Interlude: Snapshots of a Noble Type of Blackbird
Alice Merle had been born at home.
She had been born on the bathroom floor, at two o'clock in the morning. Her mother's water broke when she was going to the loo and proceeded to birth her second daughter from her spot on the floor an hour later. It wasn't a hard delivery, unlike her older sister Lorina who wanted to come out buttocks first, just fast.
Lorina and Alice showed signs of magic in the same moment.
A four-year-old Lorina accidentally magicked open the wine cabinet and gave her two-year-old sister a bottle of wine. Carol Merle had caught the pair before Alice could have a lot, but Alice proceeded to burp pink bubbles in odd shapes like stars and diamonds, which burst in a cloud of color and smelled faintly of Merlot.
Carol had not been bothered by this, beyond the fact that her eldest daughter had opened the wine cabinet and her youngest had a sip of wine. When she told her sister-in-law, Charlotte, about this, her sister-in-law began to point and stammer until Lorina told her that Carol had told her that it was rude to point.
Alice wears her hair long for a reason. Not because she likes long hair but because if she didn't then it would be a mass of fluffy hair. So she wears it long and treats it once a week with Sleekeazy's Hair Potion for Curls.
She does this because when she was five a boy made fun of her because of her hair. It was brown and still puffy and resembled a dandelion clock. He called her Dandelion Head and kept asking her what the time was.
She snapped one day, and afterwards the boy needed several stitches and was kept at the hospital overnight, just to make sure that the numerous bites he received didn't cause an infection. It had taken a bucket of water to get Alice to stop biting his leg, and a skipping rope and a chair to keep her from going after him again.
He never made fun of her after that. He still flinches when she passes him on the street.
Alice was six, in Year 1 Grammar, when she was called out of class to be told her father died. A teacher had come in, sad and pale, saying that she was to report to the headmaster's office immediately. A few children went "ooh" and "what did you do?" and promptly shut up when Alice glared at them, her long gray-blue eyes fierce and stormy.
When the headmaster told her and her sister, with sad, pitying eyes, that their father had died in a car accident, Alice just sat there. Her face did not change, impassive and wooden, and the only sign that she had even heard what he had said was the slight inclination of her head. She had nothing to say.
Lorina screamed. She screamed at the headmaster, told him that he was lying, that Daddy wasn't dead, that he couldn't be dead, that Daddy had promised to take her and Alice and Mum down to Paris that weekend, that he promised and Daddy would never break a promise, a promise, a promise, and she collapsed to the floor in a sobbing heap.
It was the first sign that Alice was stronger than her older sister, when she carried her sister home from school. Because she could carry her sister home from school, because she had not fallen to pieces.
The day her father died was the day Alice knew that she would always have to be strong. After she put her sister to bed she went to find her mother. Alice found her sitting in the attic, which had been converted several years before into a private parlor for Mr. and Mrs. Merle only. Her mother's eyes, just like her own, here dull and glassy, her mind having retreated to a safe haven, far from the news of her beloved's death.
Alice, with the help of Aunt Charlotte, eventually was the one who was in charge of the funeral arrangements for her father, because her mother was too far lost and her sister too far gone to help.
Alice didn't know then if she was strong, if she wanted to be strong. But she knew she couldn't be weak, because someone had to lay Lewis Merle to rest, because someone had to make sure that Daddy could pass one peacefully.
Because someone had to be strong enough to carry on and everyone else, too.
Six months after her father died, Alice broke. She woke up late at night because something felt wrong. Like she had pieces of herself missing, like she was broken into thousands of pieces and not all were there.
When she unbuttoned her nightshirt and looked down, she was all there. She turned on a light and saw only smooth, unmarked skin.
But she could feel it. The pieces missing—lost—and it was getting harder to breathe because of the missing pieces.
Then she screamed, horrifying and furious and agonizing. She screamed for everything that was gone, lost, and would never be found again. She screamed for her mother, who lived and breathed only for the memories of her lover and the present her mind created, a world safe from the harsh reality. She screamed for her sister, the sister she had loved and admired and was lost inside the emotionless shell that she was forced to call her sister. She screamed for her father, dead and buried, killed by a patch of summer ice. She screamed for herself, for the life she had had, the future that she should have had, that had been stolen from her. She screamed until lights flashed about her eyes and her head pounded.
And when she couldn't scream anymore, she punched every hard surface she could find, until her hands were raw and bleeding. She destroyed everything in her room that reminded her of her father, who broke his promise and broke her and didn't leave a mark to show. She ripped and tore and destroyed until she was too exhausted to do anything else.
