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)

51. Fourth Year — IX

"Ah, found it!" Sophie chirped, pointing at a spot in the overlarge booklet. "They're in the team event first, see?"

Oh, well, of course Dorea hadn't found it then, she'd been scanning through the singles matches looking for Liz's name. That was annoying.

The whole duelling tournament adventure had been a massive hassle so far, and the tournament itself technically hadn't even started yet. (Well, the senior division had started singles earlier in the morning, but Liz hadn't had her first match.) To start with, they'd actually had to get everyone here in the first place, and coordinating travel for so many people at once could be a pain — especially since several of them were muggleborns and muggle parents. If they didn't have multiple adult mages along who knew what they were doing, they probably would have gotten lost ages ago, or just never even gotten to Romania.

Sophie and Sally-Anne had been rather more eager to come than Dorea had expected, if she was being honest — they weren't particularly close with Liz, she didn't think, and neither of them really seemed like the duelling type? It just seemed too violent for them, you know, all sweet and nice and Hufflepuffish as they were. (Though Sophie's family had attended the ritual at the Greengrasses', she tended to forget about that.) Susan and Hannah hadn't been a surprise — Liz and Susan got on better, and Susan was into duelling herself — and they'd volunteered to take their fellow Hufflepuffs with them, arranging travel and lodging and the like. Hannah's mum was coming along, Susan had just barely talked Amelia out of getting a Hit Witch friend to accompany them, and Sally-Anne's dad had joined in — so that was six people.

Luckily, they didn't have to worry about Megan, Mandy, Michael, and Terry — the Ravenclaws were all travelling with family, Dorea wasn't sure they'd even see any of them during the trip. There were a lot of people here, the chances of bumbling into each other were low. Lily's mum (and Hermione's, Sophie's, Sally-Anne's, and Dorea's) was very pregnant, and couldn't travel with them — portkeys and pregnancy did not mix — and her dad couldn't get off work for a week, so she'd needed to join another group; Hermione had offered for Lily to come with her, which was complicated by the fact that Hermione was accompanied only by her father, who, being a muggle, obviously couldn't arrange any of this on his own. Dorea suspected Hermione had made the offer impulsively, without thinking through the practical considerations. As intelligent as Hermione was, sometimes she missed really obvious things like that.

Apparently it hadn't been a sure thing that Hermione would be coming at all, or at least that she'd be accompanied by her dad. (And the chances of her parents letting Hermione be taken off to a foreign country without at least one of them along were very low.) Hermione's mum was, after all, very pregnant, and couldn't make the trip herself — though she probably could have taken a train across the Continent and linked up with them on the muggle side of the city, but by the time Dorea had heard of this little drama it'd already been solved. Daniel had been reluctant to leave Emma alone for even a week, which Hermione said Emma thought was very silly, though not entirely without reason. Apparently, Emma was having a much rougher time of it than Mum, to the point that just a few weeks ago there'd been a serious miscarriage scare, with Emma being rushed to the hospital and everything — the baby was fine, but Emma was supposed to keep activity to a minimum just in case, to the point of even avoiding stairs. (So she probably couldn't have just taken a train, turned out.)

Dorea was told that, after a bit going back and forth on it, Hermione's youngest aunt, on summer break after her first year at university, had volunteered to keep an eye on Emma while Hermione and her dad were out of town — apparently Daniel had been talking to his mother about Hermione maybe needing to miss a school trip and it'd been passed along, Hermione had complained to Dorea about that side of the family being gossipy and very French. Not that she didn't think it was good that her mother had someone with her, and her aunt Tienne was a good choice, since she had plans to continue on into medical school and knew plenty of first aid and stuff already, she just didn't like her much. Well, no, that wasn't quite right — Hermione did like her father's family well enough, they were just a bit much sometimes. Too energetic, and social, and very French. Tienne in particular had long had a habit of teasing Hermione whenever she was in France visiting, it was a whole thing. But it was a relief that her mum would be fine, and it wasn't like Tienne being in the house was going to bother Hermione while she was on the opposite end of the Continent, so.

Emma, of course, thought they were all worrying about it too much, and generally being very silly, but nobody was really listening to her insistence that she could take care of herself. Doctor's orders, and all that.

(Dorea had wondered how everyone who'd accepted the offer to come to the Greenwood for the births was supposed to get there, before belatedly remembering Víðir's portable gate and feeling like an idiot.)

Anyway, Daphne must have anticipated Hermione would immediately hit a roadblock when it came to arranging practically anything, and had already offered to help by the time Dorea had gotten to it. She and her sister were being escorted to Romania by Heli Babbling (whose relationship with the Greengrasses Dorea still preferred not to think about), and they'd already been bringing Tracey and Millie along with them, so adding Lily and the Grangers hadn't been too big of a deal. When Dorea had suggested that she could maybe come with her and Sirius, apparently Hermione had talked to Daphne, and Heli had contacted Sirius, and suddenly their group of ten were travelling together.

A few days later, Sirius mentioned — incidentally, talking about the planning of the trip, seemingly not realising Dorea hadn't known about it already — that he and Heli had spoken with Sophie Abbott, and, well, there was little reason to schedule two private portkeys, was there, and they could shave a bit off the hotel bill doing it as a single group, and before Dorea knew what was happening their party had ballooned to sixteen.

It'd been, bluntly, a total bloody mess. They were honestly lucky they'd made it as far as the venue, especially in time for Liz's first match — with how scattered even getting to the keyport had been, that had to be some kind of miracle. Magical hotels were rather more accommodating of weirdly-sized groups, since extended families travelling together was more common on this side, so they'd all managed to get set up in one place, so meeting up in the morning hadn't been a problem. But getting everyone through the bathrooms in a more or less orderly fashion, and then there was breakfast, and getting through the crush of the crowd around the venue without losing anyone, figuring out how the hell they were supposed to know who was duelling where and when... Yeah, it'd been a bit of a messy morning. If it was going to be like this all the time, Dorea was going to be exhausted by the end of the week.

Anyway, Liz's first duel would be a group match in Arena 11, so now they had to get there. There were signs posted about, but there were a lot of people milling around here, Dorea couldn't see a bloody thing — Daniel, the tallest of their group (though Millie wasn't shorter by that much), spotted it first, and they started off in that direction, Daniel and Sirius in the lead. The Hufflepuffs had linked arms again to keep themselves from being separated, and as the crowd thickened a little nearer the doors Heli apparently decided that was a good idea, waving the rest of the girls closer to herself. Astoria had already been holding onto her hand and bouncing on her toes with excitement, but the rest quickly folded in to link themselves to the Hufflepuffs — Heli catching on to Mr Perks's arm, Hannah grabbing Tracey's hand — and Dorea, Hermione, Lily, and Milie ended up forming their own row taking up the rear. Since one long line of them would just get in the way.

The way they were walking, Dorea was right behind Daphne and Tracey — Tracey was dressed in perfectly normal muggle clothes (though a dress was a little rare for her), but Daphne was all made up in Mistwalker stuff. Her sister and Heli were too, oddly enough. Dorea hadn't asked, but she assumed that, since they were in a foreign country and were unlikely to be recognised, they weren't bothering to pretend to be normal people. That sounded rather harsher than she meant, she was just saying, there were a lot of people in Britain who had pretty strongly negative opinions of Mistwalkers, but those attitudes were far less common on the Continent. While Mistwalkers in full traditional garb might be immediately recognised by British mages for what they were, Dorea would guess most foreign mages had never even heard of the rather insular subculture before — or if they had, were hardly likely to care. She was well aware that the only reason Daphne made herself up in more mainstream fashions while in public was because she didn't want people to prejudge her for it, but that really wasn't a problem here.

Though maybe Daphne was starting to care about that less in general — she had very obvious piercings in her face now, which was...unusual by magical British standards, to put it mildly. It was bloody weird to look at, honestly, and wouldn't that be distracting?

It also likely helped that the Greengrass sisters and Heli didn't look that unusual in a crowd of Continental mages. Particularly colourful, and the piercings were a little much — just walking around, Dorea did see far more people with piercings about than was typical in Britain, hardly universal but frequent enough to not be special (though none were quite so thorough about it as Heli). There were a lot of people around from all over Europe, with all kinds of different styles of dress representing many different sensibilities about what was appropriate. Dorea wasn't the only person to give second-glances at this one group of Greeks (or maybe Sicilians?) wearing these little laced-on vests that really didn't cover much — she caught Sally-Anne's dad staring at the women, but Dorea caught herself staring at a man who hadn't even bothered tying his closed and, um, yeah, she couldn't judge — because some cultures had very different ideas about what was appropriate to wear in public, and even ignoring the more scandalous things there was, just, a lot of different stuff about. As far as most of the people around would be able to tell, the three Mistwalkers must just be from one more foreign culture they weren't familiar with, nothing to get worked up about.

And thinking about all that was a nice distraction from Hannah and Susan huddled together and giggling about something as they walked. It was still bloody weird to Dorea that they were dating now, but it didn't seem to bother anyone else, so she'd been keeping the thought to herself.

Before too long they managed to squeeze through the tunnel into the arena, the pressure of the crowd around them loosening a little as people split up into the stands. Dorea had been to a number of different football stadiums — she didn't care for it much herself, but Mum had a few friends who did and used to bring her to matches as a kid, and of course Richard followed Chelsea — and the arenas here were hardly the largest she'd ever been in, but they weren't tiny little things either. She suspected a good fifteen, twenty thousand people could be packed in here, if they really needed to, though she doubted there'd be anywhere near that many today. There were, what twelve different arenas, and there weren't that many spectators, she didn't expect there'd be more than maybe several hundred in each arena, only filling up a small fraction of them.

Of course, that was still enough people to make getting in and out of the things a pain, and was slightly absurd attendance for a childrens' sporting event. But there were a lot of competitors, just family and friends might well add up to thousands of people. Still, that they had twelve arenas was more to fit the competitors than it was the spectators.

