Severus stared unblinkingly at the reservoir stone for a brief moment — his brow slightly furrowed in concentration, mind focused to a razor edge — before lifting one hand, middle finger touching the side of his temple. When he pulled his finger away, gradually centimetre by centimetre, a string of silvery memory-stuff was clinging to the tip, pulling and pulling, until the connection snapped, the free end of the strand springing away from his head, dangling from his finger and beginning to coil into a misty gaseous cloud. Severus tapped his finger against the reservoir stone, and the memory-stuff was sucked into the clear gemstone, tinting it slightly blueish, seeming to glow with a faint internal light. The memory copied, Severus leaned back in his chair, reaching for his tea.

It was slightly ridiculous that Severus could copy memories wandlessly — it'd taken Liz forever to figure out that charm. Sometimes she was reminded that Severus was actually really good at magic, most of the time he was pretty subtle about it...

Anyway, right, integrating memories. Taking a long, slow breath, Liz leaned further over the sitting room table. Severus was sitting in his normal armchair, but Liz was too bloody short to reach the table from the sofa — instead they'd put the reservoir stone on the table near his chair, and Liz was sitting cross-legged on the floor where she could reach. Sitting on the floor wasn't a terrible idea to begin with, because if she got too focused on mind magic stuff and lost track of her surroundings and went limp (which could happen sometimes), at least this way she wouldn't flop off the sofa and maybe hurt herself. Slightly annoying, being so bloody short, but.

Closing her eyes, Liz reached out toward the reservoir — a clear gemstone about the size of her thumb, cut and polished into a blocky shape, set into a circle of stone the size of her hand strewn with runes, an enchantment Severus had designed to imitate the natural boundary of a mind — and grasped at the memory. She didn't look inside, like she would reading someone's mind (though she did catch a glimpse of greyish stone, Hogwarts, blonde hair, a vague sense of frustration), but instead circled around it. And not, just, holding herself around it, like hovering there, but creating a firm grip all the way around the memory. English didn't really have the words to describe what mind magic felt like in any way that made sense, but Liz kind of thought of it like plaiting hair — weaving the little bits at the edge of Liz's mind with the little bits of magic in the reservoir, just around the edges, not down in a line but everywhere in a sphere, which obviously wasn't how plaits worked, but it was the closest she could get.

Once she thought she had a good solid hold on it, the entire surface all the way around enclosed, Liz give the whole thing a good yank, like pulling on the ends of a knot to tighten it. The memory popped right out of the reservoir, with only a faint feeling of strain as it passed Severus's enchantment — a natural mind would try to hold on to its own stuff, the interference could cause the magic she was taking to lose its shape, hence the practice. She thought she'd gotten a good enough grip on it this time, though, she hadn't felt it change at all.

The process of actually integrating the memory wasn't too difficult. She loosened her grip on it, not enough for it to loose shape — the weave around its edges was the only thing keeping it together now — but enough to push some of her magic through into it. Not her mind, that would just end up with her viewing the memory (which was what she'd accidentally ended up doing her first few tries), but with her magic — like casting a charm through her wand, but pushing the power through her mind into the ball of memory instead. It had taken her several tries to figure out how to do that, but now that she knew what it felt like it wasn't actually hard. (Magic could be funny like that.) She willed her magic to, sort of, trace over the pattern of the memory — again, not a perfect description, but pretty close — until the whole thing was inundated, any magic she pushed in just evaporating right out again. Right, that should be it. Taking another breath, Liz forced purpose into the magic overlaying the memory, making it her memory — it was very much like her blood subsumption ritual, but targeting her mind instead of her body, this thing is mine, it's part of—

Liz grimaced, gritting her teeth, as the spell took, burning the memory into her brain — and "burning" was the right word, magic forcing the information into her with all the subtlety of pressing bacon against a hot pan with a fork. Colourful sparks danced behind her eyes, hot sparks of pain tingling down her neck, but they only lasted a moment, Liz relaxed as the magic finished its job, took a couple seconds to catch her breath. She was left with a dull, indistinct headache, but otherwise fine. She was pretty sure she hadn't accidentally broken anything, she'd probably be able to tell if she had, so, good. Her throat was a little dry though, she reached for her cup of water.

Her shoulders tensed at the tingle of a mind approaching hers, forced herself to relax. Severus looked over the surface of her mind, like ghostly fingers brushing over the back of her neck — looking for any breaks or irregularities, making sure she hadn't just hurt herself. This exact examination was a rather familiar feeling by now — he'd done it after she'd absorbed the horcrux and again when she'd flailed at the dementor like an idiot, and now after each attempt at integrating a memory — but it hadn't stopped being, just, uncomfortable. (It made her feel intensely vulnerable, defenceless and almost naked, she did not like it.) Thankfully, it didn't last very long, Severus's mind lifting away again after a few seconds. "What do you see?"

Liz set the cup down with a little clunk. "Um... You were at Hogwarts...during the summer, I think. Yeah, summer, planning for the next year. Um, you and Ashe — Professor Babbling, I mean." Severus thought of the Runes Professor as "Ashe", looking at the copied memory she'd slipped. "You two were complaining about Dumbledore, but I don— Oh! You both — um, separately, I think — told him the school should hire counselours or something, to help deal with students' personal problems, you know. He said no. You were complaining about him being stuck in the Nineteenth Century, and also having a stick up his arse."

There was a little flicker of amusement from Severus. "Did I say that?"

"No, Babbling did. Not her exact words, something about him being a stuffy old man too uncomfortable with the thought of dealing with people's feelings—" Which, honestly, Liz could sympathise with. "—but that was basically what she meant."

Severus nodded. "Did you catch why the Headmaster refused?"

"Er... He told you that's what the Heads of House are for — which is such shite, how the hell are you all supposed to have time for all your students on top of teaching and marking essays and whatever else?" Severus managed it through a combination of carefully delegating running the House to the prefects and also just never sleeping ever; the former worked well enough, most of the time, but the latter couldn't possibly be healthy. "Not sure what he said to Babbling. Um, something about Hogwarts not being a muggle school, and things are different here? Did Babbling go to muggle school?" She did tend to dress pretty muggleish, but...

"Yes. She attended local schools through primary and secondary, while homeschooling through OWLs; she finished her Proficiencies, the Continental NEWT-equivalent standard, at Beauxbatons while simultaneously attending Aix–Marseille University; finally, she pursued a doctorate in linguistics at Oxford while continuing Mastery study in the graphic arts on her own time."

Fucking hell... "Oxford. You mean, Oxford Oxford."

"Yes."

"...Professor Babbling literally has a Ph.D. from Oxford."

"Yes."

...Okay, then. "Anyway, yeah, you two talked about how Hogwarts is actually shitty for students in some ways, and Dumbledore and the Board aren't inclined to do anything about it. Though they are now, I guess, what with the staff they're adding next year."

"The severity of the problem has worsened since then — do you know when that conversation between Ashe and me occurred?"

"Um, summer...Eight-Five?" Hey, she would have been only five when this happened, mind magic was neat.

Severus nodded. "Eighty-Five. What was Babbling wearing?"

Weird question for Severus of all people to ask, probably just making sure she'd properly absorbed all the information. "Denim cut-offs and a sleeveless blouse." Which was actually quite scandalous by magical standards — she didn't go quite that far when the students were around. "Um, I think the blouse was pink and white and kind of floral-looking? Very Seventies. I have the feeling she always dresses like that over the summers, which obviously isn't something I would know, must have picked it up from you somehow. I always wondered, are you two friends?"

"With the exception of Trelawney, Ashe is the staff member who has been there the longest, but not so long that she was teaching when I was a student. And we get on well enough. If I must interact socially with anyone currently on-staff, I would rather it be Ashe — if you consider that sufficient to be friends, then I suppose we are."

Liz rolled her eyes — Jesus Christ, Severus, way to avoid giving a straight answer to really a very simple question...

He likely picked up the exasperation in her head, but he didn't actually see her rolling her eyes, happened to look down at his watch at the same time. "We have time for one more, if you like."

"Oh, sure, lay it on me." The quicker they got through integrating experiential memories, the quicker they'd get to integrating knowledge (which was supposedly subtler and more difficult), the sooner she could actually copy French, which was the whole point of practising all this. After a brief moment of thought, Severus copied another memory into the reservoir. Having done this probably almost a dozen times by now (though half that successfully), Liz was getting a lot quicker at it — it still took maybe thirty seconds for Liz to weave herself around the memory, pluck it out of the reservoir, and properly integrate it, but still, making progress.

This memory was fuzzy, indistinct — a pensieve used scrying to fill in the gaps, but copying memories directly from people meant she got them as they themselves remembered them, with all the vagueness and errors that came with that. This one was even fuzzier than the others he'd shown her, though, must be older. It was in a play area, um... Actually, it looked a lot like the one at her old primary school? She didn't know if Severus's had looked so much like hers, or if her mind was just filling in the gaps with what was familiar to her — honestly, she suspected the latter. It looked like they were on break, other children running around and playing and whatever, while Severus sat...on the rim of a sand pit, by himself.

Not much had come through in the memory, though she did catch that Severus was hungry, and tired. Actually, apparently more had come through than she'd thought, because noticing that had other bits of information popping up that she hadn't realised she'd gotten — Severus (who was maybe five or six?) hadn't slept well because he'd been woken up in the middle of the night by his parents arguing, and was too scared and nervous to get back to sleep; his mother had been sleeping off a hangover this morning, so no breakfast, he hadn't eaten since last night, and even then just a handful of crackers and some cheese he'd found (there was other food in the house, but he was too little to cook, and his parents hadn't done anything). So Severus was very much looking forward to lunch, though he wasn't sure he'd make it all the way through classes without falling asleep.

This was reminding Liz uncomfortably of her own childhood — she'd already known Severus's parents had been shite, yeah, but, ugh, this was far too familiar...

Anyway, in the middle of break a red-headed girl plopped down next to him, and just started babbling away. Severus knew the girl was in his class, but didn't know her name. He didn't remember a word of what they'd talked about, but he did remember the girl had some Marie biscuits and an orange, a snack she'd been sent to school with — while chattering randomly about whatever, now and then she would hand him a biscuit or a section of the orange, without comment, just, doing it all casual. It was the first time Severus ever had orange, his mother didn't like them.

Severus would only find out later, looping by her desk to check the name sign stuck to it, that the girl's name was Lily Evans.

Right, she kind of didn't know what to say about this one. "Was that the first time you met Lily?"

"I assume we must have done something to introduce ourselves to each other at the beginning of term, but I didn't take any note of Lily at the time." There was something off about Severus's mind, shifting and tingling, the words coming slightly rushed — Liz had the vague feeling that Severus was regretting giving her this memory, or at least he didn't want to talk about it. "Did you catch her hair?"

"Oh, yeah, um, it's plaited, and... Are those blades of grass?" There was something green woven into the pattern, the contrast against the deep red of her hair pretty intense, actually kind of neat.

Severus nodded. "Lily and her sister used to do each other's hair regularly, before their relationship went sour. They would use flowers when they were available, but that day was in the wrong time of year."

...It was kind of odd to think of Petunia being nice, and doing cute things like plaiting flowers into her baby sister's hair. She guessed Petunia must have been a little kid at some point too, just, not something Liz had ever really thought about. "Um, okay. Again, very Seventies."

His lips twitched. "I believe you mean Sixties." Oh, right, obviously — she didn't know how big of a difference there was, honestly, but she should have known that anyway, because maths. And she now remembered something that'd happened before she was born, very neat. "Speaking of flowers, we will need to leave soon."

Liz was pretty sure Severus just wanted to end the conversation, but that was fine. "Right, I'll go get dressed quick," she said, pushing herself up with a hand against the table.

"Wear a jumper — it will be cold outside."

As soon as she was past Severus's chair, her back to him, she rolled her eyes. Honestly, it was January, of course it was going to be cold...

Liz picked a dress at random, and then pulled on over it the jumper Tracey's mum had made for her two Christmasses ago — and then struggled for a moment to pull all of her hair back out of the neck, impossible shite. It was only a little smaller on her than it'd been two years ago, because Liz was annoyingly tiny. She also grabbed the knit hat Tracey had made, but wasn't sure she'd actually need it, tucked it under one of the straps of her wand holster just in case. It made a kind of funny-looking bulge on her forearm, but she didn't really care.

Walking back through the sitting room, toward her boots by the door, she asked, "How tall was Lily?"

Severus, standing waiting for her a few steps away, ticked up an eyebrow. He held a hand up at his side, level, just a little bit under the top of his shoulder — oh, well, that wasn't that much taller than Liz was now, actually... "I don't recall precisely, but I suspect James wasn't any taller. In fact, he might have been a couple inches shorter than Lily. I'm afraid you were never going to be tall, even under ideal circumstances."

Even under ideal circumstances, meaning Severus suspected not getting enough food as a little kid, and then having a pretty unhealthy diet up to the point he started giving her nutrient potions just last summer, had stunted her growth a bit, he'd mentioned that before. Which was irritating — how the hell was she supposed to know how to feed herself properly, nobody had ever taught her anything about nutrition — but it was too late to do anything about it now. "Tall, I'd settle for not being tiny. Whatever. I'm ready to go."

There was a little twittering in his head, internally laughing at the poor tiny person, but he held out his hand to apparate them away without a word.