The morning after she called her aunt, Aunt Charlotte, who had just recently got a divorce, and asked if she would come and stay with them, until things were better, indefinitely. She spent the rest of the day waiting for her aunt to arrive, sewing together the parts of her life she had destroyed, imperfectly but together.
She broke and spent several months gluing herself back together, imperfectly but together.
She still isn't sure if she has all the pieces of herself, together, imperfectly, but all there.
When Alice was eight, people often remarked on how well she handled her father's death and her mother's insanity.
So much better than her sister, who would go for months as impassive as a statue, but as soon as she saw something that reminded her of her father or mother, a certain tie or perfume, she would break down, crying every tear she had bottled up. The genius girl who knew everything except how to cope.
Alice doesn't consider herself better at handling death and insanity than her sister. She does consider herself better at learning from mistakes.
She made the mistake of suppressing her emotions, and each time she snapped and came down up the unfortunate souls who brought her there, either physically or spiritually. She beat up the boy who called her Dandelion Head and destroyed her father's ghost.
She has learned from her mistakes. She lets out her emotions, but on a leash.
When she's angry her eyes grow dark and wild and she's a walking storm, and she's at its eye. When she's upset she's in the storm, feeling the wind and hail and rain that no one else knows but can see because the storm is inside her, tearing at her insides. When she's sad she swallows the rain of tears and doesn't let the storm out but knows that it's there, admits it exists. She holds onto her feelings and never lets go; she'll never let anyone take her anger, hate, or tears from her.
She's a selfish bitch and knows it and doesn't care because she'll always have that part of her.
When the Ministry wizard showed up on their doorstep to tell Lorina and Alice that they were witches and that Lorina could go to a school of magic if she wanted to, Alice wanted to laugh. Not because the idea was ridiculous to what they were told, but because of what the wizard was wearing. He wore a doublet, fluorescent pink legwarmers, sandals, and a miniskirt.
That night Lorina and Alice wondered if Lorina should accept the invitation. It sounded wonderful, but what if she had a breakdown? What if people learned about Mum or Daddy and made fun of her for it? What if she either happened and she retreated into herself like Mum? She would stay there forever because Alice wouldn't be there to draw her out.
"I don't know if I should go," said Lorina, that night. She had crawled into Alice's bed, like she was the little sister who needed her big sister to comfort her to sleep; it had been this way for years. "If people make fun of me I won't be able to stand up for myself. I'm not as brave as you, Alice."
Alice sat up immediately then and told Lorina that she must go to Hogwarts. She never did explain why, but when the wizard had shown up again, better dressed this time, Alice informed the wizard that Lorina would be attending Hogwarts in September and where was she to get supplies?
Alice never explained to her sister that she wasn't brave. Bravery, in her mind, means being about to accept fear and overcome it. Alice's pride never lets her do that; it takes fear and turns it into a tool, something she could use. Fear is the one emotion she will never admit to herself or anyone else that she has ever felt.
She never accepts fear, and is never brave. Because pride is her greatest sin.
For a month Alice fretted over her sister when she was at Hogwarts, though to the unobserving eye, she was just grouchy and surly over her sister getting to go away on an adventure while she was stuck at home. When an Hogwarts post owl arrived with a letter Alice almost strangled the poor thing while trying to get the letter.
Alice read the letter, reread it, and read it thrice before bursting out laughing, startling Aunt Charlotte and the owl. While her aunt read the letter Alice wrote two letters: one to her sister, telling her not to let it get to her too much, and one to a William Weasley, thanking him for getting her sister out of her shell in ways she could not, by proving himself a challenge to Lorina's genius.
Of course, Alice never told Lorina about her second letter, nor did she explained to Bill why she was thanking him. She just wrote in big, bold letters THANK YOU.
To this day, Lorina doesn't know, and Bill still can't figure out what she meant.
On her tenth Christmas Aunt Charlotte gave Alice The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett. She had figured that at least Alice could get an idea of magic, even if it wasn't real.
Alice hadn't liked it much at first, thinking it wrong on some level to be given a fictional tale of magic when she knew it was real, and only began reading it out of politeness. By the end of the holidays Alice had read it five times and was severely disappointed when she found out that there was only one book about Discworld.
Since then Alice has worked on amassing the entire series, mostly through gifts. So far she has every novel released, the art books, and the BBC adaptations on tape.
