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)

9. Second Year — I

June 1992

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There was a hard knock at the door, sudden and unexpected enough Liz startled rather badly. For a second she frowned at her book, not really seeing it — who the hell would be knocking at her door now? It was too late in the day for it to be staff coming by to do the morning people-are-checking-out cleaning, and also too early for the touch-up-before-new-people-come one. Besides, Liz had the thingie hanging on the handle, they weren't supposed to bother her when it was there.

Without really thinking about it, Liz reached out toward the door, grasping for the mind of the person standing outside. She twitched, straightening in her chair. She didn't have to actually touch it to know who this was. This mind was very familiar.

Cautiously, Liz rose from her chair, slowly wandered over to the door. She tipped up to her toes, peeking out of the little spyhole thing. Which was kind of a silly thing to do, she already knew who it was, but it was just so odd that he was here. Never in a million years would she have thought he'd, just, show up, outside of the hotel room she'd commandeered in muggle London. Maybe whoever it was just felt kind of similar.

But no, the little hole distorted the image somewhat, but she'd recognise that long, dour face with the cartoon villain goatee anywhere — that was definitely Professor Snape. He did look slightly odd, with his hair tied back out of his face, wearing muggle-style slacks and a thin jumper in black and blue, but even made up like a muggle he was unmistakable.

What the hell was Professor Snape doing here? How had he even found her?

...He wasn't going to try to make her go back to the Dursleys, was he? That's what had happened the last time someone from Hogwarts had shown up at her door...but she kind of doubted Snape would do that...

Well... If she could feel him, he could definitely feel her, so...she probably shouldn't make him keep waiting. She glanced down to make sure she had shorts on — she didn't sleep in them, but she had gone down for breakfast this morning, still checked just in case — slid the lock, and pulled the door open. "Hello, Professor?" She didn't actually ask what the hell he was doing here, but her tone said it well enough. (He was a mind mage too, he probably knew she was thinking it anyway.)

He gave her one of those Snape-ish expressions, one mildly disapproving eyebrow ticking up. For an instant, his eyes flicked down, and then rolled toward the ceiling, his mind huffing with exasperation even though his shoulders didn't actually move.

Liz was confused for a moment, before remembering mages didn't consider the shorts and vest she was wearing enough to be properly dressed — and they were magically-made, the smooth, soft cloth just looked ordinary enough normal people wouldn't jump to the conclusion they were magic. They were supposed to be worn under robes, not on their own. By magical people standards, she'd essentially just answered the door in her underwear. It wasn't even the first time she'd done that, the same thing had happened that time Dumbledore had shown up. Oops? She meant, she didn't actually care, it didn't feel like she was standing around in her underwear to her, she just knew that's what it seemed like to them. So, oops, but oh well.

"Miss Potter. And how are you enjoying your solitude this lovely weekend?"

Rather less now that he'd shown up. "How did you even find me?"

He didn't bother answering the question, just fixed her with a flat, blank sort of look. "Might I have a word?"

He could have seven — go fuck yourself and leave me alone. She wasn't certain he was listening close enough to pick up on that, his lips might have twitched, a little, it was hard to tell. Seriously though, she thought about it for a second, but it was probably fine. Snape was one of the more dangerous people she knew — he also had mind-control superpowers, and was much more experienced with them than she was — but he'd also been...not nice, exactly, but she thought she could trust him not to do anything bad.

If nothing else, he'd apparently known she wasn't where she was supposed to be, but he hadn't told Dumbledore or anyone who would maybe try to do something about it, so she could probably trust him at least a little. Probably.

Trying not to look too uncomfortable, Liz took a step back, pulling the door open further. "Okay." With a slow little nod, reminding her of one of those polite pureblood gestures other kids at school did (especially Daphne), he swept past her into the room — though his usual dramatic swiftness left much to be desired without his robes to do their swishing — she pushed the door shut again (a little uneasily, she tried to ignore the feeling, she was fine). Feeling unaccountably nervous, what did she think she was going to find, she turned around.

This time around, Liz had picked herself a somewhat nicer hotel room to stay in for the summer, for two primary reasons. For one, she wanted one that had a desk that was actually big enough to do her schoolwork on, with a chair that wouldn't get weird and uncomfortable too quickly — the last one the desk had been too shallow, enough her books poked over the ledge, and the chair had been stiff, the back at an awkward angle. This desk wasn't huge, but at least her books and things actually fit, and this swivel chair was much nicer. The other reason was the food. The last hotel she'd stayed at had had the same thing for breakfast every day (which had been fine), and then a tiny little restaurant that had only been open for a few hours in the evening. This one had a restaurant attached to it that was open all day — the main doors actually opened onto the street, it wasn't just for people staying here — and she could ask for things whenever she wanted. She never got anything big or complicated or anything, partially to avoid drawing attention (it wasn't like she was actually paying them) and also partially because, well, she didn't actually like that much food anyway, when it came down to it. She was just a little picky, she guessed, so being able to pick exactly what she wanted was good, even though she wasn't actually picking anything most people would consider that nice.

So, it wasn't a bad-looking place, all in dark wood and fuzzy carpets, the lamp on at the desk and the bands of sun slipping through the thick blue curtains throwing the room into soft light and moody shadow. Not at all super fancy, but nice. (She actually really liked the bathroom, but she wasn't certain if that was because it was nice or because it was hers alone, and nobody could get in.) The room was bigger than she really needed, because she'd gotten one with two big beds in it, and she really only needed the one. Ironically, she'd picked one with two big beds to make it easier on the staff here (in hopes of attracting less attention) — according to the lady at the desk whose mind Liz had read, most of the people staying here were, like, businessman types, staying in London for a few days, these kinds of rooms were used less often, they had a few sitting open at all times. They didn't need all of them, it wasn't really hurting anyone if Liz camped out in one for a couple months (so they wouldn't think about it too hard).

Of course, it was also better for her cover story, but making the smallest nuisance of herself as possible (so they wouldn't pay enough attention to break her compulsions and realise she was staying here for free) had actually occurred to her first.

It was a mess already, a little bit. There were books and parchments all over the desk, her clothes were kind of spilling out of her trunk at the foot of the bed she wasn't sleeping in, the blankets pulled off and thrown carelessly into a corner, a whole bunch of potions shite spread all over the surface. She'd been brewing earlier, the bed charmed into stone-like hardness to keep anything from spilling, so some of her things were still set up, the cauldron stand set over a bowl with little char marks on it, having been used to hold a magical fire, cutting board and knives on the nightstand.

This morning she'd actually found a use for the bloody huge television. She'd poked about the thing a little bit, after moving in here, but she...didn't think she had the attention span for it? She meant, she just got kind of bored, sitting around watching it and not doing anything. It was too distracting to have going when she was trying to read or write, but it actually wasn't terrible to have going in the background while she was doing potions stuff.

The end of term was barely a week ago, she'd partially unpacked her things, but really hadn't put them anywhere, her clothes instead randomly sprawled across the floor, potions things across the bed. Snape was standing in front of the television, looking around the room with a completely blank expression, something dark and...quiet in his head, she wasn't quite certain what that was. If she knew he was coming, she might have cleaned up a little, if only so he wouldn't...she didn't know, really.

Finally, after several awkward seconds, he spoke. "Miss Potter, have you been brewing in here?"

"Just a little bit. Doing it on the bed seemed more comfortable, because I can kneel on the floor, right there. I charmed the bed so nothing will tip over or anything." As she spoke, Snape leaned forward, poking at the mattress with a finger — it didn't give at all, hard as stone. There was an echo of surprise from him, one of his eyebrows twitching. "I've been reading ahead in Charms, and I think I got a preservation charm working, so I thought I'd test it with a few potions. I thought, if I could keep a few useful ones on me at all times, that might be good."

"I see." Turning the bowl she'd used to hold her fire spell in his hand, Snape hesitated, for the briefest moment. "As impressive as the charmwork on the bed is for a student your age—" Liz blinked at the back of his head — Snape might be less harsh to the Slytherins than the rest of the students, but he hardly ever gave compliments. "—you must know that, at your level of experience, brewing on your own can be quite dangerous."

"I'm being careful. I haven't played with anything new, just potions we've done in class." She planned to move on to useful things that were similar to potions they'd done, but she wasn't reading ahead like she was for charms. She wasn't an idiot, potions could be very dangerous. If nothing else, the mishaps they had in class on the regular demonstrated that quite nicely.

"Show me."

