As much as this having friends thing could be nice, sometimes people actually giving a damn about her could be kind of annoying.
Since both of the Hogwarts teams had the day off, Liz had a lot going on, pretty much the whole day was all planned out. After breakfast — having had too many snacks late last night, she'd just gotten coffee and not bothered going — she had a couple hours to loaf around, before she was supposed to meet her friends who'd come to watch in the courtyard just outside the main entrance around ten. They'd take a leisurely stroll toward where Sirius and Heli had made reservations for lunch — somewhat early, which was another reason she hadn't bothered having breakfast — and then they'd just be hanging out in what was basically magical Romania's main shopping...area...thing, doing whatever, until it was time for dinner at some other place, which Sirius and Heli had also made reservations for. Around sundown, Liz was supposed to meet back up with the junior and senior teams, along with a bunch of people's friends from school or whatever (including the entire Slytherin quidditch team, and the Gryffindors minus the Weasley twins), and there was going to be a whole party thing. Liz had no idea how long that was expected to last, but Adrian had warned her ahead of time that there'd be drugs and shite — as in, not just liquor — and nobody would make a fuss if she left early. Which she probably would, since there were going to be a lot of people there, only some of whom she knew at all, and people could be a bit...odd, while intoxicated, so.
She was vaguely curious about other drugs, honestly, since alcohol had turned out to be fun (though hangovers sucked), but at a noisy party with a whole bunch of people she wasn't really comfortable with was not the time she wanted to play around with that stuff. Liquor, sure, but she was drawing the line there. So, yeah, she'd probably bail, but she'd show up for the first bit, at least.
Thankfully Liz had the excuse of getting beat up in the duels — though she hadn't actually been hurt that badly, half of her team were visibly sore or tired — because she fully expected today to be exhausting, and it was good to have a ready-made excuse up her sleeve. She really didn't know what to think about so many people coming to this thing just for her. Hermione, Daphne, and Tracey, sure, and Susan was into duelling, and Tori could be expected to badger Daphne into bringing her along and obviously Susan would want to bring her girlfriend, so, that all made sense. Dorea was still being weird about the gay thing, but Sirius insisted on coming, so she wasn't a big surprise. She wouldn't have expected Millie, or Lily, or Sophie and Sally-Anne in a million bloody years, and it was just...
A lot. It was a lot. She didn't know how she was supposed to feel about them all coming to the opposite side of the Continent to watch her compete. Mostly she just felt confused, and vaguely nervous — in the same I don't know what's happening and might have forgotten something feeling that back at the Dursleys often preceded getting punished for one reason (or non-reason) or another, but these days mostly just meant she was making a social faux pas she hadn't seen coming, and people were about to get inexplicably angry or offended with her. Which, nothing like that was going to happen this time, she didn't think. Everyone who'd come spent some time around her, at least — they were all in Hermione's study group, and generally the people she most talked to at school, the only reasonably-passable friend that was missing was Padma — so they should be used to Liz being...well, Liz, and not getting these things sometimes. Nobody had made a fuss about it last time, when Liz had managed to get away to grab ice cream with them quick one evening. That had been kind of rushed, since Liz had needed to get back and in bed before too long, so there would be more opportunities to say something wrong and fuck it up this time. But, she thought it'd be fine? probably?
(Liz had retained a vague glimpse of how Artèmi had felt about her mother turning up to watch her compete, but Liz didn't really have feelings like that ever, so. Also, the impression she'd gotten was that their relationship was distant and weird, and Liz didn't even have a mother, so it might not be comparable to begin with, what did she know...)
And this time, Liz was kind of hoping there'd be an opportunity to get Daphne on her own. Which might have something to do with the vague nervousness.
It probably also had something to do with why she hadn't managed to leave the bathroom yet. She'd changed into her deep red sleeveless dress, the new one — luckily she hadn't accidentally dripped anything on it during that first day here, because she hadn't thought to send it off with her uniforms — which might look like an odd contrast against her duelling boots, style-wise, but she didn't really have other shoes with her, so. (Shopping for this shite on her France trip, she'd considered getting, like, sandals or whatever, but that would come off very muggleish to mages, and also she didn't know what she was doing.) It'd taken a few attempts to charm her stubborn hair into a plait, holding the inevitably escaping wisps back with the white and gold shawl thing that went with her formal robes, which was maybe a little too fancy, but she liked it — also, red white and gold were Potter colours, so it was thematic. Not for the first time, she idly considered trying cosmetic charms, and while she did know a couple from the box of spells Lily had left for her, this seemed like a terrible time to experiment. She'd also thought about maybe swapping out for some of Lily's earrings, but she remembered the green ones had actually been Daphne's idea, and she'd probably prefer the Mistwalker style anyway, so she didn't bother.
Explicitly thinking about what Daphne might like better while getting dressed and whatever made her feel...weird. She didn't know weird how, just. It wasn't that different, in principle, to watching what she said and generally not being an arse, or occasionally doing nice things for her friends (or Severus) just because, but it felt different, for some reason. She didn't think it was a bad feeling, necessarily. Probably just puberty fucking with her some more.
It did kind of make her feel really girly, or maybe just more self-conscious about it, if there was even a difference. But as Severus had so sarcastically pointed out, she was a girl, so. Which, she didn't mind girly shite, not like some girls could get sometimes (and she thought in retrospect Severus had been hinting at), it was just a little embarrassing, you know.
Or, at least she assumed other people would get what she meant — she didn't, really, but that seemed like the sort of thing normal people would be better at figuring out.
Jesus fucking Christ she was so damn pale, the dark red of her dress had made it really obvious, practically bloody glowing. That had to be magical, as many times as she'd gotten sunburn that just wasn't natural. (Maybe that was also something she could change when they did the blood alchemy thing?) Hopefully it wouldn't be too big of a problem — they'd be spending a lot of time inside, and there were awnings and shite in the market... Oh well, she had easy access to healing potions here, it'd be fine.
Did she have the colour right? She'd charmed her fingernails to match her dress — which was something she'd actually picked up from Witch Weekly, which she would not be admitting out loud — but the two materials reflected the light differently, it was hard to tell. It looked close, at least...
And now Liz was just standing in front of the bathroom mirror fixating over her fingernails like a...well, like Lavender Brown, she guessed. She should probably, just, get going already. A flick of her wand to cast a time charm, and yeah, she'd wasted quite enough time as it was...
She was only slightly surprised to find Severus wasn't in the common room — Katie, Cynfelyn, and Brendan were out doing something with some people from the senior team and a couple other British teams, Severus was keeping an eye on them just in case, doing the responsible adult thing, but she hadn't thought they'd gone yet. He was aware she was going out, they'd talked about it last night, but her friends had chaperones — including Sirius, who would probably turn any crazy trying to make a grab for her while in a foreign country into unrecognisable bloody paste — so he hadn't made a fuss about it. In fact, the only resident in the common room right now was Oz's mum, sitting chatting in Cambrian with another mum travelling with one of Oxford's teams. (Liz assumed she was someone's mum, anyway, never met the woman.) Lleucu asked where she was going quick (doing the responsible adult thing), and then made a comment about her looking nice, which, um, okay, didn't know what she was supposed to say to that. Thanks, she guessed? She had actually tried this time...
And apparently it'd worked to a degree, because on the way through the duellists' areas of the place Liz was nudged with the warm, tingly pressure of appreciative attention on her — it was only a couple times, though, not as bad as the episode with the shorts, so Liz just brushed it off as well as she could.
Upstairs, the Long Gallery was busier than Liz had expected, but really she shouldn't be surprised — not everyone had a day off, some people were still competing. Liz had actually been half-planning on catching some of the championship events, when they'd first been told about the format and everything, but she guessed going out was also fine. (If she was really curious, she could always buy memories later.) It took a bit of weaving through the crowd, but Liz eventually made it to the exit.
And immediately grimaced against the sun in her eyes, the heat against her skin. For fuck's sake, why was it so hot in Romania?! Honestly, there was maybe a little less to this dress than she'd normally be comfortable with, but if she dressed like she normally did back home she'd literally melt...
Blinking against the sunlight, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust — the sun reflecting off of the lighter bricks didn't help, Jesus... — the courtyard the arena was on gradually resolving. It was one of the more open areas of the magical side of town, apparently, originally built bloody ages ago (though rebuilt after the Statute, and again after the Revolution), a lot of the important shite like government buildings and financial and guild whatever. Supposedly it'd been a market square bloody ages ago, but that'd been moved elsewhere at some point, the space now left mostly open, a fountain at the centre, the brick surface interrupted here and there with trees and rows of bushes and flowers and whatever else. It would be nice enough, Liz guessed, if it weren't so bloody hot and sunny outside.
It didn't take Liz very long to spot the people she was meeting, since there weren't very many sizeable groups of people just standing around not going anywhere — though they actually spotted her first, clumped under one of the trees a short distance away, someone hopping in place a little and waving her hand over her head. Um, Sophie, Liz thought, squinting, too bloody bright. Standing under the meagre shade of the greenery sounded way better, so Liz trotted over that way before the whole group caught up and started making their way toward her instead.
Honestly, way too many people, she didn't get it.
When they met, Liz awkwardly mumbled her way through the hellos — she wasn't great with this stuff in normal situations, and not knowing how she was supposed to react to everyone coming all the way to a foreign country for her didn't make it easier. It also didn't help that she was trying not to openly stare at Daphne, all made up in Mistwalker stuff showing occasional flashes of her middle through the folds, or Sophie, who was wearing these tiny little shorts that— Right. It wasn't that bad, thankfully, at least nobody tried to hug her. (Hermione, Daphne, Sirius, the Hufflepuffs minus Susan, and oddly Tori all thought about it, but none actually went for it.) There were a lot of congratulations for doing so well, which she guessed she had, relatively speaking. It'd sure felt like she'd done terribly in singles, but compared to the average person at their first event she actually did fine, and they'd done passably well in the team event and placed high in trios, so. Not to mention, Artèmi might have casually flattened her, but beating Alexis Torralba one-on-one was kind of a big deal, and she might have done better with Artèmi if she hadn't already been injured and tired, so. Pretty good showing for her first go of it, it just hadn't really seemed like it from her perspective of getting her arse kicked and eliminated from events. The compliments did make her feel a little awkward, not sure what she was supposed to say, but that was normal — she was used to just ignoring the shite people said about her, so she didn't know what to do with nice things.
Yes, she was fine, the hits she'd taken in singles had fucked her up for a bit but nothing was bothering her now, she could walk just fine. Speaking of walking, weren't they getting lunch somewhere? Let's not just sit out here, okay, the sun was slowly baking her death.
Liz ignored the amusement with her being overdramatic coming from multiple people. They mostly seemed to think she was being funny on purpose, so, whatever. She was too bloody pale for summers here, okay, she didn't know how any of them could stand it.
(Well, Hermione was probably fine, she tended to tan a lot in the summer months — normally Liz wouldn't have guessed Hermione had a recent non-white ancestor, but when summer came around it was way more believable. Of course, Liz suspected the concept of race was dogshite made up to make western Europeans feel special, but whatever.)