When Alice received her letter to Hogwarts she was ecstatic. It had taken a threat of the temporary removal of the Disc to get Alice to stop bouncing on the furniture.
So for the first time in years Alice went to her mother's room and did not lie to her about the life she was leading. She told in detail everything that had happened since Lewis Merle's death. That she was a witch, that Lorina was a witch, that they were to be studying magic together at a school far away and would be home at Christmas and Easter, and Mum, please be OK and know that I love you.
And Carol smiled at her youngest daughter with blank eyes, patted her on the head, and asked why she wasn't wearing that nice blue dress that she had bought her the other day.
It was then that Alice knew that Carol would never recover, would never realize reality again. It was then that Alice never told her mother the truth again.
Alice never wears blue, and avoids blue dresses like the plague.
On the train to Hogwarts, Alice met Chiaki Ishii. He was a quiet Japanese boy who spoke with the strangest accent Alice had ever heard, a mix between a southern England accent and a Japanese one. But that has nothing to do with how they met. Alice met Chiaki when she was sitting in a compartment on the train with her sister and he needed a place to sit.
Alice wasn't sure what to think of him until halfway through the ride he asked if Lorina was her sister. Alice said yes and asked if he had any siblings.
"I should have had a little sister," said Chiaki, with a weird smile on his face. It reminded Alice of a broken mirror, beautiful, reflecting the prisms of light, but ultimately still broken.
"So how old are you turning this year?" asked Alice.
Chiaki blinked at the rapid change in subject and said, "I'll be turning twelve November third."
"Well, I just turned eleven two days ago, so you're older than me." Then, with the innocence that can only be attributed to children. "And since you were supposed to be a big brother, I'll be your little sister, too. I always wanted a big brother."
Chiaki and Alice were inseparable until the Feast, and afterwards, too.
Alice had wanted to be a Ravenclaw. She argued with the Hat for fifteen minutes, until the Hat explained to her why she couldn't possibly be a Ravenclaw in terms she could understand. It wasn't that she's stupid, it's that she too sensible to be a Ravenclaw. If there's a giant monster with tentacles sitting on the roof, most people would wonder if it's real. A Ravenclaw would want to study and do research on it. Sensible people, like Alice, would start wondering how to get rid of it.
That convinced Alice that she wasn't meant for Ravenclaw, and for another ten minutes she argued with the Hat about the other houses. She had too much pride to be a Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, the houses that would admit to fear and the leftover house, respectively.
Twenty-five minutes later the Hat screams out "SLYTHERIN!", commending Alice for her stubbornness and telling her that the pen-knife hidden on her person wouldn't work against the Hat.
Alice first met Bill and Charlie Weasley when the first grades of the year were being returned. Met, however, is the wrong term. She first saw Bill Weasley in the entrance hall, where her sister was yelling something at him. He, in turn, yelled back. Students groaned and tittered at them, their fights being so commonplace they were overlooked by teachers.
This fight didn't go any farther, though, since Alice and Charlie bodily dragged their respective older sibling away. They shot each other sympathetic glances that said, "Sorry about this idiot."
Alice formally met Charlie Weasley a week later. She was sitting by the lake when he walked up to her and told her his name and asked what her name was. He apologized to her for his brother's actions toward her sister, and Alice likewise apologized for her sister. After that, they just sat there and talked, about nothing and everything, like they had been friends all their life.
About halfway through Alice realized that Charlie thought she was a Ravenclaw like her sister. The robes bore no insignia to their house. There was no way to tell a Ravenclaw from a Slytherin if you didn't know.
Alice didn't correct him, though. She wanted to see how long it would be until he noticed.
To her utter amazement Charlie never did. Several other people noticed, however, to the strange friendship between a Gryffindor and a Slytherin. Everyone had tried to be oblique about it, though.
Of course, by being oblique Charlie never picked up on it. He wasn't dumb, but he was very simple. He couldn't think of Alice being a Slytherin, especially since she was a Muggleborn, and wouldn't until someone pointed it out to him. And no one could come out and tell him and possibly ruin a good friendship, especially after the last several Sorting songs that spoke of unity of the houses.
A group of Pureblood Slytherins boys was tell him, though, because he was a Gryffindor and Alice was a Slytherin, and they weren't supposed to like each other. But they made a mistake: they tried to blackmail Alice first.
