The Good War

by inwardtransience

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

27. Third Year — XI

Liz knocked on the door, poked her head inside. "Do you have a minute, Professor?"

Severus's office off the common room only seemed to change in minor details over time. The furniture and the bookshelves were exactly the same as the first time she'd been in this room — which had been a very uncomfortable conversation, but at least she'd gotten the calming potions out of it — she didn't even think the little trinkets on some of the shelves were any different. There might be a couple new ones (presumably they were gifts from students over the years), but Liz didn't pay enough attention to the things to notice. The only thing that really seemed to change any was Severus's desk, but even then not much, just the geography of the papers and books on the surface shifting with time.

Unsurprisingly, Severus was sitting at his desk marking papers. He usually tried to be in this office for at least a couple hours a day — when he had the time, which he often didn't this year — just in case anybody needed anything, but that didn't mean he could just sit here waiting for someone to walk in. Liz honestly wasn't sure how he found the time to teach, run potions labs, keep Pomfrey supplied, have all those meetings with the Slytherins, and mark all the papers he assigned. Of course, she still wasn't convinced that Severus ever actually slept — it was possible he was doing most of the marking and brewing while they mere mortals were in bed.

His eyes flicked up to her, just for a second. "Come in, Miss Potter. Shut the door behind you." She did, flinching just a little as the wards snapped shut — they felt electric, despite knowing it was silly Liz instinctively felt like they would shock her. While she walked over to the desk, Severus made a few final marks on the essay before setting it aside to dry, the pen returned to its inkwell. "Elizabeth. You haven't had any issues, I trust."

With her recovery, he meant. "Nope," she said, dropping into one of the chairs across from him. "I'm fine. A little sore by the end of quidditch practice, but it wasn't so bad." Also, the scars on her chest ached pretty often now, but that wasn't so bad either, and definitely not related.

The air around Severus shivered with exasperation — she knew he hadn't approved of her going back to quidditch practice so soon, but he hadn't been able to come up with a legitimate medical reason why she shouldn't. "You haven't any tingling or weakness in your legs."

She tried not to roll her eyes. "No."

"And if you do, you will come to me or Poppy immediately."

"Yes, Severus, I will." Honestly, he knew full well how viscerally horrifying she found the thought of being paralysed, even temporarily. If she had any reason to think that ritual thing wasn't sticking, she'd be freaking the fuck out, chances were she'd track him down and...well, she guessed probably have a panic attack at him until he fixed it...

"Good." He let out a sigh, shallow and short, she almost didn't even notice. "So what brings you here today? I have no further news on your Latin tutor — I imagine I'll be able to arrange something starting after winter break."

Oh, right, Latin, she'd almost forgotten about that. In her defence, it'd been a busy last couple weeks. At least when he got that set up that would be something to do in Hogsmeade — their first trip down to the village had been a week ago, and Liz had honestly been kind of bored. "No, it's not about that. I've been researching dementors."

Severus's mind flinched just a little, with an uneasy sort of feeling Liz couldn't quite read. "A dismal topic at the best of times." The unspoken implication being that it was even worse when the things happened to be floating around the grounds. "I don't imagine there is much to find in the Hogwarts library outside of the Restricted Section, however."

"Not really, no. I checked the catalogue, and they come up in a bunch of history books — talking about the capture of Azkaban and its conversion into a prison, you know." The story went that the fortress on the island had been built by a small-time Dark Lord a couple centuries before Secrecy, one who'd had a penchant for capturing people to be tortured in his dungeons in creatively horrifying ways. The large amount of dementors found on the island had spawned from the Shadowlands due to the strength of his wards and the concentrated despair of his victims, and had likely caused his death — he'd died unexpectedly before the Aurors could put together the forces to uproot him, presumably Kissed by one of his own dementors.

So then the Ministry converted the madman's fortress into a prison, continuing his practice of torturing people on the island and essentially turning it into a permanent dementor breeding-ground. Because that was the reasonable thing to do.

"They're referenced in a few books on demons and shadow magic, but often only in general terms. I found a Healing book that talks about a few simple treatments for acute dementor exposure." Apparently, chocolate was recommended to counteract the lingering psychological effects, which was bloody weird — she had no idea how that was supposed to work, but Liz had ordered some dark chocolate anyway, and was eating a couple pieces a day just in case. "As far as fighting them off go, turns out the library is completely fucking useless. There's something called a Patronus Charm, apparently, but I haven't been able to find out much about it. It has only been a week, or not even quite, but I'm not sure how much more there is to find."

For some reason, Severus seemed faintly amused — it didn't show on his face at all, but Liz was a cheater. She had no idea what that was about. "I doubt you will find anything useful. Dementors are vulnerable only to powerful light battlemagic and certain exotic forms of witchcraft, all of which are dying arts in Britain."

"Wait, light magic is dying in Britain? I thought it was dark magic they didn't like."

Severus scowled, just a little, the air prickling with irritation. "You will find, Elizabeth, that the definitions used to categorise magic — or anything else in the world one might wish to describe, truly — can vary wildly between different social and political factions. When scholars describe a particular expression of magic as 'light' or 'dark', they are referring to a certain quality of the magic itself; often, when laypeople use the same terms, they are encoded more with historical, cultural, or moral intent. These determinations are often even subjective — a person raised in one cultural group may refer to a particular magic as 'light', while one from a different group may refer to the same magic as 'dark'.

"For an illustrative example, consider Cassie Lovegood, whom I understand you're familiar with. Cassie has, to my knowledge, never once cast a single dark spell — in fact, she nearly failed the Defence NEWT due to her refusal to cast the dark charms on the curriculum even for the practical."

"Are you joking?" But, she was one of the top professional duellists in the whole world!

His lips twitching a little, head shifting with exasperated amusement, Severus said, "No, I am not, Cassie truly did receive an Acceptable on the Defence NEWT." Liz belatedly realised Severus was referring to the famous duelling champion by her first name...but then, they had known each other in school. "I understand she took the equivalent Proficiency exam somewhere on the Continent a couple years later. They were far more accommodating of her aversion to dark magic, and permitted her to use light substitutes instead — supposedly, she received a perfect score.

"Perhaps this has changed in the years since she left school, but it is likely that Cassie has still never cast a dark spell, not once. And yet, should you speak of her among certain segments of British society, you will hear her referred to as a dark witch, her prominence achieved through mastery of dark magic."

For a couple seconds, Liz just blinked back at Severus. That didn't make any damn sense. "I don't understand. Is she just culturally Dark? I know that's a thing..."

His amusement intensified a bit, cool and pleasant. "While Cassie herself was mostly raised away from the rest of the family, the Lovegoods are one of the Mistwalker Clans, like the Greengrasses — so far as such terms have any use at all, I would characterise Cassie as culturally Light, but politically Dark. Or at least to lean that way. In particular, Cassie feels the prohibition of certain magical knowledge is counterproductive — one cannot defend oneself from the Dark Arts if one does not understand how they work — which the political Light consider to be an inherently Dark belief. To many among the Light, questioning the inherent rightness of their attempts to legislate certain magics out of existence does not only mark one as a political opponent, but is itself alone a warning sign of lacking personal morality, and potentially even criminality."

"...That's idiotic."

Severus shrugged, but didn't try to disagree. Liz was certain he didn't. "Magics designed to cause harm to another human being are considered to be dark, regardless of the arithmantic character of the magic itself. Therefore, all battlemagic is inherently dark — a form of dark magic that mages must be permitted to practise, with some reasonable restrictions, but dark magic all the same. Therefore, Cassie Lovegood, as an accomplished battlemage, is a dark witch.

"Our illustrious Headmaster himself considers her to be one of the most potentially dangerous dark mages in all the world, to be watched closely for any sign she might begin to seek greater power for herself. Despite my repeated insistence that she is a light witch, and has absolutely no interest in ruling anyone, ever. Cassie can hardly even tolerate occupying the same flat for longer than a month — I'm not certain how Dumbledore believes she could possibly commit herself to a project of the sort he fears."

Given the assumptions Dumbledore seemed to have made about Liz during the two total times they'd ever met — first that she'd started using her mind-control superpowers on the Dursleys just for the hell of it, and second that she might have been cooperating with Quirrell by her own free will — she couldn't say she was surprised. "Well, okay, that kind of explains a lot, but also not really what I'm here to talk about. How do people fight off dementors, exactly? I know it must be possible, supposedly Lupin ran the dementors off the train." The Ministry officials managing the dementors had even started trying to charge Lupin with something for cutting their inspection short (obstruction or some such nonsense), before the hammer had fallen on their own heads for putting dementors on a train filled with children.

Giving her a calm but suspicious look — the same one that usually preceded taking five points from Gryffindor for doing something stupid in class — Severus asked, "For what purpose do you wish to know?"

Liz rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Severus, I'm not going to do anything stupid — I've run into the things twice, and I was hospitalised both times. I just don't want to be completely helpless the next time the useless bloody Hit Wizards let the things on the grounds."

Severus sighed. "I will be honest with you, Elizabeth: the likelihood that you will be able to sufficiently protect yourself from a dementor before they are removed from the grounds is very, very small. There are charms by which one might repel a dementor, or even in some cases destroy them, but they are all light battlemagic. They require raw power and experience casting light magics that, quite frankly, you simply don't have. I will describe a few if you wish, but I doubt you will be able to cast any of them."

...Well, that was slightly annoying. But it wasn't like she'd expected Severus would teach her how to fight off dementors anyway — if nothing else, she could look up the spells he told her about later. "Sure."

One of his eyebrows twitched. "Very well. I have destroyed a dementor on two occasions, a total of five individuals."

Liz felt her eyes widening — chasing off dementors was difficult enough, destroying them was even more impressive. "How?!"

"One was with a curse called the Lance of Gerra. It's an ancient spell, dating to the Assyrian Empire — it's not known when it was invented precisely, but it could be older than three thousand years old. Wands were first developed in ancient Mesopotamia, as you might know, and while wizardry remained primitive by our modern standards, they did invent a number of useful charms and curses that remain relevant even today. The Lance of Gerra was created with the intent to kill vampires, though it is effective against a number of other targets — in particular, reanimated corpses, which were a recurrent problem at the time. It is also unpleasant for any dark-aligned magical being, such as lilin, certain fae races, and even some humans, though in these cases is not fatal.

