"Hey! Blaise! What'd Tori say?"

"She's in, obviously. And Theo's volunteering, if there's still slots to fill," Blaise said, tipping his head toward the boy accompanying him.

Lyra grinned. "Yeah, you were on my list."

"I suspected I might be. Blaise says it's Capture the Crown? Do you want me on offence or defence?"

"Defence. I'm thinking Katie Bell and Thane Rowle with me on offense."

"Rowle?" Hermione repeated. "Why him?"

"He is one of the better fighters in the school," Lyra pointed out. "He and Bell are both into competitive dueling, and the Rowles are an Allied Dark House — five galleons says he has at least as much hands-on experience as Theo."

"More, probably," Theo said drily. "He has older brothers."

"But do you really think he'll follow your lead? I mean, you vetoed McLaggan, Yaxley, and Kirke because they wouldn't, and Rowle's more of an arse than McLaggan and Kirke combined."

"I said McLaggan, Yaxley, and Kirke wouldn't follow your lead, Maïa."

"Er, yeah, they probably wouldn't," Blaise agreed. "Morgana's used to being in charge herself. Kirke doesn't like coordinating with anyone else, and McLaggan's just a tool. Also, I think he's in hospital right now. But wasn't Rowle one of the idiots who attacked you last spring?"

Lyra shrugged. "He doesn't know that I know that. And even if he did, this is the fucking Triwizard Tournament. I don't think he's going to embarrass himself trying to attack me in the middle of it, with elves surveilling us and all."

"You can't honestly think he's going to follow your orders, though," Hermione insisted.

Lyra shrugged again. "You need coordination on defence, not so much on offence — especially since the objective is just to tie up the other teams' strongest duelists. I specifically picked people I know can handle themselves independently against multiple opponents because I'm not so great at coordinated offence myself. I mean, I might be able to fight alongside Siri or Theo or Dora without us stepping on each other's toes, but we don't have the kind of time we'd need to get that degree of awareness with a doubles partner, let alone a trio."

Hermione sighed. "Fine. I just really hope you know what you're doing."

The other girl grinned, showing far too many teeth. "Of course I do."

፠

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Lyra?" Theo asked, as she meandered back toward Slytherin with him. Rowle was probably in the Common Room — his clique generally was, when they weren't in class. They'd laid claim to the corner which had been, in her own time, the area where the Quidditch Team tended to hang out.

"Am I ever not sure about anything, Theo?" she asked, smirking at him.

"Point," he admitted, though he didn't lose his serious frown. "I'm just saying, maybe there are better times and places to get revenge than while you're fighting a bloody Cæciné, and the Powers only know how many other trainee battle-mages, in front of the entire school and, you know, everyone else."

"Who said anything about getting revenge?"

"Oh, were you not planning on Rowle having an unfortunate accident involving friendly fire? My mistake."

"Well, maybe not-so-friendly fire? He did try to melt my face off, it only seems fair... But no, I'm not going to curse him at all. I'm going to let everyone else do that. Should be fairly entertaining, assuming I can actually track down a pensieve to watch Blaise's memory of it — I'll be too busy in the moment to pay him much attention. After all, we are going to be outnumbered at least four to one, and he's bigger, older, and meaner-looking than Katie Bell or myself, no one will be surprised if a disproportionate number of opponents decide to focus on him."

He snorted trying not to laugh. "Do you really think everyone's going to think he's more dangerous than Bellatrix Black's daughter?"

"Well, not everyone — I'd be shocked if Cæciné doesn't warn her team about me, and at least some of them will probably listen to her. But Bella's reputation outside of Britain doesn't really do her justice. So, yes." Outside of a few old Houses (like the Cæcinés) who had history with the House of Black, most of Europe had only heard of her through Light propaganda, which tried to marginalise her and make her sound way less terrifying than she actually was — because the truth would've been demoralising.

"Karkaroff was a Death Eater, though."

"Yeah, but this is one of those occasions where being tiny and continually underestimated works for me."

"Aren't they planning on doing the Order of Merlin inductions right before the task?"

"Oh, fuck, I forgot about that..." It would be a lot harder for people to convince themselves that she was just a fourteen-year-old girl and hardly any sort of threat if they'd just watched her getting a commendation for going above and beyond the call of duty, or whatever. It was still incredibly surreal that the bloody Order of Merlin had decided to reward her losing her temper and getting carried away and doing something stupidly dangerous and excessively vengeful like using runic casting to do a solo Hostile Takeover, and integrate it into the Stadium wards, on the fly, in the middle of a fucking battlefield, just because she was annoyed that those idiots started a bloody riot and then couldn't hold up their end of it (no matter how impressive it was she'd pulled it off and not killed everyone doing so). "Still, it shouldn't really matter, anyway."

