Chapter Sixteen: Lose Yourself
"So what do you think?"
"I don't think it's supposed to be that color Lucy."
"But I followed the formula exactly!"
"If you followed it exactly it wouldn't be that color now, would it? And, is that-is that peanut butter I smell?"
"I didn't put any in if that is what you are implying."
"Oh dear."
Potions was not going very well. Lucy was beyond frustrated; since she had made this potion before, last year, and it had definitely not come out a wild neon orange color and smelling like a strange combination of peanut butter and pickles.
Hermione, whose potion was simmering nicely and promised to remove the hair from a cat in under ten seconds, was now peering anxiously into Lucy's cauldron and sifting through her ingredient pile.
"Lucy, what is this?"
Lucy looked over her shoulder, "What do you mean, what is that? It's baby bat teeth, what else would it be?'
"Where did you get it?"
"From the stock jar in the student supply cupboard like everyone else."
Hermione paused.
"You were late today, weren't you?"
Lucy shrugged, "Not terribly, Snape didn't even snap that hard."
"But it did mean that by the time you had your pre-brewing procedure copied down, everyone else had already collected their ingredients."
Lucy paused, and gave Hermione a sharp look, "That's right..."
Hermione scowled, placed both hands on the table and stood up in a fluid determined movement. She strode over to the student supply cupboard and examined the large stone jars on the second shelf. Lucy followed her.
"Which one, Lucy?"
Lucy pointed to the first jar on the left, "The green one, the one labeled "Nyctalus noctula- powdered teeth", we weren't suppose to use the long- eared brown bat teeth, were we?"
"No," Hermione shook her head, her mouth drawn tight in anger, "No you weren't, you were supposed to use Noctule bat teeth, which is what the label says that is."
Lucy's eyebrow shot up, "What the label says it is? You mean the label is wrong?"
"Veritas resero!" With a flick of Hermione's wand the lettering faded from the jar, and in its place appeared the label "Dendroaspis polylepis- powdered fangs". The grey jar next to it now held the label "Nyctalus noctula- powdered teeth".
Lucy's keen ears didn't fail to hear the snicker behind her, and she whirled on her heel to see Draco Malfoy and his cronies snickering to each other and trying not to look like they were watching her over their cauldrons.
She clenched and unclenched her fists. "Snake teeth. I put Black Mamba fangs in the potion. Well, that would sure as hell screw it up."
Hermione have her a look, "Don't try anything Lucy, Snape will fry you for sure. Come on, we still have time to fix this."
Using the rest of the class time, and under Hermione's expert guidance, Lucy was able to precipitate and extract the Black Mamba fangs, add the bat teeth, and accelerate the simmering time to give her a decent potion by the time Snape returned and demanded them. But not enough time had passed to make her forget Draco Malfoy and his nasty trick.
And she still had her Black Mamba fang extract.
Snape was now at the front of the room with a very large cat and a dropper. He moved from cauldron to cauldron, placing a drop on the cat's skin to see if it removed the fur.
It was safe to say that no one was watching as Lucy lifted the gooey blob of wet powdered mamba teeth and floated it across the room, letting it slide down the back of Draco's robes.
Black Mamba powder was always handled with gloves because it was notoriously itchy. Lucy, however, was also allergic to most bat teeth, so she never used her hands to handle the powder anyway. It was most likely Draco's plan to make her itch as well as ruin her assignment.
It didn't take long for the show to start.
Lucy hadn't expected the boils, but they were a definite plus.
Unfortunately, just as Draco was beginning to attract some attention, Snape was testing Lucy's potion. He also happened to see the light orange stain on the bench where the glob had been.
Snape had been a potions professor for a long time, and he knew what an allergic reaction to snake teeth looked like. He also knew that Black Mamba fangs were available to the students, and formed an orange precipitate.
She never had a chance.
Her plans of taking a sample reading that night went cheerfully to hell as she found herself once again in detention, to be overseen by Snape personally. She barely had time to grab a bite of dinner and tell Bet that she would have to have her one on one practice with Lynx that night before she was dashing back down to the dungeons to meet her sentence.
