The darkness was pierced with silver-white light, and warmth returned to the world. The creature in the doorway — a dementor, it had to be a dementor — let out an unearthly screech, the air seeming to shiver with the sound, high and grating, making her ears ring and her skin crawl. And then it was gone, in an instant, fleeing as quickly as shadows from light.
Dorea let out a sigh, thin and shaking. That had been...unpleasant.
Except it wasn't stopping.
Dorea didn't notice at first, focused on looking around the compartment, checking how everyone else was doing. The compartment had gone eerily quiet once the thing had appeared, save for the occasional moan or mutter or sniffle, but the others had started to stir now that it was gone. Not that anybody seemed particularly well.
On the bench across from her, Tracey had pulled her feet up onto the seat, her face pressed against her knees, fingers buried in her hair. Her breathing was hard and thick enough Dorea could hear it from here, shivering badly. Daphne, sitting next to her, had an arm around her, muttering something Dorea couldn't make out (in Cambrian, she thought) — she looked a bit paler than usual, her eyes a little red, but otherwise seemed to be mostly recovered already. On the opposite side of the bench, Neville was wiping at his eyes with a sleeve, his fingers shaking a little.
Dorea finally noticed she was alone on her bench. Glancing down, Liz had collapsed to the floor — unmoving, eyes closed, and terribly pale, the contrast against her hair startling — Hermione already leaning over her, a hand on her neck. "Is she..." Dorea started the question, but didn't get it out all the way — she'd started moving, and it was only then that she realised something was wrong.
The air was still shivering.
It was a most peculiar sensation, one she'd never really been able to explain to anyone very well. It felt sort of like a very low bass note, but not really, since it wasn't a sound at all, instead just the force of it in the air. Except, it wasn't in the air, obviously, it was in her, as though her body, her head and chest in particular, were vibrating, expanding and contracting just a little tiny bit, very very quickly, the force of the displacement making an odd not-sound echo in her head, wub-wub-wub-wub-wub-wub...
She'd thought it'd been the dementor's screaming making the air shiver, but it wasn't. It was just in her head.
And it was getting worse. The force of it grew more intense, until it felt like the train was vibrating like a gong, it even started effecting her vision, seeming to zoom in and out and in and out. Her eyes shut tight, because that was making her nauseous, bile crawling up her throat — though maybe that wasn't it, because closing her eyes didn't help — her breath turning high and thin as panic hit her, her fingers shivering against her forehead.
"Oh, crap."
This wasn't supposed to happen anymore! She'd taken all those damn potions, she couldn't even count how many, she'd done that unnerving, disorienting, terrifying bloody ritual, it was supposed to be done! Ooh, if that damn dementor had set her treatment back, she was suing whoever's idea it was to let it on the train so damn hard...
(And she tried to stay calm, tried to force her breathing to slow down, tried not to think, because she'd been dying before, this shouldn't be happening, she was supposed to be fine—)
"Crap crap crap crap..."
"Dorea?" That was Neville, he was kneeling in front of her now, a hand on her arm, she opened her eyes but his face was shaking, like ripples on water, she squeezed them shut again immediately. "Hey, I think something's wrong with Dorea."
Hermione was next to her now, an arm wrapping around her back, fingers carding her hair out of her face. "Dorea, you're shaking. What's wrong?"
She almost laughed — well, that was about to get a whole lot worse, wasn't it? And, she should say something, as much as she was gasping for breath and could hardly imagine speaking right now, they needed to know. If she had a full-on seizure sitting here like this that could be bad...especially if nobody knew what was happening. "I have..." Gasp. "...epilepsy."
"I"m sorry, what?"
Yeah, she wasn't surprised Hermione hadn't understood that, she hadn't understood that, her mouth wasn't quite cooperating, shaking and weirdly numb (familiarly numb). "Ep. pi. lep. sy."
"Epilepsy — you're having an aura?"
Dorea nodded, since talking wasn't working very well at the moment.
Hermione, of course, took charge immediately. "I need your help now, everyone! Neville, help me get her down, Daphne, get Liz up onto the bench, and we're going to need something soft to put under her head..."
The world tilting around her, Dorea was lifted off the bench — which just made the disorienting sense of movement, in and out and in and out, even worse — Hermione and Neville each with one arm, gently lowering her to the floor. And they were doing most of the work, Dorea was feeling worryingly numb. (She had the vague memory that numbness and nausea tended to go with the wub-wub-wub, but it'd been so long...)
"We need some help in here! Hey! Is there a professor on board?"
After a moment one of them (Hermione?), pressed something soft into her (numb) hand, tried to push her down on her back, but Dorea resisted, propping herself up with her other (uncoordinated) hand. Hermione was saying something about needing to lie down, but bile was simmering right at the top of her throat, choking her breath a little, if she laid down she was worried she'd sick up all over the place, she hated sicking up...
"What's going on in here?"
"Sir, it's Dorea, she—"
"Move." Dorea felt more than heard the owner of the deep, raspy voice push his way into the compartment, sinking down near her, a large hand brushing her hair aside, settling at the join of her shoulder and neck.
Through the mess going on in the compartment, Dorea picked out the faint scent of sandalwood and camphor — Remus.
"Dorea, it hasn't broken yet, I'm going to do a purge. This is going to be unpleasant."
She knew, Andi had done it a few times, a very long time ago — as nasty as it was, it was better than the alternative. She tried to nod, but she wasn't sure if Remus even noticed, already moving, tilting her chin up with a thumb, the tip of a wand pressing against her forehead.
The spell came as shards of ice, cold and sharp, stabbing into her head, and it was so cold, and it hurt, and—
...
Dorea woke with a gasp, her skin tingling and her head spinning, meaningless noise scraping at her ears, bright light streaked with colourful shadows stabbing into her eyes. Before she could even get her bearings her stomach lurched, a wet cough burst out of her throat, her mouth filling with something slick and vile, a hand on her shoulder pushed her to the side.
Dorea hated sicking up.
Once she was done (hopefully), Dorea let out an entirely involuntary shivering moan, hugging her aching sides, trying not to think about the harsh, pungent shite in her mouth, the strings clinging to her lips. And her nose felt stuffed up, burning at the back of her throat, she always got some up her nose, she hated sicking up...
Thankfully, there was an adult mage on hand. Before she could even really start freaking out about it too much, she felt the cool tingle of spells being cast, the sick-sloshed bowl (probably also conjured) vanishing in a blink, and then her face (and hair, ugh) was cleaned, and then, after a moment's pause, filling her mouth and nose, when it was gone the skin-crawling feel of vomit in her mouth and up her nose completely gone.
The tingling, ticklish vanishing spell made Dorea sneeze. Which was slightly painful, since she'd clearly pulled something in her sides sicking up, and the insides of her mouth and nose felt really dry now, like after walking down to the greenhouses in the middle of winter. But no strings of sick came dripping out of her nose, the vile taste and smell and the burning up her nose was gone, so, worth it.
Dorea pushed herself up to sitting, shakily, with a little help from Remus. She was still slightly dizzy, but mostly she was just tired. Not an I need to sleep tired, but more an oh my god, why does Hogwarts have so many stairs, I need to sit down and not do anything for a couple hours tired. Remus was kneeling right in front of her, looking somewhat peculiar with shorter hair and neat, professional (though rather threadbare) robes — he must have tried to clean up a bit for his new teaching job.
Giving her a somewhat shaky smile, Remus conjured a cup, filled it with water pulled from the air, and handed it over. "Thanks, Remus," she muttered, before taking a sip. And then quickly set about getting the water down as fast as her stomach could tolerate, holy crap her mouth was dry...
"It was no trouble, Dorea."
Dorea swallowed the sweet, cool water — perfectly ordinary, she was sure, but as thirsty as she was it was amazing — broke off for now, gasping for breath. "Who the hell thought it was a good idea to let dementors on the train?"
"I have no idea. I suspect it was done on the initiative of someone down the chain — I don't think the Wizengamot will be very happy to hear about this."
She almost had to laugh at that, nearly choking on the last of her water. No, the Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot would probably lose their minds over the news that all the little noble kids had been exposed to a dementor — justifiably so, but still. "I'm so suing someone for this."
"You won't be the only one, I think."
Nodding, Dorea glanced around the compartment. Liz had been moved up onto the seats, still unconscious, lying with her legs bent up against the wall to make room for Hermione sitting on the other end. Her eyes were flicking between Dorea and Liz with clear concern, occasionally shooting a curious look at Remus. Tracey had recovered somewhat over the last minutes — her eyes were rather red, a few hints of dried tear-tracks on her face, and she still seemed...somewhat distant, her eyes not quite in focus, as though partially still stuck on whatever the dementor had made her see. (Dorea suspected something was up with Tracey's family, but Tracey wouldn't say and Daphne kept her secrets.) Daphne was giving Dorea a weirdly calculating look, Neville next to her—
Neville's robe was gone, leaving him in thin linen trousers and shirt, the kind of thing not normally meant to be worn on their own. Blinking in confusion for a second, Dorea glanced behind her, spotted a bundle of cloth on the floor. "Oh!" She picked up the Hogwarts robe, held it out toward Neville, somewhat sheepishly. "Thank you, Neville."
"No problem." He didn't move to put the robe back on right away, keeping it crumpled up in his lap — he would need to stand up to put it on, and she and Remus were kind of taking up a lot of the floor. "One of my Dunbar cousins has the stealing away, just about bashed his head open on the floor having a fit once."
Dorea winced — yeah, that could happen, she'd had this one in primary, her head had hurt for days... "Yeah, I got it too."
Neville, Daphne, and even Tracey (surprised out of her funk) looked at her with a mixture of surprise and sympathy. Hermione, of course, just looked confused — she wouldn't be familiar with the magical idiom...and probably not the condition at all, actually, it was very rare on the muggle side. Helping her get up to her feet, her legs annoyingly unsteady, Remus said, "You'll need to go see Madam Pomfrey as soon as you arrive at the school. It's possible you'll have to go undergo treatment again."
Grimacing, Dorea nodded. "I know." This really wasn't something she even wanted to think about — it'd been scary enough the first time, the thought that she might be regressing...
"Um, what's that? the stealing away?" Hermione asked, her voice uncharacteristically small and cautious.
Before Dorea could decide what (if anything) she wanted to say about it, Daphne answered, "It's a pureblood disease, Hermione, and not something people usually talk about."
