Throwing another surreptitious glance at the young Madam Cæciné, Lyra asked again, No, seriously, is she a white mage?
That would be telling, ducky.
Of course it would. Lyra couldn't expect Eris to be helpful, that would just be silly.
It was first thing in the morning on a Tuesday — they'd all been pulled from the Great Hall during breakfast, actually — and they were doing the traditional Weighing of the Wands thing. There had been a purpose to this, originally, confirming people had acceptable equipment to use in the Tournament, but the quality standards of wandmakers had steadily improved over the centuries, it really wasn't necessary anymore. Instead, it was pretty much just a press event.
At least, Lyra assumed it was going to be, they'd been told there would be pictures (Lyra had slipped up to her dorm to change quick, Harry hadn't bothered) but Lyra hadn't actually seen who'd shown up yet. They'd taken over some old lecture hall for the event — one of those big, amphitheatre-like ones that had been used for joined sessions of classes back when the student population hadn't been so small, so hadn't been used for ages — and the champions had been squirrelled away in the professor's office (cleaned up by the elves, but entirely barren, basic furniture with no hints of personality) until everything was set up.
Except, not just the champions — the younger ones were being escorted by an adult, presumably for legal reasons. (She and Harry had been asked if they wanted to call Sirius, but Lyra was a more responsible adult than he was anyway, so they hadn't bothered.) Ingrid was with a man Lyra assumed must be her father, which was slightly odd — the junior Durmstrang champion went by Ingrid Hannasdottir, so Lyra had sort of expected to see her mother instead. The Danes had a patronymic thing much like the Gaels, and maybe Ingrid used her mother's name for a similar reason Síomha Ní Ailbhe did. The whole point was to distinguish people, so it was typical for a child to be referred to with the name of the parent who was more well known by the locals — which meant they were more likely to be the sort of person who would do things like show up for this event — but in Síomha's example the reason was more practical: the Gaels called her Síomha Raghnaill simply because Raghnailt was a much less common name than Aodhán. There could be a dozen girls called Síomha Aodháin, but there was only one Síomha Raghnaill. It was possible Ingrid was called Hannasdottir not because her mother was more well-known or important than her father, but just because there weren't any other Hannas wherever she lived.
Or maybe Ingrid's mother was just too busy to come all the way to Britain for a press event? Eh, whatever.
Lyra had hardly given Ingrid's father a second glance, too distracted by Cæciné's mother (she assumed). Arte, as Harry insisted on calling her, had made herself up all soft and delicate, with all the expected cosmetic charms, silvery high heels that clicked as she walked, and a lacy white dress light and filmy enough it floated behind her a little whenever she moved — rather like what Lyra thought Luna might look like, if she had the money for nice clothes (though less colourful). Lyra didn't buy the innocent little girl act for a second, of course, but she wasn't certain whether the Durmstrangers were magically sensitive enough to pick up how dangerous she was. (She was pretty subtle, but the rigid control she had was a blazing red flag to anyone who could feel it.)
Arte's mother, though, looked like a battlemage. She was wearing fine dueling robes, etched with lines of silver and gold, the kind that was made out of leather and cotton and enchanted so intensely they practically glowed. The cloak in particular, casually thrown over her shoulders, cast in the red, gold, and blue of the Cæcinés — and the entire region of Languedoc, not coincidentally — was so thick with defensive enchantments Lyra had felt a flare of static on the air walking past her. She looked rather young, couldn't have been older than twenty when Arte had been born, and despite how differently they were made up — the elder's hair cut short, ridiculously fit, lines from muscles and tendons visible here and there, as well as a few scars from dark magic, one very obvious toward the back of her right cheek and disappearing under her ear (she must have almost lost it) — their features were very similar.
...Almost too similar. Arte had put effort into making herself look all soft and delicate, so it was hard to tell at first glance, but...
Is Cæciné a blood alchemy clone of her mother? That did seem a weird thing to have done, as young as her mother must have been — conceiving through blood alchemy was usually the last resort of people who couldn't otherwise, often not done until the mother was in her thirties or forties. Also, it was only very rarely done without a contribution from a spouse, for a variety of reasons. See how vaguely creepy people found the suggestion Lyra was a direct clone of Bellatrix. (People didn't find it weird just because it was Bellatrix, it was actually just a weird thing to do.)
You're more right than you are wrong.
What's that supposed to mean?
Artémisia Cæciné was not conceived in the ordinary fashion, but blood alchemy wasn't involved. Make of that what you will.
...Okay. Anyway, the point was, the elder Cæciné's magic was very light, but not just light — it burned. She did have that charismatic glimmer that most everyone she'd met that had any real contact with high magic seemed to, an echo of something older and larger and infinitely more powerful reverberating through them, but it wasn't just that, no, her magic was intensely light in a way Lyra wasn't certain she'd ever felt before. It wasn't like either of the Lovegoods' — their magic was very light, yes, but in a softer...gentler sort of way (despite the sharpness of a trained battlemage about Cassie, it was odd) — or even much like Fionn Ingham's — his had more of a harsh heat to it, but... Lyra didn't know how to put it.
The difference between the Light-ness of Fionn Ingham and this Cæciné, she felt, was like the difference between a kiln — intensely hot, but contained — and a forest fire — wild and chaotic and dangerous.
It was a little unnerving, giddy tingles running down her spine just being in the same room with her (which Lyra suspected would be anxiety if she could feel fear), but it was also fascinating. She had to repress the urge to skip up to her and ask who her Patron was, because she, just, wanted to know, but she wasn't actually certain Cæciné was a white mage, and also she really shouldn't talk about these things in public...
(Or maybe ask her for a friendly duel sometime, Lyra still badly needed a competent dueling partner.)
The Cæcinés have some kind of arrangement with a patron god, or maybe two or three, I don't know, something like that? Like the Covenant, but not really, like...more just a few family gods they've been worshipping forever, I don't know the details, really. Which Aspects were they again? Because that feels really fun...
There are a few among the Light I do quite like. And no, I'm not telling you. You could figure it out for yourself if you thought about it.
You're no fun. Lyra formed an image of herself, arms folded and glaring for a second before turning on her heel and stomping away, and tossed it over to Eris.
Liar, you love me.