"Do I even want to know why?"

"Well, I probably shouldn't talk about it in public, but you know how Draco had that run of bad luck after he reversed Maïa's knees? How badly do you think it would've gone if he'd been dropped into the middle of a war game while that was going on?" Theo's eyes went very wide as he got it. Lyra gave him a brilliant grin, and changed the subject. "Anyway, have you had time to look at that book, yet?"

It had occurred to her, when she'd finally noticed the book on occlumency that Anomos had found for her again (on Wednesday, so good call on past-Lyra's part, leaving it on her desk), that there might already be a translation of it around somewhere — the Blacks had squirrelled away an awful lot of esoteric shite over the centuries — and that Theo had spent a lot more time in this universe's version of their library than she had. Obviously the thing to do had been to fob off the project of looking for a translation onto him. It wasn't like she hadn't managed to make some sense out of the first few paragraphs, all the hours she'd put into it, so assuming whoever translated it (hypothetically) had kept all of the boring shite at the beginning, it should be relatively easy to see if anything matched.

He gave her a rather odd look. "I did, yes."

"And? Did it look familiar, like there might be a translation lying around somewhere? English, French, or Latin, preferably, but even Danish would be better than Arabic. I don't speak Arabic at all."

"Neither do I, but..." He shot a nervous glance around the apparently empty hallway, then pulled her into a secluded nook and cast an anti-eavesdropping charm anyway. "Apparently I can read it. Apparently, I can read...everything. I just...didn't notice the last few weeks, because it all...kind of seems like English? Or, not really, just, it doesn't click that it's not English, the actual words get lost somewhere between my eyes and my brain. It's really weird."

Well, that was just...kind of awesome. She meant, she knew Thōth was a god of knowledge and writing, but she hadn't realised he gave his people the gift of being able to read everything.

Did you know that, Eris? Why didn't you tell me?

Eris didn't answer. She was currently pretending not to be paying attention to Lyra because Lyra was still kind of annoyed that she hadn't warned her that she was about to be kidnapped and thoroughly beaten at the end of last term. She'd made a habit of disappearing whenever Lyra was thinking about the topic (or closely related subjects, like avenging herself on Rowle et al.), much like she had a tendency to just retreat and emanate disapproval when Lyra got caught up thinking about the World Cup and how she badly needed to find a dueling partner. (It was just so frustrating, knowing that there was something so perfect as actually fighting out there in the world, and not having anyone to actually fight...)

"...Lyra?"

Oh, right. Theo. Reading all of the things. They were talking about that. (Focus, Lyra!) "Neat. So, you can translate the thing for me, then?" Because that would be very convenient.

"Um... I...guess? It would take a while to do the copying, though."

"You could just conjure a copy. It doesn't have to last long, I'll take notes on anything important."

"I could what?"

"Er...conjure pages, with words on them? It's not hard. ...Is it?" She really didn't think it was. Kind of tedious, since you had to do every page individually, but it was so much faster than writing... "I mean, you do have to go back and check the copy for accuracy, which takes a while—"

"But, how does that even work?"

"I...don't understand. I know you know how to conjure shite." She'd seen him use Avis in duels before, at the very least.

"Well, yes, obviously I can do basic conjuring, but—"

"Paper is pretty fucking basic shite, Theo." She'd taught Meda how to conjure paper when she was ten.

"It is, yes, but to actually visualise every individual letter on every page to make it come out right? That's ridiculous. Completely absurd."

"Is it?" Honestly, she'd think someone would've said something by now if that trick was really that difficult to pull off. Not that she did it often, but she knew she'd done it a few times around Ciardha, and Meda (this universe's Meda) hadn't seemed all that surprised when she'd suggested it over the summer to translate the House Law. "Wait, you don't think I mean doing the whole book at once, do you? That would be absurd, especially if you're translating as you go. I just do it one page at a time."

"Wait, are you saying you've actually done something like this? I thought we were just talking hypotheticals."

"Of course I have. I just translated our House Law for Maïa's mum over the summer. Do you know how long it takes to copy three-hundred pages by hand? Days. Conjuring them is much faster."

"Sometimes I forget I'm talking to Bellatrix fucking Black," he muttered under his breath.

"I'm not sure what that has to do with anything."