It also meant they could sit pretty much wherever they wanted to. Or, theoretically, at least — most of them wanted to be as close to the front as possible, and obviously those were the seats that were going to fill up first. After a bit of looking, taking a walk nearly a quarter turn around the arena, and Sirius and Daniel found them some seats in one of the bottom sections, enough space left on the benches for all of them to squeeze themselves in at the end of a pair of rows. And Dorea did mean squeeze literally: she was sitting between Hermione and Sirius, close enough they were pretty much always touching somewhere, every movement nudging her a little. Dorea wasn't entirely comfortable with Sirius yet, if she was being honest — her father actually being around still felt very new sometimes — but it wasn't that big of a deal. And the bench was surprisingly comfortable, considering it looked like it was made of stone (enchanted, presumably), and with them all packed in close it did start getting warm very quickly, but Sirius started casting the occasional cooling charm over them all with casual flicks of his fingers (which was slightly intimidating), which took care of that. It was a little awkward, Dorea would have preferred sitting further back where they could spread out more, but it wasn't bothering her enough to make an issue of it.

Flipping through her own copy of the duelling timetables they'd picked up, Dorea finally found what she was looking for: Liz's team would be fighting a team from the Academy of Nissa. Dorea had heard of that school before — it actually happened to be one of the oldest schools of magic in Europe, though it hadn't been in continuous operation for all that time (despite what some people might like to claim). It'd been founded ages ago by Constantine the Great, as in the literal Roman Emperor, originally as a training camp for mages entering into the Roman military, went through various reconstitutions and periods of disuse, re-founded again and again by the Byzantines and the Bulgarians and the Serbians, before the oldest buildings of the modern school were laid by the Ottomans in the late 15th Century. After the Statute, the Illyrians took over the school mostly as is, but renamed it after Constantine (of course), the name of the Emperor taken back out after the Revolution in the 30s. Despite what some Illyrians apparently liked to claim, there was very little direct Roman heritage left in the school at all, the city having been completely destroyed on multiple occasions since Constantine's time. The curriculum had changed somewhat, more Westernised, but the Illyrians had inherited the modern school from the Ottomans.

Don't tell them that, though — Balkan people could be a bit sensitive about the Turks. To put it mildly.

As much as they'd been delayed getting here, their timing turned out to be pretty good, they'd only been sitting chatting for maybe five minutes before an amplified voice announced that the first match was starting soon. She was a little surprised the announcer was speaking in English, it wasn't until she'd looked up that she belatedly noticed the little posts at the corners of their section flying small (magical) British flags — the section across the aisle past Sirius was marked with different flags, but she didn't recognise the country off-hand. Okay, she guessed that explained why they'd crammed themselves into this section instead of spreading out somewhere else.

The announcer was talking a little bit about the rules — there weren't very many, just certain spell classes that were forbidden, and a few dishonourable things like cursing people who were already down (though accidentally clipping someone on the ground trying to hit an active combatant was fine) — as the teams started to walk out into the arena. Dorea had seen the Hogwarts duelling uniform before, they were the ones in black, which mean the ones in dark blue and yellow, an eagle with spread wings on their backs, must be the Illyrians. Their uniforms looked a little odd, the trousers clinging close enough Dorea thought they might actually be leggings, a long jacket reaching to their calves, buttons stopping a bit below their hips and with long slits up the sides to ease movement. An odd style, but mages could be like that, she didn't give it much thought.

They were too far away to make out faces, but she easily identified Liz at a glance anyway: the shortest of the Hogwarts duellists also had a reddish scarf tying back her hair and wrapped around her neck. There was a faint haze around her, just barely visible, transparent glimmers of colour, like oil in sunlight. The duelling wards supposedly had something on them to highlight invisible spells for the audience — Dorea would guess that was the mind magic Liz was constantly leaking everywhere. It was honestly a little intimidating to see it, to know that it was always there, but she tried not to think about that.

The teams hadn't come out of opposite sides of the arena — they were all approaching the middle from the same side, clumped up with their own teammates but walking as one group. Dorea would guess they'd all come up from wherever the ready room was through the same door. As they went the announcer was introducing the teams, listing off names, the British-born mage clearly having a little bit of trouble with the very Slavic ones. The teams eventually reached what looked to be more or less the middle of the arena (it wasn't marked in any way), not all at once but sort of wandering to a gradual halt, there was a little bit of milling around before the captains apparently got their teams sorted, picking a side and waving them back, the pack spreading out a bit.

Watching how their people moved around, Dorea got the feeling there was some manoeuvring going on, the tactics of the duel getting going before it even started. It looked like the Illyrians had split up in three pairs at first, Hogwarts instead arranging themselves in a single staggered arc; apparently reading something into that that Dorea couldn't guess, the single person (presumably the captain) waved at his people, and they rearranged themselves into a single pair, the other four spread out in a line, skewed at an angle to Hogwarts's...and the person at the back was actually behind the pair, no idea what that was about. Wouldn't they just get in each other's way? Dorea wasn't a duelling person, so what did she know, really, but.

At the announcer's bidding, the captains met in the middle, did a quick exchange of bows. They turned back to their teams, quick enough that the Illyrian's coat whipped up around him. Oddly, Liz, who had been in the middle of the Hogwarts team's line, started moving at the same time, passing Eirsley about halfway — Eirsley ended up in more or less the same place Liz had been a moment ago, Liz well ahead of the group, standing alone in the no-man's-land between the teams. The Illyrians glanced around at each other, one of them must have said something, Dorea could see Liz shaking her head from here, partially hidden by rather denser flickers of mind magic, insubstantial tendrils reaching out toward the Illyrians. Not actually doing anything, Dorea didn't think (and the judges would probably do something if they thought she were), her magic just following her attention (which continued to be a little intimidating). Dorea was pretty sure Liz was playing with her wand, that thing she did sometimes where she'd toss it up a little, catching it by the handle again as it flipped over.

"What is she doing up there?" Sophie said, her voice raised to get over the chatter and the announcer beginning to count off.

Her hands already tensing on her knees, Dorea sighed. "Something stupidly reckless, I imagine."

Sirius just laughed at that, because of course he did. Because Dorea was surrounded by bloody madmen.

As the countdown hit two, wands appeared in hands, the duellists settling into stances. Liz stopped tauntingly playing with hers, foot slipping back to put her shoulder halfway to the Illyrians — she didn't move to retreat at all, which meant she was almost certainly going to be immediately hit with multiple spells at once. Honestly, what was she thinking, Liz was good but she couldn't possibly hold off however many of them would take a shot at her...

There was a loud bong noise, a flicker of motion, and then flashes of light as spells began to fly, all fourteen contestants seemingly firing all at once, and then a series of snaps and roars of flame as the spells hit — the pair of Illyrians, along with their captain a few steps off, were entirely hidden from view by a blast of orange-yellow fire, held back by some kind of shield, a few follow-up spellglows disappearing through the flames. At the same time, a dense pack of spells crashed into the middle of the Hogwarts line, focused toward the middle, falling on Eirsley and whoever was just to his left and right. Or actually, Dorea realised, they'd been aimed at Liz, the middle of the line happened to just be right behind her, the different angles the Illyrians had been standing at making them hit the Hogwarts line in a wider arc. Dorea could see at least one of the shields Hogwarts had raised shattering into glittery sparks, someone was hit once and then again an instant latter, toppling to the ground — he wasn't teleported off, so he must not be hurt too badly, but he didn't move to get back up either. A couple more spells had been shot at Hogwarts, mostly dodged, in one case deflected away (which was difficult to do and very risky), but it looked like most of them had been aimed at Liz. Dorea couldn't actually see Liz through the spell-light, she must have been hit badly enough to be teleported off, and—

There was a boom-crackle of lightning, one of the Illyrians in the middle of the line blown of their feet, crashing to the ground with fingers of electricity crawling over them. That'd come from the side but there was nobody over— "That was quick-step! A surprise quick-step from Potter, and Radonja is down from a lightning hex, and—" Multiple people in the line turned at the lightning, and then two spellglows were flying at Liz, Dorea winced but she stepped out of the way of one and caught the second on a shield; whatever curse that was was powerful enough that Liz's shield shattered violently, falling hard on her bum, a follow-up hex knocking her out. But the distraction had apparently done its job, a second volley of spells from Hogwarts cutting into them, when the dust settled only one of Liz's two attackers was still standing.

Sirius had jumped up to his feet at the flash of lightning, letting out a sharp, "Ha! Son of a bitch, she pulled it off! I owe that girl an ice cream."

The fight going on was too flashy for Dorea to pay Sirius being especially weird much attention. It'd barely been ten seconds, but the first volley from Hogwarts had knocked out the pair of Illyrians — presumably distracting them with the fire and then slipping dark or light hexes through their shield charm, but Dorea had missed it — their captain, having been standing too close to them, looking a little scorched; the Illyrians' first volley had knocked out one, and another had an arm clamped against his side, limping a little. Liz's quick-step trick had taken out one of the four in the line, knocked unconscious by the Illyrians' response — by how she'd fallen limp, Dorea thought it was just a stunning charm — the follow-up from the rest of the Hogwarts team dropping another. So, barely ten seconds, and the seven–seven fight was already five–three, in Hogwarts's favour. That was quick...

The rest of the fight was a little more slowly-paced, but it still wasn't very long before it was over. Eirsley traded rapid-fire hexes with the captain, keeping him pinned, while the other four swarmed in on the two remaining Illyrians. The Illyrian captain — she, Snežana Marković, Dorea hadn't realised it was a girl — was doing pretty well, managing to hold off Eirsley and take a few potshots at the people closing in on her remaining teammates, even managed to drop one with a nasty-looking slicing hex, Bletchley teleported out to the healers. But then Marković was clipped with a hex from Eirsley, about at the same time the other two were being overwhelmed, and a blink later it was over.

As the announcer called the victory for Hogwarts, a cheer going up in their area of the stands, Dorea let out a breath. That hadn't been so bad.

If Dorea was being honest, she really didn't like duelling. It might just be her own neuroses getting in the way, and she realised they weren't in any actual danger — there were plenty of healers about, and the wards would push them into stasis if they were seriously injured — but it was still, just, unnerving. She might be on the outs with Liz right now, but that didn't mean she wanted to sit here and watch her get the shite beat out of her either.

Of course, she couldn't just not watch — knowing it was happening but not being able to see that Liz was okay would just make her even more nervous. And Liz was fine, she was getting a hand up from one of her teammates right now, it had only been a stunning charm. She really didn't understand people who enjoyed watching this stuff. Maybe this was just her, but she didn't find violence entertaining. She didn't even like violent scenes in films either, really, and those she knew weren't even real.

