So I think if I just... Lyra reached into the Dark, as though she were going to shape a bit of it into a pocket, but instead of pinching and folding a bit of that dimension in on itself, she sort of...folded it around herself. Not actually stepping out of the Mundane Plane, just...tweaking the boundary between the planes to hide herself, kind of the exact opposite of shadow-walking, really.
Er...
What?
Before Eris could answer, the resistance which had been fighting against her latest attempt to figure out the goddess's fun little obscurity trick suddenly snapped. (That.) There was a sickening jolt before things stabilised, though she still felt slightly...off, so...
Did it work?
No? Maybe? I don't know, you look the same to me, Eris said. Which was about as useful as everything she'd had to say on the subject — not that she hadn't been willing to advise Lyra in her explorations of shadow magic, she just didn't experience the various planes of existence in the same way, so her advice wasn't terribly helpful.
Fine, I'll go ask...whoever she happened to run into first, probably. Assuming they could see her. If they couldn't, that would be its own sort of answer, wouldn't it.
It took all of two seconds to realise that, no, it hadn't worked, and in fact she'd done something very wrong, because she stepped into the doorway between the sitting room and the dining room at the same moment Sirius did, obliviously throwing a comment over his shoulder rather than looking where he was going.
If he'd just tripped over her, that would be one thing. But he didn't. He walked straight through her, turning to look where he was going right around the time she yelped in surprise, trying to scramble out of his way. He screamed like a cursed banshee and scrabbled back against the wall as he realised that he'd just somehow managed to walk through her as though she was a ghost. Which both suggested that she was still visible, and also that she was intangible, which was not what she'd been going for, at all.
"Fuck. Guess that wasn't it." She sighed, rolling her eyes and taking a seat on the nearest chair. Gingerly — if Sirius could walk through her, she was pretty sure she could fall through furniture. She didn't, though it didn't feel entirely like she was actually sitting so much as...well, it was kind of like floating in a tepidarium...in a way that was entirely unlike that, really. Mostly it just felt weird.
"Bella? What the— MIRA!"
"What the fuck is your problem? I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything to you." Pretty sure because, well, she didn't really know what it would do, walking through an intangible shadow-person, but walking through ghosts didn't hurt anyone, and she felt fine.
"What is it?" Zee said, making an entrance from the direction of the nearest loo.
"It's— She's— This!" he stuttered, edging close enough to wave a hand through her arm.
She swatted at him, completely ineffectively. "Knock it off, arsehole."
"Is it some kind of illusion?" Zee asked, coming closer.
"No, I'm not a fucking illusion," Lyra snapped.
"I...don't think so?" Sirius said, poking at her arm again. "It doesn't feel like an illusion, there's like...kind of drag?"
"You— You can't hear me, can you? Fuck," she muttered, standing again to get away from his poking. Come to think of it, she didn't really think she was properly hearing them, either. She'd been interpreting it as hearing, but in the same way as she heard Eris talking to her, or the magic part of Parsel. It wasn't really hearing, it was magic, but 'hearing' was the closest equivalent non-magical, human sense. No, it was really more like...sensing someone from the Shadows, just...much clearer. More detailed than it would be if she was actually in Shadows. Which suggested...
Yes, I think you're right, Eris confirmed, in response to her not-quite-articulated idea.
Well how do I get back? Because between planes seemed like a fantastically bad place to just...hang around, and... An experimental attempt to step out of the Shadows did nothing. ...And she couldn't properly step into them, either. Bugger!
How the fuck should I know?
«You are less useful than a dead frog too rotted to eat.»
She pulled her wand, casting an illusion. "Can you hear me now?" They could both of their heads snapped around to stare at her, rather than muttering amongst themselves trying to figure out what she was. Fabulous. "I'm not an illusion, I was trying to do something with shadow magic, and I fucked it up."
Sirius and Zee exchanged another look, a hand rising to Zee's temple as though struck by a sudden headache. Sirius seemed to be trying not to laugh at her. After a moment of her silently glaring at him, he stopped trying.
"Oh, go on, laugh it up. Not like this is a serious problem, or anything, I'm just fucking intangible!"
"What the fuck else am I supposed to do? This doesn't seem like a Sirius problem at all." The complete arse sniggered at his own stupid pun. "Let me know if there's anything I can do to help, but in the meanwhile, I'll be at the beach."
He sauntered off, calling for Harry and Blaise, presumably to see if they wanted to go to with him, leaving a very intangible Lyra with a very confused Zee, staring at each other with nothing to say. Because what the hell was there to say?
"Well, don't look at me," she said, rather defensively. "You're the one who knows how magic works, and I have to be at the Ministry in twenty minutes, so, best of luck sorting out this little...snafu." And with that, she followed Sirius down the hall, shaking her head in silent disbelief.
Well... She hadn't actually expected either of them to have anything useful to offer, but.
Fuck.
§
Bella says she's never heard of anything like this, asks if you've tried apparating out.
Of course I've tried apparating out! It's been two days, does she really think I didn't think of that?!
No, she doesn't.
Does she know anyone who might actually know anything about this shite? Shadow magic, I mean?
No one anywhere near you. Angélos, of course, but we don't trust Angélos to actually help you.
Yeah...okay...but you will ask her, if we can't think of anything else?
Well...yes, but...you don't feel hungry or tired or anything, and your future doesn't feel like you're actually in danger, so...
So you're not going to ask her. Right. Fuck you, Eris.
§
"Er...Lyra?"
"What?" she asked, poking her wand at the book in front of her to turn the page. Harry flinched slightly, as though he thought she was going to hex him or something. Which, yes, she was vaguely annoyed with everything at the moment, if she thought hexing him would help she certainly would. But somehow it didn't seem likely, so.