He shrugged, giving her a look she really couldn't interpret. "I always thought Cadmus was just playing the victim, or trying to make me feel like a weak little shite or whatever, saying I wouldn't last five minutes as one of her trainees, but— You really have no idea what normal people are and are not capable of, do you?"

Lyra pouted at him. He had no idea how much better she was at that now than she had been when she first came to school... "Is that actually relevant, here? People conjure animals and sculptures and shite all the time, and there's at least as much detail in them as a few hundred words on a piece of paper."

"Yes, but you don't have to focus on every single detail of something like that. You just recreate your impression of it. If I tried to conjure a translated copy of a page in a book, I bet I'd just get squiggles. Maybe gibberish."

Was he serious? She thought he actually might be. He seemed serious... "Are you having me on?"

"What?"

"What do you mean what? You absolutely have to focus on every detail of shite like that. Yes, conjuring a page without focusing on the details, you're just going to get a lot of squiggles, but if you conjure a bird or whatever without focusing on the details, you're basically just going to get an animated blob of ectoplasm that looks like a bird, which, sure, maybe that's okay for, like, off-the-cuff battlefield conjuration, but it's not going to sustain itself very long. And while you may not care if your conjured bird-like object lasts more than five minutes, it's still fucking lazy, from a technical perspective..." And now he was giving her a very familiar you're insane look, even though she was pretty fucking sure she was absolutely right about this. "Cadmus really never made you dissect your conjurations to make sure you're doing them right?"

"Um, no? Who the hell taught you conjuration?"

"Cassiopeia, when I was seven. She was kind of ridiculously excited that I made the Choice because it meant she could teach me real magic and not just kiddie transfigurations." Which, okay, maybe it was relevant that she'd had the channelling capacity to do real conjuration for fucking ever — Theo would just be coming into his power, he couldn't have been capable of casting really power-heavy spells for very long, and conjuration did have a higher initialisation threshold than most other magics, so maybe no one had formally taught him how to do it yet? Though they really shouldn't have taught him dueling conjuration either, in that case. That was just begging for him to get ingrained in bad habits — like thinking a lazy blob of ectoplasm with feathers was a bird.

"Cassiopeia Black, the metamorph Auror?"

She nodded — she hadn't been an Auror anymore by Lyra's time, but they were definitely thinking of the same person. "She was my favourite aunt. But she moved on when I was eight, not sure who or where she is in this timeline."

Theo shook his head, as though he didn't quite believe her. "Going to go out on a limb here and say metamorphs have higher standards for that sort of thing than normal people."

Well...maybe. But obviously you didn't have to be a metamorph to reach that standard. But they were getting off topic. "So, does that mean you won't translate the book for me?" she asked, dragging him out of the nook to continue toward Slytherin.

"No, I will, it's just going to take a while. Maybe I can read it to a dictaquill or something. It's still going to take time, but I might be able to do it— Well, I was going to say Saturday, but it'll probably have to be next weekend, now."

Still longer than Lyra wanted to wait, but faster than if she were to send it out to be translated — especially since she'd have to find a translator first, and she had even less free time than Theo. She did sleep less than he did, but reputable translators tended to prefer operating during normal-people business hours, so it'd be kind of hard to track one down when everyone else was sleeping. She gave him a heavy sigh. "That's fine, I guess."

Theo snorted at her. "You really need to work on that showing gratitude thing."

"Hey, I didn't bitch and moan about how you could do it tonight if you didn't waste so much time sleeping," she joked. Not that it was entirely a joke, Ciardha had spent years drumming it into her head that she couldn't expect other people to stay up doing things with her just because she thought they were important and/or fascinating and sleeping was boring. But she did know that it was unreasonable to ask someone to do favours for her right fucking now, no matter how impatient she was to find a way to keep Selwyn from casually invading her mind. "But thanks. I'll definitely owe you a favour."

"You— I wasn't angling for a favour, you know. Are you— What's the rush on this, anyway?" Theo asked, sounding oddly...concerned? "I thought you already knew occlumency."

"No, I turned my mind inside-out when I was little so I don't have to learn occlumency. At least, not to keep out normal legilimens and throw off the Imperius and shite. But in case you haven't noticed, Sarah fucking Selwyn isn't exactly a normal legilimens. Meaning I suddenly find I have a reason to learn actual occlumency — you know, other than certain people mocking me for being bad at mind arts even on a scale of me." She wouldn't go out of her way to learn occlumency just because Bella thought it was lazy letting Eris take care of any mind magic she needed to do (as opposed to an efficient division of labour), but. "Plus I'm supposedly an omniglot, assuming I can actually figure out how to not occlude all the time, and I've heard our guests speaking at least six different languages I don't speak, or at least not well. It'd be kind of neat if I could pick them up while they're here."