"The Lance of Gerra is an intricate spell — it takes even a proficient user five or six seconds to cast — and requires an unseemly volume of magic to properly resolve. It dates to the early days of wizardry, where only a tiny minority of mages had the resources to acquire a wand, so streamlining the curse to ease use for the average mage was not a priority. The first time I successfully cast it, when I was nineteen, I nearly passed out. It also requires a sense of chauvinistic pride and righteous fury that I, at least, find difficult to summon."

If Liz had the timeline right, Severus would have been a Death Eater at nineteen, and probably hadn't defected to the Order of the Phoenix yet — she wondered where he'd learned it from. She wasn't surprised it took a certain emotion to cast, that was what made light and dark spells different from normal ones, though she wasn't certain what chauvinistic pride was supposed to mean. But she didn't have to to understand there was no way she'd be able to cast it, at least not yet. "And this thing kills dementors?"

"If hit directly, though even a single successful casting will compel others to flee — it is debated how intelligent dementors truly are, but their response to encountering individuals capable of casting certain magics, such as the Lance of Gerra, at the least proves they feel fear." Amusement was simmering in Severus's mind again, something to his voice sounding almost smug. Probably at the thought that he scared dementors, which, fair. "Brigid's Flame can also destroy dementors, though given it can only be cast within a short range the required tactics are inadvisable. The other four I destroyed all at once, with alchemy."

"Alchemy?" Wasn't alchemy, like, advanced potions stuff, making things and altering their magical properties? What, did he just sit there and brew a potion at a bunch of a dementors?

"Yes, alchemy. It was during the Battle of Rackwick, in Nineteen Eighty. Both sides were set upon by at least a dozen dementors — I never learned why or how, though I've always suspected someone in the Ministry ordered them there. Given the ordeal of the battle itself, I hadn't the presence of mind at the moment to cast anything that would have repelled them. Instead, I isolated elemental sunlight from the grass around me, and released it on the nearest dementors. At least four of them were destroyed, though there might have been more — most everyone in the valley was blinded by the sunlight, including myself. That trick certainly isn't something you'd be able to do without years of training in alchemy. I'm uncertain whether I could even reproduce it myself, I was acting on desperation and instinct."

Okay, rather more impressive than brewing a potion at them, then. "How does that even work? I mean, it's not like grass holds sunlight or anything..." She did know dementors were vulnerable to sunlight — and apparently elemental sunlight could kill them if you hit them with enough, which was good to know — but still, what the hell?

"It does, in a sense. You're aware that certain components used in potions are more effective when harvested under certain conditions, and often acquire different properties from their environment. What I did that night is based in an extrapolation of the same principle, if taken to an extreme. The grass in that valley had taken in sunlight, that energy converted into chemical energy, which was then utilised to create its physical structure — from a certain point of view, a blade of grass is nothing but crystalised sunlight. In that moment, desperately scrambling for some method by which to save myself, that logic made sense to me, and I simply cracked the crystals and released the sunlight accumulated within."

"...That doesn't make any sense."

"I did say I doubt I could reproduce the effect," he admitted, one shoulder twitching in a shrug. "Magic can be a very peculiar thing. Theoretically, all I must do to repeat it is convince myself that the logic necessary is coherent — perhaps if I were in a similarly desperate situation, I would be capable of it again, but I've never had success in a controlled setting.

"By far the most common method to protect oneself from dementors," Severus continued, smoothly passing over the completely absurd, possibly unique feat of magic he'd pulled off once and never managed to repeat (which was weird, but magic was like that sometimes), "is the relatively simple Patronus Charm. Note I say relatively simple — due to a sort of protracted arms race between various groups of mages, battlemagic features some of the most complex and power-intensive charms in all of wizardry. Though I suppose there is another field in which mages have been far outstripped by muggles: mages haven't invented weapons powerful enough to wipe out all human life on the planet."

He meant nukes, Liz was pretty sure. "I don't know, I think it should be possible with ritual magic to make a self-propogating curse that could spread and just eat everything."

"Theoretically, perhaps, though I doubt such a thing would come to pass. Magic itself has a degree of self-awareness, and it certainly wouldn't allow mortals to use it to kill itself — after all, if we cease to exist, so does it. Besides, unlike muggles, we certainly cannot destroy the world by accident."

She shrugged. Fair enough.

For some reason, he seemed vaguely amused, didn't really think anything funny was going on just now but okay. "Like the Lance of Gerra, the Patronus Charm was originally invented to fight vampires — while a Patronus won't kill them, they are weakened considerably by its presence — though in the centuries since has been found to be useful in a variety of other circumstances. When properly cast, the Patronus Charm creates a magical construct in the form of an animal, seemingly made of silvery light — similar to moonlight, though brighter, and tinted somewhat more blue. This construct constantly exudes light magic of a quality that interferes with—"

"Dora!" One of Severus's eyebrows ticked up. "Oh, I just realised— After Dora killed Quirrell, when the...whatever, the disembodied Dark Lord started wafting out of him, Dora conjured a flying silvery... Well, it was a boar at first, but then it turned into a big dragon, and after that into a little bird perched on her shoulder, she dispelled it once she was sure he was gone. Was that a Patronus?"

There was a sense of something shifting and unpleasant in Severus's head, uneasy, apparently he didn't like being reminded of that incident. "Yes, it was. For most mages, the Patronus will take the form of a single animal, dependant on the quality of the memory used to motivate it; the animal will change if the caster decides to use a different memory, but most get into the habit of using the same memory every time. Miss Tonks is a special case in that she has total, conscious control over the form her Patronus takes. I can't explain the phenomenon, and neither can Miss Tonks — perhaps such is common with metamorphs, but as there are so few of them we can't say for certain."

Huh. That was neat, she guessed — if Dora hadn't been able to make her Patronus something that could cover them, like that dragon, the Dark Lord might have tried to possess one of them, so. "You said the Patronus is relatively simple. Might I be able to learn that? I am good with charms."

Severus stared at her for a second, his face perfectly blank but thoughts churning away in his head. He was considering it, she thought, though she couldn't tell what he was thinking exactly without peeking (which he probably wouldn't take well). After a short moment he let out a sigh, slumping back in his chair just a little. "Is it theoretically possible? Perhaps, if only just. However, I suspect you will have serious difficulty with it.

"To start with, your magic is dark-aligned. Contrary to popular belief, it is perfectly possible for a dark mage to cast powerful light magic — I personally witnessed the Dark Lord demonstrate the Lance of Gerra on a handful of occasions, though I imagine he found the experience quite uncomfortable." Oh, had Severus learned it from the Dark Lord himself? That was kind of funny, a Dark Lord teaching his people light magic... "However, while it is possible for a dark mage to cast a light spell, it is unpleasant, and at times even painful, which can be critically distracting, especially when performing magics as sensitive as the Patronus Charm.

"And then there is the spell itself to consider." He hesitated for another brief moment, considering how to word whatever it was he was thinking. There was an odd little lurch in his head, and suddenly his wand was in his hand, limply swirling through the air, seemingly aimless. "Expecto patronum." Pale blue silver light streamed out of his wand, quickly coalescing into a life-sized deer standing next to his desk. The magical light was dense enough that Liz could just barely make out the shape of the corner bookshelf behind it, all of the details obscured, the deer seeming almost-but-not-quite solid, though bright enough Liz had to squint a little.

And it was vaguely unpleasant, to be honest. It was too bright, yes, hurting her eyes a little, but there were also uncomfortable, cold prickles crawling across her skin, like a harsh winter wind. It was trying to do something to her head, some kind of compulsion, but she instinctively pulled away from it — normally, her instinct was to hit back at something trying to hit her, but there was just something indistinctly repulsive about the magic, she didn't want to touch it. Though if the thing actually had a mind, and weren't just a bundle of thoughtless magic, she might have flailed at it anyway, if that incident with the dementor was any sign.

Huh. Apparently Liz was sensitive to light magic, she hadn't realised. They hadn't cast any light or dark spells in Charms class yet, or in Defence for that matter. Supposedly, the Cheering Charm they'd be doing in the spring was light, and Lupin was going to teach them a few light hexes (for repelling dark creatures and demons) around the same time, but those would be the first. She'd learned a couple dark charms on her own — the piercing curse she'd learned to kill the rabbits in her blood subsumption thing, for example — but not even very many of them. She knew that people kind of acclimated to one or the other if they cast them a lot, but supposedly that took time, she didn't think she'd cast enough dark magic to be so uncomfortable around light magic. Some people were just born tuned to one or the other, but if anything that meant she should be light-leaning, given what the Potters were like.

Actually, the more she thought about it the weirder that was. "Okay, that's kind of neat, but why is it making me uncomfortable? I haven't done that much dark magic yet."

"You have, likely far more than you realise." A little flick of his wand, and the glowy deer disappeared — Liz relaxed a little, tension dribbling away she hadn't even realised was there. "The dynamics of magical ambivalence have not been perfectly modelled, but I believe this isn't too difficult to explain. Light and dark magic gain their particular character from the feeling used to motivate them, some emotions given to the light and others the dark — though which are light and which dark can sometimes seem arbitrary, that is one of the things that is not well understood. Curiously, you will find this effect may present itself when casting theoretically neutral charms: charms that require no emotional component can, in many cases, become tinted light or dark dependent upon the mental state of the mage as they are cast. While the effect is relatively minimal, in most cases, there are circumstances and particular fields of magic which—"

"Mind magic." Severus cut off at her (completely unconscious) interruption, one eyebrow ticking up. "You mean, all the times I compelled people, those counted as casting dark magic."

Something cold and unpleasant shifted in the back of his head, but Severus didn't show any sign of whatever it was, just calmly nodding. "Not every time, but yes. Fear and anger tend to produce dark polarisation — not universally, but far more often than not."

...So, Severus was saying-without-saying that compelling Vernon in particular had been dark magic. Good to know.

"Though, truly, it is not the mind magic itself that is polarised. People often speak of the character of magical energy as though it were a spectrum, light and dark on each end and neutral arithmantic charms in the middle, but it would be more accurate to think of it as a rainbow of numerous different shades, which mix and interact with each other in innumerable different ways. Mind magic itself is a kind apart from light and dark — though, as with arithmantic charms, it can be tinted light or dark under certain circumstances, it is not inherently either. However, in order to set a compulsion, a mind mage must first channel magic into themselves, and that process is easily influenced by one's state of mind. The compulsions themselves may or may not be dark, but this preparatory step almost certainly is with some regularity."

