Hogsmeade looked exactly the same, as though no time had passed at all.
Which was honestly slightly unsettling, Liz thought, though she couldn't put her finger on exactly why. The last time she'd been here — the last time she'd seen the village, the last time she'd seen Hogwarts, the sprawling, asymmetrical castle looming beautiful and a little imposing over the lake in the distance — had been December...1964, she thought. Almost exactly thirty years ago, now.
And that was a surreal thought, it seemed both much longer and much shorter than thirty years. She remembered that day with painful clarity, the day when everything had changed forever. It had been her seventh year, and her disagreement with Father had escalated to a breaking point — she'd gotten a letter, early that month, telling her that if she continued to refuse to go along with a proper marriage, she shouldn't come home for the holiday. In fact, she maybe should consider never coming home at all. She didn't think her father had actually meant it, not really. She suspected he'd thought drawing that particular line in the sand would be enough to have her finally 'be reasonable' — after all, what good British girl would choose to be exiled from her family, to be left entirely on her own, with nobody and nothing to rely on? No, she was all but certain Father had expected her to come home, that they would have a talk, and everything would be fine.
She'd been standing...just there, she thought — between the dirt close the carriages moving to and from Hogwarts settled in and the train platform, slightly off to the side just there. Only a few metres from where Liz stood right now, leaning against the railing on the stairs leading up to the platform. Kelsey had told her that she couldn't come home with her. That she'd gotten a letter from her own parents, just the day before, that Liz wasn't welcome at the Prewetts'. And Kelsey had made her apologies — tearful apologies, she'd clearly hated it, but she'd done her duty to her family anyway. And Liz had watched her girlfriend (going on nearly two years by then) get on the train, stood there silently as it'd pulled away.
And she'd been alone.
It felt...almost obscene, in a way, that Hogsmeade hardly seemed to have changed at all. The train platform was exactly the same, the packed dirt track and the thestral-drawn carriages on it might as well have become stuck in time a thousand years ago, the sleepy village more or less exactly as she remembered, thirty years later most of the same shops still run by the same people. Taking a walk through she'd even spotted Old Josie, looking only a little more decrepit than Liz remembered, sitting at the same spot on the same patio outside her house off Violet Way, chatting with the same circle of her little old friends and watching the students go by as usual. The students looked mostly the same too. The Hogwarts uniform hadn't changed at all, of course, and muggle fashions seemed to be somewhat more common with the students than she remembered. But other than that, those minor cosmetic differences, it might as well still be 1960.
Which was just...odd. Forget for a moment her personal perspective — everything had changed that day in December thirty years ago, an irrational part of her was convinced that Hogsmeade should have changed as much as she had — it wasn't just about her. Hadn't Britain been in a bloody war back in the 70s? Liz had been living in Aquitania for over a decade by the time it really started to pick up, she'd admit she wasn't as informed as it came to the particulars as she probably should be, but she felt rather certain there had been at least one major battle fought in Hogsmeade itself. In fact, she'd heard about half of the village had been completely levelled in the fighting. (A magical battle tended to be very destructive for the surrounding environment, especially when dark sorcerers got involved.) That they'd apparently decided to rebuild the thing exactly the same was...
Well, not surprising, when she thought about it. After all, there had seemingly been quite the push in the immediate aftermath to return the state of Britain to the status quo ante as much as had been possible. There hadn't really been any political reconstruction, or economic remuneration toward the victims, or attempts to purge supporters of their Dark Lord with the silly name from important positions in society — no, they'd just stopped fighting, and stubbornly went on as normal, as though nothing had happened at all. Given all that, she supposed it wasn't unusual that the physical damage had been erased as much as possible, in a mindless attempt to revive the Britain that had been.
Like hanging flowers on a rotting tree, as the People would put it. It was just a little unsettling.
She pulled out her wand, snapped off a tempus charm — Jamie's boy should be here any minute now. She shouldn't have come so early, but she'd wanted to make sure Chloé and the girls were set up at the Leaky, and...
And there was another train of carriages coming up now. Liz straightened a little, taking another slow draw of her yakoç. (She'd gotten some odd glances, smoking wasn't particularly common in magical Britain, but she'd been taking it for too long to stop without getting withdrawal symptoms — and besides, it helped with nerves.) The carriages trundled to a stop, the doors thrown open, chattering students leaping out. Even if she'd never seen Jamie's boy before — which she really hadn't, aside from a couple pictures in the Herald — she would have recognised him from the impossible mess of raven-black hair, identifiable even from a distance.
She and three of her girls had the same thing, after all, as most Potters did, along with a few people in closely-related families (Fawleys, Longbottoms, Ainsleys, Atwells, and so forth). She was convinced it was a magical trait, even if she hadn't manage to isolate it yet — given how it resisted various forms of glamoury and transfiguration, there was simply no way it was natural. Flicking the stub of her yakoç aside, vanishing it with a flick of her wand before it hit the ground, Liz pushed herself away from the railing, stepped away from the platform. She stood just off the footpath leading toward the high street, waiting.
And watching. Wearing muggle-style jeans and jumper, shrouded with a winter cloak, Harry was rather scrawnier than she'd expected, tall and slim. Other than the hair, he didn't look much like Father, or Dorea for that matter, must be from his mother. (Which was something of a relief, honestly, it'd probably be uncomfortable if he looked too much like Father.) She was slightly surprised Harry had come alone — she'd been half-convinced Gabbie would tag along, or that he'd bring the boyfriend Black had mentioned (Bella Zabini's son, apparently?)...or that Bella Black's little clone would invite herself. He did look slightly nervous, she thought — his stature a little tense, brow dipping in a mild frown before smoothing again, over and over — but just slightly.
While the boy was still ten metres away, at the very back of the column of children walking toward her, she felt the slightest pressure at the edges of her mind — a legilimens focusing on her, not with the intent to intrude, just listening. Gabbie had mentioned he was a mind mage, of course, Black had even warned her, possibly on the assumption that she knew enough mind magic to notice his presence and might take offence. She didn't mind, though — living with veela for nearly three decades had rather significantly altered her attitudes toward privacy — she hardly even reacted, didn't move to push him away.
(She did prepare herself to repel a deeper intrusion though — she carried far too many of the People's secrets outsiders weren't to know.)
Harry let himself fall a few steps behind the rest of the students, so they had a little window of privacy when he finally walked up to her. Liz hesitated a brief moment — she'd never intended to come back to Britain, this was very awkward, she had no idea what to say. Default to politeness, she could do that. (She still remembered the old forms, even if she hadn't used them in decades.) "Good day, Lord Potter."
The boy winced, glaring over at the trees in the near distance. "You don't have to call me that, Harry is fine."
"I'm Liz, then."
Harry nodded. A heavy, awkward silence lingered, Liz watching the boy while he avoided her eyes, still staring off at the forest, the village behind her. Or, he was actually watching her, just not with his eyes — the presence of his mind hadn't weakened at all, if anything drifting closer. But he didn't say anything, looking all the more uncomfortable as the seconds went on.