She could say she'd had worse, but none of Snape's assignments were ever really "better" than the other. This one was long, very long.
She'd been assigned the first year's classroom, which was always more of a mess than any of the others because they were inexperienced, nervous, and sloppy. Very sloppy.
She had to clean the whole place, top to bottom. Then she had to go through the first year student supply cupboard, and refill, restock, and restore the entire cabinet until it was spotless. It was going to take a week, which was exactly what Snape and McGonagall had sentenced her to.
"If I had wanted a life of slave labor I would have gone to the god damn camels," she grumbled to herself as she stood on top of the tables, trying to get the dust out of a ceiling corner with a long fuzzy pole. Her wand had been confiscated for the duration of her detention that evening, this was to be a strictly no-magic chore.
However, there were some things Snape couldn't stop her from doing, and while she was making a good show of cleaning one corner, another rag was scrubbing out the others. When the ceiling was finished she began work on the walls, the more obvious and dried-on stains first before a thorough going over of the entire place.
So it was completely natural and in no way suspicious that she came to be cleaning right behind Snape's desk. It wasn't his major desk anyway, that was in with his private stores in another part of the dungeon, but he did keep papers in it, and he had been working there just before she came in. It would have taken a saint not to look.
Lucy was many things, none of them remotely saint-like.
She skimmed through a stack of un-graded assignments, some of them abysmal, a brief note from McGonagall reminding him that the weekly staff meeting had been moved from the 4th to the 5th, and would be at seven in the headmaster's office, a pile of outside correspondence, an unsigned request for more dried dung beetles- Lucy looked back at the pile of correspondence, keeping a wary eye on the door.
The letters, sadly, were all unopened, but Lucy leafed through them anyway, there were several that had plain, handwritten addresses, although what person would want to write to Snape was beyond Lucy's comprehension, another from a wholesale dried magical goods provider, and one that had no return address, and was simply sealed with wax on the back with a coat of arms Lucy didn't recognize. She was tempted to try and have a peak-
When she heard an unmistakable brisk clip coming down the hall not very far away. She looked at the papers spread out on the desk and knew that there was now way to hide the fact that she'd been going through all of that before he arrived.
With a breath to collect herself, she focused, raised a hand palm out, blew all the papers off of the desk, and immediately got down on her hands and knees to start picking them up.
Snape came through the doorway half a second later.
"What is this?" He glared down at Lucy like an insect that needed to be squashed.
"I knocked the desk when I was cleaning, Professor, all this blew onto the floor." She offered him the letters, which she had shoved together into a little pile.
Snape snatched them and leafed through, to make sure nothing was missing, Lucy was sure.
"Get the rest of that back on the desk as you found it. You're finished tonight, be back the same time tomorrow."
With the stack in his hand he strode from the room, dropping Lucy's wand on the desk near the door on his way out.
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It took Lucy about fifteen minutes to realize that by leaving the classroom irritated and not concentrating on where she was going she had become very lost in the little-used areas of the dungeons. She tried retracing her steps, only to find her beside an absolutely unfamiliar statue of what she could only assume was an animal with the tail of a dragon, the head of a bat, and the body of a hippopotamus.
"Oh for the love of Light!" She was about to call Faustas to guide her out when she heard something.
They were voices, but the sound was deadened, as if it was coming from behind a very thick wall.
Well that would put them just about anywhere in the dungeons, Lucy thought grimly, and even if they could hear or find her, they would probably be Slytherins, and very suspicious of a Gryffindor who was clearly not where she belonged.
That was when she heard the sounds of footsteps, coming from the corridor she had just turned out of. She quickly backtracked, turned,
And ran dead into Bethany Tsepish.
"Bet!"
"Lucy? What in Merlin's name are you doing down here at this hour?"
The dark haired girl was clearly as surprised to see Lucy as Lucy was to see her, and she struggled for balance, and to hold on to the three bottles she was carrying.
Lucy automatically reached out to grab one before it fell, then raised her eyebrow at the label.