Liz shot him a quick glare, but didn't argue. The drawer in the (mostly unused) dresser opened with a clinking of glass. Snape silently floated over, lifted out one of the bottles — that one was a burn paste (she'd labeled the bottles). A flick of his fingers had the curtains opening a little, a chink of light falling over him. He lifted the bottle into the light, turning it about a little before returning it to its place in the drawer. He repeated the process with every bottle in the drawer — two more burn pastes, four bruise balms, one basic healing potion (for like cuts and stuff), five broad antidotes, and a couple wakefulness draughts — though they didn't all go back, two antidotes and the wakefulness draughts ending up on the counter instead.

Once he'd gone through them all, Snape gently pushed the drawer closed again. "These are contaminated. Using water and drying charms to wash your potions equipment is perfectly acceptable, but any magic will leave traces — traces that could well interfere with the proper functioning of your potion. These traces can be removed by exposing them to direct sunlight, for no less than three hours."

"Direct sunlight? I don't think I can open these windows."

"Glass will not interfere with the process. Take care to properly expose your cauldron — if you cannot expose the entire interior surface for a full three hours, dry it with a plain cotton cloth instead. Stirring and cutting implements should also be dried with a cloth. After use, this cloth should be hung out in the sun as well."

Liz nodded.

His wand appearing out of nowhere, Snape tapped each of the bottles in sequence, the spoiled contents vanishing. (Which was slightly annoying, but if they really were bad...) "The rest of your work is adequate, and your preservation charms are holding. I would take care to reapply them at least once a week."

"Yes, sir."

"I hope you do not intend to brew your calming potions on your own."

"No, sir." She'd found what she was pretty sure was the same potion in one of the textbooks for, like, fifth- or sixth-years or something, back in January. She doubted she could manage it, and there was really no reason to try, since Snape seemed willing to continue to supply her. Speaking of which...

"I trust you are not in need of a refill so soon."

There it was. "No, sir." The last night before she'd left Hogwarts, Snape had called her to his office, and given her a little box with five of the things — along with a stern warning to not take any more than she needed, that this potion was poisonous in large doses. She'd barely listened, she'd gotten that warning countless times over the course of the year. "Those will probably keep the whole summer, I don't think I'll need it nearly as much without all the other people around."

"You will contact me if you find otherwise."

"Yes, sir."

Snape nodded, looked away for a moment to glance around the room. Letting out a thin sigh through his nose, Snape said, "What am I to do with you, Miss Potter?"

She didn't know how to answer that. Or if there even was an answer to that, really.

Letting out another sigh, Snape's eyes tipped up to the ceiling. "Go on, get dressed."

Liz frowned. "What?"

"We're going out. Get dressed."

"Um..." Liz watched him for a moment, but his face was completely unreadable. Mind magic wasn't really helping much either — she didn't want to get too close, because he would definitely feel it if she intruded and he could definitely kick her arse if he wanted to, and pulled as far away as she was she couldn't get much more than an odd...cold stillness. Not angry, but certainly unpleasant, she couldn't tell what that was exactly. "Where are we going?"

"I am going to buy you lunch, and you are going to attempt to explain to me why I should possibly allow an eleven-year-old child to be left to her own devices."

...Oh. Okay, then. That wasn't a conversation she wanted to have, really — she didn't doubt that Snape could make her life very difficult if he chose to, if he decided he didn't want to leave her on her own... — but it wasn't like she actually had any choice in the matter. "Um, I'll need to pack up the obviously magical stuff while we're gone. There's a little do not disturb thingie, but just in case someone comes in anyway."

Snape sniffed. "Don't bother. I'll put an aversion charm over the door as we leave."

Right, Liz knew about those things, she just didn't have the power to cast them. Fine, then. Snape drifted into the little nook by the door, putting his back to the room, presumably to give her privacy, but it wasn't really necessary. It wasn't like she was changing — she just plucked a dress off the armchair and threw it over her head. She didn't actually have much in the way of muggle-appropriate clothes, when it came down to it. It hadn't seemed particularly important, especially since she would be at Hogwarts most of the time anyway, and she didn't...really care about clothes the way a lot of people seemed to? Like, as long as she looked inconspicuous enough people weren't paying her any special attention, it didn't make much difference to her.

Since absorbing that piece of the Dark Lord, sometimes she'd be more aware of the fact that she looked like crap, but she didn't actually want to do anything about it. It was just a thing that was true.

(She still thought it was weird how kinda girly the Dark Lord felt to her sometimes.)

She slipped the hotel key and some cash into a pocket — she'd hopped over to Gringotts to get some muggle money, which she used for most things aside from the hotel. She might actually pay to stay here...if they didn't have an age requirement she couldn't get around easily, and if she was certain her little school kid money would be able to bear it. The goblins were still, just, frustratingly unhelpful, she really had very little idea how much money she had access to, and whether it would last through her time at Hogwarts or not, so she was trying to be careful.

It'd occurred to her over the school year that, being a big important noble family and all, the Potters should have properties somewhere, shouldn't they? Like, houses she could live in, instead of squatting in a muggle hotel. But no, the goblins wouldn't tell her bloody anything, not until she was thirteen — she knew from talking to Daphne that kids were considered old enough to sign contracts and stuff when they were thirteen, really the only thing mages had like an age of majority. (Which was sort of freaky, Hermione had gone on an impressive rant when she'd been told it wasn't unheard of for teenagers sometimes as young as thirteen to sign themselves into corporal indenture, basically a fancy term for slavery, which was perfectly legal. Also, screwing little kids as young as ten or eleven was also perfectly legal, apparently, so long as their guardian was okay with it. Magical Britain was fucked up sometimes.) The upshot was, Liz might actually be able to get herself a real place to stay halfway through next summer, but she was on her own until then.

A quick glance at the mirror hung next to the closet, and fine, she was presentable — or as presentable as she ever got. Maybe straighten her dress a little so she didn't look quite so rumpled, there, that would do.

Once they were out in the hallway, Snape glanced quick both ways before his wand appeared in his hand, cast some kind of charm with a quick silent flick at the door. Liz could feel the magic in the air, sharp and tingly, she could only assume he'd done it correctly. His wand vanished up his sleeve, and Snape indicated the way toward the elevator with a tilt of his head.

Liz followed along, trying to ignore the nervousness turning her stomach and itching at the back of her neck. (It was fine, it was just Snape, she was fine.)

They were waiting for the elevator to come (awkwardly, silently), when one of the ladies turned up, pushing one of those big carts with the cleaning supplies and the laundry bin and all. Jodie, Liz recognised her after a second, she was one of the ones who'd paid rather more attention to Liz. Not for bad reasons, or she might have told Jodie to ignore her. She was just concerned, which was slightly annoying, but not really a problem Liz had to make go away.

Liz had told the staff that she was in London with her parents, but they had vague business things to do, so she was left here on her own during the day. A little bit of poking at their heads made them not wonder why they'd never actually seen her parents, but that didn't stop them for having other thoughts. Jodie was of the opinion that it really wasn't okay for Liz's parents to leave her alone for so long, she kind of suspected they were terrible people, so she'd been friendly and slightly nosey so far, making sure she was okay, but it wasn't really a problem.

She could have done something more extreme to make the staff not think about her at all, but she would have to renew that sort of compulsion now and again, and she didn't know what the long term effects would be, or if they'd flip out or something if she didn't see them for too long and they broke out of it. Smaller was safer, she thought.

"Hello, Liz dear," the woman said, with her usual warm (slightly worried) smile, but her voice seemed slightly...off. Her mind felt rather sharper than it usually did too. Liz figured out she was suspicious of Snape and what exactly he was doing with her just as she said, "And you are?"

Snape, amazingly, smiled. It wasn't, like, an especially big or bright smile, more a thin, polite sort of thing, but it was there. It was bloody weird, Liz tried not to gape at him like an idiot. "My name's Steven—" Liz blinked. "—Lily's my sister. Neither of them will be getting lunch off, so I thought I'd take Elizabeth out." His voice had gone slightly higher and slightly rougher than usual, the normal cool ice gone. His accent had even changed. Liz tried not to react, because that would probably just make Jodie more suspicious, but it was bloody strange.

"Oh!" Jodie looked taken aback for a second, then slightly embarrassed — though her suspicion didn't entirely go away, still glancing between the two of them, as though looking for something out of place. "Is that Liz's mother, Lily? Only, I haven't seen her around, I don't think..."

"Yes, well." Snape's eyes tipped to the ceiling with a little exasperated sigh, rather lighter and good-natured-sounding than he would usually make. "I'm not surprised — Lily and James are focused on their careers a little bit too much, if you ask me. I don't have a spare bedroom myself, I'm afraid, but I reckon dropping by to check in on Elizabeth now and again is the least I can do."

