Chapter Text
Her first year is one word.
Fear.
Because fear meant blood rushing behind her ears, a fluid panic in her lungs and a throbbing heart in a darkened chest. Because fear meant green ties and a mother's narrowed disappointment.
Kind eyes that faded to glazed in a split second.
Because she spelled fear with two vowels and letters six and seventeen, and she formed the word with a mix of oceans of turmoil and seas of terror.
Facts that stole air from lungs and adorned arms with skulls and streaming green in the dead of night.
Because fear grounded inside her, right in the place of her heart, a cold stone that held on from the Sorting Ceremony all the way to the flash of light that sent her flying and Lex's maniac smiles.
Fear was a four letter word and she knew it well enough to feel it.
What feels like millions of hands give congratulatory clap her back, welcomes are shouted, hair is tousled.
She walks to her seat slowly.
It takes hours. Hours and years and days and centuries.
Or maybe it just takes seconds.
She's no longer counting around the thrashing panic seizing her brain, the pounding pulse that stems somewhere up and left behind her right eye.
Time stopped being a linear concept somewhere between steps two and four. It keeps speeding up and slowing down and skipping, skipping, skipping ahead and backwards, and forward again, always before she's ready for the next beat.
No, no, no, nononono-
She's hyperventilating. Disturbing clarity and bitter cold October air in one, jagged breath after another. It's ironic. The strong girl whose supposed to be fearless, the one who chases invisible monsters away for her younger sister, is panicking over green ties and underwater dorms.
It's poetic.
Or pathetic.
(Whichever. One or two, left or right, it won't matter in the end.)
And then a hand finds her smaller one, calloused and rough, but soft at the same time. Bright, intelligent brown eyes hidden behind silver glasses and brown hair cropped short, an outline for a thin face.
(It reminds her of her father.)
"Merlin, you okay there?"
The words echo in her head, muffled, like she's underwater. It takes her a second to realize they were even meant for her.
She can't breathe.
Panic steals her breath and short circuits her spine to static tingling, drowning with every other tripping thud and thump of her blood.
"Hey, hey...Woah, wait a minute, don't..-shit. Luthor! Umm, can you come over here?"
The staccato tachycardia of her raging pulse screams in her ears, and she digs her hands into tightly clenched fists.
Panic and run. Run. Run.
"K ane, Kate!"
The double mantra courses through her head, a well-versed scream of escape and evade, mixes with the indecipherable whispers of names and adjacent houses being called out.
A Ravenclaw here, a Gryffindor there.
Names dotted across the floor, like upturned and fizzled pumpkin juice, leaking down the tile.
Marbles, rolling all a-freaking-way.
The world spins.
Then her vision clear long enough to realize that the boy has come back, a shadow against the brightness of the room, and he brings someone with him.
A bright curly mop of cinnamon hair, glinting green eyes.
Green eyes. Black robes and curses in the shadows.
Images that burn holes in her brain.
She can't breathe.
Lucy gets placed into Gryffindor.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
"Hey? Alexandra? You okay?"
Fingers find her chin, feathery soft contact of skin against skin.
She lifts her head, blinks back tears, tries desperately to ignore the thrumming pulse underneath her fingerprints, rampant and ragged.
The question is asked again, and she feels her own shoulders shift, a detached feeling she doesn't remember choosing to perform. A quick up and down motion she hopes resembles a shrug and doesn't show her tangible desire to flee.
"Hey, hey, that's it. Just breathe, okay?"
The boy from earlier is murmuring reassurances too, basically repeating what the older one is saying, and with the two of them beside her and the steady parroting of words, she manages to calm down long enough to take in a big mouthful of oxygen.
" Sawyer, Margarita."
The name bounces off her ears, tumbles and spills to the floor.
She breathes. Her lungs scream a little less, salt-water languid rivers evaporating a smidge.
Somehow, she manages to meet mystery-boy-Luthor's eyes. His eyes begin to warm, lips twitch into a small smile as he sighs.
"Thought I'd have to get Professor Grant for a minute there. You okay?"
She nods. Once.
