The Good War

by inwardtransience

Despite her best efforts, Elizabeth Potter is repeatedly drawn into situations she wants absolutely nothing to do with. People just refuse to leave her the hell alone. (fem!Harry, dark!independent!Harry, mentor!Snape, F/F, playing with tropes for fun and profit)

22. Third Year — VII

It turned out scrying wasn't particularly difficult. Liz wasn't certain whether that meant it was simple magic, or if she was just especially good at it.

According to her book, it was easiest for beginners to get started if they had some kind of focus to help the process along. The most common thing people meant by "focus" was a wand, but that wasn't what was meant here — instead, beginners were to use a device that was specifically enchanted as a scrying aide. Much like a wand wasn't required to do magic, just made it easier. And scrying was a much less...finicky process, it shouldn't take too many tries for her to get used to it and not need the focus anymore.

It was possible the Potters had a scrying focus all ready to go sitting around somewhere — scrying had been a much more common practice once upon a time, it wasn't unusual for old mirrors to have the proper enchantments on them. But to figure out for sure, Liz would need Nilanse to pop a whole bunch of shite over here, find wherever the runes were, and try to decipher the enchantment to see if it was the right one. That would either be very difficult, since Liz had barely started Runes, or bloody impossible, if the runes were somehow hidden or painted over, and would definitely be very time-consuming.

Instead, Liz asked Nilanse if they had a polished silver platter laying around, about yea big, the less decorated the better. When she got back to her room after Astronomy class that evening, there was one sitting out on her desk — round and somewhat oblong, with a shallow rim, smooth and unmarked and polished to a reflective shine, it was perfect.

In fact, she thought it might be too perfect. It turned out the elves had gathered up some old silver potions equipment lying around they didn't really need anymore, melted it all down, split off a blob, mixed in some other metal to harden the silver a bit (Nilanse wasn't sure which), then formed it into this platter, all in the space of the couple hours Liz had been at Astronomy. When Nilanse was done explaining, Liz just stared down at her for a few seconds, bemused. That seemed like...kind of a lot of work for such a random, relatively small request. But then, it really hadn't taken them that long, so...

Forget about it, elves were weird.

Liz found the time to actually do the enchanting work the next evening. Luckily, she even had her second (everyone else's third) Runes class that day — she lingered in the classroom to ask Babbling how she would go about putting an enchantment into silver. The downside was that Babbling wouldn't tell her without knowing why Liz wanted to know, but the upside was that, once Liz had told her what she was trying to do — she even showed the professor the script in Reflections of the Unseen she intended to use — Babbling did actually explain in more than enough detail for Liz to pull it off. Babbling said she didn't approve of third-years running around trying out enchantments unsupervised, but this one would be almost impossible to hurt herself with if she fucked it up, and if Liz was already going to play around with this stuff on the second week of classes telling her she shouldn't clearly wouldn't do any good. It was better for Babbling to put herself in a position to give her advice, and maybe catch catastrophic mistakes before they could blow up in Liz's face, rather than make herself a hostile authority she had to hide shite from...which was a very familiar argument.

Severus had been right — Liz was pretty sure she was going to like Babbling.

Apparently, silver was terrible to use in enchanting, not because it resisted magic but sort of the opposite: it channeled magic through it so well that getting silver to actually hold magic was completely fucking impossible. (The goblins were the only people who could do it, because goblins.) But, for that same reason, silver worked fine for less complex foci — the runes in the metal would alter the character of the magic as it flowed through, and since it retained so little magic almost all of it would go toward the spell, very efficient. Or, relatively efficient, silver shed magic so quickly any enchantment hardly had time to work, but it was good enough for scrying foci.

Back in her room that evening, Liz sat on the floor with the platter, setting the thing upside-down. To do this she'd need to use the thing Daphne's mum had referred to as an annihilation blade — which Liz still thought was the coolest name ever — which of course she'd never used before. It wasn't complicated, though. One of the switches had a little ring on one end and a solid circle on the other, this was the power setting — silver took a ridiculous amount of magic to alter, so she dialed it all the way up. The other had tiny little shapes along the track, Liz moved the switch to the wide triangle in the middle. Then, holding the tip of the thing away from herself, she pushed the cap down, twisting and locking it into place.

Right, time to check if it was working. Liz had brought over her silver knife from her potions set — the old one, not the knives Severus had given her for her birthday, she didn't want to ruin those. She brought the tip of the device to the flat of the blade, gently pushed down until it clicked, the tip pushed up further into it, and dragged it along the silver about a centimetre. When she lifted it, she could see a shallow trench had been etched into the silver, the lines perfectly smooth, like a little piece had just disappeared.

Neat.

Okay then, time to get down to it. Like potions, enchanting was also a kind of ritual. The symbols and such used to make enchantments and wards didn't have any inherent meaning, only one accorded to them by the human mind. While carving a rune, the user had to clearly think about what the rune meant, what they wanted the enchantment to do, and what that particular rune's function in that enchantment was — so long as the user focused clearly enough, the ritual act of carving symbols describing their intent would imbue the object with the magical effect they envisioned. Enchanting really was very cool, there was no way Liz wasn't going to do more with this.

Thankfully, considering this was her first attempt, the enchantment she needed really was very simple. In the middle went four runes — we stand and be as one — and then three more runes, a little larger, in a ring around the middle — sight, hearing, and one that represented the ability to sense magic, which English didn't really have a word for. The symbols were all more similar in complexity to a short word than a single letter, but they were all made of simple, straight lines, none of the symbols really too bad. After a moment of thought, Liz cast an illusion in the shape of the script on the platter (not in it, because silver, but right over the surface), so she could just trace it and not have to look back and forth. She tweaked the illusion a little, moving the runes closer to the middle and changing the spacing a bit. There, that would do.

The actual process of enchanting something wasn't particularly difficult. It was a little mentally exhausting, focusing on a very particular thing and allowing no distractions for that long, but Liz had practice with that from mind magic. She might have pushed out a little bit, just out of habit — usually when she was focusing this hard on something, it was because she was casting a spell or setting a compulsion — but she didn't think that would do anything bad? If anything, it'd probably just help the enchantment settle in better.

Once she finished the last line, she switched off the annihilation blade (seriously, that name), and let herself finally relax. Blinking dry eyes, rubbing at her shoulders with both hands — hunching over the thing on the floor might not have been the best way to do this — she looked over the script. It...looked mostly right? There were a few awkward kinks in some of the lines here and there, but Liz thought they were still identifiable as the proper shapes. Also, she knew what they were supposed to be, and she was pretty sure that was all that mattered.

It was a good thing she'd thought of the illusion, though — Liz's handwriting was still terrible, and leaning over awkwardly like that, if she'd done it freehand it probably wouldn't be legible.

Right, okay, almost done. Plucking up a vaguely pen-shaped bit of smooth metal nearby, Liz double-checked quick to make sure it was her cold finisher. She'd kind of assumed silver would call for the hot finisher, since silver melted smooth, but Babbling had said she should use the cold one. She didn't think it was actually necessary to close it at all, since silver was pretty damn resistant to corrosion to begin with, and also she wouldn't be keeping this that long, but there was no reason to not do the thing properly.

Clicking the thing on, she traced every single line in the script with the tip of the finisher. She could feel a little tingle of magic, an occasional visible spark flashing against the reflective metal, but other than that it didn't seem to be having any obvious effect at all. But it shouldn't be obvious, so.

And that was it. Liz gave the script one last look-over, before getting up to put away the blade and the finisher, plop the platter and her book on the bed. She cast a glowing red strip into the wall over her bed with her favourite light charm, then spoke the key to turn the lights off — the book said this worked better in darkness, at least the first few times, so she'd be able to see the magic was catching properly. Her room fell into darkness, moody charm-light casting the area around the head of her bed in pinks and reds, the rest of her room mostly murky shadow. That seemed like every—

No wait, she'd forgotten something. Liz went back to her desk, after a little groping around found the handle of her water pitcher — she'd asked the kitchen elves if she could have drinking water in here back in first year, once, she'd never had to ask again. Liz gingerly set the pitcher down on her bedside table, careful not to knock over either of the picture frames, and there, that was everything.

She set her pillows against the headboard so she could comfortably sit up, and then crawled into bed, sitting cross-legged, the enchanted platter filling her lap. Holding the book up at a somewhat awkward angle to be able to read it in the thin light from the wall behind her, she quick checked whether she remembered correctly. (She did, it wasn't complicated.) She poured just a little bit of water onto the platter — scrying didn't actually require water, it was for lubrication purposes only — spread it across the surface with one hand so it was just slightly damp, her fingers wouldn't catch on the metal. And that was it, she was ready.

...She just had to decide what the hell she was gonna scry. Only things she'd encountered in real life could be scried, and she couldn't go through wards — well, anti-scrying wards were one-way, so she could scry out of Hogwarts but not in to anywhere protected. (This was a very intentional design decision, so people could scry for things without having to leave the safety of their wards.) Also, Liz suspected the Slytherin dorms were warded against scrying — they were new, and anti-scrying wards apparently weren't as common as they used to be, but Severus had tweaked the Slytherin wards and he was a paranoid bastard — so she couldn't scry anyone who might be in their dorm room or the bathrooms. Though, she should check — she might be able to get through, and it hadn't occurred to her until her unpleasant bath in the Hospital Wing that if the bathroom wasn't protected people could spy on her in the shower. She didn't think it likely anyone would, especially given how rare scrying was these days, but still...

Dorea was in her room right now, so not her. Maybe she could try scrying Nilanse — the Potter wards might let her through, since she was the head of the family, and she wondered if she could figure out how to read house-elf minds with practice. (She picked up strong emotions from them now and again, but their minds were too alien to get a good feel for, like goblins.) Dumbledore's office was probably protected, but he wasn't in the castle right now (or at least he hadn't been at dinner), and wherever he was might not be...but the thing she really wanted to read Dumbledore's mind for was what the fuck he'd been thinking when he'd taken her back to the Dursleys, she'd need the pensieve for that. She didn't really know very many people outside of the castle she could scry for, and inside everyone would—

Oh! She could scry Hermione! She should be in the library right now, Liz doubted there were local anti-scrying wards there. (There was no need for there to be — you could only scry the pages of a book if you've read it before, and even then only the page it was open to.) This late in the evening Hermione was either there alone or with a couple of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw friends. People Liz had met, in a location she knew, and they wouldn't be doing anything they'd get annoyed with Liz for seeing if they somehow found out about it — perfect.

The actual process of scrying itself was very easy — or at least it wasn't difficult for Liz, with several years of experience with mind magic and two years of proper magic lessons under her belt. She just had to imagine what she wanted to see (Hermione), very hard, willing her magic to show her to Liz while pushing it down her arm. And through her hand, slowly rubbing back and forth over the surface of the platter, spreading her magic, gradually thicker and thicker. She could feel something happening, that familiar tingle of magic on the air, her wrist starting to sting a little, so she just kept going, focusing on—

There was a sudden bloom of a soft blue-silver light, starting from where her hand touched the platter and spreading out. Liz gasped, twitching with surprise — the light immediately winked out. Oh, whoops, lost focus. It was definitely working, though, she just had to try again.

The second time went much quicker, but that was just to be expected: she'd already almost gotten it once, and half of getting magic to work was believing it would work — the first time casting a spell was always the hardest. It only took maybe fifteen seconds for the light to appear again, Liz grit her teeth and forced her magic to keep flowing, each gentle pass of her hand, back and forth and back and forth, spreading the light wider and wider across the platter, until the soft, softly wavering glow (as though ripples on water) filled the entire surface rim to rim.

Okay, she had the connection open. Now she just had to reach through it. Liz slid her hand to one side, her other hand mirroring it on the other — she started pushing magic through that hand to, just in case. She leaned forward over the puddle of light, concentrating, reaching out through—

A few locks of hair flopped over her face and into the light, and it blinked out again — dammit!

Leaning back against the pillows, Liz fumed at her stupid, impossible hair for a few seconds. Then she picked up her wand, cast a summoning charm toward her desk. (This was supposed to be a fourth-year charm, ridiculous, it was dead easy.) It was hardly visible, a little, indistinct shadow zipping through the air at her face, but Liz wasn't a seeker for nothing — she caught the scrunchie with one hand, started gathering up her hair. Her hair didn't really agree with being tied back, it would always end up horribly knotted around whatever she'd tied it with, and the shite was so bloody huge it always ended up in her face anyway — if she actually needed it out of the way, like for quidditch matches, she got Dorea to plait it for her — but in combination with her scarf the scrunchie would be good enough for this.

The scrunchies were part of her Christmas gift from Hermione last year, she recalled. Not surprised that she'd thought of it, whether Hermione or Liz's hair was worse was really a matter of opinion.

Okay, let's try that again...

Once the platter was again filled with gentle blue-silver light, Liz reached forward. She took a long, steadying breath, and leaned over the platter, still keeping the flow of magic going, and willed herself to pass through it, to see—

Liz felt a faint sense of pressure at the edges of her mind. It didn't feel like another mind, or even some kind of spell trying to act on her, too...simple, indistinct for that, and at once too big. Like a fragment of the ambient magic around her — a small piece, but still connected to something overwhelming large — was attempting to push inside, make some small part of Liz more like it. She felt herself stiffen, but Tamsyn had already warned her about this (however inadvertently), so she fought the natural impulse to strike back at the formless, thoughtless presence. Instead, she let it in.

Abruptly, the room around her was wiped away — as though she'd gone blind, the sudden silence as a physical weight around her head, any sense of the magic in her room, even the magic she was doing, dying as though it'd never been. But she could still feel herself sitting in her bed, the faint scent lingering on the sheets on her breath. Liz bit down on her panic, her head lurching sickeningly as the magic did whatever it was supposed to do, and—

The blackness was overcome with glinting grey-silver mist, the oppressive silence lifting, the gentle tingle of enchantments all around. It took a second to realise she must not have ever seen whatever this place was, Hermione couldn't be in the library. Hermione was only a couple feet away — the angle Liz was looking at her put their eyes at the same height, which was odd, but Liz guessed it wasn't like her body was here anyway — and very much underdressed, in loose shorts and vest Liz recognised as sleepwear, and she was...brushing her teeth? Liz couldn't actually see the toothbrush, as though Hermione had jammed a formless blob of the mist all around in her mouth, but that was obviously what was going on here.

