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)

44. Fourth Year — III

Liz heard the familiar roar of the floo, leaned back in her chair to look through the door. Yep, that was Severus stepping out of the flames — smooth and without the slightest hint of a stumble, the dark cloak over his spotless healers' robes swishing dramatically as always, because of course. She hadn't expected anyone else, but there could have been someone with him.

She was pretty sure Severus dated? Just, you know, quietly, so people didn't go gossipping about it. Not that Liz knew anything about it, didn't even think he had a girlfriend, just more casual, like. Maybe she should ask about that at some point...

Once she'd confirmed it was Severus and that he was alone, Liz turned right back to her book — she'd already finished her summer homework for Transfiguration and Cambrian, might as well knock out the reading required for her Charms essay as long as she had an hour or two. So she wasn't looking up when Severus walked into the room, but she could hear his boots clicking quietly on the tile, feel his mind cool and sparking. "Elizabeth." She was positive he was surprised to find her here, but it didn't show on his voice at all.

"Hey, Severus. Dinner will be done in fifteen, you should go change."

She could feel his attention on her, tingles along the back of her neck, the silence stretching for a few long seconds. And then he turned and walked out without a word. It was really quite funny how few people realised how much of an awkward nerd Severus was.

By the time Severus came back, Liz was at the hob, finishing up thickening the sauce. It smelled really intense, herby and sharp and tangy, which hopefully meant she'd done it correctly. This wasn't something she'd actually made before, just an idea she'd had, but it looked and smelled like it'd turned out fine, so they'd see. Severus sauntered over to the counter nearby, poured himself some wine — she'd already had a glass sitting there waiting next to the bottle, so, obvious thing to do. "This is a surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Liz shrugged. "Just felt like it."

"...You just felt like showing up in my house unannounced to make me dinner."

Well, it sounded weird when he put it like that. "Why, should I not have?"

"You're not unwelcome, I simply didn't expect to see you until it was time to leave for Jassy. Is Black giving you trouble?"

Liz rolled her eyes — she didn't know why, his assumption that she'd come here to hide from Sirius just annoyed her. "He isn't even at the house right now, off with Dorea and the Tonkses, I think." Right, that looked good enough. The plates were in the oven, she took those out and set them down on the table. The frying pan was kind of heavy, so she hit it with a featherweight charm before carrying it over to the table, splitting the sauce between their plates, jumping back and forth bit by bit to keep them mostly even. "He's a little bit of a pain sometimes, but he hasn't been that bad. And I can always hide in my bedroom if I need a break." Just a couple final mushrooms on...this plate, and there, that was all of it. Liz licked off the spoon on her way back to the sink, and woah, that was good...

"I suppose I should be relieved to hear that Black finally managed a degree of self-control."

"He sticks his foot in it sometimes, and he's not as funny as he thinks he is, but yeah, he's been behaving so far. Don't worry about it." Topping off her own wine glass — it turned out wine came in wildly varying degrees of sweetness, Sirius had tracked down several she could actually drink — Liz couldn't help a little grin. "He's going to teach me quick-step when he gets back, and apparation in August."

A sharp flinch in his head, Liz could feel him grimacing. "I'll teach you apparation, after we return from Romania."

"Why? I mean sure, but..."

"Black isn't a healer. Apparation accidents are rarely dangerous, but precautions should still be taken, especially when learning at your age. Also, I suspect you'll benefit from the teaching method used at Beauxbatons — they include scrying to aid beginners in properly visualising their destination."

Oh, neat! "Sound good, thanks."

Severus waited until she was sitting before even touching his fork — which she realised was a politeness thing or whatever, but she honestly didn't give a damn, he needn't have bothered. Of course, she wanted to make sure the sauce got in good through the potatoes, so she had to nudge the duck aside and mix everything together, so Severus managed his first bite long before she did anyway. A sharp shock of something shooting through his head, Severus twitched, his free hand jumping halfway up to his lips before he stopped himself. For a couple seconds he stared down at his plate, one of his eyebrows ticking up as he slowly chewed, thoughts shivering just out of reach.

He knew she could feel that, right? "What?"

"It's quite good. What is this?"

...Okay, then. "Well, I don't know, it's not really anything, I think. I mean, I wouldn't know what to call it, I just made it up. The cream sauce is a recipe Cediny gave me — it's something the elves made for me a couple times when I was hiding in my room at school — but I added some pepper and lemon and a bunch of herbs — um, sage and thyme and rosemary and basil, you know, whatever — and these little things," nudging a little greenish-black bud with her fork, "are capers. And I tried marinading the duck overnight, not sure how that turned out, and braised it in some wine and butter, and used..." Belatedly, Liz realised she was babbling, forced herself to stop. She felt a little jittery, didn't know what that was about. "Um, and there's garlic butter in the potatoes. So. I don't know, is there a name for that?"

There was a warm tingling of amusement, Liz suspected Severus was mocking her in his head, but whatever he was thinking he kept it to himself. "It sounds vaguely Italian to me, but I'm sure I couldn't say — I'm hardly an expert in these matters."

"Yeah, I could tell." Liz scooped up some potatoes, speared a mushroom and a bit of duck, and— Oh wow, that was good. She was going to call that a successful attempt. "If I didn't show up now and then I'm pretty sure you'd live entirely on take-out and those shitty syrupy flapjacks you've got in there," gesturing vaguely at the cabinets with her fork.

"Your unannounced appearance is out of concern, then."

"I didn't say that," she said, shrugging off the uncomfortable tingles trickling down her back. "I just felt like it. Nilanse can't have potatoes, and I feel awkward making things to go with potatoes all the time." Nilanse could just keep making her flatbread stuff, but still.

There was a shiver of surprise from Severus's head, paused with his fork halfway to his mouth to stare at her for a second. "You cook for Nilanse."

"Sure. We're quick settling into trading off days, though we'll give each other a hand sometimes too." Not that Nilanse really needed the help, Liz had no idea how she could hold so many different charms all at once — and she was only Liz's age, it was ridiculous, elves were actually kind of intimidating sometimes. "Why?"

"...Hmm." Severus continued staring for a moment before going back to eating without a word, which— Okay, she realised mages could be stupid about nonhuman beings. A mage splitting chores with an elf, and even cooking for them, would probably be seen as a very, very strange thing to do. But Liz didn't mind, cooking was actually kind of fun once Dursleys had been removed from the equation, and just...

Having Nilanse do everything around the house while Liz just, didn't, would make her uncomfortable. It felt unsettlingly...familiar, was all. She didn't want to treat Nilanse like Petunia had her, even by accident, the thought was just...really gross, felt wrong in a way she didn't quite know how to describe, even to herself in her own head. Even if she hated cooking and whatever, she'd probably insist on doing some of it just because, but she didn't mind, so.

Lost in her thoughts and poking at her food — the duck flaked apart really easily, but it was probably supposed to, she had cooked the shite out of it — she was a little startled when Severus spoke again. "If you did come out of some misguided concern for my diet, I hope you realise that this, as delicious as it is, is not particularly healthy."

Oh, well, she hadn't, but... "Why, what's wrong with it?"

"I suspect the sauce is very fatty, and I see not a single vegetable."

"Um, potatoes?" she drawled, scooping up a bit to lift up a demonstration. Jabbing a mushroom onto the end, "Mushrooms?"

"Potatoes and mushrooms are, in fact, not vegetables."

"...Oh. I thought they were." Shows how much she knew about nutrition, no wonder her diet was shite.

"They aren't unhealthy, precisely, but potatoes can be considered to be most comparable to bread — especially as many of the nutrients are concentrated in the skin, which you have removed — and mushrooms aren't truly comparable to anything else. Neither are a vegetable." Well fine, she wasn't changing what she was doing, potatoes and mushrooms were good. She'd just keep— "You have continued to take your nutrient potion, I assume?"

Yeah, that. "I still have a couple from the last batch I made before leaving school, I'll need to make some more. Um, I was going to set up a little brewing spot, you know, but I think there are vents and things you need for that?"

"I will ask a colleague of mine, he will write you to begin arrangements in the next couple days. It would be best to choose a location near an outside wall, or else the roof, and away from direct sunlight."

"It is, thanks. I think I'll need to borrow your potions lab, if I can come back tomorrow and take care of that? I didn't bring my supplies, you know."

"You may do it this evening, if you prefer — I haven't any brewing to do tonight, and everything you need should be down there. Tell me before you leave if anything is getting low."

"Oh, okay, I'll do that." Silence fell for a few seconds, Liz focussing on another bite, her feet unconsciously swaying under the chair, just, ugh, this had turned out really good was all. Though, the fact that she even could kick her feet was reminding her how bloody short she was, which was irritating. "So, this turned out pretty good, I think I'm getting better at this stuff. Oh! The oven has one of those levitation spells on it, you know, so you can do magic pizza — we did that our first night there, it was great."

There was a faint tingle of amusement from Severus, didn't know what he was laughing at. "If this meal is any indication, I would say you have improved even from last summer. It does seem you are putting some effort into the skill — do you enjoy cooking?"

"...Well, I guess so. I mean, sure, I think just making things is fun in general. You know, I made that scrying focus, and stitched expansion charms in my pockets, little things like that." The expansion charms were actually pretty complex, she might not have managed that on her own, but it happened to be in the collection of spells Lily had left her. She had an idea for a ring with scrying spells, that she could use surreptitiously, but she was still toying with the script. "And potions and stuff, it's kind of the same idea, I think? Except edible."

Severus was still laughing at her on the inside, but he only said, "That does make sense."

