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)

10. Second Year — II

September 1992

---

The first test to get onto the Slytherin quidditch team was actually making it to the try-outs.

Liz had noticed that, to these silly people from noble families and such, it was very important who you knew, and how you knew them — just look at everyone needing to specify just how they were all related to each other at the very first day of first year, that was an extension of the same thing. Most people on the quidditch team were invited to join by the current captain, or the one before him, or had somehow gotten him to let them try out at some point in the last couple years. She'd gotten the impression that Snape didn't really give a shite about quidditch, so as long as they didn't embarrass Slytherin too badly they were pretty much allowed to run the team however the hell they liked.

Now quidditch wasn't a particularly complicated game. Each team had seven players (not counting reserves): three chasers, who did all the goal-scoring, a seeker, who was basically a fourth chaser who was also responsible for going after the snitch, one keeper, who defended the goals, and two beaters, who dealt with the bludgers. (The informal games Liz had played in flying classes hadn't used bludgers at all, so that would be a new one on her.) One of last year's chasers and one beater had graduated, and the other beater and the seeker were in seventh year and had decided to leave the team to focus on their studies. So the team was looking for two beaters, a chaser, and the seeker.

Liz had absolutely no confidence she'd be at all good at playing beater — she just didn't have the strength to whack those big balls around very well, she didn't think. (She was annoyingly tiny.) Chaser or seeker, though, she could do those just fine. With a few exceptions, she flew circles around everyone in the games she'd played so far, it seemed reasonable.

But Marcus Flint had just laughed in her face.

Flint was one of the chasers, and also the captain of the team since last year. They'd announced they were going to do try-outs, talk to Flint about it, so Liz had, the Tuesday of the first week. She hadn't expected to have any problems, really. She was tiny, yes, but speed was a greater asset for chasers and seekers than size anyway. (The same was true in dueling, she'd noticed, it was a whole thing.) And, she'd checked with Daphne, the Flints had been sort of allied with the Dark Lord, but had switched their allegiance to Ars Publica since the end of the war — the traditional, live and let live, the Death Eaters are bloody idiots Dark — and this Flint in particular was rather aloof, and seemingly didn't care about politics or anything of the like, so he shouldn't be one of those people who hated Liz for no reason. She'd thought he'd let her try out, at the very least.

Instead, he'd pretty much told the tiny little girl to piss off. Liz would admit she'd been very irritated, she'd resolved the instant he'd brushed her off that she'd be showing up to the try-outs, whether he liked it or not. Thankfully, Draco had gone around bragging he'd been invited to try out for seeker, like the boasting little ponce he was — pulling the time and place the try-outs would be held out of his head had been dead easy.

When Liz showed up at the quidditch pitch at the inconvenient hour of seven twenty in the morning on a Sunday — early, but not too early — Flint, Pucey (chaser), and Bletchley (keeper) were already there, along with a handful of hopefuls. The other people trying out mostly ignored her, though Draco shot her a sneer. Snape's prediction that Draco would get over his humiliation and start trying to antagonise her again hadn't come to fruition by the end of the year, but the day they'd gotten back he'd been glaring at her and whispering and giggling with his idiot friends again. A couple months away from her, getting spoiled by his parents, must have boosted his confidence again.

Despite Snape's warning, Liz wasn't really worried. It wasn't like he posed any kind of threat to her, she didn't doubt she could publicly humiliate Draco again if she needed to. Surely the lesson would sink in eventually.

The team actually reacted to her appearance — of course, they would know she hadn't been expected. Bletchley shot her a glare, but it was Flint who spoke. Standing in front of the pack of hopefuls with his arms crossed over his chest all still and intimidating — Flint was a big bloke — he growled, "What are you doing here, Potter?"

Coming to a stop at the edge of the group, Liz stared back up at him, expressionlessly meeting his eyes. "Trying out for seeker and chaser."

Sitting on the chest holding the balls nearby, Bletchley — somewhat less huge than Flint, and rather nicer-looking, his face less harshly-angled — let out a harsh scoff, and there was some muttering and chuckling from the other people trying out. Flint scowled. "Potter, wasting my time isn't going to—"

"Give it a rest, Mark." Pucey was sitting on his broom sideways, hovering over and behind Flint's left shoulder. He hadn't seemed to be paying attention, floating around reading a book like a silly person, but he looked up (down?) to give Flint a crooked smile. "If the kid isn't good enough she won't take up any extra time, not enough to be arguing about it right now."

"Look at her, Adrian. She's just going to get herself hurt. Do you want to be the one responsible for getting Ellie Potter laid up in hospital regrowing half the bones in her body?"

Liz blinked — was that just an excuse, or was he actually worried about that? Somehow, it hadn't occurred to her as even a possibility that Flint had rejected her instantly out of concern it'd be unsafe for her to play. It certainly hadn't sounded like it...but if it had sounded like it, she probably would have been even more angry over being condescended to, and he'd probably realised that...

"And Malfoy won't? She's not that much smaller than him. Personally, I'd much rather not have to deal with Lord and Lady Malfoy after their only son takes a bad hit, but hey, I'm not the captain."

Flint huffed, rolling his eyes. "All right, fine. We'll be doing evasion trials, Potter, don't expect anybody to go easy on you. Getting hit with a bludger is fucking painful, you know."

Liz nodded. "I'd expect as much. Don't worry about it, I'll be fine."

It looked like Flint very much doubted that — that itchy annoyance and unease spiking in the air, piercing through the disdain and dark amusement from the rest of the hopefuls, was probably coming from him — but he just let out a long sigh.

Once everyone had arrived, the first thing Flint had them do was line up halfway down the side of the pitch, from where they would fly one loop around the whole thing and come in for a landing. Probably just to weed out anyone who was so terrible of a flier they shouldn't even be here — Liz wasn't sure what the point of limiting the people who could come even was if they weren't that selective, but fine. Draco ended up right next to her, which she was certain wasn't a coincidence.

Especially since, while waiting for Flint to give them the go, Draco sidled up to her and muttered, "Really, Potter? A Cleansweep Eight?"

Liz glanced down at Draco's own broom quick — she didn't recognise the model by sight, but she didn't need to, Nimbus Two-Thousand and One was etched into the handle. Of course Draco would have gotten that one, it was the most expensive quidditch broom on the market right now. It was the fastest in terms of raw speed, yes, but with how long it took to accelerate all the way up Liz thought that hardly mattered. She'd taken the floo from the Leaky Cauldron to Hogsmeade — which had not been fun, she'd ended up tumbling across the ground like a clumsy idiot going there and coming back — because there was a broom store there she could actually try the things out before buying them. She'd hardly noticed an acceleration difference between the Nimbuses (she'd tried the 1700, 2000, and 2001) and the Cleansweeps (5, 6, and 8), but the Cleansweeps had much snappier handling, which she felt was more important for something like quidditch.

The Nimbus 2001 was also, like, twice as expensive, Liz really hadn't thought it was worth the price difference. Hell, she would have taken the Cleansweep 5 above the Nimbus 2001, the raw speed wasn't worth the clunkier handling and the insanely higher price. But Draco was a snobby little brat, of course he'd just gotten the most expensive one.

Liz didn't bother actually responding. She just stared back at him, right in the eyes, not speaking a word. Draco sneered back at her for a few seconds but, unease building in his head, it slowly flickered away, until he broke eye contact, shuffling awkwardly.

It was honestly kind of funny how unnerving normal people found just expressionlessly staring at them. It took some effort to not giggle, that would ruin it.

The spells that powered and steered brooms were actually sort of interesting, and somewhat more complicated than some people realised. See, there were actually two entirely different maneuvering settings brooms could use, and most brooms were enchanted with both — Liz referred to them in her head as arrow mode and slip mode. (Presumably there were proper terms for them, but she didn't know what they were.) By what she'd observed in flying classes, most people defaulted to arrow mode, they hadn't even been told slip mode was there, she'd found it on accident.

Though, how she'd found it on accident was kind of weird. Brooms were designed to respond to the person riding it moving in certain ways, but Liz had quickly figured out that wasn't actually necessary. You could just poke at the enchantments on the thing directly. Explaining how to do that with words was hard, like explaining how exactly casting charms worked, but it wasn't difficult to do. (It felt sort of like poking at a mind with legilimency, actually, just with her magic instead, and she couldn't really explain that either.) She'd been able to feel an entire other set of enchantments on the thing, she'd asked Hooch how it worked only after playing with it for herself for a little bit.

