AE
Chapter 10: Alicia Strikes Again
While one day was doubtless more than enough time for Alicia to leave an impression on the faculty, it was not enough time for Meli to ferret out all of the leads she knew must be out there. She resigned herself, therefore, to another day's existence as an obnoxious stereotype and prepared for a second round of shenanigans—a round, moreover, which would simultaneously ensure that she would be in no danger of being accepted as a transfer student.
Ginny's course schedule did not fit into her plans, however. Defense Against the Dark Arts would be all too easy to disrupt, but fouling up Arithmancy could be disastrous, and Care of Magical Creatures outright dangerous.
Thus it happened that Alicia Ruíz developed a particular affinity for Divination and Muggle Studies, both of which Chickadee Chisholm and Almyra Natterbek were taking. After a brief conference with McGonagall, Ginny received the happy news that she was to hand off Alicia to Chickadee at lunch time.
The Gryffindor gossips were thrilled to tears at being able to liberate their new American friend, and they cheerfully called out that they'd see her at lunch, m'kay? To which Alicia replied with a heartfelt grin that yes, yes she would.
Ginny was as relieved as Chickadee and Almyra were thrilled, but she still had to make it through Defense Against the Dark Arts—and so did everyone else, for that matter.
The only challenge facing Meli in that class would be in not tipping her hand and showing that she knew far more than she should do; after all, it was known, at least to adults, that the American schools did not have an equivalent class. Fortunately, she was quite capable of thinking outside of the box and, consequently, smuggled a chicken into the classroom.
The Hinkypunk-Chicken Wars were great material for sociological and zoological study, but because the violence had not spread to include other creatures (with the notable exception of the Battle of Bippleyburg, which had involved a community of pixies, a handful of house elves, and a misplaced llama), it generally received little more than a footnote in the average History of Magic text. That being the case, only gamekeepers like Hagrid, creature-conscious teachers like Lupin, the occasional odd Auror like Andrea, and the abnormally obnoxious hell-raising student like Alicia, would know of the vicious and deep-seeded antipathy still existing between the chickens and the hinkypunks. The Treaty of Upsy Downs had halted the outright carnage, but the wars hadn't really ended; they had just gone underground.
Meli had noted on passing the room during the summer that her replacement kept a caged hinkypunk to one side of his desk. It was a relatively simple matter—even for a fifth-year prospective exchange student—to loose a chicken in the middle of class and, under cover of its clucking, whisper a charm to loose the hinkypunk, as well.
The hinkypunk, naturally, was not long in emerging, but, most unfortunately, Lupin apprehended both creatures before anything truly interesting could happen. The chicken, which Lupin held firmly by the legs, clucked madly—breathing out unthinkable death threats, Meli didn't doubt. The re-caged hinkypunk, meanwhile, looked a tad more solid and turned a painful, burning shade of pink, all the time hissing with the agonized, furious sound of a cat that had mistakenly relieved itself in an electrical outlet.
Lupin calmly excused himself long enough to lock the chicken in his office, then returned to survey the class with his customary mild expression—though Meli caught a glimpse of a spark in his eye that was at odds with the rest of his countenance.
"Only one of you looks at all crestfallen at this outcome," the werewolf observed coolly, then rested his gaze fully on Alicia. "Would you mind telling us what you hoped to accomplish with that little stunt, Miss Ruíz?"
Alicia brightened. "Hey, you said my name right!"
"Indeed," Lupin replied. "A simple courtesy, but an important one. But regarding my question…?"
If such a student ever did come here, Meli thought, Remus Lupin would be the one to get through to her. Outwardly she shrugged. "I just wanted to see what would happen," she mumbled, almost guiltily
Lupin smiled, and the spark in his eye revealed itself to be amusement; he might be trying not to laugh. "Well, you found a memorable way to learn," he allowed. "But there are other, less potentially violent, methods."
"But those are boring!" Alicia protested. "Come on, Mr. Lupin, you can't tell me you've never really wanted to! It's like—" She floundered around for the right words. "It's like opening the clothes washer in the middle of the spin cycle—you just wanna see for yourself, you know?"
Lupin's eyebrows were nearly at his hairline. "I suppose I do know," he conceded. "But there are more appropriate times and places for such experimentation." And with that mild reproof, he returned to the lecture.
Meli judged that it would be appropriate for Alicia to be uncharacteristically quiet for the duration of the lecture. The lunch time influence of Chickadee and Almyra would provide ample time to revive Alicia's standard nature.
Before lunch, though, she had to endure twenty minutes of being stared at by Ginny. At last, when the bell rang, she looked at the redhead in irritation. "What!"
Ginny shook her head. "I just never thought someone so absolutely annoying could be so cool," she marveled.
