All According to Plan

by LysandraLeigh

Thirteen-year-old Bella Black intended to go back in time to start a war in service to her patron Power. Ritual magic goes awry and she finds herself in 1993, faced with a failing House of Black, an insane alter ego, and a Dark Lord on the rise. Chaos ensues. Title drop. (A collaboration by LeighaGreene and inwardtransience)

26. Damn it, Lyra!

It was a few days into Easter break when Hermione finally worked up the nerve to talk to her mother.

Not that Easter actually happened during "Easter" break this year — it turned out, what mages called Easter and what muggles called Easter were completely different holidays. Which should have been obvious, since Christianity was practically nonexistent in magical Britain. Far as she could tell, the magical holiday of Easter was a holdover from pagan times, a festival around the equinox presumably somehow related to a fertility goddess of some sort, judging by the traditions associated with the Easter she was more familiar with that clearly had no relation to Christianity at all. (Hermione would like to hear someone try to come up with a reasonable explanation for what rabbits and eggs have to do with the Resurrection, because that made absolutely no sense.) Of course, the vast majority of mages weren't actually pagans any more — she'd heard there were some people who still held to ancient Celtic traditions, but they were a very small minority — but that wasn't really the point. The point was that "Easter" break extended from the nineteenth through the twenty-seventh of March, but the Christian Easter this year was on April third.

Hermione still wasn't sure why the name was the same in both Britains, considering it was quite obvious they weren't even close to the same holiday, but that wasn't particularly important.

She found her mother sitting with a novel in the library, which came as absolutely no surprise. She was in there rather a lot, after all. Hermione's parents had had a library for, well, longer than they'd had Hermione, certainly. (Some of her earliest memories involved picking through books pulled off one shelf or another that were honestly far above her reading level at the time, but books for children were boring.) They were both literature snobs of slightly varying brands — Dad could talk about French Romantic and Modernist authors for hours, and Mum's tastes were (unsurprisingly) more American, mostly focused on naturalist authors from the first half of the century, with a bit of dark romanticism on the side. Of course, they also both read a fair bit of horrible genre fiction, which they claimed they only enjoyed ironically, but Hermione didn't buy it, they were just nerds. There were also plenty of nonfiction texts filling the shelves hiding every inch of wall, covering everything from medicine to history to psychology to philosophy, but she honestly caught them reading fiction more than anything else.

Many people had commented on just how peculiar her bibliophilia from such a young age was, but it was just to be expected, really, given that her parents were intense bibliophiles themselves. It would have been 'peculiar' for her to have not turned out the way she did. She was more geared toward nonfiction, true, but still.

Mum didn't even look up as Hermione entered the room, absorbed in... Was that Louis Aragon? Mum hated Surrealism. Okay, then. "Mum? Can I talk to you about something?"

"Hmm?" Mum glanced up, blinked at her a couple times. "Oh, sure." Mum set her book aside next to a cup of tea — which, knowing Mum, was probably still half-full and long cold. (She had a tendency to get absorbed in whatever she was reading and forget she'd made a drink.) One corner of her lips lifting in a light smirk, she said, "I could use the break, honestly — Aragon's surrealist works are a slog to get through. I have no idea how your father can read that drivel."

Hermione shrugged — she was just as hopeless to explain Dad's...less conventional tastes. (Honestly, there was quite a bit about both her parents she'd have trouble explaining, they could be sort of weird.) Once she was settled in the overly-comfortable armchair across from Mum's, Hermione turned her thoughts back to the topic at hand.

And abruptly realised she had absolutely no idea how to ask what she wanted to. She meant, the entire subject was bloody confusing, it was hard to get her thoughts straight on it to begin with, and she wasn't sure how much she wanted Mum to know...

Smiling to herself a little, Mum took the opportunity to retie her ponytail. It did tend to get away from her sometimes, but it wasn't nearly as bad as Hermione's. (Which she tried to take as a good sign, she was pretty sure she'd inherited it.) After a few more moments of Hermione thinking and fidgeting, but somehow still not managing to figure out the hell she was supposed to go about this conversation, Mum let out a short huff, trying and failing to hide her amusement. "Do I have to guess?"

Hermione sighed. "It's just... It's just really awkward."

"I had picked up that much." Mum reached for her cup, took a sip — then she made a face, lip curling with disgust, glaring down into the cup. Shaking her head to herself, she put it back, perhaps more firmly than necessary. "If it helps, I think I can guess what this is about, at least in broad strokes. You are getting to that age."

"Yes, well..." Hermione fought a flash of embarrassment, mostly succeeded. Honestly, she was being so ridiculous, why couldn't she just talk like a normal person and not be so neurotic all the time?

(She really did wish she could just not care the way Lyra did sometimes, Zabini hadn't been wrong about that.)

"It's just, what if you, er..." For some reason, Hermione had trouble even saying it in the general, even though Mum likely had no idea who she was talking about, she was so ridiculous. "Okay, there's this...person." Oh God, trying to avoid using gender-specific terms was just going to make this conversation even more awkward. "I think I might...you know. Kind of."

Mum's lips twitched again, but she was obviously trying to not be annoying, she suppressed what was probably a smirk as well as she could. "Yes, Hermione, I know. You're old enough to start thinking about dating now. This doesn't exactly come as a shock. So, how about we skip over the awkward part and straight to whatever it was you wanted my advice on, shall we?"

Yes, well. Hermione realised she was being ridiculous, she couldn't help it. This was just...really uncomfortable. "I just... Can you still, you know, fancy someone, but think they're a horrible person at the same time, or am I just going mad?"

That actually seemed to surprise Mum, for a few seconds she just stared blankly at her. "Well... Sure, I suppose. That sort of thing happens all the time — attraction is a complicated business, and sometimes it just works out that way. Especially, well, depending on what you mean by horrible person, it might not actually be unusual at all."

Her eyes narrowing in a frown, Hermione said, "What do you mean?"

"I don't mean to be overly patronising, Hermione, but you do have a tendency toward hyperbole. I mean, just because a boy annoys you sometimes, doesn't make—"

"They're not just annoying. They really are a horrible person." Not as horrible as she'd thought for a little bit there, but Hermione wasn't convinced her own moral standards weren't just loosening, which was a kind of scary thought.

"If you say so." Mum was managing to keep it off her face, but that was definitely laughter in her eyes. "I can't say I can judge, honestly. I remember some of the things I said about certain people back in high school. If my grandmother had heard me using language like that, well..."

And Mum still wasn't taking this seriously. This conversation was bloody pointless if Mum wasn't taking this seriously. Trying to keep her irritation off her voice, and probably failing, Hermione blurted out, "She's literally a psychopath, Mum."

"Really, Hermione, that might be going a little..." She trailed off, eyes going slightly out of focus for just a second. A rather odd, thoughtful look overtaking her face, Mum turned back to Hermione, her head tilting slightly. "Are we talking about Lyra?"

Oh...shite. Had Hermione slipped on the pronouns? She hadn't even noticed... Trying to shoot for an offended tone, she said, "No, Mum, we're not talking about Lyra, honestly." She wasn't sure she was pulling it off very well. It probably didn't help that her face felt unusually warm, stupid traitorous capillaries...

Mum reached for her cup again, seemingly trying to use it to hide her smile, though Hermione still saw the laughter dancing in her eyes. Also seemingly, she'd forgotten her tea was cold and gross — she gave the cup another exasperated glare before again setting it aside. "You never did develop a talent for lying, you know."

Hermione glared at her.

The tiniest shade of frustration (or offense, maybe?) slipping into her voice, Mum said, "You don't have to try to hide that you have a crush on a girl from me, Hermione — I don't care about that. Did you really think I would?" Mum's accent had slipped, more noticeably American than she usually allowed, which was weird, that hardly ever happened anymore.

"Er..." When Hermione thought about it, no, not really. Honestly, she wasn't certain...the subject had ever come up. Mum had never really struck her as the sort of person who got worked up about who other people wanted to date, it should have been obvious she wouldn't care, but, well...Hermione still thought it was a bit weird. Not bad, just, before Lyra, she hadn't even considered the possibility. (And she'd spent most of the past three years in Magical Britain, where homosexuality was considered normal, if not particularly common). "No, sorry, I just— I didn't want to talk about that."

Mum sighed, head tipping to the side a bit, one hand rising to rub at her temple. "You really don't have to apologise, Hermione, it's a perfectly understandable concern. I'm sorry I snapped at you."

"It's fine." Hermione muttered. She was being a bit ridiculous today, getting impatient with her wasn't unreasonable — she was getting impatient with herself, even. And anyway, half of her conversations with Lyra at some point involved her getting irritated with Hermione for not knowing something. She was rather accustomed to being the target of impatience lately.

(She wondered what that said about her, that Lyra was annoyed with her so often, and Hermione was pretty sure she still liked her anyway. Probably nothing good.)

"But your father and I will always love you, no matter what. And no matter who you fancy." There was a peculiar note of irony in Mum's voice as she said that, as though there were some joke in there left unsaid.

Hermione couldn't help the thought that, if Mum had any idea what Lyra was actually like, she wouldn't be so quick to say it didn't matter. But that was a silly, useless thought. Taking in a long breath through her nose, she tried to force down the anxiety tightening her chest — it was just Mum, she didn't have to be so nervous over this, she was being ridiculous, honestly... "Well, um, yes. It, it is Lyra, that we're talking about." Christ, that shouldn't have been so hard to say...

And, of course, Mum just looked amused with her. It was obvious she was trying not to, the expression limited to just the slightest quirk of her lips, but she could still tell. "I can't say I saw this coming, but I can't say I'm that surprised, either. You do talk about her quite a lot. Your letters these days are a good eighty per cent whatever the two of you have gotten up to in the last week. You hardly ever wrote nearly that much about Harry and Ron."