Right, that made sense when she thought about it — obviously, setting a compulsion involved tweaking what a person was thinking, and people's minds weren't really light or dark, so of course a compulsion shouldn't be either. "Oh, and I'm kind of channelling magic into my mind all the time, aren't I? I think that's why my mind is so damn loud. So, literally everything I've ever felt ever should affect my magic as though I were actively casting spells the whole time." And since she was a creepy devil child, most of that effect should be toward the dark.

"As there has been little enough research into this specific question, I can't say for certain, but it does seem to be a reasonable theory. Although, altering the character of your magic wouldn't be the only effect. It would have been mentioned during theory lectures in first- or second-year Charms class that a mage grows slowly more powerful with each spell cast. You are, essentially, casting magic continuously whenever you are conscious — while the volume of magic you are channelling is small, and therefore the effect it has on your channelling capacity should be commensurately minimal, that effect is still non-zero. While that ill-advised act of soul magic subsumption back in your first year may be in part responsible for you possessing an elevated channelling capacity for your age, the constant amplification of your mind also likely makes some significant contribution.

"Regardless of whatever minor benefits to your proficiency with wizardry it might grant you, you should attempt to assert conscious control over the process. You are far more vulnerable to mental assault while in this state — not only from the like of dementors and hostile mind mages, but the simplest of mind-altering charms and potions as well."

Yes, well, saying it was far easier than doing it. She hadn't even realised it was happening until she'd felt her own mind in a pensieve — how the hell was she supposed to stop doing something if she didn't even know she was doing it in the first place? Also, she didn't know how that worked, exactly, so that didn't help either...

As far as she was concerned, getting to be more powerful in exchange for her complete inability to control herself seemed like a fair trade.

She didn't think Severus was close enough to pick up on that thought, but she picked up a flare of exasperation, moved on before he could say anything about that. "Right, but, you were talking about casting the Patronus."

He wasn't fooled, she could tell, but apparently decided confronting her over it would be pointless. "When teaching the Patronus Charm, students are generally told to think of a time they were truly happy, to immerse themselves so deeply into the moment as though they were reliving it. And to use that feeling to motivate the spell."

...Oh. "Yeah, that might be a problem." Honestly, she still wasn't entirely sure what happiness was supposed to feel like — she'd seen it in other people's heads, obviously, but that wasn't the same thing as feeling it herself.

There was a flash of something deep and frigid in Severus's head. "While that is how the charm is taught, it is not precisely correct. 'Expecto patronum' — I await a protector. The Patronus Charm is not motivated by a feeling of happiness, but of safety. However, for most learners, asking them to consider whether or not they were truly safe in a given moment can cause them to realise ways in which they were vulnerable without realising it — consequently, they feel less safe, so then cannot successfully cast the charm. It is generally held to be impossible for a person to feel happy if they feel unsafe, so telling students to draw upon happiness can lead them to a useable memory without unintentionally sabotaging them."

Huh, well, that thought made Liz...uncomfortable. Not about the tricky workaround people had come up with to teach the charm, the you can't feel happy if you don't feel safe bit. If that was true, she guessed she understood now why she didn't know what happiness felt like, but she...kind of wished she didn't. "Right, um... That's going to be a problem too."

"I did imagine it might be."

Because Severus was annoyingly perceptive like that. She nearly asked how he managed to pull it off — his life wasn't exactly a walk in the park either — but she decided that was too private. Or more to the point, he probably wouldn't answer. "Well. All that magic theory talk was fascinating, but it was also completely fucking useless to me."

Severus's lips twitched, the air ringing with his reluctant amusement. "I do sympathise, Elizabeth, but I'm not certain what else I can possibly tell you. I truly don't think you have any other recourse but to wait for the bumbling dunderheads in the D.L.E. to capture Black and return the dementors to Azkaban."

"Yeah, I get that, it's just annoying." She recalled Severus had actually spent a few weeks in Azkaban at the end of the war, before Dumbledore could convince the Ministry to give him his spy back, so he probably hated the things even more than she did. But then, that was after he'd killed a few of them, and apparently they could feel fear, so maybe they would have kept away from him anyway. "A bunch of people are trying to convince the Minister to get rid of them, you don't think they'll be able to do it?"

Severus scowled. "In my experience, one should never depend upon any individual's ability to admit to their own mistakes. Especially politicians."

Liz bit her lip to keep herself from laughing out loud — yeah, that was fair.

"Unless there's something else you wish to speak with me about, Elizabeth." The implication being I'm far too fucking busy to just sit here chatting, so please get the hell out.

"No, that was it," Liz said, slipping out of her chair. "Sorry for wasting your time." She wasn't, really, but... Well, she guessed she was a little bit — Severus was even more terribly busy this year than normal, honestly, did this man ever sleep at all? But that was just the thing people said, even if it wasn't true.

"You've done no such thing, I assure you." Strangely enough, that didn't feel like a lie. She walked out of his office, leaving the door open a crack behind her, and started off back toward her room, shaking her head to herself.

She'd spent the whole summer in his house, and she still didn't quite get Severus sometimes.

---

Liz was starting to hate the Slytherin showers.

Which was quite unfortunate, because they were really cool. Liz still wasn't over how great magic was, and the way mages just enchanted the shite out of everything, they came up with all kinds of neat little magical extras to even the most basic of things. Like clothes that kept the wearer warm in winter or cool in summer, even threw off hexes and minor curses, boots and gloves that grip onto things easier, or books that resist being torn or stained, with in-built tracking spells so they're easy to find if you lose them, or quills and pens that ink themselves, or staircases that'll catch you if you fall...

Or a shower with precise temperature control, and an endless supply of hot water, instead of a curtain closed off with a barrier of some kind, the steam kept inside so nothing got fogged up. All the surfaces were enchanted for warmth too, comfortable on bare feet, the mirror never smudged and drips splashed onto it ran right off. And the shower was much larger than muggle ones, Liz hadn't even noticed how cramped she sometimes felt in the shower until she'd gotten to Hogwarts.

Her enjoyment had been partially diminished all the way back in first year, when Pansy and Millie had broken in and stolen her clothes. Liz had gotten into the habit of putting a sealing charm on the door — while such a thing wouldn't present more than a second's delay to Severus, chances were Pansy only knew the basic unlocking charm. And she had warned Pansy off, unlike the others who'd gotten snakes in their beds Pansy still seemed mildly afraid of her sometimes, and there was the truce with Draco going on for over a year now, she didn't really think Pansy would do anything like that again.

She knew that rationally, but her brain was fucking awful sometimes. Every time she took a shower, she couldn't help a faint niggling of unease while she undressed, that someone would...do something, she didn't know what. Even if Pansy wouldn't, she was pretty sure girls in upper years could get in here...but then, due to a combination of Liz being on the quidditch team and the Slytherins being able to brag to the other houses that they got the Girl Who Lived, she didn't think that was likely either. (It'd taken Dorea explicitly explaining to her that Liz being in Slytherin was kind of a big deal — culturally speaking, unless she did anything particularly offensive the other Slytherins and the Dark in general were likely to be accommodating, just for bragging rights — for Liz to even notice, because she could be shockingly unobservant sometimes.) But despite how absurd she knew it was she couldn't help thinking about it, it was very annoying.

And now she was having a second incident in the shower — a completely different sort of incident than the first one, but she couldn't help the thought that she was going to end up being paranoid about this one too.

Liz had been vaguely concerned about the scars on her chest for a while now. While she didn't know how scars worked, exactly, that they might become a problem had seemed obvious. She would have to be blind to not notice that the other girls in her year were growing breasts now, if more visible on some than others — Lily's in particular were hardly noticeable — and she hadn't been able to help the thought that there was...well, something wrong with her. It was possible there wasn't, if unlikely. She was nearly the youngest in their year, and she was aware her diet wasn't exactly healthy, it was possible she was just behind.

Yeah, there went that possibility — there was definitely something wrong.

She'd been getting occasional dull aches in her chest, more on the right side than the left, for some months now. She didn't know exactly, she hadn't really thought about it until Severus had caught her trying to massage the pain out and asked if she was okay — and that had been back in the summer, so at least that long. It hadn't seemed like that big of a deal, so she didn't pay it much mind. She didn't tend to pay that much attention to...most of her body, really, not on a regular basis. It wasn't like she spent a lot of time without a shirt on, or even really thought about her scars if they weren't hurting at the moment.

If she did pay them more mind, maybe she would have caught it earlier. Though maybe not — it was subtle, if she hadn't been soaping herself up in the shower a few minutes ago (she got pretty gross in quidditch practice sometimes) she might not have noticed.

She was...lopsided. Not by very much, it was hardly visible in the mirror. It was easier to tell by touch. There was something growing on the right side, above one of the jagged lines of scars stretching along, mostly but not quite centred under the nipple. There was definitely something in there, it felt firmer than just... Well, Liz had never touched a woman's breasts before, but she kind of thought they'd be...smooshy? This was firmer than she imagined, not in the same way as muscle, but...she didn't know. There was a smaller growth toward the left, she found after a bit of poking around, hidden away to the side, a tiny little crescent shape, running from about the same height as the other one and curving down until it got too close to one of the scars over there.

She remembered Severus had warned her over the summer that having curse scars like these put her at a higher risk of getting cancer. That thought had a hard, unpleasant lurch thudding through her, but she focused on the thought that that was not a big deal — Severus had also explained that cancer was mostly a nuisance to mages, so long as it was caught early there was nothing to worry about. And, while it was possible this wasn't that — she didn't know what cancer should be expected to feel like either — the smart thing to do would be to get it checked out, just in case.

And to do that, she'd have to go to the Hospital Wing.

Her stomach already starting to twist with nausea, Liz scowled at her own reflection in the mirror — she hated the Hospital Wing.

She guessed going to Severus instead was a possibility, but then she'd have to take her shirt off there in his office, and that would just be awkward. Besides (she checked the time), he would be in the middle of some of those one-on-one meetings he did with all the Slytherins, he might just tell her to come back later. Not that she thought doing it in the Hospital Wing would be less awkward, but Pomfrey was less likely to be too busy for her right now.

Sighing, Liz got dressed, doing her best not to worry (and not doing a very good job).

