The Good War

by inwardtransience

Despite her best efforts, Elizabeth Potter is repeatedly drawn into situations she wants absolutely nothing to do with. People just refuse to leave her the hell alone. (fem!Harry, dark!independent!Harry, mentor!Snape, F/F, playing with tropes for fun and profit)

87. Fourth Year — XXIX

These papers are tied with a Protean Charm — the red one you hold is the primary, I hold the primary for the green one.
Please talk to me, Liz.

Very Christmassy, red and green.

Our families' colours seemed the obvious choice. Are you all right?

You're ridiculous, you know that. I run off on you, and just disappear from school like a coward, and the first thing you say is ask if I'm okay.

You say that as though it's peculiar, but it seems only natural to me.

You're too nice. I'm fine. Sorry for disappearing, I just needed to get away.

I assume you're at home? Nilanse came by for your things that morning, but she wouldn't tell me where you were.

Yes.

May I come over?

I'd rather you didn't.

Liz. Is something wrong?

I fucked up. I'm sorry.

How do you mean?
I could see you were distressed that night, but I don't understand what happened. Please talk to me.

You're not going to like it, but I guess that's only fair. You remember, back in like February or something, I explained about my uncle and the scars on my back. When you pulled at the waistband of my pants, I went back there, in my head. It's PTSD shite, very stupid, because brains are terrible and Liz is broken. That was a bad one, one of the worse attacks I've ever had.

I see. I feel like an idiot now, I̶ ̶m̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶
I'm sorry. I feel terribly ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶I̶ ̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ I should have been more careful. I knew you may have certain lines, that you may not be ready, but I wasn't thinking.
I'm sorry, Liz, truly. I deeply regret that I hurt you so, it doesn't feel enough to simply say so, but I don't know what else to do here and now.

You're not making this any easier.

I don't understand.

You're too bloody nice.
It's not your fault, I'm the one who fucked up. I knew it would be a problem, at the very least I should have said something. But no, that would have been awkward, couldn't have warned you not to
The whole thing was my mistake. When I figured out I wasn't going to be able to sleep, I should have left, not decided, hey, trying to have sex is a great idea, it's definitely not going to end horribly when my stupid broken brain decides to fuck with me again. For fuck's sake, I have trouble being naked alone in the shower, I knew it was going to be a problem. I shouldn't have agreed to try sleeping with you in the first place, I shouldn't have even been there. I wasn't thinking clearly, it's my fault. I'm sorry.

Liz, you needn't apologise for being hurt. It may be that you might have known to be cautious, but I did not help matters by

Stop that. You were about to say it's more your fault because you seduced me into it or something but that's horse shite. I knew what I was getting into, and I knew it was a bad idea, and I did it anyway. That's not on you. Stop trying to apologise to me for shite that I did.

Well. We are a mess, aren't we.

Pretty sure that's mostly on me, but yeah, we are that.
You remember, back when we started doing this, I said it might get too much for me and I'll have to stop? I think I'm going to have to call it off here. I'm sorry.

Liz

I'm going to read that as a speechless silence and try to explain.

If I charm the ink out of the page, will yours clear out, so I can start at the top again?

Yes. Allow me one moment to make a copy. I'm done.

This is going to sound pretty shitty, and I want to remind you that it's not your fault. My brain is trash. You're too nice, like incomprehensibly nice, I'm not angry with you or anything. I'm just fucked and should have known better.
Things get connected dumb in my brain sometimes. Like I still can't be around the smell of bleach, it reminds me of cleaning my aunt's kitchen, I hear her screeching voice every fucking time, it's miserable. One time, Severus hadn't gotten any sleep and was really stressing out about Sirius escaping, and he yelled at me without thinking, and I had a flashback about it. He apologised immediately, I could feel how much he regretted it, that he wasn't even angry with me so much as idiots at the Ministry, but it still took a couple days until I stopped being pointlessly nervous around him. Because my brain just does stupid shite like that.
I'm terrified that next time you touch me it's going to feel like my uncle. And being scared of it makes it way more likely to happen, but I can't stop thinking about it, because my brain is trash and I hate it.
So I'm not going to be able to go to the Yule Ball, is what I'm saying. And I don't know how long it's going to take for me to stop being fucking crazy, so we probably have to stop. And I know the Yule Ball is literally next week, and I could have had my freakout at a less inconvenient time, and over Christmas is a shitty fucking time to break up with you, but I can't fix it. I can't just stop being like this, I wish I could but it doesn't work that way.
I'm sorry for fucking it up. I knew it was going to happen eventually, but I still hate it.

It pains me that you clearly feel the need to apologise for the difficulties you have due to being hurt as a child.
I'm beginning to run out of space as well. Do you wish to make a copy?

Don't worry about it, I can always read over my shoulder in my pensieve.

What happened between us that night is not your responsibility alone. ̶I̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶
It feels rather thoughtless when I think of it now, but I consider the harmful consequences less than I probably should. When someone I care for is suffering, my first impulse is to offer comfort, and to me that is done, at least in part, through touch. That touch may do more harm than good does not come to mind. I know it may do, intellectually, but it doesn't feel right. The closest I have gotten to truly understanding matters such as these is my experience with Tracey, but that is not helpful, due to the differing circumstances. When I act with loving intent, the thought that I may be doing harm unknowingly often doesn't occur to me.
Looking back on myself, I did push more than was good to. ̶I̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ I thought I was helping.

You did. I'm a lot better about some things than I used to be.

And how much of a setback will that night present? You did say it may take time to recover from the stress.

Good point. I need to blank my page again.

Go ahead.
You needn't concern yourself on my account for the Yule Ball. I was looking forward to the evening, of course, but if you are not in any condition to go, so be it. It would be quite despicable of me to hold your pain against you.

You continue to be far too nice.

That seems to me to be basic decency, Liz. I cannot imagine how one could not summon such sympathy for those one professes to care for.
But we needn't take such a drastic step. I can endure without touch for a time, if that is what you need. I realise I am not the one who was hurt, but I am still willing to try. I do treasure your company, I want this.

No. I mean, I do too, but it's not going to work.
This is a really big problem, I'm not sure you get that. I'm going to be a nervous wreck over it for who knows how long, and it's going to be miserable for both of us. I obviously wasn't ready for this kind of relationship yet, I shouldn't have tried in the first place, and waiting for me to catch up doesn't do any good for either of us. Especially after what just happened. But it's not the only problem, I've been

It wouldn't have worked anyway. Us, I mean.

I don't believe that. We've had our troubles, but that is no reason to sacrifice the good.