Hermione was far too aware of the warmth on her own face, which, of course, was itself embarrassing, which just made the blushing worse, and she hated this conversation already, and they hadn't even really gotten to the important stuff yet! But anyway, "Yeah, I guess." In her defence, she did spend more time with Lyra on a regular basis than she had the boys, but she didn't have much choice in the matter — with the time-turning, she didn't have a whole lot else to do, and she had to be careful the wrong people didn't see her, realise she was in two places at once. Sticking close to Lyra was just the rational thing to do.

Yes. Entirely rational. Mum really didn't have to smirk at her like that.

"But, okay, I've been..." Hermione broke again to take another long, centering breath. "I've been...leaving things out, of my letters."

One eyebrow slowly tracked up Mum's forehead. "What sort of things?"

A whole bloody lot of things, actually. She had told Mum her roommates were awful, though she'd downplayed just how awful. And, well, she'd also downplayed the whole...ridiculous magical racism thing, just how horrible Malfoy and his idiot Death Eater wannabe sycophants could be at times. (She wasn't even certain the boys knew the worst of it, Malfoy's cronies were usually smart enough to not hex her in front of them.) Of course, her parents had looked into the history of magical Britain a bit, since they'd first learned it existed — a fair number of the books in here were from Flourish and Blotts now — so they knew this particular prejudice existed, they knew the general idea about Voldemort and the Death Eaters and all that.

But, most texts that tackled the subject tended to take a...sort of establishment narrative, would be the way to say it. She meant, they went out of their way to use as neutral of language as possible, to not risk offending anyone with too much money or power. Even ignoring how much they tended to skirt around the whole genocide topic, the ones she'd read hardly even mentioned the Death Eaters who'd lied or bribed their way out of Azkaban. Many of those Death Eaters were even in very influential positions in magical society. From what she knew her parents had read, they probably didn't provide a perspective that could give them a comprehensive view of what it was like to be a muggleborn in Britain — even at this point, Hermione doubted she knew the full picture of it, but her parents certainly knew far less.

Honestly, she preferred it that way. It made things...simpler.

In the interest of making things simpler, Hermione had just...not told them about the more absurd — and absurdly dangerous — things that went on at Hogwarts. The troll, she hadn't told them about that. Or the very real possibility that a professor was trying to kill Harry. Or really anything about that whole debacle with Quirrell and the Stone. She'd simply said their Defence professor had died at the end of the year of some degenerative disease, she hadn't seen any reason they needed to know more than that.

She hadn't mentioned their detention in the Forest which, really, she thought might be the worst debacle of the whole year. The other awful things that had happened her first year, those could be written off as a fluke, a madman causing far more trouble than would usually be expected, something external to the institution of Hogwarts itself. But that? They'd been sent somewhere they otherwise weren't allowed to set foot in, the detention extending long after curfew...as a punishment for being out in the corridors after curfew, which was ridiculous on its own, but what they'd actually been doing?

The number of things in the world which would both be willing and able to kill or even slightly injure a unicorn are very, very few. None of them are the sort of thing anyone with an ounce of sense should be exposing children to. Honestly, they were lucky it turned out to be a critically weakened Voldemort — most of the other possibilities would have just killed them and moved on.

And things had somehow just gotten worse in second year. There were her suspicions about Harry's home life. (She did feel a little guilty over not telling someone about that, but she just knew Harry would be furious if he found out she'd gone talking about it behind his back, she couldn't bring herself to.) The whole thing with the Chamber was, just, awful. There were a few months that year that Hermione had been in constant fear for her life — and she'd, just, stayed there, and not said anything. She had no idea how her parents would react to that if they knew.

Hell, her parents had no idea she'd been petrified for a couple months. She'd never told them — perhaps more concerningly, nobody at the school had informed them either, Hermione still wasn't sure how to feel about that. (Had they not told any of the petrified students' parents? She knew they'd contacted the Weasleys practically the moment they'd figured out Ginny was missing. If they hadn't all been muggleborns, would something, something actually effective, have been done? She didn't like to think about it.) Far as she could tell, Mum and Dad assumed she'd been having some...she didn't know, ridiculous teenage silliness moment, had just been ignoring them for one reason or another. When Hermione had started writing them again, they hadn't even really asked, just...pretended it hadn't happened, that everything was fine.

She had been asked, multiple times, why she'd decided to stay at Hogwarts over Christmas, which she'd obviously had to lie about. She wasn't certain they even believed her excuses about experiencing magical holidays and keeping Harry company and so forth — they hadn't made a point about it, but she had the feeling they thought she had...other reasons, for not wanting to come home. And she let them think it, which she did feel rather guilty about, but what could she do about that?

And this year, there was a lot she'd been leaving out about this year. Though, in a way, it wasn't even as bad as the previous two years — by the standards Hogwarts had previously established, it was rather calm this year. There was that time Sirius Black had broken into the school, which had been sort of scary, but even at the time Lyra (and Harry) had been insisting he was innocent anyway, so it'd ended up more confusing than anything. (Of course, the Prophet had since heavily implied without outright claiming that he was legitimately innocent, but that wasn't really the point.) From a certain perspective, this was actually the tamest year yet, so far as the potentially concerning things going on she felt she had to hide from her parents.

But, in other ways, it was the worst. Just being at Hogwarts seemed less dangerous than it had in previous years (the dementors floating around notwithstanding), but Hermione herself was getting into far more...questionable activities. Okay, she had done unethical and sometimes even illegal things before — setting Snape's robes on fire and impersonating unconsenting people with polyjuice stood out — but she'd had what had seemed at the time to be perfectly reasonable justifications for the extreme measures she'd been taking. She could at least make an argument that she'd had no choice in the matter, she'd had to do it to protect herself or Harry. Her parents might not necessarily agree, if she ever explained it to them, but she was certain they'd be more understanding than they might be otherwise. This year, though...

If the 'authorities' ever found out exactly what she'd been studying lately, Hermione could, quite literally, spend the rest of her natural life in prison. Estimating from Lyra's description of the censorship laws in this country, Hermione had been idly tallying what her sentence would be if they were ever caught — she'd stopped counting back in February, when she'd passed a hundred and fifty years and decided counting any further was just absurd.

Of course, it was even more absurd that just reading books was enough to theoretically get someone a life sentence, but that wasn't really the point.

Her parents might be on board with that if she explained just how stupid it was — they didn't have any more favourable an opinion on censorship in general than she did. But, well, it was more complicated than just the law-breaking.

If her parents understood Lyra as she did, she rather doubted they'd be comfortable with it. With her, and Hermione spending so much time with her.

But, if Mum didn't understand Hermione's doubts about this at all, then there was no bloody point to this conversation. So Hermione had to explain the problem somehow, but she had absolutely no idea how to get the point across without making Lyra sound completely terrifying. (Because, objectively, she sort of was.) She struggled over it for what felt like several minutes — though, it probably wasn't nearly that long, given that Mum never said anything. "Lyra is kind of... Well, she's certainly not normal. She can be sort of scary at times, honestly."

An odd look came over Mum's face, one Hermione couldn't quite identify. "You did say she's a psychopath a moment ago. I take it you don't feel you're exaggerating."

"I'm really not."

"She doesn't..." Suddenly, Mum was the one looking uncomfortable, hesitating for a brief moment with a wince. "If you're concerned she might hurt you..."

"Oh, no, I'm not worried about that, really. Actually, she's said outright that, basically, she's going out of her way to be nice to me — or, as close as she can possibly get, Lyra Black doesn't really do nice. I mean—" Hermione let out a thick, frustrated sigh, eyes tipping up to the ceiling. "It's not like she normally goes around hurting people for fun or anything, it's nothing like that." At least, assuming acromantulae didn't count as people. "Or, not physically, anyway. I told you about Trelawney, right, the Divination professor?"

Mum nodded. "I recall the words 'fraud' and 'alcoholic' came up."

"Well, yes, that. Anyway, Lyra has apparently taken it upon herself to make all of Trelawney's predictions come true, just to mess with her. Usually this involves playing some kind of prank on whoever the prediction involves, which can range anywhere from completely inane, to...

"Okay, back in our first class, Trelawney said something about how in February the whole school would get a cold. Which is absurd to begin with, because, colds just happen in February, it doesn't take any special talent to realise that. But, Lyra decided to make sure it happened, and not just with some people, but the entire student body. So she invented a potion, had it slipped into the food somehow, so it got to everyone. For twenty-four hours, every single person in the school could speak and understand only one random language — and none of those languages were the same. I was stuck with Latin. I couldn't talk to anyone, I couldn't even read, because all of my books are in English, or French, which were suddenly foreign languages. It was very confusing.

"Anyway, that lasted for about a day, but when it wore off it gave the whole bloody school a cold. Well, not really a cold, but the symptoms of a cold, which is close enough. Which, I have absolutely no idea how she did that — there is such a thing as a multi-stage potion, where the metabolites themselves have their own effect, but that is seriously advanced stuff, and she apparently invented the potion herself. It's, just, that was an insane amount of effort to go through, just to mess with everyone's heads."

Annoyingly, Mum had a faint, hesitant sort of smile on her face, as though she were amused, albeit reluctantly. "That sort of dedication is rather impressive, when you think about it."

Hermione huffed — it was, yes, she couldn't even begin to guess how long it might have taken for Lyra to design that potion. But that really wasn't the point. "She just, she does things like that all the time, messes with people just for fun. That's what her being 'nice' to me means, she doesn't go out of her way to annoy me as much as she does other people — she still does, sometimes, just not as much. And, she doesn't care, at all, about what other people think of her, of the consequences of her own actions most of the time, even the law, if she has a good enough reason for breaking it, and doesn't think she'll get caught. There are a lot of, just, absurd things she's done over the year, if I were to try to explain them all we'd be here for hours.

"And I just... She just doesn't care, and sometimes I think she's rather a horrible person, but at the same time... It's not like she's ever actually hurt anyone, not really, and she's perfectly decent to me, for the most part... I do understand why she is the way she is, for the most part, but she still does scare me sometimes."

One eyebrow ticking up, Mum said, "She has a reason why, other than just to entertain herself?"

