They were waiting for a few more minutes, Ailbhe starting to actually get worried, when Daphne and Susan finally appeared, slipping out of one of the side alleys to pick their way through the thin crowd toward Fortescue's. They were still some metres away when Hannah drew in a sharp gasp, tingles of surprise touching pretty much everyone else's heads too — apparently, they'd slipped away to get Susan a haircut.
A really short haircut. Susan had sort of reddish blonde hair, but patchy, lighter in some places, almost pinkish, and a darker almost auburn in others. (Liz had always thought it was kind of weird, honestly, but mages had unusual traits sometimes, she hadn't paid it much mind.) For as long as Liz had known her, it'd always been really long, held back in plaits reaching her waist. Which, that seemed really inconvenient to have to deal with to her, Liz wasn't surprised Susan had decided to get it cut — if Liz's stupid magical hair would consent to being cut, she would have done it ages ago. Though, if it were her, she probably wouldn't get it cut quite as short as Susan had. It was even shorter than Tracey's was now, probably only a couple inches long, wisps of pinkish-blonde and reddish-brown left to sit however they liked, set to fluttering in the breeze.
It was weird, really, Liz was too used to Susan having those long plaits — her face looked different now, though Liz couldn't really say how it was different. But if she hadn't shown up with Daphne and if Liz didn't know the texture of her mind she might not have recognised her at first.
Once Daphne and Susan were close enough to talk at, Hannah cried, "Your hair! What'd you do to your hair?!"
Susan gave Hannah a flat sort of look — because Liz was a cheating mind-reader, she picked up an odd hint of anxiety that wasn't showing on her face, not sure what that was about. "I cut it."
"Yeah, I see that!" Her lip curling in a pout, "Your hair is so pretty though, why would you, just, chop it all off?"
"I felt like it," Susan said, shrugging a little awkwardly.
"I think it suits her."
Hannah gasped, glared at Daphne, the expression all dramatic and overdone for effect. "Traitor!" She was just playing, yes, but Liz could tell she was weirdly sad about Susan's hair being gone — but also, she was playing because she didn't want Susan to be bothered by her being weirdly sad about it. (Would rather Susan not know she was weirdly sad about it at all, for reasons Hannah didn't think explicitly.) And also kind of joking about the traitor thing, but only kind of, wondering why Susan hadn't talked to Hannah about it, why she'd gone with Daphne and not her, did she think she wouldn't—
Liz wrenched herself away from Hannah's thoughts, blinking her eyes back into focus. She didn't really need to know personal stuff about Susan and Hannah's friendship, and honestly she just didn't care that much.
There was a bit of chatter then about Susan's hair, the sort of empty compliments that people gave each other all the time that Liz didn't really understand — it didn't help that she could tell at least half of them were lies. Liz thought the only people who actually liked Susan's new haircut were Liz herself — though she didn't bother saying so, because she really didn't know what she was supposed to say and also didn't care that much — Daphne, and Tori — the youngest Greengrass even skipped up to Susan to muss it up, giggling about it being all fluffy. ('Fluffy' wasn't the word Liz would use, but okay.) The rest all said nice things, but Dorea, Tracey, and Ailbhe were just saying it because it was polite, and didn't actually care that much one way or the other, and Hannah and Hermione were plain lying about it.
This conversation was very confusing, honestly, Liz just waited for it to be over as patiently as she could.
Before too long, they were moving on into Fortescue's so, good. Liz had been looking a bit closer at everyone's heads than usual, trying to figure out what was really going on with that conversation about Susan's hair — though even with looking, she didn't really get it — and apparently she was still lingering too close, because she picked up something she hadn't really been meaning to. The door was narrow enough their group had to scrunch up a bit to get through, Daphne unexpectedly stepping really close to Susan just before the threshold. (Susan hadn't expected it, she meant.) There'd been a sudden flare of a sort of...warm, tingly anxiety Liz didn't recognise at first glance so, before she could even think to restrain her curiosity, Liz peeked a little closer to see what was going on with that.