They landed in a dark alleyway, stepped out onto a street in a town somewhere — Liz hadn't asked, since it didn't matter at all. After a short walk they came to a glass-fronted flower shop, rows of plants visible inside, a few pots even set out on the pavement or hanging from the wall overhead, all green and some flowering despite it being January, but Liz guessed some plants were better with cold than others. The inside of the shop was very warm and unexpectedly humid, ugh, hopefully they weren't going to be in here very long...

The salesperson, a perfectly unremarkable-looking middle-aged man‚ greeted Severus by name, weirdly enough — the usual arrangement? yes, I'll have that for you in a minute, let's see here... The man grabbed a few things off shelves and out of drawers in the nook with the register before disappearing through a back door. There was a greenhouse back there, Liz saw leaning around the frame, must be squeezed into the space between rows. Kind of neat, she guessed.

Poking around the storefront out of a lack of anything better to do with herself — there were a bunch of potted plants sitting out for sale, most of which Liz recognised without checking the labels (she'd done a lot of gardening), along with tools and empty pots and mulch and gloves and whatever, all kinds of shite — Liz asked if Severus came here often. Apparently, he came here every time the Third of January came around, since Eighty-Three. In Eighty-Four he'd been out of sorts (due to being sleep-deprived and a bit hung over, but he didn't say that out loud), and had ended up telling the proprietor what the flowers were for — the bloke remembered, every year had something made up for him without being asked.

Liz still thought leaving flowers at people's graves was weird — they were dead, it wasn't like they were going to see the things. Of course, she also thought visiting people's graves was weird to begin with, and she realised she was a crazy person, so she just didn't say anything.

The man returned before long with a bundle of flowers, small enough to comfortably hold in one hand. The roses were a gimme, those little white ones were yarrow — Petunia hadn't grown them, Liz only recognised them because they happened to be common in healing potions — and the stalks with a bunch of tiny purple flowers were lavender, and the big ones were lilies (how punny), long curving white petals with strokes of red down the middle. Specifically Japanese lilies, Liz thought, the petals spread out more than the funny cone-like thing normal lilies did — Petunia hadn't grown lilies (obviously), but she'd looked up pictures in the school library after learning her mother's name when she'd been...shite, five or six, probably, bloody ages ago. Kind of ridiculous she still remembered what the flowers looked like, but they were used in potions too, they even had some in the greenhouses at school, so.

Wrapping the stems of the flowers up with some crinkly paper and tying it closed with a ribbon, the man started ringing Severus up, chatting all the while. At some point, predictably, he asked about Liz. "This is my niece Elizabeth, she's staying with me for Christmas this year." Liz tried not to react too obviously at the "niece" bit — she was guessing he meant in the sense that he and Lily had been honorary siblings...or maybe Severus had told this bloke Lily was his sister, that was also possible. "Lily and James were her parents."

"Oh, I see. I'm sorry, sweetie, I didn't— Did you want to pick out something to bring them?"

Liz was busy trying not to laugh at the muggle man calling her "sweetie" — no one who'd actually met her would say she was particularly sweet — it took her a moment to find her voice. "No, that's okay." Honestly, this whole thing was more meaningful to Severus than it was to her (Lily and James were just names to her), but she realised that was a bad thing to say.

"Nonsense, no reason to be shy. Give me just a minute..." Before Liz could say anything, the man had already disappeared back into the greenhouse — she sighed, trying to ignore the amused bubbling from Severus. He was back before too long, again wrapping up and tying off another little bundle of flowers. "The big orange ones are marigolds, these bunches of blue here are rosemary, and the little white ones are chamomile." Liz had actually known that, Petunia grew marigolds and rosemary, and chamomile are used in potions. Pulling the knot closed, he held out the bundle of flowers across the counter toward her. "Here you go."

She really didn't need any flowers, but she guessed he had clipped them already, so it was kind of too late to argue. Reluctantly taking them, she muttered, "Um, thanks. I didn't bring any money..."

"Oh no sweetie, on the house. My condolences for your loss." Oookay, then...

As much as the bloke said he was just giving her flowers for free, she was pretty sure Severus overpaid for his to make up for it — neither of them said anything about it, she wasn't even sure why she got that feeling, she just did. Getting her flowers was completely unnecessary, but at least the rosemary smelled nice. There was more polite conversation between the salesperson and Severus, and then they were walking out again. They ducked into a side alley, and, with a brief squeeze of apparation and a muffled pop-pop, they arrived in Godric's Hollow.

Liz had heard about the town before, obviously, but not just because it was where the thing on Hallowe'en '81 happened: supposedly Godric Gryffindor had been born here. The belief was so common that the village was even named after him — even on the muggle side, which suggested that it'd been called that long before Secrecy. Though there were plenty of people who argued it was probably just legend. Some insisted that, since Gryffindor had totally for sure been a pureblood mage, he couldn't possibly have been born in a mixed village. Liz didn't see how that necessarily followed, and also he hadn't been a pureblood, since pretty much every mage she'd spoken to about it who wasn't stupidly racist — the purebloods in the study group, plus Severus and Tamsyn — insisted that that hadn't even been a thing back then, that blood purity was a modern, post-Secrecy concept.

A counter-claim from stupid racists who bought that argument, but still wanted to say the name of the village was legit, was that Gryffindor had been buried here, but that was definitely not true. Nobody was sure about Slytherin and Ravenclaw, but it was an historical fact that Hufflepuff and Gryffindor had both been buried in the catacombs under Hogwarts. Since Hogwarts was weird sometimes, they couldn't actually get down there anymore — the passages in the catacombs kept curling around and doubling back on each other, it was impossible to get any deeper than the 12th or 13th Century or so — but they did have old documents talking about their graves deep in the catacombs as a sort of pilgrimage site certain groups of mages would occasionally come and leave offerings at. So, yeah, Gryffindor certainly hadn't been buried here, that one wasn't debateable.

Out of curiosity, Liz had asked Tamsyn, and she said that it was known for certain that Godric had been West Saxon, probably from the Somerset Levels around Glastonbury or Athelney. Godric's Hollow was around Wellington, which was in slightly the wrong place, but pretty close. Tamsyn thought it was most likely that some of Gryffindor's children or grandchildren or whatever had lived in the area, and over time the place came to be associated with Gryffindor's family, the story that it was where he'd been born starting up well after his time. Supposedly, nobody really had any idea where or when exactly he was born — unlike Slytherin, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had been commoners, and given people hadn't exactly been very great about keeping thorough records in the 9th Century, it's almost certain that there's simply no evidence to find. Gryffindor had been from the area, certainly, but the claim that he'd been born at Godric's Hollow wasn't actually based on anything, and was probably false.

Godric's Hollow wasn't the only mixed muggle–magical settlement left on the island (though they were less common post-Secrecy), but it was one of the larger ones. Well, not counting London or Oxford or Edinburgh or Glasgow, obviously. It was unusual in that the muggle and magical populations were pretty close to even. Normally it worked more like in London, with a tiny magical settlement hidden in the middle of a big city — Charing was actually pretty big by magical standards, the only real competition population-wise was the Refuge in Ireland (where the Potter townhouse she'd be staying in next summer was), yet still a tiny fraction of the muggle city around it — but the growing and shrinking of the muggle and magical sides of the village over the centuries had, by complete coincidence, ended up with the town neatly split. Supposedly some of the magical locals didn't even have muggle-repelling wards up, so their muggle neighbours actually knew they were there, participated in village stuff and even voted in elections and everything, but most of the magical population was hidden away from muggle eyes.

Godric's Hollow was a dinky little village — or maybe Liz was just used to Little Whinging and Guildford and London — clustered around one sizeable through-street with smaller, curvier lanes splitting off here and there. There were a few shops and a single petrol station along the street, an ancient-looking brick and slate post office with a little ring of green space around it, kind of a tiny public garden. It was actually in that green space that she and Severus landed — as they walked out from under the shade of a leafless tree, Liz felt a tingle of magic sweep over her, must be a registered apparation point.

They walked down the street a short ways, turning onto the first lane they came to. Behind the row of shops stood a forest of little wooden cottages, all roughly the same size and shape, packed much more closely together than in Little Whinging, in some cases wall-to-wall — none of them had front gardens, though some of them had little walled-in spaces in front, with gates to let in cars. There weren't any cars parked on the lane (there wasn't room for them), but Liz did spot them here and there, sitting in little nooks between houses, an occasional garage. The houses were modestly-sized, but they looked rather modern and nice. Liz assumed the people here were mostly relatively well-off middle class people, commuting to whatever in Taunton or Glastonbury.

Some of the houses had a faint tingle of magic around them but looked mostly normal, must be those mages who made more of an effort to blend in, but some of them were obviously magical, with funny little additions sticking out, the occasional flash of light caught in one window or another. There weren't many people out (it was around dinnertime, in January), so they mostly passed along the lane without drawing notice. Except for one old woman sitting on a front porch, wrapped up in a quilt on a rocking chair with a pair of knitting needles floating in the air nearby going at it seemingly on their own, who stared at them as they walked by — stared at Liz specifically, she had a feeling the old woman knew who she was. She didn't try to make a scene, at least...

After a little bit of walking, the lane opened up into an open square, covered in brick paving stones, banks of bushes here and there, a few empty trees stretching up into the dusky sky. There were clear gaps in it for cars to pass through, the bushes marking out a sort of traffic circle, but it was obvious the space was mostly meant for pedestrians. Most of the buildings were more houses, though there was a grocer's there, and that was definitely a pub. At the centre was what must be a war memorial — it looked kind of like the Cenotaph in Whitehall, pale stone in a stretched out obelisk sort of thing, but smaller, and also Liz could faintly see from here there were names etched into it, probably locals killed in one or both of the World Wars.

Severus followed the circle around, and led them onto another lane, for only a short distance before reaching a church. Sitting behind a stone wall, the church was pretty little and ancient-looking, made out of dark stone brick with a peaked roof, a short bell tower sticking up out of the top. It was small enough Liz doubted there could be room in there for much more than...whatever the proper word for where they had mass was called, and likely not a very big one at that. From the design in the stained glass over the door — much newer than the rest of the church, a man who was almost certainly Jesus with these rays of light shooting out of his chest, making a little glowy design over his heart — and the sign posted out front, it seemed this was a Catholic church (at least she thought sacred heart stuff was a Catholic thing, not an expert), which was weird, Liz hadn't thought there were that many Catholics around here. But, she guessed it was a small church...

Past an old iron gate was a narrow path, lined on both sides with bushes, leading behind the church, where there was a surprisingly large cemetery — it covered much more ground than the church and the courtyard around it, some of the gravestones mossy and crumbling with age, clearly this had been here for a very long time. Stepping into the cemetery, Liz was struck with a wave of crawling tingles, an odd cold lurch through her middle, hitched to a stop. There was... Well, she didn't know what to call it. There was something weird on the magic here, certainly that, feeling thick and deep and cold and...

Severus had stopped a couple steps after her, turned halfway back. "Are you all right?"

She blinked. "Er, yeah. Weird question, is this place haunted?"

"There are persistent rumours to that effect, but so far as I know there aren't any particular spirits known to linger here. Why do you ask?"

"Pretty sure it is — Seer stuff, magic feels weird here. Anyway, which way are we going?"

Out of a lack of anything better to do, Liz idly read the gravestones as they passed by. Some of them were very old, Liz saw a few dates in the 13th Century — which was slightly ridiculous, Liz hadn't realised gravestones even lasted that long. Those ones were all magical names — including "PEVRELLVS", the traditional Latin spelling of Peverell, one of the Seventeen Founders — so maybe they'd done something magic to make them last longer, who knows. Oh hey, there were Dumbledores...all from the 19th Century or older, but the family was almost gone, so...

Eventually they came to a gravestone of plain white marble, double-wide, one of the ones for a married couple. There was a little more writing on it than most — in loving memory at the top, their names (including middle names), birth and death dates (today was Lily's birthday), and then a longer string of letters at the bottom that was definitely a quote from something. Severus walked right up to set down the flowers — on Lily's side, obviously — muttered something Liz didn't catch. And then he just...stood there, for a bit, thoughts of some kind quietly shifting in his head.

Liz waited, trying not to fidget too much — though she couldn't quite stop her fingers from picking at the paper around the flowers, making little crinkling noises. She didn't know what she was supposed to be doing.

People always expected her to have feelings about her parents, occasionally expressing sympathy when Hallowe'en came around or apologising when they said something less than flattering about either of them, but she didn't, really. They were just...not entirely real to her. She meant, obviously she had parents, she must have come from somewhere, but they weren't people, just...names, and stories disconnected from anything. Like, Petunia used to say shite about them all the time, and the purpose of that was mostly as an insult, that Liz was clearly just as useless as them, would end up whoring herself out to some layabout and getting herself killed through a combination of drugs and stupidity. (Even before Liz had known what things like "whoring herself out" meant, because Petunia hadn't bothered keeping her insults age-appropriate.) They had more to do with Liz than anything, like Petunia wasn't talking about anybody who'd actually existed, might as well be talking about characters in some fairy tale for all that it mattered.