"Muggles get it too, actually, and for them it's always lethal, since they don't have a treatment for it." For Dorea to have gotten it her mother must be a carrier too, so it obviously couldn't just be a pureblood thing. Of course, it was much more common among pureblood mages than it was in the muggle world, but that's just because they were horribly inbred — and also because muggles who got it never lived long enough to have children, she guessed. "I'll tell you later," Dorea said to Hermione's look of mixed concern and curiosity (a common look for her). "Everyone, this is Remus Lupin, he's the new Defence Professor."
A round of hello sirs went around the compartment, Hermione and Daphne staring at Remus with almost identical analytic expressions. "Could you take a look at Liz, Professor?" Hermione asked. "She hasn't woken up yet..."
Using your potentially injured friend as a test of whether the new Defence Professor is any good? That's cold, Granger...
Remus glanced at Hermione, one eyebrow raised — he'd obviously realised what Hermione was doing as easily as Dorea had — before turning to Liz. "Well, passing out from acute dementor exposure isn't particularly unusual, though she should have woken by now..."
"Yes, let's wake her up, I'd really like to sit down soon." Dorea wasn't in immediate danger of collapsing, but the little muscle aches a purge always left behind were starting to get worse.
"Oh!" Practically leaping out of her seat, Hermione's face pinked a bit, her hair frizzing up even further that way it did sometimes. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking..."
"It's alright." Dorea gingerly slipped between Hermione and Remus to take the vacated seat, movements stiff and slow. Once she was down, letting out an involuntary sigh of relief, the muscles in her legs started jumping in little, mildly painful twitches — like sitting down after climbing the stairs up to the Charms classroom too quickly. That was irritating, she hadn't even bloody done anything. She tried to relax, letting her eyes fall closed, doing her best to not let her discomfort show on her face. Daphne and Neville were watching her, she'd noticed, didn't want to worry them any more than she already had, she was fine.
(Or, mostly fine, but she was trying not to think about that, because she was supposed to be better, but it was fine, if she was regressing they could just redo the ritual and everything, no big deal, she wasn't dying, she was fine.)
The compartment was quiet for a moment as Remus examined Liz, the air tingling just a little with magic — analysis charms of some kind, probably. "She's only asleep. Expergiscaris."
Dorea opened her eyes as Liz stirred, the motion barely perceptible through the bench, the great black mess of her hair shifting as her head tilted. She let out a soft little tired moan.
"Miss Potter? Can you—"
She squeaked, a high, half-strangled noise that was almost comical, if only because it was Liz making it. (Liz was quiet in general, and definitely didn't go around squeaking.) Dorea felt an inexplicable start, her stomach dropping, as Liz practically jumped away from Remus, scrambling, but only for a second, slamming into the side of the train before she could get very far. Curled up defensively in the corner, the back of Dorea's neck tingling with unease, Liz looked around the compartment, scanning over everything — the walls and seats, the trunks overhead, the window, all their faces.
The unease only growing, as Liz's eyes kept erratically flicking around the compartment, Dorea frowned. Something was wrong.
"The dementor is gone, Miss Potter," Remus said, his voice pitched quiet and gentle.
Liz gave Remus an odd glance, confused — eyes lingering over his robes — before looking around the compartment, staring out the window. Hermione broke first. "Liz, are you okay?"
She didn't respond.
"Liz?" Dorea leaned over a little, reaching for—
Another inexplicable jolt running through Dorea, Liz twitched, whipping her hand away before Dorea could touch it. Liz stared at Dorea for a second, suspicious and confused — uncomprehending, almost as though she didn't recognise Dorea at all — before asking Remus, "Where are we going?" Her voice came small and thin, higher and softer than usual, hardly even sounded like herself.
Remus answered — the rest of them were too busy shooting each other baffled and worried glances. "We're on the train to Hogwarts, Miss Potter." Liz just stared up at him uncomprehendingly.
"Uh, Professor?" Hermione muttered. "I think something's wrong..."
Her voice flat and tense, Tracey said, "She doesn't recognise us."
"I have to get back home." Liz's eyes bounced between their faces for a moment before fixing on Remus again, and then almost immediately dropping down to his knees. Dorea's heart slowly rising up her throat, fear starting to prickle along her spine (which was weird, what the hell), "Can I get off, I need to go back home. Uncle Vernon will– be waiting for me."
"Professor, she doesn't live with her uncle anymore." Dorea frowned across the compartment at Tracey — had she known Tracey knew that? She'd thought the only people who'd known Liz lived with her muggle aunt and uncle were Dorea and Hermione, and Dorea herself the only one who knew she'd run away. (Besides Snape, of course.) It wasn't like Dorea was privy to every single private conversation that Liz had, but still, it didn't really seem likely that she'd talk about that kind of thing...
Frowning at Tracey, Liz said, "Yes, I..." and then trailed off, blinking. "Am I being kidnapped?" she asked Remus, with a very un-Liz-like innocence. She sounded remarkably unconcerned about the possibility, if anything even seemed to relax a little.
(The phantom, inexplicable fear Dorea was feeling — though weirdly flat, only skin-deep, the physical signs without anything fear-related going on in her head — eased as well. Was this Liz's fear she was feeling, somehow?)
A tense, uneasy silence filled the compartment for a moment. Finally, wary, Remus said, "What do... Miss Potter, what's the last thing you remember?
"Um. I was in my cup– my room." In her cupboard? Had her relatives made her sleep in a cupboard?! "I was waiting for dinner time, but...I must have fell asleep. How did I get here?" She seemed unnervingly unconcerned about maybe being stolen from her bed while she slept — in a cupboard — just blankly blinking up at Remus.
Remus stunned her. In the time between the bright red spellglow leaving Remus's wand and Liz dropping unconscious, she only had an instant to twitch with shock, her eyes going wide — and Dorea felt another of those odd jolts, it must be Liz doing that. He caught her before she could flop off the bench, laying her down on her back again.
"Hey! What'd you do that for?"
"What's wrong with her, Professor? Tracey's right, she didn't recognise us..."
"Did she say something about a cupboard?"
"Can dementors obliviate people?"
"Long-term exposure causes memory loss, but I don't think—"
"Do her relatives make her sleep in a cupboard?!"
"Girls," Remus said, raising his voice a little, "settle down a moment, please. I need to concentrate." Hermione and Tracey both looked rather offended at the command — Neville too, but in his case it might have something to do with being included in Remus's use of girls — but the compartment fell into an awkward, tense silence anyway.
Putting his wand away, Remus laid one hand on Liz's chest, over her heart, the other over her brow, her hair pushed gently out of the way. His eyes closed, he bowed his head, and he did nothing for a brief moment, concentrating. The others in the compartment shot each other glances, clearly wondering what the hell he was doing — Dorea knew she certainly was. Hermione had inched a little closer, leaning over Remus's shoulder, by the look on her face half fascinated with a new bit of magic she hadn't seen before and half concerned about him touching Liz. (Which wasn't entirely unreasonable, though really, Hermione should realise no one was stupid enough to molest an unconscious girl in a compartment full of her friends.) Eventually, Remus's lips started to twitch with an incantation—
No, not an incantation — it was far too long to be one, and he didn't even have his wand out. It would be a litany, then, a ritual. His head started bobbing a little, seeming to rock back and forth a little bit as whatever he was doing went on, a faint sense of magic starting to spark on the air, and...
Taken aback, Dorea glanced up at Daphne. The other girl was watching Remus, her head tilted a little, eyes wide and one pale eyebrow arched. When she noticed Dorea was looking at her, her eyes flicked up, she nodded — Daphne recognised it too.
Remus was casting soul magic. He was probably just doing a deep analysis of some kind, but still, what the fuck?
Dorea abruptly realised that, in the space of two years, she'd witnessed two different Hogwarts professors perform very illegal soul magic rituals. To be fair, Snape definitely had a license to do this kind of magic for healing purposes — he was known to be one of the experts Saint Mungo's called in when they had the need for such extreme measures, one of the things he'd started doing after the war to quietly demonstrate he was a useful member of society — but Dorea was certain Remus didn't. If for no other reason, the Unspeakable evaluating him would notice he was a werewolf instantly, and werewolves (along with foreign nationals and a number of nonhuman beings) weren't allowed licenses to practice the Dark Arts in Britain.
Which meant Remus was breaking the law right now...in the open, in front of a compartment-full of students. He must assume third-years (other than Dorea, who wasn't likely to turn him in) wouldn't recognise soul magic being cast, but Daphne was a bloody Mistwalker, and she was sitting right there! She wasn't likely to say anything about it either, but still!
It took some effort to keep a scowl off her face — reckless bloody Gryffindors...
After a couple minutes, Remus lifted his hands, let out a sigh. "Damn it." His wand was in his hand, a single spell laid over Liz, then he stood up, scooping her up off the bench — by how easily he lifted her up that must have been a featherweight charm. "I need to get Miss Potter up to the Hospital Wing immediately. If you would open the door, Miss Granger."
Standing between Remus and the door, Hermione hesitated, her eyes narrowed slightly in suspicion. "What's wrong with her?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you that — child protection laws prevent me from sharing a student's personal information." Tracey scoffed slightly, but Dorea was pretty sure that was true. "Suffice to say, it is a serious matter, but I'm certain it's one your Potions Professor is perfectly capable of dealing with."
"How serious?" Because, Dorea didn't know about everyone else, Liz seemingly forgetting who knew how many years, acting very un-Liz-like and not even recognising any of them, had been very unnerving.
Remus glanced at her quick, giving her a shadow of a reassuring smile. "She'll be fine, though it will take her a few days to recover — I think she'll miss most of the first week of classes. Now, Miss Granger, I know why you might want to approach any new Defence Professor with a..." Remus's lips twitched a little. "...healthy degree of skepticism, but I assure you, I don't mean Miss Potter any harm. If you want, you could come with to make sure I'm only bringing her to the Hospital Wing."
Hermione considered it for a moment, watching Remus — probably thinking that, since both of Remus's arms were occupied, if he tried anything she'd be able to stun him first — her eyes bouncing around to check all their faces, finally settling on Dorea. Silently asking if she wanted to go with instead? "I'm really not feeling well enough to apparate right now," she said. "I've known Remus for years, but if you think you'll just worry about it the rest of the train ride, go ahead. I'm sure he won't be offended." Well, maybe a little bit, but he wouldn't hold it against her — he'd been a werewolf since he was a child, he was accustomed to being treated with suspicion.
With a firm nod, Hermione said, "I will, then." She pulled the door open, stepped out into the hall. The commotion in their compartment had attracted a few onlookers, but they must have trickled away as things settled down, the few remaining slunk away as Hermione stepped out into the hall. "Are we really apparating to the school? I thought momentum carried through apparation."
