She stopped by the little post office on the main street to send the letters out quick. She had an owl back at Snape's house, of course, but she didn't want to forget about them over the long day, or accidentally get them torn or stained by something while stuck in her backpack. And besides, it only cost a couple knuts.
The Leaky Cauldron was, thankfully, much more empty than she'd thought it would be. She'd expected the place would be getting people coming in for lunch, but it didn't seem so — there were people at two of the tables, a few drinking at the sad, dingy bar, but other than that only people passing through. Which was good, the place was unpleasant enough without a bunch of noisy strangers packed in here, especially since people would be saying her name. Normally strangers didn't recognise her without being prompted, but if she drew too much attention...
"Oh, Liz!" Hermione popped up from one of the stools at the bar, almost tripping over her bag at her feet. Was it Liz's imagination, or was she taller? How was that even possible, Liz had last seen her not even a month and a half ago. (She had to be imagining it, Liz was just self-conscious about how fucking tiny she was.) She'd gotten a haircut at some point, above her shoulders now, though it was hard to tell how long it was supposed to be because it was just as big as normal, a halo of frizzy brown curls surrounding her face. She'd also gotten a very obvious tan over the last weeks, enough she almost didn't even look white anymore, which Liz was also slightly jealous about — Liz didn't tan, she just got sunburn instead.
Of course, Hermione also clearly had tits now, but Liz had already known that, the baggy school robes just kept them from being obvious most of the time.
Untangling her foot from one of the straps of her backpack, Liz actually got to the bar before Hermione could get away from it. Her face splitting into a bright grin, she twitched as though to move in to hug her — Liz caught Hermione catch herself, the very explicit thought that Liz didn't like hugging flickered through her mind — but ended up just taking both of Liz's hands in hers, squeezing for a moment. "Oh, it's so good to see you! How has your summer been?"
"Fine. I haven't really had much going on." Which was only sort of true — her blood magic experiments didn't really count, and she wasn't supposed to talk about being whisked off to Snape's house. After a couple seconds, Hermione released her hands, Liz immediately folded them behind her back. "How's France?"
"Oh, France is and will always be inimitably France." Liz wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean, but okay. "We've mostly been staying with my grandmother in Orléans — not actually in Paris, but it's only a short train ride away — and my aunt Tienne still lives there, though she started university recently, so she's not around during the day. Which, honestly, I am fine with that!" Hermione huffed, rolling her eyes. "Apparently, ma chère, gentille tatie has decided I'm old enough to tease about boys now."
Liz didn't understand the French, wasn't looking close enough at Hermione's head to pick it up, but she could tell whatever she'd said was supposed to be sarcastic anyway. "I'm pretty sure you're old enough to do the teasing yourself," Liz said, glancing downward for a second.
Her oddly brown-ish face pinking, Hermione smacked her on the arm — surprisingly hard, actually, it kind of hurt a little. "You're terrible, Liz, honestly..."
"I'm not the one hitting people, honestly..."
They talked for a couple minutes, about Hermione's holiday in France. Her father had actually been born there, and her grandmother and various aunts and uncles still lived there, so they spent a lot of holidays in France. The plan this time was to stay down there the whole summer, though her parents still had to come back now and again for work reasons — Hermione had crossed the Channel with her mother earlier this week, would be going back on Monday. Hermione's grandmother had had five kids, so there was room in her house for Hermione and her parents to stay with her, so that's what they did most of the time, though they'd spent the last week or so somewhere called Fréjus and Saint-Raphaël. (Was that one place with a long name, or two separate towns? Liz didn't know, but she didn't really care enough to ask.) Apparently there were a lot of old Roman ruins and museums and stuff, because Hermione on holiday was still Hermione, but she'd also been dragged off to beaches several times by her youngest aunt and her cousins, hence the tan.
The next of their group to arrive were Susan and Hannah, tumbling out of the public floo arm-and-arm — which wasn't easy to do, they nearly tripped over each other. Hannah had sprung up over the last couple months, now the second tallest girl in their year after Millie, Liz didn't even reach her shoulder. It was possible Hannah's hair, stretching down her back in a long, twisting blonde plait, was longer than Liz was tall, it was ridiculous. (Not really, but still.) Susan was a less annoying height, at least — the Boneses were an absolutely ancient pureblood family, and purebloods tended to be short — but Liz actually just liked Susan more than Hannah in general, if only because she was quieter and more...considerate?
Case in point, Hannah bounded right up to them and yanked Liz into a hug, squealing happy birthday! and then babbling off asking what she's been up to over the holiday; Liz was too busy trying not to lash out at Hannah with mind magic to make her let go, she grumbled out a response even she didn't hear. Once Hannah had moved on to Hermione, Susan leaned in a little — Liz instinctively backed away, but Susan wasn't moving to grab at her, it was fine — muttered, "Sorry, I said she shouldn't do that, but Hannah's a hugger."
"Yes. I noticed." Honestly, Hannah was fine on an ordinary day, but when she got excited about something she could be a bit...much. If it'd been up to Liz, she probably would have only invited Susan — though if she had Susan might have brought Hannah along anyway, they were kind of inseparable. Friends since they were toddlers, supposedly.
