It's been a while. Sorry. Life is busy.

Chapter 4: The Keeper of the Grounds

BOOM! The person outside knocked again. Javier jerked up so quickly he tumbled off the couch and onto Alfred. The door shook again and he latched onto the other boy, wide eyes staring at the door in fright.

BOOM! went the door and the two boys screamed. There were a crash from the bedroom and Uncle Miguel suddenly burst into the room wearing only his boxers, his untied hair flinging around his face as he skidded to a stop beside the boys. Alfred couldn't decide if he was more frightened of the mysterious knocking, the sight of his uncle in his boxers, or the fact that his uncle was currently wielding a bazooka and attempting to aim it at the door, though surprise and sleepiness seemed to be throwing his aim off.

Where the hell, Alfred thought wildly, had he been storing that thing? He was fairly certain he hadn't seen it shoved in the trunk of their mini-van; something like that was pretty hard to conceal.

"Quien esta alli?" Uncle Miguel yelled, still wielding the bazooka menacingly. There was no answer, not even another knock. Uncle Miguel paused for a moment, not daring to lower his weapon; Alfred and Javier, still clinging tightly onto each other, leaned forward, peaking their heads out from behind the massive form of Miguel.

"Who's there?" Uncle Miguel called again, this time in English. "I'm armed," he declared, waving the bazooka a little in a threatening manner, as if the mysterious knocker could somehow see it through the door. Alfred watched its movement with wide eyes, edging away from his uncle. (But not in fright, obviously - heroes were never frightened.)

It was silent beyond the door, and the three in the room wondered if perhaps the mysterious knocker had left. And then -

SMASH!

The door flew off its hinges and crashed to the floor a few feet away. Javier screeched and dove behind the couch, yanking Alfred with him, who peaked his head back over to spot the intruder.

A tall dark-skinned woman stood in the doorway, brown eyes flashing dangerously from behind long black hair adorned with feathers and beads of all colors; in her left hand was a long walking stick, blue clothed rapped around the top to hold on a number of different feathers. Her eyes traveled across them one by one slowly, examining them, before they stopped on Alfred and seemed to light up - she did not smile, but seemed to relax slightly at the sight of him.

Ignoring the missing door, she stepped into the shack and paused a few feet from Uncle Miguel, where she stopped to straighten the strange cloak around her shoulders (which, if Alfred wasn't mistaken, was made of dark brown fur) and push her hair from her face, looking completely unconcerned about the bazooka still aimed her way.

Uncle Miguel, Alfred, and Javier stared in shock. Finally satisfied with her appearance, the woman looked up, annoyance flickering across her face as she asked, "Do you have any brandy?"

"What?" Uncle Miguel asked, the word hardly more than a gasp.

"Or another drink, maybe?" the woman asked. "It's been a long journey and I'm none too picky right now."

It was at this moment that Aunt Maria made her appearance; she stepped into the room, blinking sleepily. Taking in the sight of the strange, new woman, her husband clenching a bazooka between his hands, and the boys quivering behind the couch, she waited approximately five seconds before pivoting on her heel and heading straight back towards the bedroom. "It's too late to deal with this," they heard her mutter as she disappeared.

When Aunt Maria had disappeared into the bedroom, the strange woman calmly stepped past Uncle Miguel - still frozen in absolute confusion - and stopped before Alfred. She set the walking stick on the ground and grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet; resting her hands on his shoulders, she eyed him up and down, a slight smile tugging on the corners of her lips.

"Alfred," she said. "You've grown. Though I suppose it is to be expected; it's been eleven years."

Javier scrambled away from Alfred quickly, getting as far from the woman as he possibly could. Traitor, Alfred wanted to hiss at him, but his mouth didn't seem to want to cooperate. His brain was still processing what she had said and trying to make sense of it.

Uncle Miguel seemed to suddenly gain control of himself. He whipped around to face the woman and Alfred, a growl rumbling in his throat. "Get off my property or I'll remove you myself," he threatened, raising his weapon.