It would be wrong to say that they didn't know what hit them; they knew perfectly well what hit them. They just hadn't been expecting it. By the time the prefects could restrain Alice several teeth had been chipped, robes torn, and one boy was curled on the ground, clutching a certain male part that hurt a lot when kicked, and another boy had a hairline fracture on his arm.
To avoid getting the house in trouble the older students fixed everyone up and the prefects made everyone swear not to mention this and what caused it to anyone.
So it wasn't mentioned, and Alice came and went and made friends as she pleased.
One of the few people who spoke directly about their friendship was a Ravenclaw first year that was rarely heard at all named Peony Parkinson (the only others had been Lorina, who had never mentioned it again after being stared down by Alice, and Bill, who accepted her answer though stared suspiciously at her until he was certain that she was not using his brother in some inane scheme). She came from an old Pureblood family and was reputably the "failure of the family" because she wasn't a Slytherin.
"W-why are you friends with a Gryffindor?" asked Peony one day in the library, privately. She spoke with the stammer of someone who never expected to speak or be spoken to. It confused Alice, who had never heard it before.
"Because house doesn't matter," came Alice's curt reply. "We're friends, and that's that."
And Peony began to cry. Alice, who had dealt with sobbing females before, hugged Peony and let her cry on her shoulder about how house shouldn't matter when it came to family either.
Peony and Alice were friends after that. It was hard to be friends with someone when you've just let them sob on your shoulder like that.
Charlie did eventually realize that Alice was a Slytherin. At the Leaving Feast he saw the bushy hair that belonged to only Alice at the Slytherin table. Alice never eats meals with the rest of the school, preferring to eat later or earlier when she could sit at whatever table she wanted and no one would raise as much as an eyebrow; it's a habit she has kept even now.
Charlie spent the rest of the Feast in shock afterwards. When everyone had left the Great Hall later, Alice marched over to the flabbergasted boy and told him that yes, she was a Slytherin, and if that mattered then he wasn't as good a friend as she thought.
And Charlie looked at her, with wide eyes, like he was seeing her truly for the first time; he was, in a way. It was several moments before he could get his thoughts straight, and several more before his mouth began to work again.
"So what you're a Slytherin," he said, his voice shaking slightly from uncertainty of his words. "We're still friends, and that's what matters." This time, his voice did not shake.
Alice knew that he wasn't sure on what he said about Slytherin. But she also knew that he was certain about their friendship.
"Right."
Alice has only a few people she fully trusts, and three of them were the only friends she had at Hogwarts: Charlie Weasley, Peony Parkinson, and Chiaki Ishii. Her only other confidant she met after she left Hogwarts.
She doesn't ever worry about someone offering her the world in exchange for her friends because they are her world.
Her friends don't ever worry about someone offering them the world in exchange for Alice because without Alice, the world wouldn't be complete.
Despite Alice's best efforts, Charlie and Peony do not get along. Their hate for each other is barely hidden behind frosty exteriors and behind-the-back silent raspberries. Blood is thicker than water, and prejudice is an STD. That is, at least, the general explanation why Charlie and Peony can't stand to be in each other's company, though not that wording.
Alice knows that this is not the true reason. However, she can't figure out what it is, so she lets it lie and makes sure that she is between them whenever they are forced to be around one another.
Chiaki knows that this is not the true reason. However, Charlie and Peony swore him to secrecy when he found out, so it still lies. He does, though, use it sometimes to his advantage.
In their second year, Charlie and Alice were made seeker of their respective houses. It is one of their favorite memories, when they ran up to the other screaming the exact same thing, about how they were seeker and beat out the older students, realized what they were doing, and collapsed to the ground, laughing their heads off.
When Gryffindor won the in the Gryffindor-Slytherin match that year, Alice was not a sore loser but instead showed Charlie her newest discovery, the school kitchens.
Since then, after every Slytherin or Gryffindor victory, after finishing celebrating with teammates and housemates, Alice and Charlie would sneak down (or up, in Alice's case) to the kitchens for Victory Chips, normal chips dipped in partially melted chocolate ice cream.
They still continue this when they hear, usually several months later, of a Slytherin or Gryffindor Quidditch victory.
Summer before third year, Alice bloomed, as Peony put it. Alice, grumbling about shirts being too tight, left an IOU for her aunt and dragged the flower-named girl into Muggle London lingerie shops because the only decent lingerie in the wizarding world was either custom-ordered or sparkled. Or flashed in embarrassing places.
"If I have to wear the blasted things I'm getting one worth wearing," reasoned Alice later to her aunt. This practicality led to the purchasing of a wide assortment of undergarments.