Lyra huffed, but she didn't really have a response for that, so she turned back to Harry instead. He was fidgeting, shooting occasional glances toward one side of the room. Once she figured it out, she groaned, "Gods and Powers, Harry, if you want to talk to Krum so badly just go talk to him!"
"I can't just— He's Viktor Krum, Lyra!" he hissed, shooting the other occupants of the room a shifty glance. Which was unnecessary, they couldn't hear them, she'd thrown up Snape's neat muffling spell as soon as they'd gotten here.
She still didn't see why that was a problem — he was just a quidditch player, honestly! Harry was a more notable figure than Krum was, even outside of Britain, where people didn't care about the Boy Who Lived thing nearly as much. There was no reason to be all... Lyra wasn't sure what his deal was, really. So, Lyra decided to hook Harry by the elbow and drag him over toward Krum to handle the introductions herself.
It was for his own good, really. By how quickly he stopped struggling — sooner than Maïa had, when Lyra had pulled her over to Vicky in her pyjamas — Harry was surrendering to her better judgement. Finally, everything would be a whole lot easier if Harry would actually listen to her more. He wouldn't be in this Tournament in the first place, for starters...
Around the time Harry had gotten over his pointless nervousness, he and Krum chattering away about quidditch nonsense, the door into the lecture hall was pushed open, McGonagall calling them in. The desk at the focus of the room had been removed, replaced by a long table with six chairs — in front of each pair of chairs a banner was draped over the front, the Hogwarts crest in the middle and Beauxbatons and Durmstrang to either side. The first couple rows of desks were taken over by guests, mostly press, judging by the panoply of notepads in hand and the popping and flashing of cameras. (Harry flinched at the first flash, before forcing himself to relax.) Toward the right side of the room Lyra spotted the judges, and toward the left were the muggle guests, easily identifiable by the very dangerous-looking guards hovering over their Queen.
Lyra didn't see Michael — he apparently had other work to do, he'd been gone since a day or two after the selection, leaving his delegation here under the care of one of his subordinates. This subordinate was, unfortunately, far more boring, Lyra hadn't bothered talking to him for more than a few seconds. Michael would be coming back, right, the First Task was later this week...
Standing near the table was old Master Ollivander, surrounded by a small pack of people. The older man standing at his shoulder must be Lord Ollivander — not the same one as in Lyra's time, she didn't know this one's name — a young woman in modest enchanter's robes must be his apprentice — Lyra had heard her name was Zoë Ollivander, a Slytherin in Dora's year, but she didn't know anything else about her — the Ollivanders flanked by a trio of Hit Wizards — as expected, master wandmakers were traditionally considered a resource of some national prestige, they were always escorted by battlemages at public events. Master Ollivander was standing in front of the busy, noisy crowd with his usual slightly-absent serenity, silvery eyes staring out at a wall unfocused.
They were getting to the actual wand part of this first, apparently. There was a little bit of confusion, champions and Hogwarts apprentices, pressed into service to help run the event, shuffling about under the muttering of guests and clicking of cameras, before they were lined up at the back of the room — she and Harry were at the back, Cæciné just in front of her, but Lyra couldn't tell at a glance how they'd been— Oh, descending by age, she got it, okay. Krum was called up to Ollivander first, to even more muttering from the spectators, cameras flashing to life again.
The cool-but-friendly cheer he'd had talking quidditch with Harry vanished the instant he'd stepped out in front of cameras, Krum moodily plodded up to the master wandcrafter, grudgingly handing over his wand. Oblivious of the mood in the room to an almost Lovegood-ish degree, Ollivander accepted his wand with a humble bow.
Holding it up close to his nose, silver eyes practically glowing with professional eagerness, he turned it around in his fingers, little sparks of magic flashing in the air around him, humming to himself. "Hmm, Regensburg Imperial school, yes, but the styling in the focusing elements... Mister Krum, this is a Gregorović wand, yes?"
Some of the tension went out of Krum's shoulders, he nodded. "Yes, Master."
"Yes, yes, interesting work he's been doing, quite a distinctive style... The wood appears to be holding up quite well — hornbeam and dragon heartstring, if I'm not mistaken?" Krum nodded. "Yes, fine complements. My personal wand is hornbeam and dragon, you know." By the excited titters in the crowd, no, nobody knew that — Lyra certainly hadn't, but she also didn't really care. "The integrity of the enchantments seems to be...yes..."
His constant turning around of the wand suddenly found it in a normal grip, with the slightest jab he cast a spell — a trio of little, brightly-colourful tropical songbirds appeared, flittering around for a bit. After flying a couple circles around Ollivander, two of them winged away, disappearing somewhere up the rows of desks; the third landed briefly on his apprentice's head, she flailed, scaring the thing off, her own wand appeared in her hand to vanish it with a snarl.
For all the fuss his little bit of conjuration produced, Ollivander hardly seemed to notice, nodding serenely. "Yes, perfect condition. Good luck, Mister Krum," he said, handing it back with another bow. Krum gave him a respectful nod, then wandered off, sitting behind the Durmstrang banner at the table.
Next was Fleur. Gabbie's big sister walked up to the master wandcrafter with effortless veela grace, ignoring the less than pleasant looks she was getting from some of their assembled guests, offering her wand to Ollivander with a flourish. He accepted it with another respectful bow, giving her wand the same eager treatment Krum's had gotten. Ollivander was clearly a huge nerd for wands, which Lyra couldn't judge him for at all, wands were neat.
"My, my, late Alexandrian, hmm... An eccentric design, I'm not familiar with— Ooh, the filters on the channeling elements, fascinating, fascinating. The wood is...ebony?"
"Grenadille d'Afrique, Maître, it is similar."
"Oh, yes, one of the African rosewoods, I don't use it myself, but... Is that a veela feather?" he asked, a note of surprise entering his voice. "Your own?"
"My grandmother's, Maître."
"Yes, yes, that would do it." The problem with using material from magical beings, Lyra knew, was that they tended to be very temperamental, the wand would rarely cooperate with a human user — but, if the wand were made with material from the user, or a relative who consented, that problem could be circumvented. "It appears to... Well, let's see if I can...
