"I could say—"
"AH!" Hermione started at the sudden chirp of a very familiar voice in what was supposed to be an empty room, so hard her book tipped out of her lap, nearly fell to the floor before she caught it by one cover.
"—I'm surprised you're sitting inside reading a book on holiday in France but I'm really not. You okay there, Maïa?"
For a moment Hermione just glared, waiting for her heart rate to drop back to normal. She was surprised, okay, which was perfectly understandable — Lyra just appearing with absolutely no warning in her room at her muggle grandmère's house in France was pretty much at the bottom of the list of things she'd expected to happen today.
(Was what she would be saying, but even she couldn't entirely believe it. She knew Lyra by now, this was exactly the sort of insane thing she did without a thought.)
Though she couldn't let the silence go too long, without conversation to distract herself she... Well, okay, just, magical society was very...conservative, at times, and as much as she might not be like them in some ways Lyra had been raised among them, had absorbed some of their habits. At school, she hadn't gone about like this, just a vest and tiny little shorts, Hermione could feel the urge to stare come on, and— "Er, what are you doing here?"
One bare shoulder (Stop it, Hermione, act normal, Jesus...) twitched in a shrug. "I had a day to myself, thought I'd drop by. I finished that translation of the—"
"Wait, no, you can't just pop into— This is my muggle grandmother's house, Lyra!"
Lyra blinked. "Oh. Right. Honestly, that didn't even occur to me, sometimes I completely forget about the whole...muggleborn thing."
...No, she had no idea how to feel about that. "How did you even find me at— No, forget that, you can't— Lyra, you have to go. They could come home at any time, and I can't really explain you being here."
For a second, Lyra just stared at her, her face a picture of bafflement. "Well, finding you wasn't hard at all, I just shadow-walked straight to you. I don't have to know where you are, as long as you're not under wards that can block it — and that's not likely, warding against shadow magic is hard — I can always get to you, whenever I want."
She... Hermione should probably be more unnerved by that thought than she actually was.
"And I'm mostly sure I only felt—" She abruptly cut off, frowning to herself. "Oh, I probably wouldn't have felt muggles through shadows, if I wasn't specifically looking for them. Er. But you said they're not home?"
Hermione grit her teeth. "Dad and Grandmother are out. I don't know when they'll be back."
"Oh, well, clearly it's fine then — I can leave just as easily as I came, I should have time to slip away whenever they do show up." That was probably true, but... "So, Emma's here? I do need to talk to her."
"You tracked me down in France to talk to my mother?" She couldn't quite keep a note of bitter resignation off her voice. This was...one of the reasons, anyway, that she'd wanted to put off Lyra meeting her parents as long as possible, Mum had a way of, just, taking over everything.
"Well, that's not the only reason, but I finished translating the House bylaws into English — which was a bitch, let me tell you, apparently Fourteenth Century Welsh legalese is a thing — and I told Meda I'd get that to Emma as soon as I had it done, and I did want to make it clear just how light-handed of a Lady Black I intend to... Well, Sirius is going to be the Lord of the House now, I guess, at least legally, but I'm sure he wouldn't—"
"What the hell are you talking about, Lyra?"
She blinked. "Didn't you know about the vassalage offer? I mean, I'm certain that got into the Prophet — the article I saw about it was padded out with far more speculation than is entirely sensible, but I can't imagine you could have missed it."
"Oh," Hermione muttered, her brow collapsing into a frown. That. Yes, she had heard about that.
It was, in a way, her own fault that it had ever happened — or, to be more precise, that it had ever needed to happen. It had perhaps been a bit naïve of her, sending that letter of hers into the Quibbler. She'd thought it would...well, set the record straight, she guessed. Not many people believed a single bloody thing the Quibbler said, but that wasn't really the point. She hadn't expected it to change anything in the short term, so much, she doubted the Lovegoods' ridiculous conspiracy rag would change most anyone's mind at all, she'd just wanted to...
Honestly, it had been intended as a statement more than anything, a gesture, more meaningful in the doing of it than any direct consequence. Even if she hadn't been quite conscious of it at the time. Lyra had put her in a corner, Dumbledore had put her in a corner, and everyone was being, just... She'd been lashing out, she could admit that now. She'd known it would be damaging to Dumbledore and the Ministry, their reputation, and she hadn't cared, at some level that'd been the whole point — she'd wanted to prove to Dumbledore he wasn't as powerful (or as convincing) as he thought he was, she'd wanted to prove to Lyra that she couldn't stop her from doing what she felt was right (even if Lyra had technically won their argument about it), she'd wanted to prove to all those idiots in the entire bloody country that...
...that they were idiots, she guessed? She didn't know, she wasn't convinced anymore she'd been thinking nearly as clearly as she'd thought she'd been at the time.
(People said hindsight was twenty-twenty, but personally she was almost always more uncertain in the aftermath than in the moment.)
