Alice sent her friends back up to Gryffindor Tower without her, using the excuse that, as a prefect and a seventh year, she really ought to stay in the entrance hall to make sure everyone got in and to their common rooms without lingering or causing any panic or hysteria. As far as excuses go it was a flimsy one, especially considering there were prefects among her friends, but it did eventually send them off. True to her word, Alice stayed in the entrance hall until it seemed like no one else was left outside the castle, but when she left it was not in the direction of her common room filled with her friends and younger students who probably needed someone like Alice who would sit and listen and give them a hug when they started to cry.
Except Alice was in no fit state to be her usual, optimistic, comforting self. There may well be students in need of a calm presence, but that presence would have to be someone else. Calm was, at the moment, an impossible concept for Alice. Alice stalked the halls with angry tears burning in her eyes. Had anyone happened across her they nearly wouldn’t have recognized her as the cheerful girl who usually roamed the halls. It wasn’t in Alice nature to be in-genuine and she wasn’t the type to put on fronts, but she didn’t like to bother the general population with her problems. If she was upset about something she would walk off the strongest of her feelings, and then talk to a friend about it.
Alice wasn’t sure if there was enough time in the world for her to walk off this emotion. Anger was too simple a word for what Alice was feeling, it was used far to regularly to explain what exactly was boiling inside her. Rage seemed more fitting. She was incensed, she was furious, she wanted to break something. Alice liked to think she was pretty openminded. She didn’t always have to be right and people didn’t always have to agree with her. She could even tolerate people having opposite opinions from her, but not when those opinions put other people in harms way. If there was anything Alice hated, it was a bully.Â
Every time Alice thought she might be calming down, and might be able to go back to her common room, she would think of all the families who’d lost everything, and she’d start crying angry tears again. She couldn’t begin to imagine what if would be like for her house to burn to the ground, for all the pictures of her grandmother to turn to ash, every trinket connected to a dear memory destroyed or disfigured. It was such a cruel fate, she didn’t understand how anyone could exact it on another human being. Alice was pulled out of her thoughts just as she was about to round a corner by the sound of footsteps. Wanting to avoid explaining herself, she darted into a nearby classroom, hoping she’d been quick enough to avoid being spotted.