Um...oops? Hermione hardly ever went back to Gryffindor before curfew, Liz must have lost track of time...

Oh well, no reason not to check to see if this actually worked. Liz reached out toward Hermione and... Well, Hermione wasn't actually thinking about much of anything coherent, just letting her brain drift idle before settling in for bed, random memories and feelings quietly glimmering — but there was no doubt about it, Liz was definitely reading Hermione's mind from clear across the castle right now. And her occlumency was getting good enough that Hermione would ordinarily be able to feel her there...but of course Liz technically wasn't there at all.

Liz would call that a successful test. Neat.

It did feel kind of...weird. She didn't know how to put words to it exactly — English really wasn't equipped to describe the experience of mind magic properly — but sort of like trying to use her fingers when her hand had fallen asleep. Remembering the illusions Severus had cast explaining mind magic last week, she guessed getting a close look at a thought required altering the person's mind, if only to hold the thought or memory or whatever still long enough to look at it properly. Hermione's thoughts were flittering around, quick and short-lived, which wasn't unusual, but it felt more overwhelming than usual, Liz couldn't slow any of them down, blowing past her like leaves on the wind.

She could read her mind, of course, it just wasn't as clear as it would be if they were standing in the same room. Still neat.

Liz wondered what Hermione would think if she ever found out Liz was watching her right now. Because she was an enormous hypocrite, it would freak Liz out if someone was spying on her in the bathroom, even just brushing her teeth — not that she actually brushed her teeth, she used a charm instead — but she didn't actually feel guilty about this. She did feel kind of excited, her lips pulling into a grin, but that had less to do with spying on Hermione in her pyjamas and more to do with the fact that it worked, magic was so cool.

Of course, the knowledge that she could spy on people now, pretty much whoever and whenever she wanted (as long as there weren't wards in the way), was also an exhilarating thought...not that she honestly thought she'd end up using it for much, it was just the principle of the thing.

Gathering her currently damp (and therefore less frizzy than normal) hair in one hand, Hermione leaned forward to spit, and Liz realised she was probably partially inside the bathroom wall right now. Weird.

...Wait a second, the Gryffindor dorm bathrooms weren't warded against scrying. Gryffindor Tower was pretty new — the castle had changed a lot over time, most of the upper levels and the towers had been added in the last few centuries — new enough that scrying had probably gone out of style by then. All the bathrooms and dorms and shite had their own local wards on top of the main castle wards, like how boys couldn't step foot inside the girls' bathrooms in the Slytherin dorms at all — not even the prefects, she thought, though Severus was probably an exception. (It was his house.) The wards over the whole castle had anti-scrying stuff, so someone couldn't scry in here from outside, but from the inside...

Liz should try scrying the inside of their bathroom, and maybe Dorea too. Just in case.

While she'd been thinking about that, Hermione had finished with her teeth-brushing, turned to walk off — into the rest of the Gryffindor dorms, Liz assumed. It wasn't like Liz could see literally anything else in here, so without really thinking about it she just kind of...floated after Hermione. She wasn't really up in Gryffindor, obviously, so she didn't have legs, just a disembodied pair of eyes and ears. She might have guessed figuring out how to move around the aperture she was scrying through might be weird and confusing, but she hadn't even been thinking about it, just decided she would move after Hermione and she did.

Of course, the room Hermione went to was just more featureless glimmering mist. She could kind of get a vague impression of the layout, the mist seemed to be shaped more or less like the real room, but without colours or shadows it was pretty much impossible to actually make out anything, like it was all hidden in fog.

She could see the other girls, though — unlike Slytherin, Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs shared living space. Supposedly, the girls' and boys' rooms in Hufflepuff weren't even entirely walled off from each other, divided only with heavy, magically-reinforced curtains, because mages could be extremely inconsistent about when they decided to care about that sort of thing. Not in Gryffindor, though, only the girls were in here, and Liz's vague impression of the size of the room suggested there wasn't space for more than that.

Lavender and Parvati (both wearing very girly nightdresses) were huddled together on one of the beds (Hermione knew it was Lavender's) giggling to each other, likely about something completely inane — Hermione's thoughts were no more charitable than Liz's, though with a sort of exhausted irritation, if those two didn't shut up soon Hermione would have to put up privacy spells just to get some sleep, again. (Hermione hated those two, she always had. Liz hadn't looked too closely, but she assumed Lavender being stupidly racist about muggleborns had gotten them off on the wrong foot from the very first day here.) There was another girl here, lying on her stomach on her bed (reading?), but the curtains were blocking most of her body — she only knew that must be Fay because Hermione knew which bed was whose, and also apparently Fay liked those flannel trousers.

The only Gryffindor girl Hermione got on with at all was Lily, but she wasn't here at the moment, so Hermione went straight for her part of the room without speaking a word to anyone. Lavender and Parvati did give her back smug smirks as she passed, though Hermione didn't see that. Hermione did something with one of the blobs of mist, making it sort of change shape a little. By her thoughts, Liz knew she was putting together her clothes for the next day before bed — because Hermione never stopped being Hermione — so that must be a wardrobe or something.

Well. This whole scrying thing was very cool, if somewhat disorienting, but there wasn't anything going on worth sticking around for. So, of course, just when Liz was about to leave was when something finally happened.

The first indication something was wrong was a dull sort of confusion from Hermione, quickly spiraling into an anxious sort of surprise. Her mind coming alive with sizzling sparks, she pawed through...probably a drawer, by the way she was moving. As clumsy as Liz's mind-reading was like this, she couldn't pick out anything too clearly — something she expected to find in there wasn't in there, that much Liz understood. And then, as she finally confirmed whatever it was was definitely missing, and not just misplaced, the surprise in her head quickly crystalised into anger, mixed with something unpleasantly warm and sticky and...kind of nauseating, it wasn't pleasant.

Fuming, Hermione pushed herself out of her crouch and stomped across the room, directly at Lavender and Parvati. The two were aware Hermione had noticed whatever it was, were struggling to play innocent — and doing terribly, Hermione could see it on their faces, Liz felt their glee sharp and cool on the air. Hermione came to a stop standing over the bed, glaring down at the two of them, rigid with fury, but Liz could feel an internal waver of uncertainty, something creeping and raw and...something.

"Really?" Hermione said, her voice flat and cold.

Smiling up at Hermione as though nothing were wrong — though again, not doing it well, her lips tilting with a smirk — Lavender asked, "Hello, Granger. Did you need something?"

"My things back, for starters."

"Well, that's rude," Lavender said, falsely offended. "Walking up to someone and just accusing them of things out of nowhere — haven't you gotten anyone to help you with your manners yet?" Parvati was biting her lip, trying not to laugh.

Liz was aware Lavender and Parvati considered Hermione horribly rough and uncultured, which Liz had always thought was silly. Not because they were wrong, or at least not by the standards that silly purebloods like them measured these things — Liz suspected Petunia (or most muggles) would think Hermione far more of a polite, proper young lady than Liz herself — but Liz just...didn't get how it was any of their business? Why did they care? Very silly.

"I know you took them. I need them back."

"Mm, I don't think you do. I think whoever it was who misplaced your things did you a favour." Parvati failed to keep herself from giggling this time.

"A fav—" Hermione's head shook, like a mental stutter, tripping over the ridiculousness of the thought. "How is stealing all of my underwear doing me a favour?"

They what? Liz focused on the two girls, pushed into their minds and— They did! They actually did! While Hermione had been in the shower, preparing for bed, they'd cleared out Hermione's underwear drawer, and... Liz couldn't tell what they'd done with them, they weren't thinking about it explicitly enough — she got the feeling they were consciously not thinking about their hiding place, so they wouldn't unthinkingly glance that way and tip Hermione off. They... Why would they do that? Just to make Hermione uncomfortable? There were other ways to do that that weren't...

Well, if she were Hermione, she'd be hexing the shite out of them, or ensure they would find snakes in their beds sometime tomorrow, that's all she was saying. Stealing all of your roommate's underwear seemed like a...provocative thing to do, just begging for retaliation.

(And, as some of her fellow Slytherins had discovered two years ago now, Liz did not play games.)

Hermione wasn't sure what to do about it. She wasn't the type to go around hexing people, so she couldn't force the girls to give them back. And they could have put them anywhere, hell, they could have destroyed them, Hermione wouldn't know if they didn't cooperate. She couldn't go to any of the prefects, because they were bloody useless — also, Hermione wasn't exactly popular in Gryffindor, they wouldn't take her side — and she couldn't go to McGonagall, she was liable to give all three of them detention, hopefully to make them work out their issues in a relatively controlled setting, but that wouldn't do Hermione any good at all, would it? (There were reasons kids who were being bullied went to Flitwick or Babbling or even Severus, but never McGonagall.) And she wouldn't be able to convince them to give them back, no, she just had to wait for them to tire of their stupid game, once they'd wrung out of Hermione what they felt was enough humiliation and misery for this week.

The explicitly hopeless tone to Hermione's thoughts — there was nothing she could do and no one she could go to, she just had to put up with it until the girls got bored of her — had Liz's shoulders squaring with anger, her skin across the back of her shoulders tingling.

Distracted as she was with her own fury, Liz only sort of half-heard Lavender, picking up her intent more through mind magic than hearing. "Granger, I realise you're, well, you, but looking through your wardrobe is just depressing. I swear you dress like an old frumpy muggle most of the time. If you had to replace the things you've lost that wouldn't be such a bad thing, would it?"

Hermione was speechless again for another second. "So you steal my underwear? We're thirteen years old — who the hell do you think is going to be seeing it, anyway?"

Maybe Hermione was too angry at the moment to remember that mages considered thirteen (almost fourteen, in Hermione's case) to be old enough to start having sex — thirteen was even the age of consent and everything. (Sort of, there wasn't really a legal age for this stuff in magical law, but if there were one it'd be thirteen.) It wasn't really a secret that Lavender and Parvati were on a mission this year to seduce cute older boys, which was honestly just hilarious, because Liz doubted the boys they were after would give them the time of day. Half of them had girlfriends, and the other half preferred girls their own age, and most of them found their fawning irritating. It was good entertainment, honestly.

Of course, Hermione was about as likely to start screwing around this year as Liz — which was to say, not likely at all — so it wasn't really a surprise Hermione was so flummoxed by the idea.

"No one will be seeing them now," Parvati said. They both giggled.

Hermione was going to keep trying to talk to them, no matter how frustrating it was. But they weren't going to give in, and Hermione knew that, she only persisted out of vain hope that they'd be reasonable. She wasn't entirely screwed for tomorrow — she wasn't wearing knickers under her sleep shorts, but she could just wear these under her robes, nobody would notice. She could hold out for a few days, it would be fine.

Liz could not hold out that long.

She severed the flow of magic into the spell and, after a brief moment of head-spinning blackness and silence, her eyes blinked open back in her room. Tossing the platter aside, Liz jumped up to her feet, checked to make sure her wand was still in her holster, then stomped out of her room. She diverted only long enough to pick up a certain owl-order catalogue before continuing out into the castle corridors.

It wasn't until she bumped into a pair of fifth-year prefects on the Grand Staircase near the third floor that she remembered it was after curfew — maybe she should have grabbed her father's invisibility cloak. In her defence, she hardly ever used the thing, it hadn't occurred to her. Oh well. In the brief seconds as the pair started interrogating her about what the fuck she was doing out of the dorms, Liz poked around the edges of their minds, and when she didn't get a response slammed down with a compulsion on both of them at once, hard. The prefects abruptly forgot she was here, turned around and went about their business.

By this point, after two years in the castle and the occasional tid-bit picked up from someone's mind (usually by accident), Liz knew a little about all the dormitories, and how they were all secured. The entrance to the Slytherin dorm was hidden to the eyes of non-Slytherins, and was also sealed by a password. Hufflepuff wasn't far away, down the hall across the basement near the kitchens; the entrance wasn't obvious, but it wasn't exactly hidden either, and anybody could just walk in — from any house, no password or anything — though if someone made trouble the prefects could get the wards to bar them. (A handful of students in all three of the other houses had managed to get lifetime bans from the Hufflepuff dorms over the years.) Ravenclaw Tower was off the top of the Grand Staircase, and could be opened by answering a riddle from a talking door-knocker, regardless of house — though, like Hufflepuff, people could be blacklisted if they wore out their welcome. Liz had been in Ravenclaw a few times, and Hufflepuff on one occasion, for a post-exams party back in June she'd only stayed at for maybe ten minutes.

She'd never been to Gryffindor Tower before, though she did know how to get there. It was near Ravenclaw Tower, on the opposite end of the seventh floor — not right next door, but relative to the walk from Slytherin and Hufflepuff they were practically neighbours — where Ravenclaw stood right over the cliff down to the Lake, Gryffindor instead towered over the courtyard, looking out over the grounds, the quidditch pitch, the road down to the village. (People said Gryffindor had lived here to keep watch over the approach from the rest of the Valley, but that was obviously nonsense, the tower wasn't nearly that old.) In an otherwise unremarkable alcove off the ring corridor was an especially large portrait of an especially large woman in a fancy pink silk dress, jewelry sparkling in her artfully curled and plaited hair — Liz didn't know what her name was, supposedly a great-great-granddaughter of Gryffindor or something. (The Gryffindors just called her the Fat Lady, which greatly irritated Hermione.) Just like Slytherin, the Gryffindor dorm was also sort of hidden — there was nothing about the portrait or the alcove it was in that suggested what this place was — and sealed with a password.

Liz actually knew what the password was right now (fortuna major), but it wouldn't do any good — the advantage to having a semi-sentient guardian at the doorway, like a portrait, was that the Fat Lady could just flat-out refuse to let someone in, even if they had the correct password. It was common knowledge that the Fat Lady wouldn't let in non-Gryffindors unless they had Gryffindor escort. Hermione was one of her best (first) friends, but she'd never brought Liz or Dorea up here (though Dorea had come to find Hermione and been let in once). The Slytherin–Gryffindor rivalry was stupid, but some took it far too seriously, Hermione was concerned her yearmates or even some of the older students might do something if she started bringing Slytherins around. As much as Liz thought this was very, very stupid — she still didn't really get the whole houses thing — she didn't think Hermione was wrong to be concerned, so she'd respected the decision.