Once again it seemed the weapon had no affect on the woman; no fear seemed to grip her heart, and she merely raised an eyebrow. "Do not order me to do anything," she warned before picking the walking stick up off the ground and tapping the bazooka with it. And suddenly - no bazooka.

A scream rose from the corner - Javier, Alfred assumed, but he didn't turn to check. His eyes stayed locked on the strange stick in the woman's hands. (He needed to unlock a weapon like that in Call of Duty, he decided. That way when Javier occasionally let him play he could just make all of Javier's weapons disappear.)

Uncle Miguel looked first at the empty air between his hands, then to the walking stick, before letting out an impressive string of Spanish curses.

"Well," the woman muttered, before turning back to Alfred. "Hua Kola, Alfred," she said, nodding her head towards him. The words coming out of her mouth were foreign; Alfred simply stared at her in confusion, mouth gaping. Though the following words were perhaps more strange than that: "Happy Birthday."

The polite thing to say, of course, would have been 'thank you'; instead, Alfred leapt away from the woman, made the cross motions he had seen in The Exorcist, and shouted, "Who are you? How do you know it's my birthday?"

The woman only laughed at him. "My name is Awenasa. I'm the Keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hetalia." She clapped her hands together, looking around. "Well, I don't know about you, but I really would like that drink. Perhaps a snack as well." She sat down on the lumpy couch and pulled a whicker basket from under her cloak, one that Alfred was quite sure had not been there before.

Alfred watched her warily as she removed a few apples and a bowl a grapes from it, along with a bottle of amber liquid that she took a few swigs of before setting aside, and a plate of some sort of meat - it looked like turkey.

His mind warned him that this woman was mysterious and possibly dangerous - maybe she was an alien; or maybe a humanoid robot sent from the future to destroy him - but his stomach was rather empty and was complaining quite loudly at the sight of food. In the end, his stomach triumphed over his logic, and he sat down beside Awenasa, digging into the turkey she handed him.

Uncle Miguel on the other hand took a step back. "Don't eat anything she gives you, Javier," he warned his son.

"It wasn't for him anyway," Awenasa informed him.

"Sho," Alfred asked, his mouth full of turkey. "Wafs Hethala?"

Awenasa's brown eyes glared down at him. "Swallow and then talk," she instructed and the intensity in her glare made him listen.

"So," Alfred said again once he had swallowed, "What's Hetalia?"

There was silence in response to his question; Alfred looked up from his meal to see Awenasa staring at him in absolute shock. "You don't know what Hetalia is? I knew you weren't receiving your letters, but -" She cut off, sending a glare Uncle Miguel's way. Turning back to Alfred she asked, "Didn't you ever wonder where your parents learned everything?"

Alfred wasn't sure if he was more thrown by 'your parents' or 'learned' - the first because he had never heard much about his parents other than Aunt Maria's explanation of their deaths and the second because the fact that this Hetalia was meant for teaching meant it wouldn't be very cool or interesting at all, even if its teachers randomly burst threw your door and made bazookas disappear into thin air.

"Learned what?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow and taking another large bite of turkey.

"Learned what?" Awenasa repeated, her voice a quiet hiss. Alfred looked at her in alarm. She was staring at Uncle Miguel with a look of such anger that he felt compelled to slide to the edge of the couch and away from her. (He took the plate of turkey with him.)

"You mean to tell me," Awenasa continued, her eyes glaring holes into Uncle Miguel who glared right back. "That this boy doesn't know a thing?"

Alfred felt insulted; he may not have been the brightest crayon in the box, but he certainly wasn't stupid - he was a hero, after all, and the hero had to know how to outsmart any supervillians who came his way. "Hey!" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet and placing his hands on his hips. "I know things! I know, like…math and stuff! And I've never gotten an F!" A few Ds, maybe, but hey: D was for Dynamite, right?

"I mean about our world," Awenasa explained, her expression softening as she looked over at him. "Your world. Your parent's world."