And then twice because she isn't even sure the action was performed in the first place and she doesn't have much confidence in her zombie-like actions to begin with.
"Good. Your name is Alexandra, right? Well, my name Lex." He pauses, smirks at the boy to her left, nod for him to introduce himself.
The taller one, Harry, smirks and extends his hand.
"I'm Harrison. Harrison Wells. But, um.. everyone just calls me Harry."
She numbly excepts the hand, shakes it with a confidence that she sure as hell and mumbles out her own name. Gets lost in the sound of them arguing and the echo of names being called.
The Hufflepuff table cheers.
Now that the blaring in her ears has quieted, she can finally get a good look at the hall. Candles float in the air, soft and sure, emanating the room with a warm glow. Savory scents fill the air, expelled by the copious amounts of food on the table, and it all jumbles and mixes with the sounds of talking and clapping and laughing, hectic and loud.
A big ball of comfort. Home-like.
She can see herself there. Her future. Learning spells and flying and pouring over tales of ancient mythology. Finding friends and perfect badges in the mail, N.E.W.T.S and Butterbeers in the sun.
Slender fingers snap in her periphery, jolting her out of her daze.
Her mind is foggy, startled. Confused.
"You still with us Alex?"
She nods, thankful for the use of the shorter version of her name.
"Well, alright then," He pauses, gives her a toothy grin and a pat on the shoulder that makes her think of her dad. "I'm going to go grab you a plate, okay? Harry will stay here until I come back."
She nods again, pissed that any words she tries to sting into sentences get stuck in her throat, like cement in her vocal chords.
Lex leaves, weaving between students and clapping hands and with his departure, Harry nudges closer to her, shrugs glasses off. Sets them on the table. Alex finds herself staring at them, nearly sure every last scrap of her resolve has been left right there alongside them.
Discarded.
The sight of Vasquez mulling through the crowd and taking a place at the Gryffindor table puts any plan beyond the short term into a bitter, sharply shifted perspective.
Her chest quivers again.
Harry must have notice because he turns, looks her straight in the eye.
Bumps his knee against hers.
"Hey, don't worry okay? Last year, when I had just gotten here, I felt exactly what you were feeling. But it'll get better. It always does."
Harry's eyes crinkle with a mix of stoic warmth, like he's not quite used to comforting people, but his voice is steel, set and wired with resolve.
And when a steaming plate of food and a mug of pumpkin juice is shoved in her direction, she believes him.
*
Lucy and Vasquez both get into Gryffindor.
And so does James (Everyone calls me Jimmy, he says), Lucy's second-year Gryffindor friend who smiles warmly when he takes the seat next to her in the library the following week.
He extends a hand as they both open their books, the scent of ink and old parchment wafting through the air.
(She knows that instant that they're going to be friends.)
*
Her introduction to the Slytherin dorms is nothing less than she expected.
Frightening and foreboding.
The perfect showing them around, a seventh year Slytherin with bright yellow hair, green piercing eyes, a twinkling smile and a thick Australian accent, slowly opens the door to their common rooms.
"Okay, umm...How does this start again? Ah, yes. Congratulations, boys and girls, you have all been sorted into the Slytherin house...My name is.." The boy, previously pointed out to her by Harry as Arthur Curry, pauses and glances back down at the messy scroll in his hand, mouthing words with a seeming look of disgust on his face.
"Bloody fucking Merlin's beard? Who the...?" The words fall out of his mouth, tumble to the floor and spread over the fire as his eyes comically narrow. "Diana bloody Prince. That twat. There is no way in hell I'm reading this."
The older Slytherin tosses the parchment into the fire, claps his hands. The flames crackle.
"Okay, well then! Let's chop down to business, eh? Here are the things you should now. First of all, lets dispute the rumor most of you are thinking of. Not all of us are pure-blooded psychopaths or evil or Dark lords. Brucie of there-"
The boy, pointed to and identified as Bruce, gives the group as small nod and a smirk before shoving his hands into his robes and retreating into the darkness.
Yea, b3 cause psychopaths lurking in the shadows are the best thing to show a bunch of scared eleven years old' s.
Her internal sarcasm makes her smile, makes the pressure on her lungs dissipate just a little.