"Yeah. I mean, I didn't do much of it for a long time. It was something Petunia use to make me do a lot—" Liz hitched for a second at the flash of anger from Severus, but it wasn't pointed at her, she continued after a second. "—and sometimes that sucked. Especially around Christmas, Christmas was miserable. And I guess I just didn't need it after that, except, you know, bacon sandwiches, that was really it. I didn't start doing it again until last summer, and... Yeah, it's fun. Feels kind of funny admitting it, don't know how. Girly, maybe?"

"I hate to break it to you, Elizabeth, but you are a girl."

"Oh shut up, you know what I mean."

"I don't, actually." ...Well, that was fair, because Liz didn't either, honestly, that was just the thing people said. "If you were to speak with most of your classmates about it, they will think it odd for an entirely different reason. You'll find being able to cook is not a common skill in the nobility — it's considered to be servants' work. I don't mean to imply any negative sentiment on my part, but to warn you of the reaction you may get if you tell your classmates."

Liz couldn't say she was surprised. Magical Britain had a lot of the same classist shite she'd occasionally heard back in the muggle world, but like ten times worse. The same principle probably applied to just making things in general, actually — obviously it would be unseemly for a fancy noble person to do anything even approaching work, with their hands, like a peasant. There were some exceptions, like the Greengrasses, but Liz got the impression that kind of attitude was pretty common.

It was also very stupid. "Maybe I should tell people — if they're going to be a bitch about me doing servant stuff, I don't think I want to be friends with them anyway."

His mind shivering and sparking, Liz wasn't sure how to read the mix of feelings in his head. It definitely was multiple things, but the way it was mixed up, it was hard to tell — there was amusement in there, but there was something darker and slimier... "Maybe not. The skill is more respected on the Continent, especially in neocommunalist nations."

Well, obviously, they'd kind of killed all their nobles, hadn't they — they weren't around to be annoying. "Denmark and Sicily are communalist, right?"

"Daneland; yes and no. Sicily, like Aquitania, adopted a set of politics not dissimilar from communalism well before anyone had heard of Grindelwald, and the Scandinavians have their own system. They are both members of the neocommunalist block in the ICW Senate, however. You've narrowed down the schools you'd like to transfer to?"

"Yeah, I'm thinking it's going to be Syracuse or Durmstrang. Durmstrang is harder to get into, but Syracuse is probably really hot, I don't know..."

They talked about school stuff the rest of the way through dinner, which was fine. Liz had already talked out most of this with Tamsyn, but Severus didn't necessarily know that, and he was just trying to helpful, so. And he was helpful in ways Tamsyn hadn't been — Severus had actually been to most of these places at some point, could speak more to what the weather was actually like. According to Severus, Syracuse wasn't actually that much worse than London in the summer, often only a few degrees difference — and it was a dry heat, because it almost never rained in summer — but the winters were about as warm as the summers at Hogwarts, which was ridiculous. Also, Durmstrang was actually a little warmer than London in the summer, but averaged a good ten degrees colder in the winter — cold enough consistently enough that when they got snow they kept it, so Durmstrang was covered in a good foot of snow, and some years a good deal more than that, pretty much constantly from December into early April. Liz didn't know if she'd ever seen a foot of snow before...

Honestly, as intense as it sounded like the winters were, she thought she would tolerate Durmstrang better — Syracuse was really, really sunny, Liz would probably die.

Before too long the food was all gone — Liz was going to have to try marinading shite again, that'd turned out pretty good — Severus taking care of the dishes with a few flicks with his wand, because mages were cheaters. (She sometimes forgot she could just do that, started washing things by hand until Nilanse caught her at it and asked what she was doing.) When the talk about school wound down, Severus asked, "Have you had too much wine to brew your nutrient potions tonight?"

"Um..." Probably not — she hadn't filled her glass very far, aware that she had to floo home. Her lips did feel a little tingly, but she wasn't dizzy or anything, she thought she was fine. "No, I should be good."

Severus seemed a little sceptical, but he just nodded. "It would be difficult to ruin that particular formula badly enough to hurt yourself, and you are familiar with what it's supposed to look like — if it seems off, ask me to confirm whether it's usable."

She held in the urge to roll her eyes — honestly, Liz realised he was just trying to be helpful, but she wasn't an idiot.

"If you plan to surprise me like this again, be aware I will not be home for dinner on Saturday."

"Wait, really?" That was weird, Severus didn't like eating in public, he avoided being dragged to dinners or whatever whenever possible. Must be a special occasion, or Narcissa was guilting him into something. It couldn't be his birthday — that was in January, only a couple days after Lily's — so it was either Narcissa, or... "Do you have a date? Do you date? I was wondering before..."

There was something lurching in there, subtle, quiet enough she hardly noticed. Annoyed with Liz for sticking her nose in his business, probably. "I'm certain that is no concern of yours."

Liz shrugged. "Well, no, I'm just curious. You never talk about that stuff, and I wonder, well, there was a woman while we were at the Greenwood, I think, but... Do you have a girlfriend?"

"No, I do not," he drawled, giving her one of those flat, eyebrow-raised, unimpressed expressions of his. "And I am quite content with things the way they are — you needn't worry yourself on my account."

"I'm not worried, I was just wondering. I mean, I wouldn't want to come over here and...interrupt anything."

Draining his wine, Severus rolled his eyes — which still struck Liz as kind of silly whenever he did that. He seemed too stiff and mature for eye-rolling, incongruous. "Forgive me if I am unconvinced. I have been the target of more than enough well-intentioned meddling from the women in my life to be all too familiar with the feeling."

"...That's what the thing on Saturday is, isn't it? Narcissa's trying to set you up with someone again." Liz felt very confident of that, despite having little reason to think so...or that this was something that was happening again, she didn't actually remember Severus mentioning it before. Must be a Seer thing.

Severus sighed, thick and harsh, the flare of something dark and sharp in his head telling her she'd guessed correctly. "Go brew your nutrient potions, Liz."

"Okay, I'll stop." This topic was clearly bothering him, and she didn't like having an uncomfortable talk pushing on her either, so. She pushed herself up to her feet, and didn't need a second to keep her balance, so yeah, she hadn't had too much wine, she was fine. By this point, she'd done the nutrient potion enough times she could probably do it from memory, but that would increase the risk of a fuck-up, she should ask Nilanse to pop her copy over.

A thought occurred to her just as she stepped through the door, she leaned her head back in the kitchen. "Wear your blue robes, the green ones make you look all sallow."

"Elizabeth."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm going." Jeez, and here she was trying to be helpful, so rude.

(Liz smirked to herself on the way down to the potions lab — Lily wasn't around to nag him anymore, so clearly she had to do it. Ooh, maybe she should write Narcissa, they could coordinate strategy...)

---

July 1994

---

"Dorea, you're needed at the office, if you have a minute." Its message delivered, the patronus faded into wisps and vanished, taking the soothing aura of light magic with it.

Dorea let out a sigh. "I have a good idea what this is about, it might take a little while. Will you be okay on your own?"

"Oh, I'll be fine, lovey. Don't worry about me." However much Mum might not want Dorea to worry, she had to know that was a ridiculous thing to say — it was hard not to worry at least a little bit when Mum was very visibly pregnant.

She had some thorough familiarity now with how pregnancy tended to go — Ben and Sam hadn't been born that long ago, Dorea had been old enough to clearly remember — and it was true that Mum would probably fine on her own for a couple hours. The boys were getting old enough now that they didn't need quite so much active supervision anymore, and were down for a nap at the moment anyway, and there was a patch in the middle where it seemed to be...not as trying, at least. The early months, Mum tended to get pretty sick a lot, and her emotions would swing all over the place — Dorea sharply remembered when she'd been with Ben, there'd been an incident where she'd yelled at Dorea for some minor thing, and then seemed to abruptly realise what she was doing and burst into tearful apologies, it'd been a bit unnerving. (Dorea had gotten the feeling that Mum had been more careful around her with Sam so it wouldn't happen again, and of course Dorea had been at Hogwarts for this one.) And then the later months tended to be miserable for other reasons, mostly to do with being in a fair bit of pain just from trying to get around the house, and generally being exhausted all the time (apparently sleep could be a problem), and irritable and short-tempered because of it. But there was a phase in the middle where the big problems from the early months had passed, but she hadn't yet gotten quite so big that it was making her completely miserable.

No, at this point Mum was usually just hungry literally all the time. Right now she was sitting at the kitchen table with a book waiting for her faggots, which, ugh. Dorea had never gotten the stomach for offal — she could almost tolerate liver and onions, but she'd really rather not, and faggots were, just, no thank you. Apparently that kind of thing was more common where Mum was from — Dorea had visited her grandparents a few times, but she'd grown up in the south — and for whatever reason she always wanted some of the things she'd had more often when she was younger.

Like minced pig hearts wrapped in bacon and cooked in gravy. Ugh.

But Mum was right, she'd be fine without Dorea for a couple hours. She had been helping out a lot since getting back home, especially with the boys, but she'd been managing while Dorea was still at school, so... Dorea just felt inexplicably guilty, which she knew was ridiculous, but emotions could be that way sometimes. "I know. I should be back in time for dinner, I can't imagine how this would take longer than that."

"Mm. Tell Sirius hello from me."

She let out a little snort of laughter — looked like Mum had the same guess Dorea did of what this was about. And she wasn't even being kept entirely in the loop.