Jodie gave Liz a long look, but whatever she was looking for she must have found, because the rest of her uncertainty vanished. She and Snape chatted for a few more seconds, before the elevator doors finally slid open, and then they were leaving, Jodie left behind them.

"Your work is acceptable."

Liz blinked. "What?"

A single eyebrow ticked up, something thick and itchy rung from Snape's head. "The mind magic you performed on Jodie back there. Did the rest of the staff get the same treatment?"

"Oh, yes." She hadn't even noticed him checking, Snape was damn sneaky. "Anyone who looked at me twice, anyway."

"I suppose that should be sufficient."

...Okay.

Somewhat to her surprise, Snape didn't lead her into the restaurant connected to the hotel. They left through the main doors onto the street — going through the lobby, Snape got another suspicious look from the bloke behind the counter, but he brushed it off much easier than Jodie — and then went down a block, turned the corner, walked for a bit, crossed the street a couple times. After some minutes, they came to a cafe. Or, it was called a cafe, but it really looked more like a pub to her — she was pretty sure those were even beer taps over there. But fine, whatever.

They didn't stay inside very long, though, they were sat at one of the tables out on the pavement. (The cafe was recessed back a little bit compared to the shops to either side, she suspected it'd been rebuilt to allow having tables outside.) Which, that was fine, it was a rather nice day out, and she guessed there wasn't too much foot traffic here, whatever. She'd think Snape would have preferred a table in a quiet corner somewhere they wouldn't be overheard...but Jodie had clearly looked at Snape like he was a paedophile or something, sitting out in the open like this was probably way less suspicious.

Besides, the instant the server turned her back Snape sketched a few runes on the table, magic crackling into existence on the air around them. He probably knew what he was doing.

They sat in awkward silence for a couple minutes, Liz avoiding his eyes by looking sightlessly at the buildings around them, before the server came skipping back. Which meant she had to order something now, shite, Liz hadn't been paying attention. She glanced over the menu for a second, just asked for the first thing on the breakfast list — she could be very picky, when it came to normal people food, but between eggs and bacon and sausage and beans there was nothing there she wouldn't eat. But apparently that came with tea or coffee, and...coffee was fine, she guessed? Tea tended to taste weird and...she didn't know...green?

Snape seemed slightly irritated for some reason, but he didn't say anything.

There were another awkward couple minutes, and the server reappeared with coffee and water, cheerfully chattering away for a little bit — Snape had that same spontaneous personality shift whenever she was around, it was bloody strange. And then they were alone again, Liz and Snape and the strangers passing by, cars rumbling and blaring.

She'd gotten so used to him not saying anything she nearly jumped when he did. "You have put me in a very difficult position, Miss Potter."

...She had no idea what she was supposed to say to that.

"In the interest of full disclosure, I have been aware you ran away from your relatives last summer for some time now."

Liz frowned. "Did you read my mind?" He'd never directly asked her, those meetings they'd had when they'd talked about stuff, but she had thought about it...

"No, I have never read your mind." Taking a sip of his coffee, he suffered her doubtful glare for a few seconds before letting out a sigh, his head huffing with exasperation again. "Miss Potter, were I to enter your mind, you would almost certainly be aware of it. Your friends, however, are not nearly so self-possessed — if you wish to share your secrets with Miss Black and Miss Granger, you should perhaps teach them some rudimentary occlumency."

She kept glaring at him — how the hell was she supposed to teach them mind magic, she barely knew how she did it herself. They'd said they were looking into picking it up themselves, but Liz had hardly noticed any progress so far... "You read their minds?"

"In my defence, Miss Black was quite concerned for you. If you are in legitimate danger, I do have an obligation to do something about it."

Well, that was maybe a point. Maybe. Liz let out a huff, but focused back on her coffee rather than argue.

"Potter, aren't you going to put any sugar in that?"

Liz blinked. "Er. No?" She thought just a little bit of cream was about perfect, really...

A mild shiver of revulsion echoing in the air, Snape stared at her for a second. "Further, I have already visited your relatives, yesterday evening."

Despite herself, Liz tensed — teachers talking to the Dursleys never ended well for her. The echo of it lingered around her, like a bad smell, but she stuck her face in her coffee, it would go away if she ignored it. (Hopefully. She didn't have a calming potion on her.)

"I of course did not expect to find you there, but there is...a certain process I have refined for this sort of problem. But, due to extraordinary circumstances, I cannot pursue the avenues I normally would. So I find myself in this very difficult situation of mine."

Liz took a breath, slowly in and out, trying to loosen her shoulders, to ignore her skin crawling like ants. (It was fine, if Snape were going to force her back to the Dursleys he wouldn't have dragged her out to lunch, he would have just done it.) "Nobody else knows?"

"Besides Black and Granger? Not so far as I am aware." Snape let out a slow breath through his nose. "Miss Potter, if I informed the proper authorities about your current living arrangements, what do you believe would happen?"

"Dumbledore would bring my back there." Or, it probably wouldn't actually be Dumbledore, it would be like an Auror or McGonagall or something, just, when she imagined someone forcing her back to Privet Drive, she imagined Dumbledore.

"That is the most likely result, yes. In all likelihood, there is nothing either of us would be able to do about it. His custody over you could be challenged, theoretically, but in the absence of anyone in a strong position to do so, any such attempt would be doomed to failure. I could remonstrate with him, but I doubt he could be readily convinced that your relatives are not suitable guardians."

Liz glared down at her coffee. Honestly, it shouldn't be hard to convince Dumbledore she did not want to go back there. He'd read their minds, hadn't he? There had to be reason he wanted her there, but she couldn't think of anything. (Besides that freaks belonged in places like that, but that didn't sound like the kind of thing Dumbledore would think.)

She didn't say anything, but Snape must have picked up a little bit of what she was thinking (or at least the tone of it) — he let out another long sigh, his head ringing with frustration, and something colder and darker she couldn't quite put a word to. "Many people, I'm sorry to say, simply will not understand these things. After all, if one has absolutely no experience with something, it can be difficult, even impossible, to grasp the full nature of it. Albus Dumbledore came from a happy family. They had their troubles, as many families do, but his parents loved him, his brother and his sister, they did the best they could with the difficult hand they were dealt.

"Over the years since, Dumbledore has certainly been confronted with the idea of...unhealthy home environments. But it is just that to him: an idea. It is a concept he has heard of, and heard of alone, not something that is quite real to him. If you were to explain to him how your relatives have treated you, he will not understand. He will assume you are, perhaps, fudging the details, making things sound worse than they truly are, in pursuit of some unfathomable end. Because Dumbledore is the sort of man who simply cannot imagine harming a child himself, so he has difficulty imagining how anyone else could mistreat a child given into their care. People who have never been exposed to these things, good people, they often cannot understand it. No matter what we say to sway them."

Liz would say that was, just, completely ridiculous...but it wasn't like she understood normal people either. She guessed it made sense that normal people wouldn't understand her. "But you do?" That maybe wasn't quite clear...

Snape's brow twitched, something slick and dark flickering in his head. "I do indeed. Your situation is perhaps not quite so unique as you believe. I will not betray the confidence of any of your classmates, but I have intervened in a number of...circumstances I felt were unacceptable, in the dozen or so years since I have taken over as head of Slytherin. At this point, I feel there is little I have not yet seen, at one point or another."

She guessed she had heard rumours about that — Snape intervening with Slytherins' families, she meant. Nobody really talked about details, but...

"Elizabeth." She started, looked up from her coffee to Snape across from him. He'd leaned forward a little at some point, his stare flat and cold and heavy. "I understand this may be difficult for you to believe — you needn't just now, I will not take it personally should you wait for my future actions to demonstrate my sincerity. I will never send you back to your relatives, not ever, and should anyone else attempt to do so I will exhaust every means available to me to prevent it. I am trying to help you. It is my job, and one I am dead serious about."

Liz couldn't say anything. She could barely think. She just stared back at him, hardly even blinking.

She nearly spilled her coffee all over herself when the server reappeared out of nowhere.

The server lady set down their stuff, chattering on for a little bit with Snape, who'd again done that creepy personality shift thing. Something must be showing on Liz's face, because she seemed a bit...tingly and shifty, throwing what Liz thought might be concerned glances at her now and again. Liz wasn't really listening to what they were saying, just staring down at her food, the server bounced away again before too long.

And she felt Snape's eyes on her skin like ants, but she didn't look up, picking at her plate, sprinkling pepper over her eggs and just...trying not to think too much.