But at least that one hadn't been so bad. A couple people had gotten burned a little, and that lightning hit shouldn't be too serious, since he'd been left in the field (though healers were coming to carry him off now). That hit Bletchley had taken was probably the worst of the lot, and he'd been teleported off quickly enough she hadn't really seen much — which was itself reassuring in a way, their emergency stuff was clearly working. If they were all like that, well, Dorea didn't think she would enjoy it, but maybe she could relax about it a little bit.

"Right," Sirius, still standing, chirped with a clap of his hands. "Hogwarts has another one in this arena in a half an hour, and another a bit after that, so we'll be here for a while. I was going to go get a beer, anyone want anything?"

With an amused curl to his voice, Hermione's dad asked, "A little early for drinking, isn't it?"

"What a silly thing to say — we're on holiday, Daniel." Dorea caught a few giggles from the Hufflepuffs, rolled her eyes at Hermione; having heard the same rumours about what parties were like in Hufflepuff that Dorea had, Hermione rolled her eyes right back, smiling a little. "I think I saw a stand over there with croquettes and shite, and there's coffee and tea and whatever else. Seriously, anyone want anything?"

"Sirius, we just had breakfast barely an hour ago."

He grinned down at her. "Dorea. We're on holiday."

"Well, in that case, I'll take a couple of those cream cheese things."

"Um, Mister Black, could I just have some water?"

"Mister Black, how old do you think I am? Please ignore my teenage daughter," he said, reaching down to ruffle Dorea's hair. "'Sirius' is fine, kid, really. And sure, I can just conjure some glasses and draw some water, that's not a problem."

"I've got it." Heli conjured a pitcher with a flick of her wand, a swirling motion casting some elemental spell. She conjured a glass for Sophie, followed by a couple more when Lily and Hannah asked for some too, started pouring it out.

"Right, Heli's got that, anything for me?"

"As long as we're on holiday," Daniel drawled, "you don't suppose they're selling wine out there?"

"Daniel, we're in Romania, of course they're selling wine — forget the beer, I'll get a bottle. Any other requests? Seriously, girls, don't be shy now..."

As Sirius took orders, Susan and Mr Perks volunteering to come with him — Susan to see what all they had, Mr Perks initially to help carry things before being reminded magic existed, and then just because he had no idea what magic food stalls sold — Dorea let out a long, tolerant sigh. At least Sirius was having fun. Turning to Hermione, "How much you want to bet Liz does something crazy reckless and gets herself knocked out in the next one too?"

Hermione smiled. "No bet. And it wasn't reckless, just good strategy — between baiting most of the Yugoslavs into—"

"Illyrians." Hermione just waved off the correction with a flick of her fingers, which Dorea guessed was fair enough. The borders of the magical country were similar to (the former) Yugoslavia, if not the same — Slovenia had been controlled by Venice before breaking off a century after Secrecy, though Venice still held much of the Adriatic coast, and Macedonia was also independent and significantly larger, including a sizeable fraction of what was northern Greece on the muggle side — but it was more or less acceptable to think of them as interchangeable. Except using the name had, ah, political implications, but nobody here cared, so.

"—into all aiming at Liz and then distracting them with the attack from behind gave Hogwarts a big advantage. Sure, Liz probably knew she'd be sacrificing herself going into it, but she made the win a lot easier for the rest of the team. That's not recklessness, that's bravery."

"Sure, I guess." If you wanted to look at it charitably. "I just hope she doesn't get herself hurt next time."

"She'll be fine. There are plenty of healers down there waiting to rush in — and healing magic can be quite impressive, especially without the silly restrictions around witchcraft we have in Britain. Liz knows what she's doing, I wouldn't worry about it."

...Dorea must have missed something, because she had no idea when Hermione had gotten so cavalier about this stuff. She made a mental note to sit next to someone else next time — Hermione was one of her best friends, but watching all nervous next to someone who thought Liz nearly getting herself killed for no good reason like an idiot was brave seemed like it could get uncomfortable.

Dorea probably shouldn't worry about it, like Hermione said, but she, just, couldn't help it. She'd be scared, facing all those real hexes and curses and whatever else, and, well. She knew, intellectually, that Liz wouldn't be in any legitimate danger, but, it was really uncomfortable for her to watch, that was all.

The announcer called the start of the next match, beginning to introduce the participants — teams from Hungary and Genoa, Hogwarts wasn't in this one — and Dorea forced out a breath, psyching herself up for another fight. At least Liz wasn't going to be in this one...

---

It wasn't until after Liz had pulled the jacket off its hanger that she realised the sleeve was scorched — a patch from the elbow nearly to the shoulder, fibres melted to a smooth and glassy sort of look, the silvery stitching discoloured.

The Hogwarts duelling team uniform was pretty simple, all things considered, and from the pictures she'd seen from somewhere or other the design hadn't changed significantly since at least the 70s. Heavy, stiff cotton, treated for fire-resistance — as evidenced by the fact that her sleeve had melted instead of just catching on fire — in a solid night-black, with trim in silver sketched back and forth and running down the limbs, trousers and long-sleeved jacket. They were shaped a little weirdly, the trousers only reaching partway down the shins, meant to be tied in place just under the top of the boots, and the sleeves widened out past the elbow, to make room for a wand holster. The silver trim was densest along the hems and following the buttons in the front, along the lapels swirling to form stylised wings (which was silly), a full Hogwarts crest with all the elaborate floral shite around the shield was stitched high on the left breast, with a much larger one on the back, which also seemed like a bit much. Liz felt a little silly wearing it, and it didn't help that she didn't really like wearing trousers, but it did help that she could wear whatever she liked under it — as long as it didn't violate their rules about defensive enchantments, that is, they had to go through a brief inspection in the morning and again after lunch, it was a whole thing.

She knew what this was from, just earlier today. Liz had had a day full of singles matches, she honestly didn't remember how many she'd been in — there'd been one bracket in the morning and then a second one in the afternoon, and she'd gotten a concussion at some point, her memory was kind of fuzzy. (She was still sore from the healing, and very tired. If nothing else, she was sleeping very well on this trip.) One of the matches she'd won had been against a veela from Sicily, she'd just barely managed to dodge a blast of veela-fire — bright and sweltering and nauseatingly hot, Liz didn't like even just being near it — and while she'd felt a bit flushed and dizzy afterward, a quick potion had taken care of that — for light magic toxicity, she'd taken several of those already this week — she hadn't thought she was injured. If she had been injured, she would have had this sent in for repair with everyone else's at the end of the day.

Except, she guessed it was sort of good she hadn't? Narcissa had agreed with Severus that doing her second meeting with Skeeter in her duelling uniform might be a good idea, for reasons to do with her public image she didn't entirely get — but Liz only had two sets, and the other one had been shredded and splattered with blood by a complex slicing curse of some kind. (Liz hadn't recognised it, but it'd hurt like hell, she was still limping a little.) She suspected Skeeter would want pictures again, and with how it'd messed with the trim, this burn mark was probably going to be obvious.

Oh well. Liz also still had a half-faded bruise splotching her face from that hit to the head she didn't really remember (thankfully not damaging her eyebrow piercing at all) — presumably Skeeter had known what she was getting into when she'd agreed to meet her during the tournament. People back home might be a bit...odd about pictures of their precious Girl Who Lived looking all beat up in Witch Weekly, but she guessed that wasn't really her problem.

Unless people made it her problem. She should probably warn the elves to be a bit more careful with her post for the couple weeks after the article came out.

Sighing it off, Liz pulled the jacket on. She didn't bother buttoning it up yet — they'd be crossing outside, if only for a couple minutes, and it was still bloody hot out there. After pulling a scarf on, she quick checked herself in the mirror, and aside from the uneven yellowish blotch across the upper-left quarter of her face, she guessed that was fine. She plucked up her bag on her way through the bedroom — empty, Katie was downstairs getting coffee and chatting with half the team — and continued on into the common room. "Ready to go?"

Severus was in here with Oz's mum, Cass, and Brendan, who apparently didn't feel like mingling with the foreigners this evening. (Cass was kind of racist about it, but Brendan had taken a few nasty hits today and was just tired.) Somewhat amusingly, the adults and the students were on completely opposite ends of the room — Liz still hadn't asked, but by how they hardly ever talked to each other she assumed that, while Brendan was clearly aware he and Severus were related somehow, they had absolutely no relationship outside of school whatsoever. Anyway, Severus was already moving to stand as she spoke, setting aside the Book, having been idly flipping through it while talking to Oz's mum. Reading the Book was basically like reading the dictionary — it had an entry for all the contestants in it, a little picture, some basic stuff like when they were born and where they were from, a summary of their performance in previous events, and that was really it — but it wasn't like there was a lot of other reading material around, and he probably hadn't been paying that much attention to it anyway. He was still dressed oddly muggle-ish, though nicely, slacks and dress shirt and all, which Liz thought was out of character, but it wasn't really her business.

While the pair of them made for the door, Severus shrugging on a jacket as he went, Cass called, "Have fun with your adoring public, Liz." Cass was a bit of an arsehole, one of those Slytherins who didn't like her for stupid racist reasons — she wasn't sure whether or how the Warringtons had been involved in the war, but it didn't really matter — but he mostly played nice for the sake of the team, the worst it got was little comments like that.

Liz just flipped him the bird over her shoulder, "Have fun going to hell, Cass," and walked out. She didn't know where they were going, Severus had dealt with the minor details of setting up the meeting while she'd been at lunch a couple days ago, but there was only one exit, so. Her hip twinging with each step, Liz set off down the hall, empty at the moment but occasional conversation filtering out through propped-open doors — by this point, Liz could semi-reliably hear the difference between Saxon and Dutch, and caught a word now and then due to their similarity to German, but it was still mostly nonsense. Irritated with not understanding what people were saying, Liz had had the thought that she should go about copying more languages, but she didn't want to do that until she figured out a work-around.

(As much as Liz was positive she'd gotten away with it, it'd been very scary, she didn't want to risk a repeat if she could help it.)