Ted had had an office in Charing since before she could remember. He rented some rooms along with a handful of other attorneys — the correct term in magical Britain, they didn't distinguish solicitors and barristers — creating what was basically a law firm, if a small one. The practice of law didn't work the same on the magical side, so it wasn't widely recognised as such, and wasn't itself a legal entity in the sense it would be on the muggle side, but. While Ted's own practice continued, ever since Cassiopeia had moved on, and the Tonkses had taken over the leadership of the House (on Dorea's behalf), his office had also been used for the occasional business meetings, especially those who wouldn't be offended by being asked to meet somewhere so...common.

The building wasn't on Diagon Alley proper (the rents there were ridiculous), instead a couple streets down — still in the nice part of town, but a bit less polished than the high street. It was stuck in with a bunch of guild halls and the like, and supposedly it could get pretty rowdy in the street sometimes, depending on the politics of the moment. Dorea said "supposedly" because she hardly ever saw it for herself, when she did visit she just flooed straight in. The reception area was pretty bland, dark carpet and wood-panelled walls, a few armchairs scattered about. The walls were mostly left blank, save for framed news articles here and there, one of the attorneys working out of the office managing to get into the papers over one escapade or another. Ted was featured in a disproportionate number of them — not that he'd done many more particularly controversial things than the others, his and Andi's marriage had been a big scandal, so some people still had their eyes on the Tonkses. Dora didn't make things easier by being, well, Dora, so, that likely wasn't going to end any time soon.

When Dorea arrived, the reception area was mostly empty, save for Julian at the secretary's desk. "Hello, Miss Dorea," he said, not looking up from the papers spread out in front of him, a pen tapping in his hand. "Looking for your father?"

She couldn't work up surprise that she'd guessed correctly. "I suppose I am. Ted's office?"

"Yep, go on in."

Dorea also couldn't work up surprise to find, upon walking into Ted's office, Ted sitting behind his desk looking rather exasperated, Sirius leaning over with both hands planted on the desk, shouting at him. She hadn't known Sirius very long, but this was about what she'd expected. "All right," she snapped, raising her voice a little to make sure she'd be heard. Slamming the door behind her to punctuate it, "Now, what is this about?"

"Have you seen this?!" Sirius snatched something up off the desk, a roll of false-parchment that had seen better days — it'd been scrunched up and wrinkled, even torn in a couple places. "Ted wants to let those bastards off with this– this— Just look at it!" he demanded, crossing the room in harsh quick steps toward her, the air crackling with furious magic.

Unconsciously, Dorea retreated a step, bumping into the door behind her. Sirius hitched to a stop, a stricken expression briefly flickering across his face. His fists clenched at his side, his eyes fell closed, and he took a few long, slow breaths, clearly trying to calm down.

If she was being completely honest, Sirius being around now was still very strange sometimes. Dorea had long ago become accustomed to the idea that her father would spend the rest of his life in Azkaban, and that she would likely never meet him...and then the last eight months happened. She couldn't say she knew him very well yet. They had spent some time together since he was exonerated, but he had a lot going on at the moment — settling back into ordinary life after a few years fighting a war and then over a decade in prison could be like that — and she'd still been at school for most of that time, and then there were Mum and the boys, and... Well, they were both kind of busy. Sirius was a very intense man (which she had been led to expect), and could be a bit unpredictable at times, and there was the fact that she still didn't really know how to talk to him — she'd never had a father before, and he was still a practical stranger — so, things were a bit awkward.

Stepping back like that had been instinct — she didn't really think she was in any danger from Sirius. If anything, anyone who tried to hurt her while he was around might well end up a bloody smear on the wall. But he was an intimidatingly powerful mage, enough she could taste it on the air around him when he got worked up about something, and sometimes he could be...kind of volatile. Definitely improved from their first meeting, the healers hadn't done nothing, Dorea thought this was just what Sirius was like. It was a little unsettling sometimes, was all, she couldn't help it.

But he was pretty good at realising when he was being too much, the power sizzling around her ears gradually diminishing with each breath. Until he let out a heavy sigh, his eyes blinking open again. "Sorry about that, kid. Didn't mean to, um..."

"It's alright. Let me see it," holding out her hand for the paper, trying to move right past that uncomfortable moment. Because it was alright, he hadn't really scared her, it was fine. After Sirius (rather sheepishly) handed it over, it only took her a couple seconds to identify what it was: a statement on the Ministry's restitution for Sirius being wrongfully imprisoned for a dozen years Ted and Andi had been negotiating off and on ever since the trial. "Yes, I know about this. Is there a problem?"

"Is there a problem? We can't—" Sirius sucked in a quick breath, let it out in a sigh. "This is nothing, it's— You know they don't care about gold," he said, turning away to pace back toward the desk. "Not so little of it, at least, some of these pricks will drop this much just to show off to a whore." Sirius was underselling it a bit...though not that much, honestly, some of these lords were, well... Gestures picking up as his voice continued to rise, finger jabbing and hands waving, "This amount of gold, it's nothing to them, they'll throw it at us just to get us to shut up — there's a good lad, you wouldn't want to make a fuss would you. I'm not letting those bastards off the hook so easily! Not for this!"

"Unless you know something about the Ministry's finances I don't," Ted said, still smooth and calm, seemingly unphased by Sirius's raving, "this is no small penalty for them. Unless you want to force them to levy more taxes to pay for it — which I don't think you do, especially as the family hardly needs the gold anyway — we can't ask for any more than that. That number is already going to strain their finances, honestly, and this is bad time to leave the Ministry beggared, as fragile as things are at the moment."

"Oh fuck the Ministry — those cowardly self-dealing shites can all burn in hell for all I care."

"I'm sorry, did you want the goblins to come collecting debts while we're in the middle of a change of government?"

"And of course we don't need the money!" Sirius shouted, ignoring that comment. Which was a good point, Dorea thought, they didn't need problems with the goblins on top of everything else. "That's not the point! Did you even read my proposal at all?"

"You didn't actually think Andi would agree to that, did you?"

"Why the hell not! She even stole it, partly, with donating half our penalty to the clinic, but she got rid of the best part!"

"The clinic was my idea, Sirius. We were never going to go with your suggestion."

"It's a much better idea, they already have access to healers with the cults! What the fuck was so bad about doing a school instead?"

"Oh, I don't know," Dorea drawled, "maybe the fact that it would anger literally everyone?" She had been told what Sirius had wanted to demand in recompense for his imprisonment — it was certainly...ambitious.

Magical Britain didn't really have a public education system, as such. Hogwarts was occasionally given a grant by the Ministry for one reason or another, but was mostly funded by other means, and the Public Academy of Saint Frideswith — the official name of the school most people just referred to as the one in Oxford — got maybe half of its funding from the Ministry (which was enough to get the "public" in its name), and the rest through proceeds from the lands the school was on and donations from individuals and guilds. Caoimhe's Academy in Ireland didn't get any government funding at all, supported by old primarily Irish religious priesthoods and certain guilds and a few wealthy patrons, but their OWL and NEWT programmes were certified by the Ministry the same as Hogwarts and Oxford. As far as the law was concerned, those were the only three educational institutions in the country.

Which, there were some obvious holes in that. The Ministry recognised OWL and NEWT programmes, of course, and also Masteries (though only Caoimhe's Academy had a classroom programme), but there was also levels below that. In primary school kids learned basic things, like their letters and arithmetic and so on, which went through about the age of seven; after that was craft school, which continued basic reading and maths and stuff but also added in things like potions and herbology and very basic runes, that sort of thing, magic you didn't need a wand to do. Craft school ran until it was time to go into academy at eleven, but there were more advanced craft school programmes too, for kids whose families couldn't afford to send them to academy — further study in witchcraft, mostly, often with the intent of leading into an apprenticeship with one of the craft guilds. Oxford and Caoimhe's Academy both had primary and craft school programmes, though Caoimhe's was considered the better of the two, enough that some nobles even went there for craft school. In their study group, Susan, Hannah, Lisa, Tony, and Morag had all gone there, that was how some of the kids in their year whose families weren't in the same political faction (so wouldn't have been stuck at social functions together growing up) had already known each other before Hogwarts.

Though not all of the magically-raised kids at Hogwarts had gone — homeschooling was quite common, especially in the larger magical families who had several adults on hand to teach multiple kids at once. And even in the smaller families, it wasn't unusual for a few of them to group together to teach their children, meeting in one of their houses a few times a week. Dorea knew the Allied Dark had an arrangement like that, the families taking turns to pay for a succession of tutors. (Apparently at least one of their tutors had been muggleborn, which was how, for example, Draco knew things like what a helicopter was, still didn't know what to think about that.) Both schools did have limited spots, they couldn't take everyone, and the nobility could definitely afford to pay for tutors, so Dorea was pretty sure the majority of the students at Hogwarts (excluding muggleborns) had been homeschooled before coming here.

But the nobility was a pretty small fraction of the population. And on top of having limited space, both schools charged tuition for their primary and craft school programmes — it wasn't terribly expensive, but a lot of commoners simply didn't have the extra money for that. And people who couldn't afford tuition definitely couldn't afford private tutors instead.

So the overwhelming majority of children in magical Britain just didn't go to school at all.

Which wasn't to say they didn't get an education...necessarily. Communities of people here and there did try to educate their children as best they could — there were countless tiny little schoolhouses all throughout the country, without Ministry sanction, just something people put together on their own. Since it was just something people put together on their own, the quality of the instruction was often not particularly great. If a community were lucky, a well-educated priest from one of the old pagan cults dotted around might just show up to help, in exchange for nothing more than a place to sleep and the occasional hot meal — a lot of lower-class people's education and healthcare was dependent on charity work by religious cults, which was bloody weird to think about — but for the most part it was very slapdash, teachers coming and going as their jobs and personal lives permitted, the resulting education patchy and inconsistent.