Alicia was taken aback. "Hey, I don't think he's annoying," she said defensively. "He's just plain cool!"
Now it was Ginny's turn to look irritated. "I wasn't talking about Lupin," she grumbled, then sighed long-sufferingly and left for lunch.
Alicia shrugged in her wake, then turned and walked up to the front of the classroom. Lupin looked up at her approach and tilted his head inquiringly.
"I was just wondering if I could have my chicken back," Alicia said, wincing as Meli's wand started to crawl up her sleeve and away from the werewolf.
Lupin regarded her thoughtfully, observing first her face then her sleeve, then smiled slightly. "I think it would be best if I keep it for now," he replied. "You may collect it when next we meet, which, unless I'm mistaken, will be in short order?"
"Sorry," Meli said, "what?"
"It's quite understandable that you're drawing a blank," Lupin answered. "Good day, Miss Ruíz."
Alicia flashed him a knowing grin, then departed therewith.
Bloody wand, she sighed inwardly. A dead giveaway, at least to a certain perceptive werewolf of my acquaintance.
xxx
Lunch time provided more useful information, and Meli was relieved that her name didn't enter the conversation once. By the time she arrived at the Muggle Studies classroom, Alicia was fully restored in all her glory, and Meli spent a wonderful hour wreaking havoc. Professor Bland brought in a hair dryer, curling iron, and heat comb for an in-class demonstration on Muggle hair-styling methods, and Alicia had a field day.
By the end of class, several students were experimenting with charms to make themselves look a little less like the Bride of Frankenstein, and Bland was nursing burns from the heat comb. As Alicia had been quick to point out, those particular injuries were not her fault. The teacher had, in fact, sustained them as a result of being slammed into by a student, who tripped over a chair while dodging another student, who was ducking out of the way of a third student, who was trying to escape the flying industrial-strength hairdryer set loose by the visiting student.
Bland was not amused.
Trelawney, who alone of the faculty knew little or nothing about the now-infamous Alicia Ruíz, also ended the afternoon in a highly unamused state, and it was all thanks to David Bowie.
Alicia made a fine show of being awed at the sight of a "real, live crystal ball", then made an off-hand comment that they looked smaller in the movies. Chickadee, who, as Meli had learned, was intensely fascinated by Muggle cinema, wasted no time in asking Alicia to elaborate.
"Well, see, there's this movie called Labyrinth that has David Bowie as the goblin king," Alicia explained, "and he really needs to get some better pants because spandex shows way too much, if you get my drift, but he does this really cool thing with crystal balls."
And here she picked up Chickadee and Almyra's crystal ball and attempted a demonstration, which ended, predictably, with the crystal ball dropping and smashing on the floor, jolting a number of students awake. Trelawney whirled in alarm at the sound, but Alicia was oblivious.
"Oh, man!" she said in disgust. "I gotta try that again." Seizing another crystal ball from a nearby table, she made another attempt with the same result.
Mali thought afterward that she would have paid a premium to download someone's memory of that class into a Penseive so she could watch it again and again. In the guise of Alicia, she progressed steadily around the room, smashing crystal balls one after another, with a stricken, whimpering Trelawney following, begging her to stop and moving too slowly to stop her by force. The students, meanwhile, were laughing too hard to interpose.
When the only crystal balls left in the room were a handful or so on a storage shelf, Alicia at last stopped and turned, utterly dejected, to Chickadee and Almyra. "I guess I can't show you, then," she sighed sadly. "You're just gonna have to rent the video."
Trelawney at last reached her and, grabbing her by the shoulders, shook her forcefully enough to nearly knock teeth out of her head.
"WHY?" the Divination teacher screamed. "HOW COULD YOU DO SUCH A THING!"
Alicia blinked in innocent confusion, then looked at the trail of glass shards she'd left. "Well, they're not supposed to do that, right?" she asked. "I mean, you kept the warranty, didn't you? Pyrex is supposed to be a little tougher—"
"These are not Pyrex balls, you insolent little minx!" Trelawney wailed. "They're crystal, and the price of replacing them is above what I'd make in a lifetime!"
Meli knew a little better than that, having carefully calculated the replacement cost for which she'd be responsible before running up the bill in the first place. Nevertheless, confronted with a near-hysterical Trelawney, she was forced to admit that she might have overstepped, and accusing the teacher of engaging in hyperbole was unlikely to improve her situation much.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly, but apparently that was still the wrong response.
"Sorry?" Trelawney shrieked. "SORRY!" She angrily shoved Alicia away from her…to slam solidly into the storage shelf holding the very last intact crystal balls in the castle.
Meli attempted to minimize the impact, but she failed miserably, and the shelf came crashing down.
