The Good War

by inwardtransience

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

42. Fourth Year — I

June 1994

---

Dorea heard a shuffling from across the table, glanced up from her notes to find Adrian Pucey, dark hair casually tousled and uniform robes slightly dishevelled, settling into the chair straight across from her. His face pulled into a friendly smile.

Startled, she could only stare, for what felt like long seconds.

"Hey, Black. I'm looking for Liz, is she sitting with you?"

It took a moment for the words to register, his voice echoing meaninglessly in her head, the meaning only slowly filtering in. "Oh. Um." She glanced toward Liz's bag, hanging off the chair next to hers. "Yeah, she's getting a book. A Runes thing, we, um, she should be back in a minute."

"Right, good," he said, nodding. "So, how's revising going for you two? I remember third year being brutal — not as bad as last year, of course—" That would have been Adrian's OWL year. "—but they really start to step up in the complexity of the material in third year."

"Oh, um, it's not so bad. There's a lot to memorise in Runes, and Arithmancy too I guess, and I don't really get how Potions work? I mean, affinities and environments, it's very confusing, and that's without getting into second-order interactions, and— I don't know how Liz follows all of this, it's very confusing, I might think it was just, like, she's a Seer and she can kind of cheat at the brewing part, but you think that wouldn't work with—" Dorea realised she was babbling, bit her lip to stop herself — she felt her cheeks warm, feeling oddly twitchy and self-conscious, she hoped Adrian didn't notice that. "Um. It's a lot, but it's not so bad."

Hogwarts during exam season could be a bit tense just in general. There's a lot of pressure around doing well on OWLs and NEWTs, which did make some sense — exam scores were used as hiring criteria in all kinds of professions, and of course they were essential for getting into an apprenticeship or mastery programme. While most of the students were nobility — or, like Adrian, had close family connections to nobility (his mother was a Stryke) — and didn't really need to get a job or anything, doing well and thereby demonstrating their talents was sort of a prestige thing, built social capital they could then use elsewhere. And, of course, for the muggleborns in the school getting good scores was all but essential to be taken seriously by pretty much anyone, so they tended to be very obsessive about exams. It wasn't unusual to see people (disproportionately muggleborns) sent to Pomfrey for a calming potion, held in hospital and away from their books overnight, so they might possibly get one good night of rest.

For Adrian in particular, well, he was probably planning on going into professional duelling after graduation, if only temporarily, to further build up his resume. Except, unless Dorea was very much mistaken, this wouldn't be a professional resume — the point would be to make him seem as attractive a prospect as possible for some noble family to marry off a third or fourth daughter or something. It probably wasn't that much of a problem for Adrian in particular (he was nice, and very handsome), but the more feathers in his cap the more doors would be open to him, so.

(Dorea forcefully stopped herself from thinking about Adrian Pucey's marriage arrangements.)

Anyway, in some ways Hogwarts was actually quietest when the exams came around, as everyone buckled down and focussed on revising, far fewer noisy outbursts going on than might be expected during other times of year. But at the same time, the tension on the air was so thick Dorea could almost taste it, anxiety so widespread through the castle it almost made her paranoid sometimes. Like, everyone else was taking the exams so seriously, revising was pretty much the only thing everyone was doing all the time — was she forgetting something, should she be doing something she wasn't? Sally-Anne had made little flashcards for Runes, brought them with her everywhere, even to meals, the boys had made a game of asking each other questions and tossing jinxes when someone got something wrong, which they were at pretty much constantly, everyone around her was putting so much effort into it, maybe she should be working harder, but she wasn't even sure what she would revise, she was pretty sure she was already familiar with everything that might come up...

You need sleep Hermione, honestly, you're not going to do well on the exams if you're so wiped out from revising you can't even keep your eyes open...

The person who seemed least neurotic about it all was Liz — she did revise with everybody else, yes, participating in the little quizzes their study group did and everything and helping people with their casting, but she never seemed particularly worked up about it, always all smooth and unconcerned. And as the day of the exams approached, people around them getting more and more nervous, Dorea had noticed that Liz would pull away, try to avoid the more obviously worked up of their friends, even just stop going to study group meetings entirely. Now that she knew more about how overwhelming other people's feelings could be for her sometimes, she suspected Liz found everyone around her freaking out over exams uncomfortable, and at a certain point it just got too much and she had to stay away.

Dorea and Liz tended to spend most of their time alone together in the last week before exams — because being around people freaking out over exams made Dorea paranoid, and since she was much less nervous about it Dorea was less likely to make Liz uncomfortable. That was her theory, anyway, she hadn't actually asked.

Of course, they did still want to revise some. And the anxious tension in the air all around could be distracting enough without Dorea being interrupted by handsome sixth-year boys.

At her little directionless babble — nervous, Dorea realised now, slightly jittery, Adrian had hardly spoken to her directly very much (and never alone, she didn't think) — he just smiled for a second, a little crookedly. She couldn't help the feeling he was making fun of her in his head, which was silly and absurd and he was probably used to girls being embarrassing around him and, oh god, why was she doing this to herself... "Potions can get a bit, well. It's ritual, you know, I'd be surprised if it weren't symbolic and confusing. I'm honestly amazed I managed an O on the OWL, didn't think I'd get into the NEWT level."

Dorea bit her lip to stop herself from blurting out something about him being brilliant, that wasn't a surprise at all — and then she noticed she was fiddling with her notebook, forced herself to stop, crossed her arms over stomach instead, leaning back in her chair a little. She felt the way moving her arms like that pushed at her breasts a little, she wondered if that were visible, and if it were if Adrian had noticed, and then a second later realised what she was thinking, the heat on her own face and neck increasing and— Oh, for crying out loud... "Um. I doubt I'll be getting into NEWT Potions. I don't really need it, I guess, but I've been averaging Es..."

"Yeah, I did too — Professor Snape's a harsh scorer. You'll do better on the OWL than you do on his exams. And you can always take the NEWT on your own if you don't get in. I have a few older cousins who did that, they wanted to go into healing but didn't manage an O on the OWL. Though I suppose you don't have to worry about getting into an apprenticeship, do you."

"No, not really." She only realised he meant that she was a Lady of a Most Ancient House, so could simply trade on her name, a couple seconds later. "Oh! Um, I don't mean— That's just not something I'm thinking about right now. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do after graduation. Maybe go into a Mastery programme somewhere, or maybe a muggle university? I don't know."

Then they talked about that for a little while — apparently Adrian actually was going to go into professional duelling after school, so she'd guessed that part right, but he planned to study for a Defence or Charms Mastery while he was at it. So they ended up talking about the different Mastery programmes around, and post-Hogwarts study, that kind of thing. Caoimhe's Academy in Ireland had the only comprehensive Mastery programme in Britain — their OWL programme was solely in Gaelic, but their NEWT and Mastery programmes offered classes in English too — so that was the only option if he didn't want to study abroad, but Beauxbatons had more available specialties, and also lower tuition fees...but taught primarily in French, and he wasn't sure his French was good enough for that. And, of course, he couldn't go to a muggle university without a lot of preparation, since he'd never gone to a muggle school before, so he'd have to catch up on a lot of stuff — and also didn't have muggle papers at all, so kind of didn't legally exist on that side, but there was an office in the Ministry whose job was dealing with that sort of thing, but he had no idea what muggle schools taught, he wouldn't know where to start...

It was the longest conversation Dorea had ever had with Adrian Pucey.

Dorea nearly jumped out of her seat when a heavy book was dropped on the table nearby — it wasn't that loud, she just hadn't seen it coming, wound up enough her heart was pounding, nerves jittering in her fingers. "Sorry, the copies on the shelves were all gone, I had to go find one in returns." Liz swished down into her chair, the bracelets of colourful glass beads around her wrists tinkling. Those were definitely in a Mistwalker style, and very familiar: it was the same local jewellery they'd been offered on the Solstice, Dorea had also borrowed some for the occasion. Liz must have kept the ones she'd been given — they'd been told they could, but Dorea had left hers behind in her room anyway — and she'd inexplicably started wearing them again some weeks ago. Dorea was kind of curious what that was about, but she hadn't bothered asking. Maybe Liz just thought they were pretty. "Were you looking for me?"

"Just something quick. You know Flitwick has been tracking down responsible adult chaperones for the Jassy trip?" There was a slight edge of sarcasm on 'responsible', for some reason — Dorea thought it was perfectly reasonable to have a few parents along with a group of teenagers for a week-long trip to a foreign country.

"Yeah?"

"Professor Snape volunteered. The Captains wanted to make sure you were okay with that first."

Liz frowned. "I thought he was already going? Why wouldn't I be okay with that?"

"I don't know," Adrian drawled, his lips twitching into a smirk, "some people might not want their parents breathing down their neck while they're on a trip with their friends."

Liz still looked confused, but Dorea wasn't really surprised she didn't get it — she was pretty sure Adrian was suggesting people might want to get up to things their parents might not approve of while out of the country, like parties and drugs and sex and the like, but Liz wasn't exactly likely to do any of that in the first place, so. "No, it's fine."

"All right. We're rescheduling the planning meeting, to a time Professor Snape can actually make it. This Sunday at two work for you?"

"Sure. Was there anything I was supposed to bring to that?"

"Maybe a notebook, to take down the itinerary, lodging and contact details, that sort of thing. Though, I don't know how important that is in your case — I imagine Professor Snape will make sure you don't miss the portkey or anything."

Liz let out a little huff, rolling her eyes, but nodded. "All right. See you then."

"Yep, see you. Black," he said with a little nod and a flick of a smile to her. Then he stood and walked off toward the exit, with that casual swaying saunter of his.

It took a few seconds, Dorea watching Adrian walk — he was wearing trousers today, it was very distracting (she was maybe staring at his bum, a little bit) — for her to realise Liz had said something. "Huh?" She blinked, turned to Liz to find her already looking at her, one eyebrow sceptically raised in an expression she'd definitely copied from Snape. (Dorea noticed little things like that sometimes, it was kind of adorable, honestly.) "I'm sorry, I wasn't listening."

Liz frowned, just slightly, her eyes flicking to Adrian before turning back to Dorea. "You like him."

Despite herself, Dorea felt herself flinch, the heat on her face that had cooled off a bit suddenly flaring to life again — which was silly, it wasn't that big of a deal, it was just a little embarrassing, if she'd been being obvious about it...though Liz was a mind mage, so...

"Sorry, we don't have to talk about it, I just noticed."