Third year, or, to be specific, the train ride, Charlie and Chiaki noticed that yes, Alice is actually a human of the female persuasion.
It was that moment that Chiaki could no longer think of Alice as he had before.
It was a few moments later that Alice hit them both upside the head for staring.
When Alice was fourteen she received her first kiss. It wasn't from Charlie or Chiaki, like the various betting pools suggested. Or even Bill, which another pool was suggesting, mostly to get a rise out of Lorina (IT'LL BE OVER MY DEAD BODY BEFORE ALICE EVER KISSES HIM!"). It was from Peony.
It was Christmas Eve and Peony had invited Alice to the Christmas Eve party her parents threw every year. They were contradicted over Alice; she was a Mudblood and a Slytherin; they didn't know what to think of her, or their daughter's friendship. So they had let her come, but spoke nothing except the customary pleasantries to her and shuddering afterwards.
"Shee tha' boy there," slurred Peony, pointing an unsteady finger at a blonde boy of seven or eight years. "I ushe' to be en-en-en—suppos'd teh marry 'im. Then Pansy came 'long, sho now she's the fi-fi-fianc—fewture' wife of the Ma'foy brat."
Alice, tipsy but not swaying like Peony, squinted at the boy. "Damn," she swore, the alcohol still not affecting her ability to speak, "He's half your age, Peo—"
Peony kissed her then, long and hard and sweet. Alice, sober enough to notice but too drunk to care, yielded, parting her mouth to let the fermented juices and Peony's tongue in.
Alice's first kiss was with one of her best friends, with a girl, tasted of sweet ice wine and canapés, and ended as a heap of pink and black silk and satin and lace on the floor.
In fifth year, the four of them were made prefects of their respective houses. This surprised everyone, Alice most of all, considering her tendency to get into fights and the subsequent detentions. However, she had the entire Slytherin house wound around her fist, so there might have been some logic in the decision. Prefects were leaders, and Alice could lead; she led with an iron fist.
In fifth year, Charlie resigned from Quidditch; that, on top of his prefect duties, was making it too difficult to keep up with his studies. It was the last year Gryffindor won before Harry Potter arrived.
Alice didn't resign, despite her prefect duties. Quidditch made her happy, and she was willing to put forth twice, three times, the effort into her studies if need be just so that she could keep playing and being happy.
Charlie did play in the first match of the season, though, the Gryffindor-Slytherin match. Alice made Charlie stick around for one last official match. The last test to see which one was the better seeker.
If asked, neither Alice nor Charlie can remember who won. All they remember is the usual ecstasy they feel with flying, the adrenaline rush, and the massive hangover they had the next day.
That night, instead of celebrating or mourning with their teammates and house, Charlie and Alice drank smuggled firewhiskey to their last Quidditch match and sang drunkenly afterwards.
When Alice was in sixth year she dated a seventh year boy, house she-can't-remember-for-the-life-of-her. When he tried to get under her robes she kneed him in the balls and elbowed him in the head. She turned her back on Love and a blind eye when Charlie and Peony went after her ex-boyfriend. If she couldn't have a lover who wanted her for more than her body then she wouldn't have one at all.
When Charlie was in sixth year he thought he might love Alice. He didn't know for sure so he stopped thinking about it and tried to love other girls. So much easier that way.
When Peony was in sixth year she knew she loves Alice. She is willing to let Alice love whoever she wants (as long as it isn't Weasley), so long as she got to punish those who just want to use Alice to feed their own lust. So much easier that way.
When Chiaki was in sixth year he knew he liked Alice very much but did not love her. He had never been in love and never expected to be, though wanted to be someday. The sweetest love he never knew died along with his baby sister. He can imagine being in love, because he knows that somewhere else, in a world without a Mizuko-Jizo for his baby sister, he loves Alice. It is in these moments that he knew that he just might one day, even if it is not Alice.
So when Alice broke up with her boyfriend Alice and Chiaki blatantly ignored Charlie and Peony dragging the seventh year to a remote part of the building and the ensuing screams.
It was the first time Charlie and Peony ever got along while in the same room.
When Alice, Charlie, Chiaki, and Peony left Hogwarts they headed their separate ways. Charlie went straight to Romania, having wanted to be a dragon keeper ever since he saw the beasts in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Chiaki moved back into his old bedroom and got a job as a mediwizard at St. Mungo's, Flooing to work every morning. Peony grabbed the first Portkey out of England and landed several Portkeys later on the west coast of Canada, the farthest from England her homesickness would let her and got a job as a seamstress in Victoria, British Columbia's magical neighborhood.