Before too long they got to the stairs, and ooh, ow ow ow — she'd forgotten, her hip didn't like stairs at the moment, she'd cheated and used a featherweight charm on the way up. She hadn't quite gotten her wand out when she noticed Severus had moved over to her left side, holding out an arm. Um, okay, she guessed they could do it this way, then? She imagined going down stairs even with the charm might still suck anyway, and there were balance issues, so, sure. Leaning on him took a bit of her weight off her hip, which helped, but it still hurt, and she was a little out of breath by the time they got to the ground floor. (Well, not ground floor, she was pretty sure this was all under— Whatever.) She took a moment at the bottom to catch her breath, leaning against the bannister and rubbing at her hip, the dull pain gradually tapering off as she gave it a rest.

"Will you be alright walking the whole way? I could conjure a cane or a wheelchair, if you prefer."

Well, Liz didn't know how to use either of those, so that would slow them down anyway. Also, embarrassing. "I'll be fine. Walking on it isn't going to fuck up the healing is it?" The curse she'd been hit with was a bastard, multiple cutting planes but also with a fair bit of physical force behind them, she'd been cut deep in three slices and also broke her hip. But it'd been a clean break, the healers had repaired that easily, and it hadn't been dark magic or anything so the cuts had been easy to fix too. They hadn't even put her under for it — she hadn't passed out, and apparently her blood pressure hadn't dropped far enough for the emergency wards to force her into stasis — poking around the wound to figure out what they were doing had hurt even through the pain potion, but then just a handful of charms, crack zip zip zip, and she was sealed up again. (Though she'd needed another potion for light toxicity, because healing magic.) But they hadn't been able to hundred per cent fix something to do with the joint — something about healing charms sometimes fucking up joints if you brute-force it, she'd been slightly delirious from pain and blood loss and hadn't followed it. Instead they'd given her a potion that would gradually heal the joint the rest of the way over the next twelve hours or so, which was a pain, but she'd already been eliminated and it'd be healed by tomorrow morning, so she wasn't too worked up about it.

"No. In fact, most healers recommend at the least some activity to prevent any stiffness from setting in."

Right, that made sense. "I'll be fine, then. Unless you can do that thing where you make my brain ignore the pain somehow?"

"That I cannot do. Pain has a purpose — without those signals forcing you to slow down, I would worry you may unnecessarily stress the joint, prolonging your healing."

"That's what I was worried you would say." Liz pushed herself back onto her feet with a sigh. "I'm good for now, let's go."

The Curtea was rather noisy, with hundreds of contestants from all over the Continent milling around, minds pressing in from all directions. But luckily there was a clear corridor all the way to the exit, at least they didn't have to force their way through. The long, spiralling stairs up were shallow enough that they didn't bother Liz too much — though she did make a point of taking each step with her right foot first, hurt less that way. Eventually, they reached the Long Gallery, which was much emptier than the Curtea, enough that the voices of the few people around seemed to echo. The events for the day had finished a couple hours ago, the spectators would have all filtered out into the city by now, though she assumed all the restaurants in town must be packed. Liz took another brief moment just inside of the main doors to rest before continuing on.

Considering Romania was one of the more conservative countries in the ICW, politically, Liz had been rather surprised to find on her one previous venture outside that Jassy's magical quarter was quite modern-looking. The dominant building material was brick — white and red, mostly, but there was plenty of this almost glassy-looking black too — the blocks hemming them in and the street underfoot both made of the stuff, the colours similar-looking enough Liz assumed they were from the same source. But, while the main, load-bearing parts of the buildings seemed to all be made of brick, there was a lot of metal and glass around too — many of the storefronts and restaurants and shite looked like they could be copied straight out of central Guildford...except for a lot of the signs being animated, and the glimpses of magic shite through the windows, but still.

Actually, how close the buildings were packed together, hardly any room for an alley here and there, their differing heights and designs giving the bank of façades an interestingly varied appearance, reminded Liz very much of the main street just north of the castle. (There was a store near there she used to get clothes before relocating to London after getting her Hogwarts letter.) The major difference was in, yes, the magic shite around, the different colour scheme, and the street was much wider — there was a full two-lane road in the middle, probably meant to let carts and shite through, flanked on either side with a row of trees, plenty of space past them for people to walk along the storefronts. She thought the buildings were also significantly taller, but besides that, it looked very much like muggle Guildford, with some old-fashioned sensibilities in there but still very modern.

Which did kind of make sense, when she thought about it. Romania had been beaten up pretty badly in the war, a combination of domestic sabotage and invasion by Illyria and the central European states. The war in the west might have gone badly for the Revolutionaries, but in the east they'd managed to successfully conquer Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland, and they'd had Hungary, Ukraine, and Muscovy all in serious trouble by the time a ceasefire was called. (According to Tamsyn, with the fall of the west — France, Saxony, Germany — the remaining Revolutionaries had been worried the western front pressing in at their backs would end with them losing outright, while a negotiated peace might be more to their advantage in the long term...but the structure of the ICW favoured old institutions of power, so they'd been screwed in negotiations anyway, half of them forced to submit to ICW occupation as 'protectorates', because of course. The communalists had bided their time and wormed their way back into power a few decades later, but still.) The fighting in Romania and Bulgaria had been especially intense, the settlements where the governments had been headquartered (in Jassy and Varna) practically levelled. So it made sense that it was more modern-looking, and even that they all seemed to have used the same materials — most of the magical quarter must have been rebuilt all at once less than fifty years ago. And it also made sense that it looked like it could have been dropped in from western Europe, since the rebuilding had been directed by the ICW, and they'd been dominated by western countries at the time.

Except for the language, anyway — most of the signage was in Latin letters, but there were also a few in Greek, and even more of what Liz thought was Russian? She wasn't an expert, but she thought that was Russian. A lot of the signs actually had both Latin letters and whatever that other one was, seemed to be a whole thing. Since they didn't have anything better to talk about, she asked Severus, and apparently that was actually Bulgarian. Well, no, the language was Romanian (or sometimes Bulgarian or Ukrainian), but the script was from Bulgaria, it just later spread across eastern Europe — it was what the Slavic Bible had been written with, apparently. Liz was right that they were the same letters Russian was also written in, so yay, she wasn't a complete idiot. Severus's explanation was very oblique, but which alphabet people used was apparently a cultural thing, all wrapped up in religion and shite — people with more ties to the west used Latin, while more conservative and Christian types tended to use the not-Russian one (or Greek, but that was just because they had a Greek-speaking minority), so Latin was more common in Jassy than it would be elsewhere in the country, since that was what the ICW used and all their international business shite was here — which all sounded like far too much, why couldn't they just pick one? Liz guessed learning a second alphabet didn't take that much effort, but still...

She wondered if she copied a language that wrote with whatever this script was called, would she learn the letters too? She assumed so, she did know how to read and write French and German...might not get the muscle memory, though, her handwriting would probably be even more shite than usual...

Anyway, that conversation didn't take very long, as absurdly complicated as the subject was — Severus didn't actually know that much about magical Romania, just that the Latin script tended to be associated with weird post-Statute 'ancient' magical traditions people (the same kind of thing they had in Britain) and that the Christian majority used the other one. The streets were annoyingly packed, with all the foreigners about, very loud, the air around her so thick with everyone's thoughts and feelings and shite it was kind of hard to breathe. Severus had led them past the row of trees into the central part, just to give them more room, and thankfully nobody was paying them any particular attention, but still, it was a bit much.

So, a distraction would be nice. "Hey, I've been wondering. You and Brendan are related somehow, right?"

There was a spike of something unpleasant in Severus's head, he let out a short sigh. "Yes. He and his sister are my first cousins — their father is my mother's youngest brother."

...Oh. Liz hadn't realised they were that closely related. It was also kind of funny that they were cousins, considering how much older Severus was, maybe a bit of an age difference between their parents? "His sister, you mean Mallory? The Ravenclaw prefect."

"I suspect she may be the Head Girl soon. But yes."

"I was just wondering, he— I mean, you never talk about your family, and he assumed you're properly Jewish, you know, which I thought was weird." A little flicker of surprise, Severus turned a raised eyebrow at her. "He was surprised I don't know about the rules, to do with food." Had Severus not noticed that? Maybe he just hadn't been paying attention at the time...or just hadn't considered it important and forgot, she guessed...

"Ah. The Prince children have no familiarity with me outside of Hogwarts. As I understand it, they may have heard my name mentioned when discussing the war—" Because the Princes were in with the Death Eaters, naturally. Brendan and Mallory were nice, though, didn't know how much of that shite they'd actually been raised with. "—but they had no knowledge of our relation until Mallory stumbled across the information somehow in her third year. The Princes don't talk about my mother."

...Well, apparently that'd been a shitty topic to use as a distraction, because Liz had no idea what to say now. That was kind of fucked up.

The rest of the walk passed in awkward silence (on Liz's end, at least), turning off the main avenue onto a rather narrower but largely identical side street, before long reaching a hotel. It was also a restaurant, the single entryway used for both — it was pretty noisy in here, a glance toward the dining room showed it was very full. Liz was starting to understand why countries might volunteer to host these events, and even compete with each other for the opportunity, all the hotels and restaurants and shops and shite in Jassy were probably getting far more business than usual. The Quidditch World Cup was a similar thing, she would guess...but then Britain had to be idiots, and put the thing out on a moor in the middle of nowhere. There were practical considerations there, sure — since quidditch had to be out in the open, it was harder to pack it into a city without the muggles noticing — but that seemed like squandering most of the benefit of having the thing in the first place.

The equivalent of the group stage (she thought they used the same term?) had started just last week, knocking off the matches two a day, one in the morning and one in the evening. Apparently there was a big temporary city being built wherever the fuck this was happening, and Liz had heard snippets of stands being set up, overheard someone at the Refuge complaining about how the licensing worked — it seemed like the Ministry would be getting back the costs of arranging the Cup, if only by fleecing the vendors. Two matches a day was kind of a brutal schedule, but it wasn't like any one team would actually be playing twice, since they only had the one stadium. It was really more work for the organisers and support staff and media people, to keep the whole thing running smoothly.

