Frank combs his fingers and ruffles his hair anxiously. Heslackjaws while concentrating all his energy to absorb what Alice tells them.Shooting his best friend an occasional questionable glance. Alice had donethings that didn’t make sense all year now. He leans back down propping himselfup with an elbow as he stares her down. “After Rod..you mean Rodolphus? Did..did..”He furrows his brows thinking that was a strange conclusion, but he blurts itout anyway. “Did Rodolphus push you down the stairs? I..Is there another Rod?”Rodolphus wasn’t a prefect so he shouldn’t have been outside of the snake’sdorm that late.However, he felt even more confused. Didn’t Rod find Alice?
“Freak out? I’m Frank fine. I’m fine.” He clears his throat,and inwardly continued to freak out. Frank wasn’t just Frantic Frank on amurder train. He was like that always and it didn’t shut off. He fidgets andpicks up Luke to set in his lap, placing one hand to keep his head propped andthe other lingering at his chest. “Painful? He.. he caused you pain.?. so you..”Frank licks his lips trying to draw the right conclusion from his head. Therewere few ways to recover a lost memory, and he found himself asking King anunspoken question with his frantic gaze. “I can’t promise Alice. I I don’t knowwhat you’re going to tell us… but I don’t know how I’ll react. I’ll try toreact like I am now which is perfectly fine ok. I’m ok with this. I’m fine. YesFine. I’m groovy. I can stay groovy.” He rambles on and finally bites down onhis lower lips to silence himself. The worry stuck to his face, as he changesposition to place a reassuring firm hand on her shoulder.
Of course Rodolphus had gotten himself further involved. Kingsley resisted the urge to pinch his nose. That fucking Lestrange boy. Later, when he had more time to process, he’d have to sit Rodolphus down and have a chat about a good deal of things. Mostly, how people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
He forced his focus back on to Alice, letting Frank’s ramble slide. Dealing with Frank’s panic, and his own for that matter he’d thought they’d finally put this all behind them, could come later. Alice looked as if she had to say something now or she never would.
“Al,” he said gently. “What do you remember?”
Alice could see that both of her friends were silently panicking so she reached out and took one of their hands with her own and squeezed it hard to calm them down, to assure them that she was alright. That the hardest part was over and she would get out of it and they didn’t need to worry about her anymore.
“It-- it wasn’t Rodolphus, no. He just found me and after I woke up, I wanted to talk to him and thank him for finding me and not just leaving me to die, and we started talking, and it turned out that he found a way to bring back memories. And it worked.“ She stopped for a second, let out a small sigh and then continued on. “According to that theory, the only way to bring memories back after any kind of memory charm was to put the person who lost their memories through immense pain, and since I knew you two would never-- I could never ask any of you to do that, and it doesn’t matter what you guys think, Evan would never actually be able to do that to me either, so since Rodolphus was the one who found the theory, so I... kind of went and asked him to torture me. Which is he didn’t even want to do, originally, but for whatever reason, he changed his mind and it actually worked. There was a weird, unknown curse along with the theory, so he didn’t use any unforgivable curses before you think that,” she added that one small lie quickly because she didn’t want to get Rodolphus into trouble with this, “and it worked. It was horribly painful, but it worked and remember the last week before the break started and how I disappeared? I didn’t want to go back to the hospital wing, so I cooped up in the Slytherin dormitory while I was healing.“
She took a deep breath, a lump forming in her throat. She was alright, she was ok, she was through most of it, but still, she only ever really thought about it or talked about it with Rodolphus, she never actually said these words out loud, especially not telling the whole story, and it proved to be a bit more difficult than she originally thought, and she found herself squeezing her two best friends’ hands again, this time probably more for her reassurance than for the others.
“It was---“ she cleared her throat and ducked her head for a second before she continued. “It was a stupid accident. Severus Snape and I, we were arguing about stupid stuff and we somehow got to the top of the stairs and I guess it disappeared not long after I got to the top because we were only there for about a minute when he started to leave and it was-- it was so stupid, you know when you pass somebody and you hit your shoulder against the other’s in the process of it? That is kind of what happened here too, and I am pretty sure it wasn’t intentional at all, but I lost my balance and as I stepped back, the stairs just weren’t there behind me anymore and... and I fell. So it was all an accident, I just... I just don’t understand why he erased my memories? I guess he got panicked he would get the blame? Something like that? I don’t know, I can’t really think of anything else. This little bit is still kind of confusing, but... but it was all just an accident. A stupid, stupid accident and now I can just... move on from this.”
That last bit didn’t sound too convincing, even to Alice herself, but she was trying really hard to work towards that. Towards moving on from all of this and moving forward.