Apparently, they hadn't been late getting here just because of the haircut — they'd ducked into a quiet corner to talk privately, and also there'd been kissing. That was unexpected, she'd had no idea— Actually no, she realised, Susan and Daphne weren't dating or whatever, Susan had just been curious, so she'd asked. She'd been having some really confusing feelings recently, so she'd decided to ask Daphne if they could, just to try it — the Boneses might not be one of the Mistwalker Clans anymore, but they used to be, so Susan knew from stories and stuff she'd learned growing up that they could be a bit libertine about these things. And Daphne had seemed kind of amused, but she hadn't been offended by the question, and had even agreed, which Susan had honestly not been entirely prepared for, and then had been faced with actually going through with it, which had been rather nerve-racking at first, but then— Well, she was almost positive now she liked girls — not really Daphne, she didn't think, but she was very pretty, so, experiment successful — but now that she'd figured that out for certain she had to decide what to do about it, she had no idea how to bring this up with Hannah, that was going to be unspeakably awkward, especially if Hannah turned her down or reacted badly or she didn't even know, it could go very badly — in the meantime, maybe Daphne would be up for, er, experimenting some more, that had been nice—
Sighing to herself, Liz pulled away from Susan's mind, shaking her head. She hadn't really needed to know that either.
Fortescue, as always, had some of her ice cream on hand. When she asked for some, the girl at the counter started asking if she was sure, that one was very bitter (she personally thought it was gross, but she didn't say that part aloud), but she choked off in mid-sentence as she abruptly recognised Liz — she did her absolute best not to roll her eyes.
Liz couldn't say afterward she remembered much of what they'd talked about at all. The greater part of it was stuff she really didn't care about — more stuff about what everyone had been doing over the break, news about the shit-show going on at the Ministry in the aftermath of Sirius's escape (and the Auror's continued inability to capture him), and occasionally a little bit of gossip about friends not currently present. She didn't really have an opinion to express at all, most of the time, so just had nothing to say (which wasn't unusual in situations like this, really), instead just eating her ice cream, idly eavesdropping on the other girls' thoughts. Not that there was anything particularly interesting to pick up there, either — since they were thinking about what they were talking about, it was also mostly boring stuff she didn't give a shite about — she just didn't have anything better to do with herself.
She did learn that Tracey really didn't like Hannah, for some reason. Somehow, Liz had never noticed that until just now.
Some minutes later, Liz wasn't really paying attention, she caught an idle thought from Hermione that she was kind of getting bored, wondering when they'd be finishing up to go home — she'd been in the middle of a couple interesting books already (Hermione was always partway through several books, which sounded confusing but okay), and now she had new ones! Following the idle thought, Hermione didn't want to be rude, of course, but it was like the middle of the afternoon now, and they were kind of finished with everything, and Liz wondered what she was reading right now anyway, she wouldn't be going over their old school books again—
Her mind twitching, Hermione stiffened in her chair, her eyes flicking over to Liz — she must have intruded enough Hermione had noticed her. For a moment, Liz wondered whether she should apologise or something — she had said she wouldn't look in their heads to much, but honestly it was hard to remember, it just kind of happened on its own — but before she could even pull out Hermione's mind around her crystalised with a sort of eager confidence, her eyes narrowing in concentration.
Instantly, without any transition or building up, Liz was bombarded with maths. Hermione's head was just full of it, equations by the dozens and dozens and dozens — geometry and algebra from muggle shool, mostly, but Liz recognised a couple basic functions that had come up in Charms and Transfiguration too. Too much, her mind was completely full of it, there was nothing else, just numbers and letters beating Liz over the head. And they weren't sitting still either, moving around and shifting as problems solved themselves a dozen all at once.
Which, that couldn't be right, a person couldn't think about that many things at once. They must be memories, Liz decided — or, more to the point, the internal part of the memory, what Hermione had been thinking while solving one maths problem or another. Hermione probably wasn't even fully conscious of the entirety of the wall of maths she'd just shoved in Liz's face, she was probably just thinking about doing maths really hard, which then primed all kinds of associated memories and knowledge, all jumbled up with each other, and kept focusing on the idea hard enough that nothing else floated out of it, or at least nothing personal at all.