"Uh-huh." Lyra had no idea which part of that he sounded so skeptical about. "I hate to break it to you, but even if you do learn proper occlumency, you're probably not going to be able to keep a thousand-year-old natural legilimens out of your head."

"Well, I'm definitely not going to be able to if I don't even try to learn proper occlumency." «Open,» she hissed at the main door to the Slytherin Common Room — so much more reasonable than fucking riddles, honestly — and putting a rather firm end to the conversation.

Maybe normal people weren't capable of learning occlumency well enough to fight off someone like Selwyn — at least long enough to get the fuck away from her, Lyra didn't think she'd ever actually be able to hold her own against her for more than a few seconds, she wasn't an idiot — but maybe they just never really tried. Even after years of living with normal people, Lyra was still convinced that the biggest difference between her and them was their ridiculous belief that mediocrity was the best they (or anyone) could do. The fact that Bella had managed to train over a hundred mages to Hit Wizard combat standards, despite only one mage in five hundred supposedly having the potential to reach that degree of competency, kind of proved that, Lyra thought. And even if this particular thing was actually impossible for normal people, Lyra wasn't a normal person, anyway. When she tried to do "impossible" shite, it tended to actually work.

Compared to her conversation with Theo, the one with Rowle, inviting him to come get his arse handed to him on Saturday, was almost laughably brief. She let Theo slink off toward his room, shaking his head as though Selwyn's existence wasn't a perfectly reasonable incentive to learn proper occlumency, and skipped over to the Quidditch Corner. (Which was more like the Obnoxious Pureblood Supremacist Corner in this universe, but whatever.)

She leaned on the back of le Parc's armchair in such a way as to tilt it a few degrees back, just because he was an annoying twat. "Hey, Rowle." The Bletchley bitch — the one who'd broken every bone in her wand hand individually, Lyra still hadn't come up with a fitting response to that — glared at her as though she thought Lyra ought to have greeted her as well, so she added, "Bitchley, Warbler, Carrows, Stupid Cunt with a Death Wish." She could practically hear le Parc's teeth grinding as he restrained himself from leaping up from his chair to curse her right fucking now — which would be incredibly stupid, because he'd have to turn around once he actually made it to his feet, she could definitely get a disarming spell off first. Or a lightning hex, whichever. (Tee hee.)

"What do you want, you little freak?" Warrington asked, as though he was the one she'd initially addressed.

"Not you, certainly. Unless you're a hell of a lot better at fighting than you are at insulting people, and we both know you're not. Rowle. You're on the Hogwarts team for the War Game this Saturday. Offensive squad. Clear your schedule."

Rowle, predictably, bristled at her presumptive tone. "Oh, I am, am I?"

"Yes. I mean, technically I guess you could say no, but that seems about as likely as Mallory Prince agreeing to go to the Yule Ball with you." Rowle's left eye twitched at the reminder of the very public refusal he'd suffered at the beginning of term — apparently his father had been annoying the Princes about a potential marriage contract between the two of them, which the Princes had been reluctant to discuss. Thane had presumably thought that, if he were to get Mallory on his side, she'd help bring her parents around. As it turned out, it wasn't Zorian and Crystal who had a problem with that particular match, it was Mallory herself. Which she had made very clear. In front of the entire Great Hall. The phrases singularly unimpressive and paragon of entitled mediocrity had figured prominently. Not that Rowle was a poor wizard, compared to the average population, but it seemed Zorian had instilled a higher standard of expectations in his daughter. (Good for him.) "I mean this is the fucking Triwizard Tournament we're talking about."

"Why are you tapping me for this, Black?" he ground out, after taking a short moment to master his temper.

"Is there some reason I shouldn't?" she asked, trying not to laugh at the look on his face as his eyes flicked down to meet le Parc's, clearly wondering what she knew about the reasons she presumably shouldn't trust him at her back. "We'll probably have at least one strategy meeting before Saturday, I'll let you know. Good? Good."

She skipped away before he could respond, though she slipped into the Shadows as soon as she was out of sight. Now she just had to find his room, grab something of his to use as a focus for the ritual, and she could go track down Bell...

፠

"Hey, Bell!" The fifth-year Gryffindors were just leaving Herbology when Lyra caught up to them, waving at Bell as she crossed the lawn with a few of her roommates. All four of them changed course slightly to intercept her.