Oh, she just noticed, Dorea had to bite her lip to keep herself from laughing. Dorea had had a very frustrating, embarrassing, pointless crush on Adrian for months, and her best friend was only figuring this out now — Liz could be so ridiculously oblivious sometimes for someone who could literally read her mind at any moment. "It's fine. Um. Yeah, I guess. He's just, you know..." She wasn't really sure what to say about it, so she just shrugged. Liz was still giving her that sceptical look, which was making her feel annoyingly self-conscious, so she added, "I don't mean anything by it, he's just really handsome."

Liz frowned, glanced in Adrian's direction — though he wasn't actually in sight anymore, disappeared out of the library. "Is he?"

"Oh come on, Liz, you have seen him." Like, seriously, he was, just, eugh, distracting. Cedric Diggory was prettier, though not by very much, honestly. (Also, his father was a huge racist, and Dorea didn't know how much of that Cedric had picked up.) And, sure, Cedric was nice enough, in a stereotypically Hufflepuff-ish sort of way, but Adrian was— She sounded silly even thinking it to herself, but he was cooler. Like, one time she'd gone down when Liz had quidditch practice, and when people had been changing and getting ready, Adrian had been floating around the pitch waiting, casually reclining on his broom and reading a book, just, argh...

"Well, yeah, but I never really thought about it, I guess," Liz muttered, frowning, sounding a little absent. Of course, Dorea wasn't really surprised that Liz apparently didn't pay much attention to boys, so.

Dorea considered pointing out that like half the girls in their year — an exaggeration, but not really that much of one — were pining after Adrian, but that would mean admitting she was pining after Adrian — which she wasn't, not really — so she decided not to. "I mean, I'm not going to— Don't tell him. I don't want to actually do anything about it. I mean, he is three years older than us, I doubt he would be interested." Also, it would probably be kind of creepy if he were — not illegal, because the age of majority in magical Britain was confusing and terrible, but definitely creepy. (Though it wouldn't be once she was a few years older, and Lady Black would be a hell of a catch for him, and— No. Stop it.) "And isn't he dating Alex Ingham?"

"Yeah, he is. Even though she's engaged to someone else already, I don't know what the deal is with that."

Marriage was political for nobles, obviously, so her personal life was a separate matter, but there was no point in explaining that just now. "Yeah, so. It's no big deal, you know, it can just be really distracting sometimes. And also embarrassing, I made a complete idiot of myself before you got here, ugh."

Liz let out a short, irritated sigh. "That part I get, yeah. But yeah, I won't bring it up again, I was just surprised."

Dorea hardly heard that second sentence, zeroing in on the first one so intently she felt herself stiffen in her chair, blinking over at Liz. "Do you have a thing for someone I don't know about?"

Apparently Liz hadn't meant to admit that — she grimaced, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. "I guess," she muttered, shrugging. "Well, fine, yes, but I haven't told anyone about it."

"Sorry, I just never noticed anything, and I'm...well, curious I guess." The thought of Liz having a crush on a boy was just so weird, though Dorea couldn't really say why. Probably just because it was such a normal thing, and Liz was, well.

...

It probably wasn't anyone in the study group, she would have noticed...though Liz did get along well with, "Terry? Is it Terry?"

"No," Liz said with another sigh.

Hmm, okay. What other boys did Liz even know? "It's not Miles. Eirsley? Yaxley?"

"No."

"Cedric?" That was the easy answer...

Liz rolled her eyes. "You're not going to guess."

"...It isn't Draco, is it?"

Dorea guessed the eugh noise Liz made was answer enough on its own. "You know Severus is his godfather, he's been acting all— That'd be like dating your stepbrother or something."

Okay, as weird as that idea was, Dorea probably shouldn't point out that families naming each other godparents to their children was commonly a precursor to a marriage alliance — people who share godparents getting married was actually very common. Besides, that would never happen, Draco was the only heir the Malfoys have. "Well then who... No, sorry, you don't have to tell me. I was just wondering."

Liz was looking down at her notebook, fiddling with her pen. She'd seemed a bit annoyed or embarrassed or something while Dorea had been making guesses, but now she seemed more thoughtful, turning something over. Finally, after several seconds, "I can tell you, I guess. I think... We've been talking, and... I still don't know if it's a good idea, I'll probably fuck it up, but I might, you know. So, I guess I can tell you, before it happens and you find out that way."

"Oh, um." Dorea tried to keep the suspicious frown off her face — Liz was acting kind of...weird, didn't know what to make of it. Not like the effort mattered, Liz would know what she was feeling anyway, force of habit. "We can talk about it, if you want." Honestly, she'd rather talk about boys than memorise runes some more. As much as that wasn't the sort of conversation she normally wanted to be having, she was so tired of revising for Runes...

"Daphne."

"What?" Dorea glanced around quick, but she didn't see her.

"No, I meant it's Daphne."

She meant...

...

Dorea blinked. "Oh."

...

"Seriously? I mean..."

Liz shot her a look, not sure how to read it. "Yes, seriously. Come on, Dorea, you have seen her," with a slight edge on her voice she didn't quite...

Well, she was repeating what Dorea said about Adrian a couple minutes ago, she got that after a second, but she didn't think— "Are you gay?" She didn't realise she'd just blurted that out in the middle of the library until after she'd said it, looked around quick but it didn't seem like anyone was paying attention to them...

Liz shrugged. "I think so, yeah."

"...Oh."

She didn't know what to say. She felt terribly uncomfortable all of a sudden, but she didn't really know why. She just...

"Daphne... You said you've, um, been talking to her. About it."

That wasn't very clear, but Liz answered the question she hadn't properly asked anyway, because mind magic (which was a little terrifying whenever she stopped to let herself think about it). "I don't think she cares. Whether someone's a boy or girl, you know."

...No, she didn't know — she couldn't imagine why someone wouldn't even care what— That didn't make any bloody sense, how did that work? "And she knows you're a mind mage."

Liz shot her another look. "Of course she does. It was in the papers, Dorea." Well, yes, she just meant— "And she found out before that, when we were at the Greenwood."

That was... Hmm.

Dorea had run out of obvious questions, and now she didn't know what to say again.

...

She didn't think she... Well, dating a mind mage, especially one as powerful as Liz, would make her uncomfortable. Didn't Daphne wonder whether—

Liz bit out a sharp sigh, startling Dorea out of her thoughts. She folded her notebook closed and stood up, starting packing her bag. Dorea just watched her for a couple seconds, very confused. "Um, Liz, what are you—"

"You can keep the dictionary," she said, nodding at the book Liz had been looking for when Adrian showed up. "I have one in my room." Slinging her bag over her shoulder, making her bracelets jingle again, Liz circled the table, and started off toward the exit.

"Liz, hey, wait—" Dorea started, halfway standing — and then pausing, because she didn't know what she was— It was really subtle, Liz managing not to show much external sign of it, but she'd obviously upset Liz somehow. But she had no idea what it was, she hadn't even done anything...

Not bothering to look over her shoulder, Liz gave her an odd little back-and-forth wave with one hand — gesturing her to stay, like. A few more seconds and Liz was gone, the bookshelves breaking line of sight. Confused, Dorea slumped back down into her seat. For a long moment she just sat there, frowning in the direction Liz had left in, her thoughts a jumbled mess and something itching at her chest.

...

What the hell just happened?

---

The end of the year at Hogwarts was an odd time. After the exams themselves — which took two whole weeks, professors staggering the years they were teaching so they could get to them all — the students stayed at the castle another whole week, before finally leaving the next weekend. Usually within a few days of the summer solstice, so students whose families had a holiday then (which was a minority) would be home for it, though by a pretty narrow margin. There were arguments that came up every once in a while about adjusting the school year to better align with the holidays most mages celebrated, to make it so they could actually be home for them — Hallowe'en was a big one, and another was in February, so a lot of people wanted their kids home on those days, but accommodating all the different religions in Britain and all their holidays was pretty much impossible, so nothing was done about it. Not that that was really any of Liz's business, she'd just heard some people complain about it.

But anyway, the whole last week at school, there was basically nothing to do. The professors spent that whole time marking the exams — and Liz really did mean the whole time, Severus hardly even left his office the whole week — in time to get all their scores and put together their final report for the year by the day the train left. (Except the OWL and NEWT students — those exams didn't count, they got their grades and class rank at the end of the year but their exam scores didn't come in for a couple months.) Most of the adults in the building being tied up with that meant the students were under rather less supervision than usual. Since there weren't any classes going on they really didn't have much they were supposed to be doing, so they tended to get up to a lot of rowdy shite.

Liz didn't know what it was about the school year being over, but it always made most of the other students act...weird. Like, way more energetic and silly than usual, she didn't know what was up with that, she didn't get normal people. There were some people — Hermione, Padma, Sally-Anne, Lisa, Neville — who spent the week obsessing over the exams, wondering and worrying over how well they'd done, preventing them from getting into the revelry going on in the castle. And "revelry" did seem the right word to use — people running around in the halls making a nuisance of themselves, just in general; having picnics out on the grounds, sometimes including alcohol smuggled in from somewhere, making them all very silly, a little play duel or scrap breaking out here or there, Liz had even heard of people stripping off their clothes to go swimming in the lake (which was just plain scandalous by magical standards, though the alcohol probably helped it along); having frequent parties in the common rooms, in all four houses practically every night, though the parties in Hufflepuff were particularly famous, apparently involving all kinds of drugs and intoxicating potions and, according to rumour, sometimes even devolving into actual orgies. (Liz had never heard it directly from someone who'd been to one, so she couldn't say whether that was true or just one of those stories that went around.) The castle was basically chaos for that last week, was the point.

It was honestly exhausting, especially with how difficult it could be for Liz to keep other people's excitement running away from them from getting into her head, so she always spent most of it in her room by herself. Reading, mostly, or practising spells or brewing potions, just whatever she felt like. Little different from what she did over the summer, really, just starting a week early.

Her routine was a little different this time, but not really by much. She crammed a bunch of divination practice in with the other stuff. Interestingly, she could scry out of Hogwarts from inside, which did make sense when she thought about it — it was a castle, it made sense that you might want to be able to scry what people outside of it were up to. She couldn't scry the Wizengamot Hall, even focussing on just magic, their wards were too good. When she tried Clyde Rock, she was a little concerned that she could actually scry the building (or the parts she'd actually been to, anyway), but Nilanse said that was just because she was Lady Potter, if she were anyone else the wards wouldn't let her through. (Which was neat, she wondered how that worked...) Scrying into Charing was trivial, and she could look into some of the stores themselves — oh, she should remember to go to Fortescue's, order a pail of her ice cream to have in the new house — but even the ones that kept sight and sound out didn't block magic, which was supposedly much harder to scry against, so she could still read the minds of everyone there...except for Gringotts and also Ollivander's, which were both completely blocked. She spent one afternoon just wandering around London, which was kind of interesting, because the people and objects she'd never seen were just silvery misty shadows — she'd only seen islands in the city here and there, but even in those islands what she could make out was patchy, streets she hadn't gone down or things that had been hidden behind faces of buildings, it was kind of neat exploring the edge of it, wondering why this part was visible and this part wasn't.

