The Good War

by inwardtransience

Despite her best efforts, Elizabeth Potter is repeatedly drawn into situations she wants absolutely nothing to do with. People just refuse to leave her the hell alone. (fem!Harry, dark!independent!Harry, mentor!Snape, F/F, playing with tropes for fun and profit)

56. Fourth Year — World Cup I

Liz had thought Hermione was joking about having a library in her house, but she was starting to get the feeling she'd been completely serious.

It was a bit more modest than some of the ones she'd passed on the way here — it turned out the north of Oxford was slightly ridiculous — but still easily twice the size of most of the houses on Privet Drive. The brick wall outfront choked with ivy, most of the 'garden' had been paved over with more brick, through a gap had been left for a row of bushes along the inside of the walls, a tall tree in one corner (maple?). The main structure of the house was more red brick, but it looked like chunks had been cut out of the walls to put in modern windows, the glass framed with rectangular sections of wood painted a brilliant white — a lot of the houses around here looked weirdly patchy like that, Liz assumed the brick parts pre-dated big nice windows becoming a thing. (Not that it looked bad or anything, gave the houses a bit more colour, just saying.) It looked like there were two full storeys, and by the sharp slant of the roof (shingles a similar reddish colour to the brick) there must be room for an attic up there, but the only proper room on the third floor looked to be those windows on the left just there, probably a single bedroom or something. The house wasn't perfectly square, the right half bulging out a bit, the entire curve lined with windows on both levels — and the front of the house faced east, it probably got really sunny in there.

It was way bigger and nicer-looking than Liz had expected, honestly. Though, maybe she shouldn't be surprised, when she thought about it? She meant, Hermione's parents did own a dental practice — and not just somewhere you went to get cleanings or whatever, they did full-on orthodontics and surgeries and shite there. It wasn't a huge bloody hospital or anything, but it wasn't a little cheap hole-in-the-wall place either, there was a certain minimum amount of equipment you needed to do that kind of thing. Liz wasn't an expert, she had no idea how much money people could expect to pull in running that sort of place, but she probably should have guessed the Grangers were a good couple income brackets above the Dursleys. They were travelling all the time, and not just the usual tourist shite but all over the place, and Hermione had said they had a bloody library in their house...

Of course, Liz's house was bigger than this, and Rock on Clyde was a fucking palace (kind of literally?), because purebloods were ridiculous. She was just saying.

She stepped across the 'garden' up to the door, painted a rusty red to match the brick. Though, weirdly it was just hanging halfway open? Liz poked her head in, finding an entryway, wood-panelled floors, the walls plastered over and painted white, blue accents here and there. "Er, hello?" She cautiously stepped through, glanced around. There was a closet there, a bench against one wall for people putting their shoes on. The entryway opened up after a little bit, a little open space with the stairs up, a set of drawers with scattered keys and papers and stuff on top, the walls covered with pictures and framed documents of some kind, a few newspaper clippings — a lot of the pictures were of Hermione and/or her parents, plus a smattering of people Liz didn't recognise, presumably relatives and friends. (She noticed most of them were white but a smattering were visibly mixed-race — some like Daniel, where you could barely tell, but some way more obvious — a couple blacks or Arabs here or there, she even spotted a few women and girls she assumed must be Muslim, from the head-scarves.) There were a few doors going off, the near one on the left into a sitting room (this one with a television), the far one on the left was a kitchen, straight ahead was a dining room, a door to the right near the bottom of the stairs was closed, a nearer one opened into another sitting room, bright from sun through the front windows (this one didn't seem to have a television). Liz picked up a low murmur from a radio somewhere, but it was otherwise really quiet, no sign of anyone around.

She didn't think she was early? She nearly reached for her wand to check the time before remembering she wasn't supposed to do that here, um, maybe she should just look around? They had left the door open... "Hello? Is there anyone in here?" Letting out a little huff, she plopped down onto the edge of the bench, started unlacing her boots.

There was a light thumping, so soft Liz barely heard it, a mind she instantly recognised as Hermione's approaching, she glanced up to see Hermione was on the stairs, leaning over to peek between the bannister and the ceiling. (Huh, the walls here seemed to be blocking her mind magic, didn't know what was up with that.) Hermione held a finger to her lips, pointed at the closed door, then waved Liz toward herself. Okay, then. Liz wasn't sure where guests were supposed to put their shoes, so she just left her boots sitting next to the bench, got up to follow Hermione. Apparently they were being quiet, so Liz stepped as lightly on the stairs as she could — with how tiny she was, her socks giving a little cushion, her steps were practically silent, Hermione's noticeably louder. The stairs led up into another open space, looking very similar to the one downstairs, though with fewer pictures on the walls, the underlying brick let show through in the corners, sunlight let in through a bank of windows over the front door, an armchair in the little nook there. A couple doors lead into what were obviously bedrooms, a bathroom just there, another narrower staircase leading further up, but Hermione looped around to lead her to the opposite side of this floor, through a set of wood and glass double doors into—

Liz froze. "Jesus, you really do have a library in your house." There were bookshelves lining the walls up the ceiling, gaps left for a fireplace here, a liquor cabinet there, a turntable with modern-looking detached speakers. There was a table in the middle ringed with chairs, the surface scattered with books and papers, toward the spot where the house bulged out, brightly lit by the sun, were some armchairs and a sofa. The place wasn't huge by any means — the floorspace was probably similar to the ground floor of the library tower at Rock on Clyde — but still, it was a library, in Hermione's house.

With an oddly uncertain smile, something shifty in her head Liz didn't know how to read, Hermione said, "What, did you think I was joking?"

"A little bit, yeah." Not really, that the house Hermione grew up in would have a room dedicated to books seemed like a natural thing to be true — but she'd thought, like, a spare bedroom they'd put bookshelves in or something, this was actually slightly ridiculous by normal person standards. "Remind me to show you the library at Rock on Clyde some day."

"That's the Potter manor, right? I'm sure it's incredible, the Potters are an old noble family — consider me very jealous. Anyway, sorry about the, you know, Mum's taking a nap downstairs, so I was staying up here out of the way. Dad was taking care of something quick, but he'll come back with takeaway soon, and then after lunch we can get going."

Hermione paused expectantly, but Liz had no idea what she was supposed to say. She shrugged, muttered, "Okay."

"Did you want to look around? We have a little bit still."

She doubted the Grangers had much in the way of books on magic, so not really, honestly. "Or we could get all your stuff packed up, so we don't have to worry about it later."

"Oh sure, we can do that. My things are in my room, come on..." It turned out Hermione's bedroom was the single room on the top floor, she led Liz back toward the little staircase up. Babbling about it on the way, Liz accidentally picking up unspoken details from her head, this hadn't always been Hermione's bedroom. They'd moved into this house when Hermione had been five or six — partially just because her parents had been able to afford a nicer house by that point, partially so Hermione could walk to her primary school — and at the time her room had been on the first floor, opposite the bathroom from her parents'. Apparently the room up here hadn't been quite properly finished at the time and the Grangers hadn't wanted five-year-old Hermione taking too many stairs or playing around in the attic — fixing it up, they'd intended it to be a guest room, but Hermione decided she liked it up here, so she'd moved up when she'd been ten or so, her old room was a guest room now instead. Well, it had been a guest room, it was a nursery now, and it'd be her baby brother or sister's after that...

(Hermione still thought it was odd that she was about to have a younger sibling, so used to being the only child. Not a bad thing, just odd.)

Liz was only kind of half-listening to Hermione babbling off — it didn't help that Hermione wasn't bothering to keep her out of her head, so she actually knew what Hermione was going to say a second before she said it, made it hard to pay attention to the actual words part. The stairs were pretty narrow, the walls on both sides were making Liz feel a bit surrounded, and rather steep, enough that Hermione's waist was nearly at Liz's head level. (Not really, but it was making Liz feel even shorter than usual.) Hermione was wearing shorts today, littler than Liz might have expected — it was cold at school, she didn't see Hermione dressed like this very often. Apparently shorter than she usually wore outside, because... Well, Liz had noticed before that Hermione got noticeably darker over the summers, and while it wasn't quite as obvious as usual — her mum being super pregnant, they wouldn't have gone anywhere this time — she'd still tanned several shades, her legs below her thighs noticeably brownish, the strip just under her shorts much more pale, not making a hard line but a mostly smooth sort of gradient, from wearing skirts or shorts or whatever of differing lengths...

Liz realised she was staring at Hermione, and consciously forced herself to stop.

At the top of the stairs there was a little landing, a door to the right leading into the attic, and Hermione's bedroom to the left — there wasn't a door, instead thick, heavy curtains, currently pulled back against the walls. There hadn't been a wall up here before, apparently, and putting one in was something the Grangers wouldn't be able to do themselves, so they hadn't bothered. (Emma had installed the track in the ceiling for the curtains herself, and they'd done the carpet, but putting up a wall was a bit much.) The curtains were a deep navy blue, which Liz knew was Hermione's favourite colour, the inside of the room showing more blue and green and a little yellow. It was actually nicer than Liz expected, she hadn't thought the room was this big from outside. There was the bed, covers blue and scattered with pillows and old plush toys, a few bookshelves packed full (because of course), some drawers, a closet — the door hanging open, Liz could see it was deeper than she'd expected, but oddly triangular, compressed by the slant of the roof — with a free-standing full-length mirror (reminding Liz of the Mirror of Erised for a second, despite looking nothing like it), a desk with a comfortable-looking swivel chair, a little reading nook by the window with an armchair and a little side table. The desk and bookshelves were scattered with random bits and bobs, the things people acquired over the years, pictures and posters and things on the walls. Not posters of, like, musicians or athletes or whatever, this one was some Greek town somewhere (Liz didn't recognise the name), that one was of some part of Rome, there was another one that was labelled with a script Liz couldn't even read (Japanese, maybe? what did Japanese look like?), another of a ruin in a jungle somewhere, looked maybe Mesoamerican... Things she'd picked up on vacation to these places, obviously.

Liz noticed that, while some of the people in the pictures were probably family — she assumed, they were mostly group shots with other kids, must be cousins or whatever — some of them were people in their study group at school, mostly taken at Hogwarts and obviously magical, the figures inside moving around. There were a couple people in the group who had cameras, but Liz didn't like having her picture taken, so she mostly tried to avoid being around when the cameras were out. She noticed she was in a couple of them, Hermione must have gotten lucky to get any of her, because there weren't very many. Obviously Hermione's parents were in the know, but her extended family wouldn't be, nor any random friends or neighbours or whatever, she must hide those away whenever there were people over.

The room was nice, sure, but she did think it was odd it didn't have a solid wall here. She was kind of wondering what Hermione did when she, er, wanted some privacy, but that wasn't any of Liz's business.

...And now she was thinking about it, but she really didn't need to be wondering about her friends' masturbation habits, for fuck's sake, bloody hormones...

"Right, so, I'll need to bring my school trunk, of course," Hermione said, tapping it with her heel. "I've got all my school stuff in there already — except the new books for this year, of course, I haven't gotten my list yet. Have you?"

Trying not to look awkward, Liz cleared her throat. "No, not yet. Severus said they'll come soon. With all the new professors and stuff, they're slow getting it all straightened out this year."

"Ah, yes, that makes sense. It is a little full, if the new book list is really long I might need to leave a few things behind at your house. If that's okay?"

Liz shrugged — she was hardly likely to complain about there being more books in her house, honestly Hermione. "That's fine." Really, Hermione could just keep her room at Liz's house. Not that she thought Hermione would be moving in permanently or anything — or at least not yet, presumably she didn't want to live with her parents forever — but it wasn't like Liz was going to be using that room for anything else, she might as well leave a few things there for when she came over. But that idea was making her feel a little weird, so she kept it to herself.

"And I'll need to bring my book bag—" The poor abused thing was packed tight, as per usual. "—and this," fingering the strap of a purse hanging over the back of her desk chair, "has got all my papers and money and keys and the like, so. Will the book bag fit in the box? Travelling through the floo wearing it sounds like it'll be a pain."