It just hadn't occurred to her at the time that, in having that bloody letter published, that she was drawing far more attention to herself and her family than she was comfortable with. Mum had solved the problem very quickly — which was quite impressive, really, but Mum was impressive sometimes — so Hermione hadn't really had it in her to complain about exactly how she'd done it.
Even if it made her extremely uncomfortable. If Hermione understood the concept correctly, Mrs. Tonks had gotten the bloody magical press and even the Ministry to back off by...essentially claiming her family for the House of Black. In a sort of...serfdom kind of way. Hermione didn't understand exactly what was going on too well, it was just so foreign and weird, and Mum had been very clear that it wasn't official, just saying they were considering it was a stalling tactic, basically, but...
If they were to do such a thing, as Hermione understood it, Lyra would be...her Lady, basically, in a feudal sense. Or, Sirius, technically, since he'd be in charge of the House once he was officially pardoned, but...
Hermione was extremely uncomfortable with that.
Over these last couple weeks, Hermione had done a lot of thinking. About herself, exactly what kind of person she thought she was, what she wanted out of...everything, really. And about Lyra, and about their...relationship. ("Friendship" wasn't quite the right word, Lyra didn't really do friends, but "association" seemed too light a term.) She'd done a lot of thinking, and she was still a bit uncertain, and...not scared, exactly, but wary certainly, and she couldn't help the thought that she had completely lost her bloody mind, but...
She thought she knew what she wanted, and that wasn't it.
They left Hermione's room — it had been her uncle Rèmy's once upon a time, but it'd been her room when in France for longer than she could remember — walking through the tight, moodily-lit halls of her grandmère's house toward the salon — Grandmère used that word for the living room even speaking Engilsh, which seemed sort of odd — where she knew her Mum would probably be, the whole way Lyra babbling off about...something about Sirius being more entertaining than she'd expected. From the things Hermione had heard about Sirius Black...she would say she'd be concerned about the influence he might have on Lyra, but honestly she doubted it would make any difference. Lyra didn't need any encouragement to make a complete mess of things just for the fun of it.
(Hermione should probably disapprove of that more than she did, but, most of the time...)
"Yeah, I'm not surprised you're sitting reading on vacation either."
Mum, curled up on a chair with a book, glanced up as the two of them walked in...and that was it. Somewhat to Hermione's annoyance, Mum didn't seem surprised at all with Lyra, just, dropping in on them out of nowhere. Mum had apparently adapted to Lyra's Lyraness absurdly quickly, that wasn't at all fair. "Yes, well, what else am I to do when Dan is off with his mother's in-laws? My in-laws are exhausting enough, I don't need the added burden of dealing with them another step removed."
Lyra just smirked at that, presumably at some internal joke, but she didn't say it aloud for the rest of them.
"Anyway, did you need something, Lyra?"
"Oh, nothing, just a bit of House business." Lyra sauntered over to the sofa, bonelessly flopped down to a seat. "Meda said you wanted a copy of the House law."
The soft, amused sort of smile on Mum's face instantly vanished. "Ah, yes. That."
While dropping to sit next to Lyra, Hermione noticed her reach behind her, seemingly pulling a loosely-rolled scroll of parchment out from between the cushions. Hermione was rather jealous of that...shadow-pocket...thing she did these days, but knew better than to ask Lyra to teach it to her — she knew enough about shadow magic to know she wouldn't be able to do it, still wasn't sure how Lyra had pulled it off. (It would have gone on the list of evidence Lyra wasn't human, had Hermione still had doubts about that, because seriously?)
Lyra tossed the scroll over to Mum, who didn't quite manage to catch it, the thing tumbling to a halt in her lap. "I'm pretty sure that should be clear enough — the version I translated from was compiled in Thirteen Seventy-Six, excluding the amendments that are still relevant, but I was taught to read Classical Welsh for exactly this sort of thing. If there are any questions just owl me...or Meda, I guess, I will be in America most of the summer. She can't clarify my translation, of course, but she will be able to clear up any questions about the code itself, should be fine."
Mum unrolled the scroll, enough to make out the first couple paragraphs — holding it rather awkwardly, which did make sense, she'd probably never read from a scroll before — giving Lyra a raised eyebrow over the top. "You read Classical Welsh, now?"
Shrugging, "Sure. And Latin. And Greek — though, my Koiné is better, Classical Greek is stupid."
It probably wasn't worth explaining to Lyra most of her confusion was probably because there was no such thing as "Classical" Welsh in muggle academia. When mages said "Classical" Welsh — or Cambrian or simply British, some mages avoided using the word "Wales" — they were referring to the dialect used by the Wizengamot around the tenth century (also not coincidentally by the Founders of Hogwarts), which, obviously, any documents dealing with all that muggles had had access to would have been sealed away with everything else when the Statute was implemented.
Smirking, Mum spoke...in Latin. Because of course she did. Hermione thought she might have recognised a word or two, but it was hard to tell — she could read Latin...sort of...with the help of a dictionary...but she certainly couldn't speak it. She was surprised Mum could, apparently.
