For Gwionfawyr, MCR(/HP/A7X) 13ish gen





title: Matt & Alice
author: lisa roquin
rating: 13?
fandom: MCR(/HP/A7X)
pairing/characters: Matt Cortez & Alice
series/sequel: gwionfawyr's of Dragons and Men Verse, set before Duke of Cambridgeshire
disclaimer: lies, fiction, untrue. completely and totally made up. I know no one, know nothing of thier personal lives. I make no claims of knowing much of anything. Alice, Uncle Alejandro & the of Dragons & Men Verse belong to gwionfawyr
summary:
warning:
author notes: sick, miserable, couldn't concentrate, Jenn let me play with Alice so tis her Trick-or-Treat goodie.





Matt frowned at the muffled sound, sounded like a scream...

"FRANK! Get off my hoodie!" Matt shouted and went running for Frank and the amp case he sat down on. Frank didn't move too busy talking to Gerard. Matt shoved him straight to the floor. His hoodie was mostly beside Frank but...

"Alice? Alice--"

"Squirrel is heavy and has a stinky butt," came muffled from his hoodie's pocket.

"You hurt, kiddo?"

"Just the end of my tail," Alice poked her head out of the pocket. "You tell Squirrel I'll get big! I'll get big enough to eat Squirrels someday!"

"Furry ones, not Frank ones," Matt swallowed hard and shuddered.

Alice's little tongue flickered out. "Master Matt?"

"What, kid?"

"You smell funny..." her tongue flickered again."Are you scared?"

"C'mon out let's look at you," Matt murmured. Alice slithered out of his pocket.

"Oh shit!" Frank gaped.

Alice shot Frank a dirty look."I will be a lady and not comment."

Matt choked. "Yeah, you do that."

"Is she okay?"

"Yeah, I think so," Matt said. Alice seemed to move okay as she wrapped herself around his wrist, then made her way up his arm to settle around his neck mumbling about stupid stinky Squirrels and interruption of nice warm naps all the way. "You need to watch where you're sitting!" That was the second close call Alice had with Frank in two days.

The night before he'd flopped on the bed in Matt's hotel room and came within milimeters of smashed Alice then--after being told to watch out for Matt's hoodie cause Alice was in the pocket. Frank had started worriedly yammering about Mikey being in a funk and mumbling weird shit to himself, and promptly forgot the warning.

Mikey was a Seer. A muggle or maybe squib one, Matt wasn't quite sure on that, but a Seer all the same. Seers were batshit. It was kind of a rule. From what Matt knew, Mikey was a pretty darn accurate Seer, which usually translated to more batshit than the Wannabes. The Wannabes that had maybe two visions in their entire lives got theatrical and carried on trying to figure out how they had the vision that got them all the attention. The Seers that saw a lot were usually quietly batshit.

"Are Squirrel and Shiny One stupid?" Alice asked, not for the first time.

"No, they just get distracted easily and a lot," Matt shook his head. Alice wasn't forgiving Frank anytime in the near future. Gerard was on her people she was unhappy with list for picking up Matt's hoodie and swinging it to move it. She got sea sick. Air sick? Whatever.

Alice harramphed and coiled herself into a living necklace.


~*~


"Master! MASTER!"

Matt woke up with a gasp.

"Master Matt?"

"Just Matt. My name is just Matt," he sighed.

"Yes, Master Matt," Alice said dutifully, a teasing note in her voice.

"Have you been watching I Dream of Jeannie again?" Matt mumbled. That he was blaming his Great-Uncle Alejandro for his last visit home, and Uncle Alejandro's enduring crush on Barbara Eden, or at least Jeannie's outfit.

"You were smelling scared," Alice accused.

"Nightmare," Matt sighed.

"I had one too. About Stinky Squirrel sitting on me again," Alice said her tail moving across his throat as she slithered over on the pillow to look him in the eye. The little enchanted glowstick shining a pretty pink color Alice decided she liked giving off enough light for Matt to see her.

