Only half-awake, Dorea had the delirious thought that her bed was moving. Which was really a quite peculiar thing for her bed to be doing. It took longer than it probably should have for her to put together her bed wasn't rocking back and forth — there was a hand on her shoulder, gently but insistently pushing at her.
"What is it?" She wasn't sure that came out right, she still felt numb and sluggish from sleep.
"The Aurors want to speak to you, Dorea."
Her forehead creased in a frown, the thought bouncing meaninglessly in her head. Why the hell would the Aurors want to talk to her? Especially this early, was it even morning yet? "Huh?"
"They're downstairs, waiting. I tried to delay them until later in the morning, but they tired of my stalling after only a couple hours." It was at this point that Dorea finally realised it wasn't her mother waking her up, it was Andi instead — Dorea had put her in charge of most of the House's legal and financial things, if the Aurors were trying to find her they probably would have gone to Andi first. After all, her official residence in the Ministry records was Ancient House, she wasn't certain anyone knew where...
Wait. The Aurors were downstairs, in her house, right now.
Dorea popped upright, her head swirling for a couple seconds from sitting up too quickly. Thankfully, Andi hadn't turned the lights on, she only had to deal with the hall light coming through the door and the pale pre-dawn in her window. Andi was seated on her bed nearby, a strained, worried expression tugging at her lips — it was subtle, but Dorea had known Andi long enough to read her by now. "What happened?"
Glancing at the wall quick for a second, thinking, Andi then gathered one of Dorea's hands in both of hers, soft, gentle. Which was honestly just making her nervous — whatever it was, if Andi thought taking this kind of care telling her was necessary, it couldn't be anything good. Andi took a slow, bracing breath, before meeting Dorea's eyes again, her voice soft and slow. "Late last evening, the Ministry was alerted that a high-security prisoner was no longer in his cell. Dorea...your father escaped from Azkaban."
For long seconds, she just stared blankly back at Andi, too shocked to say anything. Or really think all that much. "...Oh."
Dorea had been under the impression that nobody had ever escaped from Azkaban before. It would be extremely difficult to pull off. The island was a couple miles from the nearest land, much of that distance within the range of the anti-transportation wards, and the sea was quite cold up there — it was possible to swim across it, though, that wasn't the real problem. There were dementors in Azkaban, hundreds of them, more than any other single location in the world. It often only took a couple weeks, or less, before prisoners were essentially comatose, trapped in the unending nightmares the dementors caused with their very presence.
When she'd had it explained to her just what Azkaban was like, she'd been astounded that such a place was permitted to exist. They were essentially subjecting all of their prisoners to the worst sort of psychological torture — and this was Britain! Even people who were given short sentences, even just a couple months, they were never the same again after. It wasn't unusual for prisoners to die within a year, because they were too deep in the dementor's influence to remember to eat. It was bad enough that a sentence of five years or longer was considered to be a slow-motion execution.
She'd heard people say it was remarkable that a handful of people currently in Azkaban — including Sirius, a couple anti-Statutarian activists, and a slew of Death Eaters — had survived there as long as they had. Supposedly, Sirius, one of the anti-Statutarians (Dorea forgot her name), and Bellatrix Lestrange were even coherent, enough they could converse with the Hit Wizards doing their monthly inspections. Apparently, that practically never happened, everyone was a drooling unresponsive lump after only a short time.
Of course, it only made sense that, if someone were to escape, it would be one of the few people who had actually managed to keep their heads.
...And Sirius was out. Somewhere.
Dorea swallowed. "Wh– Why do they want to talk to me?"
It could be her imagination, she wasn't looking very closely, but she thought Andi was annoyed. "They wish to put you on record saying that he hasn't contacted you and—"
"They do know I've never met him, right?" Dorea had always known her father was in prison, and that she'd probably never meet him, since she'd been too young to really understand why. Mum might not have been able to explain everything about the war and just how awful Azkaban was when she'd been three or four, but she'd never lied to Dorea about where he was and the likelihood of him ever being released.
And, honestly, she'd long ago come to accept that. There'd been a time, especially shortly after she'd met Cassiopeia and Andi and started to learn about the Blacks, that she'd been...curious about him, but even then she'd never seriously entertained the idea of actually meeting him. It was, just...not something she ever thought about, really.
The idea that he was on the loose somewhere — that he might try to contact her somehow — was actually very surreal. Like, so outside of her expectations of what could happen that it didn't even feel real, yet.
"I have told them as much — your guess is as good as mine on whether or not they believe me," Andi muttered, just below a growl. Yep, annoyed, no doubt about that now. "I suspect someone wanted to take a statement and extract certain concessions from you, so they would have grounds to charge you for collaboration if they later find proof you've assisted him."
"...Couldn't they do that anyway? If I do help him somehow, I mean."
"No, actually. Criminals wanted by the Ministry have the right to seek shelter with their families — you would be well within your rights as Lady Black to shield him from the Aurors while negotiating with the Wizengamot on his behalf. If they have you agree to assist them, however, then you're vulnerable to criminal charges yourself if you renege."
"Oh." That was...slightly odd. But okay. "So...you're suggesting I shouldn't agree to anything."
Andi's lips twitched, a shade of amusement slipping through her irritation. "I would avoid agreeing to hand over any member of the family without terms, yes. You should do whatever you can to prevent suspicion coming upon yourself, of course, but I would give them nothing further — after all, allowing the Ministry to claim primacy over the life of a member of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, no matter how estranged, would set a bad precedent."
With a little hum, Dorea nodded — she could see how that might be a problem, yes. No matter how much people might accuse her of defending a mass-murdering terrorist, she really couldn't just hand over a member of the family without reaching a beneficial agreement with the government first. Politics. "Right. Um. Should I bother getting dressed?
Or would innocent little girl dragged out of bed be better here?"
This time Andi actually smiled. "Speaking to the Aurors in your nightdress would be too inappropriate. Get dressed, but don't put in that much effort — definitely skip brushing your hair."
Dorea couldn't help a little wince, her hair was always bloody awful in the morning, but okay. "Right. Give me a minute, then."
By the time Dorea made it downstairs — in a muggle dress but with enchanted jewellery, the silver necklace Cassiopeia had given her that detected potions and curses and the like, a couple rings on her fingers, the most prominent the family signet ring (her hair still a complete mess, of course) — she heard voices coming from the direction of the kitchen, by the sound of it the Aurors bickering with Mum. As she walked closer, she realised the Aurors were talking about searching the house, Mum was (rather condescendingly) telling them they'd be doing no such thing, and this was a muggle home, what did they expect to find anyway — also, the boys were still asleep, so keep your voice down, sit, and drink your tea. By the sound of it, the Aurors were less than happy with being talked down to.
It probably didn't help that the person talking down to them was a muggle.
Dorea stepped into the kitchen to find three Aurors — overkill, that, honestly — she only recognised Sir Proudfoot off the top of her head. (Cassiopeia had been an Auror herself, she'd brought Dorea down to the Ministry a couple times, she'd met a handful before starting at Hogwarts.) Two of them were sitting at the kitchen table, steaming cups of tea sitting in front of them, a third standing by the door out into the back garden, as though guarding the exit. Mum was by the oven, leaning one hip against the cabinets with her arms crossed over her chest, still in her nightclothes, silky vest and shorts which were perfectly ordinary by muggle standards but perfectly scandalous by magical ones — and she'd clearly fixed up her hair a bit, brushed through and neatly tied back, so Dorea assumed she was making the Aurors uncomfortable on purpose. (Her mother was such a Slytherin, sometimes.)
Of the people crammed in the kitchen, Mum was facing the door, so she noticed her first. "Dorea, lovey, sit down and I'll have tea for you in a second."
Slipping without really thinking into her proper polite magical noble girl manners Cassiopeia had drilled into her head, Dorea said, "Yes, Mother, thank you." She drifted over to one of the seats, sank down gracefully — complete with the little sway that was meant to have robes swishing out of the way, despite that she wasn't wearing any. She rubbed at one of her eyes for a moment, which was definitely a breach of propriety, but also they'd barged into her house before the sun had even risen, they'd read it either as her being tired or being a little crude as an intentional snub. (Assuming they'd been raised in the Noble Houses, which they might or might not have.) "Sirs. To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence on this lovely morning?"
The Aurors introduced themselves before actually answering her question — as was proper, in polite circles you didn't have a conversation with someone without giving them your name first. Dorea had never met Sir Blishwick or Sir Pickering before, though she knew the Blishwicks had been largely Voldemort supporters (which might explain why he was by the door all surly and stand-off-ish), and she'd literally never heard of the Pickerings, so they were probably poor commoners. With the staunchly anti-Voldemort Proudfoot, that meant the Aurors they'd sent were about as mixed in their politics as they could possibly be. Interesting.
They started getting to business at about the time Mum was setting a cup of tea down in front of her. "I'm afraid this isn't a social visit, milady," Proudfoot was saying. It was still bloody weird, hearing people refer to her as milady, despite that it was technically accurate, being the head of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and all.
"Thank you, Mother," Dorea muttered. (It would be rude not to say anything, and people of good breeding didn't do anything so crass as call their mother 'mum'.) Back to the Aurors, "I hadn't thought it was, Sir — I don't often receive guests before the break of dawn."
Proudfoot's lips twitched, a little, and Pickering said, "Yes, sorry about showing up so early and pulling you out of bed, but our superiors insisted we speak to you first off. Hopefully we'll be out of your hair before too long." Yep, definitely from a working-class magical family, that one — she even caught Blishwick scowling a little over his shoulder.