That's because you're too bloody nice. Which is kind of the problem, really. I feel like such a bitch for saying it, it sounds mad but it's
I mean, for fuck's sake, I run away from you while we're in the middle of having sex, and I'm not an idiot, I know that must have hurt, and the first thing you do is to ask if I'm okay, and you apologise to me about it!

Liz, I may not be able to know your mind as you know mine, but I don't need to to have seen you were in terrible distress. Casting judgement on you for having been hurt would be unforgivably cruel of me.

And you're doing it right now! Maybe you're just too much of a good and pure person to get this, Daphne, but people aren't like this. Being angry with me for what happened would be perfectly normal, or being impatient with me for all my various hangups, or hell, being bloody terrified of me for doing things like literally possessing you because I'd never had cannabis before and was too high to consider that that might freak you out, in the process proving that I can make you do whatever I want at any moment, and that doesn't seem to bother you at all? Seriously, you're possibly the single most consistently kind and forgiving person I've ever met, and you don't even seem to get that other people aren't like you, it's absurd!

You're being a little overly charitable, I think. I do prefer kindness to cruelty, but even my well is not bottomless.

The only people I can think of you dislike are complete bastards who totally deserve it. Like you still don't get on with Draco, but he's a self-righteous racist arse, and was a total jerk to Tracey when you were kids, so like? Yeah, of course you don't like him? You do realise most people don't have good reasons for hating the people they do, right?

Well, that seems foolish.

Hate to break it to you, Daphne, but people are fucking idiots. And I know you don't do it on purpose, but sometimes standing next to you being all sunshine and daisies and peace on earth and goodwill towards men and whatever the fuck all the time makes me feel like a hateful little monster.

̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ I never intended to make you feel badly about yourself, Liz. It isn't

Stop it! You're doing it right now! I'm not a good person, Daphne. I am a hateful little monster. It doesn't bother me that I am, most of the time, it's just a thing that's true. Evil people don't care that they're evil, you know, it's a whole thing. But seeing your unreasonably high opinion of me in your head makes me feel like I'm lying to you, and I don't like that. And not even for good reasons, either, not lying was one of the rules when I was a little kid.

I don't think you're a bad person. You may not be kind all the time, but neither are you cruel. The good you've done aside, I can't think of anyone you've harmed who, to quote yourself, was not a complete bastard who totally deserved it.

You know that time Hermione's roommates stole her underwear? Do you know how I got Lavender to tell me where she'd hid them?

I assumed you compelled her, but I suppose I never asked.

I held her under a pain hex, until Hermione stopped me. I could have just compelled her, but I wanted her to hurt, for being a bitch to Hermione all the time. Even though feeling her hurt was unpleasant for me, since being a mind mage can suck like that sometimes, I still wanted her to. At the time, it was more important that I hurt her than actually getting Hermione's things back.

No, I didn't know that.

You could argue that's still mixed — wanted to help a friend and went a little far, that's not bad. But that's not the worse thing I've done. Every month I've been killing a rabbit in a blood subsumption ritual, but when I think about it I'm not sure if you'll think that's much worse than just eating meat.

What is done with the rabbit afterward?

Severus collects the parts that are good for potions ingredients, and the rest is given to the elves, for food.

Then I would say that is better than simply slaughtering an animal for meat. I would prefer the killing not be done at all, but if you must, it is better that it not be wasted.

Not surprised, I guess. The weasels or whatever the fuck I practised the Green Death on were definitely wasted, then. After that lesson with Moody, I snuck out of the castle in the middle of the night — with what I'm pretty sure is Death's invisibility cloak, by the way, because my life is strange sometimes — to practise the Unforgivable Curses, because that seems like a reasonable thing to do. I didn't bother the Imperius, since mind magic is better anyway, and I couldn't get the Cruciatus to work right — you have to enjoy other people's pain for that to work, and other people's pain is always unpleasant, for mind mage reasons. It still sort of works, just not as well as it should. The Green Death is easy. I got it on my first try.
And I've hurt people too. Pansy is still scared of me, from the snakes in their beds in first year. Pushing fear into their heads at the house meeting after probably doesn't help, the others are over it but Pansy's not. I think it's funny, it tickles me every time. Oh, and the only reason I haven't compelled Ronald fucking Weasley to take a dive off the astronomy tower is because Severus will know it was me.
I'm not a good person, Daphne. I'm really not. And it's starting to bother me that you think I am. Sometimes it makes me hate myself, just a little, and that's probably not good for me. Maybe shitty of me, the problem being you're too bloody nice, but I can't help being shitty, that's just me.
I'll take the lack of response as horrified silence. I was going to go see Hermione today, it's time for me to go. Also, I kind of confessed to crimes here, so I'm blanking the page again.
̶I̶ ̶a̶m̶ ̶ʃ̶ Bye

፠

The weather was pretty much the same in Oxford as it was back home — cold, grey, and gloomy. It was maybe five degrees, and probably colder, Liz wearing the fuzzy cotton leggings Hermione had gotten her a while ago, her scarf pulled up her face, arms hugged firmly around herself. She didn't really have cold-weather stuff that would pass for muggle — unfortunately her nice cloak would seem too strange here — so Liz had just cheated and put a warming charm over her dress. A weak one, so she'd still seem realistically cold, but it's not like any muggles she'd pass by would be able to tell. One older man had asked if she was okay or needed a ride somewhere, but.

It'd been a while since she'd been here, but the directions had gone in her notebook of people's birthdays and addresses and things, so it wasn't hard to find her way to Hermione's house. She might not have recognised the place without her notes — she remembered it being green, with trees and ivy everywhere, but all that shite was dead for the winter now, skeletal branches against the sky, bare brown vines stitched across the dividing walls. The house itself was more or less familiar, though. That was Hermione's bedroom right there on top, a narrow peak that had once been an attic, the windows on the bulging curve of the library down and to the right.

She was mostly sure, anyway. No point standing here thinking about it, might as well go up and check. Liz crossed the brick-paved 'garden', dried leaves crunching under her feet. It didn't look like they had a doorbell, Liz glanced over her shoulder before drawing her wand with a flick, tapped the door twice, the noise charm making sure she'd be heard. The Grangers had a big house, and Liz didn't feel like bruising her knuckles trying to knock loud enough.

She waited for a bit, hunching down against the wind, was just considering doing it again when the door was pulled open. Not Hermione, her dad, Daniel — dark curly hair, nerdy glasses perched on his nose, the denims and close-fitting fuzzy jumper making him look even taller and lankier than she remembered. "Ah, there she is! Joyeux Noël, and get in here before we let all the warm out."