Liz cleared her throat. "I was thinking coffee." Chloé and the girls would meet them at the Leaky for lunch, of course, but that was still a couple hours away — the plan had been to bring Harry with only if this meeting went well. No use in overwhelming the boy with her family if he wasn't interested, after all.
"Oh, er..." Harry's feet shuffled. "Is there a café in Hogsmeade? The only place like that I can think of is Madam Puddifoot's, and I've heard it's kind of..."
Awful, it was awful. Kelsey had brought her there all of twice, she remembered — Liz had absolutely hated it, she hadn't done as good a job of hiding it the second time, Kelsey had never suggested it again. "Merlin, is that sugary hell-hole still around? No, there's a place on Daffodil. It's been thirty years since I've been, but I'm certain it's still there." With an inviting tilt of her head and swish of her hand — being in Britain was bringing back her old manners, apparently (bloody weird) — she turned and led the way into the village, Harry a half-step behind her.
They walked for a minute or two before the silence became suffocating, Liz had to say something. Even if she had no bloody clue what to say. At least Harry was a legilimens, he'd be able to tell how uncomfortable she was, that would give her some leeway, hopefully. "You do know who I am, right? It occurs to me I never actually said."
"Yeah, my aunt. James's sister."
Huh, he called Jamie by his name. That was interesting — even with how poisoned her relationship with her father had been by the end, she still called him Father. It might not mean anything, she guessed, Harry probably didn't even remember Jamie. "Yes. Half-sister, technically — Dorea, Jamie's mother, was our father's second wife."
"I know, he— I mean, Lyra told me."
Liz blinked, turned to glance at him. He looked a bit shifty, avoiding her eyes again, probably hoping she wouldn't pick up on what he'd almost just let slip. It wasn't hard to figure out, Samhain had been just last week. "Did you meet Jamie at the Revel?" Normally, Witnesses couldn't have coherent conversations with the Dead, but Harry was a legilimens...
His eyes going wide, he twitched, gaped at her for a moment. "You know about that? I thought the Potters were all...not into the high magic stuff, you know."
She felt her lips twitch. "I was in Slytherin — all the Slytherins know about the holiday rituals, whether they choose to attend or not. Mabon of my first year was the first time I ever participated in true ritual magic, in fact. I started going just out of curiosity, really, I wasn't convinced the Powers are real, and not just a temporary construct of the ritual itself, until...probably third year, I think." She was pretty sure she'd had her first surreal dream conversation with Áine in April of third year, but she couldn't remember precisely.
(She'd realised nearly a decade later that Áine had probably been sounding her out for recruitment as a white mage. She didn't know how to feel about that — especially since, if Áine hadn't been so subtle she hadn't understood what was going on, Liz might actually have considered it. If she had, she would never have left Britain, and never met Chloé...)
Harry looked distinctly uncomfortable, almost shivering. He was muggle-raised — and how had that happened? — deep magic and the Powers were probably still new ideas to him. It could take some getting used to. "Yes, I talked to James. Or his spirit or whatever." Harry stopped there, almost (but not quite) biting his lip.
Liz didn't have to ask what he was thinking, that surly, sideways glance of his was pretty telling. "Are you trying not to ask where the hell I've been all this time?"
He huffed. "Yeah, something like that. I didn't know you existed, I was told I didn't have any other family, that I had to go to..." He trailed off, glaring down at the cobblestones under their feet.
"I had no idea you were sent to live with Jamie's wife's muggle relatives." Nobody did, she assumed Dumbledore had made certain of it — she very much doubted the Wizengamot would have approved of the only remaining heir of a Noble House (and their Boy Who Lived) being sent off to live with common muggles. (Again, she assumed — if they were halfway respectable muggles, Dumbledore would have said something.) "If I had..." Well, she probably should have done something, but she wasn't actually certain she would have. Her exile from the family had already felt like so long ago by then...
"Because being stuck with muggles is such a terrible thing, you mean."
Liz tried not to react to that too much — she guessed Harry had unfortunate experiences with purebloods, but it wasn't about that, really. Just... Well, she didn't think Harry had any idea how screwed he was, in the long term. There were things future Lords of the Wizengamot were taught while they were growing up that, being muggle-raised, he wouldn't have been. That lack would set him at a serious disadvantage, once he was out of Hogwarts and in a position where he would be forced to try to deal with his peers. Even with competent advisors, the other Lords would run circles around him.
Bella Black — and it was still odd to think the nosey little underclassman she remembered from her last couple years at Hogwarts and the infamous Lady Blackheart were the same person — hadn't been entirely wrong, when she'd tried to guilt Liz into doing something about the precarious position the House of Potter was in. No matter how many reasons she might have to be perfectly comfortable letting her birth family die, she just wasn't. Now that she was fully aware of how dire things were, she couldn't just do nothing.
But there was little point in explaining that just now. And Harry was probably aware of all that anyway, Bella had implied Sirius Black and her clone were educating him (however belatedly). "There are things that I was taught, growing up, Potter things — I was the heir to the title before Jamie was born, I was trained for it." No matter that she hadn't actually minded being passed up, however hard it'd been to convince Dorea of that. "Family lore and history that nobody else alive knows. I...probably should have done something, when your parents were killed." Not that it would have mattered, she doubted Dumbledore would have allowed the Boy Who Lived to be taken away to grow up in a veela enclave in a foreign country...
Harry didn't react to the reminder of his parents' deaths, probably too distant to be a sensitive issue. They were passing a clump of students, moving from the high street onto Violet, they turned to sneer at Harry as they passed — Harry hardly reacted to that either, though his face did go oddly still, his shoulders rising slightly. (What was that about?) Once they were alone again, Harry hesitated a brief moment, before flatly demanded, "Why didn't you?"
"That's a long, uncomfortable story."
The boy scoffed.
"I meant, I'd rather tell it sitting down, under privacy charms."
Harry winced, mumbled an apology.
The café on Daffodil was, in fact, still there, and virtually unchanged in the decades since. It was an odd little place, looking much like any other house on the lane — there had been some remodeling, the walls toward the front now more glass than wood, the only obvious indication from the outside it was anything but an ordinary home the large board bolted to the patio railing with a menu painted onto it. The structure had originally been built as a house, in fact, Melanie Fenwick had converted the bottom floor into a café when her youngest son left for school. (Geoffrey Fenwick, a Ravenclaw some years older than Liz, who she mostly remembered because he'd married Bethany Sullivan, a muggleborn, straight out of Hogwarts — since she hadn't disowned him over Sullivan, some of the more annoying of her fellow Slytherins had refused to patronise Melanie's café, which had made it a convenient place to avoid them on Hogsmeade weekends.) The inside of the café — a few little tables surrounded with padded armchairs, a long counter blocking off the kitchen, newspapers and magazines stacked along it, posters and photographs hanging here and there — was mostly the same, differing only in minor details. Different photographs, the tables in slightly different places, Melanie, behind the counter kneading at a sizeable pile of dough, starting to get old enough to show — lines about her eyes and silver starting to sprout at her temples.