"Bruce is a half-blood. Me? I'm a half-blood. Don't let those swots in Ravenclaw tell you otherwise. All those rumors are a bunch of bloody rubbish anyway, you hear? Second of all, the password changes every fortnight. Keep an eye out for the noticeboard. Now, you may can bring friends in hear on occasion. But they must never know the passcode. Cappesh?"
Alex feel her head bobbing up and down, nodding, a fluid motion repeated by the rest of the first years in line next to her.
The Head Boy nods his own head, lost, and pauses, scratches the stubble on his chin, seaweed green eyes darting around, before turning to a dirty blonde fourth year behind him.
"Oi! Ollie! Anything else I'm forgetting?"
The kid, Oliver, looks up from his book and rolls his eyes in pure exasperation.
"The ghost, Art."
Arthur, Art (she snickers), blushes, scratches the back of his neck again.
"Right! Righty, right. Okay, our house ghost is the Bloody Baron. Now, he may look like a big twat, and he's kind of creepy, but if you get on the right side of him, he just may agree to frighten people for you. Just remember to say hello in the mornings and never, ever, ask him how he got all bloody. He hates that." The blonde pauses, scratches his head.
"Umm that's all. Everyone set on the rules?"
The group nods again.
"Okay then! Girls on the left, boys on the right. Goodnight y'all."
One final wave, and then he's gone, clambering towards the exit.
*
Her room is nothing if not creepy.
A thick dark green, almost emerald colored carpet covers what feels like stone floors underneath, and silver lanterns float in the air, bouncing rays of light throughout the room.
Shadows dance in darkened corners and it already feels like ghosts are lurking, mocking, in the cobwebs and faded through the dusty bookshelves.
There's a total of eight beds in the room she got assigned to, split into groups of four on one side and four on the other, with a coffee table and couch in between, separate by a flickering stone fireplace.
On top of the fireplace is a picture of Merlin, his bright eyes twinkling with a sort of boyish delight.
The room is filled with soft whispers, the other girls tossing around questions and exchanging names. One girl, "My name is Sara Lance. And, who might you be gorgeous?", gives her a curt nod and a firm handshake and a sly smirk that makes Alex blush and look away.
Besides a couple of polite exchanges, she doesn't approach them. Despite what she might like to think, reality tells her that she hasn't quite yet managed to scrape together enough courage to mumble out a request to talk.
Or the air needed to formulate words.
Besides, she already knows in her head how most of the conversation is sure to go, and although silence may be nothing more than a half-hearted defense mechanism she's hastily built, she welcomes it nonetheless.
Settles on surreptitious glances offered and reciprocated, on light nods exchanged and shoulders shrugged from various points around the room.
With everyone else's exchanges now dying away, Alex lets the silence distract her from unpacking and unwarps the chocolate frog Harry had given her earlier.
" You're one of the few people I met whom I tolerate here, Danvers. Don't mess that up."
Flops down on her bed softly, lets the chocolate melt on her tongue and evens out the covers with her hands, letting her mind wander.
Lost in a world of what-if's and what-not's and the faded noise of the rest of her life, waiting up ahead.
*
The first week into the school year, she gets into an ugly fight with Lucy.
It starts off simple.
"You okay there, Lexie?"
Those four words pried Alex's eyes of her Defense Against the Dark Arts homework and onto the brunette slouched two feet away.
"I thought I told you to never call me that," she says, flat and determined, teeth clenched and smile tired.
Forced.
She realizes with a bitter clarity that the comment is so far from the point Lucy was trying to make, but Alex is nothing if not well versed in the art of escape and evade, so she makes use of the distraction as it is given.
It's quick, the effectiveness.
Blink-and-you'll-miss-it-quick.
But Lucy cocks her head, raises an eyebrow, and it takes a split pause and a resigned sigh to realize that Lucy is also versed in the little game they're playing. Anything but sticking to the script will only buy her borrowed time she can't seem to afford.
"I'm fine."
And there it starts.
It's a lie but Alex doesn't push the point, doesn't fake the perception of it because Lucy has known her since she was six and lying and deception has never worked well between them.