"Orches!" A swirl of Fleur's wand, and a bouquet of flowers burst from the tip, blue and white and yellow (Beauxbatons colours). "Mm," Ollivander groaned, turning them over in his hands, "that didn't come out quite right — your wand doesn't like me, I think. But it is very good work, and it does appear to agree with you. Good luck, Miss Delacour." He handed back her wand with another bow, vanishing the flowers with a flick of his wrist. Fleur wandered off, taking the Beauxbatons seat at the end of the table.
Next was Ingrid. After a quick nod at her father, Ollivander took her wand, turning it under his eyes only a brief moment before chirping, "Ah! Here we have another Gregorović creation. Yes, this one is dragon — Gregorović does like his dragon heartstring — and the wood is...a conifer, I'm certain. Larch?"
"Mestar, this 'larch' is lærke, ja?"
"Oh, my apologies, Miss." And then Ollivander spoke in Danish, because of course he did — Lyra's Danish wasn't particularly good, she only caught about every other word. Nothing important, just babbling about her wand seemingly having been put under some stress, but still being in good condition. Ollivander tested the wand with another conjuration, this time three twisting streams of water, which he levitated, looping around to form an orb in his off hand, condensing into a pale blue crystal he then vanished in a flash of green sparks. "Perfect. Lykke til, Ingrid Hannasdottir."
The Cæcinés were up next. Before accepting Arte's wand, Ollivander actually gave her mother a formal bow — probably picking up on how scary her magic was...or just because they were Cæcinés, they were one of the oldest and most influential noble families in all of Europe. The second his fingers touched the wood, Ollivander brightened, chirped, "Ah! Yes, Third Attican Revival, I'm a master of the same style, you know. This is... Yes, this wand is the work of Elio d'Onofrio, I believe."
Smiling sweetly — nice try, Lyra still didn't buy it — Arte said, "Yes, Master, it is. My family traveled to Taranto specifically to meet with him."
"And a wise choice that was! Elio is quite talented. Let's see... Oh my, holly and phoenix, is it? Fascinating coincidence, that." Lyra didn't know why that was a coincidence, exactly, but okay. "Your wand is in excellent condition, and in good spirits — the magic you have been casting agrees with its temperament quite nicely. However, this wand will not allow me to cast even the simplest of charms with it, its loyalty to you is absolute." Returning the wand with a bow, he said, "Good luck, Miss Cæciné."
And now it was Lyra's turn. Ollivander was rather older than she remembered, grey hair gone thin and scraggly, more lines in his face — he was older than Dumbledore, she knew, he had to be, what, nearly a hundred thirty by now. Though, he didn't look older than Dumbledore, but Dumbledore looked old for his age — for a mage, that is, most muggles didn't even make it to 113 — even comparing photos from the 60s against the Dumbledore she remembered from her home universe, she didn't know what was up with that. (A curse from his fight with Grindelwald, maybe?) But he still had that interesting combination of Seer airheadedness and sharp academic zeal, she assumed he had a few good decades of wand-crafting in him still.
Ollivander took her wand with another polite bow, turning it under his fingers like the others'. There was something odd about the quality of magic sparking around it, smooth and cool and...strangely unfocused. Before Shirazi (Flamel) started teaching Divination, she might not have recognised it, but she'd had enough contact with it now she could — Ollivander was analysing their wands through divination. Which wasn't that much of a surprise, when she thought about it, didn't the Ollivanders have a sort of psychometry thing that had been passed down through their family for...had to be millennia, now, they'd been making wands since at least the Athenian Golden Age...
It was...probably a good thing that she'd needed to replace her wand. Ollivander had made the thing, if he really was a Seer he definitely would have recognised it.
"Hmm, hmm," Ollivander dithered, his wrinkly brow wrinkling further with an absent frown. "I'm afraid I don't recognise this wandmaker at all. There are elements of Ming Imperial to the style but... Well, an American, certainly?"
Lyra nodded. "Yes, Master, he's Nishinābe. Can't pronounce the name, I'm afraid." She'd completely forgotten it, actually — she hadn't stuck around in the area long enough to pick up any of the language, because American languages (ugh), it had been long and very foreign, slipped her mind.
"Yes, I thought so — no Old World wandmaker is mad enough to try to use thunderbird feathers in a wand meant for use by a human." It could be her imagination, but it sounded like Ollivander sounded more amused than disapproving, possibly even impressed.
Lyra tried not to giggle. "I'm sure they're simply using what they have available, Master. They have different magical beings and creatures over there. Besides, don't many Old World wandmakers have a similar opinion about using phoenix feathers?"
Ollivander gave her a flat, empty look, but didn't answer — he didn't have to, she knew she was right. "This wand has not been in your possession very long, so feels almost new. However, your American wandmaker designed an especially fit match — I would not dare attempt to cast with this wand. It might bite me," he finished, an odd note of distant humour on his voice. Offering it back to her, he said, "Good luck, Miss Black."
Lyra grinned — Ollivander couldn't possibly know this, of course, but Luck was always on her side.
...Or maybe he could know that, it wasn't out of the question he was good enough of a Seer to know about Eris without being told. Hmm.
Anyway, taking her wand back with the proper respectful nod of one master to another in their field — not that anyone in the room probably realised she was practically a master cursebreaker, but the proper respect of a layman to a master wandcrafter would have seemed overly formal to this crowd — Lyra skipped up to the table, dropping into one of the seats behind the Hogwarts banner. The one right next to Cæciné.
Lyra had never gotten quite this close to her before — her magic was very warm, harsher than the Lovegoods' while not so sharp as her mother's, but there was also that shiny, attractive glimmer of high magic around her. Somehow, Lyra hadn't actually noticed that before. It wasn't... It didn't quite feel the same as the Lovegood girls had, or Theo's, more of an echo, less immediate...but at once more fundamental. Like the touch of divinity on her wasn't something that had been left behind, a relic of getting closer to Magic than humans really should, but more like it was...just what her magic was like.
...Rather more like Harry, actually. Which was weird, when she thought about it — Harry hadn't done any high magic himself, really, but his mother certainly had, probably even when she was pregnant with him, which could have had an effect on his magic. That had been Lyra's theory before, but now that she knew Lily had actually asked Persephone to be his godmother, like the brilliant madwoman she'd apparently been — and that Harry had apparently died, and been turned around by Kore at the border, multiple times — she'd decided he'd simply had enough contact with Death from young enough to leave an echo, even if that contact had been indirect.