As their group started off, Liz ended up walking with Hermione, her dad, and Lily, who mostly wanted to talk about how some of the more interesting magic that'd come up in her duels worked. Well, the Grangers wanted to talk about that stuff, anyway, Lily was just kind of here. In particular, Daniel was fascinated by the idea of nature magic just in general, but the quick-stepping thing was the only kind she really knew at all. Of course, explaining how it worked meant getting into mind magic, and how that was different from soul magic — it wasn't, technically, like how verbs were their own thing but also still words — but actually was different from the magic naturally produced by the human body, which Daniel also found completely fascinating. Especially when he asked how the ambient magic produced by the entire bloody world was different from the magic produced by a single living thing, and Liz explained it wasn't, technically, it was just a matter of scale, and natural magical phenomena could even be thought of as the bloody planet doing accidental magic, which immediately sent Daniel off on a gleeful spiral of questions Liz had no answers to — which was fair enough, that had been Liz's reaction when Tamsyn had first mentioned the idea.
(Magic was just so damn cool sometimes, she didn't understand how some mages could be so blasé about it.)
Of course, the Hufflepuffs were in front, cheerfully chattering and all but skipping along — so the neat magic theory conversation was a handy distraction from staring at Sophie's arse. Even then, it was still annoyingly difficult, just, very distracting, couldn't help it. If Liz had looked anything like that in hers, now she completely understood why people had kept looking.
And Liz could tell she was getting attention herself, though it had taken her a moment to notice, the warmth almost imperceptible under the summer heat, given away more by the light tingles and faint pressure pushing against her. It was a bit more diffuse than the shorts incident, more generalised, like a heavy blanket draping over her, but would concentrate now and then along her waist, across her shoulders, the patch of her legs between where her dress ended and her boots began. It was making Liz a bit self-conscious, but it helped that she quickly realised it was (mostly) all coming from one source.
As they paused at a corner for a moment, Sirius and Hannah's mum discussing which way they were supposed to be going, Liz turned to look over her shoulder, following the eyes on her straight back to Daphne. Daphne just smiled at her, a flash of smooth warmth pulsing in her head. She pushed a plaited strand of hair aside, in the process a finger conspicuously running over her bottom lip, before turning to say something to Tracey.
Well, at least Daphne liked the dress.
(Liz had been a little worried, not sure Daphne would still be interested — which was silly, given how long this had been going on by this point, but they hadn't talked about it since her last visit to the Greenwood. So. Good, that was good.)
The restaurant was not the sort of thing Liz would have even considered, if she'd been the one planning things...but the more she thought about it the more it made sense, under the circumstances. It wasn't in a closed building for one thing — when they'd walked through a gate into a courtyard set off the street, shaded with awnings and cloth curtains stretched overhead but not actually enclosed, she'd thought this was just the outdoor seating, but no, this was the whole thing. There was an enclosed area toward the back, but Liz thought that was mostly just the kitchen and stuff, toilets. Maybe there was an indoor dining room back there, but she never actually saw one. Liz had initially worried it would be too hot in here, but the awnings and shite mostly kept the sun away, and there must be environmental wards in here, it was still pretty warm but not that bad.
It was sort of like a buffet thing, Liz thought, but not a kind of one she'd ever even heard of before. Instead of big tables people sat around, there would be a ring of chairs — oddly low to the floor, with cushions set into the tile below, like goblin furniture — and several smaller end table things that could easily be moved around as they liked, in the middle of the circle a fire pit, a metal mesh grill set over it. (Not a normal fire pit, Liz didn't see any actual wood in there, instead just a smooth ceramic surface with flames rising from it, because magic was neat.) As many people as they had, they only barely fit around one of the larger fires, though it was kind of ridiculous they had ones big enough for all of them in the first place — looking around, she thought they were meant for whole families come out together, or multiple smaller groups maybe. The size meant that a good two-thirds of the circle were too far away to talk to easily, but Liz wasn't great with big groups anyway, so that was fine.
How it worked, was you went up to a few bigger tables toward the back, grabbed some of the shite up there, and came back and cooked it at the fire yourself — so see, kind of like a buffet, but not in any way a normal one. There were a lot of sausages, or sausage-like things — some of them looked like ground meat mixed up with herbs and whatever else and just pressed together, without any kind of casing — and those stuffed leaf things she'd seen before. There was a good section of a table just for kebabs, a tin of skewers and a bunch of platters with little bits of meat and veggies and whatever cut up and ready, set them up yourself — there was a bilingual sign (Romanian, in that eastern script, and French) politely insisting that everyone use the forks on the platters to get things on their skewers, for hygienic reasons, since the meat was mostly uncooked. And then there were other things, like those balls of grain meal that were apparently a Romanian thing and various breaded things — they'd bring an oiled dish over to your fire so you could properly fry those up, if you liked — and also just various kinds of bread, a whole range of sauces and shite for stuff... It was kind of overwhelming looking over it all, honestly, almost as bad as meals at Hogwarts before she got used to it all.
It didn't help that there were kind of a lot of people here, the chatter getting seriously bloody noisy, and all moving around all the time, Liz kept getting jostled looking over the food tables. Sirius had reserved a fire at the edge, and Liz had managed to claim a spot in the corner, so that wasn't so bad, but it was still rather irritating. Thankfully Liz was in a kind of up mood, if it were one of those times she didn't have the energy to keep people's minds away from her she'd be fucking miserable in here. Still took rather more focus to keep her head straight than she would like, and warm, and noisy, not what she would have picked.
But she did get why Sirius and Heli had arranged it. They were doing the visiting a foreign country thing, and as long as they were at it they might as well do things they didn't really have back home — apparently, this kind of establishment was an eastern thing (like, Egypt, the Near East through Persia, up the coast through the Black Sea), so it was very much a thing they didn't have in Britain. Also, apparently street food in Romania was very sausage- and kebab-centric, which was kind of a problem when three of them absolutely refused to eat meat at all, and Sophie, Sally-Anne (and her dad), and Lily had hardly ever left Britain before, and weren't used to the foreign food. This way they could all play around making whatever they wanted, which was convenient.
And also kind of fun — Liz didn't mind it in principle, she just could have done with fewer people around.
After they all got their first plate of stuff, the staff bringing back a few of the little oiled dishes to fry shite in — particularly, there were these breaded cheese things the Mistwalkers and the homebodies had all gotten, on the grill they'd just drip all over the place — while everyone was getting their stuff set out over the fire, Sirius, Heli, and a staff person pouring and passing out little shot-glasses. Liz was aware having a shot of liquor before a big meal was a Romanian thing (or maybe just an eastern European thing?), they'd done it every evening here (though not for lunch). Apparently people drank a lot of alcohol over here, because there would also be wine on the table, Liz had been being very careful to not have too much when she had duels coming up. (The shot-glasses were tiny and she suspected the wine was watered down a bit for the children, but still.) Romania made a lot of their own wine, and not just grapes, apparently they really liked plums over here — some of the wine they'd been given was actually plum wine, and the liquor was normally made from plums too. The wine was fine, with a bit more tangy fruitiness than she'd expected — a little sweet for her straight, but mixing it with this weird herby soda stuff they always had around was pretty good — and the liquor was basically like the wine, but less sweet and much more intense. She liked the gin she'd had at the Greenwood better, but it was fine.
Once all the glasses had been passed around, Sirius gave a toast, all about friendship and good times and adventure, and also to Liz kicking even more arse at the next tournament — the whole thing was very silly, a few of the girls giggled. Some of the braver girls (Liz included), when the time came threw theirs back all at once, imitating the adults (except Mr Perks, who wasn't much of a drinker and sipped at his instead). Liz managed not to cough or make a mess — Lily ended up spilling some of hers, dripping down to hiss in the fire — but holy crap, that was a kick in the face...
The meal ended up being fine — noisy, but the food was good, and poking about making their stuff themselves was kind of fun. Liz had ended up between Hermione and Daphne — not by mistake, both of them had moved to sit next to her on purpose — and Daphne being right there was making her a little self-conscious, especially since they'd needed to pack kind of close together to fit around the firepit. Also, Daphne kept watching her, and thinking about sneaking off alone (and what they would do then), which was distracting.
Distracting enough Liz almost didn't catch it in time, instinctively moving to reach past Hermione before realising that was a bad idea — Lily, sitting on Hermione's other side, was taking off one of her kebabs, but it wasn't done yet. Yes, Liz realised the vegetables were starting to brown a little, but Lily had pork bits on there, and those could get parasites and whatever else, so you really wanted to make sure they were fully cooked, give it another couple minutes. Everyone in earshot was a little surprised that Liz could tell it wasn't done yet just looking, which...could they not? The excuse she used was that it was just familiarity, but she actually didn't do shite with pork very often, because she just didn't like it much (besides sausages and bacon, obviously). She privately suspected it was another completely unconscious Seer thing, and suddenly had to wonder how much of her cooking stuff was down to knowing what she was doing and how much was just cheating.
(Being a Seer was bloody weird sometimes.)
That got down a tangent about Liz actually being pretty good at cooking, which was random, but fine. If Severus knew what he was talking about (and he always did), she'd probably be getting looks for this if she were in a crowd of purebloods, but nobody here thought it was odd. Of course, the muggleborns helped out at home, except Hermione, her parents shared cooking duties and she couldn't really at all. (She didn't say this out loud, but she'd been told Emma had casually asked Daniel one day if he would still have the same expectation Hermione would be helping out in the kitchen if they'd had a boy instead, and he'd immediately back-tracked — Hermione had been given the option, but it wasn't something she was interested in, so.) Lily was actually a pureblood, but her family were poor so did that kind of thing on their own, and while Daphne hardly ever cooked for herself — as Liz had put it before, she was basically the princess of a tiny, tiny kingdom, and princesses weren't expected to do that kind of thing — the Mistwalkers had more respect for working with your hands and domestic shite than the rich purebloods tended to, so she just thought it was kind of neat. (In fact, she was rather curious, but managed to hold in the impulse to ask Liz cook for her one day.) On Daphne's other side, Tracey thought it was a little weird, since Liz had house-elves and everything, but understood Liz might be uncomfortable ordering them around (Liz was honestly surprised she'd put that together herself, Tracey understood her uncomfortably well sometimes), so just shrugged it off, which was fair enough. Pretty much everyone did think it was a little strange that she regularly went through so much effort every day just for herself (and Nilanse), the things she was making kind of involved for someone her age (especially for no special reason), but if it was something she liked doing, nobody at this table was going to get all weirdly judgy for it, so.
Describing some of the things she did, Daphne was just getting more and more curious, unsurprisingly. With a careful touch right at the edge of her mind, I eat a lot of meat. I'll ask Tisme— Nilanse's mum, supposedly her skillset leaned in this direction. —maybe we'll figure something out.