Hermione hesitated for a brief moment. Ordinarily, she wouldn't consider sharing something this...private, about another person, at least without their permission. But, well, unlike Harry, she highly doubted Lyra would actually care. "Er... Lyra was, um, abused, by her father, before she moved here."

She didn't know how to read that expression either. "How badly are we talking here?"

"Very. She has these scars all over her back, from curses, I think, she's covered with them. Some of the curses he used on her are illegal, so illegal he would have gotten a life sentence if anyone knew about it. And there was, um, sexual assault too, she said. And then there's also her, um, religious inclinations, I'm pretty sure that has an influence too."

That expression was far easier to interpret: a distant sort of horror, concern with slight traces of pity. (Hermione somehow knew Lyra would hate the pity more than anything.) Thankfully, Mum didn't ask after the abuse part, seemingly deciding to move on. "Religious inclinations?"

"Er, she worships chaos, basically. It's from a traditional polytheistic religion, long story." That wasn't entirely accurate — if Lyra, or that Nott kid, overheard her referring to the whole Powers thing like that, she'd probably get a rambling lecture about it — but the details weren't particularly important at the moment, she could pass that off for now. "Although, it isn't, just, chaos for the sake of chaos, it's more...morally ambivalent than that. Far as I can tell, when Lyra says 'chaos', she's actually referring to the absolute freedom to make choices without external coercion. Which, well, laws and social conventions by definition limit a person's freedoms — it's not a, say, negative interpretation of what 'chaos' means, if that makes sense. It's really more amoral than anything."

"I see how that could make things interesting." Mum, damn her, was looking amused again, a pert little smile that Hermione was finding disproportionately irritating. "And it does make perfect sense, when you think about it. It's not unusual that a person who was abused as a child might be attracted to a religion that emphasises personal freedoms."

"Yes, Lyra herself made that point, explicitly. That conversation was so uncomfortable, honestly, she's just unnervingly nonchalant about the whole thing."

Mum shrugged. "That's not entirely unexpected either. When it comes to serious trauma, a person is sometimes faced with the choice to either break under the strain or remake themselves into something that simply can't be broken. The latter sort of person can come off a bit... Well, I'm sure you're far more familiar with it than I am by now."

"Perhaps a little too familiar," Hermione muttered under her breath. Obviously loud enough that Mum heard it, a smile was twitching at her lips again. "And, okay, I get that, you know, she can't really help it. The way she is, she isn't like that on purpose. It's not, like, a choice to not care the way she does, to be so...so very Lyra all the time."

With a light, not quite fully-suppressed snort of laughter, Mum's face broke into a smirk.

"Oh, don't laugh at— I don't know what else to call it, okay? Lyra's, just, Lyra, if you ever meet her, you'll know exactly what I mean." Hermione would, of course, endeavor to ensure the day her parents ever did meet Lyra was delayed for as long as humanly possible. She really couldn't imagine that going well — and if it did...

Hermione would have absolutely no idea what to do with that.

"But, okay, the real problem is..." When it came time to put words to the actual dilemma — the one she'd been struggling with, off and on, for what felt like ages now — Hermione found she couldn't do it at all. "I mean, the... The I guess normal stuff, that isn't that much of a problem. I mean, it's still kind of weird. The, er, gay thing. I just... It's still kind of weird, you know?"

That hadn't been intended as an actual question that needed an answer, but apparently Hermione was stalling enough, trying to decide how to move on, that Mum decided to fill the silence. "I don't think it's weird at all, honestly."

"Yes, well..." Hermione did not want to have a conversation about sexuality with her mother, no thanks. "Anyway, that's not what I really wanted to talk about, and actually...going about it, I mean—" A nervous laugh cut her off in mid-syllable. "Lyra actually said I could just go ahead and k-kiss her whenever I want, which was just bloody weird, I don't..."

And there Mum went smirking at her again. That wasn't getting any less annoying the more she did it.

"Anyway, I just... I've been worried that..." Hermione let out a long, thin sigh. "Blaise referred to it as giving in to the madness."

One of Mum's eyebrows went up a tick. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It's hard to explain. She's just so... A lot of the insane things she does or thinks, if you can get her to sit still long enough to explain herself, it makes sense. Mostly. Even when it's something that's kind of awful, she's never doing it for, I don't know, bad reasons. Absurd reasons, sometimes, but there's at least a logic to it. And... Sometimes I just..." Hermione trailed off, running a hand through her hair — which she immediately regretted, it took far too long to get her fingers disentangled from the stupid mess on her head.

Thankfully, Mum was gracious enough to fill the awkward silence. "I don't see how that's a bad thing, really. I mean, it would be a lot worse if she didn't have rational reasons for doing things, wouldn't it?"

"Well, yes, but I..." She paused for a moment, biting at her lip. "It's really... I just... The way she can just, not care, about what people think of her, you know, or... Sometimes, I wish I could... I'm jealous of her sometimes, I think, for that, that she can just do and say what she wants and, just, not care what anyone thinks about it. And, and I worry that...well, that I'm giving in to the madness, I guess, that... I'm afraid that she's making me not care as much, about important things, and if I spend too much time with her, if I get too..."

"Important things?"

She let out a huff — she guessed it was only appropriate Mum didn't get what she was trying to say, Hermione hardly knew herself. Unfortunately, she couldn't use concrete examples of the ways Lyra has had her...wavering, that would lead to arguments about other things, which Hermione really didn't want to deal with. Things were just simpler if her parents were left ignorant of certain things.

Although...maybe there was a safe topic she could use, when she thought about it. She knew full well her parents hadn't any better of an opinion on the concept of censorship than she did. Maybe she could...

"There's... The magical government has laws about what sort of magic people are allowed to use, right? People have come up with some really nasty things over the millennia, some of the worse things I've heard about are just plain sickening. But it's not just using the magic that they've made laws about — it's illegal to study a lot of these magics too. And not just the really bad ones. Which magics are restricted and which aren't is completely arbitrary. European magical society is very much focused on wizardry — that is, wand magic — and there are entire branches of witchcraft that have gone out of use, some of them even banned. There are a few other forms of magic that are banned or restricted, like runic casting or blood magic and the like, for no real good reason that I can see. Some bureaucrat just decided they didn't like them, and added them to the list. Not just the use of these magics, just owning books that describe them, in specific enough of terms, just that can get you a prison sentence. Sometimes a very long one, depending which kind of magic we're talking about."

The expression was very mild, but Hermione was pretty sure that was a disapproving look on Mum's face, nose scrunched slightly with disdain. "I suppose Lyra doesn't think much of these censorship laws." The lack of judgement on her voice was rather clearer — it looked like this was a safe topic, then.

Hermione shook her head. "No, she really doesn't, repeatedly calls the whole idea idiotic and short-sighted. And, well, she... There's this bookstore, which acts as sort of a black market in restricted texts. Lyra's gotten dozens of books from there, and she's, well, bought some for me. Rather a lot, actually. We're careful — we have them hidden in an unused classroom far away from our dorm, and we use a few charms to prevent leaving forensic evidence they can use to identify us if anyone does stumble across it all — but, technically, it's very illegal. It's a dumb law, but it's still the law.

"And, see, that's the problem, really. Because Lyra's just dragged me along into her insanity, but it makes perfect sense much of the time, and I just— I wish I could do it all as easily as she can, just not care about it, just do what I like, and... And I'm worried, that, that I'm letting her...corrupt me, I guess? That doesn't sound right. I mean, I've always tried to do the right thing, you know, to follow the rules, but Lyra makes a bloody good point, sometimes the rules are stupid, and I don't have to all the time, and it's so damn tempting to just... And I don't know what's happening to me, and she's so bloody insane, and I'm afraid that she'll pull too far, and I won't even notice crossing a line that shouldn't be crossed, and I'll look back, and it'll be too late, and—"

Normally, Hermione might have been grateful that something came along to interrupt her directionless rambling. She was pretty sure she'd stopped making sense a little bit ago, she didn't even know what she was saying anymore, anything that got her to shut the hell up before she made her mother too worried would be welcome. But, well, some distractions were worse than others.

Hermione started, breaking off in mid-syllable, when the doorbell rang. There'd been absolutely no sign up to this point that she was any kind of Seer — in fact, Hermione still wasn't certain whether Seers actually existed — but all the same, she somehow knew. Dread lurching through her, like that instant just after missing a stair, she knew exactly what was about to happen.

A moment later, before Mum could ask what was wrong, Dad called from the front of the house, "Hermione, your friend is here!"

Crap.

Mum raised an eyebrow at her. "I wasn't aware you'd invited someone over today." Hermione was pretty sure she meant, I wasn't aware you had anyone to invite over. Which, she didn't, but that was still a nicer way to put it.

"I didn't," she said, feeling her face grow warm again, because there was only one person it could be, one friend who would decide to drop by uninvited, and how can her timing be this bad? Good? Argh!

(Who was she kidding, of course it just was, this was Lyra.)

Mum, apparently reading her mind, grinned and rose from her chair, leading the way out of the room. "Well, it would be rude to hide away in here while she's standing on the doorstep. Shall

we go say hello?"

Hermione followed quickly. She really hadn't wanted to introduce Lyra to her parents yet! Leaving aside for the moment the fact that she'd wanted this holiday to be a Lyra-free vacation, and the particular conversation they'd just been in the midst of— If she'd ever decided to introduce them, she would have spent at least a few hours drilling Lyra on what she was and wasn't allowed to say about what they'd got up to at school, and what was absolutely inappropriate to say to muggles in general and Hermione's parents in particular, and generally made sure she knew how important it was to Hermione that she make a good impression on them.

And also how to dress, she thought, as she caught sight of Lyra, standing in the foyer, looking impossibly out of place, not only because she'd brought the magical part of Hermione's life crashing into her muggle life even more thoroughly than when she and Blaise and Harry had showed up in a car over Christmas, but also because she looked like she'd just stepped off of MTV or something.