Which, Liz knew now, wasn't so far from the truth — everything Petunia had told Liz about her parents had been made up to hurt her. It hadn't, mostly. Liz hadn't had any reason to think her parents weren't useless drunken layabouts, so she'd simply accepted what she was told as fact. She'd been mildly surprised, reading Petunia's mind the day she'd gotten her acceptance letter from Hogwarts, to learn that her mother had been literally a witch, and very surprised when she got to Hogwarts and learned that her father had been bloody nobility — in retrospect, it was pretty obvious that Petunia had been jealous of Lily, and had been taking out her pent-up resentment on Liz. (Primarily trying to beat her down into meek obedience, of course, but the jealousy also figured into it.) But when she'd started getting the truth from people, that hadn't really been any different, just stories that might as well be fiction for all that it mattered.

She'd been a little surprised to learn that James had apparently been a bit of a bully when he'd been her age — though most didn't mention that, presumably more trying to avoid hurting her feelings, she'd actually first picked it up from Sprout's head on accident — but also she didn't really care. And also, now that she knew more, it wasn't much of a surprise at all — he'd just been another of the stuck-up Light nobles that were all over Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, no big shock. That Liz apparently took more after Lily, with the Parseltongue and being a Seer, her talent for charms and also being a big Dark Arts nerd, that was vaguely interesting, she guessed, but she thought all of those were heritable? Everything except the Dark Arts stuff, she meant, but there was a whole thing about a mother's magic shaping the child's magic in utero, that was what usually happened. So, interesting to know, but it wasn't really that meaningful to her.

(That Lily had apparently also been super queer was also a thing to know — was that heritable too? — but she didn't really care so much about that either.)

She meant, she'd never met James and Lily, she didn't remember them at all, and she hadn't even started learning what they'd really been like until rather recently. They were just...names, and facts. Like characters she'd read out of a novel — not literally, of course, obviously she knew they'd existed, but they didn't feel real, like actual people who had anything whatsoever to do with her. She guessed it was a little...odd, that her parents' dead bodies were directly under her feet right now, but she didn't really care.

But she realised that was a bad thing to say, and also they were real to Severus. So, Liz didn't know what she was supposed to doing.

So she ended up just standing there awkwardly, wondering how long this would take.

Liz twitched when Severus spoke, unexpected. "You can set those down here, if you like."

She was confused for a second before she realised he meant the flowers. "Oh! Right..." Liz walked closer — if she weren't standing directly over their bodies before, she definitely was now — and set down the flowers the silly salesperson had insisted on giving her. A bit to the side of Severus's, mirroring them — she was pretty sure she would have liked Lily better than James, but it seemed the thing to do, for balance. "What's that from?" she asked, pointing to the words on the bottom. "I assume it's not meant to be taken literally." Though conquering death did sound kind of awesome.

There was a faint flare of irritation from him, Liz tried not to wince — was that not an okay thing to ask? "It's from the Bible."

"Were James and Lily Christian?"

"No," he said, voice low and curling. Right, that'd be what the irritation had been about then. "If I recall correctly, the Potters were vaguely theist. Lily was raised Catholic, but by the end she hadn't truly believed in any of it for nearly a decade. Neither would likely have chosen this for an epitaph. I assume the choice was the Headmaster's."

"...Is Dumbledore Christian?"

"Not particularly, but his mother was, and he was raised with it. Though I'm not certain what message he intended. I don't recall where the quote is from, or the context it belongs in. I'm not as familiar with the New Testament — I had to look it up, and I've forgotten since."

...That was kind of a weird thing to say. "Not as familiar compared to what?"

"My parents were Jewish. I can't say my knowledge of the Tanakh is particularly thorough either, but I did have more exposure to it growing up than the Christian version."

She completely failed to hold in her reaction, blinking up at him — her noisy mind must have been shouting surprise up at him very noisily, because he grimaced just a little, turning a single raised eyebrow down at her. "You're Jewish?" How did she not know that by now, they were living together...

"My parents were Jewish," said with a little bit of an ironic drawl on his voice. "They hardly put the effort into raising me even so far as to ensure I was eating regularly — what makes you think they made a point of properly imparting their religion to me?"

...Good point.

"As irrelevant as I might think it to be, my heritage was on the list of reasons Lily's father believed I was an inappropriate friend to her." Oh, well, of course it was — obviously both of Liz's grandfathers were racist bastards, she hadn't really expected otherwise. "Lily tried to convince me on more than one occasion that I should ask one of the magical Jewish families to teach me properly, but I didn't care enough to bother. Very few of my acquaintances are even aware of it now. Not out of any intent on my part to hide it, I simply don't consider it relevant — just as I doubt you'll make a point of informing people of your grandparents' Catholicism.

"In any case. You're not hiding your discomfort nearly as well as you think you are — we can move on if you like."

With a sort of sheepish shrug, Liz muttered, "Sorry. I just– I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. I mean, it's just a..." She waved vaguely at the headstone. "And they're dead, obviously, it's not like they know we're even here. I just don't get it."

"There isn't anything in particularly you should be doing." His voice came as smooth and calm as usual, not showing any hint of the feeling in his head — cold and shuddering and vaguely nauseating, Liz didn't know what that was. "Mourning is for the mourners, not the mourned."

Liz couldn't say she mourned her parents' deaths either — one had to have actually met someone before they could miss them. "Right, and I don't get it, so, we can move on, then."

There was another odd flicker in Severus's head, but he didn't say anything, with a last glance at the gravestone turned and started off. Back through the graveyard and through the path to the lane, and they eventually came to the square again. Instead of curling to the side like they had last time, Severus led them right straight through it, toward the memorial in the middle. There were several benches around, tracing a broken ring several metre wide around the memorial, iron and wood that looked rather newer than the memorial itself, probably replaced at some point. They stepped into the ring marked by the benches and—

There was a tingle of magic, targeting Liz — not actually doing anything, just noting her presence — and with a shimmer of transfiguration the memorial changed. As soon as she saw it, she froze.

Sitting on a base, probably supposed to be a sofa, were a man and a woman, an infant wrapped in a blanket in the woman's arms, one of the man's around her shoulders. The craftsmanship was rather detailed, clearly showing the man's glasses and flyaway hair and the tumbling curls in the woman's, though approaching nowhere near that of the ceramic statues at the Greenwood. The adults were smiling, warm and soft and happy, the infant frozen in mid-giggle, something about the expression without the feeling beneath it coming off a little creepy to Liz (though she realised that was just a mind mage thing). There were words carved into the platform under the figures, probably a dedication, but Liz didn't really take them in, too busy staring at the thing.

It was reminding her of the fountain at the Ministry. A naïve picture of a reality that didn't exist, created in an effort to absolve the guilt of those who look upon it, and mildly insulting to those depicted — yeah, not a good impression, to put it mildly. "What the fuck is that?" she asked, pointing at the thing.

"A memorial to those lost in the war." Severus had gone a few steps further before realising she'd stopped — apparently he'd meant to continue right past it. He was staring up at the thing too, and Liz couldn't see his face from this angle, but she did notice the hot, simmering distaste in his head. "Choosing an idealised image of your family as the design for their cenotaph reflects a baffling depth of tactlessness, but I suppose we should expect nothing less from the mages of this country."

"You can say that again." It wasn't until she noticed the waver on her own voice that she realised how intensely annoyed she was. Rather like the feeling she saw in Severus's head, lowly bubbling like that beef gravy stuff she made, growing tight in her chest, but burning brighter in her than in him — she took a long, slow breath to try to push it down. She didn't know why it was annoying her so badly, just, she hated this bloody thing. "That thing's just vile. Is that even what they looked like?" She'd only ever seen pictures, and the lack of colour was throwing her off, but she didn't think so. She thought James's chin was off, and Lily's face looked wrong, features too round and soft.

"It was supposedly designed using photographs for reference — though it should be clear to anyone who knew them that the artist took liberties."

Right, that was just making her even more annoyed.

"The existence of such a memorial would be detestable enough, but it's worse than you realise. This was commissioned by a decision of the Wizengamot, the design and location was chosen and the site maintained to this day by the Department of Public Works. The residents were not consulted, and a number of locals petition for its removal twice a year."

"I'm not surprised, this thing's a bloody eyesore." And it was just making her angrier the more she looked at it, she consciously looked away. "Wait, why twice a year?"

"I am certain I need only tell you the dates they choose to sign their petitions every year, and you will figure it out for yourself: the Eleventh of November, and the Eighth of May."

...Remembrance Day and VE Day. "Oh you're kidding me. Can mages not see the original memorial at all?"

"No, we can't — the wards Public Works set will transfigure the original memorial to show this one to any mage who steps foot inside their bounds. The measures placed to prevent muggles from interfering with the wardstones also prevent them from approaching close enough to comfortably read the names."

"Of fucking course they do." Liz had thought this damn thing was ugly and infuriating enough on its own. Lily and James had both been fighters, had duelled the Dark Lord himself and Lily had even killed him — if people were going to make statues of them, they could at least have the decency to make something dramatic and impressive, rather than this...patronising, idyllic shite. She meant, they were fucking war heroes, come on. It was extra disgusting because this was apparently supposed to be a memorial for all the dead in the war, but then it was just Liz and her parents, which, what the fuck? And on top of all of that, they'd also fucked up a memorial to the dead in a pair of wars that were much bigger deals than the mage's stupid shite, this was just infuriating.

Honestly, Liz didn't know why she cared so much — it wasn't like the people who fought in the World Wars were quite real people to her either. (Though maybe more real than James and Lily, when she thought about it, since she'd been around stuff to do with those wars and been learning about them for much longer.) Maybe it was just because she was in this bloody statue — or at least a bland featureless infant that was intended to be her — and kind of like those fucking kids books, using her name and face in things without even asking first, all this Girl Who Lived shite just really fucking annoyed her.

She took another long breath, trying to stay calm. There wouldn't be any point in yelling at Severus, it wasn't like he'd put this bloody thing here. "Let me guess: there are even mages living here whose parents and grandparents died in the World Wars, and whose names are on the memorial they can't even see."

"Good guess."

"...I fucking hate this country sometimes."

Severus didn't disagree.

Thankfully, they continued on right away, cutting straight across the square and past the pub onto another lane. They walked for some time, following the curving lanes framed on both sides with more of the little houses, taking a turn at one corner and then the next. Liz wasn't really paying attention, still trying to tamp down her simmering anger, her chest tight with it, enough that her breath was thin, her throat hurting a little. She really didn't know why this was annoying her so much...

No, she was lying to herself there — she knew why. It was just far too late to do anything about it.

They were reaching the edge of the village now, the houses spread out a little more, patches of gardens sprouting up between them. The houses weren't really any bigger, they just had more space around them — Liz spotted a few bicycles here and there, balls and toys she didn't know enough about kids' shite to identify left outside. Which was slightly ridiculous, as it was January, but Liz guessed it didn't really get that cold near the coasts. This part of the village looked far more like Little Whinging, she could easily be walking down Magnolia Crescent right now if it weren't for the narrower street, the different design of the lampposts, and the clearer air, in place of the faint hint of pollution drifting in from London an odd tinge she assumed must be the sea — it wasn't visible from here (Liz had never seen the ocean before), but she was pretty sure they were only a few miles from the shore. Save for the occasional hints of magic here and there, the village looked perfectly ordinary.

Well, except the half-destroyed house coming up on the left.

It looked no different than any of the other little houses on this lane — little modest square things with sharply peaked roofs, wood showing its natural colour or painted an earthy tone, a small plot marked off with waist-high hedges (or waist-high on Severus, anyway, Liz was too bloody short). Perfectly normal, not even any clear sign of magic...save for at least a quarter of the upper floor being missing. It hadn't been cleanly chopped out, more like a bloody bomb had gone off inside, blowing the walls and ceiling out, the rim of the hole jagged and splintered and scorched black. Patches of the roof had been sort of folded over by the force to lay shingle-to-shingle around the hole, a large chunk had collapsed inward, the whole roof sagging a bit, leaning in that direction. As they got closer, Liz could make out debris scattered across the right-hand side of the small grassy patch around the house — some of it must have been cleared, the explosion would have flung debris out onto the lane too, but they hadn't bothered cleaning up more than necessary to avoid notice from the muggles. Despite having been exposed to the elements for over twelve years now, Liz didn't see any sign of rot, as though the house had been left entirely untouched since that Hallowe'en night.

That they'd actually gone to the effort of preserving the place was just making Liz even more angry. She bit her lip, hard enough that it hurt, taking slow breaths in and out through her nose.

Severus's mind had gone cool and flat, something sizzling in the background she wasn't quite picking up clearly — uncomfortable with being here, she got that much — but he didn't slow, walking right up to the iron gate waiting straight across the garden from the front door. As they neared, stepping onto the pavement in front of the house, Liz felt a tingle of magic sweeping over her, passing through some kind of wards. They paused for a moment at the gate, looking up at the house.

She didn't know what Severus was thinking, but Liz was still fighting anger. She hated everything about this. Enough she was starting to wish she hadn't bothered coming to see it in the place first, that she'd just repossessed the house and demolished it sight unseen. She wasn't sure why she'd insisted on coming here first, she'd known she was going to hate it...

Finally, Severus set a hand on the gate — tentatively, probably anticipating some kind of reaction from the wards the Ministry had put over the place. Liz picked up the faintest tingle of magic and, bafflingly, a sign started sprouting up out of the grass just past the gate. A wood frame but a ceramic face, with elegant curling letters in gold, a dedication. The date it happened, James and Lily Potter were killed, Ellie the only known person to survive the Killing Curse, blah blah. (The sign actually used "Ellie", Liz didn't know why or how that'd become the thing to call her.) Then a bit about the house being preserved in its ruined state as a monument to...