There was a little shiver of discomfort at the beginning — Daphne was aware other people regularly ate meat, obviously, but she found the idea gross, and rather disturbing for religious/moral reasons, preferred not to think about it. (She was actually rather uncomfortable at the moment, was trying to just focus on her own food and the conversation.) But as Liz finished the thought that was quickly chased away with a burst of warmth and a tingling of excitement. Daphne was looking forward to it.
(Liz caught a flashes of a few, um, romantic ideas, about what having dinner at Liz's house might be like, and retreated from Daphne's mind before she visibly reacted.)
"Fixing tea is about my limit," Hermione was saying. "I can't even make toast without messing it up half the time. I do regret that a little, honestly, I'm going to have to live on take-out most of August."
On Lily's other side, Susan asked, "What's happening in August?"
"Oh, my mum is moving to the Greenwood early. She's been having a hard time of it, you know, we thought the wards and having healers around might be a good idea, just in case."
"Are your parents leaving you at home alone? for weeks?" Lily glanced across the firepit toward Daniel, cheerfully chattering with the other adults.
"No, my dad will be around, but he won't be spending a lot of time at home — someone has to keep things in order at the practice, and he'll be hopping over to the Greenwood often, he won't be home for meals most of the time. I was asked if I want to go to the Greenwood too, but I said no. Not that I didn't have a good time over Christmas," Hermione said, leaning around Liz to look at Daphne, "of course I did, it's just... Well, the Greenwood is very...busy. I'd rather have a quieter end to the holiday, you know, catch up on reading."
Daphne hadn't been offended — she was well aware the way of things at the Greenwood wasn't for everyone (though she did think people would be happier if they got the stick out of their arses every once in a while) — but Hermione didn't necessarily know that. After a few platitudes about all that, and about Hermione's mother, more babbling about how they'd be spending the rest of their holidays and food and whatever else, Liz's thoughts wandering as the conversation went on around her...
"You can stay over at my house, if you want."
It wasn't until the people in earshot all went quiet, their attention sharp and crawling on her skin, that it registered to Liz what she'd just said.
...Why the hell had she done that?! She hadn't meant to... She hadn't been paying that much attention to the conversation, or even really thinking about Hermione — instead how Severus usually lived over the summers, sustaining himself on coffee and those shitty flapjacks and take-out. He'd be dragged to the occasional fancy party, sure — sometimes professional, but most often Narcissa inviting him to social stuff (Liz suspected she worried about him but was too polite to say it explicitly) — but he could be a bloody awkward nerdy type and avoided eating in public if at all possible, so she didn't know how often that actually worked. It wasn't like he was in any danger of starving, he ate at least some and took nutrient potions to make up the rest, but, when he'd asked (jokingly) if appearing in his kitchen unannounced was out of concern for him, there was a reason she hadn't given a straight answer. He would have been able to feel a lie, after all — she wasn't certain that denying it would have been a lie, she hadn't exactly known why she was doing it at the time, because feelings were dumb and hard and she didn't know what she was doing. It was definitely in part because she had nothing better to do with her time, and she'd just felt like it, but...
(Also, cooking for him every once in a while was way easier than figuring out how to properly thank him for...well, everything. So.)
She hadn't really meant to make the offer, the words had, just, jumped out. But, now actually thinking about it, she thought that would be fine? She meant, she had Sirius in the house part-time, and that was fine, and Hermione was much less of a pain than Sirius could be sometimes. And she had been considering adopting people, to get the nobles off her arse about marrying and shite, starting with Hermione — she still hadn't said anything about it (and wouldn't, not until she was a hundred per cent certain), but having her stay at the house for a couple weeks would be a good trial run. And it wasn't like it would change that much, she had spare bedrooms, and Hermione would probably just be reading most of the time anyway. She (and Nilanse) would just have to make an extra serving for every meal, no big deal.
Yeah. Yeah, Liz hadn't really meant to make the offer at first, but the more she thought about it she didn't mind. It'd only been maybe a couple seconds, nobody said anything before she added, "I'm staying in the new house, you know, in Ireland. Well, it's new to me, anyway, I don't know how long it's been in the family." The last person to live there had been some bloke called Lyndon — her great-great-grandfather's elder brother, never married or anything, from the hints she'd gotten from neighbours Liz half-suspected he was gay or maybe just bloody weird — but she knew he hadn't been the first. "Anyway, the place is much bigger than I need, because magical nobles are bloody ridiculous, there are multiple spare bedrooms. And the place is connected to the floo, so you can hop over to the Greenwood to visit your mum whenever. So, yeah," Liz finished, awkwardly fidgeting with a set of tongs — she should turn these sausages about now...
There was a little bit of muttering, Hermione just staring at her for a few seconds. Surprised, yes, but Liz thought she was also a little touched by the offer — Liz was, well, Liz, inviting a friend to stay at her house for weeks just because wasn't the sort of thing anyone expected from her. Finally, after an uncomfortably long silence, she said, "That's really nice of you, Liz, but I'm not sure if my parents will be okay with that. Because you live on your own, you know."
...They were fine leaving Hermione home alone most of the time, but not at someone else's house with equally little adult supervision? Weird, but okay. But that was kind of a silly thing to say anyway, Liz couldn't help snorting, rolling her eyes. "Between Sirius, Severus, the elves, and the bloody neighbours, there's pretty much always someone keeping an eye on me. Besides, I went a little overboard on the wards, nobody can get in if I don't want them to. I bet you a hundred galleons you'd be safer at my house than yours — even Severus approves of me living there, and he's a paranoid bastard." Also, Hermione's residence would be on file with the accidental magic people at the Ministry, for reasons of enforcing the Statute of Secrecy, so it wouldn't be that difficult for some racist arsehole to track her down if they really wanted to. Liz didn't think that likely, she was just saying.
Ooh, speaking of the Statute of Secrecy, "And you can practise magic at my house without getting in trouble."
Thoughts already turning in her head — Hermione didn't really want to sit alone at home for however long, so she was tempted — she turned to frown at Liz with a crackle of surprise and confusion. "Um, no, Liz, we can't. You have seen the notice they give us at the end of every year, about the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery — it's illegal for people without OWL qualifications to use magic outside of educational institutions."
"First of all, no it's not. You missed the 'Decree for' part — Ministry decrees might act as guidelines for how they do things, but they don't have force of law. Only the Wizengamot can make laws." Hermione opened her mouth to argue, but then paused, blinking thoughtfully. "Also, you already know that the magically-raised kids practise magic at home all the time." She's gone on tirades about it before, so she must. "See, the whole point is about Secrecy — the point of the Decree is that people who haven't taken their OWLs yet can't use magic in the muggle world, because they can't be trusted to cover for themselves, and might make a mess for Adjustment to clean up. That's all."
"Magically-raised kids have the supervision of a qualified adult — we wouldn't at your house."
"Yeah, they don't know that. I do have a legal guardian, you know, for all the people at the Ministry know, Severus or Sirius are at the house all the time, so I do have adult supervision. Also, they can't detect when I'm doing magic anyway — their monitoring spells are blocked by wards really easily, and the Oracles only see threats to Secrecy, which obviously me doing magic inside my absurd wards in my magical house in a magical town isn't. So, it's not illegal, and it might be against Ministry policy, but I don't give a shite, and also they're not going to find out, and even if they do they won't do anything about it, because they don't give a damn about minor violations like that. Really, it's fine."
Hermione frowned at her for a second, before turning to Susan. "Is Liz right about all that?"
Susan hadn't been listening, so Hermione had to repeat most of it, with a little bit of editorialising about the Ministry intentionally screwing over muggleborns by not letting them practise over the summers. "The bit about decrees not having force of law is technically true, though the Ministry often acts as though they do — you might end up having to argue the point in court, which way it would go depends on which panel you get. But it wouldn't get that far. Liz is right: if it's not a possible threat to Secrecy, nobody is going to do anything about it. There are some people who think the principle should be applied generally — worried about children hurting themselves playing around with magic, you know — but the D.L.E. doesn't have the resources to police everyone's homes like that, and there'd be serious protest if they tried. So, yeah, as long as you're in a magical home under wards, you can practise magic over the summers as much as you like."
I hate the magical government, Hermione thought, her mind simmering and crackling with frustration. But, the thought that she'd actually be able to do magic while staying at Liz's house made the offer even more tempting, she agreed after only a little bit more discussion. There'd be details to work out later, and of course she'd have to ask her parents, they'd write, blah blah. Oh, actually, they should set up the room with stuff ahead of time, most of them weren't furnished...
So, now Liz would be having a house-guest for the last few weeks of the summer. All right, then.
Lunch ended up going on for a while, they were there for probably a couple hours — the actual meal part didn't take forever, they just lingered afterward, occasionally putting a quick bite on the grill and sipping at drinks as they talked. Nothing important, really, just stuff about their summers and families and school and politics, Liz and Hermione occasionally going off about some nerdy thing or other, you know, the usual. (Unsurprisingly, Hermione thought the state of education in magical Britain was completely unacceptable, a low simmer of irritation bubbling at the back of her head for half of the conversation.) Eventually, the dining 'room' had gotten far emptier than it'd been when they'd arrived, the crowd dribbling out as the lunch hour came and went. Sirius sauntered over to the back to settle their tab — the other adults had protested at first, offering to split it, but Sirius just waved them off — and their overlarge group flooded back out onto the street.
Liz grimaced as she stepped back out into the sun — fuck, it felt even hotter than it'd been before lunch. Unless her sense of time was way off, they should be getting to that point in the early afternoon when the temperature peaked, but still...
Thankfully for Liz, with how bloody hot it was, the market itself was pretty shady — didn't do shite about the heat itself, obviously, but there were enough overhangs and tents and such that she could mostly stay out of the sun, which helped. The market was in another big open courtyard, with shops and pubs and also a couple churches and even a mosque around the edge. (Christianity was a much bigger deal in magical Romania than Britain, and the Ottoman period had left behind a Muslim minority, so not a surprise.) The majority of the courtyard was filled with stands and tents and even just rugs where people had laid out their shite, leaving narrow wandering paths between them, kind of a lot more going on than Liz had expected. Apparently, magical Romania had the same issues with limited space that magical Britain had, many craftsmen and whatever just couldn't afford shop space, so they set up in open markets like this one instead. It wasn't an entirely foreign idea — there was a similar market square at the Refuge Liz did most of her grocery shopping at, and getting stuff with Sirius at the beginning of the summer they'd walked through one in Edinburgh — but it still struck Liz as slightly peculiar, a relic of a previous century kept alive in the magical world.
Probably a good thing that they existed — storefronts were ridiculously expensive, and the fees to set up a stall were usually really really low, so they were accessible to normal people — but still.