It...could have been worse. Maybe. Last time, she and Harry had clearly been wearing suits (presumably Blaise's) that they had transfigured to fit. Made being overdressed into a bloody uniform. But she and Hermione had been to muggle London several times now — spent a whole day wandering around Oxbridge! She had to know that normal people didn't go around wearing dayglo-violet, skin-tight crop-tops, Doc Martens, and rhinestone-encrusted jeans cut so low Hermione was frankly surprised they were still in place. Without even a jacket. In March.

(Hermione tried not to look too close or too long, but it was annoyingly difficult.)

"What the hell are you wearing?" she asked, before she could stop herself. "Wait, no — why are you here? How are you here?"

"Madam Granger," Lyra said, bowing slightly to Hermione's mother (which was weirdly formal of her, but so much better than the alternative Hermione couldn't help but be somewhat relieved) before addressing her questions with a bright grin. "Dora left them at Zee's house — she got called in to work, and obviously she couldn't go dressed like a muggle or a teenager, and I needed to go to Charing today anyway, so I thought I'd see if you wanted to get lunch. And I apparated, obviously — I'm never getting in another one of those horrid automobiles if I can help it." She shuddered dramatically — she'd been horribly carsick the entire time they'd been driving around looking for bookstores, Hermione recalled. "Also, hi."

"Er. Hi."

When it became apparent that Hermione was too stunned by Lyra's sudden and inexplicable presence to make introductions, her mother stepped in to fill the void. "You must be Lyra, Hermione's told us so much about you!"

God damn that ridiculous, overconfident smirk. "Oh?"

"All good things, of course." Hermione went very red at that, all the more so when Lyra gave her an exceedingly peculiar look. "I'm Emma, this is my husband, Dan. Care for a cup of tea?"

"Well met, Emma, Dan." Lyra nodded to them, in what Hermione recognized as that little not-quite-formal-enough-to-bow-but-still-being-polite thing the purebloods at school did all the time in passing, but Mum and Dad probably took as accepting the offer of tea. If so, it must have been confusing when she added, "If you've only heard good things, you probably haven't heard as much about me as you think. And I wouldn't want to impose, if you don't want to go, Maïa, I'll just—"

"Nonsense," Dad said, heading toward the kitchen and gesturing for the rest of them to follow. "Come in, come in."

"Ah... So is that a no on lunch, then?" Lyra asked as Hermione's parents pulled away from them, whispering amongst themselves. Hermione could only imagine what Mum was telling Dad.

"You...know it's almost half past two, don't you?" she said, trying not to sound too distracted. (Mum and Dad whispering to each other, and that...all of it that Lyra was wearing, were really not helping.)

"Is it?" Apparently not. Lyra went to pull out her wand, as though she didn't quite believe Hermione and needed to check. Hermione, moving faster than she'd known she could, seized her wrist. Lyra's eyes narrowed as she jerked her hand free. "Maïa. What are you doing?"

"You can't do magic here," Hermione said quickly, before she could cast that tempus charm she used all the time.

Lyra's face cleared. "Oh, right. Harry said something about a house elf and a pudding... It's fucking stupid, though, that you can't do magic in your own home. I can't even imagine. Honestly, how do you find things you've misplaced? What do you do when you want to know the time? How do you keep your tea warm?" she asked, as Dad turned on the kettle and the rest of them settled themselves around the table. "I mean, I guess you could enchant the cups, that's not the sort of active spell the monitoring field would notice, but you'd still have to activate the enchantment in the first place, and who's going to ask an enchanter to put warming charms on individual teacups? And you don't have any wards at all — how do you stop people just apparating in? I mean, it's not polite, but now that I've been here, I could just pop into your kitchen whenever I wanted. You don't even have scrying wards — everyone has scrying wards!"

Mum and Dad, unaccustomed to Lyra's rambling — admittedly even more rapid-fire today than usual — simply stared.

"Dare I ask what a scrying ward is?" Mum finally asked, breaking into the one-sided conversation.

"And what's apparating?" Dad added.

Lyra gaped at them for a moment, looking from one to the other, and then to Hermione. "Haven't you told them anything about...anything?"

Thankfully, she didn't seem inclined to wait for a response, because Hermione didn't want to admit exactly how little she'd told her parents about magic. They'd flipped through her textbooks, of course, and they'd picked up a couple of introductory theory texts at Flourish and Blotts, but they'd seemed more interested in the history and society of the magical world than the specifics of spells they would never be able to cast.

"Apparition is, well, technically it's throwing yourself out of this plane of existence, into Apparition Space, which is— Well, what exactly it is isn't really important, major theoretical debate. Anyway, you then pull yourself back into this plane at a different place. It's not quite instantaneous, there's a non-linear correlation between the distance travelled in this plane, and the time that it takes — and the amount of magic, as well — but it's fast enough most people consider it instantaneous. And scrying is well, the whole discipline of divination, basically, but in this context, it's using far-seeing spells to spy on someone, usually through a mirror or something. Scrying wards stop an area from being scryed. Again, the technicalities of how they work don't really matter, though unlike the apparition thing, it's not really a subject of debate, I'd just have to talk about theory for about five hours before it would make any sense at all, seriously, divination spells are really neat. Oh, hey! Speaking of school, have you finished your Potions essay, yet?"

"What?" Hermione said, thrown by the sudden change of topic. "Well, no, I haven't. I thought I'd leave Snape's for last, since he's just going to give me an 'E' on it, no matter what I do. I suppose you already did yours?"

"Mmm, nuh-uh. I was going to ask if I could copy yours."

Dad, fiddling with the kettle and cups, didn't seem to have noticed, but Mum, who had been rummaging in the pantry for something, straightened around to glare at the back of Lyra's head at that. Oh, no, she probably thought Lyra was trying to take advantage of her, like so many so-called friends had done in primary school. Even though Hermione had written them already about Lyra beating her in every single bloody one of their classes.

This is not a good impression! she thought futility. Then, in an effort to avoid whatever sharp comment mum was about to make, quickly said, "What? Of course not! Why would you want to, anyway? I know you know the material, and you still have five days before we go back to class!"

Lyra giggled. "But, see, it will annoy dearest Sev far more if I turn in a blatantly copied essay than if I don't turn one in at all. Kind of like it's better to show up to Transfiguration with ten minutes left in the period than to just skip it."

"You're actually trying to annoy Snape? Why?"

The infuriating girl put on an overly-exaggerated tone of exasperation. "I heard Big Head Weasley telling the twins that Snape's been assigning them far more essays than he did when Big Head was in his fifth year, which I can only surmise is because he doesn't have to mark them. I've decided to offset the extra marking time by refusing to do the essays he sets for our class. Annoying him is just a bonus. Well, that and if I deliberately draw his attention to it, he's more likely to realise I'm doing it on purpose, and not just being lazy and not doing my homework."

"Wait," Mum said, setting a plate on the table. Hermione hadn't even realised they had biscuits in the house. Since when did Mum keep sweets around? "Are you saying you're marking the fifth-year Potions essays, Lyra? Why?"

"Yes," Lyra said, pouting over a biscuit. "All of the first through fifth-years, actually, except for our own class — not sure why, he has to know I don't care enough to play favorites, but I'm not complaining, that is one-tenth of the work, so. And as for why, I think his reasons are obvious, the only fun part of marking is coming up with snide comments to write in the margins, and even that gets old quickly. I'm doing it because if I don't, he'll confiscate Hermione's time turner again. Joke's on him, though," she added brightly. "See, this really only gives me incentive to try to figure out how they work and make my own."

"I...see." Hermione winced at her mother's ominous tone.

"No, you can't copy my essay," she said, attempting to drag the conversation back into safer waters, but to no avail.

"And why would confiscating Hermione's time turner have any leverage over you?" Dad asked, finally claiming a seat for himself, passing around the cups and setting the sugar and lemon in the middle of the table. "No cream, I'm afraid, love," he said to Mum. "It's gone off."

Lyra ignored their byplay, addressing Dad's question. Unfortunately. "She didn't tell you? We've been doing every day three times through. In pieces, the thing's stupidly limited. But yeah, I stole it back in September—" (Another point for the great impression tally.) "—and refused to give it back unless she agreed to use it to its full potential, and take me with her. You'd think school would be more boring when you're there three times as long, but it drastically improves the free-time to class-time ratio, so it's really much better overall. Plus if one of you is already in class, another can leave the grounds entirely, and no one will notice."

(Was that four points, or five? There might have been a couple, earlier, with Snape, and the marking.)

"You don't say," Dad said, giving Hermione a very stern look. The Department of Mysteries had made it very clear to him and Mum as well as Hermione that she was only to use the time turner for classes, and she had to avoid being identified as a time-traveller, or she might be kicked out of the mentee program at the end of the year. Which, well, given the situation, that might have been inevitable from the moment Lyra had appeared in this universe.

Hermione had almost managed to come to terms with it, now. Almost. Okay, she was mostly just hoping she'd be able to claim extenuating circumstances based on Lyra's very existence — surely the Department of Mysteries would be familiar with the Black reputation for messing up everything in their general vicinity. (Okay, she was mostly just in denial. But she'd almost come to terms with it. If it came down to it, she was pretty sure she valued Lyra's existence more than some potential future career opportunity, even if it was the Department of Mysteries.)

But she really didn't want to have to explain the whole mess to her parents. Especially with Lyra right there, insisting on being so...very Lyra.

"What have you been doing with your break, Lyra?" she asked, in a desperate bid to change the subject, though she was certain she would be thoroughly interrogated about their exploitation of the time turner as soon as Lyra left, anyway.

"Oh, I've been updating Zee's wards — Ms. Zabini, that is. Seriously, they're terrible. She did them herself, and, well, she's pants at arithmancy. And, I can understand why she might not want people asking questions about why half her house has to be kept magic-free, but really, that's no excuse. It only took me a month or so to come up with three better solutions than the one she's been using. Ridiculous. But yeah, she's in the States for some business...thing, I guess? Also the future late Mr. Zabini lives there, so I guess she's staying with him for a while, too."