Arrow mode was very simple: the broom flew the direction the handle was pointing. Though, the actual magic was more complicated than that sounded. As far as Liz could tell, there were three different spells going on all at once — one was basically a levitation charm, canceling the person's weight and controlling their elevation; another did the actual movement, pushing the broom straight forward; the third, in the words Hermione had used, cancelled momentum going in any other direction, funneling the energy into the second spell (though it ignored the effects of the levitation charm). This was why brooms accelerated fastest while going down, the energy of the fall was absorbed and put into the movement spell, energy it got to keep after pulling out of the dive, because the speed you would lose turning out of it got redirected too. It was the same reason you didn't need to accelerate into turns to keep going the same speed, and also why you didn't need to lean into it either. It was kind of a neat bit of magic, Liz thought.

It gave Hermione a headache. She really didn't like the way brooms worked, it'd taken her months of flying classes to get used to them not moving the way ordinary objects should. Which, Liz did sort of understand that, but she didn't see why it was so hard to just run with point it the way you want to go and fly. Hermione was weird sometimes.

Slip mode also had three spells working on it — the first was the same levitation charm, though it could be switched off if you wanted; the second was the same spell that pushed the broom forward; the third was one that could be used to easily spin the broom in any direction, which had been sort of awkward to get used to, but quite useful. See, this mode didn't use the momentum-cancelling spell that gave Hermione so many headaches: if the broom was moving in a direction, it would keep moving in that direction until it was stopped somehow, by flying in the opposite direction or just from wind pushing at you. This meant that, in slip mode, the handle of the broom would almost never be pointing in the direction you were travelling, instead slipping and sliding all over the place.

Liz thought it was really fun. Hermione had tried it once, and crashed into Dorea almost immediately — she'd decided to stick with arrow mode and just suffer the headaches.

Now, normally a person would pick which mode they preferred, and always use that one. According to Hooch, amateurs, people playing around for fun or just using them to get from place to place, and also broom racers tended to prefer arrow mode; stunt performers and such preferred slip mode (in fact, stunt brooms often didn't have the second set of enchantments for arrow mode at all). For quidditch players, it depends — chasers and seekers spend most of a game in arrow mode, while keeping and beating almost required slip mode. You'd get a chaser now and again who played with slip mode sometimes, but it wasn't very common.

It had taken Liz all of two pick-up games to realise putting together the broom-spinning from slip mode and the momentum-canceling from arrow mode was fucking cheating.

The instant they kicked off — all more or less at the same time, but a couple fell out of Liz's peripheral vision instantly — Liz slipped forward, pushing hard into the spells that flew forward and upward at the same time. Draco and the couple other people on faster brooms shot out ahead at first, but slowly slipped behind her in the next couple seconds — they'd all pointed their brooms at an angle, pushing ahead and somewhat up, but Liz had kept her broom flat and was using the levitation charm to lift up, which Hermione's nerdy math said was slightly faster (though not by all that much). Liz's hair was already being yanked back by the wind, she'd tried to tie it back but it was useless, she grit her teeth and ducked her head against it.

The others had levelled off, the first few started slowly pulling ahead of her, but Liz kept going up and up, still rising as she passed the hoops a little lower than her to her left. Giving the enchantments on the broom a good mental jab, she switched to slip mode, cut off the forward spell right away, flipping her foot under the right stirrup, she pulled it forward while pushing on the left, her broom spinning halfway around in a blink, she kicked on the movement spell again, she jolted forward, gripping hard with her hands to keep from sliding off, she kept the broom turning, her hair flipping over her head, until she'd turned all the way around, which had her moving still mostly backward and sideways as the spells on the broom pushed her forward, as she passed the middle of the hoops she finally cut off the levitation spell, she started pulling the back of the broom up, pushing down with her hands, the handle of her broom now pointed at an angle downward, still drifting less back but mostly sideways—

Her chest going light and bubbly, like she was about to laugh but not quite the same, her heart pounding hard enough she could almost hear it over the roar of the wind, Liz bit her lip to keep herself from grinning — getting wind blowing in her mouth was just really awkward. Also, she'd accidentally swallowed a bug once in flying class, blech.

Going weightless as she fell, her stomach rising into her throat, Liz kept spinning with subtle pushes and pulls on the stirrups, her broom kept pointing at the hoops, pulling the bristles higher, rolling to lean into the turn a bit, some of the pack had pulled ahead of her now, still a little bit below her, but the curve was coming to an end soon, flipping her right foot back on top of the stirrup she pushed back, turning her to face back forward (still sliding fast to her right), Liz took a second to carefully aim, still sliding toward the stands and dropping quick to the ground, one, two, she was nearly at the same height as the pack ahead of her now, three, and—

Liz switched into arrow mode, the momentum-cancelling spell suddenly jumping her forward, hard enough she was kicked back hard into the stirrups, her fingers stinging against the wood, she squinted against the gust of wind, pulling up from her dive to sweep in under the pack, she started rising (using the levitation spell again) as soon as she was level, glanced behind herself to make sure, but no, her cheater speed trick had pushed her in front, she wasn't going to run into anybody, she was fine.

Pushing her sideways and downward momentum into going forward had actually gotten her going faster than the "top" speed her broom could handle, so she was slowing down as she flew the long side of the pitch, but she was far enough ahead she should be fine. Pulling off her sliding turn pretty much exactly the same as she had the first time — though she started pulling up a bit earlier, she'd crossed the pitch in a much shorter period of time, she wasn't quite as high up as last time, so she didn't start pushing downward until a little later — she was turned around enough by the time she was about halfway around the curve to spot the rest of the hopefuls behind and below her. They'd spread out a bit over the course of the race, Draco and a couple upper-years neck and neck, the rest trailing out behind them. They were just about to come into the turn around behind the hoops, but Liz was far enough ahead there was simply no way she wasn't finishing first.

This time, with the jump forward into her ridiculously stupid-fast dive, Liz failed to hold in an ecstatic giggle.

Liz didn't bother pulling up this time, their starting point was coming up quick. Switching to slip mode and cutting off the pushing spell, she kicked her broom all the way around, so she was moving backward, and started pushing forward again. Shoved back hard into the stirrups, it took a few long, strained seconds to slow down all the way, toward the end she let herself start tipping over backward, cutting back her forward push as she went, until the broom handle was pointed almost straight upward, and she just hopped off the stirrups down to the ground, skipping a few steps before coming to a halt.

A glance around and, oh, she was a couple metres away from Flint. Oh well, close enough, she thought. Especially since she hadn't even been looking...

While she walked over, the three older boys staring at her — it didn't bother her, they weren't staring at her for bad reasons, she'd just done something crazy was all — the rest of the people trying out started to catch up. Draco floated right up to her, his hair tousled from the wind and his face going a little pink. "What was that, Potter?"

Liz tried to give him a Snape-ish unimpressed sort of look, but she was probably smiling too much to pull it off. "That was flying. Real fast."

"Come off it! There's no way that's a Cleansweep Eight."

"Don't be stupid, of course it is."

"I'd like to know how you pulled that off myself, Potter," Flint said with a flat, narrow-eyed stare. "That dive was too shallow for you to get that much speed out of it."

...Okay, how the hell was she supposed to explain this in a way that would actually make sense? "Ah, you know how if you turn really fast, you feel like you want to keep going forward? but you don't feel that on racing brooms? There's a spell on it that gets rid of that motion going in other directions and redirects it forward. But, if you don't use that spell, and accelerate to going at full speed going to the side, going forward, and going down, and then turn that redirecting spell back on, it takes all that speed and redirects it forward. You can get going far above your broom's normal top speed, if you're careful." There, she thought that almost made sense.

A mix of various tones of confusion lifted from Draco and the other hopefuls, so they had no idea what she was talking about, but Pucey's eyebrow had ticked up, with a flash of irritation and a hint of something softer and shiftier she couldn't quite read. "She's talking about kick turns." Oh, Liz hadn't even realised there was a name for it, that would have been easier...

Twitching in surprise, Flint glanced at Pucey quick before turning back to Liz. "Potter, are you mad? You know you can throw yourself from your broom doing that."

"I'm careful," Liz said, shrugging. She had nearly fallen a few times in flying lessons, once both of her feet had slipped and she'd barely caught her broom behind her knee, but she hadn't actually thrown herself yet.

Flint shook his head with clear exasperation...and also a shade of concern, which was a little confusing (and also slightly nauseating) — they'd never even met before, what did he care if she went hurting herself? Well, she guessed he might be worried he'd get in trouble if she did something stupid on his watch, but surely Snape would know it was her own damn fault and cover for him, really. Anyway, they moved on, Flint quickly dismissing a couple of the clumsier fliers. Which meant they only had two people left who were trying for beater — gritting his teeth hard enough the tendons in his jaw stood out, Flint told Bole and Derrick they were in, but if they fucked it up Flint wouldn't hesitate to hold new try-outs to replace them.

Which left the people trying out for chaser — Liz, Draco, and three upperclassmen she didn't know — and for seeker — Liz, Draco, and one of those upperclassmen. Since seekers were the same thing as chasers when they weren't going for the snitch, they got the chaser trials out of the way first. These started stupid easy, but they got more and more complicated as they went on.