She'd planned on trying to do her trippy dream-walking thing in the common room, but there were always people in there, even in the middle of the bloody night, so. Near the end of the week, she'd gone down to the entrance to Gaunt's place, after a bit of poking around bumped into one of the historians looking over the place, suggested she could try dream-walking down there sometime. That led to a meeting with the head of the team there, who, after convincing him that, no really, it worked, she'd successfully pulled it off a couple times already — helped along by a copy of a memory she'd gotten by trying it out on the grounds (in the middle of the night when no one was around), which had turned out pretty boring, just a bunch of people in funny clothes standing around talking in a language she didn't understand — that this was a very neat idea, actually, he'd discuss with some of his colleagues and the Board and stuff and get back to her.

She also tried to make contact with the castle multiple times, with minimal success. Sometimes it noticed her, but only sometimes — and even when it did, it just kind of glanced at her for a second before moving on to...whatever it spent its time doing, she didn't know. Clearly, Liz just wasn't big and important enough to keep the castle's attention. There must be something she could do to get it to stick around for even a few seconds, but she hadn't come up with any ideas yet.

And she did actually spend some time with other people this time, though not at those ridiculously noisy parties, that would almost certainly just give her a headache. No, a few time over the course of the week — usually in the evening, but once around lunch too — she hung out with Daphne and Tracey and Hermione and sometimes also Lily in her room. (Hermione had wanted to bring Neville instead at first, but Liz wasn't comfortable letting him into her room.) She could let Daphne and Tracey in just by holding their hand and pulling them across, but for Hermione and Lily they'd had to ask Severus — he hadn't had to actually do anything, apparently he could change who was allowed in her room just by thinking about it, because wards were neat. They didn't really do much, just talked about whatever came to mind, sometimes played card games and stuff. Magic card games, only some of which Liz had been familiar with.

Liz was asked a couple times why they didn't invite Dorea, but just shrugged it off every time. The other girls were tactful enough to realise she didn't want to talk about it and stop asking.

One night, Tracey had managed to get a bottle of gin from somewhere — they didn't really do anything different that night, the same things as the other times, just being more silly about it. Though Lily ended up having far too much and got very drunk — like Liz on the solstice, she'd never had gin before and hadn't realised how strong it was, and oops (she was fine, just had a bad hangover the next morning, but there were potions being passed around to help with that) — drunk enough it really wasn't safe for her to go up all those stairs to her own bed, so they kind of camped out in Liz's room instead. Which was fine. She might ordinarily have been uncomfortable with it, but she'd had some too, and was feeling warm and floaty and chill enough that she didn't really care. (Picking up everyone else also being all warm and floaty and chill probably helped.) Besides, she trusted everyone here to not do anything bad while she was sleeping, so while it did occur to her that she might not normally be okay with this, it didn't actually bother her that much.

Though, the sleeping arrangements were kind of awkward. Daphne didn't mind sleeping on the floor — apparently kids at the Greenwood would sleep out in the fields sometimes, just for fun — and Lily was too drunk to care, but Liz didn't really have that much floor space...and they should try to keep the way to the door open, so nobody stepped on anyone trying to get to the toilet. They called an elf (not Nilanse, one of the ones watching over the Slytherin dorms) to bring them some pillows and blankets and stuff, and after a bit of waffling about got Daphne and Tracey and Lily more or less comfortable on the floor — Daphne and Tracey slept all cuddled up with each other by Liz's desk, which seemed awkward, but okay. After a lot of waffling, Liz in the end agreed to share her bed with Hermione. It was big enough that there was room for them to both lie down without touching, but Liz could hear her there, and— It was just a little distracting, was all. If she didn't know Hermione as well as she did she definitely wouldn't have been comfortable with it, but it was just Hermione, so it was fine. Though she was pretty sure the gin making her feel all warm and floaty and chill was helping with that, and she took a tiny sip of calming potion just to make sure she could actually sleep, but.

She'd actually woken up all cuddled up with Hermione — once she was fully conscious springing away quick enough she almost fell off the bed. The weird thing was, Liz had actually moved to Hermione's side, which... Hermione made a joke about her getting cold in the middle of the night, had just instinctively sought the nearest warm thing...and she'd been feeling all warm from the gin, so hadn't been using the blanket, so that was possible. Liz didn't have a better explanation of how the hell that happened, and she'd discovered a couple years ago now that she was pretty shite at even noticing when she was cold, so, she guessed she'd go with that.

(Liz had found the whole thing kind of unsettling, but Hermione had been... "Flattered" wasn't quite the right word, she didn't know what she was going for. She'd been all casual and joking about it, but Liz was a cheater mind mage, so Hermione wasn't actually hiding the...warm, soft, squishy, clingy thing in her head. As much as waking up like that had made Liz uncomfortable, Hermione wasn't annoyed by it, at least, so Liz decided to grab the excuse of being cold so long as it was being offered and just not think about it too hard.)

The last day they'd met up was a couple days ago, as everyone packed their shite up and actually got ready to leave. This took people absurdly long to get done, running around and collecting all their things for days, it seemed like, but Liz realised she was the weird one here — so far as she knew, nobody else had ever needed to pack up literally everything they owned, and definitely not several times. It took a few hours for Liz to sort out which books were hers and which she'd borrowed from Severus, but that was really the longest part of the whole process for her. She'd spent most of those days reading and playing around in the potions lab (brewing a last few things while she still had access to the school's supplies), just waiting for the day they'd all leave to come.

And now it was, finally, that day. And it was going to be a long day for Liz — she'd be flooing straight from the train station to the townhouse in Ireland, which had been fixed up and cleaned while she'd been at school, ready for her to move in at any moment. A house, her house, that she'd actually be living in, permanently. It was a bloody weird thought, she still wasn't sure how she felt about it. And it was also an empty house, so she'd have to get furniture and shite, and who knew how long that would take — she'd never gone furniture shopping before, so she really couldn't say. There also wasn't any food there, but she could probably leave that for tomorrow if she ran out of time, just have the elves bring her something. There would be a lot to get done, was the point, she felt all jittery and impatient, and— She just wanted to get started already, she could hardly sit still from it.

Thankfully, after what felt like fucking forever, it was time for their sending off lunch, the last meal of the year. It was a relatively light meal, all things considered, not like the big feasts they would have now and then through the year, just sandwiches and stuff — Liz assumed they thought the students would be buying a bunch of snacks on the train anyway. The end-of-year lunch was always somewhat quiet and subdued, compared to normal mealtimes, even with the undercurrent of yay the school year is over let's all be more stupid and noisy than usual for no reason excitement. There were some people who were a little sad that they wouldn't be seeing their friends for a couple months — that feeling much more pronounced among the seventh-years, as well as the handful of fifth-years who wouldn't be returning for NEWTs — but mostly people were just exhausted and hungover from all the partying and shite they'd been doing over the last week.

So, perhaps paradoxically, the end-of-year lunch was one of the least unpleasant meals for Liz of the whole year. Which just made it harder to contain the tingling eagerness to just get going already, her fingers tapping impatiently at the table.

Though there was something that was distracting her a little bit this time. Every previous year, when Liz had sat down at the table her end-of-year report thing would pop into existence on her plate — Liz wasn't sure how they did that, maybe just gave them all to the elves, or was there something on the wards to distribute things to people? Whatever, not important. But this time, when Liz sat down there was nothing. She waited a couple seconds, but it didn't show up. And it wasn't that the professors just hadn't gotten them done in time, no, looking around it was obvious that everyone else had gotten theirs. That was...weird.

For a second, nervous prickles along her spine, she wondered if she'd just done really badly, there was something wrong and she was going to be— But no, she was being ridiculous. She couldn't say exactly how well she'd done, especially in a few subjects she was less confident in, but she was certain she hadn't done especially badly. There must have just been a mix-up or something. And it wasn't like she actually cared how she did that much. She didn't want to have another conversation with Severus about how she was doing badly and why — especially since she thought she was doing better about that, if she'd started sabotaging herself again without even noticing... — but besides that, it didn't really matter. Only OWL and NEWT scores mattered post-Hogwarts, and it wasn't like Liz would ever have to work for a living anyway, so.

When she was being very honest with herself, she would admit she was slightly paranoid that Severus wouldn't be happy with her if she did badly. Though she had no idea what he'd do if that happened. She'd never really been in trouble with Severus before — he'd been annoyed about her sneaking off into the Forest to do her blood subsumption thing, but that was really the closest she'd gotten so far..and when that'd happened he'd just helped her do it more safely, so she honestly wasn't even sure why she was so worried about it sometimes. Well, no, she knew why — it was a Vernon thing — she just couldn't articulate what she thought he might do if he was angry with her.

Probably nothing, she thought? She meant, he'd want to talk about it, pick apart why she'd done whatever thing and why she shouldn't have — which would be uncomfortable and unpleasant, so it was worth avoiding for that reason, but not really that bad — and maybe make an ultimatum, like, not letting her borrow books anymore unless she stopped doing the thing. It would be something like that, he wouldn't actually hurt her. She did sometimes worry he might, but she didn't really think he would — that was just a Liz is fucked up thing, just happens sometimes, she knew it was irrational, even while it was happening, but feelings were dumb and she couldn't help it.

Severus could be confusing sometimes, but he didn't want to become his father any more than Liz wanted to become Petunia — she understood that much about all this, at least. Which she was pretty sure meant he was actually less likely to do something shitty because he was angry with her than a normal person might be, so.

As odd as it was that her end-of-year report didn't show up like everyone else's, she wasn't worried about it. But Severus walking up behind her and asking to speak with her alone for a moment kind of didn't help.