(if she didn't think about what he'd just said she didn't have to decide if she actually believed him or not, and what she should do about that. It was easier to just drop it and move on.)

"It is possible, I suppose," Snape said, all casual, as though this were a perfectly ordinary conversation, as though he hadn't just said what he'd said, "that I may be able to convince Dumbledore to find some other guardian for you. There are difficulties with this proposition, however. If Dumbledore were to pick somewhere else to put you, it would likely be with one of his friends or allies. Perhaps with the Weasleys, or the Prewetts, the McKinnons, the Fawleys, the Joneses. Emma Vance, maybe. There are options. But, I anticipate there would be difficulties with any such arrangement.

"Miss Potter, if Dumbledore sent you to live with someone else, who promptly stared setting boundaries for you, telling you what to do and when, how likely do you think it is you will simply run away again?"

Liz didn't answer for a moment, glaring down at her plate. Mixing up her beans and eggs — another shiver of revulsion came from Snape, which was silly, scrambled eggs tended to be too dry without cheese, and the beans had all this gravy with them — she pondered over the question. It was...probably fine to answer honestly. Snape didn't really seem like he disapproved, exactly — perhaps slightly frustrated, but not in a truly angry way. Besides, that he'd asked the question at all sort of suggested he already knew what she was going to say anyway. "Um, it depends, I guess, but I probably would, yeah."

She knew, from picking at memories in other kids' heads, the sort of things normal not terrible adults made the kids they were looking after do. She didn't just mean, like, chores and stuff, but other things like when they were allowed to leave the house, and where they could go when they did, which people they could talk to, and stuff like enforcing bedtimes and the like. If some stranger started trying to control where she went and what she did and when, she was certain she'd just run away again before too long rather than deal with it.

She didn't need anyone telling her what to do, okay. She was just fine on her own.

"And unlike your relatives, anyone else the Headmaster is likely to set you up with will alert him the moment you go missing. If I do inform Dumbledore, I imagine the best-case scenario is that he will put you with someone well-meaning but hopelessly ill-equipped. Thus will come an endless circle, where they attempt to impose some modest modicum of control over your life, authority which you will flout, again and again. A circle that will fruitlessly frustrate everyone involved. It would only, I fear, make everything worse."

Liz nodded — from what she understood about how adults usually dealt with kids, that did seem very likely. Except, it wouldn't be a circle, but a spiral: they would eventually escalate, backing up their demands with ever-increasing force (she hadn't understood what was happening, she hadn't done anything), until she ultimately had to use mind magic to defend herself. But whoever else Dumbledore would stick her with would probably be magical, so they'd be able to retaliate in ways the Dursleys couldn't. Give it enough time, and Liz thought it was very possible things would actually end up worse than they'd been before she'd run away — worse than that, before she'd made him stop.

The lines on her back itched, she tasted the echo of it on the air like a bad smell, but Liz pushed it back, focusing on her breakfast, woodenly taking a bite of sausage she hardly tasted. She wouldn't go back. She didn't care what Snape or Dumbledore or anyone else said, she wouldn't.

(If they tried to force her to stay somewhere, she would escape, by any means necessary — even if she had to murder her jailers in their sleep. She couldn't go back, she couldn't.)

"You see the difficulty I am in." Snape paused for a moment, taking a bite of... Was Snape eating fish and chips? Liz hadn't noticed, she'd been too distracted trying not to feel (Vernon hated it when she cried.) but that was just... Surreal, Professor Snape eating fish and chips, she didn't... "I cannot send you to live with any of your relatives. I cannot force the man supposedly responsible for your well-being to put you somewhere suitable. There are no higher authorities I can co-opt to intervene on your behalf. Anything I attempt to do will only make things worse, I fear.

"So, Miss Potter," Snape said, leaning over the table again, his eyes flat and heavy (she had to look down at her eggs), "convince me. Prove to me that I can leave you here with a clear conscience, and I will do so."

...Oh. Um...

Somehow, it hadn't occurred to Liz that Snape would consider staying in the hotel by herself to even be on the table. She hadn't thought to...

Mechanically chewing at a bite of toast and egg and bean, Liz pondered the problem for a moment. How exactly was she supposed to convince a supposedly responsible adult that a little kid would be fine on her own? That wasn't the sort of thing adults were ever on board with. Hmm. "Well, I don't really need any help. I mean, I have a place to stay, and I'm eating and everything." In a lower mutter, she added, "I'm even doing my bloody homework..." Mostly because, well, what else was she supposed to do with her time, but she had the feeling that was one of those things parents made their kids do...

There was a faint ringing of amusement from across the table, but it didn't show on Snape's face at all. "I don't doubt that you're fully capable of managing yourself on a day to day basis — I suspect you've been doing so for some time. That is not my concern."

"Then why?" She was pretty sure that was why people thought kids need adults watching them, to make sure they did what they were supposed to...

Snape seemed faintly exasperated again. "Miss Potter, you have been brewing on your own, in an environment that is far from ideal for the purpose. You are using mind magic, compulsions spread across several different people, to defraud muggles out of what will be, by the end of summer, thousands of pounds of value. Do you truly imagine you are capable of managing every possible scenario that might develop should something go wrong?"

Glaring down at her plate again, Liz pointlessly stirred at her eggs and beans. She didn't know what he was so worried about. She was being careful with the potions, only doing things she was certain she could brew without any mishaps — they were all...well, mostly things they'd brewed in class already, it was fine. So far as the mind magic went...hadn't he said himself she'd done a good job with it? She'd basically just done what she'd needed to to keep anyone from thinking too hard about her presence, and she'd just have to...update it every once in a while, so people wouldn't consider how long she'd been there.

It could be difficult to make people do things against their interests, that was true. If she was directly forcing people to give her stuff she wanted, that could be hard — and they almost always noticed something was wrong, though people who didn't know about magic had no idea what was happening. But just getting people to not think too hard about her, or ignore her entirely, that wasn't hard at all. If she really had to, she could just prevent the hotel staff from even realising she was even there. She'd have to do something to make sure they didn't give her room to someone else, but...

And if they did realise something was going on, what were they going to do? Call the police on her? They weren't any more resistant to this stuff than anyone else. Depending on how suspicious they were, it could be difficult to get them to go away, but if worst came to worst she could just blank their memories and send them away, give herself an hour or two to pack up her things and get out before someone came back. There were other hotels she could go to if this one fell through, it was fine.

She guessed it was possible mages could get involved somehow — there had to be laws against people using magic on normal people, right? The magic police would have to have some way to deal with mind magic. Honestly, she'd kind of forgotten Aurors were a thing, she hadn't known they existed when she first started living on her own, so. She guessed that might be a problem, one she couldn't handle herself. Not that she was certain what Snape could possibly do if she was actually in trouble, he was just a bloody school teacher...

But, it was possible something might come up that she needed help with. She guessed. It hadn't happened last summer, but her luck wouldn't necessarily hold out forever.

Liz sighed. "What do you want?"

"Excuse me?"

"You're not here to decide whether I can stay on my own. You're here to dictate terms I have to meet for you to leave me alone." And, indirectly, to put himself into a position where she could ask him if she did need help with something — she might have been rather more annoyed than she was if he wasn't implying she would be getting something in exchange. Even if she didn't think she ever actually would need his help with anything, still. "So, what do you want?"

Snape's head rang with amusement, intensely enough she almost thought he might be smiling. (She wasn't looking, still picking at her food.) "Well, you are quite direct, aren't you."

"I don't like dancing around the point."

"Evidently." Snape paused a moment, presumably taking a bite of something. "You will write me every other day. It doesn't have to be anything substantive — it could be a slip of paper with I'm still fine written on it. I simply want regular reassurance that you haven't gotten yourself into trouble. If I don't hear from you for a few days, I will track you down again, and we'll have to have a far less pleasant conversation."

Stabbing at her sausage, Liz held in the urge to groan — like this was a pleasant conversation... "Fine, I can do that." It's not like that was that big of an imposition, really. Except, "How am I supposed to get things to you?"

A flash of irritation, so mild Liz wasn't certain it was there. "Is there a pressing reason you haven't bought an owl yet, Potter?"

...Oh. Well, no, not really. Her first trip to Charing, she hadn't known what owls were for, and after that it simply hadn't occurred to her. There were postal stations set up in magical settlements, she'd figured if she ever had to send a thing she could just walk in, pay a couple knuts, and there it was. Of course, then she'd had to leave Charing, and she wasn't staying there now... "No, I can do that. Was that it?"