This was fucking useless. No one else in the entire history of the Family seemed to have managed to fuck up shadow magic quite this badly, she hadn't been able to find a single reference to anything like her situation in any of the journals or treatises she'd poured over in the past three days, and no one besides Lyra herself seemed to be taking the problem very seriously. It didn't help that Eris was being stubborn about asking Angel for help — even though she was practically the only person she or Bella could think of who might know how to fix this, or know someone who knew how to fix it (so Lyra wasn't speaking to her at the moment). Bella had already asked some vampires associated with the Anti-Statutarians she'd been talking to, and they'd never even heard of someone getting stuck halfway between the Dark and the Mundane. They apparently hadn't thought it was possible, which just—
Okay, doing the impossible when it was something neat, yes, she was totally on board with that. Doing the impossible when it was boring and annoying, and made her bloody intangible, was a pain in the arse!
Yes, she'd managed to establish by this point that she apparently didn't need to sleep or eat or use the loo while she was like this, and she could still do magic, so she wasn't quite as fucked as she might otherwise be, but that didn't mean this didn't suck balls. She could walk through walls if she wanted, but not wards or anything enchanted, including the furniture, which raised questions about how the hell her wand was with her and still worked, stuck as she was mostly outside of her dimension. She had no answers to these, which was itself somewhat infuriating. And she'd been stuck wearing the same clothes for days, which... Well, she didn't really need to change them, but she kind of felt as though she should, if only because looking exactly the same for days on end was boring. And had she mentioned that not being able to touch anything was fucking annoying?
Case in point: "Ah, Hermione's sent you a letter."
"Be a love and open it for me, Harry," she said, trying her level best not to snap at him. She might have overcompensated, because he seemed even more wary of her than he had when she'd been short with him a moment ago.
He did, his eyes skimming over the text.
"Well? Can I see it?" Not that she particularly minded Harry reading her post — if he found out that she was actually a dimension-hopper or that he had briefly been dead that would still be the least of her problems at the moment, and he knew practically everything else by now.
"Er, yeah, sorry." He laid it on the desk for her.
Mostly questions about the theory treatise, she saw, skimming it herself. Hardly anything urgent. Reiterating her doubts about the vassalage agreement (which Lyra honestly could not comprehend, even when she wasn't completely distracted by being intangible) and introducing her mother to Cissy, which Narcissa had already written her about, putting it off until after Sirius's trial concluded, and in any case was not going to happen until Lyra figured out how to get fully back into the right bloody dimension (or just a single one) — she definitely wasn't going to go through a Portal like this, she could only imagine the potential consequences, and none of them were at all pleasant — so also not urgent. That last bit, however...
"Come on," she snapped at Harry, dropping her attempt to sound reassuring and not like she might hex anyone who looked at her wrong, because she very well might, if anything else cropped up to make this situation more frustrating. "Where's Blaise? I need to make a phone call."
§
"Granger residence, this is Emma speaking."
"Er...Zabinis' California flat, Lyra speaking?"
"Lyra, you really don't— She's just letting you know you got the right number."
"Oh. Well, that's...a bit odd, isn't it? I mean, I doubt Hermione would've given me the wrong number. She was kind of surprised that I asked for it, but—"
"Lyra, dear? Who else is there? Am I on speaker? It sounds like you're underwater or something."
"Yes, you are, Doctor Granger. This is Blaise Zabini. Harry's here as well."
"Er... Hi, Missus Doctor Granger."
"Oh, call me Emma, boys."
"May we speak to Maïa, Emma?"
"Of course, just give me a minute— (Hermione! Here, dear, it's for you.)"
"Hello? Who—?"
"Maïa?"
"Lyra?"
"Yes, and Blaise, and Harry."
"Er...hi?"
"Yes, hello, whatever. So, I just got your letter, and since I can't really write back at the moment—"
"Sorry, Lyra? I think there's something wrong with the connection, you sound really weird."
"It's because I'm using a sound illusion to talk, it's bloody annoying, but—"
"Er... Why are you—"
"It's not important. I was just calling to let you know that I can't write back at the moment, and I also can't go on a date with you. I'm...indisposed."
"You're— Lyra, if you didn't want to go out with me, you could have said so—"
"It's not that I don't want to go out with you — I'm not sure exactly what to do or how that whole...dating thing goes, but that's fine, whatever — I can't."
"Well, why not? Are you busy, or? It doesn't have to be this Saturday, I don't really have plans until we go back to school."
"Ah...no, not busy. There's just... As I said, I'm indisposed. Indefinitely."
"Lyra. What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"She's intangible, and doesn't know how to fix it."
"Blaise! You're still— Oh, my God. Just— Okay, what the hell do you mean you're intangible and don't know how to fix it?"
"Er...that's pretty much it."
"Right. Fine, then. Just, forget it."
"Wait, what?"
"If you don't want to go out with me, that's fine, I just— Forget it."
"I don't not want to go out with you, I'm stuck in bloody California because while, yes, I would enjoy seeing you, I wouldn't enjoy it enough to risk using a Portal while I'm stuck between dimensions!"
"Wait, you're really— Jesus, Lyra, what did you do?! How did you— Are you okay?! And I didn't believe you — I'm the worst girlfriend, I—"
"Yes, I'm really intangible, fucked up a shadow magic trick I was trying to figure out and er, I'm not sure? I mean, if I knew what I'd done, really, I'd've fixed it days ago. I'm fine, I'm just stuck, so I'm going to have to say no to the whole date thing, and I'm fairly certain that makes me the worse girlfriend out of the two of us, and please stop freaking out because I have no patience for that sort of dragonshite today."
"Days?! I— How— Why are you only telling me now? Are you okay? You sound—"
"Oh, come on, even I know it's rude to refuse to respond to an invitation, and I can't write back to you because I can't hold a bloody quill — I'm good at levitation charms, but not like, levitate the fucking ink into the shape of words good! But yes, I'm fine. Intangible. But otherwise, fine."
"You can't be fine, Lyra, how are you— Are you eating? Or– or you're going to die of dehydration or something, you can't just become intangible, Lyra!"
