Maladroit: awkward, useless
{===}
The world was in complete and utter chaos.
I mean, to be totally honest, for a second, Sirius had wondered if it had worked. Little sparks fizzled along the fireworks' trails in a moment of pure confusion, and then-
BOOM!
Sirius has often found that 'Boom' is perhaps the most rewarding word a person can voice aloud, particularly when expressed in capital letters. The roundness and completeness, when connected with the sheer brilliance of the implied blowing something up, was a feeling that was difficult to top, although the grin on Alex's face that matched his own was certainly doing its best to measure up.
His euphoria lasted only a moment. The enchanted fireworks had streaked out, honing in on the Trio of Doom like missiles, each one uniquely patterned and characterised. Sirius had to say, the visual image of four giant ninja turtles comprised entirely of little flares charging down his cousin astride a simply gigantic reincarnation of Pacman very much almost made up for what happened next.
There was a crash, and that was about the time that Sirius realised part of the roof was caving in. It was the opposite end of the farmhouse to the little hatch, far from where the others would be huddled, safe and inside, but far too close to Sirius and Alex. He felt the foundations shudder, shingle tumbled haphazardly down the sides of the building. Then the ground disappeared beneath him. He tried desperately to catch anything, anything at all, but it was too late. It was all falling apart.
For a second, everything was weightless. He was falling free, not clinging to any other thing, completely and utterly independent. But the ground, as it always did, caught up with him, smashing him down in a frenzy of vindictive rage. He managed to cushion his head with his arms, but his ankles weren't so lucky, slamming and crunching on the tough tarmac.
He stayed completely still until the rumbling stopped.
His head pounded. He was flat on his back on the ground. He didn't want to move, or assess the damage to himself, so instead he counted clouds. There were three. The game was over quickly.
There were feet on the ground, a lot of them, too many for Sirius.
"Padfoot? Padfoot, c'mon mate." James crouched over Sirius, shaking his shoulder roughly.
In response, the boy groaned and shook his head, "Shhh. Quiet. Silence is nice. I like it."
"Something's wrong with him." James implored Remus worriedly. He turned back to Sirius, "Are you hurt?"
"Physically? No. Emotionally? That's for my therapist to decide." Sirius grumbled, stretching out his back.
Remus and James exchanged concerned expressions over his head.
"I'm fine." Sirius whined, pushing James away as he sat up, "Although in need of much chocolate. Don't you think, Nurse Moony?"
Remus sighed, digging around in his pockets before removing a slightly sorry looking Crunchie and handing it to his friend, "Where's Alex?"
Sirius froze in midmotion, hand still half reaching for the chocolate bar.
The entire front yard of Logan's home was obliterated, with bricks and bits of plaster crushing the hydrangeas that someone had so carefully tendered in the flower beds by the little picket fence that was now less of a fence and more of a decorative wooden covering for the dirt. The house was mostly still standing, if by 'mostly' you mean 'slightly over half'. It was as if a giant cake cutter had descended from the sky with the shaky hand of a five year old desperate to get the biggest slice. The explosion had cleaved straight through rooms, leaving a sort of doll-house effect on the remaining portion of the farmhouse.
Around Sirius, James and Remus crouched. As he glanced about the place, Oscar, Peter and Logan emerged from the shattered remains and joined him. All wore soot marks and slightly blackened hair, but appeared mercifully unscathed.
There was no sign of the Death Eaters.
"Where is she?" Logan demanded as soon as he reached Sirius, "Where's Alex?"
Sirius was wordless, scrambling to his feet, pounding in his head fading into the background blur of 'things not to worry about right now'. Voicing his lack of knowledge aloud seemed like it would waste precious time that could be spent looking for Alex Fawley, the girl who hid fireworks in other people's chimneys and had at least three fully prepared backup plans for a Death Eater invasion.
"There!" James pointed over to where a fridge was lying on its side, clearly an unfortunate victim of the incident. Two bare feet were sticking out around it, connected to a pair of jeans that disappeared behind the reflective refrigerator.
Sirius jogged over, aware of the others doing the same. Remus Lupin reached the girl's side first. Her eyes were closed, and there was a jagged cut on her forehead. Some of her other cuts, her werewolf scars, had reopened, and were spilling more red down her face. Sirius' heart contracted.
Remus reached out a hand, and gently touched the side of Alex's face. She stirred. A collective sigh of relief went around the assembled squad.
Her eyes shot open, she sat upright, almost stunning Remus back, and flexing her hands in front of her face.
"Okay, possible concussion." Alex blinked unevenly. She glared at her palms, "Ten fingers, I think." Her gaze focused downwards, on her bare feet. She narrowed her eyes at them, "Forty... Three toes. That's okay. We can cull the unworthy. I'm fine."
"I think you need to see Madame Pomfrey." Remus suggested gently. Sirius, for once, quite agreed. He would have been less scared, he thought, if she hadn't woken up at all.
"Why?" Alex demanded, "Do you have a problem with my excess toes? I like my feet just the way they are, quadrupled and all."
"No," Remus maintained, with the calm authority of a teacher, "You need to see the nurse because you've convinced yourself that you have forty three toes and your head is bleeding."
Alex wrinkled her nose, "I hate valid arguments. They're no fun."
"Yeah, well I hate grapes, spiders and the director's cut of The Hobbit." Sirius commented, leaning against the fridge and crossing his arms, "In that order."
Alex watched him shuffle for a moment in open curiosity, "That's a very specific list. You've clearly spent a lot of time coming up with it."