"It shouldn't be a problem." Liz reached into her shoulder bag, pulled out a fist-sized ceramic box. The problem of how to get Hermione's things through the floo had stumped them for a bit, so she'd asked Sirius during one of his visits — after assuring him that they'd rather do the trip on their own, if he wanted to meet Hermione he could come visit later, he'd gotten her this thing. It was sort of hard to see what she was doing with the box so small, but eventually she found the latch, flipped it open, and set it down on the floor, somewhere there was plenty of open space.

It'd already started visibly growing, very gradually as the energy of the enchantment was bled off, a faint tingle of magic on the air. Supposedly, the latch moved something on the surface the runes were cut into, breaking the shrinking enchantment — but even with the enchantment not working anymore, the shrinking spell was still there, it took a minute or two for it to fully unravel, the rate the energy was bled off linearised by a series of reservoirs. Sirius had assured her that the operation of the enchantments would read no differently to the Ministry than, say, an expanded trunk, and it was perfectly allowed for muggleborns to own those, so they wouldn't get in trouble for it. Liz could probably cast a good enough shrinking charm to last all the way to her house — though she didn't know how well it'd manage through multiple floo trips, so not a great idea — but that would definitely be detected, this was safe.

Hermione watched the box grow, head thoughtfully tilted, arithmancy fluttering around behind her eyes — another bonus to the box was that Hermione would think it was neat, because she was a bloody nerd. "Bathroom stuff?"

She twitched, blinking at Liz for a second. "What do— Oh! No, I was leaving them to dry after washing up this morning, give me a second..." Hermione slipped past Liz, bare feet padding back down the stairs.

Once the box had expanded to a reasonable size, Liz flipped the latches holding the lid closed — it wasn't completely empty inside, Liz had gotten some spare towels and blankets to use as padding, so Hermione's things didn't get too shook around in there. It needed maybe another minute to expand all the way, but it wasn't like Liz would be able to move Hermione's trunk on her own anyway, since it didn't seem to have a featherweight enchantment. Hermione was back before too long, her shower things packed into a mesh bag, toothpaste and stuff in a separate plastic one, both squirrelled away in her trunk. It took a bit for Hermione to pack them in there, the thing really was full — Hermione should consider getting one of the multi-compartment ones, the plain ones really weren't enough to fit her clothes, her potions stuff, and all her books. (Obviously, since so many of her books were in her bag instead.) A little exasperated, Hermione said her parents thought spending that much on luggage was frivolous, she just had to figure out how to make it work every year. Thankfully Liz and Dorea had talked her out of taking all the electives, she was having trouble enough fitting everything without extra classes...

Well, Liz guessed she knew what she was getting Hermione for her birthday this year. Probably better make it for her birthday and Christmas, those things were pretty expensive, and people could be weird about that...

When Liz asked if Hermione had packed her shoes, she squeaked, and darted off back downstairs. Apparently not.

Packing up her stuff really wasn't a problem. Each of them lifting from one side, they got her trunk in first — the box was just barely wide enough to fit the trunk, Liz nearly pinched her fingers — and then throw in the book bag, stick Hermione's shoes in, rearrange the blankets and stuff a bit, and there, good. Liz closed the lid again, and then flipped the switch for the enchantment back on. The box started shrinking again, but just as slowly as it'd grown, the spell applied bit by bit — a side-effect of the same limiting phrase that made the spell break gradually, which was apparently a basic safety feature, Sirius said they were all like that. Which was fine, they weren't in a rush.

They mostly ended up talking about magic and school stuff while waiting for Daniel to come back with lunch. Because of course they did, they were nerds. The conversation was perfectly normally, really, which was making Liz...

They'd sent plenty of letters back and forth, arranging Hermione staying over for the last few weeks of the summer, but this was the first time they'd seen each other in person since Liz's free day in Jassy. According to a very strange letter from Gail, back at the hotel that evening Dorea had told Hermione about Liz telling her about being gay, as well as her speculations that Liz and Daphne were dating now — which was a hell of a guess, Liz had no idea how she'd figured that out. Well, Liz had told Dorea some stuff that day in the library, and she and Daphne had been off on their own for a couple hours, but still. From what Dorea had told Gail, Hermione had mostly just been...bemused by the conversation, like why they'd been talking about that, so.

Liz didn't know what she'd expected, exactly. Not that Hermione would react badly, like Dorea had — Liz couldn't recall directly talking about this stuff, but Susan and Hannah didn't creep out Hermione the way they kind of did Dorea. (Hermione thought they were adorable, actually.) Just, you know, something. Hermione would be staying at her house for weeks, and she'd never mentioned it in their letters, and now they were alone in her bedroom, and, nothing. She wasn't watching her mind that closely, but Liz being gay now hadn't even occurred to Hermione at all since she'd gotten here, as far as she could tell.

She'd just expected something, that was all. She didn't know...

Their time at the Grangers' house passed uneventfully. They'd been in Hermione's room talking about random nerdy stuff for maybe a little more than a half hour before a car pulled up — Liz could faintly hear the gravel crunching. Liz slipped the shrunken box with all of Hermione's things into her bag, by the time they got downstairs Daniel was already inside, a hint of unfamiliar spices on the air. The food was in the kitchen when they got there, but Hermione's dad wasn't. The kitchen was, unsurprisingly, pretty nice, all wood cabinets and tile floors, the cabinets and appliances and stuff along three walls (with gaps for doors), a bit bulging out of the house a little making a breakfast nook — reminding her very much of the table they'd had lunch at at the Malfoys', with the bank of windows shining on the table and chairs from three sides, though it was rather shadier (cast by trees in the neighbour's yard) and noticeably more compact — some paper bags from some takeaway place on the table. Hermione waved Liz to a chair, while she hung her shoulder bag off the back Hermione went off to retrieve plates and forks and serving spoons. As she was setting the table, her parents walked through the door.

Daniel was pretty much the same as she remembered — tall and lanky, curly hair kept short, skin noticeably darker than his wife and daughter (though not by that much), the glasses perched on his nose and clothes all clean and neat making him come off subtly geeky. Emma looked a lot like Hermione, actually, if blonder and a bit paler, more noticeable now that Hermione had a tan and she didn't. Liz was pretty sure Hermione had gotten her hair from Emma, Hermione's darker and without the scattered blonde streaks, and slightly frizzier, but otherwise very similar. (And also her tits, but that was a weird thing to say.)

Of course, Emma didn't look quite how Liz remembered. For one thing, she was much less presentable, her hair chopped off at her shoulders and left in a mess around her head, wearing leg warmers and a loose dress with buttons up the front — Liz was pretty sure Emma wasn't about to go outside in that. Also, she was bloody huge, her stomach bulging out almost absurdly out of proportion, her face rounder than Liz remembered. Walking in, she was moving slowly — cautiously, Liz knew, even slower than Emma thought she probably needed to, but she was very conscious of the potential medical consequences of falling, low-simmering anxiety sharp in the air around her — Daniel was keeping pace with her nearby, trying to act casual, like he wasn't hovering, prepared to jump in at any second. He wasn't hiding it as well as he thought he was, Emma was fully aware of what he was doing, and trying not to be irritated with him about it, because him being nervous made her nervous and also hormones...and then there was also a lot of squishy stuff, Liz tuned it out, ignoring Hermione's parents' minds as much as she could.

Apparently, at least part of the reason Emma found Daniel being more thoughtful and affectionate than usual irritating was because she had to wait until she wasn't so fragile before screwing him silly, which wasn't something Liz had needed to know.

(...Liz was aware Emma and Daniel had a very active sex life, because being a mind mage could be like that sometimes, and Liz had been able to hear the gravel crunch as the car pulled in from Hermione's room, and she was pretty sure their room was just underneath hers, but that was an awkward thought, and she was going to stop wondering about it now.)

(And now she was thinking about Hermione and masturbation again, dammit, stop that...)

It turned out Daniel had gotten them Indian takeaway, since it was one of Hermione's favourites. Liz had literally never had Indian food before last summer with Severus, and they'd only done that a couple times — which would be why she hadn't been able to identify it by smell, and she couldn't tell what anything was looking at it either, all new to her. It was in principle similar to when they got Chinese (which was way more frequent, Severus liked Chinese), you know, scoop some rice, and then some of the stuff, there you go, have fun. Also, there was bread — the Grangers insisted on calling it "naan", but Liz assumed that's just what bread was called in whatever language — and a couple sauces and stuff, not difficult to figure out. Just go ahead, pick whatever you want — except that one, that was Hermione's favourite, and you probably won't like this one...

Liz was, once again, reminded that she was very English. Like the food back in Romania, a lot of this stuff was really spicy, enough that she had to have some bread or some of this weird yoghourt sauce stuff now and then to cool her mouth off. It didn't seem to be bothering any of the Grangers, making Liz feel like a bit of a wimp, but then, they would be used to it, wouldn't they? It was good, sure, just too hot for her, she had to space bites out a bit was all.

Daniel asked what she usually did for food, just, whatever she felt like making, really. Lots of things she'd cooked the shite out of in sauces over potatoes or bread, sometimes stews and sandwiches, nothing super interesting. Magic pizza, that was fun. Usually lots of herbs, though she didn't use spices much — some black pepper or garlic, maybe, but. No, she didn't really eat fruit at all, that's what the nutrient potions were for. For some reason, the Doctors Granger seemed rather exasperated with her diet — probably for the same reasons as Severus, he'd just started giving her nutrient potions instead of trying to argue about it — but Emma played it off with a joke about at least the two of them wouldn't be living off of cake and ice cream for the rest of the summer, so apparently they weren't that worried about what she'd be feeding their kid.

It had taken some convincing to get Hermione's parents to agree to let Hermione spend the rest of the holiday at Liz's house. Emma would be moving to the Greenwood for at least a couple months, out of health concerns. In their letters, Hermione said it was obvious now that they'd been much more worried than they'd been playing it off to her — now that they'd gotten a better idea of how good the healers at the Greenwood were from various mages they knew, Hermione said she could almost see the difference in her parents' moods, so. Daniel would be spending a lot of time running back and forth, visiting Emma at the Greenwood, yes, but also wrapping things up at their dental practice, so the both of them could be gone for a month or two without anything going to hell. After Víðir came by to pick up Emma in a couple days, Daniel would actually be closing up the house in a week or two, since the days he did need to drop by the practice to check in he could just floo into Oxford and walk the rest of the way. Hermione not staying at the house until the start of school actually made things a lot more streamlined, made it easier on her parents to arrange everything.

Which meant Hermione would be saying goodbye to her parents before leaving for school now...at least until she came to visit when the baby was born, so even with her leaving for Liz's house they'd actually see each other sooner than normal, whatever. Hermione thought it was a bonus that they wouldn't be seeing her off at the train station, because they could be a bit embarrassing sometimes. Liz had been a little irritated by that — oh no, Hermione, you have parents who love you, how terrible — but she'd kept the thought to herself.

(She had told Tamsyn about it, but she'd had similar incidents with her friends when she'd been Liz's age, so Liz hadn't really needed to explain herself. That was nice, sometimes.)

The biggest hurdle in getting her parents to go along with the plan was that Liz lived by herself — but it wasn't really that big of a problem. Apparently, with both her parents working, Hermione had spent a lot of time at home on her own growing up. Not overnight, no, but it wasn't like she normally had adult supervision at all times. Also, as much as Liz technically lived alone, she did have 'adult supervision' pretty often. They'd be spending a good week at the World Cup, and Severus and Sirius and who knew who else would be there for that — Severus had managed to get tickets for them, including Hermione, and a tent and everything, they'd be leaving in a few days now — and Sirius dropped by the house at least a couple times a week. Also, Nilanse was always there, and if there was an emergency she could pop off to get help at any time. Not to mention the nosey neighbours, yeah, Liz living independently was mostly an illusion at this point — which she was fine with, since she was mostly left alone, but still. She wasn't sure which part the Grangers had found convincing — Severus had dropped by to talk to them about it some point, which had probably helped too — but they'd eventually agreed.

She didn't think the food had been a topic of consideration but, as exasperated as Hermione's parents were, they weren't thinking about retracting permission over it, so.