Quidditch being such a big deal in this country, even Liz, who wasn't paying that much attention — she liked playing quidditch, but watching it was boring — had managed to catch bits of a couple games on the radio, and there'd been a big damn party at the Refuge the day before she'd left, when Ireland absolutely dominated in their first match of the tournament, winning by a margin of over three hundred points. (Their chaser team was incredible, Ireland were the favourites to win this time around.) Liz had half-formed plans to show up toward the end, would probably catch from the quarterfinals on (Sirius had already offered to buy the tickets, so), but until then it was just something everybody else was going mad about. The student duelling tournament wasn't as big of a thing as the Quidditch World Cup, obviously, but Liz wasn't really surprised that the hotel was packed.

Thankfully, Skeeter wasn't actually meeting them down here — which made sense, this would be a terrible place to do it, Liz could barely even hear herself think. Severus talked to one of the people behind the desk for a moment, and then they were being led off by a waiter, circling around the edge of the dining room and through a back door into a second, rather quieter dining room. They didn't actually stop here either, taking a right turn into a hallway, around a corner, and then finally into a private room. It was rather nice, all soft carpets and upholstery, bloody fancy paintings on the walls (no portraits, mostly landscapes), with a low-burning hearth throwing light over a couple armchairs, in the middle a table with eight chairs, clearly intended for more private business meetings or whatever.

And, of course, Skeeter was already here waiting. The first time Liz had seen a picture of Rita Skeeter, she'd taken it as another example of mages being very colourful and flamboyant — bright blonde hair in a twisting bed of curls, eyeliner and blush subtle enough but eyeshadow and lipstick chosen to coordinate with whatever she was wearing, normally modest and conservative but in vivid, contrasting colours, most often bright leaf green or magenta or crimson. Her spectacles had bloody rhinestones on them, more (false) jewels glinting on her fingers and in her ears, her impractically long nails brightly painted in whatever colour best suited the day. Very colourful, very silly, very magical Britain.

So Liz had been a little surprised when she'd been told Skeeter was actually muggleborn — and obviously so, if you were more familiar with this stuff. Like, flagrantly, almost offensively muggleborn, to people who were sensitive about it. The rhinestones were a dead giveaway, apparently, and now that Liz knew more she realised the earrings were too. It turned out she was from Liverpool, still had faint traces of the accent and everything. Skeeter being all colourful and, just, weird, had less to do with mages being like that, and more that she'd grown up in the 60s, and magical sensibilities let her get away with more silly shite than would be tolerated of people in her profession on the muggle side.

Also, while she'd wear robes for formal shite, like the picture that went over her column, she often showed up places in muggle-style clothes instead. Like, that was a skirt suit she was wearing today — in bright, vivid purple and red, so it couldn't be muggle-made, but the shape of it was muggle-ish, at least. The colours mages wore sometimes, Liz would feel ridiculous dressed like that, but she guessed it wasn't her business...

"Ah, Elizabeth!" she chirped, swooping up to her feet. "There you are, come in, come in. Look alive, Bozo," she muttered to her photographer, a somewhat excitable, slightly rotund man with greying hair and beard, dressed much more sedately. Also, his name was actually Boyce Tuft — he was related somehow to the Minister back in the 50s, though Liz didn't know how closely. She had no idea why Skeeter called him that, presumably some inside joke at the Prophet...or maybe he worked for Witch Weekly? Whatever. "And Master Severus, of course, hello again..."

As a bit much as Skeeter could be sometimes, she'd at least remembered that Liz didn't like being touched, just greeting her with a smile and a nod instead of the handshake she gave Severus. Skeeter sent off the person who'd led them up here with an order for coffee — specifying French coffee, with an aside about people here often not filtering out the grounds (Liz had noticed that, it was weird) — before babbling a bit on what they wanted to talk about, blah blah, Liz was only half-listening. Setting ground rules about talking to the press was the sort of thing Severus had a right to do as a responsible adult -type person, and he knew what should be said better than her, so. Thankfully, they'd already had a talk about the really out of bounds stuff running up to their first meeting, so that didn't take very long, they'd only been here for a couple minutes before starting on pictures.

Liz didn't like having her picture taken, to be honest. People's attention on her could be uncomfortable to begin with, and when they were looking at her with the explicitly purpose of capturing what they were seeing, well, it was seriously unpleasant — her breath itching in her throat, wasps crawling on her skin, warm and muggy and, just, ugh. It didn't help that Tuft was so bloody cheerful about it all the time. At least she never caught anything particularly offensive in his head, just, you know, doing his job — a job he loved, definitely a photography nerd, but no creepy shite in there — so, she guessed he was fine. And the flashes kept making spots in her eyes, but they didn't have to deal with that this time, Tuft instead casting various charms to mess with the lighting the way he liked — sometimes tinting it more reddish or blueish or purplish, didn't know what was up with that. Apparently picking up on her relief about the flashes, Tuft explained that the flashes were necessary in an open, uncontrolled environment, but in here he could do whatever he wanted with the lighting, which was actually ideal, because of something to do with shadows and colour Liz didn't really follow, whatever.

Toward the beginning, Tuft suggested they do something about the bruise on her face — reaching out toward her, Liz lurched a half-step away before realising he was just pointing — but Skeeter disagreed. Said it made it more authentic, some babble about the readership Liz wasn't really paying attention to. She definitely caught something about tugging at the heartstrings of middle-aged women, adorable orphan kid getting all beat up, isn't she so tragically precious, that sort of thing. As uncomfortable and faintly embarrassing as that seemed to Liz, Skeeter was trying to sell papers, so she just shrugged it off. Besides, she also wasn't sure how much of that had been out loud — it could be hard to tell sometimes when it was a really loud thought, and Skeeter's mind was kind of weird, a mess of hissing thoughts going on the background, occasionally broken with something bright and clear flashing through in the foreground as something clicked together. Not uniquely weird, Hermione and Severus's minds could both be kind of like that, but the point was her stream-of-consciousness babbling could be hard to separate from her thoughts sometimes, it was safest to just not say anything.

Of course, while she didn't have to deal with the camera flashes, the downside of doing pictures in an enclosed environment was that the fumes built up a little as they went. Liz had sort of assumed the smoke, acrid and an odd sweet-sour, was from the flash bulb? She'd thought, mages didn't really use lightbulbs, maybe they were fucking something up somehow, but no, turned out that was actually from the camera itself. While taking a few shots of her — just normal shite, Tuft suggested something about poses and whatever but Liz refused, she'd feel too ridiculous — he explained the fumes were actually a byproduct of some kind of potion in the film being activated. The process of getting magical pictures to move the way they did was somewhat complicated — magical portraits required hours of exposure, the ritual of the brush strokes in the presence of the subject slowly building an echo of their personality and embedding it in the image, and compressing that into an instant had been a big theoretical problem once upon a time. The film was infused with some highly-sensitive potion, and the camera didn't simply funnel the light onto the film, like a normal one, instead collecting the image into a reservoir stone, a complicated catalytic device then searing the contained information into the film. It was a highly energetic process, so some of the impurities and byproducts were burned off, making the smoke. The stuff might smell bad, but nothing in there was reactive, so it wouldn't actually hurt them — Severus would occasionally vanish the slowly-building cloud with a casual fick of his wand anyway.

(Magical cameras did look big and bulky, but she hadn't realised it was because the necessary magic was so complicated. She'd thought they were just based on old-fashioned muggle ones...)

Skeeter would comment on the pictures now and then, make suggestions — in particular, she insisted on a few with Severus, for some reason (again playing on the sentiments of the silly middle-aged women who read Witch Weekly, Liz assumed) — but she was mostly focused on talking to Severus. She thought Skeeter was just getting a few comments from him on things to maybe stick in the final article at some point, but she didn't hear most of it, distracted by Tuft, so she really couldn't say. She was certain that she'd heard Skeeter ask about his love life, his noncommittal answer (basically none of your business, but in more distant Snape-speak) followed up with teasing comments about handsome young men like him, which, hmm.

Relative to mages' extended lifespan, Liz guessed Snape wasn't really that old — he was, what, thirty-four? and mages could theoretically live to be well over two hundred, so. (Stress and injuries from the war and the occasional incident with potions fumes meant he probably wouldn't make it that long, but still.) He was old for being unmarried...though less so for commoners, who often needed to get a career and some savings set up before starting a family, or affording to get married in the first place, with dowries and finding a place to live and shite, whatever. Liz thought Severus was still a little old by professional commoner standards, but not nearly as much as he would be for nobles (or near-nobles, like Adrian), who normally got married straight out of Hogwarts. Of course, as far as she knew Severus had no interest in getting married or whatever, so it didn't actually matter. And handsome, well, Liz would admit she was hardly an expert, being gay and all, but she didn't think so?

There were older students who liked him, Liz knew, but she didn't think it was because of what he looked like. If Skeeter had said impressive, well, that one Liz would believe — he was the youngest master alchemist in British history, and it was (now) common knowledge that Saint Mungos called him in to help with weird esoteric shite the normal healers couldn't figure out, and he'd lied about his loyalties to the Dark Lord's face, and gotten away with it for over a year, so, yeah. Impressive, definitely, but unless Liz was just completely incapable of even noticing — which was possible, with the whole Dorea and Adrian thing — she didn't think "handsome" was the word she would choose.

(Honestly, Liz was kind of glad that Severus wasn't dating anyone seriously, because Liz was kind of his kid now, at least legally, and that sounded like it could get very awkward very quickly. But at the same time, he could probably use a girlfriend — at least Lily had thought so, she'd put it in the letter she'd left for Liz and everything. So, she didn't know...)

But anyway, all of that shite aside, the pictures didn't actually take very long, they were already about done by the time a waitress showed up with their stuff. (Liz tried not to notice how her top was clinging to her, her figure very visible, and failed miserably.) The cakes and biscuits and shite people often had with tea or coffee were just gross, far too sweet for Liz — at least most of the time, some were tolerable — so she was a little surprised that the platter also had these little sausage roll things. Like, tiny sausage rolls, bite-sized links wrapped up in flakey pastry stuff, with some kind of sauce for dipping the things in. Skeeter must have set up the order before they got here, because she hadn't said anything to the waiter person earlier. Which was nice of her, Liz guessed, but she hadn't really needed anything, she had already had dinner. She did like sausages, though, so she guessed she could try— Oh, not bad, and the spices blended interestingly with the coffee, hmm. She could tell the combination was not something normal people, whose taste hadn't been fucked by being fed shitty food as a child, would find at all palatable, but...

