World in My Eyes // Alice

Alice hadn't been the same since Christmas. Kasch hadn't come back from the holiday. Though they'd just started to get to a comfortable place in their relationship, especially knowing he had been the boy to save her in Diagon Alley a few years ago, they were now over. He had been called back to Germany by his family and because he knew what kind of people they where, Kasch had let Alice go. Severing his ties with her was for her own good. It protected her; even if she didn't want to be protected. So the Alice that already had nightmares and insomnia and likely an abundance of things, was now alone once again. And her candy stash was running frighteningly low. She really had to talk to that Remus Lupin about getting into her stash.

A trip to Honeydukes was more than necessary at this point. Lately, Alice was bothering herself over the most trivial things. She had to look just right. Her homework had to be worded perfectly. The books had to be dusted and put on the shelves in just the right way. Her shrink said she had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Alice knew that it didn't actually matter to her about these things. She knew that the only reason she was bothering over them was to keep her mind busy. The busier it was the less she thought about Kasch. Worried about Kasrch. It worked most of the time but even now as she counted the exact number of times she brushed her hair, Alice was thinking about him.

She drew in a deep breath. "Thirty seven, thirty eight...." Her throat went dry as she tried to croak out her count. After a moment of pause she put the brush down and closed her eyes. The girl had developed many different coping techniques and it was try to move onto another one. She smoothed out the skirt of her dress, folded her hands in her lap and looked up at her reflection of the little mirror on her nightstand. Alice found the more she stared at herself the less she seemed real. Not being real meant Kasch wasn't real either and then it didn't hurt as much. A few moments later she smiled politely at the reflection who returned the favor, and then stood up grabbing her cloak to pull around her tightly.

The walk to Hogsmead was so cold that she barely had made it to the village before she felt her teeth chattering together. She would stop at the Three Broomsticks to warm up. Ducking inside the busy building, Alice ordered herself a butterbeer. She cradled it in her red wind stung hands as she shivered at a table alone. No one liked to truly be alone and Alice was no different but right now she didn't mind it much. Talking to people made her real again. After she'd finished her drink and warmed her hands and nose and everything else on her body, Alice counted meticulously the amount of money she had and planned her purchasing exactly as she could afford and the put the money back in her coin purse. On the way out, her delicate fingers flitted up to adjust the black hair ribbon in her hair. Doing so caused her to look down just slightly and left her unprepared for her collision.

The door caught her right between the eyes and Alice stumbled back a few steps with a breath of pain. Her hands cupped over her face and she groaned a little rubbing the tender spot. With a light sniff she looked up. Her eyes were watering terribly and she couldn't properly see who was speaking to her. With a slight whimper she turned her round face toward the voice, "It's not bleeding is it? My nose? Do I have a goose egg on my face?" Feeling around her forehead she answered her last question with a definite yes and swallowed, promising herself she was not going to cry. At least not a lot.

The way his hand gently touched her chin told Alice not to be afraid. But she couldn't help the quite tears that slipped down her cheek involuntarily. When he moved and touched the lump on her face she whimpered a little. There was definitely a knot there. Rabastan gently covered it up with her ribbon and Alice groaned at the thought of how stupid she must have looked. "Is it that bad?? Do I look stupid like this?"

Alice hadn't often been the kind of person to worry about looking stupid. If she liked what she saw in the mirror it was good enough for her. But now that she had her ribbon entirely misplaced on her head, she felt out of sorts and silly looking. With a little groan she tilted her head back to let him dab at her nose. "Is it gonna be all black and blue??" Her little bottom lip quivered as her eyes tried to blink a few tears away. It stung where the door had hit her and her small child like hands tried to hide her face a little.

As her eyes cleared, she could see his face more clearly. Everyone had seen it lately. His trial had been in the prophet several times in the last month. This thought made her nervous. She also remembered. however, that they had not only proven him innocent in the end, but that she had met him many times before in the library when she'd recommended books and lent him some of hers on occasion. Alice loved to spread literature around.

"Oh... it's you." She tried to put on a smile but it moved her eyes and hurt her face making her wince a little. She didn't mean it in any sort of way really and she just spat it out. "Sorry... I mean.. Honeydukes sounds perfect. I was on my way there anyway. Maybe I should head back to the castle and see the nurse though..."