Blinking in surprise, Liz belatedly noticed Hannah and Susan were both wearing muggle clothes — Hannah in denims and a tee shirt, Susan a knee-length pleated skirt and sleeveless flower-printed blouse. That was...odd. Not for Hannah, her mother was muggleborn, but Liz didn't think she'd ever seen Susan in muggle clothes before. By pureblood standards, what she was wearing was kind of scandalous, actually...
Susan and Hannah were only around for a moment before Dorea showed up. She didn't look any different from normal at all, except that she hardly ever wore trousers — those denims did look very new though, so, who knows. It might be her imagination, but Dorea seemed weirdly relieved to see Liz. Maybe worried that Sirius might have found her and done something stupid...or maybe that she just wasn't taking care of herself good enough on her own, could go either way on that one.
Dorea barely had time to say hello to everyone when the floo was flaring green again, spitting people out one after the other. Tracey was through first, skipping to a halt with all the casual ease of someone who'd been doing this forever. She did look rather different, wearing denims and a white blouse, muggle-made — which wasn't weird, of course, but out of character for Tracey, who usually dressed like a pureblood — and she'd also gotten a haircut, really short, didn't even reach past her ears, fluttery black bits left to sit or stick up as they pleased. Okay, then. She seemed taller to Liz too, but that might just be because they'd barely spoken to each other in nearly a year.
Shortly after Tracey was someone who had to be Daphne's mother — they looked far too similar for it to be a coincidence. Pale and round-cheeked, bright sunny blonde hair left free to tumble over her shoulders, she was rather tall for a pureblood, though still not quite as tall as Millie, Liz didn't think (and Millie was still only thirteen, big girl). She was in what Liz recognised as "summer robes", which was really just a strangely-cut dress, loose and draping off a person weird. They also tended to cover less than normal robes, the hem of this one only halfway down her thighs, though she was wearing leggings, so. As she glanced around the room, giving Liz a clearer glimpse of her face, she noticed the woman looked very similar to Daphne, almost like looking into the future — magical aging being what it was, Liz would guess this was Daphne at...maybe mid-twenties, despite knowing she had to be nearly forty for the math to work out.
A short moment after Daphne's mother came through, the floo flared green again, a girl tossed out to stumble across the floor. She might have fallen flat on her face if her mother (presumably) hadn't dipped down a bit and snagged her around the waist with one arm. This girl also looked like Daphne, but younger this time, more like she'd been back in first year — long bright blonde hair held in a complicated plait, slim and tall (relatively), pale and blue-eyed — but Liz knew after only a couple seconds that she would never confuse the two of them. This girl's face did look a little narrower, but that wasn't it, she just seemed...bouncier. Once she had her balance back she was practically vibrating on her toes, her face split with a brilliant grin, babbling off to her mother (Liz couldn't hear what from here).
Also, she was wearing these tiny little shorts (not dissimilar from what Liz was wearing under her dress) and a loose tunic sort of thing that almost seemed too big for her, the sleeves pooling at her elbows and the hem nearly hiding her shorts. Liz was pretty sure Daphne wouldn't be caught dead dressed like that in public.
Daphne herself strolled out of the hearth a moment later, as smoothly and casually as though she were just walking across the room. Liz hadn't remembered wrong, she and her mother looked practically identical, the only differences that Daphne looked somewhat younger, a couple inches shorter, and wasn't as thick around the hips and chest (though Liz bet she'd get there eventually). She was probably right about her judgement on her sister's clothes, too — Daphne wasn't in fancy robes or anything, a dress that looked normal enough it could be muggle-made, though it was long enough the hem might drag on the floor if her boots didn't have heels, her sleeves flared enough her arm showed nearly up to the elbow when she reached up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
Once the four of them were settled, Daphne started to lead the way across the little pub, Tracey at her elbow and closely followed by her mother and sister. Daphne and Tracey said hi to everyone quick, before Daphne immediately started introducing the other two to everyone — her mother's name was Ailbhe (which she would like the girls to all use for the day), and her sister was Astoria ("'Tori' is cool!"). Then she went through all the rest of them one by one, starting with Liz — Ailbhe shook her hand, actually, Liz had thought that wasn't a thing mages did (at least not the purebloods); since her mother did, Tori apparently decided that was just what they were doing, offering her own hand all solemn-faced and formal-voiced about it. (If Liz couldn't see in her head the silly girl was being completely serious, she might have thought Tori was mocking her mother.) And Daphne continued through the group, first Susan, then Dorea, Hannah, and finally Hermione.
Toward the end, there was a sudden burst of wry bemusement from Dorea. Daphne was introducing them according to order of precedence — as the person this event was centred around, being her birthday and all, Liz went first; as the Ladies of Noble and Most Ancient Houses, Susan came next, and then Dorea (apparently Bones was supposed to come before Black, though Dorea didn't explicitly think about why); Hannah, a random ordinary commoner, came next; and then last was Hermione, the muggleborn in the group.