First all of them floated up into the air — excluding Bole and Derrick, who waited on the ground — and tossed the quaffle around in a circle. Liz still thought quaffles was sort of weird. They were roughly football-sized, but made out of hard leather instead of rubber, and were filled with some kind of gell or something, she thought, so they were rather heavier. They were also squishier — her fingers would poke into it if she squeezed, and it sometimes wobbled in the air when it was thrown, if it had enough of a spin to it flattening a bit, almost like a disc. Which was sort of weird, but also kind of neat, because with a right flick of the wrist you could get a quaffle to curve in the air some.

The gloves Dora had gotten her really did help — her hands were too small to catch or throw the thing one-handed, but the extra grip the gloves gave her made it a whole lot easier.

After tossing it around just floating there, Flint had them start moving around constantly, still throwing the thing back and forth. He didn't tell them where to fly exactly, just that they could never stop moving. He'd call out a name, and whoever had the quaffle had to throw it to that person, he'd wait a few seconds, and he'd call out another name. (Luckily, with the order he'd called them in Liz picked up the upperclassmen's names before she had to throw to them.) One of the upperclassmen fumbled a catch and badly aimed a throw — Liz still managed to catch it, but it had required a "kick turn" and a bit of a scramble — so, voice tight and hissy as though holding back a curse, Flint sent him away.

That was when things started getting complicated. They were split into two teams — Liz, Flint, and Eirsley in one, Draco, Pucey, and Carrigan in the other. And then they basically played without a keeper (or beaters) for a bit, which was little different than the games in flying classes. They didn't not to use the whole field in class — a quidditch pitch really was quite big — and the rules for exactly what they were allowed to do were a bit looser. Quidditch could get a bit violent, without even bringing the damn bludgers into the equation. Eirsely nailed Draco badly once, he nearly toppled right off, and Liz actually lost her grip entirely once, when Carrigan tried to snatch the quaffle out from under her arm and accidentally hooked her elbow instead, yanking her back hard. She managed to hug the shaft of her broom behind her knee at the last second, leaving her dangling in the air upside-down, speeding along at, what, forty kilometres per hour, probably.

Of course, she managed to chuck the quaffle in Flint's general direction as she fell, and got herself back up onto her broom in a couple seconds without help, so she thought she handled that quite well, thank you. She should probably be thanking Carrigan for that, honestly.

And then, after going at it for some minutes, Bletchely, Bole, and Derrick floated on up, and then bludgers were added into the mix.

Somewhat to Liz's surprise, bludgers weren't actually very difficult to deal with at all. The things were bloody fast, she couldn't just out-fly them, but they had shite steering, and they let out a high whistling noise as they flew through the air — she never didn't notice one coming, and it was easy enough to just quick kick her broom to the side and slip out of the way. She had no idea how Eirsley managed to get hit bad in the shoulder, they weren't hard to dodge at all.

At least, not at first. Flint and Pucey had been less competing and more giving them pointers and pushing them into certain situations the whole time, and clearly Bletchley was doing the same thing with Bole and Derrick — their aim didn't really get better, but their timing did. It only took Liz a few minutes of observation, and a couple times barely avoiding a bludger flying at her as she was trying to catch a pass or shoot for one of the hoops, that Bole and Derrick were trying to time their attacks for a moment when one of their targets was distracted doing something else. Liz still managed to avoid getting hit at all — partially because the strategy was predictable once she noticed it, she started just assuming a bludger would be coming at her at the most inconvenient of moments and planning around it — though she was the only one: Eirsley got a nasty hit again, Carrigan got hit three times, and even Draco, nearly as small and quick and hard to hit of a target as Liz, got clipped across the shoulder once while lining up a shot, dropping the quaffle...

...straight into Pucey's hands, who passed it to Carrigan, who feinted at the hoops, drawing the other bludger, scrambled out of the way, started winding up to throw it...

Draco, just recovered from his hit, was floating right in front of the hoops.

By the time Carrigan threw the quaffle, Liz was already moving into position, easily plucked it out of the air before it could get to Draco. But still, that was damn clever — she'd almost think they'd planned that ahead of time, if she didn't know they hadn't the time to. Maybe Draco wasn't as much of an idiot as he usually seemed.

After going at it for a long while, enough Liz's arms were starting to ache and her legs and middle burn — the downside to her fun kick turn tricks was that it took rather more work than just flying normal — Flint finally called them to a halt. They all floated to the ground near the entrance, Bole, Derrick, Bletchely, and Pucey briefly delayed chasing down the bludgers. Once they were all down, Flint told them they'd be making their decisions over the next couple days, they'd be telling them whether they were in or not in person at some point over the next week. Until then, get out.

Except Malfoy and Potter, they had to stay for a quick word.

Carrigan and Pucey shot them suspicious looks, but they surrendered, wandering up to the castle with Bole and Derrick, leaving Liz and Draco behind at the edge of the pitch. And they were alone for a brief moment, Flint and Pucey and Bletchley squirreled a short distance away whispering to each other.

Liz could feel Draco's attention on her, her skin tingling. His head was too weird and fuzzy to guess what he was thinking, though. (Without peeking, anyway, and she honestly just didn't care enough to look.) She did glance at him, to find him giving her a narrow-eyed considering sort of look — which he immediately dropped, looking away, the second she turned to him.

No idea what that was about, but okay.

Before Liz could decide whether she cared enough to bother asking him what his deal was (it was probably stupid and confusing anyway), Flint was back. "I know you two have some little feud going on — honestly, I don't know much about it, and neither do I want to, I do not care. But if you're going to be on my team, it's over. I can't have you picking fights with each other at practice, or worse during matches. I'm not saying you have to like each other, but if you can't even pretend to get along, you're out. Do you understand me?"

"Fine with me," Liz said, shrugging. "As far as I'm concerned, our little feud was already over anyway. If he's cool, I'm cool."

Draco seemed a little annoyed with that, for some reason Liz couldn't imagine, but he agreed with a stiff nod of his head. "Does that mean we're on the team?"

With a long sigh, a pulse of something tight and strained she couldn't quite put a word to, Flint said, "I must have lost my bloody mind, but yes. We'll figure out which one of you gets to be seeker after we see how you do in practice. Adrian might take it if neither of you are quite up to it, but you're both staying on either way. Keep that to yourselves for a few days, yeah? I don't want to have to deal with Carrigan whining at me over being passed up for a couple second-years before I've got everything squared away with Snape and Hooch."

They both agreed, and then they all split up, the older boys carrying off the chest of quidditch stuff. Rather than walk the whole way, Liz hopped back onto her broom and flew up to the main doors of the castle. Dorea was probably in the library right now, but Liz thought she'd rather have a quick shower first — it was early enough it wasn't really warm or anything, but they had been at it for a while...

Draco caught up with her before she was even through the doors. "Hey, Ellie, did you mean that back there?"

Great, and she'd thought she was done dealing with Draco Malfoy for today. She could only hope this conversation wasn't going to be quite so tedious and annoying as talking to him usually was — he had just agreed to drop his baffling grudge against her, after all. "What part of it?"

"That you have nothing against me, I mean."

"I didn't say that." Liz halted, near the stairs down toward the Slytherin dorms, her eyes tipping up to the ceiling for a second. When she turned back to look at him, she tried to not be completely expressionless — she wasn't trying to make him uncomfortable at the moment — thought she couldn't be certain what kind she ended up with. (Facial expressions were hard.) "Look, Draco, I've already tried to explain this once before. You keep assuming we're enemies or something, that I'm out to get you for some reason, but I'm not. Quite honestly, I just don't care about you that much. I'm not saying I hate you or whatever, I don't care. Sometimes you're an arse to me or my friends for no good reason, sure, but if you're not actively annoying me at the moment, most of the time I don't think about you at all."

There was a twinge of something on the air, almost like... Well, she thought she might have hurt Draco, a little bit. Which, she kind of wanted to say that was stupid, but it did kind of make sense, she guessed — after all, she had just told Draco she didn't give a shite about him one way or the other, that was kind of offensive, when she thought about it. Though, in the context of explaining that she didn't hate him...wasn't not caring about him a step up? Whatever, not her problem. Also, she wasn't certain why Draco should care whether she cared about him or not...but that also wasn't her problem, she did not care. His face squished in what Liz was pretty sure was supposed to be an irritated frown of some kind, he said, "It doesn't work that way, Potter."

Oh, back to Potter now, was she? "What doesn't work what way? There's nothing going on, this whole whatever will go away if you just stop imagining it's there."

"The disagreements between the Dark and the Light don't go away just because you stop paying attention to them!"

"Who the hell ever said I'm Light?"

