The elevator (probably meant to move heavy equipment and supplies around the stands more easily) came to a stop, even this deep into them a cold wind already tugging at Liz's hair. It was dark down here, the magical lamps along the walls spaced too widely — after all, it wasn't like anyone but the quidditch teams and the elves ever came down here — they walked down the shadowy hall for nearly a minute before they could see the exit.
And the pitch beyond it — the dread the rest of the Slytherin team had already been feeling intensified, thick enough Liz could feel it as frigid tingles on the air, a few groans slipping out. They'd known it would be raining, of course, it had already started when they'd come down to the pitch to get ready, but it was even worse now. It was dark, the thick clouds overhead sinking the world into a greyish murk. Unreasonably dark — it looked almost like the sun had already set, like twilight, despite it being ten in the morning.
Liz could hardly make out any details in the stands from here, everything a blurry mess, obscured by torrential sheets of rain, falling so thick it seemed almost solid, reflecting enough light in the stands the air took an odd, dull sheen. As they got closer, approaching the box they were supposed to wait in until they were called out, she saw the ground had been pounded into mud under the force of the downpour, churned up and tossed about by inches, the grass half-hidden.
And, of course, it was cold. It was always colder up here than it was back in England, especially in the warmer seasons — they were higher up, and also not far from the sea, Liz assumed it was a combination of the two. It didn't ever actually get really cold in the winter, not that much worse than down south (she assumed the sea had something to do with that too), but the warm seasons were noticeably cooler. She hadn't checked, the wind blowing into the box was really cold for it not even being November yet, maybe...six, seven, eight degrees? Definitely not higher than ten. And it was raining, so they were going to get wet too...and if it weren't windy (which it was), they'd be flying around, which would just make it worse...
Liz grimaced — this was going to miserable.
Adrian leaned around Mark to ask, "Liz, will you even be able to see the snitch in this at all?"
...That was a good question. "I don't know." She didn't actually need to see the snitch, she could feel the magic on it just fine, but she had to be pretty close to feel it. The rain being this thick would make it hard to see, easy to confuse with people moving around in the stands — also, people casting charms to shield them from the rain, that was going to be a problem too — and it'll get in her eyes, which will make it even worse, and— There was a flash of lightning, followed a rumbling groan of thunder — the noise wasn't so bad, but Liz flinched at the light, the raindrops almost seeming to glow with it, for a blink or two turning the whole thing a solid silver-white, she couldn't see a damn thing. "If it keeps doing that, definitely not."
There was some muttering — none of them wanted to play in this, especially if the snitch being impossible to find would have the match dragging on much longer than usual — Mark cut them off with a low, "It doesn't matter. If you don't think you'll be able to see it, don't bother with the snitch, just stay with us. We'll run the score up until Hufflepuff forfeits."
Liz considered that for a second — while she did, Madam Hooch appeared in their box, absolutely soaked from the rain, checking to make sure they weren't using enchanted stuff or spells that were against the rules, as was always done before a match. The Hufflepuffs did have one new chaser they hadn't seen in action yet, and their seeker (fifth-year Hufflepuff prefect Cedric Diggory) was pretty decent, but Liz seriously doubted their squad would be able to keep up with Slytherin. In fact, it was common knowledge in the school that, at least for the last couple years, Hufflepuff had the worst chaser squad of the four. (Ravenclaw's was decent, but not great; Slytherin and Gryffindor were essentially tied, which was better a matter of opinion.) The Hufflepuff team wasn't very good in general, their play-style much less...aggressive than the other teams'. Sometimes you just had to knock someone out of the air with a bludger, and sometimes there were collisions and scrapes, the Hufflepuffs were apparently unwilling to fight hard.
(Though, that did depend on which Hufflepuff they were talking about — some were rather less soft than others. The stereotype was true enough to be useful when guessing how the game would go.)
Slytherin (and Gryffindor) tended to crush Hufflepuff in games. They'd won both last year by absurd margins, the score run up until they had a three-digit lead even before the whistle blew and Liz could end the game. Diggory hadn't been captain then, and he was pretty decent himself, so maybe he'd whipped them into better shape...but even then, he probably hadn't been able to make that much of an improvement yet. (Maybe next year or the year after, but he hadn't even had two months as captain yet.) Liz didn't doubt they should be able to outplay the Hufflepuffs easily.
At a certain point, Slytherin so far ahead of them, the Hufflepuffs should get demoralised — hell, Liz would be surprised if they weren't already, even in the best conditions they had no hope of winning. And most of them were the sort of people who would care about keeping people out in the cold and the wet for who knew how long, when they knew they were definitely going to lose anyway. The Hufflepuffs forfeiting was the most likely way the game would end, and it seemed pretty likely it wouldn't take them very long.
It really did seem like the best strategy they had, as unsatisfying as it seemed, so Liz just nodded back at Mark. "Try to rough them up a bit," he said to everyone. (Well, everyone but Liz and Draco, who were too little, and Miles, who as keeper wouldn't be in a position to, so really only half of them.) "The harder we make this for them, the more likely they are to quit early."
"Try not to foul Diggory," Miles said. "He's good enough he might get a lucky shot through." Normally, fouls didn't matter, since it was actually really difficult to get a shot past the keeper one-on-one — the Gryffindors were the only chasers who were good enough for it to be a concern. Some of the other houses thought the Slytherins were violent crazy people for risking so many fouls, but the penalty wasn't enough to offset the benefit, so it was just good strategy.
Perry snorted. "How are we supposed to tell which is Diggory in this shite?"
That was also a good question.
There was a sort of binging noise, half drowned-out by the hissing of the rain and whistling of the wind — that was their cue — but nobody moved right away, reluctance and irritation and dread flaring around her from multiple minds at once (which was never not disorienting). But with a last few girding breaths, her teammates started stepping out into the rain — gritting her teeth, Liz followed them.
Fucking hell, that was cold! The water hit her less like a bunch of individual drops and more like someone had emptied a bucket over her head, her hair and her clothes quickly flattening against her, it only took a couple seconds before they were soaked through, the wet and the cold pressing against her skin. Liz almost instinctively reached for her wand to cast a warming charm, but that was pointless — casting spells during a game was extremely against the rules (like instantly removed from play extreme), she always left her wand in the locker room to avoid the temptation. There were some light environmental enchantments on the quidditch uniforms, so they wouldn't freeze to death — they were great in the winter, but not as much help when it was raining or snowing — but still, this was going to be absolutely miserable.
Liz had never appreciated more that Severus's insistence she eat properly meant she'd put on some weight — she already had a little since starting at Hogwarts, her friends always noticed if she missed a meal, but something about the combination of the nutrient potions and Severus subtly and indirectly nagging her about it had made a noticeable difference. Not really noticeable to her — most of Liz's clothes were loose enough she didn't notice minor changes, and it wasn't like she spent a lot of time staring at herself in the mirror or anything — but she'd caught idle thoughts from Dorea, Hermione, Daphne, Tracey, Adrian, Susan, and even Pansy about her not looking so terribly thin anymore. (Which she didn't think she had been, really, especially after doing quidditch for a little while, but Liz guessed people weren't likely to realise she actually had muscles and stuff through her clothes.) That meant, she was pretty sure, that it would take longer for her to get really cold...but it probably wouldn't take that much of a difference, especially with all this fucking rain...
She really hoped the Hufflepuffs would give up soon — trying to play quidditch while shivering was awful...
The Hufflepuffs were already out on the pitch, standing in the middle with Hooch. Liz couldn't make out their faces or anything at all at this distance, damn rain, but all the yellow gave it away, and who the fuck else would it be? The commentator — Lee Jordan, a Gryffindor in Miles and Adrian's year — was announcing them, but Liz could only half-hear it, his voice wavering in and out. Not that it mattered, she knew mostly what he'd be saying — Jordan was terribly biased against any team that wasn't Gryffindor (and especially Slytherin), but both Dumbledore and McGonagall (the people in charge) were both Gryffindors themselves, and apparently didn't care. Every other time he'd added disparaging little asides between their names, she could only assume it would be the same this time.
(Honestly, she'd rather get the insults than the more, um, complimentary remarks he sometimes made about the Gryffindor chasers. Last year Johnson had once hexed him immediately after a game over a particularly bad one.)
(Johnson happened to be the same black girl who'd helped Liz get her book out of her trunk on the train before first year. Random coincidence.)
After Mark and Diggory shook hands, Hooch warned them all to not be stupid, to call a time-out so they could come down and warm up if they needed to — there were little stations set up on the sides of the pitch under environmental palings for them to use. Her voice came through very clearly, despite the noise and the sodden hair half-covering Liz's ears, she assumed Hooch was using some kind of charm to do that. Then she released the balls, and the game was on.
More often than not, Liz hardly remembered most of the game once it was over. A few moments would stick out with sharp, hyperreal clarity, almost surreal in a way, everything slower and sharper and more colourful than she knew it'd truly been at the time — she had a pensieve, so she could prove that for certain — especially when someone pulled off something neat, or when she paused to take stock for a second and debate pursuing the snitch, but most of it was just a blur. A quick, energetic, exciting, ecstatic blur, action and reaction chained together into an indistinguishable mess.
Liz had no idea why, but Draco and Adrian had both said they got the same thing when she'd asked, and something similar happened duelling too. (It wasn't quite the same, duels were much shorter than a quidditch match, but similar.) Last year, a couple of her friends had said something about an improbable goal she'd scored, and Liz had admitted she honestly didn't remember, which had led to her explaining this weird thing. Hermione said it sounded like going into a flow state, which must be a muggle concept because none of the purebloods had heard of it...or even the muggleborns, actually, so apparently an obscure muggle concept (which was normal for Hermione). It had seemed plausible, though, so Liz had just shrugged and said whatever it was it was damn weird.
It didn't work that way this time. Whether it was the extra weight from her soaked clothes (and hair) dragging at her, or just being distractingly cold, or fighting the wind, or her hands and feet slipping on the wet handle and leg-braces — her gloves and boots helped a little, but not enough — or the rain prickling and stinging at her face, an occasional drop getting right in her eye, or having to pay a lot more attention than normal just to figure out what the fuck was happening... Even just flying straight required far more attention than usual. Whatever it was, there were too many distractions, she couldn't get into it like she normally did, the pace of this match feeling slow and grinding in a way they never did.
Due to some combination of all of that, Liz was having absolutely no fun at all. They were winning, of course — the cold and the rain was making them slower and clumsier than usual, but the Hufflepuffs really were quite terrible at this — but it was such an awful slog that it was impossible to take any enjoyment out of any part of this whatsoever. She was really starting to wish Hooch or McGonagall or Dumbledore or someone had had the good sense to postpone the match, but of course they hadn't — as Hermione would say, they couldn't possibly expect mages to have good sense...
(Personally, Liz thought most people hadn't any sense, Hermione was just biassed.)
It only got worse when Liz managed to injure herself, like a fucking idiot.
She wasn't doing anything abnormal, at least not for her — since she was tiny, so could make harder turns easier, and also had no sense of self-preservation whatsoever (according to Dorea and Miles), she could exploit kick-turns to pull off crazy shite nobody else really could. Well, they could, theoretically, she still argued it wasn't really that hard, but they didn't. The Hufflepuffs had gotten possession after Adrian scored, they were sweeping back to the Slytherin side, Liz realised she could slip in between...well, whoever those two Hufflepuffs were, she couldn't tell. She'd be in place to intercept a pass that'd be coming up any second, was the point.
Spinning her broom around to the right angle, that went the same as always, but when she switched back to arrow mode and accelerated she slipped. Her gloves only slid a little bit, she managed to tighten her grip and hold on, but one foot must not have been back in place right — normally, being a little bit off was fine, but the rain had her sliding back on the broom, and her foot went right off the brace. Her broom jerked under her, she yanked the handle back down to stop herself from pulling up and—
She saw the person in front of her, the one she'd meant to slip past a few feet behind, far too late to stop herself from running into him. She was coming in at kind of a weird angle, from above, her broom handle managed to miss him entirely but she did slam into his shoulder at speed. It happened too fast, one moment she was fine, and then she saw him, her heart leaping into her throat, and then there was a wrenching in her arm, something slamming her in the chest, her breath driven out of her lungs in a harsh cough — the impact didn't hurt too bad, but her hands were ripped from her broom handle, in a blink it was gone.
And she was falling.
The air thick and hard, she couldn't breathe, her stomach rising into her chest, her whole body painfully pounding with each too-slow heartbeat, the world seemed to slow down around her, just a little, giving her enough time to see the sky was above her, Adrian's advice about cushioning falls ringing in her head, she tucked her chin to her chest, her arms folded, and she frantically drew up as much magic as she could, not trying to channel it out to cast anything, just holding it in her chest, and—
A bone-shuddering thud slammed through her as she hit the ground, back-first — something in her chest popped — her legs and her head hit an instant later, the ground seeming to shudder under her for a second, going a little dizzy. Then the pain hit, in a thrum coursing through her head to toe, not really seeming to be focused in any one place, just a hot ache everywhere at once.
She laid unmoving in the mud for a moment, still being pelted by rain, she closed her eyes because that was annoying, just trying to catch her breath, each thin and shaky and annoyingly painful. Moving seemed to make the unfocused pain worse.
Yeah, that could have gone better.
She was probably only down here for a few seconds before someone was landing next to her, feet squelching in the mud. "Liz, are you awake?"
Oh, hey, Adrian. "I'm fine." She didn't think anything was broken, at least — the magic she'd called up must have done its job. Mages were more resistant to injury, sort of instinctively cushioning the blow, and making herself temporarily more magical should have increased the effect. (The human body didn't have much magic in it when they weren't actively channelling, the more magic was in them the more power their instinctive self-defence had to work with.) Or well, there had been that unpleasant pop, and that spot still kind of flared a little with each breath, but it was probably fine. Gingerly, Liz started pushing herself up to a seat.