That was kind of funny, Liz had to admit. Apparently Daphne had to do things the "proper" way, even when they were just going on a school shopping trip.
Once they had all that nonsense out of the way, they left the pub on the magical side, heading for the restaurant Susan had recommended a few days ago now, a few side streets off of the main avenue. (Charing was kind of big, a decently-sized town, which was weird, there was no way there was enough space in this part of London for all this to fit.) It was a perfectly ordinary-looking place, really, save for the absence of any electrical fixtures at all it could pass for muggle, everything made of unstained wood, tables and chairs dotted across the floor. The lighting was probably magical, but it was subtle enough Liz wasn't even certain where they were, most of the light seemingly coming in through the windows.
Also, the menu was perfectly ordinary too: Liz had been brought to a magical pizza place. She hadn't realised purebloods even knew what pizza was. For a few seconds, Liz could only stare at the menu on the wall over the counter, dumbfounded.
Though it wasn't quite pizza as Liz knew it — it was definitely recognisable, circles of bread with cheese and such on them, but there were differences, Hannah explained. (Apparently, Hannah was the expert on the differences between muggle and magical food in the group.) For one thing, it wasn't called pizza, but Liz didn't give a shite about that, that's obviously what it was. Also, the magical British version (imported from somewhere on the Continent ages ago) had become a thing before people had started bringing back tomatoes from America, so they didn't have the sauce — their pizza didn't usually have sauce at all, actually.
Also, it wasn't baked, but fried...kind of. It was a thing that only really worked with magic available. While waiting their turn, Hannah explained that they beat the dough into shape, then coated it in a thin layer of this oily stuff — traditionally, olive oil, butter, and garlic, though there were variations — which was then blasted with fire from all sides at once, done in a special enchanted oven that levitated the dough while cooking it (which was kind of neat). The top was then usually slathered with this really soft cheese (like quark cheese, she guessed), and then the toppings the person asked for — most commonly some combination of onions and mushrooms and bacon, because magical Britain was still Britain. There were all kinds of variations out there, of course, because people were always experimenting with everything edible, but that was the basic idea.
It sounded really good, actually — it even skipped the sauce, which had always been the most problematic part of pizza for Liz. Good pick, Susan.
They ended up getting three different ones. On the toppings list, Liz noticed they had braised and shredded mutton, which sounded interesting, but Hermione didn't eat mutton and Dorea didn't like mushrooms — which was silly, mushrooms didn't taste that strongly of anything at all, but okay — so they'd be splitting one with Hannah, Liz sharing hers with Susan and Tracey. The Greengrasses would be getting their own, because apparently they were vegetarians, which Liz had somehow managed not to even notice after knowing Daphne for nearly two years now. (In her defence, she didn't really pay that much attention to what other people ate.) Once they'd put in their orders, and Ailbhe paid — Hermione and Susan both protested, saying they could at least chip in, but the woman just smiled sweetly and ignored them — and found some seats.
They ended up cheating to fit everyone the way they wanted, Ailbhe expanding a table with a tap of her wand, duplicating enough chairs for all seven girls to sit around what had been a two-person table a second ago, Daphne's mother and sister sitting at an adjacent table, where Daphne could easily reach back and take pieces of the pizza they were sharing. Because, apparently people didn't mind if you transfigured the furniture in their restaurant? Seemed a little weird, but mages were a little weird, what did she know.
Through lunch, the girls mostly talked about what they'd been up to in the summer so far — Liz said "the girls" instead of "they" because she didn't participate much herself, but that was fine, she didn't mind just listening. Most of them hadn't really been doing that much, at least partially because of Sirius's escape from Azkaban. Susan's mum — her aunt, technically, but when talking to her friends she usually called her her mum — was the Director of Law Enforcement at the Ministry, so she tended to be pretty busy at the best of times, but with the big scandals going on and organising a nation-wide manhunt, yeah, she'd barely even been home at all. Susan and Hannah had spent most of the summer together, and nothing really interesting had been going on with them.
Similarly, Ailbhe couldn't leave the country — there was too much politicking going on at the moment, Lady Greengrass couldn't risk being too far away in case something big happened. Which meant they'd actually canceled a trip this summer, to somewhere called Flakstaðey, an island way up north somewhere that Liz was pretty sure was in Norway? She didn't ask, though, the purebloods would misunderstand the question anyway. ("Norway" to mages just meant the north in general, and depending on who you asked could include all of Norway and Sweden, but also Orkney, Shetland, and Iceland, and sometimes even the Scottish Highlands.) Their father was from there, apparently — their parents had met at an international academic conference in enchanting, which Hermione thought was adorable — so they tried to get out there to visit that side of the family now and again, but it wouldn't be possible this summer. Tori went on a babble about how she'd once fallen off a cliff into the sea and ended up being rescued by the prettiest selkie, she was so nice! only stopped when she was distracted by the pizza arriving.
(And the pizza was amazing, by the way, she made a mental note to check out magical pizza again sometime.)