While Harry sidled up to Ollivander, his shoulders rigid and jaw clenched (he really didn't like the crowd watching him and the cameras, Lyra was Lyra and she could tell at a glance), Lyra cut a quick glance at the elder Cæciné, looming nearby against the wall behind them. Maybe... Maybe the children of black or white mages had their own kind of god-touched-ness. Lyra hadn't met any such children before, that she was aware of, so it made sense she wouldn't have recognised it for what it was, that could explain it. Lily hadn't been formally dedicated, but Lyra suspected that didn't actually matter so much. After all, these were human things, if Kore considered Lily hers enough to, just, keep her, yeah, it seemed like the difference at that point was just semantic.
Leaning closer to her, Lyra hissed, "Hey, Cæciné, is your mother a white mage?"
The girlish, pleasant sort of expression on Cæciné's face abruptly vanished. She glared at Lyra for a quick second, but didn't answer, turning back toward their audience again, her smile looking slightly strained.
Yep. Lyra was right, she knew it.
...Except it didn't seem likely Cæciné would actually tell her who her Patron was now. Dammit.
Back where things were happening, Ollivander perked up the instant his fingers touched Harry's wand. "Ah, yes, I remember this one, I remember it well. I crafted it myself, in the winter of Nineteen Twenty-Six — one of a pair of wands built around a gift of two phoenix feathers I'd just received, this of holly and the other of yew."
Oh, that was what the fascinating coincidence was, Harry and Cæciné's wands were made of the same materials. Which didn't necessarily mean anything — phoenix feather wands were correlated with nothing but the channeling threshold of the owner, and the lore around wand woods was very hit and miss, and was often even different in other cultures — but it was kind of interesting as a random happenstance, she guessed.
"You might find it interesting to know, Mister Potter," Ollivander said, wand still turning in his hands, "that you have met the phoenix who provided the feather at the heart of your wand."
"Yeah, I know, it was Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix." Harry then blinked, frowning a little — not at the excited chattering that revelation inspired, no, almost as though he were surprised. Lyra would wonder if he hadn't known he knew that, but that wouldn't actually be that weird, he was turning out to be pretty good with divination.
It was hard to tell from this angle, but she thought Ollivander might be giving him a level, forbidding look. "Mister Potter, a phoenix is not a pet, that might be said to belong to another. They are beings as intelligent as you or I, and often far wiser, gifted with insight gleaned over centuries of life. Fawkes, as he is called these days, has lived in this valley for centuries — at least since the Dark Lord Ignatius Gaunt was rooted out of this very castle in the Thirteenth Century, and probably longer. He acts as advisor and companion to the Headmaster, not a pretty decoration."
Interesting, Lyra hadn't actually known that. She meant, she vaguely remembered there being hints of a phoenix around Hogsmeade in her original timeline — their magic was kind of hard to miss — but he hadn't been nearly as visible as he was here. Maybe Dippet simply didn't appreciate Fawkes's company the way Dumbledore obviously did...
"No, I didn't— I know phoenixes are beings, I just meant..." Harry trailed off, awkwardly shuffling his feet, his cheeks going noticeably pink. "I misspoke, sir, I'm sorry."
Lyra tried not to wince. They really needed to work on Harry's etiquette. Getting a bit flustered over a slip, sure, but this was just embarrassing. And, sir? Honestly, he had five people ahead of him using the proper address, that shouldn't have been difficult to figure out!
It was one thing to know what you were supposed to do, and get it slightly wrong on purpose to make a point. It was another thing entirely to stick your foot in your mouth out of ignorance, and come off like a bumbling, thoughtless moron.
Ollivander wrapped up quickly enough after that, testing Harry's wand with a quick splash of conjured wine before handing it back. Dumbledore, speaking on behalf of the panel of judges, thanked him for his assistance, as graciously as he was capable of doing this sort of thing. And then, with a few bows and swishes of cloaks, the Ollivanders and their Hit Wizard escort turned and swept past the spectators, and before long they were gone.
Unsurprisingly, once the actual talking part of the event was supposed to get going, Zee jumped up to her feet, sashaying to the centre of the room to address their guests. There was an introduction, quickly pointing out their guests and the judges — Zee actually acknowledged Vicky first, which did make sense, any order of precedence Lyra had ever heard of put monarchs at the top (or, right under manifestations of the Powers and certain high priests that didn't exist anymore), whether they had magic or not.
Speaking of manifestations of the Powers, it wasn't until Zee went through introducing their judges that Lyra finally noticed that Angel wasn't here. Which was odd, because her magic was very distinctive, Lyra must have been too distracted by the Cæcinés, and also not at all surprising, because she kind of doubted Angel had the patience for a tedious event like this. As unnervingly powerful as she was — probably the most intimidating mind mage she'd ever met, which was saying something, because Professor Riddle had been pretty damn impressive — Selwyn was definitely a more...diplomatic representative for Miskatonic.
Before they got to actually taking questions, Zee wanted all the champions to stand up and introduce themselves quick — she suggested they tell their names, where they're from, and what sort of particular specialties or skills they might have, if applicable, but any other personal details they might want to offer were also fine. Just don't get too carried away, they did have business to get to (a few polite chuckles from their guests).
Which was just...inane, but... She guessed it was sort of reasonable to start with that sort of basic information, they did have champions from, er, probably four different countries. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect foreign press to know who all of them were.
Still irritating, but fine.
They were starting at the Durmstrang table and working their way down, so Krum was first again. With every hint of reluctance, he forced himself up to his feet, addressing their audience with a surly glare — it was kind of hilarious how much he clearly didn't want to be here, and just how aggressively obvious he was making it. (Apparently, Krum was sick of press events, and couldn't even be bothered to pretend to care anymore.) "My name is Viktor Rumenov Krum, I was born in the Seventh of August, 'Seventy-Six, in Varna, Balgarija." Krum's pronunciation of the name was very obviously in the native Slavic. "So far as skills useful in this tournament go, I am top of my dueling class, due in part to skill in combat transfiguration." Krum slumped down to a seat again, looking almost relieved to be done.