Lyra smirked back, responded...in Latin. Because of course she did. Thankfully, she switched back to French immediately. (Hermione didn't notice until just now they'd been speaking French this whole time.) "Anyway, you really don't have to worry about...most of the Blacks' rights, so far as your family's affairs go. I'm not likely to stop you from doing anything, unless it's too directly harmful to the interests of the House — which, I think you're smart enough not to do that, since the House of Black's power would also be yours. This is just easier, so far as I'm concerned. Straightens out some issues with you being our proxy, and Maïa picking fights with the Ministry." Lyra turned to Hermione, grinning. "That was great, by the way, watching Dumbledore and the D.L.E squirm over it is bloody hilarious."
Before Hermione could think of how to respond to that — that Lyra was enjoying the controversy (partially) unintentionally stirred up by her Quibbler debut probably should be a bad sign, but Hermione couldn't help feeling a bit smugly pleased — Mum had a question. "What's this about a proxy now?"
"Didn't I mention that?" Lyra blinked at the both of them for a moment, apparently confused. "Oh. Whoops? When a Lady or Lord of the Wizengamot sends someone else to vote in their stead, that proxy. I could have sworn I mentioned having you vote the Black seat."
Hermione sighed. "No, Lyra, I'm pretty sure you never told us about that." She wasn't certain Lyra would have thought to tell her — she had a bad habit of forgetting to inform people of their role in her schemes ahead of time — but Mum would have, at the very least.
"Oh. Well. How'd you like to be our proxy, then?"
For long seconds, Mum just stared at Lyra, expression peculiarly blank. "You...want to give me a seat in the magical Parliament."
"I wouldn't be giving it to you — it'd still be the Black seat, you'd just be speaking for us. But sure, yes, basically."
"You're aware I know very little about magical government or politics."
"I'm sure you'll catch up," Lyra said lightly, shrugging, as though this concern were inconsequential. (Which was absurd, but, Lyra.) "Meda will help, of course, and there are a few introductions I'll arrange ahead of your investiture — Cissy, certainly, probably Lady Ingham, and Lord Peakes, and...Lady Smethwyck might be good, er, Tugwood, maybe Dunbar or Eirsley..."
"Er, Lyra?" The ridiculous girl cut off in mid-ramble, turning to blink at her. "You realise those are all Dark families, right?" At least, she thought so — she didn't recognise Peakes at all, and she somehow hadn't realised Dunbar was even a Noble House, and the only one she knew was in Gryffindor, but...
Lyra blinked. "And...this is a problem?"
No, Hermione was not getting into a discussion about politics right now. Not when there was a far simpler issue she could bring up instead. "You do remember Mum is a muggle. How many of these people will even be willing to meet with her?"
"I am leaving out the worst pureblood nationalists on purpose, Hermione." (The use of her full name was a subtle sign she was a little annoyed, she didn't miss it.) "The Dunbars have had a few prominent marriages with muggleborns by now, the Smethwycks and Peakes have always been subtly anti-Statutarian, the Tugwoods and Eirsleys are more conservative communitarian families, they've always thought the blood purity thing is silly, and, back in the last war, the Inghams and the Monroes were the most visible opponents of the Death Eaters among the Dark — you also might notice that, despite being two of the few remaining Ancient Houses left, they're not counted among the Sacred Twenty-Eight, maybe ask yourself why that is. I might not care about this stuff much, but I did get a proper pureblood education, I do know these things."
Okay, well... Honestly, sometimes Hermione still forgot that "Dark" and "Death Eater" were hardly synonymous — she had learned more recently the situation was far more complicated than the impression she'd originally been given, but she still reverted to older information without thinking, sometimes. "Fine, but you can't tell me the Malfoys will be happy with a muggle in the Wizengamot — the rest might not be, but they are Death Eaters."
Lyra shrugged. "Lucy was, yes, but from the impression Cissy's given me she never did quite agree with the whole muggleborn genocide thing."
It took some effort for Hermione to hold in a disbelieving scoff — oh, she never had quite, that made it all better!
"Besides, she was never Marked, so she's technically not a Death Eater, and she's the one who votes the Malfoy seat anyway. If it were Lucy, that might be a problem, but it's not, so. And she's in negotiations right now to form a coalition between her Allied Dark and a few other Dark-leaning factions in the Wizengamot, factions which definitely did not support Riddle — this is actually great timing, Emma will be able to get in on the ground floor with the new coalition, should do nicely. A lot of them won't be happy about it, but they won't make too much trouble, I don't think. It will be a bit of a scandal, obviously, but it won't be so bad Emma won't be able to get anything done. It might actually go some way to getting her in with the right people, and skewing the reputation of our House the way I want it to go, so, it's a win-win-win-win, basically.