For the actual interview part, Liz and Skeeter moved to the armchairs by the fire, Severus and Tuft left at the table. The arms were wide enough to set her coffee down on one (on a saucer), a plate with the sausages drizzled with the cheese sauce stuff on the other — Liz wasn't sure if nobody else wanted any of the sausages, or if they'd silently decided they were all for her, but she guessed she'd just be eating all of these, then. She was apparently hungrier than she'd realised, but she guessed she had been injured today. (You were supposed to eat extra after healing, replacing the tissues and blood that had been lost, blah blah.) Skeeter hadn't bothered with any of the the little cakes — it seemed like it'd be awkward trying to eat around those too-long nails — just had a cup of coffee, her notebook floating at her elbow. At least at their two meetings so far, Skeeter had never written by hand once, instead using dictation quills — some of the comments she'd make in response to an answer didn't seem to be intended for Liz at all, like she was making notes for herself. Liz wondered if she did that because writing with her nails like that would be annoying, and then wondered for perhaps the thousandth time why some women kept their nails so long, seemed so impractical...

The interview itself passed uneventfully, Liz hardly remembered any of it afterward. Just duelling and quidditch stuff, about the other people on her team(s), how the events had gone so far, about the new house, Severus and Sirius, blah blah, random shite. Skeeter seemed weirdly delighted that Liz was considering duelling professionally while doing her Mastery study, didn't know what that was about. There was a tangent about the house in Godric's Hollow at one point — Daedalus's auction scheme had been announced a few days ago, Skeeter said there was a lot of talk about it back home — and they ended up getting on a longer, much more tedious one about politics. Liz had no idea how Skeeter knew about her new proxy being Sylvia Slughorn — she'd sent the paperwork off late the night before they'd left for Romania, it shouldn't even have been processed yet. Skeeter just said something cryptic about having friends in the Ministry, come now, Elizabeth, I couldn't possibly give up my sources, you know that.

Which, that Skeeter had leakers working with her wasn't really a surprise. That was how she'd found out about the Dursleys in the first place — and that would have been in privileged records with the Office of Adjustment (the leaking of which was a serious crime, since it was with Adjustment the sentencing rules for the Statute of Secrecy kicked in), while the proxy thing was public information with WAS. Of course, Skeeter had somehow found it before it'd been made public, so. She must have a source among the clerks at WAS, someone who'd seen Liz's proxy stuff going through their inbox.

Liz thought she was starting to get what Narcissa had meant when she'd said Skeeter was dangerous. She might seem a bit silly and flighty and melodramatic, focused on kicking up scandals seemingly just to amuse herself, but she had an uncanny way of knowing things she really shouldn't. And also aiming that information right at people's weak points — the article about the Dursleys hadn't been aimed at Liz, but Dumbledore, and had played a significant role in soiling his public reputation even in the Light, contributing to him being run out of public life with his tail between his legs. Narcissa had warned her, when they'd first been talking about doing interviews, that Skeeter was a good friend to have, especially if she could drop a few tantalising hints to point her at someone else, but that she made a terrible enemy. Since Skeeter's profile had skyrocketed up from obscurity around the end of the war, Narcissa had been feeding her a steady drip of the secrets of the rich and powerful — people Narcissa had been around all her life and knew plenty of crazy shite about, wouldn't be running out of material any time soon — that Skeeter could further investigate and make hay out of, partially in an effort to get Skeeter to fling mud at her enemies, and partially just to keep her occupied and well away from the Malfoys. It'd worked for them so far, but Narcissa had admitted that it was playing with fire — especially since the stories Narcissa had set up for her had only raised Skeeter's profile even further, making her even more dangerous if she turned on her.

While Liz could get Skeeter to behave by playing the you're the only reporter the Girl Who Lived is talking to card, that would only work until Skeeter grew bored of it — and since Liz didn't have the treasure trove of scandal Narcissa was sitting on, and her life really wasn't that interesting, she didn't think that'd take very long. No, if she wanted to keep Skeeter off her in the long term, she'd have to be a little more creative about it.

As Skeeter had just said herself, she wasn't stupid enough to burn her sources.

They petered off eventually, Liz didn't know how long later, with talk about the Triwizard Tournament, which of course she was excited for, that was going to be great. Also, boys, but Liz was positive Skeeter was just teasing about that — the smirk was pretty obvious, and Liz could tell by the feel of her mind that she hadn't expected a real answer. Skeeter had remembered she didn't like being touched, after all. (Liz, naturally, failed to mention Daphne. Not that she would be entirely sure what to call that anyway, they hadn't really talked about it and Liz didn't know what she was doing.) It was clear they were coming to an end now, directionlessly gossipping, the kind of really boring shite Liz could barely tolerate on the best of days. Until Skeeter finally went off on how long it would take for the article to appear in Witch Weekly — she still had to write the thing, and of course talk to the editors and find a spot in their schedule, blah blah — and if there wasn't anything else Liz felt she wanted to include, well, they were just about done here, she thought.

"There was one thing." Liz drew her wand, cast a privacy charm over their part of the room — she didn't care if Severus heard this part, but she had no idea how deep in Skeeter's confidence Tuft was. Severus did notice immediately, of course, she felt him watching. With mind magic, she meant, not intruding but just kind of hovering, keeping an eye on them. She did know palings that would keep out mind magic, so she wasn't really trying to keep him out.

One of Skeeter's thin, pencilled eyebrows stretched upward, a sharp simmering of something in her head. Curiosity, maybe, but it could be hard to tell. "Ah hah, want to keep this part between the two of us, I see." Skeeter snatched her notebook and quill out of the air, muttering some kind of enchantment key, folded the notebook closed and set them aside. Leaning forward on an elbow against one of the armrests, grinning, she drawled, "Go on then, Elizabeth — consider me riveted."

...Did Skeeter have to be so enthusiastic about it? That was, just, kind of vaguely creepy. Shrugging off that moment of discomfort as well she could, Liz asked, "You have a lot of influence at the Daily Prophet and Witch Weekly, right? You're one of the bigger writers over there."

Frowning just slightly, Liz could feel Skeeter's mind turning, trying to figure out where this was going. "I sell them a lot of papers." That was an unusually brief, flat statement for Skeeter, the suggestive sweetness abruptly gone out of her voice.

Liz had the feeling she was missing something. Oh well, not her business, and probably not important. "I don't like waking up to find articles about me in the paper. People were annoying about the ones this year, and then there was the speculation about the Chamber last year, and me talking to snakes or whatever else the year before that. I don't like it."

"That's the way fame goes, Elizabeth, you can't expect the papers to ignore stories when they come up. A girl's got to eat," she said with a little, coy smile. A good half of those extremely annoying articles had been written by Skeeter herself, so. At least she had the decency to not try to claim she felt badly about it — she probably realised Liz would feel a lie.

"There's enough politics and shite going on to fill pages, and the stuff with the World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, things aren't going to settle down for a long time, I don't think. There's plenty enough news going on they don't need to talk about me."

Skeeter let out a long hum, her too-long nails tapping at her forearm. "You want me to stop Witch Weekly and the Prophet from writing about you."

"Yes."

"Oh, well I'm flattered, darling, truly." Skeeter leaned back in her chair, slouching a little and her smile vanishing — the last bits of the character of Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent falling away, more of her old northern accent even slipping back into her voice. "I think you're giving me far too much credit. The management likes the money I bring in, and I'm friendly enough with the owner of Witch Weekly to go out for drinks once in a time, but I don't run things over there. I can trade favours to get stories I want, but I'll still need to write it. And maybe I can talk another reporter out of something, maybe give them something they want to drop it, but if the editors want a story written, nine times out of ten there's nothing I can do. Like I said: I sell them a lot of papers. That's it."

...Right. That made a lot of sense, when Liz thought about it. After all, Skeeter was just some random muggleborn who'd managed to do well for herself, it wasn't like she actually owned either of the papers she wrote for, or had any power of any kind. On its face, that made perfect sense, but Liz wasn't convinced she was being entirely straightforward with her — hadn't really felt a lie, but. "That's a shame. And I was going to make a deal."

Another flash of something in her head, Skeeter's eyes narrowed. "What kind of deal?"

"Did you know I have a pensieve?"

"No, but I'm not surprised — a lot of noble families use them to preserve their wisdom for future generations." That last bit was said with a subtle note of sarcasm, because muggleborn.

Liz gave her a look. "Did you know mind magic works inside pensieves?"

There was another bright flash, intense enough Liz twitched, as where she was going with this abruptly clicked together. A smirk beginning to bloom on her face, Skeeter said, "No, I did not."

"It's more limited than normal mind magic — since it's just a memory I can only see what the person was thinking at the time, and can't pull up memories and stuff. But I still think it could be useful. Obviously, you couldn't just put in the articles I know this because Liz Potter told me. But I can tell you if you're barking up the wrong tree, or if someone is lying to you, or whatever."

"I have my own ways of knowing when someone is lying to me. But you're right, that could be very useful." Skeeter was mostly keeping it off her voice, but Liz was a cheater — she very much wanted access to Liz's mind-reading abilities. Thoughts a tangled mess hissing away in her head, she leaned back in her chair, after a moment reaching for her coffee before remembering she'd already emptied it. "This is why you came to me in the spring, isn't it? You thought I could stop the papers I write for from printing anything about you, and that I'd take you up on the deal."

Liz snorted, amused despite herself. "That was quick."

"Darling, I was in the same Slytherin class with Bellatrix Black and Mirabella Zabini," Skeeter drawled, some of the honey dripping back into her voice. "You're hardly the first precocious little schemer I've come across."

"Wait, you were in Slytherin? But you're muggleborn."

One of her eyebrows ticked up, giving her a look — what kind of look, Liz wasn't sure, and her mind was too fuzzy, thinking about something else. Liz didn't think Skeeter thought she meant it in a racist way — given their politics talk earlier, that'd be a weird thing to think — but beyond that she couldn't tell. "The Hat didn't stop Sorting muggleborns into Slytherin until the Seventies. As I was saying, I did wonder why you didn't go to the Herald, but I suppose this little plot of yours explains it." Because Liz owned a share of the Northern Herald, she meant. Honestly Liz had just been hoping she could get Skeeter specifically to stop making up shite about her, talking to her directly had been Severus's solution in the first place. "I don't have power over what Witch Weekly and the Prophet print, but...I think maybe we can come up with something anyway."