"What's up, Black?" Bagnold asked, sounding rather suspicious. Honestly, Lyra wasn't always up to something. (Even though in this case she totally was.)

"I just need a word with Bell. Privately," she added, as the other girls gave her various she's right here, say whatever it is you want to say looks.

Bell herself just looked slightly confused. Maybe a bit intrigued. "Er...sure, I guess? You lot go ahead, I'll meet you in the Library."

"Great, come on." Lyra hooked an arm through one of Bell's leading her off toward the lake.

"Bloody hell, slow down, Black! Where are we going?"

"There's an old Circle out in the Forest, there's enough residual power there we can do a minor invocation without anyone noticing."

Bell stopped dead. "What?!"

"Oh, right. I assume that if I were to ask you whether you wanted to be on the offensive squad for the War Game on Saturday, you'd say yes?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"Well, come on, then. This is important to our strategy."

"Some weird ritual magic shenanigans are part of your strategy?! You know I want to go into the Aurors when I leave school, right? I'm not going to do anything illegal just to– to win some school tournament!"

"Yeah, why do you think I'm asking you to be on the team? And why do you think we're doing this out in the Forest? I'm not going to tell anyone, trust me there are enough people who'd love an excuse to throw me in Azkaban for a few months, and if I got caught doing high ritual like a fucking idiot, Meda and Siri might actually let them. If you don't tell anyone, well, then, as far as the Aurors are concerned, it never happened, right?"

"No, Black! I'll know! This Tournament is not important enough to jeopardise my entire bloody future! If your 'strategy' demands I do some high ritual shite to curse Artémisia Cæciné or whatever, count me out."

"What? We're not cursing Cæciné, why would we—?" Lyra trailed off, genuinely confused. Cæciné hadn't done anything to her, they'd barely even spoken. There was some history between their families back in fucking Henry's time, but it wasn't like they had ever formally declared a blood feud. They'd been much more evenly matched back then — the Blacks had had fewer battlemages, but a much broader intelligence reach — getting into a serious feud would have assured the destruction of both of their Houses.

Bell blinked at her for a moment. "You do know that she placed first in the I.C.W. student tournament just this summer, right?"

"Well, no, I didn't. Not surprised, but no. And why would I want to— Never mind. We're not cursing Cæciné, we're cursing Thane Rowle. And we're not cursing him so much as...redistributing probabilities among our own people. Specifically, the probabilities of gaining the attention of and being seriously injured by our opponents."

It wasn't quite the same thing Lyra had done when she'd found out that Draco had attacked Maïa, that really had been just asking Eris to ask Tyche to turn the pain and suffering he'd caused back on him threefold. This was actually a formal ritual, a scapegoating spell. It was occasionally even used voluntarily, to focus enemies' attentions on the strongest or quickest or otherwise least likely to die of your warriors, protecting the less-skilled and allowing them to attack more effectively. (Not unlike the strategy Narcissa had used at the World Cup to protect Draco, though the mechanism was very different.) But it was, admittedly, more often used by cowards hoping to save their own skins at the expense of their allies.

Bell's face twisted into an expression of disgust. "You invited Thane Rowle to be on your team?"

"I owed him for a spot of trouble he was involved in last June."

"So he asked to be on the Hogwarts team as a favour?" Bell sounded somewhat incredulous. Which was silly, it wouldn't be a terrible favour to ask, if you were trying to get noticed by a scout for a professional dueling team or something — you couldn't really ask for a better showcase for your talents than the fucking Triwizard Tournament. A thousand galleons was a nice prize for the average mage, sure, but the exposure was far more valuable to most participants.

Ryan had almost certainly agreed to figure out how to deal with their communication problem because, even if there weren't professional musicians in the audience, word would still get around, especially if he pulled it off. Which Lyra had every confidence he would. He might be a bit prickly, but he was a fucking genius, and one of the best musicians she'd ever met. She might have been cheating, reproducing Dru's performance of Beethoven's ninth sonata (and/or tenth, oops) — it was kind of lucky he'd been practising something she actually knew — but Ryan had been playing it himself. That shite was fucking ridiculous. And he'd been doing multi-part improv performance magic at Walpurgis, she was sure he could figure out something. And she'd make sure that when it did get around that everyone knew he'd designed whatever mad, brilliant solution he came up with himself, and he'd managed to put it together in three fucking days.

"Ah, no, I don't owe Rowle a favour, I owe him for trying to melt my fucking face off. Conjured aqua fortis. Nasty shite. I didn't even do anything to him. Bella didn't even do anything to him! If I recall correctly, his fucking problem with me is that I don't have the right pedigree for the Heir of the House of Black. Which is both fucking ridiculous, and also none of his business."