"Hello, dears!" she called, before the door even closed behind them. "Give me one second." She stepped way from her work table, waving her hands over an enchanted disc on a nearby pedestal — it would have an automated vanishing spell on it, Liz knew, some practising blood alchemists used a similar set-up for sanitary reasons.
Liz drifted toward the counter, Harry at her heels, and stopped dead a few steps away when she noticed one of the pictures over the counter. It was a memorial, framed with holly and everlit candles — she didn't recognise the long-faced man in the photograph, but she didn't have to, there was a label under it in silver and bronze. "Benjy died in the war?" A couple years older than Jamie, Benjy's parents had sometimes left him with Melanie, she'd seen him a few times, kicking around the café. Adorable little kid...
Standing just on the other side of the counter, Melanie's smile froze. "Yes, our Benjy was murdered by Philip Travers, back in Eighty-One."
Liz scowled — she'd heard Travers was in Azkaban now, one of the more high-profile Death Eaters, which had been no surprise, bloody creep. "I'm so sorry, Melanie, I had no idea. I've been out of the country for a while, you know..."
"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but I'm not sure..." Frowning at her a little, as though trying to place her, Melanie's eyes then slid to Harry, widening a little — she clearly recognised him. "Oh! Is it little Liz Potter?!"
"It's Delacour now, actually, but yes." She smiled back at the older woman, somewhat strained — the Fenwicks were very Light, tended not to like non-humans much, if she recognised the name...
Either she did or she didn't, her grin didn't dim at all. "Oh stars, it's been ages since you've been by! Where have you been— No, let me get your coffee started first, and I think I have some of that cinnamon teacake you like..."
That startled a laugh out of her. "It's been thirty years, Melanie, how do you remember that?"
Her grin turning slightly crooked, she said, "You'd be surprised the things you remember about your best customers. Before I forget, Mister Potter, dear, did you want something else, or am I doubling the coffee? Liz takes it very strong, just so you know."
Harry's nose scrunched a little, apparently he was a tea drinker. Though, he seemed a bit intimidated when his request for black tea was followed up by a list of the eight different blends Melanie had on hand, he clearly had no idea which to pick — it was a little adorable, honestly, Liz tried to keep her amusement off her face. (Harry would be able to tell, of course, but she could at least avoid embarrassing him by making it obvious to Melanie.) He did choose one after a few seconds, probably at random.
"Where did you end up anyway, darling?" Melanie called over her shoulder as she brewed. "I remember reading something in the paper about you running off, but I don't think I heard anything after that."
Liz glanced at Harry, shrugged. "Ah, I'm living in Gascony these days, with my wife's family. I run an artificing shop on their property in a little village there."
"Wife? Oh, they do do that in Aquitania don't they, I quite forgot. Delacour, Delacour, that name is familiar..."
She tried not to wince — this was probably going to be uncomfortable... "It's the largest veela clan in western Europe."
Melanie glanced over her shoulder. It wasn't quite so blatant as when she'd asked after Benjy, but Liz did notice her smile had gone a little cold again. "Your wife is, er..."
"Chloé is a veela, yes."
"Ah, I see."
Their conversation didn't abruptly cut off just then, but it was obvious (to Liz, at least) that Melanie was rather less enthusiastic about their little reunion than she'd been a moment ago. Liz tried not to take it too personally, the woman couldn't exactly help the attitudes she'd been inundated with growing up. (Liz had been raised into it too, after all, she understood.) Harry, she noticed, was offended, rather surprisingly so, openly glaring at Melanie's back. Gabbie had mentioned (at some great length) in her letter that she and Harry had sort of hit it off, so she guessed it wasn't really that surprising Harry might not look kindly on people reacting in such a way — it was the degree that she hadn't anticipated, really.
Liz might not be taking it too personally, but Melanie's obvious disapproval of her family was incentive enough for Liz to not censor herself when it came to her career. That shut Melanie off the rest of the way pretty well — blood alchemy was still very illegal in Britain, and there were all sorts of silly superstitions around blood magic of all kinds — the woman was rather more curt than necessary setting down their tray. Cheerfully, Liz paid her, complete with a generous tip.
Entirely because she knew her generosity would make Melanie cringe — Liz had earned it with blood magic, after all — and her politeness would make her feel guilty. By the pained scowl on the woman's face, Liz was confident she'd achieved both.
(She'd had many disagreements with her father, but she thought he'd had the right idea when it came to the proper response to petty rudeness.)
After a short detour pointing out the different flavours of honey available — apparently Harry was completely unfamiliar with the idea of infusions, which was odd, he must not spend much time in the magical world (or just didn't pay that much attention to what he was eating, she guessed) — Liz led them off to a table in the corner. While pouring her coffee, Liz pulled out her wand, layered a few privacy charms over the table. She didn't plan on discussing anything that particularly sensitive, really, she just didn't want to see her private business splashed all over the papers. She'd gotten quite enough of that as a teenager, thank you.
Liz took a sip of her coffee, frowned down at it for a second. It'd been too long, she hadn't realised the orange-infused honey the People used was rather stronger than what Melanie had on hand. But adding more of the stuff would just make it too sweet, oh well.
For a moment, neither of them said anything, Liz's finger tapping at the rim of her cup, Harry poking at his almond treacle tart. (Liz thought that was an odd thing to be having with tea, especially only an hour or two before lunch, but to each their own.) Liz considered easing into it with small talk, maybe about quidditch or something — Harry was on the Gryffindor team, right? — but, really, that would just draw out the uncomfortable bit of this whole thing, might as well get the awkward explaining shite out of the way. "Why I wasn't around, it's complicated. How much do you know about my history with the family?"
Surprisingly, Harry's brow dipped into a moody scowl — surprising because it didn't seem to be directed at her, he was still glaring at his tart. "Not much. James seemed to think you marrying a veela was enough reason to not even tell people he had a sister. Lily had no idea you existed at all."
Liz didn't quite hold in a wince — she couldn't say she was entirely surprised her baby brother had seemingly decided to pretend she didn't exist, but... Yeah, that still hurt, a little. "I can't say I blame him too much. Not about Chloé, I mean, he was only four when I left the country. I did write him, a little — Dorea practically ordered me to, actually — and we did meet a few times, when I was visiting. But I wasn't exactly a big presence in his life, enough... Well, I'm not really surprised."
"Why did you leave, anyway?" Now he was glaring at her, though more uncertain than angry. "Nobody's ever actually explained that, beyond, just, ran away and married a veela. It was too early to be about the war, wasn't it? I know Professor Lovegood left to get away from the war..."
"Hundreds of people left Britain to get away from the war, but yes, I left before then. It's sort of complicated." Liz took a sip of coffee, pondering how to go about this whole thing. "Well, just start at the beginning, I guess. My mother died when I was... I'm honestly not sure, I think I might have been two? I don't remember her at all, actually, I had a few pictures and the diary she was using at the time, but that's about it." And she didn't even have those anymore, they'd been in her room at home when she'd left Britain — Dorea had sent her a photo from her parents' wedding, it was the only thing she had of either of them now.
Harry's glare vanished, leaving him staring blankly down at his tea.