Anyway, no, she had no idea what kind of food there'd be at the World Cup — she'd never been to a professional quidditch match before, she didn't know what kind of things they normally had. (She'd never seen football either, so she wouldn't have anything to compare to anyway.) Probably all kinds of things though, there'd be people from all around there, and there'd be venders and food stands and stuff...

The talk through lunch was mostly things like that, food and quidditch and their plans over the rest of the summer, blah blah. Before too long it was over, Liz drifted over to the entryway to give the Grangers privacy as they said their goodbyes. She could feel her sense of them narrow on the other side of the door, there was something in the walls that was blocking her mind magic — which was bloody weird, usually only wards or active enchantments did that. Well, she guessed the walls at Hogwarts usually did, and there weren't ward-lines through most of them, but there was so much magic there, the stone probably conducted it... Whatever, not important.

By the time Hermione was coming out again, Liz was sitting on the bench, her boots already pulled back on — she'd reflexively reached for her wand to lace them, barely remembered to do it by hand. Watching her pull on a pair of sandals, Liz frowned. "You're not changing?"

Hermione blinked at her, a shiver in her mind Liz wasn't sure how to read. "I wasn't planning on it. Why?"

...Well, mostly just that those shorts and vest were scandalously skimpy by magical standards. Maybe fine in muggle Oxford, sure, but mages could be weirdly prudish sometimes. (The sleeveless, knee-length dress Liz was wearing was pretty close to the line too, to be honest.) And the sandals weren't great either, but, to be fair, Liz suspected the not-showing-your-feet rule was a Noble Houses thing. Also, it was cooler back home than it was here, fourteen degrees and cloudy — Liz would probably just pull on a cardigan before going outside, but she wasn't showing nearly as much of her legs (hardly any at all, with her boots added in). After a short pause, Liz said, "Never mind." They were just going through public floos, and she kind of doubted Hermione cared about the mages' sensibilities that much, it wasn't a big deal.

Liz suspected Daniel knew what she hadn't said — he'd followed Hermione out, leaning against the wall a short distance away, mind shifting with a crooked sort of amusement. "Alright, have fun, girls." Abruptly switching to French, "Don't forget to write, Maïa."

"I won't. The locals will be able to get a message to me more quickly than an owl, if there's an emergency."

"Ah, that's so. Then you would meet Víðir somewhere, I suppose?"

"I know the floo password for the Greenwood," Liz said. "The water crossing back to Britain is a pain, but she can be there in just a few minutes." The Grangers both stared at her, confusion and surprise flittering in their heads. English, "Um, floo password, I forgot you wouldn't know that. I said I know the floo password for the Greenwood."

There were a few more seconds of silence, and then Hermione blurted out, "You speak French!"

"Oh, um, yeah."

"I didn't know you spoke French! Since when?"

"Er, about a month ago, I guess." That got a couple more blank looks, so Liz added, "I copied it, with mind magic, I learned the whole language in like five minutes." They'd switched straight back to French again, and she didn't know how to say "mind magic", but l'arts du esprit seemed reasonable enough. "The girl I copied it from also knew German, so I speak that now too."

"How interesting," Daniel said...in German. "Is that something you can help another with, or can you only do it with yourself?"

"I wouldn't try it with someone else." She wasn't certain that was even possible, honestly — subsumption didn't work like that. "It isn't something that works like— Um, there are dangers of— Fuck it," back in English, "I don't know magical jargon in German. It's a kind of subsumption, and subsumption is inherently reflexive. I think it might be possible to do it to someone else, theoretically, but I'd be worried about, um, accidentally driving them insane. Subsumption does work by permanently changing something about yourself, when you fuck up it can go very badly. There are language potions, but it's weird alchemy shite, so they're really expensive, and because it is weird alchemy shite, you shouldn't use them unless you really trust the person who made them, because that can also go badly, so... Yeah."

Hermione gave her a comically overdone pout. "Oh fine, then. Consider me very very jealous."

She shouldn't be, really — Liz somehow doubted Hermione would have dealt with accidentally breaking someone's mind and needing to finish them off and dispose of the body nearly as well as Liz had.

After a last goodbye with Daniel, in French seemingly just for the hell of it — it was his native language, Liz guessed — and then they were finally off. Hermione took a different route than Liz had to get here, a smaller back street, but Liz just assumed she knew what she was doing. And they kept babbling away about nerdy shite, because why not, and still in French, because why not. There were a lot of questions about how the whole language subsumption thing worked, which was sort of difficult to get through — Valérie had been a muggle, so Liz didn't know magic jargon in French either. She knew the word for a floo password, from the map she'd picked up at the keyport, and a few little things here and there. Like, it was sorcier (or sorcière), not mage, which was actually a term for a kind of Seer. She knew potions were potions and charms were charmes (the same as in English, but pronounced Frenchly), but only charms with instant effects, static charms were enchantements — no, she didn't know what enchantments were called, like the ones done with runes, that hadn't come up. She'd actually made up the term for mind magic on the spot. Besides, it was weird esoteric mind magic stuff, and wouldn't be any good to Hermione since she wasn't a mind mage anyway, not really much point in talking about it...

There were still playing around making up French magical terms when they got to Christ Church College. And they immediately ran into a problem — Hermione had brought her to that big courtyard in between the cathedral and the clock tower, like she'd asked...but Liz had forgotten which way they were supposed to go. Everything in here looked the same, okay! Jesus... They couldn't just track down a building that felt magic-y — now that she was paying attention, there were (weak) wards and enchantments pretty much everywhere around here, not sure why (help preserve the old buildings, maybe?) — and it wasn't like they were going to have signs up, like, secret magical school this way. She'd come into the courtyard from over here, maybe, and then through here, and across— Nooope, that wasn't it. Damn.

Luckily for them, while Liz couldn't feel out the magical buildings, she could feel out magical people. Hermione was surprised Liz could spot a mage when they weren't actively doing magic — the only real difference between mages and muggles was that mages could channel magic and muggles couldn't, so they should be indistinguishable at rest — but it wasn't like it was a big difference. They just felt a little...sparklier. She didn't know, it was hard to explain. Before too long looking around, she spotted a couple of women sitting against a wall off the big courtyard, muttering to each other about something, and Liz asked for directions. There was a flash of surprise, and then a sizzling of excitement, Liz tried not to wince — Liz had given her name, hoping that the women would be more likely to help the Girl Who Lived than some random stranger. She'd known it was possible they would be stupid about it, it was a calculated risk.

It wasn't that bad, thankfully. There was a bit of that silly oh my god, it's Ellie Potter stuff right at the beginning, the women scrambling to introduce themselves (Liz didn't commit any attention to remembering their names, they'd never meet again), but after a couple quick curious questions about why she was in Oxford — after all, it was common knowledge she went to Hogwarts, with all the other absurdly rich noble kids — they started leading the way without too much more stalling. They did keep talking on the way, all gossipy and very nosey. If Liz were on her own, she suspected she'd find it extremely annoying and uncomfortable and bleh, but luckily Hermione was here, she kept up their half of the conversation just fine. The women thought it was odd that Hermione kept answering direct questions for her, that Liz was acting way more stiff and awkward than they'd expected, but neither of them commented on it.

Liz caught the explicit thought from both of them writing it off as Liz just being more fucked up from the child abuse than the articles had made it sound. Which was irritating, she didn't like people thinking about that, but if it was getting her out of having to deal with offending random strangers for no identifiable reason, fine, whatever.

The public floo in Oxford was actually connected to the magical school here, the Academy of Saint Frideswith — who was apparently a healer-nun from the 7th Century, because that was a thing that used to happen a lot (and the "saint" thing wasn't just for the hell of it, she'd started a monastery that was now a cathedral and everything) — which was kind of in the middle of the Oxford University grounds. Supposedly it hadn't been originally, but the University had expanded through the town, like vines crawling over an old building, so it was now, it was a whole thing. The public floo kind of acted like a boundary, signs pointing toward Christ Church College back the way they'd come, warning people in multiple languages — English, Cambrian, French, that one must be Gaelic — that beyond this hallway was muggle space, observe Secrecy rules, blah blah, signs the other way pointing to the Academy, a steady stream of people criss-crossing in all directions despite it being in the middle of summer. Did the Saint Frideswith's have summer classes? She didn't know, actually...

Getting through the floo back home wasn't too big of a deal. Liz recited all the advice she'd picked up from one person or another, at least all the things she could remember, about pulling her magic in and keeping moving and all that. Hermione didn't know what she meant by "pull your magic in", which was fair, and probably not even a problem — Hermione's aura was way less noisy than Liz's. (When nothing was going on, at least, she did tend to leak magic when she was worked up about something.) Just using that occlumency she was working on to focus inward a bit should cut off what little sublimation she did have going on, but if she couldn't keep it up it should be fine. Obviously none of them had any active charms on them, those were a big no-no, and all the enchantments they had on them were passive, so, nothing else to worry about.

Liz went first, partially just to demonstrate and partially to watch how Hermione came out, and call for help if she didn't show up quickly enough. Liz landed at the public floo in Leicester — a short hop without being redirected through any nodes, to give Hermione an easy trip to get used to it — her boots skidding on the tile a little but managing not to trip, just ten seconds before Hermione was spat out of another hearth a few metres away. Hermione did stumble a little, her hair looking messier than usual, but had handled it fine otherwise. They then went to the public floo at Newcastle upon Tyne, which required being bounced once passing through Leeds. Hermione didn't have any more trouble with that, but Liz still paused at Dunskey, on the Scottish side, before making the water crossing to Bangor in a single leg. This time Hermione almost tripped, flailing a few steps before she caught her balance again, her hair scattered and her clothes dusted a little with ash — but it wasn't that bad, she was ready to get going again after a minute to catch her breath.

It took some effort for Liz to keep her irritation off her voice — this was literally her first time doing it, and Hermione was already more comfortable with flooing than Liz was. Shite just wasn't fair sometimes.

With a warning to not give the password to anyone — her wards would put unwelcome guests in stasis or bounce them back out, but it was the principle of the matter — Liz flooed straight to her house from Bangor, passing through nodes at Ard Mhacha and the Refuge. Since she was ten, fifteen seconds ahead of Hermione, she was already reaching for the wards by the time the hearth flared green, she keyed Hermione in as a resident before she'd even come to a stop again, a not-light flashing behind her eyes as the wards took an impression of Hermione's mind and magic and burned it into the reservoir bank.

Hermione twitched, glancing around. "Was that— Oh, are those the wards?"

"Yep. When you have a minute, play around with that a little to get a feel for how it works — since you know a little occlumency, I think you shouldn't have any trouble? I don't know, it didn't take me any effort at all to figure them out, feel really similar to a mind to me. Anyway, you shouldn't be able to break anything just looking around, so. I've added you as a resident, which means you can do things like let in guests and tweak the environment spells, that kind of thing. You can't key someone in as a resident, only I can do that — if you notice Sirius is only in as a guest that's on purpose, I don't want him letting people in without asking first." Also, he doesn't really live here, and she didn't trust him not to mess with the environment spells as a prank. "Though, if you want to invite over, like, people in our study group or whatever, that's fine, I just didn't want Sirius letting in old friends or whoever he's shagging at the moment or whatever."

There was a little shiver of amusement, probably about that last bit — Sirius got around, Dorea had already started complaining about it. (Though not to Liz anymore, obviously.) "Maybe we can have the Slytherins, Lily, and Susan over at some point. Or Padma, are the Patils back in the country yet?"

Liz didn't miss that Hermione had suggested the people in their study group that the two of them got along best with — if she were going just for her closest friends, she would have included Neville — because Hermione had never been particularly subtle. "No idea, but sure. Anyway, this is the dining room — I never use it, but Sirius said I should fix it up anyway, in case I have fancy guests over or for when I'm older or whatever. The kitchen is this way..."