Until now, anyway.

The portrait had been humming to herself, the sound faintly carrying down the hallways all the way to the Grand Staircase (hence why the Gryffindor dorm was only sort of hidden), she cut off as Liz stepped into the alcove. "Oh, hello dear! It is very late, isn't it? Should you be wandering around?"

"I need to see Hermione Granger." Again like Slytherin, there was some way people inside could be alerted there was a visitor outside, though Liz didn't know how it worked in Gryffindor.

"Now, now, you know I can't be doing that. You should be back in bed, young lady!"

Liz had never before had cause to regret that mind magic didn't work on bloody portraits. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't really need to be. It's an emergency. Please tell Hermione that Liz Potter needs to see her."

The Fat Lady clucked her tongue, shaking her head a little, but she stood without protest and disappeared off the side of the frame, humming to herself again.

Seconds passed slowly, Liz's anger distractingly simmering at the back of her head. It probably wasn't wise to be standing out in the halls after curfew, especially so close to one of the dorms, but Liz wasn't really concerned — so long as whoever found her wasn't a professor, she could probably mind magic them away again no problem. So long as she caught them by surprise, anyway, so Liz shuffled a bit to the side, a suit of armour blocking line of sight with the main corridor, just in case.

It was maybe only thirty second later when the Fat Lady reappeared. "Dear Hermione is on her way down. She was just setting down to bed, so it might be a minute."

Liz didn't bother responding. She was only a portrait.

Eventually, there was a heavy click, the portrait swinging open as though on hinges, revealed behind a circular hole in the wall, rather shorter than a normal doorway. Liz was tiny enough she wouldn't really need to duck much, but that must be miserable for some of the older students to get through. Crouching near the lip was Hermione, wrapped up in a fuzzy navy blue dressing gown. "Liz, is something wrong? Do you know what time it is?" There was a bit of a snap to her voice, frustrated with Lavender and Parvati, softened a bit by an edge of concern — after all, coming to find Hermione about an "emergency" was very much out of character for Liz.

She had actually lost a couple hours enchanting and scrying, so she didn't know what time it was, but she also didn't really care. Stalking up to the weird circular passage, she said, "Let's get inside first."

Hermione let out a huff, but turned around to lead the way inside without complaint. The Gryffindor common room was very red, almost violently red, Liz blinked at the assault on her eyes, squinting against the firelight glinting off gold accents. Holy crap...

"Okay, Liz, seriously, is something wrong? Is Dorea okay? Did she have a seizure?"

That was a weird direction for Hermione's mind to jump...though not really, when Liz thought about it — if Dorea had some kind of medical emergency, it wasn't out of the question that Liz would think someone should tell Hermione, but she didn't think she'd go herself. Especially since it was late and everything, she doubted she'd be allowed even if she wanted to. "No, Dorea's fine. Can we go up to your room?"

"Um, you know we don't get our own rooms in Gryffindor, right?"

"I still think that's fucking stupid," especially considering how much Hermione did not get on with her roommates, "but yes, I know. Still, let's go."

"I really don't think that's a good idea..." She was already having a tiff with Lavender and Parvati over the insipid bitches stealing all her underwear, Hermione was worried bringing Liz up to their room would just make it worse. It was a toss-up which of the two of them Lavender and Parvati disliked more, having Liz around wasn't going to make them any more cooperative.

But Liz could be very convincing when she wanted to be. "It'll be fine. I want to show you something, it's fine if your roommates see."

Hermione gave her a narrow-eyed suspicious look, clearly thought Liz was up to something — Liz would be surprised if she didn't, Hermione had known her for two years at this point. After a moment of thought, she let out a sigh, deciding Liz couldn't possibly make the situation with her roommates any worse than it already was. "All right, it's up this way..."

Like in Slytherin, the dorm rooms were stacked one atop the next, the girls' and boys' rooms branching off of separate staircases. By the luck of the draw, their year had ended up being put in the room on the top floor, so they had to climb up seven whole flights of stairs, ugh. Liz was glad a year of quidditch had gotten her into the best shape of her life, but even so, by the time they got to the top, the steep, winding staircase in addition to the climb all the way up from Slytherin, Liz was definitely feeling it, the front of her legs just above her knees and her calves burning a little.

The girls' room was also very red, though much less garish than the common room below, in somewhat more muted, rusty colours, gleaming wood furniture and wall panels a warm reddish-brown. It did look comfortable, she supposed, with thick carpet and curtains (tapestries, whatever) covering the walls, the beds and chairs well-cushioned, but Liz instantly decided she preferred Slytherin — not only because they got their own room, also just aesthetically. There was some weird space-bending shite going on: the little turret the girls' rooms were in was obviously cylindrical, but this room was long and rectangular, they must have straightened the space out somehow...or maybe this was the way it was supposed to be shaped and they'd just wrapped it around the tower, one way or the other. Magical architecture was confusing sometimes.

Hermione made to lead Liz toward one of the beds in the rear of the room, but Liz ignored her, stopping at the first bed in the row — Lavender and Parvati were still sitting there, thick as literal thieves. They were wearing the same overly-girly, pretty, lacey nightdresses from her scrying, and Liz belatedly realised she'd been able to make them out despite never having seen these particular articles of clothing before, nor Hermione's and Fay's. That was...odd. Maybe people's clothes counted as part of them, at least while they were wearing them, so as long as Liz had seen the person before she could make them out? There might be something about that in Reflections, she'd have to look...

Anyway, since Liz had finished her scrying Lily had shown up. Lily was a squirrely little thing — though still taller than Liz, obviously, everybody was taller than Liz — with long straight black hair, at the moment wearing a cotton tee shirt — the stitching was wrong, must have been a magical seamstress imitating the style — that was rather too large for her, the hem hanging below her hips. Liz didn't really know Lily well. The first two years, despite sort of being a part of the same study group, Lily had hardly spoken a few sentences to her, always shifting and awkward whenever Liz was around.

According to Hermione, Lily was actually named after Liz's mother. Her family lived in Hogsmeade, and had back during the Battle of Hogsmeade on Hallowe'en of '79. Death Eaters had gotten into their house and were torturing her parents, as Death Eaters had done, and her mother had even been pregnant with Lily at the time — to put it mildly, pain curses and pregnancy didn't tend to mix very well. Liz's mother, along with Dorea's father, had swept in to save their lives — killing all five Death Eaters in the process, naturally — checked to make sure they would live, and then waltzed right out again, like goddamn superheroes or something. Her parents had decided that if the kid lived (they hadn't been sure of that until she'd turned out fine), they would name a girl Lily and a boy Sirius.

Lily was extremely awkward about this, for some reason Liz really couldn't comprehend. Hermione had even tried to explain it to her and she didn't get it. But she didn't get a lot of normal people things, so she'd decided to just not call attention to it when Lily was being weird.

Like now — Lily had been standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed and frowning, clearly arguing with the grinning and giggling pair of idiots. Trying to get them to give Hermione her things back, presumably, she and Lily were friends. As soon as she noticed Liz, she sort of twitched a little, letting out a surprised little "oh!" her eyes flicking over to a nearby wall and going silent. See, it was fucking weird.

Liz just ignored her. She stalked over toward the bed, her wand falling into her hand with a twist of her wrist. Lavender was whining, something about how Liz wasn't supposed to be in here, but she was ignoring that too. Her wand coming up — Lavender's lecture cut off as her jaw dropped, all the girls' eyes widening — with a little zig-zag and an up-left flick twisting into a hard jab, "Irritati!"

The harsh orange spellglow zipped between them in a blink. Both of the girls had tried to move to dodge, Pavati had actually managed to leap off of the bed to the side, but Lavender was too slow — the hex nailed Lavender in the centre of the chest. And she screamed, her mind shuddering with shock and terror and agony, writhing on the bed, as though trying to get away from it and—

Liz felt the flicker of magic zeroing in on her, and she dropped into a low crouch, the pale, nearly invisible spellglow sailing over her head — a full-body binding hex, she recognised the feel of the magic from dueling club last year. (Lavender let out a gasp, a fluttering moan of relief, the hex had broken with Liz distracted.) The motion of standing upright again also pushing forward, darting toward Parvati, her arm drawn back and then lashing out and downward just as her foot hit the floor, "Cude!"

The piercing white spellglow lanced out toward Parvati, she tried to dodge but Liz had anticipated that, adjusted a little left. Her aim wasn't quite perfect, but the bludgeoning jinx still clipped Parvati over the right shoulder, wrenching her roughly around, drawing a shout of pain, she fell to one knee. She still had her wand in hand though, so Liz cast, "Evertat!" a little upward flick at the end of the wand movement adding a spin to the knockback jinx — Parvati was flung backward, flipping in the air, landing roughly against the wall there at an awkward angle, toppled over to slump against the next bed in the row. More important, she'd lost hold of her wand in the tumble, Liz snatched it up with a quick accio.

As the wand flew toward her free hand, she slipped forward a step, a hex of some kind passing behind her back. She turned to Lavender, shot off a lashing hex and a disarming jinx, Lavender rolled off her bed down to the floor to avoid the first, managed to get a weak shield up in time to catch the second. Her face flushed and contorted with fury, Lavender fired off a brace of spells — disarming jinx, stinging jinx, piercing hex (woah, that one would actually hurt) — Liz easily blocked the first two, then stepped out of the way of the third to give herself a second to overpower a banishing charm — she took two quick steps into it and turned the wand motion into a whole-body stab to give it a bit of extra oomph.

Lavender was slammed hard against her dresser, the drawers and shite scattered on top (jewelry boxes and little knick knacks) rattling around, her momentum carrying her around the corner and into her bedside table, the thing started tipping over, Liz heard the snap of glass cracking as something fell. Liz was close enough now to stoop over and pick up Lavender's dropped wand, holding it in her off hand with Parvati's. At the same time, she turned to face deeper into the room, her wand whipping up to fix on Fay, whose mind she'd felt approach during the fight. The other girl was past the opposite side of Lavender's bed, a few metres away yet, but she didn't have her wand to hand — and as soon as she noticed Liz's wand pointed at her she froze, both hands raised open at her sides, showing she was unarmed.

Liz felt her eyebrows twitch — Fay was wearing the flannel pyjama bottoms she'd noticed scrying, but she was naked from the waist up. She'd just been...sitting around reading or whatever topless, out in the open? Okay, then. Liz noticed faint lines of muscle sketched across Fay's stomach — which Liz knew she also had herself, though it was a little more obvious on her, because she was noticeably skinnier — and also Fay had tits now — not huge by any means, but it's obvious they were there. Of course, Liz knew everybody in the room right now did, with the possible exception of Lily...and Liz herself, obviously. Even through the anger still simmering in her head, Liz felt a little flicker of exasperation.

(She did have cursed scars covering her chest. It'd occurred to her before that that might be a problem, she probably wasn't going to develop the way she should. She didn't know how she felt about that, she'd figure it out when it actually became a problem.)

"What was that for, Potter? You mad bitch, you—"

Liz cut Lavender off with a stinging jinx — she let out a little yelp as the spell hit, clutching her shoulder and glaring up at Liz from where she was splayed out on the ground, fuming. A glance to the right, and good, Parvati hadn't moved, just sitting there, frozen and quietly watching. "Where are they?"

"What are you—"

"Hermione's things. Where are they?" She noticed a little mental twitch of surprise from Hermione — Liz was probably going to have to explain how she knew about this before she left, but whatever.

Lavender scowled. "Have you finally lost the rest of your mind? I have no idea what—"

"Irritati." And Lavender was screaming again, her feet scrabbling against the floor, jerking to the side against the dresser, as though trying to throw herself away from whatever was hurting her. Pointless, of course, the spell would keep going as long as Liz held it. Parvati was yelling something, and Liz thought that was Fay, but she wasn't listening, her wand fixed on Lavender, and—

"Stop it! Liz, stop!" Hermione grabbed onto her wand arm, but she didn't actually try to pull her wand out of line — she wasn't so worried Liz would be angry with her if she did, she mostly just didn't care that much if Lavender was hurt.

Which was kind of funny, Liz felt her lips twitch. "It's just a basic pain hex. It doesn't even hurt that badly, Lavender is just a fucking baby." She did lift the hex, though, Lavender drew in another rasping gasp. Hugging herself around the middle, Lavender took a few shuddering breaths, sniffling and wiping at her eyes — like Liz had said, fucking baby. "Where are they?"

"I put...bookshelf," she admitted, pointing with a shaking hand. Next to the desk across the room from her bed was a set of shelves, the books a mix of their actual textbooks and what were clearly recreational things, along with entire blocks of glossy magazines — Witch Weekly, Liz assumed, Lavender and Parvati were always giggling over that stupid rag. In the higher shelves there were other things, blankets, cuddly toys.

With a basic movement charm, Liz yanked everything off the second shelf from the bottom, books thudding noisily against the floor. There were a few little bundles of cloth there, shoved into what had been empty space behind the row of books. That didn't look like it was quite enough, or at least not for a normal person (Liz was aware she owned less clothing than most people), so she cleared the rest of the shelves too — all the ones with books on them, anyway, she left the fuzzy shite near the top alone — the pile of books and papers and magazines growing into a scattered mess. "Check to make sure it's all there."

"That's all of it," Parvati said, "we didn't hide any anywhere else."

A sarcastic lilt on her voice, Liz drawled, "I'd rather Hermione confirm that, if you don't mind." Not that Liz would care if she did.

Parvati glowered, but didn't argue the point.

A stiff, tense silence lingered over the room as Hermione, kneeling in the pile of Lavender's things strewn about the floor — she didn't even try to avoid stepping on the books, which from Hermione was extreme disrespect — went through the bundles of cloth, separating things out and folding them in little piles on her lap. Liz was struck with another weird little flicker of irritation when she noticed there were bras in there too. But of course there would be, Hermione was the oldest student in their year and had the most obvious breasts of any of the girls (though Liz guessed the obviousness might just be because of the muggle clothes, magical clothes tended to be baggier), so she hadn't expected any different. Liz hadn't really considered the natural consequences of her scars before recently, but it was kind of hard to miss how the figures of all the girls in her year were changing now, but hers wasn't really. Well, she'd noticed the fit of her pants and trousers had changed enough something must be going on with her hips, though it was slow and small enough she couldn't really tell, but above the waist...