"Let's hope so. What matter can possibly be so important as to see you here so early?" Dorea took a slow sip of her tea, trying to look both sleepy and unconcerned.
"Milady, surely Madam Tonks informed you of your father's escape," Proudfoot said, his eyes glancing toward Andi, who'd joined Mum looming a few steps away from the table.
After setting down her teacup (because it was rude to speak with a drink in hand, the things fancy people came up with), cooly, "So she did, but I fail to see why you should wish to speak with me about him. Surely you can't believe I somehow aided in his escape."
Blishwick let out a soft scoff — why, she couldn't guess. "You should get the quill set up." So they would have her on record, he meant.
And so they did. The process went smoothly enough, Proudfoot pulling a roll of parchment and an enchanted quill seemingly out of thin air, quickly tuned it to record all of their voices in different colours of ink. Between three Aurors, two witnesses, and Dorea, that was a lot of colours, but they decided Blishwick wouldn't be participating in the interview, and only Andi would be acting as witness. (Which meant Mum was expected to remain silent, no matter what was said — clearly these men didn't know her mother at all, if they expected her to not speak a word just because she was supposed to.) Once everything was settled, Proudfoot asked the first question: "When did you first meet Sirius Black?"
Starting right off with a trick question, she saw. Dorea pondered how to respond for a second while taking a sip of tea, slowly returned it to its saucer before speaking. "Do you intend to entrap me, Sir Proudfoot?"
"I'm not sure what you mean, milady."
Dorea allowed herself a very undignified roll of her eyes. "That you would ask that question at all reveals you have some strange ideas — and besides, even if there were something you could catch me out on, I'm not careless enough to incriminate myself." Pickering was moving to speak, so before he could she said, "I have never met Sirius Black. I understand I've been in his presence, but that would have been before his imprisonment in November of Eighty-One — I don't suppose you expect I should include events for which I was an infant."
"You've never visited your father," Pickering said, sounding rather doubtful.
"Should you not know that already? I understand the Hit Wizards keep a full accounting of all the visits made to Azkaban." Of course, there was also a long practice of bribing the officers on duty to keep visits off the books — surely the Aurors were aware of that. "No, I never visited Sirius. Perhaps now you can understand my confusion at the thought that you wish to speak with me at all."
The Aurors glanced at each other quick — apparently, the possibility that she might not have ever spoken to Sirius in her life had simply never occurred to them. Which was sort of ridiculous. Sure, she had gone through a phase when she'd been curious about him, but even at its peak she wouldn't have subjected herself to dementors just to have a brief conversation with him, they sounded awful. (And in any case, Andi had taken it off the table from the very beginning, for medical reasons — apparently, dementors and epilepsy didn't mix.)
Proudfoot reached forward, holding the nib of the quill between his fingers so it couldn't write, had a quick, whispered conversation with Pickering. Probably discussing skipping ahead in the interview. Sure enough, when they were done, Proudfoot let go of the quill and said, "The D.L.E. would like you to open the properties held by the House of Black so we can search them for signs of the fugitive, at your earliest convenience."
Andi twitched, as though to interject, but she really didn't have to worry about that. "No."
"Excuse me?"
"No, I will not allow the Department of Law Enforcement to tromp through sanctuaries the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black has held against all outsiders for centuries. Our wards will remain closed for the time being." Really, there was nothing else she could say, for appearance's sake if for no other reason — no Noble House worth their name would give the Ministry free reign to do whatever they liked within their home, even under the most dire of circumstances. Especially if they were merely searching for a fugitive, that was just not done.
Of course, given which Noble House in particular they were talking about, Dorea was certain that if they went traipsing around Black properties they would find something that was very, very illegal. Dorea would rather not get sent to Azkaban over something she hadn't even been aware she owned, thanks.
After a moment of silence, glances exchanged between the Aurors, Proudfoot said, "Are you certain you want to refuse to cooperate? The record of our conversation here is going to get out, eventually. It may be...unwise, given the circumstances."
"In fact, I have not refused to cooperate. Make a reasonable request, and I might actually consider it for a moment before turning it down."
Neither of the Aurors at the table seemed pleased, though Dorea was pretty sure she caught a snort of suppressed laughter — Mum, probably. It was Blishwick, still standing over by the door, who spoke first. "Perhaps, Lady Dorea, you could at least see fit to inform us if you are aware whether your father is taking shelter in one of the family properties."
"That's a reasonable request," Dorea said, nodding. "He is not. I haven't checked in person, of course, but the wards would notify me if he were present." So long as people remained within the bounds of the wards, the degree of awareness of the family's movements and activities available to the Lord of the House was actually very creepy. It was for security purposes, true — overly paranoid, maybe, but the House had had determined and vicious enemies for much of their history — but if there were actually Blacks living there Dorea would probably be feeling guilty right now over spying on them.
Proudfoot perked up at that. "If that changes, will you inform the Department?"
"I will. I will not, however, surrender him to Ministry custody without conditions, or allow anyone in to apprehend him. I imagine I would demand a trial be set in progress first."
The Aurors at the table glared, but Blickwick was smirking a little, shaking his head to himself — Dorea had the feeling this interview was going exactly as he'd expected. "You think we'd just let you hide him?" hissed Pickering, forced through grit teeth. "He's a mad mass-murderer, I'm sure the Wizengamot would authorise our curse-breakers to crack the wards."
He was sure, was he? Because Dorea seriously doubted it. The Noble Houses had certain rights — all recognised magical families did, in fact — and they were always aware of the potential consequences of the decisions they made. Authorising the DLE to dismantle the magics protecting private land during peacetime was a relatively extreme violation of those rights, the Lords of the Wizengamot wouldn't want to set that precedent.
Also, it wasn't the only reason Dorea suspected that would not be happening. "I wouldn't recommend it. The magics defending my family's lands were laid in a...less civilised time. Should the Department attempt to force their way inside, I suspect they'd be eaten." Cassiopeia had once told a story where one of the old enemies of the family — the Maddychs, another of the Seventeen Founders, who were not coincidentally extinct in the modern day — had once attempted to storm Ancient House, and had actually gotten as far as cracking the boundary wards and charging onto the grounds.
They'd swiftly been dispatched — rendered mad and jibbering or simply set aflame by old Celtic vengeance curses, some of them swallowed up by the earth, some torn limb from limb by the trees. The Blacks had hardly even needed to throw a spell before it was over, the survivors fleeing for their lives.
Attacking one of the old families on lands they'd held for generations upon generations was a terrible, terrible idea.
And the glares only got worse. "The Wizengamot could compel you to allow Hit Wizards access."
"They could vote to do so, but it wouldn't do any good — as Lady of the House I'm under geasa that prevent me from betraying a member of the family to outsiders." The various geasa (there were a few others) applied only to the head of the family, not anyone else in it, which Dorea had always thought was odd. She guessed they were meant to balance the power of the Lord of the House somehow. That wasn't unique among the old magical families, but it's still one of those things she wasn't quite used to about how the magical world worked. "You can threaten me however you like, Sirs, but it is literally impossible for me to help you apprehend him without first extracting guarantees as to his good treatment."
Pickering was fuming, but Proudfoot smiled. "Ah, but there we go! Surely you understand it's in the best interests of everyone involved, including Sirius, if he turn himself in before anything unfortunate can happen."
"Nice try, Sir Proudfoot — I may be young, but I'm not that much of a fool. I'm well aware that escapees from Azkaban are to be given the Dementor's Kiss." Presumably because any such person would have demonstrated they couldn't be held, and were therefore considered too dangerous to live. Sirius was the first to escape on record, so it was a statute that had literally never been enforced before, but she didn't think there was any doubt the Ministry planned to carry the sentence out. "I fail to see how having his soul forcefully ripped away from his body could possibly be considered to be in Sirius's best interest. Now, if you could perhaps convince Director Bones to begin trial proceedings for the events in Edinburgh in November of Eighty-One, then I might be free to give any assistance I can to find him. As things stand now, though, my hands are tied."
"What good would that do?" Pickering asked, scowling. "Black already got a trial."
From her spot leaning against the oven, Andi said, "In fact, I think you'll find my cousin was not sentenced by any legal proceeding recognised by the Wizengamot. He was remanded to Azkaban directly upon his arrest on the Fifth of November—" Dorea blinked, barely stopped herself from turning to stare at Andi — she somehow hadn't realised it had happened on Guy Fawkes Night. "—to be held awaiting trial at the Wizengamot's convenience, alongside dozens of other suspects. But, before Sirius got his turn before the court, there was...something of an upset in the Ministry."
Dorea allowed herself a thin smirk, demurely 'hiding' it behind her teacup — that was one hell of an understatement. In the immediate aftermath of Voldemort's disappearance on Hallowe'en, Millicent Bagnold had awoken as though from a half-sleep, she would later describe it. It was now believed the Dark Lord had put the Minister under some kind of mind-altering curse, though one far less conspicuous than the Imperius. Essentially, the Minister had been mentally incapacitated for perhaps as long as a decade, and it was generally agreed by most scholars that her incompetent handling of the war could at least partially be blamed on this peculiar curse.
On recovering — abruptly, overnight — Bagnold had been absolutely furious with her security personnel for not realising something had been wrong. All the Undersecretaries and other executive officials, her assistants, and the Hit Wizards assigned to her had been immediately fired, and Bagnold had gone on a tear through the Ministry, particularly the DLE, almost single-handedly starting an audit into just how they could miss something so bloody obvious. Working with the Minister's newly-restaffed office, Amelia Bones, who'd then been First Auror for less than two years, swiftly identified victim after victim of magical subversion at the hands of the Death Eaters — some with the Imperius, yes, but others by more subtle means. In the process, they also ended up outing Death Eater sympathisers who hadn't been found during the war, all of whom had also been immediately fired.