Alice disappeared after a row with her aunt. No one knew where she had gone until just over a year later, when she showed up at the dragon reservation in Romania, travel-worn and smiling and looking for a job. It turned out she traveled across Europe, going from relative to relative, then, as relatives close to Romania grew scarce, staying at various youth hostels, magical and Muggle alike. She didn't have letters and/or postcards never sent, but she did have a journal, filled with entries, pictures, and various slips of paper and parchment saying various things, which she let be passed about after she reached the reservation and bathed.
One part that was kept out of her journal: her fourth confidant, Remus Lupin.
They first met in a pub somewhere in Southern England. Alice was drunk and upset from her row with her aunt, and Remus was the bartender, one of the many jobs he had and couldn't keep, and too tired and miserable from the recent full moon to resist. Misery breeds strange things, and Alice was surprisingly persuasive when inhibited.
Alice lost her virginity to a man more than a decade older, and Remus deflowered an upset, drunk girl who wanted to be lost in sweat and heat and to forget the day and night.
And because that night might not be forgotten, Remus informed Alice of his lycanthropy. Because wizard law dictates that werewolves are not allowed to have children and if that night was not to be forgotten then Alice could not have the physical reminder.
So Alice borrowed money from Lorina and bought two-way mirrors for herself and Remus, with a gold frame because of the "wolf thing." Just in case.
Remus was the only person Alice kept in contact with when she traveled across Europe. Sometimes they would meet somewhere and just talk, never mentioning that night outright but letting it play along the edges of their conversation since that night could be forgotten. But it wasn't.
Alice never mentions having met Remus Lupin, one of the infamous Marauders, and Remus never mentions having met the girl voted 'most likely to have been dragged to the stake by a screaming mob if born three centuries before' for her year.
So when the Order of the Phoenix reconvened for the first time in years people were very confused when Alice and Remus seemed to have known each other for years.
They never explained why. And never will.
When Alice got a job working at the dragon reservation in the Reconnaissance Squad and in the Research Division, Chiaki came out to Romania. He came two weeks after Alice began work, to treat the third-degree burns the Muggleborn received after scouting an angry Romanian Longhorn female; she wouldn't let anyone else treat her, and no one could treat her but a fully trained mediwizard.
As Chiaki knitted her nerve endings back together, Alice, between screams, asked Chiaki if he would stay. They needed a mediwizard badly, if the scars and burns the other members had were any indication, one that could repair damaged nerves and heal away horrendous burns.
Chiaki considered this and agreed. God only knew how much he needed to leave home. It isn't considered socially healthy for a grown man to be residentially dependent on his parents. Not that he had much of a social life to begin with.
For a while Charlie, Alice, and Chiaki all lived in the dormitory on the reservation. They didn't like it much, but it was free, clean, and there was food. Eventually, though, they became tired of the rules and decided to get an apartment together.
For several months they saved their money, but when Charlie was promoted to Dragon Keeper they immediately went out and rented the first apartment they came across.
It was in Braşov, in an apartment building run by a middle-age couple who had trouble with English, and even more trouble with Chiaki's accent. The apartment was cheap, small, and came with wallpaper that might have driven them all insane if it weren't for the fact they already were mental.
None of them felt like pointing out that there was only one bedroom.
After some time the three of them became something. What exactly they became no one could tell, not even them. All anyone knows is that they shouldn't ask about it, shouldn't think about it. So relations ignore the way the trio hold hands when they are together, with Alice in the middle, and coworkers turn away at their PDA, especially when all three are going at it at the same time.
They weren't two couples sharing the same partner, whichever way it went (no one was quite sure about Chiaki and Charlie), they weren't a threesome, and they weren't lovers (though they did make love to each other). They were just in love.
Alice loves Charlie like flowers love sun and light, and she loves Chiaki like flowers love rain and water. She loves them like flowers love everything they need to live.
Chiaki loves Charlie and Alice as though he's afraid that one day he's going to wake up and they won't be there and he'll hear the sound of the world falling apart. They are his anchors to reality, the only things that he knows are truly there, all that is keeping him from fading away.
Charlie loves Alice and Chiaki simply because he loves Alice and Chiaki. This simple logic confuses everyone but him and some man he met who was higher than a kite, because they can't understand the idea of simply loving a person without any reason but love.