Honestly, she kind of suspected that Rowle just didn't like her appearing out of nowhere and showing up all the noble idiots who claimed to be the best mages of their generation any more than le Parc liked her making him personally look like a moron. He was also one of those pricks who took his social status far too seriously, and therefore hated that the House of Black refused to behave with the dignity other noble houses thought they, as a Noble and Most Ancient House, ought to display (not unlike certain ferrety cousins she could name). Which betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the House of Black, but she supposed it was understandable since there hadn't really been any Blacks for his entire life. She wouldn't really be surprised if he'd realised at some point since Sirius had made his triumphant return to Society that her general lack of fucks to give for the opinion of lesser nobles (or anyone at all) wasn't a product of her being an ignorant line thief, but that of a long, proud family tradition of taking the piss and telling idiots to go fuck themselves. But she also wouldn't be surprised if he considered Sirius to be an enormous class traitor, so same difference, really.

"He what—?! Is this— Are you talking about at the end of last term, when you and Potter disappeared? I thought you were obliviated!"

"That's what Pomfrey and Snape told me. Lavender wasn't, though." Both of those statements were technically true, even.

"Lavender? Lavender Brown?"

Lyra nodded. And if word got around that Lavender had been the one to tell Lyra who had been involved in her kidnapping and torture, Lyra was betting dear Bunny's earstwhile confederates would take care of the poor girl's punishment for her. To that end, she elaborated: "She was the one who ambushed me. Apparently she feels guilty about her involvement in the whole thing." According to Blaise, not Lavender, but still...

Unlike Rowle, Lavender actually had good reason to want some kind of revenge on Lyra — she had been the target of a disproportionate number of malicious pranks over the course of the year. That, more than the fact that she'd attempted to stop the actual torture, made Lyra less inclined to make the idiot girl suffer for her role in the whole kidnapping incident. If the allies that, rumour was going to have it, Lavender had "betrayed" were sufficiently put out with her, Lyra might not actually do anything to Brown herself.

"Have you reported her?!"

"...No? Why would I?"

"Black! The Prophet said someone used the Cruciatus on you! If Brown knows who— She should be questioned at the very least! Don't you want to know—"

Oh... Shite. She hadn't anticipated that. Though, maybe she should have. Wannabe Auror, and all... "Don't be thick, Bell. I'm not going to set anyone up for a life sentence over a few seconds of pain."

"Black. Lyra. Unforgivable curses are Unforgivable for a reason."

Well of course they were. "I know." She shrugged. "The Cruciatus, specifically, is Unforgivable because it can melt someone's brain, and you have to be a genuinely sadistic person to cast it properly, and that propensity along with a demonstrated willingness to potentially cause permanent damage to another human being suggests that someone who casts it successfully is very likely to torture or kill innocents in the future. Since the person who cast it didn't melt my brain, and I apparently informed them at the time they didn't do it properly, I'm not turning them in." The fact that she wouldn't turn them in anyway, because it would be incredibly hypocritical for her to turn anyone in for being a sadist and/or causing permanent mental damage to people — the idiots she'd trapped in wraith-form at the World Cup were reportedly not going to make a full recovery — was kind of irrelevant. "If you try to report Brown for her involvement and pressure her into it, I'll deny this conversation."

"Black! Whoever did it deserves to rot in Azkaban! That—"

"No, they don't. Being locked up for the rest of their life for a few seconds of self-righteous fury and a single lapse in self-control, directed at the daughter of a woman who has committed capital crimes against them and their family? I sincerely doubt that they're ever going to even try to use it on anyone else — except maybe Bella, I guess, which is fine, Bella's a fucking bitch, and probably wouldn't let them anyway — so as far as I'm concerned that's the bloody definition of disproportionate response." Especially since normal people didn't just think the idea of Azkaban was boring as fuck — Sirius being as sane as he was after more than a decade in the presence of dementors was apparently kind of absurd. (And Sirius was hardly sane by ordinary person standards to begin with.) "This is why the Dark thinks the Light is full of shite, by the way."

"WHAT?!"

"This whole one law for everyone thing, rather than working shite out on a case-by-case basis? I mean, if Neville tried to use the Cruciatus on me because Bella tortured his parents into insanity and I told him that was perfectly reasonable because they were on opposite sides of a war, or something, and he failed to cast it properly because this is Neville, and I used it on, I don't know, Draco, because he's an annoying, ferrety little tit and the faces he makes when he's terrified are hilarious, under the actual letter of the law we would both deserve to go to Azkaban for the rest of our lives. Even though Neville's not exactly likely to try to torture anyone else, and even if he were, he isn't actually capable of doing so effectively, and I'm not saying I'm planning on torturing people because it's funny, I know that's not on, but if I were to start using Unforgivables on people for annoying me I probably wouldn't stop with Draco.