Liz slipped past Daniel — under the arm he was holding the door open with, because she was irritatingly short — the door snapping closed behind her. It was a lot warmer in here, not quite as warm as her own house, but enough that she felt hot prickles on her exposed skin. It also smelled really nice, herbs and spices, she assumed someone must have been cooking. (She would say Emma had been cooking, but she was aware from Hermione's memories that her parents split kitchen duties.) She dismissed her warming charms with a flick of her fingers, pulled her scarf down off her face. "Um, Happy Christmas." That was still some days away, and Daniel had said only that part in French for some reason, but whatever. "It's cold out there, you know."

"It is a bit. I thought about going down to pick you up, but Maïa wasn't certain what time you were coming in, exactly."

"It's fine, I can walk. Warming charms." Liz plonked down on the bench, ran her wand over her boots to loosen them.

"I see, I see. So, that exemption you asked for, it doesn't just work for the potion."

"No, it's for everything, until eight in the evening." Technically, people who hadn't gotten their OWLs yet weren't supposed to do magic outside of school without qualified adult supervision, out of Secrecy concerns — since muggleborns didn't have qualified adult supervision, they basically couldn't do magic at all. The ones who'd had accidental magic outbursts that had required intervention from Adjustment also often had monitoring charms over their houses, so the Ministry was very likely to catch them breaking the rules too. Hermione wanted to try that heritage test potion, which had seemed a reasonable Christmas gift to Liz — especially since the expanded trunk Liz had gotten her for her birthday was pretty expensive, so she probably shouldn't be spending any money — but finishing the half-prepared catalyst would require the use of a wand. But Daniel and Emma wanted to see it too, and they couldn't bring the baby through the floo. There were ways around the rules, though — Severus had asked a friend at the DLE to get the Improper Use of Magic Office to suspend detection at the Grangers' house temporarily, so they could do the potion here.

Of course, the exemption was granted on the understanding that Severus would be acting as qualified adult supervision, but he trusted Liz and Hermione to not do anything stupid. If Adjustment did need to come in and wipe the neighbours' memory or something, Severus would be liable for that, would have to pay a fine — by which Liz meant she would pay a fine, part of their arrangement had included Liz agreeing to give Severus the gold for it if they fucked up. (It'd be pretty steep for Severus, on his teacher's salary, but it wasn't a big deal for her, so that just seemed fair.) It wasn't as though anyone would be checking, so.

With a rueful sort of smirk, Daniel drawled, "I expect Hermione will be irritated to hear that — she's upstairs clearing off the library table, she hates tidying." That seemed out of character for Hermione, but maybe it was different from keeping her own things organised, for some reason. "I can have lunch done in ten minutes or so. Can the test sit for that long, or did you want to do it before eating?"

"No, it can wait." An hour more or less shouldn't affect the stasis charms any. "I can go dump all this stuff first, though. Up in the library?"

Daniel disappeared into the kitchen, Liz finished peeling off her boots and started up. On the way to the stairs, she passed a door that had been closed the last time she was here — there was a sitting room in there, Emma softly calling out a hello to her as she went by. (The second mind she could feel that way, small and fuzzy and unfocussed, must be the baby, but Liz couldn't see it from here.) Her hair had been cut short during the pregnancy, and it hadn't grown back out yet, a fuzzy blonde cloud around her head. Liz didn't stick around, but her brief impression was that Emma didn't look nearly as exhausted and strung-out as she had last time Liz had seen her, so, good?

(Pregnancy seemed awful, Liz couldn't imagine wanting to go through that...)

Up the stairs, loop around and through the glass-paned double doors, and Liz was in the library — as dark and grey of a day as it was, the windows all over the place weren't doing much to light the big room, mostly from the lamps here and there. Hermione was at the table in the middle, all the books and shite that'd been scattered on it the last time Liz was here put away. When Liz walked in, Hermione had a hand-towel in one hand, in the other a spray bottle of...some kind of glass cleaner, presumably. (It wasn't the same brand Petunia used.) "Oh, Liz! Did I hear you cast a noise charm earlier? Can we use magic now?"

"Yeah, you can do anything you want until eight o'clock. As long as it's not too showy, anyway." Walking over, Liz gently set her shoulder bag on a chair. It shouldn't ruin anything, it'd been prepared to get through the floo, but just in case.

"Brilliant." Hermione dropped the bottle and the towel on a chair, stomped over to the shelves nearby, and pulled out her wand. She shot a cleaning charm at the table, and then a neutralisation charm, the same one they did on their workspace in Potions before brewing anything particularly sensitive — and then she cast it a few more times, aimed at different spots on the table, just in case. Sticking her wand through a belt loop on her denims, at an angle so the tip would rest in her pocket, Hermione grinned up at Liz. "Much better. Happy Christmas, Liz."

Liz rolled her eyes — still a few days away, but whatever. "Happy Christmas. Just set it up right here?"

"Yeah, I figured this would be most convenient. The only other tables in the house that're big enough for the whole parchment are the dining room table and the one in the kitchen. Unless you wanted to move downstairs?"

"No, this is fine." Liz's fingers quickly found the ceramic tube, she pulled the parchment out, stiff and tingly against her fingers from the absorbed potion — the roll of parchment was visibly longer than the tube, expanded on the inside. She rolled the parchment out over the table, noisily crackling as it went, Hermione grabbed the other end to help tug it flat. "It should only take five, ten minutes to finish, but I figured we'd wait until after lunch."

"All right." Hermione watched Liz unpack her bag, eyes following the little portable enchanted heating element, the rack to hang the cauldron, the roll of leather holding her utensils (the contents were hers, Severus picked up the carrying thing for her), widening a little as Liz pulled out the cauldron itself. It was silver, which was pretty expensive, but the cap was also neat — alchemically-inert glass, a more pliable metallic band snug around the rim, drawn taught by a little lever held in place with a spring. (No enchantments involved at all, aside from the stasis spell itself, the better to prevent any interference with the potion inside.) Both were borrowed from Severus, the same setup he sometimes used to transport sensitive healing potions for colleagues dealing with an exotic emergency. The whole time Hermione's mind was turning away, like the gears of a clock steadily ticking, Liz wasn't looking but she still wasn't surprised when she finally voiced the question. "I was wondering, how are you? I didn't see you at our last couple exams, Tracey said you disappeared overnight."

Liz grimaced — she hadn't talked to Tracey since the thing with Daphne. They'd been friends for ages, practically grew up together, she expected that was going to be awkward. "Yeah, I don't have to do the exams anyway, so I just went home."

There were a couple seconds of silence, as though Hermione were waiting for more of an explanation. "Did something happen? It seemed very sudden."