Since their group was too bloody big to wander around in these narrow little paths without getting in the way, they decided to split up. Sirius pointed out a pub along the rim, he and Daniel would be hanging out in the outdoor seating there, if anything came up come find them; the restaurant they'd be going to for dinner was also on this square, right over there, the reservation was under his name, they weren't eating until seven but they'd let you hang out in the bar area if you were done early. Watch each other's backs, be safe, blah blah, and have fun, he and Daniel were going to go get drunk and chat shite now. (Liz was pretty sure Sirius kept flirting with him, but if Daniel noticed he clearly didn't think anything of it, Sirius was just like that.) Dorea, Lily, Hannah, Sophie, and Sally-Anne wanted to look at clothes and stuff, which, no thank you. They went off with Mr Perks — Heli was a little reluctant to let them go without an adult mage, but kept the thought to herself. (Apparently she had hairs from all the girls hidden away so she could track them down if she needed to, okay then...) Astoria wanted to just look around, maybe get some gifts for people back home; Heli was carrying the money, so she went with her, Millie tagging along with them for some reason.
Which left Liz with Hermione, Daphne, Tracey, and Susan, which she guessed was fine. (She was a little surprised Susan hadn't stuck with her girlfriend, until she caught a vague thought of maybe finding something neat for Hannah's birthday, or just because, so never mind.) They didn't really have anything better to do, so they ended up just wandering around the market at random, poking over this stall or that, Liz doing her best to slip from shadow to shadow. Which wasn't hard to do, thankfully — despite how random the curving pathways seemed, they must have been planned out this way, because most of them were shaded by these big curtains overhead, thick cloth stretched between posts standing here and there between the stands. Liz assumed the local government must have put those there, since they had a lot of the same colours and shite she'd seen at the keyport, and while the walkpaths were shaded the stands weren't necessarily. Some had brought their own tents, or tarps or whatever, but others were just set out in the open air — in those cases, the merchants would usually have a parasol, most surprisingly colourful and stitched with intricate little patterns (obviously hand-made), but customers would be standing out in the sun. Obviously a very slap-dash setup going on here, Liz assumed most of the stands would be packed away and carried off at the end of the day, and very noisy, with people running around and haggling, but she guessed it worked.
Also kind of smelly — like at the Refuge, there were food sellers here, some of those had cages of live animals (ducks and chickens and rabbits), which weren't pleasant to stick around too long, but that area was pretty easy to avoid. They were selling all kinds of shite here, ceramics and metalwork and leatherwork and textiles, some practical stuff — kitchenware especially, tools for various stuff, whatever else — but also just random artsy things, jewellery and bric a brac and the like. Some things were visibly enchanted, and they stumbled across multiple different apothecaries and potions-sellers, but a lot of it looked like normal handicrafts, like what you might find at one of those stands Liz saw in London sometimes. Rather nice, some of the engraving and painting and shite was impressively elaborate, but a lot of it was surprisingly mundane-looking. Or, surprising to Liz, anyway, the magically-raised people in their little group clearly didn't think anything of it.
They did pass by a couple stalls with shoes and boots and stuff, but Liz didn't see anyone selling completed clothes — but they did find multiple different tents selling fabric, big rolls of the stuff hung up for passers-by to look over, vibrant dyes bright where the sun caught them. Hermione was as surprised by this as Liz was, Tracey explained finished clothes would be done by a tailor, indoors at a proper store, but it wasn't unusual for poorer people to just buy cloth and make their own clothes, or for tailors themselves to source materials for special projects directly from weavers at markets like these. (Cheaper than it would be through a merchant, cutting out the middleman and all that.) Inexpensive clothing was actually more available in Britain than it was in other conservative countries, due to something about how the guilds back home worked that Liz didn't quite follow, so people making their own clothes was less common, but it was still a thing a lot of poor people did as routine.
(Liz was slightly blindsided by clothes in the magical world actually being kind of expensive, even the basics, but when she thought about it most stuff on the muggle side was probably made with practical slave labour in third-world countries, so she guessed that tracked.)
Though, Mistwalkers in general were an exception to that, they made all their stuff — Liz recalled that Daphne and Astoria's school uniforms were even made at the Greenwood. She didn't really know much about the details, but supposedly they had some religious thing about people making their own shite, she didn't know and didn't really care. Everyone didn't do everything, apparently they had spinners and weavers actually make the cloth, and then everyone cut and shaped their own stuff, and did the embroidery to make all the complicated designs and stuff. And different crafts were big in different clans, they would pass stuff back and forth between them — not really trading, since they weren't concerned with keeping things even, just, you know, helping each other get stuff they need, whatever. The Greenwood actually did most of the cloth, since Mistwalkers mostly wore linen and they grew the flax there, and then the Hartwrights did most of the metal and glasswork — like Liz's piercings, for example, the Hartwrights had made these and sent them to the Greenwood — and the Babblings did a lot of highly technical specialised crafts (especially enchanting), and the Lovegoods had a lot of healers — and also were really big on performing arts, like musicians and actors and the like (when nobles hired musicians to play at fancy parties they were almost always Lovegoods), in addition to running Pandemos Printers — and so forth and so on. So, Daphne ended up poking over some of the cloth set up, just out of curiosity, was drawn into a technical conversation with one of the sellers for a bit, but she wasn't actually interested in buying anything.
They spent most of their time looking over the jewellery section. Well, it wasn't a section, exactly, but the sellers were all kind of clumped together — by the way they'd shout over at the people at neighbouring stands, or wander around trying to draw people away, Liz got the feeling they'd done that intentionally to try to poach each other's customers. Liz was kind of surprised how elaborate a lot of the stuff was. The places that were selling stuff made out of fancy materials — gold and silver, natural gemstones (that is, not made with alchemy) — were pretty rare, instead a lot of cheaper steel and bronze, plenty of glasswork, ceramic, even carved and painted wood. But it was clear people had put a lot of time into this stuff, the carving fine and extremely detailed, the glass (or fake gemstones) tinted in multicoloured swirls, a few more simple examples here and there but for the most part intricate and delicate. One hairnet Liz saw — the web covered in segments of polished silvery (but not actual silver) metal, the tiny seams allowing the whole thing to bend so fine they were hardly visible, the entire surface engraved in complex, swirling patterns, occasionally set with coloured glass, so pure and well-cut they almost looked like diamonds glittering in the sun, in little stars and rosettes, dozens and dozens of them to cover the entire breadth — with how fine the details were in the whole thing, this must have taken hundreds of hours to make by hand. Doing a couple quick conversions in her head, yeah, it wasn't cheap and she wouldn't be surprised if the price was mostly just for the labour time, sounded about right, Jesus...
Not that Liz was actually interested in buying anything here. If she wanted more jewellery, she'd just check out the stuff she already owned — perks of being the last remaining member of a several-hundred-year-old noble family, there. Hermione and Susan picked up a couple things, but. It was interesting to think about, the work that had gone into this stuff, and just how generally impressive it all was. And Liz also spent some of it just watching the people around. The customers, yes, but the sellers too. Most of them looked like any other Romanian mages they'd run into — there seemed to be a preference for a vest over a long sleeved shirt over here, she hadn't seen many people in robes — but it turned out a significant fraction of the jewellery craftsmen were gypsies.
Well, not gypsies — Hermione insisted that was a racial slur, which was news to Liz (and the other three with them, but whatever) — whatever the proper word should be. Hermione was unhelpful on that count, something about there being multiple different groups around, so Travellers, then, fine. (Also not the right word, quite, but Liz had ceased caring by that point.) There was a pretty big population of them in Romania, apparently, possibly the largest in magical Europe — it was hard to say for sure, since they, you know, travelled, didn't have a great idea of their numbers. Liz didn't really know much about them, honestly, but it was just kind of neat.
She did know, from reading Tamsyn had recommended about how Secrecy came about, that gypsies (or whatever) had been and still were a big problem. They were one of those groups where the distinction between mage and muggle was a lot fuzzier than the people who'd thought the Statute was a great idea would like. Since witchcraft mostly worked by harnessing magic already in the environment and making it do what you want, muggles could do it if they knew how; and since wands were expensive, the majority of mages hadn't had one (and in some places, still didn't), so they only did witchcraft — which meant that, in many cases, the difference between a crafty muggle and an actual mage was only theoretical. Generally, the mages had played it safe, taking in whole villages with significant magical populations, the muggles gradually dripping back out into the muggle world over the centuries, but some situations had been harder than others. Isolated communities deep in the mountains, the Lapplanders to the north of Scandinavia — Saamiland had been a protectorate of the Scandinavians at first but were an independent country now, if a thinly populated one — the various tribes in the north of Novgorod, there were problems with all of them.
There'd been a whole big thing, at the time, of trying to do a survey of the various gypsy clans wandering around, identifying which were magical (or magical enough) and which weren't. To put it mildly, that hadn't gone well — to put it less mildly, it'd been completely fucking hopeless from the start. For one thing, they only trusted the nascent magical governments' officials as far as they could see them (and mostly not even that far), and also thought the Statute was shite, so weren't really inclined to cooperate. And they were rather secretive people in general, and had a long history of various Europeans trying to chase them off or just exterminate them all, so, some arsehole comes by and asks them how many people they have, how many of them are magical, where they plan to be going next, yeah, those kinds of questions made them very suspicious and defensive, and they mostly just lied, or told the officials to fuck off. They got into a fun habit of, after barely cooperating with the first interview, being gone by the time of the second interview, leaving not a trace behind — an interview they'd scheduled, to be clear — and when the governments got impatient and started sending people to actively track them down, just showing up unannounced in their encampments, they tended to react to that very very badly. Like, lots of shouting, throwing shite, and in a couple infamous incidents even killing the officials, badly.
The issue had kind of never been solved. Some clans were thought to be 'magical', and mostly kept to magical enclaves (or at least away from muggles), but nobody really had any idea how much the 'muggle' clans were actually muggles. Them being so secretive actually played in the mages' favour, because if the 'muggle' ones were still doing witchcraft or whatever they were hardly likely to tell muggles in general about it...though it might have something to do with some of the stereotypes about them in muggle culture, now that Liz thought about it. At the very least, they were keeping Secrecy when dealing with outsiders — probably just because the ICW really might resort to just wiping them out if they didn't cooperate, Liz assumed — but whether they followed the rules internally, well, nobody knew.
The books Liz had read had mostly been unsympathetic, but Liz couldn't really blame them. Like she'd said, long history of various Europeans trying to chase them off or exterminate them, secretive people, and the Statute was stupid — if it were Liz, she probably would have told those officials to piss off too. She was kind of curious about them (because Liz could be a nosey bitch sometimes), so while the others were looking over whatever they were selling she ended up watching them probably more than was polite, but, oh well.
(Only with her eyes, though — most had surprisingly good occlumency, the first one she reached toward gave her a sharp look so she stopped.)
Once they'd looked through the market for a while, all of them done and not sure what to do with themselves until dinner, they debated for a bit what they wanted to do next — they still had a couple hours before it would be an at all reasonable time to head to the restaurant, so. Susan wanted to check out some of the shops around the edge, Hermione wondered if they had a bookstore — which was silly of her, because there almost certainly wouldn't be any in English — but Liz was thinking coffee, invited Daphne to come with her. Daphne, being not a complete idiot, immediately agreed...and then Tracey said she'd stick with them.