Not with overbearing sister's and disappointed mother's whirling around the vestiges of a haven they had managed to build.
But Lucy pushes because stubbornness seems to be a prime Gryffindor personality trait and soon enough, the tightrope they're inching along is starting to wobble and shake.
And then they're fighting about things that they weren't fighting about to begin with, and Lucy leaves in a hot flurry of tears and she leaves the Slytherin standing there, despondent and pissed.
Ten minutes later, Alex meets a short Hufflepuff girl with a smirk on her lips and from then onward the 'I'm fine." comes with a little less force.
*
As the days blend from their first meeting, Alex finds out that she and Maggie have four classes together, Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, and Flying, the latter of the two are spent in shared company with Lucy and Vasquez.
They were now sitting in Herbology, and Alex was struggling to concentrate because the shorter girl had been bouncing the entire time, radiating with excitement.
Alex begins to stuff the Hufflepuff's notes and textbook into her discarded book bag lying halfway open on the floor behind them and sends an apologetic glance to Professor Peirce, who now eyes them warily from his desk, eyes flicking with slight amusement.
With a short smile and a nod to the older man, Alex tugs on the sleeve of Maggie's robe and leads them out of the exit.
As they're walking, Alex wants to make a teasing comment about stereotypical Hufflepuffs, she's almost certain that the Latina she's grown to be friends with can't be described with categories or placed into stereotypes.
She remembers meeting the shorter girl, and when Maggie pauses and gives the Slytherin a look of questioning, and Alex gives her a high five and a brilliant grin in response.
*
There's something about Maggie, whether it's the cleverness, or the kindness, or the fierce protectiveness that the brunette emanates, she doesn't know, but it's something Alex trusts.
Because Alex has watched the brave Hufflepuff shove herself in the middle of disputes, throw punches and cast jinxes. Alex has watched her clever friend rattle of facts and spell out medicinal purposes of various plants. She's joined the brunette in study sessions that span through the night, studying for tests nearly half a week away.
And the more time Alex spends with her, the more she realizes that the smaller girl's got worlds bundled up in those yellow robes and a golden tie.
And Alex wants to seem them all.
*
As it would turn out, Alex is great at flying.
She thinks it's probably because of her knack at surfing, but regardless of the reason, she loves the feeling of flying.
The wind in her hair, the quiet.
Shifting on her broom, she sits at a wobbling twenty feet up in the air, watching silently as Madam Hooch instructs Maggie and a Ravenclaw boy she faintly remembers seeing at the Sorting ceremony, crouching and gesturing madly in front of them.
A gust of wind sends her broom shaking, and she steadies herself, one hand held out. Grasping at absolutely nothing.
Faking the confidence needed to sit straight again, she eases herself up and spares another glance at Maggie. The Hufflepuff is shaking, despite only being a few feet off the ground, and her eyebrows are furrowed with concentration, lips parted only slightly.
Lucy is to her right, shouting encouragements to the girl and Maggie's broom slowly rises higher.
The brunette looks up and Alex gives her a grin, methodically lifting a hand off the broom to give the girl in yellow a wave and a thumbs up.
Maggie grins and waves back and Alex feels her heart swell, soaring through the clouds.
*
The rise of December brings clean and bitter cold air, flutters of snow and unimaginable amounts of essays and quizzes.
By then, they've managed to form a group, consisting of Lucy, James, Vasquez, Maggie, Alex and Harry, with the occasional pop-in of Lex or Clark, and to her surprise, Leslie Willis ( A Slytherin in their year who claims she's only there for the hot chocolate) and Sara Lance (who still doesn't stop making Alex blush, a rosy color that sends her sputtering pumpkin juice and Maggie glaring for reasons Alex can't fathom).
They all grow closer through lazy Saturdays and frantic study sessions, and soon, their table becomes a colorful mix of yellows and red and blue and green, shiny wildly in the afternoon breeze.
*
Vasquez goes home with her for Christmas (Her parents were on a ministry trip) and Kara wrings her like a soaked sponge.
She asks constant questions about Hogwarts.
(It never ends, really.)