"I'm not looking at memories for you for free."

"Ah, and I wasn't saying you should. The problem, Elizabeth, is that you're famous. You said earlier that there's enough going on fit to print without needing to write about you, but it's not about need — your existence is a story, so every little thing that happens to you someone is going to think is newsworthy. Dumbledore made sure of that."

"You think it was Dumbledore?" As far as Liz was aware, nobody was a hundred per cent sure where exactly the Girl Who Lived story had come from. That it had been Dumbledore spreading it around in the aftermath was the common assumption, because who else, but she didn't think that'd ever been confirmed.

Skeeter shrugged, something clinking a little with the movement. "The author of that first article about you in the Prophet, the same one your little moniker first appeared in, has an uncle who's an old friend of Dumbledore's. And between you and me, he isn't a very good writer — the story wouldn't have been given to him, he must have brought it himself. He's never said anything about it to me, or to anyone else, but I think it's obvious what happened." Oh, well, of course, Liz hadn't bothered looking into who wrote the thing... "As I was saying — again, you keep changing the subject on me, darling — what was done when you were a babe can't be undone. People are going to take any little thing about you and turn it into a story, there is nothing you or I can do about that. We can't keep your name out of the papers. What we can do, is try to control how your name gets in the papers."

...That didn't sound like solving the problem to Liz. But she wasn't the expert in the room, what did she know about this shite, really. "What do you mean?"

Smirking, her mind shivering with amusement, Skeeter drawled, "Mm, you know, that Liz Potter, she's such a sweet, shy little thing, she doesn't like talking to the press. It was hard enough for me, after years sending owls with requests to talk before she finally agreed to sit down with me—" That was a blatant lie...or at least Liz thought it was, but she didn't actually feel anything. When she thought about it, Liz had been a minor, Skeeter might have been writing Dumbledore for permission to talk to her instead, and he'd just blown her off...or never even seen the letters in the first place, he was a busy bloke... "—but now that we have a rapport, well, I doubt anyone else will be able to get anywhere with her. Very private, and cautious, and who can blame the poor dear. No, if we want to do a story on Potter, well, I'm thinking I'll just have to do all of those myself from now on. And if some story can maybe benefit from a comment from her, I can pass it along. But I'm afraid any contact with Potter will have to go through me.

"And if we refuse to play nice..." Her smirk turned sharper, showing her teeth. "...you know how the nobles can be, and now that Sirius Black is free, well. I don't want to be on the wrong end of a lawsuit from the Girl Who Lived and the House of Black, maybe best to play it safe."

Liz felt her own lips twitch, fought to keep her expression flat. "And that'll work, will it?"

"How do you think I've been keeping my colleagues off the Malfoys all these years?"

...Point taken.

"Unfortunately — and I understand these things can be, mm, difficult, especially for a girl your age — but unfortunately you can't give people nothing. You're already an object of fascination, and if you don't give people something they'll fill the gap themselves. And you might not like what they come up with."

"I don't want them talking about me in the first place." Though Skeeter was right, that ship had sailed a long time ago — people had been paying far too much attention to her from the instant she'd stepped foot in Hogwarts, before she'd even done anything. And some of the rumours the other kids came up with, ridiculous. As much as Liz thought it was fucking stupid that people couldn't just let it go already — honestly, that Hallowe'en had been a dozen years ago, and it'd been her mother, Liz hadn't done shite, she'd been a bloody infant at the time, for fuck's sake (oh, but we couldn't give the muggleborn credit for defeating the Dark Lord, of course not) — she couldn't make people stop being fucking stupid. "You might be right, but, I don't want to— How big of a thing would this have to be? Because if it's all the bloody time..."

"No, no, of course not — I'd only need anything from you when something happens you're involved in. Political stories might benefit from a comment from you now and again, but I suppose I can go to the Slughorn girl instead. That is what proxies are for, after all, you should tell her to expect my owl." Before Liz could agree, because making Sylvia deal with all that shite sounded like an excellent idea (especially since Liz didn't know that much about magical politics anyway), Skeeter went on. "There will need to be a story about you now and then, though. If I'm to be known as your official interviewer, there need to be interviews, you see. Nothing big, just checking in. Let people know what the Girl Who Lived is up to, in broad strokes, so they don't feel the need to speculate.

"Perhaps we could..." Skeeter trailed off with a long hum, glancing away for a moment, fingernails idly tapping. "I'm sure you know, the Prophet does a memorial issue every year on Hallowe'en."

"Yeah, I don't read that." There was always too much Girl Who Lived shite in it, it irritated her.

"I can't say I'm surprised, I imagine many people with baggage from the war don't. Honestly, it's in quite poor taste, but it sells, so." Skeeter shrugged. "They always want to have something about you, but nobody has ever known much — Dumbledore can be a coy old codger when he wants to be, and the rumours floating around are hard to back up. Having some information from you — what's happened over the last year, just superficial stuff, you know the idea — would make it far less...well, speculative. Less focused on the myth-making of that night, you see. Maybe, we can make it part of a bigger— You're hardly the only household name out of the war, maybe it can be a whole production, your update alongside a number of others. Even other orphans, maybe, part of the set, there are a few others. Bones, Longbottom, Selwyn, the Carmichaels, Grey..."

Liz had never heard of those last ones, and Neville's parents weren't technically dead, but whatever. "That might be fine, I guess. I mean, it might be less annoying if it's not all ooh, Girl Who Lived shite, you know."

"I thought it might. There will need to be, well, something like what we're doing now, I suppose. Keep people up to date, you see."

"Yeah, I get it. I guess that's fine." These things with Skeeter hadn't been too painful so far, and the article from the last one was probably the least annoying thing about herself she'd seen yet. Of course, she understood that it was good for Skeeter's career to get to be the reporter the Girl Who Lived talks to, so she was trying to not be annoying, but. Ideally, people would leave her the fuck alone and she wouldn't have to do this shite at all, but she couldn't stop the entire bloody country from talking about her any more than she could stop people from having feelings around her. (Just one more thing to 'thank' Dumbledore for, she guessed.) "How often would we be doing that?"

"Aside from the Hallowe'en piece and the occasional comment here and there as needed...I'm thinking annually. We can meet a couple weeks after you leave school for the summer, and I'll aim to publish on your birthday. Yes, I think that might work nicely."

"...Oh." She'd thought Skeeter would be asking for a lot more than that, that actually didn't sound too bad. Just the two a year, assuming Skeeter managed to keep any ridiculous speculation being written by anyone else, meant there'd actually be fewer articles about her coming out, which, hmm. But then, Skeeter did really want access to her mind reading, must be trying to sweeten the deal. "I can live with that, I guess."

"Marvellous!" Skeeter chriped, grinning, her cheerfulness so thick on the air Liz could taste it, bright and spicy. "Oh good, good. Maybe we should— Hold on a minute." She started to rise to her feet, then paused. "I can walk through your paling, yes?"

"Yeah, it's fine."

"Alright, I'll be back straight away." Skeeter sauntered off, a cocky sway to her hips — she'd been playing it pretty cool, but now she wasn't even bothering to hide that she was very pleased with herself. There were a couple bags set against the wall, Skeeter poked through them for a moment, trading a couple quiet comments with Severus and Tuft Liz couldn't quite make out from here. Before too long she was coming back, a pair of plain journals held in one hand — relatively nice, with black leather covers, but no decoration or anything — a quill and a bottle in the other. Swishing down into her seat, with more clinking of something on her somewhere, she said, "Sometimes I might need to ask you a question, or if something comes up with you, and we might not have time to meet. And owls can be frustratingly slow when you have deadlines to worry about. So, we'll need another way to communicate."

She was about to ask why Skeeter didn't just use floo calls, before realising the Ministry could probably monitor those if they wanted to, so, never mind. "And the notebooks are going to do that."

"With a bit of clever planning." Skeeter had flipped the books open to the inside back covers, dragged the tip of her wand along the edge, separated the last sheet of parchment away from the leather. Leaning over a little, Liz was not entirely surprised to find the internal surface, some kind of light wood the mages used in place of cardboard, was covered with a rune circle — Skeeter must have enchanted the things. She added a couple runes to each — with her (inactive) dictation quill, not the angular black one she'd carried over — switching back and forth between the books as she did each one, when she finished the last a faint snap around Liz's head signalled the enchantment taking. Skeeter shook out her fingers, apparently caught by the effects a little, flipped over to the inside front cover, showing one of those this book belongs to things there.

"Here," Skeeter said, holding out one of the notebooks and her bright red quill. "Write in your name. It's not a contract or anything, I swear, just putting your name on it."

Liz hadn't even considered Skeeter might try to magically bind her with a hidden contract until after she'd brought up the idea, which she really should have, but she could feel Skeeter was telling the truth, so. Once she'd written her name on the one notebook, Skeeter turned the other one so Liz could see it — her name had appeared on that one too, despite not once touching it. Huh, that was neat. "Can I get the script for that?"

"Of course, darling, it's a simple thing. But the second part isn't so simple. Watch what I do." Skeeter flipped again to the back cover, pointed at a rune in the very centre of the circle — it was clearly Egyptian, though Liz didn't recognise it off hand. (They were starting Egyptian this year.) Picking up the black quill, Skeeter carefully traced over the rune, little sparks of something in her head as she did, the ink pulled from somewhere a dark, glimmering red. Once she'd finished the last line, she raised the book closer to her face with both hands, her eyes flicked to Liz. "Unsweetened coffee," she muttered, and then blew on the rune. There were little multicoloured sparkles in the reddish ink, just for a second before going still again. Definitely magic of some kind, no idea what was going on there, but it was also just kind of pretty.

A quick charm to dry it, and she flipped back to the front cover, turned to show it to Liz. Where Liz's name had been was a squiggle of cursive — completely incomprehensible cursive, Liz couldn't even be certain it was in the right alphabet. When Skeeter said "Unsweetened coffee," it abruptly switched back to Liz's name; she closed the book and then opened it again, and it'd returned to gibberish.