"Wait, you should stay down until—"
"I'm fine, really." Actually it kind of hurt to move, Liz had to fight to not hiss in pain, but she was mostly fine. Adrian was standing nearby, kind of half-way hunched over her, his head throbbing with concern and exasperation — which was still slightly weird, she had no idea why he cared so much. Liz tried to get her feet under her, but apparently she was still kind of dizzy, she ended up needing a hand from Adrian to stand up. Once she was on her feet, still wavering a little but it was getting better, she said, "See? Fine."
"You just ran right into Diggory at speed and fell fifty feet to the ground, but sure, you're perfectly uninjured, of course."
...That had been Diggory? Shite, they were supposed to try not to foul Diggory, oops... "Well, maybe I could use a couple minutes, but..." They could probably keep playing without her — they did have a couple reserves, none of them were great seekers but it wasn't like anyone was catching the snitch in this shite anyway — but it would take a while for them to change and get down here. Nothing was broken, Liz would be mostly recovered by then anyway. She'd probably still be sore, sure, but she wasn't hurt that badly...
Adrian sighed. "Mark already called a time-out, come on..."
At either side of the pitch, there were these big cloth tents pitched up, though without any walls, just a ceiling propped up people could shelter under, several chairs sitting here and there, a big enchanted heater in the middle during the colder months. They served as a place for the team to get out of the elements for a few minutes on time-outs — when it was especially cold out, Hooch would call a break at regular intervals for them to warm up, those games going twenty on and ten off. That wasn't something they did in professional games, but it didn't take very long at all to get serious frost bite when flying around at forty miles per hour in freezing temperatures, they didn't want kids badly hurting themselves playing games. There was usually water or whatever else available too, if a game went really long the elves would set out finger food — again, the latter wasn't a thing they did in professional games, but they didn't want kids getting dizzy and falling off their brooms.
Liz and Adrian picked gingerly across the pitch — she was stiff and pained enough she couldn't walk very fast, and Adrian stuck with her rather than fly ahead, for some reason — they were the last to arrive at the tent. By the time they got there (Liz sighed a little at finally stepping out of the rain, would it be cheating to have someone cast a drying charm on her?) she noticed they'd been beaten by Pomfrey and a tall bloke in a Hufflepuff uniform, there were too many people between here and there for Liz to make him out.
Because she was kind of being rushed at the moment — Mark and Draco and Pomfrey asking her if she was okay, Pomfrey's wand already flicking (analysis charms unpleasantly crawling over her skin), looming over them was— "Severus? What are you doing here?" He never came down to the tent thing during matches...
He looked even more gaunt than usual in the insufficient light thrown by the heater, almost sickly, but then he never looked particularly great, did he. (Severus was such a hypocrite, he definitely needed to eat more worse than she did.) Ignoring the weird looks they were getting from the rest of the team — Liz hadn't even slipped on purpose that time, she'd been surprised and not thinking — he drawled, "I do realise you suffered a hit to the head a moment ago, but the answer to that should be obvious."
Had he come down to check on her because he was worried? Or was that something he did whenever anyone had a nasty fall, and she'd just never noticed? Huh. "I didn't hit my head that hard, I'm fine."
Pomfrey let out a little irritated huff. "You are decidedly not fine. A flare of accidental magic successfully absorbed the impact, but as a consequence much of the force was distributed across the whole of your body — you will have bruises absolutely everywhere — and while it was enough to prevent your shoulder from dislocating, you do have mild ligament damage that will weaken your left shoulder significantly until it's healed."
"...Well, I managed to walk here, so I'm mostly fine." Honestly, it wasn't that bad, she'd gotten beatings from Dudley and his friends that had hurt worse than this.
While her teammates within earshot let out little amused huffs, Draco rolling his eyes — they were used to her brushing off minor injuries by this point — she caught a flash of irritation from Severus. He didn't say what he was thinking though, just pulled a little phial of some kind of potion from somewhere. "Take this."
"Um..." She took the phial without thinking, turning it in the thin light. It wasn't one she recognised, but then she wasn't a master potioneer, she didn't really expect to. "What is it? I won't be out of the game if I take it, will I?" Players were allowed to get minor injuries treated and keep playing, but there were limits to what they could do.
Nobody was surprised she planned to continue playing, if exasperated, though she did catch flashes of concern from...pretty much everyone, really — though she was a little confused to pick up the same feeling from Perry, she hadn't realised he gave a damn. His voice perfectly even and flat, without any sign of the resigned irritation simmering in his head, Severus said, "No, this will not disqualify you. It will merely prevent the worst of the contusions from forming. It will also reverse some of the damage to connective tissues, though some will likely remain."
Right, that sounded fine, then. Liz twisted off the stopper and drained the tiny little bottle. She couldn't really taste the potion much at all, but she did get an odd warm tingle on the inside of her mouth that she was pretty sure wasn't actually a physical sensation, instead picking up on the magic in it. (Taking potions could be strange like that sometimes.) She did feel a little warmth spreading through her, with this odd little prickling — it itched, underneath her skin, didn't hurt but felt just weird — she was distracted enough by that that she didn't really hear most of Pomfrey's lecture. Blah blah, don't throw her shoulder too quickly — besides, it was her left shoulder that was hurt, and she was right-handed, so that wasn't really a problem — if she felt anything tearing come back down immediately, because if she seriously injured herself while flying she'd probably fall right off her broom again, blah blah, yeah fine, she got it, honestly...
Once Pomfrey finally left her alone — stomping off shaking her head to herself, head frothing with hot frustration (she kind of hated quidditch games) — Severus giving her a last warning glare to not do anything too stupid before wandering off too — she noticed the rain arced around him somehow to leave him perfectly dry, damn, that was a neat charm, she made a mental note to ask about that later — Mark leaned a little closer to mutter where no one else could hear. Which was a little uncomfortable, he was a big bloke, but it was only Mark. "If you need to sit out, we'll be fine. We're already up eighty to ten, at this rate I don't think it'll be long before Diggory forfeits."
Were they really? She only ever paid attention to the commentary to decide when she could safely break off to look for the snitch, and matches always passed in enough of a blur that counting goals herself was pretty much impossible. "No, I'm fine, Pomfrey's just ridiculous. If it does bother me I'll break off to take it easy looking for the snitch for a few minutes now and then." She didn't expect to find it in this shite, of course, but flying around aimlessly for a little while would be much easier on her shoulder than passing around the quaffle.
Mark wasn't happy, his head still shifting with something warm and unpleasantly cloying and sticky, but he didn't say anything about it, just nodded at her. His wand was out and pointed at her before she could react, but it was only a drying charm, the water leaving her clothes and her hair in a puff of cool fog.
Liz walked closer to the heater, hoping to warm up a bit, ignoring Miles's joke about Liz running into things like an idiot. (Miles was a bit of an arse sometimes.) It was then the Hufflepuff walked up to her, and Liz finally realised it was Diggory. He was rather tall for a pureblood, black-haired and grey-eyed — which meant he was probably related to the Blacks somehow, but he was too tall for it to be very closely — and supposedly very handsome. She said supposedly because she really couldn't tell. She'd overheard enough girls gossiping about him (and, in some cases, caught glimpses of fantasies involving him) to know other people thought he was — he was one of the most popular boys in the school, and not just with silly teenage girls, most of the boys thought he was a decent bloke too. In a very Hufflepuffish sort of way, she meant, genuinely friendly and honourable and just all around pleasant company. But again, supposedly, she'd hardly ever spoken to him before.
She supposed he didn't look offensively ugly, or anything, but she wouldn't have known he was particularly handsome if she hadn't heard people saying so. But then, apparently she was bent — because of course she was, she hadn't really expected she wouldn't be (there was no way in which she wasn't a freak) — so she guessed that checked out.
She was confused what the hell he was doing here, the Hufflepuffs would have their own tent, but she didn't have to wonder for long. He walked up to her with a rather awkward smile, asked, "You alright, Potter?"
She was starting to wish people would stop asking her that — honestly, it wasn't that bad, she hadn't even broken anything... "Yeah, I'm fine. What's up?" seemed more polite than what are you doing here?
Holding the broom out, "I managed to catch up with this before it crashed into the stands."
Liz glanced down, and oh, that was her broom, okay. She had wondered where it had gotten off to... Taking her broom back, quickly checking over it for any nicks or cracks — the 'runes' were on the inside (somehow), so any surface damage was unlikely to do anything, but even a single broken glyph could turn a broom into a death trap — Liz nodded up at Diggory. "Thanks. Sorry for running into you." She wasn't, exactly (though she could have done without falling like an idiot), but that was just the thing people said.
"Oh don't worry about, no hard feelings. It's almost impossible to fly straight in this mess." It should be even worse for her than it was the rest of them, since she was so much smaller the wind blew her around easier — Diggory didn't say that out loud, but he did think it, and Liz was a cheater. Which, it was slightly annoying that part of why Diggory was brushing the incident off was just because she was so damn tiny, but she guessed she'd take it. "You know, I wasn't sure I believed you actually flew a Cleansweep Eight until I saw it close up. I'm not sure how you fly like that on that thing." He also thought that the Potters definitely could have afforded a new Nimbus, which was generally thought to be the superior broom for seekers (Diggory flew a Nimbus 2000), but he didn't say that out loud either.
Liz smirked. "It's called skill, Diggory, maybe you should get some."
She'd thought it was fifty-fifty whether the older boy would be offended by that, but he just chuckled, shaking his head to himself. "Thanks, Potter, I'll look into that," he drawled, blithely sarcastic. "See you back up there in a few minutes."
"Yep."
And Diggory walked off without another word, nodding at Mark as he passed by. Watching him step out into the rain, pulling out of his pocket and unshrinking his broom to fly off — that was a feature some of the more expensive brooms had, but Liz hadn't thought it was worth it — Liz couldn't help feeling vaguely annoyed. She hoped the people in the stands couldn't see into the tent. If people had been able to make out that they'd talked, there'd definitely be gossip about it later, and certain people in the study group would want to know all about even that brief of an interaction with the super popular and super handsome Cedric Diggory, and Liz was not looking forward to that tedious nonsense. She wondered whether she could just hide in Slytherin for a few days until people got it out of their systems...
The time-out only lasted a few minutes after that, Liz spent the whole time in front of the heater, warming her fingers. She had been starting to lose feeling in them, they were getting those painful tingles in the heat. Hooch was awarding a penalty shot to Hufflepuff — running into someone like that was against the rules, but it had obviously been an accident, it actually hadn't been certain whether she would or not — but Miles wasn't worried. Ordinarily he might be, Diggory was the only Hufflepuff who had a chance getting a shot past him one-on-one, but the wind made it a lot harder to accurately throw the quaffle, and a lot of the spins and shite plain wouldn't work at all, so it shouldn't be a problem.
Not long after Liz's fingers stopped aching, warmed back up to normal, Hooch finally called them back out. With a few reluctant grumbles, they picked up brooms and started walking, shoulders squaring in anticipation of getting drenched again. Before they stepped out into the rain, Draco asked, "Liz, you sure you're good to fly?"
Liz resisted the urge to shoot him a glare. "I wish people would stop asking me that."
"It's okay if you can't keep playing." Adrian stepped out of the tent, cringing a little as he was instantly soaked by the rain. Mounting his broom, "That's what the alternates are for, you know."
She sighed. "I'm fine, it really wasn't that bad." After a last breath in the warm, still air under the tent's enchantments, Liz stepped out into the rain.
Honestly, they were being so ridiculous, what was the worst that could happen?
፠
Liz woke up in pain.
There wasn't a slow return to consciousness, instead starting awake all at once — so the pain hit all at once as well. It was hot and sharp and intense and just too much, Liz could hardly tell where it was coming from, washing out everything else, for a time it was as though she'd been reduced to nothing but an amorphous, disembodied sense of agony.
But in a rush, much of the pain tapered off, and she could feel her own body again. She was laying face-down, a texture to the cloth against her chest and face that was immediately familiar, though it took her a second to identify it — she was in the Hospital Wing. The pain was still there, intense and sharp, throbbing hot with each breath, and she could actually tell where it was coming from now. Her right arm, worst just above the elbow but extending done from there in little twinging sparks — that shoulder hurt too, but duller and cooler, not nearly as bad — and all through her chest, more to the right side than the left — she immediately started trying to force her breaths shallower, though that didn't really help much.
The worst of it was lower down, though she couldn't pick out where it was centred very well, just a big blot of stabbing agony. Despite the fact that it felt rather like she imagined being stabbed with a red-hot knife might, she couldn't say where the stabbing was happening, exactly — definitely somewhere in her middle, but...in her back, maybe? That would make sense, since she'd been put face-down, but she couldn't really tell...
She could tell that she wasn't wearing a shirt or anything, and wasn't covered with a sheet either, kept warm instead by that charm of Pomfrey's, like sitting out in the sun. Normally that might bother her, but fuck, it hurt too damn much, Liz pressed her face into the mattress, her hands fisting in the sheets, desperately trying to control her breathing, breathing only made it worse...
A shivering sort of tingle, fingers running along the back of her neck, she felt a mind slip into hers — she tensed, but she was too unfocused to even try to resist, whoever it was slipped through her as easily as a rock tossed into the Lake. But they didn't pay any attention to her thoughts, or even reach for her memories, instead reaching deeper into...well, Liz didn't know what was down there — there must be something, but she'd admit she wasn't the most self-aware person in the world. He (Liz was suddenly sure it was a he) tweaked something deep under the surface, Liz had no idea what, and a second later—
Liz let out a moan of relief, sagging limp against the bed. The pain was...just...gone. Abruptly, no gradual fade at all, one second awful and the next just nothing. She had no idea how whoever it was had done that, but shite, that was incredible...
For some reason, going from being in agony to feeling nothing was one of the best things she'd ever felt, all but shivering with pleasure. She had no idea if that made any sense.
"Try to move as little as possible," said a voice from somewhere above her — male, low and smooth, a note of intensity to it she was too dazed to read. "You are badly injured — under ordinary circumstances, you would never be allowed to wake this early in the healing process. I have set a compulsion to prevent you from feeling any pain at all, but it is still there, and moving too much may exacerbate your injuries and set back your recovery."