Swallowing her stupid fucking pointless nervousness as well as she could (it only sort of worked), she stood and followed him. She'd expected him to lead her into the Entrance Hall, and from there somewhere quieter — the Entrance Hall was currently occupied with trunks stacked up against the wall, people poking through them to make sure they hadn't forgotten anything — but instead they went the opposite direction, toward the staff table. There was a door up here she hadn't really paid attention to, behind the table on the left side. Through it was a set of stairs, curving around a quarter turn as they descended, depositing them in a large room. (They hadn't gone down very far, maybe only half the distance down to the first underground level, but Hogwarts could be weird like that.) The room was rather empty, with only a couple armchairs sitting in front of an overlarge fireplace, dozens of magical talking portraits scattered all over the walls. The figures inside twitched at their arrival, a wave of whispers going around the room.

She expected Severus to lead her to the armchairs, but instead he stopped shortly inside the room, pulled his wand to cast a privacy paling so powerful the edge of the field was visible as a tenuous hemisphere of transparent blue — presumably so the portraits couldn't eavesdrop on them. Severus turned to her, some of the tension in her shoulders easing as his wand vanished back up her sleeve. (She hadn't even noticed she was uncomfortable with that until she wasn't anymore, ugh, she hated her brain sometimes.) "I thought I would check in before you leave. You have the ward key on you?"

"Yep," Liz said, patting her pocket, "it's in my trunk, right on top." Like in previous years, she hadn't put her trunk with everyone else's, shrinking it and putting it in her pocket instead — it did hold literally everything she owned, after all.

"Good. If you have any difficulty with the wards, send Nilanse to find me, but I imagine it should be straightforward."

"I know, Severus." She might have sounded slightly annoyed — she was trying not to, but they'd already talked about this...

"Black knows to meet you on the platform?"

Liz scowled, but nodded. "He said he'd be there." Honestly, Liz had been fully prepared to just have nothing to do with Sirius — there was no reason she needed to, after all. Despite the fact that she was certain that they hated each other's guts, it was actually Severus who'd convinced her to change her mind, for completely practical reasons she wouldn't have thought of on her own.

For one thing, Sirius hadn't just been making shite up when he'd said the first time they'd met that he could challenge Severus for her guardianship, and probably win. (At least shared guardianship if not stealing her outright, which Liz didn't want to happen either.) Severus had argued that the best way to prevent that from happening was to placate Sirius by assuring him that, no really, she was happy the way things were, he'd only make it worse by trying to 'rescue' her, and actually proving it by spending some time with him. It didn't have to be a lot of time, Severus realised Sirius Black's personality could most succinctly be described as a bit much, but some.

Severus, like the manipulative bastard he was, had pointed out that Sirius had been a wartime Auror, so might have some duelling tips he could give her. Even while realising she was being manipulated, Liz had had to admit that was a good point. (Five points to Slytherin, Mister Snape.)

Also, Liz's new house she'd be staying in was completely empty, and she had no fucking clue how to shop for furniture — she would need someone to help her with that. Severus would be too busy wrapping up things here, so he wouldn't be available for at least a week or two. So, there was that.

It did help that Sirius had written a long, grovelling apology letter not long after their meeting, explaining why exactly he'd fucked up. Apparently, they didn't get the Prophet in France, so he'd been ignorant of a few very important details, and then stepped into it like a thoughtless idiot. After a few letters back and forth, he'd promised to be more careful about the touching, and also to not be awful about Severus — he hadn't promised he'd be nice to him, probably self-aware enough to realise he wouldn't be able to keep that promise, but that he'd keep his nose out of their business, and try not to pick a fight with Severus if they were ever in the same room at the same time. Which was acceptable, Liz guessed.

And he had agreed to help her get furniture and figure out how magical kitchens and water fixtures and grocers worked and whatever. So, that was a thing Liz would be doing today.

Severus could clearly tell how much she was not looking forward to spending all day with Sirius — she felt the amusement, but there was also a slick edge of smugness to it. He really wasn't subtle about how tickled he was that she and Sirius didn't really get along, but given their teenage rivalry that was fair, she guessed. "And I'm certain you still have the emergency portkey."

Liz rolled her eyes, but raised her hand to rub her thumb against the plain steel ring around one of her fingers. If he was certain she still had it she didn't know why he bothered asking.

"I need to check the spell hasn't faded." Oh, well, that was a good reason to ask, she guessed. She pulled it off and handed it over, his wand appeared in his hand again, a couple analysis charms later and he handed it right back. "You remember my floo address?"

"Yes, Severus. Honestly, I'll be fine — I've been taking care of myself for years, you know."

"I'm well aware," he said, a low note on his voice she didn't know how to read, the flicker in his head too subtle. "If I didn't believe you could take care of yourself day to day, I wouldn't be accommodating your desire to live independently. But that is no reason to not take a few basic precautions." She wasn't really sure what to say about that — he wasn't wrong, exactly, it was probably better for her to be able to go to him on the off chance she did need help — but Severus reached for something in his robes before she could figure it out. "I also wanted to give you this privately."

Moving to take it, Liz immediately recognised the feel of the stiff, rough card stock against her fingers, the Hogwarts logo on the cover — this was her end of year report thing. She couldn't help an annoying niggle of nervousness at Severus giving this to her in private, instead of it just appearing on her plate like everyone else's, but it was probably fine? It didn't feel like he was annoyed or anything. There was definitely something going on in his head, as subtle as it was, a low tingling of anticipation, but she really couldn't guess what that was without intruding. Taking a thick, girding breath — actually giving a damn how she did in classes was uncomfortable, she didn't like it — she opened the pamphlet-sized little folder, pulled out the sheet of parchment inside.

...That was a lot of Os. She just noticed it in her peripheral vision at first, looking over the form letter part at the top — blah blah, Elizabeth Potter, blah blah, advancing to fourth year, blah — and she just kind of froze, when she realised that... Well, that was a lot of Os.

She'd only gotten an A in Astronomy, which wasn't a surprise, nobody really liked Astronomy — though that was still better than the P she'd gotten in first and second year. (Which was technically a failing grade, but she'd been told they hardly ever actually held someone back.) She'd gotten an O in Charms, up from an A in first year and an E last year, Flitwick including a comment — all the professors did, but they were usually pretty bland, Liz hadn't payed them much attention before — about her written work this year coming to match the exceptional intuitive talent for spellwork she'd always had, which was, hmm. She'd also gotten an O in Defence, which wasn't so out of nowhere, that'd always been her best class...though she'd never actually finished with an O before.

Her Herbology grade was, of course, shite — she'd gotten a P, which was still better than the Ds she usually got, but still bad. She hated Herbology.

Apparently she'd gotten an E in History, which she was very surprised by, nobody did very well in History. She'd gotten an O in Potions — Severus's (very positive) comments included a bit about taking notes on the nudges her Sight gave her, and maybe seeing if she could figure out why they made an improvement on the formula, which was a good idea — and an E in Transfiguration, which was actually very good for her — which it fucking better be, she'd been trying really bloody hard in that class. McGonagall's comment said her practical work had improved significantly this year, but she should continue to work on her visualisation, which was entirely unhelpful, that really wasn't the problem...

She'd also managed an E in Arithmancy, Vector saying that her understanding of the theory was excellent, she'd mostly only been marked down for occasional algebra and geometry mistakes. (Ugh, triangles were stupid.) Then there was an O in Cambrian — Smethwyck's comments were in Cambrian (about her accent being good and her speech mostly comfortable, at this point all she really had left was to pick up more adult vocabulary), which was kind of a compliment all by itself, when she thought about it — and then another O in Divination — with an effusive comment from Trelawney about being a true Seer, if more receptive to the past than the future (because Trelawney was weirdly ignorant for a Seer about how divination worked) — and then another O in Runes, Babbling's comment kind of sarcastically chastising her for playing around with enchanting before she was ready — she did prefer students not experiment unsupervised, in case there was an accident, but Liz had gotten the impression she actually liked having talented students (like Severus), so she'd never been that annoyed when Liz had asked for advice on one project or another. So. O.

For a long, dragging moment, Liz's eyes slid over the comments, following the column of letters, once and again, A-O-O-P-E-O-E...E-O-O-O...

That was a lot of Os.

She ended, just, staring at the line toward the bottom of the page, dumbfounded. Because she was apparently eighth in the class. That just...didn't seem real. This was the best she'd done in school since year one of primary school, fucking ages ago.

She didn't know how she felt about this. She wasn't entirely certain she was feeling anything at all, just.

That was a lot of Os.

"Elizabeth."

She twitched, glanced up to find Severus watching her. He seemed...faintly amused maybe, couldn't say — it was hard to tell feelings apart, and that warm, flickery whatever could be anything. "Huh?"

"Are you all right?"

She honestly didn't know. "That's a lot of O.s."

That was definitely amusement. "Yes, it is."

"Am I really eighth in the class?" She remembered first year she'd been in the high thirties (and there were only forty-one students in her year), and second year she'd been in the twenties. A single-digit number was...not expected.

"You are really eighth in the class."

...She didn't know how she felt about this. It must be something, with how she kept, just, staring at the page, and breathing was slightly hard, but she had no idea what it was. Feelings were dumb and hard.

That was just a lot of Os, was all.

Severus touched her, gently settling a hand on her shoulder, the weight light enough she could easily pull away if she wanted to. Her eyes jumped away from the paper, turning to stare up at him, blinking. His voice low, something on it she didn't know how to read giving it an edge of intensity, he said, "I told you I knew you are capable of doing well. You may be surprised, but I'm not."

It took her a second to find her voice, just, blankly staring up at Severus, she couldn't... "Yeah, I remember." She swallowed, trying to loosen up her throat a little. "Um. I didn't... I don't know."

With another pulse of another warm feeling she couldn't interpret (though not particularly clingy), Severus's hand lifted away, straightening from the slight hunch she hadn't even noticed a second ago. Though, when she thought about it, his face had been rather closer to her level than usual, because she was so bloody short, just, not paying enough attention to pick that up. "I'll see you on the Fifteenth of July, Elizabeth."

For the Jassy trip, he meant. They were supposed to meet at the keyport on the Fifteenth — Liz had never been to the keyport before, so he wanted her to come by his house on the way, which was fair enough. "Yeah, um. See you then." Probably earlier, actually, there was no reason she couldn't floo over to his house at any time, to borrow books or use his potions lab if for no other reasons. Though she did hate the floo...

Severus started walking off, and she didn't follow at first, her eyes drawn back to the parchment in her hand. A tingling at the back of her neck, looking at this thing she couldn't help remembering the report from Ms Derby, years ago — and posting it on the fridge right next to Dudley's, naïvely convinced that if she had proof that she wasn't a worthless freak, it would stop. Of course, that was when everything had started to get worse (she didn't know why, she didn't know what was happening), but she'd been a stupid kid at the time, and...

