Valérie Étienne had no idea Liz was following her. And if everything went correctly, she never would.
In their last subsumption lesson before exam season really kicked off, Severus had said that Liz was more or less ready to instantly learn French, as soon as there was a convenient time. Though, as much as he'd agreed she was ready to try it, she was well aware he hadn't intended for her to run off and take care of it on her own — and Liz hadn't really planned to, not at first. But Severus was, as always, ridiculously busy, and finding the time to take a trip to France for the day so she could pick out someone to copy the language from was a pretty big time investment. Especially since Severus was trying to get as much shite out of the way as possible so he could go away to Romania for a week and not miss anything, yeah, he was kind of busy at the moment. If this year was anything like the last one, there'd be a little bit of a lull in his schedule around late July and early August, they'd be able to find time to do it then.
But that would be too late. Liz had been told countless times that English wasn't a particularly common language on the magical side, internationally. Which wasn't a surprise, if she understood correctly French used to be the big international language in Europe once upon a time — the term was "lingua franca" for a reason — before Britannia got down to ruling the waves proper, but that shift didn't happen until after Secrecy. The point being, there'd be practically no English being used whatsoever, anywhere in magical Romania — but plenty of people would know French.
It wasn't necessarily urgent that she copy French before then, it wasn't like she'd be completely lost or anything. The tournament organisers were handling all the participants' lodging and meals and so forth, and there'd be someone there to give them instructions and whatever else. Even the people coming to watch would be mostly fine, when it came to the tournament itself — apparently they'd have commentators for each of the dominant languages of the ICW, the stands separated by language and the wards keeping the proper commentary in the proper section, which was very neat. The spectators might have more trouble getting around the town outside of the tournament, but. And that was really where the problem came in for Liz too: they'd have a couple days off, and if she actually wanted to look around Jassy, go out for lunch or something, that'd be a lot easier if she could speak a language anyone in the bloody place was likely to know.
Not to mention, if she wanted to talk to the other competitors at all. They'd been told, running up to the end of the term, how things in Jassy were going to work, and normally the organisers would do this thing where— Well, there were enough schools sending teams to these things that putting everyone all in one big dining room wasn't really practical. So what they would do was have a bunch of different rooms where they'd stick a few teams in together, and mix up who was eating with who meal to meal, so every team would get to meet a bunch of different people from all over the Continent. Liz expected it would be quite awkward to be stuck in a room with people who mostly didn't speak English — if she wanted to know what people around her were talking about, she was going to have to either read everyone's minds all at once (which was intrusive and impractical) or just magically learn French.
So, if Severus didn't have the time to hold her hand through it, then she just had to do it herself.
Getting to France wasn't particularly difficult. Liz flooed down to London — stopping at the public floo grate in Dunskey just after the water crossing, so she didn't end up falling out like a clumsy idiot — and slipped into Gringotts to withdraw a few galleons' worth of pounds. Daedalus had said they didn't use "elvish" currency in other magical countries, and she had no idea what they used in France, and she'd be spending some time on the muggle side anyway, so she might as well convert to French money there. Instead of going by way of Brittany, which sounded like a pain, Liz flooed straight across the Channel to Calais; someone in the public floo there pointed her straight to a dedicated line to another public floo in Lille.
Except, this wasn't much like the public floo grates she'd seen in Britain, with a couple rows of fireplaces and some directories posted around, no, this looked much more like an airport. (From what Liz had seen in films and such, anyway, never been to one.) Which did make sense, because it basically was an airport — but since mages were bloody terrible at naming things, it was actually called a keyport, which was where you took international portkeys to and from, because of course it was. It looked pretty modern, all glass and metal and shite — Liz knew France's communalist revolution only a couple generations ago had been nasty, and then they'd been conquered by conservative forces, they'd probably had to build this one from scratch in the aftermath — with people wandering about, big signs with arrows on the walls pointing at this or that, even little coffee and newspapers stands here and there. Was one of the more modern-looking magical places Liz had ever been, it was a little surprising.
Britain had a keyport too — at least three, actually, she'd heard of ones in London, the Refuge, and Edinburgh — but Liz hadn't had a reason to go to any of them yet. They'd be leaving for Jassy from the one in London, so Liz guessed she'd see it then. She had the feeling it wouldn't look much like this, though.
Anyway, the multilingual signs thankfully included English, Liz followed the arrow pointing incoming travellers toward customs. This led to a big open room, divided in half by a line of desks (protected by wards she could feel tingling from here), multiple lines forming for people to be processed and let through. Kind of a lot of people around, which wasn't that much of a surprise — Lille was kind of an important transportation hub for France. In her research ahead of the trip, she'd read that most of the international travel coming from the north — Holland, the northwestern part of Germany (magical Germany, so around Dusseldorf and Cologne), Saxony, Scandinavia and the Baltics, including the northern parts of Poland — was routed through Lille. And, of course, Britain, when not going the long way around through Brittany. The room was filled with a lot of chatter in a variety of languages, Liz caught a couple snatches of Cambrian and English here and there but most of it was incomprehensible, French and German and who knew what else. She could still understand what people were thinking, because thoughts had no language (which was very neat), but what she heard was mostly just babbling noise.
It wasn't until after Liz had been standing in line for a few minutes that she belatedly realised she was in a foreign country — she'd just left Britain for the first time in her life. (Well, the Refuge was south of the Irish border, but there was no border on the magical side, so.) That was kind of an odd thought, she didn't know how she felt about it. Vaguely excited, maybe? The Dursleys had gotten as far as Lisbon or Majorca on holiday (she thought those were roughly the same distance away?), but they'd definitely never brought Liz along, this was a new one on her...