...Oh. That was...rather intimidating, when she thought about it, that someone could mess with people's minds at such a fundamental level that they couldn't even feel pain. Of course, if they could do that they could also do the opposite, make them feel all the pain it was possible to feel all the time, which, yeesh. Whoever it was had needed to get all the way through her mind to get to the place he could do it, though, so that probably wasn't something she had to worry about — if they could get deep enough in to do that, she would probably already have other problems.
It was only after following that thought for a moment that she realised who this must be. "Er. Sevus." She frowned — her tongue was thick and sluggish, that hadn't come out right.
"Yes, Elizabeth, it's me. You're at the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, in a private room. It's a little after three in the morning of October the Twenty-Fifth. What do you remember?"
"Mm, do you seep ever?"
"I sleep enough." She doubted that, the whole summer she'd never seen any sign he ever went to bed. "What do you remember, Elizabeth?"
As scattered and unfocused as she felt at the moment, not very much. Quidditch, they'd been playing Hufflepuff — it was the hardest time they'd had against Hufflepuff, but that wasn't because the other team (who were still not great), the weather had been miserable. She'd even run right into Diggory once, oops. "I fell an, no tha's not..." She'd been fine after hitting Diggory and falling, though nobody else had seemed to believe her, she'd been allowed to keep flying anyway. The game had gone on a while after that, but she didn't...
She remembered feeling terribly cold.
"Dimenors." She took a slow breath, tried to concentrate, focused on making every sound exactly correct. "De-men-tors. They were there. Yes?"
"Yes, they were." Even as out of it as she was right now, Liz could still feel the vicious fury wafting off of him.
Normally she found anger in other people somewhat scary, like a raging fire burning around her (she wasn't so un-self-aware to not realise that was because it reminded her of Vernon), but this wasn't so bad. Severus's anger, at least when he got very angry (murderously angry), was colder, like a biting wind in the dead of winter — implacable and deadly, yes, but...calmer, somehow, she didn't know. She didn't really like the cold, but it was almost even pleasant...though she was sure she'd feel differently if it were pointed at her.
"The dementors were drawn to the excitement of the match — such a larger congregation of people must seem a feast to them, even with their enthusiasm diminished by the abominable weather — and supposedly their handlers were not able to prevent them from invading the grounds. I'm told the Headmaster had very stern words for them, but I may have to pay them a visit myself."
"Don' get caught."
"Excuse me?"
"If you gonna kill them, don' get caught. Prison is bad." The thought of Severus maybe murdering the people responsible for letting soul-sucking demons onto the grounds was vaguely satisfying, but the thought of him going to Azkaban was...bad, it was bad.
She caught a glimmer of reluctant amusement from Severus, felt herself smiling against the bedsheet. "You were successfully able to resist their influence to some degree — at the very least, you didn't attempt to strike at them this time. However, distracted by that effort, you failed to react to an incoming bludger." Oh, crap... "The force of the impact separated you from your broom but, as the bludger approached from behind, you were still moving at speed. You struck one of the Hufflepuff goal posts before falling the rest of the way to the ground."
"...Oh." That didn't sound good. "How bad?"
"Your injuries were serious, though not so serious you needed to be rushed to Saint Mungo's. You had several broken bones, some of them fractured in such a way as to cause further damage to the surrounding tissues. You suffered a concussion and a punctured lung; there was also some significant bruising around your liver, pancreas, colon, and right kidney, though we found no lacerations. All of the broken bones have been repaired, as well as the damage to major organs, though some of the damage to tissues surrounding the breaks remains — it is considered advantageous to allow injuries to muscles and tendons to heal more slowly, lest the new tissues form in such a way as to impede full range of movement. Some significant bruising also remains. These would be the source of most of the pain you felt on waking."
Right. That was...very scary-sounding, but it also sounded like Severus and Pomfrey had already taken care of most of it, so. She'd probably be stuck in hospital for a while, and that would suck, but it couldn't be for that long. Normal injuries from, like, falling and shite, magic was really good at healing that kind of thing — from curses or weird magical accidents and the like, that was what they mostly had trouble with.
Though, the more she thought about it, something didn't quite seem right. "Why wake me up?" If she was healing just fine, there should be no reason for him to do that...
"While you remained unconscious, we were unable to..." Severus trailed off for a moment, something slimy and unpleasant lurching through his head — despite not know what that even was, Liz had her own cold tingle of unease in response. "I need to do a brief examination to determine the extent of the damage. We are in a private room, nobody can see inside. I have even temporarily warded the door against Pomfrey. May I proceed?"
...Overly cautious, but okay. Liz nodded, her cheek rubbing against the bed.
A second later, Liz understood why Severus had made it absolutely clear that nobody was going to walk in on them. She heard a rustle of cloth, a breath of air crawling up her back — there must have been a blanket or something covering her from maybe about the waist down, and Severus must have just removed it. Maybe if she were properly conscious at the moment, she'd be far more uncomfortable with that — she had no idea how much she was wearing right now, but it probably wasn't very much — but at the moment she hardly managed more than the vague thought that, oh, this is awkward.
Besides, she was certain Severus must have seen her naked before, the other times she'd ended up in hospital after nearly getting herself killed. That didn't make it better, exactly, but at least she knew for certain he wasn't going to do anything later on to make her uncomfortable about it.
"Curl your toes."
Random, but okay, she could do that — it didn't really feel right, numb, but she was out of it, and Severus had compelled her not to feel anything, so that wasn't really a surprise. Though she picked up more of that odd feeling from Severus, didn't know what that was about.
"Can you feel this?"
"Feel what?"
"No, then. How about this?"
"...No." She was starting to get a nasty feeling, her stomach lurching, he couldn't be thinking...
"And this?"
"No."
"And this?"
"No. Sev—"
"And this?"
Her breath catching her throat, she turned her face into the bed, folding her hands in her hair, pushing her down. It took her a couple seconds to force herself to even say a single syllable, panic already beginning to steal her breath, unpleasant tingles sprouting over her skin. "No."
"And this?"
"No."
"And this?"
"No," barely a gasp, wasn't even sure Severus could hear that.
"And—"
She twitched at the touch on her sides, just under her ribs, squirming away — and then groaned at the odd feeling shooting through abdomen. It didn't hurt exactly, not sure what that was, but it certainly wasn't pleasant. "Yeah, I felt that."
"I thought so." Severus replaced the blanket or whatever over her — this time Liz was paying attention, it must be coming at least up to her hips, but she didn't feel it at all, nothing, from her feet up to her arse, just—
Her voice coming out in a croak, constricted by her chest and throat clenching in on her, she said, "Severus, what's wrong with me?"
"You struck the goalpost at an unfortunate angle. Most of the force was focused across your back, though the whiplash of the sudden stop also badly strained your hips, shoulders, and neck. You suffered multiple fractures of your second, third, and fourth lumbar vertebrae, as well as—"
Her spine, he meant — some kind of noise was wrenched out of her throat, she had no idea what it was, her fingers tightening in her hair, she—
She twitched in surprise at the hand on her wrist, at the unexpected physical contact Severus's feelings were washing over her, self-recrimination and sympathy and...not quite fear, she didn't know what that was exactly. "It's all right, Elizabeth. Mages learned how to induce nerve growth millennia ago — Pomfrey and I are fully capable of healing spinal injuries here in the Hospital Wing. I promise you, Elizabeth, you will fully recover."
The panic abruptly leaving her was an almost physical sensation, like a bucket of water poured over and then running off, leaving her shivering a little in its wake. Her throat still hurt a little, feeling all too weak and shaky, she took a moment before trying to speak, carefully wiping her face on the bedsheet. (Uncle Vernon hated it when she cried.) Once she thought her voice would work properly again, she said, "Okay. Thanks."
Even as she said the word, she was struck with an odd, warm, clinging feeling she didn't quite recognise — hers, not Severus's, but even as she was feeling it she had no idea what that was. Just, even though she knew it wasn't going to be a problem anymore, that she might have... It was horrifying, still lurking at the edge of her thoughts, cold and terrible, the back of her neck crawling, she was very, very relieved she wasn't going to be... She loved magic, that was all.
(She hated feeling trapped.)
"No, I didn't think... I should have explained beforehand, but I wasn't certain whether the neural cord had been seriously damaged. You might have been perfectly fine. I didn't want to worry you unnecessarily, but in my caution was instead unintentionally cruel. That was foolish of me, I apologise, Elizabeth."
"It's okay." She was too relieved she wasn't going to be paralysed forever to be too concerned over Severus maybe doing things in the wrong order. "Is that why you woke me up, to check?"
"Yes and no." Severus's hand lifted away, she felt a tingle of magic. She turned her head to the side, trying to find him. It was rather darker in here than she'd expected, she couldn't really make out much — besides Severus, sitting in a chair not far away from the edge of her bed. He wasn't wearing the robes he always had on at school, instead what looked very much like a muggle-made tee shirt. (In a dark colour, of course, this was still Severus.) He looked tired. "There is a decision to be made, and we are nearly out of time to make it in.
"We can fully heal spinal injuries, yes, and the process is simple enough that it is something we can do here at Hogwarts — however, the average student would likely be sent home for the duration of their recovery. The volume of magic necessary to artificially induce nerve growth is immense, and even then the process is slow. Depending on how extensive the damage is, it could be anywhere from two to six weeks before the break is fully healed."
Liz was struck with an unpleasant, nauseating shiver — she did not want to be stuck in hospital for six weeks.
"And that would not be the end of the recovery process, I'm afraid. As modern healing techniques currently stand, it is impossible to restore neural connections exactly as they were — the connections will be restored, but they will almost certainly be...mixed up. The inevitable result of this is a long recovery period as the brain relearns which action is associated with which signal. There may be some sensory confusion, though that should clear up quickly, but you will more or less be forced to learn how to walk all over again."
...Oh. That sounded completely terrible, honestly. In fact, fear was already crawling up her chest again, she shoved it down as well as she could, taking a few slow, conscious breaths. "How long?"
"I can't give you a precise estimate — it varies depending on the severity of the damage, how the broken cord was set before the process begins, and a host of other factors. Generally, the young adapt more quickly than the old, so your recovery would be toward the beginning of the window. My best estimate, including the healing of the cord itself, is two to three months."
"I..." Liz swallowed, shaking enough she almost choked on it. She couldn't help it, she was trying to keep calm, to concentrate, staring at the stitching at the cuff of Severus's shirt, but it wasn't really working very well. "I don't... I don't know if I can do that, Sev..." She'd meant to say his whole name, but she'd run out of breath before she'd gotten to it, the rest coming out in a silent whisper. She'd gotten to the important bit, so that would just have to do. Turning her face into the mattress, uncomfortably squishing her nose a little, she focused on taking slow, deep breaths — which was making her chest feel funny, she guessed that would probably be pain if she were capable of feeling it right now.
There was something going on Severus's head, but Liz was too busy trying not to freak out, she didn't have the attention necessary to try to figure it out. "There is an...alternative course of action. This is why I woke up you up — it will no longer be viable once the sun rises."
"...What?" Was it some kind of ritual magic? That was the only thing she could think of, it might be a thing that only worked the same day the injury had happened. Except, the old Celts had considered sunset to be the end of one day and the start of another — like how Samhain was the new year on their calendar, same idea — but she guessed the ritual could be from somewhere else...
"I am familiar with a ritual—" Yep, called it. "—that will immediately restore a segment of the spinal cord to its condition as of sunrise yesterday. It is something I was taught during my time with the Death Eaters — as you might imagine, the Dark Lord was loathe to tolerate extended periods of convalescence from his servants if it could be prevented. If you do decide to undergo this ritual, you will still need to remain in the Hospital Wing for a few days, as your other injuries fully heal. But, before the end of the week, you will walk out."
Liz shivered, squeezing her eyes further shut, as the horror creeping over her abruptly dribbled away, again. Severus just kept doing that to her tonight. "Let's do that, then."
"You may wish to reconsider, once you have heard the particulars of how this ritual must be conducted. First, it is necessary to— Well," Severus said in a little huff, something unpleasant flickering in his head, "let's use layman's terms, shall we? I would need to cut you open — with a knife, no magic — enough to reveal your spinal column. I would then carve runes directly into your vertebrae, one above and one below the break — again, barehanded, no magic allowed. In the process, I will certainly need to sever certain tendons, which will prolong your recovery by a day or two — you will likely still be immobilised when you wake up to ensure your spinal column isn't pulled out of alignment, but that should only be necessary for the first day. I would then direct a very large volume of magic through your nervous system, which will certainly be...unpleasant. Not painful, exactly, but I'm told it can be quite overwhelming.
"You must remain conscious for the entire process. It won't interfere with the ritual for me to immobilise you, so the slightest movement won't ruin it, but I can't provide anything against the pain — none, whatsoever. I will need to remove my analgesic charm and the compulsion, and I cannot give you anything to replace them. The subject's pain is, in fact, the larger part of the sacrifice fueling the ritual. You will need to feel all of it."
...Oh. She guessed that explained his hesitation, then. Liz let out a long, shaky breath, her fingers fisting in the sheets. But, given the alternative, there was really only one thing she could do. "Will it work?"
"I have successfully performed this exact ritual a handful of occasions in the past. No matter what else you might fear, I would not risk your health on magics so potentially dangerous were I not certain I could perform them with reasonable competence." Well, no, she didn't think he would, exactly — she did regularly take potions he brewed for her, after all... "It will work, Elizabeth, you have my word on that."
Good. To go through...that, and still end up stuck paralysed for who knew how long, would be, just, the worst thing ever. She took another breath, nodded. "Do it."
"We should arrange a signal beforehand, should it prove too much for you and you wish to stop. Since you will be immobilised, it will have to be—"
"No."
There was a brief pause, a flicker of something she didn't catch in Severus's head. "Excuse me?"
"No, we don't n-need one. I don't w-w—" Liz bit out a frustrated sigh — she was shivering, which was stupid, she wasn't even cold. Instead, she took a second to concentrate as hard as she was capable of at the moment, flung a thought off toward Severus's mind. No matter what happens, I want you to do it, even if it's too much for me.