"Well it's not like I did it on purpose, and no, I'm not eating, and I'm apparently not going to die of dehydration, either, it's already been four days — and before you ask, no, I haven't slept, I don't seem to have any bodily needs at all at the moment, which I suppose makes sense because I haven't got a physical body at the moment, or it's temporarily outside of time or something. It's actually kind of neat, theoretically. Just generally really boring in actuality. And frustrating. Very frustrating."
"But– but— It's been four days?! Damn it, Lyra, when— Were you going to tell me about this at all?"
"Er...no? Well, maybe after I figured out how to reverse it. I guess it might have come up eventually."
"Lyra!"
"Fuck, was that one of the questions where I was supposed to lie?"
"What? No! Why would you— Why wouldn't you tell me? I– I..."
"Why would I tell you? It has nothing to do with you, I don't like admitting I've fucked up, and you have nothing useful to contribute to solving the problem."
"Urgh, you— You didn't think I might want to know that my– that you made yourself fucking intangible?"
"Wow, you got Granger to say fuck?"
"Oh, suck it, Blaise, if I don't have patience for Maïa today, do you really think I have patience for you? And even if I had thought of it, what would be the point? I'll let you know when I've got it sorted. Er...what's the phrase, again?"
"Rain-check."
"Right, yes, rain-check, on the date, Maïa. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to trying to figure out why I'm currently stuck between planes and how to fix it."
"But— Ooh, fine, just...be careful, Lyra. Blaise, Harry, you'll keep an eye on her, won't you?"
"Wha— Yeah, of course we will, Hermione."
"Don't worry, Maïa, she'll figure it out."
"Besides, what could possibly happen to me? I'm intangible. It's not like I can get hurt."
§
Okay, look, Eris. We've established that this is a completely unique fuck up as far as the literature is concerned, I can only interact with the Mundane Plane using magic, the only magic cast from the Mundane Plane that appears to affect me is transfiguration, and then only irregularly, which suggests I'm stuck mostly outside of it, as though we didn't already know that. It's been five days, now, and we're getting nowhere. Ask Angel if she's willing to help us. Please.
Eris's uncertainty was nearly palpable in this state, warring with her unease with the intangibility situation. She had been relatively unconcerned at first, but this morning she'd begun to become increasingly agitated, refused to tell Lyra why. Which probably wasn't good.
Fine.
Fine?
Yes, I'll do it. The Dark says she'll— Oh, never mind.
Angel stepped out of the Shadows, peering closely at Lyra's intangible form. "Oh, well, this is..." She poked Lyra in the shoulder without even a greeting, dragging her fingers through her not-flesh as though examining its texture.
"...Hello, Auntie Angélos," Lyra said, not entirely certain how she ought to be addressing her many-times-great aunt, but hardly concerned about the formalities, under the circumstances. Or ever, if it came down to it, just, usually there were other people around who did care about that shite.
Angel wasn't one of them, apparently. (Somehow, Lyra wasn't surprised.) "Hi! So...this is weird." She stepped back into the Dark, Lyra could feel her there — she hadn't really been very aware, most of the past few days, of what she was perceiving in the Dark, because for the most part there was very little there. "You can hear me from here, right?"
"Er...yes?" In the same way she always 'heard' things from the Shadows, but that was just par for the course lately. "Why wouldn't I...?" Oh. Apparently she could talk, here, too. Good to know, she supposed.
"You wouldn't believe how incompetent and ill-suited most human shadow-walkers are to this plane. But then, you're not entirely human anymore, are you?"
"Ah...what? Are you talking about Eris?"
"Nooo...that's a different not-entirely-human thing. This is about you becoming shadow-kin."
"Shadow-kin?" Lyra repeated. She was certain she'd never heard that particular term before.
The thing you did with the Essence of Shadows, Eris told her. Subsuming it changed you.
Well, yeah, she'd known that. Even if the weird shadow-vision thing and the sunlight suddenly being terrible hadn't given it away, she had felt it in her, doing something, making her a dark creature physically, not just metaphysically. But...That wore off, though, weeks ago.
"Subsuming Darkness— You do know what that means, don't you?" Angel said. "I mean, we knew you were reinventing the wheel, but subsumation, in general, how would you describe it? The basic principle, I mean."
"Well...kind of like freeform alchemy? I mean...stripping out the elements and properties you want from something and integrating them into yourself — that's basically an alchemical process, isn't it?" That was the impression she'd gotten from Professor Riddle's ramble on the subject, and it did seem to fit with her experience of it...
"Interesting way to think of it, and not entirely wrong — that is the basic premise behind the Elixir of Life — but not what I was getting at. How do you integrate the energies or qualities you subsume? You alter your own fundamental identity. Technically what you did, turning a human into shadow-kin, is a kind of metamorphosis — not metaphagy, which is what most people think of when they think of subsumation, but it's the same concept. You just altered your own fundamental identity to define yourself as having certain non-human qualities, rather than to take advantage of energies humans simply can't. Though I suppose one of those non-human qualities might be some form of esoteric subsistence. I imagine that particular side-effect would vary by case, though, since it's not really the point of the exercise... Hmm, I should look into that. Ask around, at least. One of the Tams probably knows. Anyway, normally there's formal ritual involved in metamorphoses this complex, but auto-metamorphosis isn't by any means unheard of. Getting us to bless the Distilled Darkness before you took it into yourself... I'll admit that was a new one to me, probably helped speed the process along, I think, but that doesn't really matter."
Lyra wasn't sure any of that really mattered. Yes, it was fascinating — she'd never even heard of metamorphosis, at least not in any context that suggested it might have anything to do with her attempt to cheat at shadow magic — but it didn't really address her current problem. Namely, somehow getting stuck between planes like a complete idiot. "So, you know what I did, then?"