"You surprise me Bet, I never took you for a moonshiner."
Bet looked confused, then shook her head emphatically.
"Trust me, that is neither made by me nor is it intended for consumption by me."
"Then what is it?"
She visibly squirmed. The trouble was, that Lucy had seen enough of Bet to know when she was lying, so she told the truth.
"Libations."
"Libations?"
Feeling extremely awkward, Bet took back the bottle from Lucy's hand, "Yes, its part of my job to provide the drinks. Usually its non-alchoholic, but there's a birthday tonight."
Lucy nodded, "And its hard to place your bets correctly and keep an eye on your money when you've had too much, er, libations, isn't it."
Bet nodded, then stopped and stared, wide-eyed. "How did you know about the Ring?"
Lucy shrugged, "The old fashioned way, I was eavesdropping, the Russians were nervous about missing on Halloween."
Bet nodded, her face quickly recovering its usual state of cool, calm, and collectedness.
"How long have you been doing this?"
She shrugged, "Since third year, I guess. I mean, first and second there were games a couple times a year, but they were pitiful, no organization, no security. I've sort of cleaned it all up, got it running like a tight ship."
Lucy nodded, "You wouldn't have been the first person I would imagine goes in for that sort of thing. Why do you do it?"
Bet sighed, "There are a lot of old wizarding families, Lucy, and not all of them are drowning in Galleons. There's probably an equal amount of Weasley-like and Malfoy-like households, but there's also quite a few who have, well, fallen out of favor. Tsepish's have always had a good family name; we had a Count in the family once, somewhere in Romania, where we came from. But lately, with the Ministry raids, the confiscations, and lots of members no longer really functional parts of society, the fortune, well, dried up I guess you would have to say."
Bet gave her a rueful smile and shrugged. "We just never let that be generally known. We keep the real estate and the heirlooms, hanging on to them with tooth and toenail, and I've made enough money to pay for my tuition since the fourth year, plus I've paid back Uncle Geoffrey for the loans he gave my parents to cover tuition and materials for third and second year."
"And your parents don't mind?"
Bet shook her head, her long French braid bounced across her back. "I actually think they were rather proud of it. The ridiculously wealthy and the royal have always excelled at gambling. And setting up my own venue showed what mother called real entrepreneurship, an excellent understanding of supply and demand. Plus, by taking the physical risk of setting up the game and circulating the word, bringing in players, I no longer take any financial risk by playing, and take a percentage off the top of each pot. It's very profitable, since the house usually wins."
Lucy's brain was starting to tell her an incredibly impossible idea. "So, I assume, it's Slytherin only."
Bet rolled her eyes, "But of course, you think they would trust anyone else? Although..."
Lucy pounced, "What?"
"Towards the end of the year the regulars become rather pressed for cash, and that's when it getting good, the last game of the term is when you really clean up, because so many have already left, and their money is still in there. Last year we finally let non-Slytherin family into the game after a very rigorous screening process. That was also when we had to find an alternate entrance, since leading outsiders through the common room was never going to get approved."
Lucy nodded, "Of course...."
Bet gave her a narrow stare, "What are you plotting Lucy? Whatever it is, it can't happen, you aren't even supposed to know about this place!"
Lucy reached up and gave the taller girl a pat on the cheek, "Never you fear, I'll tell you when its good and thought out."
There was no point in arguing with that.
"So, what ARE you doing down here?"
"Detention, then I got lost."
Bet chuckled, "Only you, come on, I've got to get you out and get back before I get caught with all this."
"I appreciate it."
"I appreciate you no telling anyone."
"Bet, I've known since Halloween, I could have told dozens of people."
"But you didn't."
"No, didn't seem right."
"I think that's what made us friends so fast, Lucy, we understand each other."
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It wasn't until the weekend that she managed to get time enough to take the sample Faustas had wanted. The grounds were mostly deserted since the wind had picked up and the temperature hadn't risen much, so there was no fear of an audience as Lucy and Bet made their way to the cliff side of the castle, the same place the international students had met at the beginning of term.