"Elizabeth..." Since she'd reached closer to his mind she could actually feel that now, unease and reluctance and...well, other things, she couldn't actually interpret them all. There was a whole big mess in there, actually. She could tell he didn't really want to do this, that he would hate having to cut her open with a knife while she screamed, but he would do it if she truly wanted him to — if he hadn't been willing to, he wouldn't have made the offer in the first place.
Honestly, she was rather surprised that he found the thought of causing her pain as...repulsive as he apparently did, but she guessed she probably shouldn't be.
"I don't know if you fully understand what we're talking about here. This well, all but certainly, be the single most viscerally unpleasant experience of your entire life, past or future."
Well, she guessed it was a good idea to get it out of the way, then.
"Elizabeth..."
She had absolutely no idea how to get him to understand, and she kind of just...wanted to get it over with. Now that he'd explained what— Yes, it was scary, it sounded horrible, and she was certain it would be extremely unpleasant. But it still sounded better than being paralysed for as long as a month, and then needing to relearn how to walk. She hated feeling trapped, she suspected she would go completely mad. At the very least, she would be almost incomprehensibly miserable until she regained the ability to get out of bed on her own.
So, since she had absolutely no idea what to say, she showed him instead.
It only lasted a couple seconds — sitting on the sofa while Uncle Vernon yelled at her, hardly listening, there was nothing she could do, then bent over the arm, the fabric scratching at her face and her chest, his hand on her shoulder holding her down (it would be over soon, it had to be over soon) — before Severus tossed the memories aside, leaving Liz shivering, struggling to breathe. Okay, maybe that had been a bad idea — if she couldn't have a pain potion, she doubted she could have a calming potion either, and freaking out before they could even get to the start of the ritual would not be any help at all.
But before she could even really worry whether she was about to lose it, a compulsion crashed over her, smooth and cool and soothing. Almost like one of her potions in mind magic form, the mess in her head was immediately inundated, washed away by a tide of unshakeable calm. She felt herself relax with a sigh, her lips twitching — she'd had no idea that Severus could do that.
Under ordinary circumstances, compelling another person into tranquillity would be considered a flagrant violation of privacy.
It was, she guessed, but at the moment she was far too delirious to actually care. Even without anything for the pain, she thought her injuries were be dragging her down anyway, she probably wasn't quite in her right mind.
...She was going to regret showing Severus those memories later. He'd never directly asked what had happened, and she'd never volunteered it (she wasn't to speak of what went on at home), but she wasn't thinking straight, she'd just...done it. She had no idea how she would feel about that once she was more herself. Laying here right now, the thought of the long recovery was, just, absolutely repulsive, she couldn't, it was much worse than...letting Severus know...things. But, once she no longer had the threat of being trapped in her own body hanging over her head, she had no idea whether she'd feel the same way.
Oh well, it was too late to do anything about it now...
"I understand." There was something off about Severus's voice, low and thick, something shivering and shifting in his mind. She felt a warm pressure at the back of her head — not heavy enough to push her face into the mattress, gentle, almost cautious. It took her far too long to realise that was Severus's hand. "I won't stop until it's finished. You will walk out of here before the end of the week, I promise."
Oh. Um. Good? She wasn't sure if she was supposed to respond here...
Had Severus ever touched her before? Besides her hand when they were apparating, or that one time brewing, she meant. She didn't think so. That was just...kind of weird. It'd probably be seriously fucking uncomfortable if she weren't still dazed from that neat calming compulsion thing, so, thank god for small favours, she guessed...
Severus let out a little, reluctantly-amused huff. The weight of his hand lifted away, and he retreated a few steps — she wasn't looking, but she could feel his mind and magic pull back. After a couple seconds, something softly falling to the floor, "If you have any requests of me before I get started, now would be the time."
Oh, they were doing it right away? She guessed that made sense, Severus had said they had to do it before sunrise. Somewhere in his direction, she heard a trickling of water, she turned her head that way to look — a bunch of her hair had fallen in the way, it took multiple tries to push it off her face.
Severus was kneeling on the floor a few feet away from her bed, in front of a big bucket of some kind. She noticed he'd also removed his shirt at some point, and holy crap he was a scrawny bastard, he definitely needed to eat more. Also, there were a bunch of scars scattered here and there, but she wasn't really surprised by that — he had been in a war, after all. None of them looked that bad from here, they must have just been little nicks...or, he was a healer and a Dark Arts nerd, maybe he'd just broken the curses well enough. He was washing his hands in water in the bucket, scooping some up to get all the way over his elbows. Salt water, she knew...though she wasn't certain how she knew that. Seer shite, maybe? Fuck knows...
"Um. Tell Dorea and Hermione I'll be okay? They're prolly worrying right now..."
"You will be able to tell Miss Black that yourself soon enough — she's in the Hospital Wing right now as well."
Liz blinked. Oh, right, Dorea was really sensitive to dementors, she'd almost forgotten. "Is she okay?"
"Miss Black suffered an intense seizure episode, as well as some minor blunt-force trauma sustained convulsing against the stands, but she will recover. She will certainly be released from the Hospital Wing before you."
Good, then. "Er...maybe ask Hermione— No, she can't get in my room. Um. Could you bring my book bag up here? I'll be so bored stuck here without anything to read..."
There was a flicker of amusement from Severus's head — though it wasn't very loud, suffocated under the cool, steely resolve overtaking him. He stood up, water still dripping from his fingers, and walked back toward Liz's bed. There was a knife in his hand now, a long narrow handle with a small, triangular, one-sided blade. Goblin silver, looked like, Liz had one just like that in the knife set he'd given her for her birthday.
Looking at the thing, knowing what Severus was about to do with it, made Liz shiver, her skin crawling, she turned her face back against the bedsheet.
"You could simply call Nilanse to retrieve it for you once you wake up."
...Oh. She'd completely forgotten about Nilanse. She swallowed down the nerves crawling up her throat, after a couple seconds managed to force herself to speak. "Right, I'm stupid, never mind. Nothing else, then."
"I'll make sure the elves have some of your ice cream made."
Despite herself, Liz giggled, more of that odd not-pain shooting through her stomach. "You're so silly. Oh, sorry for cutting you up with a knife and carving runes into your bones, here, have some apology ice cream..." She bit her lip, trying to stop herself from laughing, but it wasn't working very well, Liz feeling all too unsettled and, she didn't know, something...
"I suppose I've been called worse. Here, bite down on this." He put whatever it was right in her hand — smooth and soft, a length of the fake silk mages used for lots of things, she thought — so she just went ahead and did that. Tasted vaguely salty, must have been right about the water. "First, I will dispel the warming charm, then I will immobilise you, and then I will dispel the analgesic charm and reverse the compulsion, in that order. I will need to perform a brief neutralisation ritual before making the first incision. I will start with the lower set first — it must be below the break, so I doubt you will feel much. As there is no use in prolonging this any longer than absolutely necessary, once I have begun the process I will not slow down for anything, unless some serious complication presents itself.
"This is your last chance to change your mind, Elizabeth. Do you truly wish for me to do this?"
Liz took in a long, deep breath through her nose. And she nodded.
(In retrospect, she would decide the ritual had definitely been the correct decision — it turned out, the human brain was terrible at remembering pain anyway. It'd sucked at the time, of course, but she couldn't remember it very well afterward.)
(Also, she would later watch it in her pensieve, very neat. Could have done without all the screaming, though.)
Lady Narcissa Malfoy
I know this letter is coming very much out of the blue. I'm not sure what the protocol is for writing to someone you've literally never met before, so I apologise if I'm doing something wrong. While we have never met, Draco has spoken of you now and then, though I think I've actually heard more about you from Severus — I understand you two know each other. I also apologise if I come off somewhat silly, as I'm currently in hospital and not quite at a hundred per cent.
It's been a couple days already, so I imagine you know about what happened at our quidditch game against Hufflepuff. Draco wouldn't have told you, because he doesn't know, that I was very seriously injured. I'm told I'll be let out of hospital by the weekend, but without a very intense healing ritual from Severus it would have taken me two to three months to recover. He didn't even get permission from Dumbledore to do it first — he doesn't like that kind of magic, I think Severus suspected he would say no — so Pomfrey is still furious with him.
And I admit I'm furious too — whoever thought it was a good idea to put soul-sucking demons around a school is a total idiot, especially since Sirius proved he can get past the damn things when he escaped in the first place. This is the second time I've been hospitalised because of them. We have been given assurances there won't be a repeat incident, but I'm less than fully convinced, to put it mildly.
I'm about to be very blunt, but I'm tired and dizzy from the pain potion, so I just don't have the attention to be subtle about it at the moment. The rumour is that your husband has influence over the Minister, in part because of bribes. I assume both of you want the dementors far away from your son nearly as much as I want them gone. I thought about writing to your husband directly, but I thought he would be less likely to listen to me, because of the whole Death Eater thing, and you're friends with Severus, so I figured you couldn't be too bad.
The point is, I'm sure your husband is already bribing Fudge to get rid of the dementors, but it apparently isn't working. I want to help. I'm not sure how I can help, though. I have a tonne of gold, but I expect you've already got plenty of that. I am annoyingly famous for painfully stupid reasons, maybe we could use that somehow? Give a statement to the paper or something, and have them make a lot of fuss about it, get everyone angry at Fudge? I could do an interview with someone, I guess, but I'm not sure I want to do that, they would probably ask me questions I don't want to answer. But I really want the dementors gone, so if that's what's necessary, I'll do it.
If you're not interested, don't bother replying. Also, please don't curse anything you send me — I'll have to bring it to Severus, and then he'll ask me why I'm writing you, and it'll be very awkward.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Potter
፠
Lady Elizabeth,
Fret not, child, you haven't offended me with your, shall we say, less than perfectly dignified letter. As you have guessed, Draco has spoken of you with me, and it was mentioned at one point that you were raised in ignorance of the culture of your birth. You were not raised among us, and so I could hardly expect you to be familiar with the protocol. For the moment, you are still young enough to anticipate being accorded a certain degree of leeway, though were I you I would seek to be educated in these matters as soon as possible.
And you certainly do know how to entice a curious person — hinting at such a mystery as that, in the very first paragraph! I am familiar with Severus, though he has hardly mentioned you any more than he would the average student. That you speak of him with such familiarity is something I cannot think of a reasonable explanation for. I find myself fascinated, I confess.
Not so long ago, Severus asked me how he might go about arranging a Latin tutor on behalf of one of his students. I find myself wondering whether you might be that student, but that possibility raises more questions than it answers.
You have my sympathies for your recent hospitalisation — quidditch is dangerous enough without the presence of dementors, of all things. It is a travesty that the abominations have been placed so near a school for children, one I have been protesting most strongly ever since I first heard of the Minister's plans. Their assault on the quidditch pitch marks the second deviation from the arrangements made over the summer for their placement around the grounds. A handful of Hit Wizards have already been fired over their foolish decision to have the things search the train at the beginning of term, and I imagine there will be consequences for this incident as well.
Though, like you, I am sceptical whether these consequences will stop a third incident, or fourth or fifth. So long as the dementors remain in the Valley, the students at Hogwarts will be in danger. Unfortunately, the Minister has so far proven to be uncommonly resistant to our overtures. You may not be aware of this, but Cornelius was the official responsible for the report that saw Sirius remanded to Azkaban without trial — it is likely that he sees my cousin's escape as a political liability for himself, and potentially even fears exposure for improper conduct if too much attention is drawn to the Edinburgh incident. Without knowing precisely what is motivating him, it may prove difficult to persuade him to abandon his current course of action.
It is possible, however, that public pressure may sway him to a degree we and our allies speaking privately cannot. Under the proper circumstances, an interview with a sympathetic reporter could prove very useful. Your reluctance is understandable, though you needn't worry so — before you consent to such a thing, it would be wise to arrange with your interviewer which topics are to be discussed. It isn't always easy to come to an ideal agreement, but you are perhaps underestimating the service you would be doing to any reporter's career by choosing to have your first interview with them above any other in their profession. I don't imagine it will be difficult for you to find favourable treatment.
Should you wish, I would be happy to help arrange a suitable interviewer. I would ask in exchange that you discuss with me what you plan to say on the topic of the dementors — your public statements and our private ones will be most effective in their purpose if they are tailored to support each other. If this isn't something you wish to do, I won't attempt to convince you otherwise. I understand it can be quite the daunting prospect the first time.
I feel I must briefly address the passage just at the end of your letter. I realise we are not political allies, and you have likely been given every reason to think ill of me. To be blunt myself: the Dark Lord is gone, and I would never harm a child. I have no cause to wish to assassinate you, and even if I had I wouldn't do so out of moral considerations.
And besides, it would be intolerably inelegant of me — a lady should always seek to achieve her ends without bloodying her hands.
With warm regards,
Narcissa Malfoy
November 1993
This was, undoubtedly, the single most idiotic thing Dorea had ever done.
But she didn't think she had a whole lot of choice at this point — something had to be done. That the Ministry had decided to post dementors at the school in the first place was seriously damn stupid. She meant, Sirius had already proven he could get past dementors when he escaped from Azkaban, what the hell was putting them around Hogwarts supposed to accomplish? Dorea had known the Ministry could be incompetent sometimes, but Jesus Christ, that made her head hurt.
Especially since dementors were not healthy for people to be around long term. It was messed up that they used them as prison guards to begin with — most other magical countries destroyed them whenever they turned up. (Which was possible, despite what was commonly claimed in Britain, it just required somewhat exotic light magic and a high channelling capacity, so it was impossible for the average mage.) In fact, Azkaban was definitely torture, against a whole host of international laws, and not just in the muggle world. This wasn't the sort of thing that was talked about very often, but the ICW had demanded Britain close Azkaban repeatedly over the last century or two. There'd been an assumption internationally that Dumbledore, with his well-known hatred of dark magic and compassion for common people, would do something about the place after being made Chief Warlock — but then he just...hadn't, for seemingly no reason that Dorea could see. It was an especially big issue these days — Sirius wasn't the only person who hadn't gotten a trial, Azkaban was even more horrifying when there wasn't any due process — and Britain was becoming increasingly diplomatically isolated, at least in part because of Azkaban. It wasn't to the point that they necessarily had to do anything about it yet, but according to Andi magical Britain might find itself in serious trouble a decade or two down the line.