Remus stepped out after her, Neville immediately standing up once he was gone, pulling his robe over his head. A hint of amusement on his voice, Remus said, "That it does, Miss Granger — if only the term hadn't started yet, I should give you points for that. But you see, I'm not moving, the train is."
"...That's not how inertia works."
"No, but magic does funny things sometimes. It's a matter of your frame of reference, you see — so long as I conceptualise my entry and exit points as stationary relative to each other, then they will be. It is a tricky little quirk of visualisation, though, so I will need to concentrate. Hold on to my arm, Miss Granger. No, tighter than that. Good. All right, give me one moment..."
A couple of seconds of silence, and then the air was split with a sharp crack — much louder than Remus usually made, but he was taking two people side-along and accounting for the motion of the train (which Dorea knew was more difficult than he'd made it sound). She leaned forward to check, and yep, they were gone. Remus hadn't left anything behind either, which was actually a little impressive, so, good.
Neville slid the door closed, plopped back down to his seat. "Do you think they'll be okay?"
"Hermione's getting better than she used to be," Tracey said, giving the door a vague sort of glare, "but she's still far too trusting sometimes. It doesn't matter that Lupin can't reach his wand, if he was actually a threat he could apparate them right in front of a few accomplices."
"It's fine, Tracey, like I said, I know Remus. I only suggested Hermione go because I think she'd be all neurotic about it if she didn't." And so they would have someone to report back to them about what was going on, of course.
Tracey scoffed, but didn't argue the point.
"Well, sure," Neville said, frowning a little, "but I actually meant the apparation — off of a moving train, side-alonging two people..."
Lifting a shoulder in a shrug — somewhat less artful than usual, probably still unsettled from the dementor — Daphne said, "Oh, it's possible. Once Tori fell from her broom hundreds of feet up, and our father apparated off his own broom to catch her and side-along down to the ground below. And then he apparated back up to collect their brooms."
At the dumbfounded looks Neville and Dorea were giving her (apparating in mid-air with enough accuracy to grab someone falling, Jesus...), Tracey let out a weak, thin little giggle. "Yeah, Daphne's dad is kind of ridiculous."
"He works with space-manipulation enchanting a lot — he's really good with spells with space-bending effects, like apparation. Now, I have no idea if Remus has that kind of talent, but he's reasonably powerful, and he clearly didn't splinch them. I think it's reasonable to assume he wouldn't have offered to take Hermione with if he wasn't confident he could do it."
Or he might have thought the offer alone would have been enough to get Hermione to let him leave without complaint. Dorea could tell Tracey was thinking that, her lips pulled into a faint scowl, but she kept it to herself — probably assuming Neville hadn't thought of that possibility, and didn't want to worry him for no good reason. She had the feeling Tracey didn't like the thought of her friends agreeing to let people they'd never met before side-along them — that was part of those basic personal safety lectures children got (like not getting into cars with strangers) which Hermione, being muggleborn, wouldn't have gotten — and while she wasn't actually worried about Remus in particular, it was still a talk she'd be having with Hermione later.
...Which was a good idea, actually. They should get all their muggleborn (and muggle-raised) friends together and tell them about the things to look out for. Not letting strangers just teleport you places was an obvious one, but they weren't always obvious...
The rest of the train ride was, thankfully, uneventful. Well, Dorea wasn't really feeling very thankful, considering the things that had already happened were a big deal, and she was still trying (and mostly failing) not to worry about them, but at least this day wasn't getting any worse. Neville got up and left to find other friends elsewhere on the train — not a surprise, he was closest with Hermione and didn't get along with Daphne and Tracey very well. Tracey was clearly still having lingering difficulties from the dementor exposure, her face seemingly fixed in a glare, fingers shakily tapping at her knees. For some reason, Daphne kept shooting Dorea weird glances — annoyed, she thought? What for?
Some minutes after Neville left, Susan showed up. Apparently, the rumour had passed down the train that Dorea had had some kind of fit, so the people in Susan's compartment had elected her to go check if everyone was alright. News about Liz hadn't made it to Susan's compartment, but she had heard it on the way over, so she ended up asking about that too. After a moment of thought, Dorea decided to get up and follow Susan back — she had the feeling Daphne wanted to talk to Tracey about what was bothering her in private, so.
Walking down to Susan's compartment was more difficult than it should be, Dorea annoyingly dizzy and the muscles in her legs tingling uncomfortably, but she made it easily enough. Susan was sitting with Hannah (obviously), Terry, Sophie, and Michael, and also Lily Moon, weirdly enough. Dorea didn't see the quiet little Gryffindor around very much — she knew Lily was one of the purebloods in Hermione's study group (mostly muggleborns with a couple exceptions), which sometimes overlapped with Dorea's, but not all the time. Dorea hadn't realised she was friends with this group.
With the addition of Dorea, the compartment was slightly overfull, but they fit four people on one bench pretty easily — Lily was tiny, and Hannah, Susan, and Terry didn't mind squeezing really close together. And then Dorea got to answer questions about what had happened back in her compartment. She hesitated for a moment, but decided to just come out and tell them she had the stealing away. (It wasn't something people normally talked about, but people already knew something had happened, and she might as well provide an explanation before people start making one up.) Dementor exposure was already bad enough for people who just had normal epilepsy — Dorea wouldn't be surprised if it turned out a couple other people on the train had had breakthrough seizures — but it really didn't mix with the delicate balance enforced in Dorea's brain by the treatment she'd gone through years ago now. Yes, Terry, that was a big part of why she'd never met her father before, visiting him at Azkaban just wasn't medically possible.
And yes, Susan, she did plan on suing. Oh, her aunt should be able to find out who authorised it? Right, ask her to owl Dorea that information, then. Thanks. Yes, she would invite other people to join in on the claim, there would be time, they could talk about it later.
This compartment was a lot more active than just Daphne and Tracey, enough conversation going on to distract her from her worries about Liz and herself, it was no time at all before they were pulling into the station. The cramped scramble out onto the train was even more of a crowded mess than usual. After she spotted the huge (and still growing) cluster of smaller kids in plain black robes collected under the looming figure of the groundskeeper, Dorea had a pretty good idea what at least part of the problem was — supposedly, the incoming first-year class was the largest Hogwarts had had since the 60s.
And it was only going to get bigger over the next couple years. There had been something of a post-war baby boom, couples who'd put off having children due to the unrest finally getting to it — though a rather limited one, restricted to the segments of the society who'd had anything to do with the war, but that did happen to include everyone who sent their kids to Hogwarts. The number of muggleborns had also been steadily increasing over the last several years, due to the Death Eaters no longer murdering them before they made it to school age. The incoming first year only included the initial uptick, coming out to eighty-something, twice the size of Dorea's class — and probably over half of these kids had July, August, and September birthdays (roughly nine months after Hallowe'en '81, which was not a coincidence) — but the class after this one was even larger, supposedly just under one hundred twenty.
Andi claimed (telling her about Wizengamot reports from the Department of Education), that the class size was expected to continue to increase after that, leveling off in a few years somewhere just under two hundred before trailing off again, probably stabilising somewhere between one twenty and one fifty, which had been the average around the turn of the century. At least until the kids born in the baby boom started having kids themselves, which would probably lead to another spike in the student population.
Hogwarts would certainly need to hire more staff, just out of safety concerns. Dorea knew from personal experience that having twenty kids in a room brewing at the same time was too many, Snape alone couldn't keep a close enough of an eye on them to stop anything from blowing up. The new first-years would have forty in each class, which was going to be so much worse — Andi had said Snape had told the Board of Governors this summer that, if he was forced to deal with sixty students in a single class, as the next first-year class would have, that there could well likely be deaths due to accidents his attention was just too divided to mitigate in time. And he wasn't the only one either, Flitwick and McGonagall had given similarly alarming statements.
Which was why the Board of Governors and the Ministry were even now in negotiations to increase Hogwarts's endowment and tax base, in order to support the salaries of additional staff. And not just teachers, either — eleven- and twelve-year-olds weren't thought to be mature enough to take care of themselves away from home by themselves, but with the classes being all roughly the same size, it was assumed enough older students would be keeping an eye on them to keep things from getting out of hand; with so many younger students coming in, they weren't confident of that anymore. They were planning on hiring on adults (probably Mastery students) to live in the dorms full-time, where they'd be on hand to manage all the little kids running around.
Dorea thought it was kind of ridiculous that that wasn't a thing already. That was what the job of the head of house was supposed to be, but as the class size shrunk the staff had been downsized, and heads of houses had started teaching as well — all of the heads of house taught core subjects now, which was something that had literally never been the case before Flitwick had taken over as head of Ravenclaw in the mid-70s. Instead of hiring entirely new professors to take on all the teaching responsibilities and having the heads of house do the job of managing their houses, the Board had instead decided to have the heads of house focus on running their departments (with new junior professors under them), and hire additional people whose only job was to look after the children while out of class.
Which didn't seem like a terrible idea to Dorea? Still somewhat inefficient, but better than what they had going on now. It was sort of common knowledge that Slytherin and Hufflepuff were managed pretty well — due in large part to Snape and Sprout both effectively delegating responsibilities to their prefects, after having put in place consistent conflict-resolution systems everybody could access and knew the rules for — but Ravenclaws and Gryffindors were pretty much on their own, McGonagall and Flitwick either unable or unwilling to provide the structure and guidance necessary for their houses to govern themselves.
Hermione had been rather irritated to learn that Slytherin and Hufflepuff had revising sessions ahead of exams organised by the prefects, that students could bring grievances against each other (for theft or bullying or whatever, really) and have the dispute mediated, with redress or punishment enforced by the rest of the house, that Snape and Sprout both had regular meetings with all their students to make sure they were doing all right... Sort of a lot of things, actually. Apparently Gryffindor was sort of a vicious, disorganised, free-for-all mess — Hermione couldn't even get her roommates to stop stealing her things or sabotaging or pouring out her shampoo and stuff, bullying that would never be tolerated for very long in Hufflepuff or Slytherin.
(By the end of that conversation, Dorea had never been more glad that she hadn't followed Sirius into Gryffindor. Slytherins could be exhausting to deal with sometimes, but at least Snape gave a damn.)
The point was, as much as the dramatic increase in class sizes might make things kind of messy for a little while, the changes they'd be making at the school in response definitely sounded like they'd be an improvement. Dorea would only be at the school for the first few years of the new system — fourth through seventh, most likely — when things would still be shaky as they tried to settle into the new normal, but still, good news.