It wasn't really that big of a deal — Liz didn't give a damn what she looked like in the first place. It was just...irritating.

(She was a freak, after all, she guessed it just made sense that she'd get more freakish with time.)

Fay had returned to her bed at some point, Lavender and Parvati gingerly poking at bruises, Lily lingering in the background, quiet and awkward. Finally Hermione said, in a false-casual chirp, "Yep, that's everything." She started gathering everything up, Lily drifted over to help, taking half of the little piles Hermione had made sorting it all. Without a glance at Lavender and Parvati, they stood and walked toward the back of the room.

"You made a big mistake, Potter."

Liz turned to Lavender, still sitting on the floor glaring up at her, lifted up one eyebrow in a very Severus sort of skeptical look. "Did I?"

"You're going to regret this, one day."

"Who's going to make me? You?" Rolling her eyes, she gave a derisive scoff.

With a pale shadow of her usual catty tone, "My grandfather's on the Wizengamot, Potter, you can't just—"

"Is he? What a coincidence, so am I." She really wasn't sure how that was supposed to impress her, considering she had a seat in the mages' silly hereditary parliament too...

"I mean, when I tell Grandfather about this he can press for damages in the Wizengamot. Do you know what the blood price for assaulting an unmarried daughter of a Noble House is? It's a lot."

Liz was pretty sure that was a load of shite — if the silly magical nobles could sue each other over petty little incidents at Hogwarts, she was certain Draco's, Pansy's, Millie's, and Theo's families would have done it after she'd put snakes in their beds. Honestly, blood price, she hadn't even drawn any blood, fucking baby... "Oh, you mean I might be fined a couple hundred galleons out of the thousands and thousands I have lying around? You're right, what a horrible fate, I'm certainly reevaluating all the decisions in my life that led me to this moment."

Lavender glowered up at her, her head simmering with anger along with a tinge of what Liz suspected was jealousy. The Browns might be rich, but that was the family's money — it seemed a good bet that a pampered bitch like Lavender might be frustrated with whatever pocket money she got. Liz, on the other hand, was literally a millionaire (in pounds, at least), and could do whatever the fuck she wanted with all of it. Not that she really wanted to do much, but that was beside the point, she still expected Lavender of all people to be envious of that.

She couldn't help smirking a little, gave herself another point on the tally in her head. (She did enjoy winning.) "I don't know the law very well, but I have the feeling I'm allowed to use force in defence of one of my friends."

"That's not how it works, Potter! Granger isn't a member of your House, or a vassal, or—"

"Don't care." When Lavender kept ranting, Liz just silenced her — and she still had Lavender's wand, so she couldn't do anything about it but powerlessly glare up at her. Hermione and Lily must have gotten everything put away, she noticed Hermione was coming back this way. "I know you've been fucking with Hermione for a while, but it ends now. If you do anything to her, I'm going to find you and kick your arse again. And your threats about your oh so important grandfather or telling professors or whatever aren't going to do shite. Getting fined over it isn't going to stop me, and I've been blowing off detentions since first year." After all, what the fuck were they going to do if she didn't show up? The only worse punishments they had were to suspend or expel her, but she'd quickly decided that wasn't much of a threat. They needed the student's head of house to agree to it, and Severus wouldn't unless she did something really bad, and even if it did happen, so what? Oh no, she'd have to settle for poking around the library and pensieve and practising magic on her own, how terrible...

Attending Hogwarts had become much less stressful when she'd realised she didn't have to follow rules she didn't like, because there weren't any consequences she really cared about anyway. Maybe not quite the lesson Severus had meant to teach her when he'd given her permission to half-arse Herbology and started illegally lending her Dark Arts books, but. Now if only the other students could be less annoying to be around sometimes...

"So. Do we understand each other?"

Lavender glowered up at her some more. Liz had no idea if she was going to say something — she had canceled the silencing, so she was capable of it — Hermione got to it first. "I think it might take a couple times for it to sink in. Lavender isn't very smart, you know."

"Oh, shut up, Granger! Just because I have better things to do than spend all my time studying doesn't make me an idiot." The inane shite Lavender occupied herself with didn't really seem like a "better" use of her time than studying how to alter reality at will, but what did Liz know.

"Of course it doesn't, I never said it does. But you being an idiot does make you an idiot."

Liz smirked. "Yes, well, I don't mind if I have to kick her arse a few more times — I could use the practice for dueling club, you see."

The hateful glare Lavender was giving her would almost be threatening if she were capable of being any kind of threat to Liz at all, but since she was just a spoiled, petulant child, it was really more pathetic than anything.

"Can I talk to you for a second, Liz? Downstairs."

"Sure." Liz still had to give Hermione the owl-order catalogue anyway. Carelessly tossing Lavender and Parvati's wands down onto the carpet, she ignored the flares of fury and hurt from the pair — treating another person's wand like that was very insulting, but she didn't give a damn — and turned to follow Hermione out of the room and down the stairs. Somewhat to her surprise, they didn't go all the way down, turning into an alcove between levels she hadn't noticed on the way up. They stepped out onto a long, curved balcony, looking out over the grounds far below, toward Hogsmeade in the distance. The sun had set hours ago (Liz really had lost track of time), the Valley dark save for the village in the distance, setting a ring around the clump of buildings into a soft moody glow against the shadows all around.

"You didn't have to do that, Liz." Hermione was standing a short distance away, staring out into the night, her arms wrapped around her middle. (It wasn't cold, exactly, but it was cooler than indoors and sort of windy, and Hermione wasn't wearing much at the moment.) Her voice wasn't in the hard, firm tone she usually had when speaking of what people should or should not do, softer and slower than that, and there was an odd, shifting edge to her thoughts — reluctant maybe? Liz wasn't sure, she would have to look closer to figure it out, and she'd promised she wouldn't do that too much.

(More importantly, Hermione was pretty decent with occlumency now, so she'd know if Liz broke her promise.)

"I kind of did, though." Hermione turned toward her, a flicker of exasperation from her head, Liz shrugged. "I had to do something. As soon as I found out I was just...really angry." She couldn't even entirely explain it to herself, she just was.

"How did you find out, anyway?"

"You know I've been looking into scrying?" Liz knew Hermione remembered before she actually got around to nodding. "I just pulled it off for the first time earlier. There aren't that many people or things I know well enough to scry, and most of them I assumed were behind wards... I thought you were in the library, if I knew you were in the dorm I wouldn't have tried it — I assumed the dorms would be warded against scrying, it's a little absurd that they're not."

"You can scry into the dorms?" There was an obvious note of horror in Hermione's face, her mind giving an uncomfortable, nauseating twist. "How much did you see?"

"You were in the bathroom, I think, and then you walked over and started your argument with Lavender and Parvati. I didn't stick around very long after I figured out what was happening." She paused a moment, then added, "I didn't see you in the shower, if that's what you're asking — you were brushing your teeth when I found you."

By the shiver of relief from Hermione, that had been what she'd been thinking. "Oh, okay. But you think someone could scry into the showers if they wanted to."

Liz nodded. "If there were anti-scrying wards they'd be on the whole bathroom, not just the showers. I really need to check the Slytherin stuff later, I assumed it'd all be warded..."

"They should be! I realise divination magics aren't exactly commonplace in the modern day, but— Christ..." Leaning against the railing, Hermione rubbed at her face with both hands for a moment, her mind sparking and roiling. She forced out a sigh, said, "I guess I'll talk to McGonagall about it, or see if I can get, I don't know, a necklace with anti-scrying enchantments on it or something..."

"I'd rather you didn't."

Hermione turned to frown at Liz over her shoulder. "Why not?"

"I..." Oh shite, she hadn't actually put that impulse into any kind of coherent thought, now she had to figure out how to explain herself. "Er... I don't know, if you're lost or kidnapped or something, being able to scry you would...be good." She'd ended the sentence all slow and quiet, feeling terribly awkward. She couldn't even say why, exactly, it seemed like basic safety stuff to Liz. It was the same reason Liz hadn't done anything to block scrying or tracking herself — besides the ring Severus had given her a year ago, of course, but she assumed Severus had left a backdoor for himself in the anti-tracking spells on this, being a paranoid bastard.

"Oh. Um..." One of those soft, warm, clinging feelings was pulsing out from Hermione again, clinging at Liz's skin. (She rolled her shoulders, trying to shrug it off, but it didn't help.) "I suppose that makes sense. Maybe there are palings or something I could put up..."

"I don't know, you'd have to ask Flitwick or Babbling." Or maybe Severus, he might know that kind of thing — he was a paranoid bastard, after all. Unfortunately, they couldn't ask their Professor of Divination about how to protect themselves from divination, because Trelawney had turned out to be completely fucking useless. "Or maybe you could enchant a thing that projects some kind of anti-scrying paling you could set on your bedside table and carry with you to the bathroom. That seems more likely, ask Babbling if you can do something like that."

"Right. I am glad you saw it, Liz, I'm sorry if it doesn't seem like I am. I don't like the idea of just anyone being able to scry into the dorms, but if you hadn't..." Hermione trailed off, a confusing mix of feelings pulsing off of her in little bursts, Liz couldn't pick it apart. "They didn't used to be so bad, but it's been getting worse. They've messed with my things before, but they'd never stolen so much like this, and, well, I wouldn't have been able to handle it on my own."

Liz considered insisting Hermione could have — Hermione might not know as many hexes and shite as Liz did, but she still knew more than enough — but kept her mouth shut. It wasn't the magic that was holding her back, Hermione just...wasn't the kind of person who'd resort to violence to solve problems. Or, she might, but not without being pushed rather harder than that, or if she had what she felt was an indisputably justifiable reason.

Personally, Liz thought someone stealing all your underwear was an indisputable justification for hexing the shite out of them, but Hermione wasn't a creepy, violent devil child. And Liz was, so she could just do Hermione's hexing for her, she didn't mind.

After a few seconds passed in unreasonably awkward silence, Liz finally managed, "If they pull something again, tell me. I did threaten to kick Lavender's arse if she didn't stop, I'd hate to break a promise on accident."

Hermione barked out a laugh, sharp and high, before clapping a hand over her mouth, an intense tingle of embarrassment sweeping over Liz. Apparently Hermione felt she shouldn't have laughed at that — Liz didn't see why, she'd thought it was funny. "Um, yes, I will," she said, her voice wavering a little from suppressed laughter. "I mean, I don't... Thank you, Liz."

Liz nodded. Right, that seemed like the end of this conversation. She pulled out the owl-order catalogue, held it out toward Hermione. "I thought I'd take care of something else while I was up here. Take a look at that."

It happened to be face-down when Hermione took it, when she lit her wand it first illuminated the mailing instructions on the back. "An owl-order catalogue?" Flipped it to the front page, "Oh, Luca, Merge, and Pandemos, the Ravenclaws get the same catalogue." People could order books directly from the publisher by owl, but often publishers didn't have enough of a selection to be worth putting out a catalogue on their own, so they'd band together to share one — Luca and Merge were mostly nonfiction, including half of their school textbooks, and Pandemos mostly did fiction or more niche, obscure stuff, so Liz had figured Hermione could get a mix of whatever she wanted.

"If I place an order in the next couple days they'll come in around your birthday. Go ahead and write down the numbers of the ones you want, and I'll send it in."

"Oh, thank you, Liz." The surprise was even obvious on her voice. Hermione probably hadn't expected anything for her birthday, at least not from Liz — she knew she'd forgotten it last year, she wasn't great at remembering these things. Hermione seemingly forced herself to not look through the catalogue right this second, carefully rolled it up in her hand for later. (Liz felt her lips twitching with a smile.) "Ah, what's my budget? You didn't say..."

"A galleon."

Hermione's head twitched with surprise. "A galleon? No, that's too much, Liz — you realise a galleon is, like, two hundred fifty pounds, right?"

About two-forty, she thought, but she also didn't care. "You realise I'm stupidly wealthy, right?"

"Er..."

"Honestly, Hermione, I won't even notice a galleon one way or the other, a hundred would barely make a dent. I have far more money than I know what the fuck to do with, and I don't really have anything better to spend it all on. Please just take the galleon." Besides, magical books were more expensive than muggle ones, a galleon would probably only buy eight to ten anyway. Hermione would get through that many books in a couple weeks, so. "Hell, go a little over if you want, I don't give a damn."

"Well..." Hermione hesitated a long moment, an odd, unsteady, creeping something emanating from her head, but there was only one way she was going to go when books were on the line. "...okay, then. Thank you, Liz."

"Sure." She hoped her friends weren't going to be weird about her throwing money at them for very long, because she really didn't see why she shouldn't. "Right, I'm going to go back to bed. Curfew was a while ago now, and I have to go across the whole castle..."

"Oh! Yes, you're right, you should— You should go." Liz wasn't looking very closely, but she did catch a snippet of thought, she was pretty sure Hermione had considered suggesting Liz stay here instead of risking getting in trouble for being out after curfew. She didn't see enough to know why Hermione had decided against it, but pick a reason, really. Something else followed immediately after that, a flash of uncertainty, but Liz wasn't looking close enough to—

Quicker than Liz could react, Hermione had closed the couple steps between them, and her arms had been flung around Liz's shoulders, her scratchy hair (still a little damp) covering Liz's face. Oh, er, so they were hugging now, Liz probably should have guessed this might happen.

Liz still didn't get the hugging thing? She understood, mostly from picking up shite from other people's minds, that there was some squishy feelings thing they got out of it, but she...didn't think she did, really. It mostly just made her uncomfortable. Not always the same degree of uncomfortable, of course — randomly getting jumped by say, Hannah on her birthday, or Dora back in first year, that had been terrible, but if it was Dorea or Hermione, and she saw it coming, it wasn't so bad. She still didn't like it, but at least she didn't freak out over it.

And, she thought it was getting...less bad. There was still that flash of uncomfortable warmth, shifting tingles crawling over her skin, but... This was fine. She could tolerate this, if Hermione got some weird squishy feelings thing out of this, this was fine. So, awkwardly, she hugged Hermione back. Not really sure what she was doing, just, bring her arms up and, yeah, maybe this was what she was supposed to be doing? It felt almost painfully unnatural to Liz, but Hermione didn't seem to think she was being especially weird, so...