"Besides, if anyone does anything too stupidly racist, she can always bait them into an honour duel and have me kick the shite out of them for her. That's one of the advantages to the vassalage thing, she can ask a Black to stand in as champion — and that's internal Black law, so whoever it is might not know that, will be hilarious when they find out. There's a litany of other benefits too, of course, but you get the point. Having that set up before you take the seat," Lyra said, turning back to Mum, "would probably be a good idea, just in case someone does something stupid. But, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. There is precedent."
Hermione frowned. "There's precedent for a muggle voting in the Wizengamot."
"Sure. Salazar bloody Slytherin's father was a muggle, he spoke for the family for, what, a couple decades, I think. That was a thousand years ago, there are more recent examples, but still."
"Slytherin's father was a muggle?!"
Jerking back at the sudden volume — which, okay, wasn't entirely necessary, but really — Lyra gave her an odd, confused sort of look. "Er, obviously? Doesn't everyone know that?"
She certainly didn't. People could be very peculiar about Slytherin, simply suggesting such a thing would probably get an...unpleasant reaction from a lot of purebloods. "But... Didn't Slytherin start the whole blood purity thing?"
Lyra had the gall to just look more confused than she'd been a second ago. "No? Really, Maïa, there was no such thing as purebloods a thousand years ago. The very concept is post-Statute, you know that."
Well, she did, obviously — there hadn't been any difference between muggle and magical society in the Founders' time, they hadn't segregated yet — it was Lyra's assumption everybody knew this that was the problem. "But, the story everyone always tells, about Gryffindor and Slytherin and..."
"Oh, that's interesting, actually. See, in the Thirteenth Century, a Dark Lord called Ignatius Gaunt took over...most of Scotland, I think, ruled from Hogwarts for a few decades, and he started this mythology about Slytherin and muggleborns. Of course, back then it was about anti-Christianity, the blood purity angle never came up in the original version, but shortly after the Statute a few pureblood nationalist crazies decided to reframe it as part of an effort to legitimise their own ideology. People do that all the time, you know, it's sort of fascinating how they twist things around to suit their narrative. There are blood purists who believe it's all factual, of course, but...well, back in my Nineteen Sixties at least, it was widely believed to be propaganda. Some people still believed it, but it'd gone out of fashion before I was even born. I almost forgot it stuck around here, honestly, it's hard to keep track of these things sometimes."
She didn't... That...
Okay, that sort of explained a lot, actually. Probably didn't help that they tended to skip that entire period in History of Magic class, a terrible oversight now that she thought about it...
"You do realise I already have a job."
Hermione had almost forgotten Mum was in the room. Turning back to her with a brilliant grin, Lyra said, "Are you saying you don't want to use the wealth and influence of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black to antagonise a bunch of hidebound, reactionary, racist arseholes?"
A corner of Mum's lips twitched with a repressed smirk. "Well, when you put it like that..."
Er... Hermione had a bad feeling about this. Lyra and her Mum teaming up to mess with the entrenched powers of magical Britain, that could get...
There was a little bit more discussion, Lyra explaining she'd extended the negotiation window out to Hallowe'en (which she called Samhain, obviously) — apparently that was something the Lady of the House could just declare was so without needing any outside acknowledgement — but that it would be a good idea to finalise their arrangements before Mum took the Black seat in the Wizengamot. (Mum hadn't actually agreed to do that yet, Lyra just assumed she would, because Lyra.) They might actually want it squared away before school started up again, since the scandal around Hermione's letter would make her far more of a target for harassment than she had been already, just by virtue of being muggleborn.
Apparently, even many of the people outwardly accepting of muggleborns only truly tolerated them if they didn't get too uppity. They wanted quiet, meek muggleborns who were appropriately grateful of their betters' largesse in allowing them to integrate into magical society, and certainly not ones with independent, potentially inconvenient opinions. Hermione was rather taken aback by the scorn on Lyra's voice as she said it, but that wasn't too surprising when she thought about it, she'd heard Lyra go on rants about Light hypocrisy several times now.
Though she wasn't wrong — Hermione had noticed the same thing in old articles mentioning Lily Potter in the Prophet, even sometimes in how their classmates talked to her. A surprising number of the "good" purebloods were shockingly paternalistic in their attitudes about muggles and muggleborns, it was irritating.
After a little bit more about where to send whatever questions Mum might have about the (ridiculously extensive) House law — along with blasé reassurances that they probably didn't matter, since Lyra was hardly likely to exploit them in any case (which, given Lyra's peculiar morality, was a good point) — she turned to Hermione, everything about her bearing and voice suggesting she'd just decided to dismiss the subject. "So, I put something together, I was wondering if you'd go over it with me."
"Er..." Hermione blinked at her for a second, trying to yank herself away from the vassalage topic. (It wasn't quite as scary as it'd been at first, but she was still very much not comfortable with the idea.) "Go over what?"