That wasn't it. That wasn't it at all.

---

July 1992

---

Dorea had been around magic for half of her life now, but there were were still some things she hadn't quite gotten used to.

Inanimate objects randomly moving or even talking would always kind of freak her out — she simply couldn't imagine why people thought having a talking mirror was a good idea. (She never liked staying over at Cassiopeia's, because her room there had one of those damn creepy mirrors, she always felt uncomfortable changing in front of it.) There were a lot of weird cultural things out there, especially among the commons, and there were just too many little different groups it was simply impossible to keep track of them all. (She'd only barely heard of the Mistwalker Clans before meeting Daphne, and they were even one of the more important ones.) How cavalier mages could be about body modification was still very strange to her — less so among the nobility than the commons, at least when it comes to more mundane things like piercings and such, but permanent cosmetic alterations through the use of potions or ritual (or blood magic) were actually pretty common.

Apparently, a house elf just appearing in the middle of lunch was one of those things. Dorea started hard, her heart jumping up into her throat for a second. And she wasn't the only one — Mum jumped, nearly spilling tea all over her book, Ben drove his spoon into his bowl, launching bits of noodles and cheese into the air to splatter across the table.

Sam, perched on the seat next to Mum, just giggled, though. Sam thought elves were funny, he kept trying to play with their ears whenever one stood close to him for long enough.

The elf — this one was Cherri, she thought, one of the chief elf's adult nieces — hardly even acknowledged the upset her appearance caused. She just glanced across the table, a snap of her fingers and a tingling wave of magic vanishing the spilled macaroni cheese, before turning back to Dorea. "Cherri is carrying a letter for Mistress Dorea," she said, her voice oddly thin and shaky, holding up a folded piece of parchment.

Actually, it wasn't just her voice, she didn't look quite well either. It was hard to tell for sure, since elves didn't really look much like humans to begin with, and Dorea wasn't very familiar with this elf in particular, but she thought Cherri was on the edge of tears — big bright eyes looking somehow brighter than usual, big ears twitching, looking all too tense and strained. "Cherri, is something wrong?"

"It is Lady Cassie, she, she is..." Cherri cut herself off, glancing away from Dorea, and took a long, deep breath. "You should read the letter, Mistress. Menae is waiting for you to call, when you are ready. She is thinking it is maybe being better to wait until tomorrow."

"Oh. Okay." Cautiously, Dorea took the letter, the parchment cold and rough against her fingers. She opened her mouth to ask Cherri if Menae (the chief elf) wanted something in particular from her, but she popped away again before Dorea could form the first syllable.

Sam squealed. "Bye bye, elf!"

Ruffling Sam's thin toddler-hair, sending him into more giggles, Mum said, "Do you think Cassiopeia...moved on?"

"That's probably it, yeah." Feeling an odd sense of dread, Dorea pushed her mostly-empty bowl aside, flattened the parchment down on the table in front of her. Ignoring Mum and the boys going off on something to do with elves, she read.

Dorea—

Immediately after handing this letter off to the elves, I will be performing a ritual to sever myself from my name. It is some more of that esoteric ritual magic mumbo-jumbo you hate so much — in case you're wondering, it is illegal, naturally — but the result should not be difficult to wrap your head around. By the time you receive this letter, so far as all of the magics that monitor such things are concerned, it will be as though I were dead. From this day on, there is no Cassiopeia Black.

I know this may feel sudden. We have spoken of my inevitable exit from our family on multiple occasions, but I have never given you any explicit indication of when that would be. Honestly, it was difficult to talk about. It's not outside the ordinary for a metamorph to carry their birth name for as long as I have, but my situation is not ordinary.

My parents are dead. My brothers and my baby sister. My aunts and my uncles. My cousins are either all gone, or have turned their backs on our family so thoroughly they have long refused to acknowledge our name. Since Walburga passed last year, so too are all my nieces and nephews (at least those who carry the name) either dead or in Azkaban.

I haven't told you this, but I've almost abandoned this life before. Once, long ago, when my grandparents and my uncles and my aunts — the ones I'd liked, anyway — had started dying one after the other, I nearly left. But my baby sister, your namesake, had just been coming into her own then, and a new generation of Blacks were about to be born, and I had my work with the Aurors to distract me. It was enough, for a time.

And then, for a time, it was the war that kept me here. What remained of the family split, some declaring allegiance to that fool Dark Lord of theirs and the rest taking up arms to oppose them, we were already tearing ourselves apart, I couldn't simply leave. I quit the Aurors out of frustration with how bloody useless they were. (That bridge is thoroughly burnt, I couldn't go back if I wanted to.) I considered calling a Circle myself, but I truly hadn't the influence or the contacts to do such a thing, nor a full understanding of what could be done. Trying to stop young Blacks from doing anything stupid, keeping an eye on the state of things in places outside the light of upstanding British society, helping Dumbledore's foolhardy Order smuggle muggleborns and their families out of the country, those were things Cassiopeia Black could do, so there was still reason enough for her to exist, for me to be invested in her.

Then the war was over, and our family all but dead.

I would already be gone, if not for you. It has been difficult, stagnating here, performing a character that truly hasn't felt authentic to me for decades now. I do not mean to say I regret or resent it, the years I have known you, and I don't mean all this as a personal slight. But I have been forcing myself through the motions for some time now. It is miserable. I hate it, confining myself as I must, and I'm sure I have not been pleasant to be around as of late. It isn't fair to you to subject you to my misery, and no longer can I force myself to endure. I simply can't.

I would ask for your forgiveness for skipping out on you on such short notice, but that would feel a lie. Honestly, I simply can't care anymore. Everything of Cassiopeia Black in me has been used up, and I have nothing more to give.

In my absence, you will now be Lady of the House. The practical aspects of your accession will be delayed until you turn thirteen — you will have some months to become accustomed to the idea. There are some decisions you will need to make about the household immediately, however. In particular, I believe Menae wishes to move on as well. The elves will choose her replacement from among themselves, but the law of our family requires confirmation from you, at the least. The new chief elf will be able to handle most issues that might come up during our interregnum.

You might be interested to know that I did finally manage to track down my nephew Alphard, who you'll recall was expelled from the family some decades ago. It turns out he'd married into a Gaelic clan at some point. He was killed in the war, but his daughter lives, and she has children of her own. In one of my final acts as Lady of the House, I sponsored them for admittance to Hogwarts, and last I checked they planned to accept. They will most likely be entering this September as first years. They do not carry the Black name — though I have added them to the mosaic at Ancient House, if you're curious — and you have no obligation to even speak to them if you do not wish to.

It feels like there should be more to say, but words escape me at this moment. Though I will be carrying a new name and wearing an unfamiliar face, we will meet again. I cannot say when, probably years from now.

Until that day, I wish you grace and good fortune.

Dorea folded the letter up again, staring blankly down at the table.

"Dove? Was it Cassiopeia?"

She nodded. "Yeah. She's gone."

A couple seconds later, and Mum was out of her chair, coming around the table to crouch over her. Dorea was about to roll her eyes — she was fine, honestly — but then Mum's fingers were running through her hair, so, she guessed she could tolerate the hovering. "Are you okay? If you wanted to call off today and—"

"No, no." Dorea ended her head shake leaning against Mum's shoulder. "It's too late to tell Liz anyway, she must be almost here by now." London wasn't that far away, and she said she'd be grabbing lunch on the way... "Don't worry, I'm fine. It's not like I didn't know this was coming." She nearly added that Cassiopeia also wasn't actually dead either, but she really was, for all intents and purposes. Metamorphs were just sort of odd sometimes.

As Dorea understood it, metamorphs were technically immortal. They could be killed like anyone else, of course, but as soon as they reached a certain point of psychological development where they could fully utilise their self-transfigurative abilities they completely ceased aging. Apparently, that point was usually somewhere between the ages of seven and eleven — Andi had had to help Dora get through puberty with a combination of medical charms and potions and a thorough education in anatomy, because it simply wouldn't have happened naturally.

Of course, just because metamorphs couldn't die from old age didn't mean they all lived forever — most metamorphs never even made it to the age of twenty. See, metamorphs could make of themselves anything they liked, but their body still had to function. It was all too easy for a young metamorph, experimenting with what they could do, to twist themselves into a shape where blood flow to somewhere important was cut off, or they couldn't breathe, or something, and they accidentally killed themselves. (Hence Dora acquiring nigh-Healer-appropriate knowledge of human anatomy by the age of nine.) Their natural self-transfigurative abilities interacted unpredictably with potions and spells with transfigurative effects, sometimes basic schoolyard jinxes could have devastating complications, even lethal ones.