...Well, she might as well tell her. She would kind of have to, it would definitely come up, and...it was just Hermione. Yeah, okay. "I'm breaking up with Daphne, and I didn't— I just wanted to go home."

A sharp flash through her mind, Hermione gasped. "Oh no! Liz, what happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it." That'd been the larger part of her initial reluctance to tell Hermione, honestly, she didn't want to have this part of the conversation. "Some of it is...kind of private, you know. It just wasn't working out, that's all."

"It seemed to be going well enough from the outside," Hermione said, twisting with confusion. "I suppose I don't know what was going on in private, but you two are so sweet together." Yeah, Daphne had obviously thought it was going well too. And it hadn't...not been, Liz had been trying not to let it bother her for...

Shite. Honestly, she had no idea when Daphne being so bloody nice all the time and having too high an opinion of her had started to make her uncomfortable. A while, anyway. That would have become a problem long-term, yeah, the short-term thing was mostly Liz's stupid PTSD-brain stuff, but she didn't want to talk to Hermione about that either. "I just wasn't ready for this sort of thing. I kind of knew that already, from the start, but... I mean, you know how much trouble I can have with just hugging, it's not like it's any easier to... I'm fucked up, Hermione, that's all. It was a bad idea to even try so soon — most kids in our year aren't even dating yet anyway, me of all people starting early makes no sense at all — but I'm an idiot sometimes and decided to do it anyway, so." She shrugged. "Oops."

"I don't think you're stupid." Hermione was too nice to say it out loud, but she did think Liz dating already wasn't a great idea — which wasn't news to Liz, she'd picked up Hermione worrying about it before. Basically, for Liz is broken, PTSD-brain -related reasons, though Hermione didn't necessarily put it in those words. She'd never actually said anything about it, though, thinking it wasn't really her business, and also hoping it would work out well, not wanting to jinx it.

Liz was aware that Hermione thought she and Daphne were adorable, and had been weirdly happy to see them together, which had always been faintly confusing. Even being able to see exactly what other people were thinking, she still didn't understand them sometimes.

"Maybe a little reckless," Hermione continued, smirking a little. "I was worried that— Well." She wasn't sure if it would be hurtful to say that she hadn't thought Liz was ready either, so she kept the thought to herself. Sort of to herself, anyway, her occlumency was good enough these days to feel Liz there — she wasn't sure how much Liz was picking up, exactly, but if she didn't say it out loud Liz could avoid the topic by pretending she hadn't seen it. "How have you been? You and Daphne have been dating for a while and, well." Hermione also didn't say aloud that she was aware Liz had issues with depression sometimes, and that Liz lived alone, which might not be great for her when she was feeling down.

Liz rolled her eyes. "I'm fine. Okay, not fine, it sucks, but I'm not going to, like, do anything stupid or anything. I actually have an outstanding promise with Severus that I'll tell him if I'm feeling shitty enough that hurting myself or something seems like a good idea."

"Oh, that's...good." Hermione didn't like the implication of the promise having been made in the first place, suggesting Severus had thought it was necessary, that it'd come up before, but she also kept that thought to herself. Although there was that time that— Wait, had Liz told Hermione about that disturbing suicidal moment a year ago? She didn't remember that...

After a second, she decided to actually comment on that thought (or at least part of it), if only to reassure Hermione that it was being taken care of. Feeling people worry about her was kind of unpleasant, clinging sharp and sticky at her skin, ugh. "I've had pretty bad crashes at least once a year since starting at Hogwarts and having to deal with this horseshite all the time, so, reasonable precaution. Since the Tournament started, we've been keeping a closer eye on it, I'm taking these silly mood screening test things like every other week, it's ridiculous. And Nilanse's been keeping my company — I know she went to Cediny for advice, which I think included not leaving me alone for too long. She's been keeping me occupied, probably trying to distract me from wallowing.

"Speaking of which..." Liz reached into her bag, pulled out two sizeable ceramic containers, rectangular, each a bit smaller than a proper baking sheet. They were covered with glass lids that were rather similar to the one on the potion (except for being rectangular), but these had actually been in storage at Clyde Rock, were at least a hundred years old — this was just how mages handled resealable containers, apparently. "We made far too much to eat all of it on our own before it goes bad. Nilanse has been distributing some of it out to the elves on other properties, and I figured I might as well bring some so long as I'm dropping by."

Curious, Hermione reached across the table — having the table between them was possibly the only reason Hermione hadn't reflexively tried to hug her when she found out about Daphne, which was a relief, honestly — after a bit of fiddling snapped open the latch on one of the lids. This one was full of multiple kinds of biscuits and a stack of nut brittle. "Oh wow, you have been busy." Hermione quick checked the other container, this one filled with rows of fist-sized single-serving bread rolls (some of them filled, Liz had included little pieces of paper identifying them), before sneaking a biscuit out of the first and closing them both back up again. "Thank you, Liz, it all looks great. Do we need to get the containers back to you before the end of break?" She took a bite out of the biscuit, an instant shiver of shock and pleasure shooting through her mind, her free hand reflexively coming up to her chin. Once her mouth was clear again, she said, "Okay, how is your cooking only getting better? Honestly..." and once the words were out immediately took another chunk out of the biscuit.

Liz felt her lips twitching — she wondered if Hermione had even noticed she'd switched to French. "I didn't really bake at all before, I still have a lot of catching up to do there." Well, maybe not so much anymore, but. "I know your parents are silly dentists and can be strict about sugar, but I can still be ridiculous about sweet things, so this all has a lot less than they're supposed to. I figured they might be less of a pain about it this way."

"Mm, maybe, maybe not." They relaxed about it at this time of year — it was Christmas, after all — and Hermione could taste the butter on this, even with the low sugar content they might not approve otherwise. "Those are almonds, and...cloves? Is that honey?"

"Yep." There was also a little bit of cinnamon and nutmeg in there, but they were pretty subtle, she wasn't surprised if Hermione hadn't noticed. "I'm now very certain that my not liking sweet things is a Seer thing, from cane sugar, I'm pretty sure honey-sweetened things only bother me by association. Sometimes in baking you do need some sugar in things, for chemistry reasons, but as long as the sweetness isn't the primary flavour, having a little bit of honey in it is fine. Still less than the recipe is supposed to have, it took a little experimenting to get the consistency right." They were still a bit denser and chewer than Liz thought biscuits were supposed to be, but she thought they were great — and Hermione agreed, evidently — so she didn't really give a damn what anyone else thought.