Lyra reached into shadows again, this time pulling out a book. It wasn't professionally printed, hand-written script on loose sheets of parchment, what looked like a homemade adhesive potion forming a slapdash binding at one end. "I composed the letters I've been exchanging with Sam into a unified theory on deep magic, taking the more recent discoveries of muggle physicists into account. This is the first draft, it's not perfect as it stands — I'm not as well-read on this quantum stuff as I probably should be yet — but I'd like to get your impressions before continuing work on it."
"Quantum stuff?" asked Mum, sounding rather amused.
"Yeah, I had to pick up a bit to explain some things in a way Sam would understand. Long story."
It took Hermione a few seconds to process this, the absurd realisation slowly percolating through her head. "You... You wrote a book?!"
"Sure." The shrug seemed easy enough, but the brilliant smirk suggested Lyra knew exactly how ridiculous she was. "It's just fundamental theory at the moment, but I'll probably expand it into demonstrations of practical workings before looking to publish it. Want to take a look?"
There was really only one answer Hermione could give.
As odd and unsettling and frustrating as Lyra could be at times, well, Hermione didn't think she'd ever looked more beautiful, sitting there smirking at her holding a magical theory book she'd just written in her spare time.
(Hermione was in so much trouble.)
"You know, I think that actually almost makes sense."
Lyra grinned. "Obviously, I'm a genius. Did you expect anything else?"
The exasperated little glare Maïa shot her just made her giggle.
They'd been going over a few of the opening definitions and concepts in her treatise for at least an hour now, sitting in the grass in a park a couple blocks away from Maïa's muggle grandmother's house. Apparently, once Maïa had realised what she was holding, she couldn't resist the urge to talk about it right now, but they couldn't stay at the house — they did both have a tendency to get wrapped up in this sort of thing, Maïa was worried the magic-ignorant members of her family would walk in on them and they'd have some awkward explaining to do. Personally, Lyra thought the rules about which of their relatives muggleborns were and were not allowed to tell about magic was bloody stupid. She'd nearly started an argument about, just, telling the rest of Maïa's family about it all anyway, it would certainly make things less complicated, but she suspected it wouldn't get anywhere. Not yet, anyway, give Maïa a couple more months, maybe.
It was especially stupid because there were wards over the house. Or...she thought there were, anyway. They were very basic, just some simple measures to prevent scrying and detect the use of harmful magics, but they were definitely there. What Lyra wasn't certain of was whether they were actually intended for that house, or one of the neighbours' instead. The narrow, winding streets of old European cities being what they were, the little houses were quite tightly packed together, the wards easily covered half the block. Either someone living in the area was a mage themselves, or had magical relatives who'd put up the wards for them. If it were Maïa's family, she'd have expected to feel something magical in the house, so it wasn't particularly likely, but...that Maïa had magical relatives was still an elegant solution. It wasn't at all unusual for multiple muggleborns to crop up in the same family, after all — in fact, it was practically guaranteed, if they had a recent squib ancestor.
But, Lyra hadn't any proof, and Maïa certainly believed she was the only mage in the family, so it hadn't seemed worth arguing the point.
So far, they'd mostly just started with the fundamental stuff — defining a few terms, describing dimensions and fields and units, that sort of thing. Which meant Lyra's central insight that had led to writing all this came up almost right away. It had long been an obvious implication to magical theorists that there was some sort of connection between magic and physical matter. Magic could be made to simulate matter for a time, through transfiguration or conjuration, and while these effects were usually temporary, for all a purely physical examination would be able to determine the magically-created object was completely indistinguishable from the real thing. Ritual and more recent advances in physical alchemy could even make a conjuration permanent, essentially forcing magic to become matter. It was complicated, and a rare practice to this day, but indisputably possible.
Similarly, muggle physicists had come to the conclusion that physical matter, when it came down to it, wasn't anything special. She meant, the little bits that made up things weren't fundamentally different than what made up light, or electricity — it was just another sort of energy, the familiar mechanics of the physical world emerging from the interactions within it. The whole Big Bang thing had fascinating implications, that everything that existed now was essentially the ashes of what had come before, diffuse parts of what had been a single whole. That all of reality was made of the same, fundamental stuff.
When it came down to it, adding in magic to fill it out and bring the two perspectives together had been bloody obvious.
"I mean, it's still a bit..." Maïa flipped back to a previous page, eyes dancing over the script. "I get it conceptually, but if you weren't sitting here explaining it to me I'd have trouble. I think my maths isn't quite up to scratch." She sounded slightly bitter, as though annoyed with Lyra for being so much better than her at something, frustrated with herself for not being as good as she wanted to be.
"Well, that was sort of expected, wasn't it? This is mastery-level arithmancy and physics. I've been studying the former for years and the latter for months, you'll catch up."
For the first sentence or two, Maïa started to look annoyed, but it wiped away again by the end, replaced with a reluctant sort of smile. "Yes, well. I'm afraid until I do, I won't be much help with refining all this."