Liz didn't actually get all the way to the end. Before she could, the rage smouldering in her chest suddenly roared all the hotter, choking out her breath, intense enough she could hear her blood rushing in her ears and taste electric copper on her tongue, and magic crackled over her skin in a prickling wave, something deep in her stomach lurched, and the sign was abruptly enveloped in unnatural flames, black edged with silver, and—

She turned away, not just her head, but staggering a step back and wrenching herself around, scrambling to sever the power flowing into the accidental magic — it took a second, the anger-fueled magic resisting, but eventually she managed to cut off the spell with an almost painful shudder, sparks of restrained energy sizzling through her veins. Despite not actually doing anything she was unreasonably out of breath, limbs tingling and knees shivering. She stooped halfway over, hands braced on her knees, focused on her breath — thin and shuddering, harsh in her strained throat — trying to concentrate on the motion as rigidly as she could, forcing herself to calm down.

Thankfully, the anger did, bit by bit, dribble away. But that wasn't necessarily an improvement — the more her head cleared, the more she started to feel, just, embarrassed. Having outbursts of accidental magic at her age wasn't unheard of, but it was, well...

She could feel Severus standing nearby, his attention undoubtedly on her (eyes on her skin like ants), but he didn't move to say or do anything, seemingly just waiting for her to get control of herself. Forcing herself upright again, hands propped on her hips, she took a last few deep breaths, the last of the furious magic crackling in her blood finally going quiet. "Sorry." There was probably something else Liz should be saying with that, but nothing was coming to her, sheepishly shrugged her shoulders.

"It's all right, no harm done." He didn't sound annoyed with her for completely losing control of herself, at least. Well, he almost never sounded like anything, but she couldn't feel anything like that in his head either. Cool and attentively flickering, couldn't put a word to what that was exactly, but... "Though I expect the sign is likely unrecoverable. That fire you cast was intensely dark — I suspect the standard repair charms will prove entirely ineffective."

"...You didn't try to fix it already?"

"This house and the land it stands upon are your property. Should you wish to burn anything we find here to ash, that is your right." ...Huh. Okay, then. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Liz could try to pretend she didn't know what he meant, but it would be blatantly obvious she was lying. "No, not really." Especially now that she was mostly just embarrassed over her childish outburst — well, maybe not childish, exactly, she didn't know how often children accidentally cast black and silver flames — but no, that'd just be uncomfortable. Turning back toward Severus and the house (a little reluctantly), seeing the ruin had a few sparks of anger surfacing again...which weirdly enough made it a little easier. "It's just— I really hate these people sometimes, that's all. The mages, I mean. Not all of them, no, but most of them, it feels like."

With a little flicker Liz didn't know how to read, Severus ticked up a single eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah. All this shite I hear all the time about the Girl Who Lived or whatever, and the monument back there, and this," gesturing at the house with a sharp, disdainful flick of her wrist, "I just... They make such a big deal about it, they're so thankful, but they'd rather tell themselves pretty stories in shitty books and build ugly pointless monuments than do a single fucking thing to make sure I was okay. The least they could have done was made sure their bloody hero wasn't being stuffed in a cupboard or starved and beaten for no good reason, but no, of course not, that would take thinking about something other than themselves for two bloody seconds. They're always patting themselves on the back for how grateful they are for James and Lily's sacrifice, but their gratitude is completely fucking useless, it's all a big self-righteous performance, and I hate them all." By the time she got to the end, her throat was tightening again, she could feel her eyes prickling, she forced herself to stop, again focused on her breathing.

(Uncle Vernon hated it when she cried.)

Silence hung for a moment, broken only by the wind in the leafless trees, the murmur of distant conversation. There was something going on in Severus's head, shifting unsteadily — clearly not happy about her little rant just then, but not sure what to say about it either. After what had to be at least a half minute, he finally spoke, his voice low and smooth and...almost gentle, for Severus. "While I should hardly wish to defend the self-interested ignorance of the great masses of unthinking imbeciles who populate this country, none had any reason to suspect you weren't being cared for. You were entrusted to Dumbledore, and they all expected him to do right by you. I expected him to."

"Yeah, I know, I just— I don't know. I know it's not perfectly rational, I just..." Folding her arms around her stomach, Liz gave him a helpless shrug. "I dunno. I just hate all this Girl Who Lived shite, that's all. Sorry for losing it, there."

"It's all right — you have every reason to be upset." That didn't feel like a lie, so, good. "I can't say setting things on fire is the most healthy way to deal with it, but I hardly have any right to judge. Though it is..." Severus let out a quiet sigh, his eyes flicking up to the side for a moment. "We've discussed the possibility of you transferring overseas for Proficiencies. You might consider pursuing Mastery study overseas as well, and even afterward spending as little time as feasible in Britain. So long as you remain here, there is no escaping the Girl Who Lived."

"...I continue to hate this country."

The Ministry had put wards over the property, to keep the house from rotting away or whatever, but apparently there was little in the way of anything to keep people from tampering with the place. People had been able to reach across and graffiti the sign (though Liz hadn't made out much of it, and now it was scorched black and ashy grey and illegible anyway), and the gate was locked, but it opened easily when Liz tried it — it was her property, after all — and Severus was able to follow in after her without any resistance. Which was kind of shitty as far as magical security went, but oh well, maybe they just assumed nobody would want to do anything to the place.

While walking down the narrow path Liz felt a hint of...something, some emotion she was too horribly un-self-aware to put a word to, her shoulders tense and her skin prickling, as though anticipating an attack, but at the same time her steps feeling weirdly unsteady, weak and knees almost shivering. But whatever it was wasn't so bad she couldn't keep going, so she just ignored it.

The front door had been smashed open — by the Dark Lord, presumably — a web of cracks across the surface, hanging on by one hinge and leaning against the inside wall at an odd angle. Ignoring the tingles on the back of her neck, Liz stepped over the threshold. It was warm, the environmental enchantments still working, Liz loosened her scarf a little. It was dark in here, obviously, far enough away from the lampposts that she couldn't see shite. People used all kinds of enchantment keys, but maybe... "Luceat?"

The lights suddenly came on, Liz blinked against the brightness for a second. The entryway continued on into a hallway, cutting straight through the house — Liz spotted a door leading out back at the opposite end — doors to both left and right and a staircase leading up just past the right-side door. The floors were plain hardwood, the walls plaster painted a pale yellowish-green, like the underside of leaves in sunlight.

It was also a mess, some of the boards torn up, the plaster cracked and missing patches, splinters of wood and drywall dust scattered across the floor. Looking around, Liz thought someone had attempted to build a barricade with transfiguration, the materials they used reverted to their original form when the Dark Lord broke in. Liz also noticed what was definitely a furrow from a cutting curse in the wall traced in an arc over the door, and over here an odd blackish-orangeish patch that was probably from the impact of a curse of some kind.

There'd definitely been a fight here, but the damage was relatively minimal — Liz guessed the Dark Lord had killed James pretty quickly.

There had been frames hanging on the walls, but they'd been knocked off their hangers in the fight, crashed and broken on the floor, she didn't bother going over them. She took the left door, "luceat," stepping into a long combined dining room and kitchen, taking up this whole half of the house. The dining room part was mostly unremarkable, a potted plant in one corner — it'd long ago died, shrivelled and brown, but it hadn't rotted, affected by the same preservation spells as everything else — a bright red Auror cloak hung over the back of one chair, a child's high chair set up.

None of that was exactly unexpected, but she was a little surprised by the food and water bowls for a pet setting in a corner, both of them empty. Too small for a dog, maybe, "Did we have a cat?"

"Yes, Lily got one shortly after graduation. Your grandfather was allergic, so she had to wait until she was moving out permanently."

"What happened to it?"

"I have no idea."

Right, never mind, then.

The kitchen was also perfectly unremarkable — very muggleish, with the same wooden cabinets and fake-granite plastic counters she might expect to find in any house on Privet Drive. The light fixtures, the fridge, and the stove looked muggleish too, but she assumed they'd been enchanted to run on magic instead, like at Severus's house. There were dirty dishes in the sink — looked fresh, prevented from going bad by the preservation spells — food in the cabinets and the fridge. There were even leftovers in the fridge, wrapped up in baking paper or held in bowls sealed with tin foil, which was a bloody weird thought.

Out of curiosity, Liz twisted off the cap of the cream (a muggle brand, must be from the grocery in town here), sniffed it, then put it back and continued on, shaking her head to herself. Over twelve years, and the cream still hadn't gone off — those were some seriously impressive preservation spells. The Ministry had wanted this place to last.

(The thought only made her more annoyed.)

Toward the back of the house was a small toilet — the proper bathroom was probably upstairs — and a sort of office-slash-library thing. James's, she was pretty sure. Every step into the little room had that unidentified feeling growing stronger, she tried to just ignore it. The walls were a bit darker than she'd seen so far, a sort of burnt reddish-orange. There were a few bookshelves, filled with thick blocky volumes and these weird metallic-looking files, some of what definitely weren't normal books at all, loose papers sloppily held together with thread (probably woven through with some kind of charm). There was an odd sort of rack in a corner by the door, a hanger at the top for a cloak (currently empty), and a pair to each side for a shirt and trousers each — these were occupied, all four articles made out of thick, seamless cloth, black with accents in glittering silver, which Liz recognised as what Aurors wore under their cloaks — a flat shelf in the middle held a pair of black leather gloves and a wand holster — heavily enchanted with protective spells, enough that it had built in reservoir stones to power them, faintly gleaming to Liz's eyes — another shelf just a step up from the floor held a pair of boots, more black leather.

James had been an Auror, though still technically in his apprenticeship by the end, so it made sense he'd had the uniform. The cloak out in the dining room must have been his — while they were in hiding he'd gone in to the Ministry now and then to get updates on the progress of the war, he'd just worn the cloak part for those trips. There had been pictures in the Prophet (as proof that the already famous Potters had still been alive), only reason she knew that.

The desk was a little bit of a mess, a few books and pamphlets left sitting open, papers scattered about seemingly at random. There was even a teacup and saucer set toward one side, must have forgotten to bring it back to the kitchen that same night. Walking closer (that unpleasant feeling growing yet stronger), Liz looked over the papers. Woah, James's handwriting had been really pretty — a curling graceful cursive, which still kind of struck Liz as girly, but she knew that was just how the purebloods wrote things. He had been raised into nobility, presumably he'd been taught to write 'properly' the same as all the fancy nobles in her year. Liz had never really learned cursive, so it was a little hard for her to read, but it looked like this was probably all notes on, like, Ministry policy and DLE procedure and stuff — she knew there was some kind of exam Aurors (and all DLE officials) took at the end of their apprenticeships, must have been studying for it. At a second glance, most of the volumes on the shelves appeared to be law books, so.

There was a second level to the desk, narrower and set back a bit, raised to about eye-level — there were a few little trinkets here, but most of this shelf was all framed photographs. Liz recognised the people in some of them, a few obviously of Lily. In one she was sitting on the rim of a fountain somewhere, looking up at the camera with a raised eyebrow and a flat, unamused look — the expression struck Liz as very Severus-ish...or maybe he'd gotten it from her in the first place? — wearing a soft blue sundress and a feathered white straw hat, vibrant red hair flickering in the wind. (Liz liked that one.) In another she was lying on her back on a sofa, asleep, a blanket pulled up to her waist and naked above that (as in, actually naked, she wasn't wearing a shirt or anything), an infant who was presumably Liz laid out sleeping on her chest. Another was of Lily and another red-haired woman, hers in a lighter more orangish shade, the two sitting talking at a tiny little tea table, the unknown woman holding an infant and... Yeah, she was actually breastfeeding while talking to Lily (hard to tell for sure with the folds of her robes in the way), odd time to take a picture, James. Another she suspected was taken at their wedding — Liz had overheard people in the study group talking, apparently white wedding dresses were a very modern muggle thing, so Lily's was vibrant red and blue with gold embroidery instead — Lily dancing with a man, but weirdly the bloke wasn't James, that long curly black hair meant that was probably actually Sirius — while she watched Lily leaned in and muttered something, smirking, and Sirius threw his head back to let out a (silent) cackle. Sirius had probably been James's best man or whatever the mages called it, so.

There were a couple other pictures of James and/or his friends — Sirius, Lupin, Pettigrew — but there were plenty of people Liz didn't recognise. "Who are all these people?" she asked, vaguely gesturing at the pictures.

"I'm afraid I don't recognise all of them — your father's associates and mine did not much coincide." Well, that was an understatement. "I know these three are of your grandparents, Charlus and Dorea Potter." There was one of them together, with a younger James (maybe twelve or so), and one each of them on their own, Dorea reclined in a chair reading a book and sipping at a cup of tea, sunlight slanting in a nearby window (pretty photo), and Charlus pruning a rose bush — by hand, surprisingly, was wearing gloves and using clippers and everything, which was odd, Liz would have expected they used their wands for that sort of thing — dirt smeared across his cheek and forehead from rubbing his face with his gardening gloves. They both had solid black hair, his short and messy and hers long and curly; Charlus had a rounder face, with full rosey cheeks, Dorea's narrower and features sharper — James (and Liz) looked more like Dorea, but he'd definitely gotten the hair and hazel eyes from Charlus.