"Oh, that's so cool! How does that work?"

Skeeter gave her a curly, pleased little smile, warm sparkles in her head. "It's a basic encryption, you can find books on glamourie at Flourish and Blotts that will have similar spells. The tricky bit is the key." She held the narrow black quill out toward Liz.

The second she touched it, she knew it was enchanted somehow — it felt cool and spikey, the intensity of the magic on it making her fingers numb and tingly. And there was something else about it, she felt vaguely queasy, didn't know what that was about. "It's enchanted. What does it do?"

"That's a blood quill — it uses blood taken from the user in place of ink. They're pretty common, if you're signing a magical contract normally you'll use a blood quill. The goblins also use them a lot, for identification, their magic works differently. I'm pretty sure we got them from goblins in the first place. Remember what that enchantment feels like — if someone hands you a blood quill unexpectedly, you should be very suspicious of what they're up to."

Liz knew enough about blood magic to not need that warning, but Skeeter probably didn't realise that. "And I'm not supposed to be suspicious now?" She wasn't, obviously, since she had just seen Skeeter do the same thing, she was mostly just teasing.

Skeeter chuckled, strangely delighted. "It's only for the encryption, it's isolated from the rest of the spells on the book. You can go ask Severus if you don't believe me — I already told him what the notebooks are for."

"Or you can say what you just did, since I'm a mind mage and can tell when you lie."

"Or that," she agreed, smirking. Still strangely delighted, Liz really had no idea why Skeeter found her so amusing sometimes.

Shaking that off, Liz turned down to her own book. As much as she couldn't actually read the runes, she could tell this was two separate enchantments...or, more like one enchantment that fed into a second one, but still. That was what the design in the middle was for, isolating the runes in the middle from the ones outside, pretty clear to her. Anyway, she was supposed to trace over this one in the middle — with each stroke, sharp, cold magic penetrated into her hand, it was a little painful but not too bad. While she was doing that, Skeeter was writing something in one of the first pages of her own book, presumably copying down the enchantment for her. She was scritching along pretty quick, in the time it took Liz to draw only a single rune, but her handwriting was shite and she was trying not to screw it up, so.

Right, so, she needed an activation key, something she would remember had to do with Skeeter. Um... "Rhinestones." There was a little huff and a flash of amusement from Skeeter, but Liz ignored it, leaning over to blow on the rune drawn with blood, which— Oh, she got it, normally enchantment keys worked just on the words but Skeeter was using the tiny bits of stuff on their breath, loose skin cells or whatever, to tie it to their voices specifically. The blood probably helped, but still, that was really clever, Liz would never have thought of that.

It turned out the bottle Skeeter had brought wasn't ink, as Liz had assumed, but some kind of adhesive — once Liz had charmed the blood dry, Skeeter took the book back, and poured a sizeable dollop of the stuff over the runes, evened it out with a circular swish of her wand, and then pressed the back sheet of paper back over it. Another drying charm, and she handed the book to Liz. "There we are. I check over all of mine every morning and evening for new entries — you don't have to keep it on you, but do remember to give it a look now and then."

"Right." Flipping open to the first page, Liz noticed the gibberish version didn't look the same on her book, some arithmancy... Actually, Liz knew enough about arithmancy to realise this was complete nonsense, but she guessed it was only supposed to look innocuous at a glance. A mutter of "rhinestones" had it suddenly snap over to the stuff Skeeter was writing — a reproduction of the design on the back, on the next page she was just starting a description of how the different parts worked, it— Oh, each pair of books used the same symbol in this spot right here, different from the other pairs, not a proper rune but just a shape she made up each time, to make sure she didn't get any slippage, that was also clever. "Very cool, I love magic sometimes."

"Only sometimes?" Skeeter joked, grinning — trust a muggleborn to get it, she guessed, most of her magic-raised friends thought she was just being silly. "The encryption will only break if the key is said in your voice while you're holding the book. It can be broken, if someone knows what they're doing, but they'll need your blood to do it. Someone who thinks they're being clever might try to remove the back cover, thinking breaking the enchantment will work, but I thought of that — if they try, the papers will catch on fire and burn instantly."

"Like I said, very cool." Liz was honestly surprised, Skeeter didn't really have a reputation for this sort of thing. She wasn't sure she'd ever even seen her cast magic at all before now.

"Thank you, darling, I'm quite pleased with it myself. There was one other thing." Skeeter turned a page in her book, tossed Liz a spare quill she'd gotten from somewhere, pointed down at it before beginning to write. If there was any delay between the books Liz couldn't tell, it looked like what Skeeter was writing was reproduced in Liz's book at precisely the same instant. If I'm to send you memories you will notice straight off, so let's get it out of the way. I wouldn't tell you this at all if not for what we discussed earlier. Liz had long enough to wonder what she was referring to before Skeeter got out, I'm an unregistered animagus. A beetle, very small.

...Fucking hell. Liz definitely hadn't thought Skeeter was that good of a mage — the animagus transformation was extremely difficult magic, and risky. And a bloody insect, Liz had never heard of that before, they were always mammals and birds! Just, fuck, that was— "Oh! That's how you alw—"

"Shht!" Shooting Liz a flat look, Skeeter sharply pointed at her book, started writing again. Never speak secrets aloud in public places. I guarantee you something in here has a listening enchantment on it. Maybe law enforcement, more likely guild espionage.

...Oh. That was creepy, but not really a surprise, when she thought about it. Good thinking, sorry. I was just saying, that's how you always know things you shouldn't, you sneak in places as a bloody beetle! I bet that's even how you got into Adjustment's records, for my stuff.

Turning to smirk up at her, Skeeter tapped the side of her nose with a finger. The records at the Ministry are kept in rooms with security wards, they keep out animagi. But if I have an accomplice whose clothing includes a pocket enchanted with anti-scrying spells...

Even with Narcissa's warnings that Skeeter was a dangerous enemy to have, she'd still managed to underestimate her — that was seriously bloody clever. I want to be annoyed with you getting the stuff on me, but mostly I'm just impressed. Though you're lucky you got something so convenient.

Skeeter sniffed. Luck had nothing to do with it — I chose my form.

I didn't think you could, that you're just stuck with one you have some affinity with, for whatever reason. Like patroni? They're usually even the same thing, too.

Nonsense. The form a patronus takes is associated with the memory somehow. It might be subconscious, but it's not a mystery. Well, no, Severus had said the same thing, but... And how mages talk about how an animagus's form is decided is obviously nonsense. Rambling about "spirit animals" and the like, it's very silly — obviously the only animal you have an "innate affinity inscribed upon [your] soul" is the animal you are. But mages don't consider humans to be animals like any other. Unless they're muggles, of course.

...Right, that made a lot of sense when Liz thought about. She'd just never given it much thought before. How do you pick, then?

By keeping your desired form in mind during the rituals. It's not some big secret, it's how the Americans do it. If you don't, you're likely to end up with whatever animal you happen to think about most often — which is also most likely to be your patronus, because obviously. The two so often being the same is a coincidence. I can turn myself into a beetle, but my patronus is a horse.

"You can cast a corporeal patronus?" Liz couldn't see why that part should be a secret, so it was probably fine to switch back to talking out loud.

Skeeter apparently agreed, folding the book closed. With a crooked, teasing sort of grin, "Surprised?"

"...Well, not as much as I might have been a half hour ago. No offence, but you don't really have a reputation for being good with magic."

If anything, Skeeter just seemed pleased at the comment, mind warm and sparkling and smiling coyly back at Liz. "Sometimes it's useful to be underestimated."

Yeah, she could see that. Unfortunately for Liz, people thought she'd blown up a Dark Lord as a toddler, so.

They wrapped up quickly from there, going back to the half of the room with Severus and Tuft, Skeeter thanking them for meeting with her, reiterating that it'd take a few weeks to finish the article and squeeze it into an issue. Skeeter said that like Witch Weekly would be reluctant to push out other shite to get it in there, but Liz was unfortunately well aware that the combination of being about Liz written by Skeeter would have any issue selling like mad. Severus would "again" be sent a copy of the article ahead of time — Liz hadn't been aware he'd gotten one the first time, apparently some legal arse-covering, whatever.

...Actually, it was very possible Skeeter just wanted to avoiding making Severus angry with her. He was rather more threatening of a guardian than Dumbledore — Liz was pretty sure Dumbledore had never straight murdered anybody, and it would be trivial for Severus to slip Skeeter an undetectable poison. In any case, not Liz's business, she mostly ignored the conversation going on around her, waiting until they could leave. A last coy drawl about keeping in touch, with another tap of her nose and a bloody wink — being very obvious about it, clearly just being silly for the hell of it — and then Liz and Severus were walking out, leaving Skeeter and Tuft behind to settle the tab. And that was it, they were done.

"Do I need to write Narcissa?"

Liz blinked. "What about?"

"Whatever you and Skeeter discussed privately."

"Oh, no, it's fine. We have a deal now. Kind of like the Malfoys, you know."

"Very well."

Liz expected Severus to ask, she waited a good minute, well after they stepped back out on the street...but he didn't. What was that about? He must assume she would say something if it turned bad, or that she'd planned it out with Narcissa — he did know they'd talked about Skeeter, but not the specific details. Whatever he was thinking, the little sign of trust was nice, honestly. So, all in all, that had gone very smoothly, hadn't it?

Except now they had to walk all the way back, and Liz's hip hadn't stopped bothering her — ugh, long day, she was so going straight to bed when they got back...

---

Blluuuuhhhh. Not happy about this one, it seriously fought me at points, but I'd rather just move on. YOLO, fuck the police, etc.

There was originally going to be a third scene — featuring one of the fights actually from Liz's POV, the only one we're doing this tournament — but it would definitely bring this chapter way over 20k, so we'll start the next one with that. I feel like there should be other shit to say, but my brain is super fried right now, and I can't remember anything. Oh well.

Oh! There was a thing I was going to say a couple chapters ago, but I forgot. Hogwarts Legacy is on pre-order now, and I thought I'd remind everybody to definitely not pay for it — JKR doesn't need your hard-earned money, and neither does WB Games for that matter. I am going to play it, of course, but I'm not going to pay for it, like a sucker.

We live in the age of the internet now. Be gay, do crimes.

Right, bye.