"Explain to me again..."
Lucy sighed, "Well, I know one of your secrets, so I'm pretty sure I can trust you with one of mine. But I can't tell you everything and half of what I do tell you is probably not quite the truth, but I need your help anyway."
Bet raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and followed Lucy's example when she sat on the ground.
"It's cold!"
"That's why I'm not sitting on it," it took Bet a moment to realize Lucy was hovering half an inch above the ground, just enough that it you looked closely you noticed that the grass was not bent beneath her weight.
"I wish you would teach us that."
"I wish I was good enough to. OK, what I need you to do is a two part deal. The first is that if I start to even look like I might possibly lose my grip, I want you to clamp the tightest shield on me that you can make and call for Lynx or Rasheph. They're physically big enough to snap me out of it. Put enough power behind it and you should make one of them irritated enough to find us."
"Why didn't you bring them?"
"Rasheph is at Quidditch practice and if Lynx doesn't do decently on his History of Magic test tomorrow he may not pass on to sixth year, I didn't want to bug them if I didn't need to, and you already had a session scheduled."
"What's the other part?"
"If I look like I'm going a little greyish, but am still in control, I want you to open an energy channel, you remember how right? Good, you were always good at those. I may take a little while, but the second you start to fade, if you do, I want you to stop. This is kind of important, but definitely not worth you getting a headache from."
Bet shifted so she was sitting back on her heels. "So what exactly are we doing?"
Lucy shrugged, "It's my job."
"Your job is to sit around outside in the freezing cold?"
"No. See, after you pass your Master's trials you become a member of that Guild. You also owe them several years of service. I got off pretty light really. I just do this."
"And what is 'this'?"
"Its kind of like empathy, kind of like thought-sensing, kind of like far sight all in one, except that instead of involving another person, your looking at the earth."
"Clear as mud," muttered Bet, but Lucy was starting her breathing exercises and didn't hear her.
"Here goes nothing," Lucy thought as she extended an energy link to Bet, then focused out and DOWN.
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"Is she okay?"
"I don't know, I mean, does she LOOK okay?"
"She hasn't said a word?"
"Not one."
"She's definitely breathing, and conscious, at least, I THINK she's conscious."
"What happened?"
"I told you, one minute it was all fine, I was a little tired, was actually going to pull out after a few more minutes, and then...."
"When did she throw up?"
"Oh, she did that right away, told me it was all right, perfectly normal."
"I pray none of us develops this, it must be messy to train."
"So, anyway, all of a sudden I feel my line snap, and she's broken the connection. And she's standing there, just STARING at the ground, and then she walks off, fast, toward the castle."
"She came right here?"
"She was in the bathroom first, I think she might have been sick, and she washed her hands."
"So?"
"For twenty minutes, she was still scrubbing when I came back in. When I asked her if anything was wrong she looked down at the sink, then turned off the tap and dried them. Came in here, said she needed to think. That was four hours ago. I brought her some food, but, well..."
Bet waved her hand, indicating that plate of untouched chicken and vegetables that was on the table, Lucy was still seated on the floor near the fire.
Rasheph went to try and shake her out of it.
"She's freezing."
"I know, and she's been close enough to the fire that she ought to be flushed, but she-"
At that point Lucy stood up and stretched, giving a little jump when she turned around and saw the others staring at her.
"Oh, gods, I'm sorry, I was, um, I'm sorry Bet I didn't mean to make you worry."
"What happened Lucy?"
Lucy's already pale face went white, "I didn't hurt anyone, did I? I mean, did I-"
"No," Lynx said firmly, "You didn't lose any control."
Lucy grinned, "Cool. Yeah me. Um, I just saw- felt- connected to something that I didn't think could really exist. It was kind of confusing."
Rasheph took a piece of bread off Lucy's plate and handed the rest to her, "You wanna talk about it?"
Lucy shook her head. "Not now. I'm really cold, and I wanna go to sleep. You ought to too Bet. Besides, if I have questions in the morning I know who to pump for answers."