They looked young. But then, they had been — they'd had James relatively late, but they'd still died quite young for mages.

"That's the same one Dorea was named after, right?"

"Yes. Sirius Black had some sort of falling out with his family — I don't know the details, Narcissa would never say — and was taken in by your grandparents in the aftermath. I can't speak to his thinking for certain, of course, but I assume he named Miss Black after her, out of gratitude." And there would be another reason Sirius couldn't possibly actually be a Death Eater — Liz had to wonder how the hell anyone believed that story, the more she learned the more absurd it was. "The woman with your mother here," pointing at the one with the orange-haired breastfeeding woman, "is Alice Prewett — Longbottom now, excuse me — your godmother."

Liz blinked. "I have a godmother?"

"Of course. Traditionally, each parent will choose the opposite-sex godparent — should something happen to their spouse, they will essentially be co-parenting with them, so it is ideal that they get along." Huh, that meant Lily had picked Sirius, hadn't expected that. "Alice and Lily were roommates and friends at Hogwarts, though James is also her cousin of some degree, they would have been raised knowing each other. I assume James consciously chose the only one of his close female cousins he knew to be friendly with Lily."

That made sense, she guessed. "What happened to her?"

With an odd wiggle in his head she didn't know how to read, his voice low and flat, Severus said, "Alice and her husband were tortured into catatonia by Bellatrix and the Lestrange brothers, shortly after that Samhain."

"Oh right, I heard about that..." Mostly because they were Neville's parents, it'd come up — she just hadn't realised Alice was one of those Longbottoms. Which meant that baby Alice had there was Neville, bloody weird thought.

...Belatedly, she caught the significance of Severus consistently using Alice's first name, the slip a moment ago with her maiden name, and maybe even that odd wiggle — they must have been friends back at Hogwarts too. Hmm.

"This here is Devin Fawley and his wife — I forget her name, I'm uncertain whether we ever met — another cousin of your father's. I understand they were close as children, though they were in different houses at Hogwarts — Fawley was a Hufflepuff in our year. They both live." A blond man and a black-haired woman, sitting for tea — perfectly normal-looking noble mages, really. "This one here," a crowd of people in a rather shabby-looking building, all crammed together to fit in the frame, "is of the Order of the Phoenix. This is Missus Hope Lupin, Remus Lupin's mother — I recall she died while we were at Hogwarts, perhaps fifth or sixth year, though I don't know what of. This is Elizabeth Bones — née Prewett, Alice's elder sister — and her husband Dilwyn, Susan Bones's parents. Dilwyn was killed in a raid on the House of Bones before his daughter's birth — your mother famously fought the Dark Lord one-on-one and forced him to withdraw in the same skirmish — and Elizabeth was captured, tortured, and murdered before Miss Bones's first birthday." Yeah, Liz had already known about that too, she was hardly the only war orphan in her year...

Severus went through a few more of the photos, but Liz wasn't really listening — it wasn't like she knew any of them, and most of them were already dead anyway. When he ran out of people he recognised, Liz asked, "Do you think it's worth keeping any of these books?"

If he was thrown off by the sudden subject change, he didn't show it. "They appear to be mostly law books, procedural handbooks issued by the Ministry, and archives of court and council transcripts. The metal ones are internal case files from the D.L.E., which is curious — it seems the Ministry didn't think to come in here and reclaim them. I suspect the law books and archives were pulled from the library at Rock-on-Clyde anyway, you could simply have them returned to their proper places. The case files should be returned to the Ministry or else destroyed."

"Let me guess, it's illegal for me to even have them."

"It is, though a minor violation — I suspect you would be issued a fine of ten to fifty galleons each if convicted. I did say I was surprised the Ministry didn't reclaim them."

Ten to fifty galleons was actually a lot of money for most people — especially each, since there were maybe seven or eight of the things — but not for her, so. "Right." Liz considered swiping the one with Lily outside in the blue dress and the hat (she had space in her dorm room, and it was a nice picture), but after a second just turned around and moved on instead.

The last room on the bottom floor was a sitting room thing, armchairs and a sofa (the same sofa Lily was sleeping on in that one photo), a couple more bookshelves against the walls, a fireplace here — taller and wider than muggles would have put in, easier for flooing — a few paintings on the walls, all landscapes. The place was a little bit of a mess, books set out here or there, on the furniture or left abandoned on the floor, a pair of tea cups on saucers sitting on a side table. Curiously, there was a tiny broomstick propped up against the side of the hearth — did they make toy broomsticks for kids or something? There were what Liz assumed were infant toys strewn across the floor, most of them were unrecognisable, presumably magic...things, she didn't know. Just looked like colourful random little trinkets to her, but.

Liz nudged a discarded soft toy with her foot — a cartoonishly-proportioned hippogriff, way too cutesy, in red and white, Potter colours. She didn't know how she was supposed to feel about all this.

She didn't realise how unsteady she was feeling until she started trying to climb up the stairs. The steps came awkwardly, feeling too weak and clumsy, she paused only a couple steps up to take a breath, her hand shaking just a little against the bannister. She was definitely feeling something — the tingles had only gotten worse, crawling over her scalp and through her chest, her throat tightening just a little — but she still had no bloody clue what. It was annoying.

"Elizabeth, are you all right?"

Clearing her throat to make sure her voice would work properly, she muttered, "It's nothing, I'm fine." She forced herself to take another step, keep going. She didn't know why she'd bothered checking the place out, but now that she was halfway through she could hardly stop — just a few more rooms to get through and she could have the whole place demolished. That sounded kind of satisfying, actually, though she couldn't say why...

The hallway on the upper floor was set at a right angle to the one on the bottom floor — the hole in the house was to the right, so she turned to the left. The door toward the back led into a bathroom. It looked mostly normal, with the tile and the sink and the toilet, but Liz thought they'd expanded it from the underlying muggle construction so they could fit a much bigger shower and more circular tub, with magical fixtures and enough room in each for multiple people. There wasn't really much to see in here, though, so—

From Severus, following a couple steps behind her, there was a sudden sharp, unpleasant spasming, something deep and lurching, and... She glanced back to see him standing in the doorway, looking even paler than usual. Weirdly, he was actually showing an expression, almost stricken. "What is it?"

"Lily's conditioner." Oh, now that he mentioned it there was a faint floral smell in here, she hadn't really noticed. "Excuse me." He turned right around and walked off, Liz leaned out the door in time to catch him making down the stairs.

...Huh. Well, she guessed she had thought to herself earlier that all this was more meaningful to Severus, since he could actually remember Lily and she couldn't — so it wasn't really a surprise that this was hard for him.

(She kind of felt bad for bringing him along now, he could have just waited outside...)

On the other side of the hall was what must be Lily's office. More bookshelves — these clearly academic books, Charms and Potions and Runes and Arithmancy, along with some novels, a mix of muggle and magical — a desk that was possibly even messier than James's, strewn with random loose pages and enchanting tools and empty potions phials. There was a second table in here, set up like a brewing station, with multiple rings of runes marking out heating pads, a few clear spots obviously meant to serve as cutting boards, an array of knives and stirring spoons and sticks and even distillation equipment hanging on the wall over it. Built under the table were cabinets, drawers in all shapes and sizes, which Liz assumed were packed with potions ingredients — they should come back some other time and have Severus remove anything of value. Oh, wait, hold on a second...

Liz backtracked to the bathroom to cast a few scent-neutralisation charms, layering them one after the other until she couldn't smell a thing at all, before returning to the office. One wall was dominated with a kind of cork pinboard thing, almost the entire surface plastered with papers stuck in place with thumbtacks or sewing or hair pins, apparently whatever she'd had to hand at the time, scrawled across them... Well, Lily had obviously been working on some kind of complicated project — there must be hundreds of runes, thousands, set in dense blocks or as part of complicated circular designs here and there, some areas circled or underlined or crossed out, multiple layers of papers posted over each other as she made revisions. It was all in Egyptian, though, Liz couldn't read a word of it.

This must be a breakdown of the sacrificial ritual Lily had used to save Liz's life and destroy the Dark Lord. That was a reasonable guess to make, but Liz inexplicably felt very certain — Seer shite again, she thought.

...She probably shouldn't just leave this here — whatever Lily had done had certainly been illegal. She was struck with the wild urge to burn it all, but no, she should keep it. Maybe when they came back to pack up the potions stuff they could take it down, but that was a problem for later, she shook the thought off and moved on.

The notes on Lily's desk seemed to mostly be more runes stuff, a lot of Egyptian with sloppily-scrawled notes in English lettering. (Lily's handwriting was much messier than James's.) Some of it was probably ritual-related stuff, but this page here was detailing a cantrip of some kind — Lily had been a much weaker and more inexperienced mage than the Dark Lord, or most other people she'd fought in the war, Liz had read commentary about how she'd made up the difference by carrying bits and bobs enchanted to do all kinds of things, a very tricky strategy but one that required a lot of prior planning. (One book Liz had read, talking about the raid on House Bones, had speculated she'd even laid a ritual-based trap on the property before the attack, to weaken the Dark Lord and strengthen herself — only speculation, but given what happened on Hallowe'en '81, probably a good bet.) She found a couple more enchanting plans, oh, and these more heavily arithmantic pages here were attempts to design original curses, she was pretty sure, and this was potions stuff over here...

Liz suspected she'd gotten her brains from Lily — James had supposedly been pretty clever too, but it sure seemed like their strengths had been in different areas.

There were several pictures on the desk or in available spots on the bookshelves — here Lily and James; there James and baby Liz; one of Lily wrapped in a thick shawl of some kind (Liz suspected she was naked under it), her hair wet, holding a tiny, ugly, reddish infant, which she assumed must have been taken just minutes after Liz's birth; a few of unfamiliar girls and women, who Liz suspected must be friends from Hogwarts — the only one she recognised was Cassie Lovegood, in the uniform of the senior division duelling team, holding some kind of flatbread sandwich in one hand and flipping the camera the bird with the other; she was a little surprised to spot one of Lily with Severus, hadn't they had a falling out? They were maybe a year or two older than Liz was now, lying in the grass in the shade of a tree, Severus in his Hogwarts uniform but Lily in a floral-patterned skirt and plain white sleeveless blouse, Severus's arms up to make a pillow of his fingers, Lily's head resting on his shoulder, the back of her wrist covering her eyes. They looked like they could be asleep, Liz wondered who took the picture.

Belatedly, she realised Severus must have been wearing the Hogwarts uniform in their off-hours because he didn't have anything else — she didn't know what to think about that.

Poking through the bookshelves, she found one with a smooth, red leather cover, slipped it out, curious. There wasn't a title on it, she let it fall open to a random place, the pages thick and stiff and oddly— Oh, it was a photo album, okay. Liz glanced over the open page, and...

She blinked.

Slowly, she folded the book closed, and slipped it back into its place on the shelf.

Apparently her mother had had a hobby of taking erotic photos. That was a thing that she knew now.

Most of the texts on the shelves were modern academic things, but some were clearly older, not properly bound, looking a lot like those bloody ancient ones near the top of the library at Clyde Rock. Reaching toward them, she felt a cool tingle of magic on her fingers, some kind of protective spells to stop them from being damaged while crammed together on the shelf, Liz guessed. Sacrificial rituals like she'd done that Hallowe'en weren't the kind of magic anyone did anymore, and hadn't been for a long time, and supposedly the Potters had inherited the Peverell library, and they'd been death cultists — it seemed a good bet that Lily had had these books to help figure out her trap. These should definitely be returned to Clyde Rock, they were almost certainly very illegal, and it'd be a shame to destroy them.

(Unfortunately, they were in Latin, so she couldn't read them yet.)

Poking over the shelves — delaying the last few stops as long as reasonably possible, honestly — Liz stumbled across it by complete chance. It wasn't a book, but a wooden box sitting on the shelf, stuck in with a few heavy textbooks like it belonged there. And there was a strip of parchment posted to it, bearing a single handwritten word: Hazel — as Liz had been told by the elves, that had been what her parents had called her when she'd been a baby.

It seemed like her mother had prepared something for her to find. As odd as the thought was, she suddenly felt very certain about it.

(That undefined feeling was getting worse, her throat even starting to hurt, but she ignored it.)

Cautiously, the back of her neck tingling and a surge of something shooting through her chest, Liz slipped the box off the shelf. There was too much shite at the desk, so instead she sat down on the floor, the box set on her crossed legs. It wasn't difficult to open, one face sliding right off. The contents seemed to be mostly papers, high quality parchment wound into little rolls and held closed with lengths of ribbon, packed into the box tight one against the other. There were a couple layers of them, actually, maybe three dozen of the little things total. On top was a single overlong page (like a flattened scroll), folded closed instead of rolled up, so Liz plucked up that one, unfolded it.

She was unreasonably unsurprised to find it was a letter, to herself.