Lyra raised an eyebrow at the man — combat transfiguration? Using transfiguration in a duel to any real practical effect was not an easy thing to do, not at all, usually something only professional duelists or battlemages developed much skill with. An eighteen-year-old pulling it off was actually pretty impressive. Lyra had sort of been operating on the assumption Krum would be a pushover, just a quidditch nut who'd be useless on the ground, but it sounded like he might actually be a problem.
Probably not nearly as big a one as Cæciné, but still.
There was some appreciative muttering at the thought of an eighteen-year-old proficient in combat transfiguration, not surprisingly. While Ingrid waited for them to quiet again so she could speak, Lyra glanced around — and finally spotted Luna Lovegood, sitting near the front of the crowd, madly scribbling on a muggle-style notebook. It shouldn't have taken Lyra so long to notice her, it was Luna bloody Lovegood, though in her defence the girl was a lot less stridently colourful than usual. She was wearing what looked like flannel trousers and a jumper, the trousers cross-hatched in a fake tartan-ish pattern, greens and yellows and blues, the jumper surprisingly plain, just a light sky blue. Though, there was a hat, because of course there had to be a hat — less garish than the Press Hat of Unobtrusiveness, a faded green Tyrolean hat, a handful of fluffy feathers in green and yellow and pink stuck into the band (probably spare quills).
Lyra hadn't seen much of Luna since popping in on her freak-out over Angel being Angel, but she seemed...better? There was still a bit of exhausted tension about her, but her hair had gone back to its normal smooth sheen, all the frazzle gone, the bags under her eyes almost entirely faded, every hint of that mad twitchiness gone. Still not entirely back to her old Lovegood-ness, but mostly over that little episode of hers, at least.
Which, good. Lyra might not get Luna, but she was at least more interesting than a normal person, if she was going to be around more she'd at least make things less boring. And hey, she was a Truthspeaker now, so—
...Wait a second...
"I am Ingrid Hannasdottir, born Eighteen Mars...ah, syttiætta?" she muttered, turning to Krum.
"Seventy-eight."
"Ja, Eighteen Mars, Seventy-Eight, in Ystad, Skåne." That was Scania in Danish, right? Lyra's Danish was really sketchy... Ingrid struggled through the rest of her little introduction, talking about dueling but especially divination and nature magic, with frequent help from Krum on how to translate one word or another.
Lyra spent most of it watching Luna, thinking. So far as white mages went, dedicants of Truth were actually relatively common — their Patrons tended to gift them the ability to separate truth from lies, so there had been a time they'd been almost omnipresent in primitive legal systems, ensuring the testimony given to judges and their peers (and the claims rulers made to the people they ruled) was factual, or at least in good faith. In fact, the Wizengamot had once had an official Truthspeaker, though the post had been vacant since the 12th Century or so. (It technically still existed, as they'd never moved to abolish it, they'd simply never nominated anyone to fill it for half of their history.) Lyra had never asked if Luna had gotten it, they hadn't really talked about her new Patron at all...
...but she did recall, now, a few low, soft, disdainful mutterings of, "Liar."
If Lyra were to say something a normal person would consider absolutely ridiculous, well, chances were the professionals would assume she was messing with them. They'd go to official sources to get the official story, and maybe put in a couple lines acknowledging she'd said something ridiculous, that she was clearly some kind of prankster. Those Blacks, you know how they can be sometimes. But Luna would be able to feel it.
And the Quibbler would publish the truth, no matter how impossible it sounded.
Lyra grinned.
Ingrid finally finished with her valiant struggle against the English language, Harry got to his feet. "I'm Harry Potter, er, July Thirty-First, Nineteen Eighty, in, uh..."
Lyra resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Godric's Hollow, Harry."
"Right! Thanks. Er...that's in England, right?" There was a wave of awkward chuckles, Harry stood stiffly, flushing a little.
"Yes, Harry, Godric's Hollow is in England," she said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.
"Well, excuse me, Lyra, I've never been there! Not that I remember anyway. I grew up in Surrey, which, er, is also in England...um..." Well, he should have just said Surrey then, shouldn't he have? Gods and Powers, this kid sometimes... Harry was silent a short moment, fidgeting a little, frowning up at the ceiling. "Um, I don't think I have any particular skills, really? I mean, unless not dying counts, I'm pretty good at that." There was some more laughter from their audience, though without that awkward, slightly-guilty tone to it, as though sharing in the joke this time — yeah, I suppose the only person known to have survived the Killing Curse is talented at not dying, isn't he?
...Honestly, Lyra wasn't certain she'd ever met someone who so seriously underestimated their own abilities as Harry bloody Potter. "He's a pretty good mind mage, and he's a genius with charm work, especially polarised spells." In her peripheral vision, she saw Harry shoot her a surprised look. "For fuck's sake, Harry, you saved my life with a Patronus Charm not three months ago! How many thirteen-year-olds do you know who can cast a Patronus?"
Harry blinked; as a few appreciative mutters swept through the room, both Cæcinés fixing him with speculative glances, Harry took in their reaction with wide eyes, apparently dumbfounded that people considered casting a Patronus at thirteen — and better yet, successfully pulling it out in a tense, life-or-death situation, that was often much harder to do with light magic — to be in any way impressive. "Oh. Right."
Lyra sighed.
But then it was her turn. Throwing off her irritation with her ridiculous baby cousin — honestly, what was she going to do with this kid — she popped up to her feet, cocking her hips with a smirk. "I'm Lyra Bellatrix, First Daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black." That hadn't always been her name, of course, but it was now, so it should still register as truthful to the little Truthspeaker in the audience. "I was born on the Seventh of January, Nineteen Fifty, at Ancient House, the ancestral home of my family, which is situated at an undisclosed location somewhere in England. I spent roughly six and a half years apprenticed to the Ciardha Monroe, and as such I have particular skill in all forms of runic magic — enchanting, warding, cursebreaking, and recently I've been getting into runic casting. And I'm also pretty damn awesome in a fight, if I do say so myself." Throwing the room a cocky grin, Lyra plopped back into her chair, primly folding her legs like a proper young lady.
The response to her little introduction, judging by the glances and the muttering, was a baffled sort of confusion. Lyra caught a couple wry smiles here and there, people presumably making notes about how silly this Black girl was, the family tradition of flagrantly taking the piss was clearly still running strong, had to watch out for that one, the scamp.
