Acrasia [t.r]

𝐈. 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄

31st August, 1952.

  CRACK

  Alice finally felt the squeezing pressure release her. She felt a jolt of pain course through her body as her knees gave out and smashed into the cobbled stone of the street beneath her. She keeled over, knitting her fingers in her hair as she gasped heavily.

  She had just apparated to Hogsmeade...from France.

  It was said wizards weren't able to do that—apparate across countries—but apparently they hadn't met her mother: Sophie Lefevre.

  Alice wasn't exactly sure what she was doing there. It had all been such a rush. A rush for reasons she could see her mother still had no desire to explain.

  She'd received a letter. Alice had watched as its contents caused her hands to clench around the weak parchment. Her jaw set. Either in rage or determination, Alice couldn't tell, perhaps it was both.

  The next thing Alice knew, she was on her doorstep, with a packed trunk, tentatively placing her hand in her mother's with the intent of apparating to Scotland.

  She could only presume her father had something to do with it. Her dear mother had tried her best to keep her past from her daughter, but unfortunately Alice was far too inquisitive for her own good. A trait—she was told—that came from her father.

  She didn't know how her parents had met, only that they had. Perhaps it was a summer fling, who knows? But Alice's mother was a Muggleborn witch. Alice's father was an aristocratic Pureblood wizard. That was where the problems started.

  When Alice was younger she'd never even met her father, he'd fucked off back to his estate in England before she was even born—the bastard. Although, no one knows why, her father did reach out after five or so years and requested to see Alice every summer. She obliged, though something about it felt off. Like he had a secret ulterior motive behind it all. And there was something about this scenario that felt off too. It felt like he had something to do with it, and Alice couldn't explain why.

  "We'll 'ave to walk zee rest. You cannot apparate directly to 'ogwarts." Sophie had a strong French accent when she spoke English. Something that, thanks to many summers spent with her father, Alice didn't have—I guess he'd been useful for something.

  Alice took a deep inhale before standing up. It was late in the afternoon; slowly bleeding into the evening. There was a blaze of orange hues igniting the horizon that purple night attempted to swallow like a wave engulfing a sandcastle. The remaining warmth of the fading summer day started to dwindle.

  She took a moment, placing her palms on her hips and stretching out like a sleepy cat before nodding to her mother.

  "Lead the way," Alice gestured to the quaintly pathed road in front of them.

***

  Alice was slumped peevishly in a chair so soft and squashy she felt at any moment the fabric might just suck her in and suffocate her. Perhaps part of her even wished for that—maybe the boredom was just making her dramatic.

  She was waiting, not so patiently, for her mother to leave the office and tell her what the hell was going on. She was talking to Albus Dumbledore, who was apparently, an old acquaintance of her mother and the Headmaster of Hogwarts School.

  Alice was rather disgruntled by the fact that she wasn't even allowed to listen to their conversation, especially because she could tell it was concerning her. God, she hated her mother sometimes. Always so secretive, never properly communicative.

  After what felt like a year on Pluto, Alice jumped up at the sound of squeaking door hinges on the ancient wooden door. Her mother came out first, she looked flushed. Had she been crying?

  Before she spoke she wrapped Alice in a meaningful embrace. Alice, still scrambling about in her ignorance, had no knowledge of why exactly it was meaningful but there was some sort of finality about it. Alice had the inkling she was about to leave her here. After all, they were at a school.

  "You're going to finish school 'ere." Her mother whispered into her ear, still keeping Alice hugged tight to her. There it was. "It's just one year. You'll be safe 'ere. I need you not to worry." She was speaking in clipped sentences, Alice noticed, as if she were trying to keep her voice steady. "Stay 'ere for Christmas. I'll write to you when I can. I know it must seem rather confusing to you right now. Albus will explain everything when zee time is right."

  Her mother pulled back, planting her hands affirmatively on Alice's shoulders, finally looking her in the eye. She placed a loving kiss on both Alice's cheeks—how French of her. "Goodbye darling." she administered a small smile as she said this, before she disappeared from the room completely. That was it.

  Alice was abandoned.