Hermione was temporarily flabbergasted by selkies actually existing in real life, which all the people who'd been raised with magic thought was silly, and Liz kind of did too, honestly — there were fucking mermaids in the lake outside their school, Liz wasn't surprised by any of this shite anymore.
Not that there was actually anything interesting going on Sirius-related. There were rumours of him being spotted all over the country, but Susan said the DLE thought most of them were people jumping at shadows or just making it up. Dorea had been interrogated by the Aurors once — pulled out of bed at four in the morning, she grumbled, clearly still annoyed about it — but she hadn't heard anything since.
Tracey apparently did have stuff going on, but she didn't really talk about it much. She'd been staying with the Greengrasses all summer so far, and sure, the Greengrasses weren't doing anything out of the ordinary themselves, but it was weird that Tracey was there at all. Reading between the lines (and consciously stopping herself from trying to read Tracey's mind), Liz guessed whatever Snape had done to stop Tracey from being murdered by her grandfather was seeing results already — whether Tracey was to stay with the Greengrasses indefinitely, or it was just something they were doing until a more permanent arrangement could be made, whichever, at least something was being done.
Tracey didn't say much of anything about it, but Liz wouldn't expect her to — she wasn't to speak of what went on at home.
Once they were done with Sirius stuff and summer stuff, then they were talking about classes, because most of the people here were kind of nerds. Hannah was a little concerned about Transfiguration — apparently they did more animate transfiguration in third year, and Hannah was worried she might screw it up and make a mouse or bird or something explode in a gory mess — but mostly they went babbling on about the electives they were taking.
All of them were taking Arithmancy and Runes — both were needed for any serious academic work in magic, or for Mastery-level study in practically any field at all. That, and it was also just dead useful. Apparently, with arithmancy it was possible to invent new spells — though not easy, reducing an arithmantic model to a castable spell was very complicated, they wouldn't be doing it until NEWT level — but making your own enchantments was dead easy. Could blow up in your face if you weren't careful, of course, but not actually hard to do. Dorea was worried about being able to do the math for Arithmancy, and Daphne would probably be bored for the first couple terms in Runes (her mother was an enchanter, she knew stuff already), but other than that, all of them were looking forward to it.
Liz was too, but she couldn't say why. She had the feeling admitting that she'd probably end up using what they learned in Runes playing around with illegal witchcraft, rituals and blood magic and stuff, would be a bad idea. Especially with the daughter of the Director of Law Enforcement sitting right there.
(See, Tamsyn, Liz wasn't a complete idiot...)
All of them were taking a third new class, but not all the same one. Nobody was taking Muggle Studies, because why the hell would anybody waste their time with that, split instead between Care of Magical Creatures and Divination — Liz, Dorea, Hermione, and Susan were in Divination, Daphne, Tracey, and Hannah in Care. (Which was weird, Susan and Hannah taking a different class, Liz had thought they did everything together.) Daphne wanted the Care NEWT, though she didn't say why — and she wasn't explicitly thinking about it either, Liz couldn't tell without intruding further — Susan was bad with animals — frightened of some of them on the curriculum, though she didn't say that part out loud — but Liz and Dorea just preferred to stay indoors, thanks.
She didn't really understand people who liked animals, honestly, they were just kind of stupid and boring, and sometimes smelled really weird. Which Hannah thought was sad, for some reason? She didn't get it. Even Dorea and Susan didn't react very well to her opinion, and they were taking Divination with her...
Liz learned her lesson, and kept her opinions to herself for the rest of the conversation.
Once the pizza was gone — which was great, Liz wondered if Snape would agree to getting magical pizza instead of the muggle kind for the rest of the summer — then it was off to do their school shopping and shite. They hesitated at the junction onto the main street, clumped up on the pavement and discussing what order they wanted to do these things in. They all needed their books, yes — the letters still hadn't gone out yet, but Liz had gotten the third-year booklist from Snape (excluding Defence), and the first years' never really changed. Tori didn't need a cauldron or phials or scales, since she'd just be bringing some from home, but she would be dropping by the apothecary to get the pack of standard ingredients they sold there; Liz could also use refills for a few things, as could Hannah and Hermione, and Tracey had lost all of hers, somehow. Everyone taking Runes needed a few basic tools, Divination a student set of reservoir stones, Liz didn't even know what those were — they were also used in enchanting, Ailbhe claimed, they were sold in the same shop as the Runes stuff. Tori didn't need to go to Madam Malkin's — apparently they made their own clothes at the Greenwood, including their school uniforms, which was wild, Liz had had no idea — but Hermione, Hannah, Tracey, and Liz herself all did — Liz was still annoyingly tiny, yes, but the robes she'd gotten in first year were a couple inches too short now, and she needed a new quidditch uniform. They'd be doing that while Tori got her wand. Right, so they were good to go, then.
...Or not? They'd somehow gotten on a tangent about how professional enchanters and wardcrafters made a living, Hermione interrogating Ailbhe, the other girls occasionally throwing in comments about the enchanted shite magical houses apparently had. Liz waited for the conversation to wind down, trying not to look too annoyed.