Dora had actually been sent to Saint Mungo's in critical condition multiple times in her first couple years at Hogwarts...from prank jinxes. Her original interest in picking up dueling had entirely been out of self-defence.

If they managed to make it to adulthood, though, metamorphs generally only died from violence. And, since every mage grew slowly more powerful as they used magic, the longer a metamorph lived the harder they were to kill — some of the most dangerous people in the world were multi-centenarian metamorphs, more powerful than most any mortal mage could ever match and with the experience to back it up. (There were a small number who were millennia old, a tiny handful who literally pre-dated written history, but they tended to be rather withdrawn, so they weren't exactly dangerous, for the most part.) Though Cassiopeia was only eighty-six — comfortably middle-aged for a mage, not truly old by their standards yet — she had decades of experience as an Auror, and she spent no small portion of her free time studying the Dark Arts for fun. She'd already been kind of intimidating, honestly. Give her a couple centuries, and she'll probably be terrifying.

Though she wouldn't be Cassiopeia anymore. Presumably as a consequence of how they could change themselves physically, metamorphs tended to have...an unstable sense of their own identity. It was very common for a metamorph to stick around until their immediate family started dying off, then they'd just...disappear, to go be someone else somewhere else. A different name, with a different background (made up, of course), sometimes as the opposite sex, they would just drift around, performing the role of dozens of people over their lives, rarely staying in one place as one person for more than a century or so. It was so instinctive for them, the few metamorphs who didn't flit about and change like this were considered rather eccentric.

So, she'd known this was coming. She'd originally learned how metamorphs work years ago — with Cassiopeia and Dora both around, it hadn't taken long at all to come up — and Cassiopeia hadn't taken any efforts to hide that she didn't plan to be around for very much longer. She'd never said how long, no, but Dorea had known it would be soon. She'd known this was coming.

(It still kind of hurt.)

While Dorea's thoughts were wandering, Mum had been explaining to the boys what was going on. (She hadn't been listening, but she was pretty sure Mum was going with the simpler explanation of her having died.) Neither of them had known Cassiopeia particularly well, really, though they had met several times, and they at least knew who she was. Well, Ben did, at least — Sam was still a little too young for it to quite click that he and Dorea had different fathers, so the Blacks and the Tonkses weren't actually related to him, but that didn't matter so much.

Ben, who at least seemed appropriately sympathetic — or about as appropriately sympathetic as a four-year-old was capable of being — suddenly perked up. "We gonna have sad cake?"

Mum let out a surprised chuckle. While Dorea had been away at Hogwarts, Rick's father (who Dorea had barely ever met) had died. Apparently, there had been cake at the wake, and Ben had been very confused, because cake was meant for happy occasions, birthdays and the like. The only thing Ben had gotten out of the explanation was that this was sad cake — also, sad cake was tasty. "Well, we were going to have cake tomorrow anyway, but you can call it sad cake if you like."

Both boys squealed, "Yaaaayy!" Sam probably just because Ben started doing it first.

Dorea would tease them about being happy her aunt had died, but really, using Cassiopeia as an excuse for cake would probably be better than telling Liz it was supposed to be for her birthday. She wasn't certain how Liz would react, so.

Once lunch was done and the dishes cleaned and put away, Dorea slipped away into her room. She'd intended to get some of her summer homework done — she still hadn't finished Potions and Cambrian (she was going to horribly backslide in Cambrian over months not using it, she just knew it) — but instead she ended up just sitting at her desk, playing with her pencil. Thinking about Cassiopeia.

Dorea didn't know how to feel about her being gone, really. She couldn't say they were particularly close. She hadn't even known she existed until she'd been...seven, she thought — it would have been after her whole medical thing back then, Andi hadn't introduced them until after she was okay again. And Cassiopeia had always been...distant and cold and awkward.

Which did make sense, now that Dorea had thought about it, if she'd been feeling so disconnected with her birth identity. Dorea had always thought it was just because she was old (though she never looked old, because metamorph), and very pureblood. Most of magical Britain's pureblood nobility tended to be like that, so flat and distant it was hard to imagine they were really feeling anything at all. The other kids at school proved that the whole thing was just an act, because most of them really weren't very good at it yet — Daphne pulled it off better, but the mask slipped completely off sometimes, making it even more obvious the whole thing was a performance. (Dorea suspected she was overcompensating, because the nobility didn't have a great opinion of the Mistwalkers and she didn't want to embarrass herself, but she didn't know for sure and it didn't quite seem appropriate to ask.) But in retrospect, that she didn't feel like Cassiopeia Black anymore, so she had to try to force it and it wasn't working very well, made a lot more sense.

If nothing else, Cassiopeia's history, dating all the way back to her disciplinary record at Hogwarts, didn't really give much indication she gave a damn about the nobility's mind games. That Cassipeia was just a typical strict pureblood matron made less and less sense the more she thought about it.

Dorea had complained a bit about having to go to hers for lessons, but they weren't all bad. The etiquette stuff was awful, yes, but some of the history and politics were fascinating. The Black family was literally millennia old, and over that time they'd had a few...characters, let's put it, and Cassiopeia seemed to prefer to focus on the stories of their more dramatic, interesting forebears. And the politics and political history, well, a lot of that was boring, when it was just about names and dates and economics and the like, but Cassiopeia had been walking in their circles for a long while — she knew quite a lot about the people in the Wizengamot and the Ministry, as people, some of the stories she had were kinda funny and others, just, outrageously scandalous.

When Cassiopeia started talking, Dorea could never guess if it was going to be something boring, unsettling, or hilarious. Kept her on her toes, if nothing else.

And she'd never go to meet her at Ancient House ever again.

It was just kind of... She didn't know what she was feeling, exactly. But she certainly couldn't focus on doing homework at the moment.

She'd been struggling to get something accomplished for maybe a half an hour when the doorbell rang, startling her out of her thoughts badly enough she dropped her pencil. Popping to her feet immediately, she was still only halfway down the stairs or so when she heard the door open, Mum's chirped welcome far clearer than Liz's low mumble. The door was closing again by the time Dorea came into view — it could be her imagination, but she thought she caught a little bit of tension lift from Liz at her appearance.

"Your parents were Lily and Jamie Potter, right?" Mum was asking. "I think Dorea said something about that, but I can't remember for certain."

Dorea held in a wince — Mum didn't know Liz was a legilimens, and Dorea hadn't been able to come up with any good way to warn her she couldn't lie to Liz. Mum knew exactly who Liz was, she was just being silly. By the flat, unamused look Liz shot her, she knew Mum was lying, but had no idea why. "That's what I'm told."

"I thought so. Can't say I knew them very well myself, but we did meet, briefly — they were there when Sirius and I married, you know."

"Ah."

"Lily was nice enough, I thought — a little creepy, maybe, a lot of mages come off that way to me — but, sorry if this isn't a nice thing to say, lovie, but Jamie was a little bit of a prick."

Liz's lips twitched slightly, her amusement barely noticeable. "Yeah, I've gotten that impression, for both of them. Apparently Lily was into, like, Dark Arts and stuff, and James was a toff."

"At least Sirius had a sense of irony about it, but good God, the way those two played off each other..." Mum shook her head. "Anyway, if you girls wanted to get settled in, I'll get out of your hair. Richard isn't getting home until five or so, we don't have anything on until then."

"Okay. Thanks, Missus..." Liz trailed off — probably just occurring to her she didn't actually know what Mum's last name is.

Of course, in the muggle world Dorea's name hadn't been Black since she'd been a toddler, but it also wasn't Walker either. When Mum and Rick had married, Dorea had decided to keep Young, Mum's maiden name, but as far as magical law was concerned she was a Black and that was that...so Liz didn't even know what Dorea's last name was. Though, actually, magical convention allowed for someone having a surname that was different from their house, like how Olivie, a Ravenclaw in their year, her last name was Rivers but she was a Tugwood, so technically... Whatever, not important.

Smirking to herself a little, Mum said, "It's Walker, lovie, but call me Gail."

"Er, right."

Once Mum flounced off again, Dorea led Liz up the stairs. The thunk of Liz's trunk hitting each stair sounded rather louder than Dorea knew it actually was — she couldn't help wondering if Liz had packed up and brought everything she owned with her. "Sorry about my mum, she can be a bit..." Dorea trailed off as she stepped into her room, absently sat on the edge of her bed as she considered how to finish that sentence. "Well. My mum."