Thankfully, it only lasted for a few seconds, Hermione pulling away before Liz could worry too much about how long this was going to go. She didn't separate entirely, catching Liz's arms as she stepped back, her hands finding their way to Liz's. "You're a good friend, Liz," she said, squeezing Liz's hands a little. "A weird friend, but a good one."

"Oh, um..." Liz had absolutely no idea what the fuck she was supposed to say here. The silence stretched on for an uncomfortable second, she finally managed, "That's good...?" She was trying to not completely frustrate Hermione and Dorea (and also Daphne and Susan, she guessed), so...

Hermione's smile tilted a little, a tingle of wry amusement crawling through the air. "Yes, that's good. Come on, we should get to bed, we have Potions in the morning." She finally let go of Liz, started back toward the door inside, so Liz trailed silently after her — automatically, still too baffled by the weirdness going on she didn't really know what she was doing. Stopping for a second on the stairs, "Just knock on the inside of the portrait to get out, okay?"

Out of a lack of anything better to say to that, Liz just muttered, "Yes."

That earned another little flicker of amusement, though Liz wasn't really sure why. "Goodnight, Liz."

"Night."

Hermione started up the stairs, the curve of the tower quickly hiding her from view. Liz blinked in the direction she'd disappeared in for a moment, still trying to process the odd mix of cold and tingling warmth in her chest, the unfocused mess buzzing at the back of her mind, only really half-conscious.

Liz shook her head to herself, started down the stairs — she really should get down to bed, going to Severus's class sleep-deprived sounded like a fantastically bad idea...

---

Severus's door in the common room was already open a crack, so Liz pushed it open a little further, peeked her head inside. "I think it's time for our meeting, sir."

"Yes, Miss Potter, come in. Close the door behind you." Liz obeyed, hardly twitching as his wards snapped into place behind her.

The office Severus kept off the common room hadn't really changed in the two years since Liz had first stepped foot inside. The same dark carpet, the same padded armchairs in front of a gently crackling hearth, bookshelves packed from floor to ceiling all the way around. If the contents of the shelves, or the liquor cabinet sitting just there, or the papers scattered over Severus's desk had changed at all, Liz didn't really notice, the small details minor enough they didn't really jump out as obviously different. Severus was at his desk when she walked in, reading something, one of those potions journals she saw him with now and again — when he set it aside, she noticed he'd marked it up in a couple places in the same red ink he used for their essays.

"Sit down, Elizabeth," he drawled, conspicuously switching to her first name now that the door was closed. Severus was very careful about acting normal where other people could see or hear them — not that he acted that differently in public anyway, it was just the little things. By the time she plopped down into one of the chairs across from him, he'd retrieved a file from one of the cabinets on the wall behind his desk, Liz's name sketched in a cramped, angular hand on the side. "I'm certain you're familiar with the purpose of these meetings by now, so I won't bother wasting both of our time explaining what we're doing here. I realise it's only been a few weeks, but how are you finding this year so far?"

Liz shrugged. "Fine. I hate doing reviews of things we've already studied, which is really all we've done so far, but it hasn't been so irritating that I've wanted to curse people too badly."

There was hardly a twitch on Severus's face, but she caught a cool pulse of amusement from his head anyway. In a slow, overly-precise tone Liz had learned to read as sarcasm, "While I must advise against giving into any such...disruptive impulse, the Second Rule, of course, always applies."

She felt her lips pull into a crooked smirk — the Second Rule of Slytherin was Don't Get Caught. "Of course."

"I don't suppose you've had any difficulty keeping up with your increased course load so far — it is early yet, the workload tends not to pick up until October at the earliest."

Yeah, they hadn't even had any real homework in Runes or Herbology yet. Or History and Divination, she guessed, but those didn't really count — homework had been assigned in both classes, Liz simply had no intention of doing any of it. Liz was convinced the scores given by Binns were arbitrary; in Divination they were supposed to make a chart of the night sky at the time of their birth and describe how the relative position of various celestial bodies affect their life, which was zero, because astrology was blithering nonsense and not even real divination. (The relative position of various celestial bodies did have an effect on potions and ritual, because witchcraft was like that, but they didn't do shite to day-to-day mundane events.)

"Before we proceed to concerns that have been brought to my attention, have you any issues we should address immediately?"

Liz shook her head, and then paused, furrowing her brow. There was something that had been bothering her a little, but... "This might sound weird, but is it colder than usual?"

The flash of anger from Severus was so sudden Liz twitched with surprise, intense enough it was even clear on his face, a steely, frigid glare aimed a bit to her right. "It is not truly colder in the castle than it would ordinarily be, but it is not your imagination. Dementors exert influence over the ambient magic of their surroundings. All beings interact with the magic of the environment on an unconscious level, so that influence will inevitably affect the minds of anyone within range — while we here are far too distant to be directly assaulted by the dementors beyond the wards, in such great numbers the weight of their presence does still alter the character of magic all through the Valley. The effect this will have on the minds of the people living here will be small, subtle enough they are unlikely to be aware of it, but non-negligible.

"To those sensitive to such things, Seers and mind mages especially, this influence may present itself through any manner of phenomena. If you've noticed a mild, persistent but inexplicable chill, that would not be an unusual presentation."

"Right," she said, slowly nodding. That was...slightly horrifying, honestly, that the soul-sucking monsters outside the gates could be affecting people from all the way over there, but she guessed that made sense.

Something about his enunciation sounding slightly more delicate than usual, as though he were selecting his words with extra care, Severus said, "As subtle as this influence can be, it has a tendency to exacerbate depressive episodes, particularly in those susceptible to such things. You'll recall we've discussed warning signs before. I know I have already asked that you speak to someone if you notice any of these signs, but this is especially important so long as the dementors remain in the Valley — doubly so after the events of this summer, it is my responsibility to do whatever I can to assist you if you are struggling, you needn't be concerned it would...be a burden of any kind. Do you understand?"

"I understand." This was hardly the first time he'd made this point, though she didn't think she was any more likely to tell him if were feeling especially miserable now than she had been back in first year. She really wasn't certain what telling him about it was supposed to accomplish. Especially if she was feeling especially miserable, talking to people about anything tended to just make her feel more miserable, so that seemed kind of counterproductive, didn't it? So, she kind of didn't think she would ever do that? If he were trying to get a promise she would out of her, he would probably catch a lie, but thankfully he was just asking if she understand he wanted her to. He might be able to guess she had no intention of following through, but he wouldn't know.

In fact, by the slightly narrow-eyed look on his face — which she only saw in her peripheral vision, she was staring down at her hands in her lap at the moment — she was certain he realised she hadn't actually promised anything, but he just moved on anyway. "There are already a few concerns that have been brought to me by professors and prefects. Most of them aren't particularly troubling, but as they have been brought to my attention I would prefer to discuss them, if only so I can honestly say I did so should these issues be mentioned again in future."

Liz bit her lip to keep herself from smirking. There was just something funny about that, she couldn't even explain to herself what it was.

"I have heard from multiple sources that you are having difficulties with Professor Lupin." There was a shade of something on his voice saying the title, but it was so subtle Liz couldn't guess what it was. "What I have been told is scant on details, however..."

Right, so now she had to talk about Lupin. She kind of didn't want to do that, but it was better than some other things they could talk about, she guessed. "Well, it's just that... You heard about the first lesson, right, with the boggart?"

Severus's brow twitched with a brief frown, a flare of irritation sparking off. "I have. Perhaps it would interest you to know that there was an argument in the staff room over the matter that weekend — while Lupin does still intend to give you and your peers practice defending yourselves from minor demons, he has been informed that measures to ensure student privacy during these encounters should be undertaken."

Oh. Well, that was good, she guessed — he should have thought of that in the first place, but at least he wasn't so much of an idiot he wouldn't change his plans once it was explained to him. Seemed like a low bar, but, Defence Professors. "Well, I walked out, and... As you might imagine, that first lesson doesn't really incline me to like him much." A half-hidden smirk twitched at Severus's lips. "A few days after that, he asked me to stay after class — to apologise about it, I'm pretty sure, I wasn't actually paying that much attention."

For stupid brain reasons, of course, because her own irrational feelings could really frustrate her sometimes. Apparently, she really did not trust Lupin, which hadn't become clear to her until she was alone in a room with him, the door closed — she'd gotten very tense, tingles crawling along her spine, coiled and ready to lash out with mind magic at the first wrong move. Which was ridiculous, she didn't really think it likely he would hurt her — especially when she was expected at Charms in a few minutes, he would certainly be caught — but she couldn't help these things sometimes.

"I do remember his apology was kind of annoying. And it transitioned into asking if anything was wrong that I needed to talk to someone about — because, clearly, if I didn't want to display my greatest fear in front of a room full of twenty other kids, there must be something wrong with me." There was, arguably, but still, that was fucking stupid. "I made it very clear I wanted him to lay off and mind his own fucking business, and he ended up apologising for that, making some excuse that he'd been friends with my parents so he would naturally be concerned — but not concerned enough to contact me even once in the last twelve years...

"So, yeah, I'm not happy with him. I think I might be kind of snappish at him in classes, I'm really not trying to be, it just happens. I guess people might have noticed that I don't like him, but nothing happened, really, I just find him annoying."

Severus gave a slow nod, his head glowing with a sort of...smug pleasure, maybe — it wasn't quite the same as Hermione's ah ha, I got the thing right! kind of feeling, but in the same family of feelings, maybe. No idea what that was about. "That is understandable, I suppose. Under the circumstances, you needn't subject yourself to his presence any more than is absolutely necessary — should he decide to attempt to force his company upon you in some misguided effort to connect with the child of his late friends, inform me and I will deal with it."

That didn't seem likely, given he hadn't bothered contacting her in twelve years, but she nodded anyway. "By the way, did you tell me to be careful around him before the start of term because he's a werewolf?"

"How do you know about that?" he asked, one surprised eyebrow ticking up. "I hardly expect he would have told you."

Liz shrugged. "I accidentally picked it up from Dorea — she's known him for years." ...Because apparently he'd thought it worthwhile to contact Sirius's kid, but not James's. Liz didn't know what was up with that. "But anyway, I thought it might also be because he and Sirius were friends, and it's kind of a wild coincidence that he happened to be hired while Sirius is on the run. It doesn't really matter, I guess, just curious."

He was silent a moment, staring across the desk at her, his fingers slowly tapping at the file. And then he moved on, blatantly not answering the question. Which was slightly irritating, but she guessed if they had some kind of personal history — they would have been in the same year at Hogwarts, and might have both been in Dumbledore's vigilante group, so it seemed very possible they did — that wasn't really her business, so, fair enough. "It has been brought to my attention that you've had multiple...confrontations with the youngest Mister Weasley."

She let out a groan, scowling. "He thinks I murdered his sister. He's being an arse about it."

Severus's lips twitched, she picked up a little twitter of amusement — probably thinking that being an arse to someone who murdered your sister was perfectly reasonable, actually. "It is my understanding that it was made clear that you were never even a suspect." It was Severus who'd made sure of that, explaining to Slytherin what the Aurors wanted her for before the gossiping could even start.

"Yes, well, nobody ever accused Ronald Weasley of being intelligent." Severus's lips twitched again. "He thinks Dumbledore or the Aurors, or maybe both, are protecting me for...some reason. I don't know, don't expect me to make sense of the ridiculous conspiracy theories going on in his head, I can't figure out how the fuck that's supposed to make any sense — I'm pretty sure if I murdered another student Dumbledore would do something about that, the whole Girl Who Lived thing be damned."

"I would advise against testing that theory." Really, no shite, thanks for that advice — she realised he was joking, but come on... "Should you suspect he intends to escalate..."

"Oh, I'm not worried. I'm pretty sure he isn't any threat to me, anything he might try won't accomplish anything. It's just annoying, is all."

Severus nodded — by how smooth and easy the gesture was, he didn't disagree. "Even so, should you decide the situation has developed to a point you can't handle it on your own, feel free to come to one of the prefects or myself."

"I will." She didn't expect that to ever become necessary, but why not.

It didn't seem like Severus entirely believed her, which was slightly annoying, but he moved on anyway. "This last topic is the one I am most concerned with myself — especially because it appears to be in direct contravention of the agreement we made at the beginning of term."

The hard edge slipped into his voice had her tensing in her chair a little, nervous sparks prickling at the back of her neck. She couldn't think of what agreement he was talking about that she'd broken — it was only a couple weeks into the year, she didn't think she'd really done anything that bad yet...

"One of the Ravenclaw prefects — I will not say who — spotted you crossing the grounds toward the forest late Wednesday night. I was under the impression we agreed that, so long as the dementors remained in the Valley, you would not wander the grounds unaccompanied."

Ooohhh, right, she guessed she had done something that bad — Severus had told her not to go out, that was true. Also, her blood magic subsumation thing was technically illegal. Not, like, life sentence stuck with soul-sucking demons illegal — in fact, she thought she'd only get a fine for it — but it definitely wasn't something she was supposed to be doing. The whole reason she'd snuck out onto the grounds in the middle of the night to do it was because it was illegal, and she didn't want to be caught. Well, also because the only animals in the castle were people's pets, and sacrificing any of them was probably a bad idea...

So, now she had to decide how the hell she was going to handle this. Ordinarily, she would just come up with some excuse, not admit what she'd really been doing — after all, it was illegal, she wasn't an idiot. But she had promised she wouldn't go out, and Severus wasn't going to be happy if she gave him some innocuous, perfectly innocent thing she could be doing. It was...probably fine to tell him about the blood magic? She wasn't certain, but, he had been letting her borrow restricted Dark Arts books, and he'd admitted he had illegal potions supplies in his house. He'd probably ask where she came up with the idea, but she could just say she'd come up with it herself, it did follow from some of things she'd read in books she'd borrowed...in principle, the practice of doing it would have been more difficult to figure out, but...

"I am waiting, Elizabeth."

"Right, sorry, um." She took a deep, girding breath in and out, trying to suppress the tension rising in her throat and the tingles along her spine as best she could. She didn't think she was in danger of freaking out, it didn't quite feel like the same thing — which was good, since she didn't have a calming potion on her at the moment — but she'd rather keep her voice steady if she could. "I went out into the forest to perform a blood subsumation ritual."