Alfred stared at her dumbly. "I thought there was only one world." Unless, of course, she really was an alien; which would be pretty awesome, actually, as long as she didn't try to eat him.

"But certainly you know about your parents, right?"

"I know they died in a car crash."

"A car crash?" Awenasa whispered. Alfred nodded. She stood to her feet; she was taller than Uncle Miguel by a few inches and she looked down on him. Alfred could see that her hands were shaking and suddenly, she exploded.

Not literally, of course. Just in the insanely-mad-and-screaming kind of way. (Alfred was a little disappointed; the other kind would have been more interesting.)

"YOU TOLD HIM THEY DIED IN A CAR CRASH?" she screamed. "You didn't tell him a thing - a single thing?"

"OF COURSE NOT!" Uncle Miguel yelled back, glaring right back at the taller woman. "And I forbid you to tell him anything!"

"Forbid me?" Awenasa asked, scowling. "You can't forbid me to do anything." She spun to face Alfred. "You're a wizard, Alfred."

Alfred stared at her. Silence filled the room and he waited for the cameramen to jump out, the Punked crew to grab him and tell him this was all a joke. No cameras appeared.

"I'm a what?" he asked finally.

Awenasa pulled something from her cloak and handed it to him; he looked down at it, realizing it was a letter - just like all the millions of letters that had come for him. His letter. And he finally was going to get to read it.

He tore into it eagerly, opening it and looking at what was written:

HETALIA SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Romulus Vargas

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, International Confed. of Wizards, Former Empire)

Dear Mr. Jones,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hetalia School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Yao Wang,

(Deputy Headmaster)

"Ummmm," Alfred said, quite eloquently after he had finished reading. He didn't quite know what to say; usually when that happened, he said something entirely random and off-topic, but at the moment, he couldn't even bring himself to do that.

A hand closed down on his shoulder and yanked him backwards. It was Uncle Miguel, who stepped in between him and Awenasa. "He's not going," he hissed, looking very angry indeed.

"And I'd love to see a Muggle like you stop him," Awenasa said, a slight grin curling the corners of her mouth upwards.

"A what?" Alfred asked.

"A Muggle," she explained, "is a nonmagical person, such as your aunt, uncle, and quivering cousin."

"We swore when we took him in that we'd stop all that ridiculous magic talk," growled Uncle Miguel.

"You knew?" Alfred gasped, looking up at his Uncle in shock. "That I'm a wizard?" He very much wished at that moment that he also had a walking stick so he could make Uncle Miguel disappear into thin air. He was a wizard and hadn't been told? He had magic powers of awesomeness and had never been informed?

"Of course we knew! That mother of your's, my wife's sister, was a freak! And that husband of hers, too! We almost didn't take you in, boy, remember that. We didn't have to give you a place to stay after your parent's went and blew themselves to smithereens!"

Alfred's mouth dropped nearly to the floor. "Blew up?" he chocked. "How?"

His question seemed to make Awenasa even angrier. "This is an outrage," she snarled. "Alfred Jones not knowing his own story when every single child in our world does!"

"They do?" Alfred gasped, a smile lighting up his face. He was famous!

"Yes, and I suppose I should explain." Awenasa sighed, rubbing at her shoulder irritably before pushing Uncle Miguel out of the way and sitting on the couch; she motioned for Alfred to take a seat next to her and he did. "It begins with a wizard who went bad. Evil. A man named…." she paused, frowning. "Well no one likes to say his name anymore. They're all still scared. Everyone just calls him You-Know-Who." She hesitated again, eyeing him before sighing. "But I suppose you have to know - Russia."

Alfred stared at her, blinked, and then leaned back and blinked again. "Russia is a country." She nodded. "Not a person." She nodded again.

"I realize, but that's what he called himself."

"So…what do magic people say when they're talking about Russia?" Heck, what did Russian magic people say when talking about their home?

"Other things. They describe it usually."