She did point out where everything was stored, herbs and mushrooms and bread and whatever else in the cabinets with the neat preservation spells and everything, and how the stove worked, not that she expected Hermione to use any of that — Hermione was completely useless in the kitchen, after all. The cold pantry downstairs, where all the refrigerated and frozen stuff was kept, was relevant — she wouldn't be using the meat and stuff, but there were drinks and ice cream down here...Liz's ice cream, but. Which was fine, Liz and Nilanse were already doing all the cooking, there was no reason that needed to change just because Hermione was here now.

Speaking of which, Liz had half-expected Nilanse to be in the kitchen making more of that flatbread when they got back, but she must be off somewhere else. Once they got back up to the kitchen, Liz called for Nilanse, the excitable little elf appearing a second later with a pop. "Hello, Liz!" Her big red eyes flicked to Hermione, curious — elf minds felt different from humans', it could be hard to interpret their thoughts, but feelings were close enough to be identifiable now that she was used to it — before going right back to Liz. "Are you needing something?"

"Are you busy right now?"

"Nope! I was only looking for fresh potions things, I can do that later." Nilanse had pointed out that, since the Potters grew so much shite for the apothecary market, there was no reason for Liz to buy supplies when she could just have things sent straight from the farms they were grown on for free. (Or from the greenhouses the elves kept at Rock on Clyde, which had a lot of the stuff she used just by themselves.) Liz had just made a fresh batch of nutrient potions, and was running low on a few things, Nilanse must have been tracking down replacements for her.

"Right. You know I said a school friend would be staying over for the last few weeks of summer?" Saying that was mostly for Hermione's benefit, obviously Nilanse wouldn't have forgotten — she'd helped Liz set up the bedrooms and everything. "This is Hermione Granger." Dorea had met Nilanse, when Liz had been getting a lot of letters around the time of her custody hearing, but she didn't think Hermione had.

"Welcome, Hermione," Nilanse chirped — slowing a little on the name, careful to pronounce it right. Excited enough she was all but bouncing on her toes, which, she could feel Hermione was a little taken aback by the enthusiasm, but Liz wasn't surprised. Elves liked having guests, and full houses just in general, one of those cultural things. Liz knew they didn't entirely approve of her living here by herself...which probably had something to do with Cediny telling Nilanse to stick close to her in the first place.

Liz thought Nilanse had maybe been about to say something else, but she cut off with a blink when Hermione took a few steps closer, squatting down closer to her height — even with her bum nearly all the way to the ground, she was still taller than Nilanse, because elves were tiny — holding out her hand to shake, because of course she did. "Nice to finally meet you, Nilanse — I've heard about you, from Liz and Dorea, but never seen you. Thanks for looking after Liz all the time."

For a moment, Nilanse didn't say anything, just stared up at Hermione, bemused. Rolling her eyes — Hermione wouldn't see it from this angle — Liz pushed a thought into Nilanse's mind, careful to make it as clear and bright as she could so Nilanse would actually understand it. It took rather more out of her than usual, the thought unusually dense with magic, but that was elves for you. Hermione is muggleborn, and odd about some things, just play along.

Nilanse squeaked a little at the intrusion, held in the impulse to glance at Liz — Hermione would see that — before twitching into motion, tolerating the handshake. It was awkward, enough that Hermione couldn't possibly not pick up on it — and not just because of the size difference between their hands, almost comical-looking. Hermione had maybe forgotten that mages didn't do handshakes, generally speaking, and Liz suspected the elves in particular had a thing about touching. Whatever she was thinking, Nilanse played it off as smoothly as she could, saying, "Hello! Ah, I hear about you too, Liz is talking about you all the time. I think you and and Daphne and Tracey are being her favourites."

"Well, isn't that sweet of her?" Hermione drawled, her mind shivering with warm amusement.

"Yep!"

Liz let out a huff, but didn't bother dignifying that with a response. "Anyway, I thought we should talk about food. I don't think Hermione is as picky as I am, but..."

That conversation went on for a bit, longer than Liz expected — Hermione was curious about the elven diet, and that Liz and Nilanse could eat the same meals without complications. It wasn't that hard to figure out. Elves were carnivores (obviously, just look at their teeth), and needed some fibre for digestive reasons, and there were a small handful of magically reactive things that could be rather poisonous to them. With the exception of a few things that gave them indigestion — like potatoes, when Liz wanted potatoes with something Nilanse had bread instead — for the most part other human food would just go right through them, digested like everything else but to no nutritional benefit. Which Liz guessed was sort of interesting, but it hadn't been nearly as difficult to figure out their meals as Hermione was making it sound — especially since Liz tended to eat a lot of meat, cheese, and bread, and those were all edible for Nilanse anyway.

She was surprised that they split cooking duties — particularly, that Liz actually cooked for Nilanse half the time. Not a bad kind of surprised, of course, this was Hermione, shooting Liz warm approving smiles and everything. Liz was aware that wasn't a thing other mages did, but honestly, what else had Hermione expected from her?

Hermione was less picky than Liz was, so food mostly wouldn't be a problem. Though Liz's diet was a little rich for her, maybe pick up some greens and vegetables and whatever else, maybe some fruit for snacks — that was fine, whatever, Liz had been planning on dropping by the market for stuff for Hermione anyway. Though maybe they should wait until after the World Cup? Liz wasn't positive that the preservation spells were so good that they would prevent fruit from going soft over a week, the mushrooms did slowly brown a little, so. Hermione apologised for making more cleaning work for Nilanse, correctly guessing that Liz didn't help much there (she hated cleaning), which Nilanse thought was very silly. It's not like cleaning was hard for elves, just a few finger-snaps, really, don't worry about it.

Now that that was out of the way, Liz let Nilanse get back to what she'd been doing, and continued showing Hermione around the house. There was the little office thing, she didn't usually do her homework down here, supposed to be for meetings and stuff — the marked off spot in the corner was where the ventilation for a potions lab was going to go, some people were going to come in and do that the weekend after the World Cup. (A bloke had already come in and sounded out the walls, checked for conflicts on the wards and in the structural enchantments, then they had to build the equipment custom and install it, there was a whole process.) Through the hallway after that, pointing out the closet, dropping their shoes in there. Yes, the entryway was a bit much, supposedly the whole ground floor had been ridiculously fancy once upon a time, because the nobles were bloody ridiculous, really the people who'd fixed the place up needn't have bothered, but whatever...

Liz quick dipped under the stairs to point out the toilet, that was the only one on the ground— Oh wait, there was another one near the pantry in the basement, on the left, Liz had forgotten it while they were there. Anyway, upstairs now, past a pair of bedrooms — that one was Sirius's, Hermione could use this one, if she wanted — and here was the guest bathroom, she'd be using this one. Here were some closets, with towels and bedsheets and stuff, if she needed fresh ones. Oh, just put dirty clothes in any of the hampers, Nilanse would deal with them — again, with just a couple finger-snaps, don't worry about it. And next was the living room, this one actually looking rather lived-in, with some books and decks of cards and board games around. (Magic board games, which were apparently a thing.) That was stuff Sirius had brought, mostly, they'd spent a lot of evenings in chatting over a game of something and sipping at wine. Sirius would rather go out to random new restaurants, but while Liz could eat out she preferred not to — too many people around, their minds got noisy — and it wasn't like Liz minded cooking anyway. Yeah, she was sure Sirius would keep visiting with Hermione here, she couldn't imagine why that would stop him, and he could be a bit much, but there wasn't a lot she could do about it, unfortunately.

Hermione got really annoyed at being told that a good part of the reason she'd started tolerating Sirius in the first place was because he'd threatened to challenge Severus for custody literally the first time they'd met — well, "threatened" was Liz's word, obviously he'd thought he was rescuing her or something. It hadn't occurred to Liz that she'd never actually mentioned that until Hermione blurted out about, well. (Not surprised she hadn't, people paid too much attention to her private stuff to begin with, she'd rather keep it to herself when she could.) It was fine, really, Sirius was okay most of the time. Way too energetic for her, but in measured doses he could be fun. Also, he'd taught her quick-step and some duelling spells, and they'd been starting on hex-deflection lately, so Liz wasn't complaining too much.

Anyway, two more bedrooms down this hall — only one of them was furnished at the moment, also an option for Hermione's room — and then there was another little sitting room thing. This was also where Liz's pensieve was set up, on a little table surrounded by four little two-seat sofas in a deep red to match the colour scheme everywhere else — when using a pensieve you were basically dreaming (sort of, it was complicated), so your body would kind of go limp, having a comfortable place to lay down was handy. Sirius had shown her a few memories of her parents — from before the war, so mostly just James, he hadn't known Lily well then — those were the only group trips she'd taken so far, but sure, they could play around with it. This afternoon, if Hermione liked, they didn't really need to do anything in particular. Oh, and that little kitchen area right there mostly just had things for snacks, a few drinks in that cabinet just there. No tea, Liz didn't drink that, maybe they should drop by the market at some point this afternoon...

"My bedroom's in there," Liz said, pointing at the closed door. "The door's warded to only open for me. There's a toilet in there you can use if we're hanging out in here, but I'm going to keep that door closed most of the time. Nothing person, you know, just." She shrugged.

"No, you want a space that's just yours, I get it." Hermione didn't say anything about the Dursleys, or even explicitly spell it out in her thoughts, but Liz could tell she thought it was connected. Which, it probably was, so, fair. "I think I'll take the closer bedroom, just there. We'll be hanging out a lot in here, I think, so that's just more convenient."

Meant she had to walk further to get to the bathroom, but sure, whatever. "Sure. Um, go ahead and make a list of anything you think might want, like tea and fruit or whatever, and we can go to the market later. You'll have to change first, though."

"Yeah, you said that before too. Why?"

Liz stared at Hermione for a second, and then sighed, walked over to the door out onto the balcony. "Come on," waving her over, Liz opened the door and stepped outside. It was a cool, cloudy, drizzly day — and there wasn't an awning over the balcony, so once Liz stepped outside she started getting speckled with raindrops. "See what I mean?"

"Oh, wow," Hermione said almost immediately after stepping outside, "it is cool out. I didn't realise it'd be so bad — it is August..."

Liz shrugged. "Ireland. I think it's just like this." She didn't mind the weather here so much, honestly — she didn't do well in the sun, Ireland being even cloudier and rainier than London actually suited her — but it could get rather cold. "By the way, all that back there," pointing at the field out back, "is a sort of common area thing, you can go out there if you want. My house is the one without any grass, but you can just ask if you get lost. Though they might not speak English, most people around here speak Gaelic..."

"You tore out all the grass?" Hermione asked, peeking over the railing. "Why?"

"I didn't want to have to cut it — especially since I'm not even going to be here nine months out of the year. Besides, I think whatever random stuff decides to grow there will look better anyway."

"Right, makes sense. And, point made about the weather, let's go back inside..."

Hermione, huddled down against the cold a little with her arms wrapped around her middle, slipped back inside ahead of her, Liz closed the door behind her — not that it really mattered, the environmental wards would keep the cold and the rain out, but it was the principle of the thing. "And I don't know if you noticed, mages can be kind of prudish. Especially out here, there aren't many muggleborns around the Refuge, they can be more conservative in some ways. You'll get funny looks going out dressed like that."

As Liz had expected, Hermione just shrugged that point off, not really giving a damn about the mages' sensibilities, but she would take the weather into account, so it didn't really matter. "Well, there isn't anything I urgently need — I'll at least want to try your coffee first before deciding I prefer tea. The trip to the market can wait until after the World Cup, I think. Was there anything else I needed to know about the house?"

"Mm, I don't think so. My wards are strong enough electronics will get fried the instant you turn them on, but I don't think you brought a Walkman or anything?" She didn't have to wait for Hermione to answer, the instant denial in her head was enough. "Right, um. You don't have to worry about using up water in the shower or bath or whatever, it recycles. Oh, I have the lights set to go on and off automatically, for the most part, but the ones in your bedroom won't work like that. The enchantment keys are just the standard Latin ones — lights on is luceat and lights off is noctesco, I'll write down a list with the rest later." Apparently the lights in the Gryffindor dorms were on a timer, each of the desks with their own lamp for studying late, and they had space heaters and shite, which seemed annoying and unnecessarily complicated, but whatever. The point was, Hermione probably didn't know the standard enchantment keys, but Liz had memorised the list they gave everyone in Slytherin back in first year. "And I think that's it."