There'd even been whispers in some of the more radical post-Grindelwald states — Saxony, France, Sicily — of overthrowing the British government and fixing the problems they had with the country, Azkaban one of many things on the list. That wasn't exactly likely, Dorea was just saying, it was a sign of how many people had a problem with magical Britain's justice system.
(Supposedly, the UK had been refusing to act as an intermediary with other muggle governments on magical Britain's behalf for decades now, their communications with the mages increasingly hostile. Dorea really wasn't surprised.)
Posting dementors in a prison, Dorea could maybe see how people might convince themselves that was okay, but around a school? Chronic health problems were less common among the magical population — not by nature, purebloods were even more susceptible to congenital issues, they just had magic to fix them — but there were still students who had them. Apparently, any psychological issues students might have were exacerbated — part of the result was people acting out more, more arguments and fights going on in the halls, but there was also a noticeable change in class, people more distractible and forgetful. Dorea had talked to several people who were seeing their marks slip already because they just didn't have the attention to remember things properly, sometimes completely forgetting written assignments.
And that was the least of it — according to Liz, Severus was even more busy than usual this year, since Pomfrey was blowing through potions that attempt to correct emotional imbalances, like depression and anxiety (which supposedly didn't even work very well), at several times the ordinary rate. A handful of OWL and NEWT students had had full-blown panic attacks — which wasn't necessarily unusual, but they normally happened in the run-up to exams, and there were never so many — and there'd already been at least one serious suicide attempt, a sixth-year Slytherin Dorea was only vaguely familiar with. And there could easily have been more she hadn't heard of, for all Dorea knew.
And, of course, dementors weren't great for people's physical health either. There were various conditions that didn't mix well with dementors, but the most obvious and most frequent was epilepsy — since that happened to be one of those things mages couldn't just get rid of, it was relatively common. There'd been a couple dozen students who'd already known they had epilepsy, but there'd been a noticeable uptick since the dementors had shown up, with one Dorea knew of (a muggleborn second-year Hufflepuff) having his first seizure ever when the dementors searched the train. Most Dorea had talked to felt their health had noticeably worsened in only a couple months, some (like Dorea) getting migraines for the first time, and partial seizures were far more common.
Also, drop attacks — as one might imagine, that wasn't a great thing to be happening in a building with so many damn stairs.
Dorea wasn't the only person in the school with the stealing away. She didn't claim to know who all of them were, it wasn't the sort of thing people talked about, but there were a handful of purebloods she knew for certain had it. All of them were getting migraines — that was pretty common for adolescents with their condition, according to Pomfrey — but so far only half of them had had breakthrough seizures.
Lucky her.
Maybe almost dying as a child had messed up her baseline here, but Dorea didn't really think it was that bad, yet. The migraines were awful, yes, but they weren't really that hard to deal with — just shut herself up in her room, take Snape's potion, and wait for it to go away, no big deal. And so far she'd only had two seizures that she'd noticed. It was possible she was having partial seizures without even knowing about it, but nobody had said anything about her acting off at times, and also she thought Liz would notice that, so probably not. Of course, that she was saying only two seizures was kind of messed up, considering she hadn't had any for nearly half her life, but.
That second one, though, yeesh. She knew she'd had a few when she'd been little where she'd hurt herself — she'd managed to give herself a concussion once, slamming her head against the tile floor in the bathroom at her primary school — but that was a long time ago now, she didn't really remember. Turned out? Up in the middle of the quidditch stands was a seriously terrible place to have a seizure. She'd been horribly sore when she woke up, bruised all to hell and with a few throbbing muscle sprains — as well as inappropriately giggly, having lost all ability to recognise faces (which was apparently common in dementor-induced seizures, for some reason), and also with no feeling in her right arm. So, that was fun.
Though Liz had been hurt far worse than she had. This time, she'd managed to avoid striking back at the dementors, preventing herself from repeating the incident on the train...so instead she'd been knocked off her broom and broke half the bones in her body. (Dorea suspected whatever she'd done to hold herself back had tied up her magic somehow, cutting off that instinctively-resisting-injury thing mages did.) Apparently, she'd even broken her spine — when she'd first woken up late that night, she'd been paralysed from the waist down. Which was, just, horrifying to think of, when Liz had told her about it, Dorea had gone so weak in the knees that she would have fallen straight to the floor if there hadn't been a convenient chair right there.
Not that it seemed to bother Liz much. Snape had done some kind of healing ritual on her, in the Hospital Wing without Pomfrey's knowledge, to instantly heal spinal damage that might otherwise have had her laid up in bed for months — Liz didn't explain what it'd involved, exactly, just that it'd been extremely painful, and Pomfrey was very annoyed with "Severus" over it. (She still had no idea why Liz called him that, she used all the other professors' surnames...) It'd been a little unnerving, actually, when Dorea had talked to her the day after Liz had still been a bit...delirious. Apparently, flooding a person's nervous system with magic could have odd psychological effects, Liz hadn't been all there those first two days. She was better now, but still, it'd been weird.
But despite how horrifying all that was, Liz still seemed remarkably unphased by own serious injury — it was a week later now, and besides a new interest in magics to protect herself from dementors, she was apparently over it already. Dorea didn't know how to feel about that, she would still be freaking out over nearly being paralysed.
(After being released from the Hospital Wing on Friday, Liz had casually gone right back to quidditch practice on Saturday, ridiculous...)
Anyway, since it was really not good for the kids to have dementors around, various people were trying to get the Ministry to get rid of the things, but they weren't having a whole lot of luck. Fudge was very, very determined to catch Sirius, which did sort of make sense — he had been the DMAC official handling the Edinburgh incident, and it wasn't great for him to have the first escape from Azkaban on his watch. It didn't make sense to try to catch him with dementors, given he'd already proven he could get past them, but nobody had ever accused Fudge of being especially intelligent. That he was a bit simple-minded and gullible was exactly why the Lords of the Wizengamot had put him in that office in the first place...except that was supposed to lead to him being easily manipulated, but that didn't seem to be working out this time.
They had been making progress...so Sirius then had to break into Hogwarts and slash up the Fat Lady's portrait like a bloody madman. Because of course.
What the hell was he even trying to accomplish, anyway? The rumour was that Sirius was trying to murder Liz — which was patently absurd, but oh well — but she was in Slytherin. Though, when Dorea thought about it, it was very possible he didn't know that — it'd been mentioned in a few articles in the Prophet back in '91 (most particularly in the one about her being a parselmouth), but she didn't think it'd come up since. So, if someone accepted the Sirius-is-totally-a-loyal-Death-Eater theory, Dorea could almost understand how they could convince themselves Sirius trying to get into Gryffindor made some kind of sense.
But, since Dorea knew that was nonsense, she had no idea what the hell he was doing. And proving that he was actually at Hogwarts had sabotaged their efforts to get the Ministry to remove the dementors at the worst possible moment.
It seemed the obvious thing to do was to make sure Sirius was spotted elsewhere, far away from Hogwarts. And the best way to make that happen was to tell him to.
So Dorea needed to talk to her father.
She almost couldn't believe she was doing this, it was just surreal, but she was trying not to think about it. She needed the dementors gone, and this was the best thing she could think of to help make that happen. It was better to focus on that than...anything else.
(Besides, if she thought about Sirius too loudly Liz might overhear, and probably stop her from doing something she realised was incredibly stupid.)
It wasn't truly that difficult for a parent to track their child or vice versa with blood magic. In fact, she suspected that was how Sirius had found her over the summer — at least, she was pretty sure that shaggy black dog she'd spotted a couple times had been Sirius, she'd never seen him before and he'd always run off before she could get a very good look. The day after Hallowe'en, Dorea had called one of the Black elves to pop her straight from her dorm room to the library at Ancient House, and it'd only taken a couple hours poking around before she found a spell by which she could call close blood relatives to herself. Sort of like an emergency beacon, she guessed, if someone were kidnapped or something and needed help. It could be used to target almost any relation (though only within a couple generations), all she needed to specify Sirius was to use specific runes.
Runes drawn in her own blood, because it was blood magic, obviously. Dorea had...mixed feelings about that. Blood magic wasn't inherently evil, of course not — a lot of very important healing techniques were technically blood magic — but she'd never actually done any before. She'd never done any ritual magic at all, in fact...besides potions, she guessed. She wasn't sure how she could possibly hurt herself if she screwed up something so simple as this, but she wasn't certain whether or not she'd be able to get it to work. And she couldn't practise it, because accidentally calling Sirius into the school sounded like a bad idea. But, at the same time, if she couldn't get it to work the first time, having to go out into the forest and cut into her arm so she could draw runes in her own blood more than just the once sounded like a very bad idea. Also, she wasn't even sure it would work if he happened to be a dog at the time — considering wilderfolk existed at all, she kind of suspected it wouldn't.
After hesitating for another day, Dorea had instead written a note telling him where and when to meet her, then gone up to the Owlery to borrow one of the school's. And then spent the next couple hours feeling very, very stupid.
Dorea slipped out of the common room shortly after midnight. The halls were filled with a heavy, almost tangible silence, the quiet a physical pressure around her head, and blindingly dark, but Dorea didn't dare light her wand — as dark as it was, the light would be visible from halfway across the dungeons, it would be far too easy to be caught. One hand trailing along the stone of the wall just in case, she passed the lower reaches of the Grand Staircase, before long came to the vicinity of the Hufflepuff dorms. The Hufflepuffs usually took the Grand Staircase up and down, but there was a smaller, side stair near Pomfrey's office just past the dorm.
Of course, Pomfrey was still in there — the door was open a crack, light pouring out into the hallway — so Dorea carefully snuck past, placing her steps as softly and silently as she possibly could. She let out a tense sigh once she was on the other side, climbed the spiralling stairs up to the ground floor. A short walk and a couple turns down halls, and she came to a door leading outside near the greenhouses — the same way Pomfrey went between her office and her classes, she assumed. The door was locked, unsurprisingly. Dorea cast a few detection charms, looking for any sign opening the door would trip an alarm somewhere, but she didn't see anything. It only took a basic unlocking charm to get it open, and she stepped out onto the grounds.
Shite, it was cold — Dorea hugged her cloak around herself, the enchantments in it quickly chasing away the chill from that first breeze. It was an intensely dark night, moon and stars hiding behind the clouds. (It was Scotland in November, after all.) Dorea walked between the greenhouses, their geometric forms looming black and silver in the wan light. It was too dark to read the signs at the doors, so she counted them instead. One, two, three...
There were small gaps between the greenhouses, often thick with weeds but shielded from the wind and warmed by the nearby enchantments (if rather less than inside). Of course, the weeds and the warmth meant things (like snakes) sometimes hid out here, but her detection charms didn't pick up anything — so she set down her basket and proceeded to clear some of the weeds (brown and frail from approaching winter) with cutting and cleaning charms, mostly just to have something to do with herself.
Sirius wasn't here yet. He must have gotten the note — she'd sat with a book in the Owlery waiting, and the one she'd sent had returned less than an hour later without it. But she was a little early, it was possible he was still on his way...or maybe the note had been intercepted...
Thankfully, a Lady of the Wizengamot attempting to help a member of her family on the run from the authorities wasn't actually illegal. She was pretty sure even a single day in Azkaban would literally kill her.
She was still working at clearing the weeds — not because she hadn't already made enough space, just to keep herself occupied — when she heard a rustling from nearby. She froze, glancing around. The narrow gap between the greenhouses made it pretty much impossible for her to tell which direction the noise was coming from, but it didn't take her long to spot the figure at the end of the alley. It was dark, but her eyes had adjusted enough she could still make it out: it was a dog, large, with shaggy black fur. He was larger than she'd expected, actually, easily above waist-height on her, which was slightly absurd. She had seen dogs this big before (though only from a distance), but still.
Dorea had the absurd thought that this dog was larger than Liz — without the deceptive volume of her hair, it was probably pretty close. Which was ridiculous, she had to bite her lip to keep herself from laughing.
For a moment, they both stared at each other, silent, neither of them moving, Dorea's heart in her throat and the backs of her arms tingling.
...He didn't look well. It was heard to tell for sure, too dark, and he was clean, his fur rather tousled and tangled but not, like, matted with dirt or blood or dripping with muck or anything. But under the thick mess... Dorea didn't have a lot of familiarity with dogs — Mum didn't really like animals much, she barely tolerated keeping an owl — but even she could tell this didn't look right. That he was thin, hardly more than skin and bones (and fur). He wasn't literally starving to death, given he had the energy to be up and moving around, enough presence of mind to read her note and come to the right place at the right time. But he clearly wasn't doing well.
Dorea nudged the basket with her foot, pushing it a little closer toward him. The dog's head dipped a little, probably looking at the basket, before looking back up at her, head tilting to the side, ears cocked. She glanced away, warm enough despite the cold that she suspected she was blushing a little, her stomach churning with pointless nerves, she shrugged. "I don't know, I figured you'd probably be hungry."
He let out a little doggy huff. There was a shiver of magic on the air, what little light there was seeming to bend, and suddenly there was a man crouching where the dog had been a second ago — his face half-hidden by a halo of tangled black hair, wearing a nondescript set of cheap robes in bland dark colours. (Not the Azkaban prisoner uniform, he must have stolen something to wear at some point.) In a blink, before Dorea really had time to observe much more than that, a wand was suddenly in his hand, he gave it a swirl, a rush of magic surging outward.
Dorea cringed, took a startled couple steps back, but whatever spell that was washed over her with no effect but a vague, crawling tingle. A detection charm of some kind, she thought, checking for eavesdroppers. Sirius waited a few seconds before he started casting more spells, each coming to effect with a thrum more felt than heard — she wasn't sensitive enough to distinguish such things, but she guessed those were probably privacy spells. Once he was done, he stared at her, still and silent, for a long moment.
She'd never seen him in person before, of course, but she had seen pictures, she could still tell he must have lost a lot of weight. His face seemed narrower and sharper than she recalled, deep pits in his cheeks and around his eyes, bones sticking out at his wrists, the base of his neck, his jaw. He was extremely pale, enough the lines of his veins were visible under his skin even in the dark of night, which given how pale Dorea was might just be genetic. His hair didn't quite reach his shoulders, looking oddly crooked, as though he'd haphazardly chopped at it with a knife, with the same odd kinks and curls the dog's fur had had (looking much more natural on a person), forming a dense, black, misshapen halo around his head.