Okay, Alfred decided, magic people were weird.

"Anyway, this wizard, about twenty years ago now, started looking for followers. He got them, too. Some were afraid. Some wanted power; and that's something he certainly had. Power."

"So he's like a supervillian," Alfred said eagerly. A supervillian named Russia. Okay, yeah. Still weird.

"Only worse, because it was real life and not a cartoon," Awenasa scolded, narrowing her eyes at him. "It was a horrible time. Dark days. You didn't know who to trust; terrible things happened. He was taking over and murdering witches and wizards right and left. Some because they stood up to him and some because they were in the way of what he wanted. One of the only safe places was Hetalia. The headmaster, Romulus, was probably the only one Russia was afraid of.

"Your mother and father were good. I suppose. I liked your mother well enough but your father got on my nerves. Actually, I disliked him greatly. Not that I would have wished for anything bad to happen to him," she added quickly. "For some reason, and no one's really sure why, he showed up in the village you were living in on Halloween ten years ago when you were just a year old, and," she paused here, watching Alfred.

"He killed them. Just murdered them," she said finally. "But the biggest mystery of all - he tried to kill you too and couldn't do it. Couldn't kill you. But the curse he used left that mark on your forehead," she said, pointing.

Alfred reached up to touch the star-shaped scar on his head. "He couldn't kill me?" he asked, amazed.

"He couldn't. And that's why you're famous. No one ever lived when he decided to kill them, no matter how powerful. And yet you, a one year old child, could not be killed. And not only that, but after that night he disappeared. Vanished. Some say he died. Absolute buffalo if you ask me. I don't believe he was human enough to die. Others think he's waiting, biding his time but I don't think so. A lot of us think he lost his powers somehow and he's too weak to do anything now. Most of his followers repented and came back to our side."

Hear that world? Alfred thought. Never doubt Alfred F. Jones' amazing heroic abilities. Defeating dark wizards before I was out of diapers.

"He's not going." Both Alfred and Awenasa looked over at Uncle Miguel in surprise; they had completely forgotten that he was still there.

"Of course he is," Awenasa argued. "He's Alfred Jones. He can't not go to Hetalia. And a Muggle like you is not going to stop him."

"I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT MAGICIAN TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!" Uncle Miguel bellowed.

Awenasa leapt to her feet and raised the walking stick level to Uncle Miguel's face. "And I will not listen to you insult Rome!"

She flicked the stick in Javier's direction. Light yellow and white feathers sprouted from his skin in patches, his nose lengthened into a shape that was almost a beak but not quite there, and when he opened his mouth to scream, he sounded rather like a chicken.

Uncle Miguel let out a roar, ran to the other side of the room when Javier was standing frozen in shock, and dragged him into the bedroom. Moments later they heard loud, hysterical Spanish in a the shrill voice of his aunt.

"Oh dear. I shouldn't have lost my temper," Awenasa said after a moment, though she didn't sound very sorry, nor did she look very concerned as she took a seat on the couch again and made herself comfortable. "I'm not actually supposed to do magic and that's the second time since coming here."

"Why not?" Alfred asked, eyeing the closed bedroom door before sitting next to her.

"Well," she said, pursing her lips and eyeing him. "I was expelled. They snapped my wand. I kept the halves in secret and had them put into this walking stick. I didn't have a place to go, though, so Romulus Vargas let me stay and care for the grounds. Good man, Rome."

"Rome?" Alfred asked. What was it with these magic folk and using places as names?

"It's a nickname," Awenasa said simply.

"Why were you expelled?" Alfred asked, curiously. He wondered if she picked a fight with someone; somehow it seemed like the sort of thing she would do. (She probably won, too.)

"It's getting awfully late," Awenasa said in reply. "I for one, would like to get some sleep. We're getting up early to get your things."

Awenasa - a Cherokee name meaning "my home". I thought it would be a good name for a nation.
Quien esta alli? - Who's there?
Hua Kola - Lakota for 'hello'