The DLE hadn't been the only department to be hit, but it was undoubtedly the worst. By the end of Bones's investigation, roughly a third of the few Aurors who hadn't died in the war had been dismissed or put on probation, nearly half of the Hit Wizards, and over half of the various other officials, reducing the DLE to a barely-functioning skeleton crew. Early in the process, a scandal had erupted around the Director, Bartemius Crouch, which had ultimately seen him booted before spring, replaced with his Deputy Director, er... Dorea couldn't remember his name at the moment, something Selwyn. He hadn't even lasted the year. Bagnold swiftly outed him as a Death Eater sympathiser — she'd baited him into honesty in private and then given the memories proving his true loyalties to Bones, like a spy in some cheesy film or something — and Bones had discovered in the following investigation that he'd been sabotaging the DLE the entire time. At least five Aurors and eleven Hit Wizards had died due to Selwyn setting them up, it had been a massive scandal.
The DLE had basically been falling apart, listing and leaderless — and they hadn't been the only department having serious issues by then either. Desperate, Bagnold had gone to Erin Scrimgeour, who'd been Director before Crouch but was now quite old for an Auror, had been retired for a couple decades. In less than a year and a half, Scrimgeour had basically reformed the DLE from scratch — while also assisting in the continuing post-war inquiries and reorganisation of the rest of the Ministry, basically acting as Bagnold's second-in-command — running roughshod over the protests of various officials and even Lords of the Wizengamot. Eventually, the reforms at the Ministry had attracted too much discontent, and the Wizengamot dismissed Bagnold from office (over her very noisy and very public protests), replacing her with Fudge, who was still Minister today; Scrimgeour had resigned within a week of Fudge's appointment, but by then she'd considered the needed work to be finished anyway, more than content to let Bones step in.
By then, it had been July of '84, and everybody had forgotten they never had gotten around to trying all those suspected Death Eaters they'd captured back in October and November of '81. Sirius was far from the only one — by Andi's reckoning, there were at least a couple dozen (though many had already died in Azkaban by July of '84). They'd sort of just fallen through the cracks during the chaos.
(Apparently, Bagnold had been equally furious with her family for not even noticing she'd been under the effects of a debilitating, mind-altering curse — at the very same time she'd been tearing through the Ministry, she'd also been going through a messy, vicious divorce. Articles in the papers in this time had alternated between commenting on political stuff and her personal life, it wasn't pretty. And she kept giving them fodder to gossip over, because before the divorce was technically settled she'd shacked up with a few of the people she'd gotten to know during the aftermath of the war — two men and two other women, at last count — who to this day lived together in some...weird group marriage...thing. Supposedly, one of the other women had a son who'd be starting at Hogwarts next year, and there were three more, two of whom were twins belonging to the former Minister, who'd be starting in Dorea's fifth year. She still had no idea what to make of all that.)
The Aurors looked somewhat surprised by the thought that there were people in Azkaban who hadn't gotten a trial or even a hearing — they were all relatively young, Dorea wouldn't be surprised if they'd all joined after the war. Smiling, she said, "Under these circumstances, I'm afraid I can't help you unless Sirius is guaranteed a trial before the Wizengamot. Though I don't truly expect that will happen — I imagine it will be difficult to find people willing to give an alleged Death Eater the benefit of the doubt."
The wary surprise on Proudfoot's face was instantly replaced with a doubtful scowl. "Alleged?"
Dorea smile turned cooler. "Perhaps you may have missed it, Sir Proudfoot, but my mother is a muggle."
Still lurking halfway across the room, Blishwick shot her a look. A delicate tone on his voice (completely false), he said, "Pardon me, milady, if this seems...crass, but what a man does in his personal life may have little to do with his politics."
"True enough. He did choose to marry my mother and legitimise me as his only heir, however — that doesn't seem to reflect Death Eater sensibilities, does it?"
Blishwick just shrugged, acknowledging the point. (He'd probably already assumed Sirius wasn't one of theirs anyway.) But miraculously, the other two Aurors actually seemed to be thinking about it, giving each other thoughtful glances. If this stupid first-thing-in-the-morning interview actually got the Aurors to rethink Sirius's role in the last war, then it might actually be worth it. Maybe.
Slowly, cautiously, Pickering asked, "Do you truly believe your father is innocent?"
"Oh, no, of course not." That got surprised twitches from all three Aurors. "My family believes Peter Pettigrew betrayed the Potters to the Dark Lord, and that Sirius was overzealous in his revenge, incidentally blowing up half the street and a dozen innocent bystanders." Proudfoot and Pickering gaped at her in astonishment, but Blishwick was smirking. With a thin, humourless smile, Dorea said, "Were my father to get a trial, I don't believe he would be exonerated, but I do think the events of that day are still worth examining. If nothing else, the motives behind his actions have clearly been mischaracterised.
"Even so, Sirius Black has proven that he is a dangerous man, and after over a decade in Azkaban is certain to be more volatile now than he was then. I assure you, Sirs, whatever the geasa of my family might compel me to do in future, I have absolutely no desire to risk his company, and will not be seeking him out or collaborating with him — and were the magics of my family to force me to do so, that is a state of affairs I would attempt to resolve as swiftly as possible. Thankfully, I have no idea where he is, and neither do I wish to know.
"As such, I believe there is nothing further for us to discuss at this time. Unless you disagree, Sirs?"
They did not disagree — the Aurors only had a couple more inconsequential questions before the quill was plucked off the page, they were all asked to sign it, and then they were packing up to leave. Proudfoot seemed absent and thoughtful, actually reconsidering what he knew about Sirius and the end of the war, while Blishwick just seemed pleased to be on their way out of the horrifying hellscape that was muggle Maidstone. Pickering, on the other hand, looked irritated, shooting glares at Andi when he thought nobody was looking — as though he was convinced they were being tricked, that the sneaky evil Blacks weren't letting them search any of their properties, including the house he was standing in, because they were trying to hide something.
Which, obviously they were, all of the old magical families had something to hide, but still, he was being very silly. What did he think he was going to find in this house? Did he think a muggle home was likely to have dark artefacts lying around, or perhaps an escaped fugitive stuffed in a cupboard? Honestly, now.
Once everything was squared away, Pickering apparated straight out of the kitchen, swiftly followed by Proudfoot, Blickwick left scowling at where his fellow Aurors had stood a moment ago. Apparating on another's property like that was extremely rude — not to mention possibly very stupid, since you never knew what unpleasant things someone might have worked into their wards. Blishwick might not approve of Dorea much, given that she was a half-blood and all, but she was a Lady of the Wizengamot, so a nobleman like Blishwick probably felt she was owed more courtesy than that. In fact, he didn't apparate away himself, after a last trading of goodbye and we'll be in touch, he stepped out the back door, the sharp pop of his disapparation not sounding out until some seconds later.
And that was that. Dorea let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding, feeling inappropriately jittery for the early hour.
She glanced over her shoulder, finding Andi still leaning against the counter nearby. "How was that? Too aggressive?"
"Too aggressive?" Andi looked slightly bemused, frowning down at Dorea. "That was downright conciliatory by Black standards. If Aurors had made those demands of my great-uncle Arcuturs, he likely would have hexed them in retaliation for the presumption."
Dorea's great-grandfather, Andi meant — there'd been multiple people named Arcturus Black in the last few generations, but only one had been Lord of the House. (After him had been Orion, Dorea's grandfather, and after him Cassiopeia.) She had actually met him a couple times, briefly, before his death in February of '91. He hadn't been very nice. "Right. But not too conciliatory."
"No, Dorea, you did fine. I'll get officious twits from the D.L.E. and reporters pestering me about one issue or another, but I don't expect it will be too bad. Speaking of which," Andi said, straightening and turning to Mum, "I should return to the office and bunker down for the storm to hit — I'm betting two hours for the transcript to spread through the Ministry, and maybe six before the Prophet gets their hands on it."
Mum smirked, just a little. There wasn't quite as much... Dorea didn't know, there was just less energy in the expression than usual somehow. "Don't pretend with me, you love it."
"I wouldn't dare. Your address shouldn't leak — and if it does, I'll definitely be having words with someone — but the aversion wards should help to keep the riff-raff at bay. If they do turn out to be more persistent than the wards can handle, and—"
"Through the floo to yours if anything comes up, I know. We're fine here, Andi. Go, have fun."
"Well, if you insist." Andi and Mum exchanged a few quick whispers Dorea didn't catch, finishing up with cheek-kisses. Dropping another kiss on Dorea's hair as she went by, Andi slipped out the back door like the Auror ahead of her — though she actually slid the door closed, the Auror apparently hadn't realised it didn't on its own — and she was gone.
Mum didn't move, stayed leaning against the counter. A cup of tea, surely cold by now, was cradled in both hands, a finger tapping at the rim, staring at a wall. Her face was weirdly blank, really — Mum could be very intense, her expression usually only dimmed when she was very tired, or had retreated so deeply into her thoughts it could be difficult to rouse her out of them. Dorea couldn't tell which one this was. It was still awful early, and the boys weren't babies anymore but they could still be a pain, so she could just be tired.
But, well, Sirius was out there, somewhere. The thought must be just as weird for Mum as it was for Dorea. Probably weirder.
"Are you okay?"