Once she was convinced she didn't look silly, Alice let her hands hand down at her side limply. With a sigh she sniffed a little trying to clear her sinuses but it only made her face hurt more and she winced making a little sound as she poked at the sides of her nose gently and swallowed down the lump caught in her throat. She'd be fine. Of course she'd be fine. Kasch would have hugged her and kissed her and then tried to make light of the situation and dragged her up to the nurse. Stop it, Alice. He's gone.

Suddenly her eyes were filling with tears for an entirely different reason. There were more now than there had been before. Like a child without their mother after falling on the playground, Alice whimpered out a little sob and turned her face down for a second as she silently chided herself for crying over him again. Shaking her head, she blinked and looked up at him. "Do you think you could fix it? Can you make it go away?" Her voice was a little nasally from snot and the clotting blood in her nose.

Alice didn't understand why people thought so ill of Rabastan. The case had been dropped. He'd been released. He wasn't guilty. Alice only judged based on what she could see and what was presented as fact. Rabastan had never treated her poorly, and he was more careful with her books than anyone else. The pages were never bent and the spines were always perfectly in tact. In her opinion, this made Rabastan a much more upstanding person than most. Sure, he came with a reputation, but Alice chose to ignore it for what she saw with her own eyes. Though those could hardly be trusted some days.

Her pitiful little face looked up at him as her lungs sucked in a teary little breath. "Can... Can you do it before we go to Honeydukes? That is... If you want to come with. I just don't want to go in there looking like a unicorn. And it really kind of hurts. And the nurse at the school is really intimidating."

"Is it really that bad??" As her thin arm looped into his, she looked up at him with worried eyes. Her delicate hand was still fighting not to cover up the lump on her face, and her eyelashes were still slightly damp from tears. Swallowing the lump out of her throat, Alice stepped aside as another student shoved into the door way. She had to slide in closer to Rab to get out of the way. Her face spoke volumes to her level of discomfort. Tucking in, almost chest to chest, Alice looked up to him with her dark grey-blue eyes and took in a small breath.

He was not hard on the eyes and the closer she looked at his sharply featured face the more she noticed it wasn't as scary as she thought it should be. She also took note of the bandage across his cheek. He'd been hurt previously and though she couldn't help but imagine he was in pain, here he was caring for her. "O-Oxford? You live in Oxford? With your parents right? It was in the papers. About your parents finances and that they were concerned over their estate there... Not that I paid a lot of attention to your news stories... Sorry."

Once Alice started talking, she realized it might not have been the most polite thing to say. Her lack of sleep and social interactions had left her a little clumsy in her etiquette. Looking down for a moment, studying his shirt front intensely, she swallowed again and licked her soft raspberry pink lips. "I didn't mean... It's... I'll go with you. If we have to go, I'll go. I just would rather not suffer the headache I'm likely to get from the bump... Is it really that noticeable?? Is my face all puffy??"

There was a light groaning sound that gurgled through her throat as he detailed her on how it might get worse. Of course his warning didn't make her any less inclined to worry over it. She did stop touching it, however; but this was not in part to his predication. His left arm came around her shoulders and while her initial reaction was to stiffen, she sank against him holding onto his waist.

Alice was not expecting the apparition. The crack and sudden stretching feeling she got brought her closer to him as she clung to his body with her eyes shut. She hadn't done it many times by herself, even if she was old enough. Swallowing, she backed up a step or two once her feet were on solid ground. He'd told her to sit down, but instead, Alice carefully pulled the ribbon from her head and paced around the room slowly. There were books and potions vials and more books and more vials. He was an astoundingly tidy person. Alice was very pleases by this but also found herself noting just exactly how he liked things. Not a single one of his books looked like they had ever been read though she knew he had devoured their pages many times. He'd been very careful with each of their spines and all covers were perfectly in tact.

A smile came to her lips as she snoop-ishly ran her fingers over a hair brush on his dresser. There was a thin black leather strap next to it that she assumed was for his long silky hair and she found herself winding it around her fingers gently before returning it to it's perfect place just the way she found it. She found his desk next and took to examining the left out ingredients and notes.