So, with twice as many first-years kicking around on the platform than usual, it took a couple extra minutes to get to the carriages. They'd lost a few people from their compartment, but Dorea was still with Susan and Hannah and Terry and Lily, which was enough people to fill one, they were trundling on down the track to the castle after only a moment.
A couple minutes into the ride, the light chatter in the carriage trailed off, the air turning thick and cold and heavy — apparently, they had dementors posted at the gates too.
Son of a bitch. She was definitely suing someone.
Liz woke up slowly, reluctantly, numb and tired.
She felt raw. Like Dudley had shoved her and she'd fallen scraping skin against asphalt, or like that time she'd accidentally swiped her hand across a cheese grater, not physically but mentally, her thoughts scattered and broken and painful.
Consciousness came on slowly, clumsy, her thinking still slow and unfocused, seeming to float in a warm, soft, still void. But with a hint of confusion, because this was familiar, she'd felt like this once before. It took a moment to connect the dots, beyond just a vague sense of I've been here before, but eventually she remembered: when she'd woken up after subsuming that piece of the Dark Lord in her scars, it'd felt like this.
And the memories floating up through the numbness only made her more confused. The time she'd felt like this before, she'd just attempted soul magic subsumation, while having absolutely no idea what was going on or what she was doing, and kind of fucked it up a little — she couldn't possibly have tried something like that again. Could she? It wasn't like she'd really done it on purpose the first time, so...
As Tamsyn liked to joke, subsuming a human soul was really the sort of thing one had to work up to.
Slowly, she started to become aware of her surroundings. She was laying in bed, on her back, the sheets stiff and starchy but charmed to be soft and warm to the touch. (She couldn't say how she knew that was magic, she just did.) Those were familiar, she must be in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts. To her discomfort, she realised she wasn't wearing her own clothes anymore, the fabric on her skin smooth and silky — she was dressed, yes, but the absence of her usual cotton knickers was making her uneasy already, and she'd hardly even been properly awake for a few seconds. Not to mention, someone would have had to change her out of her own clothes into these, while she'd been unconscious, that thought didn't make her feel any better...
The room was quiet, but not silent. There was a little bit of shuffling around, cloth against cloth, an occasional huff of breath. Liz must not be the only person in hospital at the moment. She wasn't surprised, magical accidents happened all the time, there was almost always at least one or two kids in here, especially around—
No, it wasn't around exam time — the year was over, she'd spent most of the summer with Seve— Snape, she was supposed to go back to calling him Snape. (Though occasionally slipping might sell the story that would eventually come out better, she should try to remember that.) But the summer had been over, and...
Liz didn't remember getting back to Hogwarts.
She lifted her hands, feeling strangely weak, rubbed at her face. She was in Hogwarts, she was almost positive this was the Hospital Wing, but she didn't remember getting here.
She had been on a train, but she hadn't recognised it, she'd been abd—
No. No, that wasn't right.
Liz had the surreal feeling that she'd been both thirteen and six yesterday. She recalled Severus dropping her off at the platform — and then immediately popping away again without a word, like the most socially-awkward person on earth — and she'd been on the train, some of her friends had shown up, the details of their conversation were sort of fuzzy, and then...she didn't remember.
She also remembered being locked in the cupboard, Uncle Vernon had been annoyed with her, though she wasn't certain what she'd done wrong. (Sometimes it seemed like Uncle Vernon just made up new rules to be annoyed with her for breaking just so he'd have a reason to be annoyed with her.) It'd been before dinner, and she wasn't brought out to help Aunt Petunia cook, so then she didn't get any, and she'd been hungry but mostly bored, so she'd fallen asleep...and then she'd woken up on a train, with a man and a few older kids she didn't know, certain she was being kidnapped, but that wasn't so bad, the Dursleys weren't likely to look for her very hard, and she couldn't get in trouble for not staying put if she never came back...
Except, she also remembered the scene with her friends and an unknown middle-aged wizard, dealing with an inexplicably six-year-old Liz — feeling vaguely humiliated with her own behaviour, honestly — as though watching from the outside, but not really, she'd still been in her body, it'd just been acting with absolutely no input from her. Kind of fuzzy, dream-like, as though she'd only been partially conscious. She didn't remember it very well, but...
Something really fucking weird was going on.
But thinking about it was making her head hurt even worse, so she was just going to stop doing that.
Liz opened her eyes, winced at the bright yellow-white light stabbing into her head. A few painful, blinking moments and her eyes had adjusted — even just seeing the stone ceiling above her, the curtains curving in her peripheral, she was now even more certain this was the Hospital Wing. She pushed herself up to lean against the headboard, her arms almost shaking with the effort. There was no way she should be anything near this weak, that was ridiculous, must be lingering after-effects of whatever had happened to her.
...Or she'd been unconscious for a very long time. Liz didn't think that was likely, but...
Sitting on the side table nearby was her wand holster, the handle of her wand sticking out where she could easily see it, alongside the contents of her pockets — a pouch holding a handful of coins, a calming and nutrient potion, a broad-spectrum antidote, a basic healing potion and a jar of burn paste (okay, maybe she was over-prepared), and a few Chocolate Frog Cards. She didn't like Chocolate Frogs, of course, too sweet, but her friends sometimes forced the cards on her when they got repeats. Liz must have a couple dozen of the things by now, she usually just pitched them in her trunk and forgot about them.
This time, she'd ended up being passed Helga Hufflepuff, Carlotta Pinkstone — the infamous British anti-Statutarian, been in and out of Azkaban for decades now — Wendelin the Weird — the infamously mad witch who'd gotten herself repeatedly burned at the stake for fun (who might be fictional, since that hadn't actually happened very often) — and Morgen of Avalon — because Morgan le Fay was apparently a real person (the magical world was wild sometimes), though she was actually a princess of the fairy kingdom on the "other side" of Glastonbury Tor, whatever the fuck that meant. Liz had only found out Morgen was actually real when she'd been handed the card, and she had so many questions, but unfortunately her friends hadn't seemed to know much. It was on the list of things to research this month.
(Looking at the particular cards she'd been given Liz had had the suspicion Tracey had been trying to make some kind of point, though she had no idea what.)
Okay, seeing the cards was helping her remember some of what had happened on the train ride, but she still had no idea what the hell had happened to her. Presumably somebody would explain that at some point. There was also a pitcher of water there, so Liz poured herself a glass — and noticed as soon as the water touched her throat that she was very thirsty, fuck, that felt good, quickly drained the glass and refilled it again.
She'd downed most of a second glass, was just wondering whether she should call for someone (if only to find out what the hell was going on), when her stomach started making surprisingly loud gurgling noises, shifting her water about enough she swore she could feel her organs shuffling around under her skin. Okay, apparently she was hungry.
...Would she have even noticed if she didn't just throw a bunch of water in there? Hmm.
"Madam—" Her voice coming out weak and croaking, Liz broke off, worked at clearing her throat for a moment. Let's try that again. "Madam Pomfrey? Are you out there?"
It was only a brief moment before Liz heard a faint shuffling, the click of shoes on the stone floor approaching, and then the familiar figure of the school's Healer pushed her way through the curtains. "Good morning, Miss Potter. And how are we today?"
Liz blinked. She ignored the question entirely, of course — Liz kind of hated that kind of question, she never knew what she was supposed to say. "Morning? I thought it was...how long have I been unconscious?"
"I'm not certain exactly, but a little over forty hours, I think."
In response, all Liz could manage was to gape silently back at her, the thought not quite processing properly. Forty hours, like, nearly two days? Was it Tuesday already? That was the first day of classes, she was pretty sure — the other two years, they didn't have classes the day after they arrived, a short time to settle in and for the first-years at least to find their way around — and she really didn't feel up to doing much right now, so she was going to miss them...not that she cared that much about missing class, honestly, but she had three entirely new subjects this year...
Pomfrey was saying, "I'll need to do some diagnostic charms quick, if you'll sit still for a moment, Miss Potter." Before Liz could even think to respond, Pomfrey's wand was in her hand, spells breaking over Liz one after the other. They were kind of...itchy, clinging to her in a way that wasn't painful, but was definitely uncomfortable. (It didn't help that she didn't feel properly dressed right now.) Or at least, they didn't start out painful, but the longer they went on a warm, dull ache started settling in — not localised in any particular place, not even seeming to be associated with any part of her body at all, just a vague, undifferentiated pain she couldn't really make sense of.
It was only as her mind started to hurt — not a physical headache, but sort of like the stabbing mental pain of a mind magic attack, though not nearly as intense and much more...unfocused — that Liz had the surreal thought that it wasn't connected to any part of her body because it was her magic that hurt. She hadn't even realised that was possible. Letting her eyes drift closed, Liz forced herself to sit still and silent, impatiently waiting for the uncomfortable process to just be over already...
"All right, Miss Potter, hold out your hand, please." Liz blinked her eyes open to see Pomfrey had pulled something out of a pocket — she couldn't see what it was, wrapped up in a little square of silk. Once her hand was opened, Pomfrey let a blue-purple crystal fall in her hand, maybe an inch long, little runes etched into the face with what looked like gold dust. "Push your magic into the reservoir, like how you cast a spell with your wand — gently, it doesn't take very much."
She blinked, staring down at the stone, wondering what the hell this thing was supposed to do, for a few seconds before remembering she was supposed to actually be doing that. Right. It wasn't very easy to do, as unfocused and raw as her mind and magic were feeling at the moment — all those diagnostic charms poking at her probably hadn't helped — but eventually she managed to get magic flowing down her arm, warm and tingly in all the little joints in her wrist and fingers. The crystal slowly started to glow, gradually brightening as she pushed, sparks starting to flicker deep inside, green and silver and red—
"That'll do, you can stop now." Oh right, doing a thing, Liz had almost forgotten. Pomfrey plucked the stone out of her hand, holding it under her nose, the tip of her wand held close but not quite touching. Some seconds passed by, Pomfrey's lips twitching with unspoken spells, little sparks dancing in the depths of the crystal, the air tingling with a faint hint of magic. Finally, she let out a hum, dropping the crystal in a pocket. "It appears you are recovering well, Miss Potter. I'll be sending an elf to fetch Professor Snape to do his own evaluation — this is more his area of expertise than mine, but I do believe you are out of the woods now."
...Okay. "And what happened to me, exactly?"
"You don't remember?" asked Pomfrey, sounding vaguely sympathetic in that way she had, but not particularly concerned.
"No, not at all." She assumed whatever had put her here had happened between the discussion of Chocolate Frog Cards and just what the fuck Avalon was and the shorter one with the unfamiliar man Liz had two distinct memories of, but she had absolutely no memory of what that had been.