About the professors, and the classes, spells and jinxes, the freaking school itself.
What the food smells like, tastes like, what the rooms look like.
Questions like...
" Does water taste better there? Is it magical?"
and,
"Are there unicorns?...No? They should totally bring in unicorns."
Both Jeremiah and Eliza smile, strained at constant onslaught of questions. Vasquez points and laughs, giggling softly behind popcorn crumbs and elf hats. Alex sends icy glares in the direction of her friend and sister, shutting them both up.
It's a little draining, but, mostly, it's adorable.
Alex answers all the questions that get thrown at her with a strained smile, two aspirin and a leaping heart. She's missed her bubbly, optimistic, energetic sister, and despite having good friends like Lucy and Vasquez, and now, Jimmy and Lex and Harry, they'll never be able to fill the Kara-sized hole her heart gets every day at Hogwarts. The way her chest aches whenever she sees puddles or creatures or sunshine.
If a bunch of questions is what it takes to make her sister happy, then so be it.
*
But if Kara asks her even one more question, Alex just might take the early train back.
*
Christmas fades to discarded candy wrappers and the echo of bells, and with its end comes January.
And a pounding pressure slamming her cranium, a constricting tightness in her chest.
Lex had agreed to teach her wandless magic, a feat most first years had never even heard of, much less attempted.
(Because yea, extra pressure was exactly what she needed.)
It's one of the hardest things she's ever attempted to do.
It takes what feels like hours and years and centuries for her mind to settle and a even larger eternity before her hands to stop shaking.
But they've spent hours and hours and the sun dips to dusk and the quill still hasn't moved.
And Alex just about wants to give up.
"How do you even just...Ugh." She flops back on the grass, sighs dramatically and grasps a few blades in her fist. "How do you think of nothing? Is that even humanly possible?"
Her voice seemingly echoes through the meadow, bouncing off the nearby rocks and trees. Lex looks up from his notes, frowning.
"Alex."
He says her name like a statement of fact. Not a question. Not a request.
She see's the letters weed through the grass in her hand. Take root.
"Well I wouldn't say the goal is thinking of exactly nothing. It's like...Thinking of one specific thing or thought or person and concentrating on them." He pauses, frown slightly and runs a hand through his thinning hair.
(He'd started to go bald a month earlier, when Gryffindor Alan Scott cast a hex in his direction. Lex never quite recovered from that one, but the scar that runs down Alan's face tells people that Lex didn't go down fighting.)
"Think of something that makes everything else feel like nothing. Something that drowns out the white noise. Understand?"
She nods silently as Lex brushes his hands, smeared ink and all, and narrows his eyes at the quill in front of them.
Effortlessly, it floats up in the air.
He tilts his head to the side, smiling. "Whenever I do this, I think of ace. I think of the times I go and get ice cream with her, or we play Wizard's Chess next to the fireplace." He pauses, squints a little bit more. "And sometimes I'll think of Clark. But don't tell him that. He gets unbelievably cocky at times."
He smirks with that last part, chuckles and blinks.
Down the quill goes.
His piercing green eyes find hers, and he nods, nearly prodding.
"Find what matters most to you. And focus."
Alex nods, placing her attention on the motionless quill.
She lets her mind wander and thinks then, of Kara, her baby sister who had lost her entire freaking world and is still smiling and grinning. She thinks of small hands and blue eyes clinging to her after nightmares, she thinks of Maggie's smirk and Lucy's grin.
Harry's glasses and James' hugs.
She thinks of her dad, warm eyes and kind smiles. Her mom, a soothing voice and quick wit.
The quill wavers and slowly rises.
She lets her mind swim in memories of these people, of friends and family, of the elation and joy and belonging that only comes with them.
The quill hovers and Lex smiles.
It's nothing like the smooth and effortless performance Lex had shown, and a fist sized pressure is building on her brain, stealing the air from her lungs and narrowing her eyesight.
But she long ago learned to take what she could get, and the realization that she actually did it makes her grin and jump up, hands pumped in the air laughter spilled from her lips. Lex smiles, a warm one that makes his eye crinkle and lights up his face.