Hazel,

Being a seer can be a peculiar thing. I'm sure you've figured that out for yourself by now. Looking back on it, I honestly can't imagine how it took me so long to find out — I've always known things, even when I was a child, things I couldn't possibly have known. But I was a rather strange child in a myriad of other ways, and then there was magic, so I didn't give it that much thought. Sev paid it more mind than I did. Learning I am a seer, without a doubt, is the sort of thing that should have come as a surprise but, as so many other things over the years, it really didn't.
Things have been becoming clearer, lately. Perhaps it's the isolation doing it — my "Inner Eye" unclouded by "the pull of the mundane" or some such rubbish. Perhaps my experiments with soul magic are simply making me more aware of what was always there. Whatever the cause, I know things, more than I used to.
I know the Dark Lord will come for us. I played along with the plan to switch the Secret Keeper without anyone's knowledge in hope that would prevent it, but nothing changed — perhaps Peter was always meant to be our Secret Keeper, maybe whatever trick they would have used to get it out of Sirius will catch him just the same, I don't know. Unfortunately, we can't put up any further protections around the house, as the vulnerability is what makes the Fidelius work. I've tried to say something, but James and Albus both think the Sight is nothing but superstition, so there's nothing I can say that would be taken seriously. I can't flee with you to the continent, we'd simply be deported right back.
The point I'm circling around is that I know we're going to die, James and I both. You will live — I knew that for certain even before I knew how I would ensure it. But you'll be alone. Something must happen to Sirius and Alice, though I don't know what, I don't know where you'll end up. With Severus, maybe? I know you'll know him, but I get the feeling you won't actually be raised by him. I don't know where you'll end up.
And there's nothing I can do about it. I can feel the inevitability of my own death hanging over me like a black cloud, descending heavier and heavier with each step and each breath. The only escape is for me to flee, to leave you and James to die, and I won't do that. So all I can do is wait, and plan. And make sure I take the bastard with me.
If you feel any guilt at all for surviving when we did not, don't. I have already spoken to James about my plan — he's convinced it won't be necessary, a last resort we'll never be pushed to, but even so. He knows what I will do, he knows he needs to buy me just a few seconds to finish the trap. He knows the cost of those few seconds will be his life — and he'll do it, without hesitation. That's simply the sort of man he is, the brave, loyal, wonderful fool. And when the time comes, I will choose to give me life for yours, without hesitation. Our decision, made with clear eyes, whatever you might hear one day about prophecies or anything else, it's not your fault, not in the slightest.
Honestly, I don't think I could live with myself if I did anything less.
As the end comes, the thought occurred to me that I should leave something for you, but I have no idea what. My family isn't completely destitute, but we were poor. It seems a little odd to leave you a thing, when you'll inherit everything we have before too long now. And all our things technically belong to James anyway — the only thing I truly own is my life, and I already plan to give you that. And I don't know you, I don't know what kind of woman you will become, I don't know what will be appropriate.
This was the best I could come up with. In this box you'll find descriptions of enchantments, potions, and spells that I think you might find useful. Some of them I copied out of one book or another, but most of them I designed myself. They run the gamut from defensive magics to things for your health to cosmetics and just little things for convenience, whatever came to mind. I've tested all of them, they're safe — though you may have Sev check them all if he insists, the paranoid bastard — and I doubt you'll use all of them, but I'm sure you'll find something you like. They'll be something to play around with in your spare time, if nothing else.
But I think I've filled this page with my directionless babbling more than enough — I'm sure you have better things to do than listen to a dead woman go on. I love you, Hazel, more than anything. I'm sorry I can't be there for you. Good luck.

All my love,
Lily

P.S. — When you meet him downstairs, tell Severus to get his head out of his arse and lighten up, and get a girlfriend already. He still has a chance to be a stupidly happy normal person, with a wife and 2.5 children and a bloody dog, in one of those nice houses with a walled garden, or whatever the hell. He's not nearly as ruined as he thinks he is, and Sirius tells me "birds dig scars, and blokes with dark and traumatic pasts or whatever," so there you go.

P.P.S. — No, I'm serious, tell him exactly that, it'll be hilarious. Who says I can't mess with people from beyond the grave?

P.P.P.S. — All that applies to you too, by the way. Are you a lesbian? I'm pretty sure you're a lesbian. Get yourself a nice girlfriend or three. Skip the kids, though, I don't think you'll ever want them. And also the dog. Maybe a cat?

...So, that was...

Liz felt the urge to laugh, though she couldn't really say why. It was a lot, the whole letter, and— Lily was, just, weird, that was all. Though reading the letter had been, mm... Liz didn't know, she was maybe a little annoyed that Lily had Seen their deaths coming and nobody had listened to her. Not really surprised, though — most people, especially in the Light, didn't put much stock in divination. The future was changing and uncertain, primitive superstition, blah blah, probably just wrote it off as Lily being pessimistic and paranoid. Which, irritating, yes. Didn't know what to think about the part about Liz not feeling guilty — the thought that Liz should feel guilty for her parents' deaths had never occurred to her. How the hell did that make any sense? She'd been a bloody infant at the time, honestly...

Though, it sounded like maybe there was a prophecy or something, which, what the hell, but even then it wasn't like a prophecy existing was her fault. Maybe this was just Liz being broken again, but she didn't get it.

She'd never given the fact of her parents being dead much thought at all, honestly — they just were. There was never any possibility of them not being dead, it was just... They weren't even quite real, and...

And that odd feeling she couldn't put a name to had gotten worse with the letter too, a dark, cold something growing in her stomach with every word in Lily's scraggly, uneven handwriting — sort of like suddenly dipping on her broom, but not quite, like the dementors' influence creeping over her, but also not quite. And the tingling had gotten worse, pins and needles down her neck and across her shoulders and prickling through her chest, making it slightly hard to breathe. (Uncle Vernon hated it when she cried.) Her fingers were even shaking a little, she had to be careful folding Lily's letter back up, the folds coming out uneven, took multiple tried to get the lid back onto its track.

She was curious about the magics Lily had written out, but this wasn't the time. Besides, her head was such a scrambled, unfocused mess of...something, she didn't know how much she'd actually take in.

It was unreasonably hard to get up, her feet feeling weirdly numb and her knees weak and unsteady, but Liz stubbornly pushed through it. There were two rooms left, she thought, and then she'd be finished, and she could leave. The box folded under one arm, the lights put out with a muttered noctescat, and she continued on.

The room on the other side of the house, toward the back, was James and Lily's bedroom. Liz stood at the threshold, unseeingly staring inside, the weight in her stomach sharpening and her breath catching.

She didn't want to go in there. The feeling came on rather suddenly, all but freezing her in place, she didn't—

They'd lived here. Lily's letter had— Liz didn't want them to feel real.

So she turned her back on their bedroom, and walked into the ruined nursery instead. The wall on this side of the hallway had bowed out a little from the force of the explosion, cracks run through the plaster, the doorframe left empty — yet the door wasn't in the hallway, the Dark Lord must have blasted it in or else vanished it or something. The roof had partially collapsed toward the hole in the house, broken and splintered bits of wood leaning down into the room, blocking off most of it from the door. Carefully, moving slowly step by step, Liz slipped through the curtain of wood and metal, trying not to touch anything. Mostly she was concerned about cutting herself on an exposed nail or something, she didn't think she'd bring anything falling on her — this stuff had hung here this long, even through a hell of a snowfall they'd gotten in this part of the country a few years ago (like over two feet or something?), it probably wasn't going anywhere. She ended up needing to squeeze through a too narrow gap, her jumper catching on something for a second, but she made it.

Not that there was much to see. Any colour that had been in the room before had been scorched to black, the wallpaper burned away, the walls cracked and broken, the top halves of the outside walls completely missing, most of the roof just gone. Shingles and random bits of debris crunched under her feet, thick enough most of the floor was covered, her footing uneven and unstable, might easily fall if it weren't for the enchantments on her boots. What bits and bobs might have been around were either little burned wrecks or completely incinerated, the only clear features left a smashed and blackened...dresser drawer, probably, against one wall a full-size bed, the mattress burned away to a tangled mass of springs but the frame still mostly intact — didn't know what that was in here for, obviously Liz wouldn't have used it.

More signs of fire than she'd expected, there must be enchantments in the walls to stop it from spreading, or else the whole house might have burned down. Which wouldn't have ended well for Liz, considering she'd still been in the room at the time.

The entire room and everything in it had been destroyed, blackened by fire...save one small circle around a plain wood-framed cot. There was still carpet there, though scorched a little around the rim of the circle, a pleasant light blue, a few bits of wood or ash having fallen in but otherwise unaffected by the devastation.

The cot was completely untouched. The blankets looked a little scraggly, having been rained or snowed on and dried out again who knew how many times — but the preservation spells had stopped anything from rotting or whatever, so they still looked whole and new, could just use a couple times through the wash to smooth them out. A black dog plushie had been dropped past the bars, fallen onto the carpet, undamaged but looking even more bedraggled than the blankets.

Stepping closer, Liz felt an... She didn't know what that was. Some kind of echo, she thought, her magic ringing with an odd reverberation she could feel through head to toe, her bones almost seeming to shiver. Not just inside herself, but outside too, the ambient magic quivering around her head, the feeling of it almost physical, pressure in her ears like being dipped underwater.

Sympathy, like calling to like — two objects involved in an intensely powerful magical event brought together once again, the shared memory called forth by each other's presence.

Using "memory" metaphorically, of course, obviously she didn't remember it.

For a moment, she didn't know how long, she stared down at the cot, hardly blinking.

She hadn't given any thought to what it might look like, really. Where it'd happened. In the same way her parents had never felt quite real to her, neither had the story of that Hallowe'en.

It didn't help that, immediately upon first hearing about it, it'd struck her as obviously ridiculous — the standard story, she meant, about the super-special Girl Who Lived resisting the curse and blowing up the big scary Dark Lord by some inexplicable magical power, yeah, it might as well have been from some fantasy novel for how seriously she'd taken it. She'd immediately jumped on the alternate explanation of Lily coming up with some kind of ritual (which she now knew one hundred per cent for certain was true), at least in part because it had nothing to do with Liz herself, it was just something that'd happened to her. But, honestly, the story felt no different to her than anything else she might read in a history book. If it weren't for all the stupid Girl Who Lived shite, but even that seemed disconnected from anything and...

Where the hell had that story come from, anyway? How did people know what had happened here? Seers, she guessed, but the story had come out awfully fast — and it wasn't like there'd been any witnesses. Hermione had pointed out that problem before, but Liz still didn't have any answers.

As much as the story didn't really feel real, or at the least had nothing to do with her, she'd never given any thought to what the place it'd happened might look like. What might have been left behind, after the ritual and destruction wrought by it had passed. It was...unpleasant. The burned and broken room, the cot, the sheets and blankets in soft pastel colours, that little stuffed dog, and the echo of the event on the magic in the room, reverberating deep through her, indisputably proving she had some kind of connection to this place, it was...

It'd never felt real, before.

She didn't want it to feel real. But there was no way to avoid it, the magic shivering around her head, she could feel it, the echo of it on the very air she breathed and in every inch of— And it was overwhelming, heat building in her chest and crawling up her throat, unpleasant prickles sweeping over her, she—

She wrenched herself around, the first few steps stiff and unsteady, and slipped back through the gap out of the room.

In something of a daze, Liz made it down the hall, down the stairs, before she, just, stopped, sat down at the bottom leaning against the wall, the wood cool against her forehead. It was unreasonably difficult to breathe, the tightness in her throat making it raw and almost painful, she took a moment to try to control herself (Uncle Vernon hated it when she cried), even sitting down her knees shaking just a little, her fingers shivering against the box from Lily in her lap. Besides, she couldn't apparate, and she didn't know where Severus was, so it wasn't like she could leave anyway, she could take a moment...

She didn't know how long she sat there, struggling to control herself, but it was long enough that Severus showed up before she'd managed it. He entered the house slowly, reluctantly — in retrospect, she probably should have noticed how much he did not want to be here, but the feeling was rather more obvious now, closer to the surface — didn't make it through very far before he spotted her on the stairs. For some reason, he froze, a cold jolt of surprise rushing through his head and echoing out around her, but not... It was surprise, but there was something else to it too, unpleasant, almost slimy.

Even through the whatever the unknown feeling that'd been bothering her the whole time in this house was (she didn't want it to feel real), there was a tingle of embarrassment. "I'm sorry." She sniffed, quietly, took a surreptitious wipe high across her cheeks — dry, good. "Were you waiting for me?"

"...No. Not as such."

Okay, there was something definitely off about Severus, uncomfortable and shifting and...she didn't know. But it was clear that, whatever that unpleasant slimy feeling a second ago had been, it hadn't been disgust with her. (She didn't know why she'd assumed it might— No, that was a lie, Uncle Vernon hated it when she cried.) Frowning up at him, she asked, "What? What's wrong?"

"Nothing." She didn't believe that for a second — there was a wiggle of dishonesty in the air, but even without it she would have been able to guess he was deflecting. Probably realising he wasn't fooling her, Severus let out a little sigh, his eyes tipping to the ceiling. Rather than answer, he stepped closer, until he was standing over her (Liz felt her shoulders tense, the echo of it on the air like a bad smell), after a brief hesitation sat down on the stairs just to her right. Not quite close enough to touch, but Liz still felt herself press a little closer to the wall anyway. "I suspect it would be better that I not explain, but I know it will bother you later if I refuse. Did I ever tell you that I was the first on the scene, that night?"

It took a second for Liz to respond, her breath caught in her throat. "Um. No, I didn't know that."

Severus nodded, slowly, his gaze distant and mind unfocused, in another time and place. "I had to see it for myself. Your mother had mentioned she had a plan, and... When I felt the Fidelius fail, I knew what must have happened. I flooed from my office at Hogwarts to the house in Cokeworth, and was about to apparate straight onto the street just outside when I felt the Dark Lord's death through his Mark. I left as soon as I recovered — I was here short minutes after...the event, soon enough the fires hadn't yet gone out.