"Oh?" Mum managed to interject, as Lyra snagged another biscuit. "Hermione mentioned that you and Harry stayed with Ms. Zabini and her son over Christmas. But if she's on a business trip, who's staying with you and her son?" Hermione successfully held back a relieved sigh when Mum apparently failed to react to the future late Mr. Zabini line — one of her new friends' mothers supposedly being a serial killer was one of those things she didn't want to have to try to explain.

"Er...no one? Well, Harry's there again, too, was that a plural you? Theo stopped by on his way to Ancient House, I should probably make sure he didn't get cursed and die in the library, because it's been a while since I've seen him... And of course the staff come around, but they don't actually stay there. So, yeah, just me, Blaise, and Harry. Why?"

Hermione was willing to bet, based on the worried little crease between her mother's eyes alone, that she disapproved of the idea of three teenagers staying in a house for a week without adult supervision. She was equally willing to bet that Lyra, who considered herself an adult in every way that mattered, wouldn't understand why. Six. She groaned preemptively, which gained her a confused glance from her father, but was otherwise ignored.

"Oh, well, it's none of my business how Ms. Zabini raises her son, of course, I'm just surprised that your parents and Harry's aunt and uncle don't mind you staying the week alone there."

Lyra broke into giggles at that. "You sound like Cissy — I wouldn't presume to judge Mirabella's life choices, but... Give her a little credit, she did make me promise not to blow up her house, and if I wreck her wards and get bored with the project before I finish it, she said she'll convince Severus to kick my arse for her, which, I'm kind of tempted, I'd like to see how good the Death Eaters really were. But it's not like I'm going to get to the point of stripping out her wards this week, anyway — the new stones won't be done, yet. Anyway, I don't imagine Harry told his aunt and uncle. My understanding is that they would prefer to pretend he doesn't exist. And my parents...aren't in the picture."

Mum did an admirable job of staying on point, refusing to be distracted by the mention of Death Eaters, or their Potions Professor potentially kicking Lyra's arse at the behest of the CEO of LES. "You have a guardian, then, like Harry?"

"Oh, well, no, not really. Technically, Sirius is the legal Head of House Black, so he'd be my guardian, but since I'm a more competent adult than he is in practically every way, I'm not sure he really counts. And what little remains of the House Magic thinks I'm the Head, anyway, so there's that."

"Is this the Sirius Black we saw on the news?" Mum asked.

"Highly dangerous madman, convicted murderer, escaped from prison over the summer, been on the run ever since?" Dad specified, presumably in case it wasn't.

"They actually alerted the muggle press? Morgen, Circe, and Lilith, overkill much? Unless they had to, I guess, but— Hey, Hermione, was there a revision of our treaty with the UK and Ireland in Thirty-Three?"

"Which Thirty-Three?" There had been several important treaties between the Wizengamot and the Crown — and various pre-modern states, only some of which had been reaffirmed by successor governments — though Hermione couldn't think of any that had been signed in '33, of any century. If she'd been more specific, maybe...

Lyra stared at her incredulously for a long moment before she apparently remembered, "Oh, right, History of Magic is useless. Nevermind, I'll look it up later, should know the exact text we're using anyway. But speaking of, I'm certain the Treaty of Nineteen-Thirteen includes a clause concerning international... Wonder how the D.I.C. missed that."

"Lyra. What are you talking about?"

"Oh, well, it's not important, really. Just something that's happening next year, I happened to see the guest lists and it's possible the Ministry left a couple very important people off." She grinned. "In any case, yes, that Sirius. He didn't actually murder anyone, though, he never got a trial, and well... I guess some people might consider him dangerous, he is a Black, after all, but I don't think any of them have actually met him." She shrugged. "He's not really on the run, anymore either. Remember, Maïa, I told you I caught him back in December?"

What?! Bugger the tally of things Lyra should not have said in front of her parents, there was absolutely no point keeping track anymore. "You most certainly did not."

"Are you sure?" Hermione nodded. "Oh." For a brief moment, Lyra stared back at her, blinking. Then, shrugging, she said, "Well, I caught Sirius back in December, had a House Elf keep him locked up in the nursery over winter hols, which was bloody hilarious, and— Are you sure I didn't tell you this?"

"Oh, my God! Yes, I'm sure! How could you— Ugh! You're infuriating, you know." Mostly because Hermione couldn't help feeling more put out about the fact that Lyra hadn't mentioned any of this to her than that she was harboring a fugitive.

"It's part of my charm. But anyway, after we got Pettigrew into custody, Meda let me ship Siri off to France. He's staying in Molitg-les-Bains while she gets his trial in absentia off the ground. I should ask her about getting a retraction in the muggle papers, too, I guess. He should be able to reveal himself once the news that the trial has been confirmed reaches him on its own, you know, to avoid looking too suspicious. I mean, everyone will suspect we knew where he was all along, but there's no real proof. But that should take care of the rumors about his trying to kill Harry, and the Aquitaines would never extradite anyone to Britain, so he should be fine and I expect the dementors will be pulled back before the end of the year."

"Dementors?" Dad repeated. He and mum had been exchanging a series of concerned looks for the past several minutes.

"Soul-sucking demons? Popularly considered evil? Make people exceedingly boring when they come 'round? Maïa didn't mention them? They normally guard the prison Sirius escaped from, but they're currently stationed at Hogwarts, because— Well, mostly because everyone in the Ministry is a moron, really— Oh! Speaking of morons, I guess Druella's still alive, so she might technically have some claim over me, but, well, that would depend on her recognising my existence, and probably also coming back from wherever she ran off to when Cygnus died. I still haven't found their marriage contract, though. She might have reverted to the Rosiers, in which case, yeah, it'd be Sirius."

"Druella and Cygnus? Your mother and father I presume?" Mum's face was completely unreadable, but Hermione rather thought her tone was disapproving. Whether that was because she disapproved of Lyra or what little Hermione had told her of her parents, she really couldn't tell.

"Well, bearer and sire, at least."

From how the disapproving look grew stronger, if only barely, Hermione would guess it was the latter. "Any other family?"

"I have two sisters, but one married out of the family, and one of them disowned us. They both have kids. Draco's a prat, Maïa may have mentioned him at some point, he is in our year—" Mum raised an eyebrow at that — probably both because Hermione had mentioned Malfoy, and also because that implied that Lyra's siblings were far older than she was. Not impossibly so in the magical world, but still unusual. "—but Dora's great. Pity Meda won't let me bring her back into the House. But anyway, it's really just me, Sirius, and Harry. Kind of. He's Siri's godson, so he's our responsibility. Well, mine, really, since Sirius is an incompetent, wanted idiot. And there's Other Bella, of course, but she's...unwell. And also in prison."

"Other Bella?"

"Er." Lyra hesitated, her eyes going momentarily unfocused and distant as they did every so often. Then she blinked, and shrugged. "My counterpart from this dimension."

"What?!"

Lyra looked at Hermione as though she was the one who'd gone mad, here. "Why are you freaking out, you already knew that. I know you did. Blaise will back me on this!"

"Because, you lunatic, how long did it take for you to tell me that? And now you're just telling my parents? You've hardly met them!" And, she just— Letting people know she was a time traveler from the past — which was supposed to be impossible — couldn't be a good idea. There was a reason Lyra had come up with a (patently fake) cover identity in the first place. What the hell was she thinking?!

"Well, yes, but they're muggles. Who are they going to tell? And who would believe them?" Hermione considered objecting to that, but, well, Lyra wasn't wrong — no one in the magical world had much respect for muggles at all, even the ones who supported muggleborn rights and muggle protections. (Sometimes even especially them.) "Besides, it's not like it's not going to come out eventually. Honestly, I'm surprised no one's figured it out, yet, even though it is impossible as fuck."

"Could you not swear in front of my parents?" Hermione snapped, though she wasn't entirely certain they were even paying attention at the moment, instead whispering animatedly to each other at the other side of the table. She was fairly certain she heard the words flux capacitor and the bloody Doctor and Tricia McMillan's Earth mentioned in passing.

"Er... Well, no, probably not," she said, very seriously. Too seriously for her response to be anything other than sarcastic. Sure enough, she followed up with, "I mean, I probably can't not swear. I'm a bit of a twat like that, in case you haven't noticed."

"It's magic, Dan, we don't have to understand it." Mum, at least, appeared to finally have processed the counterpart from this dimension comment. "So you're..."

"A time traveller from the past is probably the easiest way to think of it," Hermione explained, rather reluctantly.

"Except, not the exact past of this universe. As far as I can tell, we diverged from each other somewhere in the Nineteen Thirties, so it was already a bit different when I left in Sixty-Three. You know, technically, I'm probably older than you," she said with a grin, nodding at Mum. "Yes, some people would argue that the thirty years I 'skipped' don't really count—" Hermione being one of those people. "—but the way query spells work, magic still considers me to have been born in Nineteen Fifty. That's one of the reasons it's bound to come out eventually. Like I said, divination is really neat. Anyway, my point was, I definitely don't require adult supervision. And Blaise and Harry have been taking care of themselves almost as long as I have. Honestly, I'm not really sure why you think we shouldn't be left alone. We're not going to starve or wander off and get lost or accidentally blow ourselves up or curse ourselves, and — er, actually, like I said, I should probably check on Theo — but I can almost certainly reverse anything he's managed to do to himself, and Blaise and Harry have been spending all their time playing mind games and being boring, so."

"What's she in prison for?" Dad asked, apparently out of nowhere. He'd been rather quiet for some time, now, simply watching Lyra ramble with a flat, disapproving stare.

"Huh?"

"Your alter ego. What's she in prison for?"

"Well...technically? Torturing a couple of people into insanity using an Unforgivable, but really, she was one of the leaders of the Death Eaters — Hermione has at least told you about the war, right?"