"Okay. If we don't have anything else we have to do, can we check out the pensieve? I've been curious about it since you mentioned it last summer, it seems fascinating."

"Oh, sure, we can do that. Hold on, let me just..." Liz started moving toward the cabinet to get a bottle to put away the memories already in there, but then paused — instead she walked up to the pensieve, started pulling the memories out with the tip of their wand, tossing them away with a flick to dissipate into nothing. She didn't really want to be showing Hermione these, but also they were just her own memories, mostly of Daphne having squishy thoughts about her at various points over the last year or so. She'd been, um, trying to get herself used to feeling that, she guessed. It still felt weird, picking up on that, vaguely disconcerting for reasons she couldn't quite put her finger on, it could be kind of– just one of those things she was working on. But Liz could simply copy them again whenever she liked, didn't need to save them.

Oh, um, speaking of Daphne, did she want to...? That conversation might be awkward, but she probably should...

Still scooping out memories, her eyes on her work but closely watching Hermione's mind, Liz said, "I almost forgot, I might have Daphne over a couple times, before school starts again. You know."

There was a brief flicker of surprise. It was hard to tell for sure without actually intruding — Hermione's occlumency was good enough these days she'd probably feel that — but Liz suspected she hadn't actually been certain Dorea was right about the two of them until right this second. It was the awkward you know that gave it away, apparently. "Ah, of course. I can stay out of the way when she's around, if you like."

"It isn't— I mean, sometimes that might be better but, um. You don't need to, like, be gone or anything, it's not a big deal." Liz wasn't entirely sure what she was trying to say, so she just gave up. She thought Hermione was suggesting she could be out of the house somewhere if Liz and Daphne were, um, wanted privacy, but Hermione was maybe underestimating how much of a mess she was with this stuff, so. The diluted tincture of moonstone noticeably dimmed as another memory was pulled out, the pensieve was empty now. Her skin crawling with completely unnecessary nervousness — Hermione had barely even reacted to the confirmation on the gay thing, seriously, it was fine — trying not to fidget, Liz said, "I wasn't sure you knew. I mean, I know Dorea told you, but you haven't thought about it at all all day. At least not loud enough I could hear, I guess..."

In her peripheral vision, she saw Hermione shrug. "It's not really my business, is it? I kind of assumed you weren't talking about it yet."

"I'm not, you're the first person I've told." And she hadn't actually said it, just kind of hinted at it, so it barely even counted. "I think Severus has guessed, because he's a clever bastard like that, but I haven't said anything to him either. I'm not sure I would have said anything if I didn't know you already knew. I'm still kind of...well, you know," she muttered, shrugging again.

Hermione assumed — loudly — that the Dursleys had been very outwardly homophobic, and Liz was still working through shite, which, ugh, could she have some less perceptive friends, maybe? "That's alright, we don't have to talk about anything you're not comfortable with. I am surprised Dorea told you about what she told me."

"Well, she didn't, actually. Um, Gail wrote me about it, they had a talk. Apparently Gail doesn't approve of Dorea, you know, not really being comfortable with gay stuff, so, they're going to be working on that."

"Oh good, I had thought, well." Hermione had already known Dorea was weird about Susan and Hannah, so. Also, as much as Hermione hadn't wanted to confront her about it at the time — it'd been late, Hermione had wanted to go to bed — that conversation in Romania had been really uncomfortable. For one thing, Dorea had basically outed Liz to Hermione, which, Liz being gay didn't bother her at all (and she didn't entirely understand why it should anyone?), she was just saying, you didn't do crap like that. And something about the way Dorea had talked about it had been, just, subtly creepy, Hermione couldn't really say why — if she'd been picking up on unstated homophobia, yeah, that'd probably do it. There were some things that she caught on to quicker instinctively than rationally, felt like being around some of the meaner girls back in primary or listening to her grandparents talk (Emma's parents didn't approve of Daniel for racist reasons, Liz was learning just now), or a lot of the time at Hogwarts, honestly, just a subtle feeling that something was wrong and she needed to get—

Liz's attention was smoothly diverted away into a memory of Hermione playing some board game with her cousins, she twitched. "Oh, sorry."

"It's alright." There was motion in her peripheral vision, she glanced up to see Hermione walking closer, flopping down to sit in the square around the pensieve. "Is this why you and Dorea aren't really speaking anymore? I did wonder about that..."

"Yeah, um, that talk in the library..." Liz hesitated for a second, not sure she really wanted to tell Hermione this, but dismissed it with a shrug — she had the feeling Hermione would be on her side on this one. "Dorea is concerned I might use my mind-control superpowers to rape our friends."

Her mind flashing and shuddering with surprise and revulsion, Hermione muttered, "Oh, Jesus, Dorea..." Hermione fumed for a moment, the air around her roiling with...something unpleasant, hot and thick, rubbing at her forehead with one hand — worked up enough it wasn't just her feelings being projected out, a faint tingle of magic, her hair visibly frizzing just slightly. So, yeah, definitely on Liz's side. "That's just– ugh, I'm sorry you had to see that."

"It's fine," Liz said, shrugging. It wasn't, really, but it hadn't hurt in the way Hermione was thinking it must have, which was the point. "But yeah, that's why. If you distrust someone that badly, I don't know if you can be friends. I'm not an expert, but. Feels gross."

"I'm not an expert myself, honestly — you know I didn't have any friends before Hogwarts either. But that doesn't seem like a bad line to draw to me." Hermione paused a moment, thoughts kneading in her head, her lips quirking to the side in that way they did when she was thinking. Probably considering asking a question she wasn't sure Liz would— "You know, if you want to talk about Daphne, and everything else, we can. Or we don't have to, if you're not ready for that."

Yep, there it was. "I'm not ready for that."

"I figured as much, I just thought I would leave the door open. I know you don't really have, well, you know." Liz didn't have a mum or an aunt to talk about these things with, she meant.

"I know. Um, thanks." Not that Liz really felt grateful at the moment — embarrassed and vaguely impatient more than anything else, honestly — but that just felt like the thing to say.

"Of course. Now," she chirped, clapping her hands. "Ready for this conversation to be over? Because we've got this neat scrying focus right here to try out."

A smile twitching at Liz's lips despite herself, "I'm definitely ready for this conversation to be over. There's a charm to copy memories out, I learned it like a year ago now — it's pretty finicky, it'll be easier for me to just copy them for you. And I can copy in some of my own memories too. Anything you want to see?"

"All kinds of things. Um. I don't suppose going through Gaunt's headquarters would be too uncomfortable for you?"

"No, no, that's fine." Liz immediately started focusing on that day, being led off by the head Auror, the tip of her wand coming up to her forehead.

"One time we went to these caves in Mexico, very pretty, I think you'll like that." ...That really depended on how small the spaces would be, but she guessed they'd see. "And, does the perspective of the memory follow around the person it belongs to?"

"If you want it to it does." Liz tapped her wand against the side of the pensieve, the memory sucked into the liquid reservoir, beginning to visibly glow — Hermione watched the process with wide eyes, her mind brightly simmering with almost gleeful fascination. No surprise there, Hermione really did love magic.

"Can we see one of your quidditch games? I can't fly anything like that, you know, I've always wondered what it was like."

"Sure. I'll also put in one of my duels, hmm, the messy trio match against that one Polish team, I think. Anything else?"

With a little sheepish smile, Hermione said, "I'm just getting started, Liz, we could be here all night."

"This is my house — I'm not going anywhere."

"Right right, ooh, this is going to be so much fun, mm... There were closed doors in this reconstruction of an Iron Age village in Germany somewhere, I always wondered what was in there. Ooh ooh, and there was this one time in Greece we went..."

---

"Oh!" Hermione gasped, straightening in her stool a little. "I felt something in— Is that Professor Snape at the front gate?"

"Yeah, that's him." After a few days at her house, Hermione was starting to get the hang of the wards, but it was still a work in progress. Severus was also keyed in as a resident, so the wards hadn't asked them what to do about someone trying to open the gate — but there was a quick alert that the gate had opened, and Liz could feel Severus in the garden now. Though, Liz wasn't honestly sure how much detail the wards were giving Hermione, she might have just put it together logically. "Come on, let's go."

Liz never bothered locking the front door — it seemed redundant, with the wards — by the time she and Hermione had left their empty dishes in the sink (just a couple finger snaps, Hermione) and moved to the front of the house Severus had already stepped into the entryway. He was dressed relatively normally by his away from purebloods who give a damn standards, with the muggle-style navy blue jumper and all, though the trousers were different, made out of a more sturdy cloth, better for tromping around outside. In addition to the shoulder bag he'd brought for their holiday at the Greenwood, there was a large canvas bag slung over one shoulder — the tent, Liz assumed. "Hey, Severus."

"Good morning, Elizabeth. And Miss Granger," he added when Hermione appeared over Liz's shoulder a second later.

"Um, hello, Professor." Hermione sounded slightly distracted, her thoughts flittering around making the back of Liz's neck itch. She had been at the Greenwood with them, so it wasn't entirely new, but seeing Severus wear normal clothes was still bloody weird.

With a twitch of amusement that didn't show on his face at all — probably picking up on the same thing Liz had — he said, "I think we can forgo the proper formalities for the rest of the summer, so long as they resume upon our return to Hogwarts."

"Oh, okay. Sure, that's fine." Of course, now Hermione had no idea whether she was supposed to call him Mr. Snape instead (Liz caught the thought that that was what she'd normally call her friends' parents until told otherwise), because using his first name seemed...not right somehow.

Shaking off Hermione being silly (and also the part where she'd casually put Severus in the category of friends' parents, which, um, okay then...), Liz asked, jerking a thumb over her shoulder, "So, we're taking the floo?"

"Or we can walk. The portkeys are leaving from the grounds of the Academy, which isn't far from here. Our portkey is leaving in..." Severus snapped his fingers, the spellglow of a time charm flickering into existence over his hand before dissipating again. "We have time."

"Well, you know me, I'd rather avoid the floo if at all possible. Hermione?"

She shrugged. "Sure, I don't mind. We went down to the market around here one day, but I haven't seen much of the town yet. And I haven't seen any magic school besides Hogwarts. Well, and Saint Frideswith, I guess, but that doesn't count, we just went through the public floo." Not that there would be much going on to see, the sun had barely risen by now...

After quick confirming they weren't forgetting anything, especially the food — there would be food stands and stuff, but Severus had suggested they pack drinks and snacks, and supplies for breakfast for the week, because apparently the tent would have a kitchen in it — they stepped right back outside. The sun had, in fact, barely risen yet, half hidden by trees and buildings to the east, the scattered clouds overhead painted reds and oranges and pinks. The street was unusually empty, practically nobody around. Which wasn't really a surprise, the start to the day tended to be later on the magical side. The street was aligned pretty well east-west, but thankfully the Hill was to the west, they wouldn't have the sun in their eyes the whole way.

The Refuge wasn't a particularly huge place, so it didn't take them too long to get there. The street ended in a T, they took a right-hand turn, and then the first left, following this along another block of ridiculously fancy houses, then they passed a little greenspace around a canal into...well, Liz wasn't entirely sure what to call it. Kind of like a business area, she guessed? Like the kind where offices and factories or whatever were, but no actual shops. There were a lot of workshops for various things — just basic building things, lots of enchanting and potions stuff, and also artsy stuff, blah blah — and also some guildhalls, whatever the hell those were actually for, and also a few apartment buildings, for people who worked here. The street they went down happened to pass through the residential strip, with a couple little shops, an informal schoolhouse, a healer's clinic — all pretty small, just for the people who lived here. There were a few people about in this street, locals chatting with their neighbours, but for the most part this part of the town was really quiet, work for the day not having started yet.