"Family dinners at my house were very boring." Sirius said shortly by way of explanation, "Like back-to-back episodes of Crufts boring."
James grinned at Sirius, and hit him on the shoulder, "You're just mad because they wouldn't let you compete."
"Hell yeah I'm mad about it." Sirius agreed, "They said I wasn't a pure bred. Moony tried explaining the irony of that statement, but still nothing."
Remus leaned towards Alex, muttering something along the lines of, "The last time Padfoot tried to enter a dog competition..."
"I was outdone by a Scottie!" Sirius cried, outraged, "Have you seen those things? They're like little walking beer barrels with beards. There is no way evolution made the decision to keep them alive. This is human evil." He nodded knowingly.
"I like Scotties." Alex muttered blearily, "My aunt has a Scottie."
The others looked at her, concerned. She was smiling ditzily, and swaying a little.
"I think it's time we get her back to school." Logan chipped in, eyeing Alex with open concern.
Sirius nodded his agreement, along with a few others. Ten minutes later, after a hurried goodbye to Oscar, they were preparing for apparition into Hogsmead.
Crack!
{===}
Alex Fawley was getting rather tired of being the sick one.
Of course she was the only person in the explosion that tore apart Logan's farm to get injured. Just like she was the only one who had been out by the lake on a full moon. There had to be some patriarchal enemy of female empowerment that just kept putting her down every time she tried to venture outside.
Sirius looked like he was limping, which made her feel a little better about her predicament, but the blood that stained her fingers whenever she raised them to her face worked as a constant reminder that, yet again, she was playing the role of damsel in distress. She glared at the ground as they reformed in a back alley of Hogsmeade, believing that if she hated it enough, it would stop spinning.
She could hear the murmurs of the boys around her, speaking quietly. It wasn't until an uncomfortable silence descended that she realised they were waiting for her. She looked up. James Potter's face swam hazily into view.
"You okay, Fawley?" James' eyebrows pulled together.
"The stag." Alex muttered, "A stag tried to save me on the full moon."
James glanced at Logan, and then back to her, "We can't move her like this. It's an hours hike to Hogwarts."
"Okay." Remus' voice added, "Me and Logan will wait here with her, you go back to school and get help."
"But-" That was Sirius Black's whine.
"Padfoot," Remus had his best teacher voice on, "They're going to find out about what happened at Logan's anyway. And Alex needs help. Go."
Alex fell against the wall that she sensed behind her, grimy bricks digging into her back as she sunk down it. Her skull pounded. She closed her eyes, trying to focus on one minute to the next and breathing through her nose.
The air felt strange now. That sort of bracingly cold, unreal quality that the night gets when you're so tired that everything seems like it's happening to a different person. She imagined that she was watching her life through a television screen, wrapped up in a blanket with a cup of coffee. She really wished she could change the channel.
"Hey."
Alex felt the warm presence of someone as they crouched in front of her. Hesitantly, she opened her eyes to see Remus Lupin, with his scars that matched hers and his polite distance and his warm, friendly smile.
She nodded to him, grimacing against the pain it sent through her skull.
"Do you need anything?" He asked her.
Alex gave a weak smile, "The sweet embrace of death."
"Yeah, well, I'm all out of grim reapers and death totems at the minute." Remus responded wryly.
Alex leaned her head backwards, "What about that pet Grimm your mate Black can turn into?"
"Still not actually the devil," Remus commented, "Though McGonagall might disagree."
Alex was quiet for a moment.
"He likes you, you know." Remus added.
Alex laughed bitterly, "He's Sirius Black. If it has two legs, is of consenting age and isn't related to him, he likes it. I'm nothing special."
"No, I mean he likes you." Remus stressed. At Alex's expression of confusion, he rushed to elaborate, "As a person. You can't say that about a lot of the kids here."
Alex eyed him suspiciously, "Are you secretly Yoda?"
"I have no idea who that is, but sure." Remus smiled widely.
"Yoda's cool." She mumbled tiredly, "You'd like Yoda. Actually, he's a bit of a prick at times, but I still think you'd like him."
"I'm going to take that as a compliment." Remus said. Alex's eyes slipped closed. He put a hand on her shoulder, "Hey, stay with me. You have to stay awake. I read that somewhere."
Alex rolled her eyes half-heartedly, "Of course you did."
She ran the chain of her necklace through her fingertips, feeling the little pendant on the end dig into her skin and willing it to wake her up.
"What's that?" Remus asked, with more urgency than was perhaps required of the question, "I've seen the chain before, but I never really got a look at what was on the end. Is it a bell?"
Alex shook her head again. The whole world was becoming a little blurry at this point, "It's a golden acorn. It's symbolic."
"What of?" Remus pressed gently.
Alex laughed again, this time with a little less bitterness, "I have no idea. That's why I like it."
"Because it can symbolise anything you want it to?"
Alex's eyebrows tugged together, "That's a better answer. Why didn't I think of that? I just got used to it being there."
"Well," Remus glanced down the alley, to where the half-formed shape of Logan was standing guard, "Can it symbolise determination right now? Because you're gonna need to stay awake. You're gonna need to hold on for just a bit longer."
Hold on for just a bit longer.
Huh. Alex couldn't remember the exact number of times she had thought that sentence to herself. Just a little bit longer. One more day. One more. Please. If she could do it for herself, she could do it for someone else, too.
She clutched the acorn tightly in her fist and gritted her teeth.
She would get through this.