"Father... They'd known each other since they were toddlers, you know, they'd been best friends for years before they married. He did not handle Mother's death well, not at all. From what I was told, after the fact, he was barely functioning for a while. I didn't see much of him, for years. I was raised largely by the elves, the humans I saw were mostly my great-uncle Lyndon — that's Lyndon Potter, your great-great-grandfather's brother — and a few Fawley and Ainsley cousins. I actually lived with Lyndon for a few years there.
"Until I turned seven." Liz paused to take another sip. It was hard to read Harry's face exactly, he'd clearly been practising his occlumency. But she got the feeling he'd softened a bit already — out of sympathy, she guessed, he obviously hadn't known his parents growing up either. "It's a tradition of sorts, in the Noble Houses, that a child's formal education starts at seven, and since I was the only Potter child I was also to be trained to take over the family, in time. That's a job for the Lord of the House. Father was mostly okay again by then, but I'd hardly seen him for years — he was practically a stranger. It was...very awkward. I remember, for months after moving back in with Father, wishing I could go back home. Home to me then was the townhouse in the Refuge, with Lyndon, I didn't even really remember my father and the Family Manor."
"There's a Potter Manor?"
Liz blinked at him, too dumbfounded to speak for a second. "I— Of course there is! Harry, every noble family has one. Have you...never been there?"
Harry shot her a mulish glare, but she didn't buy it, he was shifting in his seat too much — almost guiltily, which was silly, he couldn't be held responsible for people not telling him things, even when they really, really should. "Well, I don't know, nobody ever told me this noble family shite. I know about the house in Godric's Hollow, but..."
"I don't know about a house in Godric's Hollow, Jamie and your mother probably bought that themselves. It certainly isn't the Manor. The point of them is to have somewhere the entire family can gather if they need to, for special occasions or emergencies — the House of Potter may be tiny now, but it wasn't always, there's no way any house in Godric's Hollow is large enough."
"Like Ancient House?" he asked, frowning to himself.
"Yes, exactly like Ancient House, that's the Blacks'." Though, Ancient House was rather less defensible than family manors tended to be — physically, that is, the wards there were absurd — but it hadn't originally been built for the purpose. The first Black Family Manor had been Château Blanc, which was much more defensible, though the family had outgrown it by the 12th Century or so. But that was rather off topic. "The Potters' is called Rock-on-Clyde, looking over the River Clwyd in Wales. I can show you later."
Though, she realised, it might actually be a little tedious to get there. She doubted the floo connection had been maintained, and she probably wasn't keyed into the wards anymore. (They should still recognise her as a Potter, blood-based wards were hard to tweak like that, but she'd probably been removed from the table of exemptions from the anti-apparation ward.) They'd probably have to apparate to the river, and walk all the way up...
"Anyway, it was very frustrating for the both of us, getting reacquainted, my relationship with my father probably wasn't as good as it could have been. It didn't help that, a couple years later, he overcompensated making sure I was comfortable with his marriage with Dorea. I think, he expected me to be jealous, or something, and didn't really believe me when I said I didn't mind. I liked Dorea — when you're nine years old, and you find adults who don't talk down to you like you're a stupid child, those are the adults you tend to like, you know."
Harry's lips twitched with an involuntary smirk.
"Not long after that, Lyndon died — I was devastated, and Father was...kind of annoyed about it."
Frowning, Harry said, "Why would he be annoyed about that?" By the twist to his lips, Liz thought Harry was making a judgement on Father's character that wasn't entirely fair. Liz wouldn't claim her father had been perfect, obviously, not by any means, but...
But, well, she didn't entirely disagree, when it came to this particular issue, it took her a moment to decide how to explain as charitably as possible. "To be fair, I think he was... I'm not certain 'jealous' is quite the right word. Yes, I was miserable and useless for a little while, which did interfere with our scheduled lessons, but it wasn't about that, really. I think he felt I was...too much a dutiful daughter in mourning — at that point, in some ways, Lyndon had still been more a father to me than your grandfather. He never really said or did anything about it, I assume because he was aware that he was at least partially responsible for that happening in the first place, but it was...awkward for a while, again.
"And then, before things could get back to normal between us, I was leaving for Hogwarts. And was Sorted into Slytherin."
"I'm guessing he wasn't happy about that," Harry said, sounding rather resigned.
"Not particularly. Is that stupid Slytherin–Gryffindor rivalry still going on?"
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, the hand not holding his tea giving an ambivalent wiggle. "It depends, I guess? Some people take it much too seriously, and some people just don't care. I might have bought into it a little myself, at first," he mumbled, a little exasperated with himself. "I mean, I was never as bad about it as some people? Which, in retrospect, I was still being very stupid — the Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin, you know, I asked for Gryffindor."
"Oh, it actually listened to you? I asked for Hufflepuff, damn thing put me in Slytherin anyway." It'd taken a bit to decide between Slytherin and Ravenclaw, brushing off Hufflepuff with little more than a that's nice, dear.
"It can do that? Dumbledore told me the Hat's supposed to take your choices into account."
"If you're sufficiently suited to the house you're asking for, perhaps, but it didn't listen to me."
With a rather thoughtful look, Harry nodded. "Anyway, I'd kind of been told all Slytherins were evil, basically, and there's this kid in my year, Draco Malfoy, he's a complete arse, and I kind of just...assumed the rest of the Slytherins were all like him. I hardly even talked to any others until last year, and then only because they were Lyra's friends. Which, stupid, I was supposed to be one myself, and I'm even a parselmouth and everything."
"Really? I hadn't heard about that." And she really thought she would have — the Boy Who Lived having an evil dark wizard trait like parseltongue was the kind of thing she'd expect to be sensationalisted in the Prophet. "Your mother must be from a squib line."
"That's what she said when I talked to her at the Samhain ritual, yeah." Harry paused, glanced around for a second, as though making sure nobody was paying them too much attention. (Which was a little silly, she had privacy spells up.) Leaning over the table a little, "The thing is, Dumbledore said, at the end of second year, that I got parseltongue from Riddle — er, the Dark Lord, I mean. That, when he got blown up, some of his magic ended up being transferred over to me. Even Sirius assumed something like that must have happened."
It wasn't a question, but it was pretty clear what he was asking. Shaking her head, Liz said, "No, that's not possible. Parseltongue is a blood-mediated trait. To give you parseltongue, Voldemort would have needed to perform a blood alchemy ritual — using his own blood, or that of another parselmouth. It's not a particularly difficult ritual, I could do it myself given about an hour of preparation, but it's something that must be done consciously. I don't know what happened that night, but I can't imagine it was anything that could have carried over a blood-mediated trait of any kind." That didn't seem like a surprise to Harry, though he was frowning — wondering why the Chief Warlock had told him something so obviously false, she assumed. Not that Liz had any ideas, that was odd.
Liz frowned. "Wait, did you just say Voldemort's real name is Riddle?" She'd heard Thom de Mort, one of Candidus Malfoy's old friends, had become the Dark Lord. Everyone had known that was an assumed name, but it was thought he was a bastard from a French noble family — Riddle that was not a pureblood name...