She didn't know how she felt about this. It wasn't a bad feeling, she didn't think, she just didn't know what to call it.

...

That was a lot of Os.

፠

The train ride was, as usual, uneventful. There were people being ridiculous in the hallways, but her compartment was relatively calm and quiet. She didn't know if she'd be able to tolerate it if it weren't — Liz was self-aware enough to realise she didn't like enclosed spaces, and the compartments weren't that small, but stuff a bunch of people in one all moving around and chattering and it did start to bother her. Part of the reason she always spent much of the trip trying to read was that she wasn't great at just aimlessly talking with people, yes, but it was also easier to sit here for a few hours straight if she wasn't paying that much attention to the room around her.

It did help a little that she could clearly see the lock on the door from her seat, and it was on the inside. This was the first time it'd occurred to her that the cupboard was why she didn't like the train rides, and it probably wouldn't have if doing so well at school for once hadn't reminded her of the incident that had led to the lock being put there in the first place. She honestly thought she would have preferred never putting that together.

(She had no idea how long she'd still be dealing with Dursley shite, but it was already far too fucking long.)

Though, now that it had occurred to her, she tried opening the window a crack, and the air moving around actually made her feel noticeably better. So, mixed bag, she guessed.

As much as her compartment wasn't as noisy and chaotic as some of the others, or nearly as packed full of too many people — they just had Daphne and Tracey, Dorea, and also Millie (who apparently wasn't friends with Pansy anymore), which was manageable — it still got pretty awkward at points. People were aware there was something going on with her and Dorea, but it was even easier to notice when they were sitting in the same compartment, being awkward. Well, Liz didn't think she was being awkward herself, just acting normal, but Dorea wasn't doing as good of a job of hiding it, with the few odd comments and lingering glances here and there. She couldn't help thinking about it either, Liz caught the explicit thought more than once that Dore had no idea what she'd done to offend her so badly.

Dorea hadn't offended her, exactly. Liz wasn't even particularly annoyed about it. She simply hadn't any interest in being friends with someone who so deeply distrusted her.

It was about three o'clock when the train rolled into Platform 9 ¾. As usual, Liz waited in the compartment for the hallway to clear out — she didn't like being jostled around, thanks — the others lingering with her. Dorea kept looking at her, not being subtle about it at all — she thought leaving for the summer without talking about whatever was wrong was a bad idea, but she also didn't think Liz would respond well if she brought it up now. And yes, Liz had picked up that much detail, Dorea kept going back to it. Not to mention she was just throwing this shite all over the place, for someone so afraid of mind magic she clearly wasn't putting much work into her occlumency...

Finally, the hall cleared enough that they could leave without Liz being squished from all sides. There was still a bit of a crowd on the platform, but it wasn't that bad, and gradually dissolving further as people disappeared through the barrier to King's Cross or the floo or simply apparated out. By the time Liz was stepping out of the train, Dorea had already been met by a man Liz assumed was Ted Tonks (her cousin Dora's dad), and also Sirius — as Liz spotted them Sirius was moving to wrap her up in a hug, because of course. Liz really hoped Sirius remembered she didn't want him to do that with her...

"There's Tori," Tracey said, pointing through the crowd toward the floos. Millie had already set off in that direction, with only a nod and a muttered good-bye to them — that girl really didn't talk much. "The longer we make her wait, the more whining she'll do when we get home." There Tracey went again, calling the Greenwood 'home'. She and her mother were officially living with one of the (less racist) cadet branches of the family, but Liz didn't know if either of them actually spent much time there.

"Yes, we can't have that." Daphne turned to Liz, softly smiling. "We'll be seeing you in July, I suppose."

"Oh, you can make it to the tournament?" A good number of people had told her they would go to watch, and others had made apologies that they wouldn't be able to make it — Padma would be in India, Morag had family stuff that'd probably get in the way (related to her upcoming betrothal, but she didn't say that part out loud), Neville's grandmother had plans for the summer, Tony would be visiting family overseas at the same time, and so forth. Last Liz had checked, Hermione, Dorea, Susan, Hannah, Millie, Megan, Lily, Terry, Michael, Sophie, Sally-Anne, and Mandy all planned to be there. And the whole quidditch team would be there too, but that was also for Adrian. Which was a little ridiculous, honestly, especially since Liz didn't really care if her friends watched her compete or not, but she just hadn't said anything. Point was, Daphne's family was going to visit her father's side again this summer, and she didn't know exactly when that would be, and her mother was busy with politics, so they hadn't been sure they'd be able to make it.

Tracey nodded, said, "Yeah, Heli volunteered to take us, we'll be in the country the whole week. Tori begged her way into coming along, I hope you don't mind."

Liz shrugged — she'd be busy with the tournament, she doubted she'd spend much time with the people coming to watch anyway. Besides, Daphne's baby sister was...exhaustingly energetic and cheerful all the time, but she wasn't that bad. "Whatever. I don't know how much free time I'll have, there's a lot of matches they'll be cramming into a week."

"That's alright, don't worry yourself over making time for us. We will only be there to watch," Daphne said, smiling again, her mind bright and warm. Liz happened to have a finger in Daphne's head at the moment — not something she was really doing consciously, just a habit she'd gotten into over the last couple months — so she managed to catch the explicit thought that Daphne liked watching Liz duel, she was looking forward to the tournament.

It took some effort for Liz to not visibly react to that — by the confused glance she got from Tracey, she wasn't doing a very good job of it. She was just taken aback and kind of...she didn't know, exactly. Liz thought duelling was really cool, and much more fun to watch than quidditch, but she hadn't really expected Daphne to. Just, didn't really feel like a Greenwood thing, you know? Though duelling did require a fair bit of magical power and skill, not to mention a lot of practice to get good at it, which were all things mages tended to think were attractive — professional duellists were athletes, the more well-known basically celebrities, complete with some people treating them like sex symbols and everything — so, it wasn't really surprising, in the abstract.

No matter how bloody weird it was that— Well, Daphne knew Liz was in her head, and she wasn't being subtle about why she wanted to watch Liz, which was, hmm. Liz didn't know how she felt about the thought of Daphne watching her like that. Nervous, she thought, but she didn't know nervous how.

"Oh, I was—" Liz broke off to clear her throat for a second, getting a second, even more confused look from Tracey. "Is it alright if I come by the Greenwood before that? Um, in a couple weeks, maybe, after I get things settled at the new house."

"Of course, Liz, you can by whenever you want, you know that. The floo password is 'y goedwig ddifarwolaeth'—" Literally the forest without death, because mages could be dramatic like that sometimes. "—it may take me a minute to come find you, if I am..." Daphne trailed off, blinking. "Have you decided on piercings, then?"

"I've been thinking about it," Liz said, with an attempt at a casual shrug. She'd liked all that shite that the Mistwalkers did from the off, the only thing that'd stopped her was worrying she might be distracted by having bits of metal in her face. (And also she wasn't sure whether it was a thing they'd do for outsiders, but Daphne had already said they didn't mind, so.) But having things in her hair that first time at the Wizengamot hadn't really bothered her so much, and she'd been playing around with wearing bracelets and things, and those were fine. That revelation she'd had about not having control of her body and, well, it was a thing she'd been thinking about — if it did bother her, she could take them out and heal the holes up quick at any time, no big deal. She thought tattoos might be neat too, but Mistwalkers didn't really do those much, she wouldn't know where to go. "I was maybe thinking I could get it done before the tournament, it—"

She'd been about to say she thought it would look cool in the pictures and things they were going to do, but maybe that wasn't the best thing to be saying? This was a religious-adjacent thing to Daphne's people, not quite tactful, maybe. But before she could get it out, Hermione came bounding up, calling Liz's name to get her attention. Coming to a stop, her poofy hair scattered and slightly out of breath, Hermione said, "You know how to get around, right? Taking trains and the like."

Liz blinked. "Yes...?" Though she'd really only ever had to do it twice, once when she'd first left Privet Drive for Charing and then again after Dumbledore dragged her back. But it wasn't like it was complicated, just follow the signs...

"You think you can get to Oxford?"

"Sure." Since she'd be staying in Ireland, she'd have to floo to London and then take a train up to Oxford...or just floo straight to Oxford, wasn't there a magic school there? They must have a public floo, she should look it up. But it wouldn't be a problem, she didn't think.

"Great!" Grinning, Hermione held out a little torn off slip of paper to her. "That's my address, come visit sometime."

...Well, she guessed she could do that. Taking the slip of paper and tucking it into a pocket without looking at it, she said, "I'm going to be pretty busy this summer, but sure, sometime."

Hermione then talked to Daphne quick, passing on her parents' thanks for the gift basket thing the Greengrasses had sent — partially as an apology for their contribution to the Grangers' unplanned pregnancy, and partially because giving gifts to expecting parents was just something a lot of more traditional mages did. Except, Liz didn't really think they had anything to apologise for? They had warned everyone it was easier to get knocked up at the Greenwood, and even that the solstice ritual had a tendency of yanking around people's cycles to make it even more likely on that night — Liz had put the memory of the meeting before the solstice party in her pensieve to double-check — and while they hadn't mentioned that contraceptive magics failed...did Dorea forget that Gail and Emma were muggles? It wasn't like they'd have been using contraceptive magics, was it?

Anyway, a bit more talking, arrangements for the Grangers to go to the Greenwood for the birth (in large part to increase the chances the kid would be a mage), or more just reminding Daphne that her parents had an owl so they could arrange that directly, and then they were hugging goodbye. Because apparently Hermione and Daphne were hugging friends now? Liz had missed that happening. Hermione also considered giving Tracey a hug too, but decided against it — Tracey didn't really like hugging any more than Liz did (and presumably for the same reasons) — and then turned to Liz. Since Liz was looking in her head a little bit, she caught Hermione think about hugging her too, but she took a second to look over Liz head to toe, a quick weighing of pros and cons, and she ended up not doing it — apparently Liz looked a little tense, from the crowd all around (which was odd, because Liz hadn't noticed, but now that she was thinking about it, well, she didn't like crowds...), and Hermione was worried she wouldn't appreciate it at the moment, which was thoughtful of her, thank you, Hermione. Instead she just said goodbye quick, wished everyone a good summer, and skipped off back toward her parents.