"Oh, well that's good. That you're making progress dealing with your Sight and that you're keeping occupied, I mean. Nilanse is very thoughtful." Hermione finished off her biscuit, gave the container a lingering look before shoving it closer to Liz, out of reach — she'd rather not spoil her lunch.

So they were very good then, she thought, trying not to smile. (She didn't even know why, it just kind of tickled her.) "I believe you mean she's nosey. But she's fun, I think I've been a bad influence, so, whatever." Hermione's lips tilted into a smirk, amused by the thought of Liz and Nilanse playing off each other, Liz just shrugged back. "I, um. Daphne brought up the idea of going to culinary school after graduation, so. Been thinking about that."

Hermione was a little surprised that Liz was just casually bringing up Daphne in conversation with only a slight hint of discomfort, wondered how Liz was dealing with the feelings end of things. (Sometimes Hermione was very jealous of Liz's ability to know what everyone around her was feeling at all times, even while knowing it could be a huge pain in crowds.) But what she said was, "That's an interesting thought, it might be worth considering. You are an excellent cook, and... I don't know, do mages have the same culture around properly-trained chefs and the like? I haven't heard much about that, and their world is much smaller." And also all the wealthy people had house-elves anyway, but she didn't say that part out loud.

"Not as much, but it exists. Supposedly there are a couple places you can go, but I might end up going to a muggle one anyway." She would guess there were interesting things you could do to food with magic, which wouldn't be taught at a muggle one, obviously, but she could just play with that on her own. Alchemy, she should probably keep studying alchemy... "And you don't have to worry about bringing up Daphne, seriously, I'm fine. It sucks, yes, I'd be lying if I said I haven't ended up crying about it...but I kind of cry a lot these days, honestly, hormones are a bitch. And it's going to be super awkward when we get back to school for a while — I haven't talked to Tracey yet, that's going to be a pain. But you don't have to tiptoe around it, I'll be okay. Really."

Hermione was still going to worry about it, some — that's just what happened when you gave a damn about people — but Liz thought she seemed a little relieved, at least. Though, honestly, she didn't know how much of that was because she had Severus and Nilanse keeping an eye on her. Whatever, good enough.

Thankfully they didn't have to linger in the awkwardness for very long, called down for lunch right around then. As far as Liz was aware, nobody in Hermione's family were particularly religious — except for one of her uncles and his wife and children, of course, but they were Muslim, so not exactly likely to be big on Christmas. (That is, Daniel's side of the family wasn't particularly religious, they didn't really talk to Emma's side much.) It'd come up at school before, Hermione had said something about her grandparents losing religion during the War, which was fair enough, Liz guessed growing up in a time like that could do that to you. They did still kind of make a big deal about Christmas, though in a secular, very French sort of way, mostly involving everyone going back to Hermione's grandmother's house (somewhere around Orléans) to have a big damn Christmas Eve dinner (réveillon), hang out doing family shite for a week or so.

It wasn't always super easy to arrange, there were different complications every year. There was the transportation necessary to get there, of course — only Hermione's grandmother and her aunt Tienne actually still lived in Orléans, and Eugène's family lived all the way in Tunisia — everyone being grown-ups with their own schedules (and in-laws to negotiate who they got to spend which holidays with). Also, apparently Muslims had similar dietary restrictions as Jews, so they had to be a little careful with the food, and réveillon was kind of big on having a lot of wine, so they needed to have something else for Eugène's family, it was a whole thing, because apparently Muslims weren't supposed to have alcohol at all? News to Liz, but whatever. (Sometimes there were additional complications if Christmas happened to be during Ramadan that year, but Liz didn't know what that was, so she just took Hermione's word for it.) Hermione's parents didn't feel super comfortable travelling to France for a week when they had a three-month-old baby, so they'd be missing it this year.

So, since they couldn't go to France, they were trying to make up for it a little bit by doing all kinds of shite. Mostly just, like, hanging out at home and talking and playing card games or whatever the hell, since going out and doing things could also be difficult with a three-month-old infant — though there were plans to go out some over the holiday, to parks or checking out public decorations and the like. They were also cooking proper, involved meals every day (Daniel and Emma trading off doing the cooking and cleaning and looking after Rachael), and they were going through so many bottles of wine. There were rows of the things along one wall in the kitchen, when they got downstairs Daniel told Hermione to just go pick one.

(Of course, Daniel was very French, so having a lot of wine in the house wasn't unusual, but still.)

Lunch was a stew, made in part from leftovers from dinner the night Hermione got back from school — when they'd left to pick up Hermione, Emma had left a whole bloody chicken (capon, technically) slow-roasting in the oven, they'd lingered in London for a bit to get tea or coffee and drop by a couple shops, dinner ready by the time they got back, which was a neat trick. It wasn't a chicken soup, with the yellowish translucent broth, but a proper thick gravy-like stew — Liz suspected red wine had been involved at some point — with carrots and potatoes and mushrooms and celery and whatever else. Really thick and hearty and herby, though Liz could have done without the celery. There was also bread, bought from a bakery, but the garlic-herb butter with it was homemade — roasting the garlic and mixing it together, she meant, obviously Daniel hadn't made the butter himself.

It was pretty fucking good, basically, Liz hadn't realised Daniel was such a good cook. She would have skipped the celery, used less parsley and more pepper and thyme, added barley or something to thicken it even more, maybe a different, fruitier wine, but it was great. And the garlic butter was a great idea, she should just keep some of this shite around the house...could use more salt, though...

And it also went really well with the wine — Emma did ask if it was a great idea to be drinking, since she had a potion to brew, but a single glass wasn't going to mess her up that badly. Great work, Daniel, not at all what she'd expected when Hermione said they'd be feeding her, fucking hell.

Lunch was also the first time Liz ever saw Hermione's baby sister in person. Not that there was much to see, babies weren't very interesting — babies did look weird, all squishy and out of proportion, but they didn't really do much. Rachael had definitely inherited the family's curly hair, though it was thin and really short, little swirls sketched over the top of her head, and...Liz thought she might be a little darker than Hermione? Like, Hermione mostly just looked like a white girl — until she got a tan over the summer, which made it kind of hard to tell — but Liz suspected it would be somewhat more obvious that Rachael's grandfather was Algerian. (Liz still wasn't sure whether that meant black or Arab, but it seemed rude to ask.) Or maybe that would change as Rachael grew up, Liz didn't know how babies worked.