"Professor Snape did say that might happen — it's nothing to worry about, dear, psychic trauma simply interferes with the formation of memories." Oh. Okay. That was slightly reassuring, she guessed...though, more because it sounded like Severus had apparently expected it than anything Pomfrey thought, if she was being honest. "I don't think you'll ever remember what happened, but there shouldn't be any lingering memory issues. Though if you do notice anything like that, you should tell Professor Snape immediately, of course."
Liz nodded — she'd been told the same thing the first time. Well, no, the first time she'd been told there might be memory issues or other problems, and to be on the lookout for them, but apparently this time none of that was even an issue. Which meant this was a less serious medical thing, she thought? Maybe, she didn't know, thinking was hard. "Okay. And what was the...psychic trauma, exactly?"
Her lips twitching a little, some slippery feeling on the air Liz couldn't quite read, Pomfrey said, "I'm sorry, Miss Potter, but this is not my area of expertise. Professor Snape can give you a much better explanation when he gets here. Is there anything I can get you while we wait for him?"
"Um." Liz took a moment to evaluate the likelihood she'd get answers if she demanded them. Low, probably. "Some food would be nice, I'm starving." Which did make sense, since apparently she hadn't eaten for two days. "Oh, and, can I get a book or something? I guess if it's bloody Tuesday it might be a little bit before he can make it up here..."
It only took a few seconds for Pomfrey to produce her copy of Reflections of the Unseen — the last thing Liz remembered, she had been reading that, half paying attention to her friends chatting around her. According to Pomfrey, Hermione had visited yesterday afternoon to drop it off for her, in case she woke up and got bored, because Hermione was thoughtful like that sometimes. Liz had only gotten through a couple paragraphs (as scattered as her head was right now, reading was very slow) before a tray of food was popped in by house-elf, and her book was immediately abandoned.
Liz couldn't remember the last time she'd felt this hungry. It would have been before she'd started using her mind-control superpowers on Vernon, and that was...what, five or six years ago now. (Which was honestly surreal to think about, it somehow felt like it should be both longer and much shorter than that.) Except, she did remember, it'd been just before she'd woken up on the train...but not really, because that'd been years ago, but it also felt like just yesterday...
This was very confusing, and it was making her head hurt, so Liz decided to stop thinking about it.
She had no idea how long it took for Severus to show up. Presumably, he had to put it off until he had enough time between classes to make it all the way up here — the Hospital Wing wasn't that high up in the castle, but it was still quite a walk from the Potions classroom. Or classes might be over for the day already, for all she knew, it was impossible to tell what time it was from in here. She'd been trying to read most of the time, but she hadn't gotten very far. There was no telling how much of this she was retaining anyway, and the effort was making her head slowly hurt worse — which was somewhat concerning, Liz hadn't found reading to take any effort at all since she'd been seven or so — but as difficult and painful as it was, she wasn't about to give up, out of stubbornness if nothing else.
Reading was a large proportion of what she did with her time. She was going to make her brain cooperate, 'psychic trauma' or not.
But eventually, probably a couple hours after she'd woken up, Severus arrived. He suddenly and sharply whipped the curtains aside, the rings on the rail making a harsh scraping, but Liz wasn't startled. She'd felt his mind approaching some seconds earlier — in fact, she'd already marked her page and set the book aside before he even made it all the way. He pulled the curtains closed behind him, turned to look down at her, and—
Liz grimaced at the skin-crawling sensation of a mind slipping up against hers. It wasn't an attack or even really an intrusion — little tendrils of magic slithering around the edges, not pushing in at all, just feeling out shape and texture — but it was still extremely uncomfortable, like fingers unexpectedly brushing over her neck. She looked away, glaring down at her hands in her lap, and tried to keep her breath smooth and even, resisting the urge to defend herself. After an interminable, teeth-grinding moment, the light pressure of Snape's mind lifted away. Liz sighed.
"What is your name?"
For a second, she frowned up at him in confusion — he couldn't possibly not know that. But no, they must be doing this again, the little cognitive function test he'd given her after the subsumation incident. Right. Deciding to have a little fun with him, Liz drawled, "Elizabeth Hazel Augusta, Lady of the Noble House of Potter."
Barely an eyebrow twitch? Boo. "What is the date?"
"Last I recall, the Twenty-Ninth of August, but Pomfrey said I was out for at least forty hours, so I suppose it's the Thirty-First now."
Severus, as expected, handed her a piece of paper and a pen, by the steady tingle of magic in them both were conjurations. "Draw a clock showing the time three forty-seven."
Grimacing despite herself, Liz set the sheet of paper down on the cover of her book, and started off. She hated trying to draw circles, stupid things...
"Repeat these words after me, and try to remember them..."
And his little test continued on like that, for some minutes. It might have been the exact same test he'd given her last time, but she didn't remember it clearly enough to say one way or the other. There were five words, seemingly picked at random — she recited them the first time but, as tired and unfocused as she was feeling right now, she didn't expect to remember them. Then she counted back from a hundred by sevens, repeated a sequence of numbers, then repeated a different sequence backwards. The sevens were annoyingly difficult — she could feel how slow she was — and she stumbled a little at the end of the first sequence, and only got maybe half of the second before she forgot.
Obviously she knew where she was, and rattling off towns in Britain wasn't difficult. He asked her who the Minister of Magic was — she was pretty sure it'd been the Prime Minister last time, probably because she hadn't been as familiar with the magical world as a first-year — and she blanked for a second before remembering it was Fudge, that bloke with the funny hat. (She didn't remember his first name, but she remembered the hat, so she thought that should still count.) Her classmates, well, she was pretty sure she knew the names of her entire class at this point — there were still some she might mix up, but she knew all their names at least. Severus didn't even let her get halfway through before stopping anyway. And then she was asked to recite that list of random words again, which, fuck, she didn't know. She maybe got half of them? She was pretty sure she'd forgotten when she'd been trying to count back by sevens...
Finally, the questions were done. He vanished her (slightly crooked, stupid circles) clock with a flick of a wrist, letting out a sigh so thin she wasn't entirely sure she'd heard it at all. "That was worse than I might have hoped, but not entirely concerning. We will be doing it again tomorrow."
"Right." Not that she expected she had any choice in the matter, but presumably she'd be feeling better tomorrow. "Are you going to tell me what happened? Pomfrey didn't tell me anything, just said it was your area of expertise and you'd explain."
Severus's brow narrowed in a faint frown. "Did she not mention the dementor at all?"
"Dementor?"
Liz definitely heard that sigh. "I suppose I should have expected as much. Unfortunately, this explanation is somewhat complicated. It is perhaps something we should have discussed before — you are a reasonably competent mind mage, so sometimes I forget you have desperately little formal knowledge of the mechanics involved."
...She honestly couldn't tell if that was supposed to be a compliment or not.
Severus's wand was suddenly in his hand, he gave it a flick. An illusion resolved right in front of Liz, two featureless silhouettes of people — sort of like the mannequins at a muggle department store, though weirdly transparent — roughly life-sized, cutting off at the waist where they met the sheets of her bed. There were these little blobs of light around their heads, one red and one green, inside but also spreading well outside them — a cloud of hundreds of little flittering sparks, denser toward the middle and tapering off toward the edges.
"The mechanics of the how mind is generated to begin with," Severus was saying, in that cool, smooth lecture voice of his, "is far beyond the understanding of even an advanced third-year student, and a largely theoretical matter in any case." The even an advanced student part had been a stealth compliment, she was pretty sure, it was hard to tell with him. "For simplicity's sake, imagine each mind is a radio transmitter, broadcasting at a particular frequency. No two minds naturally operate at the same frequency — with the special exception of bonded twins, such as the Weasleys in fifth year and the Carrows in second.
"The basic function of passive legilimency is then to induce portions of one's mind to match the frequency of others nearby." With a little twist of Severus's wand, a sizeable section of the green blob changed to red — though not entirely, Liz noticed there were still little streaks of green in there, an occasional golden thread between the two that must mean something to people who understood theoretical mind magic stuff. "The information this method alone can intercept is limited. You might have noticed you are almost always aware of the feelings of people around you, especially the stronger emotions, perhaps struck with the occasional intrusive thought — a strong feeling or thought spreading through a mind will often force an impression into the ambient magic, which will then carry outward." The red blob pulsed, flaring brighter for a moment, a wave of dancing sparks with a weaker reddish tint spreading outward; when they reached the green blob, little sparks flickered in the red section inside, the green parts staying the same. "This capability is one that can be learned, though only in native mind mages and empaths does it occur without conscious effort.
"The unique trait of a mind mage that enables our particular magics is the ability to, intuitively, channel our magic directly into our minds, increasing their range and granting us greater control over their form." Deep in the centre of the green mind there was a flare of white light, and the blob swiftly expanded, growing to twice its previous size. A drifting tendril of green light then lashed out at the red blob, glomming on to the surface. The thick tentacle-looking thing swiftly changed colours, red flowing up through it into the green blob, spreading into it like ink dropped into water — though still surrounded by and run through with strands of green, thin stitching in every inch. "In this way, we can achieve direct contact, through which we can receive much finer, more detailed information.
"We can also manipulate the mind to show us what we wish to see." From where the tendril met the edge of the red blob, little green threads spread into red, like roots growing into soil. "Or make alterations, small or large." A bright green blot appeared within the part of the red mind streaked with green roots, the blot then quickly stitched through with lines of gold which then steadily turned red. The tendril finally pulled away from the red blob, swiftly fading back to green, and the red threads in the blot gradually expanded, after some seconds the entire blob again an even red. "This is a drastic oversimplification of the process, as you might expect, but sufficient for our purposes today.
"Any questions so far?"
Liz was going to guess why the hell are we talking about this? wasn't one Severus would give her an answer to just now. "Not really. I didn't realise this was all so complicated, I just sort of...do it."
She half expected Severus to be annoyed with Liz being so completely ignorant about what was starting to look like a very complicated field of magic, but if anything she thought she caught a warm tingle of amusement from him. Though it didn't show on his face at all, of course, this was Severus. "I don't expect you are consciously aware of how you stimulate artificial intelligence in mundane serpents whenever you speak to them in Parseltongue, either."
"...Well, no, I didn't realise that did anything more than hissing. But that is kind of obvious, now that I think about it — they're only snakes, it's not like they're smart enough to speak any language at all."
Severus nodded. "It is possible to replicate that effect, though it requires advanced charmwork. Mages who are born with these sort of innate abilities are rarely conscious of the mechanics behind their gifts."