Alice didn't have to say anything to him, but over her shoulder she smiled lightly at him and bent a little feeling the texture of his duvet cover. the room smelled of different herbs and potions, with a mix of expensive ink, aftershave, and cigarette smoke. It made her skin prickle a little and if she weren't so hyper aware of her surroundings, she wouldn't have heard the muttering from outside his door. There was an angry sound and shuffling feet in the hall and her eyes turned to the door. "Rabastan... Is someone at home?" Though her voice was level, it did hold a certain tone of caution. She knew he didn't like his family much. Most purebloods on his side of the war didn't. And if Rabastan didn't like them, Alice wasn't sure how much they would care for her.

She jumped. Her shoulders flinched moving the rest of her body to follow, and her eyes fluttered a little. The screams from the poor creature outside were unlike anything she'd ever heard before. Immediately, Alice wanted them to stop. She didn't like it at all. With both her hands covering her ears to hide the horrible noise, Alice looked to the boy at the door. "Rab... Rabastan..." Her voice was hardly a whisper but she was silenced entirely when his thin finger found his lips. Alice swallowed hard and kept her eyes focused on the door for what seemed like a horrible eternity.

And then in an instant the house elf was shut tight in the room with them. Alice's family didn't have house elves. They weren't exactly wealthy enough for that sort of thing. Not that they didn't live comfortable, but Mr. and Mrs. Hallows associated elves like that with wealth and social standing. But Alice's parents were not those people. Her father was a humble toy maker, inventing wizard's toys for children, and her mother was a homemaker and a very nosy neighbor. Mrs. Hallows had plenty of time to keep her own house or do other things all by herself. That was not to say that Alice had never seen a House Elf before. She'd seen people bring them along to Diagon Alley. They never seemed to be treated half as nicely as Rabastan treated this one though.

The poor thing must have been terrified, though he did a very good job of hiding it. Alice wanted to take a step forward to him and console him, but instinct told her he wasn't exactly that sort of elf. "Is he alright??" her voice hissed as she lowered her hands, an action she regretted immediately. Phraxos' loud aggressive voice came through the door and made Alice jump again. She stepped back involuntarily and knocked into a bedside table shifting the lamp and dropping a book to the floor by her feet. Horrified, her eyes darted up to Rabastan as her heart caught in her throat and felt like it stopped beating entirely. With a soft breath she reached a shaking pale hand out toward him and whispered again, "Rabastan I-," but she was cut off by the sound of wood creaking from the force of a blow on the other side of the door. Phraxos was coming through, and no magic was going to stop him.

To say Alice was scared was an understatement. Terrified didn't even begin to cover it. They were only coming for a quick fix. Now, with her heart hammering away in her chest and her head throbbing in pain, Alice felt a lingering familiarity tug at the corners of her memories. She'd been in a position like this. A place where she had to run. A place where she had to fear. The difference was there was no Kasch to save her this time. As his fingers found hers, Alice found they had a static quality to them. Firm and sure yet chaotic and quick. She wished she had more time to think about the way he held her hand, but at that moment they started to run.

Her little legs carried her along behind him, and Thane behind her once his hand was cupped in her other. "Rabastan, he's coming." They were through the bathroom and into the other bedroom when Alice let go of Rabastan's hand. Her gut instinct pulled her through the room toward a long writing desk along the wall. On Rabastan's exact instructions, Thane nodded and stood in front of the petite Gryffindor. All she wanted to do today was buy some more candy. Of course, she could have apparated out from here. Gone back to school. Told someone there was a fight going on. But who would listen? That's when Alice knew she had to stay. She had to be here to help.

A gasped scream came from her as Thane ushered her around to a corner, standing protectively before her. Alice was watching the fight in horror her chest heaving with panic. Her trembling hands were pressed to her body; one to her chest and one to her stomach in fear that she might get sick. This fight was not going well. "Rabastan!" The sound of her shrill voice reverberated off the walls as the crucio hit him. No one deserved that. Alice couldn't imagine the feeling of pain. She didn't want to. She didn't want to see him go through this either.

A jump shook her as Phraxos kicked Rabastan. Alice gasped and shouted. Thane had been holding her into the corner before, but now Alice was shoving past him. Lunging forward, the girl pulled her wand and shoved Phraxos away before aiming quickly, "Relashio!" The jet of fiery gold sparks hit Phraxos in the shoulder. It wasn't enough to kill him. A good singe though. Alice hadn't intended to harm him seriously. But she wanted it to be known she was not afraid of turning her wand on him.