"Well, obviously? I mean, is it not obvious? Your presence in the Mundane Plane is wraith-like at best — you don't really belong there any more than I do, anymore. But you don't not belong there, it is your native plane, still, so it's not trying to push you out, you don't have to cling to it like an actual wraith, you're...buoyant. Sitting right on the boundary between the planes, like floating on the sea. Not quite sure how you managed to lose your way halfway through the boundary, but you sort of settled there and since that's pretty much where you belong now, half-human, half-shadow creature — or, well, more than half, really, you are tangible on this side, you know—" She poked Lyra in the arm to demonstrate, which no, she hadn't known that, because there wasn't really anything for her to try to touch on this side of things. "—but that's hardly the point. Getting all the way to either plane from where you are now is like leaving your own — far more difficult than moving from one plane where you don't quite belong to another when you're already in a constant state of liminality."
"Er...right. So...does this mean I can't shadow-walk anymore? I mean, when I figure out how to get...out? Er...in? Whatever." Because if this was going to be a recurring problem, Lyra was going to be livid.
"No? As long as you don't go straddling the boundary at least, I think it should be fine."
"Oh. Well, how do I get out of here, then? All the way to one or the other, I mean, so I can jump back."
Angel shrugged, the motion sending waves rippling through the Dark, as clear as speaking. "No idea. I don't know anyone else who's ever done this. It's fairly obvious what the problem is, but... Actually, no, I do have an idea. Have you tried getting someone to cast a Patronus at you?"
"Er...no?" She could, though. Might be kind of embarrassing asking Harry to save her, but at least she knew someone who could cast the damn thing. She didn't think she had, in her old universe. "Would that actually work?"
"It might. Dragging vampires out of the Shadows is what the spell was designed to do in the first place. Of course, it might also kill you. Or it might not do anything at all."
Well, knowing exactly what she was dealing with was...something, Lyra supposed. Because, no, that hadn't been obvious. But as far as potential solutions went, that sounded a bit...wanting. What with the whole potentially dying bit. "Any idea what the arithmancy is on that? Probability of dying, I mean."
Angel shrugged again. "I don't know any other shadow-kin who've had it used on them. Direct contact with light battle magic like that burns most dark creatures like sunlight." Lyra winced. She could walk around in the sun just fine (or, well, with not with much more damage than she had before doing that ritual — she'd always been prone to sunburns) and she hadn't had burns from the light repelling charm Lavender had used on her at the end of term, but compared to a Patronus, that was nothing. "You're more human than me, obviously. So it might not burn you as badly. But on the other hand, you are just a baby, really, so I don't know how well you'd be able to resist it."
If Lyra hadn't been so distracted by the more human than me comment, which had reminded her of the last time Angel had visited and the insinuation that they were the same sort of thing, she might have been more annoyed about the just a baby bit. As it was, the implication seemed to be that she was still in the process of becoming...whatever Angel was. Maybe. Unless she just meant that everyone looked like a baby when you were five-hundred years old and were in constant contact with the Primordial fucking Dark. The Dark probably considered Eris a child in comparison to itself. "Er... Right. Thanks, but I think I'll hold off trying that, then."
Another shrug rippled to her through the Shadows. "It was nothing. Especially since we are family, duty to one's blood and all that."
Even despite the circumstances, it still gave Lyra a bit of a thrill, being recognised as family by Angel fucking Black. She always had been Bella's favorite character in the legends of the early post-Covenant Blacks. (She was pretty sure they'd been intended as more cautionary tales, really, but that had backfired spectacularly, at least in her case.) Though it was a bit amusing to think that family would mean much of anything to Angel. After all, "Didn't you kill most of your family?"
"Only the boring ones. You're lucky you were born before the Covenant was broken, or I'd've killed the rest of them, too. These last few centuries the whole fucking House got boring. But Bellatrix Druella took care of that for me, and you have potential, and breaking the Covenant because fuck the House of Black is just so ironically in character for a proper Lord Black that I'm actually looking forward to seeing what Sirius Orion does with the position, betrayal of the Dark notwithstanding. So, I'll see you in a couple of months. I expect to see you representing the House in the Tournament come Samhain, so do sort out this whole wraith issue, would you."
As though she had any more idea how to do that than she'd had before Angel showed up. "Ah...right. Yes. I'll do that. Not because being stuck between planes is bloody stupid and being intangible sucks, but so I can enter the fucking Triwizard Tournament." Not that she hadn't already been planning on entering the Tournament, but honestly.
"Cheers. And let me know if you try the Patronus thing. There aren't exactly enough shadow-kin around to do a proper experiment on our reactions to light battle magic, but a case-study would be something at least." And then she vanished, as abruptly as she'd arrived, well before Lyra could think of anything to say in response other than sure, if I don't die, at least.
§
"Okay, Bella," Sirius said, practically skipping into her room and conjuring an armchair beside her desk, just to jump on it, sitting on an armrest with his feet on the seat (because Sirius was almost as bad at chairs as Lyra herself) and generally looking all too pleased with himself. "How much longer are you going to be like this?"
Lyra, who had only become more annoyed with her predicament as the days wore on, glared at him. "Well I suppose that depends if I get to the point that I'm actually dying of boredom and therefore ask Harry to cast a thrice-cursed Patronus Charm at me, because so far I've got nothing. Why?"
He grinned, brandishing a letter. "From Amy! I've been cleared! Completely exonerated, including for the illegal animagus thing, chalk that up to time served. There's going to be an emergency session tomorrow to get all the recognition dragonshite out of the way, tender the official apologies of the Administration, blah, blah, blah, but! The World Cup is next week!"
"...Yes, and?" She had no idea what those two things had to do with each other. Nor, if pressed, did she really care.
"And, how much you wanna bet that I can parley the Minister's apology into seats in the top box?"
"Yeah...no bet. You could probably get top box seats just showing up the day of. Even if you hadn't been locked up without a trial for twelve years, you'd still be the fucking Lord of a Most Ancient House," she pointed out. And it wasn't like it was that difficult to expand a room for twenty-four hours, throw a few more seats in at the last minute. If whoever designed the stadium had half a brain, they'd've kept the wards and structural enchantments simple enough to deal with emergency alterations like that, no problem.
He pouted at her. "You're no fun when you're like this."