Actually getting through customs didn't take too long. Liz handed over her bag, which the attendant put on a little enchanted scale on his desk — some kind of magical scanner, she thought — asked Liz a few questions about what she was doing here in very laboured English. She wasn't certain she would have understood what he was trying to say without mind magic, but they got through it, it was fine. There was a little bit of a delay, for a very annoying reason — apparently, since Liz was a Lady of the Wizengamot, and therefore technically one of the rulers of magical Britain, when overseas she was technically a visiting dignitary. Bloody stupid. The attendant had to call up his superior to come over quick, which thankfully only took a minute, the older woman in a vibrant blue suit asking a couple questions to confirm she was who she said she was — they accepted her Gringotts draft book as proof, which was good because she didn't have anything else, she didn't know if magical Britain even did ID cards — there was a brief explanation from the older woman (who spoke surprisingly fluent Cambrian) of the rules around this kind of thing — since this wasn't an official state visit, there wasn't that much different from normal, though apparently she did get limited diplomatic immunity, just for really minor stuff, which was bloody weird — though with some added complications due to her still being a minor by local law, or she would be if it weren't for the fucking diplomatic immunity part. (Seriously, what the fuck.) The woman advised Liz not do anything age-restricted, if only to avoid making a scene, and just try not to make a nuisance of herself, she'd be fine. While they were talking, the attendant was filling out some papers, which she was told were proof she was a visiting bloody dignitary, which she was supposed to show to the authorities on the off chance that something came up — or when trying to get a hotel room, because they weren't supposed to let those out to minors either — she was handed back her bag, and they were finally done.
As soon as she was through the threshold, her skin tickling as she passed through the wards, Liz let out a sigh. That had been...a bit much. Visiting dignitary, honestly...
Anyway, from there it wasn't hard to find the outgoing floos, and Liz continued on to Paris. The main magical quarter in Paris wasn't that much different than the one in London — curving stone-paved streets, old-fashioned buildings of brick and plaster in a gaudy mix of bright colours, the occasional flash of magic here and there. There was less leaning — half the buildings in Charing looked like they could topple over at any moment — and Liz didn't see any robes or cloaks or whatever, the clothes people were wearing looking more modern — though not the same as muggle stuff either, a lot of the styles unfamiliar and very colourful — and of course the signs were all in French, but besides that, very similar. After a little bit of looking around, Liz managed to find a bank, where she exchanged her pounds for a mix of francs and...coupons? That had to mean something else in French...
It took Liz annoyingly long to find a decent hotel to stay at. The magical quarter was pretty big, probably larger than Charing — though she couldn't say for sure, she hadn't been everywhere in either — and everything was so colourful and jumbled and confusing, and of course the signs weren't in English. Multiple times she would walk in the lobby only to turn right around again, the inside looking too fancy or too trashy — it could be hard to tell from the outside sometimes. After what felt like bloody forever, she finally found one that would do. It wasn't super pretty and fancy inside, but it was clean and she got her own toilet, which some of the cheaper ones she'd looked at first didn't have. No shower, though, they just had a shared bathhouse thing for all the guests, but she'd only be here for a day or two, that was fine. Actually getting the room was a little bit of a pain, since the receptionist didn't speak English or Cambrian, and there was a bit of dithering about her age, but they got it worked out after a little bit.
It was already getting pretty far into the evening by then, so she went to their attached restaurant to eat quick. The menu was, of course, in French — there was actually a Cambrian one they brought her after a moment of stumbling, but just because she could read the language (sort of) didn't mean she knew what the fuck it meant. She didn't know...French food shite, this was mostly nonsense to her. She kind of cheated, after asking permission — by brushing the edge of the waitress's mind quick, she twitched with surprise, a little uneasy but clearly got the idea — pointing out a thing at the menu, and picking up from the woman's head what the thing was. It was pretty slow and awkward, but they figured it out.
This not-speaking-French thing was getting very annoying. She better go fix that.
After eating — some kind of beef stew thing, which had been fine enough, though she'd left half of the bread that came with it (apparently the French liked bread) — Liz set out again, this time into muggle Paris. Not before stopping in a magical bookshop to buy a map of the city, though. She was pretty sure Paris was about the same size as London, and she'd never been here before and also couldn't ask for directions, it'd be far too easy to get lost — and the map automatically marked her location for her, very neat. She wasn't actually looking for someone to use, yet, just planning out how she'd go about it.
She'd given it a little thought, and talked to Tamsyn about it, and she had a few requirements when it came to the person she copied the language from. It was just safer to pick a muggle — it wasn't super likely, but if a mage blacked out for an hour or so they might be able to figure out what happened and track it back to Liz, but a muggle wouldn't even know where to start. This could make things complicated for some languages that weren't common on the muggle side — the most extreme example was Prussian, which had been completely extinct on the muggle side for centuries, but after a nationalist revival programme was now the majority language of a tiny magical country in the Baltics — or had just diverged enough since the start of Secrecy that they were obviously different. While there were different dialects of French, it wasn't as big of a problem — Tamsyn said as long as she picked someone native to the area around Paris and Orléans, it should be fine. Also, a lot of languages had sex and generational differences, so it'd be best to find a young woman — not someone Liz's age, their mind might not be able to handle the stress, but maybe early twenties — and preferably someone well-educated, since the formal language taught in schools and stuff translated better to the magical dialect.
So, the obvious thing to do was to pick off a girl on a university campus or something.
There had to be universities in Paris, and the names would probably be identifiable — the words used in English were all Latin borrowings anyway — so it shouldn't be too hard to find one. And it turned out it wasn't hard at all: Liz walked out of the magical quarter, checked over the map quick, took a bridge across the river south and walked a couple blocks further, and boom, university campus, just right there. And there was another one literally two blocks east, and then another one a couple more blocks down the same road, and then another fucking huge one a couple blocks after that... Paris had a lot of bloody universities, apparently.
Actually she might just be in a funny part of town. There was an obvious theme to the buildings here, most of them made out of a similar off-white brick, one, two, three, four, five storeys, pressed in close to the pavement, with balconies and shite, a lot of the railing made out of the same black iron twisted into similar designs, in some places some really fancy-looking stonework and stuff, the roads narrow and winding around, some of them so small Liz was certain they were pedestrian-only. The buildings weren't uniform, it was obvious a lot of more modern remodelling had been done, and it was actually very colourful in places, stores and restaurants and stuff putting their own shite in there, and the balconies overhead tended to have potted plants and stuff, vines tangled along the railing, some plants hanging down nearly to the street. Liz had learned enough from her time in London that this must be an older part of the city, the white-brick frame everything was in centuries old, probably dating back to when the French Empire had still been a very big deal and Paris was pretty much the most powerful and wealthiest city in the world. There were parts of London that looked kind of like this, though different in the details. The university here was probably ancient, like from the Middle Ages — though it was odd there seemed to be so many small ones, and not one big one, maybe it'd been split up at some point? or maybe it actually was one big one, and the signs she saw were just marking different departments? Whatever, not really important.