"Hmm?" Mum slowly surfaced from whatever was going on in her head, turned a soft smile on Dorea. "Oh, I'm fine, lovey. I'm just..." She trailed off, a frown creasing her brow, set her cup down on the counter. Her arms coming up to cross over her stomach, she started staring at the wall again. Despite the wary, worried look on her face, her voice sounded perfectly casual, as though the expression were just for the show of it, only skin deep.
Which Dorea didn't buy for a second — she noticed Mum's fingers plucking at the hem of her vest over one hip, an obvious sign of anxiety.
"I suppose I can't help but think: why now? Sirius has been in there for, God, eleven and a half years? I can't imagine what suddenly changed to have him breaking out, risking having his soul sucked out by those awful things. And, well, since he obviously can break out of there, why didn't he do it before? I'll admit I'm a little annoyed — if he'd done this years ago, we could have figured out a trial and all then, no matter how much of a mess the Ministry was in, who knows what might have happened."
That was a very good point.
"And, mostly I'm just worried he... Your father can be...impulsive." Well, duh, I only exist because you were both impulsive one night — Dorea bit her lip, but Mum clearly knew what she was thinking anyway without even looking, her frown twitching a bit with a hint of a smirk. "If he does something very rash and, well, Sirius Black, and someone gets hurt..." Her eyes flicked over to Dorea, suddenly sharp, enough she almost flinched. "If you see him, if you even think you might have seen him, you'll tell someone. Not the authorities, me or Andi."
"Of course, Mum." Whatever might happen, Dorea felt certain she didn't want Sirius hanging around their home. She doubted Sirius would try to hurt any of them on purpose, but... Well, if the Aurors or someone turned up, Sirius had demonstrated he had a bad habit of causing collateral damage — she didn't want him anywhere near her baby brothers.
"Remember, he might be hiding as a dog. Shaggy black fur, huge bloody thing."
"I know, I'll keep an eye out." She didn't expect to run into him — Sirius wasn't an idiot, surely he'd realise they might be being watched. There were probably already Hit Wizards posted somewhere nearby waiting for him to show up. He couldn't be that stupid.
...But he was impulsive.
Dorea sighed. "I think I'm going back to bed. Hopefully I can get a little nap in, at least, it's far too damn early..." Rinsing out her teacup in the sink quick, Dorea started back for her room.
Leaving her mother blankly staring at nothing, leaning against the kitchen counter — lost in thought, fingers anxiously playing with the hem of her sleep vest.
Despite the weirdness of being in Snape's house, Liz thought the next couple weeks were perfectly ordinary.
She'd already done most of her homework for the summer at the hotel, so that didn't take very long to finish. Somewhat irritatingly, there wasn't a writing desk in the room she'd been given, or apparently anywhere in the house — actually, there was one in the basement, but Snape was down there a lot and it had his stuff on it, so she couldn't use it — which meant she had to get somewhat creative. There were no electronics or anything around, she could use whatever magic she wanted (as long as she didn't break anything). There were charms that could be used to stiffen parchment or paper or whatever, so it was hard and unbending as though sitting on a flat surface no matter how it was held — though, putting pressure on it would still tip it over if it was standing up, obviously. Liz ended up doing the rest of her homework sitting in one of the chairs by the fireplace, feet propped on the cushion and parchment resting against her legs, whatever references she needed (when she did need references) charmed to float in the air nearby. It was slightly uncomfortable not having anywhere convenient to rest her arm while writing, but it worked well enough.
The first time he'd caught her at it, coming out of his basement laboratory to get more coffee, Snape commented on her use of levitation charms, if she was keeping the books up constantly with some kind of wandless magic the whole time. That was ridiculous. She could do some wandless magic, but only a handful of charms, and certainly nothing like this — it took too much focus to, just, constantly maintain something this precise while doing something else. No, she'd found a charm that was specifically designed to float books at convenient heights. Like her favourite light charm, from the same book she'd learned this one from, she only had to apply the charm once and it would work for hours (though not so long as the light charm), even turning pages when she wanted it to. Very convenient, really, she'd already used it plenty to read in bed without having to find comfortable positions to hold onto the damn book.
When she'd demonstrated it for him, Snape raised an eyebrow at the incantation — probably because it was in Norse, the spells taught at school were all Latin and Greek. He'd then said something bluntly, flatly complimentary of her solution, and then walked away without a word, disappearing into the kitchen. Because Snape was actually very weird and awkward sometimes.
(A lot of the time, really.)
Not that Liz wasn't weird and awkward. It wasn't like she wasn't used to sharing space with people — ten months out of the year she lived at Hogwarts, where everything besides her bedroom, including the bathrooms, were shared with other people — but this was especially awkward, for some reason. She wasn't certain if spending so little time in the same room at the same time made it more or less awkward.
Liz's routine was, for the most part, virtually unaltered from before she'd been dragged off here. She woke up whenever she couldn't convince herself to stay in bed anymore, usually around eight. She had breakfast before really doing anything, and then spent most of the day finishing her homework or reading — or practising magic in the back garden, which was not something she'd been able to do before, that was nice. Letters were still coming in from various people, usually at some point in the early afternoon, every other day or so, writing responses taking less than an hour, sometimes longer if she'd gotten several at once. (She didn't tell anyone she was staying at Snape's house now, because it was weird and she had no idea what to say.) Every two or three days she had a shower just before dinner. And then more reading in the evening, maybe a bit of tinkering with potions or more spell practice, and then to bed when she didn't feel like being awake any longer, usually a bit before midnight.
The door to her borrowed bedroom heavy with locking and sealing charms, of course — any time she was in the bedroom or bathroom she did that, throwing on plenty to make sure they'd stay going for hours, took multiple dispels to get rid of them all. Snape must have noticed, she was cramming enough magic into the doors the air around them tingled, but he hadn't commented at all. Had probably expected as much.
It only took her a couple days to figure out Snape's routine. He woke up at a godawful early hour, always up and about long before Liz woke up. She'd never seen him at it, but she knew from evidence left behind that he had breakfast — store-bought flapjacks, there were several boxes in the cabinets, and coffee, and that was it — and read the paper — he got both the Daily Prophet and the Northern Herald, but she suspected by the condition she found them in that he read most of the Herald and only glanced at the headlines of the Prophet — in the kitchen, though he was never at the little table by the time she got there, the papers and the smell of coffee left behind. Snape got an absolute avalanche of post, thick letters and plain, colourless magazines coming in constantly, when she woke up he was often in the sitting room reading one of the magazines — things for academic professional types she guessed, judging by the titles — or writing a reply to one of the letters. After he'd seen her own book-floating spell, sometimes the letter he was replying to would be floating in the air nearby, multiple pages arranged around his head.
When she was around, he always cast some kind of charm to blur the words, so she couldn't read his post over his shoulder. As though she actually cared enough to snoop.
(She was vaguely curious, but still.)
The rest of the day, sometimes he'd be in the sitting room reading, sometimes taking notes on a scroll laid out on the armrest. If he wasn't there, he was probably most often in the basement, brewing away. Sometimes on one of his experiments, but a lot of the time stocking up on healing potions for the Hospital Wing back at school — when she'd asked, he'd explained he personally brewed most of the potions Pomfrey used or handed out to students, but he didn't have a whole lot of free time to work on it during the school year, so he got as much of it out of the way as he possibly could over holidays.
Liz had bit her lip to keep herself from making a joke about Snape having summer homework like the rest of them. It probably didn't matter, by the way he huffed he knew what she was thinking anyway.
He took trips out of the house, usually after lunch — or what would be lunch, but Snape was seemingly sustained by a constant stream of coffee and the occasional flapjack. (When he'd realised she didn't really eat lunch either, he'd made noises about how she maybe should, the total hypocrite.) When he was going to leave, he always dropped by quick to tell her where he was going and how long she could expect him to be gone, so she had a pretty fair idea what he was up to, though none of it was particularly interesting. Sometimes he was going to the school — he did his more dangerous experiments in his lab there, since it had better safety enchantments, and also had some kind of work to do there even when students weren't around, apparently — or sometimes to various apothecaries or potioneers' shops around the country — he went through a lot of supplies, and also sold some of the more finicky potions to shops and Saint Mungo's for some extra cash. Sometimes he was going to some social function or other, most often afternoon tea or something of the like, most often at the Malfoys' — that sounded boring and tedious and awful, and Snape didn't bother denying it — and sometimes he was meeting other potioneers or healers, on one occasion going all the way to Barcelona to consult with one of the people he traded letters with — a healer, apparently, who wanted help with one of her patients. The overwhelming impression was that Snape was very, very busy, even during the summer, honestly just sounded exhausting.
He always came back for dinner — and not just to keep an eye on her, he claimed he hated eating in public so he always made his excuses to escape early when he was out with people, and it didn't feel like a lie. (Liz wondered how long it'd taken him to get used to taking every meal in the Great Hall with the whole bloody school, and then belatedly remembered he missed half of them anyway.) Though, apparently, Snape had never learned to cook, so they always had take-out. Indian sometimes, and a lot of Chinese, which was slightly irritating, because a surprisingly large fraction of the things on the menu were nauseatingly sweet. It took a few attempts at each before Liz started learning words to avoid. Snape did try to help, but his definition of "sweet" was apparently very different from hers, he was awful at guessing what she wouldn't like. The pizza they got occasionally was much easier, though she often had to add extra cheese to balance the sugar in the tomato sauce.