An intense shiver of surprise making the magic around her shake, both of Severus's eyebrows stretched up his forehead. "You... What kind of ritual?"

She shrugged. "Nothing complicated, just absorbing the vitality of a sacrifice and integrating it into my own. I..." She couldn't admit Tamsyn had told her this stuff, because then she'd have to explain who Tamsyn was — and, considering she really didn't even know that herself, that would be difficult. "I really hate being ill, and I realised I could prevent that with blood magic pretty easily. It was kind of tricky figuring it out the first time, but it's not so hard."

Again, Severus silently stared at her for a moment, his fingers tapping at his papers. There was definitely something going on in his head, Liz could feel things turning over and shifting — which was weird, he was usually so quiet she rarely got even that much — but whatever it was didn't show on his face at all, Liz only feeling a sort of...intensity from him, not even sure what to call that. Finally, "How long have you been doing this?"

"Just a few months. This was the third time — blood magic wears off, you know."

"Blood subsumation does, but blood alchemy does not." Well, of course, but she wasn't doing blood alchemy, was she? She didn't even know how. "Where did you find this ritual?"

She shrugged. "I came up with it myself." That wasn't true, of course, Tamsyn had told her more than enough to figure it out, but she couldn't tell him that.

There was an intense flash of something hot and sharp from him, strong enough Liz cringed a little. "Describe this ritual," he said, his voice suddenly gone harder.

For a second she was confused, before realising he was thinking she might accidentally hurt herself doing something wrong — she was honestly surprised he cared that much, but she guessed she probably shouldn't be. "Right. Well." She stalled for a moment, trying to decide where she should start. "I'll explain what I did this time. I tracked down a spell in the library that could attract animals to me — I can make them behave with mind magic, of course, but they have to be close enough for that to work." And that had been a pain, it'd taken her a few guessed to find the right terms to search for in the catalogue. The spell itself was easy though, even if it'd taken several minutes of repetitions to get what she wanted. "I waited for something I could actually use to come — a few little rats and stuff showed up first, but I'd need to do the ritual more than once with something that small, and then a fox, which I thought was a little too big.

"Eventually I got a...otter or a stoat or something, not sure what that was exactly." It was definitely a tube-like ferrety thing, but she didn't think it was an aquatic one? Not sure, she didn't know that much about animals. "I threw a hard compulsion at it, enthralling the thing. I had a little thing with ink, put some of its blood and some of mine in there, mixed it up, and drew a rune on a piece of paper I brought with." Liz took out her wand, with her favourite light charm drew the rune onto the surface of Severus's desk — a little notch, an upside-down V making a pair of legs, a second notch for the other foot, then a horizontal line balanced on top. "That kind of... You know, how you explained the mind is generated by the nerves working, the rest of your body does the same thing, generating a different kind of magic? Drawing the rune kind of pulls that up, and then I push it further to wrap around the...little ferrety thing, whatever that was.

"Then I blew its head off with a curse." Liz turned her wand down toward the floor, cast the curse to demonstrate — it only worked on living things, it wouldn't do anything to Severus's carpet. "Since my magic was surrounding it, the thing's magic didn't escape when it died. I kind of reel the blob of magic up into myself and... I'm not really sure how to explain it. I just kind of...insist that the magic is mine and it is? I don't know. When it works, it's kind of overwhelming for a little bit — that first flash stings, and when it settles I'm really, really hyper for a few minutes.

"Once I'd come down enough that I wouldn't seem suspiciously strange to anyone I might run into, I burned the sheet of paper and the rest of the ink — paranoid, maybe, but you shouldn't leave blood lying around, you know — then I washed myself off with a couple charms, got dressed, and went back to the castle. That's it," she finished, lifting one shoulder in a shrug, the motion far more casual than she actually felt.

One of Severus's eyebrows twitched. "You got dressed?"

Oh. Um. Shifting a little awkwardly in her chair, she admitted, "When that curse hits something, it'd kind of...messy. Er. I just hung my cloak, dress, and scarf on a branch until I was done. There are reasons I did it actually in the forest, I didn't want to be seen." Of course, she hadn't thought she'd be seen going there either, so it was probably a good idea she had decided to go into the trees... "It's not like I was, er, running around naked or anything..." She'd just been in her shorts and vest, Severus had seen her like that more times than she could count.

For some unfathomable reason, she thought Severus might actually be a little amused. "If you were, I could hardly even say I would be particularly surprised." He must have noticed her confusion, adding, "Your mother used to spend considerable time out in the forest with Cassie Lovegood, playing with the wilderfolk and riding unicorns and who knows what else — I understand they both considered clothing unnecessary for these activities."

...Okay, then? She really didn't give a shite what her mother had gotten up to when she'd been here, like that mattered, there was no fucking chance of Liz doing anything like that — she didn't even like being naked alone in her room longer than she had to, honestly... She responded to the only part of that she was comfortable asking about. "There are wilderfolk in the forest?"

"It is common knowledge that a wolf pack lives in the Valley. It is my understanding that most of them are wilderfolk. I have encountered them myself on a few rare occasions, but they largely keep to themselves."

Oh. She hadn't known about that, neat. "Right, I'll keep that in mind for next time." If she hurt any of the wilderfolk they probably wouldn't be happy about her traipsing around in the forest later, so, should try to avoid that...

"You will not be going back out into the forest." Liz twitched, opened her mouth to argue, but Severus went on before she got so much as a single syllable out. "You will inform me when it comes time to renew your ritual, at least three days ahead of time. I will procure a suitable sacrifice myself — would a common rabbit suffice?"

A little warily, Liz nodded. "The first time I did it with a rabbit I got from a muggle pet store."

"Good. Rabbits are commonly raised for certain components—" The spleens, hearts, bones, and eyes, Liz knew. "—it will not be difficult for me to acquire a live one from certain contacts. You will perform your ritual in my private workshop — the wards I have put in place there will prevent most any magic conducted inside from being detected through nearly any accessible means. I understand subsumation of this type may interfere with one's sleep, so you will be performing it first thing in the morning, to allow the most time possible for the immediate effects to dissipate. Given that you partially disrobe for this, I will wait in my office; you will come check in with me immediately after you have finished, so I may confirm you have not injured yourself. So long as the dementors remain in the Valley, you will not sneak out into the forest alone, ever again.

"Do you agree to these terms?"

"Ah, yes, thank you." That would be a lot less hassle for her than tracking down a proper sacrifice herself, there was really no reason she shouldn't agree. "But, I don't... I mean, why?"

"Why do I not punish you for breaking our agreement, you mean?" She nodded, but she wasn't sure Severus even saw it, glancing up to the ceiling with a little sigh. "I would, perhaps, if I had any expectation that doing so would accomplish anything. Given your history and your conduct at Hogwarts, I suspect any punishment I would be comfortable enforcing would be insufficient to dissuade you. I cannot watch you every second of every day, so, if I wish to prevent you from doing this again, I must remove the necessity for you to do so.

"Make no mistake, Elizabeth..." His voice sank, turning sharp and cold, his anger leeching into the magic in the room, brushing up against her like the drafty Hogwarts halls in winter. She clenched her fists to keep herself from shivering, her breath catching in her throat. But it only lasted for a second, a twitch crossed his face and the tension in his shoulders relaxed, the air swiftly warming again. When he continued, he still spoke harder and lower than usual, but still noticeably softer than a second ago. "...I am not pleased that you have been playing with subsumation in secret. If I believed I would have any success in preventing you from conducting experiments in the Dark Arts, perhaps I would attempt to do so, but I believe any such effort would be counterproductive. If my options are to make of myself an oppositional figure, or to reinforce that it is safe to come to me with...certain interests, I would prefer the latter — then, at least, I can take certain actions to reduce the risks of you seriously harming yourself toying with volatile magics you do not understand."

Liz considered protesting that she hadn't been toying with it, she'd been careful, but she doubted it would do her any good. She just nodded instead.

Severus let out another thin sigh. "And in any case, the particular ritual you describe would be difficult to hurt yourself with, and under the circumstances... Perhaps you were not aware of this, but this sort of blood magic should reduce your susceptibility to depressive episodes — so long as the dementors remain in the Valley I would, in fact, prefer that you continue to maintain the effects." She hadn't known that, actually, neat. "As much as I'm not opposed to you performing this particular sort of subsumation, you should avoid doing something so foolish as going out into the forest. Alone, in the middle of the night, while there are dementors in the Valley.

"Going forward, while I cannot force you to comply, I ask that you come to me before attempting any further experiments in ritual or subsumation. I will not attempt to dissuade you from performing these magics, but I can advise you in minimising the risks."

Right. That was...reasonable. Liz really couldn't have hoped for any better of a response than this. As long as they were talking about it, she should probably... "Ah, about that, I've been planning on starting with mind magic subsumation — I was thinking, I could just copy French from someone instead of learning it the long way..."

There was a roiling, unpleasant, nauseating feeling from Severus, not sure what that was. His eyes closed, one hand came up to rub at the bridge of his nose for a moment, drawing in and out a few strained breaths. Finally, "I understand you have been practising the charms necessary to copy memories for use in a pensieve."

"I haven't managed it yet, but yes." She was close, she was sure, the fucking thing was just so finicky...

"Tell me once you have. While mind magic subsumation is never truly safe, the dangers can be reduced by limiting the elements involved — for example, by removing previously isolated knowledge from a reservoir through the same charmwork you are already practising, and attempting to subsume the free magic. I have a very full schedule, but I will make time to guide you through the process the first few times. Once you have become competent with the absorption of minor bits of information, you would then gradually increase the volume of the subsumation, on your own time. Do not attempt to absorb something so large as an entire language before I agree you are ready. Depending on how quickly you master the skills necessary, this could be only months, but it could be years — you will be ready when you are ready. Understood?"

"Yes, I'll wait, thank you." It wasn't like she urgently needed to be able to speak French or anything. And, well, mind magic was very... She wasn't sure of the word. It was hard enough for her to describe what she was doing when she did it, and she couldn't imagine Tamsyn would be much better at it — after Severus's lecture about fracturing a few weeks ago, yeah, she kind of didn't want to risk screwing it up if it could be avoided. "I didn't... I mean, I realise all this stuff is pretty seriously illegal, and you probably don't want to deal with it, so... Thank you, is what I'm saying. For helping."

Severus's hand dropped, his eyes opening to fix her with an exasperated glare. "Elizabeth, I don't care the slightest bit that it's illegal — have I ever given you any impression that I respect the governing institutions of this insular, backward cesspool of inbred, bigoted idiots masquerading as a civilised society? I'm not concerned your experiments in the Dark Arts will incriminate me; I'm concerned for you. I don't want you to accidentally drive yourself permanently insane. That's all."

...Well. Liz had no idea how to respond to that.

Thankfully, Severus didn't make her. While she just blinked across the desk at him, lost for words, he folded the file closed again — there kind of hadn't been any point in him getting that thing out, he'd hardly looked at it — and changed the subject. "I believe that is everything I wished to address. As you might recall, these meetings I have with the Slytherins are far less frequent in third year — if there is any matter you would like to discuss with me, now is the time to do it."

"Oh. Er." Liz took a deep breath, trying to shake off the...whatever was going on in her head right now. "There were a couple things, actually. I was thinking earlier, I have a whole bunch of books in Latin now, but I can't read any of it, so... Could I get like a tutor or something?"

Severus ticked up a single eyebrow. "I'm certain you could. You have a full schedule already, but I see no reason you couldn't meet with a tutor for an hour or two once or twice a week. If your goal is simply to be able to read the language, it's very possible that would be enough — you'd simply do most of the work on your own time and check in with your tutor on occasion."

It was a pretty subtle feeling, but Liz got the impression Severus had completely missed the point of the question. "I meant, I have no idea how to get a tutor, and I'd probably need to leave the Castle, and I'm not supposed to do that."

"I see." Glancing to the side, Severus thought for a second. "I'll write Narcissa — while she would have never needed such a thing herself, I'm certain she knows someone suitable." Okay, asking a Lady of the Wizengamot and also Draco's mum to find her a Latin tutor was a little weird, but Liz guessed the same woman had also asked Severus to research childcare charms for her, so what the fuck did she know. "It would perhaps be most convenient for you to meet in Hogsmeade. There are a few coffeeshops or cafés in the village, I suspect any of them will do. You would floo down from my office to meet them the same as you will on Hogsmeade weekends."

"Okay, let's do that, then. Thank you."

There was a flare of what Liz was pretty sure was exasperation. "I realise this may still be new to you, Elizabeth, but making arrangements for a child's education is a perfectly ordinary thing for a responsible guardian to do."

...Right. She was just going to...not respond to that. (Liz still couldn't work out how she felt about Severus being her guardian now, if only on a technicality, and she kind of doubted she ever would.) "Anyway, the other thing was, Daphne invited me over for the winter holiday. I was wondering, with Sirius still out there..."

Liz didn't miss the faint twitter of amusement on the air, but it didn't show on Severus's face — probably the abrupt subject change, she realised that hadn't exactly been graceful. "You hardly need my permission to visit your friends, Elizabeth."

She didn't know, he was the one who'd just made the point about being her guardian a second ago — she was under the impression telling their kids what to do was just what adults did — but fine. "I was more worried you might appear in the middle of the night and drag me off somewhere you think is more safe. I can't imagine why I might think that."

This time, Severus's lips twitched a little. "Good point. While I can't promise I will never feel the need to do something of the like again, I can say it isn't a problem this time. The Greenwood is, by any comprehensive evaluation, one of the safest places in the country. Perhaps the only location less vulnerable to outside attack you might have access to is the Black property known as Ancient House — the Greenwood has the additional advantage of the presence of dozens of adult mages who could oppose any assault on their home, and I suspect the wards at Ancient House would allow any member of the family to waltz right in without resistance, including their second-most infamous." He meant Sirius, Bellatrix would be the most infamous. "So long as the locals are judicious in who they choose to allow onto their lands, there are no significant security concerns that would prevent you from staying at the Greenwood for a few weeks."