Huh. That was a neat trick.
Out of curiosity, Liz grabbed at one of the equations floating around, tried to follow it to a memory associated with it — theoretically, it should be attached to every time she'd used that particular thing (Liz didn't actually recognise it, but that didn't matter), as well as when she'd originally learned it, there should be something there. And there was something there, Liz yanked at the thread, eventually found a flicker of memory — Hermione sitting at a desk in her bedroom, with her tutor — but before the details could quite come into focus correctly Hermione yanked Liz back away, her attention drawn to another bundle of numbers and letters, and then a vague impression of a few three-dimensional shapes — not a real thing Hermione had seen, just something imagined — lines drawn across one of them and a chunk being taken out, and then an angle fanning out, the image replaced with another equation, which then immediately bounced to another, another, another—
Liz retreated a bit, shaking her head — focusing too closely on what Hermione was consciously thinking was just making her dizzy, as overwhelmingly a lot as all of the associations and shite floating around her was this was actually less disorienting. (Hermione was more intelligent than her, she'd already known that, trying to follow Hermione thinking about maths was just rubbing it in.) Okay, so. Hermione had been working on her occlumency, apparently.
She didn't doubt she could get through that mess if she really had to, but she'd have to stab a compulsion down hard (distracting Hermione enough she could slip past her attention), kind of like those mind magic fights with Quirrell and the Dark Lord fragment, penetrating through Hermione's consciously-projecting thoughts down to the core of her mind, by force. Which she didn't want to do — she might accidentally hurt Hermione or something, she didn't know enough about how this mind magic stuff really worked to risk pushing it that hard.
And she also didn't need to, since she suspected any other mind mage would also be stymied by the misdirection, they wouldn't be able to get past it without attracting far too much attention, so, Hermione's practice had achieved what it was supposed to do. Opening her eyes — they'd closed at some point while she'd been focusing on the mind magic, she hadn't noticed — she gave Hermione a little nod.
Hermione beamed, her mind ringing with the gleeful smugness of correctly answering a professor's question in class, but like times ten.
(Now Liz just had to worry about Dorea, she was still practically defenceless...)
By the time they were all done with their ice cream, it was already nearly four in the afternoon. Liz stared at Ailbhe's time-divining spell, conveniently projected for the rest of them, with numb disbelief — it did not seem like it'd been that long...but also, Liz could definitely believe it had, she was unreasonably tired for it not even being dinnertime yet. Once Hermione saw the time, she yelped, babbled something about how she was supposed to meet her mother at the bookstore down the street (on the muggle side she meant), at three-thirty, which meant she was late already. Hermione popped up to her feet, a round of good-byes went around the table, she moved a few steps before coming short, her mind twitching with hesitation.
Then she leaned over (quite a ways, Hermione was rather tall and Liz was tiny) to give Liz a hug. Which was somewhat awkward, what with Liz still being in her chair, and also she didn't really do this...touching thing, which Hermione was aware of, that's what the hesitation had been about, and she was moving slowly, cautiously, giving Liz time to pull away. (Or, more likely, lash out with mind magic to stop her.) Liz's breath hitched, uncomfortably hot tingles prickling at her skin, but forced out a sigh, with the motion smothering the completely unnecessary ember of fear as well as she could.
(Hermione in front and the chair behind, her arms coming around, Liz hated feeling trapped.)
It was fine, though. Liz knew Hermione wasn't going to hurt her, and the hugging was just something normal people did for normal people reasons, and Hermione, being a normal person, was inclined to do that sort of thing, so... It wasn't a threat, Hermione wasn't hurting her, so. Fine.
(The back of her shoulders itched, the ghost of Vernon's hand shoving her down, but it was faint, she could mostly ignore it.)