Snape had seemed surprised that she could taste sugar in pizza sauce. It apparently didn't taste sweet to him at all, which she found completely incomprehensible — it was often even sweeter than red pasta sauce, which itself was sometimes bad enough she couldn't stomach it at all. She'd thought tomato sauce was supposed to be sweet! Though, they clearly had a very different palate, those flapjacks Snape ate were completely inedible — they smelled sugary, no way she was even going to try one of those — and she was convinced Snape's favourite sauce from the Chinese place had to be quarter syrup it was so damn sweet. She'd thought her problem was just not liking as much sweetness, she hadn't expected things that were too sugary for her to not taste sweet to other people at all...though, supposedly bread, white bread and the dinner rolls at Hogwarts especially, didn't taste sugary to other people, Dorea had been flabbergasted when she'd said they were too sweet for her...
Some cooking was done in the house, but it was pretty much only her breakfast, which was usually a pan-fried bacon and cheese sandwich (rye bread, obviously), because she didn't actually care enough to mix it up. And also, they were great. Snape had seemed very much less than pleased with her diet, when they'd been talking about what he should be stocking the shelves with, though he'd gone out and bought everything without complaint. Just, the next day he'd left a little bottle on the kitchen counter, filled with a mouthful of greenish-purple potion, pinned underneath a brief note explaining this was a nutritional supplement intended for people with serious dietary gaps, and she would be taking it before she made herself ill. She had scowled at the chastising tone the note was written in, but had taken the potion all the same — Snape continued leaving the potion on the counter every morning, and Liz continued taking it, neither of them saying a word about it.
Honestly, it hadn't even occurred to Liz that eating as she did would be that unhealthy, and it wasn't like she wanted to make herself ill. And she was pretty sure her blood magic wouldn't prevent malnutrition. If all she had to do was take the damn potion every morning, she couldn't think of a good reason why she shouldn't.
Other than a few brief exchanges now and again — mostly Snape informing her he was going out, or asking if she needed him to pick up anything — they barely interacted at all. They'd discussed the rules she was to follow living here, once when she'd first arrived and again at dinner that evening, but besides that, she'd been here for a couple weeks now and she couldn't say they'd even had a full conversation. It was weird, because it was Snape, and she was in his house, and what was going on, even, and also Snape was surprisingly awkward and just kind of a nerd when he wasn't in Potions class or doing his intimidating Head of Slytherin thing. Liz kept expecting something to happen, for him to try to talk to her about...
She didn't know, most of the time when she was alone with Snape he was making her talk about uncomfortable things she really didn't want to talk about — though none of her mandatory meetings with the Head of Slytherin had been nearly as bad as that first one, thankfully. Back at school, her dormmates were always talking with/at her or trying to get her to do whatever with them, something, it was just kind of odd that they were...both doing their own things, and that was it. She didn't know what she'd expected, being dragged off here, just, something. But the other shoe wouldn't drop, it was making her a little anxious, honestly.
They hadn't even talked about Sirius Black escaping! She knew that was why she was here now, because Snape was worried Dorea's mad mass-murderer father would come find her. Probably not to hurt her on purpose, Dorea had mentioned ages ago now that Snape agreed that her family's understanding of him was more likely. But after his escape, Dorea had said she was worried that Sirius might show up and do something rash and reckless and crazy, and end up hurting people on accident — in her case, she was most worried her father might kill her baby brothers without meaning to. Presumably, Snape was worried about the same thing. He hadn't said as much, but it seemed a pretty reasonable concern.
After all, if nothing else, Sirius making a scene would attract attention to how she was using mind magic to steal food and a place to sleep (and sometimes other stuff, little things) from muggles, and the Ministry finding out about that would not end well for Liz. So.
It did kind of make sense...except for the part where Snape had decided he had to do something about that, and the thing to do was stick her in his house, keep an eye on her himself. She still didn't know what to think about that. And she had nothing to work with, because Snape hadn't said anything about any of it, and Liz had no idea how to ask, or even when would be a good time to bring it up.
So, she'd decided to make a good time.
Shortly after Snape swung by the kitchen for a second (third?) round of coffee and a single pre-packaged flapjack in place of lunch, he informed her he had another stop at the hospital to make, immediately after which there was a tedious social function he was expected to show up at — this one started at tea time and was supposed to run through the evening, but he'd be making his excuses before dinner as per usual. That meant he was likely to be gone for hours. As soon as he was gone, Liz threw on a dress — she tended not to bother when she wasn't leaving the house, despite knowing that she was essentially walking around in her underwear by magical standards, it didn't feel like it to her so Snape just got to deal with it — grabbed some cash out of the drawer in the kitchen — she would use her own money, but she hadn't gotten to the bank in a little while, she was low on pounds — and walked out of the front door.
Surprisingly, Snape lived in a really shitty town. The street he lived on was part of a development of shitty little prefab houses, one of those put up after the Blitz, tiny and packed together like sardines in a tin. (Liz was positive now he'd used magic to expand his back garden, and possibly even the inside of the house.) The neighborhood was apparently called Cokeworth, but Cokeworth wasn't a separate thing of its own, only blocks away running into other districts in a town called Smethwick, which was now part of a borough called Sandwell — the way Snape had talked about it, using phrases like now part of, made it sound new, like Sandwell hadn't been a thing when he was a kid, probably one of the new boroughs created back in the 70s Vernon complained about sometimes.
Smethwick sounded vaguely familiar, and not just because that happened to be the name of one of those silly magical noble families. Liz wasn't positive, but she was pretty sure it was one of the cities in the Black Country (or close enough to be getting on with). Descriptions of the area had come up in history class before, as part of the whole living in the Industrial Revolution sucked thing they go off about sometimes — apparently they used to do a lot of coal mining and industry and stuff around here, bad enough there were descriptions of everything in the region constantly getting covered in a steady snow of gross black dust. (Hence, Black Country.) It didn't seem nearly as bad anymore as things she'd read from like a century ago, though looking out to the occasional taller building or hills in the distance Liz did notice a distinct greyish haze on the air.
Also, breathing it just tasted funny, though she couldn't say what it was, exactly. Sort of like the hint of metallic smoke she noticed in London, especially after spending ten months in the middle of fucking nowhere, but a lot worse, with a faint tinge of something else, almost...pungent, like rotting garbage or sick or something, but so slight she barely noticed it. So, better than it used to be, air quality -wise, but still not great.
Liz couldn't smell it in the house at all, or even in the back garden — she assumed Snape had put up wards to keep the bad shite out.
As she'd picked up from the news as a kid — or, mostly Vernon complaining about what was on the news, but same difference — a lot of these old industrial areas were really falling apart these days. So she wasn't at all surprised by how colourless and dreary the tiny houses seemed, some in obvious disrepair, paint patchy and the occasional slat missing from roofs and siding. She passed several, on her way down the cracking, neglected pavement, that had seemingly been abandoned, broken windows boarded up with cheap plywood, splashes of colour in the form of graffiti here and there. There were few vehicles about, the ones she spotted old and dinged and rusted — one sitting on the drive in front of a house was propped up on cinderblocks, missing three of its tires, one of the windows smashed in. The streets were littered with trash and broken glass, the kids playing with a football out on the blacktop a block down from Snape's house had even brought a broom to sweep it all out of the way first. Turning a corner, Liz noticed someone must have recently jumped the kerb, a tire-track carved through the grass nearby, a roadsign sitting dented and abandoned on the ground.
So, a shitty little town, was what she was getting at, just in general. Liz had known places like this existed, but she'd never actually seen one before.
And apparently, this was where the Head of bloody Slytherin House had grown up. Wild thought, that. She assumed the awful racist purebloods couldn't possibly know about this, because if so they wouldn't treat Snape with anything close to the level of respect they did. In fact, Liz was pretty sure most of those types didn't even realise Snape was a half-blood — it was weird how much of a secret that was, considering it wasn't really a secret at all.
A couple streets away were a string of shops and restaurants and things, most of them looking rather run-down but still in business. The market was the largest, though still much smaller than the one in Little Whinging Petunia did all her grocery shopping in. Petunia would also probably faint at the idea of eating anything from this place — it was kind of a mess, the concrete outside cracked with grass poking through, the floors inside coloured with dust and streaks of rubber and the occasional spill someone hadn't gotten to yet, dust and cardboard filings on shelves, some of the people around looking kind of rough (and even worse, poor) — but the food and everything seemed perfectly fine to Liz. She yanked a trolley out of the mess of them and set off into the aisles.
It had been a couple years now since Liz had cooked anything much at all, but that was mostly just because she hadn't needed to. After enforcing new rules with the Dursleys, she had cooked, but only for herself, so much simpler stuff just when she felt like it, and after leaving Privet Drive she'd been living in hotels or Hogwarts all the time, so she hadn't needed to worry about preparing her own food at all. But that didn't mean she'd forgotten how. And, well, among the things she'd been made to do back before she had a choice in the matter, she hadn't actually minded cooking much. Around Christmas it could be brutal, all the shite sweets and biscuits and puddings and whatever Petunia came up with to fill half the bloody kitchen (no wonder Dudley had been ballooning up like a whale), but just normal stuff was fine. It wasn't much different from Potions class, really, and that was one of her best subjects.
The biggest difference was that potions tended to be pretty vile, and food didn't normally make magic happen when you ate it.
Of course, the thing that had really bothered her about it before was that she never got to have any of the meals or whatever she made — that was fucking irritating, bothered her even when it'd been things she'd been pretty sure she wouldn't like anyway. Which was most of it, in retrospect. There were a number of things she remembered how to make that she liked just fine, though, and other things she could probably reverse-engineer that she'd had at restaurants or Hogwarts or whatever. And it wasn't like experimenting to try to figure shite out was going to literally blow up in her face like a potion would, there was really no good reason she shouldn't try.