"I found your father first." He paused for a second, something thick and dark and slimy in his head, clinging at her skin — wrestling back his own reluctance to tell her whatever it— "His body lay just where you are sitting now. And so my shock a moment ago, I...remembered."

Severus was underselling, a little bit. She caught a flash, didn't know if it was a mind magic thing or a Seer thing, James in house-robes, hair and glasses askew, limp and lifeless, wand rolled away a short distance across the floor (Severus accidentally stepped on it, nearly tripped), and for a blink, just an instant, Severus had returned to that day (kind of like those moments when Liz was back on that sofa, or in her cupboard), but instead of coming to find James on the stairs, he saw Liz instead — they did look rather alike, with the black hair, and there was some of Lily in her face but she'd taken more after James (she looked a lot like James's mother, apparently — according to Severus, Liz hadn't noticed herself), so the switch-up wasn't entirely out of nowhere, his mind playing tricks on him for a second, and it didn't help that she was literally sitting on the exact spot her father had died, and—

Her chest convulsed, a thick, harsh sound wrenched past her throat, Liz clamped a hand over her mouth. But it was too late, prickles crawling over her skin (like wasps), her chest so tight and hot it hurt, her head swimming from the pressure built by the storm of shite going on in there, the flush burning on her face and her chest and her hands, and her eyes stung, her vision swimming, she squeezed them shut, but it wouldn't do any good to stop— "I'm sorry," she barely managed to hiss through her teeth, clamping down again as she shook, her hand tight enough over her face she could feel her fingernails digging into the edge of her cheek.

There was an odd shiver in Severus's head, but Liz was too distracted desperately trying to control herself to interpret it. Low, barely above a whisper, "It's all right, Elizabeth."

That didn't feel like a lie, but Severus was, well, Severus, one of the coldest most meticulously-controlled people she'd ever met, and was hardly the type to have much patience for the histrionics of noisy children, but Uncle Vernon hated it when she cried, she had to stop— "I don't mean to—" Before she could finish the sentence her chest spasmed on her, drawing in a harsh, shuddering breath, cutting her off, she clamped down her throat, her hand tightening over her mouth, her eyes squeezing shut so hard she saw colourful spots, her stomach dropping and his eyes crawling over her skin like wasps, she could feel the echo of it on the air like a bad smell, the cloth of the sofa scratching against her chest as she shivered, but she— "I can't– I-I..."

Severus moved, and a hard thrum shot through her head to toe as Vernon grabbed her shoulder, yanked her around and pushed her over—

The memory was jarred out of her head because she was leaning the wrong way, to the side instead of foreward, the sitting room at Privet Drive dissolving and drifting away, leaving her dizzy, because Severus was hugging her, even through the deafening storm going in her head her breath was still stolen for a second out of shock. One arm around her shoulders, not tight but enough she'd been drawn a little away from the wall, his mind and magic tingling cool against hers, and she felt herself tense, almost painfully so, enough the next spasm of her bloody traitorous lungs only managed a faint breathless ergh at the back of her throat, because this was fucking weird, okay, she didn't know what was happening, she couldn't— "It's all right, Elizabeth. It's all right."

With a rush of warm tingles, she couldn't– a thick hard noise was wrenched out of her throat, she couldn't stop it, she was trying to stop it, enough it actually hurt, her throat stinging and her sides aching, but she couldn't— (Uncle Vernon hated it when she cried.) —but Severus didn't pull away or move to– to– his arm still firm around her and—

It hurt, she hadn't remembered how much crying hurt, it'd been too bloody long (she couldn't remember the last time she'd cried), her ribs aching and her throat burning, she almost thought she would pull something as she shook. It probably wouldn't be so bad if she weren't still trying to force her body to fucking cooperate, dammit, stop it, but it wasn't working, she could feel tears building around her eyes, her face burning, and she could hear herself, strained and choked and harsh and— And she couldn't make it stop, now that even a little had leaked out the pressure was only building more, and Liz couldn't even think straight, could hardly think at all, except to wish for it to stop, Uncle Vernon hated it– but it wasn't working, she couldn't, and—

And Severus was still bloody hugging her (which hadn't stopped being weird, she had to be imagining that), as a shuddering sob escaped from her (her sides aching sharp and hot as she tried to hold it in), if anything even pulling her closer, his mind cool and— And she felt herself relax, not consciously aware of the decision, the painful tension holding her rigid dissolving away — reluctantly and unevenly, bit by bit — and...

Liz just cried. She couldn't stop, and Severus wasn't– so she just...didn't.

With each painful, wrenching sob and wet cough, the pressure built up gradually eased — she didn't know how long it took, maybe only a couple minutes (though it certainly felt longer than that) — until it finally stopped, Liz left feeling empty and worn out, her throat raw, a mild ache building in her head. Though she hadn't gone completely quiet, her breath was still harsh and noisy, like she'd just been running, hot and unpleasant against her protesting throat, but there was nothing she could do about that. Weirdly, everything kind of hurt, shivering a little with each breath, like she'd been hit with some kind of pain hex, but it wasn't that bad, her throat and her head were the worst of it. She'd forgotten how much crying hurt...

She was also inexplicably hungry, didn't know what was up with that. Or maybe not so inexplicable, when she thought about it — it was getting late, and she hadn't eaten since breakfast...

At some point, she'd ended up leaning further over — she had felt that happening, but she hadn't really been paying attention at the time — practically halfway into Severus's lap — not really, but — one arm wrapped around her back and the other hand resting on her arm. Her forehead was pressed against his chest, she hadn't really noticed that happening, and...her hands were fisted in his jumper. Oops.

She forced herself to let go, the joints in her fingers stinging, clenched too tightly for too long, started pulling back to lean upright, wincing when something in her lower back protested. Severus let her go as she went, though he didn't move his arm, still loosely draped over her shoulders. "Sor—" Her voice didn't come out right, hoarse and grinding, she cleared her throat — grimacing at the pain, bloody thing... "I'm sorry." She sniffed, unthinkingly wiped at her nose, and oh god, she was leaking...

Severus conjured a handkerchief with a flick of his wand, wordlessly levitated it within easy reach. Liz didn't think she'd ever actually used one of these things before, but it wasn't like it was a complicated concept — ugh, why was crying so gross? At least the thing was conjured, they could just vanish it when she was done. While she was taking care of that, there was another flutter of magic, she was too busy cleaning off her face to see what—

"Oh!" There was a glass of water floating in the air nearby — the glass was conjured, but the water must be condensed or drawn with an elemental charm or something. "Thanks," she managed to grind out, a little sheepishly. The water was warm, maybe a little above the air temperature in here, but cold would probably hurt on her throat anyway, so...

When she was done, the soiled handkerchief and mostly-emptied water glass disappeared, they silently sat on the step, tense and uncomfortable. Or at least, Liz felt uncomfortable — Severus's head was cool and shifting, distracted, didn't know what was going on in there. This whole thing had been, just, uncomfortable, and Severus's arm was still around her, which hadn't stopped being bloody weird, and nothing had happened, but...

Liz was confused. She didn't know what she was supposed to do now. So she sat silently and just...waited, not willing to break the uncomfortable silence first.

"When I was a child, my father would punish me for crying." With a little twitch, Liz glanced up at Severus — that was not what she'd expected him to say. (Not that she knew what she had expected, honestly.) His face was mostly expressionless, staring unfocused toward the front door, his mind not giving much away, cool and deep and shifting. "At first, it was little more than shouting at me, or shutting me up in my room until I quieted down. He escalated in time, as abusers tend to do. It wasn't always...physical, but...

"Well. I cannot tell you how many homophobic insults I received from my father — he didn't want any of that in his house, you see, and seemed to be under the impression that the deprivation and abuse I was subjected to was not sufficient to cause a normal boy to be reduced to tears. It was a frequent feature of how he spoke to me, even after I'd learned to avoid it, enough that... I don't feel any attraction for men at all, but I have...been approached before, and it never fails to make me uncomfortable, for this reason."

"You still hear him, after so...?" Severus was, what, thirty-three? something like that? And his father had even been dead for half of that time. The thought that he was still dealing with this shite even after so long was...unpleasant.

"No, it's not so explicit as that. It isn't as though I truly hear him calling me some slur, but only a subtle sense of...vulnerability, I would say — the instinctive awareness that I am approaching too near doing something that may bring me harm, with no true thought given to how or why. Simply the feeling, disconnected from the present moment, seeming to rise without cause or warning."

Liz shuffled in place a little, trying to shrug off the unpleasant tingles crawling over her shoulders. (That sounded too familiar.) Maybe Severus thought she was trying to shrug off his arm, or he was just getting uncomfortable himself, because it finally lifted away, Severus leaning back. Reclining on the stairs, elbows propped up on a step a few above where Liz was sitting, his head tilted back to look up toward the ceiling, most of his face hidden from the angle Liz had (because she was so bloody short).

"In any case, I learned to stop myself, to force rigid control over my emotions — or the external expression of them, at the very least. It didn't stop my father from finding some excuse, but even so. My control held for years, I'm uncertain how many precisely. Until that Samhain night, twelve years ago, when I found Lily dead in the nursery."

...Liz wasn't surprised, exactly, she'd sort of seen that coming, but it was still a little... She couldn't imagine Severus crying, it was weird.

Silence dragged on for a moment, broken only with trees rustling in the distance and something in the house creaking (probably the wreckage in the nursery overhead being rocked by the wind). Words were itching at the back of her throat, but she wasn't supposed to talk about what went on at home, her fingers shivering as eyes crawled over her skin like ants, but it was fine, nothing was going to happen...

"They..." She paused, swallowed — she should have kept the rest of that water. "It was both of them, really, but they...did different things. They'd always say that I had no reason to— That I was lucky, that they'd took me in, and I should be grateful for all they did for me—" There was a hot flash of anger in Severus's head, she broke off, a little nervous, before realising he was angry at the Dursleys. "Yeah, I know that's absurd now, but then I... Well. The worst Petunia would do was not feed me, or lock me up in the cupboard for a while—" Another flash of anger, Liz ignored it. "—but Vernon, when I was little it was, just, lecturing, but later, he'd say he– he'd give me something to cry about, and..." Liz let out a hot, tense breath (snap), her hands gripping her knees in hope it would stop them from shaking. It didn't really work.

"You don't have to talk about it," Severus interrupted, before she could work up the nerve to keep going. "I didn't tell you what I did with the expectation that you would do the same — I will listen if you want to talk, but you needn't do so. I only meant to explain that I understand. That I know why you were frightened, before. I know that simply saying so may make little difference, but that is not something you need ever fear of me. That you are merely human is not a failure, and you haven't anything to apologise to me for. It's all right."

...

Liz didn't know what she was supposed to say here. She didn't know what was going on, and she was still...confused — like at Hogwarts, following a hallway she took regularly only to end up in a place completely different than where she'd expected, because apparently this one leads somewhere else when it's a full moon on a Tuesday, or because the person walking down it had kippers at breakfast while Mars was in retrograde, or who the fuck knew. (Hogwarts was weird sometimes.) On top of feeling kind of achy and miserable because crying was awful (and also hungry), it was just disorienting, she felt like she was waiting for something to happen, and that it wasn't happening was just making her more confused.

Though, the more she thought of it, she was certain she knew why that was. The fucked up part of her brain, from when she'd still been six years old and useless, was convinced she was going to be punished for breaking the rules, because Uncle Vernon hated it when she cried, it hadn't happened yet but it must soon — and she'd never really gotten in trouble with Severus, and he was much more dangerous than Vernon, it'd probably be something worse. But she didn't really think that was going to happen. Severus had never given her any reason to think—

Well, yes, he was a scary bloke — he was damn good with magic and a more experienced legilimens and also knew all kinds of Dark Arts shite, and had literally murdered people — but she didn't really care. She meant, Severus had never hurt her (except for the cutting her back open thing, which didn't count), so the fact that he theoretically could was irrelevant. Like with Tamsyn, sort of. There had been a few moments when her stupid fucked up brain was convinced he was about to, but she didn't really think he would, it was just...stupid ingrained shite, she couldn't really help that.

So, she knew there wasn't anything coming, but stupid, neurotic, useless, PTSD brain didn't know that. And she didn't know what was supposed to happen instead — she'd literally never been in this situation before, it was... She didn't know what you were supposed to say or do after crying on someone for a few minutes, and then talking about super uncomfortable personal stuff, if only a little bit and stuff that wasn't really news anyway, and...

She was confused, that was all, it was awkward.

"Have you decided what you wish to do with the house?"

Oh, they were moving on, good. "I'm demolishing it. There are books that should be move to Clyde Rock, and Lily has a potions lab up there, we should probably pack up the supplies. They should still be good, the stasis spells the Ministry put on here are kind of impressive." The thought struck her with an unexpected flash of anger, she grit her teeth for a second.

There was a flitter from Severus in response, obviously catching that. "Is something the matter?"