"Ideally, if justice were handled by sane people, Neville would get off with a fine or something — honestly, I'm sure Sirius wouldn't even press charges, because who doesn't occasionally want to torture me? — and the Wizengamot would give Draco special dispensation to use it on me three times as long as I used it on him or something, because obviously. Or, well, Cissy, probably — I'm sure Neville could cast it better than Draco. Or, I guess if we were being tried by normal people, I'd probably just be chucked through the Veil, because if you care about the public good, some people — including mad Blacks who have decided fuck it, let's torture people for fun — are too dangerous to live." Honestly, it was still a little baffling that Crouch and Dumbledore had let Bella live, Truce or no Truce.

Bell just stared at her for a long moment, apparently at a loss for words. Then, "Do you really think it was reasonable for Lestrange to torture the Longbottoms?"

Well, Lyra's immediate response was something along the lines of shrug...kind of? but she knew that wasn't an acceptable answer. And that was kind of a hard question, actually. Obviously it hadn't accomplished anything, but Lyra could understand why she'd done it — she'd been out of her fucking mind. Lyra would be the first to admit that she'd done some pretty fucking stupid shite when she was frustrated or furious, and she was pretty sure she'd never been as overwrought as Bella had been when Riddle's body was destroyed. Plus, plenty of ideas that were objectively reckless and entirely pointless seemed perfectly reasonable and necessary when she was mad. Lyra didn't remember much from Bella's memories, but she did remember that Riddle disappearing had thrown Bella into Madness, enough that she'd completely lost any sense of perspective or self-control for a while there. Which, while not really reasonable, also didn't entirely seem like something Bella should be held responsible for?

"I think it probably seemed reasonable to Bella at the time. Her Lord, the one who'd had her enthralled since she was a little kid, had just been vanquished and was missing, but not dead. She thought the Longbottoms had information she could use to find and restore him, and she needed to make an example of someone to make it clear that the war wasn't over just because Evans took Riddle off the field. I'm pretty sure she didn't intend to go that far with them, though. And she obviously wasn't in a rational state of mind, because melting a prisoner's brain without getting any useful information from them, when I know she knows how to question someone much more effectively, is the sort of thing that suggests she wasn't really thinking clearly at all. I mean, she obviously wasn't well — she went quietly when the Aurors finally caught up with her."

Evans really had been good. Lyra didn't think anyone else had ever driven her or Bella so far down, defeated her so thoroughly, that she'd actually stopped fighting. Maybe Cygnus, before she'd made her dedication? She knew she'd tried pretty fucking hard to placate him, thinking that maybe he'd stop using the Imperius on her if she stopped 'making him'. But she hadn't really been the same person back then.

"You..."

"Yes, I know, you and literally everyone else think I'm insane. That's fine, I don't care. I'm not even debating the point. I'm just saying, scapegoating Rowle so he takes the brunt of the attack on Saturday seems like a fairer response to his trying to melt my face off than reporting him to the legal authorities, because he doesn't deserve to spend a couple of years in Azkaban for kidnapping and assaulting the under-age heir of a Noble and Most Ancient House, and irreparably ruining his reputation and his sanity even after he gets out — the vast majority of released prisoners never properly recover, you know — but he also doesn't deserve to be entirely acquitted, which are the only two outcomes with actual precedent in Wizengamot trials for that sort of thing. Getting him cursed to seven hells in order to save the two of us some pain and suffering and then calling it even seems much more proportionate."

Bell was wavering, Lyra could tell — she looked uncannily like Maïa on the cusp of admitting that Lyra was completely right about something 'good people' didn't agree with, all tense and conflicted.

"What, you think he should go to Azkaban just for kidnapping and assaulting me? He didn't actually do any permanent damage, after all. Or you just don't want to admit that the law is wrong?"

"No, Azkaban is awful, I don't think it should be used as punishment for minor crimes but— You can't just go around deciding for yourself what's fair or proportionate or reasonable and– and doing shite to people—"

"Why? Because that's the Ministry's job? They aren't the injured party, and if you think my plan isn't fair, proportionate, and reasonable, I think you would have said as much." She let a smirk play around her lips. "Why do you want to be an Auror, Bell?"