It was a neat area of town, though, pretty and colourful, food smells and music leaking out of restaurants, and... It was kind of reminding her of the more middle-class areas of Charing and the Refuge, actually, like the muggle version of the same idea. It was pretty noisy, car traffic relatively light (though heavier in the major avenues around the edges of the district) but thick with people wandering around and chatting, some even getting pretty rowdy, Liz circled around what sounded very much like a fist-fight about to start. She wouldn't want to live here, too many people, but it wasn't bad.
Liz came back the next morning, straight after breakfast, but she didn't go straight to one of the campuses. She figured the best time to pick someone would be around lunchtime, when people were more likely to be between classes and wandering around — assuming there were classes going on during the summer, but there had been people on campus the previous night, so there must be. But she needed to get some new muggle clothes, and also proof of something else she'd done while in France so people wouldn't wonder why she'd gone, so she might as well take care of that while she waited. The first shop she came across seemed a little too fancy, she actually stopped someone to ask for directions to one which wouldn't be ridiculously expensive — it didn't matter if it was a little pricey, but there was no point in throwing too much money at something she didn't even care about that much, and wouldn't even be able to use for very long anyway. Thankfully, English turned out to be more common on the muggle side than it was on the magical, the woman she asked spoke iffy but understandable English, it was fine. Though she did spend annoyingly long asking Liz if she was lost and where her mum was, honestly, how young did she look?
(Stupid question, she was a bloody mind-reader, she knew the woman was guessing she was eleven or twelve at most...which wasn't that far off from her actual age, to be fair. Liz still dressed like a bloody child most of the time, which she guessed didn't really help.)
Anyway, after whiling away a few hours on that, Liz snuck into an alley somewhere to shrink her bags quick, and then stopped in a cafe for an early lunch — she wasn't really hungry, but she was doing a lot of walking, and it was a pretty warm day, seemed like a good idea. It took a couple tries to find one that didn't look too fancy, and it wasn't until she was looking over a menu (thankfully they had an English version) that she realised "café" probably didn't mean the same thing here it did back home. Oh well, they had coffee, and sandwiches and whatever, it was fine.
The coffee was really good, actually, way better than what she made at home, Liz ended up ordering a second just because. She might have to find an excuse to visit Paris again someday, if only for the coffee. Ooh, Hermione had given her excellent imported chocolate before, but she wouldn't know where to find that...
Wasn't Hermione in France at the moment, visiting her grandmother? (They'd initially planned to go somewhere further away this summer, but Emma didn't want to take a long-distance plane trip while very pregnant, something about radiation and turbulence or whatever.) That was in Orléans, right, that wasn't very far away, Liz could probably take a train or something there pretty easy...or just the floo, she guessed. But she didn't know where exactly, and it was kind of late to ask, and just showing up unannounced would be a weird thing to do. And she'd end up having to be introduced to Hermione's family, which would probably be awkward. So, never mind.
Liz wandered around for a little bit, eventually settling into a little green space outside of...the College of France? Fuck, another one, how many schools did they have around here?! Whatever, not important. There were some stairs here, and a big thick stone balustrade, a tiny little square between the green patches with a statue of a bloke called Claude...Bernard, maybe? The stone was kind of worn, hard to tell for sure from here. Some old dead person, anyway. Liz hopped up onto the railing, a book folded open in her lap — mostly for the look of the thing, she didn't actually do any reading. Instead she kept a surreptitious eye on her surroundings, mind open and drifting around the green space, looking for someone who would do.
She wasn't exactly lacking in options — there were enough people around all the thoughts and feelings buffeting her were giving her a headache. Thankfully, she was here maybe only twenty minutes at most before Valérie and her friends walked by. There were four of them all together, and Liz felt very certain that this was it (Seer thing), Liz waited for a little bit of distance to open up before hopping off of her perch and following them.
Valérie Étienne was nineteen (twenty in September), from Évry, which was apparently a suburb of Paris. From the feel of it, it was one of those industrial towns that used to be super-important and well-off and whatever, but had significantly decayed over the last decades — it didn't sound like Évry was nearly as bad as, like, where Severus lived, but noticeably less nice than it used to be. Her father had been an engineer or something when Valérie had been younger — Liz got the impression she didn't really know — but now kind of jumped from thing to thing, "consulting", whatever the fuck that meant; her mother was a...German teacher, at the same lycée (secondary school?) Valérie had gone to which, yes, had gotten awkward at times, especially since she kind of sucked at German. She had two younger brothers, one of whom was kind of a fuck-up, but the other was brilliant and big with science and computers and whatever, going to a special school for it and everything (which was apparently something they did in France?) — Valérie was a little resentful of her parents' focus on her brothers, but she was too nice to say anything about it, and when it was bothering her would go off to hang around with her friends until she cooled off.
Her parents being big on education and everything, there'd really been no question about going to university, so Valérie hadn't really thought about it that hard, just gone along with what she was expected to do. At the moment she was a student at University Paris-Sarbonne — also called Paris IV, for some ridiculous reason, apparently something about one big institution being split up into several smaller ones after a bunch of fucking riots and the school buildings getting occupied by communists back in the 60s? Because she didn't really know what she was doing, she was studying history and the classics (like Latin and Greek and shite), because they were neat and she had absolutely no clue what she wanted to do with her life, which her parents were irritated/disappointed about, but oh well. There were vague thoughts about maybe teaching, in some university or lycée, while writing fiction and history books on whatever her latest curiosity was on the side, but just vague thoughts, she didn't know at this point.
Of course, Liz was also looking in the heads of the other girls, so she could tell Valérie not really knowing what she was doing was perfectly normal — apparently Severus had been on point with that one.