And besides, it wasn't like she had a whole lot else to be doing with her time right now.
After a bit wandering around and loading up her trolley, Liz made her way back to the register. The lady there thought it was very odd that a little kid was doing her own grocery shopping, especially this much of it — because Snape had no food in his house at all, she'd needed to get a lot of basic things, bloody pain. Her accent was aggressively northern — northern compared to Surrey, anyway, she was pretty sure she was in the West Midlands — bad enough Liz had to cheat and use mind magic to understand what was going on, which didn't make this conversation less annoying. Apparently, Liz looked even younger than she actually was, which was irritating, but the lady started checking her out as normal...after Liz proved she had cash on her, because of course. It went smoothly enough, besides the weird looks and pointed questions she was getting, until they got to the couple bottles of wine and sherry she'd gotten.
Somehow, she'd completely forgotten people under a certain age weren't supposed to buy certain things. Liz just stole stuff most of the time, and the things that were restricted weren't things she ever wanted anyway. When the lady refused to even ring the things up, Liz just rolled her eyes, compelled her to think this was perfectly fine — robotically, her eyes going slightly out of focus for a moment, she obeyed. The total came out a bit higher than Liz had been expecting, because Snape had nothing in his damn pantry, but she'd taken enough money anyway, it was fine. Liz waved off the lady's questions about whether she needed help getting this all home, and strolled away.
Because obviously she didn't need help getting this stuff to Snape's house — she'd just be taking the trolley the whole way there. She'd bring it back after, or in a day or two, whatever, she'd get to it. Though it was more difficult than it should be, due to all the cracks and chunks taken out of the pavement, lines of grass poking out here and there. It wouldn't have been a problem if it weren't falling apart so badly, and if Liz weren't so damn tiny.
Glancing around quick to make sure nobody was paying her any particular attention, Liz slipped out her wand and cast a featherweight charm on the trolley. That made it much easier.
Liz didn't think it was worth it to try to get the trolley over the door jamb and all the way into the kitchen, especially since she didn't know if the wheels would leave track marks on the floors, so she just carried the bags in two at a time, with the aid of more surreptitious charmwork. Getting everything squared away was somewhat irritating, because she didn't know where anything was supposed to go...but, since the kitchen was practically empty, there wasn't anywhere things were supposed to be, so it didn't really matter, did it? It took her a second to figure out what to do with the frozen stuff, eventually she noticed each of the shelves in the (mostly empty) enchanted cold cabinet had little temperature gauges on the walls inside. She turned one down just a bit below freezing, and the effect was obvious and immediate — whoosh, instant icebox.
Magic was really neat sometimes.
Once everything was squared away, Liz checked the time — had a couple hours, probably, but might as well get started. After abandoning her dress back in her room, she spent a couple minutes pouring over the kitchen and going through the cabinets looking for a proper cutting board and a good knife before deciding, with no small amount of irritation, that Snape didn't have any. Well, Snape would definitely have good knives, but those were meant for potions stuff, he probably wouldn't appreciate her borrowing one for this. If she'd realised that, she might have picked up things while she was at the market...but she wouldn't have had enough cash on her anyway. Dammit.
But, when she thought about it, she didn't really need those things, because magic was neat. A hardening and a sealing charm cast into the plastic-looking counter top — not the same sealing charm that held together doors and stuff, but one that stopped fluids from leaking into the pores in things — and Liz just plopped the cut of beef straight down onto it. Using a severing charm — not a hex meant for dueling, but the one they'd been taught in first year to cut parchment or cloth or whatever — she ran her wand along the meat, the tip a centimetre from touching, the magic cutting the fibres apart much easier than a knife would. Long, narrow strips, snip snip snip, then cut them a couple times lengthwise, all done. Well, that was easy.
The pan heated up and buttered, Liz levitated the whole mess in there — which was slightly awkward, levitating a whole bunch of little pieces at once instead of a single object, but it was easy enough so long as she thought of all of it as one thing. (Magic could be funny like that.) While browning the bits of beef, Liz went through Snape's newly-stocked spice cabinet, just throwing in whatever the hell seemed appropriate. Lots of black pepper, pepper was good. Didn't know exactly what she was doing, since the Dursleys had preferred their meals awfully fucking bland, but she was pretty sure she wasn't fucking it up somehow. It smelled fine, at least.
She nearly dropped her stirring fork as she abruptly turned away from the simmering pan, her whole body clenching with a hard sneeze. Yep. That was pepper.
And that was all browned, neat. Throw a bunch of water in it, cover it up, turn the heat down, and just let that get the shite cooked out of it. Good for now. Potatoes, then. So far as things to put things on went, a lot of the bread-based ones ended up being distractingly sweet — not so sweet as to be unpalatable, but certainly noticeable — which meant anything like noodles or even rice was usually out. Potatoes, though, potatoes were fine. Liz had gotten a whole bunch of potatoes, with the thought that they were versatile things, she could probably do all kinds of shite with them.
Liz went back to her room to grab the novel she was currently partway through, plopped a sack of potatoes on the table, dragged over the rubbish bin, and... Snape didn't have a vegetable peeler. Of course he didn't, why should Liz have expected otherwise? Oh well, he did have a paring knife, that'd have to do. She charmed her book to float in front of her at a convenient reading height, and set to peeling potatoes — she could do both at once, peeling was simple enough she could do it by feel — every time she finished one hopping up to stir the gravy quick.
She only actually need, hmm, maybe three of the potatoes for this — the rest she tossed in a bowl, layered with preserving charms, and put in the enchanted cabinet. The three she was using sliced up and set to boiling, and now she could get to her crazy idea for the day. This might not work, but she was pretty sure she could make a not disgustingly sweet take on Petunia's nut fudge...
By the time Liz heard the roar of the floo, it was some time later. Everything was all pretty much done, just simmering in wait, so Liz was lying on her back on the tile, one of Ciardha Monroe's books hovering over her head. Liz plucked it out of the air, slipped her bookmark back in, but was still sitting on the floor when Snape appeared in the doorway. He was still in his fancy-party-with-inane-simpletons robes, his cloak folded over his arm — he'd clearly wandered over here straight after arriving, probably drawn by the smell. (The gravy was rather more fragrant than she'd expected, especially since she'd added the wine a while ago.)
He stared blankly at the hob for a moment, then glanced down at her, a single eyebrow ticking up. "...Did you cook?"
"Obviously," she drawled in her best sarcastically Snape-ish tone.
There was an odd twitch in his head, but it was over too quickly for Liz to tell if it were amusement or irritation. He was still and silent for another uncomfortable moment. "Why?"
Because she planned to guilt him into honestly telling her what the hell was going on — even Liz was more inclined to be nice to people if they were nice to her first, as the Christmas gifts she'd gotten the last two years proved — but also just because she'd realised she could, and why not. She gave a nonchalant shrug. "I felt like it."
Snape just stared at her. For a long time, hardly blinking, it was honestly slightly creepy.
"Well." Liz pushed herself to her feet, trying to ignore the tingles running along the back of her neck. (What the hell was that about, anyway...) It was about time to stir the stuff again, she stalked back to the hob, feeling even more inexplicably uncomfortable with her back to him. "If you don't want any, that's fine, I'll just set it aside for tomorrow."
For a long time, he didn't say anything, lingering silently in the doorway — she wasn't looking, stirring the well-thickened gravy around, but he was still there, she could feel his mind (though she wasn't really picking up anything). She glanced over her shoulder quick to see he was still standing there, blankly staring at her, all...
Snape might act all dramatic and impressive and intimidating at school, but Liz had realised by now he was a completely different kind of person in private. In fact, she was starting to think he was secretly a strange, awkward, nerd.
(Not that Liz cared, most of the people she hung out with at Hogwarts could be described with some combination of those three terms. She was just saying.)
"I need to change."
Repeat: strange, awkward, nerd. "...Okay?"
After another brief moment of silently staring at her, she felt Snape's mind retreat, slipping away toward his room. She let out a sigh, shaking her head to herself — Christ, that was weird...
By the time Snape got back, she'd mixed the cream into the gravy, and the potatoes were warm again, so, that worked out. She wasn't sure if the gravy had turned out quite how she'd been going for. She'd cooked the shite out of the beef, fallen apart completely, and it didn't taste bad, of course, just...not quite right, she didn't think. Still good though, so, whatever.
Snape being back and being weird and awkward in her general vicinity was making her weird and uncomfortable again, and she didn't really know why, it was irritating. It wasn't a her brain being stupid thing, she didn't think — that annoying thing at first, being irrationally afraid of him like he was going to magically turn into Vernon or something, had worn off overnight, by the time she bumped into him her first full day here she'd been fine again, and that was a couple weeks ago now, so it couldn't be that. Or, not the same stupid brain thing, anyway, who the fuck knew what the hell was going on in here, could be anything.
She tried to ignore the unpleasant tingling along her spine, feeling annoyingly unsettled and jumpy. Wasn't doing a great job of it, Snape could definitely tell something was going on with cheater mind magic powers, but she was mostly managing to act normal, she thought.
Pointing out the wine, in case he wanted that — she'd only tried a sip, too sweet, but a little bit in the gravy gave it a hint of tangy fruitiness she thought was actually sort of great, just didn't like it straight — he'd asked how the hell she'd gotten that. It wasn't like it was difficult to convince the lady at the register that it was perfectly fine to sell it to her, she probably could have just waltzed out with the trolley full of everything and nobody would have stopped her, it wasn't a big deal.