"I suppose it wouldn't be a gift if you had to study for a decade to learn how to use it properly."
His lips twitched, another tingle of amusement crawling through the air. "I suppose. However, the fact that we have an intuitive ability to perform these magics does not mean there aren't potential dangers. In the case of mind mages, the greatest is a phenomenon known as fracturing." A red blot appeared in the middle of the green mind — a much bigger one, taking up maybe a quarter of the whole space — but this time it didn't have any of the little green threads stitched across it, the shimmering gold lining missing, just an abrupt, solid border. "In ordinary practice, portions of the mind are sectioned off to resonate with others, certain magical systems in place to manage the structure of these sections; however, it is possible for these systems to falter or fail to develop properly, the sectioned-off region of the mind allowed to, essentially, act under its own will. If that region is large enough to sustain independent consciousness, it will be as though a sliver of another has taken temporary residence in the person's mind, two separate entities sharing one body.
"However, under ordinary circumstances, this phenomenon is temporary. The mind is continuously generated by the activity of the underlying neurons, and — to drastically oversimplify what is truly a varied and complicated magical process — an alteration must be magically burned into a person's brain to be sustained. Without some magic reinforcing the fracture, the mind will reintegrate itself, as a natural consequence of its basic function." As Severus spoke, the solid red blot withered, gradually shrinking as the green pushed against the boundary, even shifting colour, the red tinting greenish until it finally vanished completely. "The experience is disorienting but, so long as the fracture is not reinforced, it is not truly dangerous, and almost always resolves itself in a matter of moments."
Okay, Liz thought she understood what Severus was getting at here. Mostly, anyway. "Right, I guess that sort of makes sense. I vaguely remember being two different versions of myself, though."
Severus nodded. "It is also possible for fracturing to occur within a mind." Another twitch of his wand, and thick golden lines shot through the green blob, dividing it into three sections. "This is a technique those experienced with the manipulation of their own minds often exercise — a proficient user might split their attention so as to cast multiple spells simultaneously, or isolate certain thoughts and memories from an attacking mind mage, for example — but it comes with greater risks. Should their attention waver..." The gold lines quickly faded to a pale off-white, flickering here and there with black static. "...they may lose control of the divisions in their mind, leaving themselves fractured. And this is more serious than the other form of fracturing I described previously: since their mind is still wholly theirs, their fractured mind does not conflict with the magical field generated by their brain.
"Such a fracturing is not permanent, not without magic performed to make it so, but it will sustain itself much longer. Perhaps days, in serious cases. Without assistance, a mind mage so fractured is often forced to subsume the wayward pieces of their own mind, which can have peculiar and unpredictable consequences if done inexpertly — subsumation, after all, is one of those magics that reinforces the quality of a mind on the underlying physical structure, so any mistakes made in the process will be permanently burned into the user's brain. Do you understand so far?"
Liz was already familiar with the dangers of mind magic subsumation — it was something that had come up in her letters with Tamsyn, and she was pretty sure Severus had also mentioned it at some point. The very real risk of accidentally driving herself insane was one of the primary reasons she hadn't tried out absorbing knowledge from other people yet. (Tamsyn had suggested starting with little things, like memories of mundane events or people's shopping lists or whatever, before trying big things like instantly learning French.) This fracturing stuff was new, though. "I think so, but I'm still not really sure what this has to do with anything. I mean, I guess I must have been fractured — that explains the weird memories of that last bit on the train I have — but how? I don't think I've ever even tried this splitting my mind up stuff..." She wasn't even certain how she would do that, it sounded weird.
"What do you know of dementors?"
...She was going to guess that wasn't nearly as much of a subject change as it seemed like. "Not much. They're unkillable soul-sucking monsters," a note of sarcasm slipping into her voice, "so obviously the Ministry uses them as prison guards." They sounded pretty fucking terrifying, honestly.
"They're not unkillable, in fact. Or perhaps 'kill' is an imprecise word, since they can hardly be considered to be alive in the first place, but they can be destroyed — the feat simply requires esoteric light battlemagics that are all but extinct in Britain. I believe you've heard of Castalia Lovegood?" Severus waited for Liz to nod. "In a somewhat well-known incident, she annihilated a trio of dementors attacking a muggle village during a visit to Karelia. It is possible, though rare. But that is not a matter of discussion for today."
Another twist of Severus's wand, and the mannequin-like figure on the left, the one with the red-coloured mind-cloud, was replaced with something else. It didn't seem to have any features at all, hidden entirely by a tattered hooded robe — despite the holes and tears in the fabric, the shadows under the hood were perfectly solid, the face in blackness. There was something odd about the fabric too, not settling the way it should, seeming to half-float and shift around the hidden figure, as though underwater.
"The mechanics—" Liz jumped as Severus spoke, distracted enough by the creepy-looking thing she hadn't expected it. "—of how a dementor's influence functions are irrelevant for the moment. Suffice to say, dementors affect the minds of everyone around them in a way not too dissimilar from mundane mind magic, and through that contact perform a sort of soul magic subsumation." A black mist expanded out from the dementor's head, before long reaching the edge of the green mind. Little tendrils of black reached inside, little white sparks flickering up to be caught by the roots, funnelled up into the mist where they disappeared into the blackness, like being sucked down a drain. "Under ordinary circumstances, the anima will regenerate — brief exposures to their influence effect no permanent damage to healthy individuals. Chronic exposure, on the other hand, has serious psychological consequences, inducing permanent changes to one's personality or long-term emotional imbalances within a matter of months, and most often irreversible insanity in under a decade."
So, scary fucking things, was what he was saying. "And they put them in the prisons? But don't..." Liz paused a moment, trying to put into words exactly what she was thinking. "I was just thinking, if people end up with long-term emotional imbalances after only a few months, aren't they just going to commit another crime pretty quickly?"
There was a flash of something from Severus, hatefully bitter yet coldly amused. "Yes, in fact, reoffenders are very common. You'll find people who've received even a short sentence are exponentially more likely than the general population to receive a second — even controlling for various factors such as social status, race, and employment. Once someone has been sent to Azkaban once, they tend to vacillate in and out over the course of their lives."
"Well, that seems inefficient. Why doesn't the Wizengamot just execute them, and get it over with?"
Severus laughed — it wasn't nearly as much as the last time, just a few dark little chuckles, his lips curled in a crooked smirk. Much more reserved, but still fucking weird, there was just something surreal about Professor Snape laughing that made Liz...uneasy. "I'm sure I couldn't say. Perhaps the Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot wish to avoid bloodying their own hands quite so directly — sending those they convict off to have their lives slowly drained away by dementors is one thing, but taking their lives is something quite else."
...Was it? Liz honestly didn't see how. Either way, the people they convict died, it didn't really make a difference how it was done or how long it took. It seemed to her that just killing them, rather than having soul-sucking monsters torture them to death with mind magic over years, was actually the more merciful thing to do. But whatever.
"To return to the matter at hand: What do you think would happen if a mind mage attempted to compel a dementor?"
"Um..." Liz frowned at the creepy-looking dementor illusion, considering what little she knew about the magic involved. From the images Severus had shown, it seemed like compelling someone was basically forcing their mind to resonate with hers, so she could slip in whatever she wanted. Except, she had to be able to see what was going on in there to change it — the weird tentacle-looking connection Severus had drawn had funnelled red stuff into the green mind too — and Liz had no fucking clue what would happen if she got dementor bits in her head. "...probably nothing good? I'm guessing that's what I did, then?" She did have a problem with mentally flailing at threats first and thinking—
Liz twitched. "Wait a second, there was a dementor on the train? Why?!"
His eyes narrowing and lips curling in a scowl, Severus said, "In an ill-considered attempt to protect the children of Hogwarts from your fugitive godfather, the Ministry has decided to post dementors at the gates of the school. I cannot speak to the thinking behind this decision, as I doubt there was truly any thought involved at any point in the process."
For a second, Liz was distracted by the joke (she did find Severus amusing sometimes), before realising the obvious problem with that. "But, he got past the dementors to get out of Azkaban in the first place. What is surrounding the school with the things supposed to accomplish?"
"That would be why I suspect there was no thought involved. If the Ministry truly wished to guard Hogwarts, a better measure to take would be to surround the school with Hit Wizards, as was done during the height of the war. Unfortunately, no one seems to have been able to convince our illustrious and capable Minister that dementors have no business being anywhere near any place children live." Severus paused a short second, seemingly in an attempt to master his own fury. "If we are very lucky, the Malfoys will successfully bribe him into changing his mind the first time the abominations invade the grounds and get too close to their only child."
...It said a lot about the situation that Liz had been forced onto the same side as Lucius Malfoy. She had a ton of money and nothing to do with it, should she help with the bribing? Maybe she should send a letter...
"I am not certain whose idea it was to allow the dementors to search the train — that wasn't included in Fudge's initial order. I'm sure Director Bones will be opening an investigation into the matter soon, if she hasn't already. But, to return to the matter of your hospitalisation."
Severus's wand twitched, the green blob contorting, a couple thick tendrils reaching out through the mist toward the heart of the dementor. Before they even got there, black roots started to thread through them, and in a blink they shattered, the solid shapes splitting apart into separate green fragments that were then quickly vacuumed up to disappear into the blackness. The main green blob had been affected too, thick black cracks zig-zagging across it until it broke apart into seven or eight pieces — these pieces weren't sucked away, shifting around and bumping into each other but still clinging close to the person they belonged to.
Continuing his lecture as though the tangent hadn't happened, Severus said, "The mind of a dementor is not like that of living beings. Any attempt to resonate with it will cause the systems behind mind magic to fail, catastrophically. But it is a degree worse than ordinary fracturing." Another twitch of his wand, and black roots spread into the green fragments, white sparks drawn up into them from the heart of the person's mind. "In drawing the soul out through a fractured mind, the dementor is, however indirectly, reinforcing its structure. The magic they are doing is not applied with the direct intention of doing so, and for this reason the effects are somewhat limited. They are, however, serious."
Severus flicked his wand a couple more times. The image of the dementor vanished, leaving the person with the green blob broken into segments, separated by slowly flickering black-and-white static. "When you arrived here on Sunday evening, your mind was split into eight independent segments — only two or maybe three were large enough to sustain any level of consciousness, the others undirected feeling, memory, or magic of low complexity — the fractures already partially burned into the structure of your brain. It is possible you could have recovered without treatment, but it would have taken days or perhaps even months, and there could well have been serious deleterious effects.