They went to the enchanters' shop first. A rather plain-looking little thing innocuously tucked between the post office and the quidditch shop, the inside was surprisingly dusty, the air tasting of chalk and sawdust. The floors were unpolished slate tile, the walls and ceiling unstained wood. In the middle of the floor, instead of shelves there were just these stacks of stuff, big pallets a couple feet to a side, the tops of the tallest stacks higher than Liz's head. They were tiles, flat squares maybe four inches to a side made of various kinds of wood and stone — more stone than wood, but there were still hundreds of tiles in the wood piles all together, it was a lot of crap. There were these signs attached to each pile, saying what the material was, how strong it was, how resistant to water and acid, and then a few magical terms she didn't recognise. She was pretty sure they were tolerances for holding and channeling magic (of various qualities), which were separate things — for example, the human body was pretty good at channeling magic, so they could cast spells at all, but awful at holding magic, which was why channeling too much could do serious damage if you weren't careful — but Liz couldn't say for certain, she didn't know some of the terminology involved. The signs had a price for the little tiles, but also said they could be formed into whatever shapes people wanted, go to the desk for an estimate.
Liz couldn't imagine what all this shite was for, but luckily she didn't have to. Ailbhe said it was pretty typical for people studying glyph magic to go through a lot of tiles like these to practise enchanting, usually fired clay and soft woods — both because their low channeling threshold limited the damage they could do, and they could be destroyed easily if something went wrong. It was pretty common for the tiles and panels and things used in magical construction to be enchanted — things altering the material itself, preventing damage or staining, but also things affecting the space around it, giving off light or controlling the temperature and humidity, or neat things like automatically repairing a glass dropped on it, Susan claimed — the script carved into them hidden on the reverse side. The cheap materials here were just meant for practice, but the more expensive ones were for that kind of work.
This shop wasn't just for enchanting and warding supplies, apparently they were also, like, construction contractor people. On the other side of the pallets was a more open area, tools hanging on the walls or from racks, big spools of thread, some fibres but others metal wire — copper and silver and gold, but also aluminium and platinum and lead and iron and nickel and tin, and Liz didn't even know what calamin and wolfram were — bins of crystals in various sizes and colours, one glass cabinet with finer gemstones on display — some of those were literally diamonds. There were also a few display pieces of different kinds of glass, but none to buy off the shelf, shaped to order. Back here was a counter, surrounding it displays describing the services they did, complete with pictures of past projects. A lot of stone work, it looked like, but in one spot there was a sort of greenhouse thing, the glass set in complicated, curving patterns, glinting rainbow colours in the sunlight, very pretty.
At one of the tables here sat a man who must be an employee, poking at a colourful wireframe illusion of a little house hanging in the air with a metal device — it looked like a pen, but Liz doubted it could actually write — chattering with a man and woman across the table. A relatively newly-married couple, Liz knew, planning on building a new house on their clan's land, because the woman kind of couldn't stand her mother- and brothers-in-law, and was tired of being walked in on while having sex by his baby cousins — the things Liz accidentally picked up through mind-reading superpowers sometimes...
...She wondered if it would be worth it to just demolish the rest of the house in Godric's Hollow and build whatever she wanted on the land instead. Eh, she had time to think about it.
They all drifted toward where the enchanting implements were hanging up, Hermione found packets labelled for student use right away — Ailbhe took one glance at the contents, scoffed, and helped all of them to pick out the necessary tools one by one instead. They needed two wood knives — a little blade attached to a narrow handle, like a pen with a cutting edge on the end of it — the blades different sizes and thicknesses, enchanted for extra sharpness and durability. Also, two styluses (styli?), one for working with clay and another for wax (the tips were shaped different). And then there was something labeled on the shelf as a "stone knife", but Ailbhe called an "annihilation blade", which was a very cool name. The devices looked innocuous, just lengths of smooth metal with a couple tiny switches and a twist cap on one end, but Ailbhe said they were designed to carve into stone by automatically vanishing whatever material they touched — any material including human flesh, Ailbhe gave them very firm warnings to not go playing around with the things. And then they needed one hot and one cold "finisher", which were more perfectly ordinary-looking bits of metal. Materials often formed an outside layer, which held up to being worn better than the inside, but carving in runes would expose the weaker inside — the finishers were meant to convert the stuff they touched into the stronger outside layer, prevent the thing from breaking down, which Hermione thought was fascinating for complicated science reasons Liz couldn't follow (not even in her head), but Liz was mostly just wondering why there were two of them. Apparently, different materials had to be "finished" by different magical processes, their professor would tell them which worked with what.
Anyway, the reason Ailbhe wanted them to buy them one by one was because carving runes was a relatively delicate process — the sealed pre-packaged things didn't allow them to make sure they felt comfortable in their hands. They did come in varying shapes and sizes, so, Liz guessed that wasn't unreasonable. Ailbhe even bought three cheap tiles, one wood, one clay, and one sandstone, so they could try them out. (She cast some kind of charm to make the hardened clay all soft and malleable again, which was neat.) There were a few different styles of things, Ailbhe led them toward somewhere in the middle — not the cheap ones, which were crap and might stop working right before the year was even over, but not the expensive ones either, which weren't really worth the cost for students — and let them poke around until they'd found one they liked of all seven tools they needed. Once they were set, they were then led to a rack of carry cases to keep them all in. They were shaped sort of like coloured pencil boxes, she thought, though made out of leather instead of cheap cardboard.