Nobody had ever done a proper survey on this, and there wasn't even an official standard to use to measure it, but the general assumption was that maybe only two thirds of magical Britain was even literate. If you included people in corporal indenture and local nonhuman beings (nymphs being the most significant population), it was probably under half.

This was, obviously, unacceptable, and for once Dorea and the mainstream opinion in the Wizengamot actually agreed on that — they were in the process of putting together a massive public education reform at this very moment. Of course, Dorea couldn't say the motivations behind the effort were particularly altruistic in this case. Free public education had been part of the communalists' programme, every country that had been taken over by the revolution now had a proper modern education system, and even some countries that hadn't. A couple generations down the road, now, and it was becoming very obvious that Britain was beginning to fall behind, economically and technologically (out of a lack of a better word). The Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot couldn't possibly allow themselves to be shown up by peasants — when engaging diplomatically with foreign governments or making business deals overseas they might feel embarrassed — so what had once been completely unthinkable had quickly become an inevitability.

Dorea didn't know whether or not Sirius had even been aware of the imminent educational reforms when he'd made his proposal, but he probably wouldn't have done anything differently if he had. He'd demanded a significantly larger penalty, which would then be matched with funds provided by the House of Black and a handful of other families, to found a school. They would start with a primary and craft school, but Andi's letter had said Sirius had implied they might expand into academy programmes later. The school would be completely free, and even cover supplies and such for the students who needed the help. There would be no admittance requirements whatsoever — if you applied, you were accepted, first come first served. And that included...

Sirius turned to shoot her a look over his shoulder. "So what if it makes them angry? It's not a penalty if they like it."

She let out a sigh — yeah, she'd assumed as much. The idea of starting a public school in general, sure, the Wizengamot didn't have any problem with that. If anything, getting to use something they were going to do anyway as part of their apology to the House of Black for improperly imprisoning Sirius would almost be letting them off the hook, especially as the Blacks would have contributed significant funds to the effort themselves. (Though actually not accepting any recompense themselves whatsoever, putting it all into the school, was itself insulting.) The problem was the no admittance requirements whatsoever part — in Sirius's proposal, he really meant none, of any kind.

In fact, Sirius's proposal included a requirement that Department of Education officials actively recruit students from certain disadvantaged populations — wilderfolk, werewolves, veela, vampires. His version even demanded a quota of nymphs, as a percentage of the student population.

Needless to say, the Wizengamot would never have gone along with that. And they would have been deeply offended that it was even asked of them.

"Ted and Andi are right, Sirius. The clinic is a good idea, and it's one we'll actually be able to get through the Wizengamot." Healthcare was about as spotty as education in magical Britain. There was really only the one hospital, and getting treated there wasn't cheap. Once again, a lot of people relied on cults for help, or the occasional wandering healer (themselves also often pagan priests), but a lot of people were just screwed. Especially in emergencies, because apparently it was perfectly legal for Saint Mungo's to turn away people who they suspected wouldn't be able to pay for treatment, because of course — if there happened to be a healer or receptionist around who wasn't an arse, they might kick them through the floo to a cult known for their healing, but that was really the best the poor could hope for.

So, Andi's idea was to instead demand the Ministry open a clinic as a gesture of remorse for their crimes against the family; the Blacks would still demand gold to buy them off, but they'd donate half of that to the clinic as a sign of good faith. (But only half, because not taking the Ministry's money was insulting — Dorea was certain Sirius had known that when he'd suggested it, but it was just unnecessary.) Patients would still be charged for elective, specialist treatment, but emergency and especially children's and prenatal care would be absolutely free. Dorea was certain someone would slip in an amendment to exclude nonhumans and werewolves, but still, it was a good thing. And it was a good thing they could actually get. Sirius just wanted to mess with their peers, and in doing so would completely ruin the opportunity to do something good for the people in this country.

And it was even still very insulting! Demanding the nobility and the Ministry basically give to charity instead of directly repaying the injured party was not an ordinary thing to do — the papers would have a field day, and she expected people would be talking about it for years. She really didn't know why he was complaining about it.

"Well, you're certainly not going to get my school through if you don't even try!"

"Sirius, there is no way it would ever get through the Wizengamot — and there are already educational reforms in the works, but nothing on healthcare. The clinic is—"

"Those reforms are cheap, human supremacist shite!" Oh, so he did know about the educational reforms, then. It was true that only human citizens would be eligible to attend the proposed public schools — resident nonhumans and even foreign citizens living in Britain would be barred. But they could hardly expect anything else, with the way politics were in this country.

Besides, wilderfolk and nymphs were hardly likely to want to go to school anyway, were they? They'd be happier where they were.

"There are ways to get those dickheads to vote for things they don't like. If they vote against it, fine — of course I would be so very insulted by them refusing to compensate me, which is cause enough to challenge them to an honour duel. If they want to get out of it with their lives, well, I'll accept an oath to vote for my school as a forfeit."

For a second, Dorea could only gape at Sirius in disbelief. It would work, sure, but that– that was— Insane, that was insane! "Sirius..."

Sounding more amused than anything, Ted drawled, "You realise that's completely mad, of course." Yes! That!

Sirius shot him a surly glare. "Yes, Sirius Black, have we met?" Well, at least he was aware of it, she guessed... "I don't see the point in beating around the bush, catering to these self-righteous fuckwads' backward fucking prejudice. We can get the school, I know we can. And if I have to curse the piss out of a few arrogant bastards to get it through, well, that's a bonus, as far as I'm concerned."

"No, Sirius, we're doing the clinic."

"Look, kid," he growled, whirling around to face her again, "I know this isn't—"

"No! Maybe you'll get a kick out of using the nobles' own rules about honour and whatever to make them do something they'll hate, just because you've hated them since you were my age, but I still have to live here when you're done! What makes you think that, even if you do get your school, they're not going to screw our family over a few years or even a generation down the line? The Noble Houses hold grudges, Sirius, for centuries! They could still be punishing my great-great-grandchildren over it! Did you think of that?"

Sirius reared back a step while she shouted at him, as though she'd physically shoved him, his eyes going wide and his mouth dropping open. Apparently, he hadn't thought of that. "I don't... It would be me doing this, it doesn't have anything to do with you."

Glaring over at him, she crossed her arms firmly over her chest. "I know you're not that stupid. I'm your daughter, and it would be the House demanding recompense on your behalf — of course they'll hold it against me. And maybe if you were the one in charge, you might be so unbelievably reckless as to sabotage our family for who knows how long. But fortunately for us, I'm Lady Black, so it's my decision. We're doing the clinic."

For a long moment, Sirius just stared at her. He looked almost stricken, still, hardly seeming to breathe, face long and pale. Moving a little shakily, he sank into one of the chairs across the desk from Ted, falling limp and boneless, slumping back enough to nearly bring his hips to the edge of the cushion. "No, you're right," he muttered, voice breathy and unsteady. "I'm sorry, you're right, I wasn't... I'll– We can do the...bloody clinic."

Ted nodded, shooting a brief thankful glance at Dorea. "Good. I'll understand if you don't want to be there for the final agreement, but you don't have to be. We will need you to sign the announcement in the Prophet."

"Yeah, yeah." One elbow on an armrest, the way he was sitting putting it at a weird angle, Sirius rubbed at his forehead, half-hiding his face. "Just put the papers in front of me and I'll sign them."

"All right. Well!" he chirped, his hands light slapping against the desk. "I don't know about you two, but I could use some tea — I think we have some biscuits and these little cheese sandwiches lying around too."

Sirius didn't say anything, just silently rubbing at his forehead, Dorea held in a sigh. "Sure. Thank you, Ted."

"Of course." On the way out, Ted paused for a moment as he passed Dorea, gently squeezing her shoulder with a smile. Silently thanking her for getting Sirius on board, she guessed. And then he was gone, pulling the door closed behind him. Leaving her alone in the room with Sirius.

Dorea didn't even bother holding in her sigh this time. She walked over to the chairs, swooshed down into a seat. Sirius didn't react, at least not right away, just sitting there looking... Well, she didn't know what was going on in his head, exactly — she didn't know Sirius that well yet. If she had to guess, well, Sirius could still be pretty volatile, and she had just pointed out that his plan would have been seriously bad for the family, for who knew how long. And she was well aware that the Dark could be deadly serious about their duties to their families, Sirius would have gotten some pretty intense indoctrination growing up. So, probably guilty, though she couldn't really guess more than that.

The silence stretched on long enough, Sirius sitting still in his chair, that Dorea twitched a little when he spoke. "I'm sorry, kid. I wasn't... I don't think things through, sometimes. I didn't mean to...make things difficult. I just wanted to... I wasn't thinking about... You know. I'm sorry."

Well. This was awkward. "It's alright. You're still recovering."

"No, it isn't—" Sirius cut himself off with a heavy sigh. His hand dropped into his lap, revealing his face — or at least the parts not hidden by wild curls. Dorea thought there was a little red in his eyes, but she couldn't be sure. "It's not because of the dementors. I've just...always been like this. It's— I'm not sure if you know about this, but there's a...relatively common condition in some parts of the nobility. Er. If I remember correctly, you'd call it a mental illness."

"...Oh. No, I don't know about that."