A short moment later and Daphne and Tracey were heading off to the floos — Liz noticed after a few seconds that she was watching Daphne walk away, and forced herself to stop — and then she was alone on the platform. But not for very long, she'd hardly had a few breaths alone before she picked out Sirius walking in her direction. A short, scrawny man, his sharp-angled face almost too pale, with a halo of random black curls around his head that kind of reminded her of Hermione (but shorter and the wrong colour), he walked with a bit of a showy swagger, which apparently hadn't been to annoy the Wizengamot and was just how he always was, a smile plastered on his face. His mind was flickering with a combination of anxiety and uncertainty and something warm and clingy, didn't know what that was, she tried to pull away from the nauseating feeling as much as she could. Which wasn't very well, because Sirius's mind was pretty loud, actually — he did know occlumency, he'd shunted off her compulsion when he'd tried to hug her pretty easily, he just seemed to burn brighter than most people. He was an especially powerful mage, she'd heard, but so were Severus, Flitwick, Dumbledore, and none of them were like this. She didn't know what that was about.

She noticed that his hands were firmly tucked into his pockets, presumably to stop himself from trying to reach for her. So, that was an improvement over last time, at least.

"Hey, Liz," he drawled, lurching to a stop a few steps away — which was also an improvement, he'd consistently called her Hazel at first. "You about ready to go? Was your trunk put in the back?"

"No, it's in my pocket. Let's go." She started off for the floos without another word, Sirius's eyes crawling on her skin like ants as she passed him. Probably surprised that she was casually shrinking her trunk like that — the larger the size difference and the more complex the object the harder that was to do — but there was actually an enchantment on it that did that for her, so. There were still enough people here that they had to wait their turn for the floo, an awkward silence lingering as the people between them and the bank of fireplaces slowly dribbled away. For a certain definition of "silence", obviously — there were still a fair number of people here, but neither she nor Sirius said a word, which was what she meant.

She noticed she and Sirius were both getting stared at. That wasn't really a surprise, given they were both famous for stupid reasons and had had pictures in the papers enough they were easily recognisable, but Liz wished they would stop. Their attention clinging at her was extremely uncomfortable, she found herself shuffling from foot to foot, taking slow conscious breaths, trying to stay calm.

After a minute or two, Sirius said, "So, get through exam season alright? I remember third year being a pain, with added elective classes, you know."

Oh god, now they were doing small talk, did they really have to? "It was fine. I usually do pretty well on exams." When she wasn't unconsciously sabotaging herself, anyway. "I'm eighth in the class." She hadn't really meant to say that, it just...slipped out. It was still surreal, she hadn't gotten over that yet.

Sirius let out a low chuckle, something cool and...sparkly in his head, didn't know what that was. "Yeah, you and Dorea both did really well." She noticed he didn't say where Dorea had ended up, presumably because she'd done better than Liz — she didn't actually know for certain, just assuming. "I was never much of an academic type myself, and... Well, I'm a little relieved you two both seem to have taken after your mothers, James and I were such little shites when we were your age..."

At least he was self-aware enough to admit that. An apology to Severus for being such an arse to him for no good reason would be nice, but this was a good start. Maybe this whole dealing with Sirius thing wouldn't be that bad.

"What's the floo password, by the way?" he asked as they neared the edge of the crowd, only a thin layer of people between them and the row of fireplaces.

"Oh, it's just 'Potter townhouse'." Apparently it was normal for nobles to give all their houses fancy names and shite — back when her multiple-times-great-uncle had lived there, it'd been called...something with "griffon" in it, she forgot exactly. (Potters had a thing for hippogriffs.) Liz, of course, didn't give a shite, and would rather it just be something easy to remember. It was also normal for noble family name plus "townhouse" to be a thing, but it was supposed to refer to a place they kept in London, where they could be close to Charing and the Ministry so it was more convenient to invite people over, for networking and shite — the Potters didn't have a house in London, so the name was available, had seemed the easiest one to go with.

Sirius just nodded. "Are the wards open? Getting bounced back through the floo is miserable."

The floo was miserable in general, but Liz couldn't imagine being thrown backwards through it was an improvement. "Should be. I have the ward key on me, the wards shouldn't even be active yet."

"Right. See you on the other side." Sirius sidled a bit further to her right, putting him in line for one of the other floos.

The floo trip was, of course, terrible. She'd picked up a little bit about how the floo network worked, and it was more complicated than she'd assumed — it didn't just connect one grate directly to another, but passed a person down several legs skipping across nodes to reach their destination. See, floo travel actually had a pretty short range (which was why it'd originally only been used within cities), but they'd gotten around that by figuring out a way to get a person to go down multiple connections in a single trip. Those uncomfortable jolts she felt every once in a while were her reaching one of the "nodes" — public floo grates, most commonly, which could handle that sort of traffic — and being passed through onto another connection, which wasn't a hundred per cent efficient, hence the jolt.

And since the floo worked through fire magic, it was naturally shite at getting across water, and especially salt water. You could get everywhere in Britain through the floo, but some of the trips really sucked. That shudder on the trip to and from the Wizengamot, that's what that was, crossing the narrow strip of water separating Anglesey from the mainland. Getting to the Isle of Man was also a bitch — you could get there through the floo, but it wasn't a comfortable trip. There was a line of nodes up the Orkneys all the way up to Shetland, skipping across a tiny little island halfway between the two to make it up all the way, though you actually needed to stop there, crossing the patch of water bled off too much momentum to make it all the way across the second one. Liz suspected the fact that Shetland was accessible by floo from Britain but not Norway was the primary reason the islands were part of magical Britain (though the mages there still spoke some Scandinavian language). Getting across the Channel to Brittany, which was part of the same country on the magical side, was more difficult — getting from London to Calais wasn't so bad, but Calais was in France, and they were hardly likely to let domestic British travellers take a shortcut through their country. To solve that problem, they'd designed a special node in one of the islands of Guernsey, giving people a huge boost to get them the rest of the way across the Channel — it was possible to floo from pretty much anywhere in mainland Britain to Brittany on the Continent and back, though if you were leaving from the Orkneys or Ireland they recommended you stop in London first to make sure you had enough momentum to reach Guernsey.

There was a floo connection between Holyhead on Anglesey and Dublin, but the trip sucked — for the most part, the network didn't send people that way automatically. Instead, if you were flooing from London you were sent looping around north, skipping across nodes in Leicester, Leeds, Newcastle upon Tyne, then turning west to Carlisle and through Galloway, and then finally crossing the Irish Sea straight to Belfast. From there, there would be one more node in Ireland before reaching the Refuge, and the node there would finally kick her to the townhouse. Which meant it took about as many turns as the trip from Hogwarts to the Wizengamot (which actually passed through the node in London, for some inexplicable reason), with the addition of a serious water crossing.

It completely fucking sucked, was what she was getting at.

The jolts weren't too bad, she was starting to get used to that by this point. Though she could have done without the swirling fires abruptly starting to swirl the opposite direction halfway through — that would be the turn at Newcastle upon Tyne, she thought. A couple jolts later and the floor started shuddering under her feet, the fire shifting in these weird pulses, and she could feel herself slowing down, like a train pulling into a station, she staggered, fighting to keep her balance—

And then she was abruptly kicked back into full speed, jerking her to the side as the fire around her swirled, knocking her even further off balance as she kicked through another node, and—

Liz was thrown out of the floo, slamming into the floor shoulder-first, skidding for a little bit, her forearm squeaked against the tile. She gasped at the hot flash of pain in her arm, and then immediately started coughing, must have breathed in some ash, ugh...

"Liz? Liz, are you okay? Shite..."

"I'm—" She started coughing before she could get the words out, fuck, that was starting to hurt. Once her lungs stopped trying to strangle her, she flopped over onto her back, letting out a sigh. Sirius was standing over her, his head screaming with concern and anxiety — with his wand in his hand, her heart abruptly jumping into her throat, she had to force herself to calm down before finding her voice. "I'm fine, I just hate the floo."

He gave her a sceptical sort of look, thoughts shivering incomprehensibly around her ears. "You know, it might go more smoothly if you tried pulling in your mind magic a little bit. The floo doesn't tolerate active magic going through it very well."

Of course it didn't, that was just her luck. "Unfortunately I'm shite at that," she grumbled, somewhat shakily pushing herself up to a seat. "Could you vanish the ash, please? I'm really bad at doing that without also vanishing the cloth the stuff is stuck in." Sirius snickered a little, but did as she asked without further comment, the spell crawling over her head to toe with a quick flick of his wand. Once that was done his wand disappeared back into its holster, he gave her a hand up to her feet. She let go of his hand as soon as possible, turned to look around.

The hearth she'd been violently spit out of was made of white granite, shining and new-looking, the stone to either side carved into a pair of gryphons sitting on their haunches — as in, actual gryphons this time, not hippogriffs. Those were pretty much the only decoration in the room — the notes Liz had been sent had said the stone had held up well in the decades since Lyndon Potter had died, had only taken minor work to restore the fireplace — the rest of the wide open space plain and empty, floors and walls covered in reddish wood panels, the ceiling some kind of white plaster. There were actually a lot of windows, taking up at least a third of the opposite wall, letting in enough light it was a little dazzling, Liz blinking against it.

She was definitely finding some drapes as soon as possible.

There was a double-wide doorway (without an actual door in the frame) leading into another room to the right, which didn't look any different from this one, though a bit smaller. To the left were a set of double doors, wood matching the rest in the room inset with squares of glass, glimmering in the sunlight — Liz had signed off on replacing those doors, but apparently the other exit had never had any, so they hadn't bothered. She knew the doors led into the kitchen, where she'd find the stairs into the basement, so she went that way. Everything in here was stone tile, all white and black, even the cabinets looked like they were made of ceramic or something (very stain-resistant). Thankfully there weren't a bunch of windows in here, much easier on the eyes.

She let her fingers trail along the top of the centre island — the stone smooth and perfectly featureless, meant to be used as a cutting surface — looking around as she went. That right there would be a door out back (supposedly the place had a pretty sizable garden), cabinets and cabinets and cabinets... She pulled one open, but she didn't see anything like the temperature control stuff in Severus's, nor in the second one she checked, must all be meant for dry goods. Ah, this one had preservation spells on it, though, she'd have to check over all of them at some point...

There was a pretty sizable sink, and what looked like the door for an oven, the hob built into the counter separately, more toward the middle of the kitchen — putting the centre of the island right across from it, so you could just scoop stuff up from where you'd chopped it and drop it right into a hot pan. "How does this shite work?" she asked, pointing at the hob and the oven.

"Well damn, Liz, I had elves growing up, and lived off take-out during the war. But I think it shouldn't be too hard to figure out, let's see what we've got..."