"What kind of— To help people! To protect them when they can't protect themselves!"

"Yeah, that's what Dora and Sirius said, too. To stop dark mages from hurting civilians, basically. Which, if you think about it, is exactly what we're doing here. Teaching Rowle that there are consequences for his actions, that he will be held responsible for hurting people — don't worry, I'll make sure he knows exactly why he had such shite luck, after — without making him a victim of the legal system itself, and/or making him an even greater danger to others after however long in Azkaban." This was, as far as Lyra was concerned, an unassailable argument. It had worked on Maïa, when she'd been trying to convince her that Lyra taking care of her attackers herself was perfectly reasonable and really for the best all around.

Bell opened her mouth to protest anyway, though, so she added, "Think of it this way: I'm not turning him in, and I'm not letting him get away with it. And I don't think you're going to turn me in for wanting to get him back, because I'm the victim here — kidnapped and tortured, if you recall." She was...pretty sure about that one. But that was one of the reasons she kind of had to convince Bell to go along with it, now — if she were equally culpable, she couldn't just go turning Lyra in for practising black arts. Well, she was far less likely to, at least. "If you help me do this to him, you'll at least know I'm not doing something even worse to him because you stopped me from doing this."

Bell hesitated. "Why did you even tell me in the first place?"

Lyra grinned. She was pretty sure she'd just won. "Well, when I say I'm going to adjust our relative probabilities of getting the shite kicked out of us, I mean I'm mostly going to give you all of his good luck and him all of your bad luck. See, I don't have bad luck in a fight, and Cæciné is probably good enough she's not likely to be swayed much by this little ritual anyway — she's not likely going to be causing incidental damage that could affect one enemy more than another just by chance—" Not to mention her own family gods would probably stop Lyra's (and Tyche's) meddling from affecting her. "—and I'm planning on dealing specifically with her, so you're kind of important to the whole equation."

"But...why me? You had to know I wouldn't approve of this sort of thing." She actually sounded more annoyed that Lyra had put her in an awkward moral dilemma than anything, she decided.

"Yeah, but I also know that you can take care of yourself in a fight against multiple opponents, and that last week when your friend Chelsea Lewis hexed Prefect McLaggan for grabbing her arse, Rowle told McGonagall it was unprovoked, so McGonagall gave Lewis detention and McLaggan got away with harassing the pretty muggleborn yet again. So I figure you're not likely to cry for poor little Rowle getting the worst of it on Saturday."

"I'd be a lot less likely to cry for McLaggan," Bell groused. "He's the one who thinks it's okay to put his filthy paws wherever he likes. I can't believe McGonagall made him a prefect..."

"Oh, has Pomfrey already managed to get his hand unstuck from his own arse? Maïa said something," she added, by way of explaining why she had stuck McLaggan's wand hand to his own arse, though she supposed it could also be taken as an explanation for how she knew about the arsehole's predicament. She had been pretending not to, after all, to avoid suspicion.

Maïa had been the one to actually witness the whole incident between McLaggan and Lewis, not Lyra, but Rowle had been closer to them by the time Lewis had actually hexed him, so McGonagall had taken his word (and McLaggan's) over Maïa's (and Lewis's), much to Maïa's outrage. Someone — Lyra was certain she couldn't possibly say who — had somehow contrived to coat McLaggan's wand hand with Flesh Fusing Ointment, and bonded it to his arse in his sleep — again, she couldn't possibly say how. But she could say that if you used enough of that shite on a sufficiently fleshy area of the body it was possible to sink, say, a hand, far enough into fat and muscle that, unless Pomfrey knew something Lyra didn't (which, she might, Flesh Fusing Ointment was a healing potion), McLaggan was going to need a complete arse-ectomy to get it back, and probably some reconstruction of the hand in question, too. If Pomfrey were willing to just cut it loose and use something like that healing spell Bella had used on Lyra last time she'd seen her, it probably wouldn't take that long, but it would hurt like hell. And Lyra kind of doubted Pomfrey would be willing to use such blatantly dark healing magic. If she were, McLaggan would have been at breakfast today.

"You didn't..."

"I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about, Bell," Lyra said firmly, giving her a grin that said she absolutely had. "So, in light of the fact that you clearly believe I would do something that might cause severe and lasting harm to someone for a crime far less severe than attempted face-melting—" Not really, annoying Maïa was kind of higher on Lyra's list of things deserving of retribution than causing temporary physical harm to Lyra herself, but less severe by normal people's standards. "—are you going to help me fuck over Rowle or not?"