A flick of his wand sent a conjured paper airplane whizzing toward her head. She dodged it. She'd let one hit her, once, just to see what happened. It had lost enough momentum that it sort of got stuck by the time it passed halfway through her arm. And then he'd refused to grab it for her, and she couldn't quite get a grip on it herself, so she'd eventually had to resort to walking through a wall to get rid of it. "Fuck you, Sirius."
He smirked. "Sorry, not into necrophilia. Er...fantasma-philia? Whatever. Not my thing."
Well, she had walked into that one, hadn't she. Still, she could hardly stop herself pointing out, "I'm not a fucking ghost."
"You're also barely tangible, what would even be the point?"
"Good question, Sirius: what is the point?"
"Oh, you know, I heard somewhere that orgasms are fun, so..."
Okay, Lyra had to fight not to laugh at that one. Sirius could be very entertaining when he wanted to be. "And I stand by that assessment, but why are you here?"
"Besides annoying you?"
"Yes."
"Are you going to get this sorted out by next weekend? Because if not, I'm not going to bother getting you a seat."
"What, at the World Cup?"
"No, genius, on a city tour. Of course at the Cup, what the fuck have I been talking about?"
Well...sex, mostly? It had taken all of half a week living together to realise that Sirius was a bigger flirt than Zee. He was by far the more likely of the two to say that sort of shite to her in this timeline. It was kind of weird, actually, because this Zee certainly didn't have a problem flirting with anyone else, and Lyra was pretty sure she'd caught Zee actively stopping herself from saying something a few times (though she could hardly guess what she'd been going to say). Not that she minded, she had just kind of thought that was how Zee communicated with everyone, all soft and teasing, still didn't get why she'd stopped. (People were confusing. Even Zee, sometimes.)
Honestly, Lyra had never really considered going to the World Cup. Quidditch was kind of boring even when she didn't already know how the match was going to end, and she'd done the arithmancy for the OWL, so. The most interesting part would probably be wandering around meeting foreign mages.
We should go, Eris urged her. It will be fun.
Assuming I can go...
Lyra sighed. "Eh, go ahead and get me a seat. If it turns out I can't go, we can give it to Dora or something. She probably likes Quidditch more than I do, anyway."
"Wait, Dora? Andi said she's on some kind of undercover mission. How would we even get a letter to her?"
Oh, right. Sirius didn't know about that. No reason he shouldn't, though, being the proper Head of the House, and all. "Er, no, she and Moody are trying to kill Bella. It's not like she couldn't take a day or two off. And they're in Florence, or they were before I got stuck, I haven't been able to spy on them since, obviously." Not that she'd spent much time spying on them, detectives were kind of boring. Especially when they were detecting and not practicing dueling or something. "I'm pretty sure the Hunters could get a letter to them if you asked nicely."
"They're... You know what, I don't even care that you've apparently been spying on fucking Mad-Eye—"
"The Eye is limited to the Mundane Plane, it's fine."
"Whatever, you didn't think it was maybe worth telling Andromeda that her fucking sister's going to kill her daughter?!"
"Oh, relax, Bella's not going to kill Dora. Snape asked her not to. And also, Dora's great." The latter point was probably far more pertinent than the former, honestly. It was really much more like Snape was on Bella's list because of Dora's interest in him, rather than the other way around.
"What in the nine fucking hells do you mean Snivels asked Bella not to kill Dora? Why? And how do you even know that?"
Lyra gave him her best are you stupid? look. "Apparently they're shagging. Snape and Dora. Not Snape and Bella, that would be weird." Though she could make him very uncomfortable making step-father jokes all next year, if they were. Or she could just do it anyway, make him uncomfortable and confused. "And technically, he asked me to ask her because he's not in contact with her."
"And you are."
That wasn't a question. "I'm sure you're shocked."
"Well, you are the same person, so no. Not even a little bit. Where is she?"
For a brief moment, Lyra considered just telling him where she'd come from, who she actually was — he was (legally) the Head of the House, now. But it was much more entertaining watching him try to figure it out, being so close to right for all the wrong reasons. Similarly, he probably did have a right to know where Bella was (even if Lena Geise technically owned the Vinyard, now), but he might run off and do something stupid like try to kill her (and get himself killed in the process), and it was more fun to tease him, anyway.
"Oh, shut up, Bella's way more tangible than I am. And that would be telling."
§
Lyra woke suddenly, gasping for air, reaching instinctively for her wand, though the motion dragged at her skin, wrenching painfully at flesh she knew (even before opening her eyes or remembering exactly what had happened) had to be new. She'd had her skin melted off enough times over the past year, she was far more familiar with the feeling of recently having had it regrown than she might have wished.
Did I blow myself up again?
Ah, no, Eris informed her.
Not entirely necessary, since Harry, as soon as she'd moved, started babbling at her, variations on "Oh, my God, I'm sorry, I didn't— I just— I thought you were going to die!"
Pretty effective way to jog her memory.
"So did I," she croaked, her voice sounding like she hadn't spoken in days. Which she supposed she hadn't, really.
She should have known that there would be worse consequences to being stuck between planes than just being intangible, though that had been bad enough on its own. She was actually kind of surprised, now, that nothing worse had happened at any point in the past...week or so? She cast a time-and-date charm to check — looked like she'd been out for about a day — and was immediately distracted by how good it felt, channelling that little pulse of magic. Like a cool sip of water when she was absolutely parched. Speaking of which... She conjured a glass for herself, filled it with a condensing charm, almost shivering as the magic flowed through her, dark and soothing, easing a pain she hadn't entirely recognised or distinguished from the physical pain of her still-healing burns until it began to fade.
Hey Eris? If I ever think it seems like a good idea to tangle with a Patronus in the Shadows, again, kindly remind me of this moment.
Somehow, I hardly think you're likely to forget, the goddess thought back, her dry tone not quite masking her concern and anxiety.