"That's true, I suppose." Lyra shrugged. "But I can wait, I'm not in any rush. It's not like I should be publishing this sort of thing until Sam and Mira start moving on...whatever it is they're planning, I never actually asked. I can give you the list of books I used, if you like. Or conjure copies, I guess. I would just give them to you but, I do still need them for reference." Which wouldn't be a problem once they were back in Hogwarts, but if she wanted to get any work done on this stuff before then...
Letting out a brief sigh, an odd sort of wariness about her, Maïa said, "I guess at this rate I'm going to be bored out of my skull in Arithmancy, aren't I."
"Why do you think I'm not taking it? Really, the only reason I'm bothering to take Runes next year is because I hear the professor is at least entertaining." Not to mention, she should pick up a mastery or two eventually, if only to get people to stop questioning whether she knew what she was doing. It wasn't necessary she actually take the class for that, but she didn't have any connections in the field to exploit in this timeline. Babbling could function as an in just fine.
"Yes, well..." Slowly, reluctantly, Maïa closed the book, offered it back to her. "You should probably hold on to this until I'm caught up, at least."
"Er, that's your copy."
"It... What?"
"Yeah."
"Lyra, this..." Maïa blinked down at the book for a second. "This is hand-written. How long did this take you to make?"
She shrugged. "I dunno, the writing itself probably took a few days, I guess. Most of the material was already written elsewhere, I was just compiling it in a way that made sense. Er, that is the only permanent copy I have at the moment, so don't damage it — I'm partway through writing out another one, copying from a blank book with text projected by a protean charm on that one, so, I'd lose most of my work if this one is destroyed. But, well, explaining all this shite I've been figuring out with Sam to you is the whole reason I started this project in the first place."
Maïa just stared at her for a moment, her eyes wide. "Really?"
"Yeah, sure. I mean, that was the original purpose, it wasn't until I was partway through that I realised I could refine it into something fit to publish pretty easily." Once Maïa was caught up enough to help her work out the kinks anyway. If only because Lyra had absolutely no idea if her reasoning would make sense to anyone else, she'd need her help to translate her ideas into normal person.
"You... You wrote a book...for me."
Lyra frowned back at Maïa, not really sure how to answer that question. For one thing, it wasn't a question — she had just said that, and Maïa didn't sound like she doubted it. She definitely did sound something, though Lyra couldn't put her finger on what that was supposed to be. All soft and...she didn't know, voices were even harder to read than faces. She wasn't getting any help there either, Maïa still just sort of...blankly staring at her. It was weird. "Er...yes?"
That was sort of a question, one Lyra never did get an answer to. At least not a verbal one — just out and kissing her sort of was an answer, in its own way.
It was soft and quick, just a second or two, Lyra blinking at her, face suddenly blurry from being far too close to properly bring into focus. And then Maïa was sitting back again — not quite all the way back, still sitting rather closer than she'd been a moment ago — face shifting a few shades pinker as she glanced away. Okay, then. "So, I'm confused. Just to be clear, are we not pretending you don't want to kiss me anymore? Or are we going to be doing that again as soon as we're done here? 'Cause, I have to say, Maïa, if you keep going back and forth on me, you really can't blame me for not being able to keep it straight."
Maïa's eyes flicked back to her, flushing face pinching with a churlish sort of glare. "Lyra?"
"Yes, Maïa?"
"Shut up."
"Er, what—?"
Lyra couldn't even get the question out before Maïa was kissing her again. Which, again, was its own answer.
Now, she couldn't possibly say she was at all an expert with this...kissing thing. There'd been whatever the fuck had been going on with Zee back in her time, and then randomly snogging Blaise several times now. That was really all the experience she had in the subject — Maïa had kissed her once before, of course, but Eris had been house-sitting at the time — and she wasn't even entirely certain all that should count. Zabinis would be Zabinis, after all. With Zee, she'd just randomly kiss her sometimes, and Bella would just...go along with it, and that only toward the end of second year. Before then, she'd just kind of...stand there and wait for Zee to stop being weird and confusing. She hadn't really understood what was going on, at the time, just, didn't feel it was worth it to make Zee stop, since it wasn't like it hurt, or anything.
Honestly, she still didn't really understand the snogging thing, even after doing it with Blaise all those times. In a slightly different way, she was still sort of, just, going along with it — Blaise was always the one that started it, and she was never opposed, she'd just never once felt the urge to kiss him first. It wasn't a horrible thing to do with one's time, it could even be sort of fun, but Lyra could always find something to entertain herself with. (Besides, Blaise spent a lot of his time around Harry lately, so it often wasn't even a conveniently available option either.) She wasn't sure the thing she found most fun about it was even something normal people would care about. She meant, yes, it could be nice — the neck-kissing in particular was very pleasantly distracting — but the best part was getting Blaise all worked up, making him want her, until it was very obvious, it really couldn't be comfortable straining his trousers like that, and then just...getting up and leaving him there, frustrated and disappointed. It was far too much fun.