Since Valérie was a big bookish type, her French was excellent — though she'd been irritating her parents lately by picking up working-class Parisian youth slang, but obviously she still knew proper French — between the four girls was probably Liz's best pick for that reason. One of them was from the far south of the country, where they spoke a noticeably different dialect (it was even a separate country on the magical side) — she spoke mostly normal, but Valérie sometimes had trouble understanding her when she was drunk and not keeping a hold on her accent. One of the other two had been born and raised in Germany — her parents were French, but it was still her second language — and the last was from some country in Africa called Gabon she'd literally never heard of before — a former French colony, apparently. All three had noticeable accents, so it would be Valérie.
And after Liz had been following the women for a few minutes, hanging several metres back and gently sifting through their minds, she stumbled across another reason it was going to be Valérie: the other three were returning to campus, but Valérie was going home. She meant, not back to Évry, where they were living here in Paris. Apparently Valérie was doing something with her boyfriend tonight, they were supposed to meet up in a few hours — which seemed early to Liz, but apparently they had a whole long plan, including coffee and dancing and dinner and getting drunk (and possibly high) and ending up at his place for the night. The other three were also going to go out drinking tonight — apparently that was just normal for people this age in France? — but Valérie's plans were separate from theirs, and she wanted to go and shower and change into something nice and everything, so.
Apparently she planned on not wearing knickers tonight, which, fucking hell, Valérie, whatever does it for you, Liz guessed...
(Liz would never be able to do something like that herself, but it was a...interesting thought. And now she was thinking about Daphne's knickers, or lack thereof, for fuck's sake, stop it...)
The four women briefly paused at a corner to say goodbye, arranging to meet up at some coffeeshop somewhere the day after tomorrow, and then they split up, three of them following the corner around and Valérie crossing the street. Liz continued following Valérie, reaching a little deeper into her head to get an impression of what the route ahead of them was like. She would need a good time to snag her, somewhere isolated to go off to...
Ah, perfect! There was a relatively fancy clothing store ahead, the changing rooms were nice and fully-enclosed — Valérie had gotten a dress there once, but it was too expensive for her to shop at regularly. As they approached, Liz slipped a compulsion into her head — relatively gently, to not be too jarring, but with enough force behind it to make sure it would take — maybe she should get something fun and sexy for tonight, she had some time before she had to really get going, might as well look. Liz caught the thought, even as Valérie walked through the doors, that this was a little silly, she really shouldn't throw away too much money on frivolous things, and Liz immediately countered it with a compulsion to not think about the cost at all, just pick something she liked — Liz would leave her money to cover it. Sort of paying for her French lessons, if that made sense.
She didn't really have to, it wasn't like Valérie would even realise anything had happened, but it just...felt like the thing to do. Balanced. It was possible she'd been reading too much ritual magic shite...
Of course, that meant Liz had to wait for Valérie to pick something out, but that was fine, she wasn't in any rush. The store was all clean and bright and colourful, and Liz kind of stuck out a little (they didn't sell kids' clothes), but it was trivial to just compel the employees and customers around to ignore her — that wouldn't do a thing to any security cameras, but Liz doubted that would matter. It wasn't like just sitting here not bothering anyone was particularly suspicious, and nobody should have any reason to check back through the footage after the fact.
She was waiting for maybe a whole half hour before Valérie was finally moving — honestly, if she'd known it was going to take this long she might not have bothered. She followed Valérie back, leaned around the corner to watch which changing room she was getting into. A quick compulsion on the attendant to go use the toilet, and Liz darted along the row of doors, drawing her wand once she was out of sight of the shop floor, she unlocked the door and slipped inside.
Valérie was saying something, surprise and confusion sparking on the air in the tiny little wood-panelled room, but it was in French. Also, she didn't get more than a few words in before Liz compelled her to shut up and stay still — a much heavier, harder compulsion, crashing into place with almost physical force, the babble cut off instantly. Valérie hadn't gotten very far, still fully dressed, sitting on a bench against the side wall to take off her shoes. Good, if Liz had been slow enough she was already changing this would have been awkward.
Liz pulled a potion phial out of her bag, popped off the cap and held it out to the (confused and increasingly terrified) woman. "Drink this, and lie down." Valérie did actually understand the English, but even if she didn't it wouldn't matter, the words were just to help Liz focus better, like an incantation. Under the weight of the compulsion, Valérie was conscious enough to wonder who Liz was and what the potion was and what the fuck was happening, and kind of freak out about it a little, but even with her mind jittering with nerves Liz's grip was far too firm for Valérie to even attempt to resist. Liz had gotten practice since her first stumbling attempts at controlling Vernon — the movements smooth and without the slightest hint of hesitation, Valérie took the phial and threw the potion back, emptying it in a single gulp, and started turning to lie down on the bench.
Once Liz could tell which direction Valérie was turning, she set her bag down against the wall on the side Valérie was putting her head, so she could use it as a pillow. I know this is scary as hell, Liz thought directly into Valérie's mind (her English wasn't excellent, and thoughts had no language), but I'm not going to hurt you. I just need to borrow your mind for a moment. You'll be fine — I'll even pay for the dress. Liz glanced where Valérie had hung it, the silky, shimmery cloth a vibrant deep red shaded just a little bit toward purple. The part right toward the top had a curly lacey flowery design, not stitched into it but, kind of, cut out of it, intricate enough to make enough holes to make it rather see-through up there, another few inches down by the hem had a similar thing. Not something Liz would be able to wear, her scars would show, but very pretty, she actually liked it. Let's see, there must be a price tag...yeah, she had enough cash on her to cover it. Shoes?
The sedative was already coming into effect, Valérie's panic crumbling as she was dragged down, down, feeling warm and slow, thoughts bumbling around unfocused. Valérie wondered if there was morphine or something in that, kind of reminded her of this one time at a party last year when she took some pills, which, Jesus, what the hell was going on in France? But, there was actually opium in there, it was used in a lot of potions for— Whatever, not important. As confused and dazed and afraid and numb as she was, the thought still floated up through the mess that part of why Valérie had gone with this one was because she already had heels at home that would work with it.
Good, then. I'll give you the antidote once I'm done, and wipe your memory of the last minute or so — you won't remember a thing. If Liz did it right, she wouldn't even realise any time had passed, but she didn't trust herself to be quite that delicate. Valérie would probably just write it off as feeling a bit odd for a moment, it shouldn't be bad enough to really make a big deal out of.