It struck Lyra, not for the first time, as rather amusing that Eris was more human in her reactions, sometimes, than Lyra herself. She felt tired, physically, and she was definitely in multiple kinds of pain, but under that, there was only triumph, satisfaction — she was drinking water, she was back in her proper plane again, no matter how much it had hurt to get here, and she wasn't dead, so. She definitely didn't want to do this again, but it hadn't gone nearly as badly as it could have, there was no call for Eris to be all worried about her.
"Are you okay?" Harry asked. "I mean, not okay, obviously you're not okay, but the healer Blaise sent for had never seen anything like this — he said the only thing he could do was treat the physical effects, and even then, his spells weren't working, or, well, they obviously worked, but not like he thought they should, I guess? It's— Sirius said you'd be fine, but... I'm sorry!" he said again. "I didn't mean to...to...this! I didn't want to hurt you, I just— I'm sorry!"
It took a moment for her to register that he was probably expecting an answer of some sort. She was rather more interested in wrapping herself in dark magic, neutralising the lingering poison of the light construct that had overwhelmed her, dragging her back to this plane. But he had saved her life, she probably did owe him some reassurance, at least. "Don't worry about it, Harry."
"But I put you in hospital!"
In point of fact, he hadn't, this was her bedroom in California, infinitely preferable to some hospital ward. "I'd much rather be here than eaten by a fucking lethifold, and Sirius was right, I'll be fine, so. Thank you."
"You shouldn't be thanking me," the silly boy muttered. "I just— I just saw that thing attacking you, and I panicked."
Yes, they'd been sitting around talking about nothing much in particular, she and Harry and Blaise — lucky, really, she'd've been researching her condition alone if Sirius and Mira hadn't gone to Britain for the Emergency Session to Apologise to Sirius because Everyone in Government are Idiots. Harry had been invited as well, and obviously if she'd been able to she could've shown up, but since she couldn't and if Harry went he'd undoubtedly realise he was 'dead' (and Dumbledore probably wouldn't let him leave again), she'd convinced him and Blaise to stay and keep her company. Which excuse really only worked if she didn't hide herself away in her room with a pile of books. Not that it had been terribly onerous, it wasn't as though she'd been getting anywhere with her research, anyway.
The lethifold had come out of nowhere. Or rather, she'd felt it coming, following the same path Angel had walked to reach her the other day, she just...hadn't had any idea how to avoid it. Honestly, she hadn't really thought she'd needed to. She'd seen them before, they were one of the half-visible things that had kept flitting around the corners of her vision before the Distilled Darkness had worn off (or before she thought it had, before she'd finished processing it, whatever). At first she'd been a bit wary of them, but they, and all the other creatures that inhabited the Dark Plane, had ignored her entirely, as long as she'd just been watching them from the Mundane Plane or herself flitting through the Dark on her way to somewhere else. She hadn't seen many around since they'd come here, none at all since she'd managed to get stuck all intangible, but that wasn't entirely surprising, either. She wasn't sure why, since it wasn't as though they had much of an impact on the Shadows, but shadow creatures seemed to avoid places with too many humans. There were hardly any in London, either.
So she hadn't even really considered the thing a threat until it came right up to her, nosing around her like a curious puppy (if something as formless as a lethifold could be said to nose), and she'd tried to wave it off, and something about her reaction had apparently convinced it that she was both potential food and an easy target.
It had wrapped itself around her, a living shroud cutting her off from both planes — lethifolds were one of the dark creatures which could more easily cross the boundary into the Mundane, they were known to hunt sleeping humans (mostly in tropical areas, where there was no need to keep a fire inside at night) — forming a sort of cocoon around her. She was pretty sure the 'burns' covering her body too uniformly to be heat-based were the effect of whatever it had been doing, trying to digest her. Her soul hurt in the same way it had when she'd stupidly accepted Flitwick's challenge to cast the Cheering Charm, except more, by about an order of magnitude or two, but she'd never been physically hurt by light magic, even when Dora was using it to beat the shite out of her over Easter.
"What happened?" she asked, in an effort to distract Harry from his entirely pointless attempts to continue apologising, which was just annoying, she'd already said he had nothing to apologise for.
"Ah, we were talking about the World Cup, and this shadow kind of grabbed you out of nowhere. I mean, obviously it wasn't really a shadow, it wasn't even that dark where you were sitting, and we could tell you were trying to get it off yourself, but it kind of...dragged you away, like all the way into...wherever you were stuck, you know?" Right, that would make sense. She'd tried to cast a few different spells at it, break herself free, but she couldn't cast normal spells in the Dark, about the only thing that worked was runic casting, and the lethifold had cut her off from the ambient magic of that plane when it wrapped itself around her. "And you were getting less and less visible— We tried stunning it and a couple of different spells Lupin taught us, but they didn't do anything, and, well..." He trailed off into a rather embarrassed silence before admitting, "I heard you and Sirius talking about how the Patronus might be able to get you back here, if it didn't kill you, and it seemed like that thing—"
"It was a lethifold."
"Yeah, that — it seemed like it was pulling you more into the shadows, and nothing else was working, so..."
"So you figured it was better to maybe kill me to get me all the way back here, rather than definitely let it drag me off wherever it wanted and eat me?"
"Er...yeah, basically." Harry still seemed unaccountably...weird, about that. "I'm sorry," he added, yet again.
"Why?" she asked. Probably too bluntly, but she wasn't really in the mood for normal people guessing games at the moment. "That's what I would have done—" Well, it was what she would have done if she were Harry and could cast a bloody Patronus in the first place, whatever. "—and besides, I didn't die, so it's fine."
If anything, that only seemed to make Harry look more uncomfortable. "I'm not sure how I should feel about that."
"I'm not sure you should feel any way in particular. It's just a fact. Now," she announced, flipping back the sheet that someone had spelled to hover just above her burned skin. It wasn't as bad as she'd feared — certainly not as bad as the acid burns Rowle had given her a couple of months ago, and those had healed in a matter of suspected she'd been conflating the pain from the magical damage (which was fading quickly, now that she could channel dark power to neutralise it) and the physical, because her skin had already started regenerating, turning her a uniform pink. Pretty much all of her was tender and itchy, and there was the familiar ache of having just been through extensive healing, but nothing that would actually keep her in bed. "I'm thinking tacos."