She had. Though not in much more detail than the history books. Her parents nodded.

"Yeah, well, the Longbottoms were only the last of her Azkaban-worthy offences. They didn't bother prosecuting her for any of the others, since that's already two lifetime sentences. I'm kind of surprised they didn't chuck her through the Veil, honestly. Azkaban sounds boring, yeah, but if Sirius got out, she definitely could, and you'd think anyone who considers Sirius dangerous would consider her too dangerous to live. Not that I'm complaining, but, well, I think I already said, everyone in government are idiots."

Okay, that was it. "What the hell is wrong with you today, Lyra?"

Lyra just raised a questioning eyebrow at Hermione, took a sip of tea and another biscuit. Mum and Dad looked rather more surprised at her sudden outburst than she did.

"You...do realise that you just told my parents that a version of you was one of the head Death Eaters and is in prison for torturing people into insanity? And that you're a time traveller, and you're just... You're being weirder than usual," she finished lamely. Though really, she wasn't being that much weirder than usual, at least in the type of weirdness. Just in the degree, as though her behavior — already infuriatingly impulsive, distractible, and overly energetic — had somehow been turned up to eleven. "Did someone give you a truth potion or, I don't know, speed, or something?"

"Uh...no? Is that some kind of muggle drug? I've never heard of it. And truth potions don't work on me. Well, most of them. But I'd recognize any of the ones that do. Anyway, nothing's wrong, I just came up with a way to—" She spaced out again, just for a moment. "Well, I can't tell you exactly what, it's a surprise." Because that wasn't ominous at all. "But I made a breakthrough on one of my long-term projects a few days ago. The excitement hasn't quite worn off yet. Though honestly, if you think this is bad, you should have seen me yesterday. Blaise actually tried to lock me out of a room because I was annoying him. Blaise. He never gets annoyed."

Hermione rolled her eyes. She couldn't help it, Lyra just sounded so delighted with herself. "God, sound more impressed with yourself, why don't you."

"Whatever. Point is, nothing's wrong, this just...happens, sometimes. I'll probably crash in a week or so. And then there's usually all sorts of consequences for things I did without thinking them through to make life interesting for the next few weeks."

Right, so when Zabini used the term manic, he meant in the clinical sense. And of course he couldn't have been more explicit about that. Lovely. Just lovely. Mum exchanged another significant look with Dad, and then with Hermione. This time, she was pretty sure she knew what they were thinking — it had been in their textbooks that she'd read about psychology, after all.

"Though there probably won't be many this time, I mean, since we left school, I've mostly just been playing with Zee's wards. She agreed to let me fix them, as long as I ran the plans past a 'real' wardcrafter first — as though I don't know what I'm talking about, honestly!"

Hermione did her best to seem skeptical, because really, Lyra wasn't an actual wardcrafter, but she had chosen to say she'd been raised by a cursebreaker for a reason. She had cracked the box she'd been given to keep her time turner in in the time it took Hermione to take a bloody shower, so. "Well...you are fourteen. And apparently in the middle of a manic episode."

"Well, yeah, if that's what you want to call it, I guess."

Somehow, knowing that Lyra didn't realise this wasn't normal, didn't make Hermione feel better about not having been warned about the possibility. She hadn't been this manic the last couple of days at school, had she? Or had three days away from her reset Hermione's perception of normal behavior?

"But Zee knows me. Here, look." She pulled a full-sized notebook apparently out of nowhere and passed it to Hermione. It was filled with page after page of runes and diagrams, none of which meant much of anything to her, though she obviously recognised them as the blueprints for runic inscriptions and ward-stone specifications. "The first six pages are the implementation for the most elegant of the five solutions I found for segregating the magical and non-magical areas of the house, then there's the standard wards, and a defensive suite you might see on a noble seat — not like one of the Black or Monroe or Bones properties, because as far as I know, no one's ever tried to assassinate Zee, but like the McKinnons or Abbotts — and a couple of avoidance wards, with amulets keyed to let her muggles in, which, yes, is a security flaw, but Blaise said she wouldn't go for tattooing the key onto the staff. Plus, what if they had to let one go? And I told him they could just—"

"You did all this since the beginning of break?" Hermione asked, because she was fairly certain Lyra was about to say that they could just kill any servant Ms. Zabini decided to fire, and her parents were already clearly uncomfortable with the revelations of the past few minutes, sitting in silent judgment on the other side of the table, giving her looks that suggested they'd be having a long talk about Lyra's suitability as a friend the moment she left.

"Uh, no, that would be absurd, even for me. I've been working out the magic-isolation wards and the arithmantic interactions for the past few weeks to keep myself awake in Defense. Night Mares? Really? How much time do we really need to spend on just don't get on the fucking horse? And I spent most of Sunday measuring the house and grounds — twice, actually. See, the inside of the house is the same size as the outside, which is just... She didn't even expand her closet or compress the corridor between her bedroom and the morning room, it's bloody weird. Thought I'd done something wrong the first time, but no. Just...purely euclidean architecture. Whatever, made the arithmancy easier, I guess. Tailoring the outline to the actual spaces that needed to be covered only took like, six hours. I made a clean copy and sent the plans to the goblin who manages my accounts yesterday morning, asked him to have the cursebreaking department have a look at it. They're perfectly fine, of course. It's not like I haven't been doing this since I was seven, or anything."

"Seven?" Dad repeated, rather incredulously, his curiosity about the world they'd managed to learn so little about apparently overcoming whatever else he was thinking. "Like an apprenticeship or something? Is that common, in your world?"

"Ah...no, not really. I mean we do have apprenticeships, and yes, they would traditionally start around that age, traditionally being, ah...two- to three-hundred years ago, or so — but you don't do your whole apprenticeship and then go to Hogwarts, they're considered post-secondary educational tracks these days, the official international guild-standard programs won't look at an application until you've got your NEWTs. You can go the independent route, just find some master willing to train you, or go at it on your own, but the guilds make it positively hellish getting recognized as a member if you do. Well, enchanting and wardcrafting are worse than most, but. Ciardha, my tutor, he just specialised in the runic arts, so we spent about half our time on wardcrafting and cursebreaking. I think I passed the ten-thousand-hour mark a couple years ago, that's usually considered the point to start considering your mastery project, but like I said, the guilds are terrible to get into, and the only reason to bother with official certification is if you want to teach or do this for a living, and I really don't."

"Seriously? Are you having me on?"

Lyra reaching for yet another biscuit, gave her a blank look that suggested she actually wasn't. "About what?"

"Ten-thousand hours is more time than we spend in class the entire time we're at Hogwarts! And that's including the useless classes!"

Lyra snorted, apparently amused by her characterization of some of their classes as useless, but honestly, what was the point of Astronomy? And there was no way to better describe Divination...

"I've been studying or using magic at least six hours a day, every day, since I was three, Hermione. Closer to twelve, on average, since I turned seven. And that's not counting history, languages, and etiquette."

Dad looked almost as horrified at that as Hermione felt — surely it couldn't be good for three-year-olds to be taught magic, especially if they were forced to study it six hours a day. (Mum, rather disconcertingly, didn't look horrified. Slightly surprised, maybe, but almost more...calculating, than horrified. Which was, in itself, slightly horrifying. Hermione could only imagine what she was thinking...)

"Hogwarts isn't really about learning magic. Yes, it does teach kids the bare minimum of what they need to know to control themselves and get a job at the Ministry, or something, but anything we learn in class, you could learn on your own — probably ten times faster, if you really worked at it. At best, the magic they teach is a starting point. Anyone who wants to excel beyond their standard of mediocrity almost has to have the initiative to engage in extensive self-study."

Hermione sputtered at that for a moment before managing to ask, "Well then, what is the point, if we're not really there to learn things?!"

"Well, we are there to learn things, just...not magic. According to Walburga and Zee, it's more about, well, developing social relationships among our peers, mostly. And forcing people like me, who spent the first ten years of their lives being indoctrinated with the values of their own House, to develop a degree of autonomy and class consciousness, break up the insularity of our society, basically." Then she shrugged.

That sounded patently absurd to Hermione, but she couldn't help but notice her mother nodding slightly to herself, nibbling at her lip in contemplation.

"I'm inclined to believe them, especially since, well, the curriculum was better back in the Sixties, but it still wasn't good. Though this latest generation has really dropped the quaffle when it comes to early childhood education — Blaise and Daphne and Theo, yeah, okay, they're alright. Susan Bones and Zach Smith, and a few of the Ravenclaws, too. But most of the other kids in our year don't seem to know, well, anything really, even in Slytherin. Even Draco, I can't even really explain how badly Cissy spoiled that brat. Meda did better, and Dora didn't even need to prepare to take on the responsibilities of a Noble House. Seriously, House Malfoy is completely screwed."

"Yes, well, I'm pretty sure forcing a three-year-old to study for six hours a day counts as child abuse," Hermione informed her.

"I'm pretty sure it only counts as abuse if it's not the social norm," Lyra shot back. "Which it is. Was, I guess. Generally speaking, my upbringing was very in keeping with the times. Or, well, it wasn't that far outside the norm, in most ways, at least. And you have to admit, it got results. Anyway, while I was waiting for the goblins to get back to me—" What? Oh, she'd gone back a couple of topics, as though the conversation hadn't deviated since Hermione had asked what she'd been doing with her break. "—I started on the dueling wards — Zee doesn't care about those at all, so, not necessary to pre-check them, and I did promise her I wouldn't blow up her house, so if I want to practice runic casting at all this week, it had to be done. I also integrated a bunch of the features from the Hogwarts Dueling Arena, have you seen that thing? It's amazing, seriously. You should come next time we break in. Those I finished at school, they didn't need to be tweaked to the actual space, so I spent most of Monday on that, just painting them, not carving, I wanted to test them first. Which I got Dora to help me with this morning. She's an auror," she added, for Mum and Dad's benefit, as though they actually knew what an auror was.

"Aurors are kind of like DIs...if DIs had SWAT training," she explained, in response to Dad's er...