The room was deadly silent in the wake of the crash, and then a blood-chilling howl emerged from the Divination teacher. Meli needed only a glance to gauge the wild, desperate, and not-entirely-sane fire in Trelawney's eyes.
"Oh, shit!" Alicia gasped, then dove headfirst through the trapdoor just seconds ahead of a thoroughly murderous Trelawney.
xxx
Once Meli was out of sight, she ducked into an empty room, changed her glamourie, and hit herself with the most powerful Disillusioning charm she knew. She waited until she heard the raging bull that was Sibyl Trelawney charge by, gave it another ten minutes, and then slowly exited the room and made her way directly to Dumbledore's office.
She had a vague idea that it would require at least an hour for the distraught teacher to calm down enough to think of going to the headmaster, and she wanted to be long gone by then. Dumbledore, not surprisingly, was waiting for her when she removed the Disillusionment and knocked at his door.
"Jenny Wren, is it?" he asked calmly as she entered the room. "Or should I say, Fanny Cleaver?"
"Nancy Sikes," Meli answered miserably. "I've made a few too many poor choices, and while I wish I were redeemable, I'm well aware that I'm not." She looked meekly up at the headmaster. "I have a confession to make."
Dumbledore nodded. "Only one?"
"Well, three, actually," she amended. "The first is that what I did was premeditated and I have the charge slip to prove it. The second is that I, um…personally smashed three-quarters of Sibyl's crystal balls and indirectly facilitated the destruction of the rest. And thirdly, I underestimated—catastrophically—the full effect that such behavior would have on her, so…" She swallowed. "Well, sir, I'm afraid Sibyl has gone completely mad."
"I see," Dumbledore said, still quite calmly. "I assume that the charge slip aforementioned indicates that you've made arrangement for the replacement of the crystal balls?"
Meli nodded. "I ordered them shipped overnight," she answered. "They should be here by ten tomorrow morning." She offered a sheepish half-smile. "And I made sure to buy the ones that are equipped with the latest anti-breakage charms."
"Made of Pyrex, are they?" Dumbledore remarked sardonically.
She shrugged. "Something of the sort," she allowed. "But in the hands of someone actually possessing the Sight, these particular ones also happen to be tools, not the decorations Sibyl had. Call it my donation to the school ten years after graduation. I just…led up to it a little differently."
Dumbledore glanced in the direction of the door, then said, quite casually, "You may wish to become Alicia again. Unless I'm much mistaken, Sibyl is on her way up."
Meli swallowed but complied, having just enough time to smooth a wrinkle out of her Homies T-shirt before Trelawney nearly put a fist through the door. Dumbledore grimly called for the Divination teacher to enter, which she did with all of the grace of a Level Five hurricane. She stopped short on finding the newest bane of her existence standing with head bowed under the dark gaze of a (seemingly) extremely annoyed headmaster.
"Ah, Sibyl," Dumbledore said. "I was just about to send for you. Miss Ruíz and I have been having a little chat on the topic of crystal balls."
"And?" Trelawney demanded.
Dumbledore inclined his head and looked expectantly at Alicia. "And, Miss Ruíz?" he prompted.
Alicia looked mournfully at Trelawney. "And I'm sorry I broke your crystal balls and acted like a punk-ass bitch," she told the teacher.
Dumbledore looked a bit pained at her phrasing, but he chose not to address it just then. "And what else, Miss Ruíz?"
"And I called my Uncle Tito, who knows a guy," Alicia continued, "and I have to pay my uncle all my allowance for the rest of my life, but he's gonna make sure you get some new crystal balls by lunch time tomorrow." She glanced at Dumbledore, then looked back to Trelawney. "And they're new like out of the factory new, not secondhand or nothing. And since I'm paying him back anyway, Uncle Tito said to make sure and tell you he's sending the best ones out there—even better than the ones they use on the Psychic Friends Hotline."
It was amazing and somewhat comical to see how the news transformed Trelawney. All of the rage dissipated during the course of Alicia's speech, and by the end of it, the batty teacher was drowning in tears of joy. She came within an inch of actually hugging Alicia, then thought better of it; they weren't exactly friends, after all.
Dumbledore cleared his throat. "Miss Ruíz, please report back to me for detention this evening after dinner," he said. "And until dinner, you will remain in the library, under the watchful eye of Madame Pince."
"But I'm not a student here!" Alicia protested. "You can't give me detention!"
"I can, however, ask rather forcefully that you clean up the mess you made," Dumbledore countered, his eyes twinkling evilly. "You did, after all, choose to make the mess in the first place." He glanced at the clock, then looked back to Alicia. "Madame Pince will be expecting you in five minutes," he added, and Meli had the sudden realization that he was entirely serious.
Busted, she thought as she left the office and hurried to the library. And I'd be willing to bet that the cleanup tonight will be all elbow-grease, no magic allowed.