Rachael's mind was also super super noisy, sharp and colourful and unfocussed and chaotic, which was quickly giving her a headache. Thankfully, her mind was also rather smaller than the average — due to her brain not being properly developed yet, Liz assumed — so it was easier to just ignore. Liz could tell immediately that Rachael was magical, though — she had the same little sparkles that all mages did, the feelings pulsing off of her thick with them due to the unfocussed nature of her mind...which was probably why kids did accidental magic so easily, come to think of it? Rachael was colouring the ambient magic around her, just by existing. The effect wasn't enough to actually change anything, but her environment being primed like that would reduce the threshold necessary to do shite, so, yeah, that made sense. Emma said that the people at the Greenwood had said that it could be months before Rachael presented magic at all, or even years, but no, Liz could tell. It might be a while before she actually did any 'accidental' magic, sure, but she was definitely magical.

...It was a little weird that nobody at the Greenwood could feel what she could, when Liz thought about it. But then, Liz had a weird combination of magical abilities, and had also broken her brain as a child, so it could be any particular thing or an odd combination of them, like how her mind magic and her psychometry did funny things when going on at the same time, so, who the hell knew. Rachael was a mage, though, trust her.

Daniel and Emma had somewhat mixed feelings about that — mostly because of how super racist magical Britain was, and also how politically unstable they seemed at the moment — but Hermione was happy about it. Liz guessed they'd count that as part of her Christmas gift for the family, why not.

(If she did adopt Hermione, she should probably adopt Rachael too — which was actually a benefit for her purposes, making it clear that she was bringing multiple people into the family so someone would be able to inherit her shite. Except, she'd want to bring in Daniel and Emma too, to make sure they were protected under magical law, it'd be a whole thing. She'd ask Sylvia how exactly they'd go about that before coming to a final decision. Pretty sure she was going to do it, at this point, just wanted to make sure she had everything figured out first.)

Anyway, they lingered over lunch for a while, Liz probably eating too much — the stew was really good, okay — sipping at wine and talking about...whatever, the topic bouncing around all over the place. Some of them were kind of awkward, especially when the Tournament came up, but it wasn't so bad, Emma and Daniel always breezing past tense moments before they could fester. That wasn't just a coincidence either, Liz could tell they were keeping it light and being entertaining on purpose. Apparently the charisma had skipped a generation, because both of Hermione's parents had social skills that Hermione just didn't, obvious even in a casual conversation like this. Which was interesting, but not really important to wonder about just now.

Liz had finished a second glass of wine, a little noticeably tipsy now, when they finally left the table — Daniel to clean up and do some early prep-work for dinner, Emma going to put Rachael down for a nap (maybe sneak one herself after the test, babies were exhausting), and Liz and Hermione going back to the library to get the potion going. There were only a couple ingredients left to put in — it'd been put into stasis just before it needed Hermione's blood, which was close to the end — Liz set the cauldron on the heating thing, turned it on, and set out the remaining ingredients, eyes running over a sheet of paper with instructions from Severus. It wasn't complicated, from this point, just a lot of stirring, keeping a careful eye on the feel of the magic. At least it wasn't a potion Hermione had to take — if Liz fucked it up, it just wouldn't work right and they'd have to start over from scratch, she wouldn't accidentally poison anyone.

Liz touched a finger to the cauldron near the rim, just under the cover. Nope, not ready yet, a few more minutes. Mind bubbling with curiosity, Hermione asked, "You're leaving the stasis spells on while it's on the heat?"

"Yeah, it was warm when it was put into stasis, so it needs to be warmed up again. So the sudden temperature change doesn't fuck up the potion, you know."

"Oh right, that makes sense, never mind."

They waited quietly for a moment, after a minute or two Liz touching the side of the cauldron again — there, that's better. She undid the latch on the lid, twitched a little at the itchy crackle of the spells being released, pulled it away and immediately picked up a glass stirring rod. Diving into the stirring pattern for this stage in the potion, after a few times around she lifted the rod up a few inches. The silvery-blue potion was sticking to the sides of the stirring rod, which it wasn't supposed to do, but Severus had predicted that might happen, had told her what to do just in case. A few drops of leech juice and a pinch of salt, stir, stir, stir...

There we go, much better. "I need your blood now." The little knife of dark greenish-blackish glass was borrowed, Liz didn't actually have a glass knife herself. She had glass utensils, like spoons and stirring rods and the like, but glass knives were basically only used for blood magic, which obviously wasn't the sort of thing they did in Potions class. Holding Hermione's palm, right at the base of her fingers, Liz carefully cut into the pad of her middle finger, drawing out drops into the potion with a squeeze, one, two, three. The drops of blood hit the surface of the potion with odd sizzling noises, little filaments of red stitching into the silvery-blue base. Liz quick cast a healing charm on Hermione's finger and a sterilising charm on the knife, and then immediately got back to stirring, tight little butterfly patterns, the tip of the rod starting just under the surface and spiralling down toward the bottom, and then working her way back up, and then starting over with the pattern rotated a third of the way around the cauldron, and then again...

Like she'd said, a lot of stirring.

After the stirring pattern was done, Liz added a dusting of powdered augurey eggshell, Hermione waited until after she'd started the next stirring phase before speaking. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to — I know it might be sensitive, and none of my business, I'm just curious. What happened with Daphne? It's just, it seemed to be going so well..."

Liz sighed. Normally, she might not answer at all — she trusted Hermione not to make a fuss about things, like some of her other friends might, she just didn't want to talk about it — but she could tell Hermione was... She didn't entirely get how that kind of relationship worked, and considering going with Neville to the Yule Ball was a date now, she was kind of nervous. "It's not anything you'll have to worry about. Or, well, I don't know, I guess — Neville's family sounds kind of awful, but I don't think they managed to fuck him up as badly as I am. And I kind of doubt you're planning on screwing him any time soon."

"...Oh." Hermione's head was practically simmering, bouncing all over trying to figure out what Liz was implying had happened. But she also thought it would be rude to come right out and ask — especially since she was kind of assuming that whatever sex-type thing had set Liz off had been unwanted on her end — so she just said, "No, probably not."

"It's not— Daphne didn't do anything wrong." Focussed on dropping a couple laurel leaves in the potion (swiftly dissolving with the help of a little light charmwork), Liz grit her teeth. She hadn't meant to imply Daphne had...what, coerced her or something. ("Rape" seemed like too strong a word for what Hermione was imagining, but she couldn't think of what to call it.) None of this was Daphne's fault, she didn't want Hermione to hate her or anything — so Liz had kind of shot herself in the foot and now she had to talk about it, she guessed. "I wasn't... We were in bed, and I had a flashback."

Hermione audibly gasped, thin from being drawn through her teeth, shock and sympathetic horror and sadness echoing disorientingly intense around her, Liz almost fucked up her stirring. "Oh, Liz..."