And after only a couple blocks of that stuff they reached the Hill — or, an t-Ard Chaoimhe in the Gaelic, but they normally went with simply "the Hill" when speaking in English. Supposedly, the famous Caoimhe Ní Bhláithín had built her sanctuary on the top of this hill, overlooking the low valley around the lake (Liz had never been to the shore, but she'd seen the lake in the distance a few times), however many centuries ago that had been. Liz wasn't sure, honestly — they didn't cover as much Gaelic history in class as they probably should, considering they were a third of the country — but she thought it was right around the time of the Founders? Somewhere around then, anyway. A little town had gradually grown around Caoimhe's place, the powerful sorceress offering protection for people who were tired of the constant fighting between all the little kingdoms and clans on the island (and also vikings, because Dark Ages) — sort of on purpose, but nobody wanted to mess with the village and accidentally annoy Caoimhe herself, so also sort of by accident. Caoimhe had made a habit of teaching the mages in town — free of charge just for the hell of it, which had been very rare at the time — but the school had come much later, the grounds carved out of land still owned by her descendants to this day, the school itself supposedly built on the very site of her home.

Liz said supposedly because nobody really knew. A lot of the stories about Caoimhe were sort of half-myth — she had definitely existed, one of the most powerful families in magical Ireland had been started by her and she'd founded literally the largest magical settlement on the island, but the stories also said her mother was a literal goddess, so, you know, grain of salt. The Hill was probably the right place, but it was pretty flat and wide, and things had been rebuilt multiple times over the centuries, they could easily have the precise locations of things wrong. The Caoimhes did make a big damn deal about their famous (supposedly semi-divine) ancestor, but a thousand years was a long time, Liz would be surprised if they hadn't gotten little things like that mixed up.

So, the private parts of the hill were still owned by the Caoimhes, plus a couple houses belonging to other big-name Gealic families, but the public parts were mostly all religious stuff. Liz didn't know shite about the religion in magical Ireland — there were a bunch of different gods, and the priests ran a lot of schools and clinics and the like, but that was pretty much it. Most of the big priesthoods were headquartered right here on the Hill, churches and monasteries (or whatever the proper words were), places where their trainees lived and were taught, stitched together with lots of open gardens. (Supposedly people could just pick bits of fruit as they passed by, or herbs or whatever, but only for use, selling them was against some religious law or something.) There was a hospital here too — smaller than Saint Mungo's, but still big enough to be called a hospital and not a clinic — which kind of doubled as a medical school, the student healers(/priests) getting hands-on training. Severus had said their programme was actually pretty good, in the sense that the people trained there were relatively competent, but it didn't actually get you a healing certification — they were considered religious practitioners, which the Ministry monitored separately.

While all this stuff wasn't super fancy looking — mostly made out of wood, though carved with complicated weaving designs and flowering plants and birds and whatever else, very detailed but made out of cheap materials — it wasn't bad to look at. Nice and open, and the carved buildings with arches and balconies and whatnot, plants all over the place, trees and bushes and blah blah, vines crawling along railings. There were people around, tending to the gardens or sweeping up courtyards — Liz caught a glimpse of a ceremony of some kind going on through an ivy-choked gate, a hint of herby smoke on the air. The feeling Liz got, generally, wasn't one of wealth, but that a lot of people had put a lot of time into keeping the place up, dedication and whatnot.

Along the way they passed what was definitely a Christian church, complete with an attached monastery — because apparently Irish mages didn't think Christianity and paganism were an either-or thing.

Anyway, before too long they came to the Academy itself, half-hidden by a low brick wall and a bunch of trees on the grounds. And it was definitely the right place — there was a sign attached to the wall near a wide iron gate (hanging open) displaying the name of the school in three languages. (Gaelic most prominent, the letters carved in curves as though written by hand, and then English, a bit less stylised, and lastly Cambrian, smaller and plainer, seemingly as an afterthought.) Down a brick walk path through the gardens, they eventually came to a wide courtyard, mostly open grass with some paved bits here and there, a big gazebo sort of thing over there on a plot of brick. There were multiple buildings surrounding the courtyard, mostly in wood but there was some stonework around too, most of it relatively simple and modern-looking, though there was some elaboration around the trim in some places. It seemed to vary quite a lot, different buildings put up at different times. A lot of them were crawling with vines, a couple painted with murals, a few banners flying — one Liz knew was for the school, and that was the Wizengamot's (in place of the magical British one, which would be expected in this context), and it turned out the Academy openly flew the white sun flag the Gaelic nationalists used, because apparently they weren't even pretending.

(Of course, Liz saw white sun flags all over the Refuge, but she'd thought the school would be more politic than that.)

The whole portkey trip was relatively painless. There were signs up, pointing to one edge of the courtyard, the Ministry had cordoned off spots for departures and arrivals. The group before theirs was leaving just as they arrived, officials with the Department of Transportation sorting through their box of portkeys, muttering with the half-dozen or so travellers waiting their turn. There was a team of five Hit Wizards lingering around, black dragonskin armour half-hidden by blue cloaks, sitting on conjured stools at the fringes of the group, chatting over slightly-steaming drinks.

Liz noticed the Hit Wizards were constantly glancing around, between the buildings and into windows and through the trees, as though on the lookout for potential threats. One of them would turn to glare up at the nationalist flag every now and then.

When they got up to the group, Severus handed one of the Transportation blokes a sheet of paper, presumably proving that he'd paid for the portkey. The three of them plus six strangers — a middle-aged couple, two grown sons and a daughter, plus a daughter-in-law, all in the Irish team's colours, a couple even with branded stuff — were gathered along a long loop of rope, with more of the hand-holds and safety straps Liz remembered from the Romania trip. Because of course she was going to be tied down to the thing again, couldn't have her not made terribly uncomfortable first thing in the morning. She dipped halfway behind Severus to sneak a sip of her calming potion — she was seen at it, curiosity sparking in multiple minds, but nobody made a thing about it, their attention swiftly moving on.

While she was doing that, Severus asked, "Have you ever taken a portkey, Hermione?"

Hermione still thought Severus using her given name was weird, but she was trying to just get used to it. "Yes, we took one to Romania and back." She'd barely managed to hold back the automatic sir — she'd decided to go with Mr. Snape, but using sir was too formal. She'd slipped a few times but, you know, force of habit.

"Of course. This trip is rather shorter, but we will be crossing multiple wardlines. Keep a grip on the handle, and you should be fine."

The portkey to Romania hadn't felt like it'd taken that long at the time, but either she just wasn't remembering right or this one was noticeably shorter. A pair of twenty-somethings came rushing in close to the departure time, flushed and flustered, they'd barely gotten properly strapped in before the portkey was yanking them away. Ignoring the magic clinging at her as well as she could, her eyes snapping shut against the swirling, this trip felt oddly jumpy, the feeling of motion interrupted with little jolts, but it hardly lasted for a breath before Liz's feet were slamming against grass again.

Hermione toppled straight to the ground, nearly dragging Liz down with her. It was possibly the most undignified she had ever seen Severus — he was still strapped to the rope too, Hermione (and a couple of the locals) falling making him lurch in their direction, awkwardly stooping over. He freed himself from the portkey quickly, but still, very graceful, Severus.

Supposedly, the World Cup was being held somewhere north of the Scottish border, in the hills and moors and stuff just there — Liz didn't know exactly, but it didn't really matter that much. They'd landed in a patch of grass at the top of a shallow hill, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, more low-rolling hills spreading out in all directions. Maybe it was the quality of the early morning sunlight, but the grass looked almost yellowish in patches — she didn't think there was anything wrong with it, it just looked like that, seed pods or whatever — and there were patches of trees here and there, especially this one spot Liz noticed between two hills to the north. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere, looked like, one of those places dotted across the islands where the land wasn't good for much but raising sheep so'd been left more or less alone.

Though she couldn't actually see large patches of the land around: there were sprawling patches of tents set up in all directions, dense and colourful against the brownish-greenish-yellowish backdrop, trails of smoke rising all over the place. It didn't quite look right, though, some weird jittering in the twisting lines between the tents, some of the larger shapes looking strangely...bent. Lensing from expanded space, maybe? Using space manipulation wards outdoors was very difficult, but it was doable — as small as the islands were, they'd probably needed to to fit all the international guests. Luckily they didn't plan on this being here very long, Liz doubted such delicate wards would survive the subtle shifts in ambient magic that came with the changing of the seasons. Or maybe they knew what they were doing, who knows, Liz wasn't an expert...

One of the Ministry people tending to the portkeys pointed them off toward the British(/Irish) camp, a little wood hut in the near distance along a walk path leading down the hill — not something that'd been paved or anything, Liz suspected just beaten into the earth by passing feet over who knew how many hundreds of years. Along the way, one of their fellow travellers — the younger boy, the youngest of the group at maybe fifteen or sixteen — tried to talk at her in Gaelic. The language was similar enough to Cambrian that Liz was positive he was asking her something about quidditch, maybe if she played? By the feel of his head, he'd instantly identified her as the one in her group that was actually into quidditch.

She was using an Irish National Team -branded scarf to hold back her hair today, and while Hermione was also wearing green — she didn't really give a damn about quidditch, but she knew Liz was supporting Ireland, so she was just playing along — neither of the others had on anything quidditch-specific. Liz was told she did look pretty athletic, to people who knew what to look for, so that she played wasn't a bad bet. But, well, wrong language. She said she didn't speak Gaelic, in English, half-hoping he'd give up...but then he immediately repeated the question in English — he clearly didn't speak the language natively, his accent pretty thick, but he was understandable enough. Damn, she'd been hoping to get out of this conversation...

It wasn't too bad, thankfully. There was a little bit of whispering between the adults when they realised who she was, but the boy himself didn't care so much. Apparently he played beater with some local youth club — like how all the big football clubs ran youth teams to help recruit and train up new people, same basic idea. Liz didn't recognise the name, but she didn't follow quidditch that closely...and he was using the Gaelic name, it was possible she'd know the English one. Anyway, they managed to talk about quidditch for most of the walk, so, could have been worse.

The adults were a little tickled that Ellie Potter was supporting Ireland, which, she didn't see what was so weird about that. Sure, she was English (though mages normally only used that word for the language), but it wasn't like it was against the rules to support another team or anything. She knew a couple people on the Slytherin team were supporting Bulgaria, and Cynfelyn and Oz were both supporting the Danes, so. The islands were just one country on the magical side, and she was actually living in Ireland now, so in a way it kind of was her team. Also, the British team was meh, and the Irish chaser squad was incredible, so.

(It didn't hurt that Tricia Mullet and Aoibhínn Ní Mhóráin were incredibly sexy — she'd picked up a magazine with a feature on the team, there were pictures and fucking hell — but she didn't say that part out loud.)

There was a bloke waiting at the little hut, he took some papers from Severus and after consulting a map pointed them in the right direction. The campgrounds were sorted by dominant language, apparently, though they did take a couple shortcuts — in their case, for example, the English- and Celtic-speakers (both Cambrian and Gaelic) of the country had been put together. There were British and Gaelic sides of the camp, but the British side was only lazily sorted, English-speakers and the various Cambrian dialects sometimes clumping together but pretty mixed up. And there weren't as many countries that spoke English on the magical side, since Australia and New Zealand and southern Africa hadn't been fucked with until after Secrecy, and Canada and Belize had been being colonised by different Europeans at the time.

To Liz's knowledge, the only other magical countries where English was the official language were Massachusetts (the country the Salem Institute was in) and Miskatonic, both in New England, and then Virginia, the largest of the bunch, and finally Bermuda. (A lot of magical countries in North America had an English-speaking minority, since it was what the muggleborns grew up speaking — and they all learned the local American language in school, or else moved to Massachusetts or Virginia — but the continent was still mostly dominated by natives.) Massachusetts and Virginia both had a team in the Cup, but Miskatonic and Bermuda didn't — Miskatonic was basically just one city, and Bermuda wasn't really culturally English despite speaking the language, and quidditch had never become popular there. And also the population was probably pretty small, Liz didn't really know. But if there were any Miskatonites or Bermudians here, they'd probably been stuck in with the rest of the English-speakers.