"...Ah."

"Not sure what that means, but she's a complete badass. We spent a couple hours warming up, and then I made the mistake of telling her to stop going easy on me. Ten rounds, and I think the longest I lasted was two minutes? And that was using every dirty trick I know." As though lasting two minutes in a duel with a bloody auror wasn't impressive itself, especially after spending a couple of hours warming up — honestly, Hermione couldn't tell if Lyra had any idea how ridiculous she really was. "But she was ordered in, and then I realized the goblins had owled my plans back, so I spent a couple hours breaking up the specs so no one will be able to figure out exactly what I'm doing, which is why I'm headed to Charing."

"Er, what?" Hermione was fairly certain she'd missed something there, or else Lyra had assumed she knew something she didn't, and left it out intentionally.

"There's no fucking way I'm going to carve an entire house's worth of wardstones on my own. I'm having it hired out — that's what journeymen are for. In pieces, because Zee said I could only do this if I could do it without making anyone too suspicious. I'm using an Incan technique to construct what would traditionally be single stones piecemeal from a bunch of smaller stones carved to lock together. Uh...the last four pages in that," she explained, pointing to the notebook still sitting in front of Hermione. "It's actually really neat, see the Inca didn't actually have a writing system, they recorded information in knots. But they did have defensive wards — actually something we would recognise as wards, I mean, not like most of the Americas. The channeling elements, what would be the runes in Western wardcrafting, were defined by the shapes of blocks and the three-dimensional intersections between them when they were fitted together. Which, when you combine it with Western wardcrafting, means you can spread your wards across eight or ten stones and then fit them together, instead of putting the whole thing on one stone for your carver to read as they're doing their work. Really cut down on the mortality rate among journeymen, or so Ciardha said. So I have a bunch of different pieces I need made. Preferably by competing shops, so they won't get together and work out what I'm doing. But there's at least a dozen between Diagon and Knockturn, so it should work out alright. Still won't be done in time for me to set it up before we go back to school, especially since they won't have non-standard blocks pre-shaped, but stripping the wards she's already put up is going to take at least a week, anyway, so."

Hermione gave her a very pointed look as she took the last biscuit — it had to be her sixth, at least.

"I did come to see if you wanted to get lunch because I was hungry," Lyra pointed out, entirely unapologetically. "Still up for that, by the way, I haven't had real food since...yesterday?"

Mum gave Lyra a rather concerned look. Hermione didn't think she noticed it. Dad snorted, probably thinking of her earlier claim that she didn't require adult supervision, though she wasn't sure how much difference it would make if she did. She was pretty sure Lyra would just do whatever she wanted to, regardless of whether she had anyone telling her when to eat or sleep. Speaking of which... "Are you saying you forgot to eat all day? How long has it been since you slept?"

"Sunday? Yep, Sunday. Got a couple hours between measuring and fitting the ward-scheme. Why?"

"Because it's Tuesday."

"Yes, and? It'll probably be another eight hours or so before I pass out again. And I'd like to get to the wardsmiths' shops and get real food before then, so — what time is it, now?" she said, probably rhetorically, since she immediately reached for her wand to find out for herself.

"No magic!" Hermione reminded her.

"Dark Powers, that's annoying. Do you want me to fix that for you? I totally can, I'm already going to get a bunch of stones carved anyway, and this house isn't that big, you'd only need, what, five? seven? Either way, they'd probably be done in a day or two, could get everything set up before we go back to school."

"Wait — what?" Mum said, startled.

"Sure. Pass me that back," she said, gesturing toward the notebook. "And a quill, if you have one."

Dad grabbed the biro from the pad by the telephone, which she took as though she suspected it might explode. "You write with the pointy end," Hermione informed her.

Lyra rolled her eyes, scribbling a few lines of runes on a blank sheet of paper. "This is all the text you need for a ward that would slow the dispersal of magic within the warded space sufficiently that the monitoring spells wouldn't register most magic being used. And this," she added a few more lines, "is a basic anti-apparition jinx. We can also include anti-disapparition, portkey wards, uh...gate spells — though those haven't been popular since the floo was invented — not shadow-walking, that's stupidly hard to ward against. It's also really difficult to master, though, so it doesn't really matter. I've only gotten as far as sticking things in shadow-pockets, still, and I've been working on it for months, bloody annoying. This is a variation on a Somebody Else's Problem field that will lead anyone who notices anything amiss here to disregard it, including the authorities, unless they're specifically prepared to counter it — I wouldn't worry, really, it's fairly rare. Let's see...common post wards—"

"Is this legal?" Dad asked suddenly, probably clued in by the Somebody Else's Problem ward that something was amiss.

Crooking an eyebrow, Lyra asked, "How much would it matter, on a scale of one to forget I ever said anything?"

"One," Mum said, without missing a beat. Huh. Hermione had guessed she'd be okay with breaking the censorship laws, but she hadn't expected this.

Lyra giggled, nodded. "I like you. Good priorities."

Dad glared at the both of them. "Well, it is kind of important, isn't it?"

Lyra hesitated for a moment, then tore a page out of her notebook and scribbled something on it before passing it to Mum and grinning at Dad. "It's fine, you have nothing to worry about. It's not actually illegal for there to be wards on your house, it's just really illegal for me to put them up. It's also not illegal for Hermione to do magic outside of school. She is supposed to be supervised by a qualified mage, except in a whole list of exceptional cases, but that law has literally never been enforced. If I understand it correctly, the point of the monitoring thing is to protect muggle parents from their kids using magic to control or manipulate them, and, well, they don't really consider it a high priority, prosecuting witches on behalf of muggles. Even muggleborns." Hermione winced at the appalled looks which appeared on both her parents' faces. That was exactly the sort of prejudice she'd not told them about over the past two years. "Anyway, the monitoring charm just tells them if magic is used in this house, not by whom. There's a separate Trace on the wands of underage mages, but that's easy to get around. I already took it off Hermione's."

Which Hermione had not known. "You did what?"

"The Trace? It's easy enough to break with ritual magic. Not even high ritual. It took like, ten minutes. And now your wand isn't registered as belonging to an underage witch, so no one will care if you use magic away from here. Or, well, other muggleborns' homes, I suppose."

Hermione knew she probably should be quite offended — mages took other people fiddling with their wands very seriously — but, honestly, she'd prefer the Ministry not be able to monitor the spells she was casting. Not because she planned on doing anything illegal, exactly, she just didn't trust them. But that wasn't really the point. "When did you do that? And why didn't you ask me?"

"Before we went to London the first time, and because you probably would have said no." Well, if she'd asked all the way back then, she might have, but now—

"London?" Dad repeated, in a tone which promised that Hermione was going to have to explain that tonight as well as...everything else. "The first time?"

Damn it, Lyra!

She ignored him, of course, pointing at the noted she'd passed to Mum. "If anyone gives you any trouble, that's my solicitor, just tell her it's all my fault, she'll take care of it. Probably won't even be surprised, really."

"You...have a solicitor on retainer?"

"Somehow, that doesn't surprise me," Dad muttered.

"Sure, why not? Well, the House of Black does, technically, but I'm kind of the closest thing we have to a functioning Head of the House right now, so essentially yes."

"How much would this sort of thing cost?" Mum asked, reaching across the table to pull the ward-scheme toward herself.

"Emma, you can't possibly be serious."

"Well, why not? Hermione would never hurt us, and I'd much rather get in trouble for having protections against other mages than abide by the laws of a country we aren't even recognized by, and then end up needing them. Especially if the law puts most of the culpability on Lyra. No offence, dear."

"Oh, none taken. None at all." She grinned, then whispered, very audibly, "Your mum is great, why didn't you ever tell me your mum is great?"

Because Hermione loved her mother, she really did, but Mum had a terrible, terrible habit of taking over everything she touched, from PTA fundraisers to book clubs to Hermione's entire life. One of the reasons she'd been so excited to go to Hogwarts (a distant second to magic, obviously) had been that her mother wouldn't be able to hover behind her, there, waiting to intervene in teacher conferences and meetings with parents of children who were mean to Hermione, demanding to know every little detail of everything she was learning, trying to protect her and make all her decisions for her and generally being far too interested in everything, even when it was really none of her business.

She loved her mother, she really did, but she needed at least some degree of independence from her. Not to mention, Mum had an uncanny ability to win people over, even people who had no business liking her. She could probably form a working relationship with Narcissa Malfoy, given half a chance. Much as Hermione hated to admit it, she was just a little bit afraid (and not without reason) that anyone who met her mother would like Mum more than they liked her. So no, she had not mentioned that her mum was, in Lyra's terms, great.

Mum smirked in a very self-satisfied way — obviously that little comment had been calculated to win points (why Mum wanted to win Lyra over, Hermione wasn't really sure, since it had been her impression until just now that Lyra was failing miserably at winning her over, or Dad) — but continued as though she hadn't heard. "Plus it's patently unfair that Hermione can't practice magic over the summer when all of the — what did that book call them? the purebloods — can. It wouldn't interfere with the electricity, would it?"

"Well, they would, but I came up with this neat little work-around, see, you just have to use an insulating metal like iron or lead to make a ring to seal to the outside of the wires bringing the electricity in, and then enchant that so it sits in the ward like a little tiny gate. Can't do any blanket wards, like to throw someone out, if they're already in, but that just means you have to be careful about who you bring in in the first place. Since you're muggles, you won't be able to adjust them on the fly. I can still key you specifically to the wards if you're willing to use blood, but you'd probably need amulet-keys to bring visitors in. Or, I guess I could just adjust them to keep out anyone sufficiently magical, and key in Hermione. That'd probably be better." She crossed out a few lines — she'd been writing the whole time they'd been talking — and replaced them with a new set of runes. "How large is the house?"

"Just over a hundred square meters."