After a second of hesitation, Liz said, "Actually, I was hoping we could go alone." There was a brief silence, everyone giving her looks, confused — well, Hermione and Tracey were confused, anyway, Susan was pretty sure she knew why they wanted to be alone together, her mind shivering and her lips twitching. (Liz abruptly remembered that Susan's first kiss had been with Daphne, almost exactly a year ago, she'd forgotten about that.) With some effort, she pushed down the urge to fidget, and if her face was warming a little, well, it was hot and sunny out, probably not suspicious by itself. "Um, I did a heritage test potion thing, just before leaving home, and I wanted to talk to Daphne about something on it."
"Oh, did you find a Mistwalker name?" Daphne asked, suddenly grinning — and she wasn't faking that either, her mind glowing bright and warm, sharp with interest.
"Yeah, Severus thinks my grandfather was a Hartwright squib, but he's not sure."
Daphne let out a little hum, her brow wrinkling just a little, a shade of suspicion slipping into her head. Mistwalkers didn't exile their squibs, as a rule, so. "I don't know everyone in the clan, of course, but maybe I can help narrow it down. If that's alright, Tracey?"
"Sure, if you're going to be talking about family history and who's related to who and such. I got quite enough of that at home growing up, thank you." Tracey said it easily enough, with a bit of a sardonic drawl, but there was a slant to her thoughts that didn't fit with her tone. Probably guessed something else was going on with them, but wasn't sure what.
Unlike Susan, who knew exactly what was going on with them, because of course she did. At least she was keeping the thought to herself, trying to keep the smile off her face, shifting her weight from one foot to the other every couple seconds.
Hermione, being the other oblivious nerdy person in the group, didn't notice a thing. "There's a heritage potion? How does that— Never mind, this isn't the time. Do you think I could try it next month? It's most likely I have squib ancestors somewhere, after all, I will admit I'm curious."
"Um, the potion is really complicated, Severus did mine and he's going to be pretty busy when we get back. I don't know, if he doesn't have the time, definitely next summer."
"Right. Well, we'll meet back up with you at the restaurant, then — come on, let's go..."
As their group split up, Susan hung back for a second, once Hermione and Tracey weren't looking turned around to give Liz a bright grin and a thumbs up. Daphne wasn't looking that way, thankfully, glancing around for signs of a coffeeshop — Liz rolled her eyes, and just flipped Susan the bird before turning and starting off.
That Susan had figured it out was making Liz vaguely nervous, but it was probably fine. Susan was pretty damn gay herself, even had the haircut and everything, it wasn't like she was going to make a thing about it, like Dorea had, so. Yeah, it was fine.
(Embarrassing, but fine.)
Liz had no idea if Daphne had actually spotted a place, or if she'd just decided to lead Liz around the opposite direction the others had gone, but it wasn't like they had anywhere to be, Liz just followed. Now that they were alone, she was feeling annoyingly self-conscious, distractingly aware of how she was holding herself and where her hands were, her breath tense and her skin crawling, she tried to ignore that. It wasn't like anything was really different, she didn't have to worry about— She didn't know, whatever. She was fine, her brain was just ridiculous sometimes.
The feeling of Daphne's eyes brushing over her didn't really help, but. "I can feel it when you do that, you know."
"I know." A brief pause, something reverberating through Daphne's mind. "I can try to do it less, if you prefer." Only less, because Daphne didn't think she'd be able to quit it entirely, which, Liz had a problem with staring at pretty people too, she got it. Theoretically, anyway — it was still bloody weird that Daphne seemed to legitimately like her, but Liz not understanding people was normal, so.
Liz didn't really answer the not-question, just shrugged. It did make her a little uncomfortable, and it could be distracting, but it wasn't that bad. Nothing like the whole thing during the trip here, for example. Which was odd, because it wasn't different in principle, but she guessed context mattered.
They walked in silence for a moment, Liz occasionally stiffening at the warm, tingly pressure of Daphne's attention on her, brushing now and then over her shoulders and her neck, her face, her waist and hips — and Liz kept sneaking glances herself, because why not. The odd Mistwalker wrap thing Daphne was wearing today (leafy green and sunny yellow and earthy brown, Greenwood colours) left one shoulder uncovered, legs from the hem (a little higher on the left than the right) down to the soft cloth shoes she was wearing, little strips of her middle peaking out through the folds. So, yeah, distracting. Daphne wasn't quite so bloody pale as Liz, but she was, well, wasn't she worried about sunburn? Liz was probably going to need to use some of her burn cream on her shoulders when she got back to the hotel...
"Did you truly find a Mistwalker name in your ancestry, or was that only an excuse?" Daphne asked, a curl of teasing amusement to her voice.
"Right, no, I wasn't making that up." She'd thought they were going to a coffeeshop or whatever, but she guessed they could just talk about that now. "My mother was adopted, you know, she never knew who her birth parents were — or, since she was marrying the head of a Noble House, I guess it's possible she did a heritage test at some point, but she never told Severus, at least. Apparently their names were Daniel and, ah...Caroline, Britnell."
A sharp flash of surprise in Daphne's head, "Britnell! That is a Hartwright name, I've met a handful. I don't know a Daniel or a Caroline, though." Yeah, no surprise, they didn't sound like names Mistwalkers would use, did they.
"No, if Lily ended up in the system on the muggle side they were probably muggles, and something must have happened to them. I don't expect they're still alive. I guess they might be out there somewhere, but. Anyway, my great-grandfather was Hunter Britnell—"
"I do know some Hunters, that's not an unusual name to use when speaking English."
Liz still thought using different names in different languages was an odd thing to do, but it wasn't her business. "Yeah, that sounded more Mistwalker-y to me too, so I guess maybe he was the squib? That part of the tree had a bunch of Britnells in it, and other Mistwalker-sounding names, I didn't bother memorising them. Except Hunter's mum was apparently Diana Gaunt, because the Gaunts are the sort of people you want to be related to."
"Oh!" Daphne chirped, lurching to a halt with a scrape of her shoe against the brick road. An odd, eager bubbling in her head, grinning, "I know Diana! She's one of the elders... Well, you would call her a guildmaster, I suppose, we've met on a handful of occasions. She must be the same one — there aren't so many Gaunts out there any longer, you know. She's not even quite so elderly, just passed a century I think..."
It was a little odd that Daphne would say someone over a hundred years old was not quite so elderly, but Liz guessed mages aged weird, so. It was very odd that Daphne actually knew Liz's great-great-grandmother but, well, the mages were so bloody inbred sometimes, this wasn't really that much weirder than that conversation way back in first year where all the Slytherins just had to establish how exactly everyone was related to everyone else. And the revelation that Liz had close ancestors who were Mistwalkers was kind of neat, she did think they were interesting, she decided to try to focus on that more. "So they were Mistwalkers, then, that's what I wanted to know," Liz said, side-stepping the matter of her living great-great-grandmother.
"I can arrange an introduction with Diana and your Hartwright cousins, if you like."
"Yeah, we won't be doing that." At the sudden sharp chill in Daphne's mind, Liz sighed. "This isn't something I— I'm used to being on my own, okay? I'd have no idea what the fuck I'd be expected to say or do or— It'd just be awkward."
Daphne still felt a bit...sad, about that, but she nodded. "Fair enough. I won't try to talk you into it, but if you do ever change your mind, simply ask me and I'll talk to— Ah..." She cut off with a flash of something hot and sharp and unpleasant, nauseating, her step hitching for a moment. "Oh dear. Hunter Britnell, son of Diana. Born in the Nineteen Teens, thereabout?"
...What? Um, Liz did the maths quick, adding up generations, and if they assumed roughly twenty years each (and mages tended to have kids early, so), "Yeah, probably somewhere around there. Why?"
"Oh dear..."
"What is it?"
Daphne glanced at her, shifting reluctance shivering in her head. "Ah, it's not important. The Hartwrights are hardly likely to hold you responsible for your great-grandfather's crimes. Though I suppose it would make introductions more difficult, Diana can't well ackno— Well, that's a problem to deal with if and when we come to it. It doesn't matter just now."
His crimes? What? "Daphne, what the hell are you talking about?"
"It's not important. We should—"
"Daphne."
A sharp spasm in her mind, Daphne let out a sigh. And then she hitched to a full stop, an unexpected tug at Liz's wrist to hold her here — the skin contact had Daphne's discomfort suddenly blaring much louder, hot and stabbing and nauseating, Liz wrenched her hand away reflexively. "Sorry," Daphne said, backing off half a step, hands open at her hips.
Trying not to feel embarrassed about her reaction, Liz shrugged. "It's all right, just, touching makes people's minds a lot louder, you startled me is all. Did something happen with Hunter Britnell?"
"Yes, he..." The air around her reverberating with shivering reluctance and muggy pity, Daphne took a long breath. "I saw the name, once, looking over the records of legal decisions. Studying for my future responsibilities, you see." Another breath, firming herself. "Hunter Britnell was exiled from the Hartwrights, a long time ago."
...Liz had no idea how she was supposed to react to that. "Okay. What for?"
There was a brief pause, Daphne trying to decide what to tell her. "He refused to participate in remuneration. Ah, we avoid involving the Ministry in our affairs if we can help it, and we don't have prisons, or fines — we have other ways of making amends for harm. But if one chooses not to follow the rules, to not act as one of us, they may no longer live among us. Hunter Britnell was exiled, and he was never heard from again.
"And Diana did... It's a ritual — a social one, not a magical one. By our law, she is no longer his mother, and so to acknowledge you she must reclaim him, which she is...not likely to do. Converts are often the most zealous."
Right, okay, weird religious commune shite, she got that much. But there was one kind of important detail Daphne hadn't explained. "What did he do?"
There was a pause, Daphne really didn't want to say whatever it was, but eventually she let out a sigh. "He...assaulted a girl."
"...You mean he raped her."
Daphne grimaced. "Yes."
Oh, well, of course her great-grandfather was a rapist who'd fled rather than face the consequences for it. Liz hadn't really expected she wasn't related to complete bastards.
"But as I said, nobody would hold you responsible for what he did. Though it would make arranging an introduction difficult, since Diana severed him..."
"It's fine, let's not talk about this anymore." It didn't really bother her, she'd never met anyone involved and it'd happened like fifty years before she'd even been born. Slightly disappointing, but. Daphne didn't have to be all whatever about it...
In a weird way that she'd never admit out loud (especially not to Daphne), she was honestly a little relieved — if the Hartwrights wanted nothing to do with her because her great-grandfather had been a rapist bastard, she never had to bother with meeting them ever, so it got her out of what would undoubtedly be some extremely uncomfortable interactions. Daphne had said she wouldn't try to change her mind, but Liz didn't really believe that, it would have happened eventually — especially with how absurdly friendly Mistwalkers could be, and how much Daphne enjoyed the idea of Liz being one of them — but now it couldn't. So.
Daphne still looked uncertain, obviously very uncomfortable with this subject, but Liz didn't think there was anything else to say. Not that she really know where to go now, either physically or in the conversation — she didn't know where Daphne had been leading them before, and Liz was terrible with feelings shite. The words locked in her throat for a second, but she managed to blow past her own bloody awkwardness, saying, "You know, instead of picking over this awful shite from forever ago, you could be kissing me right now."