Except, according to Snape, it was a big deal: they had security cameras in there, if they noticed the poor woman had sold a minor alcohol she might lose her job, worst case be brought up on criminal charges. Er. Oops? Hadn't thought of that, honestly. He didn't think it likely she'd get in trouble, just that it was something to keep in mind. Maybe tell him next time and he'll buy it himself...or just steal it, if she really must.
Liz failed to hold in a choked laugh. She was pretty sure adults weren't supposed to encourage her to steal things...
In a couple seconds they were sitting at the cheap dining set in the kitchen — apparently, he didn't want to risk spilling anything on the nicer stuff in the library — which was incredibly awkward, because neither of them were saying anything, and he was right over there, the table really was not that big, and... Just, uncomfortable, it was weird, okay. She was still not at all used to this, hanging around Snape's house, and it was weird, and she actually wanted to ask about that, it was the central feature of this whole silly plot of hers, but she had no idea how to start it off, it was much easier to just silently eat and try not to shuffle awkwardly in her chair...
"Elizabeth." She jumped — it was in a normal quiet, Snape-ish tone, but still, neither of them had said anything for long enough that she hadn't expected it. A finger idly tapping at the rim of his wine glass, he stared at her for another couple seconds (which continued to be awkward). "Your birthday is this Saturday."
"Yes, I guess it is." She'd sort of forgotten about that, honestly...
"I'm uncertain whether you're aware, but under magical law a person comes into certain rights upon reaching the age of thirteen."
"The goblins told me about that. They refused to tell me anything else, mind, but they did tell me that." It was the reason she'd been sort of looking forward to this birthday — which was a novel feeling, she'd never given a shite about it before — because she probably owned multiple houses she could live in instead of squatting in a muggle hotel. The Potters being a big fancy magical noble family and everything, it'd be weird if she didn't. At the moment, going off to live on her own again was probably off the table, though.
There was a brief pause, as though Snape were waiting for something — though she couldn't figure what, really. FInally, "Would you like to go to Charing on Saturday to meet with them?"
"Sure?" She didn't see what good that would do, since it wasn't like he'd be letting her out of his sight anyway...but there could be other important things she might find out, or be able to do. Come to think of it, she'd probably be able to cancel Dumbledore's guardianship of her, she should definitely do that.
...Could a thirteen-year-old just not have a guardian at all, or would she have to pick someone else? Because that might be a problem. There was only one adult she could think of who she trusted even a little bit (and so barely at all she wasn't sure if the word "trust" even really applied), but she didn't like the idea of handing Snape actual legal authority over her either. She didn't really think he'd do anything bad with it, but...
Well, she still put locking and sealing charms on the doors, didn't she?
(Which was kind of silly when she thought about it, she regularly took potions he made...)
"Is there anything else you would like to do while we're in London?"
Right, having a conversation here. Which Snape was still being all weird and awkward about, but okay. "I could use a refill for some potions supplies, I guess. Will we have our book lists by then?"
Something flickered in Snape's mind, too distant for Liz to pick out properly, but she thought it was irritation. "No. We're still waiting on the Headmaster to fill the Defence position and for his undoubtedly incompetent choice to set the required reading — Minerva cannot send out the letters until he does so. I'm certain, however, that whatever reading ends up being assigned will be far below your level in that subject anyway.
"I remember you're taking Runes and Arithmancy." She was confused for a second, before remembering they'd talked about it in their last meeting back in May. Also, the forms they'd filled out must have gone to him anyway, so. "Was there a third subject?"
Liz nodded. "Divination." Care of Magical Creatures sounded boring and pointless, and Muggle Studies was a complete waste of time for someone who'd grown up in the muggle world. (It'd taken some convincing, but they'd eventually gotten Hermione to admit that.) Runes and Arithmancy were the only ones that were actually useful, and Divination sounded interesting, if nothing else. It helped that Dorea and Hermione (and several of their friends) happened to be taking those three subjects, so.
An odd sharp something sparking in his head, Snape winced. Whatever that was about, he didn't say anything about it, just moving on. "Those three have already submitted their book list for third years — I know the volumes Ashe teaches from off the top of my head, and I can look up the others before Saturday." To her confusion, Snape said, "Ashe? Professor Babbling, Runes. I suspect you'll like her — she's a quite engaging lecturer, and very... She has little tolerance for inane nonsense, let's put it. Was there anything else you would like to do on Saturday?"
...It sort of sounded like Snape was trying to hint at something, but she had no idea what. "Ah, I should drop by Malkin's, I guess." The robes she'd bought before first year were noticeably short now — she wasn't that much taller, she was still annoyingly tiny, but it was enough her school uniform didn't quite fit right. Also, new boots would probably be a good idea. And, some of her normal clothes didn't fit quite right anymore, either. Her pants in particular — though, she'd rather not tell Snape out loud she needed underwear, that was really awkward — but she couldn't comfortably wear half of her dresses anymore either. And since she didn't have that many of them, that really was a problem. "A muggle clothing store too would be good."
Snape just nodded. He hesitated a long moment, taking another bite of potatoes and awesome beef gravy stuff. (It was pretty great, if she did say so herself, more than she'd thought just tasting it out of the pan.) He could just be eating, she guessed, but somehow, probably cheater mind magic powers, she knew he was stalling, trying to figure out how to say something. Which, she was also stalling, sort of, so she guessed that was just fair. Finally, "If you wanted to write a few of your friends and meet with them somewhere..."
She frowned. "What? Why would— Oh!" He was suggesting she do something on Saturday with her friends, like, because it was her birthday. Honestly, the possibility hadn't even occurred to her. Her birthday being something she should give a shite about, that she should...do things on, was still something of a foreign concept.
Last year, she'd stayed at Dorea's house for a couple days, she'd actually arrived on her birthday. There had been food and cake and ice cream and junk — Dorea's mum had clearly tried to make a cake she could actually eat, all heavy and chocolatey, but it'd been barely palatable, she'd had to scrape off the frosting and even then she'd only had half a little slice before she got too queasy (they'd had her ice cream from Fortescue's, though) — and they'd gone out to a theatre the next day. She'd literally never been to see a film before, and while it hadn't been great it hadn't been awful either — also, it turned out popcorn was pretty good, so there was that. (Dorea's mum had gotten her her own so she could put extra extra butter and salt on, Dorea had made sarcastic gagging noises.) Nobody had said they were doing all that for her birthday, it had never been mentioned the whole time, but it'd been pretty obvious what was going on. If for no other reason, Dorea was bad enough at keeping herself to herself Liz caught an occasional passing thought without even consciously trying...and her parents too, for that matter.
Or, her mum and her stepfather — Dorea used his name and everything. Whatever.
Which was...fine? None of it had been bad — though Dorea's brothers had been a bit much, Liz had learned she didn't like little kids — and honestly, Liz probably would have hated it if they'd made a big production about it and why they were doing it, all...however birthday shite went. The only experience she really had with that sort of thing was Petunia and Vernon fussing over Dudley, and she somehow doubted that was normal. (Also people at Hogwarts sometimes, still.) Being casual about it, not hovering over her too much was better, she thought — if only because she'd have absolutely no idea how to respond to any of that, it would just be unspeakably uncomfortable.
She certainly hadn't thought to do something this year. And she hadn't expected anybody else to suggest they should — especially not Snape.
And what the hell were they supposed to do, anyway? She didn't know how birthdays worked. Also, she had the feeling it'd be really fucking weird to, what, hang out at Fortescue's or something with Dorea and Hermione, with Snape standing there looming like...well, like Snape, she guessed...
Snape's lips twitched. "I can be convinced to leave you be for a few hours. In fact, I would prefer your friends remain unaware of your current living arrangements."
"I'll think about it." She was leaning toward probably not, if only because she had no bloody clue what they would do and also doubted she'd get anything out of it anyway. No point, really. "And, why not? I mean, I know you asked I not tell anyone where I was, but..." For security reasons, she'd assumed — it was harder for Sirius to find her and do something reckless and stupid in her vicinity if he didn't know where she was.
"I suspect," he drawled, a wry tilt to his lips and an eyebrow sardonically raised, "that the both of us would become the target of a number of annoying, prurient questions neither of us would enjoy being forced to answer. Personally, I would prefer to avoid drawing that sort of attention."
"Right, that makes sense. Speaking of annoying, prurient questions..." Taking another sip of wine, Snape rolled his eyes — it looked kind of silly, with the glass pressed against his lips, but Liz was starting to realise his totally-a-scary-dark-wizard-see-how-my-cloak-swishes act was always silly to begin with. "...what the hell am I doing here? Sure, Sirius Black might do something stupid, I understand that, but... There had to be something else that would work."
"You might be surprised how few suitable options there were."
"Probably not very many, and my being crazy doesn't make it easier, I know, but..." How the hell did she want to say this? "I know you think it's your job and everything to take care of the Slytherins — and I'm not saying I don't think you do that, I've heard the rumours going around. I'm just saying, putting me up in your house, seems like...too much. If you know what I mean."
Snape set his wine glass down, gently enough the clunk was barely audible, leaned back a little in his chair with a sigh. He was silent a moment, fingers softly drumming against the surface of the table, staring blankly at the wall to Liz's left. "As many times as I have intervened on behalf of one of my students, your circumstances are unique. Never have I been presented with a situation where a child has nowhere to go — normally, there are cousins who would suit, perhaps a friend of the family, or at the very least I can go to the Office of Child Welfare at the Ministry. However, none of those options are available, in your case. And so I have been forced to take...exceptional measures."
Liz was frowning through the whole explanation. "Huh. I don't think I've ever heard you lie before."