He nodded, slow and miserable, eyes turned away to stare unfocused into the distance. "It's a... Well, you know how arranged marriages are like — there are politics to it, yes, but people also have an eye to what traits they might be bringing into the family. Like breeding bloody livestock," he muttered, an edge of venom leaking into his voice. "Anyway, sometimes when you're selecting partners based on one thing, you'll end up getting something else attached to it. Trying to breed for magical power, these idiots accidentally also picked up a susceptibility to, well. The way I am. My mother had it, and so does Bellatrix, seemed like half of my cousins growing up. Not really, but, it turns up here and there in the Noble Houses, particularly in the Dark. So. It's not the dementors."

Well, no, but it sounded like he couldn't help this, either — it was just how he'd been born, he had less control over that than getting sent to Azkaban like an idiot. When she thought about it, depending on what this mental illness was like, it might have contributed to why he'd ended up in prison in the first place, but... But she couldn't say that, it would come off, she didn't know, condescending. "What is it, exactly? I've never heard of, well." She knew about the stealing away, obviously, and the mages were familiar with depression and anxiety, and also things she was pretty sure were OCD and schizophrenia, and there was also a thing Dorea was positive was autism — though mages used different names for all of them, because of course — but it didn't sound like he was talking about any of those.

Sirius let out another deep, heavy sigh. "It's hard to explain. Just, feeling things very intensely. And erratically, flipping back and forth, or getting things all mixed up. It can be kind of...overwhelming and confusing, sometimes. And not just— It can be kind of hard to tell how you feel about people sometimes, all mixed up and confused, you know. When I was your age, I can't tell you how many times I rubbed one off fantasising about people I was certain I hated..."

"That was too much information, Sirius," she said, feeling her nose wrinkle with a grimace.

"Ha. Yeah, sorry, I do that too. Boundaries are hard." His head tipped back as much as he could manage sitting like that, letting out yet another sigh. "I get that the school was...too much. I knew it was too much, just, I hate those preening self-righteous racist bastards, and I just wanted to— I wasn't thinking of, you know, years down the road. They don't really gave a damn, I wanted to make them choke on their fake sympathy, make them show to the whole bloody country how... Well.

"I don't... I'll try not to fuck things up too badly. At least I'm not the one in charge of the family, Merlin, you're right, that would be a fucking disaster." A little chuckle under his breath. "This isn't the first time I've said this, but I am glad you take more after Abbie."

Yeah, she was too, honestly. But that wasn't something she should say out loud either. "It's okay, Andi and Ted will keep us both in line." Sirius let out a little breathy ha!, probably sceptical of her needing it the same way he did — which she didn't, for the most part, but there were still things about the culture of the nobility she didn't entirely get, she did need her hand held through things sometimes. "Why do you call her that, anyway? I don't think I've ever heard anybody else call Mum 'Abbie'."

"Honestly? It annoyed her, and that was funny. Teasing, you know. After a while, it was just what I called her."

...Okay, then.

"It's something I've been thinking about, lately." What, calling Mum by— "You know, I've been spending time with Liz, and she keeps mentioning Snape, and... I can't understand why she likes that slimy git, but— You know I almost murdered him once?"

Dorea twitched, rearing back in her chair a little. "You what?"

Sirius shrugged. "It was an accident. He was— Well, you know, we had a rivalry back then, and... He was always trying to get us caught for one thing or another, I let him overhear us talking about meeting up with the person we get our contraband from — you know, liquor, drugs, potion and prank stuff. Nothing actually illegal, just, stuff we're not supposed to have at Hogwarts. Just had to go through the secret passage, out on the grounds, they'd be waiting there. On the full moon this month, how aesthetic."

"You didn't..."

With a little snort, he muttered, low and derisive, "What do you think? Snape would have walked right in on Moony if Jamie hadn't flipped out and went charging after him."

And good thing he did! Forget about Professor Snape's life for a second (which he really shouldn't), if he'd been killed or even turned, the Ministry would have executed Remus! Remus had told her they'd hated each other in school, but he hadn't mentioned that! "But they would have— What the hell were you thinking?"

His lips twitching into a humourless smirk, Sirius said, "I wasn't thinking, obviously. Not about what might happen, you know, just that Snape would be out of the school, and I wouldn't have to deal with the snivelling arse anymore. I didn't intend for him to be killed, just expelled for sneaking out of bounds after curfew but, well, I couldn't say I really cared if he did die. And I didn't think about what would happen to Remus afterward, I just...

"Fuck, if he had died there wouldn't have been anyone to get Liz away from those awful bastards Albus stuck her with. I'm not saying I'm going to start liking Snape or anything, but... Or, even before that, he was the only spy we had with the Dark Lord's people, passed on all kinds of intelligence, he was even the one who told us Jamie and Lily and Alice and Frank were being targeted in the first place — they probably wouldn't have gone into hiding otherwise, and then what might have happened? I would have fucked us all over with one act of monumental bloody stupidity, and I would never have even known.

"So, yeah, I know I'm a thoughtless idiot sometimes, I've been reminded of it a lot lately. I'm trying to be better about it, but it's hard not to...get carried away." Smirking a little again, his eyes twinkling in the light, "And not just out of anger or whatever else — there's at least one stupid mistake I made that turned out all right."

Dorea forced out a scoff, but completely failed to stop herself from smiling back at him. By that one stupid mistake, he meant her. "It's alright. Like I said, we have the Tonkses making sure neither of us do anything too stupid, and... Well, I know you have a lot going on now, coming back into your life and everything. If you're having a hard time and you ever need help with anything..."

"No, I'm fine, I just—" He pushed himself upright in his chair, apparently done with moping for the moment, hands hanging limply off the edge of the armrests and one foot swinging up to cross his legs at the knee. With a sort of rueful smirk, he said, "Unless you have any more advice for getting on with Liz. I've managed to not completely put her off so far, but getting her to open up at all is... Well, I haven't been getting anywhere."

She snorted. "If you do figure that out you'll have to tell me about it — it took months hanging out at school to get her to even start expressing an opinion on anything. She's just...like that. Private, you know."

"Yeah. Hey, I was thinking of taking you girls out one day — to get lunch and see a film or something, the shite they've been doing with those these days is wild — if there's a day coming up that's good for you I can—"

"That might not be a good idea," Dorea interrupted, grimacing. "Liz and I are, um, kind of not speaking. At the moment." They'd been home from school for a couple weeks now, and... Well, it was actually normal not to see each other for this long over the summer, but she didn't— She'd considered sending Liz a letter, she just...didn't know what to say. She'd started and stopped one multiple times.

Sirius stared at her for a moment, unblinking. "What? Why, what happened? I thought you two were..."

"We are." If she assumed what Sirius was trying to say correctly, anyway. "Or, past tense now, I guess? I don't know. And I don't— It's complicated. I'm not sure how much I should tell you, you can ask Liz yourself if you want." It didn't help that Dorea wasn't sure what she'd done wrong. She hadn't said anything too bad, she didn't think, and she hadn't— Maybe Liz had been in her head, sure, but she hadn't thought anything particularly offensive either! She didn't know what she'd done to make Liz so angry with her, and Liz refusing to talk to her about it did not make it easier to figure out.

At this point, she was getting extremely frustrated with Liz. She knew Liz could be a bit, well, she was troubled, to put it mildly — and she had every reason to be, of course, Dorea wasn't saying she didn't— It just made things much more difficult than they had to be sometimes. Not really that often, the things that set Liz off didn't come up all the time, but sometimes she'd just close off without warning, it could be— Well. And maybe Dorea could have reacted better to...Liz coming out to her, she guessed? She'd just been blindsided, okay, she hadn't known what to say! It'd been weird and uncomfortable and out of nowhere, and of course Dorea had been uncomfortable, she didn't know what she was supposed to—

Well. If Liz was going to be childish about it and refuse to talk to her, Dorea didn't know what else she could be expected to do. She was at a loss, and, just, she didn't know. Maybe after Liz had a little longer to cool off Dorea could try asking her about it, maybe at the duelling thing...

(Though sometimes Dorea wondered why she should even bother — if their friendship was worth so little to Liz that she would completely cut Dorea off over something so minor she hadn't even noticed it, maybe it just wasn't worth the effort. Dorea didn't know why it was her responsibility to fix it, when Liz had been the one who'd flipped over nothing and stopped talking to her, she hadn't even done anything! She didn't like the thought that it might never get fixed and they might be done, but faced with the prospect of picking up the pieces, with seemingly not the slightest sliver of cooperation to come from Liz, she couldn't help it.)

Sirius looked very much like he was about to ask again what was wrong, but he was interrupted by the door opening, Ted returning with a tea tray. Excellent timing, Ted, because Dorea really wouldn't have known what to say if Sirius tried to press the issue.

It was too uncomfortable, she didn't want to talk about it with him. So, she guessed she kind of understood where Liz was coming from this time.

(Which didn't make it any less frustrating, of course — the whole bloody thing was Liz's fault in the first place.)

---

"All right, this will do," Sirius said, sauntering across the back garden. "It's enough room, just stay close to the middle — sometimes your aim can get off when you're just starting out, you might end up flying backward — and try not to hit the pond over there... By the way, I was wondering, why'd you tear up all the grass?"

Liz shrugged. "I was just going to let everything grow wild. I don't like gardening, and I think things actually look better growing however they want. The grass would have gotten in the way." And it didn't take that much effort to get rid of it all — a few charms to yank out the grass and churn up the soil then toss a pinch of seeds she'd bought and mixed up before moving on, section by section, she'd finished the whole plot in an hour or two. And the gardens were pretty big, it'd taken less time than she'd spent just weeding Petunia's bloody flower beds.

"Well, sure, I guess. Grass is nicer to walk on than dirt, though," he said, giving her bare feet a pointed look.