"Pomfrey and I spent the better part of twelve hours carefully reintegrating and reinforcing your mind. It is a difficult process, but I believe we were successful — unless some unforeseen complication presents itself, you should fully recover by the end of the week." Another flick of his wand, and the image disappeared entirely.
Well, that was...good? It did sound pretty fucking scary, but she barely remembered anything. Even that pair of weird memories she had from after the dementor attack (which she didn't remember at all) were kind of weird and fuzzy. It was a little hard to be too freaked out about something she didn't even remember.
How many times had Severus saved her life now? This made at least two, that she could think of...
But she didn't voice either of those thoughts. Instead she said, "You're welcome, for getting you out of the Welcoming Feast." He'd explicitly told her over the summer he didn't like eating in public, and she had the feeling he wouldn't appreciate being stuck in a room with the noise and chaos of hundreds of excitable children.
Severus furrowed his brow in a glare, but Liz could feel a tingle of dark amusement on the air. "Perhaps there would be some use in you so nearly sacrificing your own sanity were that so — the Headmaster is quite insistent that all staff must attend the Welcoming Feast, or else suffer his incessant nagging until at least Samhain. You were put into medical stasis until after our new first-years were introduced to Slytherin."
"Oh. Well. Never mind, then." Liz abruptly realised the professors probably had to deal with Dumbledore's confusing lectures all the time, like the one she'd gotten this summer about the Dursleys and family and love or whatever. And they couldn't just avoid him, not if they wanted to keep their jobs. Poor bastards. "So, how long do I have until I'll be let out?"
"I cannot say for certain. Perhaps you'll be released by lunch tomorrow, but I suspect Thursday morning is more realistic." He leaned forward a little bit, looming over her, his voice dropping into that smooth, cold, not-quite-whisper he used sometimes. "I cannot stress this enough, Elizabeth: when you arrived here, your condition was very serious. If there weren't a competent mind mage on staff, you would have been sent to Saint Mungo's — and the longer it took them to find an expert qualified to reintegrate a fractured mind, the more serious the damage might well have become. You are very lucky to be sane right now."
Because Liz was so very sane to begin with — she bit her lip to keep herself from blurting that out, she doubted Severus would respond to it well just now. It was a frightening thought, yes, but she was still all tired and unfocused, she suspected it was making her a little silly. He seemed to be waiting for a response, so she muttered, "I understand. Thank you, Severus."
For saving her life and all. Again. When she thought about it, that was kind of...she didn't know, exactly, but something.
One of his eyebrows twitched, there was a flicker of something in his head, Liz couldn't pick it out. "I was not seeking your gratitude, Elizabeth. I've been given the impression that your instinct is to attack a threat instead of retreat from it, but that is not a strategy that works with dementors. Should you be faced with one again, pull in, make yourself as small as possible. The more rigidly you hold yourself, the less power its influence will have over you. Do not attempt to strike at one with mind magic, ever again."
It took some effort to stop herself from glowering up at him. More than it should, really, but whatever was still wrong with her head right now was making her very silly, yes, she was blaming it on that. (She'd been unconscious for forty hours, but she still felt like she could use a nap.) Pointing out the bloody obvious really wasn't very helpful. "I know that, I... I've noticed before, with Dumbledore and then Quirrell, that if I throw myself into an attack right away and the person blocks it, I'm disoriented and vulnerable for a moment. I know it's a problem, but I don't really know what to do about it."
A prickle of something simmering around him (frustration? irritation?), Severus's shoulders hunched down a little, one hand coming up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. After a brief silence, he said, "The disorientation is a result of overexertion — you are committing far too much to the attack and exhausting the energy of your mind until it can be replenished. This does not take longer than a moment, but I'm not surprised you are vulnerable in the interim. Perhaps you might consider not throwing absolutely everything you have into an opening volley that might well be countered."
Liz felt her face start warming, crossed her arms and glared up at him. "I know it's a problem! I'm not doing it on purpose, it just happens."
"Elizabeth, I am fully aware you are capable of performing far more subtle uses of mind magic. I have examined your work at the hotel you passed last summer in, if you recall."
"I can do it, but..." Liz wasn't really sure what to say here. She didn't know what the problem was, when she really needed to use her mind magic she always just acted without thinking. It was frustrating, but she didn't know how she was supposed to think herself out of doing something stupid when the problem was that she simply failed to think.
Severus watched her for a moment, eyes slightly narrowed in thought. When he finally spoke, his voice was empty of any intonation at all, smooth and bland. "You stopped your uncle with mind magic. It wasn't just the once, was it?"
His gaze suddenly feeling too heavy, uncomfortable tingles crawling at the back of her neck (like ants), Liz looked away, glaring down at the blanket over her knees. She lifted one shoulder in a shrug in place of actually saying anything.
Vernon had learned the lesson eventually. It'd just taken a few reminders.
She'd always had to stay on her toes, be ready to slam down on his mind quick and hard, before he could catch her out. (Once he'd surprised her and she hadn't been quick enough, he'd managed to smack her before she got a hold of him, she'd had a bruise on her face for a week.) She thought that was why that was still her first impulse — she understood that now, but she hadn't realised until Severus had pointed it out. But that she knew why it was happening didn't mean she knew what to do about it.
Again, Severus was silent, calmly watching her. She wasn't looking, but she could still see he was facing her in her peripheral vision, and she couldn't make out an expression. His mind, as usual, was giving away hardly anything.
She didn't want to talk about Vernon. Not now, and preferably not ever.
Thankfully, he moved on without asking anything else about that at all. Which was a bit of a surprise, but more of a relief — Severus forced her to have uncomfortable conversations far too often in their private meetings, so she'd accept this gift horse gladly. "The best method to break down certain ingrained habits, I believe, is to develop alternative methods by which to defend yourself. I understand you have an interest in dueling."
Liz blinked. "Yes?"
"I'm certain you've heard of the dueling club by now." Of course she had, she'd participated last year. Not much, they didn't let the second-years or even third-years do a lot, but some. But Flitwick was their advisor, Liz wasn't surprised Severus didn't know about that. "You may have heard the I.C.W. holds student tournaments twice a year, to which Hogwarts sends a team." Two teams, technically — one for the senior division (NEWT students) and one for the junior division (mostly fourth and fifth years). "It would be unusual for a third-year to be invited onto the team, but I suspect you have the talent for it. If competing is something you feel you might have an interest in, I would suggest you use the setting of the dueling club as an opportunity to flaunt your skills in an attempt to draw the team's attention."
Her discomfort from the reference to things she didn't want to talk about quickly dribbling away, Liz contemplated the idea. She'd never really considered joining the dueling team, to be honest. Her interest in dueling had partially been out of self-preservation — all this magic stuff had been new to her, and the realisation that she had practically no defence against mages with the ability to defend themselves from mind magic had made her feel very, very vulnerable — and partially just because it was fun. Casting magic at all was fun to begin with, channelling magic just felt good — and offensive and defensive magics tended to be power-intensive, so it felt better than most normal magic. And also she almost always won, especially against the other kids in her year, and...
Well, winning felt good. She'd never really won, at anything ever, before their practice duels in their first-year Defence class. Obviously, if she'd ever done better than Dudley at anything she was punished, so she'd gotten into the habit of...just not trying, at anything. Even now, she did like winning, but she didn't ever seem to get competitive the way other people did, obsessing over it, seeking out opportunities to win at things. She didn't think it would ever have occurred to her to do something like join the dueling team on her own.
It hadn't been her idea to try out for the quidditch team either — she'd been told repeatedly in flying class that she'd make a really good seeker or chaser, and she liked flying, so why the hell not? And winning their games felt amazing, and they'd done it plenty of times too, since they'd only lost one game out of seven. (Gryffindor, obviously — the other two couldn't keep up with Slytherin, but if Gryffindor found a decent seeker this year they might actually be in trouble.) It was a hell of a rush, she couldn't even explain how or why, it just was.
And she really wasn't sure she wanted to give that up, even for something as fun as dueling. "Can I get on the dueling team and still play quidditch?"
"So far as I am aware," Severus drawled, with a tingle of amusement that (again) didn't show at all on his face, "there should be no conflict between the two. The school's quidditch games occurs solely during the academic season, and the I.C.W. student tournaments are held over the course of a week, once during the winter break and again during the summer. I understand the dueling club attempts to coordinate their meetings with the quidditch teams' schedules, though the dueling team may have additional sessions that would need to be discussed with them. It may be tedious, but it is not impossible — I believe Mister Pucey competed this summer."
Who was Puc— Oh, Adrian! (The quidditch team all used each other's first names, sometimes she had trouble keeping their last names straight.) Liz'd had no idea Adrian was on the dueling team, he hadn't mentioned anything. "Right, I might do that. But what does dueling have to do with my mind magic problem?"
"Developing another means by which to defend yourself, and reinforcing the idea that you are skilled in these means by doing well in competitive environments, may assist in degrading certain...deleterious reflexes. I do not suggest this will solve your problem immediately. In fact, I suspect breaking yourself out of habits you developed to defend yourself in childhood will be the work of years to come. But it may help."
...Well, at least he hadn't made her talk about Vernon. Even if they kind of were indirectly — Severus was annoyingly good at doing that.
"In the meantime, I must insist that you avoid coming into contact with a dementor again by any means necessary. They are not permitted to approach the castle, but I wouldn't trust the vile things under the best of circumstances, so you are not to wander too far into the grounds. Never go to the quidditch pitch alone. If you are loitering down by the like, make sure there is a NEWT student in sight at all times; if there is not, return to the castle. If you stumble across a dementor while out on the grounds without escort and are hospitalised a second time, we will be having a much more unpleasant discussion."
Liz almost rolled her eyes — honestly, there were soul-sucking monsters floating around out there, she wasn't about to go exploring the forest just now. That seemed like common fucking sense to her. She realised Severus was under the impression that children — and most grown adults who weren't himself, for that matter — had the intelligence and usefulness of a particularly dim flobberworm, but come on. "Understood. What about Hogsmeade?"
Severus paused for a moment, apparently not having thought of that. Starting in third year, the students were allowed to go out to the nearby village — the NEWT students went out all the time, but the third- through fifth-years weren't supposed to go when there weren't staff on hand for emergencies, which was only every other weekend. Liz didn't expect Hogsmeade to be particularly exciting, but it was something to do with her time every once in a while, she guessed. And supposedly there was a decent bookstore out there, and a shop that sold all kinds of neat enchanted artifacts, might be worth checking out at some point. With a clear air of sarcasm, Severus had signed her form a couple weeks ago — Liz hadn't even realised it was possible to sign one's name sarcastically, but this was Severus Snape they were talking about. He'd found the whole thing funny, she thought for one of two reasons.
