An American At Hogwarts: Book Three

Chapter Fifty

A/N: Sorry this update is coming a little later in the day than usual! I completely forgot that is was Friday  🤦🏻‍♀️

****************

The six of us ended up walking the grounds, either in comfortable silence or just chatting about things like pro Quidditch teams and stories the twins had of terrorizing poor Ron when they were kids until one in the morning. Once the weight on my chest had gotten light enough to manage, thanks to my friends, we all headed back inside. I could've gotten us back to our dorm with a sling portal, but we'd all agreed without having to talk about it that part of the fun of the night included sneaking around the castle after curfew. We easily made it back to the Common Room, since we were pros at castle-sneaking by this point.

I hugged the twins, Angelina, and Alicia long and hard before they all went up to bed. I made Lee stay up with me while I did more than the bare minimum from the astronomy tower for his hand, sitting together on the Common Room couch while I used my muggle medicine, supplies, and fun Iron Man kids' bandages to hopefully speed up the healing process. We hugged for a long, long time before both going up to bed, after he promised me he'd point any other hurt kids in my direction.

Over the course of the next few days, the war with Umbridge changed. It shifted from one of irritation and laughing defiance to a quiet rage and solidarity with everyone else who was fighting her right alongside me. A few kids approached me for muggle band-aids and healing, including Harry, since they didn't want to go to Madam Pomfrey. I did everything I could for each one of them (including sharing my favorite fun and funky muggle bandages), and only Harry noticed the way my hands shook with barely-controlled anger.

"Are you alright, Alexa?" he'd asked me. I scoffed.

"I wish you'd told me about this earlier, Harry. And that I could paste that pink nightmare with my repulsors so hard she'd never ever come back."

He'd huffed a laugh, then given me a small smile.

"I wish that too."

It didn't get easier no matter how many times I did it. But I managed to keep helping without exploding, to keep letting other people carry their own part of the fight, and keep pretending to Umbridge that she was having no impact on me at all.

In order to maintain the plausibility of that last one, I started throwing myself into my work more than ever before. I studied late in the library, ran session after session of WWHRS meetings with anyone who wanted one, and immersed myself in the magical lessons and self-defense lessons with the DA. Once, when I was scribbling away on a new engineering lesson plan in the Common Room, the twins came in like they were planning yet another intervention. But I was spending time with my friends in most of my activities, and once I explained that along with the simple fact that these acts of rebellion were the only things keeping me sane, they understood. We spent most of the rest of the night together in the Common Room, them working on Weasley's Wizard Wheezes and me working on everything else I could think of.

As January turned to February, Myrah and I started making good progress on our basic mermish (despite the lack of sources to help us learn), and I'd finally collected all the information on mermaid and centaur culture to sort through, minus some of the clearly ridiculous sources. Finally, I was starting to make progress, which helped fight the rage threatening to boil over every time I saw Umbridge's face.

"Okay... starting with sources from the 1800s and earlier..." I muttered to myself as I stared at the virtual documents laid out on the library table before me. I'd avoided the library for a week and a half after the twins' little stunt, but thankfully, when I came back Madam Pomfrey didn't try to kick me out.