Liz just shrugged again. She'd been told that quick-step was technically nature magic, and Sirius had warned her that it'd be easiest to learn if she was as calm and comfortable as possible, so she'd dressed with that in mind. He'd given her a double-take when she'd come downstairs in her nice robes, the red and black ones, but he'd (mostly) kept whatever he was thinking to himself. The laces were pulled a little tighter than she normally did — not enough to restrict her breathing at all, just making the cloth hugged around her more present, constantly aware of the pressure. It was nice. And Liz had never really liked shoes much, if she was being honest, so she hadn't bothered with those. It wasn't like she couldn't just wash her feet when it was time to go back inside, not a big deal. "So, how do we start?"

A shifting tingle on the air, Sirius was feeling rather...bemused, she would say, giving her a crooked, sceptical sort of look. Probably thinking she was bloody weird, which was fair enough, most people did. "Right. Quick-step. You might have heard people call it nature magic, which it sort of is, if from a different tradition than European nature magic. The basic idea, you push your magic out of your body and sort of mingle it with the ambient magic in the environment. Kind of sink into it, you know, anchoring yourself. Then all you do is will this mixed magic to move where you want it to, and it'll drag your body along with — magic can move faster than the human body, you know. Exactly how fast you can go depends on how—"

There was a flash of magic, tingling on her skin and copper on her tongue, a smeared flicker of colour, and—

"—deeply integrated your magic is." Liz whirled around, the dirt crumbling under her feet — Sirius was gone, and his voice was coming from behind her. He was just standing there, a couple metres away, hands planted on cockily slanted hips and grinning. Liz had seen people use quick-step only a handful of times, and she'd never seen anybody move that fast, that was awesome. "The more you practise, the better you'll get at it, and the quicker you'll be able to move. Since you can already do a little bit of wandless magic, I think you might be able to figure it out today, though I doubt you'll be ready to actually use it by the time of the tournament — you only have a couple weeks, you'll probably need more practice than that. Any questions so far?"

"No, I'm good." The way he'd explained it had already answered a few questions she'd had niggling away in the back of her mind. Like, supposedly quick-step could only be done in brief bursts, following line of sight — there were stories of people travelling huge distances with it, but they were just stories, not something people did in real life. The basics of how it worked solved both those questions. Sirius said it worked by willing the mixed magic to move the person, which sounded a lot like casting a spell: the person visualised how they wanted to move, and once they'd gone where they'd pictured the spell was over, kicking them back out. It sounded like the person didn't necessarily need to see where they were going or do it only in straight lines, but that would make it easier to visualise, sounded more like a practical problem than a definitional one. Also, she thought if they went far enough, the magical environment might change enough that they...lost their grip, so to speak — and when she thought about it, the patch of ambient magic the person had control over would be making contact with the environment beyond that, and there would probably be some kind of friction at the edges, which might gradually chip away at their grip... She wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to explain what she meant to anyone else, but it made sense in her head.

"Right. So, I don't imagine you've been doing much ritual magic or blood runes — at least I hope you haven't been," he said, chuckling a little, "that's really not the sort of thing you want to experiment with on your own. Anyway, do you know what flaring your aura means?"

That phrase sounded...very familiar. "Um, no. I think I've heard it before, but..."

He nodded. "Thought not. It's a basic skill used in a lot of ritual magic to— Well, it's complicated theory stuff, and I don't really get it, to be honest. Kind of tune the environment to the practitioner, I think? Whatever, not important. You know your body and mind have a magical presence, just them doing their own thing, kind of radiating out into the environment. Like a glow, you know, but magic. Most people, it's faint enough you need analysis charms to pick it up, but as a mage gets more and more powerful, their body becomes more and more accustomed to channelling magic, becoming more conductive, their aura getting brighter and brighter. If you've heard people refer to sorcerers, this is when a person's magical presence is great enough to be perceptible to people around them, not through the use of charms or anything, just, there, you can taste it on the air — it's not a technical definition, there's no official measurement of density past which someone's officially a sorcerer, just a cultural thing.

"Anyway, how you flare your aura, you channel a bunch of magic and you push it out. Not like casting a spell, where you have to focus it, but just out into the environment around you, not doing any particular thing with it, just pulling magic in and pushing it right back out again. The idea is to create a negative potential differential where the animus is—" Sirius cut himself off with a little huff, his eyes tipping up to the sky, the sun intermittently peeking through patchy clouds. (It rained a lot in Ireland, turned out.) "Complicated magic theory bullocks, never mind that. If you're curious I can find the book in the old library at Grimmauld Place I originally found all this shite in. Assuming the Tonkses haven't cleaned the place out, anyway, there was a lot of nasty shite in there..."

"Sure, if you can find it." It didn't sound like she'd need to know how it worked to do it — she often didn't, most magical theory had been developed a posteriori to explain things people already knew how to do — but it sounded neat anyway. "So, you flare your aura, and then...mingle it into ambient magic? How does that work, exactly?"

"Um." Sirius blinked, frowning to himself. "I don't know how to explain it. You just kind of...dig in, and... It kind of feels like, you know." Dropping his hands from his hips, Sirius settled into a duelling stance, and then dipped a little, as though preparing to jump out of the way of a big spell, his heels twisting against the dirt. "Like that. It feels just like that, but with magic? No, I don't know how to explain any better than that. It's... You have a pensieve, right? I don't suppose you've copied out memories before..."

"I have."

He twitched, both eyebrows stretching up, a sharp flicker of surprise on the air. "Well shite, that's an advanced charm for your age. It's kind of like that, but backwards, you sinking into magic instead of the other way around."

...That didn't make any sense.

A smile twitching at his lips, Sirius said, "How about we start out with flaring your aura and work up to that? Now, I've been doing it long enough that I can kind of cheat, and push my magic out and dig in at the same time, but you should start out taking it one step at a time. So, you draw in magic, like taking in a big, deep breath, and then..." His eyes narrowing, fists clenching at his hips, Sirius let a sharp sigh. There was a harsh crackle of briskly cool magic, Liz took a step back on instinct, and—

Woah. A wave of ghostly flames crawled over Sirius, starting at his chest and surging out across his body, all the way down to his fingers and toes before fading away, a ghostly halo flickering around his head before dissolving into whisps — red and silver and purple, ephemeral and insubstantial enough to be see-through, but vibrant enough the colours came through. They were only there for a second, but— "What the hell was that?"

Sirius grinned. "That was an external aura manifestation. If you push enough magic out quickly enough— Hmm. It's an artefact of interference between your magic and the magic in the environment. There's always some interference going on, around any living being or active enchantment, around the border of its influence. And this effect is actually what gives spellglows their colour, the friction between the envelope and the environment. But, it only takes a few seconds for the magic you've pushed out to equalise with your surroundings to the point it's not visible anymore, so these effects will pass in a flash.

"The density of magic it takes for it to actually be visible is kind of absurd, by the way. If you see someone, just, casually flickering while casting spells, run the fuck away — anyone who bleeds that much magic when not doing it on purpose is very, very scary. In a this is literally Dark Lord shite kind of way."

...Right. Got it. That weird ghostly fire was really familiar, actually, but she couldn't think of where she'd—

Oh! The memory Tamsyn had sent her, when she did the ritual to give herself the ability to fly! That's where Liz had seen it before! And that's where she heard the name before too, Tamsyn had told her she shouldn't even contemplate doing it herself until she could flare her aura.

...Which meant, if Liz learned how to do this, and got good enough at it, she could learn to fly unassisted. Neat!

"Okay, so, just..." If she understood what she was supposed to do correctly, it was just pulling in magic, like she was about to channel it into a spell, and then just...not. Pulling in more and then just...

Liz could never explain what channelling magic felt like, even in her own head. It kind of felt like pulling, like reaching down and yanking something up, but at the same time like relaxing, letting go of tension she hadn't realised she'd been holding. It was better to just not think about it too hard. Letting her eyes fall closed, taking a deep breath, Liz relaxed and pulled, and then just kept pulling, more and more and more. Of course, the human body was only capable of holding so much magic at once — it didn't take very long before hot-cold prickles were crawling across her skin, tingling numbness, a sharp pain growing at the base of her skull, burning in her chest, her heard pounding in her ears and the taste of blood on her tongue and rainbow colours dancing behind her eyes. Right, that was quite enough. So she just had to...force it out — not casting any particular spell, just, push—

The magic abruptly left her, so quickly it left her a little dizzy, she staggered a step before catching herself. "Woah," Sirius said, a flash of something cool and smooth but warm and soft at the same time pulsing out of his head. "That was a hell of a good first try, Liz, you've definitely got a talent for wandless magic. But that came out as a charm."

She blinked her eyes open. "It did?"

"Yup. You let too much intent slip into it — that was a bludgeoning hex, I think. An omni-directional one, which is a neat trick, you might want to work on refining that too. Who knows when that might be handy?"

...She wasn't thinking of anything off-hand. She guessed, maybe if she was being attacked by conjured constructs from multiple directions, but... Oh well, Sirius was the much more experienced fighter of the two of them, she'd take his word for it. "Intent." Magic was all about intent, of course, she knew that already — it wasn't like Liz actually visualised the mechanics of the wandless spells she did, just, imagined what she wanted to happen and shoved power at it. Liz must have been thinking about pushing too hard, so the magic had come out...pushy. That made sense. Or, the same kind of weird sense that magic always had. "I think I get it. Let me try that again."