Harry's eyes widened a little. "Ah, you were talking about Slytherin?"
That was a pathetically obvious deflection, but she could humour him — Voldemort was dead and gone, the possibility that he'd maybe been muggleborn didn't really matter anymore, did it. "Yes, that. You're right, my father wasn't particularly happy about it. It wasn't a serious problem, it just gave him some political difficulties with the rest of the Light. It didn't help that he was marrying Dorea — the Blacks being the fire at the heart of the Dark and all that nonsense, you know, they have a reputation in the Light. Although, it's not actually unusual for people from some of the more extreme Dark families to marry into the Light — in just the generation before Dorea, you had one Black marry a Prewett and another marry a Weasley, of all people — and the Light tend to see this as a good thing, that these people are escaping from the depravities of the Dark. Most of that is nonsense, of course, the Dark isn't nearly as bad as the Light claim, but Father was betrothed to a Black, and at the same time his only child is Sorted into Slytherin... People talked, and he was a bit annoyed about it. He wasn't angry with me, exactly, only a little...displeased, but that just made our already rocky relationship a little bit more...distant and awkward.
"And then a couple years later, Jamie was born. Internal House Potter law prioritises inheritance along the male line, like most Light families — now that my father had a son, I wasn't the heir anymore." There was a flicker across Harry's brow, Liz added, "I didn't mind so much. It was something of a relief, actually. I was a...troubled child, kind of, and, if I'm being honest, all the responsibilities attendant to being the future Lady Potter hanging over my head all the time, were...intimidating. It made things simpler.
"The important thing about it for this conversation is that no longer being the heir meant my lessons with your grandfather — mostly just meetings by that point, discussing our family's affairs — they were done with. Which meant we spent rather less time together. Which meant our still rather shaky relationship was never given opportunity to recover."
Liz drained the rest of her cup, poured herself another from the pot on their tray — it was still steaming, good, the warming charms on the pot were working properly. (She couldn't dismiss out of hand the possibility Melanie might have given her a broken one as an intentional snub.) Stirring in a spoon of honey, Liz said, "The point I'm trying to get at, Harry, is that there wasn't that much keeping me here in the first place. Not personally, anyway. Sure, I had nowhere else to go, and no way to provide for myself besides, and I'd been taught to mind my responsibilities to the Family, but so far as actual, personal relationships go? The man who'd had the most direct hand in raising me had died years ago, and the elves had retreated as I aged. My relationship with my father was distant and awkward, and always had been. I got on with my stepmother just fine, but we weren't especially close either. My brother was too young to really have a relationship with, and I was away at Hogwarts, so I didn't see him much anyway. I had a few cousins I'd known growing up, but we weren't very close, mostly casual friendships at school.
"And then there was Kelsey." Liz paused, drawing out a sip of coffee much longer than necessary, working over how to explain this next bit. It didn't help that Harry had been muggle-raised, and she wasn't certain how aware he was of how these sort of things generally worked. She did have some practice in explaining it to uninformed people, from her time on the Continent, but... "Well, marriages in the nobility are mostly arranged, you know. This was actually the norm all around the world, once upon a time. The concept of a love marriage is far more modern than many people realise — the institution of marriage developed as a means of organising familial hierarchies and controlling wealth, the rest of the cultural trappings around it came later. It isn't as though a permanent, formalised union is necessary to produce and raise children, after all." The People, in fact, had developed their own traditions concerning family and childrearing parallel to human society, ones that had no institution equivalent to marriage — a small minority married outsiders, but they never married amongst themselves. "There's a courtship culture the British nobility have, I don't know how familiar you are with this. It's expected that teenagers will experiment with sex and relationships — even encouraged, in a way — sometimes as part of the whole courtship game, and sometime entirely separate from it. It's not unusual to be courting with multiple people, while also 'dating' someone else, or multiple someones. These categories may or may not overlap, it depends."
It was hard to tell for sure, but Harry didn't seem particularly confused. She assumed this wasn't entirely new information for him. Both Harry and Bella's little clone were about the proper age to start thinking seriously about courting — Black had probably mentioned something about it at some point — and if nothing else he probably had friends who were on the market, or maybe even betrothed already. Finalising an arrangement at fourteen would be seen as sort of...overeager, but fifteen was prime courtship age. Harry seemed slightly exasperated, she thought, but not as though he was unfamiliar with the idea.
"Anyway, it didn't take me very long to realise I didn't really like boys much. Or not in the same way I did girls — I had male friends, of course, and I tried dating a couple, it was just...different. Which, that was fine, it just makes the whole courtship thing a little more complicated. After all, it's not everyone who'd be happy marrying someone who might get along with them just fine, sure, but has absolutely no interest in shagging them." That and it could make the act itself rather unpleasant, for both parties, but there were potions that helped, and they were needed often enough they weren't too hard to get. (She'd tried them herself, actually, they worked as one hell of an aphrodisiac for people who already were attracted to each other.)
Harry had huffed a little at that last bit. At her raised eyebrow, he hesitated a moment, his lips quirking, before letting out a sigh. "I'm seeing this bloke, Blaise, he's...well, not engaged, but engaged-to-be-engaged, I guess, to this girl Daphne, who's like that. I mean, totally gay, not interested in blokes at all. Apparently, she can get a bit protective of, ah, their arrangement, because finding someone else who's as cool as Blaise is about it might be difficult. I've gotten stuck in multiple conversations about the whole thing."
"Ah, yes, that makes sense." Liz bit the inside of her lip, consciously forced herself to stop. It wasn't really her business, but if something untoward were going on, she should really do something... "Excuse me, this may seem...intrusive, but, you're seeing this Blaise fellow, and Gabbie wrote to me, and it sounded sort of like..."
Unfortunately, it didn't look like Harry understood what she was getting at. "Like what?"
Liz bit back a sigh. "Ah, hell, I'm just going to say it straight. Did you like girls before Gabbie came along?"
"What?" Harry had been raising his cup, he practically slammed it back to the table, tea slopping over to pool in his saucer. "Of course I— Well, I'm pretty sure—" He huffed, glaring at the ceiling for a second. "I'm a legilimens, you know, I can feel the veela magic happen and stop it if I want to, pretty easily, actually. She hasn't done anything to me."
It took some effort for Liz to keep her surprise from showing — of course, Harry would know what she was feeling anyway, but it was still just polite. (Being in Britain was bringing out the old instincts, it was weird.) The People's emotional compulsions were actually very sneaky, many mind mages had trouble dealing with them. Not all of them, by any means, some mind mages were more powerful than others, and some more practised with it. Gabbie's friend Arte Cæciné, for example, she'd been in close proximity with them at Beauxbatons for years before her abilities properly kicked in, she'd adapted to managing their influence very quickly. Mind mages who first came into contact with the People later in life tended to have more trouble with it.
Of course, she could tell Harry was a rather powerful mage, for his age, enough he'd almost certainly be a proper sorcerer given time. (That was disproportionately frequent in half-bloods from old pureblood lines, she'd noticed.) A power advantage did help, yes. There was also a familiar echo to his magic, she'd assumed a lingering trace of the Samhain ritual he'd attended not long ago, but if he was actually god-touched... Well, that would help too, wouldn't it.