Draco blinked, his mouth hanging open, staring at her like an idiot for a few seconds. "Ah, aren't you, though? You're always hanging around with Granger and Greengrass, and, I mean the Potters have been Light for generations!"

Liz rolled her eyes. "The Greengrasses are a Dark family, Draco, they just don't give a damn if someone's pureblood or not. I hardly pay attention to this stuff, and I know that. And I don't see why the Potters having been Light should matter to me. It's not like I ever knew any of them. Also, you might have noticed, but none of my friends are from Light families — unless you count Neville or Susan or Hannah, I guess, but I don't, I barely talk to them. Most of the Light kids here hate me even more than the Dark kids do. Because I have the nerve to be a parselmouth, and also just generally creepy."

For most of that ramble, Draco's head was quivering with surprise and confusion, but toward the end a tingle of amusement washed over it, his lips twitching. "No offence, Ellie, but you are a little creepy."

And Draco didn't even know about the mind magic. "Yeah, I know, I'm just saying. The point, Draco, is that you keep thinking like we're enemies, but we're not. We're not friends either, obviously, but there's no reason for you to keep picking fights with me. If you leave me and my friends alone, I'll leave you alone. It really is that simple."

"I suppose. I didn't think that—" Draco cut himself off, shaking his head. A crooked sort of smile on his face, his mind ringing with rueful amusement, "I guess you're not very much like I thought you would be, Ellie. I don't know, I just..."

"You were expecting the Girl Who Lived, not me."

"Ha! Yeah, that might be it. The way everybody talks about you all the time, even my father, I never really thought..." That was Draco's problem when it came down to it, wasn't it — he'd never really thought. Smiling to himself, Draco shook his head again. And held out his hand. "Truce?"

Because it'd gone so well the first time. "Sure, why not?" Liz shook his hand, for as brief a time as she possibly could and not seem too rude. "Just try not to be such an arse to my friends all the time."

Somewhat to her surprise, Draco laughed again, head shivering with amusement, his eyes almost sparkling. "Yes, Ellie, I'll try my best."

"Liz."

"Excuse me?"

"I prefer Liz. Ellie is a stupid name."

And there Draco went laughing again, that was bloody weird. "Right, I'll try to remember that. People have been calling you Ellie Potter forever, you know, I'll probably slip."

"That's fine, I get it. I'm just saying." There was a short moment of awkward silence, Draco still shaking his head and smiling, as Liz tried to figure out if there was anything else that needed to be said. She didn't think so? This conversation was over then, she thought. "Right. Well, I'm having a shower now. Bye." Liz darted toward the stairs, putting Draco being especially strange firmly behind her.

She thought that had gone well, at least. Probably. Maybe.

(Who was she kidding, she didn't get that lucky. He'd be fucking with her again inside a month.)

---

Liz knocked twice on the door before pushing it open a crack, leaning her head around to peer inside. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Yes, Miss Potter, come in." As Liz stepped into his office, pulling the door closed behind her, Snape folded over the magazine he was reading, set it aside. "Have a seat."

Biting back the suspicion tingling at the back of her neck — she had no idea what this meeting was about, she didn't think she'd done anything... — she drifted over and sank down across from him. She was probably more nervous than was really justified, especially after Snape covering for her this summer (and all through first year, really), but she couldn't help it. He was still just vaguely intimidating, she couldn't even say how or why, exactly.

(Being a more powerful, more experienced legilimens probably had something to do with it.)

"Before we get to the matter I asked you here for, do you have any issues you wanted to bring up with me?"

Liz frowned. "Like what?"

"I'm sure I couldn't say," Snape said, one shoulder lifting in a lazy shrug. "I understand there has been some displeasure among your housemates concerning your acceptance onto the quidditch team. Also, I have heard rumours that Lockhart has been...making a nuisance of himself."

She let out a disdainful snort — that was certainly one way to put it. "He's a pain, but he's not that hard to deal with." She'd mastered the art of avoiding the Defence Professor last year, after all. "He did keep trying to grab at me and stuff, but drawing my wand on him and Susan telling him off for getting too handsy with little girls put an end to that pretty well. And, I think the older Slytherins are holding off on making a fuss about the quidditch thing until they see how the first game goes."

"A reasonable course of action. It is in Flint's interests to defend whatever decisions he makes concerning the team, so any ire directed at you will, at the very least, be moderated by Flint and your other teammates."

Liz nodded, having already figured out that much for herself. Mark was very particular about stressing they were a team now, so they bloody well better act like it — firstly with his demand Draco drop his feud with her, then at their first practice telling Perry and Miles to lay off Liz (and Draco), and also warning that they'd probably get shite from the other teams over the course of the season, and maybe even other Slytherins if a game went badly, and that they would be expected to back each other up. If they didn't, well, Mark might just have to find people more willing to play nice, wouldn't he.

Play nice with each other, he meant, they weren't expected to play nice in general. Roughing up the other team was just part of how quidditch was played, and they were even encouraged to bend the rules if they thought it was worth risking a penalty shot. After all, they could only be penalised if Hooch actually saw it, and penalty shots were relatively easy to block, Miles wasn't worried — unless it was Gryffindor, anyway, they had the best chaser team in the school, the only ones who might actually score one-on-one.

Also, sabotaging the other team running up to a game was acceptable. It wasn't unusual for the school to devolve into a prank war the days and hours before a match, the houses attempting to incapacitate opposing team members long enough they couldn't play, or else just wear down on them mentally. Slytherin had the added disadvantage of all three of the other houses often rooting for whoever they were playing against, so they didn't just have to defend themselves from the house whose team they were about to face, but the other two as well. Adrian had actually been in hospital for a Gryffindor game his first year on the team, hurt badly enough he'd missed a whole week of classes. (He hadn't quit, though, because sport nuts were mad.) They were expected to look out for each other, to prevent that sort of thing from happening again — especially Liz and Draco, who were (theoretically) less capable of defending themselves as the older kids.

Liz wasn't worried — she'd just pay more attention to the minds around her running up to a game, and compel people to leave her alone if she really had to — but it was still slightly reassuring that there were older students who were expected to look out for her, under penalty of being kicked off the team. If nothing else, the occasional pranks she'd had to deal with early on last year were less likely to become a problem again.

...Of course, most of those had been from Draco and his friends, and he'd already agreed to drop it anyway (under penalty of being kicked off the team). Whatever. Point was, even if quidditch ended up being terrible, it still might be worth sticking it out, just to have some of the more popular older students watching her back.

Liz didn't really know what she could possibly say about that, or if a response was even necessary, so she just moved on. "Right, so, what is this about?"

An echo of feeling radiated from Snape's mind — one of those emotions Liz was starting to associate with Snape in particular, tired exasperation mixed with reluctant amusement. Instead of actually answering, Snape reached into a folder to his right, pulled out a single piece of parchment, and set it down in front of Liz.

It only took a brief glance to figure out what this thing was: a Charms exam. Flitwick gave these out every once in a while, about once a week or so, to check how everyone was keeping up. There were usually somewhere between five and a dozen questions, sometimes things that required no more than a few words to answer — what is the incantation or wand movement for this or that spell — but sometimes took a couple sentences. This one had only six questions, unless... No, the back side was blank, six questions.

After handing it over, Snape went right back to his magazine (the title was in French, but she thought it was a healing journal or something), clearly expecting her to fill the exam out. That was...weird. But okay. Liz picked up a quill waiting nearby — the sparks of an enchantment against her fingers told her she didn't need any ink — and got down to it.

Huh. Some of these questions seemed weirdly familiar...

It didn't take her very long to finish — most of the questions required multiple sentences, but they weren't particularly complicated. Once she was done, Snape took it back, pulled a quill and a bottle of red ink out of a drawer and...started marking it. Without a word, just started in, Liz still sitting here.

The back of her neck and her arms tingling, Liz shifted awkwardly in her chair. She...probably wasn't supposed to just leave, was she? She could ask, she guessed, but she got the feeling he'd tell her to wait...

Which was too bad. She was getting the creeping feeling that she really didn't want to be here anymore.

Before long, Snape was finished, rounding off with a big, angular A at the top-right of the page. (Magical marking was weird, an 'A' was really a C, it'd taken Liz a little bit to get used to that.) There was an odd sense of... She wasn't quite certain what that feeling echoing from him was. Satisfaction? But, not a pleasant sort of satisfaction, something creeping and grim, she didn't know what to call that.

Snape set his quill aside. Still without speaking a word, he turned the page around so it was right-side up to Liz. He pulled out another exam, this one the marking done in Flitwick's handwriting, and set it down right next to the other. Then, staring straight at her, unblinking and expressionless, he pulled out his wand, and tapped the exam she'd just finished.