"It's fine." Liz glanced around the room for a moment, an odd, slightly crooked, inscrutable expression on her face. Dorea didn't think her room was really that unusual. There was less floorspace at the moment — Rick had found a spare mattress somewhere, it was fixed up in the middle of the floor (Dorea had assumed Liz wouldn't be comfortable sharing a bed) — but other than that. Liz pushed her trunk against the wall with a foot. "Is something wrong? You feel...weird."

Bloody cheat mind-reader. "Oh, I'm fine. Only, my great-aunt died, I just found out an hour ago."

Liz frowned at her slightly — if Dorea had to guess, that statement hadn't registered entirely truthful to her (which it wasn't, sort of). She dismissed it after a second. "Um. I'm sorry," she muttered, awkwardly. Even that much didn't sound quite natural, as though she knew she should be saying something, but had no idea what.

"I'm fine. We weren't that close, and I knew this was coming. Was just a bit sudden, I guess. I am kind of sorry you didn't get to meet her, now that I think about it."

Liz clearly had no idea how to react to that. Which wasn't that much of a surprise, she guessed, Dorea doubted Liz had any experience dealing with this sort of situation. After a moment of thought, she finally said, "Oh, was this someone I'm related to too?"

Dorea nodded. "She was your grandmother's sister. Older by like fifteen years, so more like an aunt, really. I was planning on introducing you two at some point, never got around to it..."

"Okay," Liz muttered, awkwardly.

Trying to hide her amusement as best she could — not that it mattered, Liz was probably reading her mind right now — Dorea said, "We can talk about something else."

Liz let out a relieved sigh, Dorea couldn't quite hold in a giggle.

They quickly ended up babbling away about their summer homework for Potions — Liz had finished it weeks ago already, because of course she did, she was one of the best Potions students in their year. Well, sort of? It was complicated. Dorea had noticed before the end of September that Liz's performance in class didn't necessarily match her actual marks. She regularly topped the class in practical lessons in Charms, and frequently did near the best in Potions, but she barely scraped Acceptables in her written work for both classes. She tended to get Ps in Transfiguration and Cambrian — despite her attempts at spoken Cambrian being better than Dorea's, and she'd finished with an O in that class — and Dorea had seen mostly Ds on her work for Astronomy and History.

It wasn't actually possible to fail a class at Hogwarts — whether someone advanced a year was entirely at the discretion of the head of their house, someone being held back was virtually unheard of. But if it were possible, Dorea was reasonably certain Liz would have failed Herbology, Astronomy, History, and possibly Transfiguration.

Which didn't make any bloody sense! Liz wasn't, like, a super genius or anything, but she was definitely clever, and she spent half her time out of class with her nose in one book or another. And it wasn't like she wasn't actually learning the things they were studying in class — she tended to do excellent in practical lessons (with the exception of Transfiguration, where she was merely average), and she could talk about it all with Dorea and Daphne and even Hermione and keep up just fine. Yet, her marks on her written work were all awful.

Dorea had found herself wondering, more than once, if Liz had a learning disability or something. Like, most of their written work came in the form of essays, more frequent and more complicated than anything Dorea had been expected to do in non-magical school, and by a significant margin. Maybe Liz had difficulty writing. That was a problem some people had, Dorea knew, that they couldn't get the letters to look right, so it ended up being too illegible for a teacher to mark properly — Liz's handwriting was quite bad...but Dorea didn't think it was that bad — or just had trouble organising their thoughts in such a way to get their knowledge on the subject across. Sort of like dyslexia, but for the physical act of writing, or for ideas, getting everything mixed up. That was something that existed, right?

Or maybe Liz just...didn't know how to write an essay. Dorea had actually learned what was expected from Cassiopeia, and Hermione was Hermione, but most of the other muggleborns had had significant trouble with it, at first — several sessions of Hermione's muggleborn study group had devolved into workshops on how to properly write an essay. But Liz never participated in those.

In fact, Liz seemed remarkably unconcerned about her own academic difficulties. Dorea had tried to ask her if she was doing okay, if she needed help with anything — carefully, Liz could be prickly sometimes — but Liz had just brushed it off. She'd wondered if she should talk to somebody about it, maybe Snape, but she didn't know what to say...

It was difficult to ask for help, especially on someone else's behalf, when she didn't even know what was wrong.

But anyway, Dorea took the distraction of the conversation to get a good look at Liz. She was dressed somewhat unusually for Liz — or at least it seemed unusual to Dorea, but she'd only ever seen Liz at school before — in a plain blue dress, knee length, the neck loose enough Dorea could make out the edge of one of those magic-made vests intended to be worn under robes. (Which was quite inappropriate by magical standards, to actually be able to see that, the same idea as someone's bra peeking out over the neckline of their blouse — if Dorea dressed like that Cassiopeia would definitely tell her to change, or at least adjust herself.) It might have been even more visible if half her chest wasn't hidden by a fuzzy green and black scarf, the same one Tracey had gotten her for Christmas. Liz had taken to wearing a scarf almost all the time since then — though she still only had two, so far as Dorea knew, the other a Slytherin-themed one she'd picked up at the quidditch final. Apparently, she hadn't noticed how distracting her own hair scratching at her neck could be until she had a way to avoid it easily available, she found not wearing a scarf irritating now.

Dorea would admit she'd been a little worried, since she suspected Liz was living on her own somewhere. She'd worried she might...she didn't know, not be eating properly, or get hurt or something. But she seemed...fine. Terribly pale, but then she always was — a consequence of spending half her time indoors with her nose in a book, Dorea suspected. (And also possibly genetic, Dorea herself was noticeably paler than the rest of her family and she never tanned properly.) Dorea thought she might look a little thinner than she'd last seen her, but that could be her imagination, or just the absence of the big baggy school robes. And she didn't seem...strained, like, nervous or tired. She seemed fine.

Which was almost obscene, in a way. Liz wasn't even quite twelve yet, and she was, unless Dorea was very much mistaken, technically homeless, getting by on her own through a combination of the money her parents had left her and probably lots of mind magic — on muggles, using it to steal from them, which happened to be very illegal. It just...

Dorea didn't like it, that was all. If she thought Liz was at all likely to accept, she would have asked (begged) her to stay here by now. Or hell, the Blacks owned she wasn't even certain how many different properties, some of which were rented out but some were completely unoccupied, she could just stay in one of those if she preferred to not be stuck with Dorea and her family. But she knew without asking that Liz would turn it down, would deny she was having any problems at all, would probably claim she was still staying with her (horrible) family if Dorea said anything about it...

"Is something wrong?" Liz was poking through her trunk — tracking down one of her Potions textbooks, to back up something she'd been saying about the assignment, Dorea had only been half paying attention — suspiciously frowning over her shoulder at Dorea.

Well, yes, there was something wrong, but Dorea wasn't just coming to come out and— "Did you take everything you own with you?" The words came tumbling out before Dorea had quite considered it, but she couldn't help it, Liz's trunk looked packed full of clothes and books and school things...

"Oh." Liz turned back to her trunk for a second. Her shoulders tensed slightly, just for a moment, as Liz obviously considered what to say. "Yeah. I pack everything magical away when I'm going to be leaving my room, just in case someone goes poking around, but I didn't think it was safe to leave it there for a couple days. Who knows what one of the muggles might stumble across, cleaning the place. So I packed up everything, and checked out — I'll find a different hotel when I go back, for the rest of the summer."

For a couple seconds, Dorea could only stare at Liz's back, dumbfounded. She... She'd actually admitted it. Dorea hadn't thought she ever would, Liz never talked about anything personal. Getting Liz to do anything as simple as express an opinion on what kind of food she liked, or what she wanted to talk about, or anything, that was hard enough, but getting her to say anything about her life outside of school was bloody impossible. It'd been like pulling teeth, that conversation on Hallowe'en, and that was with her backed into a corner.

There was no reason Liz had really needed to tell Dorea anything, right now. And yet she'd just done it anyway.

Dorea had absolutely no idea how to feel about this.

(She did notice her chest felt a little weird, but she ignored it the best she could. Any sort of outpouring of emotion would probably just make Liz uncomfortable.)

Eventually, she noticed Liz had turned to frown at her again, waiting tense and watchful, almost nervous. Dorea cleared her throat. "I, ah, I didn't think you would say anything. About, you know."

Liz shrugged, the gesture looking stiff and awkward. "I knew you already knew."

How? Dorea had never said anything, and she was a much better liar than Liz. She managed to slip little things past her all the time, mostly through omission, while Dorea could almost always tell when Liz was being less than honest with her — and Dorea didn't even have cheater mind-reading powers. Dorea couldn't think of any conversation where they'd gotten close enough to the topic for Liz to pick up on it...unless she'd been poking about her head without permission...