It didn't take very long from there, Valérie sinking further and further, her mind turning warm and still and smooth. The potion wasn't putting her to sleep — Liz needed to be able to interact with her mind, and that wouldn't work right if she was unconscious — more a kind of trance thing. If it worked right, Valérie should temporarily be incapable of any emotions or conscious thoughts, just existing in a state of complete passivity. Still awake enough to react to Liz's compulsions properly, but not able to do anything to fuck it up. It only lasted for maybe ten minutes, but Liz shouldn't need that long.
While waiting for the potion to fully take effect, Liz gave Valérie a look over — she'd been watching Valérie with her mind, not her eyes, she hadn't actually gotten a good look at her before barging into the changing room. Chin-length curly brown hair, round cheeks and pointy nose, she had these strappy sandal things (abandoned on the floor now), wearing a flittery sleeveless sundress, with one of those necks that looped around from the front leaving her upper back uncovered — which was probably rather cold on the bench, Liz cast a warming charm with a careless swish of her fingers — the hem not quite reaching her knees, mostly blue with little splotches of white here and there, some kind of design in yellow across her waist. There was a speckle of metal in her earlobes, rather featureless little things just holding the spot, her finger and toenails painted red. Liz guessed the dress was nice (though she'd never be able to wear that herself, not comfortable showing that much skin), and Valérie... Well, she wasn't stunningly beautiful, more the random-person-on-the-street kind of pretty, you know. From snooping in her head, she knew Valérie was, just, a pretty normal girl, all around — much like her appearance, nice and pleasant and inoffensive, but not particularly special or interesting.
And Valérie had plans today, and the potion wouldn't last forever, so Liz should get down to it.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor nearby and leaning against the wall, Liz reached toward Valérie's mind — the potion made her feel kind of weird, the tingling restless energy of a living person but diffuse and undirected. It was slightly uncomfortable, pressing in around her, almost like stepping into a really, really thick fog. Or maybe more like pudding, she guessed. Her mind was still working, though, a quick thought telling Valérie to think about pink elephants had the fog around her instantly turn into a thousand flashes of pink elephants (and all kinds of random shite Valérie apparently thought was related to pink elephants), so, it was working.
Subsuming knowledge wasn't particularly difficult, but getting the mind to properly cue up the knowledge she wanted could be a little bit of a pain. Liz couldn't just think French at her, because that would cue everything France-related — since Valérie was French, that was an absurd proportion of the shite she knew, not just language stuff. Using just the concept of language was probably fine? Valérie also spoke German — badly, but some — and English — picked up from American films and music, understood it but didn't really speak it — and tiny little bits of Italian and Greek and Arabic, and of course also a fair bit of Ancient Latin and Greek, if more written than spoken. (Jesus, making Liz feel stupid over here.) Except, looking at what her think about language poke had brought up, she hadn't gotten any of the other stuff, for some reason, just French and German and English. The English shouldn't be a problem — Liz was adding to her knowledge, not replacing it, so Valérie's imperfect English shouldn't fuck with Liz's — and if she picked up a little German while she at it, that wasn't exactly a bad thing.
She wondered how many languages a person was physically capable of learning — the brain only had a limited number of neurons, after all. Though, bringing magic in probably fucked with that somehow. There was a magical language talent, kind of like snake-speak, called omniglottalism, where a person instinctively copied other people's understanding of languages just by being around them. (It worked through mind magic, but nobody was entirely certain how.) Professor Babbling, the only omniglot Liz had ever met, spoke a couple dozen languages at least (more than that counting different dialects and stuff), which sounded like it was probably getting close to the ceiling, but supposedly Crouch, magical Britain's Foreign Secretary -equivalent, spoke over two hundred. However many languages it was physically possible for a person to learn, that was definitely over the limit, magic must help people cheat somehow.
The point was, Liz was pretty sure that subsuming French and German shouldn't take up any brain space — at least, she thought this should work by the same principle as omniglottalism. Not a hundred per cent, but she didn't think it would be a problem, she could subsume dozens of languages and not cut into any of her other knowledge, should be fine.
So, right, let's just do that then. Liz grabbed at the complex web of words and concepts and connections in Valérie's head, like fisting her hand in her bedsheet, and drew it together, pulling, pulling. Pressing it together, making it more dense, Liz started stitching a shell around the edges — like plaiting hair, twining the magic of the knowledge and Liz's mind together, but in all directions and not just a straight row. Making a kind of rigid bubble, like. Mind energy stuff lost coherence once there wasn't a mind supporting it anymore, after all, compressing it together and holding it there in a limited space helped it keep its shape long enough for Liz to subsume it. Like a growth spreading out from the edge of Valérie's mind, pulling in more and more information — not actually looking at it, only glancing at it every once in a while to make sure it was still working, occasionally giving Valérie another think about language poke to keep it coming — the border gradually inching closer to Liz as it filled further and further, Liz pausing every couple seconds to extend the bubble-weave further around, bigger and bigger and...
Until Liz reached around to extend the bubble some more...and couldn't. She tried, but even as she did she felt the bubble weaken elsewhere, magic being pulled out to... Huh. Must be running out of mind magic stuff she could use. With a short breath, vaguely feeling her eyes screw tighter shut, Liz channelled more magic into her mind — a burn started to build at the back of her skull, copper on her tongue and colours dancing behind her eyes. Right, that was as much as she could handle, any more than that and she'd start hurting herself. Keep going, Liz gave Valérie's mind another prod and continued pulling the knowledge into her bubble, expanding it as she went, more and more and more—
She scrambled to shore up the weave as, trying to add some more stitches at the end, she lost her grip and a rent was torn through the middle, a few snippets flittering through her mind and out into the air, like bubbles rising in soda, gone before she could catch them. Dammit! Once the bubble was stable again, Liz slumped against the wall, her fingers idly tapping at the floor next to her. It turned out languages were bloody huge, she didn't have enough mental capacity to hold all of it at once. Maybe if she could do a single bit of bloody occlumency, she'd be able to use the mind energy stuff she was thinking with to add to the bubble, but she didn't know how to do that.
Or, maybe she could...