He continued to stare at her, unnervingly still and intense, dark eyes thick with...something, she didn't know. Dorea just stared back, because she didn't know what the hell else she was supposed to do. He did look awful, yes, but despite how weird all this was, she felt her breath catch, her heart pounding in her ears, an unpleasant thrill rushing through her.
She really didn't think she'd ever meet Sirius, honestly.
"Dorea," he barely managed to whisper, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat, glanced away for a second, before fixing her with that uncomfortably level stare again. Somewhat more steadily, he asked, "You do go by Dorea, right?"
Wasn't a completely crazy question, a lot of purebloods actually went by their middle names. (Hers was Melaina, after Sirius's grandmother, who'd apparently been one of Sirius's favourite relatives, but she'd died before Dorea had been born.) It took her a second to find her voice, it was strangely difficult to breathe properly. "Yes."
"Right." He kept staring at her for another second before — the motion looking rather stiff, uncomfortable — straightening out of his crouch to his full height. Not that it made that much of a difference, since he was a pureblood, and purebloods tended to be tiny — she couldn't be sure without comparing them side by side, but she was pretty sure Mum was taller than him. He approached slowly, cautiously, as though trying not to scare her off, before gingerly sitting on the ground a few feet away, his back to the side of one of the greenhouses (which she'd cleaned only moments before he'd shown up). He dragged the basket closer to himself, but he didn't open it right away, still staring up at her. "Thanks. For this."
Dorea shrugged, glancing away, face warming and stomach churning in embarrassment...which was an odd thing to be feeling right now, she didn't know what was up with that. "It's nothing."
"It's not. I've mostly been eating out of muggle dumpsters since I escaped."
She guessed it was good thing Sirius had been familiar with the muggle world before he'd been imprisoned, then — mages didn't really have food waste for him to steal. She hesitated for a moment, before saying, "You know, you could just compel muggles to give you food." Liz had never said, but Dorea was pretty sure that was how she survived during the summer holiday.
"That Fudge bloke really wants me dead, I thought the Oracles might be helping the Hit Wizards track me."
If the Oracles were helping track him, he would have been caught already. "Dora says the Oracles can't be convinced to do anything but look out for threats to the Statute. Besides, if the Oracles were looking for you, the Ministry would definitely know you're an animagus."
Sirius blinked up at her for a second. He'd opened the basket by now, but hadn't taken anything out of it, seemingly too busy staring at her, as well as too distracted by that bit of news. "They don't? I thought they would...but then, they aren't warning people in the papers..."
She figured out what he was asking after a couple seconds. "I don't think anyone said anything? I'm not sure who all knows about it. I guess Dora might feel she'll have to if they ask, being an Auror and all, but, well..."
"Little Nymphadora's an Auror now? Huh." Sirius shrugged. "I guess they'd want to keep her out of it, family loyalties and all that."
Dora was actually very relieved to be excluded from the manhunt. She remembered Sirius, from back when she'd been a little kid, and had actually liked him, she'd been crushed when she'd been told he'd been sent to Azkaban — she really didn't want to help get his soul sucked out. "She's still in her apprenticeship but, ah, she's been assigned to Sir Moody." Sirius had done his apprenticeship under Moody too, so the Aurors wouldn't put him on the manhunt either, for similar reasons.
"Right," Sirius muttered, nodding. Cautiously, awkwardly, he plucked a sandwich out of the basket, and took what was possibly the most uncomfortable-looking bite out of something Dorea had ever seen anybody take ever. It was kind of weird, didn't know what was going on with that. (Was it just because Dorea was standing here watching, or...) After chewing a little bit (again, awkwardly), he said, "It's Ninety-Three, so, you'd be thirteen now, right?"
"Yeah?"
He rubbed at the side of his face with one hand — his wrist and his hair in the way, Dorea couldn't really make out his expression. "I don't know hardly anything about you. Last time I saw you you were this high," he said, holding a hand up next to him. Toddler-height, she would have been not yet two when he'd been arrested.
"Oh, um." Out of a lack of anything better to do with herself, Dorea sank to the ground, leaning against the greenhouse wall a few feet from him, the basket set between them. "What do you want to know?"
His shoulders shook with a single low, rough laugh. "Everything, of course."
Dorea looked away, blindly into the brush scattered in the gap between the rows of greenhouses, fingers idly playing with the edge of her cloak. "I don't think we have time for everything just now." She did have class tomorrow morning...though Transfiguration was one of her best classes, so she'd probably be fine...
"I know. I'm just..." Curious, he probably meant.
Which, she guessed that was understandable. She had come out here to talk about something in particular, but Dorea didn't see why she couldn't just...indulge him first. The problem was, she had no idea what to say. This was just...really weird. It didn't feel quite real, all floaty and dream-like, details jumping out at her all random and disconnected — the speckles of light in the castle windows, glinting darkly off the edge of one of the greenhouses, the wind tugging at her hair, the creak of a branch in the near distance, a dead vine she'd missed near her knee, Sirius's long thin fingers awkwardly shifting. "I play piano."
He turned a slightly-raised eyebrow at her. "Oh?"
"Yeah, um. One of those proper young lady things Aunt Cassie taught me, you know."
"Aunt Cassie the Auror? Is she still around?"
"Er, no, she moved on just last summer."
"Ah." Sirius was quiet for a second, turning back to his sandwich. "I was never great with music, honestly. I tried to pick up guitar during my Jimmy Page phase, it was a disaster." Somehow, Dorea found she was entirely unsurprised a teenaged Sirius had gone through a Jimmy Page phase. "Didn't Abbie used to play violin?"
Dorea blinked — nobody called Mum that. "Er, yeah, she still does a little bit." Not a lot, having little kids around and starting back at school didn't give her much time to, but. "Um, I don't play as much as I used to either. Because, you know, spend most of my time at Hogwarts now."
He glanced back at her. "You know, the seventh floor, between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, there's that empty corridor? Has that barmy tapestry with the trolls in ballet crap."
That was only vaguely familiar, but it sounded distinctive enough it shouldn't be hard to find. "Yes?"
"The wall across from it, walk back and forth three times, thinking to yourself you need a place to practise. The castle will give you one."
...Oh. Okay, then. Was it, like, a room that became whatever the person wanted? Did many people know about that, because Dorea had never heard of it before... "Thanks, I'll, er, try to remember. Um, what else to talk about, I don't know..."
"You knew Aunt Cassie?"
"Oh, yeah, er. The Tonkses, um, I think Mum was writing Andi earlier than that, but I met them when I was...six or seven, I think. Um. At some point Dora decided I was her favourite baby cousin, it was actually kind of annoying, she can be a bit much. And, Aunt Cassie decided I needed to be taught to be a proper Lady Black, so I saw plenty of her. Oh, Grandfather Arcturus too, but I only met him a couple times. He died back in spring Ninety-One."
Sirius nodded along through that ramble, the sliver of his face she could make out seeming a little... She didn't know, it almost looked like a grimace, but she couldn't decide what kind of one. At the end, though, he let out a little snort. "Good riddance, crusty old bastard. You know, when I told him about your mother and, well, you, he threatened to castrate me."
Dorea really wished she could say she was surprised — some of the things she'd heard about some of the Blacks, they were not pleasant people. "Yeah, he...wasn't very nice. I didn't go to his funeral because I didn't think I could pretend to be sad well enough." Well, technically, Aunt Cassie had suggested she not come for that reason, and Dorea had taken the excuse when it'd been offered. It made her feel a little, she didn't know, ungrateful or something to think it, but her great-grandfather had been a total arse, and he could rot in hell. "Um, who else, as far as Blacks go... I never met my grandmother, Aunt Cassie asked but she refused to meet me. She died a couple years ago now."
Sirius scowled. "You didn't miss anything."
That was the impression she'd been given, yes. "Besides that, it's just the Malfoys, I think. I have met them a couple times, fancy person meetings over tea, you know how it is. Aunt Narcissa is nice enough, I guess, but Draco's annoying. He takes after his father."
A guffaw quickly going wrong, Sirius broke into a fight of coughing, hunching over his half-eaten sandwich. "Oh god, I just—" Cough. "A little eight-year-old kid with the poncy hair and Lucy's damn cane, that's too funny..."
It was, kind of — the pall of awkwardness around Dorea was broken enough to smile, a little bit. "He's not that bad. Well, he is a bit of a melodramatic ponce, I guess, but he's trying to be nice to Liz, so, he could be more annoying."
"Liz?"
"You know, Ellie Potter. She prefers Liz." Honestly, Sirius, she's only your goddaughter...
"Oh." Sirius blinked at her for a second, face oddly blank. "She... Her mum called her Hazel," he muttered, somewhat absently, as though not fully aware of what he was saying, eyes a little unfocused.
Yes, well, Liz wouldn't know about that, would she. Dorea waffled on what to say about her for a moment, before just continuing with her previous thought. "Right, well, Draco was a complete prick for most of first year, but, they're both on the quidditch team now, so he's trying to be nice. We're not all friends, exactly, but things are a lot less tense now, at least."
"They're on the same team? I thought any son of Cissa and Lucy's should be in Slytherin."
Oh right, that hadn't come up yet, had it. "He is. So are me and Liz."
Sirius was still and silent, just for a second, before taking another bite of his sandwich. "Oh, okay. What position does she play? Do you play at all?"
"Um, seeker, and no, I don't. Medical reasons. I'm fine now!" she blurted out, when Sirius twitched around to stare at her. "It's, er, it was kind of scary for a little bit there, it's why I ended up meeting Andi when I did, she's a healer, you know. But I'm fine, I'm just not supposed to be doing things where I might, you know, get knocked over the head really hard. I actually got out of the practice games in flying class because of it — there weren't any bludgers, but Andi was worried I'd fall badly, you know."
Somehow, Sirius had managed to go even paler than he'd been a moment ago. "Oh, shite, you got the stealing away, didn't you."
"Yep."
"I'm so sorry Dorea, that– that's on me, I think." Sirius had hunched over a little bit, tearing his eyes away from her to brood down at his sandwich with what looked like some effort. Before he'd looked away, she'd caught the look on his face, half-terrified and terribly guilty. Which was a little silly, but she guessed not totally crazy, since it was generally thought of as a pureblood disease.
But it couldn't have been all his fault — as she understood it, it was recessive, Mum would have to be a carrier too. (Or, it could be a random mutation too, she guessed, but still.) And she was...mostly fine now. So, while she could understand why he might be feeling that way, there was really no reason for Sirius to be being all weird and guilty about it. "You don't need to apologise for that, Sirius, it's not like you gave it to me on purpose or anything. Besides, Andi took care of it. It was really scary at the time, but I'm...well, not fine, but I'm not dying or anything."
"Right, I just... I had a cousin who had it, and, it was—" Sirius cut off with a wince, staring blankly out into the night. "It's a scary thing, is all. And Abbie wouldn't have known to recognise it, and I..." ...wasn't there. He didn't actually finish the sentence, but she was pretty sure that's what he was thinking.
Dorea looked away, suppressed the urge to shift awkwardly in place. "Yes, well, it worked out alright. It's fine." Silence hung for a second — Sirius probably didn't have any more clue where to move on from there than she did. Or, maybe now would be a good time... "That is kind of what I wanted to talk to you about."
"Oh?" He tensed, just slightly, as though anticipating being yelled at. Which was very silly, but okay.
"You probably know better than most people that dementors aren't exactly good for your health." Sirius let out a little reluctantly-amused scoff. "Long story short, the students are having far more emotional and health issues this year — there are other things, but there's been a lot more seizures than normal, and—"
"Wait, what?! The dementors are affecting the kids from all the way out there?" Sirius's eyes had gone wide, he'd actually dropped the remains of his sandwich, horror and guilt clear on his voice.
Forcing her voice softer, trying not to sound accusing — after all, it wasn't his fault the Ministry was so stupid as to send dementors after him in the first place, and it was obvious he hadn't been aware of the risks — she said, "It seems so. Liz said Professor Snape told her that dementors alter the character of the ambient magic around them, and since the Hogwarts wards are pulling in so much magic from the environment it extends all the way to the school." Well, Snape hadn't explained that part, but it seemed obvious to Dorea. "The effect is diminished with distance, yes, but it still isn't good for you."
"I had no idea. I don't... I don't know that much about dementors, honestly, I..." He swallowed. "Has it been... For you, I mean."
He wasn't going to like hearing this, but if it got him and the dementors the fuck away from Hogwarts, as far as she was concerned that was a good thing. "Yeah, I haven't been doing great. After the ritual when I was a kid, I didn't have a seizure once until this September. I just had a second, worse one on Sunday, and I've been having migraines...about once a week, I think."
"Oh, fuck me..." Sirius's head tilted back, he let out a deep, heavy sigh. "I'm so sorry, kid, I didn't think— Shite..." His hands came up to rub at his face, his voice dropping a bit, thicker. "I'm far too good at fucking things up on accident. Got Jamie and Lily killed, myself locked up like a gullible idiot and left you and Abbie alone, and now this..."
While Dorea kind of did want Sirius to feel bad about at least the last one, she still felt a twinge of guilt at the misery on his voice. She had no idea how the Potters dying was Sirius's fault — maybe he'd refused to be the Secret Keeper for some reason? — but the second one was something they could talk about. "We're fine. Me and Mum, it wasn't— I mean, things weren't perfect, but we were okay. If you were...worried, about that. You know."
Sirius let out a little, doubtful huff. "Really, I expected you...I don't know, to be angry with me, I guess. Getting myself locked up for a decade like a fucking idiot."
"I...kind of think Azkaban is punishment enough?" The place sounded completely horrible. Even for people who had murdered literally a dozen people, psychologically torturing them with weird soul-sucking demon things until they simply can't remember to feed themselves anymore was probably a little much.