"You're— Lyra! You can't get up, you're—"
"I'm what?" she asked, over his objections. True, she had been burned (or whatever) fairly thoroughly, including, she realised (with some annoyance, as she attempted to stand up) on the bottoms of her feet, but that was what numbing charms were for. And illusions, she thought, realising suddenly that her head felt far too light to still have hair on it. Damn it, she hated hair-growth potions.
"You're hurt!" Harry snapped. "It was bad, Lyra, you—"
"Did I still have eyelids?"
"What?"
"Eyelids. Did the thing manage to eat through them before you drove it off?" She doubted it — if it'd managed to get to her eyes, she probably wouldn't be able to see very well at the moment.
"Uh...no?"
She presumed he meant no, it didn't eat through them, not no, you didn't have eyelids. "Then I'm going to say it was pretty superficial damage." It probably wouldn't even have obliterated all of the scars Bella hadn't gotten rid of. She could still feel the one on her stomach, for example, and the fire-whip burn on her hip. Though it had eaten through the flaying curse marks on her leg, which was a shame, because those had looked neat. "Yeah, it's all over, I'm sure it looked terrible, but Siri was right. I'm fine, really." A hell of a lot better than she had been fifteen minutes ago, at least, or two days ago. Certainly well enough to go find something to eat.
Harry just stared at her, at that. Not as though he believed her, but at least he wasn't trying to stop her getting dressed, so. "What the fuck even are you?"
She paused halfway through gingerly pulling on a soft muggle shift to look at him, made a futile attempt to guess what he was talking about, but he just looked suspicious, which wasn't any help at all. "Ah...what?"
"You're not human, Lyra. Humans don't– don't get stuck halfway out of the universe or have a bloody goddess living at the back of their minds or just shrug off almost being eaten by some sort of shadow-demon! I asked Hermione, and she says humans can't do shadow magic the way you do, and I know you're not a vampire. So what are you?"
Well...that was a hell of a question, wasn't it? Two days ago, before Angel's visit, she'd've said Harry didn't know what he was talking about. That "human" wasn't nearly as small and tidy a category as he seemed to think it was. But, well...Angel had outright said she wasn't human, implied that she wasn't human in multiple ways, even. Which was... Well, she was accustomed to thinking of herself as human, wasn't she? She'd been human for the past fourteen years, after all. But Harry had just saved her life, and he was basically muggleborn — he probably wouldn't know that having somehow transformed herself into something preternatural was more worthy of a freak-out than her maintaining the increasingly obvious lie that she was, in fact, human. She sighed. "Truth?"
"Yeah, that would be good, for once!"
"My parents— Bella's parents, I mean," she specified (since he thought she was Bella's clone, Dru and Cygnus would still technically be her biological parents), "were human. I was born human. Well, a Black."
"Which means?" he interrupted.
She shrugged. It was kind of hard to explain what it meant to be a Black to anyone outside of the House, she'd found. "Like Sirius? It's not really a secret that the whole House is a bit mad. Too much magic in the blood." According to people who weren't Blacks. Obviously there was no such thing as too much magic, really. "Me being a bit...weird, emotionally speaking, not freaking out about shite like almost getting eaten, that's hardly unique. Nor is my connection to magic, to Eris, for that matter. And that's completely unrelated to the shadow magic. Ah, don't tell anyone about any of this, by the way. If you do, I'll have to go on the run and you'll probably never see me again."
"I'm not going to turn you in as a black mage, Lyra." He glared at her, as though insulted that she'd thought he might. Which she hadn't really thought he would on purpose, if he knew she was doing something illegal. (Or that she was something illegal in this universe, so stupid...) It just wasn't necessarily safe to assume he would know what was legal and what wasn't.
She hadn't even realised he was familiar with the term. Must have asked Blaise or Maïa about Eris after their little mind magic experiment. Well, fine, then. "Good. Maïa might kill you if you set the Aurors on her girlfriend, you know." Speaking of which, she should probably ask her out on a make-up date. Not this weekend, though — if Sirius actually had gotten them tickets to the World Cup, she already had plans.
He did, you're going to love it.
But of course telling me why would be telling, Lyra thought back, only slightly sarcastically.
You like surprises, don't lie.
Harry just rolled his eyes at that. "And the shadow magic thing?"
"The shadow magic and the getting stuck between planes are because... Well, you were there, when I did that ritual over Yule. I honestly thought it had worn off, but apparently, no, I turned myself into something called shadow-kin. And before you ask, I have no idea what that means, I just found out two days ago, haven't really had the opportunity to look into it yet. So if you must know, I have no idea what I am. I'll let you know when I figure it out, though I hardly see why it should matter," she noted, moving in front of a mirror to glamour herself less pink and give herself the illusion of hair and eyebrows. That looked...more or less normal, she thought. She didn't really spend all that much time staring at her reflection. "So...tacos?"
"What are you— You can't just go out and get fucking tacos, Lyra. You're hurt, in case you didn't notice!"
"I'm fine. Starving, but otherwise fine."
"Look, I'll go get something for you, just, get back in bed. Please."
"Are you fucking kidding? I've been stuck in this flat for the better part of a week now, so you can just—"
"Oh, hey, I thought I heard voices," Sirius interrupted poking his head into the room. He was all dressed up in formal robes, must've had something to do as Lord Black today.
"You should get that checked out," she quipped. "Hearing voices, and all."
"Ha bloody ha. I see you're feeling better." He flicked another airplane at her.
She glared at him and swatted it out of the air, prompting a grin. "Much. How was the Everyone in Government are Idiots session?"
"Hilarious. Dumbledore had to make a speech, looked like he was biting into a lemon the entire time." He smirked, then pulled a pinched, puckered face. "Had to go back today to get the offices set up, talked to Andi about drafting a motion to close that fucking loophole they used to keep me locked up all those years, nothing major. Mostly been walking around seeing what's changed for the last few hours. Came back for dinner, though, because nothing's open in Charing at three in the morning."