When she'd wondered to herself about that, Eris had once pointed out that it was quite possible she just enjoyed being able to say no, since it wasn't like Cygnus had ever given her that option. Which, she guessed that sort of made sense. She was never conscious of that at the moment, of course — she avoided remembering Cygnus had ever existed at all if she could help it — but it wasn't out of the question.
Point was, no, she really still didn't understand this snogging thing. She didn't get why people did it, went so out of their way and put so much effort into getting people to do it with them, and it was just sort of silly, she didn't get it.
Snogging Maïa was subtly different, though, and she couldn't really say why.
Aww, my baby ducky is starting to grow up, how precious.
Lyra took a second to imagine sticking out her tongue at Eris before returning to the matter at hand.
It couldn't be that Maïa was just better at it than either of the Zabinis. Lyra was hardly an expert, but she was certain she wasn't — Maïa had gotten those practice-snogs in with random people at Walpurgis (still hilarious, by the way), but the Zabinis were the Zabinis, they were far more practiced than Maïa could possibly be at this point. Maïa certainly wasn't nearly as confident about what she was doing as either of them, more, just...well, hesitant, she guessed. Almost shy, which was weird, Lyra hadn't even realised until just now it was possible to snog shyly. She certainly wasn't better at it.
In fact, Lyra kind of thought that might be the point.
It was just... This, snogging Maïa, was fun in a way that it simply hadn't been with either of the Zabinis. And, it took a moment for the realisation to properly form itself in her head, but she was getting the feeling that she... Zee and Blaise certainly knew what they were doing far more than Lyra did, she was...in a passive role, sort of. She certainly made a point with Blaise of making him work for it, but there was a power disparity at work there, one she hadn't even been entirely aware of until it'd gone and reversed itself on her.
Lyra had never been the more confident snogging partner before. And that was, just...sort of...
...fun.
She couldn't even say what about it was so entertaining, what about what was happening right now was even that much different than snogging Blaise. It just was.
Also, when Lyra caught Maïa's lip with her teeth, the way she squeaked, that was just bloody adorable. Like, four-year-old Meda pouting -level adorable, baby thestral -level adorable. It took some effort to stop herself from laughing — she had the feeling Maïa would react quite badly to that — she almost couldn't help it, come on, that just wasn't fair.
"Stop, stop." Maïa's hands had come up to her shoulders, pushing her back a few inches, far enough their faces were no longer smushed together but close enough her floofy hair was still hiding half the park around them, her breath still playing across Lyra's face and neck. Her breathing had gone a bit heavier, so it was more noticeable than it would be.
Actually, Lyra was a bit out of breath herself, and she felt weirdly...tingly, she hadn't noticed that until now. It took a second to find her voice again. "Er, why?"
Maïa gave her another look, somewhere between exasperated and amused, she'd guess. "We're in public, Lyra."
"Yeah, in France. Nobody cares."
Blinking, she glanced around — as Lyra had expected, the few other muggles in the park were going about whatever it was they were doing, barely sparing two snogging teenagers a second look. And that was without magical assistance either. When they'd gotten here, Maïa had suggested not bothering to put up a paling, anyone who heard them would just assume they were talking about some fantasy novel or something. Pulling out a stick and waving it around would actually be more conspicuous than just talking about magic. (Which, that was a good point, Lyra was clearly a great influence.) Maïa looked a bit surprised that nobody seemed to care, which...
Okay, that was just sort of silly. They were in France. Muggle France, but muggle France was still France.
"Er, still, I don't..." Maïa's face went a few further shades redder, now quite clearly avoiding her eyes. Her hands left Lyra's shoulders, drifting down, settling over her wrists, their hands loosely tangling across their laps. "I don't think— In public, just..."
"Yeah, I've noticed people can be weird about that sort of thing." Lyra still didn't fully understand the normal person...privacy thing. Like, against mind magic, she understood that, but everything else...
Maïa shot her another look, but Lyra was completely hopeless to read this one.
"So...is this going to be a thing now? I mean, it was nice, but if we're going to go back to pretending you don't want to, you should probably tell me ahead of time." She'd never felt the urge to kiss Blaise first, but this had been unexpectedly entertaining, and that squeak was just unfairly adorable, she probably would.
"No, I..." Glancing away again, Maïa took a long breath, sounding peculiarly thin and shaky. A very familiar, Maïa-ish expression took over her face, a determined (if somewhat wary) kind of frown. "I think... I want to give it a try. You know, dating."
Except, Lyra didn't know, really. She meant, she knew the words, obviously, but she couldn't possibly mean... "Maïa, are you asking me to be your girlfriend right now?"
Maïa turned back to her with something that was almost a pout, though not quite, a shade of irritation stopping it from getting all the way there. "Well, yeah, I guess."
That... She didn't...
Eris!
Yes, my bellatrice?
Help!
For a moment, the only response was a deep welling of amusement frothing from the back of her mind, a bouncing giggle she could almost feel echoing in her ears.
That is NOT help!