Alice first heard of Everclear through Peony. Having been born to a proudly-so Pureblood family, she took to Muggle life with the ease and grace attributed to those who decide to go the "Sink or Swim" method of adjusting to a new, strange culture. This meant that it took her several months to get into the swing of things; this also meant that she is now very good at Memory Charms.
She found a lot of things infuriating, like traffic lights and televisions, and still does. But she likes Muggle music. She had never liked the Weird Sisters or Celestina Warbeck, but there was something about Metallica and Pink Floyd that made her start hanging around Muggle music stores after work.
Peony sent Alice Sparkle and Fade when she heard that Alice just received a teaching position at Hogwarts, along with a bottle of Liquid Jolly Rancher and a note saying that she should find a way to play the CD at Hogwarts and get it patented.
Alice didn't know what to think of it but kept the CD anyway. If anything, she would have something to do between grading essays and creating lesson plans.
She still has something to do, despite getting the CD to play in a stereo she fished out of the garbage and Chiaki tried to fix. She has to figure out how to get the blasted CD out now.
When Alice told her sister that she was returning to England to teach at Hogwarts her aunt grew angry. Alice hadn't spoken with her since their last row, the same row she wanted to forget that night she lost her maidenhead to Remus. Her aunt wanted to move her mother to a psychiatric ward and Alice wouldn't stand for it. Nor did Lorina.
While Alice never spoke to her aunt again, Lorina continued, just to make sure that their mother was never sent to a psychiatric ward.
When Alice returned to her childhood home to speak with Lorina, who had moved into the house with her new husband, Charlotte and Alice began to fight again, this time on the years of silence. At that point Alice was almost considering forgiving her aunt for suggesting moving her mother, but this new row just renewed her anger.
The Merle family doesn't fight with fists and loud words, but with frosty silences and doors being shut too quietly. Alice knows how to fight with her hands and how to tear people up with her eyes and false smiles. And how to hide the wounds she receives.
When Alice first met Snape she was eleven and he was her professor. She didn't like him much then, but she didn't hate him either.
She started hating him when he made a disparaging comment about Remus. It would have been OK for Snape to insult her, because she was there to take it and send back an insult of her own. But Snape insulted a man who wasn't there, the man who had held her when she was upset and took the full force of her inner storm and survived.
Snape didn't hate her when he first taught her. To him, she was just that strange Slytherin girl who was friends with a Weasley brat and had too much pride in herself to have any for her house. She barely registered in his mind, being proficient enough in potions to not bare the brunt of his anger and not good enough to deserve his praise.
This is what made him start hating her: After insulting Lupin she marched over to him and kicked him squarely between the legs. With pointed boots, nonetheless.
This also made Alice a favorite of Minerva McGonagall, who had previously despaired over the girl-now-woman's defiency in Transfiguration.
Alice can remember when she first heard of Harry Potter. She was ten, and it was in a letter from Lorina. She wrote about a story of a kid, a baby, who ended one of the most fearsome times in the history of the European wizarding world and then vanished, hidden away from vengeful followers in the Muggle world. She was fourteen when she first saw Harry Potter, the newspaper having printed an article about a "Boy Who Lived" sighting in a Muggle park with a photograph. a blurry, moving photo, the only image to ever surface to the public eye since the downfall of You-Know-Who.
In the photograph was a small, thin boy of eight with round black glasses held together with tape and messy dark hair. How anyone knew that this boy was the "Boy Who Lived" was anyone's guess. There was a mark on his forehead that could either have been the famed scar or just some bad photography.
Alice had looked at the photograph so often that it eventually crumbled to pieces. But she doesn't need the photograph to recall it. She knows it inside and out.
The child moved around the photograph, oblivious to the viewers and edges, as he would sometimes disappear from the frame. Occasionally he would crouch and study the ground, then stand and start walking again. He moved like someone who was looking for something but wasn't sure what it was.
There was something about Harry Potter himself that nagged at her mind, connected synapses she never knew she had and couldn't identify. Which bothered her and compelled her to study the photograph till it turned to yellow dust.
At twenty-three Alice understands what her mind was trying to tell her. Looking at Harry Potter now, sitting in her class, her eyes see what her mind used to say and no longer needs to; the fog of childhood and hopeful doubt is gone now. Harry Potter is still small and thin, too small and too thin for a boy his age. He has always been too small and too thin for his age. Just looking at Harry brings the older sister out of her in ways she never thought possible.