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"So what do you think?"
"I don't think it's supposed to be that color Lucy."
"But I followed the formula exactly!"
"If you followed it exactly it wouldn't be that color now, would it? And, is that-is that peanut butter I smell?"
"I didn't put any in if that is what you are implying."
"Oh dear."
Potions was not going very well. Lucy was beyond frustrated; since she had made this potion before, last year, and it had definitely not come out a wild neon orange color and smelling like a strange combination of peanut butter and pickles.
Hermione, whose potion was simmering nicely and promised to remove the hair from a cat in under ten seconds, was now peering anxiously into Lucy's cauldron and sifting through her ingredient pile.
"Lucy, what is this?"
Lucy looked over her shoulder, "What do you mean, what is that? It's baby bat teeth, what else would it be?'
"Where did you get it?"
"From the stock jar in the student supply cupboard like everyone else."
Hermione paused.
"You were late today, weren't you?"
Lucy shrugged, "Not terribly, Snape didn't even snap that hard."
"But it did mean that by the time you had your pre-brewing procedure copied down, everyone else had already collected their ingredients."
Lucy paused, and gave Hermione a sharp look, "That's right..."
Hermione scowled, placed both hands on the table and stood up in a fluid determined movement. She strode over to the student supply cupboard and examined the large stone jars on the second shelf. Lucy followed her.
"Which one, Lucy?"
Lucy pointed to the first jar on the left, "The green one, the one labeled "Nyctalus noctula- powdered teeth", we weren't suppose to use the long- eared brown bat teeth, were we?"
"No," Hermione shook her head, her mouth drawn tight in anger, "No you weren't, you were supposed to use Noctule bat teeth, which is what the label says that is."
Lucy's eyebrow shot up, "What the label says it is? You mean the label is wrong?"
"Veritas resero!" With a flick of Hermione's wand the lettering faded from the jar, and in its place appeared the label "Dendroaspis polylepis- powdered fangs". The grey jar next to it now held the label "Nyctalus noctula- powdered teeth".
Lucy's keen ears didn't fail to hear the snicker behind her, and she whirled on her heel to see Draco Malfoy and his cronies snickering to each other and trying not to look like they were watching her over their cauldrons.
She clenched and unclenched her fists. "Snake teeth. I put Black Mamba fangs in the potion. Well, that would sure as hell screw it up."
Hermione have her a look, "Don't try anything Lucy, Snape will fry you for sure. Come on, we still have time to fix this."
Using the rest of the class time, and under Hermione's expert guidance, Lucy was able to precipitate and extract the Black Mamba fangs, add the bat teeth, and accelerate the simmering time to give her a decent potion by the time Snape returned and demanded them. But not enough time had passed to make her forget Draco Malfoy and his nasty trick.
And she still had her Black Mamba fang extract.
Snape was now at the front of the room with a very large cat and a dropper. He moved from cauldron to cauldron, placing a drop on the cat's skin to see if it removed the fur.
It was safe to say that no one was watching as Lucy lifted the gooey blob of wet powdered mamba teeth and floated it across the room, letting it slide down the back of Draco's robes.
Black Mamba powder was always handled with gloves because it was notoriously itchy. Lucy, however, was also allergic to most bat teeth, so she never used her hands to handle the powder anyway. It was most likely Draco's plan to make her itch as well as ruin her assignment.
It didn't take long for the show to start.
Lucy hadn't expected the boils, but they were a definite plus.
Unfortunately, just as Draco was beginning to attract some attention, Snape was testing Lucy's potion. He also happened to see the light orange stain on the bench where the glob had been.
Snape had been a potions professor for a long time, and he knew what an allergic reaction to snake teeth looked like. He also knew that Black Mamba fangs were available to the students, and formed an orange precipitate.
She never had a chance.
Her plans of taking a sample reading that night went cheerfully to hell as she found herself once again in detention, to be overseen by Snape personally. She barely had time to grab a bite of dinner and tell Bet that she would have to have her one on one practice with Lynx that night before she was dashing back down to the dungeons to meet her sentence.