To get to their section, they had to walk through the sections for...um, from the look of things probably one of the Indian countries — there were several, she knew Padma's family were from one called Maratha...something, she forgot — and then probably either Spain or Portugal (or both?). The camp was quiet, it being so early in the morning, or at least quiet to the ears — visually, the place was extremely loud. Especially in the Indian section, the tents were big and very colourful, almost like they'd been woven by hand in complex designs — which sounded like way too much work, Liz assumed it'd been done with magic somehow — occasional decorations showing shining metal, eye-drawing flashes of magic here and there, smoke flavoured with spices from cooking breakfast thick on the air. The Spanish section was only slightly plainer, without quite so much of the complicated weaving, but still with a lot of bright clashing colours — also with a lot of flavourful smoke, but the spices were noticeably different.

Liz didn't realise they'd gotten into the English section right away, the first few tents they passed in an unfamiliar oblong shape, more foreign-looking designs and decorations around — until she spotted a signboard stuck into the ground plastered with posters for Virginia's team. She'd read that Virginia and Massachusetts had significant native minorities in addition to all the white people, so, that would be what all this stuff was. She'd kind of expected a lot of feathers and teepees or whatever, but she guessed that stereotypical stuff was probably from further west? Whatever, not important.

It wasn't hard to tell when they got to the area the actual British people were — someone had put up that dragon flag, apparently just because. While a lot of other people's tents were really colourful, and in weird unfamiliar shapes, the British section was filled with a lot of things that were obviously magical. Liz was pretty sure it was impossible for tents to have multiple storeys, for example, and like half of them had chimneys, one had a bloody moat? What, did they think they were going to be put under siege in their tent? Fucking mad... And that was without getting into pots on cookfires slowly stirring themselves, or animated posters showing teams or individual players, someone had apparently flown here on winged horses, the things tied outside of their tent to graze, kids on toy brooms shooting around to the consternation of their half-awake parents...

Yeah, Liz guessed these people were lucky there were certainly avoidance wards over the area, because there was no fucking way they would ever pass for muggle for five seconds.

It was still relatively quiet when they got here, but the camp was starting to wake up as they passed through, people emerging from tents to form streams heading to the nearest market area (there was a sign), hanging outside of their tents chatting, kids whining about being woken up too early or wanting to go get awful junk food instead of boring normal breakfast. They passed multiple people pushing big carts through the twisting alleys between the tents, little mobile sales stands, looking for somewhere to set up shop for the morning. There was a disturbance building near one clump of tents, a pair of teenagers sat down looking very embarrassed, a group of adults shouting at each other increasingly loudly — Liz caught a little bit out of their heads on the way by, apparently one of the teens had been found in the other's bed in the morning, their families were arguing about who was responsible and what was to be done about it. She could tell the families had history, and seemingly not a pleasant one either (real Romeo and Juliet shite), the argument just got louder and rowdier, by the time they turned the corner Liz spotted a few harried-looking saps in LEP uniforms rushing over.

After some minutes wandering around through the English-speaking section seemingly at random, Severus occasionally glancing between the papers in his hand and the little wooden markers stuck into the grass here and there, he abruptly lurched to halt. "Here we are." They were standing in front of an empty patch of grass, between a violently purple tent on one side, a thin trail of smoke curling out of a brick chimney sticking out of the top, on the other side a white and yellow tent with windows cut out, framed not with wood but woven garlands, bright green leaves with flowers red and blue and orange and pink — she guessed that was pretty, but how had they even done that? Glancing around, they were just near a wider path leading over to the nearest market area, and on the other side of the path were more tents, showing a lot of green and white and yellow, some of them almost looked to be crawling with living plants. Couldn't be sure, but it looked like they were right on the edge of the Irish half of the section.

One open pavilion-looking tent near the path was plastered with posters of the team...and someone had hung up a white sun flag right along with them. And, as she looked closer, that wasn't the only place the Gaelic nationalist flag was being displayed, she caught more glimpses of the design further in. Frowning, Liz looked across the alley deeper into the British side, seeing a lot of British National Team posters and memorabilia, a couple dragon flags, red on a purple backdrop...but also a few with the colours inverted — that belonged to Ars Brittania...also used by British nationalists.

...Maybe being right where the British and Irish camps met wasn't a great idea.

While Liz had been distracted looking around, Severus had opened up the tent bag, pulled out a long bundle of canvas and poles. Liz wasn't an expert in this stuff — the Dursleys never brought her anywhere, and they weren't the tenting sort anyway — but it looked mostly normal? Liz didn't know what the tents around them had looked like packed up, but this thing just looked like metal poles and dark blue canvas. Awkwardly holding the unwieldy thing under an arm, Severus fiddled with it, occasionally tapping his wand at one spot or another — obviously doing something, but Liz couldn't begin to guess what.

"Do you need a hand with that?" Hermione asked. "I've never seen a magical one before, but it looks like it's probably pretty similar..."

Severus glanced at her, a faint tingle of amusement in his head but his face as blank as ever — enough that Hermione actually thought he was annoyed with her, internally grumbling to herself. A last tap of his wand and, with a single broad but sharp motion with both hands, the tent unrolled itself all at once with a harsh rustling and rattling of poles moving around, extending all the way to its full length in a blink, Severus still holding on to one end. An instant later, snap-snap-snap-fwoomp, the rectangle of fabric expanded to maybe four times its original size, even as the thing assembled itself, the poles crawling upward and clicking together dragging the canvas along with, quick enough the air rushing into the newly opened space was audible. In only a couple seconds the bundle of canvas had turned itself into a rectangular tent, blue lined with yellow here and there. It was even passably muggle-looking, nothing about it screaming magical, though quite large and maybe a bit old-fashioned, more like you'd see in old pictures of the Empire in India or Arabia or whatever...and also seemingly weightless, only slowly drifting down toward the grass, Severus easily guiding it into place with his grip on one end.

"...Okay, never mind." It was hard for Liz not to smile at the bemusement in Hermione's head, didn't want her to think she was making fun of her.

Once the tent was down, Severus said, "Wait one moment," reaching back into the canvas bag. There was a bundle of metal stakes inside, tied together with a ribbon. Severus went over to the corner of the tent, slipped one of the stakes into a loop at the base of the pole there, and drove it into the ground with a flick of his wand, and then moved on along the side of the tent to the next. Interestingly, as he drove in the stakes the tent seemed to settle, listing a little but evening out as he went around, the air thick with a tingle of magic wafting off of the tent. Maybe, the stakes interrupted whatever enchantments had made the tent so light? Or maybe slipped a couple runes in place to redirect where the energy was being channelled, that'd probably be easier — removing a part of script to deactivate an enchantment was easy enough, but Liz wasn't sure how you'd get the same effect by adding something.

She could tell Hermione was equally fascinated, mind a hyperactive jumble of overlapping thoughts, but her guesses weren't as good as Liz's. Hermione hadn't studied enchanting on her own nearly as much as Liz had.

Before long Severus was back in front, bent over to pick up the discarded bag, and then led the way into the tent with a silent tip of his head. Ducking through the cloth flaps in the doorway — no zipper, mages didn't use those — Liz immediately froze just inside. She'd expected the inside of the tent to be larger than the outside — internal expansion was more difficult to do on a space without solid walls, but they had bags and things that were bigger on the inside, so it was definitely doable. But she'd, you know, still expected it to be a tent, with canvas and stuff on the inside? The outside looked pretty big too, so there would be multiple rooms, dividers to split them up...and Severus had said there'd be a kitchen, she'd had no idea what that would look like...

But it definitely didn't look like a tent from the inside. Everything seemed to be made out of wood — pretty normal wood flooring, though the walls weren't normal wood panelling, instead like someone had taken slices out of long logs and stacked them up horizontally, the rough-looking boards unpainted and seemingly not even sanded all the way smooth. She'd never been in one of those old-fashioned log houses they had, like, up in the mountains on the Continent, but she imagined they'd look kind of like this from the inside. The ceiling overhead — higher than she'd expected, definitely no danger of Severus smacking his head on anything — was peaked, the frame done in more log-looking things...but the ceiling itself was made out of the same blue canvas as the outside, a few places patches of a transparent material to let the sun in, visibly fluttering a little in the wind. Huh.

They were in a sort of combined kitchen/dining/living room thing, four cushioned chairs around a table (also made of unfinished wood), the kitchen area looking similarly rustic, plain wooden cabinets, work surface in the form of a ceramic covering of some kind. The hob was separate from the oven, a few burners built into the counter nearby, the top of the oven itself turned into a sort of oversized griddle surface...which was actually a neat trick, if Liz had known this was a thing before having the house fixed up she might have gotten one of these instead. (Oh well, she was filthy rich, if she really wanted a big flat cooking surface like that she could just pay someone to put one in the island.) There were three actual proper doors leading off, left, right, and straight ahead, much sturdier than the flimsy dividers she'd half expected. The room wasn't huge, by any means — there was enough room to move around in, but it was a little cramped — but it was much more finished and nicer than she'd thought. Sort of like a little house you could carry around, she guessed.

While Liz and Hermione were standing dumbfounded at the entrance — Hermione was thinking about how much she loved magic, which yeah, Liz was right there with her — Severus had continued on into the kitchen area, pulled a big jug of water out of one of the cabinets...and started pouring it down the sink. He'd emptied the first and was pulling out a second before Liz's brain caught up. "Oh, they've got one of those water-recycling systems in here? Like at the house."

Severus nodded. "The reconfiguration necessary to compress the system for transport cannot be done with water in the reservoir. However, the expansion charms on the cabinets—" He tapped one of them with a finger. "—are properly anchored and isolated, so the contents are protected through the compression. While ensuring the tent was in usable condition, Lana had the water set aside as well."

"Lana?"

"Alana Yaxley — her husband Austin and I were in the same cohort in the war." So he was a Death Eater, Severus meant. Hermione obviously put the same thing together, giving the room around them a sceptical look — the aesthetics weren't quite what she'd expect of a Death Eater, Liz gathered. "In exchange for the use of the tent, I promised I would introduce you to their younger son at Consualia. The arrangement wasn't my preference, but Lana can be very stubborn."

There was a funny tone on Severus's voice, obviously not happy about it, with an odd slimy sort of exasperation she didn't know how to— Oh. Oh, she got it now. "You mean introduce, like...?"

"Yes. I promised you would meet him and nothing more — if you find yourself unable to tolerate him for more than a couple minutes, that would still be sufficient to fulfil the obligation."

"Oh, okay, that's not so bad, then." Besides, this bloke couldn't be too bad, could he? If they were even coming to her for this in the first place, Austin couldn't be one of the bad, true believer Death Eaters, more like Severus. Or maybe more like Narcissa and Mr. Bulstrode's faction? It would probably be fine, she could put up with an awkward conversation in exchange for living in this thing for a week, not a big deal. "I can meet him, I guess, but I'm not playing along any further than that."

"I did expect as much."

Good, things could get really uncomfortable if they weren't on the same page here...

"Play along with what?" Hermione asked, glancing back and forth between the two of them.

Liz grimaced, not sure where to start with that, so Severus got there first. "Elizabeth is approaching courting age. It is still too early for any explicit offer for her hand to be in any way appropriate, but it isn't unusual at this stage for dutiful parents to...begin preliminary manoeuvres, I suppose."

There'd been a stuttering flutter of surprise at the phrase courting age, Hermione's thoughts darkly simmering cool and uneasy through the rest of the explanation. "Oh, I see. I'd entirely forgotten about all that, honestly." Liz snorted, muttered lucky you under her breath; Hermione glanced her way, but didn't respond. "Is that something I'm going to have to deal with? What age is that, usually?"

"Fifteen, traditionally. As to whether you will be approached, I honestly can't say. Ordinarily, courtship is a game of the nobility, but sometimes they do make exceptions — Elizabeth's mother began to attract attention around your age, for example. One of the more liberal noble families, should they have few other appealing opportunities, may find exploiting the potential presented by a younger son to acquire a particularly talented muggleborn to be an attractive prospect. There are too many variables in play for me to predict one way or the other."