It ended up being about a half sickle more expensive this way, but Liz didn't actually care that much. Ailbhe was the expert in this stuff, Liz was just gonna assume she knew what she was talking about.
The reservoir stones were quick. Everyone taking Divination just grabbed several bits of crystal, maybe quartz, which, apparently that's all that was? They had a lot of crystals and gemstones in here, so apparently they were used in enchanting for something, though Ailbhe admitted she had no idea what Divination needed them for...
Next was the bookstore — Susan had suggested books before potions stuff, lower chance of something fragile getting broken. Flourish and Blotts looked the same as always, like one of those nicer, newer bookstores in London, with the gleaming polished window frames and rosewood shelves, the occasional cushy armchair here and there, though seeming weirdly off-kilter, the ailes not quite in perfectly-straight rows, some of the shelves themselves slightly crooked, the books within arranged somewhat haphazardly, crammed in however they could fit, even if that meant stacking them two-high on one shelf, or layering some lying sideways on top or even beneath a row standing upright. Of course, most magical places had this kind of feel to it, less regimented like.
Liz still thought it was slightly weird, but she did like to imagine the look on Petunia's face if she ever stepped foot in this kind of place.
They ended up staying in the bookstore longer than they really needed to, which wasn't a surprise, since all of them were nerds of one kind or another. On Hermione's recommendation, they found and paid for all the books they needed for class first, to make certain they wouldn't forget anything, before lingering to look at other stuff — nobody was the least bit surprised that Hermione had a strategy all worked out for book shopping. They all needed new books for Charms, Transfigurations, and Potions, except for Liz, who'd bought the third and fourth Standard Book of Spells a year ago. Runes took a book called Spellman's Syllabary, which was weird, because it looked like it was basically just a dictionary, but presumably the professor would explain what they were actually doing. The Arithmancy books were Numerology and Grammatica, which were clearly part of a set, the style and fonts of the covers matching, just in different colours. There were two more in the set, called Analysis and Reification, which they didn't need, at least not in third year — Liz and Hermione bought all four anyway.
Out of curiosity, Liz flipped to the back of the new potions book, checked the publisher's imprint — it was at the front of a muggle book, but at the end in magical ones — and yep, this one was printed by Goldwing Press too. That was still a weird thought, that she partially owned the company that... Wait, when she bought this, would a fraction of her own money be coming back to her? Hmm.
They split up then, but Liz watched for a little bit — apparently the Care of Magical Creatures textbook was the one the store had in that cage back there...for some reason? Why the hell would they keep books in a cage? But when one of the shop workers approached the cage — tense and steely-eyed, as though walking into spellfire — the disorganised pile of lime-green books burst into motion, fluttering over each other, snapping at the bars of the cage, creating a great rattling and clangoring, the man clearly had to fight to get his hands on one of the books, slapping away others trying to bite at him.
...Liz was now very relieved she wasn't taking that class.
The only book required for Divination was a thick, heavy volume titled Unfogging the Future — Liz checked the table of contents quick, and nope, that wasn't just a title, it really only dealt with scrying the future. That was...concerning. Liz knew from Tamsyn's letters that scrying the future was kind of a crapshoot — parallel dimensions were apparently a thing, and there was no practical way to tell if anything was relevant to people in this universe at all — but scrying the present and the past was much more reliable. And crystal balls supposedly only worked for Seers...
Oh well. If the class ended up not being as useful as she'd hoped, she'd just have to study divination in her own time. Annoying, but not that different from usual, really.
Once she'd paid for her required books — which took a little while, Hermione and Tori had ended up in front of her — Liz turned around and went straight back to the Divination section. Tamsyn knew about scrying and stuff, but she didn't have any experience in doing it herself, so if Liz wanted to try it she needed to get it from somewhere else. Unfortunately, the Divination books seemed to be mostly silly nonsense — all stuff about predicting the future to protect yourself from being blindsided by major events, or stories about people trying to act on predictions and having it backfire on them horribly, or how to use it to help you find your one true love, that kind of rubbish. It all seemed kind of...
It reminded her of some of the books Petunia and the neighbour ladies read, fluffy nonsense about actualising your dreams or gossip about one celebrity or another or finding your inner goddess or whatever, the same sort of thing but with magic involved. Or, supposedly with magic involved, because Tamsyn claimed this seeing-the-future shite didn't even work. That was disappointing.