There was a tingle of surprise in Hermione's mind, louder than normal from so close, she'd half-expected Liz to not go along with it. Awkwardly patting at Hermione's shoulder (she really didn't know what she was doing), Liz shoved her own exasperation at the other girl — I'm letting you touch me this once, but let's not make a habit of it, okay? Hermione twitched at the intrusion into her thoughts — it was a compulsion, technically, making Hermione think a thing, but she would know the thought wasn't hers (Liz wasn't sure how clear it would come through, she'd never actually done this before) — before letting out a half-choked giggle, mind flaring with an intense, tingly, clinging warmth that was a little uncomfortable being so close to, too loud and... She didn't know, something. But, thankfully, a last brief squeeze and Hermione was pulling back, straightened again and taking a couple steps away — it was less overwhelming with a little distance.
Though, not really very much. Feelings that were directed at Liz were always more intrusive, harder to ignore, made her uncomfortable even when the feelings in question weren't bad — Liz wasn't certain, but she thought that was Hermione's affection for Liz herself, more explicitly present than usual because Liz had drawn it up by actually letting Hermione hug her for once, so it wasn't a bad thing, but having the feeling focused on her, Hermione's attention on her like a dozen elastic bands clinging pulling at her skin, it just—
She realised it was unreasonable to wish her friends wouldn't think or feel things at her, but she'd be much more comfortable if they'd, just, keep themselves mentally quiet when she was around. But she did realise that was unreasonable, so she kept the thought to herself.
Once Hermione had run off, anxious her mother would be annoyed with her for making her wait, the rest of them quickly decided to finish up themselves. They all started off toward the Leaky Cauldron, in only the few minutes the walk took Liz receiving three separate invitations to come visit. Dorea, of course, was well aware Liz didn't have a home to go back to — although she technically sort of did now, since she could actually get at the Potter properties, or at least she would next summer (Snape probably wouldn't let her live alone as long as Sirius was loose) — she'd been inviting Liz over to stay with the Blacks (or, Walkers, Dorea was the only Black in the house) as a matter of routine going all the way back to Easter of first year. She never said her motivation in doing so had anything to do with Liz's living situation, but she wasn't good enough at not thinking about that stuff while making the invitation, she might as well be shouting it in Liz's ear for how obvious it was.
And, of course, Daphne invited Liz to the Greenwood again — and that was an of course, because it was hardly the first time. Daphne didn't have as many details as Dorea or even Hermione did, but she'd managed to put together a surprising amount on her own. She had seen the lines on Liz's back and, perhaps as a consequence of her best friend being Tracey, had drawn the correct conclusion — she'd never said anything about it, but she had thought about it in Liz's presence multiple times, so she might as well have — but that wasn't why she made the offers. She just legitimately wanted Liz to be comfortable and happy, and she personally thought of the Greenwood as the most comfortable and happy place in the world, so inviting Liz to come stay over for a few days was just the natural thing to do. Honestly, despite that she'd never once even considered taking her up on it, she found Daphne's constant offers less irritating than Dorea's, for that reason.
The invitation from Susan came as a surprise, though, enough Liz had to peek into her head to find out why. Turned out, it was completely innocent. Since Susan's mother (aunt) was always busy at the Ministry, the house tended to be empty, and when Susan wasn't off visiting cousins or friends she quickly got a bit lonely and very, very bored. Having anyone staying with her was better than nobody at all, and Liz was perfectly decent company, for all that she could be weird and creepy sometimes — a thing Susan thought without any sense of it being a good or a bad thing attached to it, just stating a fact that was indisputably true. (Which Liz kind of appreciated, at least Susan was more honest about it than Dorea or Hermione, who kind of privately pitied her for being broken, and whether they expressed the sentiment or not wanted to try to help her get better.) The offer was totally impulsive, even, the words had jumped out of her mouth before Susan herself had even considered them. Startled, Susan took a second to think whether she really wanted Liz in her house for a couple days without Dorea or Hermione or Hannah to help break up any awkwardness, but in the end shrugged it off, it would probably be fine.