It turned out there were a few people in the Hospital Wing at the moment, judging by the curtains pulled closed around some of the beds, but then that wasn't unusual these days. There would often be one or two people in here at any given time, but there'd apparently been a noticeable uptick this year — dementors were bad for your health, after all. She and Dorea weren't the only ones in their study group to end up here, and Dorea had been sent here more times than Liz so far this year, though Liz had been trapped for far more time total.

Just last week, Dorea had been here for a few hours after another seizure before being released again. And this one had been barely a week after the one during that disastrous quidditch game — Liz had the feeling it was getting worse, but she didn't know how to ask. Or even if she wanted to know, honestly.

Liz stood near the door, waiting for Pomfrey to notice her, her feet shifting uncomfortably against the floor, trying to breathe as little as possible. Whatever disinfectant Pomfrey used in here didn't smell exactly like Petunia's, but it had a similar faint bleach-like burn to it. It wasn't strong enough to give Liz seriously bad brain moments, but it did make her uncomfortable, especially when she didn't have anything to distract herself with. She started mentally reciting series of hexes and curses, her finger twitching with the wand movements, just to have something else to think about.

"Oh, Miss Potter!" Liz twitched a little at the unexpected call, Pomfrey appearing from behind one of the curtains, pulling them closed behind her again. "I'm sorry, dear, I didn't see you there. Did you need something, or are you looking for someone?"

Liz hesitated, glancing around the room — she wasn't really comfortable talking about this subject with Pomfrey to begin with, she definitely didn't want to be talking about it where other people could hear. Apparently picking up on that, Pomfrey took a few steps closer, cast some kind of privacy paling with a casual little flick of her wand. (Liz couldn't wait until she could cast charms that complicated and powerful so easily.) She took a breath, tried to force any hint of awkwardness out of her voice. "It's about, you know, my scars. The ones on my chest," she added, belatedly remembering Pomfrey would know about the ones on her back too.

"Oh, I see," Pomfrey muttered, frowning just a little, with a sharp flash of...suspicion, maybe? "And what about them brings you here? You know I can't remove them."

"I remember," she had to go to a proper blood alchemist for that. Supposedly Severus hadn't studied it much, which was weird — he was an alchemist and a healer, and her understanding was that it was basically just using alchemy for healing, but whatever. "They have been hurting a bit, and I just noticed... Well, Severus said there was a risk of developing cancer, that I should keep a look out for that, you know."

That was definitely exasperation, but interestingly it wasn't clinging at Liz, focused on someone else. Pomfrey let out a little huff, rolling her eyes for a second before turning back to Liz. "I'm sorry, Miss Potter, but I wish he hadn't told you that. It is true that people with curse scars have an elevated cancer risk, but that is a long-term risk, something to watch out for decades down the line — at your age, given the kind of curse lingering in your scars, having problems this early is almost unheard of." Oh, so she was exasperated with Severus then, all right. "Now, I do think it's very unlikely to be cancer, but I can do an examination anyway, if that'll give you peace of mind."

...As much as she didn't want Pomfrey poking at her, that was probably a good idea. She would just keep worrying about it if someone more informed on these things didn't tell her for sure. Maybe it would be worth it to learn some healing, just so she didn't need help for these things — supposedly healing charms were extremely delicate, but there was no reason she couldn't look into it. Trying to push down her own reluctance (and mostly failing), Liz said, "Sure, let's try that."

In a few seconds, Pomfrey had Liz shuffled off to one of the beds, a swish of her wand drawing the curtains around to wall the little area off. She needed to get a potion for one of her other patients quick — she'd been in the middle of something when she'd spotted Liz at the door — but that would only take a moment, in the meantime Liz should undress. Not completely, she could keep her shorts on, but Pomfrey needed to get at her scars, so, obviously. Pomfrey hesitated for a second before suggesting that Liz take a little of her calming potion, if she feared she would be too uncomfortable without it. And then she left, the gap in the curtains firmly yanked closed behind her.

The calming potion was a good idea, she'd actually slipped a bottle into her pocket just in case. (She usually carried her potions in her bookbag, but it hadn't seemed worth it to carry the thing all the way up here.) Once the familiar moment of disorientation had passed, Liz set the bottle on the bedside table, stood back up to pull her dress over her head. She hesitated a moment, unease prickling over her skin, eyeing the opening in the curtains — she was pretty sure Pomfrey had cast a sealing charm along the gap as she left, but still — before removing her vest. She didn't know if the enchantments on her wand holster would interfere with Pomfrey's analysis charms, but she went ahead and took that off too.

And she perched on the edge of the bed, within arm's reach of her clothes, settled in to wait. Through the vague, cool haze of the calming potion, Liz managed a lowly-simmering irritation — she was still too bloody short for her feet to touch the floor. The beds in the Hospital Wing were a bit higher than the average chair, but still...

Also, she was already starting to get a little cold.

She was idly poking at the faint lines visible across her stomach — over a year of intense quidditch practice had given her noticeable muscles here, if barely noticeable, which Liz thought was kind of neat — when she felt a flicker of magic nearby, Pomfrey slipping through the gap in the curtains an instant later. Even with the calming potion, as soon as Pomfrey turned to her Liz could feel her eyes crawling on her skin like ants, but she took a slow breath, focused on picturing the runes she had memorised instead.

Honestly, it was only Pomfrey. It wasn't like the healer was going to do anything bad to her, her stupid brain could kindly shut the fuck up now...

Pomfrey's examination was uncomfortable, but thankfully brief. She cast a couple charms, frowning and tutting under her breath at whatever they told her, before asking Liz permission to touch her. Grimacing, Liz told her to just get it over with. It wasn't so bad, just a little gentle prodding around the edges of the growths Liz had noticed, she hardly even noticed — Liz stared at the wall over Pomfrey's shoulder, intensely focused on the basic grammar that went into enchantments, strings and components and determiners and referents, to the exclusion of anything else that might be going on right now.

She must have been doing a pretty good job, because she twitched with surprise when Pomfrey said, "All right, Miss Potter, you can put your shirt back on now."

Liz reached for her vest, fumbled with the thing a little bit before figuring out which way around it was supposed to go — it didn't help that the calming potion made her fingers a little numb. She hesitated for a second, but decided to leave her dress there for now. It was possible she'd be staying here for a little while, and she didn't know what else Pomfrey would want to do. Also, she would have to stand up for that, and while Pomfrey had turned her back — which was slightly ridiculous, she'd just been poking at Liz's naked chest anyway, but okay — she hadn't actually left, so there wasn't a whole lot of room next to her bed anyway. While fiddling with her wand holster, she asked, "So, what is it?"

"I can assure you, Miss Potter, that isn't cancerous — it's perfectly normal breast growth, in fact. However..." Facing her again, Pomfrey's eyes tipped up to the ceiling for a second as she thought. She was showing little sign of it, just the slightest pinching between her eyebrows, fingers tapping at her hip, but Liz could feel the emotion bubbling away in her head anyway. Warm and sticky and slimy, bearing down on Liz sweltering and suffocating, impossible to ignore and seriously unpleasant, Liz's shoulders hunching and throat beginning to burn with nausea.

She knew this one, she'd felt it before: pity.

"For the most part," Pomfrey began, seemingly ignorant of how uncomfortable she was making Liz, "people are born with all the different tissues they will ever have throughout their life. The glands the breast is centred around are already there from birth, but only in their most basic, nonfunctional form. When a girl gets to a certain age, hormones released into the blood cause a sort of chain reaction that leads to these tissues beginning to properly develop. These glands grow to many times their original size, supported by a variety of fibrous and fatty tissues, which all together give the breast its shape.

"Whatever happened that night years ago, these tissues were damaged. Some of the glands are still there, and are beginning to grow the way they should, but others are gone. The presence of the scars is also interfering with the proper growth of other tissues around them. A little bit of soreness is not at all unusual in girls your age as their breasts develop, but given the intrusion of scar tissue in the area, I'm not surprised if it's worse than might otherwise be expected.

"While I can tell you for certain that you don't have cancer, I'm afraid it isn't good news." The sickening pity wafting off of Pomfrey only grew more intense, she dropped her voice a little, soft and delicate. "The damage that was done to these tissues when you were an infant is irreversible, and the scars will continue to get in the way. The growths you noticed are perfectly normal breast development, but...the underlying structures are incomplete. I wish I had better news for you, Miss Potter, but as things stand now, any breast growth you see is going to be...irregular."

...Right. Okay, then. Liz wished she could go back to thinking her scars meant she wasn't going to get any at all — having no tits was better than lopsided and misshapen ones. They were really small right now, she doubted they were noticeable, she'd just have to...hope they stayed that way. She bit down her frustration, her chest annoyingly tight and hot, to ask, "But that's something that can be fixed with blood alchemy, right?" The plan had always been to do something about that eventually, she just had to get out from under Dumbledore first...

Pomfrey let out a little sigh. Her voice sounding oddly reluctant for some reason, she admitted, "Yes, to my understanding, it is. But that isn't something we can do here at Hogwarts. Even if I thought I could do such a thing, which I don't, performing any blood alchemy at all in this country requires a licence from the Ministry. Also, that licence only allows the holder to use certain kinds of blood alchemy — the procedure we're talking about here is a process called corporal neogenesis, which is illegal in Britain under any circumstance."

"Wait, what? Why?" She understood there were crazy things people could do with blood alchemy, but fixing curse damage really shouldn't be that big of a deal...

"Corporal neogenesis, creating entirely new tissues from nothing, can be used to a variety of...distasteful ends. There are countless questionable experiments that have been done with it, and ill-considered use can... Well, if the blood alchemist doesn't know what they're doing, it can be very easy for the body to reject the new tissues, drawing the body into a war against itself, or afflict the patient with strange, stubborn cancers. I personally think there should be a medical exemption in the law — blood alchemy can be dangerous if used incautiously, but the same is true of a lot of healing magic. This is actually a common opinion among healers, but unfortunately healers don't write the law."

Oh, Liz understood now what that reluctance a moment ago was about — Pomfrey was uncomfortable suggesting a student break the law. A silly thing to care about, but at least it made sense now. "Right, so, I go to a blood alchemist on the Continent to do it. I don't know how to do that, though, where the hell would I even start..."