"Yeah, turns out P.T.S.D. is a bitch sometimes," she said, quick and flat. Signalling that she didn't want to talk about it, she hoped. "I'm just, you know, worried about after-effects. That can happen sometimes, sounds miserable, and isn't really fair to Daphne either. Even though she's willing to try, but she's too bloody nice — honestly, she apologised to me for the whole thing, ridiculous. That was kind of a problem itself, too."

"...How so?"

Liz rolled her eyes. The colour of the potion was slowly shifting, the magic smooth and grasping, it was almost done, a little more salt, some dried ivy... "Maybe you didn't notice this, Hermione, but I am not a good person. Sometimes Daphne being so bloody perfect all the time makes me feel like shite."

"I think you're a good person." The soft, clingy, not-quite-pity Herimone was broadcasting was suddenly slashed by something sharper and colder. Her head tilting, her eyes tipped away from the potion, looking blankly up at the ceiling as her mind ticked along. "I think you're a good friend. Those aren't necessarily the same thing, are they?"

"Hexing Lavender." Brutally and efficiently getting Hermione's things back was a good friend thing to do, maybe, but the way she'd done it definitely wasn't a good person thing.

"Yeah. I mean, I wish you weren't so down on yourself, but I get it. Daphne makes me feel cruel sometimes too, and I'm not... Well." Exactly what Hermione was not was too tangled up, a whole bunch of different things. Hermione wasn't Liz, basically, was the point. "That girl really is too bloody nice sometimes. Once you get past the cold, formal Slytherin act, anyway."

"I'm not down on myself about it, really. It's kind of like the Liz is broken thing, you know, just a thing that's true. Most of the time, I'm okay with being a shitty person." For what Severus would consider abused kid reasons, and he probably had a point about that, but whatever. "It's just, Daphne thinks I'm a good person, and that makes me feel bad. Like I'm lying to her, I guess, I don't like it."

"Fair enough. It's probably for the best, then. Oh, I meant— That sounds a bit more flippant than what I was going for, you know what I mean."

She felt her lips twitch, amused despite herself. Projecting the thought directly into Hermione's mind, Yes, I know what you mean. "Probably. I think she'd be happier with someone else, at least. Who knows, maybe I would be too, but I'm not going to do anything like that for a while — like I already said, I just wasn't ready for this stuff."

"Yeah, that makes sense. It might be for the best, but I am still sorry you're going through this. If there's anything I can do to make it easier...?"

Liz shrugged. "We can stop talking about it, maybe."

There was a flutter of dark amusement from Hermione. "All right. Oh wait, what are you doing for the Yule Ball?"

"Not going?" That was pretty obvious, Liz thought, not like she even wanted to go to the bloody thing...

"...You know the Champions are supposed to open up the dance and everything."

"Because I was so looking forward to that. I'm not even supposed to be in this bloody thing in the first place, they'll manage without me."

"Fair enough." Hermione suspected it might not be that simple — at the very least, it was going to cause issues for Liz after the fact if she didn't show up. (Witch Weekly would definitely make a fuss about it, if nothing else.) But it was kind of late to arrange a new person to go with, and going alone would probably be worse for Liz than not going at all, so Hermione wasn't going to make a point about it. "That's too bad, you already have the nice dress and everything."

"...Yeah." That hadn't actually occurred to Liz until right this second. She did like that dress, but it wasn't the sort of thing she could wear any random day just because — and she wouldn't be able to wear it at all after the blood alchemy thing this summer. So, there probably wouldn't be another opportunity. It was expensive, sure, wasting the money wasn't a big deal to her, but she was weirdly disappointed she'd probably never get to use it properly. It kind of sucked, honestly, more than she would have expected over something so bloody frivolous... "That is kind of sad, I do like... Oh well.

"This is ready now," she said, attaching the clamp to the rim of the cauldron and lifting it away. (Some potions were sensitive enough that the heat remaining on the rack even after the heating element was turned off could ruin them.) She started shuffling over to pour the catalyst over the parchment, before hitching to a halt. "Oh wait, did you want to go get your parents, or show them later? The drawing will be permanent," she added, catching a thought.

"In that case, we might as well do it now. Dad is probably still cleaning up, so it might be a few minutes."

"Right, here we go, then." Tilting the cauldron with the clamp was a little awkward, and she needed to aim as close to the middle of the parchment as possible — Liz being so bloody short made that difficult. Severus's directions specified to pour it in a thin stream, not just slopping it over all at once, and from enough of a height for a little bit of air to push its way in. After a bit of holding the thing up and experimenting with different angles, she found the best way was to just hold her wrist straight, and sort of loosen her grip, gradually letting the cauldron droop sideways. The instant the potion touched the parchment, Liz began to feel it work, a sharp snap-hiss-crackle of magic — almost like water hitting a hot, oily pan, but more felt than heard, like thunder echoing in her chest. Grasping tendrils reached toward Hermione, a twisting shimmer that sank down, and in, and out, leaves rustling in the wind as the branches stretched out of sight—

Hermione let out a little ooh noise, taking half a step back. One hand came up against her chest, right under her ribs between her heart and stomach. Frowning, an odd lurch in her head she didn't know how to read, but it didn't seem painful, Liz concentrated on continuing the steady stream of potion onto the parchment. "That feels funny..."

"You can feel that." It wasn't really a question, though it was curious — it hadn't seemed like Severus had noticed anything.

"Yeah. Kind of tickles, I guess. It doesn't hurt, just, weird."

"Right. Almost done." The spreading pool of purplish potion, sparkling rainbow flecks in the light, was sinking into the parchment, blushing more pinkish and gaining a faint glow as it went. After a couple seconds, the light began to fade, starting in the middle and quickly spreading out, the pink retreating to leave darker script and lines in its wake. The whole process took maybe fifteen seconds, and it was over, the ambient magic in the room settling back into proper shape. Liz set the cauldron back down on the rack (didn't want to damage the table from the heat), shook the stiffness out of her wrist. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, it just felt weird. Oh, this is fascinating," Hermione breathed, leaning over the table. Pointing, her finger hovering just over the parchment without actually touching, "I've seen letters written by my grandfather, and he does this funny little squiggle with Ns at the ends of words. That's definitely his handwriting. I know you said that's what it does, but wow — how does that even work?"

"No idea," Liz admitted, shrugging. Which wasn't quite true, honestly, but she wasn't sure how to explain it, exactly. Her thought was that, however the potion queried magic for the person's name, since it was being produced in written form it got how the person would write their name, which had a certain symmetry to it, you know? But it was weird divination shite, intuitive, she wouldn't be able to explain it in terms that Hermione would accept.