While Hermione did not react well to the use of the word "acquire", there was still a warm glow of smug pleasure emanating from her (like standing near a smouldering fireplace) from being compared to Lily. She had been very clever, and the Light had practically canonised her since the end of the war, and Hermione was aware Severus had known her personally, so. Carefully at the edge of his mind, Liz thought, Did you intend to compare her to Lily? Because she definitely took it that way.

She does remind me of Lily, sometimes. Severus's touch was so light that if she weren't looking for it she might have wondered where the hell that thought had come from. Their essays are even similarly exhaustive, though as I was an equally egregious offender the comparison hadn't occurred to me until after Minerva commented on it.

Hypocrite. Liz was well aware that Severus had given Hermione failing marks for going too far over the required length, multiple times. Between Severus and Sinistra, they had managed to train Hermione to keep her written work to a more reasonable length — though she still wrote very very tiny, so Liz wasn't actually sure how much of a difference it made.

Severus didn't bother responding to the accusation, because he knew she was right. Do keep this to yourself, please. There's a common rumour that Lily and I were romantically involved, and I wouldn't want anyone to come away with the wrong impression.

Oh, yeah, good idea. Liz would tell Hermione that in private later too, just in case. At least, she assumed there was some weird normal person reason why Severus wasn't just saying that himself right now, maybe just thought it would be awkward, she'd take care of it.

Liz didn't know how long the mental conversation took, exactly, but it must not have been long, because Severus continued on as though nothing had happened. "If you receive any curious letters or gifts from boys in the coming years, I would show them to your pureblood friends. Just in case."

"Right, I'll do that. Thanks."

Severus dismissed the subject with a nod, setting aside the last of the water jugs. "We might as well get settled in. Which of you has the food?"

"Oh! Me, sorry." Walking into the kitchen area, Liz fished around in her shoulder bag, quickly found the same shrinking box they'd used to transport Hermione's things to her house. Between the coffee machine, breakfast things, and snacks Tisme had insisted on sending with them — because elf mums were still mums, apparently — they hadn't filled the whole box, but it was actually way more full than Liz had figured it would be. Which seemed slightly ridiculous, since they'd only be here a week, but whatever. Glancing over the counters, there really wasn't enough room up there, she flipped the switch and set it down on the floor. "That'll be a minute to unshrink itself." Gesturing toward the doors, "Three bedrooms?"

"Two. That one," pointing at the door straight across from the entrance, "is the bathroom. There is a bath, and a shower — I suspect we may need to add more water for the bath to be usable, and the shower may stutter in the meanwhile — so we won't need to use the public facilities here." Oh, well, that wasn't so bad, then. She'd had to share a bathroom with Severus before, that was way better than being forced to use whatever the Ministry had set up for the camp, it would be fine. "Austin and Lana's," pointing at the door on the right, and then the left was, "the boys'. I assume the two of you sharing a bedroom will be acceptable — I know you've had friends stay overnight in your dorm room in the past."

Liz glanced at Hermione quick before saying, "Yeah, that's fine." It wasn't her preference, and she'd need to sneak off to the bathroom to change, but it wasn't a huge deal.

"Also fine with me. I think Liz gets into my dreams when we're in the same room, is that normal with mind mages?"

"What, really? I didn't notice anything..." But then, Liz very rarely remembered her dreams — usually only when she was woken up by a nightmare, which didn't happen very often — and she'd only slept in the same room as Hermione or Dorea a handful of times, so she guessed she wouldn't have expected to notice.

"Sure, you know that time we stayed over for a couple days, at the end of the year? At first I didn't..." Her mind turning with a lurch, changing her mind about something she was saying, Hermione's eyes flicked up at the ceiling for a second, biting her lip. "I don't know, it was really strange. You know, sometimes you'll have dreams where you're kind of half-conscious, but everything is still really dreamlike and random, but feels like it makes perfect sense at the time?"

"...No, not really." Liz hadn't realised people were conscious in their dreams at all — they always felt to Liz less like something she was doing and more something happening to her.

"Well. It was like that, but you were more solid than anything else there, and kind of weren't making a lot of sense, the way dreams are, but you didn't feel like the other people in the dream. I don't know, it's hard to explain. Is that normal?" Hermione asked Severus again.

"Yes, it's called dream-walking. The term is the same as the divinatory practice Elizabeth has had some success with, but that isn't unusual — separate disciplines sometimes develop similar terminology for distinct phenomena by coincidence. The minds of a minority of natural legilimens — a survey I once encountered suggested an occurrence of approximately one in four — are structured such that their influence extends beyond their body while at rest. As very noisy as Elizabeth's aura is, I'm not surprised that she might unconsciously find her way into your dreams now and then."

For the incident Hermione had been talking about, she'd actually been sharing Liz's bed, and that was definitely inside her 'aura', so. Yeah, Liz guessed she wasn't surprised either.

Liz was about to say something about preventing that — she never remembered much, but Hermione probably didn't want to get stuck in one of her nightmares — but she was distracted by something bumping into her leg. Oh, the box had expanded that far, oops. Severus got there first. "If it troubles you, it will only take me a couple minutes to enchant an amulet to shield your mind."

"No, it's fine, I was just curious."

...That was probably fine, then? Liz meant, Severus was talking about it like Liz was going into Hermione's dreams, so she shouldn't be bringing her shite with her. She thought? And it wasn't like Hermione was going to get embarrassed by Liz seeing whatever she was dreaming about it, since she wasn't going to remember it anyway. It was probably fine. If she started messing with her head, throwing around compulsions or whatever, they'd need to do something about that...but she was pretty sure that required conscious attention, which obviously wasn't going to happen while she was literally asleep. So, yeah, nothing to worry about.

Anyway, the three of the split up, Severus going to the right-side door and Liz and Hermione heading for the left. There hadn't been anything outside advertising which bedroom was which, but Liz was going to go out on a limb and assume Severus had had them the right way around — she kind of doubted many married couples slept on bunk beds. The room was pretty compact, space for the beds, a pair of dresser drawers, and not much else, barely enough room to move around. There wasn't even a proper closet, instead just a pole running across one part of the room to hang things off of if they really needed to. The ceiling was slanted, the outside wall maybe only waist-high (on Liz), at the inside the ceiling still low enough that Severus could probably reach up and touch it if he wanted to. Which wasn't really that low, since Severus was a tall bastard, just saying. The bunk beds, the frame made out of unfinished wood, were pressed against the inside wall, but even then it was kind of a tight fit, the little safety fence thing around the top one only maybe a handspan away from the canvas ceiling — there was even a gap in the wooden frame under the ceiling (presumably to stop it from being blown in too far by wind or whatever) over where the ladder was, to make sure the person would be able to get up.

Liz wasn't surprised it was tight, honestly, it couldn't be easy to get this much expanded space out of a tent like this. Might be slightly awkward with another person in here (especially since Hermione was rather bigger than her), but it was fine, she'd deal with it. More importantly, though the canvas looked somewhat flimsy, whatever spells there were on the tent were completely blocking off her mind magic — all the thoughts and feelings or whatever from all the people out there wouldn't keep her awake, so.

"Do you want top or bottom?"

...That was a hard question, actually. Having the top bunk over her head, Hermione's mind pressing down from above, would probably make her uncomfortable, but at the same time the triangular slice of open space over the top bunk was pretty small. Looking up there, she saw there was another of the transparent patches in the canvas up there (with a flap that could be drawn over it), so she decided, "Top, I think."

"Sure." Hermione slung her bag onto the bottom bed, immediately set about pulling out folded-up clothes. "Honestly I think I might have trouble fitting up there anyway."

Liz frowned, glanced between Hermione and the gap between the bed frame and the ceiling. It might be a little tight, but Liz didn't think there'd be a problem. "I know I'm bloody tiny, yeah, but you're not as big as you think you are, Hermione." She'd noticed before that Hermione overestimated her own size, especially around her hips and waist — Hermione did have a little flab around there, but it wasn't super noticeable or anything, definitely less than Hermione thought it was. She didn't obsess over it the way some girls did, it didn't seem to bother her that much, so Liz didn't think it was a problem, exactly, just something Liz noticed in her head now and then.

There was a little flutter Liz didn't know how to read, and Hermione just flipped a hand in the air dismissively instead of responding. So, whatever then, Liz guessed...

It only took a couple minutes for them to each unpack their things into one of the dressers — they'd only be here for a week, they hadn't brought that much. Carrying their shower things — Hermione also had teeth-brushing stuff, but Liz had switched to just using magic for that ages ago now — they headed over to the bathroom. The little room was rather cramped, and entirely enclosed, no hint of canvas, most of the surfaces done in smooth blue ceramic. (Wood was susceptible to mould and stone harder to transfigure, so would resist being compressed for storage, the ceramic was probably an alchemical product designed for this sort of thing.) Crammed in here were a toilet (in the mages' style), a sink, a shower and, surprisingly, a bath — it was weird-looking, elevated a bit and kind of half set into the wall, seemed uncomfortable but whatever. There weren't shelves in the shower to put their shampoo and things, but there were cabinets over and under the sink, they'd just have to put it all in there when not using them. The shower stall was kind of uncomfortably tiny, actually, Liz really didn't like it, but she could tolerate it for a week.

More irritatingly, there wasn't a lock on the door — magical families sometimes, honestly. Liz was finding that just as Severus was coming up, they all quickly came to an agreement to leave the door open when not using it, to not just barge in if the door was closed. Interestingly, the internal walls also blocked her mind magic — and Severus's too, he confirmed when she asked — possibly a side-effect of all the spells on the tent, so they wouldn't have any better idea than Hermione if someone was in there or not. So, house rule, respect the closed door, got it.

(Liz would be putting locking and sealing charms on it anyway, but it was good to have an understanding on the matter, she guessed.)

When Severus and Liz were talking about the walls blocking mind magic, she must have been standing too close to Hermione, because she completely accidentally caught the thought that, if Hermione really needed to while they were here (teenagers, hormones), she could get off in the shower — okay, wow, that wasn't something Liz had meant to intrude on, oops. Though, that did answer her curiosity before about what (if anything) Hermione did at home, since her parents' bedroom was right under hers — her dad had even put a stereo in the bathroom, so there was that — and also at Hogwarts — the Gryffindor girls all shared a room, and some of the other girls (Fay particularly) would just draw their curtains and put up privacy palings, but Hermione was way too shy and neurotic to do that, she could never—

Hermione's mind turned, the train of thought pulled out of her fingers...because Liz had unthinkingly followed that first thought she'd overheard deeper in, probably pulling up memories in the process, and— Fuck, Hermione had definitely noticed that, she hadn't meant to... I'm sorry, Liz gently pressed into her head — right at the edge, only looking inside enough to be sure Hermione could hear her. Reflex, I didn't even notice I was doing it.

Thankfully, Hermione didn't seem particularly offended about it — a little annoyed, sure, but she actually almost seemed more amused than anything. Liz was such a nosey little thing, she didn't really expect Liz to be able to control her curiosity. It didn't even bother her, theoretically, they could just talk about this stuff if Liz wanted to. But it'd felt like Liz was getting too close to explicit memories, and that was where Hermione was drawing a line.

Liz was way too bloody awkward to actually talk about sex stuff, but she got the point. That's fair. I am sorry, I really didn't mean to look.

By this point, they were all leaving the bathroom, directionlessly strolling back out into the main room. She could feel Severus's attention on her, but at a remove, like eyes on the back of her neck but his mind not actually reaching for hers. She recalled Severus had been able to feel Liz compelling Tracey, and later Ronald — he must be able to tell Liz and Hermione were silently talking about something, but she didn't think he was close enough to see what. Regardless, she backed off, trying not to look like she'd been caught. And she had been caught, by Hermione, so that wasn't very easy, her hands fisting to hold in the urge to fidget.

"So," Hermione chirped, seemingly trying to dispel the awkward moment with sheer enthusiasm. "What do want to do first? I thought we'd just walk for a while and take a look around, but if there's anything in particular you wanted to check out..."

---

And that's a chapter! Woo! Slightly longer than my 20k limit, but I didn't feel like splitting it this time, so oh well.

I feel like I should have something to say, but I don't think it would really add anything, so fuck it. More quidditch stuff next chapter, until next time.