A shock of surprise split apart the unpleasant, tangled mess in Daphne's head, reluctantly dissolving into amusement a second later, her lips twitching. "Was that a request?"
"Sure, you can call it that." Mostly she'd just been trying to shock Daphne out of her dour mood, but that also worked.
Eyes tipping up to the sky for a second, Daphne let out a false annoyed huff. "Come on, then," she said, holding out her hand, "let's get out of the sun."
A little reluctantly, Liz took it. Not because she thought there'd be anything, you know, suspicious about it — she saw normal girls do way more in public than just hold hands all the time — but Liz could be unreasonably neurotic about touching sometimes, not to mention it made people's minds way louder. She was in a pretty up mood at the moment (the alcohol with lunch probably helped), so the former wasn't a problem, but the latter definitely happened, Daphne's feelings washing over her like sinking into a bathtub. It wasn't so bad, though. There was still a fading echo of the unpleasantness from before, but she'd gone back to being all warm and bright, a low eager thrill crawling over her skin, amusement and affection thick and soft and... It was kind of a lot, but it wasn't painful or anything, so.
(No matter how baffling all that still was, Liz was trying not to worry about it.)
Daphne did eventually lead her into a place. Liz had no idea if she'd had this particular spot in mind — she had had more opportunity to look around the town than Liz, so it was possible — or if she'd just stumbled across it by chance, but either way it was nice enough. It reminded her very much of the coffeehouse she'd met Gwenfrewi Eirsley in, the more public seating area in the front all occupied with men loudly chattering, plus a more private seating area — this one was actually up a set of stairs — with tables surrounded by curtains enchanted for privacy. The colour scheme was different, a lot of blue and white and black, and of course the conversations were in Romanian instead (she assumed), but it was similar enough Liz immediately pegged it as the same kind of thing. Whatever that kind of thing was, she honestly didn't know — a spot meant for business types to have lunch meetings, maybe, like the café across the street from the Grunnings offices Vernon went to, just a bit more laid back to better fit with the tempo of the mages' working day.
The man leading them up to one of the private tables only barely spoke French, but it was enough to get by — Liz remembered at the last second to specify she wanted French coffee, the stuff that still had the grounds in it was weird. While the waiter was gone, a stiff, tense silence fell over the table. Or it felt so on Liz's end, anyway, it didn't seem to be bothering Daphne. She was sitting across the table smiling at Liz, fingernails tick-tick-ticking against the surface, eyes and teeth and piercings glimmering in the lamplight, mind warm and thick on the air around her. (Liz suddenly felt a little surrounded — she didn't like tight spaces, wonder why — took a couple deep breaths to clear her head.) Daphne hadn't actually said as much, but she didn't need to, Liz knew she was waiting for the man to come back with their coffee before closing the curtains, which was apparently a thing you could do — Gwenfrewi hadn't bothered, but she probably just hadn't wanted to make Liz uncomfortable, trapped in a small space with a stranger.
(The thought of being in here with Daphne was making her nervous, but for different reasons.)
Fidgeting in her chair, Liz didn't even notice she was tonguing her lip ring until she saw Daphne was watching — and imagining catching the bead with her teeth, gently tugging it and— Liz cleared her throat. "That's distracting."
Daphne smiled. She knew, she was aware Liz was watching, at least a small part of the reason why she kept doing it in the first place. "So is that."
Playing with her lip ring, she meant — Liz couldn't really help that, she hardly even realised she was doing it most of the time...
Once the waiter came back with their coffee — or, Daphne was having some kind of tisane, she didn't like coffee so much, Liz should try to remember that — Daphne stood up and circled around the table to the opening in the curtains, tugged them closed. There was a tie she looped around, held up a bit of silvery metal attached to it. "This will glow when the waitstaff are outside — they will move on if we don't respond, but they may grow suspicious if we don't answer multiple times in a row."
"Right, good to know." Liz assumed Daphne was telling her so she'd know they wouldn't just be barged in on without warning, which, she knew herself well enough to know she definitely would have worried about that.
Letting out a little hum, Daphne moved back to her chair, but she didn't sit down, instead picking it up and moving it around — very close to Liz's, Liz actually leaned a little away just in case. And then she sat down with a little huff, the motion coming with a faint sharp, musty smell, spices from lunch and sweat and a hint of something green. Daphne leaned over to pull her drink back toward her, settled into her chair.
They were sitting very close. Daphne's elbow kept brushing against Liz's arm, and her leg against her knee, which meant her mind kept flashing louder in little bursts. That wasn't really bad, Daphne was all warm and smooth and pleasant at the moment, an undercurrent of tingling excitement, but the abrupt changes in the volume were a little unsettling. After a particularly loud burst while Liz was trying to take a sip of her coffee, she grimaced, shifted her leg over so it was pressed against Daphne's. "Stick with one or the other. The quiet-loud-quiet-loud thing is uncomfortable."
With a lurch Liz couldn't quite read, Daphne said, "Ah, of course, I didn't think of that. I was only..."
"Teasing, yeah, I know. I think blunt and direct would be better, like with everything else, you know." Liz could be very oblivious sometimes, after all, it was generally better if everyone just spelled things out for her. Her friends had all figured that out by this point, but this right here wasn't exactly the sort of thing that came up a lot.
"Oh, direct?" Her cup clinking down, Daphne twisted a little in her seat, Liz twitched, her heart jumping up her throat, when her arm came up and around the back of Liz's chair — not actually touching her at all, just startled — and then she was leaning over very close. Liz turned her face up before Daphne's fingers managed to find her jaw, light, a touch cool against what might well be a sunburn by tomorrow, close enough Liz could feel her breath along her chin and her neck, smiling down at her. "Was this what you had in mind?"
Her breath hitching tight, it took Liz a long moment to find her voice. "What are you waiting for?"
Daphne chuckled, just a little in the back of her throat, before leaning down the last couple inches to kiss her.
If Liz was being honest, she still didn't entirely get the kissing thing. She'd only done it once before now (or several times, but only the one event), so it wasn't like she was an expert or anything, but. It did feel sort of nice, she guessed...and that might be it just there, come to think of it. But people did obsess over this stuff way more than seemed quite called for, it was kind of silly. Normal people often seemed silly to her, so she didn't give it that much mind, it was just a little confusing sometimes. It didn't help that she was certain it was very different for her than it was for everyone else.
She could feel the physical part, obviously, though it wasn't really— It was nice, sure, lips were sensitive, but by itself wasn't really a big deal. It was a bit of a rush, her skin tingling and her stomach swooping, kind of like taking a dive on her broom, but without the sharp edge of I'm doing something crazy and dangerous right now, more soft and warm and— She didn't know, similar but different. That was a hormones thing, she assumed. She was always very conscious of the ring in Daphne's top lip, hard and cool against her skin, her own might catch on the stud opposite, just slightly. It could be a little uncomfortable in some ways, nerves simmering away (Petunia ranting about freaks faintly echoing in her ears), because she was so bloody short her neck needing to be tilted at a slightly awkward angle, but she tried to ignore that, focus on, just, yeah.
There was all that, but the mind magic stuff part was more immediate to Liz. She had a theory, about some kinds of magic or materials being conductive for mind magic stuff, carried signals through easier — it weakened pretty quickly crossing open air (which was why normal people couldn't just learn to do proper legilimency), but living things carried the signal much better, and so skin contact made people's minds so much louder. But, the human body still had some resistance — a pretty damn high one, relatively speaking — so it did still weaken somewhat, just not as much. It logically followed that, the shorter the physical distance between the origin of her mind and the other person's, the more the signal would get through, the louder their mind would be. And people's brains didn't get much physically closer to each other than when they were kissing.
Since she and Daphne had already been touching elsewhere, it hadn't been quite as much of a shock as it might be otherwise. But it was still a bit much, slamming down on her and sending her flailing for a second — kind of like her favourite wind charm, but instead of knocking her off her feet and flapping her wind and her hair, the force just blanked her mind for a second, pushing everything away in a surge of eager, crackling warmth. It was a bit disorienting, she almost reflexively slapped back at a mind magic attack that wasn't there, hunkering down for a second against the weight, feeling herself tense.
And she must be physically tensing too — as close as she was, Daphne flickering with something was easily visible, picking up on Liz's unease. But it wasn't bad, just a surprise was all, it only took a second or two for Liz to remind herself she wasn't being attacked — it was fine, she was fine — and to gradually relax, Daphne's head going smooth again. Once she'd managed to stop herself from freaking out like a crazy person, it wasn't bad. Kind of a lot — Daphne was really really loud from this distance, monopolising her attention just with her presence, smooth and soft and warm and sizzling with excitement. Intense enough Liz had to wonder how much the tingles on her skin and the clenching heat in her chest was actually her, and how much she was just picking up from Daphne. It could be kind of hard to tell the difference even in normal situations, and with Daphne being everywhere...
Not that the distinction really mattered. Maybe it'd be a problem if Daphne weren't enjoying herself, but the mind magic part felt nice too, so.
...Although, maybe it wasn't mind magic, actually. She randomly remembered Severus suggesting the psychometry thing, which she still didn't take seriously, if she was being honest — maybe not liking sweet things could be explained with that (maybe), but she didn't have the same problem with cotton, and she, just, her stuff didn't feel like descriptions she'd read of psychometry before, that was all. But, maybe her idea about resistance and signals and stuff was actually shite, and people's minds getting so uncomfortably loud from skin contact was a Seer thing. Severus had said he didn't experience other people's feelings in the weird, sometimes overwhelming, physical way that she did, so... Maybe why minds seemed so different when she actually reached into them — she meant, the web of people's thoughts and memories when she was looking in there or fiddling with things seemed almost separate, the sea of feeling it was all floating in from the same source but a different substance — was because that was proper mind magic, but the other stuff was actually psychometry. That would make an odd kind of sense, she'd just never thought of it that way...
She completely lost her train of thought when Daphne shifted against her, a ghost of breath slipping over her lips and down her neck — her mind retreating somewhat but still there, clinging with glittering gossamer threads — before approaching again, touch soft and tingly, her presence pressing in like a heavy warm blanket, mm...
(It was nice, like pulling on that jumper Tracey's mum made for her for Christmas back in first year, like she hadn't noticed how cold she'd been until she wasn't anymore.)
It was a good thing Daphne didn't mind if Liz looked in her head, because she was pretty sure she couldn't stop it even if she wanted to — too damn loud to ignore, pressed up close against her, the border between them seeming to dissolve away. Though that did only go one way, Liz could tell immediately, Daphne was bound by the natural limits of her mind in a way Liz simply wasn't. So it was more like Liz was just, kind of, oozing through, sinking into Daphne without really meaning to, despite the fact that it felt like the opposite, Daphne's mind pressing in on her, but mind magic could be trippy sometimes, whatever. Like sinking into a bathtub, the tactile presence of Daphne's pleasure and amusement and affection and eagerness warm and smooth around her, thoughts and memories fluttering against her fingers.