That had gone on far longer than necessary — he could have just said nobody wants to try to break into a place Mistwalkers, who are known to be much less squeamish about ritual magic than most mages, have been fortifying for centuries — but since she'd gotten the answer she wanted she wasn't about to complain. "Okay. I haven't decided if I'll go or not yet, but I just thought I would ask." In case he wouldn't let her go anyway, obviously.

"A reasonable precaution," Severus said, picking up on the unspoken part. "Depending on events between then and now, there may be further practical concerns, but I don't imagine they will prevent you from going." He must have noticed her confusion, adding, "It is quite possible the news of your...current legal circumstances will break before then. In that event, Lady Greengrass will certainly feel the need to inform me of their plans, and confirm that I consent to them. I expect this will be a minor hassle, nothing more."

"Right." She hadn't considered that, honestly — there'd never been anyone who gave a damn where she went or what she did, that other adults would ask Severus whether she had permission to do things was just...not a possibility on her radar, at all. She would worry that that kind of thing might become a nuisance once people knew about it, but how often did she really do things where someone would feel the need to bother asking?

Liz did expect other kids, especially the Light kids, were going to be fucking ridiculous about their precious Girl Who Lived living with a Death Eater. (Despite the facts that he was going to dissolve the trusteeship as soon as he could and that she wouldn't be living with him as soon as Sirius was caught, she suspected none of that would matter.) There was no way that wasn't going to be a shit-show, it was going to be completely insufferable, she was not looking forward to it.

Anyway, "Yeah, that's all I had to talk about. I'm done if you are."

Severus nodded. "If you have any pressing concerns, you can of course bring them to me at any time."

"Sure." The Slytherins had all been told not to bother Severus outside of the hours he specifically made himself available to them, but she guessed she was an exception now. After all, he didn't put up other Slytherins in his spare bedroom either. She pushed herself up to her feet, flailed for a moment before saying, "Bye, then." With some effort, she managed not to cringe at how incredibly awkward she sounded — she wasn't any better at ending conversations than she was with...any other part of them, honestly.

There was another twitter of amusement from his head, but it didn't show on his face at all, Severus instead just giving her a bland sort of look. "I'll see you in class tomorrow morning, Elizabeth."

Because nine in the morning on a Saturday was a great time to have Potions — seriously, she was pretty sure one of the Gryffindors was going to blow up half the classroom one of these days. Out of a lack of any good response, Liz turned and walked back out into the common room, leaving the door opened a crack for Blaise, whose meeting should be right after hers.

That hadn't been as bad as some of their meetings in first year, but still, apparently having lived with him for two months didn't make these any less uncomfortable. Liz was so painfully awkward sometimes, honestly. Hopefully she'd get better with this shite eventually, but that didn't seem very likely, did it?

Anyway, now that that bit of unpleasantness was out of the way, she had another Transfiguration essay to write. Because of course she did, ugh...

---

Liz watched herself dip around Johnson, letting go of the quaffle in the middle of the maneuver, the limp leather ball dropping at an unexpected angle, Spinnet reaching for it but missing by inches, Adrian easily snatching it out of the air a second later. Adrian streaked off toward the Gryffindor goalposts, jinking to the side and rolling a little to avoid a bludger. Before he could get close enough to shoot, Bell, the smallest and fastest of the Gryffindor chasers, had managed to catch up, swooping a little above him to then slash down through his direction of travel, forcing Adrian to instinctively pull up — despite not actually being in danger of hitting her, as fast as she was moving, Bell had a knack for pulling that kind of fake-out — the maneuver cutting his speed enough the rest of them had caught up again, Johnson and Spinnet and Towler cutting him off from the goals.

Adrian made as though to try to dip under Towler, and while the Gryffindors were distracted tossed the quaffle up and back, Draco catching it with one hand, the awkward, blind throw forcing Draco to chase it a little, his off hand needed to steady his broom. Draco only flew a few metres, parallel to the goalposts, before passing the quaffle to Mark, a Weasley twin adjusting his aim to follow the pass at the last second and missing because of it — the bludger would nearly hit Spinnet and then Liz, but they both saw it coming and dodged in time — Mark immediately turned for the goals, Johnson and Towler and Bell darting up into his path, Mark ducked his head and accelerated, as though intending to slip between them and plough through, the Gryffindors tightened to cut him off and he ended up running straight into Towler, Johnson hemming him in from the other side, reaching for the quaffle, but he'd actually dropped it the instant before hitting Towler, Draco there to pluck it up as it fell, in a single sprint Draco halved the distance from the goalposts while the Gryffindors were distracted.

But Bell wasn't part of the skirmish, she slipped herself between Draco and the goals, Draco passed it to Adrian who made a run toward the keeper, Bell whirling after him and Wood tensing in preparation to block a shot, a bludger winging in at him from behind and above, he wound up his arm to take a shot—

Liz came out of nowhere, a precisely-aimed kick-turn brought her whipping inches from Adrian's back — and also upside-down, so she could most easily snatch the quaffle out of his hand — as her spin finished, bringing her back right-side up, Liz kicked her broom around a hundred eighty degrees, a hard push bringing her to an abrupt stop in mid air, the force enough she slid down the shaft, the leg-braces hitting the backs of her knees, hugging the broom to herself in the crook of one elbow. Adrian actually took the bludger hit in the shoulder — Liz hadn't noticed that at the time, but it looked to be a glancing blow, he'd still been flying normal afterward — Bell's momentum carried her in the wrong direction, the other Gryffindors still too far behind, Liz whipped the quaffle down toward the lowest goal, Wood scrambled in that direction but wasn't even close, the limp leather ball spanging off the bottom of the ring and bouncing through.

Floating disembodied in the air, watching the memory projection of herself swoop back toward the opposite side of the field to prepare to cut off the Gryffindor chasers, sharing an ecstatic grin with Adrian at a well-executed play, the real Liz smirked to herself.

Liz had, finally, figured out how to copy out her memories for use in a pensieve. It was something of a complicated juggling act, needing to single-mindedly focus on the memory she wanted to copy while also casting the spell itself — and it didn't help that the spell was a fiddly little thing, it was very easy to fuck it up. The first couple times she'd gotten close, she'd been so excited by the spell actually working — silvery mind-stuff clinging to the tip of her wand, a glimmering substance neither liquid nor gas yet somehow both — that she'd lost her focus, the delicate spell falling apart, the mind-stuff escaping to dissolve into nothing. It was extremely frustrating.

(Thankfully the spell only copied the memory, not removing it outright, otherwise who knows how many memories she might have permanently lost trying to get the bloody thing to work.)

For her first trip into a pensieve with one of her own memories she'd decided to go with something fun: the quidditch final last year, against Gryffindor. That match had been a nail-biter, they'd been seconds away from losing. Gryffindor had the only chaser squad that could really stand toe-to-toe with Slytherin at all — Bell, Spinnet, and Johnson were excellent, though Towler was only decent — and they'd already played Gryffindor twice that year, winning one and losing one. Liz had waited until they had a five-goal margin before peeling off to look for the snitch, and it'd taken a long while for them to open up that much of a lead — the score had been something like two-eighty to two-thirty, she thought.

Both previous times they'd played, Towler had tried to close the margin with the chasers for a couple minutes before moving to compete for the snitch — the game Gryffindor had won, they'd closed the margin to twenty, Liz took a very well-timed bludger hit and Towler got the snitch, winning by five points (just, fuck); the game Slytherin had won, she'd simply beaten him. For the final, somewhat to her surprise, Towler hadn't broken to compete for the snitch, instead staying with the chasers and trying to run up the score so she'd have to give up. They hadn't managed it in time, barely, Liz catching the snitch when Slytherin had only been a single goal down, winning three-twenty-five to three-ten.

If Liz was being honest, she didn't tend to remember their games very well. It all just...happened, a constant stream of action and reaction, play and counter-play, so quick and so automatic very little stuck in her head. She usually remembered when someone pulled off something particularly crazy, or when she was hit with a bludger, but other than that...

Looking at it from the outside, how quick and coordinated and sometimes brutal it could be, was kind of impressive. She guessed it was a good thing they'd drilled like crazy over the year, because she really doubted she'd be able to fly like this if she actually had to think about it all the time.

And this was only a realisation she'd come to now, she didn't like watching quidditch. It wasn't only being trapped in a big noisy crowd pressing in from every direction, though that was part of it, but following what was going on from the stands was kind of a pain. The action went very quickly, as fast and maneuverable as brooms were, and from a single spot she didn't often have a good angle on what was happening.

But, on her second trip in a pensieve, again looking over Tamsyn's memory of flying for the first time, Liz had realised that she didn't need to experience the memory as though she were physically present — she could just drift around at will, as though floating...but not really, because when she did this it... Well, it was kind of like scrying, she guessed? It was like she wasn't entirely there, just a disembodied presence drifting around, watching and listening from any perspective she pleased.

And she really did mean any perspective, every person in the stands had been reproduced with perfect fidelity, exactly as they had been at the time. Every gesture, every word, even every thought, all of them. Even though, obviously, she couldn't possibly have remembered all of that, and hadn't noticed the vast majority of it at the time. She hadn't even noticed Adrian taking that bludger hit a moment ago, and Liz had been right there! Pensieves were just neat — they worked not by recreating the event as she remembered it, but by using her memory as a focus to recreate the event as it had truly been. There were sometimes errors, supposedly, due to interference from adjacent alternate universes (because divination was wild like that), but for most practical purposes it was perfect.

Which was just so cool. Even on top of how impressive the quidditch was, Liz couldn't help a bit of giddiness that she'd gotten this to actually work, this was so cool, she loved magic.

Liz floated around watching the quidditch for a little while, wondering what she should look at next. As fun as the quidditch was, it wasn't interesting enough to hold her attention for that long — it was entertaining to play, but not really to watch. (She really didn't like watching the other games, after all.) She should definitely find an owl-order form for a memory seller to get some duels and stuff — people didn't generally bring pensieves to school, so that one wasn't in the Slytherin library — but there had to be something else she could play with in the meantime. Maybe something from the dueling club, or oh, that thing with Dora and Quirrell, it'd been very impressive and she might actually be able to follow...some of it now, anyway...

Wait a second. She had an idea. Something she'd wondered about before, that had bothered her for a while, but she'd never been able to find out...

A quick trip through the disorienting magic of the pensieve, and Liz landed back in her physical body, lying on the floor of her dorm room — she'd considered lying on the bed, but she was worried she'd knock over the pensieve and ruin the potion inside, had just put a pillow down here instead. She pushed herself up, kneeling over the pensieve, the soft blue-silver light casting wavering shadows over the walls. For a moment, she considered removing the quidditch memory first, but it was probably fine. Now that she could actually do this charm correctly, she should be able to separate any memories inside and remove them if she wished. Besides, it didn't really matter if she accidentally destroyed the copy — it was hers, if she wanted she could just make a new one.

Staring down at the glowing potion, Liz concentrated, focusing intensely on the particular memory she wanted to copy. Not on the whole thing, that wasn't necessary, just a single clear moment within it, something she could anchor it by. Bringing her wand to the edge of her forehead, she concentrated on the intent of the spell at the same time, which was not an easy thing to do — it might actually be the mind-splitting thing Severus had described when she was in hospital, that hadn't occurred to her until she'd been trying to get it to work a few days ago — hissed out the incantation.

She felt the spell reaching into her head immediately — it felt vaguely similar to scrying, but not quite the same, more...tingly. It kind of tickled, actually. She let the magic sit there for a few seconds, spreading out from the specific moment she was focusing on, both before and after, before she started to pull, slowly drawing the tip of her wand away from her head. There was a bit of resistance, as though something were clinging on, she had to draw out slowly or else the memory would snap and she'd have to start over.

It also felt really fucking weird, the magic pulling at her mind, like pulling at a thread in one of Dudley's old jumpers, but in her head. It wasn't painful, exactly, it was just strange, and somewhat distracting. If Liz looked closer, she could feel the magic working, little sparks running through the bit of her mind the spell was in contact with, dancing energy resolving bit by bit into the form and texture of the memory she was copying — she didn't look closer, because that would be distracting and her spell would fail, but it was still kind of neat.

Eventually, the copying was done, the tension connecting her wand and her forehead abruptly breaking. Still holding the magic running down her arm — she'd accidentally let the spell break at this point more than once — Liz tapped the middle of her wand against the side of the pensieve. The coil of silvery glowing thread around her wand uncoiled a little by the force of the impact, the end of it lazily whipping down to meet the liquid inside — the potion latched onto the memory-stuff, in an instant slurping it up, the light given off by the pensieve growing just the slightest bit brighter.

Setting her wand aside, Liz rubbed at her face with both hands. She hoped she would get used to it eventually, because casting that spell was bloody exhausting.

And then she had to do the whole thing again to get out the second half of the memory she wanted to look at. Son of a bitch...

Another disorienting trip through the pensieve, this time falling instead of rising, and Liz slammed to a stop in that hotel room in Charing she'd stayed in for a couple weeks. She hadn't really remembered anything about the place, but it also didn't matter — it was just a hotel room, and she hadn't been there that long. It was kind of a mess, her things strewn all over the place in little piles here and there. After a moment looking around, she realised there was order to the madness — potions stuff here, books there, clothes over in that corner, and so on — but it was still slightly ridiculous.

Liz quickly found the memory-Liz, sitting at the desk with a bacon and cheese sandwich, turning to give the door a thoughtful frown. Somewhat to her annoyance, she noticed that memory-Liz— No, she was going to call the old her Ellie, she recalled she'd still been using that at the time anyway. Ellie looked practically the same as Liz did now — Liz was actually here physically, so she could tell when Ellie stood up that she was maybe a few inches taller now, but it really wasn't a very big difference. That was...more than a little irritating. Liz was annoyingly tiny, and she still practically looked like a little kid, and she realised this memory had happened only two years ago, but most of her classmates had started to grow up in that time, and...

Whatever. It was annoying, but there was nothing she could do about it, so sitting here fuming was a waste of mental energy.

Ellie opened the door, revealing Dumbledore standing outside — though, obviously, Liz had already known he was there, both because she remembered this and because she'd felt his mind already. Ellie's bemusement was so intense Liz nearly shivered with it, thinking to herself that this old man looked very, very weird. Did... Was Liz that loud all the time? She knew Severus had said her mind was really loud before, but she'd never been a position to feel herself before, and holy crap...