She could say she'd had worse, but none of Snape's assignments were ever really "better" than the other. This one was long, very long.
She'd been assigned the first year's classroom, which was always more of a mess than any of the others because they were inexperienced, nervous, and sloppy. Very sloppy.
She had to clean the whole place, top to bottom. Then she had to go through the first year student supply cupboard, and refill, restock, and restore the entire cabinet until it was spotless. It was going to take a week, which was exactly what Snape and McGonagall had sentenced her to.
"If I had wanted a life of slave labor I would have gone to the god damn camels," she grumbled to herself as she stood on top of the tables, trying to get the dust out of a ceiling corner with a long fuzzy pole. Her wand had been confiscated for the duration of her detention that evening, this was to be a strictly no-magic chore.
However, there were some things Snape couldn't stop her from doing, and while she was making a good show of cleaning one corner, another rag was scrubbing out the others. When the ceiling was finished she began work on the walls, the more obvious and dried-on stains first before a thorough going over of the entire place.
So it was completely natural and in no way suspicious that she came to be cleaning right behind Snape's desk. It wasn't his major desk anyway, that was in with his private stores in another part of the dungeon, but he did keep papers in it, and he had been working there just before she came in. It would have taken a saint not to look.
Lucy was many things, none of them remotely saint-like.
She skimmed through a stack of un-graded assignments, some of them abysmal, a brief note from McGonagall reminding him that the weekly staff meeting had been moved from the 4th to the 5th, and would be at seven in the headmaster's office, a pile of outside correspondence, an unsigned request for more dried dung beetles- Lucy looked back at the pile of correspondence, keeping a wary eye on the door.
The letters, sadly, were all unopened, but Lucy leafed through them anyway, there were several that had plain, handwritten addresses, although what person would want to write to Snape was beyond Lucy's comprehension, another from a wholesale dried magical goods provider, and one that had no return address, and was simply sealed with wax on the back with a coat of arms Lucy didn't recognize. She was tempted to try and have a peak-
When she heard an unmistakable brisk clip coming down the hall not very far away. She looked at the papers spread out on the desk and knew that there was now way to hide the fact that she'd been going through all of that before he arrived.
With a breath to collect herself, she focused, raised a hand palm out, blew all the papers off of the desk, and immediately got down on her hands and knees to start picking them up.
Snape came through the doorway half a second later.
"What is this?" He glared down at Lucy like an insect that needed to be squashed.
"I knocked the desk when I was cleaning, Professor, all this blew onto the floor." She offered him the letters, which she had shoved together into a little pile.
Snape snatched them and leafed through, to make sure nothing was missing, Lucy was sure.
"Get the rest of that back on the desk as you found it. You're finished tonight, be back the same time tomorrow."
With the stack in his hand he strode from the room, dropping Lucy's wand on the desk near the door on his way out.
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It took Lucy about fifteen minutes to realize that by leaving the classroom irritated and not concentrating on where she was going she had become very lost in the little-used areas of the dungeons. She tried retracing her steps, only to find her beside an absolutely unfamiliar statue of what she could only assume was an animal with the tail of a dragon, the head of a bat, and the body of a hippopotamus.
"Oh for the love of Light!" She was about to call Faustas to guide her out when she heard something.
They were voices, but the sound was deadened, as if it was coming from behind a very thick wall.
Well that would put them just about anywhere in the dungeons, Lucy thought grimly, and even if they could hear or find her, they would probably be Slytherins, and very suspicious of a Gryffindor who was clearly not where she belonged.
That was when she heard the sounds of footsteps, coming from the corridor she had just turned out of. She quickly backtracked, turned,
And ran dead into Bethany Tsepish.
"Bet!"
"Lucy? What in Merlin's name are you doing down here at this hour?"
The dark haired girl was clearly as surprised to see Lucy as Lucy was to see her, and she struggled for balance, and to hold on to the three bottles she was carrying.
Lucy automatically reached out to grab one before it fell, then raised her eyebrow at the label.