...Liz had no idea how to respond to that. She hadn't realised Susan liked her that much. Granted, thinking that Liz was better than being completely alone wasn't a high bar, especially for people who liked having other people around, but still, Liz had kind of assumed that Susan and Hannah only tolerated her because they were friends with Dorea and Hermione, so they were kind of stuck with her. Apparently, even with her cheating mind-reading superpowers, Liz could still miss things sometimes.
Of course, she turned them all down — she didn't think Snape would agree to let her go off to... Well, the Greenwood would probably be fine, actually, since there would be competent adult mages there at all times, so. Still, she didn't really want to go anywhere else, she'd rather just stay at Snape's house for the rest of the summer. As awkward as that could be sometimes, dealing with new places and people would be more awkward, so.
Susan and Hannah disappeared through the floo first, quickly followed by Tracey and then Tori — Daphne winced, positive that Tori had run over Tracey on landing. Ailbhe lingered for a moment, pulling a book out of her magically-expanded bag (which also held all of Daphne and Tori's shopping). Holding it out to Liz with a smile, she said, "Happy birthday, Elizabeth."
For a few seconds, Liz could only blankly stare up at the woman. She had not expected any gifts at all. The only birthday gifts she'd ever gotten before in her life had been last year — Hermione had sent her more chocolate, Daphne had sent her a set of fountain pens with colour-changing ink (still took some getting used to after muggle ballpoint pens, but still far better than quills), and she'd stayed over at Dorea's house for a couple days and been taken out to the theatre and stuff, which she'd assumed had sort of been in lieu of physical gifts. She'd...kind of thought that's what this was? Like, they were hanging out and stuff, so people wouldn't need a gift to let Liz know they hadn't forgotten about her (which was what she thought the point of the whole thing was). She hadn't expected gifts at all, and really hadn't expected anything from Daphne's mother.
Awkwardly (Ailbhe and Daphne and Dorea's eyes on her skin like ants), Liz reached out and took the book. A plain magical-printed book, the title on the cover in silver letters: Practical Enchanting — Simple Projects for Beginners. Okay, like, basic little things people could do with their own stuff without having to be an expert, she was guessing, so, could be interesting to play around with. It took a second for Liz to realise the listed authors were Ailbhe Greengrass and Heli Babbling — Daphne's mother had actually written this book.
Liz had no idea how she was supposed to handle this, so... "Er... Thank you, Missus Greengrass." Except, it was supposed to be Lady Greengrass, wasn't it...
"It's my pleasure, mhaoinín." Liz didn't know what that meant, but judging by the warmth echoing from Ailbhe's head, she tentatively translated it as sweetheart. Daphne tells me you have some interest in the art, and I thought this could help you get started."
"Yes, um..." Liz glanced away, frowning down at the floor. This wasn't the first gift Daphne's mother had given her — had she ever thanked her for the photographs? She didn't think so... Of course, she'd feel too bloody awkward trying to talk about that with Dorea and Daphne standing right there, so. "Um. Thanks."
Thankfully, Ailbhe and Daphne left pretty quickly after that, because Liz really just didn't know what to do at this point. Which left only Dorea. With a flickering, crawling indecision that was just making Liz twitchy, Dorea was thinking about asking Liz if she was really okay, inviting her to come stay with her family rather more insistently, but she ultimately decided against it — not because she wasn't worried, but because she knew Liz would find her nagging irritating. Which was hardly ideal, Liz guessed, but she'd take it.
She really wished she hadn't agreed to tell nobody that she was staying with Snape. It hadn't seemed like it would be a problem to go along with that, since it wasn't like she really wanted people to know either, but Dorea was still worrying about her — because apparently worrying was what you did when you gave a damn about someone — when there was no reason to worry about her, she was fine...but she couldn't tell Dorea that, because she'd promised not to. Well, the problem wasn't really so much that she'd given her word, she didn't mind doing that in principle (especially when there wouldn't really be any consequences for it), but Dorea was still pretty shitty with occlumency. If she told Dorea, Snape would, inevitably, find out about it — Snape would be annoyed with Liz, and...