There was a slight shade of exasperation from Pomfrey, probably about a student outright asking how to break the law, but she answered the question anyway. "That is something Severus can help you arrange." Liz was confused for a second before remembering the Child Welfare Office had talked to Pomfrey, she was one of the few people who knew what was going on. "He has professional contacts on the Continent, in Healing specifically — if he doesn't know someone you could go to, he will know someone who does. There would first be a consultation with the specialist, where they would do an examination and you would discuss with them what you want done, and then you would come back later for the procedure itself. Depending on how extensive the work is, they might need to spread it out over multiple days, and the new tissues will be tender for at least a couple weeks. They might put you on a regimen of potions for the first month or two, though they might not, I'm not certain. My point is, it's not something you could manage during the school term, you will need to do it over the summer.

"Though there is another concern. Have you started menstruating yet?"

Liz blinked at the question, taken aback by the sudden change of subject. "Um. No?"

"Right, I thought not." ...Was there some way to tell just looking at a person? "I'm not an expert, so I can't say for certain, but I do have some basic familiarity with other specialties. It's my understanding that blood alchemists prefer not to do major work during puberty — all the changes going on in the body in this time are in a delicate balance, and it can be too easy to accidentally mess something up, with possibly serious consequences. There is no hard line, but I've read multiple times that blood alchemists prefer to wait until roughly eighteen months after menarche. I'm not sure why eighteen months, something about the effects hormone cycles have on fundamental identity, it's a little over my head, honestly. Whatever specialist you choose might be comfortable doing it a few months earlier or might want to wait even longer, but I think eighteen months is a good estimate."

Well, that was shitty news — she hadn't even had her first period yet, who knew how long that was going to take, and she had to wait another eighteen months after that... Yeah, let's hope the damn things didn't try to grow much, because if they did she was going to end up looking really fucking weird by the time she could do anything about it.

Of course, Liz already kind of looked fucking weird, so it shouldn't bother her. It still did, though, because her brain was terrible.

"Okay. I understand." She understood that she was a freak, and shouldn't expect anything involving her to be in any way normal, but that wasn't a good thing to say out loud — Pomfrey would just pity her even more, and that shite was uncomfortable. "Was there anything else?"

"No, no, nothing from me. I'm sorry there's nothing more I can do for you, Miss Potter." And she was sorry, she wasn't just saying that, pity suffocating and regret sharp on the air.

"It's okay." Liz was just saying that. "Can I go now?"

"Yes. Come back to me if anything changes." Uh-huh, Liz would be sure to come back to this disinfectant-scented pit so she could listen to Pomfrey talk about how she couldn't help her again, that sounded like a lot of fun. "If the pain becomes too distracting, there are things we can do about that, do let me know."

Liz doubted she would do that — she could probably brew a basic numbing paste on her own, or she would ask Severus instead — but she agreed just to get out of here. Once Pomfrey stalked away (but not far enough away for her pity to stop clinging at Liz), she pulled her dress back over her head, returned the half-empty calming potion to her pocket, and fled back out the door.

She was far too worked up right now to get any work done, but thankfully she found half the study group in the library. Distracting her from her own thoughts with pointless chatter was one of those things actually having friends was good for.

---

By the time Dorea got up to the Entrance Hall in the morning, she was already exhausted.

Sirius had, somewhat to her surprise, done exactly what she'd asked of him. Given what Mum and Andi and everyone had told her about how stubborn and volatile Sirius could be — and that was before Azkaban, a dozen years of dementor exposure wasn't likely to have done his mental state any favours — she'd expected him to be difficult about it, but no, it wasn't even a week later when she saw something in the Prophet about a sighting in the south of England. There were a couple more over the next few days, culminating in a brief fight with Aurors on the scene at the end of last week. Luckily, nobody had gotten hurt — Dorea suspected Sirius had been lingering around somewhere a little longer than was wise, just to make sure he was spotted, not expecting the Aurors to respond so quickly. He'd managed to flee (being able to turn into a dog probably helped), so no harm done.

Dorea hoped he wasn't doing something stupid, like hanging around Fudge's house. While directly threatening the Minister would likely convince him Sirius wasn't still trying to get into Hogwarts, security must have been tightened after his escape. If he had been anywhere near where the Minister lived, the papers hadn't said so, but it was exactly the sort of thing Dorea would expect the obsessive, half-mad man to do...especially since Fudge was the one who'd gotten him sent to Azkaban in the first place.

Yeah, he was almost certainly doing something stupid. Dorea had considered sending him a letter telling him to be careful, but he almost certainly wouldn't listen — or if he did, would end up forgetting in the heat of the moment anyway — so that just seemed pointless.

Regardless of the fact that Sirius had been spotted far to the south multiple times now, there was no sign they were getting anywhere in convincing Fudge to remove the dementors from around the school. Either Fudge was a complete fucking idiot (which was possible), or he thought Sirius still wanted to get into Hogwarts and was allowing himself to be spotted in the south to draw them away. Which, to be fair, he was, but there were a few connecting details there that didn't make any sense. For one thing, Dorea still had no idea why Fudge was so certain Sirius's target was Hogwarts — it was nearly half a year later, and she still hadn't heard any explanation for that — but obviously Sirius didn't need to draw them away, because he'd already gotten inside with them there! He'd gotten past and all the way up to Gryffindor without being spotted! What the hell did Fudge thing the damn demons were supposed to accomplish, anyway?!

Except, Dorea did know now what Fudge wanted them here for, it just wasn't a good reason. Dorea was being kept updated on progress they were making (for what little there was), both directly from Lords of the Wizengamot and indirectly from Andi. After the break-in on Hallowe'en, Lord Smethwyck had pointed out that Fudge's continued insistence on posting dementors around the grounds didn't make any sense if Fudge wanted to stop Sirius from getting inside...but it did make sense if Fudge wanted to make sure he died. Hit Wizards might do a better job of detecting him, but if they cornered Sirius they would try to capture him alive; the dementors, on the other hand, would consume his soul, without delay.

As horrifying as that thought was, Dorea couldn't think of an alternative explanation that fir the facts. It raised interesting questions concerning whether or not Fudge himself was truly certain about Sirius's guilt, but meant it would be even harder to convince Fudge than they'd thought — after all, they couldn't just let dementors comb through the south of England, Downing Street would (rightly) throw a fit.

So, at least for the time being, they at the school had to tolerate the dementors' presence a while longer. Which meant slowly but surely deteriorating health for some of the students, including Dorea.

The seizures weren't so bad, if she was being honest, at least not so far. She'd only had a few, and while they were rather exhausting there weren't really any long-term consequences. Besides eating into time she needed for schoolwork, she guessed — from the beginning of the aura to Pomfrey letting her out of the Hospital Wing was only two or three hours at most, but she was usually too tired and unfocused afterward to get much work done.

As annoying as they were, the migraines were actually better for that. They lasted longer, yes, and, while they didn't exactly hurt with Snape's specially-designed potion, they were still seriously unpleasant, but so long as she kept the lights down really low and cast a silencing charm on her quill so the scritching didn't get to her, it was possible to chip away at her homework. Slowly, and she had to do it on her own — the lights in the library were far too bright, and she couldn't let people into her room, their voices would be too much — but it was doable...for at least a couple hours, until the letters on the page got too blurry and painful to read, even with Snape's potion, and she had to go take a nap.

She wasn't quite keeping up with all of her classwork, but their professors had been understanding so far that she was having problems — so long as she was clearly picking up what she was supposed to, nobody had made a fuss about the occasional unfocused, badly-written essay. After all, she was hardly the only one, and the dementors must be dragging at the professors too, they were being a bit more lax than they usually might be this year. So, as difficult as it was, it could be worse.

But she was starting to get terribly tired, all the time. Physically tired, yes — Hogwarts had far too many stairs, it'd been hard enough just getting around when she'd been at her best — but it was getting increasingly difficult to concentrate on things, her own thoughts feeling all too slow, clumsily bumbling unfocused in her skull. Some days were worse than others, and on the good days she hardly noticed. On the bad days, sometimes she had trouble reading.

Today was a bad day. She'd hardly managed to summon the energy to get out of bed. Staring across the too-large hall toward the doors into the Great Hall, where breakfast was waiting, and just, ugh. She knew she should eat, but she kind of just didn't want to deal with people trying to talk to her like normal, or walking.

She'd never understood Liz better than she did in this moment.

"Are you okay?" Liz had gone a couple steps further into the Entrance Hall before realising Dorea had paused, turned to frown back at her. Since Dorea wasn't supposed to go anywhere alone, especially since she'd started having seizures semi-regularly again, Liz almost always walked her up to breakfast. This time Dorea had had an especially slow morning, but Liz seemed more concerned than annoyed about it. Though it was hard to tell, Liz could be very subtle about these things — it was the caution in the way she spoke, how she kept watching Dorea when she didn't think Dorea could see.

It was kind of sweet — Dorea hadn't realised before this term that Liz could be sweet — but not really necessary. "I'm fine, just tired. I might try to sneak a nap this afternoon." After Defence in third period, they didn't have Cambrian until sixth, which was more than enough time to sleep for a couple hours. Well, no, technically they had History during fifth period, but nobody actually went to that.

Judging by the sceptical frown, Liz didn't entirely believe her, but she continued on without another word anyway.

On the way to the Great Hall, Dorea thoughtfully frowned at Liz. She knew Liz wanted the dementors gone too, badly — apparently, she'd even written to Lady Malfoy offering to help them bribe the Minister, which was strangely funny to her. Obviously, that didn't do any good, but Malfoy's idea had been to try to build public pressure instead, which would involve Liz giving an interview to be written up in one of the papers. Naturally, Liz was reluctant to do that. Dorea didn't know if out and asking her to would make a difference, but...

No, Dorea wasn't going to do that. If her health continued to get worse and worse, she'd consider it, but it wasn't even certain that would accomplish anything. It wasn't worth it, not yet.

As slow as Dorea had been getting out of bed this morning, by the time they got to the Great Hall the morning papers had already arrived. Most people got the Prophet, but there were a few who got the Herald instead, particularly commoners or students from Common Fate families — Dorea got both, but since she'd been late to breakfast hers would come with lunch or dinner. Only a small fraction of the students actually had the paper delivered — there was no need for everyone to have a subscription when a group of friends could just share one, it wasn't unusual to look around the Great Hall and see people clumped together to pour over an important bit of news.