"You surprise me Bet, I never took you for a moonshiner."
Bet looked confused, then shook her head emphatically.
"Trust me, that is neither made by me nor is it intended for consumption by me."
"Then what is it?"
She visibly squirmed. The trouble was, that Lucy had seen enough of Bet to know when she was lying, so she told the truth.
"Libations."
"Libations?"
Feeling extremely awkward, Bet took back the bottle from Lucy's hand, "Yes, its part of my job to provide the drinks. Usually its non-alchoholic, but there's a birthday tonight."
Lucy nodded, "And its hard to place your bets correctly and keep an eye on your money when you've had too much, er, libations, isn't it."
Bet nodded, then stopped and stared, wide-eyed. "How did you know about the Ring?"
Lucy shrugged, "The old fashioned way, I was eavesdropping, the Russians were nervous about missing on Halloween."
Bet nodded, her face quickly recovering its usual state of cool, calm, and collectedness.
"How long have you been doing this?"
She shrugged, "Since third year, I guess. I mean, first and second there were games a couple times a year, but they were pitiful, no organization, no security. I've sort of cleaned it all up, got it running like a tight ship."
Lucy nodded, "You wouldn't have been the first person I would imagine goes in for that sort of thing. Why do you do it?"
Bet sighed, "There are a lot of old wizarding families, Lucy, and not all of them are drowning in Galleons. There's probably an equal amount of Weasley-like and Malfoy-like households, but there's also quite a few who have, well, fallen out of favor. Tsepish's have always had a good family name; we had a Count in the family once, somewhere in Romania, where we came from. But lately, with the Ministry raids, the confiscations, and lots of members no longer really functional parts of society, the fortune, well, dried up I guess you would have to say."
Bet gave her a rueful smile and shrugged. "We just never let that be generally known. We keep the real estate and the heirlooms, hanging on to them with tooth and toenail, and I've made enough money to pay for my tuition since the fourth year, plus I've paid back Uncle Geoffrey for the loans he gave my parents to cover tuition and materials for third and second year."
"And your parents don't mind?"
Bet shook her head, her long French braid bounced across her back. "I actually think they were rather proud of it. The ridiculously wealthy and the royal have always excelled at gambling. And setting up my own venue showed what mother called real entrepreneurship, an excellent understanding of supply and demand. Plus, by taking the physical risk of setting up the game and circulating the word, bringing in players, I no longer take any financial risk by playing, and take a percentage off the top of each pot. It's very profitable, since the house usually wins."
Lucy's brain was starting to tell her an incredibly impossible idea. "So, I assume, it's Slytherin only."
Bet rolled her eyes, "But of course, you think they would trust anyone else? Although..."
Lucy pounced, "What?"
"Towards the end of the year the regulars become rather pressed for cash, and that's when it getting good, the last game of the term is when you really clean up, because so many have already left, and their money is still in there. Last year we finally let non-Slytherin family into the game after a very rigorous screening process. That was also when we had to find an alternate entrance, since leading outsiders through the common room was never going to get approved."
Lucy nodded, "Of course...."
Bet gave her a narrow stare, "What are you plotting Lucy? Whatever it is, it can't happen, you aren't even supposed to know about this place!"
Lucy reached up and gave the taller girl a pat on the cheek, "Never you fear, I'll tell you when its good and thought out."
There was no point in arguing with that.
"So, what ARE you doing down here?"
"Detention, then I got lost."
Bet chuckled, "Only you, come on, I've got to get you out and get back before I get caught with all this."
"I appreciate it."
"I appreciate you no telling anyone."
"Bet, I've known since Halloween, I could have told dozens of people."
"But you didn't."
"No, didn't seem right."
"I think that's what made us friends so fast, Lucy, we understand each other."
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It wasn't until the weekend that she managed to get time enough to take the sample Faustas had wanted. The grounds were mostly deserted since the wind had picked up and the temperature hadn't risen much, so there was no fear of an audience as Lucy and Bet made their way to the cliff side of the castle, the same place the international students had met at the beginning of term.