It turned out not letting her intent slip into something that she was doing intentionally was kind of difficult. After a few attempts, Liz sat down on the ground — carefully, trying not to flash her shorts at Sirius — and kept trying, again and again. It was, she realised, an occlumency problem: she had to keep her intent to push the magic out separate from the magic itself, so it didn't get a pushing feeling in it. And Liz was, of course, fucking terrible at occlumency. After several times getting it wrong, Liz was starting to get frustrated, she had to take a few calming breaths before every attempt, because letting her frustration slip into the magic would also fuck it up.

This was annoyingly difficult. She guessed, if this shite were easy everyone would do it, but still.

After what felt like fucking forever, she finally managed the bloody thing. And apparently did a pretty good job of it — Sirius said it was even visible, if barely, which was slightly ridiculous for her age...or it would be, if she weren't basically always channelling magic because of whatever the fuck she'd done to make her mind so bloody loud. (Liz suspected she'd unknowingly broken something when her mind magic activated early, but it was far too late to do anything about that, and she could still use magic, so she didn't really care.) It took another dozen or so more attempts for Liz to be able to do it consistently, which was a little irritating, but she had it, dammit. Fucking finally.

Of course, then she had to get to the next step, which was a bloody pain. She wasn't fully conscious of the magic she'd pushed out around herself, and Sirius wasn't doing a very good job of explaining it, she had no bloody clue what she was supposed to be doing. After some circular explanations that weren't getting anywhere, Liz eventually managed to convince Sirius to copy a memory of himself doing it so that she could just subsume it and have done with this. She meant, she was a bloody mind mage, what was the point of having magical superpowers if she didn't use them for anything?

Sirius was slightly blindsided that she could do that already, she was only thirteen — almost fourteen, she insisted, a little annoyed despite herself — but he was being silly. He already knew she was a mind mage, and stealing memories and shite was just something that came naturally to them — other people could do it, they just had to learn it, mind mages could do it a whole hell of a lot easier. She'd initially asked to just copy the knowledge of how to do it, but that Sirius didn't agree to. Apparently, he didn't think he could isolate it properly, it'd be connected to too many other bits of information and memories and who knew what else. And Sirius had had a pretty fucked up life, Liz didn't need to see that. But he could copy the memory of doing it right now, that should be fine.

It was only once she'd integrated Sirius's memory that she realised she was trying way too hard, and his explanation was bloody terrible and unhelpful. Maybe if Sirius were a mind mage himself, it wouldn't be as much of a problem, but. She was keeping her mind and magic separate, but she couldn't do that and still use it, obviously, she— There were multiple steps to it, and Liz wasn't even certain if Sirius consciously realised what he was doing. See, he wasn't just drawing in magic and holding it there, he was channelling it into himself — like, the same "magic of the body" stuff Liz had figured out how to feel to do her blood subsumption thing. Which, that was kind of doing a...

It was hard to explain. The body, just doing its thing, generated magic of its own, like Sirius had said earlier, and the brain did the same thing, but much denser and more complex, resulting in consciousness — and it was that magical construct that channelled magic from outside and shaped it into spells. Which was an absurdly complex process and not really important to know the details of how it worked. But, obviously it wouldn't work to just push her mind/magic out and try to anchor that into the environment and pull it through— It was her body she was trying to move, so, just using her mind wouldn't do shite. (If anything, if she did it 'correctly' that way, she might end up ripping her consciousness right out of her body, which sounded like a bad idea.) But, the body magic...stuff...couldn't channel magic into it the way the brain could, so, what you had to do was channel magic and push it into the...body magic stuff...kind of plugging your magic straight into your body, like? And then you push that out. And if you do it right, you create a bubble around yourself that's got your mind/magic and your body-magic-stuff and the ambient magic all mixed up together, until it was kind of all one thing, and then you did magic with that...

It was kind of complicated, and sounded really trippy, even just trying to explain it to herself. But it wasn't that difficult, she didn't think. Just had to not think of it like a normal spell. Kind of more like scrying, she guessed...if she decided to try to scry when in the middle of her blood subsumption ritual. She thought that made sense? More sense than what Sirius was saying, anyway.

She told Sirius to be quiet for a minute, so she could give it a try. Pulling magic into and through herself out, with a lurch like missing a step, tingling numbness sweeping over her, feeling unexpectedly cold. Or, not really. It was kind of like that odd feeling when she'd had a bit of alcohol and got numb and tingly but warm and flushed but also a little chilled at the same time, seemingly contradictory things all mixed up — like swallowing an icy drink out in the summer sun, cold spreading from inside but heat pushing in from outside. Except only kind of, it wasn't exactly like that, being a little drunk at the Greenwood was just what it reminded her of.

...Sunlight. That's why it reminded her of the Greenwood — her magic being spread out like this, she was feeling the magic in the sunlight, that's what the warmth was. Neat.

Okay, now she just had to... She understood why Sirius hadn't been able to explain it in any way that made sense. It was kind of like a compulsion, forcing something outside of herself to take on a pattern defined by her, but backwards, taking a part of her and copying the pattern of something else. Which was how reading people's minds worked, actually — when she consciously reached out to people, anyway, passively picking up feelings and the occasional thought was more analogous to just hearing an echo — but she wasn't normally conscious of that. If she understood correctly, that was what made natural legilimens different from normal people, that their minds could just do that without any conscious effort — theoretically, normal people could learn to do mind magic, but they'd have to consciously alter the resonance of their own mind to match that of someone else's, which was prohibitively difficult. (This was why most normal people who wanted to read people's minds learned the charm instead.) But just because she wasn't normally conscious of doing it didn't mean figuring out how to do something vaguely similar was that difficult. She just, kind of, pressed her body/mind magic mix into the space around her, trying to smooth out the differences, sort of like levelling off a cup of flour, and—

With a faintly audible sizzle, the combined magic decohered, crumbling apart and slipping out of her grip. "Ope, you lost it," Sirius said. "That was close, though."

"I know, shut up for a second." She'd made her magic too much like the environment around her, enough that it wasn't hers anymore and she lost control of it. Or, that's what she thought happened, anyway, she was hardly an expert in trippy nature magic nonsense, but that sounded like a reasonable guess. It's what it'd felt like, anyway. But that was a problem, because she was supposed to dig into the ambient magic or whatever, and...

Or maybe Sirius was just giving her a shitty explanation again. Once more, she channelled magic into and through herself and out, until she was properly spread out in a bubble around her body — which was why it felt a little cold, she thought, because she was less dense. (That didn't make logical sense, since it wasn't like it was actually doing anything to her body, but magic could be weird like that.) Actually, she thought her (metaphorical) centre of gravity might be outside of her body when she did this, which also might have something to do with it feeling cold, but that was a freaky thought, let's not contemplate that too closely. Instead of pressing down on herself to try to absorb the pattern of the ambient magic all the way, she just...smoothed some of the rough edges off, and at the same time reached for the ambient magic and also changed it — making it just a bit more like her, like setting a compulsion but only going part way. Trying to have them meet in the middle, like. Which wasn't something she'd ever done on a mind before, it sounded kind of like it would be...

Oh. She knew what that sounded like.

Whatever, not thinking about that just now. (This wasn't the time to get distracted by how easy it would be to entirely steal control of someone's body — Liz was already bloody creepy enough.) There was a funny tingle, an unpleasant shiver racing up her spine (which she could kind of only half-feel, numb), as her mind/body magic stuff and the ambient magic around her got close enough for the interference between them to get rather grating, but only for a second before they abruptly fit together with an almost audible snap. And it felt...weird. She felt bigger, taller, but also weightless, like diving on a broom, her breath caught hard in her lungs and her pulse pounding in her throat and her hands and behind her eyes. Not unpleasant, exactly, just weird. This was definitely it. Liz opened her eyes, and—

Focussed on something else, her control slipped, and the mixed magic immediately decohered again, Liz returning to reality with a disorienting lurch. "Fuck! I had it!"

"Yeah, I could feel it, you were— You're picking this up stupid fast, Liz. Go on, give it another go. How about a little wager, if you get it this time I'm buying." Fortescue's, he meant, they had plans to go to London after this. Sirius had been very enthusiastic about going out to see a film, which, fine, she guessed. She'd warned him it might be too loud for her — both literally and in a mind magic sense — but she'd already gotten through half of her homework for the summer, and it wasn't like she had anything better to do. When had she last gone to the cinema, she couldn't remember...her birthday back in '92, she thought, with Dorea and the Walkers...

Anyway, "Right, okay. Let's see if I can do it without..." If she didn't close her eyes, kept them open the whole time, then she wouldn't have to worry about losing focus when she opened them again. And she could pick a spot she was going before she did the whole thing, so she knew what she was doing, hopefully that'd stop her from fucking up. So, okay. Pull in magic, push it through herself and out, sink down and pull the magic around her up, meeting in the middle, drifting and weightless and simmering, and want for it to– without thinking, doing what came to her naturally, a compulsion forced into the magic in her grip (into herself), and she—

She'd imagined it would feel like walking or running, but it didn't, really. It felt more like flying, carried forward on soaring magic without any physical effort of her own. But it didn't really feel like flying, because she wasn't actually moving, her hair and skirt not twitching an inch, no touch of wind on her face. The world around her blurred, colours turned into smearing streaks, everything save the patch of ground she'd chosen, an island of sharp clarity in the middle of messy—

Liz's toes hit the ground at speed, she tipped forward, her knee drove hard into the dirt, deep enough she could feel the chill of the earth where the sun didn't reach, she managed to curl around so she didn't get her face slammed into the ground, her shoulder hitting instead, her momentum digging out a small crater before she came to a stop. She flopped over onto her back, sucking in a thick, unsteady breath.