Liz saw immediately that Daphne enjoyed the actual kissing part more than she did — she meant, it was nice, but she tended to notice the physical part less under all the other stuff. At one level, she just thought it was a fun thing to do — there were reasons she was perfectly willing to kiss her friends if they asked — feeling all tingly and warm and squishy and– Liz didn't know, exactly, she just enjoyed it. It helped that she'd liked Liz for a while, as much as she hadn't really expected anything to happen, at least not any time soon, because Liz was a hopeless neurotic mess about this stuff (Daphne's thoughts were kinder about it than that sounded), she was really very pleased, though was trying not to be annoying about it, or push too hard. Most of her attention was focused on the kissing part, intensely conscious of Liz's lips against hers, her cheek warm and smooth against her fingertips, breathing her in, the vaguely floral scent clinging to her, maybe lavender (yeah, that's my shampoo), a thrill at the feeling of Liz's aura enveloping her — auras weren't a real thing, but the charge of Liz's magic on the ambient energy around her, perceptible to Daphne as an electric chill, autumn at dawn — the light touch of Liz's presence in her mind, making her feel exposed, but not in a bad way, a warm eager thrill (which was alien to Liz, but okay), Daphne was fighting the urge to push ahead, to deepen the kiss, to taste her, but she didn't want to scare Liz off, besides, this was plenty, another slow, gentle kiss, trying not to grin as she felt Liz moving with her—
Oh good, at least she was doing that right. Liz didn't know what she was doing — this was literally only the second time she'd done this, and the first one she'd had other concerns — but having sunk so far into Daphne's mind, her intentions clear, it wasn't difficult to, just, follow along. And Daphne had remembered the loud-quiet-loud-quiet problem, didn't pull back all the way, hovering for a second with her nose touching Liz's and the faintest whisper on her lips — it tickled, a little — before sinking in again, Liz twitching slightly—
Which Daphne thought was adorable, apparently, drawing Liz's attention to the thought, rather less unambiguously positive than the other. Liz hadn't noticed at first, but something about the way she was reacting had an odd hint of sadness hovering far back in Daphne's head — the way she was sitting, stiff, her hands firm in her lap, tensing at unexpected movements, all but shivering with— She hadn't even noticed that. It was very subtle, sure, if Daphne hadn't been paying such close attention she wouldn't have noticed either, but...
She wasn't used to, mm.
Daphne was aware. The way she put it was being treasured, which was, ah, not what Liz would have said. She got what Daphne meant, though she might not have if she weren't in her head right now, but.
Really, just, feeling good in general, physically, especially with touching. She didn't remember anyone even so much as hugging her ever before first year, so, not really something she was used to. That got an unpleasant flinch from Daphne, even though Liz was pretty sure she'd known that already.
Well, they would just have to acclimate her then, wouldn't they?
...Sure? Turned out kissing was nice, so, why not?
Daphne found that unreasonably funny, but Liz was too distracted at the moment to figure out why.
Over the next minutes — Liz didn't know how long, really, lost in Daphne's giggling warmth flooding her head, the motion of one slow kiss after another, her chest tight and her spine tingling — it all gradually seemed to shift, like a change coming over a potion as she stirred. Daphne's thoughts focussing sharper and sharper, extraneous bits falling away — except not really, but they were pulled in more, tugged into the same direction, Liz and what they were doing (and ideas about where it might go). Her arm had shifted off the back of Liz's chair, draping over her back, Liz very conscious of her hand near her waist, skin hot and tingling (her scars occasionally reminding her they were there, sharp like ice, but she tried to ignore that), Liz had turned toward her at some point, her hand finding her bare shoulder, hot and very distracting...but she also didn't know what she was doing, so she just kind of left it there. And the kissing part had changed a little, Liz had actually seen the thought flitter through Daphne's head, uncertain if it was a good idea, so Liz had just gone with that, lips parting a little, not doing the whole full-on snogging thing (which seemed kind of gross to her, honestly), just, more than before, and...
And it was kind of a lot, honestly. Between all the, well, everything, Daphne's hands light on her, her skin crawling (but not in a bad way), one kiss hot and slow after another making her tingle, almost like the hot-cold prickles of overchannelling but not quite, breath thick through her throat, Daphne's happiness and affection coiling through her, a tension sparking in her chest, sharp and lurching, running through her, her face and her neck burning, and she couldn't even think straight, washed away by the constant flood of warmth, it was all—
Too much. It was too much.
Abruptly, Liz jerked away, Daphne's lips and her mind leaving a tingling echo behind. Turning sharply, her hand hitting the rim of the table hard enough their forgotten cups rattled a little, she let out a shaking breath, sucked in another, her eyes squeezed tight against the stinging— Oh, for fuck's sake, why?! She ducked her head a little, turning her face further away — she knew Daphne wouldn't do anything like that, but she couldn't help the niggling anxiety anyway (Vernon hated it when she cried) — Daphne's arm over her back still kept their minds very close, so she could see her moving to—
"Stop," she gasped, voice thick and breathless. "Don't touch me." There was a shudder of something very unpleasant in Daphne's head, Liz instinctively cringed away from her arm and Daphne twitched, lifting it away. Grimacing at the frigid sharp something in Daphne's head, "I didn't mean— It's fine, I'm just..." She waved her hand, not sure what to say. That she actually didn't know what was wrong did not make finding the words easier. "I just need a minute." Shite, she heard the croak on her voice, ugh...
"And touching makes my mind louder, I understand. Do you need anything?"
"No I'm, just, overwhelmed," there we go, that was a good word, "need a minute is all."
Thankfully, Daphne waited, her mind coolly simmering, while Liz frantically struggled to stop herself from losing it like a crazy person. Leaning over the table, forehead propped up on a hand in a way that conveniently hid her face from Daphne, she, just— Honestly, what the hell? Nothing had happened, she was fine, but she could hardly breathe from the tense heat in her chest, her eyes stinging and her throat starting to ache, it was all she could do to keep breathing normal, her head such a tangled mess she had no clue what— What the fuck was wrong with her?!
She was so damn tired of her brain being trash. Nothing had happened, she didn't know why she was reacting like this, and— She just hated it, that was all. At least she'd managed to stop herself from breaking down for absolutely no reason at all, but Daphne was probably wondering what she'd done wrong over there, but she hadn't, Liz was just completely incapable of acting like a normal person for five fucking minutes.
Whatever it was about the kissing that had nearly pushed her over the edge cut off, taking slow, deep breaths, Liz did manage to calm down before too long. Or, at least enough, anyway, she was still all unsettled and frustrated and ugh, but at least she didn't feel like she was about to cry for absolutely no reason at all anymore. Surreptitiously wiping at her eyes, blinking against the lamplight, she (somewhat shakily) reached for her coffee cup. It'd cooled a little bit, but it was still warm, soothing some of the ache away. She sniffled a little (as quietly as possible), cleared her throat. "Sorry."
"It's alright." There was a brief pause, a flicker of hesitation in Daphne's head. "You're allowed to have feelings, Liz. You don't have to try to hide them from me."
...Try, because Daphne was entirely aware Liz had just spent the last couple minutes trying not to cry. Because of course she was.
Gritting her teeth at the squirming in her stomach, Liz forced out a sharp sigh. "It's just— I don't know why, is all. I'm fine, really," she insisted, turning to glance at Daphne. She'd picked up her drink at some point (Liz hadn't noticed), sitting back in her chair, watching. "You didn't do anything wrong, I'm not— I don't know what's wrong with me."
"I think we put our finger on it a few minutes ago. If you are so unused to being given affection, and if you can't block out my feelings at all, of course you will find it overwhelming at first."
...That sounded annoyingly possible. Kind of like that time at the Godric's Hollow house, she guessed, obviously a different trigger but the same idea. The hug part, she meant, it'd started for other reasons but she thought the hug had actually made it worse. (Severus hugging her was still bloody weird, but.) Which was fucking stupid — crying because you felt good was just, ugh, she hated it. "So you think this is going to happen again?"
A cool flash in her head, Daphne gave her a sad sort of smile. "Most likely."
"Well. That sucks. I continue to hate my brain."
"I know just saying so won't change anything, but I wish you wouldn't be so embarrassed about it. There's no reason to be." It felt like Daphne believed what she was saying, and Liz knew rationally that she was probably right, but it wasn't like she could help it. Which, Daphne was saying that she got that, so.
The first time she'd actually cried in front of someone since she'd been...maybe seven? had been that time at Godric's Hollow — which was also the first time she hadn't been immediately punished for it literally ever. She knew it was stupid, that nothing was going to happen, but her brain was trash, there was nothing she could do about that.
Also, crying because she was kissing the girl she liked and it was nice was fucking stupid, and she hated it.
(She'd really like to stop being fucked up as soon as possible, please. Unfortunately she didn't think there was a blood alchemy ritual for that...)
Liz cleared her throat, took another sip of her coffee before flopping back in her chair a little. "Still, sorry about that." Ruining the moment, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, blundering into social things and fucking them up was kind of what she did, all the time. "Being such a mess, and I was going to— I mean, moment over, we can go back to talking about something else now."
"What were you going to do?'
"It doesn't matter, forget it."
There was a flicker in Daphne's head, hesitating. "You can tell me to mind my own business if you like, but I don't think you think that. I think you're still embarrassed over losing your composure, and worry I'll react badly to whatever it is and embarrass you further."
For a moment, Liz just stared at Daphne — her chair still set very nearby (though they were sitting such that they weren't actually touching), watching her, eyes wide and attentive, expression pleasantly neutral. "It's really not fair how good people are at that without mind magic. I can barely tell what's going on half the time..."
With a bubbling of amusement she kept off her face, Daphne took a delicate sip of her not-tea.
...She kind of didn't want to say anything about it. At least in part because she suspected Liz almost breaking down for no reason like a crazy person wasn't going to make any difference to Daphne, and that was— It made her uncomfortable. She didn't know how or why, it just did. But she didn't have any better way out of this conversation without probably making things very awkward later — she'd rather not make Daphne hate her, if she could help it — so, might as well just get it over with. Blankly looking down at her coffee, "I was going to ask if you wanted to try...you know. The dating thing."
"Yes, of course."
Liz huffed — of course, like it was a given. "Really? I mean, I just..." Not really sure what to say she just waved vaguely. She could imagine the person you're kissing suddenly losing their shite like a crazy person wasn't the most pleasant experience in the world. In fact, she remembered it hadn't been pleasant, Liz hadn't been paying the most attention at the time but she had noticed Daphne's mind go all sharp and cold and uncomfortable, so. She'd half-expected it wouldn't have changed anything, but she didn't get it, was the thing. It was always surprising when people put up with her shite — Liz wouldn't, in Daphne's place.
(But then, Daphne was a much better person than she was, being a creepy devil child and also literally a murderer and all, so that made perfect sense when she thought about it.)