"Perfect, I haven't eaten in a week. Tacos?"
Sirius hummed consideringly under his breath for half a second — long enough for Harry to open his mouth, but not long enough for him to insist again that she couldn't leave, which, how did he think he was going to stop her, really? "Sure, I found this great little hole in the wall Mexican joint a few blocks from here, they should still be open, I think."
"Really, Sirius? I know you're not, I don't know, the most responsible adult, but—"
"Hey, I resemble that remark!" (Lyra snorted, while Harry just glared at the man.) "But Bella's much more responsible than I am and she knows her limits. If she says she's well enough to go out, she'll be fine."
"And if I'm not, it'll be my own fucking fault, yes." If you hurt yourself because you don't know your own limits, it's your own fault and you have no right to complain was one of the principles both Walburga and Ciardha had made a point of drilling into her over the years. Presumably Walburga had done the same for Siri. "Thank you, Sirius. Come on, let's go," Lyra said, linking her arm through his — which, ow, she'd forgotten her arm was a bit soft at the moment, and his sleeve was much rougher than it looked — and turning him around, headed back toward the door and actual food.
"Wha— No, Sirius, she's not fine, she's still all burned under that fucking illusion, and who even knows what the Patronus did to her!"
Sirius smirked, waving a hand through her illusory hair, presumably amused by the fact that she'd had to give herself the illusion of hair, then winced at the darkness of it. "Fuck, Bella, overcompensating much?"
No, she was pretty sure she wasn't. Washing herself in the darkest magic she could channel — which, come to think of it, she was almost surprised that Sirius, attuned to the Light as he was, was comfortable standing this close to her — was perfectly reasonable compensation for the lingering effects of the light battle construct. "Aww, poor little light baby get stung by the big bad glamour charm? Please."
He flipped her off.
"Love you too, Siri."
"Sadistic bitch."
"Takes one to know one."
Harry used their little exchange as an opportunity to put himself between the two of them and the door. "Are you even listening to me?"
"Of course we are," Sirius said, probably as a distraction, because she could tell he was trying not to laugh (it was funny because it was true, and even more so because he didn't like to admit it). "She really is fine, though. I mean, yeah, she got a little eaten, but you got there in time. She did still have eyelids, so it couldn't have been that bad."
"That's what I told him."
Sirius nodded, looking back to Harry. "Well, there you go, then. Besides, you've been outvoted, so, are you coming with us, or not?"
Harry's fish-slapped look of disbelief shifted from Lyra to Sirius and back again before he sighed in defeat. "You know, I hadn't really noticed before, but you two are basically the same bloody person, and you're both fucking insane."
Lyra grinned, stubbornly refusing to let the expression turn into a pained wince as it stretched the new skin of her face. "That's weird, I thought that was fucking obvious," she quipped, even as Sirius said, "Hey, I'm way more sane than Bella!"
"No, you're not," she informed him. He flipped her off again.
"Ugh, fine, yes, I guess I'm coming, someone has to keep an eye on you lunatics..."
Sirius flung his other arm around Harry's shoulders, pushed him gently toward the doorway. "Good man, let's go, before she hexes us for making her wait. You know how girls can get when they're hungry and you get between them and food..."
"Oh, shut up, you arse, I've never hexed Harry."
"Has he ever tried to get between you and food before? No? I rest my case."
Lyra tried not to laugh at that, she really did, but Sirius could be genuinely amusing on occasion, and weird magical chemical burns or no, her mood had drastically improved now that she was no longer stuck between planes.
So, I take it you won't be trying that little experiment again? Eris asked.
Well, at least not until I've had a decent meal, maybe gotten some sleep. Honestly, she wasn't even planning on attempting normal shadow-walking again before then, just in case.
I think you misunderstand me, Lyra. You won't be trying that little experiment again.
Wow, Eris never gave orders like that. She must have really come close to offing herself this time. (Oops.) Aww, you're no fun.
You're incorrigible.
And whose fault is that?
(Eris's. It was Eris's.)
Poor Hermione, her girlfriend's intangible and doesn't even think to tell her. Also, doesn't realise that asking her to the World Cup would be a pretty awesome make-up date, mostly because Hermione hates quidditch, so why would she want to go? But on the plus side, Harry got his annual opportunity to be the hero of the story! (Really, it is good for his self-esteem to save Lyra, especially since she normally seems so much more competent than him, and with a skill he worked his arse off to master, too.)
And we've finally got Lyra to admit she's not human. Which literally everyone has known since October, but.
Angel's overestimation of the damage pulling Lyra back to Earth with a Patronus might do is due to the fact that the Dark has prevented her from dying properly so many times now that her own body is more dark magic than flesh and blood. Lyra, on the other hand, is flesh and blood tainted by dark magic, and she doesn't fully realise how much of a difference that makes. While Angel has been around a long time and therefore knows an awful lot about a lot of topics, she's not really an analytical or problem-solving-oriented person, so she's not really the best person to ask about this sort of thing, even if she is the most convenient.
The "Tams" Angel mentions are alternate versions of Tom Riddle (most are female, thus Tam, rather than Tom) who ended up at Miskatonic and delved into mind magic and subsumation in a way (head)canon!Tom never did. Tam is one of the most terrifying beings on the face of the planet in those timelines, and also Angel's favorite person ever. She's incredibly envious of the alternate versions of herself who get to live in universes with a Tam, especially the ones where Tam manages to become immortal to be her best friend literally forever. (This is very important characterisation for Angel. Totally plot relevant. Not gratuitous in the least.)
Shadow creatures avoid big cities because there's too much artificial light there, which disturbs their environment even if the humans themselves aren't really present on their plane.
IDK, there are probably other things to comment on, but... *shrug* In conclusion, time and tacos heal all wounds, all's well that ends well, and the appropriate response to very nearly getting yourself eaten by a demon is always oops.
Also, Happy Hallowe'en/Samhain xD —Leigha