Luna had gone still, staring at her with silvery Seer eyes wide. But for only a handful of seconds before she suddenly jumped into motion, madly scribbling away at her notepad.
Tee hee.
Next to her, Cæciné was staring at her with narrow-eyed curiosity — Lyra even felt a faint tingling, probably Cæciné trying to get some sense of her emotional state, to figure out if she was lying or not. If Harry and Gabbie (and Riddle before them) were any indication, she was going to get absolutely nothing, which Lyra guessed might be frustrating to someone accustomed to knowing what people were feeling all the time. How awful that must be for her.
Cæciné shared an unreadable glance with her mother before standing up to take her turn. "Artèmisia Cecinà," she said with a little curtsy, with the modern Aquitanian pronunciation — which sounded very odd to Lyra's ears, are-the-me-sho say-she-nah, just weird, Lyra was much more familiar with the French. "I was born January Twenty-Third, Seventy-Nine, outside Narbona, Aquitània." Lyra blinked — nar-boo-no had to be Narbonne, right, spelled like the Latin but pronounced stupid? Bloody Aquitaines.
Maybe she should actually work on picking up an Aquitanian language, as long as Gabbie and the Delacours and Cæciné were around. It was easy enough to read Occitan — it didn't really look that different from French when written down, especially around the twelfth through the fifteenth century or so, back when a lot of "French" literature had actually been written in Provençal — but it sounded different enough she often had to pause for a moment and try to recreate the original Latin spelling in her head. (Which meant she couldn't follow conversation at all, too quick to pick apart on the fly.) Since she was apparently an omniglot anyway, there wasn't any reason she couldn't pick up, well, whichever dialect Gabbie spoke...and maybe the veela language while she was at it... Oh, and also Danish, her Danish was terrible.
She just had to relax her god-given occlumency long enough to actually pick anything up, that shite was just bloody hard...
Anyway, Cæciné said something about specialising in light charms, elemental magic, and implied she had a talent for low ritual without explicitly stating it (probably mostly ritualised elemental magic, that shite was damn impressive sometimes). Because apparently Cæciné thought she was Cassie bloody Lovegood or something, those happened to be the same branches of magic Cassie had learned to exploit to such devastating effect. Though, Cæciné didn't say she'd been being trained as a battlemage since she'd been a small child — which obviously she had been, she was a bloody Cæciné, and look at her mother... — and also failed to mention she was a legilimens — which maybe wasn't so obvious, Lyra had no idea how detectable they were to normal people (presumably more than they were to Lyra, but she wasn't sure).
Maybe Lyra shouldn't have outed Harry as a mind mage. She sometimes forgot what other people did and did not know, and... Well, while she did understand intellectually that mind mages were rather unnerving, just on principle, sometimes she forgot how very vulnerable normal people were to them — Lyra had perfect god occlumency, so it wasn't like they were any kind of threat to her. (With the exception of Selwyn, but she was a thousand fucking years old, there weren't very many mind mages that powerful around.) Cæciné hadn't offered it, though, and she probably knew what she was doing, so...
Harry hadn't seemed annoyed with her, but he also certainly didn't know what he was doing. Maybe Lyra should have kept her bloody mouth shut about that one.
Lyra was distracted enough wondering if she'd fucked up the taking care of the baby cousins thing that she more or less entirely missed Delacour's introduction. Whoops. Not that Lyra cared — she knew Delacour was from Gascony already, and she was a veela, so light and fire magics, and there were a fair number of enchanters in the family, so she probably had a decent background in runic magic too. Lyra had thought Delacour might be the only even mild competition for her in this thing — since Lyra was apparently shadow-kin now, dealing with veela fire might pose actual problems for her, and while she doubted Delacour was nearly as good of a cursebreaker as Lyra she might know enough to at least interfere with any runic magic she might try — but now that there was a bloody god-touched Cæciné in the game, yeah, Lyra wasn't really concerned about the little bird anymore.
In fact, Lyra was increasingly getting the feeling that the war game this weekend might turn out to be really, really fun. It'd been months since she'd gotten into a proper fight, and if Cæciné was actually good enough to keep up...
Anyway, introductions done, the floor was then opened up to random questions — which was also inane, but normal people could be like that, nothing for it. The questions were mostly focused on Krum, because of the whole international quidditch star thing, and also Harry, because of the drama and mystery around his surprise selection. (Well, the British were also focused on him because of the whole Boy Who Lived thing, but that didn't apply to the foreign journalists, obviously.) The questions for Krum, as well as the rest of the champions, were usually stupid boring things about how they're finding Britain, and their hopes for the Tournament, blah blah. Probably the most interesting was when one Aquitanian reporter just flat-out asked Delacour if she was worried she might be murdered by the infamously racist Brits, it was hilarious, Lyra completely failed to hold in a delighted cackle.
Before the foreigners could get any ideas, Lyra swiftly followed that by saying they had a marriage alliance indirectly through Lise Delacour (yes, that Lise Delacour, Harry here was her nephew, you know), and Fleur's sister Gabbie was under Lyra's personal protection, anyone who fucked with the Delacours while they were in Britain would answer to the House of Black. She wouldn't want these foreign journalists to go writing in the foreign press that Lyra was some kind of crazy human supremacist, after all.
Of course, that was immediately followed up with questions about conflicts of interest with the judges, and since Lyra and Harry were cousins — and also Fleur, by marriage — whether even the competition itself would be fair, whether some of them might not collaborate to screw over the others. Zee had popped up again to explain the arrangement the judges had to deal with the various overlapping interests they'd ended up with, and Lyra pointed out that she seriously doubted Fleur would be going easy on them, and Lyra herself had no compunction kicking the shite out of her cousins if the situation called for it.
A perceptive observer might notice Lyra had not said she'd be doing her damnedest against Harry. Because Lyra still fully intended to engineer the Tournament so Harry came out the winner, but it would be funnier if they didn't see it coming — she also hadn't bragged about how she was totally going to win the Tournament, like a couple of the others had (because she didn't want Luna to pick up on the lie and get any ideas). But nobody called her on it, this time.
(Also, she'd sort of been under the impression that two champions collaborating to screw over the third, and then work out who would come away the victor between themselves, was a time-honoured Triwizard Tournament strategy that had been successfully employed any number of times, especially by the two visiting champions to attempt to counterbalance the hosting champion's institutional advantage, but she guessed that wasn't really the point.)