Liz gave Valérie's mind another poke, drawing out more language stuff, drew it in until the bubble was full. Then, sinking down and drawing Valérie's mind stuff up (kind of like doing quick-step, bringing them closer together), once that bit of Valérie was enough like Liz that she could control it, she pulled that around, plaiting it together with the edge of the gathered knowledge. It was a little difficult, since the knowledge and Valerie's mind were made out of the same stuff, not giving her enough contrast, fingers a little clumsy, but after a little bit of fiddling she got it to work. Holding her breath, she let go...and the weave stayed in place, as stable as the parts made with Liz's mind stuff — ha, got it! Smirking to herself, Liz continued on, pulling more magic, weaving the bubble together bigger and bigger, on and on...
Of course, since the knowledge in the bubble was still technically part of Valérie, she was running out of mind stuff too, going quiet and dark. Which was easy enough to fix, Liz just reached around to the back of her mind, down down down, and channelled magic straight into it, the same way she did to push out her own mind, Valérie's presence flaring to life with a bright flash of not-light and—
...
Liz had the feeling she'd just done something really weird. She hadn't been thinking about it, just done what felt right in the moment, but feeling Valérie's renewed mind bright and energetic against hers, she... Well, the thing that made mind mages special was that they could channel magic directly into their minds, that wasn't a normal person thing, and fucking with another person's soul like that was kind of absurd. Had anyone ever done this before? Someone must have at some point, like just random mind mages fucking about through history, but. She wondered if it was possible to teach someone to be a mind mage just by breaking open the window and showing them how it worked — not Valérie, no, she didn't have the ability to channel magic at all, but another mage, maybe.
She would say she should test this idea, but she doubted anyone she knew was going to agree to her poking about with the very core of their being, and it really wouldn't work without their cooperation. Oh well.
Anyway, with the help of the energy she'd added to Valérie's mind, she finally got to the end not much later — another prod didn't come up with much, just little flickers not really connected to anything, so that must be it. Right, time to do the subsumption part. Liz tried to grip all the way around the bubble, to yank it out, but it was too bloody big, she couldn't... When she thought about it, she was pretty sure she didn't need to do that step. Besides, Valérie's mind was still holding the other half of the bubble, if she pulled it all the way out it'd probably tear apart. But she didn't want to take a big bite out of Valérie's soul while copying the language(s), so she, kind of...
It was hard to explain, exactly. Still holding on to her half of the bubble, she pulled the rest of herself back, out of Valérie's mind entirely, until the only thing connecting them was the bubble, like a bridge from one mind to the other. And it was like a bridge, Liz could kind of skim right across the surface of the bubble into Valérie — much smoother and slippier than normal, like the bubble was conductive or something. Which was neat, she'd have to ask Sev– Tamsyn, she'd have to ask Tamsyn later.
Right, okay, she wasn't holding on to Valérie's mind at all, that should do it. She pushed magic through the weave of the bubble and inside — not mind stuff, but magic magic, like casting a charm but channelled into the bubble instead of through her arm. She willed the magic inside to trace over the pattern of the information in there, like taking a rubbing of an inscription, and pushed in more magic, and more, and more, and...
This was taking a long time, actually. Which did make sense, it turned out languages are bloody huge. After what felt like several minutes — it wasn't actually that long, time could be funny in mind-magic-space — magic started to slip back out through the weave, like steam lifting out of a pot. Right, that was it, the bubble should be completely inundated.
Taking a last glance over the bubble, the size of the knowledge she was about to subsume, Liz grimaced — this was going to hurt. She sucked in a long, deep breath, brow furrowing in concentration, and forced purpose into the magic, firm and certain. This knowledge was hers.
This is mine, it is part of me, mine, mine, mi—
Blinding white light flashing in her mind, piercing hot agony exploded at the back of her head and crawled down her neck, a strangled groan wrenched out of her throat before she caught it, her teeth grit painfully tight as her breath burned in her lungs, her heart pounding in her throat and her fingers, she bent over, her forehead against her knees and her arms wrapped tight around her head, pressing herself down, her fingers shaking—
Liz let out a shaky, thin sigh when the pain abruptly lifted, slumped limp against the wall, cold sweat prickling at her skin. Or the pain was mostly gone, anyway — she'd been left with a dull, pounding headache, in sync with her heartbeat, her muscles a little sore and twitchy, like she'd just gotten out of a long, hard duelling team practice. Also, she could use a drink, she was suddenly very thirsty.
Fuck, that had been unpleasant. She had expected it to be, she'd never subsumed something that big all at once before, but, ugh...
Once her breath had slowed down, Liz straightened a little, and... How did she tell if it— Oh, that was a stupid question — she only had to think about it for a second and she immediately knew she spoke French now.
Oh, wow, French spelling was stupid. English wasn't any better, she guessed, but really. At least German wasn't that bad...
The real question was whether she could actually speak it correctly — just because she knew the words didn't mean she could pronounce them. Hell, she had problems pronouncing her own language (bloody Ls and Ts, honestly), so who the fuck knows.
Might as well test it. "Um... His cat sing—" No, wait, that was wrong, she just sounded like Doça for a second there. Valérie's southern friend, she meant, she got those same vowels wrong sometimes...though Liz wasn't sure how she knew that — a few connections besides just the language must have slipped through, that could happen. Anyway, "His cat sings his song." Ha, nailed it. "These cherries are so sour we don't know if they're really cherries. The wheel on the road road— Ach, shite." ...Well, at least the swearing came out in proper French. "The wheel on the road rolls, the road under the road stays — ha, there, stupid thing..." And Liz thought English had too many vowels, that was just annoying.
And how about... "Eight old ants ate pineapple in the evening. We Viennese washerwomen would wash white clothes, if we knew where the soft, warm water was." Yep, there was German too, that wasn't so bad. Actually, sitting here thinking about it, and being able to directly know what Valérie knew, she had the feeling Valérie's German wasn't nearly as bad as she thought it was — she just had a bit of an accent and slipped up the grammar sometimes, and was silly and self-conscious about it. So, Liz hadn't just picked up some German, she also spoke German now. Not fluently, sure, but better than she did Cambrian, anyway.
So, she got two languages for the price of one. Neat!
And she hadn't accidentally broken her mind either, as Severus had been worried she might — that silly man was so bloody paranoid sometimes.