In a blink, the neatly-written questions, the messy scrawl of Liz's answers, the compact, jagged lines of Snape's hand, they swapped around, settling into a different sequence. Glancing between the two exams, a cold stone abruptly dropped into Liz's stomach.

They were the same exam. She'd gotten an A on both, but the red ink didn't match up — she'd answered different questions incorrectly.

...Fuck.

"I did think it curious, last year," Snape said, his voice smooth, cool, calm, "that there was such a noticeable gulf between your performance in class and the quality of your written work. Curious, but not necessarily suspicious. It is not particularly unusual for a student to have practical talent in a subject that they can't quite express in writing. There is nothing inherently wrong with that — myself, it took some years before my written work developed to match my instinctive talent with potions. I hadn't considered your particular case too closely, wrote it off as another example.

"It is only the last couple months when I began to reconsider. You may recall, when I dropped in on you over the summer, you admitted you had been reading ahead in Charms. However, Flitwick has observed the same seeming disconnect between your practical and theoretical work in his class. If you had an instinctive ability to cast charms put before you in class, you would not be able to so easily learn to so effectively cast fourth-year charms on your own simply by reading about them."

Oh, shite, it hadn't even occurred to Liz that that would be giving anything away. Picking up things they were taught in class quickly and easily was one thing, sure, but teaching herself more advanced stuff out of books, obviously that'd be a completely different thing, god, she was such an idiot...

"It didn't take very long, looking back over my own records of your work and conferring with Flitwick, to come to a very different conclusion." Snape's head tilted, one eyebrow ticking up. "It seems to me that, on essays and exams, you are performing badly, by design, for some purpose I cannot fathom."

Liz's fingers were practically shivering with nerves, Snape's eyes on her skin like wasps, her breath was thick and hot enough her throat she could barely—

"You are not in trouble, Miss Potter. I simply wish to make clear I know what you are doing, and explore whether there is anything I can do about it."

She heard the words, washing against her like waves against stone, they didn't quite penetrate properly. Other people weren't to know, worthless freaks weren't good at anything, she wasn't supposed to let anyone know what went on at home, the one time anyone had found out about anything—

Her face and chest itched, the cloth of the sofa pressed against her, the echo of it permeating the air like a bad smell, Liz bit her lip, reaching for the bottle in her pocket without really thinking. A single little sip, a brief wave of fuzziness, and the air had cleared, the worst of it gone — her neck was still tingling with nervousness, her throat too tight and hot, but she could think straight, at least.

She really didn't have to be afraid of breaking the rules anymore. It wasn't like Vernon could punish her for it — with her mind-control superpowers, he hadn't been able to for, what, three or four years, and now she hadn't even seen him for over a year. He had no power over her anymore, it was over.

And, it was probably fine to...let Snape know a little bit, at least. She could only assume that, since nobody had turned up to try to make her go back to the Dursleys (or at least put her with someone else, as Snape had said Dumbledore might do), that he'd kept his word about not telling anybody what was going on with her. And, none of the other kids had said anything, nothing about her had turned up in the Prophet, she could only assume he hadn't gone around blabbing about...other private things.

She thought she could trust Snape, at least a little bit. Especially since it wasn't like Vernon could hurt her anymore anyway. It was fine.

...

It was probably fine.

She took a long breath, trying to force down the hot tension in her throat. It didn't work very well. Looking up, she saw Snape had retreated a bit, leaning about as far back away from her as he could without standing up, something about him seeming...weirdly cautious, a strange note of concern in the air. "Yeah, I... I've been getting things wrong on purpose."

Snape didn't speak for a long moment, still blankly staring at her (his eyes on her skin like ants), Liz avoided his eyes, or getting too close to his mind, fingers playing with the half-emptied calming potion in her lap. Finally, some of the nervous tension on the air faded. "May I ask why?"

Liz swallowed. "Doing better than Dudley is...bad. At anything, it's bad." Well, technically, she'd been punished for lying, but she hadn't been lying, Dudley had been. It hadn't been difficult for Liz to figure out what the actual rules of the house were, and how they differed from the stated ones — what things set Vernon off and what didn't was a pretty good hint. (Sometimes, anyway, there wasn't always an obvious pattern.) "The first time... I'd done better than Dudley in maths."

Something dark and slimy and sharp was creeping over Snape's mind, Liz retreated from the feeling instinctively, it was unpleasant. "The first time. You're referring to...the events we've spoken of before."

"Yeah." That first conversation they'd had in Snape's office, he'd asked her about it without actually asking about it, sort of talking around it. She still hadn't told him exactly what it was — the only person she'd told had been that one teacher, that time Liz had somehow ended up on the roof (apparating, maybe?), and that hadn't gone well for her.

(The ghost of it on the air, her pants being yanked down, she shifted in her seat.)

She thought Dorea might have caught a glimpse of her back at some point — her shirt hitched up in her sleep sometimes, and it'd been too warm at Dorea's house, so she hadn't used the bed sheets and such — but she hadn't said anything. (Oh, and Pomfrey had too, but she didn't count.) And, of course, Dorea knew she was living on her own, Hermione knew she'd left last summer (but not that she hadn't gone back), and on top of them, Daphne, Tracey, Neville, Susan, Lily, Hannah, and Sophie knew she had issues with her family, though they didn't know as much as Dorea and Hermione about how bad it was (and they didn't even know that much). She'd managed to get away with not commenting on practically anything about...things at home and families and stuff, when those discussions came up, with everyone but Dorea and Snape.

(Nosey bastards...)

But, the point was, she was just thinking, she could tell him about it. It was over, Vernon couldn't hurt her anymore, it didn't really matter, and Snape had demonstrated she could trust him at least a little bit...

But, since it didn't really matter, what would be the point of telling him about it? It'd just be unpleasant, and nothing would be different afterward.

Right, not doing that, then.

"The next time a maths exam came— We had them every week, you know, like, practise doing multiplication or whatever. The next time, I just...put down the wrong answers on purpose." She shrugged.

Snape hesitated, for the briefest moment. "He can't hurt you anymore, Elizabeth."

With another shrug, awkward and helpless, she muttered, "I know that. I don't even think about it anymore. It just...happens."

In fact, she hadn't even realised she was still doing it until Hermione had asked if she needed help with essay-writing — that was one of the big things they did in her muggleborn study group, apparently a lot of muggle schools didn't teach that properly. Because, see, she did so well in class (except in Transfiguration), and she could talk about the things they were studying just fine, but her marks weren't great, it was fine if she needed help. Liz had scrambled to come up with some kind of excuse.

Thankfully Hermione could be a bit oblivious sometimes, because it'd probably fallen flat, and Liz would rather not mess with her friends' heads if she could help it. She had promised — not that she was that opposed to lying (it wasn't even against the real rules), but she'd actually meant it, so.

Snape was quiet a long moment, staring not directly at her but unfocused to her right, his fingers idly tapping against the surface of his desk. His head was rather noisy, shivering and sparking, but exactly what he was feeling wasn't very clear. Actually, come to think of it, Snape's emotions often weren't very clear, even when he wasn't trying to hide them — through occlumency, she meant, his face was almost always blank — at least relative to most people.

She didn't know why that was. Snape did feel things, obviously, she just wasn't sure what to call it sometimes. Which wasn't that strange, really. Everyone's experience of even the basic feelings was slightly different, varying shades that were similar enough to use the same word to describe them but still distinct — like how there were a lot of different colours that were all called green, anger or happiness or fear were like that. And Snape's mind did throw off feelings she could easily identify, there were just also ones she couldn't, rather more often than average. Which was an interesting thing to notice, she just wasn't sure it was relevant.

(She was still a bumbling amateur at this mind magic stuff, in some ways, she didn't always know what she was doing or what things really meant.)

Anyway, after a long, lingering silence, Snape finally spoke. "I'm sure you're intelligent enough to realise this is not something I can simply ignore. However, the usual reinforcement I might use to motivate someone in your position would do, I suspect, more harm than good."

Liz frowned. "I don't understand."

"In dealing with certain students, before anything else I try to avoid framing myself as a hostile authority, an opponent who must be confronted or subverted, whose influence must be escaped. It does neither of us any good, Miss Potter, if I maneuver myself into a position where you come to see me as an enemy."

...She still didn't get it. Or, not entirely, anyway — she got that he was saying he didn't want to do anything to make the idea of cooperating with him too...unappealing. To stay a person who would help with things, and not just another adult she had to be careful around. She just didn't get why he thought this was such a big risk he had to be careful about it. Like, not only why he cared — it was his job to look after the Slytherins, she guessed, he had even said as much — but also why he seemed so convinced it should be so easy for him to do the wrong thing and Liz would...what, treat him like he was Vernon, or something? It was weird.