"Snape said you need to work on your occlumency."

...That devious son of a bitch. Snape hadn't gone poking about Dorea's head (she assumed), she'd come out and told him what she suspected of Liz's circumstances. But he'd avoided telling Liz that, probably aware that Liz would be unhappy with her. Instead he'd hidden behind a simple statement of fact that implied he had stolen it from her head himself — he'd simultaneously covered for Dorea (protecting her as a source of information), circumvented Liz's own lie-detecting abilities by saying something true (but unrelated to the matter at hand), and suggested Liz help her friends learn to defend themselves from exploitation through mind magic (which he must realise would be necessary, given Liz's fame), all at once. That was just bloody brilliant, was what that was.

Of course, there was a reason Snape was the head of Slytherin. Damn clever bastard.

"...Yes, I guess I do. It's hard, though."

"We can work on it more," Liz said, pulling out the book she'd been looking for. She hesitated a moment before stepping away from her trunk, leaving it sitting open. "I think it'll be easier to feel it out if you practise against me. I need the practice too, really, I've noticed running into someone who knows how to protect themselves can leave me overextended and vulnerable if I'm not careful. It's a problem."

"Oh."

"And, now that you know I know you know, I can say things like, don't tell anyone. I'm fine on my own, and it's really the best option I have. If people find out, Dumbledore will just force me back with my aunt and uncle or something."

And that was completely unacceptable. She hadn't forgotten what little she knew about how Liz's family had treated her. If Dumbledore, who Liz said was technically her legal guardian, couldn't be convinced to arrange something suitable, than Dorea guessed telling anyone about anything would just be bloody pointless.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Dorea could make sure information about Liz's homelife, or lack thereof, gets out. Talk to a writer for the Herald, maybe — she would say the Prophet, but they were too closely tied to the Ministry, anything too...political might not get printed without the permission of the people involved (in this case, Dumbledore). If it became public knowledge, it would certainly be a massive scandal, the sort of thing Dumbledore couldn't just sweep under the rug. With how mad people were about the whole Girl Who Lived thing, it could even politically ruin him, if things snowball in just the right way. Dorea could only assume whoever custody of Liz ended up handed off to would do a better job than Dumbledore was. It'd be hard not to.

But no, she wasn't going to do that. Liz would certainly figure out it was Dorea who'd leaked it. And she'd be very angry with her. If Liz didn't seem to be doing fine, at least, Dorea was certain she would do something, no matter the consequences, but...

Honestly, it just didn't seem worth it. For now.

"I won't say anything," Dorea muttered, the words slimy and sick in her mouth. "Just, if you're having trouble, if you need help, you'll say something."

Liz shot her a flat look. "Dorea, do you honestly think there's anything you could actually help me with that I couldn't handle just fine on my own?"

She winced — no, she didn't think there was. Mind magic was just cheating.

"Snape already made me promise to contact him in case of emergencies. I'm supposed to owl him every other day, it's actually very annoying, and he gave me this weird beacon thing if I need to contact him immediately. Not that anything will ever come up, because I'm fine."

There was an odd tingle on the air, almost like magic. For a moment, Dorea wondered if Liz was trying to...do something to her, but...she didn't feel anything. Though, if Liz were trying to compel her to think she was fine, Dorea didn't think she would feel anything. Because she already did think Liz was fine, see, so there wouldn't be anything for the compulsion to do. She thought that's how these things worked, anyway, she wasn't an expert. Not that she really thought Liz was trying to do anything to her anyway. Perhaps she'd just put enough feeling on the word her mind magic stuff had slipped a little bit, or something, maybe it was completely unrelated, maybe Dorea was just imagining it. It was hardly noticeable anyway.

Besides, Liz had promised she wouldn't. Dorea chose to trust her, even if all available evidence suggested she shouldn't. Which, it didn't, really. If Liz were going around messing with her friends' heads, it would probably be more obvious — Liz wasn't exactly a very subtle person. She was just saying, benefit of the doubt.

"I'm not..." Dorea trailed off, turning over how to say what she wanted to say. It didn't help that Liz just didn't get these things more often than not, so she should be blunt, but Liz was also bloody skittish sometimes, so she should be careful. "I don't doubt you can take care of yourself, Liz." Well, not most of the time, at least, that was honest enough Liz shouldn't notice. "I just worry, because... We're friends, right?"

Liz had been watching her, standing a short distance away almost unnaturally still — her face narrowed in a faint frown, looking impatient verging on annoyed — but at that she twitched, her eyes widening. "Ah. Yeah?"

"Well. I give a damn what happens to you, so I worry. It's not rational, I can't help it. You're my friend, I care. Sometimes that means worrying."

And now Liz looked distinctly uncomfortable, not meeting Dorea's eyes, fiddling with the Potions text in her hands. For a few long seconds, she said nothing. It looked like she was working up to something though, so Dorea waited. She did eventually speak, after what felt like a minute, a low mumble Dorea almost couldn't make out. "You shouldn't have come after me."

She blinked. "What?"

"With Quirrell. Telling Dora to come find me, sure, but you shouldn't have come with."

"Oh." Well, Dorea knew that, of course. She didn't know what had gotten into her, she'd just... "It'd seemed the thing to do at the time."

Liz's eyes flicked back to hers, dark and cold. "You could have died, Dorea."

"I know that." If Dora hadn't smacked that blasting curse up into the wall, she would have. (Dorea still had nightmares about that fight with Quirrell, it'd been terrifying.)

"People are going to try to hurt me again. Because of this whole stupid Girl Who Lived," she said, her voice thick with disgust, "that shite, people are always going to be stupid over that. And I'm not very nice, I'm pretty good at making people hate me on accident. I'll probably have to deal with people trying to hurt me my whole life." Liz sounded, just, amazingly nonchalant about that. Like she didn't even care.

No, like she was accustomed to the idea that people might try to hurt her, like it wasn't unusual to her at all. Dorea felt her throat tighten with anger — which was weird, she didn't know what exactly she was angry at. (Pick a thing, really.) "I'm not going to ditch you because someone might—"

"That's not what I'm saying. Just, don't be stupid about it, is all. There's no reason to put yourself in more danger than you really need to be in for no good reason."

"I won't—"

"Dorea, honestly, I don't want you to get yourself killed because of me. Just don't run straight into danger like an idiot. That's all I'm saying."

She sighed — that was a good point, no matter how...slightly condescending it was. After all, Liz shouldn't be being put in danger in the first place, but the really important thing was that Dorea not let herself be caught up in it with her, sure, of course. But, in a weird, socially-stunted kind of way, Liz was saying she gave a damn too, so, Dorea guessed she could just take that for what it was and move on. "Right. I'll be careful."

"Good." Liz broke eye contact again, frowning a little and fiddling with her book some more. "Er. Can we go back to talking about Potions now?" she asked, her voice small and thin.

Dorea bit her lip to keep herself from giggling.

---

Meant to get to this earlier, but depression continues to be a shit. These things happen.

Chapter is long but, believe it or not, I actually cut out a scene. There was originally going to be a thing with Dobby, but then I decided Severus should do something to insulate Liz from magical tracking. So Dobby is still worried about Liz, but he can't find her. Poor little guy.

People getting bad grades just because their handwriting is terrible isn't nearly as absurd as it might sound. In fact, it was a problem I had for a while. I'm 95% certain I have dysgraphia — by which I mean I have enough of the signs to count, but it was never made official. My handwriting was always complete, absolute shit. Like, actually illegible. I had teachers who just marked things they couldn't read wrong — I've failed multiple spelling tests for this reason — would give me a zero for essays until I redid them — which was pointless, trying to write slower or more carefully makes such a small difference it's not worth it. Some teachers who thought they were clever would have me come after class and read my answers for them...but I also have a stuttering problem...and I'd also struggle to read it myself — yes, my handwriting really is so bad even I can't read it — so they'd sometimes assume I was making it up on the spot, so then I'd be marked down or get a lecture or whatever for that. I'm certain my grades in elementary and middle school were substantially worse than they should have been, entirely because of my handwriting. (Similar problem in high school, but that's mostly because of the stuttering, being able to hand in printed out assignments is awesome.)

Of course, Liz doesn't have dysgraphia — she simply hasn't had the opportunity to properly practice writing since she was six. Just, Dorea's thought that maybe Liz is being marked down because her handwriting is so bad the professors can't read it is actually very plausible.

And I've babbled on long enough. Blah blah, until next time.