"I hate this place, that's all. The house is nice enough, I guess, that's not what I mean. I just..." The box of notes from Lily squeaked a little, Liz's hands tightening around it, she forced herself to relax. "I don't know why I wanted to see the place first, this was a terrible idea. I didn't— None of it was real to me, before. James and Lily, you know, or that Hallowe'en, it was all just shite I read in books, not... Now I know they were both absentminded nerdy types who left their empty teacups everywhere, and James was studying for his Auror exam thing even with the war going on, and Lily had a hobby of taking erotic photographs, and—"

There was a surprised cough from Severus. "Oh, for fuck— I completely forgot about that, Lily and that bloody camera..."

For some reason, his exasperation had a weak smile flickering on her lips. "For fuck's sake is right, I guess." There was a faint twitter of amusement from Severus, but only a faint one, too mortified by the topic to find it funny. "I just didn't... That's why I was– you know, earlier. None of it... We really lived here, it all really happened, and I don't—" She cut herself off, taking a thin, shaking breath. Hot tension had started to build in her throat again, her dry eyes beginning to prickle — she'd already cried like a baby once today, okay, that was more than enough. "I should have just paid someone to move everything worth keeping to a Gringotts vault and had this place demolished. Coming here was a mistake."

"Regardless, now it is done." Liz got the distinct feeling that Severus thought it wasn't a mistake — he'd probably say something about not being able to move on without first understanding and accepting what happened to her (he said similar things about the Dursleys), but that was such dogshite. Of course, he probably knew she'd say it was dogshite, so he kept the thought to himself. "And it seems you didn't come away with nothing at all."

Liz was confused for a second before realising he was referring to the box. "Oh, yeah. Lily was a Seer, you know, she knew they were gonna die, so she left something for me." That got a spasm of something sharp and unpleasant in his head — probably thinking it was fucking infuriating that Lily had warned them and nobody had listened to her, which, yeah, right with you there, Severus. "There was a letter in here, she had a bit for you, actually, let me..." She opened the box again, unfolded the letter to the post-script, and read it out loud.

There was an odd, murky, shuddering feeling from Severus for the first bit, about getting a girlfriend and kids and whatever, and not being as ruined as he thinks, blah blah — didn't know what to call that, but it didn't seem very nice. He let out a low huff at the quote from Sirius. "Of course, I should have expected something like that. I suppose I should be relieved she didn't say something crude — I can't tell you how many times Lily told me I would lighten up if I got laid."

"...Well, she's probably not wrong."

Another little huff. "That is not a concern, I assure you."

Liz wasn't certain whether he meant that he was getting laid or that he didn't care to...she did vaguely remember something about a girl at the Greenwood, but she'd been drunk at the time... Whatever, not her business. Smirking to herself a little, she then read the post-post-script: "No, I'm serious, tell him exactly that, it'll be hilarious. Who says I can't mess with people from beyond the grave?"

Severus actually laughed at that, sudden and sharp enough she was a little startled, the magic around her turned warm and bubbly. "That woman, honestly..." He leaned his head back again, hair hissing slightly as it shifted, let out a breath. "Are you ready to leave?"

"Yeah, let's get out of here." It only took a second for Liz to pack up her box again, but Severus actually turned and started up the stairs — he said he was getting something, be back in a second. Well, all right then, she thought she'd seen... Ah hah, yes, there was a tin of biscuits in the fridge, she'd just take those...

She met Severus at the door a moment later. He was carrying an engraved wooden box, kind of a chest in miniature, with an arched lid that flipped open. "Your mother's jewellery box," he explained. "I thought it would be best to bring it with, just in case."

Liz didn't know just in case of what, but fine, whatever. "All right. Trade you," she said, holding out the tin of biscuits.

One of his eyebrows ticking up a little, Severus carefully set the jewellery box down on top of the box of notes, took the tin. "What is this?" he asked, even as he tilted the lid up a crack. That eyebrow ticked up even further.

"You can go ahead and have those. I saw them in the fridge earlier, and thought..." She shrugged — she didn't know what she'd thought, honestly, it'd just occurred to her as a thing to do.

"I couldn't possibly, Elizabeth. You know this is the only opportunity you will ever get to have your mother's baking."

She shrugged again, giving him a pointed look. "And maybe that opportunity would mean shite to me if I could stomach anything with sugar in it."

"Ah," Severus breathed, an odd awkward wiggle in his head. "Yes, I hadn't thought of that. In that case, thank you, Elizabeth."

"Sure. Let's go."

They had to walk all the way back to the post office to apparate out — just popping away out in the open was kind of conspicuous, and the wards around the house also stopped apparation, so. Along the way, out of a lack of anything better to do, Liz poked through the jewellery box, careful not to knock it over or drop anything. Most of it was probably new, things she'd gotten after marrying James — the Evanses had been poor, and there was a lot of gold and red and white (Potter colours) and little hippogriffs carved into things, so — though there was some cheaper stuff, like beaded bracelets and the like, which were probably older. Liz doubted she'd actually use any of this, having jewellery jangling around just seemed like an unnecessary distraction, but...

She opened a drawer in the side, finding a tray of earrings. "Hey, I was wondering earlier, do you think the Greenwood people would do the neat piercings and shite for me if I asked?" Those might be a little distracting, but probably less than dangly bracelets and necklaces or whatever — also, they just looked cool.

"I'm uncertain. As I understand it, there is some cultural or religious meaning attached to the practice, so they may not react well to outsiders who wish to imitate them merely for aesthetic reasons. But Mistwalkers do tend to be easy-going, friendly people. I suppose it's possible, though I suspect you will need to make up with the elder Miss Greengrass first."

Liz grimaced — of course she would. The problem was she had no fucking clue how to do that...

(Maybe she should write Tamsyn, seemed like she'd have good advice for that sort of thing.)

A few minutes later, they arrived back in the sitting room, Liz letting out a slightly shaky breath — she'd gotten used to apparation at some point, not nearly as bad as those first few times, but she still didn't like it, too tight and restricting and ugh. While she was still shaking it off, Severus switched on the lights, then asked, "I was thinking Chinese. Should I go put in our order, or would you like to do something else?"

"No, that's fine. Extra for me this time, I'm starving."

Severus nodded. "It'll be about twenty minutes." And then he apparated away again — obviously, he couldn't call in an order over the phone, since he didn't have one.

Rolling her eyes at Severus once more being a bit weird and awkward (not that she had any right to judge), Liz walked over to her room. She'd put Lily's jewellery and notes away somewhere else eventually — not that she had anywhere permanent to put them, at least not until she finally moved into the townhouse come summer — but for now she just set them on top of the dresser. A tap of her wand to each to loosen her boots, she kicked them both off, pulled her jumper and her dress over her head and tossing them aside — she'd properly put those away later too. Tipping back a few steps, she flopped limply back onto the bed, roughly enough she bounced a little, stared blankly up at the shadowy ceiling — she hadn't turned the lights on — practically sinking into the covers as the last of the tension dribbled out of her.

It wasn't even that late, but it still felt like it'd been an unreasonably long day. Between the duelling practice she'd done in the morning, and then the mind magic subsumption lesson in the afternoon, and Godric's Hollow and the house and bloody crying, yeah, she was tired. It didn't help that crying fucking hurt, she forgot how much crying hurt — her chest and her throat were still aching a bit, and her head was actually worse than it'd been immediately afterward, stuffed up almost like she had a cold. It turned out crying was kind of terrible all by itself, didn't really need another reason to want to avoid it...

It also didn't help that this week just in general had been a bit...much. Emotionally, she meant. As Severus had said going on a month ago now, even normal people only had so much energy to put into things, and she had to be running negative by now. With her blow up with Daphne and then needing to leave the Greenwood and then the Malfoys... And Godric's Hollow had been kind of awful, alternating between anger at Dumbledore and British mages in general being terrible — sometimes she really hated almost everyone, it felt like, it was exhausting — and the house hadn't been any better, fucking emotional roller-coaster, that. Liz wasn't good at managing even normal, everyday shite, but whatever that odd feeling she still didn't have a word for was, and all the shite she'd learned in such a short time, and it actually feeling real for the first time (and not being happy about that, going there was a mistake), and bloody crying, and Severus hugging her, which was still fucking weird when she thought about it (not bad, really, just seriously strange), and, just, everything...

It was a lot, that was all, she was relieved to be back. As fucked up as everything else might get, Severus's house was always pretty calm — it was only the two of them here, and as weird and awkward as he could be, Severus was a very low-drama person, just, doing his awkward nerdy thing. And they were in the middle of nowhere, by magical standards, nobody knew where they were, so they didn't have to worry about anyone busting in and... She didn't know, it was nice here, that was all. Not to mention, this was literally the first room someone had just given her (the Slytherin dorms didn't count), so there was that, and Severus was, well, she didn't know exactly, she was just—

The thought abruptly clicking, Liz jumped up to sitting upright, her breath caught in her throat.

She was safe here.

She felt safe here.

The realisation had an odd storm of shite sweeping through her, her stomach swooping and her skin tingling, and her head spinning, she didn't know what...

She didn't know what to do with that thought. It was just...too big, she didn't know how to process the...all of it. She...

There was a sharp pop, somewhat muffled — Severus coming back. He wouldn't have dinner already, he would have given their order and then come back, so he didn't have to stand around and wait while they made it. (Liz didn't actually know where this Chinese place was, could be on the other side of the country for all it mattered.) Her fingers twitching a little, the warm tingles sprouting again, she...

She found Severus in the sitting room, in his usual armchair, sorting through the latest batch of letters he'd gotten — probably just planning responses, wouldn't have time to finish one before their dinner was ready. The back was to the door, but he must have felt her coming, an odd lurch in his head as he turned to look up at her. "Elizabeth? Is something the matter?"

Liz opened her mouth to answer...but she didn't know what to say. She knew she did want to say something — the pressure of it hard in her chest and locked in her throat, making it slightly hard to breathe — she just had no fucking clue what. Words were hard sometimes, and also she didn't entirely know why she'd walked out here in the first place, not really. She just...

Her head was a mess right now, she was kind of having a moment, she doubted she'd be able to find the words. So instead she showed him.

Her wand suddenly in her hand, she whispered, "Expecto patronum." She'd tried the spell before, and it'd never really worked — not that she'd expected it to. But this time, her magic surged, burning bright and sharp and hot — unpleasantly so, searing through her chest and down her arm, but it was light magic — her joints stinging electric hot and cold as it poured through her hand, pale blue-silver light steamed out of her wand, swirling into a pool and...

The light condensed into an ephemeral, silvery bird — no idea what kind of bird, Liz didn't know shite about animals, wings wide and sweeping, with a sharp... Probably a bird of prey of some kind, she would guess, which was kind of neat. (Way cooler than a pretty little deer, Severus, ha ha.) The bird silently drifted around the room, wings slowly flapping — far slower than a real bird would need to stay aloft, ethereal and graceful, a thin trail of magic dissolving into the air behind it. The wisps in its wake kind of looked like memory stuff, blue-silver and an odd substance between vapour and liquid, but not quite the same thing.

It was also a bit unpleasant for Liz, like a harsh winter wind blowing through the room, sharp cold stinging at her skin, on top of the hot ache still lingering along the path she'd channelled the magic through. But still, watching the thing fly around the room, numb surprise shivering in Severus's head, she couldn't help a faint smile.

She remembered, that meeting months ago now, asking Severus about defences against dementors, this spell had come up. Most people thought it was happiness that fuelled the spell — which would have been a problem anyway, since Liz still wasn't certain what happiness was supposed to feel like — but he'd said that wasn't really it. Focusing on happy memories worked, yes, but really...

"'Expecto patronum' — I await a protector. The Patronus Charm is not motivated by a feeling of happiness, but of safety."

The spell gradually unravelled, the power she'd channelled into it burning off — she could keep it going for longer, but light magic hurt, so — until it finally dissolved completely, Severus left staring at the now empty space the Patronus had been just a second ago, speechless. Apparently he had no better idea what to say than she did — she wasn't sure how to read the odd, wiggling, tingling, lurching mess in his head, but she was pretty sure he'd gotten the message. So it didn't matter that neither of them knew what to say, there was nothing that needed to be said.

Liz turned on her heel, and returned to her room without another word.

[a hell of a snowfall they'd gotten in this part of the country a few years ago] — Liz is referring to the Big Freeze of 1987.

I still think it's kind of funny that one to two feet of snow and subzero C temperatures (teens in Fahrenheit) in England is a big enough deal such events even get Wikipedia articles. Where I live, we get at least one snowfall that heavy every single year (sometimes multiple, on one memorable occasion three separate storms in the same week), and we get below -10 Fahrenheit (-23 C) as a matter of routine literally every January — the lowest temperature I've been outside in personally was around -45 Fahrenheit (-43 C), and even then people were still going to school and work and shite more or less like normal. (IIRC, school districts with significant rural areas closed — school buses have diesel engines, and those have trouble running when it gets too cold (it's pretty neat, actually, the long chains in the fuel congeal into wax, because science) — but that was pretty much it.) The English are fucking pansies.

I realise Minnesotans saying people are wimps for not being able to handle a little cold is a stereotype — and also Irish people insulting the English just in general — but xD

For some reason, I thought Lily's birthday was the third, instead of the thirtieth. Consider this headcanon as of this moment.

And yet another absurdly long chapter where nothing really happens, but somehow at the same time a lot happens — my specialty is well-established by this point. I could ramble on here about stuff, but I think I'm going to just let this chapter stand on its own. Except for the total innocuous comment that I'm sure Liz coming to resent magical Britain at large won't have any long-term consequences whatsoever.

Anyway, bye.