It wasn't that complicated, turned out. The hob worked just like the burners back in the potions labs at Hogwarts, though without the ability to go negative. The oven had a timer on it, but the temperature dial was marked with the volume of magical energy going into it and not the actual temperature that produced, which was annoying. After a bit of tinkering, Sirius fixed that himself — he fiddled around with it, casting analysis charms into the oven, scratching tiny little numbers into the stone around the dial. He couldn't say whether the numbers were perfectly precise, but probably pretty close, if she were going to do any baking that required exact temperatures it'd probably be worth it to pick up a thermometer or something to double-check. Liz wasn't exactly likely to do a lot of baking, but she guessed that was good to know.

And, and, Sirius figured out it had the levitation charms on it! Just flick this switch here, and— He demonstrated it quick, pulling out the racks (casting some kind of charm to bleed the heat off so they were safe to touch), flipping the switch, conjuring a featureless blob of fluff and just...gently passing it into the oven, and it just floated there, he closed the door and there was a muffled fwoosh as the thing was blasted with heat from all sides, and—

"I'm so making magic pizza tonight. Have you had that before, there's a place in Charing..."

"Yeah, yeah!" Sirius said, grinning so brightly his eyes twinkled. "I'm not sure it's the same place, but sure, that's been around for a while. One of the elves back at Ancient House used to make those, he got the crust all along the outside all nice and crispy and buttery, one of my favourites as a kid. You know how to make something like that?"

She shrugged. "I've made homemade pizza before, it can't be that different. Nilanse?"

After a delay of only a couple seconds, the little elf appeared in the kitchen with the familiar pop. "Hello, Liz!" she squeaked, practically bouncing on her toes — before she froze, glancing up at Sirius, vivid red eyes narrowing in a frown.

"That's Sirius Black. He's going to be helping me fix up the new house."

The shade of suspicion dropped immediately, Nilanse's mind going smooth and clear again, like polished glass. "Oh! Your godfather Sirius, okay." She glanced around the kitchen, and...did something with magic, Liz didn't know what that was. Little tingles of energy slipping out and past Liz, all around, feeling out the house, maybe? "This is the new house? It's being so empty, and there aren't any wards."

"I'm going to go into the basement and switch the wards on in a minute, and we're going to go buy furniture after that."

Nilanse's head tilted, giving Liz a wide-eyed curious look. "There are being plenty of things at the manor, or at other places."

"I know, I'd rather get my own stuff." It was going to be her house, after all — she realised she could completely skip the need to buy furniture by just having the elves move shite in from elsewhere, but that would kind of defeat the point? "If there are rooms I don't end up using, I guess we can fill in the gaps with other stuff, but for now we're doing it my way. Anyway, I was going to ask if your mum knows a recipe for garlic bread I can use to make pizza with."

"Mm, probably? I'm thinking yes, I will go ask. Are you wanting her to make some?"

"No, no, I can do that myself — I like to cook for myself, remember." Nilanse gave her a sceptical sort of look, her mind sizzling with...confusion, maybe (elves were hard to read). She'd mentioned to Liz before that she'd been told growing up that that sort of thing was the elves' job, so the humans of the family could focus on other things — apparently they all thought Liz was a little strange for wanting to do it herself — but she didn't comment. "What do elves eat, anyway?"

Nilanse's head tilted again, the sizzling in her head growing louder. "Meat and dairy, mostly. Eggs. We keep ferrets and ducks at the manor, and bring in milk and cheese from one of the farms."

So...elves ate ferrets, apparently. Okay. Sounded like they were carnivores, then — which she might have guessed, by the look of their fingernails and their teeth, elves could totally tear someone's throat out if they wanted to. "Can you have bread?"

"Eh," Nilanse said with a shrug, "we have little bits sometimes. We don't get stuff from it, like humans do, but it helps for, ah, I'm forgetting the word. Digestive!" she said with a little hop, "that's it, for digestive reasons."

...Probably the same reason people's cats would go out of the castle to munch on some grass, she was guessing — Liz didn't know exactly what that reason was, she just assumed there was one. It took a little effort to straighten her lips (she didn't know why she found this girl so adorable) so she could say, "Sure. So it won't make you ill."

That odd sizzle in Nilanse's head came back. "No? Why are you asking?"

"No reason." If Liz said she was thinking she might as well make Nilanse some pizza too as long as she was at it, she'd probably protest. Elves could be silly about that sort of thing. "Can you get your mum to write down that recipe for me?"

"Yes, I'm doing that. I'm also thinking—"

"You can read?" Nilanse cut off at the interruption, the both of them turning to look at Sirius. After a second he gave a kind of sheepish shrug. "Sorry, it's just, it's pretty rare for house-elves to be able to read. Especially in the Light."

"I'm told my great-great-grandfather was infamously eccentric, he was the one who taught them." Most of the elves who'd been around in Esmund Potter's time were gone now — though there were still a couple left, elves lived for a long time — but they'd taught their kids, and they taught their kids, so it was still a thing they all knew. Cediny said she'd even been the one who taught Liz's grandfather, used to read him bedtime stories, it was a whole thing. "Anyway, you were saying?"

"Oh, I'm thinking I will ask Cediny to move a couple of us here. To keep it all — it is a big house — and there are the gardens..."

"I can clean up after myself," Liz insisted, trying not to sound defensive about it. Though Nilanse was right, it was a big house (or so she assumed from the enchanters' and cleaners' notes, she'd never been here before), rooms she didn't spend a lot of time in would probably get dusty. And in magical houses, neglect like that could lead to pests and demons pretty quickly. "And don't worry about the gardens, I was just going to let that all grow wild, I'll just burn off quick stuff that's getting too out of hand. But, you do have a point, how about you just move over here? I can clean up after myself, but if you want to catch the shite I don't get to..." That and she didn't really know any of the other elves very well, if any of them were going to be hanging around the house she'd rather it be Nilanse.

The little elf's eyes went wider than normal for a second, a shiver of surprise shooting through her alien mind, before she grinned. "Okay, I will ask Cediny. Are you needing anything else?"

"Nope, that's it, thanks."

"You're welcome!" Nilanse chirped, practically bouncing on her toes again, before disappearing with the usual pop.

Liz pulled her trunk out of her pocket, set it on the floor and unshrunk it with a tap of her finger. She opened the compartment with her writing supplies and a portion of her books — the letter from the wardcrafters was right on top, Liz plucked it out and closed the trunk again. It was only when she straightened that she realised Sirius was staring at her. Well, no, she'd been able to feel him watching her, she just hadn't been paying much attention, hadn't realised how weirdly contemplative he was being about it. "What?"

"Nothing." He hesitated for a second, before adding, "You don't talk to elves like most humans I've known."

"...How are you supposed to talk to elves?"

"You know, like servants."

Liz opened her mouth to respond, and then immediately closed it again, suddenly enough she felt her teeth click. She didn't know what to say to that. So instead she turned around, stepped through the open doorway and started down the stairs on the other side, her boots clunking against the stone.

At the bottom of the stairs was a little room, the lights automatically clicking on to show stone tile floor and wood panelled walls, one door on each of the other three faces. She paused to pull the letter from the wardcrafter, careful not to accidentally drop the ward key, skimmed through it to find the instructions on how to activate the wards. The door on the left was a toilet — she pushed it open to double-check, and yep, a little more spacious and nice-looking than the toilets in the Slytherin dorms but recognisable — the door straight across would be the bath, one of the big open ones mages liked — so she'd just told the enchanters to tear out the old fixtures and seal it up, there should be a private one attached to her bedroom and another with the guest rooms, upstairs — and the door to the right led to the rest of the basement. Through the door was a wide, open, empty space, unfinished — the floor was still stone and the walls still wood, but not anything meant to look nice, rough and unpolished, support beams and shite visible stitched across the ceiling, the floating balls of light she cast with a few flicks of her fingers throwing crazy shifting shadows.

Liz felt a clattering of surprise from Sirius at the wandless magic, but he didn't comment.

She still didn't know what she would use all this space for — a potions lab, maybe, or she could carve a duelling circle into the floor somewhere? Not like there was a time limit, she'd be living here for the foreseeable future, she'd figure it out. Anyway, she followed the wall to her left, further and further inside, the scritching of their footsteps sounding oddly deep and loud in the empty space. The unfinished parts of the basement made a sort of L shape, the entire footprint of the house not taken up by the toilet and the bath, she rounded the corner and walked a bit further, approaching the middle of the house. It wasn't quite precise, she didn't think, eyeballing the space around her and making estimates, but she found the wardstones pretty damn close to where the exact centre should be.

As they came to a stop, Sirius let out a low, long whistle. "Gringotts wards?"

"Yep." Goblins did do enchanting the same way humans did — carving symbols into the object to describe the enchantment, though obviously they used their own language instead of Egyptian or Norse or whatever — but they had their own techniques unique to their magical skills. Liz didn't know how it worked exactly, but from how Tamsyn had described alchemy, she thought it was a kind of that? Like, goblin silver was enchanted somehow, but they didn't carve runes in it, instead somehow changing the properties of the metal in the process of smelting and forging...by means of ritual of some kind, she was pretty sure. That was how goblins made all of there shite, they put magic into the crafting of all sorts of things, which could have a wide variety of effects, depending on what you were looking at.

And when they made wards they used a combination of techniques, whatever they had available, though Liz didn't really know the details. The wardcrafters she'd talked to had told her what the wards did, but not how they worked — which made sense, since if people knew how the wards worked it'd be far easier to crack them. She'd gone up a few tiers in complexity from what the person at Gringotts she'd been corresponding with had first suggested, which naturally meant going up a few tiers in price as well — the scheme she'd gone with cost nearly ten times as much as the one she'd been offered at first — but rather safe than sorry. Besides, they were neat, used divination to detect harmful intent (in place of mind magic, which could be fooled); isolated potentially harmful charmed or potioned objects coming through in the post (again identified through divination); blocked elemental and sympathetic transportation magics, like what vampires and phoenixes used (which were supposedly very difficult to ward against); and would even prevent harmful curses from acting on herself and anyone keyed in as a resident — Liz had been warned that it wouldn't catch everything, but the list of spells it wouldn't stop was impressively short.

After going over the description of the thing, Severus had said it was acceptable, that the wards were even more thorough than the ones on his house. (Which was saying something, because Severus was a paranoid bastard.) According to him, literally the only places in the country she had access to that would be safer were Clyde Rock and certain old religious communes, like the Greenwood. That'd been all the recommendation she'd needed, she'd sent a reply saying she'd take it that same afternoon.

