An American At Hogwarts: Book Three

The Rogue Robot

A/N: Howdy ya'll! PLEASE READ THIS AUTHOR'S NOTE, IT IS VERY IMPORTANT!

Unfortunately, classes have been especially crazy this week (midterm projects in 3/5 classes, anybody?) so I haven't had any time to write the next chapter of AAH. HOWEVER, luckily, I have a oneshot I wrote a little while ago about Alexa, Harley, Peter, and some of their pre-Hogwarts adventures that I've decided to post instead. I started writing little oneshots of Alexa and her various family members a while ago without really knowing what I wanted to do with them, so for now, whenever I can't do a regular update I'll probably post one of these :) Hope you enjoy! See you all next week!

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I paced frantically as I searched up and down the hallways of the school, fighting hard not to swear. Where had that thing gone?

Barely past my first week of high school, and something had already gone drastically wrong.

I'd been working in the science lab after class got out on a side project, something I'd been trying to finish up from the summer. It was supposed to be a helper robot, that could go around my house (or even the whole school) picking up messes, cleaning things, and generally helping where needed. I'd almost had it finished, and I thought my code looked good, when it went on the fritz out of nowhere and shot off the table, past me, and out into the rest of the school.

I needed to find it. Now.

I tried not to look too panicked as I passed a few teachers, then picked up the pace to just short of running. Since the code had gone haywire and I had no idea why, that meant I also had no idea what my robot might do if left unchecked.

I hurtled around a corner but came to a hard stop when I ran into someone face-first. We both went flying, and I barely caught myself before falling. I looked up to see Peter, looking just as frazzled and stressed as I was.

"Alexa! I'm sorry, I-"

"Peter, thank God! I need your help!" I yelled, cutting him off and not wasting a second before dragging him down the hallway after me, back on the path of the robot.

"What's wrong?"

"I was working on this stupid project after class and it just got up and ran away, and I have no idea why or how! All I know is we need to find it and shut it down, fast, before it can ruin anything in the school."

"Ruin anything? Alexa, what is this thing?"

"It's a robot that's supposed to do chores, but could just as easily cause problems. I don't know what went wrong with the code, but something certainly did, and now it could be up to any number of things-"

I cut off and stopped dead in my tracks, Peter doing the same as we rounded a corner and were faced with utter chaos down the hallway. At the far end, we could see my robot careening off down another corridor of the school. Between where we stood and the robot, however, lay a whole hallway full of carnage.

Garbage cans had been knocked over with trash spread all across the floor, a water fountain was broken and quickly making a lake in the middle of things, students had been bowled over and were trying to collect books and papers, and all of the art and decorations on the walls had been knocked down.

"Shit," I swore under my breath. Peter nodded his head next to me. "We have to stop it."

"How?" he asked.

"I don't know! We catch it and jump on it, or maybe you use your... special powers... or whatever! But either way, we have to get that thing before it does any more damage!"