...Dorea belatedly realised she was sitting right next to someone who'd murdered literally a dozen innocent people — not on purpose, collateral damage, but still. Somehow she'd entirely forgotten about that little detail for a few minutes there. It was...probably best not to stress over that too much right this second? After all, she doubted Sirius was in any way likely to hurt her...
He barked out a harsh ha! his head tipping back to rest against the wall again, staring up at the sky with a crooked, rueful sort of smile. "Fucking up did have a built-in punishment this time, didn't it? Bet Snivellus got a laugh out of the whole thing, at least."
Dorea had no idea who that was. "But yeah, no, not— I don't know, don't worry about that, it wasn't like I was simmering with resentment over you not being around, it's fine. Hard to be angry about it when I didn't remember you at all and never expected to ever meet you anyway." By the wince, that probably wasn't making him feel any better about it, but it was the truth, so, he just got to deal with that, she guessed. "If you do want to beat yourself up over one of the kids you're supposed to be responsible for, it should be Liz."
His head flopped over to frown at her. "What are you talking about? Didn't Hazel grow up with the Tonkses? I'm sure they were a thousand times better than my parents..."
She gaped back at him for a second. "What? Liz was supposed to go to the Tonkses?!"
That came out a little more loudly and forcefully than she'd intended, Sirius reared back a little, surprised. "Er...yes? I mean, I think so. It was common then to have a long list set up, being a war and all, and I think the Longbottoms were first, Alice and Frank, but, from what Bella was saying between the giggling — psycho bitch — they probably weren't an option anymore. Then it was the Tonkses, and after that was...the McKinnons? Not Marlie, one of her cousins, I forget who — I think she's still alive, last I checked. And after that...some Fawley, I think? I don't know, it's been a while since I've seen Jamie's will. I'm pretty sure Cassie Lovegood is down the line somewhere, because Lily's bloody mad."
Despite herself, Dorea couldn't quite hold in a (slightly hysterical) giggle — the thought of Cassie Lovegood of all people raising a child was somewhat ridiculous. (Though, with how much Liz liked duelling, she'd probably think it was a great idea.)
Sirius obviously noticed something was wrong, the confused frown getting deeper, quickly shifting into concern. "Who did she end up with?"
"She... I can't talk to you about this." She really shouldn't talk to anyone about this stuff, at all. She didn't know very much, but Liz would not be happy with her if she learned about it — and there was really no point to telling Sirius, being a wanted fugitive and all he couldn't exactly do anything about it, so...
"Dorea..."
"Liz is very private, and things she's told me in confidence, I won't violate that trust, okay? I'm sorry." She wasn't, really.
Sirius gaped at her for a second, before glancing away, shaking his head to himself. "Are you sure you're not a Gryffindor or, I don't know, a Hufflepuff? Seems a little too honourable for a Slytherin."
She sniffed. "Of course I'm a Slytherin. There's no value in a secret if you don't keep it." Also, one should avoid risking important relationships over anything of lesser value if at all possible. With as...cautious as Liz could be, if she had good reason to think she couldn't trust Dorea, she probably wouldn't want to talk to her at all, ever — since Sirius was a complete stranger and a wanted fugitive (so they had no relationship, and he had nothing much to offer her), her relationship with Liz was more important than rubbing his nose in how much he'd fucked up on her account (as satisfying as it could maybe be to actually have someone to blame for the mess that was Liz's life). That just seemed like common sense to her.
Chuckling to himself, he grumbled, "Fair enough. If it'll break a promise you made to her, you don't have to tell me."
Not a promise, exactly, but some things didn't need to be stated explicitly. "Thanks. Besides, it's too late for you to do anything about that. You can do something about the dementors. They showed up at the quidditch match a week ago, you know — I had another seizure, which was bad enough, but Liz was knocked off her broom and broke half the bones in her body, including her spine."
Sirius gaped at her for a second, horrified. "They– They let the things onto the grounds? What the fuck were they thinking?! Is she okay? Healing spinal injuries, fuck, that could take months..."
"She's fine, Professor Snape did some kind of healing ritual to fix it. She's unnervingly cavalier about the whole thing, seemingly doesn't care at all that she was actually paralysed for a little bit there." But then, when Dorea thought about it, Liz was often unnervingly cavalier about the consequences of her actions, but she was already aware Liz wasn't quite mentally healthy — not that she didn't have every right to be, considering she'd been abused who knew how badly for how long, she was just saying. "But she could have died, I could have died, all too easily. And the longer the dementors are out there, the more likely it is something like this will happen again."
"And what do you want me to do about that?" Sirius had tensed a little, his voice gone hard, cold. "Let myself be caught?"
"No, of course not. But you can let yourself be spotted far, far away from here — in the south, maybe even on the Continent. Hell, you could actually seek asylum in Holland or France or something." Though, she guessed they were unlikely to be willing to overlook the whole murdering a man and accidentally killing twelve bystanders thing. "It doesn't matter where, if you're not here then there's no reason to—"
"No! I'm not going to run away while that bastard's still in the castle! He's already killed Jamie and Lily, you can't expect me to stand back and do—" His voice had been rising, glaring across the short distance separating the two of them, but he suddenly cut off with a harsh choking noise — probably realising how Dorea was leaning away from him. For a few seconds, he struggled to calm down, breathing thick and heavy, his shoulders shivering, but he clearly decided he wasn't getting anywhere, surged up to his feet. He stalked back and forth through the narrow gap between the greenhouses, his steps heavy and rigid. As though attempting to bleed off energy, movements quick and sharp, hands occasionally coming up to run through his hair, breaths heavy enough Dorea could hear the hissing, the air around him crackling with furious magic restrained.
Dorea watched him pacing, her own breath frozen in her throat, skin stinging with fear. This had been a stupid idea, she shouldn't have come out alone. Sirius had hardly been an exceptionally stable man before spending a dozen years in Azkaban — and long-term exposure to dementors tended to make people...emotionally volatile. She didn't think Sirius would hurt her on purpose, but if he wasn't in his right mind...
She belatedly noticed the remains of the sandwich he'd dropped into his lap a couple minutes ago had fallen onto the ground when he stood up, the tomato glistening slightly in the night.
"I'm sorry." Sirius had finally come to a stop, a few steps away. He wasn't quite facing her, his shoulders stooped a little, one hand rubbing at his forehead. "I didn't mean to yell at you. It's hard to... Well, dementors fuck with your head, that's all. I'm sorry." He spoke barely above a whisper, sounding all too tired, and miserable, and...kind of pathetic, honestly.
Despite herself, despite the fact that Sirius was definitely dangerous and coming out here had been a terrible idea, Dorea felt her chest tighten with pity. Shifting in place, she dragged her heels up, hugged her arms around her legs. She couldn't say it was okay, because it wasn't, so instead she went with, "I understand."
By how his shoulders ticked up an inch, Dorea guessed he'd noticed what she hadn't said. His hand dropping from his face, arms going limp at his sides, his head tipped back, staring up at the blacked-out sky. "It wouldn't work. Getting spotted someplace, I mean. The dementors beat me here in the first place — if I try to lure them away, I don't think they'll fall for it."
"Um, we have people trying to talk Fudge out of ordering them away, it's just harder to do if he knows for certain you're here. Going somewhere else will make it easier to convince him." Hopefully. Dorea didn't know where the rumours Sirius was coming to Hogwarts had come from in the first place, so she had no idea whether or not it would be possible to talk Fudge out of it. "Why are you here, anyway? The rumour is you're trying to murder Liz, but I kind of doubt that."
Sirius scoffed. "Well, what a surprise, the Ministry's half right about something. I do intend to murder someone, it's just not Haz– Liz, I mean."
...Okay, if he was trying to avoid scaring her, he wasn't doing a very good job. "Sirius, you can't just murder someone."
"Why not? I've already been sentenced for it anyway. It's only fair."
Well, Dorea had meant that he would almost certainly be caught, or at least make the situation worse for himself, but that was such a weird thing to say she didn't bother explaining herself. "Who are you talking about?"
"Peter Pettigrew." Sirius wasn't facing her direction, but she could hear the hateful scowl on his face anyway.
"Um, Sirius, Pettigrew is dead. You already killed him."
"No, he's not!" he yelled, whirling around, Dorea twitching at the volume. "I had every intention of killing the bastard, but before I could do it he slipped away, like the bloody coward he is! He's in the castle right now!" a little hysterically, hand swinging around to point up at the stone overhead — the sudden movement had Dorea's heart jumping up her throat, but it was fine, he wasn't moving closer and his wand wasn't in his hand. "I saw his picture in the paper, I'd recognise that weasely little shite anywhere. Heh, weasely, appropriate..."
Dorea tried to swallow the knot in her throat — Sirius acting erratically wasn't making her any less nervous about being out here alone with him. "Sirius. What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the worthless worm who sold Jamie and Lily to the Dark Lord and got me locked up in Azkaban for a dozen years being at Hogwarts, with no one the wiser! At any moment, he could show himself and kill you and Liz, and by the time anyone noticed it would be too late to stop him!
"That's why I broke out, you know. It's hard to think straight in Azkaban, with those cursed demons everywhere, but that's not a thought they can do anything with. Besides make it worse, I was obsessed those couple weeks after the inspection — Fudge gave me the paper, of course I recognised him, I've seen the little shite often enough — and all I could think about was that I was just sitting there, fucking useless, and that bastard could hurt you or Hazel at any moment, and nobody else would do anything about it!"
On the one hand, that Sirius had apparently lost it enough to finally, after a dozen years of dementor exposure, find the motivation to escape over a delusion about the man he'd murdered still being alive, well, that was...kind of concerning. But Dorea hardly had the time to worry about that too much, because, on the other hand, "Wait a second, you saw a picture of Pettigrew in the paper?" There had been a couple after his escape, articles about what had happened back in '81 — very few people knew Pettigrew had been the spy in Dumbledore's group, so those articles tended to be rather annoying — but Dorea couldn't think of any from before.
"Yes, the rat! The Weasley boy's rat!" There had been articles about the Weasleys in the papers, though — the youngest dying at Hogwarts had blown up into a big scandal, people capitalising on the tragedy to throw mud at Dumbledore. It made sense that Sirius might have seen a picture of the Weasleys in the paper Fudge had apparently given him during his inspection of the prison (for some reason).
Of course, that didn't mean Sirius didn't still sound completely mad. "...You mean Scabbers?" Dorea was vaguely aware of the thing's existence — apparently Ron had a habit of yelling at the cat owners in Gryffindor about keeping them away, which as of this year included Hermione, she'd complained about it a few times.
"I don't care what the boy calls the bloody thing, it's Pettigrew!"
"Sirius..."
"I'm not mad!" he yelled, correctly reading her tone, hair scattered and eyes wild — looking very mad. "Look, what was the biggest piece of Pettigrew they found, eh? A finger, right! The rat's missing a finger, the same finger! The traitor cut it off himself after blowing up half the street, slipped away before Adjustment showed up, it's him, I know it's him!"
...Okay, Dorea was going to pass over that detail for a moment. "Sirius," she said, repeating his name again, "Pettigrew wasn't an animagus."
"He wasn't a registered animagus," Sirius said, scowling, "but then I'm not either, am I?"
She blinked. Good point. "You're certain Pettigrew's an animagus?"
"Yes, we all learned it while we were at Hogwarts. Everyone except Remus, I mean, he— Er..." Abruptly cutting off, a portion of the manic anger draining out of him, Sirius stared down at her, wide-eyed.
At the sign he was finally calming down, at least a little, Dorea felt herself start to relax. "I know Remus is a werewolf." Werewolves couldn't become animagi. Interestingly, if a person was an animagus before being bitten, they'd lose the ability to become their animal...but could then instead shift into a werewolf at will no matter the phase of the moon — they were only contagious during the full moon, and also kept their minds at all other times, but they looked like a werewolf. Which was interesting, she had no idea how that worked. The point being, Remus couldn't possibly have become an animagus.
"Right, good," Sirius said with a little sigh, apparently relieved he hadn't given his old friend's secret away. "Yes, we all became animagi, me, Jamie, and Pettigrew, during fifth year. And Pettigrew was a rat, that rat, I've seen him change more times than I can count, I'd recognise him anywhere, it's him."
...This was starting to sound less crazy than it had a minute ago. "Okay. Okay, wait. Everyone thinks you're the Secret Keeper, but it's actually Pettigrew. The Dark Lord kills the Potters, everyone suspect you but you know it's Pettigrew, so you go after him. But he knows you know, so he draws you into a trap, blows up the street, cuts off his finger and leaves behind his robes to fake his own death, turns into a rat and disappears."
Sirius nodded, a little more enthusiastically then necessary, his messy hair floofing around his head. "Yes! Yes, that's exactly what happened! I should have been more careful, seen it coming, but I was furious, not thinking straight — and I didn't think he was that clever, Peter was never that great of a wizard..."
"Um..." Dorea swallowed, it took a couple extra seconds to get it down, her throat not quite cooperating. "Er. Not that great of a wizard, I've heard that before, I don't think he would have had the power to take out a dozen people and tear up half a street with a single curse."
"He didn't, he shot a complex piercing curse with an elemental lightning aspect at the street — difficult, but not that difficult. I think he hit a gas line, he must have looked up where it was, picked the spot for that reason."
...That was pretty clever, actually. Except, "Hold on a second, how the hell did his robes survive a gas fire?"
Looking aside to scowl into the distance, Sirius said, "They didn't, obviously. Those poor muggle saps were burned up bad, but the two of us only got nicks from debris."
"So, wait, his robes were fine, but the others were burned, and— How did the Ministry people not realise that, there's no way Pettigrew and the others could have been killed by the same thing!"
"I hate to break it to you, Dorea, but the Ministry is a pack of idiots. I doubt they thought about it even that hard. As far as they were concerned, I was a Black, and they'd caught me red-handed — I told them everything then, about our trick with the Secret Keeper and Pettigrew blowing up the street, but they didn't listen to me, just shipped me straight to Azkaban. I never even got a hearing or anything. Which, I was an Auror, by law they had to dismiss me before charging me with anything, and they can't do that without a hearing, but I guess they can get around that bit if they just never charge me in the first place."