Mikey had decided she needed a nightlight. Where he'd come up with a pink glowstick was beyond Matt. Maybe the Dragon Handler that Soot went with? They seemed to know each other pretty well. Mikey was--well, like Gabe and Pete, you just didn't question how he knew someone, or where from. Pete was entirely Muggle, just nuts. Gabe, well, Matt gave more credit to his dreams and stories about talking to cobras than most. He couldn't say for sure, but was willing to bet it was more than a bit too much to drink or bullshit made up to market to the Cobra stories and fascination. Mikey, well, Mikey was a Seer.

Matt stroked his finger over Alice's head.

"The Wizard who brought that was scared of you," Alice nodded her head to the glowstick, which had shown up during Mikey babysitting Alice. Mikey had wanted her for a while because he missed Soot, or something. Alice hadn't objected. She liked Skinny he didn't forget where she was or swing her or sit on her. She didn't mind Rumbly or the Tall One as she named Bob and Ray. She was less than sure of Shouty (Brian). Alice tended to give everyone but him Seven Dwarves-ish names.

"Most can't talk to snakes," Matt said simply. Alice knew that.

"Most snakes would not want to talk to Squirrel," Alice huffed.

Matt chuckled softly. Boy Frank was on her badside. He couldn't blame her, but she was so little it was hard not to be amused by her stubborn ire.

"Well they wouldn't!"

"Days I'm not so sure I want to either," Matt agreed. "Get to the end of the tour, just want to go and not talk to anyone off the tour for a couple weeks."

Alice rubbed her tiny head against his finger. He smiled and continued stroking her. She was a pretty okay kid--for a snake with an attitude.

His ability to talk to snakes had set everyone off into a tizzy. The garter snake he'd almost stepped on had been trauma enough. He'd been four, and that snake had the attitude of Brian on a rampage. Then his Uncle Alejandro catching him talking to the little thing. Or rather near-tears getting yelled at by it, for a garter snake it had been decent sized, and vicious tempered.

His mother had cried and called the priest. His father had gone white as a ghost and for a shot of tequila before calling the cuandero. Great-Uncle Alejandro had been murmuring about a war and evil and how dangerous Matt's gift could be.

Uncle Alejandro had taken him to the Bronx Zoo just to be sure. Test Matt's ability or something. Goddamned hungry anaconda thought Matt looked like a tasty meal, and if not him then three month old Elena, his cousin Lara's baby. Lara had driven Matt and Alejandro--no one in their right mind let Uncle Alejandro drive.

Between the garter snake he first talked to and the damn anaconda, that had pretty well cured him of snakes. He still didn't like snakes, Alice was an exception. The kid was just a baby with an attitude and, well, she was kind of cute once you got past the snake part.

"You do not have a wand."

"Nope," Matt agreed.

"You should." Alice decided. "That stupid wizard that was scared of you had a wand."

"Alice, it's like five in the freaking morning," Matt sighed.

Alice lifted her head and poked him in the nose with her own.

"I don't know enough or use enough magic to need a wand," Matt disagreed."I have a wand that's kind of an heirloom, the one I learned with. My grandfather's great-grandfather's, my great-uncle Alejandro inherited keeping of it and gave it to me. But it's really old and not something I use, especially not on tour."

And the damn thing wasn't the average wand either, at least not in appearance wtih the snakey parseltongue--runes or heiroglyphs or whatever anyone wanted to call them carved into it. It wasn't even all that good of a fit, close enough Matt could use it when the cantankerous ancient wand usually didn't like anyone to touch it, that was about all though.

He wasn't even sure he could use it anymore. It had let him--literally it had let him use it when he'd been a kid but the wand hadn't been happy about it. If he hadn't been a direct descendant of the wands original owner and a parseltongue he doubted that it would have done anything but cause explosions like it did when anyone else touched it.

He mostly inherited keeping of it because he wouldn't get blown up if he did for some godforsaken reason touch it. The wand tolerated kids under ten or so if they got into things they shouldn't, older than that, hell no. That Matt had been able to use it up til he was about sixteen or seventeen and really had some control that he wasn't having "accidents" had cemented the thing was his, mostly because no one else wanted to deal with it.

He'd learned what he had to, enough to control the spectacular accidents he'd had as a teen. He stayed off most Wizards radar first by the wardings and whatever Uncle Alejandro and the cuandero had done when he was small. Lara had been the one that came up with working more into his tattoos. She couldn't do much with a wand, but potions and paints were another story.

