Concrit much appreciated; please point out any flaws you notice. I'm particularly worried that I'm telling too much instead of showing – your opinions?
I'm also trying to involve Orla and co. with le Puff and her problems, but I'm concerned that it's coming off as forced. What do you think?
Chapter Seven: And the Plot Congeals
Further discussion had to be postponed until after their evening classes. Orla spent the entire History of Magic in a high state of anxiety. She expected Huff le Puff to burst through the door at any moment, ready to kill.
The class passed without incident, though. In fact, it was so without incident that Orla nearly fell asleep, lulled by Professor Binn's droning. Only Alexis' foot coming down on hers stopped her from drifting off.
"Do you think he's changed his lesson plan at all since he died?" Orla asked as they collected their things and walked back to the Rookery.
"Probably not," Alexis said. She stuck close to the wall as they moved, staring suspiciously at anyone who even looked their way. Orla thought it funny, until she noticed that she was doing it as well. Huff le Puff had that affect on people.
They reached the Rookery without another run-in with le Puff, thankfully. The closest they came to danger was when they met a Hufflepuff coming out of the library. The sight of so much yellow and black nearly gave Orla a heart attack.
Jared tore up the stairs moments after the girls had settled themselves in the common room and dragged another chair over to them. He was nearly bursting with excitement over being involved in a scheme. Orla glowered at him for it. She was reminded far too much of conspirators, and whatever Alexis and Jared were planning she already knew she wanted no part of it. Before she could escape to the dorms, Alexis pulled out a piece of paper and a quill.
"So," she said, smiling altogether too cheerfully for someone who had nearly been murdered during lunch. "What do we know about this Huff le Puff?"
She absently reached out and grabbed Orla's sleeve, forcing her back into the seat she was attempting to evacuate.
"Don't be an escapist Orla, it's unhealthy," she advised.
Orla thought that tangling with le Puff was even more unhealthy, and in a lethally short term way. She didn't bother saying so, though. Alexis got obsessive like this on occasion. Last week she'd been determined to enter the Forbidden Forest and talk to the centaurs. Her latest craze would pass. Orla could only hope it would be before she got her eyes gouged out with a pair of knitting needles.
"Huff le Puff as in Hufflepuff?" Jared asked, eyebrows drawing together.
Alexis considered the idea for a moment, then shook her head. "I can't imagine what connection the two might have. That woman's the opposite from every Hufflepuff I've met."
Orla decided that if she had to participate she might as well make it worthwhile. "That's not exactly true," she pointed out. "She's crazy as a loon, but she certainly works hard. And I daresay she's loyal to whatever cause it is she's working for."
Alexis stared.
"That makes a… twisted sort of sense," Jared admitted, trying to shove Gnasher off of his lap. Gnasher gave up, slinking away after muttering something best left off paper, as it would have to be censored anyway.
Alexis scribbled busily, then looked up, her forehead scrunching up in thought.
"And speaking of her cause… what was it she called me?" she said. "A stew? No. Spew? That's not it… Sue! That's right. She called me a Sue."
"What's a Sue?" Orla asked for a moment.
Jared opened his mouth, shook his head, and closed it again. They sat around in stumped silence, and might have given up and left it at that if a soft giggle hadn't interrupted them.
Rave'n'claw's head poked over the top of the staircase. She looked around the room, then waved exaggeratedly to Orla and her companions and nimbly pulled herself up.
"Oh no, not her," Orla muttered.
"Sue?" 'Claw said, tilting her head to the side until it lay on her right shoulder. "Wheresa Sue? Le Puff went a-hunting, and she left poor Rave all alone." Her voice took on the guttural overtones of le Puff's. "Rave'n'claw's not strong enough to take on Sues, oh heavens mercy me no! She might get killed like the others. But I know the truth." She tapped the side of her crooked nose. Glaring around the common room, as if to make sure no one else was hidden in the shadows eavesdropping, she minced closer to the stunned trio and leaned towards them confidentially. "I can smell them, and they're veeeery close," she whispered. Jared's face contorted as his nose tried to close itself off at the smell of 'Claw's breath. The stench hardly bothered Alexis and Orla, who'd both been exposed to le Puff.
"Er," Orla said at last, when 'Claw leaned back on her heels and looked expectantly at them.
Alexis sat up straight, looking suddenly galvanized. "You know Huff le Puff?" she asked.
Rave'n'claw bobbed her head enthusiastically.
Orla shook her head equally vigorously, though for very different reasons. She'd forgotten about the other witch she'd seen on the train until now, but she certainly hadn't forgotten 'Claw's desire to take off a limb or two.
