"You are wise to take what Alinora is saying seriously Severus- you can see the rest of us do not doubt her word and we are much more familiar with her abilities than you are." In fact, McGonagall's face had gone quite white and even Flitwick's normally cheerful expression had disappeared. "I've also spent the past couple hours before dinner watching Alinora explode snow balls, which may sound rather amusing until you understand that if she could do that, for hour after hour, how much damage could she have inflicted on Mr. Goyle? Could you spend hours casting any sufficiently difficult spell, over and over again, successfully? Without using your wand?" he asked Severus in a soft voice. "By the way, I especially liked it once you started making them glow- very attractive firework effect as they blew up. And your aim improved greatly once you started calming down." he said in an aside to Alinora, the twinkle coming back into his eyes.
Alinora stared at him in amazement for a moment before putting her free hand up to cover her eyes and starting to laugh softly.
Dumbledore had turned back to Professor Snape. "I fully believe that Miss Roane would've been capable of doing serious damage to Mr. Goyle this afternoon, had she allowed herself to do so. Had she not had the ability to think past her first response, to not simply react to the situation that brought back painful memories, she very well could've killed him. I'm personally very happy that she didn't use magic and test that control. That she, instead, chose to expend that anger in a manner that didn't hurt herself or anyone else. Now," he said, turning to George and Alinora, who was now leaning against George for support, "I think you two had better get something to eat. It's been a very tiring day and I'm sure your reserves are rather low."
They nodded in agreement and slowly made their way back to the Gryffindor table where their friends were anxiously awaiting them. As soon as they sat down they were bombarded with questions about what had been going on.
"Please! Can we hold off on the interrogation until after I've eaten and we're back in the common room? I really need a little time to relax after the last interrogation session." she said, rather bitterly, nodding her head in Snape's direction.
They kindly stopped asking questions and even headed off the concerned inquiries from the other students. There were a few visitors from the other houses, friends of Alinora's, and even a couple from Slytherin, who came to see how she was doing. The first of them to approach was Pansy, who Ali had befriended during the talent show.
Seeing her anxious expression, and the anger on the faces around her, Alinora quickly got up and went to meet Pansy. She gave her a hug, and Ali wasn't sure who was comforting who in that moment, but they both felt better afterwards. And the angry expressions had disappeared.
Later on, in the common room, Ali was held to her promised explanation.
"Look, there's really not much to the whole Goyle thing. He grabbed me and gave me a glancing blow to the jaw. That stunned me enough that I didn't immediately react. He'd grabbed my wand, thinking that without that I wouldn't be able to defend myself since he's so much larger than me. But I've been taking self-defense lessons for years- after I went through this the first time. My father felt that I needed a non-magical way to protect myself. Anyway, he's too tall to simply punch in the face, so I punched him in the gut- he's lucky it wasn't the groin." she muttered in a low voice. "Then, when he'd bent over in pain, I threw an upper cut punch to the jaw. He went down immediately. I left him there and went to tell Madam Pomfrey what I'd done, why, and where she could find him. I also asked her not to heal him- I want him to have to deal with those aches and pains for awhile. Then I spoke to McGonagall, which you all know about, and headed out to the lake to calm down until I felt it was safe to come back in."
"You said that this wasn't the first time you've had someone attack you, or had something like this happen…?" Alicia asked tentatively.
"Unfortunately not. You see, back when I was around eleven years old, I had a very similar experience. I'd been playing with some friends in town, it was getting late, and I had left them to walk home for dinner. I'd noticed a stranger hanging around while we were playing, but I hadn't paid him all that much attention- I had no reason to. But as I was cutting through an alley that was a shortcut out of town, he grabbed me. Looking at me now, you can imagine I wasn't all that big at eleven and I had next to no self defense experience. I was lucky enough to get a good kick in and I bit his hand so I could get free enough to scream. Some of the local men came running and found us. The stranger dropped me and ran off- they were never able to find him. After that, Father made sure I learned just about every form of self-defense he could find for me- physically and magically." Alinora shook her head, smiling slightly.
"Then, the year I was fourteen, Mom and I went into Diagon Alley to do some window shopping while Father was meeting some people for business. Mom and I'd split up- she wanted to brave the bookstore where there was some signing going on, but I decided to just wander around for a while. We agreed to meet up for ice cream later and I headed off. I got tired of window shopping a little early and headed to the ice cream shop to wait for her. I was sitting there by myself when a strange man came up and sat down with me. He kept talking about my looks, and how pretty I was- he was making me really uncomfortable, but I tried to be polite. Then he tried to get me to go off with him somewhere. When I told him no, he started getting nasty and grabbed my arm trying to physically remove me from the area. So I stomped his foot, elbowed him in the gut and again in the nose. Luckily, the owner of the shop had come out right as this was starting and he ran the guy off and stayed with me until mom showed up a little later. That's when I decided to start using personal illusion charms."
"Personal illusion charms? Ali, what are those?" Hermione asked curiously.
"Basically, they're just charms that change how you look or how people see you. I had two types, that mainly only worked on you if you didn't know me all that well. The first just worked to convince your mind to not pay me all that much attention unless we were actually interacting. The other part actually physically changed how you'd see me."
Ali stopped for a moment, bowing her head and speaking a few words. When she raised her head again her appearance had changed slightly. Her hair was shorter, mid-back length, her skin was tan, her eyes a clear emerald green. While she was still pretty, it was more subdued, less obvious. She looked exactly as they now remembered her to look from the year before. "Notice the difference?" Even her voice had changed. "Not a major change, but enough that people wouldn't notice how I looked." She snorted. "It's irritating to have to keep up though, and very draining. I'd already decided over the summer that I couldn't live like that anymore, and that I really didn't have to around you guys. It had pretty much become a habit though, and I'd sorta forgotten about it up until then. So, I started letting some of the charms drop. I dropped all the remaining ones at Halloween." Smiling around at them she dropped the illusions and they were relieved to see the real 'her' return. "I guess I should've kept up some of the general protection charms though. I'll have to think about how to modify them a bit…"
"That's really horrible! I can understand why the whole Goyle thing would upset you by bringing up all those bad memories. But Ali, you were in a bad mood this morning, before any of this happened. What was wrong then?" Katie asked tentatively, in a concerned voice.
Ali forced a smile, though it was getting easier to talk about, and explained once again about her father.
"While I don't regret for a moment coming to Hogwarts, today I finally had to deal with all those emotions I had been keeping bottled up while I came to terms with how my life is now. And bottling those sorts of emotions up for such a long time can cause problems when they decide it's time for them to be acknowledged and dealt with- like today." She suddenly started laughing, to their surprise. "Goyle certainly picked the absolutely worst day to try that little stunt." she said, smiling rather maliciously.
After that, the group had attempted to turn the conversation to more enjoyable topics. They were fairly successful and Alinora was feeling calm, if not completely happy, by the time they all went up to bed.