Harry got some reasonable questions, about whether he'd gotten any word on how he'd ended up in the Tournament in the first place — the British press was clearly more skeptical, but the foreigners accepted at face-value his claim that he hadn't entered himself — and whether he was concerned about being the youngest, least-qualified participant (Lyra at least had Runes and Arithmancy OWLs) — he made it very clear he only wanted to get through this in one piece, and that he'd gotten assurances from the panel of judges that precautions would be taken. At this point, Flamel-as-Slytherin got up to his (her?) feet to explain that, so long as the events took place on Hogwarts grounds, the wards could be fixed to remove the champions from true mortal peril, and that he was already working on it. Unlike many previous Triwizard Tournaments, none of the Champions would be in any real danger.
(It could be Lyra's imagination, but she thought she caught Ingrid and Fleur lighten up, just a little bit.)
And Harry also got some silly questions. Apparently, the Herald was curious about how Harry felt about constantly being put in danger at Hogwarts, where he should have every expectation of safety — which was ridiculous, Hogwarts had never been safe, accidents and sabotage had been an expected danger here for nearly as long as it'd existed — and Witch Weekly was inordinately curious about Harry's love life. Who the hell had even invited Witch Weekly to this thing, the bloody rag. Harry did actually answer, about how he'd been dating Blaise Zabini (yes, that Zabini) for months now, but he cut himself off, flushing — he didn't mention Gabbie for some reason, they weren't exactly subtle, even Lyra had noticed.
The best question Harry got was from Rita Skeeter.
Before this summer, Lyra had only been sort of vaguely familiar with Skeeter. She'd been in Lyra's year at Hogwarts, actually, one of the handful of muggleborns they'd had in Slytherin. According to Zee, she'd also been a Slytherin in their year in this timeline, which was weird, because people claimed there hadn't been a muggleborn in Slytherin for longer than that — though, Lyra had noticed, people tended to forget Skeeter was a muggleborn...somehow. (Just look at her, she was exactly the sort of stereotypical muggleborn the blood purists railed about...) Lyra barely remembered her, she hadn't made much of an impression. In this universe, she'd stumbled across a few of her columns in the Prophet over the course of last year, and been vaguely amused by them.
For all her aesthetic eccentricities, and her sickeningly smug prose, Skeeter was dangerous. There had always been people of her ilk, for as long as mass-produced journals had existed in any society anywhere. People who would scent out blood in the water, tracking down scandal and controversy, and tear the figures involved apart for public amusement — thriving in the thrill of striking at someone wealthier and more powerful than themselves, basking in the adulation of the blood-thirsty masses. For the most part, Skeeter sustained herself off of celebrity gossip and the slow drip of corruption always leaking from the Ministry and the Wizengamot, but she took targets of opportunity whenever she could, feeding on each scandal that came along like some kind of embarrassingly gaudy vampire.
People like Skeeter were dangerous, but they were also useful — Cissy had chosen to do that interview with Skeeter for a reason. Apparently, she'd been leaking stories to Skeeter for over a decade now, the steady offerings of red meat, and the occasional more legitimate offering like that interview, kept her coming back for more, kept Skeeter from targeting Cissy herself. Skeeter was essentially supporting their fragile alliance in the Wizengamot now, the greatest of her vitriol focused on the Light, and especially Ars Brittania.
As volatile of allies as people like Skeeter could be, it wasn't actually that difficult to keep their loyalty. You just had to keep them well-fed.
So when Skeeter got up to her feet — recogniseable at a glance, with the cherry-red frames of her spectacles, her clothes in bright colours with rhinestones dotted here and there (such a muggleborn, honestly) — Lyra just knew this was going to be good. And she wasn't disappointed. Her face stretched into a toothy (blood-thirsty) grin, Skeeter addressed Harry, but her eyes were actually on Dumbledore, watching him for a reaction. "As you might know, Mister Potter, the Wizengamot voted only this weekend to expel Albus Dumbledore as Chief Warlock — the result of a long sequence of events set off by the...confusion around your early departure from Hogwarts at the beginning of the summer." Well, that was a politic way to put it. "I was wondering what your feelings on that were, perhaps."
Harry didn't really have an answer, beyond exasperation that the entire bloody country lost their fucking minds over him for no good reason — providing in the process a pretty clear picture of just how he felt about his fame in Britain, which Lyra was certain was more than enough for Skeeter to write an absolutely scathing article right there. (Lyra would put money on Skeeter somehow using Harry to accuse the entire Light of fucking over his childhood for political gain, tapping into the public adoration of him that already existed to throw fuel on the fire, it was going to be beautiful.) But he didn't need to have an answer. The question wasn't really for him.
Lyra wasn't certain whether Skeeter actually wanted to get a reaction from Dumbledore to expound upon in her column, or if she were just taking the opportunity to twist the knife in his gut a bit. Either way, it was bloody hilarious.
Compared to Harry and Krum, Lyra didn't get much attention, though more than the other three. She did get a question about how she'd gotten across the age line, which, that should be obvious, she'd already said she'd been born in 1950, how did they think she'd gotten across the age line? She was pretty sure most of them thought she was still fucking with them, that in true travelling cursebreaker fashion she simply wasn't willing to give away the game, but Luna definitely believed her. And then there was a bit about the World Cup, how she felt about being one of the youngest people (though not quite the youngest) ever to be accepted into the Order of Merlin — mostly, baffled the Wizengamot was really going to reward her for doing something so insanely dangerous, which at least got a round of laughter from the audience. She wasn't trying to be funny, but she'd take it.
Lyra's most entertaining question was, again, from Skeeter. "There are rumours spreading among certain parties, Miss Black, that you spend quite a lot of your time out in the forest with wilderfolk. Is there any truth to that?"
For a second, Lyra wondered why Skeeter was asking that particular question — after all, Lyra was one of her patrons (if indirectly), creating a scandal with Lyra at its centre wasn't in her best interest. Perhaps she expected Lyra to simply deny it. Perhaps she thought Lyra would think the scandal entertaining, and complimentary to her political interests. Which it would be, and it was.