For one, he was technically her guardian now, but only because of the lies she'd told to the Child Welfare people. Children usually had two guardians, technically: one was their guarantor, most commonly the head of the family (or in Liz's case, the family's trustee), who was responsible for large-scale legal and financial stuff; the other was their caregiver (or proximal guardian, in legal-speak), the adult the child lived with, who had power over personal, everyday life stuff — the right to manage their space in the household and their belongings, and decide what they did, when and where and with whom. In small families the two were often the same person, but in big sprawling families spread across multiple households they were almost always separate. Dumbledore was her guarantor, but since she'd never lived with him he couldn't claim to be her caregiver. (She recalled Emily Scrimgeour's uncle had even called him on that to his face a few months ago now.) According to their cover-story, she'd now lived with Severus for two summers, and also nearly twenty months at Hogwarts — he was Head of Slytherin, which half-counted only because she also lived with him over the summer — which was well over the required cohabitation of three months needed to make a claim to be her proximal guardian. So, he was well within his rights to do things like tell the school to let her go to Hogsmeade on weekends.
The other was that the forms were supposed to be given to Severus in the first place — he'd basically signed a form to tell himself that he'd given Liz permission to leave the castle. The form was still necessary for the school's records, it was just kind of ridiculous that he was addressing it to himself. Could really be either one, but Liz personally thought the former was funnier, mostly because it involved lying to the government (wasn't that technically a crime?), though she did have to admit the form thing was silly.
But, if she was going to be avoiding the dementors at all cost — which she was one hundred per cent on board with, Severus hadn't needed to lecture her, soul-sucking monsters weren't the sort of thing you fucked around with — she couldn't well take the carriages down to the village with everyone else. Severus had said the dementors were posted at the gates, so she'd have to go right by the things. And since they'd stopped the train to look for Sirius (which was stupid, why would he be on the train?), she thought it was reasonable to expect that they might stop carriages to search those too. And Liz would probably end up fracturing herself again flailing at them like an idiot.
After a brief pause, Severus finally said, "I intend to give Miss Black, along with a small selection of other students, permission to travel through the floo from my office to the Three Broomsticks in the village. Whenever you are in the village, you are to remain in populated areas — while I don't expect the dementors to invade the village during the day, Sirius Black is a greater concern."
Oh, right, escaped mass-murderer who might try to contact her (and Dorea), that was a thing. "Yes, I'll remember." She didn't like crowds, but presumably there'd be a lot of students around anywhere there was anything interesting to do, so. "Wait, why is Dorea avoiding the dementors?"
Severus hesitated for a fraction of a second, if Liz weren't a mind mage she might not have even noticed. "Miss Black is especially vulnerable to their influence due to an underlying medical condition. Privacy and child protection laws bar me from providing any more specific information than that."
Honestly, Liz didn't think Severus really gave a damn about privacy and child protection laws, especially since Liz wasn't likely to turn him in. It took her a moment to work out what he must have been thinking in that little pause. As much as he didn't care about the law, he had other reasons not to tell her — probably most importantly, Severus had explicitly told her before that his job was easier if the Slytherins trusted him, so it was best to not tell people Dorea's secrets if he could help it. But, he must be aware that Liz spent most of her time around Dorea, and the knowledge that Dorea was especially vulnerable to them for medical reasons might be additional motivation to not risk getting anywhere near the things.
Not that Liz really needed additional motivation — they were soul-sucking monsters, and her first encounter with one had knocked her unconscious for nearly two days. If he hadn't already made it very clear he didn't, Liz might wonder whether Severus thought she was a complete bloody idiot. As much as she didn't want Dorea hurt, she'd admit her own safety was more important to her — concern for Dorea wasn't going to make her more cautious than she'd already planned on being, so telling her about it was kind of pointless from his perspective. And it wasn't like she ran around looking for trouble or anything, what did Severus expect she was going to do?
Well, sneak out into the forest to find expensive potions ingredients, she guessed (purely for academic purposes, of course). Severus had given her these fancy knives, after all, might as well try them out. And also wild animals to use as blood sacrifices... Okay, there were a couple things that might get her uncomfortably close to dementors again, but still.
But no point asking him what he thought she might have gotten up to, might as well move on. "She's okay, right?"
Severus ticked up an eyebrow, as though aware of what she'd been thinking and having serious doubts about it — he wasn't, she would have felt an intrusion and she hadn't been thinking that loudly (she didn't think), he just liked giving an impression of omniscience. "After a brief visit here, Miss Black attended the Welcoming Feast as normal. The underlying condition is chronic, however."
"Good. Or not entirely good, but you know what I mean." Liz had known there was something wrong with Dorea since...at least Hallowe'en of first year, she thought. She didn't know what, though — Liz had never asked, and Dorea had never volunteered it. At worst, it just seemed to make her somewhat dizzy every once in a while, so Liz hadn't really thought it was worth asking about. Also, Dorea never talked about it, so it was probably private? She didn't know, it was never really a problem so it hardly ever even occurred to Liz to think about...
Was this bad friend territory? or would it have been worse to stick her nose in? She honestly didn't know. Liz was still new at this having friends thing, and she really didn't know what she was doing half the time. Over half the time.
Oh god, she was going to have to get everyone Christmas gifts again, she hated figuring out what to get people. Wasn't Hermione's birthday in a couple weeks too? Shite...
Fuck it, Liz could probably just hand Hermione an owl-order catalogue for a bookstore and tell her to circle what she wanted, she had a budget of a galleon, go nuts — that girl spent most of her pocket money on books, she'd love that. (Was a galleon too much? She thought that was a couple hundred pounds, but she was also filthy rich, so she didn't actually care that much...) Liz suspected Hermione thought there was no such thing as too many books, and she really couldn't imagine what else she could possibly do...
Liz was struck with a mental image of Hermione sitting on her bed in the Slytherin dorms (Liz had never been in the Gryffindor ones), the entire space packed with stacks and stacks of books, bloody everywhere, a couple of small ones sticking out of her hair, even, she felt a giggle bubble up her throat, she completely failed to hold it in.
Her hand clamped over her mouth, she blinked up at Severus. He was still staring down at her, one eyebrow raised, a tingle in the air she couldn't quite read. Tentatively removing her hand, she muttered, "Um. I think all that stuff done to my head is making me feel slow and kind of silly. I could probably use a nap. Or several."
Severus's lips twitched. "That is not entirely unexpected. Any effects on your mood should diminish as you recover." Reaching into the folds of his ridiculous scary dark wizard robes, he pulled out a card, handed it over. She was confused for a second before she belatedly realised it was her schedule — right, she would have missed him handing those out on Monday... "You have already missed a few classes, and will likely miss several more. I believe Professors Babbling and Vector intend to visit at some point tomorrow to give you in private a version of the introduction to their subjects they give on their first session. I have no idea what Trelawney's plans are. For the main subjects, Miss Black has volunteered to catch you up on what you've missed.
"And this is all I came to discuss." Liz didn't think she imagined the unspoken finally — they had been at it for kind of a while. "Unless you had anything else to bring to my attention."
"No, I'm good. Or, let my friends know I'm awake, I guess, they're probably worrying." Liz remembered in first year she'd been visited multiple times after the incident with her scars, and Hermione had been confusingly panicky when she and Dorea had been here after Quirrell — and neither of them had even been hurt that time, very weird.
There was a flicker of something in the air — amusement? annoyance? They shouldn't be this hard to tell apart... "I believe Misses Black, Greengrass, Davis, and Granger are all waiting outside for us to finish."
"What, the whole time?" This hadn't been a short discussion, they were still waiting? Okay... "Could you maybe just send in Dorea and Hermione? I don't think I have the energy to deal with the whole group right now." Honestly, she'd prefer letting just Dorea in, and she could tell everyone else she was fine, but Hermione had brought her book up for her, she should try to be nice.
"In that matter my hands are tied — Madam Pomfrey has limited you to two visitors at a time until you recover further."
Liz blinked at the distracting feeling of imbalance she picked up, like two notes out of harmony: Severus was lying. "That's crap, but if they buy it let's go with that."
Severus's lips curled slightly with a faint smirk. "I'll see you tomorrow, Miss Potter." A flick of his fingers dispelled the privacy spells she didn't even remember him putting up, and he swept away through the curtains, his overdramatic black robes swishing in his wake. In the brief moment she had before she was mobbed by her friends, Liz let out a heavy sigh, rubbing at her face with both hands.
She hoped Dorea and Hermione didn't plan on staying too long, she could really use a nap...
aura — For those unaware, in medical terminology an "aura" is a variety of neurological symptoms that often crop up immediately before a seizure or migraine. There are a wide range of possible expressions, dependent on where exactly in the brain the seizure originates. Sometimes an aura won't progress all the way into a seizure, and sometimes someone will have a seizure without ever noticing an aura, it can seem pretty random. In Dorea's case, due to her treatment fighting to stabilise her brain activity, it takes longer than usual for a localised disturbance to develop into a generalised seizure, resulting in long and intense auras.
And yes, just what Dorea's condition is will be explained later. Liz also being fucked up and Hermione leaving with Remus means they didn't get to it this time.
Morgen of Avalon — In the earliest stories involving King Arthur, the figure that would later become Morgan le Fay was definitely not human. Exactly what she'd originally been intended to be is less clear, but she's thought to be a native of Annwn — the Welsh otherworld, roughly equivalent to the Irish Tír na nÓg — either a fairy (in the sense of the otherworldly magical people), or possibly a goddess. The more modern interpretation is due to centuries of drift in the folklore, influences from Christianisation and old Greek stories of enchantresses.
So, yes, in this headcanon Morgana did exist — and is actually still alive, due to the fae having extended lifespans — though her actual historical role was very different than the stories most of you will be familiar with. The otherworld and Avalon also actually exist. Not to get too in deep into it, there's a world parallel to ours, in a plane where magic and physics operate slightly differently. (Technically both part of the same universe, but not in the same space, it's complicated.) This is where the fae originally come from, including house-elves and goblins. Avalon is from the Welsh name for a country there, where Morgen really is a member of the royal family.
Not that I think any of this will be in any way relevant to this fic, I just think worldbuilding is fun.
[they'd only lost one game out of seven] — Obviously, I've changed how the Quidditch season works. There's more quidditch in this year, it'll come up.
Oh my god, I'm such a wordy bitch. This came out significantly longer than I intended. Oh well.
I hope to work on The Plan some — it's really been far too long since we've updated that, I'm terrible, I know — so the next chapter might be a little bit.