It was unusual for so many people to turn to look at Liz once they'd realised she'd just walked through the doors, staring and whispering to each other. There must be another article about Liz — Dorea couldn't imagine what, nothing much had happened with Liz since the quidditch game. (That had gotten into the paper, though details about just how badly Liz had been injured were left out.) Dorea noticed Liz tense up next to her, led her off toward the Slytherin table. Normally, she might seek out Susan or Padma, but people were less likely to bother Liz about whatever they were gossiping about this way.

But, she noticed, the Slytherins were sneaking looks at Liz too, some between glances at the professors' table — less suspicious or hostile than many of the others, curious, but still. Huh.

It didn't take long to spot Daphne — she was relatively tall, and very blonde (Dorea swore her hair glowed in the dark) — but they hadn't even managed to sit down before Draco stomped his way over to them, carrying a folded-up newspaper in one hand. Dorea was having more trouble than usual reading his expression. He wasn't angry, she didn't think, but not something too far removed from that, almost...offended, maybe? Whatever it was, his voice was a little lower and harsher than usual, holding the paper up to Liz and demanding, "Is this true?"

Dorea had hardly gotten a glance at the newspaper yet, but Liz stiffened instantly — probably picked up on whatever it was from Draco's mind. She snatched the paper out of his hand, glanced over the article he'd opened it to. Everyone within earshot went quiet, watching, waiting for Liz's reaction. Curious, Dorea leaned over her shoulder to get a look. It took a second for her to focus on the letters, the paper not exactly held at a convenient reading angle for her.

Former Death Eater to Adopt Girl-Who-Lived — Dumbledore's Custody of Ellie Potter Challenged before Wizengamot in Spring

Dorea blinked. And blinked again. No, she wasn't imagining it, that was actually the headline.

Now she felt awake, finally.

She couldn't read the text from here, too small, but Liz didn't know that many former Death Eaters, there was only one person that could be. Dorea turned to glance up at the high table — Professor Snape looked entirely unmoved, calm and expressionless, blithely sipping at his coffee seemingly unaware of the stares being directed at him (not the professors' table in general, she realised, but Snape specifically). She turned back to Liz, and while she couldn't make out her face very well from this angle, her expression was equally blank and unreadable.

Though she seemed far more tense: Dorea didn't miss the way the paper crinkled around Liz's fingers.

Liz forced out a thick sigh, as though trying to expel some emotion bottled up in there somewhere. Handing the paper back to Draco, she said, "He's not adopting me...I think? I mean, Dumbledore has custody of me right now, and nobody calls that an adoption. But I am living with him, and I did ask Child Welfare to get me out from under Dumbledore." And then Liz sat at the table, smoothly and calmly, and started scooping herself up some eggs, as though she hadn't said anything at all unusual.

Dorea wasn't the only person left gaping at her for a few seconds. That was just...

No, actually that made a weird kind of sense, the more she thought about it. There was how Liz kept using his first name, for one thing — that was bloody weird, and Dorea never had heard an explanation for it, even when Liz had been directly asked. Snape was a very...intense sort of man, vaguely intimidating, and not like to invite familiarity from his students. Liz spoke very informally of Snape in general, though using his first name was just the most obvious sign of it, which was a little weird, because Liz...

Well, she wasn't the most respectful of their professors, that was true. She would observe basic politeness, sirs and ma'ams and all that, but even that only sometimes, and even when she did these things they seemed tacked on as an afterthought, her phrasing still blunt and impolite. And when she was out of earshot it was even worse. The very clear impression Dorea had gotten was that Liz didn't have a very high opinion of most of their professors. She liked Flitwick, and she was fine with Smethwyck, she seemed to like Babbling so far, but all the rest she spoke of with various degrees of apathy and disdain. (She outright hated McGonagall and Sprout.) And she liked Snape too, of course, if a bit exasperated with him at times, with all the one-on-one meetings he did and everything — as private of a person as Liz was, she probably didn't like those. But if there was something like this going on between them, that would be a decent explanation for the way Liz talked about him.

It was one of the better possibilities, honestly. The thought had occurred to Dorea at some point earlier this term that it was possible there was something...inappropriate going on. Now, she hadn't thought that likely — as skittish as Liz could be, it was hard to imagine her going along with, well — but once the thought had gotten into her head she hadn't quite been able to shake it.

Snape was conspicuously single, after all. That wasn't actually unusual among Hogwarts professors, almost all of them were unmarried, but there was usually an obvious reason why — for example, Dumbledore was known to be gay, and so was Babbling, and there were probably a couple others too. (Which was very, very weird when Dorea thought about it, she tried not to.) Snape was somewhat unusual in that there was no obvious reason. In fact, given he was a relatively powerful mage and literally the youngest master alchemist in the history of the country, he would normally be considered quite an attractive prospect...if it weren't for his...general Professor Snape -ishness. Or the Death Eater thing.

But it wasn't crazy to think there might be some unknown cause. That he was a paedophile was a big leap to take — especially since he'd been working at a school for over a dozen years now, there would be rumours at the very least by this point — but it wasn't so implausible that Dorea hadn't been (very) faintly worried. As much as she hadn't thought it was likely, she still felt a little relieved that it was something so innocent.

For a certain definition of innocent, anyway — this was definitely going to be... Well. Liz being Sorted into Slytherin, and being generally cold and odd and standoffish, that had been enough for the people who'd bought into the Girl Who Lived story to feel...almost betrayed, in a way. Liz living with a former Death Eater — not even a rumoured former Death Eater, he'd admitted it before the Wizengamot (in the same hearing he'd been given immunity due to his work spying) — might well be much, much worse. The Light was not going to like this, half the kids in the school were almost certainly going to give her crap for it.

Dorea had the bad feeling that Liz was not going to have fun the next couple weeks, until people got over it. And that was assuming they ever got over it.

Gradually, people were drawn out of their shock, though some more quickly than others. Daphne was the first to recover, Dorea had barely managed to sit down when she asked, "How long has this been going on? The Prophet only had the note on the Wizengamot's calendar to go off of, the article is mostly speculation..."

Liz didn't answer for a long moment, glaring down at her eggs. "Over a year now."

"I'm more interested in how. Did Dumbledore—" Draco cut himself off, turning a brief glare up at the high table. "No, no, that doesn't make any sense, he'd hardly set you up to challenge his own guarantorship."

Her shoulders hunching a bit — the whispers increasing, the news that Liz had confirmed the story spreading through the Hall — Liz delayed again, poking aimlessly at her breakfast but not actually taking a bite. (Dorea hadn't seen Liz eat any of it yet.) It was very obvious Liz didn't want to talk about this. "You know I lived with relatives of my mother's."

"Yes, you mentioned that when, well, back in first year." Draco suddenly looked rather awkward, all but shuffling in place. Liz had confirmed that she'd grown up in the muggle world during the same House Meeting where Draco and his friends had tried to get her punished for putting snakes in their beds and had it horribly backfire on them — it wasn't really a surprise that Draco might not want to bring that up. "And there's another question right there, what did Dumbledore think he was doing, sticking the only remaining member of an old magical noble family with muggles..."

There was some displeased grumbling at that from eavesdroppers, but Liz just shrugged. "I don't know, he never explained. Anyway, I didn't know about any of this before, and when I got a letter from Hogwarts I ran away from home—" There were a few gasps of surprise from around them, even Dorea stared at Liz wide-eyed with surprise — she'd already known that, of course, but she hadn't thought Liz would publicly admit it. "—spent the last month or so until the start of term in hotels. During first year, Severus found out about it. He didn't want to send me back to my relatives, so I pretended to go home, but he met me a couple blocks away from the train station and apparated me to his house instead."

...Liz must be working on her skill with lying, because that actually sounded credible, but it definitely wasn't true — when she'd stayed at Dorea's house for a few days around her birthday that summer, she'd admitted she was staying in a hotel on her own. Or...maybe that had been a lie? Looking back on it, Liz had avoided Dorea's eyes the entire conversation, speaking of the subject only very reluctantly. Dorea had thought that was because she just hadn't wanted to talk about it, but it was possible that had been an attempt to cover for a lie. And Liz had been very insistent that she was perfectly fine — both that summer and this year's, with Sirius about who knew where and to what end — which Dorea had read as Liz's usual recklessness, but maybe she just...really had been perfectly fine, but hadn't been able to explain that.

Because, obviously, Professor Snape had kidnapped her. For all that removing Liz from her relatives was definitely the right thing to do — there was what Snape had hinted at back in first year, and on the train Liz had let slip that they'd made her sleep in a cupboard — for all that she would otherwise be living on her own and using mind magic to steal from muggles just to eat, what he'd done had definitely been illegal. Liz generally had little respect for rules to begin with, just not telling people so Snape didn't get arrested seemed like a basic precaution she'd agree to take.

Though Dorea couldn't help feeling a little annoyed. Liz could have told her, at least — she'd been worrying about Liz all summer, both times, if she'd known Snape was looking after her... She wouldn't have told anyone. But Snape was perhaps even more of a neurotically private person than Liz was, maybe he'd told her not to tell anyone. Still, she could understand why Liz might not have, but it kind of hurt anyway.

"You ran away from home?" That was Millie, a few seats away, an odd tone on her voice Dorea couldn't quite read. But then, Millie was odd a lot these days, not sure what was going on with her.

"Hold on," called someone from the opposite direction, one of the Carrow twins, sitting with some fourth years nearby. "He didn't want you to go back so badly he took you into his own home? Why?"

Draco, of course, put his foot in his mouth. "Were those muggles beating you?"

"Malfoy!" Tracey shouted, leaning around Daphne to glare up at him. "You don't just come out and ask someone that!"

There was a crescendo of unpleasant muttering all around them — people probably noticing, like Dorea had, that Liz hadn't immediately denied it, only hunching in further, blankly staring down at her breakfast — but Draco didn't seem to, glaring right back down at Tracey. "Well, I think it's an important thing to know! If the Chief Warlock stuck Liz with some brutish muggles, and then sat back and did nothing while they abused her, then he—"

"Shut the fuck up, Malfoy!"

Draco puffed up a little, his face pinking with anger, but before he could get a word out Liz's palms slammed down on the table, pushing herself up onto her feet — a few people around twitched in surprise, the impact hard enough to rattle some of the closer dishes. She stormed past Draco without a word, face hidden behind her hair, steps quick but heavy and rigid, heading straight for the doors out. Turning to follow her, Draco called, "Wait, Liz—"

In perhaps the single most improper action she'd ever taken while at Hogwarts, Daphne reached back and snagged Draco's sleeve before he could get further than a couple steps away. She did let go almost immediately, though. "Draco, you should give her a little while to calm down. I'm certain this is all awfully upsetting for her, and if you force your company on her now, she will not appreciate it. Trust me."