Instead of answering, Daphne held out a hand — at a bit of an angle away from Liz, since they were sitting too close to extend it toward her without touching — palm up, what she intended obvious. Liz hesitated for a moment (wary of having another moment), before taking it. Daphne's mind was all warm and smooth and sunny again — as cool and formal as she usually appeared from the outside, that was just an act, almost always bright and cheerful privately — crackling a bit with happiness, prickling at Liz's skin and fluttering in her stomach, an extra bit to the texture, slippery and shifting with a slant of satisfaction. Though it wasn't all pleasant, there was still a lingering echo of something colder and sharper and...wobbly, concern clinging at her, but it was weak, mostly faded as the moment passed.
Which kind of seemed like a lot going on to Liz, honestly, she didn't know how normal people could stand it.
Daphne reacted immediately to Liz's presence, turning under her fingers, thoughts and memories of Liz herself. A big thing that had gotten Daphne to like her at first (as a friend, she meant, years ago) was how very straightforward she could be, taking things and people as they were — like, not trying to impose her own understanding of how things should be, just, oh, so that's how that goes and moving on — which was a problem a lot of their classmates could have, for example being racist about Norris or a bit condescending to Daphne over Mistwalker stuff, while Liz didn't seem to give any of it a second thought. Well, she did, but not for the same reason, she was just curious without any of the judgement — which was another neat thing about Liz, how she wasn't content with the understanding she already had but always wanted to learn more. Like Hermione with her nose in a book much of the time, but unlike Hermione didn't necessarily take everything she read as absolute truth, aware that books were written by people, and people were flawed, might have motivations that influence what they choose to write and how. (Hermione was getting better than that, thanks to having too many Slytherin friends, but it'd taken time.) But, at the same time, didn't let her openness to others' perspectives and new information to blunt her moral evaluation — once she did understand something, if she thought it was stupid or pointless or cruel she would say so, with a blunt honesty that Daphne found refreshing from an outsider, who were too often circumspect about their true opinions.
Liz was slightly blindsided that Daphne thought she was a moral person. A morality that was completely alien to Daphne, of course — she did eat meat and stuff, and was more willing to resort to violence than Daphne felt was acceptable — but it was clear to Daphne that it existed. Which was news to Liz, she certainly hadn't realised she had any kind of moral code, she had no idea where Daphne was getting that from.
(She'd literally murdered a woman and subsumed her soul, after all — Liz was a monster, but Daphne didn't know that. And if Liz had her way, she never would.)
(Which also undercut Daphne's impression of her honesty, but obviously she didn't realise that either.)
And Liz was obviously very talented, of course, and it was— Well, there was cultural stuff all wrapped up in this that Liz didn't entirely get, too many threads she'd need to follow, but it kind of directly followed when you thought about it, logically? Like, magic was a gift from the gods or whatever, this person was magically gifted, ergo they had their favour, and was special for whatever reason — not complicated, Liz didn't actually need to know much detail about the Mistwalkers' religion to put that together. (It was also a pretty general magical culture thing, even in more secular segments, presumably because the idea had just stuck around longer than the old religions it came out of.) Daphne could already feel Liz's magical presence on the air, which was slightly absurd, to be so powerful at her age, though she didn't know how much of it was her mind magic. (Liz bet all of it, she was a strong mage but not that strong.) It could be a little intimidating, honestly, like lightning about to strike, and maybe that would be a problem if she thought Liz were likely to hurt her, but instead it was just kind of exhilarating. And attractive, for similar cultural reasons — it'd been hard to hide it, that time early last year when she'd found Liz in the hallway playing around with wandless magic...
Liz blinked for a second, because apparently Daphne thought her magic was sexy, which, um, okay then?
And not just for that, Daphne had kind of always thought Liz was pretty, even before hormones had become a thing — which was bloody weird to Liz, she didn't get it. Somewhat because she was sloppy about it, if Liz was following along correctly. In the sense of her basic features, you know, very much classically pretty in the way of the old nobility — also bloody weird, though Liz recalled Tamsyn had once said the same thing, suggested she compare herself to the paintings at Hogwarts to prove it (which she'd never bothered doing) — but without putting on the overdone airs their class did, more casual, closer to the sloppy academic aesthetic of people like her dad and most of her parents' friends. Her hair was a mess, yes, but not only was that kind of cute (in an almost childish way) but also oddly appropriate, reflecting her barely-controlled wildness, the power at her fingertips (fucking hell). And sure, she'd present herself oddly sometimes, clothing and jewellery often mismatched, but that was sort of endearing too, in a I'm going to dress the way I like, fuck all of you who have a problem with it kind of way — something Daphne had always been faintly jealous of, wishing she had the nerve to, just, not conform to mainstream mages' sensibilities...though Liz had inspired her there, to a degree, she was going to start trying to be more Mistwalker-ish in public, which she one hundred per cent credited to Liz's example and support. Which was a pretty big damn deal to her, Liz didn't entirely get why but she understood that much.
Liz should probably tell her that she was shitty at dressing herself properly and whatever else because there hadn't been any women around when she'd been growing up who would teach her how — Petunia was hardly likely to bother, after all — but she didn't want to.
Of course, hormones were a thing now — Daphne had definitely noticed Liz's recent preference for more close-fitting clothes. The hints she'd gotten, and Liz was quite athletic, with the quidditch and the duelling and all, Daphne was rather curious about Liz's body, with an intensity that made Liz immediately uncomfortable to look at. A curiosity that would remain limited to imagination perhaps indefinitely, and that was fine, Daphne was aware outsiders could be silly about love and sex, and also that Liz had issues. And she had imagined, so Liz was now very aware that Daphne didn't realise how extensive the scarring on her chest was — she knew the scars were there, of course, she'd seen the edges around vests now and then, but. She was assuming Liz just had small tits, which wasn't unexpected, since she was tiny in general and also some months younger than Daphne, but she wasn't that much younger, and all the girls in their year had something going on, so that was kind of a funny assumption to make, but whatever.
(Daphne's, um, imagining was actually making Liz less uncomfortable than it had a second ago, since her mental image wasn't recognisable to Liz as herself, which was kind of weird, she decided to not think about it too hard.)
And, yes, Liz was fucked up, Daphne was aware of that. She tried not to think about what few details she knew — that anyone would treat a child (and especially Liz) that way made her sad, and very angry, and she found anger unpleasant — but she hadn't forgotten. Liz had misread all that as pity, but it wasn't, really. So many things clearly bothered Liz, because of what had been done to her, but she kept trying anyway, even when she really didn't have to, just because it was what she wanted and she wasn't going to let her fucked up brain stop her. (Which was giving her more credit than Liz thought she deserved, but fine.) That some things were so difficult for Liz, but that she still tried, Daphne thought was rather admirable — and when these things were for her friends, or for Daphne specifically, it was all the more touching for it. She'd kissed people before, yes, but that first of theirs at the Greenwood was deeply meaningful for her, in part just because Daphne liked her, but also because she was fully aware of how much of a struggle it had been for Liz to get to that point, and that she was here with Daphne again, and still had the courage to keep trying even after that moment before, which had certainly seemed distressing from the outside, well, it was admirable, and very flattering, and she...
Daphne had said of course because to her it was a given. There had never been any chance she would have refused.
Liz wormed her hand out of Daphne's, the storm of thoughts and feelings abruptly dimming. She took a sip of her coffee to help smooth out some of the tension in her throat — it'd cooled a bit, she warmed it up quick, the wandless magic getting an almost smug flutter from Daphne. "Right, um...okay." She winced, that felt like a terribly insufficient response to...all that, but she had absolutely no idea what the fuck she was supposed to say now. She was very confused and, just, yeah, she didn't know. "I'm not— I don't really know how this whole...dating thing is supposed to work — I'm not good at this squishy shite, you know. So, I'm probably going to fuck it up. Or I might have to call it off, if it gets to be...too much. If that's okay."
"That's okay. We'll simply have to figure it out together." At Liz's disbelieving scoff, Daphne ticked up a single eyebrow, giving her a very Severus-like flat look. "Perhaps you didn't think of it, Liz, but 'this whole dating thing' is as new to me as it is to you. We do things differently on the Greenwood."
"...Oh." Yeah, she'd completely forgotten about that, honestly. She wasn't even certain the Mistwalkers did marriages — obviously the head of the family needed to, for political reasons (so Daphne would eventually), but other than that. "All right, then. Sounds fair."
"So it does." Daphne took a sip of her not-tea, smiling a little. "What do you think we do now?"
"Just hang out, I guess. There's a bit longer before we have to be at the restaurant..."
"Sounds simple enough. I suspect we'll get the hang of 'this whole dating thing' before too long." Didn't have to make fun of her, Daphne, honestly...
As nervous as Liz had been about all this before, and that debacle with her almost losing it a bit ago, it turned out perfectly fine. They just talked about whatever, school stuff and duelling stuff and whatever about their friends and politics and blah blah, not so different from usual — except Liz being very aware of Daphne watching her, Liz being very unsubtle about it in return. (She could feel Daphne got a bit of a thrill from Liz checking her out, so she didn't bother trying to hide it.) Or, mostly no different than usual, Daphne's leg rubbing against hers made it a little hard to talk normal, distracting, and not just because it made her mind louder than usual — being louder than usual, at one point Liz caught that Daphne wasn't wearing knickers (apparently she usually didn't), which, eeerrrr, as fascinating as that thought was it probably would have been better for her nerves if she didn't know — and there was a bit more kissing before they had to leave. Liz managed not to nearly break down like a crazy person again, so, since Daphne was her girlfriend now, why the hell not?
Fuck, that sounded bloody weird, even in her head...
D'aawwww.
[why was it so hot in Romania?!] — I looked it up, out of curiosity, and in July the lows in Iaşi are pretty similar to the highs in the general area of Ireland Liz is in, and of course they get literally twice as many average sunlight hours. The area of England Liz grew up in is a few degrees warmer and a little sunnier than her new home, but the difference is relatively small. Iaşi has a continental climate that would be really familiar to Americans, if milder than where I live (like most of eastern Europe). Highs approaching 80 F (that's 27 C for literally everyone else) might not seem like a very hot day to me — we get above 100 F (38 C) at least a few times every summer — but it literally never gets that warm at the Refuge. Basically, Liz, it seems so hot and dry because you're British xD
[from the hints she'd gotten from neighbours Liz half-suspected he was gay or maybe just bloody weird] — For the record, Lyndon was autistic, and had zero interest in the game of nobility.
[Liz hadn't really expected she wasn't related to complete bastards] — As a reminder, Hunter Britnell's grandparents are father and daughter, and he's Merope's first cousin. Lots of rape apples around that family tree. And I'm sure there's no particular reason I'm introducing the existence of Hunter Britnell into the worldbuilding, definitely just random background details that will never actually be important.
Yeah, this got way longer than I expected, no idea why I thought they'd fit in one chapter, I'm terrible at this. I'm frustratingly autistic sometimes, and find writing this kind of thing very difficult, so I have no idea if it turned out anything like what I was going for, or if it worked at all, oh well. And I can't really say anything else without undercutting things or spoilers, so fuck it, byyeee...