"What's she trying to do?" Alexis asked gently, ignoring Orla's vehement gestures.
Rave'n'claw gave her a scornful look. "Going to kill the Sues, of course," she said, snorting. She settled more firmly on her haunches, bringing her arms up to her chest. "Going to kill them all. Make them pay," she affirmed. Her smile put Orla in mind of a picket fence, complete with pointy tops.
"And what's a Sue?"
Rave'n'claw squinted at Alexis.
"Why d'you want to know?" she said, looking almost sane. Her eyes narrowed, and she hunched her shoulders suspiciously. "Why should I tell you? For all I know you're a Sue." She rose a bit, her fingers twitching. Somehow Orla hadn't noticed how long and sharp her fingernails looked until now.
But Orla remembered what le Puff had said: Alexis didn't look like one, so… "She can't be, she's not beautiful enough," Orla said quickly.
Rave'n'claw subsided as Alexis bristled slightly.
"I don't think I should talk to you anymore," 'Claw said after a moment's thought. "You might not be Sues, but you're probably in league with them, and le Puff doesn't like me mixing with the characters, oh no. So good-bye."
"Wait!" Alexis shouted, leaping up, but it was too late. With unexpected speed, Rave'n'claw darted back down the staircase, giggling and making airplane noises.
"She's even loonier than that other one," Jared said, looking slightly awed.
Before Orla could argue with him a prefect stuck his head down from the dorms and told them to stop shouting and laughing like a bunch of Gryffindors. They made a show of studying until he went back upstairs. As soon as he'd left, books were shoved aside and all three leaned towards each other. Orla, to her chagrin, found herself just as conspiratorial as Alexis and Jared.
"So what do we know now?" Alexis demanded.
But they soon realized that they didn't know a great deal more than they had to start out with.
"Huff le Puff's out to kill all the Sues, and that's nice, but we don't know what a Sue is," Alexis said, glowering around the common room as if it was personally responsible for her ignorance. "I've not seen the term in any of the textbooks or essays I've read, and…"
Jared shifted in his seat.
"Um... I think I know what a Sue is," he said, tentatively raising a hand.
Alexis swiveled to stare at him.
"And…?" she prompted.
"If it's short for Mary Sue, that is. Though I've mostly seen them referred to as Gary Stus, but I think the principle's the same, only with different names for males and femal—"
"Just. Get. On. With. It," Alexis snapped. Orla was surprised. Normally Alexis was interested in theory. Still, she supposed nearly being murdered by le Puff might have something to do with her impatience.
"They're really beautiful, cool people with all of these special powers," Jared said, growing steadily more enthusiastic as he continued. "Everybody loves them. The only people who hate them are stupid, and prejudiced, and ugly. I write stories sometimes, and people always say that my characters are Stus. I don't get why people hate them so much." He looked confused for a moment, then shook it off.
Alexis leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers beneath her chin.
"I think I have an idea of what's going on here," she said.
"Feel free to enlighten the rest of us whenever you have the inclination," Orla said, leaning back as well. She thought longingly of all the homework she could be getting out of the way if she wasn't embroiled in… well… whatever insane plot Alexis was planning.
"You know that Gryffindor girl in our Potions class yesterday?" Alexis said without warning.
"You mean the one with the purple stripes in her hair and that weird metal ball in her nose?" Orla asked.
"It's a nose piercing, Orla, they're fairly common. But yes. Did you notice how she kept on staring at Snape and sighing?"
Orla nodded, grimacing. She'd been sitting close to the girl in question and had hardly been able to hear the professor speaking above the constant whooshing of air.
"Don't you think that it's a bit odd that someone would obsess over Snape of all people?" Alexis said, gazing keenly at their faces.
At first, Orla was inclined to laugh at the thought, but remembering the Potions class she had to reconsider. Snape hadn't looked the same then, had he? She couldn't quite remember. Her memory seemed to have gone all vague and fuzzy between yesterday and tonight, like two images imperfectly aligned with each other. In one, Snape was his usual greasy, cynical self, but in the other he was pale-skinned rather than sallow, and his nose wasn't the domineering hook she knew it was. Just thinking about it was giving her a headache, as if the world had gone slightly out of focus.
She shook her head and looked up, to meet Jared's equally confused eyes.
"You're saying that the Gryffindor girl was a Sue, and that she somehow changed Snape?" Jared said. "I don't believe you."
Alexis smiled smugly. "You don't have to believe me," she said, tapping out a rhythm on the arm of her chair, "your own memory's the only thing you have to believe."
"But Sues are fictional!" he burst out. "This is real life. They don't exist!"