Uncle Alejandro had taught her what he could and the rest she'd learned on her own. Salem had declared her "magically retarded", not a squib but unteachable. Arizona had decided they could probably adjust her to wand work, as long as she didn't study potions. Her parents had flat out refused to send her to the school near Coatzacoalcos in Mexico.

While Coatzacoalcos' school would have been good for Lara magically, it was in Mexico. There'd been some uproar or something about the time Lara was ten that had been the deal breaker. Some nut of a dark wizard looking for certain talents, and killing a few who got in the way and a few more who might have had the talents but probably didn't.

His mother had determinedly shushed everyone when subjects of magic schools came up, and well, nearly everything to do with the Wizarding world. Most of the family was more than happy to oblige since the Wizarding world had so little to do with them, even with the streaks of talent that ran through the family.

Uncle Alejandro and Matt might be the only two who qualified as full out Wizards, even if Matt was largely untrained but they were hardly the only ones with some kind of magic. Lara's inability to use a wand something akin to magical dyslexia, but she was powerful in a subtle way--his tattoos attested to that. The paintings and decorated flower pots and knicknacks in the houses and apartments of every member of the family that doubled as wardings were Lara's doing, taught by their grandmother, who was something the same but not so powerful as Lara. Lara's daughter Elena was a bit of a Seer. She dreamed crap more than had visions.

Matt was pretty sure Elena's little boy, who was almost one now, was at least going to be something close to a Wizard. Kid had magic, whether it was going to be teachable like Uncle Alejandro or not was another story. There were a few others. Aunt Ramona and her way with plants. His cousin Julio who had what their grandmother had always claimed were "healing hands". Not all that powerful but he could make Aunt Josefa's arthritis flare ups ease up, which was easier on everyone's ears and nerves. (Aunt Josefa was crabby and bordering on mean when she felt good. When she was hurting, you wanted to run and hide.) Nothing teachable, nothing that counted as Wizard or Witch by the way the Wizarding world accounted for things, but there were some, a talent here and there that made the Wizard or Witch that showed up every generation or two easy enough to spot and known what they were.

"How did Squirrel and Shiny One know you could speak to snakes?"

Alice was a smart kid. Too smart sometimes. Matt didn't use magic. Too damn dangerous, he didn't know enough and he didn't want the attention either.

"Soot. Mikey's Dragon. I could talk to him," Matt sighed. "It kind of happened. Just an accident."

"Dragon's do not speak snake." Alice frowned.

"They don't? Sounded like Snake to me," Matt frowned.

"No. Dragons speak Dragon."

"You ever met a dragon, kid? How do you know?"

"I just do. Snakes speak Snake. Dragons speak Dragon. Is like you speak one People with Squirrel, Shiny One, Rumbly, Tall One, Skinny, Smiley and Shouty. And speak another People with the old woman who smells hot."

"It sounded like Snake to me," Matt insisted, really not wanting to think about the possibility of having a second talent. Alice made a bit of sense, the old woman who smells hot being Aunt Josefa and the eye-burning linement she about bathed in, who also flat out refused to speak English, or acknowledge she understood a word of English. She could, she proved it often enough by butting into English conversations and telling everyone they were wrong in Spanish.

Alice shook her head.

"Let's just get some sleep, huh?"

"Dragons don't speak snake," she said stubbornly.

"Soot was a baby. He didn't speak much for Dragon. Maybe he learned Snake from talking to me?"

"Maybe," Alice said doubtfully.

"Let's get some sleep, kid. Gonna be a long day again today. Tour's almost over though Thank God. Frank's getting way too wired."

"Squirrel should not be spawning! One Squirrel is enough."

Matt laughed. "Jamia will keep Frank and the kid in line. You sound like Brian."

"Shouty is right sometimes, just loud."

Matt stroked his finger over her head. "Go to sleep, kid."

"No fair using magic," Alice mumbled groggily, laying her head down and out like a light in a second.

Magic...Crap. Time for another tattoo when he got home. He'd have to call Lara in the morning--or later today rather. So much for sleep.