"Hello, Ellie dear." Dumbledore was smiling all gently, voice warm and friendly, but it was fake, covering up something underneath, cold and shifting and...nervous? That feeling was kind of familiar, actually: Dumbledore had been worried about her — she could tell Ellie didn't know how to read the feeling (though she couldn't really say how, mind magic was like that sometimes), but Liz had learned to pick it up from Dorea and Severus, neither of whom she'd met yet at the time. "Could we speak for a moment?"

The unearned familiarity had put Ellie on edge immediately, glaring suspiciously up at him, her mind tensing — preparing to attack with mind magic, Liz recognised the feeling from Quirrell. "Who are you?" Some of the nervous tension in Dumbledore's head loosened immediately. Liz caught something, relieved Ellie was cautious enough to ask, children could be all too trusting, innocently ignorant of the darkness in the hearts of men, he'd worried—

Liz scoffed, rolling her eyes. She hadn't been innocently ignorant of the darkness in the hearts of men for a long, long time.

Anyway, Dumbledore explained who he was, Ellie decided, from what little she knew about him, that he seemed unlikely to hurt her, and even if he tried she could just stop him with mind magic, and also that people who called themselves "light" couldn't be that bad anyway — Liz caught all of that, Ellie really was very loud — so let him come in. Dumbledore came inside, silently looked around the room for a moment, Ellie pulsing with a mix of hot and cold, discomfort and tension. Not embarrassment, Liz realised, but anxiety — Petunia hadn't tolerated messes.

She couldn't help smiling at herself a little when Ellie realised that, by magical standards, she'd essentially answered the door in her underwear. Oops?

Looking very awkward, Ellie sat back down at the desk, fiddling with her sandwich. There were a couple back-and-forth comments, nothing really important, Dumbledore observing that she was staying here alone. Because of course she was, "I'm fine on my own." It'd be hard not to notice, with how very noisy Ellie's mind was (seriously, was she still like that?), she found Dumbledore's prodding on this subject confusing and vaguely off-putting, though she couldn't quite put her finger on why. To be fair, Liz hadn't figured that out any better yet, Dorea's persistent concerns about her being on her own was one of those things she still didn't really get — she meant, obviously she was just fine on her own, Dorea knew she'd (mostly) been taking care of herself for years now. Of course, Dumbledore hadn't known that (and still didn't), so...

"Ellie, dear, I'm sure your family is very worried about you." Liz scoffed — the Dursleys had never been worried about her, not in the way Dumbledore meant. They might worry she'd do something freakish, or something to embarrass them in public, later on they might have been terrified she would use her mind-control superpowers to hurt them, but they'd certainly never cared. Not the way Dorea or Hermione or Severus or Daphne did.

Ellie laughed, which was a little awkward, given she had a bite of sandwich in her mouth at the time. The sharp, cold edge to his thoughts abruptly intensified, something creepy and shifting and...not fear, exactly, Liz wasn't certain what to call that. So she looked closer.

Looking at the memories of people in a pensieve was always heard, the images shifting and unsteady — if Dumbledore hadn't been reminded of something so strongly, weren't lingering over the thought, Liz was certain she wouldn't have gotten nearly this much. It was in a room Liz didn't recognise, the details too washed out, with a couple other adults, standing before them a girl. Asking to stay — at Hogwarts, over the summer — scoffing at Dumbledore's suggestion that the other children she lived with (?) would miss her, they wouldn't miss her, the girl insisted, they didn't want her back and she didn't want to go back, not ever...

A little girl, maybe ten to twelve, almost too-pale skin and deep black hair, worn long and curling. They didn't look that alike — their feature were obviously different, Ellie's eyes a vibrant green and the other girl's an icey blue — but Dumbledore saw that other girl in Ellie's place, if only for an instant. And the thought seriously unnerved him.

...What the hell? Who was that other girl? Some other abused kid Dumbledore had completely fucked up with, maybe? Severus had suggested there were others...

There was some talking going on, but Liz didn't bother listening — the reason she'd wanted to look at this was happening. Even while he babbled off, Dumbledore's magical presence flared brighter, and a spell lanced out toward Ellie. It was a lot weaker than Liz had expected, honestly, tiny filaments of jittering sparks flickering between the two of them, so little magic it was hardly there. No wonder she almost hadn't noticed.

Ellie did notice the compulsion acting on her, eventually, and she reacted the way Liz always reacted: she lashed out at Dumbledore with an overwhelming mental assault. If Liz had thought Ellie had been noisy before it was nothing compared to this, magic drawn into her mind amplifying it like a loudspeaker, compressing and then stabbing out into the air — it wasn't even aimed at Liz and she could still feel it, rage and terror all mixed up, STOP GO AWAY LEAVE ME—

Grimacing, Liz pulled herself away a little — fuck, that was loud...

Ellie's attack slamming into Dumbledore's defences was almost audible, the ambient magic in the room rippling from the force like a stone thrown into a lake, the crashing of a cymbal. Dumbledore's retaliatory attack was much quieter, but not the same — it felt completely different, the far more regular, electric tingle of a charm from a wand, without the messy warmth of a living mind. (That would be the legilimency charm, viewed from the outside one after the other the difference couldn't be more clear.) Unbalanced from her failed attack, teetering in her chair a little, Ellie failed to react to the intrusion at all.

Sharp, sizzling magic connected their minds, Liz jumped — this was it, what she'd come here to see. Acting on instinct, she reached forward, forced herself into the false mind magic joining them, and—

—Ellie took some of the bacon for herself, Petunia made to grab her wrist, this was for Dudley (who still hadn't gotten down for breakfast, lazy little shite), but her hand never made it all the way, "Don't touch me," freezing halfway there, fear tingling in the air—

—"Tell her she can't come," Ellie said, copper sizzling on her tongue and colours dancing in her eyes, Vernon's mind tried to push it off so Ellie leaned into it harder, she didn't want to deal with Marge (she might tell someone about Ellie where she was too far away to do anything about it), Vernon would come up with some excuse, and besides, Petunia hated Marge, Vernon knew that, he could spare his wife having to deal with the stupid vicious cunt—

—her fingers shaking a little, Petunia handed over a few notes, twenty-three pounds total, more than enough for Ellie to get a new dress and a pack of pants, she released her hold on Petunia's mind, the woman sinking into her chair with a gasp, practically shivering, "Don't worry, I won't make you drive me, I can get there on my own," like she'd subject herself to Petunia's company any more than necessary—

—the end of the barrel stuck in his mouth, Vernon was sweating and shaking, were those tears? leaning a little closer, Ellie said, "I thought you got the message, Vernon, if we have to do this again," she made him pull the trigger, he flinched at the clicking noise, his mind spasming against hers, "next time I'll make you load it first," not like it would make him smell any worse, he'd pissed his pants again, she sneered at him—

—Dudley was trying to get them to stop, half-heartedly, not sure how to explain that his cousin was evil, Dennis made to grab for her but a little push and his hand was fisted in Piers's collar instead, drove his other fist into his stomach, Piers coughing with pain and his mind swirling with confusion, Dudley started backing away, but she made Malcolm and Gordon grab him by the arms and drag him back, Ellie forced a smile onto her face, and he was already crying, the fucking baby—

—the lady pulled a five pound note out of her purse and handed it to Ellie, more confused than panicked, Ellie blanked the lady's memory of the last twenty seconds or so and continued on toward the store, this would be more than enough to get new socks—

—"Do you remember when you tried to shove my face into a bucket of this stuff?" Ellie asked, as Dudley's meaty hand shakily unscrewed the cap on the bottle of bleach, "it was diluted, but I wonder what would happen..." she wasn't actually going to make him drink it, of course, Petunia would be insufferable, but the smell would drive in the message well enough, like Vernon with the gun—

—watched through the window as Vernon waddled out toward the car, he pulled out his key, and the angle wasn't great from here, but she could see how his arm moved wrong, dragging the key against the door instead of slipping it into the lock, she giggled, she hadn't known whether that would work without her standing right there as he did it but apparently it did, served him right, she wondered what else she could do to fuck with him—

—tears streaming down her face, Petunia lifted up bit of lank blonde hair away from her head, the scissors coming up, snip, "please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—" she couldn't quite finish the sentence, her own throat choking off the words, she grabbed another bit of hair, snip, really like Ellie would stop just because she was sorry, Petunia had never cared when Ellie was sorry, this wasn't even that bad, Ellie was being careful she didn't nick herself and everything—

—wasn't even really listening, Ellie just compelled the kid to leave and she ran off, a few metres away tripped over something and fell face-first into the dirt, returning to her book Ellie snorted, she hadn't even meant to do that, clumsy idiot—

—Dudley froze with a thought, and Ellie just glared at them, and then he pissed himself, ugh, she hadn't even done anything to him, sent him upstairs to change and clean up—

The spell abruptly broke with an almost tactile snap, Ellie instinctively yanking herself away from the magic, clumsily slashing at the bits clinging to her — Liz was thrown so off-balance she fell on her arse, her breath coming in shaking gasps. Fuck, was the legilimency charm always like that? That had been intense...

It took both Ellie and Dumbledore a couple seconds to recover from the violent end to the charm connecting them, Liz froze the memory with a thought before either had fully gathered themselves. Still sitting on the floor, she glared up at Dumbledore, annoyed and confused.

Severus had told her a little bit about how the legilimency charm worked. It'd been designed to imitate the mind magic stuff they could do, but it wasn't exactly the same thing — there were very basic differences in how mind magic and normal magic worked that changed how things went a little. Most importantly was a matter of intent: a normal person's mind couldn't interact with another's directly, so instead they needed a charm to do it, and like all charms it was directed by what the person wanted it to do. This meant that false legilimency tended to be far more tightly-focused than the natural kind, drawing out specifically what the user wanted to find.

Dumbledore hadn't looked for why she was here, or why she didn't think the Dursleys would be worried about her, or why she didn't go back, nothing like that. Dumbledore had looked, specifically, for memories of Liz using her mind magic on people. And that was what he'd found.

Liz stared up at the frozen memory of the old man — his mind locked cold and shifting, ice-blue eyes flickering behind Ellie's — completely failing to make any sense of the mess of feelings roiling in her stomach.

She didn't really think she needed to know, it wouldn't show her anything new, but Liz decided to check anyway — otherwise the effort of copying the memory out would have been totally wasted. A swirling of light and colour, a vague sense of motion in no particular direction, and Liz was standing in the entryway of Number Four, Privet Drive. She tensed, ants crawling over her skin, even worse when she spotted Vernon standing only a few metres away, but she reminded herself it wasn't real, this was only a memory, she was fine...

Ellie wasn't, though. Her face was completely blank, inhumanly expressionless. Liz knew from the impressions she got from other people's heads that she was like that a lot, so maybe that was normal; the placid stillness in her head, cold and impossibly smooth, like a lake frozen over, was not normal. It vaguely reminded Liz of watching the calming potion wash over Tracey's thoughts, but not the same thing — that had suppressed Tracey's emotions, but this felt like Ellie had none at all, as though she weren't there in any sense that mattered, her body present but her mind somewhere else far away, every motion sluggish and vacant...

That was just bloody creepy. There was something wrong about that, Liz couldn't even say what, just that she didn't like it.

Had Dumbledore put some kind of compulsion on her to get her to agree to go back? She didn't think so, and it would have to be one hell of a compulsion — like what Quirrell had done to get her to go with him, but even heavier — but this just wasn't natural...

Anyway, Dumbledore was doing more fake mind magic, sparkling threads of energy stitched between him and the Dursleys. Liz didn't look quite so close to it this time, not wanting to get sucked into it like before, just enough to get a vague impression of what was going on, what Dumbledore was looking for. By the feel of it, times Liz had hurt the Dursleys, or scared them — no shortage of those, the Dursleys had always been completely stupid about magic.

She focused instead on what Dumbledore was thinking in reaction to it. It was too vague for her to pick up very well, focused on associations to things too deep and slipping by too quickly for her to get a good look at. But she definitely saw that blue-eyed girl in there again. For some reason, Dumbledore couldn't help making the comparison, and it seriously unnerved him, he hadn't thought Liz would turn out like this, he'd thought she'd take more after her parents — fucking laugh that, she'd never met her parents, why should she be anything like them? — but maybe he should have expected something, now that it'd occurred to him there was a certain resemblance between Liz and Ta...

...

Tamsyn.

Liz reminded Dumbledore of Tamsyn. And for some reason, that worried him, terribly.

Because Tamsyn had something to do with that idiot Dark Lord everyone was so silly about. Liz couldn't tell what, he wasn't thinking about it in explicit enough terms, but she could tell the two were connected in his mind.

...What the hell?

A couple seconds later, Liz was sitting on the floor in her dorm room, her surroundings painted with swirling shadows and blue-silver light. She stared at the walls, not really seeing anything, just...

She'd thought, going back to that day she'd first met Dumbledore and reading his mind where he couldn't do anything about it, would help make things make more sense. Somehow, she only had more questions than she'd had before.

But at least she had a thought about what to do about it. She checked the time, finding it was well after curfew, so she pulled her father's invisibility cloak out of her wardrobe — Nilanse had hung it up in here at the beginning of the year, which Liz thought was slightly silly, but elves could be silly sometimes — and swept out into the hall. She had some research to do.

Not that she thought she'd actually get any real answers, but it was still worth trying, right?

---

Irritati — This is the plural of irrītātus, the participle of a verb meaning to incite, stimulate, or provoke. (Yes, it's where the word "irritate" comes from.) The incantation is clipped from a somewhat longer Latin phrase meaning something like "pains be incited/inflamed" — basically, a moderate pain hex, rather worse than a stinging jinx but not in the same league as the cruciatus.

[There are wilderfolk in the forest?] — Someone has told her this before, Daphne's mum in her letter to Liz back in first year, but Liz didn't actually know what wilderfolk were until Norris's petrification nearly a year later, and she was focusing on other details, so it didn't stick in her head.

Oh my god, why is this chapter so long? Bluh.

There's some news related to this fic, but I'm going to put it at the end of the next chapter instead. The next is entirely made of letters and is already almost done, will only be a day or two. Until then...