Well, at this point Liz had realised that Snape was going out of his way to look out for her and cover her arse when she did something objectionable — like, stopping her from being punished too badly for skipping Defence with Quirrell on the regular, way back in first year. And actually trying to help, what with the calming and nutrition potions, and the whole stop-doing-bad-on-purpose-in-exchange-for-neat-books thing. No matter how fucking weird it was to think Snape was... She still didn't know how to feel about him, it was confusing.
But she definitely didn't want to fuck that up, she knew that much. So. She couldn't say anything about it, no matter how much it might help Dorea to stop agonising over it. It was irritating, but, that's just the way things were, unfortunately.
(She didn't know how to feel about actually wanting to tell Dorea either. This whole having friends thing was still fucking weird.)
She got through that painful conversation eventually, and then Dorea was through the floo too — though not without stealing a hug quick, ugh, she should have known suffering one from Hermione would just be opening the door to more. Dorea had hugged her a few times, but she knew Liz didn't really like the touching, so it was very rare, but if Liz started not making nearly as much of a fuss about it it would just encourage her...and maybe even other people, Dorea and Hermione were one thing, but...
Ugh. It was fine. So long as it was just Dorea, and sometimes Hermione, that was fine, she guessed. It didn't bother her nearly as much as it used to, especially Dorea, but it was still just uncomfortable...
Once Dorea was gone, Liz shook off the last clinging shreds of awkwardness, turned back out into muggle London. Belatedly, she realised she and Snape had never arranged where they would meet up when Liz was done — it'd been clear he would find her on the muggle side, though he'd never said where she should go. After a moment of thought, Liz shrugged it off, and started walking down the pavement. Around the corner and down the street a block that way was Leicester Square, which seemed as good a place to wait for him as any.
She had made it all the way there, but she hadn't actually managed to find a bench yet when Snape materialised out of the crowd — so silently and suddenly she might have been startled if she hadn't felt his mind approaching before she'd seen him. "Hello, Elizabeth. Going somewhere?"
"Oh, no," Liz said, shrugging. "I was just going to sit down and read until you showed up." Snape ticked an eyebrow up at the book in her hand, probably wondering why it wasn't in her bag with the rest. "Um, gift from Lady Greengrass, sprung it on me just before leaving."
There was a little flicker of amusement from Snape, but it didn't show on his face.
It was a walk of a couple minutes to get to somewhere they could safely apparate from, and a blink later they were standing in Snape's library. There weren't any books or letters or anything out which, unless he'd been downstairs brewing, implied he'd been out of the house the whole time too. She was vaguely curious where he'd been, what he'd been doing — or if he'd been quietly stalking her and her friends the whole time (though if he were, he probably would have shown up before she made it as far as Leicester Square) — but that didn't really seem like her business.
Snape had taken her bag to apparate — worried she'd drop it or she'd just fall over, she guessed — and was already unpacking it, pulling her things out onto the sofa or the floor, unshrinking them as he went. (She couldn't do it herself, some of those things were fragile or sensitive enough a sloppy unshrinking might break something.) When he got to the set of enchanting tools, he let out a little snort. "I suppose Lady Greengrass insisted you all be equipped properly."
"Oh, er, yes. She thought the pre-packaged ones looked shitty, so."
"I am not surprised. On multiple occasions Ashe has asked for permission to allow a vendor into the school on the first week of October to sell the necessary implements directly to the students, in hope that with her available to assist them the entire third-year class might begin with tools they can actually use. The Headmaster has refused her request every time, of course."
...That sounded stupid, but this was Dumbledore they were talking about — whatever his other abilities and accomplishments, he hadn't exactly impressed Liz so far. But anyway, Ashe, that was Professor Babbling, the Runes teacher, but, "Ashe Babbling? Is this the same Babbling?" she asked, turning the book to show him the cover. She knew "Ashe" was a nickname, so it was possible.