I'm sorry, Lyra dear— No, she wasn't. —you're just so very cute sometimes, I can't help myself. An image floated up from Eris, Lyra looking rather younger than she was, the familiar manifestation of her Patron ruffling her hair while image-Lyra pouted up at her.
I'm serious, Eris, what do I do?
I'm sure I couldn't possibly make this decision for you.
It's not about— Honestly, Eris, you know exactly what the problem is!
Yes, I do. And so do you. And I couldn't possibly make this decision for you.
You are completely useless, and I hate you.
As the children say, if lies make you happy. Besides, I do believe Hermione is trying to get your attention.
"Sorry, I, er..." Lyra blinked, yanking her focus back to the world around her. Maïa had obviously been saying something, but she hadn't caught it. "What was that?"
"I was just saying, if you don't want to, that's fine, I just..." Maïa looked far more uncomfortable than she had a second ago, though Lyra couldn't say why, this was weird and confusing.
Which was sort of the problem. "It's not that I want to not, I just— Ugh." Lyra cut off, glaring pointlessly up at the sky. She debated how to go about this for a few seconds, but, fuck it, she'd always been shite at dancing around the point. "Okay, I'm just going to go for plain, brutal honesty here."
That expression was perfectly readable — anxious wariness, sure that Lyra was about to say something...well, uncomplimentary, she guessed.
"No, it's nothing like that. I just... Look, okay, I like you, that should be bloody obvious by now — I did start spending so much time with you for a reason, and you must have noticed I don't really do friends. And...well, if you want something, and if there's no particular reason why I shouldn't, I'm inclined to give it to you, just because you want it, and I can."
For some inexplicable reason, Maïa almost seemed disconcerted with that admission. Which, well, that should have been obvious — she didn't think Lyra had done things like, for example, breaking into McGonagall's bedroom to threaten her into letting Ginevra stay with them for Ginevra, did she? Honestly. Whatever it was making her uncomfortable, she was obviously reasoning her way past it somehow, her face gradually clearing. "Okay, well...it shouldn't be a problem then?" It did sound more like a question than anything.
"It wouldn't be, if it were almost anything else. You know I'm not normal, Maïa. I don't... The whole...dating thing, I don't really get it. I mean, I sort of get the courtship thing the nobility do, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that's not what we're talking about here."
Maïa's face went very red again.
"It's just... From what I understand, it's one of those, interpersonal...feelings, things, and I don't really do feelings. I don't understand romance, and squishy stuff like that, I just don't, and I never will. So, I will inevitably fuck up. I'm going to do something wrong, or say something wrong, and I don't want to fuck it up, because, well, I did start spending so much time around you for a reason. I'm just...concerned this will end very, very badly."
She was sort of violating the plain, brutal honesty claim there — she didn't really feel concern, not the way other people did. But, sometimes she had to fudge the language to get her point across, there wasn't really anything she could do about that. English wasn't designed to be used by people like her...and speaking thunderbird in the middle of a park in muggle France would probably draw unwanted attention.
"I mean, I'm not saying no — as I said, I'm perfectly willing to give you what you want, and I do like you. I just... I can't help what I am, Maïa. And I can't help but think I'm going to be really bad at the...dating, normal-person-romance...thing."
"Yes, well." For some inexplicable reason, Maïa looked...amused? That was...odd. Lyra officially had no clue what was going on anymore. "I did sort of guess that already."
"Er. What?"
"Honestly, Lyra, how long have we known each other now? I'm not under any illusions that—" The corner of her lips twitched. "—you could do squishy feelings, or the normal-person-romance thing."
...Okay, now she was confused.
And Maïa just seemed to think her confusion was bloody funny, sitting there smirking at her. "I started to spend so much time with you for a reason too, you know. If I wanted normal, don't you think I would have asked someone else?"
Lyra blinked. "Good point. So, er... Okay, then?"
"Okay, then."
"Right. Now that we have that straightened out..."
Maïa had barely long enough to properly frown in confusion before Lyra was snogging her.
Gods and Powers, that little yelp was adorable.
[or Cambrian or simply British, some mages avoided using the word "Welsh"] — The word Wales/Welsh is ultimately descended from the name the Romans used for a Gaulish tribal confederation. The term eventually expanded to be applied to various peoples all across the Western Empire who, well, weren't Roman. Similar to the original Greek use of barbarian, really. Modern Welsh nationalists actually consider the term "Welsh" itself to be...not quite a slur, exactly, but certainly insensitive. I imagine the more Celtic-centered magical government would have used native names or Cambria (a Latin interpretation of a native name). Of course, speaking English, Lyra will use Wales/Welsh because she just considers it the proper English word — or gallois, since they're speaking French at the moment, but that has the same issues attached to it — but Hermione would be more aware of the disagreement around it.
Yes, Emma Granger is going to have a position of influence in the magical government, and Lyra and Hermione are "a thing" now. Britain is doomed.
—Lysandra