From there, the table around Dorea broke into multiple conversations. Draco and Daphne, later joined by Millie and Blaise, were debating whether it was a good idea to leave Liz on her own just now, or whether it was really their business whether her muggle relatives had been mistreating her — Dorea thought the answer to the latter question was an obvious no, but the magical nobility were a hive of gossipy looky-loos, not a surprise they wanted to stick their noses in. (Though Liz's reaction should have made it obvious they had been, but Draco could be surprisingly unintuitive sometimes.) The rest were talking about the scandalous news that'd just been dropped on their heads. Fortunately, most of it sounded sympathetic toward Liz and Professor Snape, from what Dorea could hear.

Among third- and fourth-year Slytherins, anyway — there was no way of telling from here how the discussion was going at other tables. Dorea wasn't looking forward to finding out.

But anyway, she wasn't paying that much attention to any of it. Dorea instead focused on spreading butter and preserves on a couple pieces of toast, then put together a bacon sandwich for Liz — remembering at the last second that she didn't like tomatoes, scooping up some of the eggs and mushrooms from her abandoned plate instead — wrapped them both in napkins, then followed Liz out.

Of course, Dorea was a few minutes behind, so now she actually had to find Liz. She couldn't have gone too far — Dorea had been slow enough getting out of bed that they had to be in Potions in less than an hour. The library was a possibility, but it was a bit of a walk round-trip, and if she wanted to be alone it also wasn't great, people could just walk in and talk to her at any time. Her room, maybe, she could be certain she'd be left alone there and it was close to the classroom. But there were all kinds of places in the castle she could be hiding in if she just wanted to be alone for a little while, which would have the advantage of people not being able to knock on her door. Probably not in the lower levels — they were a surprisingly high-traffic area of the castle, what with the Slytherin and Hufflepuff dorms, and there were still historians and stuff regularly going in and out to work on Gaunt's place — but she could be pretty much any—

Oh. Never mind, Dorea knew where Liz had gone.

The potions lab was, as Dorea had expected, unlocked but empty — Professor Snape kept the storeroom sealed whenever there wasn't someone here to observe students brewing. Empty except for Liz, perched on the edge of one of the tables, and also Tracey standing nearby. Which, that Dorea hadn't expected, she hadn't even noticed Tracey leaving the table. (Tracey was generally pretty quiet, so that wasn't so unusual in itself, but still.) What was Tracey doing here anyway? As far as Dorea knew, she and Liz weren't particularly close...though she had already known before the train ride this year that Liz wasn't living with her relatives anymore, Dorea had thought the only other student who knew was herself, even Hermione assumed she'd stayed there after being dragged back three summers ago...

Whatever, not important. Tracey looked up at the sound of the door opening and closing, but Liz didn't, staring down at her lap, idly fiddling with the cloth of her robes. "Black, if you're going to be an arse about—"

"It's fine, Tracey," Liz interrupted. "She can stay."

Tracey looked a little sceptical, but she didn't argue, lifting her shoulders in a dismissive shrug.

That was...odd. Dorea had been getting the vague feeling that something had happened between Liz and Tracey at some point, but she still didn't know what it was — Liz didn't tend to talk about personal things, and Tracey didn't really talk to Dorea at all. Brushing off her confusion, Dorea walked over to Liz, held out the sandwich. "Here."

Liz didn't reach for it right away, just blankly stared down at it. "I'm not hungry."

"Neither am I, but we should both eat anyway." Reluctantly, Liz took the sandwich, Dorea set down her bookbag and popped up onto the table next to her. Unwrapping her sandwich, she said, "Sorry, Tracey, I didn't know you were down here. If I did I would have brought you something."

Tracey gave her an odd sideways look. "It's fine, I already ate."

A tense, awkward silence developed, as Liz and Dorea just sat there, slowly munching at their sandwiches, Tracey standing nearby, feet occasionally shuffling against the stone. Maybe putting some of her eggs and mushrooms on Liz's sandwich had been a bad idea — she kept dropping little bits down to the floor, the pieces too loose to hold together very well. Dorea finally started to feel a little hungry after a couple bites, no matter how weird it was to not feel hungry until after she began eating, but she was tired and kind of numb a lot these days, not worth thinking about too hard.

After what had to be at least a few minutes, Liz finally broke the silence. "Aren't you going to ask?"

Dorea was vaguely curious what Liz thought she would ask about. What living with Professor Snape was like, maybe, why she'd decided to switch to him as her family's trustee — though the use of the phrase "get out from under Dumbledore" and what Dorea knew about the first time they'd met, she didn't really have to ask that. Or maybe about her relatives, Liz had stormed off as Draco speculated about them abusing her. There were a lot of things she could be asking right now, but the question she did ask was, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"...No."

"Then no." Dorea took a pointed bite of her sandwich, closing off the topic. Tracey seemed surprised, giving her a little double-take, but really, this was going to be hard enough on Liz, she wouldn't make it worse if she could help it.

Oh crap, some of the preserves were escaping, crap crap crap...

They lingered in the potions lab until the end of breakfast. They weren't awkwardly silent the whole time, but they didn't talk about the news in the paper or anything sensitive, instead something perfectly innocuous — their Runes work, mostly, and a little bit about Arithmancy, and how much Liz hated Transfiguration came up. (They had an essay due tomorrow morning, Liz hadn't finished it yet.) Liz gradually relaxed as she was convinced Dorea really wasn't going to try to talk about Snape or her relatives, until she was back to her normal self again. Not that Liz on the average day seemed particularly happy or anything, she was still cold and odd, but at least she wasn't nearly so tense anymore.

Unfortunately, Liz didn't get to keep her (relatively) good mood for very long — by the time they got to the door into the Potions classroom, Ronald Weasley was already there.

When Dorea spotted the familiar brilliant orange-red hair, still some metres down the hall, she grimaced. Weasley had tried to confront Liz a few times over the course of this year, but hadn't had much success with it. Unlike Draco, who had a mutual hatred for Weasley and seemed to enjoy arguing with him for its own sake, Liz just wanted him to leave her alone, so when he did try to provoke her she slipped away as quickly as possible. In fact, Dorea suspected Liz sometimes used mind magic to compel Weasley away, though it didn't stick as well as it had with Creevey — the excitable little muggleborn had been much less obsessed with Liz in particular, it'd take a much more profound alteration to get Weasley to go away permanently. Liz was capable of doing that — mind mages were kind of terrifying, honestly — but she was probably reluctant to do something like that.

At least when there were witnesses around. If Weasley ever managed to get Liz alone that might not go so well for him.

Weasley's obsession with Liz was understandable. He was convinced Liz had murdered his sister — in that light, trying to provoke her into revealing her true colours or something made a kind of sense. Of course, Liz had had nothing to do with little Ginevra Weasley's death, so while it wasn't completely unreasonable, it... Well, Dorea did kind of pity him, but she also wished he would get a hold of himself and leave her friend the hell alone.

"There you are," Weasley all but shouted (his default volume was kind of loud), glaring over at Liz. "I was wondering where you'd gotten off to — plotting something with the other junior Death Eaters, are you?"

Okay, that was idiotic for multiple reasons. The suggestion that if she wasn't being watched Liz must be plotting something was ridiculous. And Dorea realised everyone thought Sirius had been a Death Eater, but as Tracey pointed out, "My father fought with Dumbledore's people, and my mother is muggleborn. Moron," she muttered in a huff.

Weasley gave her a double-take, surprised — apparently he hadn't known that. "Yeah, well, so did Sirius Black, didn't he?" with an unsubtle glare at Dorea.

Instead of coming up with some kind of response, Dorea just sighed. She'd kind of expected that.

She hadn't expected Tracey to respond for her. And not just because Tracey didn't really like her, she also just hardly ever spoke in front of so many people, and especially not so... Confidently wasn't quite the word she was looking for, but. "Wow, apparently you do believe everything you read in the Prophet — you know Dorea's mum is a muggle, right?"

"If you've heard some of the stories about the war I—"

"Of course I heard those kinds of stories, Weasley, I've been personally threatened with them since I was old enough to understand what they meant!" Surprisingly, there were a few guilty grimaces from purebloods in the audience, Dorea guessed some of them hadn't treated Tracey well when they were children. "And what world do you live in where you think Death Eaters would marry their muggle rape victims?! Honestly..."

If Dorea had to guess, a world in which a man marrying a woman he knocked up was the honourable thing to do. The thing he was probably missing was that Death Eaters weren't honourable people as a rule, and they didn't consider muggles to be people in the first place. Also, that wasn't expected in cases of rape — tradtionally, before the Ministry had existed to arbitrate disputes, the woman's family was more likely to try to murder the rapist than force her to marry him (in the Dark, anyway, she didn't know the Light's history as well) — but she guessed that was beside the point.

Weasley gaped at Tracey for a second, probably realising how completely idiotic the assertion that Sirius had been a loyal Death Eater was. Dorea's existence wasn't exactly a secret, the Ministry must be full of incompetent morons to not notice the obvious problem there. (It was, of course, arguably by design, but knowing that didn't make it any less annoying.) He shook it off after a second, refocusing on Liz — she'd sidled a bit closer to the door, trying once again to quietly slip away while Weasley was distracted. "You might have everyone else fooled, but not me. Only a dark witch would choose Snape over Dumbledore."

Liz's eyes tipped to the ceiling for a second, letting out a little sigh. "I don't know if you noticed, Weasley, but I don't have anyone fooled. I've never tried to pretend I wasn't a dark witch."

"Not if you listen to Granger—" He shot a sharp little side-eye glare at his fellow Gryffindor. "—or any of your Hufflepuff friends — Hufflepuffs! I don't know how they can stand you, after you turned your back on the Light."

Her shoulders squaring, Liz jaw visibly shifted, gritting her teeth, glaring right back at him. Dorea noticed she'd even drawn her wand, though she was still holding it low to her side, hidden from Ron's view by her body. Her voice low and harsh, "The Light turned their backs on me! It was your people who stuck me with my aunt and uncle and abandoned me there! I didn't do a fucking thing to any of you!"