Anyway, she was calling this a brilliant success. She just had to wake up Valérie, blank her memory quick, and then she could slip out and get on her way. Probably head to a café or something — that had been a lot of shite to subsume all at once, took a lot out of her, she could use a snack and some more coffee. Getting the antidote out of her bag while Valérie's head was resting on it was a little bit of a pain, Liz helped tip her head up so she could get the potion down, and there, Valérie should be back to normal in a minute. Liz slipped out her map, found the spot where her current location was marked, hmm, there were some restaurants and shite over here (she'd annotated the map, like a not stupid person), so if she went left out of the shop, straight at the first street, and then take a right at the next, and...
Once she had her route planned, Liz frowned, turned to stare down at Valérie. She hadn't moved. The potion should have worked by now, it was possible she'd slipped into sleep and Liz would need to wake her up, maybe? That shouldn't have happened, from the potion's description, but whatever, it shouldn't—
...What was...
Looking at her, Liz had reached out with mind magic — just instinctively, focussing on someone tended to have her reaching toward them without meaning to — and something was off. There was something going on in there, Liz could see the activity, flashes of thoughts and feeling stitched together in the familiar web of associations, the potion had definitely worn off. But it...didn't look right.
It was smaller, for one thing. Not as small as one of those rabbits, no, and it could be hard to tell for sure, she only really got a vague, relative impression of the size of things when doing this stuff. But it was enough of a difference that Valérie's mind was noticeably diminished, still with the same intense energy of a human mind, but...quieter, burning cooler.
And there was something definitely wrong with it. Fingers dragging along the outside, feeling out its shape, it didn't feel properly smooth and uniform, like there were—
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
She remembered Severus explaining, way back after her first encounter with a dementor ten months ago now, about fracturing. That a mind could be split into pieces, acting independently from one another — they might or might not be conscious, depending on whether any of them had gotten a large enough fraction to sustain it. Liz vaguely remembered waking up after the dementor attack from two different perspectives, one which had ended up with control of her body, and for some reason thought she was six years old or something, confused, and another as though looking on from the outside — not in the sense of an out-of-body experience or anything, more like how it felt to eavesdrop in someone's head — but distant and unfocused and dream-like. The latter had had barely enough energy to be properly conscious, Liz understood, but the former had been locked out of...a lot of stuff, including most of her memories, which was why she'd still thought she was living with the Dursleys.
Normally, Severus had said, the brain continuing to generate the mind would gradually drag it back to its natural state. But if the fracturing had been "burned into" (the phrase he usually used) the underlying structure, then the fractured state would be reinforced instead — basically, the default, natural state of the person's mind would have become a fractured one. That had kind of happened with Liz and the dementor, but only partially, she hadn't been stuck with the dementor long enough for it to get too deeply settled. It still hadn't been easy to fix — if Hogwarts hadn't a healer who was also a mind mage and a dark arts nerd on staff, they would have needed to send her to Saint Mungo's (and if the hospital had gotten a case like Liz's they might have called Severus in to help anyway) — but she'd been fine a few days later.
Dementors fed on people through subsumption — like most demons did, really, dementors were just one of the more dangerous kinds but the mechanics were the same. Subsumption was one of those things that "burn" a new structure into a mind.
Her stomach sinking, unpleasant tingles crawling over her scalp and down her back, Liz was starting to get the feeling that she'd fucked up very badly.
But she hadn't done anything! She hadn't been touching Valérie at all when she did the subsumption, focussed entirely on the...
On the bubble. Which she'd used some of Valérie's mind-stuff to weave.
...Fuck.
And, now that she was standing here thinking about it, it was... She... She hadn't been thinking about— Valérie's mind-stuff had been running low, Liz had needed to boost it with some magic and everything, the knowledge she'd moved into the bubble was made of Valérie's mind-stuff. She'd thought, when the bubble was separated from Valérie, yeah, it'd still be her mind-stuff, but it wasn't really part of her anymore. Like when Liz threw too much into a compulsion, and was left unbalanced and dizzy for a moment, it was gone but Valérie would just make more. That was what was supposed to happen, it should have just come back...
...except Liz hadn't fully separated the bubble from Valérie's mind. There had been a barrier between them, but if, for whatever weird magical reason, the knowledge inside had still been considered part of Valérie's mind...
Fuck!
Her wand hand shaking, Liz cast a sealing charm on the door — it was already locked, but she didn't want anyone to walk in on— She'd permanently broken Valérie's mind, took a big bloody bite out of her, and— Reaching inside (the contents vague and unfocussed, Liz thought she might be sick) she traced over the border between the slivers of Valérie's mind. It wasn't a clean break, little sparks of stuff suspended inside and causing the stuff in the segments to other side to kind of twist, as though getting caught on something, and... It was the weave from the bubble, Liz realised, though it didn't feel quite the same — kind of like the negative of a photograph, but more complicated than just the colours being wrong, the space and texture all mixed up. The pattern was very complex, getting rid of it would... Well, Liz wasn't a healer, but she had the feeling it'd be much more difficult than whatever Severus had done to fix Liz that one time.
And that wasn't getting into the big chunk that Valérie was just missing. Liz had no idea whether that was fixable at all. It might be, using subsumption to add energy, but it was...kind of difficult to make something else subsume something — subsumption was almost always reflexive, almost by definition. And Valérie wasn't capable of doing it herself. Muggles might actually be able to do subsumption, when Liz thought about it, but it required being fully conscious. Maybe Liz could kind of keep her propped up by channelling magic into her mind, but...
Liz was pretty sure this was permanent, that it couldn't be fixed.
Liz was in so much trouble.