"I wonder if we might be able to come to a different sort of arrangement." Leaning back in his chair, his arms hanging limply across the armrests, Snape nodded at the bookshelves to Liz's right. "It is clear you have some significant talent for charms. It may interest you to know this is likely something you inherited from your mother — Lily had similar instincts, and such things are often heritable, especially mother to child." Liz had no idea how to feel about that...or even whether she should be feeling anything about it at all. "I understand you also have a special interest in battlemagic, and curiosity for the graphic arts."

Liz couldn't help a suspicious frown — how the hell did he know about that? She didn't think she'd told anyone... He must have spotted her with a runes book at some point. "So?"

"I have among my personal collection a number of volumes in those subjects. Most you will not find in the school library outside of the Restricted Section, or even at all, and some it is unlawful for any but licensed professionals to possess."

...No. He couldn't be saying what Liz thought he was saying...

"I am willing to allow you to borrow from a selection I deem safe for your consumption, as a reward for a sustained improvement in your written work."

He was. Jesus, she... Liz glanced toward his bookshelves, biting the inside of her lip. She'd admit, she was tempted. He was a master potioneer and alchemist, yes, but he'd also been a Death Eater, he'd fought in the war — he had to have some neat books on dark magic and curses and stuff. And, the way he'd, this summer, drawn a couple of glowing symbols onto the table to cast a paling... Liz didn't know how to do it herself, but she'd read enough about this stuff to know that had been runic casting, which was, just, the coolest thing. (And far above her level at the moment, but there was nothing wrong with looking ahead.) He did admit he'd be limiting what he'd let her look at, so he probably wouldn't give her anything too advanced or dangerous, but...

She didn't care. She wanted it.

Her fingers wanted to twitch, she wrapped them around the bottle of calming potion, the glass smooth and cold against her fingers (with just the slightest tickle of magic leaking through). Her neck and her back were tingling with nerves, enough she thought her voice might sound slightly shaky. "How are we defining a sustained improvement, exactly?"

She thought she might have caught a surge of something in Snape's head, just a flash, it was gone before Liz could decipher it. "As your head of house, I have access to all your marks in all your classes. I know you are averaging Es in Defence, As in Potions, Charms, and Cambrian, Ps in Transfiguration, History, and Astronomy, and Ds in Herbology. I suspect you are sabotaging yourself in the written work for all of these subjects, possibly excluding Defence and Astronomy, and that you aren't putting any effort into Herbology at all." Snape ticked up a single eyebrow making the statement a question.

Liz felt the squirming urge to move, somehow managed to stop herself from shifting awkwardly in her chair. She wasn't quite certain what to say, so she just nodded.

"I do not expect you to suddenly become an O student overnight — though I am certain you have the ability to do so, I would not ask such a drastic change from you so quickly. Instead, I simply wish to see an improvement, even a small one. By the end of October, get at least one of your A classes — Potions, Charms, Cambrian — up to an E-average, and one of your P classes — Transfiguration, Astronomy, History — up to an A. If you feel you have put in an effort your professors' marking does not reflect, bring examples of your work to me, and I will review it myself — it is not truly improved marks I am looking for, but rather a more honest effort. Focus on whichever one you like in each set, I will not tell you which to prioritise."

She...thought she could do that. It'd be a struggle, for multiple reasons. It was just habit now, doing badly, she hadn't even realised she was still doing it. She'd have to really think about it, pay close attention to what she was doing, it would be difficult. Also, Hermione had kind of had a point — Liz never had been taught how to write essays properly, so...she'd have to learn. But it was doable, she thought. Especially with the temptation of Snape's library hanging over her head. She'd try to do it with...Cambrian and Transfiguration, she thought, Cambrian would probably be easiest and she could use thinking about Transfiguration harder anyway...

Unfortunately, Snape wasn't done yet. "The exception is Herbology — your open disdain for that class is unacceptable. If your professor were anybody else, they would be seeking some sort of formal disciplinary action. A modest improvement there, to the standard set by the rest of your work at present, is the only specific requirement I am setting."

Liz winced.

"No? I am willing to listen to a reasonable objection."

"I don't..." She trailed off, tried to swallow down her nerves. It was fine. This wasn't even a bad thing, really — she wasn't supposed to tell people about what went on at home, but the neighbours had seen her at it. "Back at... I had to do the gardening, all the time. It was...one of the hardest chores, easy. Herbology is just... I don't like it."

Snape was seething, rage cold and frothing, intense enough it was actually showing on his face, a barely-noticeable glare. It wasn't focused at her, though, this was fine. Baffling, but. "Fine. I will have a talk with Sprout — I will not be sharing any sensitive details you would not want bandied about, simply a request for leniency. I would prefer that you at least participate, even if you do not do so enthusiastically, but if you feel you cannot I suppose we shall have to live with that."

Liz tried to keep her relief from showing too much, but it was probably bloody obvious. "Right. Okay."

"By the end of October, I will have put together a selection of suitable books, and if I am satisfied with your effort you may choose any one of them. At the end of November, if you have continued to improve, you may choose a second, and a third at the end of December, and so on. If you wish to swap out one book for another, you may do so, though you will be limited to a maximum of whatever number you have by then earned. We will discuss your progress in the spring, and decide then if modifications to our arrangement should be made.

"Are these terms acceptable?"

She nodded — those terms were great, actually. It wouldn't be very easy, fighting against her instincts built up over years, but Snape wasn't really asking for all that much. He'd probably raise the bar as they went on, but...Liz had noticed he hadn't said she would lose the books she'd already "earned" if she failed to meet the mark for the next month, so. If she stopped trying, he'd probably make a fuss about it later down the line, but for a while, at least...

For a moment, it looked like Snape was about to say something, somewhat exasperated by the feel of it. But he blew off whatever it was with a sigh, nodded back. "Unless you had any concerns you would like to bring to my attention, Miss Potter."

As though she'd ever brought anything to him before. Taking that as a dismissal, Liz got to her feet, slipping the calming potion back into her pocket, and started for the door.

She was just reaching for the handle when Snape called, "Miss Potter." She glanced over her shoulder to see Snape had moved, standing in front of one of his bookshelves. Pulling out a book, he started back across the room toward her, stopped somewhere in the middle, holding the book out toward her. "A sample to get you started."

Frowning, Liz retraced her steps, he handed it over. It was relatively new, so far as the books in the school went — ordinary-looking enough it could have come out of a muggle press, really, the only signs of age a few nicks along the edges of the cover, thin creases in the spine. Printed in plain letters on the front cover was Fundamental Mechanics of Cursing, an analysis of theme and function in harmful magics.

...Neat.

"Thank you, Professor."

Snape seemed faintly amused, for some reason. Ticking up one eyebrow in that way he had, "Miss Potter. You're dismissed."

Right, okay. She should go track down Hermione, and talk about that essay-writing thing. She should probably put this away somewhere first, though...

---

October 1992

---

Liz didn't really know Tracey Davis very well.

Relatively speaking, Liz did spend a fair bit of time in Tracey's general vicinity, but they didn't talk much at all. Tracey was Daphne's friend, so since Liz did sort of get along with Daphne — she didn't have anything against Daphne, really, but they weren't really friends the way she was with Dorea and Hermione — Tracey was always hanging around, but she was always just...kind of there. The few times she did speak at all, it was usually sarcastic, but so dry Liz wouldn't notice if she couldn't read her mind, the kind of thing you could get away with saying and not be called out for being disrespectful.

(Liz herself had been quite proficient in that art, once upon a time.)

Other than that, really the only contact she and Tracey had had at all had been the Christmas gift Tracey had sent her — Tracey had apparently even made the scarf and the hat herself. Liz never had paid her back for that, because she really didn't know how to, she didn't really... When she was expected to do things for people, she'd always been explicitly told what she was supposed to be doing, she didn't know how to figure that kind of shite out for herself. And she wore the scarf pretty much all the time, so she should probably find some way to pay her back, but...

That was before she and Tracey had been assigned each other's partners in Herbology. They didn't used to have partners in Herbology, but they did now, especially when dealing with these mandrake things. (They were terrible, she hated them.) The timing was sort of suspicious: suddenly having Herbology partners had happened just a few days after she'd talked to Snape, giving him enough time to talk to Sprout, and her to think about it. She wondered if Sprout thought that, if Liz had to work with a partner, she'd...be less willing to skimp on the work, and screw the other person over?

That did kind of make sense, she guessed, but if Sprout had picked almost anyone else in the class she might not have cared. She did kind of owe Tracey, it made her uncomfortable, and making this class more difficult for her just because she really didn't like it was just kind of...

Of course, one of the few things she'd learned about Tracey since they'd been made partners was that she didn't like Herbology much either — as long as she kept her half-arsing at more or less the same level as Tracey's half-arsing, that seemed perfectly fair, didn't it?