"You've got a long way to go. But Merlin's beard your fast learner. And that's good. You'll need this skill for what's going to come."
She pauses then, elation lost and gone.
Disappeared into the wind.
Confused.
The older Slytherin must have caught on to her expression, noticed his mistake, because he elaborates, charisma rolling of his tongue.
"We need to be prepared for any alien attacks Alex. There's nothing wrong with that."
Unease rolls and tumbles in her stomach, but she forces it down, stuffs it back into a box in the corner of her mind with a strained smile, because this is Lex.
And Lex may be biased and a little too passionate but he sure as hell isn't a dark lord or anything.
He's no Voldemort.
There's no reason to fear him.
Right?
*
(Wrong.)
*
She spent more time with Maggie and the group after that incident.
(Not because she hated Lex. But because gut feelings were something Alex always relied upon, and she just couldn't manage to shake the gnawing nausea this one gave her.)
That afternoon, when Lucy and James had class, and Harry was practicing Quidditch and Vasquez was nowhere to be seen, Maggie suggested they study in a tree near the backside of the courtyard.
It had been nice, the trees in her peripheral vision swaying slowly in the almost not there breeze and sunny rays of light over their heads. A great way to spend the afternoon.
And then......
"Do you think we'll all be still friends? When all of this is over?"
Alex blinks in response, shocked and really confused at the question that was asked.
The shorter girl's dimpled smile disappears, taken by Alex's silence, and all Alex wants to do is bring it back again.
But any words or reassurances she has die on her tongue, echoing in the breeze around them, and Maggie's owlish expression grows.
The Hufflepuff tilts her head, eyebrows furrowing slightly. Her voice is soft, like she's grasping for something she doesn't believe was ever really there. "I'm not trying to be needy or anything. It's just..."
She trails off, waving her hands almost distractedly, and suddenly, Alex can't breathe around the sound of the smaller girl's voice and dimples and that damn wind that picks up and the rays that bring out the chocolate warmth in Maggie's eyes.
Distracted, Alex mumbles out her response and scoots closer to the girl, wrapping one arm over her frame.
She knows that everything she's offering to the girl in yellow is nothing more than what she's already given, but she's empty and out of new ideas.
So, the cycle mulls onward and Alex holds her closer.
Maggie stiffens at first, and then melts into the embrace, leaning her head against Alex's.
"We'll always be friends Mags. There is no other universe or earth where the six of us aren't."
Alex beams at her, a toothy grin with not much else, and moves to lay down next to her friend. Maggie presses her shoulder against Alex's and angles the book she had been reading so that Alex could read it too, and the Slytherin doesn't think she's ever felt more content.
The breeze keeps on swaying.
*
It's the very end of her first year, the beginning of their last week, when everything goes to hell.
Specifically, Lex goes to hell.
And comes back a raving, foaming, wired demon that reaches the very pinnacle of his descent to pure madness.
He kills four students and goes mad, painting the walls bloody red.
And Alex remembers that she should have been afraid.
*
At first, they didn't know that snarky, confident, intelligent, kind Lex Luthor was the cloaked murderer running amuck in the halls.
Clark had run into the Slytherin common room, trailed by Susan and Lois and James, screaming that Lex was nowhere to be found and the murder was still on the loose.
(She'd like to say her wariness didn't flare up then, but it did.)
Oliver Queen, the fourth year she had met in the beginning of the year who was now leading the group guarding the door, nodded to them.
"Go."
(James suggested they split up into teams, with Vasquez and Harry and Lois going one direction and Lucy, James, Clark and Alex going the other, the latter group spending five minutes combing the halls for their older friend.)
They found nothing.
Until they just barely managed to pass under the doors of the Great Hall, and a blinding flood of green and red and blue light sent Clark flying, a blur of glasses, red robes and a mop of black hair.
His body hit the wall, fell like a puppet without strings, and a shuddered pump of heart passed, then another, everything moving in slow, sedated motion. Her mouth dropped open, body beginning to drop to its knees, ducking out of the way, mind racing....
Make a plan, a plan, plan, planplanplanpla-
Then a second crack of flashing light sends Alex tumbling to the ground, turns her insides to rack and ruin in a heartbeat.