"Explain to me again..."
Lucy sighed, "Well, I know one of your secrets, so I'm pretty sure I can trust you with one of mine. But I can't tell you everything and half of what I do tell you is probably not quite the truth, but I need your help anyway."
Bet raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and followed Lucy's example when she sat on the ground.
"It's cold!"
"That's why I'm not sitting on it," it took Bet a moment to realize Lucy was hovering half an inch above the ground, just enough that it you looked closely you noticed that the grass was not bent beneath her weight.
"I wish you would teach us that."
"I wish I was good enough to. OK, what I need you to do is a two part deal. The first is that if I start to even look like I might possibly lose my grip, I want you to clamp the tightest shield on me that you can make and call for Lynx or Rasheph. They're physically big enough to snap me out of it. Put enough power behind it and you should make one of them irritated enough to find us."
"Why didn't you bring them?"
"Rasheph is at Quidditch practice and if Lynx doesn't do decently on his History of Magic test tomorrow he may not pass on to sixth year, I didn't want to bug them if I didn't need to, and you already had a session scheduled."
"What's the other part?"
"If I look like I'm going a little greyish, but am still in control, I want you to open an energy channel, you remember how right? Good, you were always good at those. I may take a little while, but the second you start to fade, if you do, I want you to stop. This is kind of important, but definitely not worth you getting a headache from."
Bet shifted so she was sitting back on her heels. "So what exactly are we doing?"
Lucy shrugged, "It's my job."
"Your job is to sit around outside in the freezing cold?"
"No. See, after you pass your Master's trials you become a member of that Guild. You also owe them several years of service. I got off pretty light really. I just do this."
"And what is 'this'?"
"Its kind of like empathy, kind of like thought-sensing, kind of like far sight all in one, except that instead of involving another person, your looking at the earth."
"Clear as mud," muttered Bet, but Lucy was starting her breathing exercises and didn't hear her.
"Here goes nothing," Lucy thought as she extended an energy link to Bet, then focused out and DOWN.
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"Is she okay?"
"I don't know, I mean, does she LOOK okay?"
"She hasn't said a word?"
"Not one."
"She's definitely breathing, and conscious, at least, I THINK she's conscious."
"What happened?"
"I told you, one minute it was all fine, I was a little tired, was actually going to pull out after a few more minutes, and then...."
"When did she throw up?"
"Oh, she did that right away, told me it was all right, perfectly normal."
"I pray none of us develops this, it must be messy to train."
"So, anyway, all of a sudden I feel my line snap, and she's broken the connection. And she's standing there, just STARING at the ground, and then she walks off, fast, toward the castle."
"She came right here?"
"She was in the bathroom first, I think she might have been sick, and she washed her hands."
"So?"
"For twenty minutes, she was still scrubbing when I came back in. When I asked her if anything was wrong she looked down at the sink, then turned off the tap and dried them. Came in here, said she needed to think. That was four hours ago. I brought her some food, but, well..."
Bet waved her hand, indicating that plate of untouched chicken and vegetables that was on the table, Lucy was still seated on the floor near the fire.
Rasheph went to try and shake her out of it.
"She's freezing."
"I know, and she's been close enough to the fire that she ought to be flushed, but she-"
At that point Lucy stood up and stretched, giving a little jump when she turned around and saw the others staring at her.
"Oh, gods, I'm sorry, I was, um, I'm sorry Bet I didn't mean to make you worry."
"What happened Lucy?"
Lucy's already pale face went white, "I didn't hurt anyone, did I? I mean, did I-"
"No," Lynx said firmly, "You didn't lose any control."
Lucy grinned, "Cool. Yeah me. Um, I just saw- felt- connected to something that I didn't think could really exist. It was kind of confusing."
Rasheph took a piece of bread off Lucy's plate and handed the rest to her, "You wanna talk about it?"
Lucy shook her head. "Not now. I'm really cold, and I wanna go to sleep. You ought to too Bet. Besides, if I have questions in the morning I know who to pump for answers."
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