"You just— Fuck, Liz, you did it! That was awesome!" She felt Sirius's mind grow nearer, her hand jumped to smooth down her skirt. "I can't believe you— We've barely been here an hour! You know it took me four days of tedious meditation and shite to manage that?"

She pushed herself up to sitting, her elbows feeling a little shaky. Sirius was already standing over her, holding out a hand toward her — a bright grin stretched across his face, his mind eagerly sizzling. "Yeah, well, I'm a cheater." After a brief hesitation, she took his hand, let him help her up. She didn't need a hand, but she didn't really mind, and she might as well take the opportunity to encourage Sirius to not just grab at her without asking first. "It kind of feels like some mind magic stuff. Not the exact same, of course, but similar enough I could feel it out."

That was definitely a sceptical look, something in his mind turning, but Sirius just shrugged off whatever he was thinking. "All the same, Liz, very impressive. Even if you did end up flying right into the dirt and getting your nice robes all messy."

"Ugh." She had, hadn't she? The dirt pressed into the cloth came right off just brushing at it — they were enchanted to shake things off, it didn't always work but it looked like it was this time — but the dirt on her knee and her upper arm was going to be harder to get off. She might have to just jump in the shower for a minute before they left for London. "The dismount could definitely use some work."

Sirius let out a little chuckle. "Yeah, that takes practice. Just gotta keep trying, you'll get used to the feeling eventually. Seriously, Liz, that was excellent — I knew you were going to pick it up quickly, but I didn't think it'd be that quickly."

Liz just shrugged — she'd cheated copying the memory out of his head, and she was good at magic, especially weird witchcraft shite, no reason to make such a big deal out of it. Also, she never knew what she was supposed to say when someone tried to give her a compliment, it was awkward. "Let's try that again. I've got a duelling tournament coming up, this would be a hell of a trick up my sleeve to have."

"You're not going to be comfortable enough with it to use in a duel by then."

"Wanna bet?"

"Ha! No, you already got free ice cream out of me, I think I've learned my lesson for the day."

They had time for Liz to give it another dozen or so attempts before she should really go clean up. She got a little smoother and quicker at it with each attempt, but Sirius was right, it was going to take some practice to get quick enough at it to actually use it in a fight — and that was assuming she managed to get to the point she didn't immediately fall on her arse once she landed. There were a few times she managed to zip ahead several metres and not immediately tumble to the ground, but she still stumbled a few steps every time, off-balance, which wasn't good enough. She'd maybe been a little cocky, saying she'd pull it off by then, but she still had over a week, there was plenty of time to practice. Who knew, she might get lucky.

Eventually, it was about time that they should get going. As Liz had made one attempt after another, Sirius had gotten gradually quieter, withdrawn — thinking about something, she thought. It could hard to be sure what about without intruding — she was trying not to do that, she'd respect his boundaries as long as he respected hers — but she thought he was considering whether or not he wanted to say something. Well, he better hurry it up, she'd be in the shower in a couple minutes, and then they were going to London. Playing around with quick-step had taken up more time than they'd planned on, but still...

Liz was leaning against the door frame with one hand, the other casting water-drawing and cleaning charms at the bottom of her foot (magic could clean it up pretty easily if she tracked mud in, but it was the principle of the thing) when Sirius finally worked through his hesitation. "You know, I've been meaning to ask."

She waited a moment, but Sirius never did actually ask. Rolling her eyes as she switched to washing her other foot, Liz said, "What is it, Sirius?"

"What's going on with you and Dorea? I thought... Well, I thought you two were close, but Dorea said you're not even speaking to each other at the moment."

Liz let out a sigh. Sirius was Dorea's father, she'd expected this would come up eventually — she was a little surprised it'd taken this long. And hey, she was on her way up to take a shower, so she had an easy excuse to escape this conversation whenever she wanted. "Yeah, I guess we're not." Honestly, Liz wasn't stopping Dorea from talking to her if she wanted to, she just hadn't. She suspected Dorea was in the exact some situation Liz was in, where she just...didn't know what to say. She'd half-expected Dorea to confront her before leaving school, or to send her a latter after a few days out, but, nope.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." It was pretty clear that not demanding answers was taking some effort from Sirius, his mind filled with anxious sizzling, enough even the echo was making her own fingers twitch — which she appreciated, she guessed. "I was just...worried. I mean, I don't know. What happened?"

She didn't want to talk to Sirius about that. Or anyone, really. "What did Dorea tell you?"

Voice low and grumbling, Sirius said, "Not much. Just that she wasn't sure how much she should tell me, and that I should ask you."

...Liz wasn't sure whether Dorea had meant that it was Liz's fault, and that if he wanted to know what was wrong Sirius had to ask her, or if she'd been trying to cover for Liz, not willing to tell Sirius about her being gay without her permission. Which was nice of her, Liz honestly hadn't expected that, especially since Sirius was her father and everything. Her second foot more or less washed and dried, Liz stood back normal again, letting out a sigh. "It's private."

She didn't care that much about the gay part, honestly — it was still uncomfortable sometimes, but she was working on that. It had really bothered her at first, but she understood that that was Dursley shite, and she... Well, she was mostly over it. And she had the feeling Sirius had already guessed, anyway. The point being, if Dorea was uncomfortable over that, Liz got it, she kind of still was too. Dorea being afraid of her mind magic... Liz understood she was a freakish devil child, sure, and kind of intimidating just in general — doubly so because people read her being generally inexpressive and shite with small talk and basic social stuff as her being a complete psychopath, which, she wasn't sure how that followed, but whatever. (Definitely couldn't be that she'd spent half of her childhood being punished for the slightest sign of churlishness or disrespect or 'whining', so she got so out of practice she honestly didn't even know how to do facial expressions anymore, and everyone had hated or been terrified of her so long she'd never learned how to talk to people normal like, couldn't be that, of course not.) But she'd never actually done anything to Dorea with mind magic. The worst she'd ever done to Dorea was knock her around a little in duelling practice in Defence class. Hell, the biggest mind magic Dorea had ever seen her do she'd done to help her, she didn't know why she was all...

Liz didn't know if it was more because of the scared-of-mind-magic part or the freaking-out-because-best-friend-is-gay part, but in the end it didn't really matter. As much as she realised people didn't really like her, people thinking shitty things about her wasn't exactly pleasant — thoughts about her tended to be more attention-grabbing, clinging at her, and bad thoughts about her were just uncomfortable. Grating, and itchy. The scared-of-mind-magic stuff could get pretty annoying sometimes (especially since Liz hadn't even done anything to her), but it wasn't that bad, she could ignore it most of the time. The freaking-out-because-gay thing had been unpleasant, prickly and cloying and nauseating, but it'd been pretty subtle, all things considered, as long as Dorea wasn't actively thinking about it it probably would have been fine, in future.

Dorea, while sitting right next to her, thinking that Liz might one day decide to use her mind-control superpowers to rape her was, just, awful. Liz was under no obligation to subject herself to that at the moment, so she wasn't going to.

And she would admit she wasn't exactly an expert at this being friends thing. But if you couldn't help being worried someone might just decide out of the blue to rape you one day, Liz was pretty sure you weren't friends.

(Liz hadn't even done anything to her, ever. She didn't understand.)

But there was absolutely no reason Sirius needed to know about any of that. "Did she ask you to talk to me about it?"

"No, no, she didn't— I was going to suggest we all go out to lunch or the cinema or something, and she was telling me it was a bad idea."

Ah, so Sirius had initially planned on going out with both of them. That made sense. "She could have come, if she wanted to. I'm not avoiding her or anything."

"That's...not what she seemed to think," he said, giving her an odd, confused sort of look. He didn't really feel confused — that seemed more suspicious than anything, she thought. If she'd been trying to play down what was going on with them (which she had been, sort of), it looked like she'd catastrophically failed.

"I'm not angry with her." Well, maybe a little bit, but she had to put up with people who annoyed her far more at school all the time. "I'm not going to run off if she shows up. I do kind of expect her to be around sometimes, when you are — she is your daughter."

"Right. My daughter. Not your friend."

That's certainly what it looked like, didn't it? "No."

"Okay," he said, drawing the word out long and low. "And why is that?"

Liz rolled her eyes. "I told you, it's private. I'm going to go take a quick shower now, and change into muggle clothes — if we stall here too long we're going to miss the show time."

"Right." Sirius was still watching her, eyes slightly narrowed, thoughts churning in his head, unpleasant tingles of something cold and slimy splashing against her skin in little waves. Didn't know what that was about. Clearly not happy about this whole thing with her and Dorea, but beyond that she really couldn't say. "I'll be down here. Might make some coffee before we leave, do you want some?"

"Sure, don't forget the cinnamon in mine. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Once she was out of sight, she started tugging at the laces of her robes, shaking her head to herself. Hopefully that was the awkward part of the day out of the way already — she didn't need Sirius trying to dredge up uncomfortable personal shite, she already got more than enough of that from Severus, honestly...

Though if it were Severus, he probably wouldn't have let her get away with blowing him off. So she guessed she was glad it was Sirius trying to talk to her about uncomfortable personal shite this time, because she really didn't want to talk about it.

Right, washing up, muggle London, get going already, Liz...

---

What, under 20k words, no way.

If the quick-step shit was trippy and weird and you have no idea what's going on there, then I did it correctly.

Right, don't really have anything to say for this one, despite pointing out how adorable Liz and Severus are. Next chapter is one I've been looking forward to for a while, which means it might come quickly from eagerness, or slowly from wanting to get it right, we'll have to see. My brain still isn't cooperating with any other fics right now, unfortunately, so we'll continue to be stuck with this one. See you all next week.