Oh, wait, this was actually way better than Lyra'd thought. If she played this right, she could actually get two entertaining scandals for the price of one. Now which order did these shocking revelations go in...?
Meeting the muggleborn muckraker's smile with a toothy smirk, Lyra said, "No, that one's true. I've been meeting with Sylvie for, oh, over a year now, must be."
Skeeter blinked for a second, enough to cue to Lyra that she'd assumed that rumour was actually false. "I see. This Sylvie, she is..."
"Sylvia's a wolf. Well, she's a wolf most of the time, but her English is actually pretty good — she finds humans fascinating, you see, we met in the first place because she wants to learn more about us. She's almost at a point I think we can visit Hogsmeade soon, so she can see how the other half lives." Lyra was actually considering taking her to the Yule Ball, just for how much it would freak people out, but that would take a bit of work yet. She definitely wouldn't pass for human, and she'd probably refuse to wear shoes at all, so, should be fun. "Oh, and we're lovers, you know."
Lyra bit her lip to hold in a laugh at the wide-eyes stares and shocked gasps that got. Even in less fiercely humanocentric magical societies than Britain, people still thought wilderfolk were weird. Certainly not the kind of people teenagers, especially noble girls, should publicly admit to shagging.
Which was exactly why she was publicly admitting it, of course.
Nobody quite seemed to know how to move on from that, a lot of furious scribbling and muttering going on, so Lyra decided to take the next step herself. "Not that that was really my intention starting out, it just sort of...happened, you know. We'd just gotten out of a really nasty fight with some acromantulae and, well, you know how that can be."
"Excuse me, Miss Black," a reporter said, standing — the bloke from the Herald, Lyra was pretty sure. "Acromantulae? Are there acromantulae in the Forest?"
"Oh, yes, a pretty sizeable colony of them. The wilderfolk and the centaurs have been trying to fight them off for...well, I'm not certain how long — the wilderfolk don't exactly keep a calendar the way we do, they often aren't great at reckoning spans of time longer than a few years. A generation or two at least, I think. I'm told their tribes have been reduced quite a bit from attrition — acromantulae reproduce much more quickly than wilderfolk and centaurs, you know, even if they come out with lesser casualties in most battles they'll still lose by inches. So far, they've managed to keep the acromantulae relatively contained deep in the Forest, but they've been slowly losing ground for years, who knows when we might have started seeing giant talking spiders around the school.
"It probably won't be a problem anymore, though — with Professor Lovegood and myself helping out over the last months, we've done some serious damage to the colony. At the very least, we'll be giving the wilderfolk and centaurs time to recover. So, there's that."
And for a few minutes after that, their little press event devolved entirely into confirming there actually was an acromantula colony in the Forest, why the fuck there was an acromantula colony outside of a school, and what exactly was to be done about that. That last question was actually answered by Cassie, who stood up to say, yes, she was working with Lyra and the wilderfolk to fight the things, and that she wouldn't be leaving the country until the acromantulae were entirely exterminated — she was less clear on what the timeline for that would be, probably a year or two. (Which meant Lyra might have to find something else to do with the hours everyone else is asleep as early as next year, but she'd already accepted weeks ago that sharing her spiders with Cassie bloody Lovegood meant the inevitable extermination of the colony. It was slightly disappointing, but she'd figure something out.) Getting confirmation from both Cassie and Harry that the acromantulae really were out there got their guests even more keyed up.
Harry performed admirably, relating in broad strokes his own harrowing experience with them back in the spring of '93, brought right into the heart of the colony before barely managing to escape, due mostly to Harry's excellent luck in life-or-death situations. (Some of these stories he had were just improbable, Lyra definitely believed Kore had been keeping an eye on the little idiot, he'd be dead twenty times over otherwise.) One journalist from a foreign paper struck gold when, asking why the hell a pair of twelve-year-olds were tracking down acromantulae in the first place, Harry, in what had to be a moment of innocent thoughtlessness, admitted he'd done it at Hagrid's suggestion.
Which made it very clear that, not only did Hagrid know the acromantulae were in the Forest, and had not seen fit to inform the authorities, but he also thought nothing of pointing students in the direction of giant, intelligent, man-eating spiders. Lyra helpfully pointed out that Dumbledore almost certainly knew of this particular incident — and he'd promoted Hagrid to Professor of Care of Magical Creatures a few months later.
(Lyra was aware Hagrid was kind of being thrown in the path of a rampaging dragon here, and she did like Hagrid — his Care classes continued to be consistently entertaining, and he was one of the few mages in the castle who actually gave a shite about other magical beings at all. She hoped pointing the finger at Dumbledore would at least take some of the heat off Hagrid, it was really the best she could do.)
Dumbledore, stupidly (or possibly to further her attempt to deflect scrutiny from Hagrid), did not deny that he'd known about his gamekeeper pointing two twelve-year-olds at an acromantulae nest when he'd promoted him. If he had done that on purpose, Lyra thought she might actually admire it — sacrificing one's own political capital to protect a client was kind of a stupidly honourable thing to do...but she was betting he was just being an idiot.
The Queen had been getting whispers from her guards for a couple minutes, probably having explained to her exactly what all these magical beings were and what the inevitable consequence of the acromantulae successfully taking over the Forest would be. (They would keep spreading if they weren't stopped, eventually the Ministry would be forced to exterminate them, even if it took years and dozens of lives lost, lest they spill out into the countryside and start hunting muggles.) When Vicky stood up, Lyra half-expected her to ask something along the lines of how the acromantulae colony came to exist in the first place — supposedly, Hagrid was directly responsible for that too, thankfully Harry hadn't mentioned that, she'd rather Hagrid not be sentenced to life in Azkaban. You know, something relatively small-scale.
Instead, the Queen explained that allowing an infestation of such dangerous foreign magical creatures as acromantulae to develop would inevitably lead to her people being threatened — perhaps killed by the hundreds, if the Ministry didn't act soon enough to contain them. So, instead of something small, she asked if Dumbledore was aware that, in failing to act in his capacity as Chief Warlock to deal with this threat, he had been violating the terms of the Wizengamot's treaties with the United Kingdom, and also potentially endangering the Statute of Secrecy.
Solid. Fucking. Gold.
(Clearly, inviting extra people to the Tournament had been an excellent idea.)