Her skin crawling, sharp and painful, she could hardly breathe, the ghost of it on the air like a bad smell, turning the air too thick to get past her throat, making her dizzy, the walls of the tiny little room seeming to press in on her, the door rattling as Petunia slammed home the lock—
Grimacing, Liz leaned against a wall, let herself sink down to the floor ("Get up, girl."), her fingers burying themselves in her hair. She forced a few breaths, coming thin and shaky, her chest shivering in protest. Her knees pointed up, her skirt slid down, she stared at her legs (Jesus, she was so bloody pale), trying to concentrate, to push off the panic sizzling away in her head, the ringing in her throbbing ears sounding too much like Petunia's screeching, eyes crawling on her skin like wasps, her scars burning and her stomach aching, she couldn't—
She felt a hand on her back, heavy and rough, pushing her down, and Liz cringed away from the wall, tipping over onto her knees ("Don't argue, girl, just—"), she scrambled back to the bench and whipped her bag down (snap), shaking fingers pawing through it, she knew she had one in here, she had to (—warm and rough at the small of her back, a fingernail scraping against her skin, hooking into the waistband and yanking—), she couldn't– the bottle of soft blue potion in her hand, shaking, she nearly dropped it, she couldn't get a grip on the cork, her fingers numb and shivering, hissing curses slipping through her teeth, she—
(snap)
(—between her shoulders, shoving her down hard, the cloth of the sofa scratching at her face and—)
(—eyes on her skin like wasps, shaking, nearly tipped over, her pants sliding against her legs bright and—)
Some kind of noise choked through her throat — wasn't sure, more felt than heard — there was a ringing lurch of magic, her fingers burning, the top of the bottle was blown off, slivers of broken glass tinkling against the floor, she threw back the potion without thinking, and—
And Liz was far away from here.
Slumping limp to the floor, she flopped over onto her back, stared blankly up at the ceiling. Her throat and chest ached, her fingers twitching now and then, but slowing as seconds passed, the panic suffocated by the flood of...nothing. Her tongue tingling, the smooth flower-sweetness taken over her mouth and nose, each breath tasting like lavender, Liz felt nothing at all, her mind a big warm blank absent of even any coherent thought, and Liz floated for what felt like hours and seconds at the same time, far far away...
She tasted blood.
She dribbled back to earth, slowly, as the initial shock of the too-large dose of calming potion wore off, her mind gradually, clumsily lurching back into motion. Once she didn't feel too numb and warm and comfortable to even think of moving, one hand came up, slow and drifting, to her lip. She turned to look at her wet fingers, blinking.
With some effort, she managed to tip over onto her hands and knees, crawled closer to the mirror. There was a narrow little cut in her lower lip, blood smeared around, beginning to trail down her chin. She must have cut herself on the broken potion bottle — she hadn't noticed at the time. She hardly noticed now, it didn't— Oh, she guessed it did hurt, a little bit, a vague sharp heat, that... Must be the calming potion, it was slowly coming back now, though she wasn't sure why she hadn't noticed it in the first place. Thankfully, it was only a little cut, it wasn't difficult to close up with the basic healing charm they'd been taught in class, she washed off the blood quick. Still too numb to stand, she turned to sit against the wall again, letting out a deep sigh.
Her eyes gradually turned over to Valérie — she hadn't moved a muscle, Liz would think her asleep if she couldn't see into her mind. She stared, not really seeing what she was looking at, just...
It would be okay.
In the cold, impersonal logic the potion allowed her, the panic over what Vernon was going to do when she got home held at bay (which was completely ridiculous, she hated her brain), Liz knew there was nothing to worry about. Nobody would ever find out what happened here. If she left, just left Valérie here, the attendant would find her eventually. It didn't matter what the muggle doctors did, she would never wake up — for all intents and purposes, it would look to them like Valérie had just...slipped into a coma. The subsumption might have left some brain damage they could detect, but... It would seem odd, surely, but...Liz didn't think it was magically odd. Not enough to attract attention from mages, just, some random tragedy, the sort of thing that happened every day all over the world. Muggles wouldn't be able to track it back to her, the only way the mages could was through divination, looking back to this moment, but they would have no reason to ever learn of the existence of Valérie Étienne.
No one would know.
Liz let out another sigh, her head falling back to clunk against the wall. Good. That was good.
Her mind was too open all the time, Liz couldn't go to Azkaban. She'd be dead inside a week.
It was an...odd thought, something sharp in her chest, cool tingles running along her skin — the feeling too vague through the calming potion, even if she were any good at figuring out her own shite. She'd basically just murdered this woman. Valérie would live, physically, but her mind was permanently broken, she would never wake up, she might as well be dead. And Liz was going to get away with it.
She didn't know how she felt about that. She didn't know how she should feel about it.
Relieved, maybe — she had the feeling Severus would be rather less willing to overlook this fuckup.
...Valérie might as well be dead.
She wasn't, quite, but she would never wake up, so at this point it made little difference.
Turning back to stare at Valérie, her breath catching in her throat, snatches from books flickering by in her head, runes flashing in her eyes.
She might as well be dead already. It made little difference at this point.
It made little difference whether Valérie was found deep in an unexplained coma, or was just...never found at all.
Liz tipped onto her knees, crawled back over to her bag, vanishing the scattered glass as she went. She pulled out a pen, transfigured it into a knife — one of the ones with a long handle and a sharp, angled blade, like for carving runes. She sidled closer to the bench, looked down at Valérie. Her eyes were open, but unfocused and unmoving, not truly seeing anything. No life behind them, not enough of a mind in there to support much of anything, diminished and fractured.
But not entirely gone. Not yet.
Liz brushed some of her hair out of the way, smooth and soft and cool against her fingers. She took a slow, deep breath, forced herself to concentrate through the numbness from the calming potion. And she brought her hand up, pressed the tip of the knife against skin, and began cutting the first rune into Valérie's chest. The woman was practically dead anyway, no use in letting her go to waste.
And Tamsyn had said this was the sort of thing you worked up to — let's see if she had enough practice now...
Oops? Is that an oops? Yeah, let's call that an oops. Liz did an oops, guys, oh no.
Also, making serious decisions while high on calming potions is a great idea, definitely won't be any unintended consequences of this.
Right, enough jokes from me. This chapter was supposed to be two scenes that I really wanted to be together, but unfortunately it's getting too long, so I'm going to have to split it. Consider this and the next one to be two halves of a whole — it should be out in one or two days, depending on how long it takes for me to wrap it up. I am right at the end now, but you know me, who the fuck knows how long that'll actually take. The political write-up I've mentioned before is largely done, just doing an explanation of the Ministry departments right now and then that should be it. No idea when I'll get down to actually finishing that, but we'll see.
Okay then, see you in a couple days for another very normal scene from the life of our very good and moral hero.