She grinned. Dumbledore had better watch it. I might start raising hell more often if he keeps rewarding my behavior.
xxx
Unfortunately for a number of people, Alicia's banishment to the library did not ensure her silence. Madame Pince was well-aware that the girl's presence was a punishment, but she was not an intrinsically harsh person, so when Alicia asked a handful of questions, the librarian was happy to answer them—though, for the sake of principle, she kept the answers brief and did not deliver them in the warmest of tones.
That was how Alicia came to be made aware that some books were locked away in the Restricted section and were not available for all to read. Already over-sensitive after her conference with Dumbledore and Trelawney (or so Madame Pince reasoned, anyway), the girl took far more offense than she might otherwise have done, and the next thing everyone in the library knew, Alicia was protesting loudly to Madame Pince about the wrongness of it all.
By the time another teacher arrived on-scene, Alicia had conjured a wooden box to stand on so that she could look Madame Pince (a somewhat tall woman) directly in the eye. The newly-arrived teacher did not understand the significance of the word "Ivory", which was stenciled on the side of the box, but he did know the meaning of most of the gibberish she was spouting, which was far more than the shell-shocked Hogwarts students could say.
Standing on the box, Alicia was about six feet tall, but this teacher was taller. He waited for her to finish a particularly convoluted sentence, then stepped behind her and placed a heavy hand on her shoulder.
Whatever Alicia's norm might be, Meli neither liked nor was used to being touched, especially by someone standing outside her field of vision. She whipped around, her fist preceding her and, fortunately for the teacher's manhood, quickly checked by a skillful block.
Zarekael offered her a sardonic smirk and clicked his tongue in admonition as students throughout the library gasped in reaction to the sight of someone daring to lash out at him. Alicia, for her part, took in his height and the fact that he must be a teacher and stared at him in evident awe.
"You missed," he said mildly. "And I wouldn't recommend trying that again."
Once her eyes had gone fully wide and her face a deathly pale, Zarekael cleared his throat and addressed her earlier words. "You are aware, of course, that we're in Great Britain, and that in Great Britain the American Constitution and its First Amendment are not law?" he remarked, arching an eyebrow.
"Then what's so great about it?" Alicia shot back.
"You might be interested to know," Madame Pince added faintly, "that even in America, certain books are banned or restricted."
Alicia whirled to face her again. "What?" she demanded. "No way!"
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," the librarian told her, "because some people consider it racist. The Catcher in the Rye because it's believed to have influenced political assassins. The Dark Is Rising has been banned from some religious schools because it contains…hm…magic."
"In America!"
Madame Pince nodded. "I'm afraid so."
Alicia looked back and forth between the librarian and the Potions apprentice, then shook her head. She was silent a long moment, pondering her toes, then looked up, her eyes flashing. "That's it!" she declared. "I'm going back to Mexico!"
"You came from Mexico?" Zarekael inquired curiously.
Alicia rolled her eyes. "Okay, so my grandparents did," she amended. "But it looks like England and America are out!"
"You'll be disillusioned no matter where you go," Madame Pince told her, sounding almost anxious. "No place is perfect."
"I don't want perfect," Alicia fumed. "I just want right." So saying, she jumped down from the box and evanesced it, then stormed over to an empty study table. She sat there, glaring at its wooden top, until it was time for her detention, and while the clean Divination loft showed that she had been there, she herself was never seen by the students again.
xxx
FURTHER AUTHOR'S NOTE: Profuse thanks to my beta-reader Bet for helping me think up ways for Alicia to wreak absolute mayhem. The crystal ball sequence would not have existed without you, chica; much thanks and gratitude! Also thanks to Snarky, who came up with the idea of Alicia's rant on the First Amendment.
And yes, in case anyone was wondering, I have issues with censorship.
Cinammon- We, too, made up rumors about our teachers in high school, but they weren't as bad as the ones Meli overheard, either. In fact, they were all rather silly, like the rumor that our concert band mis-director fancied himself to be Batman or that the World History teacher was in witness protection because he knew too much about the nefarious world-domination plot of extraterrestrial Fuzzy Dice (oh, wait—he made that up himself; never mind). There wasn't any fixing-up going on, though, largely because we wouldn't wish any of the teachers on any of our friends.
Oh, and I hope the Hinkypunk-Chicken Wars didn't cause another Dumbledore's-toesocks worry; it's just a case of me over-compensating for what's soon to come.
Eilidh Ceilidh- Given your Aztlan T-shirt horror story, I'm not surprised you know someone like Alicia. I'm glad you like her, though, at least in fiction. Sorry I couldn't help you out with the skrewt explosion, but you could always go back to "Unholy Smoke" in the prequel and relive the glory.
AE