She shrugged. "I didn't believe in magic until I got my letter; I don't see how this is any different."
Jared folded his arms and glared through his red-lensed glasses.
"You have no proof," he insisted. "Those two people, whoever they are, are utterly mad. This is just some sort of delusion, and you're just as crazy as they are for believing it."
Once again, Alexis' list came out of her pocket. She waved it in front of Jared's face.
"Look at this!" she hissed. "Just look, will you? Five people with the surname of 'Snape', three named 'Malfoy', and ten named 'Potter'. Is that proof enough?"
"Potter's a common name," Jared said, pushing the parchment away. "Look in the phonebook and you'll find dozens of Potters."
"That's not true in the wizarding world," Orla put in. "I only know of one family named Potter, and most of them're dead. All except for Harry Potter, and he's an only child, not to mention famous. My dad edited a book about him a few years back."
"There, see?" Alexis demanded, shoving her list at Jared's nose again.
"Even if there were such things as Sues in real life, what would you suggest doing about them?" Jared snapped. "Huff le Puff and her friend seem to have the situation under control." He seized Alexis' list and threw it in the fire, ignoring her outraged yelp.
"You are probably the most willfully blind person I've ever met!" Alexis howled, nearly jumping up and down with rage. "Don't you get it? So long as there are Sues here, le Puff's going to stay and kill them, and her aim's obviously none too good, so lots of real people are going to die too. Don't you care about anyone but yourself?"
Orla didn't think this was a good time to say that yes, she did care more for her own intact skin than for a hypothetical person who might or might not be in danger from le Puff's madness. Huff le Puff was like a natural disaster; you felt sorry for those caught in her path, but that didn't mean you were going to go hunt her down and try to stop her. One might as well try to halt a hurricane.
She didn't say anything, but something of what she felt must have showed on her face, because Alexis took one look at her and turned her back, nose in the air.
"I give up on both of you," she said. "Cowards."
Jared stiffened, but Orla just nodded. It wasn't news to her, she'd been told the same thing by Arane for quite a while, and in much more caustic form. A piddling insult like 'coward' wasn't going to bother her.
Jared wasn't similarly complacent. He shot up from his chair as if pricked in a very tender region by something very sharp.
"I'm no coward," he snarled. "I saved your life from that madwoman, how can you call me a coward? I'm just living in this reality, not some fantasy world pulled out of my ass."
"It's not fantasy!" Alexis snapped. Oral looked hopefully at the staircase to see if the prefect was going to come down again and order them to bed, but nobody appeared. Leaving didn't seem the best idea right now, either. In the mood she was in, Alexis would probably tear strips from her hide or worse, get Orla to agree to whatever mad scheme she'd concocted.
"Yet you still haven't come up with a plan of action," Jared said, leaning on a chair back in an ill-planned attempt to look cool and collected. It didn't work; Orla could see angry red patches on his cheeks spreading, and his hands were balled into fists.
Here Alexis paused, her righteous anger momentarily deflated. "Well…" she faltered. "Huff le Puff's here because of the Sues, right? So what we have to do is get rid of the Sues and she'll go away to… to wherever."
"And how are we supposed to do that?" Jared demanded. "Get them all together and feed them poisoned tea and biscuits?"
"N—" Alexis started to say, then she stopped, her eyes narrowing. "You might be on to something there," she said at last.
Jared groaned. Orla couldn't help but agree with him.
"Not with the poisoned food," Alexis assured them. "But with getting them all together in one place."
"At the risk of sounding like a broken record: how are we supposed to do that?" Jared asked.
Orla tried to figure out what a broken document had to do with anything, but she was startled out of it by Alexis' answer.
"We challenge their leader to a duel," she said simply, sitting back down and folding her hands in her lap. Despite her demur posture, the smile on her face was anything but ladylike. "From what you've said, I don't imagine a Sue would be willing to back down from any challenge, and they don't seem like the type to share power well. There must be someone in charge, and that's the one we'll challenge. We'll tell her to bring all of her supporters so that we can get rid of them all at once."
Orla considered this for a moment, then realized the problem with the whole thing, a flaw so gargantuan it was overlookable in its vastness.
"Um, Alexis?" she said. "Have you thought about what you're suggesting? We're first years, the most powerful spell we know is 'Incendio', and you're saying we should challenge the most powerful of a group of unusually powerful witches and wizards and… miscellaneous super-beautiful creatures?"
Alexis' smile grew wider, if that was possible.
"Oh, didn't I mention?" she said with an innocence so obviously feigned it made Britney Spears look earnest. "We won't be there to fight the Sues. Huff le Puff and her merry gang will."
Orla groaned and buried her head in her hands.