"And it's three levels including the attic, and basically a square layout, right?" Mum nodded. "So six meters to a side should cover the footprint, no problem. Though squares are really a poor shape for wards. Quadrilaterals in general suck, actually. A septagon would be a better fit than a pentagon — really, the more points, the better, but the more stones you use, the longer it takes to carve them. And to ensure that the dome covers the upper stories entirely, you'd want to pull it out a bit further, so you'd actually end up with most of your gardens covered, too. Though, I wouldn't do any flashy magic out there, anyway, there's only so much an attention deflecting ward can cover, and anything stronger would disrupt the magical currents around here and completely defeat the purpose of the slow-release ward. We're far enough from any ley lines that there aren't any complex currents to account for, and close enough to tap the River Cherwell for power... Yeah, that should work," she declared, her eyes skimming over the page. "Assuming the wardsmiths aren't complete trolls, I can come back and set it up on Saturday."

"Hold on a second, we haven't actually agreed—" Dad began, but mum cut him off.

"And how much did you say this would cost, precisely?"

"What, like, if you got a professional wardcrafter to do it? Maybe...two hundred galleons, or so? I'm not really sure what the rates are in this time. Why?"

"Because my parents don't have fifty thousand pounds to spend on a magical security system, Lyra," Hermione hissed through gritted teeth. She'd better not be about to—

"Don't be stupid, I wouldn't have offered if I expected you to pay me." Of course she was. Yet another absurdly overexpensive gift, for which she wouldn't desire any apparent compensation at all, given simply because she could (or because she thought censorship laws were stupid, or because she thought this would be an entertaining way to spend her Saturday, or whyever).

Hermione let her head fall to the table, hiding behind her hair as her mother's voice took on a tone of offence. "Of course we'll pay you," she said, (ignoring Dad's very annoyed, "Emma!") "You have to at least let us compensate you for the materials!"

With a low giggle turning her voice to bouncing, Lyra said, "I think I had this exact same conversation with Harry. I really don't need your money. Really. A few hundred galleons one way or the other isn't exactly going to break the bank."

Mum had another faint frown going, looking rather reluctant. "Maybe we should wait, sleep on it, and discuss it sometime you're feeling a bit less...impulsive."

Hermione sighed. "That won't make a difference, Mum. She's always like that with money."

"Yeah, well, there's currently more money sitting in the Black vault than I could possibly spend in one lifetime. Seriously, that's not an exaggeration — the goblins limit the market to keep the economy more or less stable, if I tried to spend the entire Black fortune, even over the next century, it would be destabilising enough that they'd never allow it."

"Wha— Now I know you're messing with me. Is that even possible?" Hermione demanded. It shouldn't be. It really shouldn't be. But with all she'd seen of Magical Britain... Mum and Dad looked like they thought she was exaggerating, but Hermione wasn't sure.

Lyra grinned. "No, it totally is. I was talking to Justin about it the other day, he says Magical Britain is basically a mercantilist society, with the Noble Houses — the ones that still have money, anyway — kind of functioning as the corporations controlling pretty much everything. And of course, the goblins control the actual money. I'm pretty sure the Ministry only agreed to that treaty to limit our power and influence - well, the nobility as a whole, not just the Blacks. Point is, money's not an object. Money is never an object, and likely will never be an object. Many transactions don't even involve gold at any point in the process, houses agreeing to trade this service for these goods, or whatever. Money is only actually used for small, instantaneous transactions between individuals — that's a large part of why the Black fortune is so bloody enormous, we just keep accumulating it, mostly through rents and loans and such, without having to spend it on anything, at least not in any significant volume. Actually, I should probably ask Justin if he wants me to do his house, too, though that might have to wait, I know their property is more on par with the Zabinis'. I would just go ahead and do Harry's, but he won't be going back to the Dursleys, and all of the Potter and Black properties are already warded."

Hermione, still trying to wrap her head around the idea that Lyra considered the House of Black comparable to a mercantilist company — who did she think they were colonizing for resources? — was momentarily distracted. "What do you mean — Harry's not living with the Dursleys anymore?"

"Well, you don't think he wants to, do you? I mean, most humans really don't like being treated like House Elves."

"So...you haven't discussed this with him, yet."

She shouldn't really be surprised that Lyra had the nerve to look confused. "...No? I didn't think it was really necessary, I mean, he knows he has options now — fuck, he can probably stay with Blaise, if he doesn't want to renovate a place for himself — so why would he go back to people who hate magic, and were disappointed that the undead dark lord didn't manage to kill him in your first year, or the bloody basilisk last year? If he makes it through term without getting his soul sucked out by demons, they'll probably be disappointed again."

"Basilisk?" Mum repeated, followed by Dad's equally disapproving, "Undead dark lord?"

"It— It wasn't really a big deal, the Headmaster had everything under control, I'll tell you later."

Lyra snorted. "Are we talking about the same years, here? There's no way in any of the seven bloody hells Dumbles had any of that under control. He wasn't even in the school the whole three months you were petrified!"

"Petrified?" they said together. Hermione winced. This was going to be bad. This was going to be very, very bad.

As shockingly oblivious as she could sometimes be, Lyra didn't even seem to notice there was anything wrong. "Uh, yeah. Apparently if you see the eyes of a basilisk in a mirror or something, the magic is refracted enough that it just petrifies you instead of killing you. Kind of neat, actually, I'll have to remember to look and see if anyone's written an article about the arithmancy on that. It'll probably be in Hindi, though, if they have. Hmm..." she trailed off, obviously to consider this ridiculous potential 'problem' — which just gave Hermione's parents enough time not filled with Lyra's insatiable ranting to start in on her.

"You were petrified?"

"For three months?"

"Is that why you weren't answering our letters?"

"How close did you come to actually dying?"

"Why didn't anyone from that bloody school tell us?"

"Why didn't you tell us?"

Lyra looked from Mum, to Dad, to Hermione and back again. "You didn't know?" she said, her tone one of absolute delight. "Oops? Anyway, I really should go if I'm going to get to all the shops before they close, and it sounds like you lot have a lot to talk about. Thanks for the biscuits, Emma. Dan. Lovely to meet you and all that."

And with that, she rose from the table, leant over, and kissed Hermione full on the mouth. Her lips were warm and dry and she smelled like sugar biscuits, and Hermione was far too concerned about the conversation that was about to ensue to enjoy it at all. (Though not too concerned to feel her face growing so hot she probably looked like a bloody lobster.)

"Blaise said I was right. Now you can stop being all weird and awkward, yes? You're welcome."

Hermione, frozen in shock — completely unable to process what had just happened — could only watch her skip back toward the front door (humming a Van Halen song?) before apparently remembering that the whole reason they'd been discussing the economy and Harry and Hermione's close brush with a basilisk was the Grangers' lack of wards, and disapparating from the middle of the living room.

When she finally did recover her ability to speak (well before her mother, she noted, only slightly smugly — she did have far more experience with Lyra, even if Mum was generally harder to shock), all she could think to say was, "You see why I couldn't possibly explain what she's like?!"

Mum just fixed her with a pointed stare. "Oh, no, love, you'll not be changing the subject that easily. We want to know exactly what's been going on at that school of yours. From the beginning. Start talking."

...Crap!

---

Hermione, muggle/magical Easter are both called Easter because they were the same holiday, once upon a time. It's theorised by some that Easter was originally a Germanic pagan holiday marking the beginning of spring, centered on a goddess named Ēastre in Old English, hence the name.

Literary terminology wheeeee. For anyone who cares, capital-R Romanticism is an artistic/literary/intellectual movement dominant in the first half of the 19th century. Big English language Romantic writers are people like Lord Byron, Keats, Walter Scott, so forth; the Brontës are also quasi-Romantic. The big-name French ones are Dumas and Hugo. So-called "dark romanticism" is probably most famous in Edgar Allen Poe, but Irving and Melville and Hawthorne were also a thing. Modernism is another movement, in France including people like Proust, Gide, du Gard, and the hilarious but extremely racist Céline. The American naturalists referred to include people like Crane, Faulkner, arguably Hemmingway, Steinbeck, that sort of thing.

I realise neither of these points was entirely necessary, but I'm a nerd like that. —Lysandra

Whereas my random trivia is totally necessary:

Easter break is a point where mine and Lysandra's headcanons differ. I had the Traditionalists (who are mostly Dark) throw the Progressives a bone and let them have Muggle Easter off (because Ostara is a Light holiday and they don't much care about it). Obviously we're using Lysandra's headcanon in this story.

[half of her conversations with Lyra at some point involved her getting irritated with Hermione for not knowing something]
The other half involve Hermione getting irritated at Lyra for being generally insane.

Yes, Emma did put out cookies just to make Lyra stop talking and let her get a word in occasionally. Because she's sneaky like that.

The DIC – The Department of International Cooperation. In Lyra's timeline, one department handles both muggle and magical international affairs.

Druella's actually not a moron (the Black sisters get their intelligence from her) she's just really self-absorbed, and really hates children. And in Lyra's opinion, she completely wasted her potential spending all her time and energy on being a Society Lady.

Yes, that was Eris telling Lyra to just tell the Grangers about the time travel, because she can tell that the Grangers knowing more about magic leads to more chaotic futures than their not being involved with Magical Britain, and this is the fastest way for Lyra to establish herself as a trustworthy authority on the magical world. Also, not to tell them about Other Bella, because they're not sure if their plan to save her will work.

(Wait, does this mean Lyra Black and Emma Granger are teaming up? Magical Britain is doomed. —Lysandra)

[flux capacitor and the bloody Doctor and Tricia McMillan's Earth]
References to Back to the Future, Doctor Who, and Mostly Harmless (the fifth book in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy)

[my upbring was very in keeping with the times. Or, well, it wasn't that far outside the norm, in most ways, at least]
Yes, Lyra actually believes this.

[She could probably form a working relationship with Narcissa Malfoy, given half a chance]
Yes, this is a reference to Mary Potter. Because I think I'm funny.

Also, I'm slightly jealous that Manic!Lyra is sooo much more productive than hypomanic!Leigha... —Leigha