She did find what she was looking for, it just took a little bit of poking around. One was called Reflections of the Unseen, which seemed to be mostly about farseeing — that is, scrying a far-off place in the present. It wasn't actually necessary to use a reflective surface to project it, but the book did go into quite a bit of that, talking about standing water versus running water, or water held in a bowl, mirrors or just any polished surface, going into some detail of the benefits and shortcomings of each, even how the material the bowl or mirror or whatever was made of could affect the magic. So, that sounded like exactly what she was looking for. After a bit more poking around, Liz found another book called Echoes of the Past: A Primer in the Exploration of the Memory of Objects and Locations, which also sounded interesting, so she picked up that one too.
Flipping the cover closed, Liz glanced at Dorea, standing only a short distance away. Liz had known she was there, of course, it wasn't really possible to sneak up on a mind mage, but she was just standing there, staring at one of the books on a nearby shelf. Not really looking at it, Liz didn't think — there was a blankness to her face, her mind feeling cool and sharp, but unfocused, thinking about something else. "Dorea?"
Dorea twitched, blinked at her for a second. "Oh, um..." She turned back to the book — one of the silly fortune-telling books, Death Omens, turned on the shelf so the front cover was facing out, featuring a stylised shaggy black dog with red eyes and vicious white fangs. (Which was overdramatic, yes, but also completely ridiculous, because things like death omens were just superstition.) No idea why Dorea was so distracted by that book, the drawing wasn't even that good. Her voice dropping to a whisper, "Is anyone listening to us?"
"Why?"
"Could you check?"
Liz stared at her for a second, before shrugging it off. (She didn't think Dorea had ever asked her to use her mind-control superpowers before.) It only took a quick second feeling out the area nearby — the closest people were Susan and Hannah one row over, and they were distracted picking over a potions book of some kind, nobody else was in earshot. "No. What is it?"
"Sirius is an animagus."
...Okay? Liz was familiar with the concept, of course, though the only one she'd ever met (that she knew of) was McGonagall. She was under the impression it was rare. "I didn't know that, but I haven't really been paying attention to the news about him."
"Nobody knows. Well, some people know, obviously, but nobody's told the Ministry. Which is weird, because Remus definitely knows, but if he'd told anyone the Ministry would probably find out, and if they knew Sirius was an animagus you'd think they'd warn people about that."
Right, well, Liz imagined it could be difficult to hunt down a man if they didn't realise he could turn into some inconspicuous animal — that was probably how Sirius had managed to evade the entire DLE for this long. "Remus?"
A shiver of exasperation crossing her head, Dorea dismissively waved a hand. "Nothing, just one of our fathers' friends back when they were in school. He's the new Defence Professor this year, actually."
"Really? Why don't we have a book list yet, then?"
"I don't know, I guess he hasn't gotten around to it — he is still in France, I think. I only know because he asked me for permission before accepting the job."
"...Why did he need your permission for that?"
"Liz, don't ask me to explain anything that man does, honestly, I don't know. We don't get along, true, but I don't see why that—" Dorea cut herself off with a harsh sigh, her eyes tipping up to the ceiling for a second. "Never mind, Remus Lupin isn't what I wanted to talk about. Are we still alone?"
Liz checked quick, but Susan and Hannah were still preoccupied; Daphne wasn't much further away now, but she was focused on scanning through the craft magic section. "Yes."
Tense, anxiety bubbling in her head, Dorea hissed, "Sirius can turn into a big dog with shaggy black fur. I mean big, he might weigh more than you like that."
"...Okay?"
"I was just thinking, he might try to... If you see a suspicious dog around, you should—"
"—do what? Call the Ministry?"
Dorea gaped at her for a second, her mouth hanging pointlessly open. "Er..." Glancing away, she cleared her throat, lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "I don't know, I guess. If you called the Aurors, they probably just wouldn't believe you, since nobody else has ever said anything, and..." ...they'd probably want to know why you're on your own.
Liz almost told her she was actually living with Snape now before catching herself at the last second. And then she considered actually telling Dorea anyway for a couple more seconds, before deciding that wasn't a good idea — she didn't think Dorea would go blabbing her secrets to people (at the very least, she hadn't yet), but if she thought about it too clearly in Snape's presence he would know Liz had told her, and he probably wouldn't be happy about that. "I'm fine, Dorea, you don't have to worry about me."
Glancing away, Dorea fought a scowl. Which was completely pointless, because Liz knew what she was feeling whether it showed on her face or not, she might as well not bother putting in the effort to hide it. Much like she also knew that Dorea was unhappy about Liz living on her own (even though she wasn't anymore), not because she thought Liz was actually in danger of, she didn't know, somehow getting hurt or whatever, but more that she just...didn't like it. For reasons Dorea couldn't really articulate, not even to herself. But she wouldn't be saying anything about it to Liz, because she knew Liz wouldn't appreciate it.
Which, when she thought about it, there was really no point in Dorea not just saying what she was thinking, since Liz could see her thinking it anyway. But she understood Dorea was uncomfortable with the mind-reading thing, so Liz tried to pretend she didn't know things Dorea hadn't actually said aloud. No matter how bloody tedious it could be at times.
Liz blinked as a thought occurred to her, much later than it probably should have. "Wait. Have you seen him?"