For a brief second, Liz considered asking after that. But no, it wasn't really her business, and she hardly knew enough about Harry's personal situation to even have much to tell him.
Right. "I apologise, I didn't mean to..." She wasn't certain what to say — she had meant to imply what she had, it just sounded worse than it was. "Gabbie is still very young, you know, it's not impossible she could do something to someone without even realising she's doing it. I thought I should check, just in case."
"Yes, well, it's fine, I don't need to be protected from her or anything."
"No offence, Harry, but if I were to do something about it, it'd be to protect her."
He blinked. "What?"
Before explaining, she took a sip of her coffee, covering her twitching lips with her cup. "If she had done something to compel you to be infatuated with her, the compulsion itself would be relatively harmless, and would quickly wear off. If people found out a foreign dark creature had used evil dark magic to ensnare the Boy Who Lived, well, they might overreact. If I were to do something, it would be to get my niece somewhere she would be safe before anything happened to her."
Harry scowled — not at her, she didn't think, but at those faceless people. "You're probably not wrong about that," he grumbled, voice thick with irritation and frustration.
"I did grow up in the British Light, Harry. I know what they're like."
He let out another irritated huff, but he dropped the topic. "You were talking about courtship stuff."
Liz fought to hold in another smirk. "Yes, well," she stalled, trying to remember where exactly she'd been and where she'd been going. "Oh, I was just about to talk about how I ended up actually leaving the country. And that whole debacle starts with Kelsey. Kelsey Prewett — or, Kelsey Bletchley now, I guess — is a distant cousin, but we hadn't actually met until we were both Sorted into Slytherin the same year. We started dating around Christmas our fifth year. The whole courtship game had been just sort of tedious already, but it only got more complicated when...
"Well, when we fell in love — the overwhelming, completely stupid for each other kind of love. By sixth year, we were together as much as possible. And when I had to go on... The whole idea of 'dating' actually developed in the muggle world over the last couple centuries out of old courtship customs, there are some cosmetic similarities. Especially where going on dates is concerned, though there are significant differences in the tone and the intent of the thing. It was annoying before, but after getting serious with Kelsey I hated it. I couldn't help comparing them to her in my head, and knowing I'd be marrying one of them, or someone else down the line, I'd be stuck with them for the rest of my life, that I couldn't be with Kelsey, and I resented them all for it. It was unpleasant."
It was sort of unpleasant just talking about it, even thirty years later. Harry might have been picking up on that, or just the idea itself was enough, his lips twisting into a grimace. "Couldn't you have just...not? I mean, if I understand this stuff right, it wasn't like you were the heir anymore. You didn't really need to."
Liz let out a sigh. "Theoretically? No, it wasn't necessary. But politically, it was...complicated. It would make things far more difficult for my father, and Jamie after him, if I never married. And, well, it's what you do. To most of the nobility, the idea of, just, not marrying is completely unthinkable — not necessarily because we really want to, but simply because it's expected, it's an important part of the culture we're raised in. In fact, the idea hadn't really occurred to me, not at first. I just thought, the idea of marrying any of these particular boys was repulsive. And they were, boring and annoying. I thought my father just had to get his head of his arse and try to set me up with better options.
"I kept running off suitors on purpose. Either I'd just make it very clear I didn't like them, I wasn't interested — which is actually quite rude, I only did that with the ones I felt were especially unacceptable — or I'd say things good boys from upstanding Light families found objectionable. By that point, my Dark friends in Slytherin had brought me around when it came to some things, mostly the practise of certain magics, ritual and such. I was already studying blood magic by then, not seriously, just out of curiosity — Dorea's mother was not-so-secretly a blood alchemist, she'd managed to get a few interesting books into my hands over the years. Just casually talking about dabbling in the Dark Arts in your free time, yeah, that sent half of them running pretty quick.
"It wasn't until the summer after sixth year when I decided I was done. I'd just had a particularly bad meeting with..." Liz trailed off, frowning to herself. "Huh, I don't even remember who it was. In any case, he was un—" At the last second, she realised she was about to say something very vulgar, bit her lip to cut herself off...except, it would have been in Gascon, so it wasn't like Harry would have understood it anyway. Oops. "Ah, it didn't go well. I nearly hexed him, actually. I went home and told my father I was done, I wasn't doing it anymore. I wasn't going to marry, and there was nothing he could say to convince me otherwise."
Harry looked vaguely amused, probably realised she'd almost slipped there for a moment. Or, actually, the smirking had started with her talking about scaring off good boys from upstanding Light families, so a combination of things, maybe. But his eyes narrowed in trepidation, the beginning of a frown. "Your father didn't like that, I'm guessing."
"No, not at all. We had a terrible row. And, as awkward as things might have been between us, we'd never yelled at each other before, or anything like that. It... Well, it was kind of awful, actually. We were fighting constantly that summer, being able to leave for Hogwarts was a bit of a relief."
An odd, almost painful look had taken over Harry's face. She wasn't quite certain how to read that.
"We traded letters some, that fall. He even showed up on a Hogsmeade weekend once, cornered me to have it out again, tried to talk me around. I was with Kelsey too, that was just...extremely awkward. Around the beginning of December, he sent me a letter to the effect that, if I continued to stubbornly refuse to consent to a proper marriage, I shouldn't come home. Not for Christmas, not ever. That I should consider myself cast out of the family until I changed my mind."
It probably shouldn't be surprising, but Liz was still a little blindsided by just how angry Harry looked, his brow dipping into a very obvious glare. His voice hissing a little, he said, "He, just, just for that? He kicked you out of the family because you wouldn't marry a boy he liked?"
"Eh?" Liz wiggled a hand in the air. That just seemed to make Harry confused. "Well, it's more complicated than just, I didn't marry a particular man. I'd turned down dozens by that point, and I was refusing to even keep looking for a husband — to even pretend to play the courtship game anymore. That was very impolitic, if nothing else. And, he never confirmed this, but I don't think he expected to actually need to follow through on it. I think, he thought if he just laid down the law, made it clear how serious he was about this, I'd give in. Or at least, we could talk about it, and come to some kind of compromise. That it might be a while, that I might run off to a friend's house or something, that it might have been years before we could come to an agreement. I don't think he expected me to actually leave.
"I didn't expect to leave. It was sort of...spur of the moment. It was the start of the holiday, and on the carriage ride to the station I mentioned, you know, thoughts for what we'd be doing over the holiday, and... I hadn't said anything before, about going home with Kelsey. It wouldn't have been the first time, I'd gone to hers for Easter holidays before, it didn't...seem like something we needed to talk about ahead of time. It was a given.
"Except, Kelsey had gotten a letter from home, the day before. She hadn't said anything, she didn't think it would matter. I was packing, and I hadn't said anything, so she...assumed I'd caved to my father's ultimatum, that I was going home. Her family said I wasn't welcome with them anymore, that she couldn't bring me home with her. We had a...confusing fight, right out there in the open, on the trail to the station. She got on the train, and I watched it pull away." Liz took a slow sip of her coffee. "I never spoke to her again."