And she's floating, falling, a free fall movement she hasn't managed to master, halfway to the ground but not quite there yet. And then her shoulder blades collide heavily with the scuffed floor and her lips are fighting to move, to produce some type of motion, a sound, a warning, but the back of her skull meet the floor just centimeters later.
Then there's black.
*
Her eyes blink back to open, blurry, and it takes longer to string together any cognitive thought and work out why the world has turned upside down.
Why left is now right and up might be down and why any sort of geographical sense has been rattled out of her brain, leaking sluggishly and mixing with the soda on the floor.
She wonders why the world has been wrenched to the side, wonders why people are screaming, wonders if she's the one screaming because nothing makes sense anymore.
White noise fills her head to full. To overflowing. To drowning.
Her head rings and pounds and her ribs scream, and she tastes dirt and blood in her mouth.
Bitter.
And then James is shaking her, his mouth moving.
Completely devoid of anything more articulate than the indecipherable shouting and the two syllables making up the breathless, Alex, he seems to be stuck on.
There are noises, deep voices screaming, the crackling and whipping of on the other side of the void that fills the empty space between her ears, and then James has his arm under her ribs, and they're both running, stumbling and running and stumbling.
It's crazy, Alex thinks.
Because she can remember sitting with Lex Luthor at meals.
The way his eyes glinted when he told a snarky joke, gentle hands that flicked spells and writing in the air.
The way he smiled, his patience while he taught her tricks and tips.
The way he hugged Lois and slung his arm around Clark like they'd be friends forever.
She can remember Lex.
But not like this.
*
She thinks this moment has been oddly inevitable for months.
That all the comments and looks and forbidden books tucked around Lex should have warned them all.
A breadcrumb trail, a hint here, another one there, back two steps and you'll find a third, every hint leading to this one, single, inevitable moment.
But no one noticed and it's like everything that's happened between before and the here and now has just been building up a bigger shitstorm, a devastating crescendo no one can escape.
And that the latest drama, whether it was Clark and Lex's fight last week or Lionel's death or Alan Scott's hex, whatever it may have been, simply provided the proverbial straw that broke the damn well.
This moment was oddly inevitable.
But no one saw it coming.
*
She doesn't think she'll ever figure out the exact moment she got caught in it all.
She remembers tripping over someone's wand while she stumbled upward, pulled by arms that provided lulled comfort.
White bright and pitch dark, flashes of colorful, deadly light, emptiness and screaming in between.
She remembers the blue and green and red sparks that lit up the walls, she remembers Clark screaming betrayal and the way Lex yelled in venomous delight.
Eyes wild and wired, dust on his robes and thick lies on his shoulders.
She remembers is the way Jimmy hit the floor like a sack of flour, limp and heavy, when Lex cast the Cruciatus curse.
The way he convulsed, body shaking, muscles tense, mouth open but no sound coming out.
Words silently scattered across the floor, spilled and spreading.
She remembers how Lucy screamed, how she withered in the Slytherin's arms when Alex tried to hold her back from jumping straight into the hell that played out around them.
How Harry looked like when he bolted into the room, eyes wild and scared, wand clutched beneath white straining knuckles, airless lungs heaving.
Her own voice, raw, sounding through the hall, quivering as she yelled out spells and curses, all things way above her year.
Hollow and terrified, a heady mixture of the two pumping through her veins.
But, most of all, she remembers Lex being dragged away in chains.
The ranting and spitting and screaming, all dragged out in one cold exhale of suffocating air.
She remembers the way his wired eyes locked with hers, hazel against emerald, and the way he smiled, snarky.
Just like he used to.
(She notes the inadvertent slip into past tense. Like he's been killed, not killing.)
He disappears from view then, blurs behind a salt water wall of her own failings and the drip, drip, drip, of blood leaking from the gash on her head.
Leaking and lost, bits of her she'll never get back.
Harry's hand finds her shoulder then, and he gives her a wary, drained smile, conversations and questions and pity swirling in those glinting orbs, swirling but never quite forming sound or words.
There is nothing left to say.