...She recalled the papers at the time (she'd looked the old articles up at some point, out of curiosity) had said Sirius had been ranting and raving about nonsense, he'd clearly lost his mind...but, what if he'd just been telling people what actually happened, and— Well, she guessed he might have sounded crazy, saying how the person he'd just murdered had turned into a rat and escaped, but... Was he...
Dorea had never believed Sirius had betrayed the Potters — she'd heard her family's explanation of what happened before the official story. But they'd never really doubted that Sirius had murdered Pettigrew, incidentally killing twelve other people who'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone she'd met who'd known him had admitted that that sounded like the sort of thing he might do, if he was angry and grieving and not thinking straight. But, if Pettigrew was actually alive, if Sirius had been completely innocent this whole time...
That thought was surreal, and big, the implication looming over her, Dorea felt shaky and... She didn't know what she felt, exactly, it was just a lot.
She swallowed. "I'm not saying I don't believe you, about what happened in Edinburgh." Not to say she did either, Sirius hadn't given her any proof, but it did sound plausible. "But I don't think Scabbers is Pettigrew."
"He is, I'm telling you, I'd recognise him anywhere."
"Yeah, but... Sirius, it's been a dozen years, why the hell would he stay a rat the entire time? And, there's the..." Dorea hesitated for a second, but just for a second — this wasn't that big of a secret, and surely Liz realised it would inevitably get out at some point. Besides, Sirius wasn't exactly likely to tell anyone any time soon. "Liz is a mind mage. If Scabbers were a person, I'm sure she'd..."
Dorea trailed off, frowning to herself. When she thought about it, she wasn't certain Liz had ever been close enough to Scabbers to tell one way or the other. Ron wasn't enough of an idiot to bring his pet rat to class, and Liz had never gone up to Gryffindor. The only time Liz would have been anywhere near Scabbers was when they were all in the Great Hall, or maybe passing each other in the halls — with all the other people around, and Liz just not paying that much attention to Ron in particular, it was very possible she never would have noticed. She didn't know how Liz perceived the minds around her, exactly, but...
"Okay, how about this? You go south, let yourself be seen far away from Hogwarts, we keep trying to convince the Ministry to remove the dementors. In the meanwhile, I take care of Scabbers."
Shaking his head, Sirius insisted, "No, you can't go after him. He's a pathetic little shite, but he's still dangerous — he killed a dozen people to cover his arse, Dorea, no, it's too dangerous."
...It probably wasn't worth pointing out that, until a few minutes ago, Dorea had been convinced Sirius had killed a dozen people getting at the man he'd meant to murder — and she still wasn't sure he hadn't, but there was at least a decent possibility he was innocent — and she'd still come out alone to meet him anyway. "I'm not going to try to catch him, I'll just look into it. How long do magical breeds of rat live?"
It'd looked like Sirius was about to interrupt, insist that he had to go after the rat himself, but at that he paused, blinking to himself. "Ah, it depends. Maybe five years, but no longer than eight."
"If Scabbers has been with the Weasleys longer than that, then there's a good sign something's going on right there — if Pettigrew were smart, he would keep moving around so people don't notice he's too long-lived for a rat, but. I have friends in Gryffindor, I can ask them to keep a look out for...any odd, un-rat-like behaviour. If it comes down to it, I can ask Liz to try reading the thing's mind, but that would might tip him off.
"However I get it, once I have solid evidence there's something up with Scabbers, I go to one of the professors about it. They'll have a much better chance of catching him than I would — or even you, for that matter." She'd try Snape, maybe, Flitwick or McGonagall. She would say Dumbledore — he had the political influence to make sure the Wizengamot started trial proceedings, and this was a personal matter to him, so he'd take it seriously — but supposedly it was hard to get a meeting with him.
Sneering, his voice in a low growl, "I don't want the bastard caught, I want him dead!"
"Sirius! Think about this for two seconds! Pettigrew is the only proof you have that you're innocent — if he's dead they won't listen to you, they'll just give you the Kiss and that'll be the end of it!"
He visibly deflated at that, his shoulders drooping and his mouth hanging open just a little. "I... I didn't think of that."
That seemed to be Sirius's big problem, didn't it. He shouldn't have gone after Pettigrew himself back in '81, either, he should have gone to Moody and told him the whole story first. If the Aurors had been aware Sirius hadn't been a traitor, they certainly would have done something about one of theirs being locked up in Azkaban without even getting a hearing. Not to mention, Pettigrew would have had a much more difficult time escaping if Sirius had had backup. Dorea didn't say anything, just gave him a flat, not-quite-accusatory stare over her knees.
After watching her for a second, Sirius's head tipped back, looking up at the featureless sigh again, letting out a deep, heavy sigh. Dorea felt herself relax as she noticed the last of the tension go out of him, the half-mad, manic anger gone for now. (Coming alone really had been a terrible idea, but she wasn't certain what else she could have done.) "Yeah, I don't... You're right. I don't like it, I don't want that scheming little bastard in the castle for a second longer, but... We'll go with your plan. Gods know mine hasn't worked so far..."
Trying not to show her relief on her voice, Dorea drawled, "Sirius, in order for your plan to work, you need to have one in the first place."
He barked out a single sharp laugh, shaking his head. "Yeah, guess I can't argue with that. Sorry, kid, I didn't... It honestly never occurred to me that I could clear my name, if I play my cards right. It isn't... I don't know, I guess I thought my life was over, I wasn't even thinking about me."
...Well, that was kind of depressing. "It's okay. I know Azkaban is... Well, I understand."
Sirius nodded, staring off between the greenhouses, his gaze distant, blank. Probably brooding about how completely awful Azkaban was, which, yeah, understandable. After a couple seconds, he started into motion with a twitch, limp and sluggish, walked back toward Dorea. He nudged the remains of his first sandwich aside with a foot before sitting down again — Dorea belatedly noticed he was barefoot, which was ridiculous, it was November. Looking weirdly self-conscious, he reached into the basket for a second sandwich. "How much longer can you stay out here?"
Dorea shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not too tired, yet, so maybe a little longer."
"Mm. I don't want to think about... Well, let's talk about something lighter." His lips pulled into a grin — it was obviously false, Sirius putting on a show of good cheer. "So! Who's that bloke your mum's shagging?" He took a casual bite out of his sandwich.
This wasn't going to be a problem, was it? She hadn't even thought of that...though she probably should have. "Sirius..."
Still chewing, Sirius shook his head, letting out a little hum. Once his mouth was clear again, "Don't worry, kid, I don't mean it like that. It's not like I expected Abbie to wait for me forever."
Oh, well. Good. Dorea belatedly realised that, if Sirius knew about Richard at all, that meant he probably had been that dog she'd spotted, but she'd already been pretty sure about that, so. "His name's Richard. He's nice."
"I assumed he must be, Abbie wouldn't tolerate him otherwise."
"...Sirius, Mum married you."
He laughed again, his smile now looking more genuine, finally leaving the unpleasantness of the last several minutes behind. "You got me there! But no, really, what are things like at home, I want to know."
Probably vaguely worried, if she had to guess — she was aware his own home life had been...not great, to put it mildly. He was also probably still guilty about not having been there, so... Honestly, she didn't know whether being told she and Mum were fine was reassuring or if he'd be...she didn't know, something. But he had asked, and now that she'd said what she'd meant to about the dementors and everything, there was no particular reason they couldn't talk about that.
So they spent the next hour or so talking about Richard, and her baby brothers, and their house in Maidstone, and Mum going back to uni, and eventually earlier in her childhood, back when they'd still lived in the London flat — when Mum started dating again, she hadn't bothered trying to hide it from Dorea (who'd been maybe five at most), but she didn't talk about that, seemed tactless. Though, some of it ended up being not entirely pleasant to talk about anyway.
She didn't actually remember first meeting Richard, one of the things she'd lost when her condition had gotten really bad. She knew Mum and Richard had gotten married in '87, but Mum had been preoccupied enough with Dorea being ill, they hadn't had the wedding until '89 — counting back the months from Ben's birthday in '88, and Mum had probably already been pregnant at the time, so, good thinking. (Sirius thought that was funny, at least, Mum had married twice and she'd been knocked up both times.) Dorea suspected her illness had been a motivating factor in Mum and Richard getting so close as quickly as they had, Mum seeking comfort like, but Richard had obviously been good for her, so that thought didn't particularly bother her.
Sirius wasn't happy to learn that she'd been homeschooled after her illness — she'd forgotten enough things that trying to go back to primary wouldn't have been practical, and she had magical culture things to learn anyway, but that her condition had gotten serious enough that she'd forgotten so much was rather concerning. It was hard to tell, he was trying to remain up-beat, but she thought he felt kind of guilty about it. She guessed it was true that if he'd been around he probably would have recognised it for what it was earlier, but really, it was done and over with, fretting over might-have-beens was completely pointless.
But she was trying not to get too drawn into unpleasant things too, so she mostly didn't linger on that stuff. Or at least she tried not to. Mostly she was just babbling off about random things, whatever came to mind, occasionally swiping one of the biscuits out of the basket. (House-elves made the best biscuits.) It was still kind of awkward — she hadn't expected to ever meet Sirius, she couldn't help occasionally glancing at him and thinking how surreal this was — but it was fine, she was trying not to let it bother her.
So she was a little surprised when she checked the time and found it was already after two in the morning. Breaking off one of his stories about Aunt Cassie — he had fewer than Dorea did, he hadn't known her well — Sirius said, "Do you need to get going?"
"Probably should. I do have class in the morning, so."
"Yeah, you're probably right." There was a subtle sort of bleak tone on his voice, Sirius's disappointment not quite fully patched over.
Dorea wondered what she should say to that for a moment, before deciding to just go with nothing. She pushed herself up to her feet, her legs protesting a little — it was cold out, and she'd been sitting still for too long, she'd gotten kind of stiff. "You can keep the basket. There's still food in there, and it's transfigured from a spare sock anyway." She'd tried with a sheet of parchment first, but it hadn't turned out quite right, it'd been far easier to get the woven texture of the basket when starting with woven fabric.
Having followed her up to his feet, Sirius twitched in surprise, turned to blink down at the basket. "Is it really? That's very good work for a third-year. How did you get it to stay for so long?"
"I anchored it with an enchantment." Dorea lit her wand, pointed it at the trio of runes carved into the crossbar in the middle of the top. "See?"
Sirius crouched down a little to get a closer look. "Well, I'll be damned. Did you come up with that yourself?"
"No, I asked Professor Babbling which runes to use, and Liz helped me with the carving. It's only been a couple months, but she's already surprising good with runes — she does study witchcraft stuff on her own time, and I think she's just good with languages, Cambrian is one of her best classes." She'd continued Cambrian into OWL-level while most people didn't bother — Dorea and Hermione were also taking it, but even with all four houses together it was probably their smallest elective class — and she was even looking into getting a Latin tutor...and also maybe learning French, which Dorea thought was a bit much. "I did the transfiguration itself, though."
"That's really good, seriously." He paused for a second. "It sounds like both of you take after your mothers, which...I'm a little relieved, honestly."
Yeah, she was too. James had had a few...less than ideal personality traits that would not pair well with Liz's magical abilities — it was honestly for the best that Liz was completely apathetic about most people's existence, it could be much worse — and the Blacks weren't well-known for being stable, Sirius had been especially volatile as a teenager. "Hopefully I don't take after my mother too much — I'd rather not get knocked up before I'm quite ready for all that, thanks."
Sirius laughed, because of course he did. He scooped up the basket and led the way off, walking Dorea as far as the door back into the castle. They lingered there for a moment, Dorea's boots making the grass rustle as she shifted her feet, apparently neither of them certain what to say. By the way Sirius was watching her, his fingers fidgeting, she suspected he was wondering whether she'd let him hug her.
She was kind of relieved he didn't ask — she didn't know what she'd do if he did, but it'd probably be painfully awkward.
Finally, he muttered, "I'm glad I got to meet you, Dorea."
"...Yeah. Me too." She pulled the door open, hesitated on the threshold for a second. "Take care of yourself, Sirius." She'd nearly said don't do anything too stupid, but that seemed...a little on the nose...
Sirius gave her a weak little smirk, as though aware of exactly what she was thinking. "I'll try. You—" He cut himself off, eyes flicking away for a second. "I'll see you later, kid."
She was mildly curious what he'd stopped himself from saying, but it probably wasn't important. For another second she lingered in the doorway, before finally stepping through, gingerly pulling the door closed behind her. She locked it with a quick charm, then let out a sigh, leaning forward to set her forehead against the cool wood.
Well. That had been...an experience. Kind of a lot had happened, and she didn't know how to feel about a lot of it, honestly. She'd never expected she would ever meet her father, and... The thought that he might have been innocent the whole time was, just, surreal, she didn't know what...
But never mind that just now — it was far after curfew, and she needed to get to bed. She would have plenty of time to think about all of this later.
On the way back to the dorm, she bumped into Norris. She had the whole damn castle to wander around in, but she just so happened to be in the same hall at the same time as Dorea — what were the chances of that? But, thankfully, Norris just rubbed against her leg for a moment, purring audibly, and then trotted off again. Dorea watched Norris until she'd vanished into the shadows, dumbfounded.
She realised Norris was a cat, but she was also an actual person with human-level intelligence and everything, okay, her doing shite like rubbing against Dorea's leg and purring was just weird.
...Being on Filch's cat's good side couldn't possibly be a bad thing, though.
Right, that was far more than enough to be getting on with for one night, she was going straight to bed now.
Oh my god, why is this so long...
Right, so that's a thing. Been a while since I've had an update for this fic — got distracted by other projects, wrote 100k words in November for my Dragon Age fic, what the hell. This fic got itself stuck in my head again, so there might be some more chapters in the near future, we'll see.
I'm sure there will in no way be plot consequences to Dorea deciding to handle the Pettigrew situation without Sirius's involvement. Everyone knows Sirius, being a responsible adult, handled that just fine in canon, certainly his strategy couldn't be improved upon by a child getting involved, don't be ridiculous.
Right, that's it from me, I'm gonna go before I do something silly like try to guess how many more chapters this year is gonna be. Bye.