The visible part of the wardstones themselves looked to be ceramic — of course, goblin ceramic, so it was certainly much more durable than it looked, and who knew what over magical properties it had — a square slab nearly her height on all sides (set a foot off the ground, so the top was actually over her head), coloured in red and white with the occasional accent in glittering gold, Potter colours. She hadn't asked for that, apparently goblin wardcrafters had a sense of artistic flair. The colours divided the thing in half, the right side red and the left side white, carved into the surface geometric patterns and swirling arcs and spirals, all mixed up with each other and overlapping, some filled with gold but others not — not runes like any Liz had seen, just looked like random shapes to her. But it didn't need to make sense to her, as long as the person who'd carved it knew what it all was supposed to mean it would work as it should.

Of course, this was only the visible part, there was more built into the wall and stretching into the ground under her feet, like roots. (She'd been told she could replace the stone of the floor without interfering with the wards, but she should be very careful trying to dig further than that.) Since they'd been replacing all of it anyway, the new water recycling system was also integrated into the wards, which supposedly had beneficial effects for the operation of the wards significant enough that it'd cut down on the material costs, she'd gotten a discount for doing both at once. The water system was neat too — magical homes normally had a closed water system, the water going down the drain collected in tanks underground, where it was magically purified before being piped up again. There was some slow evaporation, and of course spills wouldn't get back into the system, or if you had plants you were watering, but you only needed to pour a couple litres down the drain every month or so and it was fine, very efficient. Actually, there were two water systems — the toilets were on a separate loop from the sinks, so if the enchantments unexpectedly went dead you wouldn't get sewage in your drinking water — and there technically weren't pipes, water teleported from the reservoirs straight up to the fixtures, it was very neat.

And yes, the goblin wardstone thing was very cool-looking, even if it was complete gibberish to Liz.

"You know," Sirius said, "there are reasons the nobility don't trust the goblins to do our warding." He didn't sound concerned or chastising or anything like that, more amused than anything.

"Because they don't want to be vulnerable if there's another war, I know. I can always go to Clyde Rock if that happens." Honestly, if they ended up going to war with the goblins again, they'd have bigger things to worry about than the goblins maybe being able to get through their wards — especially since Liz doubted they would have left themselves a backdoor anyway. (That would make the wards easier for anyone to crack, after all, the goblins had a reputation to maintain.) Maybe they should be more worried about the fact that all the money would disappear? Every single coin the goblins minted had a translocation enchantment on them, they could teleport the entire monetary system back to themselves at any moment — and they'd even done it, once, during the final war between the mages and goblins shortly after the start of Secrecy. Sure, maybe the goblins would be able to get through any wards they'd set, maybe, but Liz thought the economy instantly imploding overnight would be just a tad more pressing of an issue.

(Tamsyn claimed the stranglehold the goblins had on the British economy was why there wouldn't be another war, and Liz was inclined to believe her.)

"Anyway, let's get this thing on." Liz reached into the envelope and pulled out the ward key, the little disc of ceramic dangling from its ribbon. Figuring out how to key in the owner of a property without first keying in the wardcrafter was a problem they'd solved centuries ago now — they simply left a single small piece out of the wardstones, and gave it to the owner. As soon as it was put in, the ward scheme would activate, and it should automatically key Liz in as the master of the house. Which was so neat, she was definitely continuing Runes after OWLs.

It wasn't too difficult for her to figure out what to do with the thing. The ward key was a flat rectangle, about twice as long as it was wide and thinner than her finger, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, lines of gold along the edges. One of the big faces was red, and the other was white. There was a tiny little slot in the middle of the slab of ceramic set into the wall — she noticed the swirly shapes mostly seemed to meet at this missing part, as though this were the origin point and all the lines branched out from here. The slot happened to be right at the dividing line between the red and white halves, so Liz thought what she was supposed to do was obvious enough: she turned the key so the colours would match, red on the right and white on the left, and started slipping it in. It took a couple seconds to get the key to go into the slot — it'd been cut very precisely, there wasn't even a sliver of extra space — the friction enough she had to push harder than she'd expected, shoving down with her thumb, until she got it halfway in and it suddenly slipped the rest of the way home with a little click.

Instantly, there was a harsh crackle of magic on the air, sparks of lightning crawling across her skin and the taste of blood in her mouth, a pulse of golden light blooming from the key and then spreading out along the curling lines — just for a flash, they went dim again a second later. The energy on her skin sliced through her for a second, but only for a second, and then the feeling of magic dropped away entirely, everything going back to normal.

Except for the presence pressing against the back of her mind. Liz cringed, tried to pull away on instinct...and the pressure followed her, steady and unblinking. It didn't feel like another mind, more like an enchantment, the electric tingle of magic but without the random flittering activity of thoughts and feelings dancing around, still in a way a living thing never could be. At least until it settled into place, anyway — after a couple seconds there was a loud, uncomfortable clattering from that direction, alarm bells ringing in her mind.

Without really thinking about what she was doing, Liz reached into the presence latched onto her — her connection to the wards, she assumed — and was temporarily overwhelmed with a flood of information. She could feel the whole property, the house and the land it was on, not like she was seeing it but more tactile than that, like hands groping around a three-dimensional model...except not really, because she wasn't feeling it with her hands, all of it all at once. It was a bit overwhelming, honestly, making Liz dizzy and quickly giving herself a headache, she pulled back a little.

She felt a tug on her awareness, the wards pointing her at Sirius just behind her and to her left — she could feel precisely which direction he was relative to herself, his presence in the wards strobing with an attention-drawing not-light. The wards were telling her there was an intruder in the house, asking-without-asking what she wanted to do about him. She focused on Sirius — not with mind magic, but through her connection with the wards — possible actions floating around her like a web. It was very similar to the web of interconnected thoughts and memories inside someone's head, if not quite the same, the steady feeling of the wards' magic different from a person's, the connections much more rigid — which was probably why she knew immediately, without having to think about it, what she was supposed to do. She reached for one of the connections, following it to the controls for the reservoir bank, and compelled the wards to key Sirius in as a guest. That probably wasn't meant to be done with a compulsion, just doing what she was already familiar with, but it obviously worked, the wards reaching out to take an impression of Sirius's mind and magic, a flash of not-light behind her eyes as it was burned into the reservoir. And the alarm immediately went silent.

Liz pulled away from the wards, blinking her eyes open. "Well, that was easy." She ran her thumb over the seam around the ward key, just to make sure it would stay put — the surface was smooth, Liz couldn't even feel a crack at all. Nobody else would be able to remove it, no matter how hard they pulled on the ribbon dangling against the wardstone — in fact, they'd automatically be cursed into stasis if they tried — so it was probably fine to just leave this as is. Very neat, magic was so cool...

"Hold up, you need to key me into the wards first."

She turned to frown up at Sirius over her shoulder. "I already did."

"Are you sure?" He paused for a second, eyes going unfocused — she could feel his magic shift, grasping for a connection to the wards that wasn't there. "I don't feel anything."

"I keyed you in as a guest. I may or may not switch you to a resident later, depending on how this goes." According to the letter from the wardcrafters, residents had some control over the wards, though rather less than the master of the house, but guests didn't have a connection at all, just people the wards had been told to recognise and let through. As part of their negotiations through letter since their disastrous first meeting at the Wizengamot, Liz had agreed to let Sirius fix up one of the spare bedrooms for himself. He'd be splitting time between staying here and with Dorea or the Tonkses or old friends over the summer — they hadn't worked up a schedule or anything, but Liz expected he'd be sleeping in her house about a third of the time. As long as he didn't make a nuisance of himself, and stayed away from her bedroom, she was mostly fine with that. It'd helped when Severus pointed out that she controlled the wards, so she could kick him out at any moment.

(Now that she thought about it, that the wards had waited for her to decide what to do instead of restraining Sirius immediately meant they must not have detected any ill-intent toward her from him. That was a little reassuring.)

Somewhat to her surprise, Sirius just shrugged, not even a trace of annoyance in his head — a little cool and...something, maybe sad or disappointed? But he wasn't offended, she guessed he understood she wasn't comfortable with him yet. "Fair enough. I expected I'd have to talk you through it, I didn't think you had any experience with wards."

"I don't. I'm a mind mage, it wasn't hard to feel out." Liz folded up the letter from the wardcrafters, stuck it in her pocket. "Right," she said, clapping her hands, "that's the wards out of the way, so we've got to get furniture and shite. Where do we start?"

---

Well, I thought it was going to be a little while before the next update — the planning only took an afternoon, and then I had several ~4k word days in a row, and hey look, chapter. This fic continues to be stuck in my head, working on anything else isn't really going well at the moment. So I guess we get to just keep doing this one for now, what fun.

The ending to this chapter is a little abrupt, but that's because it's kind of running right into the next scene, which will have Liz and Severus shopping and making magic pizza, because why the fuck not. My original plan for this scene actually cut off when Liz went through the floo, but I adjusted, figured the next chapter is more likely to not be absurdly long if I get this stuff out of the way first. Depending on how long the bit with Sirius goes, the second and third scenes planned for the next chapter might need to be split off, but those two should be pretty short scenes, so I guess we'll see.

I actually made a scene-by-scene outline all the way through the end of year four — though the plan is very much subject to change, if I get new ideas or decide to cut things. The current plan for summer works out something like this:
II — some more Liz & Sirius and Dorea & Sirius stuff
III — cheating at languages and piercings
IV — politics stuff, changes at Hogwarts
V-VII — ICW duelling tournament
VIII — this one's a surprise
IX-X — world cup
XI — riot aftermath
XII — some friendship drama with Hermione and Draco
XIII — some final summer wrap-up
And then going back to Hogwarts on Fourth Year — XIV. It's so bloody weird to have an outline, I never do this. The chapter count might end up being significantly different, depending on how things go. You guys all know by now how shit I am at guessing how many words I'll need to do something, and that's assuming I don't make changes to the plan. If I don't make significant cuts, this year is actually going to be way longer than I expected, but there are a few subplots going on, and I borrowed the tasks from The Plan, so that expanded it out a bit. So, remember when I said third year would probably be the longest? I lied, it's gonna be fourth year.

Anyway, woo! 18k words in less than a week! And that was with Leigha randomly coming home with stray kittens she found, and getting distracted by that! I have no idea how I'm doing this but I'm gonna ride the wave as far as it'll take me. Woooooo...

~Lysandra