He just sits there, the same way he did the first day she got there, bumping his knee against hers.
His glasses are missing.
(And Lex is still screaming.)
*
Alex doesn't think she'll ever remember how it all went down.
But she'll never forget the way he smiled.
*
In the aftermath, she's sitting against a crumbling wall in the courtyard. Everything has managed to simmer down, students were brought back into the school, kids were interviewed, gashes were healed and refreshments were made.
And somewhere, in Azkaban, in front of wizards and Aurors and reporters, Lex Luthor, a seventeen year old child is on trial.
(But that's a thought she saves for the daily paper tomorrow, because thinking about hurts a little too much and the added pressure to her skull might be enough to make her mad. She avoids it, and pretends the pressure has lessened.)
She thinks about how the immediate aftershocks of the day the world tumbled to hell for the fourth time in its short life have fallen down to somewhere near her well-worn shoelaces.
Threaded through and through.
She's wary now, gripping a wand that's concealed under heavy robes and a clipped expression, more wary than any eleven year old should ever have to be. Because she's actually expecting someone to freak the fuck out any minute now, expecting to have to fight once more.
Back against the wall because it's one less direction to defend to the death and slouched because her head still hurts and if she's halfway towards the ground, there'll be less distance to cover.
The fall will hurt a little less.
And then she jolted out of her thoughts, interrupted with two short, small arms flying around her neck.
Maggie.
She stiffens at the Hufflepuff's touch. Guard immediately locked into place.
Thinks back to a sunny spring day when the roles were reversed, and Maggie was in her position, takes the pauses for the reprieve it is and melts into her friend's touch with one shuddered breath.
"I'm so sorry Danvers..."
Her voice is tired, and somewhat relieved, like she had been expecting to identify a body and not hug a friend.
(If Alex had been couple inches to the right in that first moment and she might have been.)
Offers the Slytherin an apology in lieu of anything else. Even though none of it is her fault.
"It's not your fault."
Her own voice is flat, exhaustion and blood numbing terror laced through every chipped verbalization.
Barely drowning out the desperate attempt at cold nonchalance with jagged breaths and closed eyes.
It doesn't offer much reassurance, but Alex trusts that Maggie will understand regardless. They've grown to a point where they're beyond the need to communicate with words, looks and eyebrows raised across rooms being more than enough to satisfy them.
She does, however, expect for Maggie to move. Up and leave, just like Clark did when he strutted around like a damn hero. Or like Arthur Curry did, when the Head Boy opened his mouth but found no words of comfort for the two Slytherin's that hadn't managed to escape the fray, the hell of it all.
To her suprise, Maggie pulls closer, presses Alex's head against her chest and the thought of her leaving fizzles out in the depths of her heaving lungs, settles somewhere between the shorter girl's arms and the lessening grip of panic around her heart.
They hold each other until the sun rises, orange and yellow and light blue hues of dawn, and the wind picks up, drifting about.
Green and yellow robes flapping in the wind.
They hold each other until her father comes and Alex has never felt more at peace.
*
That summer, not two days after exchanged hugs and promises to write and half-hearted goodbyes that no one really felt, Alex cuts her hair short.
Straight to the chin.
She shyly tells her mother it's because she wants to impress a guy.
What she doesn't tell her mother is that the last thing Lex ever said to her was a teasing complement on how great her hair looked long, "She looks like Guinevere, don't you think Wells?", and nowadays, she can't even seem to look in the mirror without his words pounding in her brain.
Migraines and lungs that forget how to breathe, three quarters into the full throes of a panic attack.
And when Alex tells herself that she hates him, that she'll always hate him, that she always did hate him, she can believe it. She can hate how Lex turned her into a hollow, bitter caricature of the kid she once was.
But her heart still skips a beat when she sees herself in the mirror and she still wakes up with a scream dying in her throat and the burn of a thousand churning fires clutching her heart, lungs burned to ash and sweat soaked sheets tight under clenched hands.
So, she cuts her hair short. Straight to the chin.
And says it's to impress guy because squeezing the truth out is much more impossible than it seems.
(And spends the rest of the summer wondering what Maggie would think of all of it.)