The Seventh

One: In the Shadow of the Citadel

"So then we saw her and I went up to her and I'm like you stupid cow what you think yer playing at yer -"

Alex had never hit anyone before.

"- coming around here with her nose in the air like thinking we're her bloody minions or something scuse my French but I'm like seriously -"

The thought had simply never entered her head. Violence never solved problems, she had been taught. It only created more problems.

"- ends up in a deep fat fryer at McDonald's she's got enough fat on her to cook fries for a month like hahaha seriously though have you seen her arse and that excuse for a -"

Yet Alex wondered what the sensation of this bitch's teeth shattering against her clenched fist would be like.

"- to God next time I'll be all like I ain't listening to yer crap you snotty heifer see what she -"

She might have felt a little more gracious towards the woman butchering her hair, had the woman in question not had a voice akin to a cheese grater being scraped across a blackboard. The scowl on Alex's face seemed to be beneath her notice. To anyone who might have been watching this scene, it would be clear that neither of them wanted to be there. The woman wielding the scissors with such poor precision had someone's reputation to shred, and had the rest of Alex's life gone to plan, she herself would never have had cause to visit a hair salon, let alone one outside the citadel.

Bloody exiles.

She couldn't help flinching a little with every snip of the scissors. Every snip meant another lock gone - another lock that would no longer be washed, or brushed, or coiled around another's finger. Alex had always been told that she had beautiful honey-blonde hair, but it was only now that she was losing it that she realised it herself. Still, there was nothing else to be done. Wearing a cheap costume-store wig would have made her more conspicuous, and the little money she had left with wouldn't stretch to allow anything more realistic. Off it had to come.

She tuned her ears into the ticking of the clock in an attempt to block out the relentless snip-snip-snipping of the scissors. She consoled herself that each tick and each snip brought her closer to a speedy payment and speedier exit.

SNIP right next to her ear. She flinched again, more obviously this time.

"- so I was like oh careful love I nearly took your ear off then so I was like - "

Alex gritted her teeth.

"- watch I'll have her alright love what do you think?"

Not a moment too soon, it seemed. Alex unscrewed her eyes, only then realising how tightly she'd held them shut, and looked at a face in the mirror that she didn't recognise. The strange spikes and tufts that passed for fashion on the outside belonged to someone that only bore a passing resemblance to Alexandra Lovegood.

It was exactly what she had wanted.

"Perfect," she replied curtly.

Alex wondered, as the gown was whipped off her shoulders and her head given one last spritz of anonymous chemicals, whether the hairdresser had meant the awful things she had said, or whether she was only in love with her awful voice. Before she could reach a conclusion, the chair she sat on was pulled back unceremoniously. Alex took this as permission to stand up, shaking off loose strands and rattling London-exile vowels onto a carpet of honey-coloured waves.

Honey bunches, she thought then. Love my honey bunches.

She wouldn't have been able to recall, if asked later, what she had paid the woman to mutilate her hair. The unbidden thought of her father had caused a resurgence of bright red anger to flood her thoughts and senses. She seemed to be alone in the universe with her rage.