Dorea winced, another flare of nerves crawling across her mind, though she finally nodded. "Yes, once. I was walking to the market when I spotted what I'm pretty sure was him. I mean, I don't know for sure, I've never seen him before and he was pretty far away, but I think so. He scarpered as soon as I noticed him. That was a week ago now, and I haven't seen him again since."
...There was something funny about a supposedly terrifying mass-murderer running away from Dorea. She was perhaps the least physically imposing person Liz knew — she was taller than Liz, yes (everybody was), but she was all...fragile. Liz was convinced there was something wrong with her, medically, though she'd never said what, nor thought about it loudly enough for Liz to pick it up. (Or, not in enough detail, anyway, Liz knew Dorea knew what it was, but she was used to it enough she didn't explicitly think about it.) Sometimes she got all dizzy and pale just walking up the stairs, seriously...
"I'll keep an eye out, I guess." Not that she really expected it to be a problem. Even if Sirius knew to look for her at the Dursleys', she wasn't there, and he definitely wouldn't guess she was with Snape — and even if he did, Liz kind of doubted he knew where Snape lived. It was pretty easy for someone to track their child (or their parent) with blood magic, she'd bet that was how Sirius had found Dorea, but Liz was more distantly related — supposedly, Sirius was her second cousin, though Liz still wasn't really clear on what a second cousin was — which made it much more difficult.
Also, the ring Snape had forced on her over a year ago now blocked tracking charms as well as detecting poisons and curses, and she'd be shocked if Snape didn't have all kinds of anti-scrying shite on his wards. The chances of Sirius finding her were approximately zero. And even if he did, Snape would probably scare him off, so. Yeah, she wasn't concerned about Sirius at all, really.
Dorea still seemed less than entirely satisfied, so Liz added, "Thanks for telling me." Not that Sirius being an animagus made any difference to her, but that was just the sort of thing people said in this situation. And she did realise Dorea had taken a risk telling her. Maybe? She didn't really know.
Dorea still didn't look happy with this conversation, but she let out a sigh, dropped it. Thinking to herself that she didn't really expect Liz to take this kind of threat to her safety seriously. That was annoying enough Liz almost commented — Liz took threats to her safety very seriously, thank you, this business with Sirius just wasn't a threat to her, at least not as things currently stood. But Dorea clearly disagreed with Liz's estimation of the danger, and Liz wasn't allowed to tell her how and why she was wrong (or at least some of the more important parts of the calculation), so there was really no point in arguing about it...and she should avoid directly commenting on shite people were just thinking, anyway. So.
Yeah, Liz wasn't very happy with this conversation either.
[calamin and wolfram] — Cadmium and titanium. Both metals were discovered post-Statute, the mages don't use the same names for some things.
[half sickle] — Has this come up yet? I don't think so? The prices in canon are ridiculous, so I came up with my own exchange rate. I don't know where my notes on this are, but I know I got it by equating the price of the Prophet with London dailies of the same time, using the value of the pound in 1994 (the middle of the year range in HP, I just ignore inflation over the period). There are problems with the logic behind this, it's not meant to be perfect, just a benchmark to run with. So, a knut is £0.50, a sickle is £14.50, and a galleon is £246.50. (1994, in 2021 values it's £0.85, £24.65, and £419.05; or $1.17, $33.84, and $575.30, for my fellow Americans.) A galleon being worth 250 pounds might seem ridiculous, but considering it's a pretty damn large gold coin, I actually think that makes a lot of sense. And also makes the Weasleys not even being able to scrape together a whole galleon in the second book much more reasonable.
So, a half-sickle is about £12.32 or $16.92 (2021), which is not an insignificant amount of money, but is also not at all a big deal to someone who just found out she's filthy rich (and also doesn't really understand the mages' stupid prime number -using currency that well anyway).
Monster Book of Monsters — Yes, Hagrid is still teaching Care, despite the divergent events of year two. That he was allowed to have the post because his record had been expunged due to the real culprit being found never really made sense to me — it's not like Dumbledore could tell the DLE "one of my twelve-year-old students told me a mysterious talking magical artifact created by the Dark Lord as a teenager told him that he did it", he'd be laughed out of the room for that bullshit. He has a single witness of questionable reliability, and the physical evidence he has is very circumstantial (so far as the events in the 40s are concerned), and that's even assuming law enforcement went to check out the scene in the Chamber, which we weren't told about one way or the other. So, the way the Chamber stuff goes is unrelated to Hagrid's promotion — the previous professor is retiring, and someone who already has practical experience in the field is conveniently on hand. The Board isn't super happy about it, and Hagrid is being tested over the summer, but he still gets the post.
The major consequences of the differences between year two in this and in canon is that Dumbledore took a significant hit to his public reputation (though I would argue that happened in canon too, Fudge's gambit in book five only works because he's already weakened), Arthur and Molly have much less faith in his infallibility though not enough to turn on him (also no lottery win), and increased historical literacy due to curiosity surrounding the discovery under the castle leads to people being more aware of what pre-Statute Britain was actually like, weakening the pureblood supremacist narrative somewhat. But Hagrid's promotion is unaffected.
Unfortunately for his students.