And sometimes, sometimes, she just wanted to grab him by the shoulders and say, "I know that you were abused so why won't you tell anyone?"
But she can't. And she can't ask for him to be removed from his relatives care, or at least have it looked into, either. There are laws, blood stupid laws, saying that no inquiries about the care of a minor would be made unless said minor was to bring it up him- or herself.
It is at these moments that she wishes she were a teacher in a Muggle school, in the Muggle world. And that she could beat up the fool who came up with that law.
Alice doesn't like chess much, but she can play it, and play it well. Chess is a game of strategy, of manipulation, of art and war. Alice can manipulate anyone; she sees people and the buttons to press and the places to poke to make them do what she wants them to do. She nips and claws and touches at people's souls, knowingly and unintentionally, and they bend to her will. There is only one person who is not hypnotized by her gray-blue eyes, and that is because in Carol Merle's world, Alice Merle does not exist; Alice exists, but not the woman her daughter has become, a woman who can take the universe and mold it to her desires. But that is OK, because it is easier for Alice to keep her mother safe from a harsh reality when her mother refuses to live in it.
And that is why Alice is the Queen. She is the protector, the mother, the sister, the empress. She will move the length of the world and the world itself to protect those most important to her. She has many Kings in her life, many things she would die and live for.
She is the Queen with love as a shield and pride her sword who knows what she must protect.
And that's the end of filler for Alice Merle. This was far too long. And just for clarification: when it's past tense, it happened before When Spring Comes; present tense is When Spring Comes.
Notes:
1 – The title: 'Alice' is derived from 'Adelaide', which contains elements meaning 'noble' and 'type'. 'Merle' means 'Blackbird' and is an actual surname.
2 – Dandelion Head – when the boy is teasing Alice about what time it was it stems from this: that white puff that forms on a dandelion is called a dandelion clock. The number of blows to blow out the dandelion clock is said to be the time of day.
3 – Summer ice, as describe by my driving education instructor, are slick, wet patches of road during the summer.
4 – About Chiaki… he plays another role. I might do an interlude or prelude with him some day. For now though, just wonder.
5 – Hufflepuff is kind of like the leftover house. "Good Hufflepuff, she took the rest and taught them all she knew" (taken from the OotP Sorting Hat song). As for Ravenclaws, read this: htt p/ static-pixie .liv ejourna l .co m/328 4.ht ml (take out the spaces because FFN hates URLs). It's a well written essay on Ravenclaws.
6 – it's not that I made Charlie an idiot, though it may seem that way. It's just after reading the Discworld series (more specifically, the City Watch books), I have been mentally casting Charlie Weasley as Carrot Ironfoundersson, "the Disc's most linear thinker" and a fellow redhead. Go here: ht tp /en. w iki ped ia. org/wiki /Carrot I ronfo unders son for a better description of Carrot, and you might see why I've made Charlie so simple (take out the spaces because FFN hates URLs).
7 – This is book canon, remember. In the book the robes are just plain black. Harry and Ron made the same mistake as Charlie in their second year (when they mistook Penelope Clearwater to be a Slytherin). There is no house tie, no sweater vest, no shield on the robes, or any of that stuff scene in the movies. The only way to tell one house from another is either by knowing, seeing a badge (prefect's badge, for example), or some other sort of thing that hasn't been mentioned. And if you want to say a scarf (which may or may not be book canon), it's still September, too warm for students to be wearing scarves.
8 – Mizuko-Jizo – the most common from of Jizo today, he is the guardian of aborted or miscarried babies, and children who die prematurely. For more information see h ttp / ww w. o nmarkprod uct ions. com /ht ml/ jizo -bosatsu -japan .s html (take out the spaces because FFN hates URLs).As for what it means, hope that it comes clear later.
9 – Liquid Jolly Rancher – a mixed drink made with Mountain Dew, jolly ranchers, and Everclear alcohol.
10 – This law that I came up with in the introspection of Harry Potter is my reasoning behind why Harry is still at his relatives, even though it's clear he has been abused, or at least neglected. Harry has never come out and said, "I've been abused/neglected by my relatives," so nothing gets done because no one can until he does, which he won't. He's only asked if he could leave but never given a reason why beyond familial hatred.
And cookies to anyone who can get all the Alice in Wonderland references.
And if you didn't read my profile or the note at the end of the last chapter, I'll say it here: I'm revising the previous chapters of When Spring Comes. There are a ton of mistakes, and my present ideas for the story don't work anymore. So watch out for that.