And she did kind of regret that still, a little bit. Kelsey had even written her several times, in those first few months, but Liz had never replied. Like a bloody coward. They hadn't technically broken up, after all, Liz had just abruptly left the country, and she... She hadn't known what to say. She hadn't wanted it to be over, even while knowing it was, that she couldn't, that she wouldn't go back. Now that she was in Britain again, part of her wanted to see her. Not to do anything — their relationship was long dead by now — but just to... She didn't know. See how Kelsey was doing, catch up, and all that.
Say she was sorry, for running off. Though she wasn't, really, but maybe she could have gone about it better...
She wasn't going to. As much as part of her might want to talk to her again, she knew it wasn't really a good idea. It'd just be...awkward. How the hell would she even start that conversation? And that was assuming Kelsey would even agree to meet her, she wasn't at all certain she would. It just wasn't worth it.
"So I left." Liz shrugged. "I don't remember what I was thinking, exactly, I'm not certain I was thinking much at all. I just, I couldn't go home, and I couldn't think where else to go. I just...left. I took the floo to London, and then to Brittany, and I apparated to Paris, and... I didn't have anywhere in mind, really. I stepped out into the crowd and just...wandered. I had a few galleons on me, I sold the clothes and the jewelry I had in my trunk for a couple more. For a year or two, I drifted around the Continent, taking odd jobs here and there — freelance enchanting and menial labour, mostly.
"After the gold I started with ran out, would have been around March or April of Sixty-Five, I was actually living on the street for a couple months. Not that that's hard to do with magic, just a few softening and warming charms, a couple palings to keep pests away, it's comfortable enough. I was working in the muggle world at the time, actually, under the table at a restaurant in Tolosa — I hadn't the documentation to work legitimately in the muggle world then, it was off the books. The magical world is much smaller, and we have magic, obviously, so there tends to be less work available, sometimes something in the muggle world was my only option. But it wasn't always enough to feed myself and also pay for a place to sleep. I suppose I could have gotten a room in a hotel easily enough, compelling the muggles to forget I hadn't paid them, but I was worried I might get in trouble with the local magical government. You can get away with that in Britain, but I didn't know how close attention the Continental governments paid."
"And you didn't go back? I mean..." Harry hesitated for a second, his fingers idly playing with his empty tea cup. "You could have, just, done what your father wanted, and gone back to live in a bloody manor, at any time, and you chose to literally be homeless instead?" It was hard to tell for certain, but Harry almost seemed... 'Impressed' wasn't quite the right word, she didn't think. That she would stick to her principles, no matter how difficult it was, when she could have just surrendered and lived in comfort, he was surprised she'd gone that far, she thought, in the good way.
Even if he was giving her rather too much credit. "I couldn't go back anymore, really. Well, I could, I guess, but... A couple weeks in, when I didn't show up back at Hogwarts, my father realised something was wrong — I think he assumed I was staying at a friend's, and he simply hadn't heard where. A few letters back and forth, and he went from worried, to confused, to absolutely furious. I was disinherited by February. It wasn't just about agreeing to a marriage now, by the time my money problems got really bad I was already exiled from the family — and it'd been in the papers, everybody knew about it — so I would have had to go to my father and beg him to take me back. I was just too proud to do that, I guess. Even when I was literally sleeping in an alley in a muggle city, I was still too proud to beg my father to take me back, I just couldn't."
"That seems..." Harry chewed on his lip for a moment, staring at his empty cup. He startled into motion, moving to refill it, even as he started slowly talking. "Maybe I still just don't know about these things, but that seems...really awful and stupid. I don't mean you!" he blurted out, eyes flicking away from his tea up to hers for a second. "I mean, your father, just... I don't know about all this noble family stuff, it's still new to me. But, isn't the whole point of them, really, to take care of the family and all that? How is throwing your daughter out to live on the street doing that, exactly? Sirius or Lyra would never do that."
Liz almost had to laugh. "Yes, well, they're Blacks, aren't they? Blacks have a reputation for a...zealous loyalty to their family." Less so in recent centuries, of course, but the idea had been cemented in the culture of the nobility long ago. "But they wouldn't hesitate any longer than my father did to cast out a blood-traitor." And it wasn't like her father had had any idea she'd ended up living on the street for a little while anyway, he might have done differently if he had, that was quite beside the point.
Actually, she wouldn't be surprised if he'd been assuming she'd ended up in a brothel or something. That had been an option, and a relatively tempting one, all things considered — if nothing else, she wouldn't have had to worry about keeping a roof over her head — but she hadn't really considered it. It had seemed distasteful, especially given why she'd left Britain in the first place — refusing to allow her father to sell her to one of his friends' sons only to sell herself to complete strangers had just felt...wrong.
Harry opened his mouth, annoyed, Liz cut over him, "I mean in the original sense of the word, Harry, a traitor to one's family. Depending on how strict you are in the definition of the term, what I did — refusing to do what the Lord of the House told me, especially something so culturally and socially and financially important — could easily apply. In fact, most of the nobility of this country who remember who I am still consider me a blood-traitor."
Harry scowled, very much unimpressed with this explanation. Stirring his tea, he muttered, "Fine, I still think it's stupid."
"I don't disagree, but it was really a good thing for me in the end, that he disinherited me when he did." Liz smiled at the boy's confused frown. "Eventually, I managed to save up enough money to take the Proficiency exams — equivalent to the NEWTs, most ICW countries use the same standard. Something in my paperwork must have set off red flags, because before I knew it I was being interviewed by the Aquitanian government, and suddenly I was given refugee status, access to public housing and a stipend for personal expenses. There's no equivalent to that sort of programme in Britain, I had no idea it existed, or I might have looked into it earlier. But, if my father hadn't disinherited me, I wouldn't have qualified, so it turned out to be a perverse sort of lucky break, if you think about it."
Though Liz had been almost offended over it at the time. Not her father disinheriting her, she'd been expecting that — dreading it, really — but the evaluation of the Commonwealth. The Office of Migration and Resettlement, which she hadn't even known existed before receiving a request to meet with them, had determined that she had fled to Aquitania to escape a forced marriage, which they considered grounds for refugee status (and eventual full citizenship). She didn't think that was accurate, and had actually been a bit irritated when it'd been explained to her. It wasn't like she'd been being forced to marry a particular man, just...economically coerced to marry someone, in general, which she didn't feel was the same thing. She hadn't liked the implications, really, it'd made her feel kind of...
She hadn't argued the point, she had needed the help. She just hadn't liked it.
(Though she kept her feelings about it to herself. If serving as a poster girl for the Programme for the Resettlement and Naturalisation of Refugees and Stateless Persons could ultimately do some good for more vulnerable people now and in the future, especially given the increasingly fragile state of Secrecy, well, she could swallow her own discomfort with the label.)