He glanced at it for a second before turning back to unshrinking her bags of muggle clothes. "The same family, yes, but not the same person. Heli and Ashe are cousins, though I am uncertain what their exact relation is — there are a fair number of Babblings."
Ah, okay then. Liz remembered the Greengrasses and the Babblings were both Mistwalker Clans (though only the Greengrasses were nobility), so she guessed it made sense Ailbhe would know other Babblings. Her bag was unloaded by now, so Liz started repacking it, putting her books and enchanting stuff back, just so it'd be easy to carry it all to her room. While she did that, she noticed, Snape was poking at her potions supplies, because of course he was, he was a complete bloody dork for potions stuff. Probably checking to make sure nothing she'd bought was spoiled or contaminated or whatever, she didn't know.
Right. So. Between her (now very heavy) bookbag, her clothes, and her potions stuff, it'd take three trips total to get everything from here to her room. Okay, then. She hesitated for a moment, glancing between her stuff on the sofa and the door into the back hall. "Severus?"
There was a flicker of surprise in his head, his eyebrows twitching just a little. "Yes?"
"I was thinking of taking a nap. I know it's not even four yet, but I've had a long day, and I'm tired."
He gave her a very Snape-ish kind of expression, eyes skeptically narrowed and his brow dramatically arched — it honestly looked kind of weird with his hair tied back, still in ordinary muggle clothes, incongruous. "I was planning on ordering Chinese." So she wouldn't be forced to cook on her birthday, she assumed. Well, not that she was ever forced to cook here, really, but Snape was completely incapable, which was the point.
"Right, well, I'm sure I'll wake up at some point." Her eyes fixed on the door, she hesitated again, just for a second. "Is that alright?"
"I hardly think you need me to manage your sleep schedule, Elizabeth."
"No, I– I meant calling you 'Severus'." She'd been thinking, just... It'd just been her assumption, originally, that kids just didn't use adults' first names, and also Snape was always vaguely intimidating, like he might verbally flay someone for saying one word out of place (or for making the slightest brewing mistake in class). But, well, mages didn't always do things the same way muggles did, and Ailbhe had asked all the kids to use her first name, since it wasn't like it was a formal event or anything...and she and Snape were kind of living together at the moment... Kind of seemed like that should be a thing.
Now it was Snape who hesitated for a second — Liz couldn't guess what was going on in there, his head was usually pretty quiet. "So long as you understand this privilege will be revoked immediately upon our return to Hogwarts."
"Right, good, I was just wondering." Liz heaved up her bookbag, nearly overbalancing and falling right back on her arse like a clumsy idiot — she would say she'd gotten too many books, but she wasn't entirely convinced there was such a thing. She picked up one of her muggle clothes bags with her free hand, but she'd need to come back for the rest. "I'm going to go, then."
It could be her imagination, but she thought Sna– Severus felt faintly amused. Or, maybe very amused, for all she knew, the impression she picked up just wasn't very noticeable by normal people standards. "I'll be downstairs. This particular stage of my current project is quite sensitive — unless you wish to attempt to drag my limp and mutilated form through the floo to the hospital, as amusing as such a display might be to observe, you should not interrupt me before six at the earliest."
Liz rolled her eyes — honestly, he could just tell her it was dangerous, he didn't have to try to be funny about it. "Ha ha, I'm tiny, no one's made that joke before. Have fun with that."
It wasn't until Liz had all her new stuff moved to her room, the door closed and magically sealed behind her, that she realised her room wasn't exactly as she'd left it. Not that it was a large difference, she might not have noticed if she weren't going straight to bed. Just sitting there out on the quilt was a pouch of smooth leather, almost exactly like the thing Liz had gotten to hold her enchanting stuff, though rather wider and without the stiff frame, so it could be rolled up. That was...odd.
It took her a couple seconds, wondering what the hell this thing was and why it was here, before she came to what should have been the obvious conclusion: Severus Snape had gotten her a birthday gift.