Casually reaching for his wine glass, Snape's eyebrow twitched. "All of that was true."
"I'm sure it was. But it's not why I'm here."
"And you're certain of that?"
"Yes." Granted, the feeling had been very subtle, but... She was mostly sure. She could be wrong, but if she had accused Snape of lying, and he actually wasn't, he probably would have told her to piss off, not just keep sipping at his wine seeming faintly amused.
"I hadn't realised you were that sensitive to such subtle nuances." ...Meaning he'd intended to lie to her, he just hadn't realised he couldn't get away with it. Awesome. "I would have told you either way, Elizabeth. This simply isn't the manner in which I wished to approach this subject. You're projecting very loudly right now," he explained before she could even ask how he knew what she was thinking.
Liz had very little sense of how 'loud' she was being, she honestly couldn't tell the difference. She tried to pull herself in a little bit, keep herself more to herself, but she had no idea if it was doing any good. "What is the reason, then?"
Snape was silent another long, obvious moment, staring at the wall. Waiting, Liz tried not to fidget — this really was kind of uncomfortable, he wished he wouldn't keep doing that. "A year ago now, I took a moment to explain Dumbledore's difficulty understanding circumstances such as yours, you may recall." She did, that was the day he'd showed up at her hotel room and dragged her off to a diner somewhere. That had been a very strange day, she wasn't likely to forget any time soon. "That day, I told you that you are hardly the only Slytherin to have come from a...less than healthy home environment. That I have accumulated experience in these matters Dumbledore has not, so am better equipped to deal with children like you."
"I remember." It was the reason her first thought had been to bring Tracey to him, in fact.
"That was the truth. It was not the whole truth." Snape took another sip of wine, fell into silence again. Only briefly, a couple seconds, not quite long enough for it to grow too uncomfortable. "What I didn't tell you that day is that I have first-hand experience in these matters. My father was a drunk — the angry, violent kind."
...Liz had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do with that information.
His voice still in his normal smooth, precise, Snape-ish tone, he said, "It wasn't so bad when I was very young, but as I began to properly come into my magic things...escalated. And by the time I was your age, well, returning home for the summer was not a restful experience, as you might imagine — I was hospitalised with broken bones on two occasions that I can recall."
Yeah, shite, no kidding...
"My mother was not abusive like my father, she was simply useless, the depressed kind of drunk — which, in the more objective view of hindsight, I no longer blame her for. Perhaps she should have left him long before, but by the time I was old enough to remember, well. It wasn't so bad for me when I was young, but I can't say the same for her, and she suffered things I never had to. I was six years old the first time I witnessed my father rape my mother — and that was not the last time."
Okay, that was fucked up. Also? Still had no bloody clue how to respond to this. Should she be saying something? What the fuck would she even say?
"There were false alarms, where I thought something might be done. I have uncles and an aunt, who clearly knew something was wrong, but nothing ever came of that. The neighbours called the police on more than one occasion, but that was worse than useless — seemingly, the only thing that ever accomplished was to make my father more angry, and my mother more hopeless. Nothing ever changed.
"The only one who ever seemed to even try to do anything about it was your mother." Snape broke to take another casual sip of wine. "I won't get into the details of what exactly happened back then — they aren't pertinent to our discussion in any meaningful way. And in any case, I would prefer not to speak of it. Suffice to say, there was a time where I felt, quiet seriously, that Lily was the only person on the face of the earth who gave a damn whether I lived or died."
...That was... Huh.
"So, I guess back in first year when I asked if you and Lily were friends, and you said yes, that was an understatement."
Snape burst into surprised laughter, sudden and loud enough Liz jumped. And he went on for some seconds, chuckling, with an actual smile on his face — she meant, not a smirk, or a fake, cold, poisonous, sarcastic sort of smile, no, a real smile, almost pleasant. It was bloody weird. She hadn't thought Snape even could smile. That was a silly thought, obviously, she was just saying, what the hell.
Had she ever heard Snape laugh before? She didn't think she had...
He quieted before too long — which was good, because Snape laughing and smiling like he was a normal human being or something was bloody creepy — still slowly shaking his head to himself. "Yes, I suppose it was. To return to the heart of the matter, Elizabeth. The particulars of your circumstances are unique, yes. But if one of your classmates were in the same situation... Now that the option has occurred to me, and the work to prepare the room has been done, might I offer it to another student if some pressing need comes along? Perhaps. Might such a possibility have occurred to me if the child in question were anyone else? I doubt it.
"I owe Lily Evans a debt I will likely never be able to repay in full. Ensuring her only child is safe and well is quite literally the least I can do."
While the kitchen fell into uncomfortable, clinging silence again, Liz frowned down at her plate, prodding at one of the few remaining bits of beef with her fork. Trying to make sense of the confusing mess in her head.
The bit about Snape's family being seriously fucked up...did kind of explain a lot, she thought. He did seem to get things, without it needing to be explained to him. Of course, that could have just been because he'd run into other fucked up kids before, but still, that he'd gone through some shite himself, so fucked up people made sense to him in a way they didn't to normal people, sure.
Come to think of it, she couldn't say if it was really that weird or not. The only other people who really knew about...anything, to do with the Dursleys, were Dorea and Hermione, and neither of them really knew much. And she'd refused to discuss it at all with either of them — the only exceptions were on Hallowe'en first year, when she'd kind of been cornered, and last summer, when she'd admitted to Dorea she was living on her own (and also that it was fine, don't worry about it), which she'd only done because she'd known Dorea already knew. (Hermione had tried to talk about her family, but Liz always just ignored her until she dropped it.) Those annoying one-on-one meetings with Snape were really the most she'd talked about it, ever.
Which wasn't even that much either, because Snape had never pressed for details on anything, as Hermione and Dorea and a couple times even Daphne had done. (She'd noticed in her thoughts back in January that Daphne even knew about the...thing on the sofa, whatever the word for that should be — somehow, Liz had no idea how she'd found out.) Which also implied that he knew what he was doing, because there was nothing to be gained by talking about it, and she did not want to, preferably ever. And he'd said the same thing a moment ago, about not wanting to talk about his own stuff. So. There was that.
And, also just his...general Snape-ishness... She didn't know. She didn't know exactly why she felt this way, but for some reason knowing Snape's family had been seriously fucked up was like a puzzle piece clicking into place. Okay, made sense.
The rest of it, with her mother and all...
This might be kind of a weird thing to think, but honestly Liz thought it was...oddly reassuring? That it wasn't really about her, she meant. That he'd cared about Lily, and he was looking after Liz because she wasn't around to pay back for stuff. It might not entirely make sense, but it was better, that way.
If it were, just, Liz needed a place to stay where there would be an adult around to stop Sirius from doing anything stupid, so hey, Snape just keeps her in his own damn house, because if he wants to do it right he might as well do it herself, just because she was one of his Slytherins, that would be...worse, that would be worse. She preferred it not really being about Liz. It was...less scary, this way. She couldn't say how the other way around would be scary, why that felt like the right word, but it was, it was better this way.
In fact, she found herself feeling strangely relieved. She couldn't explain that either, she just was.
"Okay."
She wasn't looking, but she somehow knew one of Snape's eyebrows had ticked up. "Okay?"
"You have answered my question. I understand. Good to know. We can move on now."
She picked up a flicker of amusement from his direction. She wasn't looking, still staring down at her plate — seemed safer, somehow.
The remainder of dinner passed in awkward mostly-silence. Thankfully, it wasn't very long before their plates were empty, and Snape was moving to start the clean-up without a word. Liz decided to use this as an opportunity to escape, grabbing her book and making for the door — she was held up for a second, Snape reminding her to consider their plans for Saturday. But then she was gone, slipping into her borrowed room, layering the door with the usual locking and sealing charms.
She'd had quite enough of uncomfortable conversations with Snape, thanks. The awkward checking-in-on-the-Slytherins meetings were bad enough, being stuck in a tiny house with him was no fun at all.
It didn't help that she was slightly...annoyed? She thought that was annoyance, the hit simmering just at the edge of her awareness — not something she was thinking about, something that was...just there. She had no clue what that was about. So far as awkward Snape conversations went, that one hadn't even been that bad. There hadn't been anything to get herself worked up over...and she wasn't getting worked up over it, it was subtle enough it was barely there. She hadn't even noticed until she was alone, the awkwardness faded enough the annoyance underneath it was more easily noticeable.
That was...weird.
But then, most of her talks with Snape were bloody weird these days, weren't they?
Casting her own inexplicable feelings out of mind, Liz flopped back onto her bed, and settled in to read.
Personally, presented with Snape's over-dramatic, silly caricature of a SCARY DARK WIZARD, I've always seen an awkward nerd who never entirely figured out how to adult, and is trying way too hard to get people to take him seriously. But maybe that's just me. That he performs the silly character he does in public half because people are hard and half to amuse himself is really the best and most charitable interpretation, I think.
Also, I just like it. Awkward, silly, nerdy Snape is my headcanon, and I cannot be convinced otherwise.
Anyway, yeah, been a while. Been distracted by other projects and also depression being terrible, not news. Also, this chapter really fought me at a few points, that didn't help. (I still don't like it, but that's life.) The third scene of this chapter was moved to the beginning of the next chapter, because omg I am such a wordy bitch why is this so long...
Next chapter involves a totally innocuous stray dog and a trip to Charing that certainly won't have any kind of long-term consequences whatsoever. And then after that we have the perfectly uneventful return to Hogwarts — because it's not like exposing Liz and Dorea to a dementor will end badly, or anything.
Right, going now.