"Anyway, I ended up in the Mastery programme in Artifice at Beauxbatons, paid for by the Aquitanian government." Which had actually been a bit embarrassing, if she was being honest. She'd grown up in the Noble House of Potter, okay, raised in wealth and social power, being reduced to a charity case — cheap, often second-hand clothing, living in a modest flat in a rent-free public housing block, her tuition covered by a government scholarship intended for refugees with potentially useful skills, taking most of her meals at a dining hall at the school because it was covered and she didn't have the cash to eat anywhere else... She'd felt like everyone was watching her, that they knew (which many had, of course), it'd been humiliating. She'd gotten over herself eventually, it'd just taken a while. "In Sixty-Eight, I attended a public conference on medical alchemy, where I met Chloé. And that went as you might expect."
Harry smiled, a bit crookedly, probably making some assumptions of how that went that weren't entirely accurate — at least, if he were thinking of his meeting Gabbie, which by the sound of it had gone much better than Liz getting to know Chloé. As she'd told him before, she had grown up in the British Light, and at the time she'd still had some...unfortunate ideas about veela. She hadn't actually known what Chloé was at first, when she'd found out she'd made sort of an arse of herself. It'd turned out well, of course — Chloé hadn't held Liz's not-yet-entirely-abandoned prejudices against her, because she was a bloody angel or something, honestly — it just hadn't gone nearly as smoothly at the beginning as Harry likely imagined.
"We married in Nineteen Seventy. And, in my happy naïveté, I thought it was a brilliant idea to invite my father, Dorea, and Jamie to the wedding. When he found out I was marrying not only a woman, but a veela, I was promptly disowned." Funnily enough, Dorea had actually shown up, Liz's stepmother was the only member of her family who'd actually met Chloé. She'd come with all these apologies for Father, that she'd tried to talk him out of disowning her, but there was nothing she could do. Chloé had rather liked her, it'd been her idea to name Doriane (half) after her — and Dorea had come to Gascony to visit, she was the only Potter to ever see any of their girls. Jamie hadn't even replied to her letter informing him he was an uncle. (She hadn't bothered writing Father, he'd made his opinion on Chloé quite clear.) Which was sort of tragically funny, really, the only Potter she'd been on speaking terms with by the end was the only one she wasn't actually related to.
That bit got a pretty impressive scowl, again. It occurred to Liz that Harry was probably going to come away with a rather negative impression of what his grandfather had been like, which was...probably not entirely fair. He hadn't been a bad man, certainly not, just very much a product of his time and his social class — and when it came to Liz's history with him, well, he couldn't be blamed for much of that, really, too many factors had been outside his control. She couldn't help feeling a little bad about that, but she didn't think there was anything she could do about it. (And she knew Chloé would say she was still making excuses for him out of a misplaced sense of filial shame, so...) Anyway, Harry's disdain eventually broke with a frown of confusion. "Wait, I thought he'd already disowned you."
"He disinherited me back in Sixty-Five, he didn't disown me until Nineteen Seventy. They're not the same thing. When someone is disinherited, it means they no longer have access to family properties — housing, bank accounts, whatever arrangements with whatever outside institutions, none of that sort of thing — but they're still a member of the family. Or, a partial member of the family, anyway. When the Lord of the House disowns someone, they're cutting all ties, permanently. Your godfather, Sirius Black, as I understand it he was disinherited as a teenager, but had remained a Black, so he could still take over as Lord of the House once there was nobody left to contest him. But, if you're disowned, it's as though you were never a member of the family in the first place. If I wanted to be a Potter again, you couldn't just acknowledge me as such, I'd have to be formally adopted into the family, like any outsider.
"So, as I was saying, by the time Jamie died in Eighty-One, I hadn't been a Potter for over ten years, and I hadn't lived in the country for nearly twenty. I was about as estranged from my family here as it is possible to be — hell, my own brother forbid me from attending Father and Dorea's funeral." Harry scowled some more, almost sick with disdain, maybe she shouldn't have said that... "I didn't know you existed at all, Harry, until I read about what happened that Samhain in the newspapers.
"Quite honestly, the idea that I should...maybe do something, that I might have some responsibility to you... It just didn't occur to me," she admitted, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "It probably should have, but... I'd been Lise Delacour for over a decade by then, I had my work and my own family. Britain and the House of Potter had seemed, just, so very far away from me. I regret, now, that I didn't, but." She shrugged again.
Harry stared at her for a long, silent moment, with that expressionless, thoughtful face that was almost characteristic of mind mages in its blankness, Liz felt. After maybe twenty seconds he let out a sigh. He looked down as he spoke, fiddling with his tea. "It's fine, I get it. Probably more than I thought I would, honestly."
"Oh?"
He winced, shifting in his chair a little. "Ah, I grew up with Lily's sister's family. And they were...not so good. I actually used to imagine, sometimes, a relative of my father's showing up and taking me out of there. I mean, I never heard anything about his family, I had no idea whether there were any around or not. When I was a little kid I would, you know, dream about it, someone coming."
Liz tried to prevent herself from showing any reaction to that at all.
"That actually did sort of happen, if you think about it? I mean, I don't live there anymore, because of Lyra and Sirius, I haven't even seen the Dursleys for over a year now, and they are cousins through the Potters, so. But, I just thought... Like, after I've been here in the magical world for ages, if something happened to the Dursleys, and Dudley had a little kid that had nowhere to go... I really don't think I'd step up to do anything about it. It probably wouldn't even occur to me as an option."
"It's not really..." Liz didn't know exactly what his life with these Dursleys had been like, but if he was praying for some complete stranger to sweep in and rescue him, it probably hadn't been very pleasant. It wasn't really the same thing, her history with the Potters. But, the more she thought about it, the less the distinction really seemed to matter. After all, sure, her home life might not have been quite so bad as Harry's — estranged and awkward, yes, but far short of abusive, or even truly neglectful — but she had effectively been pushed away by her father, so effectively she'd left the country. And she assumed this Dudley probably hadn't explicitly told Harry he never wanted anything more to do with him ever the way Jamie had her. So, while her relationship with her family might be less bad than Harry's with these Dursleys, in other ways it might actually be worse. Quibbling about such minor distinctions would really be quite pointless.
"I know it's not the same thing," Harry said, brushing off the argument she'd never actually gotten around to making. "It doesn't really have to be, that's not the point. I get it, is what I'm saying. I'm not annoyed with you for staying away or anything. It's fine."
For some reason, Liz thought she should feel more relieved than she did.
[yakoç] — The word veela/lilin use for a drug popular in some magical communities from the eastern Mediterranean through the Pacific, a relative of kava processed into something that can be smoked. (Non-smokable versions would be called something else.)
omg I am such a wordy bitch...
So, apparently there's this big thing on THE TWITTERZ about JKR being a huge transphobe, and how omg people maybe Harry Potter was written by a BAD PERSON?! Which...yes, obviously? Are you just realising this now? I mean, you did notice all the racism and misogyny in the original work, right? Seriously, the goblins are a super-obvious anti-semitic trope, and her treatment of pretty much any foreign character is just awful, and... You get the picture. I mean, this isn't news, people xD
Right, next chapter in a couple days. —Lysandra