Sprout wasn't a complete idiot, unfortunately. Since they had a set stock of mandrakes — and a few other exotic plants that would eventually be turned into potions to stock the Hospital Wing by Snape, but the mandrakes were the most annoying — that they were supposed to be taking care of, Sprout could evenly divide the necessary work between all the pairs of students. So it was very clearly obvious if any of the pairs weren't finishing their work.

For a week now, Sprout had been letting people who'd finished before class ended leave early. Today, she hadn't let Liz and Tracey leave until they were finished.

As clumsy as Tracey was with this stuff, and with how much Liz had to restrain herself from breaking something out of sheer frustration, they weren't done repotting the fucking mandrakes until nearly fifteen minutes after class had been dismissed.

Liz was really starting to hate Sprout. Like a lot.

So now they were walking back up to the castle alone, spattered with dirt and fertiliser — Tracey sunk into herself a bit, shoulders hunched and arms tightly wrapped around her middle, Liz gritting her teeth, focusing very hard on keeping herself inside her own head. She'd read accidental mind magic had a lower threshold than normal accidental magic (that is, it happened a hell of a lot easier) and could get very nasty — like, driving people permanently insane nasty — so probably best not to touch anyone else until she'd calmed down a bit. So she didn't know why Tracey was being so...stiff and shrinking or whatever. Liz's ability to read faces and body language and stuff, which she knew she must have been able to do before, had suffered pretty badly after years of cheating with mind-magic superpowers, so. Definitely unpleasant, but Liz couldn't guess how, exactly.

The dinner hour had already started, but she and Tracey both turned for the stairs down to Slytherin instead of toward the Great Hall. Neither of them had said anything, Liz guessing they'd both just decided they'd rather clean up before eating. Liz nearly took a glance at her head to make sure Tracey wasn't feeling anything shifty or suspicious or anything, before catching herself by the skin of her teeth — right, angry, she wasn't supposed to do that.

Of course, she wasn't really supposed to eavesdrop in people's heads at all, but she couldn't really help it most of the time. And she'd never promised Tracey she wouldn't, so most of the time she didn't even bother trying not to.

The Slytherin dorm was mostly empty when they got down there, unsurprisingly, just a few older kids sitting by one of the fires, one reading a book alone by the windows. On the way down the stairs, they passed by a few fourth-year girls — Liz got a cheerful wave from Camilla Flint, Mark's little sister. By the giggles she heard after they passed, Liz guessed her return wave was just as awkward as it felt.

Stepping into the bathroom, Liz yanked her robe over her head, tossed it into the used towel basket. Technically, they weren't supposed to put their clothes there, but the elves always got things back to the right person no matter how mixed up they got, so she doubted it made any difference. Tracey shot her a glance, then started off away from the sinks. She must feel filthy enough she thought she needed a shower right this second, which, okay then. Liz's hands were mostly clean, since she'd been wearing gloves, but she still gave them a good rinse before pulling at her scarf, moving it up like a headband to hold her hair back, she glanced up at the mirror to make sure—

Liz froze. "What is that?"

Tracey twitched, dropping her robe to the tile, jerked around to stare wide-eyed at Liz — yanking the hem of her vest down to where it belonged, sharp and firm. Liz caught something from her head (her anger at Sprout had vanished abruptly anyway), but she couldn't really say what it was, something dark and itchy and, just, unpleasant. "What?" Tracey's voice sounded a bit shaky, the odd whatever it was in her head flaring a bit, probably realising that herself.

"Your back. What is that?"

Her head cold and sticky and gross, Tracey was suddenly very pale. "I don't know what—"

"Shut up," Liz said, a faint tingle of magic on her tongue.

Tracey's voice cut out with a faint choking noise. That unpleasant whatever it was growing stronger, there was also a shiver of fear cutting under it now. Like many kids from noble families, Tracey must have some very minimal training in occlumency — enough to recognise what she'd just done for what it was, but not enough to actually do anything about it.

Which meant Tracey knew she was a mind mage now. Whoops? She'd been trying to keep that a secret, but... "You might be figuring it out just now, but I can tell when people lie to me. Maybe don't." Okay, that was much less...nice-sounding than she should probably be going for right now, but she had absolutely no idea how to do this sort of thing. Or even if she should do this sort of thing, bringing this to Snape would be better, but she wanted to confirm she'd seen what she thought she'd seen first.

Right, definitely not nice enough, Tracey was cringing away from her, shrinking even more than she had on the way down here, black dread rising with...something else, something tingly and shifty and kind of...

Tracey's breaths going thin and shallow even as Liz tried to figure out what the hell that was, it finally clicked. It didn't seem to be quite exactly the same as what happened to her, but it was sort of similar, Liz thought, in the same general family of badness. Plucking up her potion from the counter, Liz walked over to Tracey, twisted off the cap before holding it out to her. "Calming potion. Take a sip."

She didn't move, just staring confusedly at her. Well, in her generally direction, at least, her eyes weren't quite getting as high as Liz's.

Liz sighed. "I'm fucked up, remember? Snape gives them to me. Take it." She put the slightest tinge of compulsion on the words, but just a little bit, Tracey could probably shake it off easily if she wanted to.

In fact, the compulsion didn't take at all, splashing uselessly against the solid block of ice in her head. (She did need to push harder if someone was focusing on something, this kind of panic thing was probably a similar idea.) But Tracey reached for the bottle anyway, her fingers shaking, took a rather large gulp. Most of the unpleasantness was washed away in a cool, soothing wave, not so much pushing the bad out as just inundating it, overpowering it, Tracey going light-headed enough she teetered in place a little.

Huh, so that's what that looked like. Neat. Liz nearly took the bottle before second-guessing herself, let Tracey hang onto it — she probably wouldn't need more so quickly, but just in case. "Show me."

Even through the haze of the calming potion, Tracey flinched, her shoulders hitching with tension. Not as bad as before, but it was noticeable, a shade of tingly anxiety bubbling at the back of her head. "Liz, I—"

"Show me."

There was a very faint flare of lukewarm anger, as easily muted by the calming potion as everything else. Liz had actually put a bit of power into this one, it took easily enough, but Tracey could feel it happening, and was clearly less than happy about it. Her breath hitching a bit, the movement jerking and robotic, Tracey turned around, reached to lift her vest up about halfway.

Her back was covered in scars. There were dozens of them, most of them little, long narrow lines a faint white — they looked like cuts, old and long ago healed — a few little...slightly shiny-looking patches — burns, maybe? Most of them were little, but not all of them — there were a few here and there that had obviously been deeper gashes, raised lines darkened to a moody reddish-purple. The worst was wider than Liz's finger, angled top-left to bottom-right, long enough it vanished under Tracey's shorts at her hip and above where she was holding her shirt.

It was obvious what this was, she didn't need to be told — she couldn't imagine any other situation where someone would get this many scars on their back, and not have them anywhere else, it was the only thing that made sense. Liz knew she had something vaguely similar-looking herself. She couldn't see them, of course, but she could feel them, the slightly raised scars hard bumps under her fingers. But Tracey's looked rather worse than she assumed her own did. Not in the number of them, Liz thought she might actually have more, but in the size and the thickness of them. They looked... Well, they looked like someone had taken a knife to Tracey's back, in the cases of the burns like, she didn't know, a cigarette or something — not actually a cigarette, the burns were too long, not just a little circle, but something hot, anyway — most of the cuts shallow, but some of them far too deep, deep enough Liz was certain there must have been blood everywhere.

That worst one looked about as bad as the middle of the web on Liz's chest, it must have been deep enough that, if they didn't have magic and stuff, Tracey could well have died. Especially if she'd been rather smaller at the time...

But it hadn't actually been a knife, since Tracey was raised with magic, these were probably from curses. Though, when she thought about it, that made it kind of fucking weird she had scars at all. She meant, whoever did it must have known someone would notice eventually, but other people weren't to know what went on at home, wouldn't it make sense to heal them so there weren't any scars left? Or, at least, get rid of the scars later, that was a thing people could do, so Tracey had to suffer the unpleasantness of the healing process, but still leaving nothing behind.

Unless...

Unless whoever it was had used some seriously dark curses. Many of those interfered with the healing process. It was the same reason Snape and Pomfrey hadn't been able to get rid of all the scars on Liz's chest — it was possible, but they'd pretty much have to cut everything off and regrow it from scratch, which was a very involved procedure they couldn't just do in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts (and also blood alchemy, which was only sort of legal in Britain). If even some of these were done with dark curses.

Liz reached out, pressed her fingers to the middle of that worst scar — Tracey jumped, her shoulders hunching, something twitchy and unpleasant flaring in her head, though much dimmer than it would have been without the calming potion — then pulled away again, rubbing her thumb against her fingertips. It was very faint, but there was some kind of magic there, something sticky and slimy, like partially-dried sick. Probably dark magic, then.