"That's rich, ever since you came to Hogwarts you—"

"—have done nothing! I didn't do anything! I had nothing to do with the Dark Lord dying, I haven't done a fucking thing to hurt anyone in the Light, and I didn't touch your sister!"

"You've gotten away with it, but I promise, I'll find out a way to—"

Weasley's voice abruptly cut off as a ripple of magic crossed the air, like the lake rippling from the impact of a rock, so intense Dorea thought she could almost see it. A powerful silencing charm of some kind? By the way the rigidity in both Liz and Weasley's posture visibly eased, probably a pacification charm — Dorea relaxed a little too, but that might just be because the argument was obviously over.

"That will be quite enough." A few of the students twitched at the low, cool voice crawling along from further down the hall — Professor Snape, Dorea recognised the voice but couldn't see him, still around the corner from here. The door swung open with a faint click, seemingly on its own. "Inside, and be silent," a hint of fury slipping into his voice, stormy and threatening.

Liz was the first into the classroom, slipping through the door well before Snape stopped speaking, her wand disappeared back into its holster. And the rest followed swiftly, nobody wanting to be left alone in the hallway with an angry Professor Snape. There was usually a bit of low chatter as they filed through, finding their seats, but this time they proceeded in almost eerie silence, all too aware of Snape looming impatiently behind them.

Dorea was drawn up short when she saw Draco was sitting at a table with Liz — she didn't always sit with Liz, but she did most of the time, and she wasn't sure Draco ever had once. She took a second to get a look at his face, and then shrugged it off. It was impossible to be sure, but by that vague discomfort she was guessing Draco was going to try to steal a moment during the lesson to apologise for what he'd said up in the Great Hall. Daphne must have managed to talk some sense into him after Dorea had left, then. Theo, Draco's usual seatmate, was sitting with Blaise (neither of whom looked happy about it), so Dorea sat with Hermione instead. Which then shuffled Neville off to Lily, but that was fine, this would work out for the day.

Before starting the lecture, Snape stood in front his desk for a moment — looking vaguely intimidating as he often did, tall and dark and dramatic, face set in a faint, cold glare — eyes silently trailing over the class. Dorea probably didn't imagine his gaze holding on Weasley for a moment. And then he started on the business of the day, smooth and calm, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Double Potions sections normally consisted of a lecture in the first half, followed by brewing a potion in the second half that was somehow related to the lecture. Since Potions was often weird and obscure, Dorea couldn't really tell how they were related most of the time, but she trusted they must be — it was usually more obvious once she'd done the research for the essay assigned over the weekend. (Dorea did fine in Potions, but she didn't like it nearly as much as Liz or Daphne did, it all just seemed kind of esoteric and random.) Today Snape was talking about how air and blood affinities interacted differently in an environment with a summer association as opposed to autumn, and it was just completely incomprehensible, Dorea had no idea what was going on.

Following the directions to make a potion was easy enough, but Dorea was pretty sure she would never fully understand why they worked the way they did. Which meant she probably wasn't going to make it into NEWT Potions — Snape infamously only accepted O students — but oh well. She guessed Liz and Hemione and Daphne would just to have 'fun' without her.

This potion took more or less the entire time they had to brew it properly, though some finished sooner than others. Weirdly, by the time Dorea was done — hers didn't look quite exactly as the textbook described it, maybe a little too yellowish of an orange, but pretty close — Liz was still working. She used to be one of the quickest to finish, but over the last month or so she'd slowed down considerably, now more often than not at the tail end of the class — her potions, though, were perfect, even better than the work of people like Daphne and Draco, who'd been brewing potions for years before even getting to Hogwarts. Liz claimed she was a Seer, and was exploiting her talent to get little nudges now and then, which slowed her down somewhat but improved her potions' quality dramatically.

Dorea still had no idea what to think about that. She was aware that Seers and Oracles and the like existed, yes, but it was...well, just kind of weird, wasn't it? Liz had started looking into Divination lately, was learning real scrying and everything — supposedly it was Liz who'd discovered the Gryffindor dorms weren't shielded from scrying, resulting in McGonagall and Dumbledore tweaking the wards a little a month ago now. (That detail hadn't been included when Dumbledore had explained at dinner what they were doing, but Hermione said Liz had found out and told Snape, who'd presumably told McGonagall.) But from what Dorea understood, Divination could be extremely hit and miss. Scrying, sure, but looking into the future was notoriously unreliable.

Also, she wasn't sure how exactly Divination was supposed to help Liz do better at potions. She said she got "nudges", but from where, exactly? It didn't make any damn sense. Dorea was hardly an expert, but still...

As the period came to an end, students beginning to pack up to leave, Snape calmly called, "Miss Potter, stay behind for a moment." He didn't even look away from the rack of labelled phials, idly turning one in its slot. Liz twitched just slightly, but sunk back into her seat to wait for the room to empty out.

Dorea wasn't the only one who lingered for a moment, glancing between Liz and Snape — the news about Liz's living situation was still extremely new, she could practically feel the nosey curiosity on the air. Snape glanced up to give the eavesdroppers a flat look, and they startled into motion, swiftly slipping back out into the hall. As soon as the last student was through, the door was yanked closed with a charm, leaving Liz alone in there with Snape.

Not that that was something to worry about, of course, she'd apparently spent two (or maybe only one?) summer at his house. He probably just wanted to make sure she was doing okay, with the paper and all. But Dorea stopped near the door anyway, to wait for Liz to get out — after all, she technically wasn't supposed to go anywhere alone.

Though she wasn't alone, Hermione had stayed behind too. Eyes fixed on the door, only glancing at Dorea for a second at a time, she asked in a whisper, "Did you know about this?"

Dorea shook her head. "I knew she wasn't living with her relatives, but I didn't know about Snape."

Letting out a little huff, Hermione shook her head, frizzy curls bouncing around her head. "I didn't even know that until Tracey said so on the train, when Liz had that episode, you know." Of course she knew, she wasn't likely to forget that, it'd been freaky as hell. "I mean, I knew she ran away, but I thought Dumbledore brought her back." Hermione sounded faintly displeased saying that, frowning a little. She might know even less about Liz's living situation than Dorea did, but it wasn't hard to come to the conclusion she'd been abused — Hermione was not happy about Dumbledore sending her back there, she was just too polite to say anything about it.

"Liz said he brought her back, but she didn't say she stayed. Sometimes you have to pay closer attention to what Liz doesn't say."

"Right," Hermione muttered, nodding, "I didn't notice that." Lip curling a little into a weak smile, "I guess that's what I get for being best friends with Slytherins."

Mostly what she got was bullied by the other Gryffindors, but that wasn't what they were talking about just now. "Liz is perhaps the worst Slytherin ever. I honestly have no idea how the hell she got Sorted here." Well, no, she was probably just even less suited to everywhere else...

"Is this a good thing? Liz and Professor Snape, I mean, are we happy about this?"

"That Liz got away from her relatives, yes, but—"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Well, obviously."

"But about Snape, I don't know. She seems to like him, but it's so hard to tell with Liz."

"And we can't ask if she's okay, because she'll say she is no matter what just to end the conversation."

So Hermione had noticed that too. Dorea sighed. "I don't know, I think it's probably fine. If nothing else, I'm pretty sure Snape can terrify the piss out of anyone trying to mess with her." Hermione tried to hide a smile, and failed horribly. "The hearing is going to be miserable, though. They're going to blow it up into a big political thing, since it does involve Dumbledore, and who the hell knows what they're going to dig up — maybe something to do with cupboards, for example."

Hermione grimaced, and didn't respond, turning a few degrees away to glare at the wall instead. For all that she might sarcastically complain about being surrounded by Slytherins, that look on her face — frigid and inhumanely calculating, disdain simmering just under the surface — was positively Snape-ish. Probably wishing horrible things on Liz's relatives and Prophet writers and the school's bullies, which, couldn't really blame her for that.

The door opened a moment later, Liz stepping out into the hall. She glanced at them quick, but was seemingly unsurprised that they'd waited for her, started off toward the stairs without a word. Hermione skipped up next to her right away, but Dorea was lagging behind a bit — she wouldn't fall behind, but it wasn't worth the energy to push herself to reach them. But even as she had the thought Liz slowed down a little bit, must have picked it up from her head.

Honestly, Dorea wished Liz would stop doing that, but she knew nagging her about it wouldn't do any good.

"So, what did Professor Snape have to say?" Hermione asked. "Anything to worry about?" Dorea thought she was trying to ask without asking if Liz was okay with living with Snape, but she didn't think it would make any difference, Liz would likely just brush off this question too.

Liz shot Hermione a glance — Dorea couldn't make out her face from this angle, but she'd probably noticed the same thing Dorea had. (Mind-reading must make that sort of thing easy.) But, somewhat to Dorea's surprise, she actually answered. "No, it's fine. He just asked me to come talk to him if anyone's bothering me about this whole thing. And I'm supposed to have him check anything I get in the post that I don't know who it's from before opening it, which is annoying, but not that big of a deal."

"...That's probably not a bad idea, actually," Dorea said, gently. Liz had been controversial enough without this business adding to it, and British mages could be...extreme, at times. It wasn't entirely out of the question that somebody would be clever enough to slip something dangerous through Hogwarts's post wards.

"I know," Liz groaned, low and harsh, "I did agree. I'm just saying, it's stupid. I really hate all this Girl Who Lived shite."

Giving the poor, innocent wall another weirdly Snape-ish look, Hermione nodded. "So, you're okay?"

Liz let out an exasperated sigh. "Yes, Hermione, I'm fine. I'm tired of having to deal with Ron Weasley, but other than that."

Dorea glanced at Hermione the same time Hermione glanced at her, looking just about as hesitant and uncertain as Dorea felt. It was possible Liz just didn't want to talk about it, but they weren't going to get any more if they pushed, so they'd have to satisfy themselves with that for now. Except, "You know, if you are having trouble with something, you can come to us at any time. Maybe we can't fix it, but we can listen, at least."

"Sure. The study group's going to be working on Charms and Defence this afternoon, right? I still have to do my Transfiguration essay..."

The chances of Liz actually coming to them for help were vanishingly small, but Dorea guessed she'd just have to satisfy herself with that for now too. If for no other reason, she was too tired to feel like pressing Liz on anything at the moment.

(Her health issues besides, being friends with Liz could be very emotionally exhausting sometimes.)