She just stared at the thing for a few more seconds, dumbfounded.
She really hadn't expected this. To begin with, Liz wasn't accustomed to the idea of getting gifts at all yet, it was still weird just in general, but... Snape, just, didn't seem like the kind of bloke who went around giving kids birthday gifts. It was odd, that was all.
Also, he was putting her up in his house, and paying for all her food and everything, so that he would go buying her shite for her birthday on top of that was just kind of ridiculous.
Might as well...see what it was? she guessed? Liz undid the latch, flipped the cover up. Knives. Those were knives — potions knives, specifically. There were ones that looked like the paring knife looking thing she already had, three of them — she guessed one was steel, one was silver, and that one looked like...bronze? maybe bronze — but then several more. Some smaller, the smallest blades the size of her thumb, sort of curved like a spoon (though more angular than that), and some larger, not quite the size of a chef's knife, two pairs of the biggest ones, one the blade thicker and heavier, the other long and flexible. And pairs was appropriate, because there were two of most of them — some steel or silver, a few more bronze ones.
These weren't just knives for preparing ingredients — they were also for rendering them down in the first place. Like, slicing off the bits of plants she wanted, or cutting up animals to get at one thing or another. Which...meant that silver was probably goblin silver — enchanted unnaturally sharp and to hold an edge pretty much forever, and also to ignore the magical defences of pretty much anything.
Slowly and carefully, Liz pulled one of the larger knives out of its sleeve. Yep, definitely goblin silver, she could feel the tingle of the magic worked into the metal against her fingers. It was surprisingly light — there was some weight to the blade, but it wasn't too heavy to work with. Enough weight that, with the magic-stripping properties of goblin silver, she could probably chop straight through a troll's skull with this. She wasn't sure why she would ever need to — this was, like, actual potioneer stuff — but with this stuff she could get pretty much whatever potions supplies she wanted on her own, theoretically, so long as they lived in Britain. Hell, she could probably render down a bloody dragon, if she wanted to, goblin silver supposedly cut through dragon scale like butter.
It didn't just work on magical creatures either. Theoretically, she could stab a person with this, straight through a shield charm and whatever protective enchantments they might have on their clothes — there was a reason goblins could actually hold their own against mages, despite not using wands.
...These couldn't have been cheap. She had no idea how expensive, but. And Sna– Severus hadn't even said anything about it, just casually left it here for her to find.
Liz had absolutely no idea how to feel about this.
That's it, she was starting to give herself a headache overthinking shite too much, probably didn't help that she'd used a lot of mind magic today. Forget about the fancy knives for now, she needed a fucking nap...
(a) mhaoinín — Irish, "darling" (lit. "little treasure"). The Mistwalkers mostly speak Cambrian (/Welsh), but many of them also speak Gaelic (Irish). Ailbhe Greengrass in particular grew up with a lot of Gaelic, since her mother's from Ireland — she's from the same clan as Síomha Ní Ailbhe, that's where the name comes from. (Yes, Ailbhe was born a Greengrass, the Noble Houses don't always follow the male line.)
Right, that's the whole thing. Way too fucking long, what is wrong with me...
While reading through about half of this big clusterfuck, I noticed a lot of typos that slipped by me, way, way more than normal. I suspected it's related to my brain being stupid thing I've mentioned before. If anyone notices any, go ahead and tell me and I'll fix them, stupid things...
A previous A/N implied Dorea would be meeting Sirius in this chapter — I decided to cut that. It didn't happen off-screen, their first meeting will be later. Also, writing the shite in the Gringotts conversation, I realised there was other stuff that needs to happen over this summer I hadn't originally planned. So, Liz will be following up on some House of Potter stuff, but I don't think that'll take too long — the latter half of next chapter will probably still be the train ride. I think. Probably.
Shit, I don't know, this 35k word monstrosity was supposed to be just half of a normal-length chapter. Anything could happen, I can't anticipate these things with any real accuracy. It's like an adventure! A very poorly-planned adventure.
—Lysndra