Hmm.

She stopped holding on to the compulsion, and Tracey shrugged it off a couple seconds later, yanking her vest back down and jerking a step away. "Your father? No, wait," she said before Tracey could protest, "it wouldn't be him, I forgot." Tracey's father had died in the war when she'd only been a few months old — he'd fought for the Light, which the rest of his family apparently hadn't liked much. "Who?"

Tracey hesitated for a moment, her feet shifting in place, glaring down at the floor. For a long moment, she didn't say anything, biting at her lip hard enough it actually looked painful. Liz wondered if she'd have to compel it out of her again but, her knuckles around the bottle turning white, she finally spoke, the words coming low, half-choked, barely above a whisper. "My grandfather would prefer a pureblood heir."

...That was stupid, but okay. Though, Liz wasn't certain what hurting Tracey was supposed to accomplish there, no matter what he did she would still be— "Did he actually try to kill you?" That biggest curse scar on her back was kind of...

Tracey clenched her jaw, going almost painfully tense, her head sick and shivery. She didn't answer.

But she didn't have to say it. Liz knew, while not entirely certain how she knew, that at the very least Tracey believed her grandfather fully intended to murder her.

In fact, Liz knew, somehow, that Tracey didn't expect to live to her fifteenth birthday. She'd only lived this long because her mother had kept her away from home as much as possible, but she (and the Greengrasses and the Monroes and the Glanwvyls) couldn't protect her forever. Why specifically her fifteenth birthday, Liz didn't know, but that was the date Tracey had in her head, that her grandfather would make sure she was dead before then, one way or another.

Well. Liz guessed she knew how she was paying Tracey back for the scarf.

Bursting into Snape's office just off the common room, Liz wasn't entirely surprised to find it was occupied. Snape was probably the professor who was absent at meals the most, it wasn't unusual to look up to the staff table and not see him there...which, that might have something to do with how skinny he was, come to think of it. Anyway, he was sitting in one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace, reading what Liz had learned to recognise from the quality of the paper to be a magical-made magazine. Given this was Snape, probably an academic journal of some kind — somehow, Liz just couldn't see Snape reading Witch Weekly.

He barely twitched at the intrusion, calmly turning to look their way. And then, once he saw them, his eyes tipped up to the ceiling with a sigh, a pulse of exasperation crawling across the air. There was a sense on it of a, kind of, of course this was going to happen, unsurprised while also annoyed, but also a hint of...embarrassment?

Liz blinked, glanced down at herself, and then at Tracey. Right, mages didn't consider these shorts and vests to be decent on their own, they were supposed to be worn under robes. She kept forgetting about that...

Which meant she'd essentially just dragged Tracey across Slytherin in her underwear. Whoops? Tracey had seemed a bit...shifty, she didn't know — whatever it had been going on in her head, the calming potion muted it enough Liz had hardly noticed — but she hadn't actually protested...and the common room had been practically empty, anyway...though not completely empty...

Yeah, whoops. Her bad.

Leaving his journal on a side table, Snape pushed up to his feet. "Miss Potter, Miss Davis. I'm certain you have a decent explanation for bursting in here in such a state."

Liz turned to Tracey. "Show him."

"Potter!" Snape seemed rather taken aback, that she was just openly compelling Tracey like this right in front of him, a cold kind of shock ringing out. A tingle stretched across the air, presumably Snape reaching toward Tracey's mind to break it. But he was so surprised his reaction was delayed a couple seconds.

So, before Snape could undo it, Tracey had already turned around, her shirt lifted up again. And the tingle of mind magic on the air dissolved into nothing.

Staring at the scars on Tracey's back, Snape had gone still, and quiet, and cold.

It was actually a little bit scary. Liz had seen anger in people's heads before, obviously, but it was usually... Well, anger tended to be a hot and noisy and messy thing, like fire, spreading and roaring across the person's mind. Which, that could be scary enough, Liz sometimes felt like it would burn her if she got to close, instinctively pulled away — it didn't help that the feel of it always reminded Liz of Vernon's rages. This, though, was different. Snape was, just, absolutely incandescent, yes, but it wasn't the fiery, wild kind of anger Liz was used to. Instead it was cold, so cold, as still and frigid as a deep winter night, and sharp, instead of flaring and raging around keenly focused, intense and, just...

...dangerous. That was the word Liz was thinking of, really, dangerous. She was abruptly reminded, feeling the coldly rational yet murderous fury in Snape's head, that he had been a Death Eater back in the war. It was weird how easy it was to forget that, most of the time.

Finally, Snape twitched into motion again, breaking Liz's compulsion with an easy flick of thought. While Tracey jumped, jerking her shirt down again — and took a very obvious step away from her — Liz said, "It looks bad, but it's even worse than it looks. She thinks her grandfather is going to make certain she'd dead before her fifteen birthday."

Snape grit his teeth, the frozen blade in his head growing even sharper. "I suppose Lord Davis doesn't want to suffer the humiliation of approaching his peers to arrange a suitable husband for his half-blood heir." Oh, right, fifteen was the age a lot of the mages in the noble families got their marriage stuff settled, she'd entirely forgotten about that. It did sort of make sense that that would be Tracey's grandfather's deadline, then. "Have a seat, Miss Davis," he said, nodding to the armchairs by the fire. "Miss Potter, five points from Slytherin. I will let it go this time, but if this sort of behaviour becomes a habit we will be having a conversation on what constitutes acceptable use of mind magic on one's peers."

He didn't say it out loud, but Liz got the message anyway — you did a Bad Thing, but we're basically saving Tracey's life right now, so I'm not going to do anything about it. She gave him a little compliant nod.

But Tracey hadn't moved, her shoulders hunching, nervous tension slipping through the haze of the calming potion. "Professor, this... I don't—"

"This ends now, Miss Davis," Snape said, his voice a low hiss, yet somehow hard and unyielding. "Sit down."

"But—"

"Miss Davis, after what Potter has just told me, I cannot simply do nothing. I will be intervening, no matter what happens in this room today. Your cooperation merely broadens the possible interventions I may take. Without it, I may be limited to the most...extreme options."

Liz blinked — had Snape just implied he would kill Tracey's grandfather if he thought he had to, to make it stop? Huh.

Apparently, Tracey thought the same thing. A shiver of surprise ran through her, but very mild, suffocated by the calming potion. So instead of the shocked outburst Liz might have expected, she just stared up at Snape, doubtfully frowning. "But...he's a Lord of the Wizengamot."

"I think you will find, Miss Davis, that I do not care. Sit down," he repeated, pointing toward the armchairs by the fire.

Her mind cool and smooth from the potion, but still muddled by confusion, Tracey meekly obeyed.

"Get out, Potter."

Liz glanced at Tracey, bit her lip. "Ah, sir, can I have another potion? I gave one of mine to Tracey, but I think she should keep it."

Weirdly, the sharp fury in Snape's head actually lessened a little. A flick of his fingers, a crackle of magic on the air, and one of the drawers near his desk rattled open, a familiar bottle of pale blue potion whipped across the air toward Liz. She caught it, the smooth glass hitting her palm with a hard smack. "Go."

Liz was just stepping through the door when she heard Snape add, "Thirty points to Slytherin, Miss Potter." So, that meant he'd actually given her twenty-five points over this. She got that message too, though he didn't say it out loud — I actually think you did a Good Thing, despite doing a Bad Thing to accomplish it, and I don't actually care about the Bad Thing that much, but I had to say something about it, just to make the point the Bad Thing wouldn't have been acceptable if you weren't doing it to do a Good Thing.

Shaking her head to herself, Liz closed the door behind her, a smirk twitching at her lips. Snape-speak wasn't that hard to interpret at all, once she got a feel for it.

Anyway, dinner had to be nearly over by now, but she should probably go get dressed first...

፠

Four days later, Liz received an unlabeled package at breakfast. Her ring, enchanted to detect curses, didn't react, so she opened it to find chocolate — a few bars, the unfamiliar labels were in...German? She thought that was German. She didn't recognise the brand, but they did look kind of fancy.

Flipping through them, she noticed each bar had the same shape hand-drawn on a blank spot in the packaging on the back: an old-fashioned wheel, flowers and wheat woven between the spokes. Liz was pretty sure that was a symbol of House Greengrass.

Daphne, sitting a couple metres away with Tracey, pretended not to notice Liz was looking at her.

Liz frowned for a second, then shrugged, slipping the chocolate into her bookbag. Apparently, the reward for doing things Daphne approved of was fancy chocolate. Good to know.

---

Books and chocolate are the best forms of motivation.

Might be a little while until the next update again. I plan to be putting more effort into the collab and Echoes over the next couple weeks, which might mean less going into this, we'll see.

—Lysandra