Anyway, glancing over the web branching out from Hermione Granger in the middle — tight and precise and meticulously legible, reminding Liz of how she wrote her name at the top of an essay — Liz was a little surprised to see colour on the page, indicating heritable magical traits. Not nearly as dense with it as Liz's test, of course, but some, more like Severus's...which would suggest Hermione had relatively close magical relatives. Not that that was that much of a surprise, when she thought about it — the dominant theory was that all muggleborns had magical ancestors, and probably not even that far back — it was still interesting. Liz flipped over the page with Severus's instructions, where she'd copied off Tamsyn's explanation of what the different colours meant.

"You have magesight and...the animagi trait. And omniglottalism, but I guess that one didn't activate." Though it might have something to do with why Hermione's mind was so bloody busy all the time, maybe she'd done something similar to Liz and broken herself in a funny way? Hermione could bloody memorise entire books, if she tried, so that was possible...

Hermione glanced back at Liz, blinking. "Really?"

"Yeah, the magesight is the blue and purple here, the blue and silver is omniglottalism, and the animagi thing is the red and orange." Out of curiosity, she traced the magesight line through Daniel Granger, and then Athénaïs — just an odd jumbled squiggle in place of a surname, curiously — to Mélisande Jocelyne de Grâce-Savesse, to Clamença— "Wait a second, Cæciné?"

"Where? Oh wow, you're right, there are Cæcinés up here. Um, my great-great-grandmother... Grâce-Savesse is an old French magical family too, and so is d'Angeus, and so is Œillèsie. That's interesting. I can't read these at all, though," she said, waving over the adjacent section of the parchment. Daniel's father's father's family, those names were in different scripts — most were in what Liz recognised as Arabic, but a couple were in a different, blockier script she didn't recognise at all. The animagus line came from in there somewhere — there was also the deep purple line of the Sight too, but it cut off long before Hermione — but she couldn't read any of it.

"Do you know what script this is?" Liz asked, pointing. "The rest are Arabic, but I don't know this one."

"Not sure. It looks sort of like... Oh, I can't think of the name. Samiya would know." Her Tunisian aunt, she meant. "It might be the letters the Tuareg use, but the name isn't coming to me."

"Tuareg?"

"Saharan nomads, mostly in Niger and Mali." Hermione's pronunciation of "Niger" was very obviously French.

"Ah, okay." Niger and Mali bordered Algeria, she was pretty sure, so that was about the right part of Africa. If they were mages, it would make sense if the magical country in the area used a similar writing system — she knew there were Arabic-speaking countries along the coast, but she knew basically nothing about what was going on further inland. Berbers, were Tuareg Berbers? She had no idea...

Anyway, the omniglottalism actually came in through Emma — they should check later to see if Rachael got it too, maybe there was a way to make sure it activated — bouncing through a couple perfectly ordinary-sounding English names before devolving to blank of blank, back far enough already that a lot of ordinary people didn't have surnames yet. Which needn't necessarily have even been very long ago — back along the omniglottalism line, the names had started sounding Cambrian, and supposedly a lot of people in, like, rural Wales or whatever hadn't started having official surnames until around the turn of the century. There was also a red and silver line of, um, that was spirit magic, but only the last couple generations way at the end, nowhere near Hermione. These were probably mages back here too — Emma's father's mother's family — but it was impossible to tell, since there weren't any surnames they could look up.

"I might actually have magesight," Hermione said while Liz was still tracing the omniglottalism line. "That would explain a couple things. Honestly, I assumed everyone felt magic like that, until I was talking to some of the other muggleborns."

"Magesight is pretty common — like ten per cent of mages, or something like that? So, not everyone, but it's not super rare, either. Supposedly you can switch on omniglottalism, we should look into that." Though, Liz vaguely remembered Severus saying something about doing so being safe because Liz was already a mind mage, it might not work for Hermione. And that was assuming she hadn't already broken her mind somehow. "Um. And I can ask Sirius for stuff about the animagus transformation. Apparently there are meditations and stuff, you can start on those long before you're ready to do the actual magic."

"That'd be great, thank you, Liz." Hermione didn't have much faith in Sirius's advice on practically any subject, but she was aware the Blacks' library was absurd, so he'd have better access to materials than she did. She didn't think learning to turn into an animal would be particularly useful, but researching the magic itself should be interesting, at least.

"I'm told if you do it right you can turn into all kinds of things, as long as you understand their anatomy well enough."

Mind shifting in confusion, Hermione said, "I thought that was American magic."

"It's the same thing, supposedly, the European practice just has people stop once they get the first one, for some inexplicable reason. Well, it's hard, you basically have to start over from scratch, I guess that's a decent reason. African animagi can do it too, and historical European mages sometimes took all kinds of different shapes." The Morrigan was particularly famous for turning into all kinds of animals (most frequently ravens or wolves, but sometimes other things too), but she was an absurdly powerful immortal sorceress, and at that point the rules basically didn't apply to you anymore. And that was assuming she even existed in the first place, Liz had heard there was some debate on the matter.

"Oh, well that sounds far more useful, then. Ask Sirius to write to me directly, please — I'll have a lot of questions, no need to pass them through you."

Feeling her lips tilt into a smirk, she drawled, "Good point." Liz went back up to the opposite end of the parchment, Daniel's mother's ancestors. Most of the surnames over here were familiar, if only from her history reading, old noble families. There were a couple Aquitanian families (like Cæciné), and a couple Germanic-sounding names, but most of them were all French — so, Hermione had had relatively close magical relatives, but they'd probably all been killed in the Revolution. (The French nobility had been devastated over the course of the civil war and the subsequent British/Dutch invasion, most of them completely extinct in the modern day.) She was probably related to Artèmi somehow, which was neat, but the Cæciné family was bloody huge, so Liz doubted it was very closely. There was a Rosier way back here, who were also a British family, though she didn't know how closely the Breton and French branches were connected. "Hey, you might be distantly related to Draco — his grandmother is a Rosier, you know." Liz had no idea why she knew that off the top of her head, purebloods gossipped about how everyone was related to everyone far too much.

Hermione let out a harsh, sharp groan. "Don't even joke about that. At least I didn't see any Malfoys up there, they were a French family too." Up there, because Hermione had moved down to her mother's side of the parchment, poking through the names branching away down there.

"Yeah, I don't see any Malfoys. I picked up a book on the French Revolution a while ago, and if I remember correctly, the Malfoys and the d'Angeus didn't— Wait a second." Liz went back to the middle of the chart, Hermione Granger, Daniel Granger, Athénaïs (plus meaningless squiggle)... "No fucking way."

"What is it?"

"Nicodème Apollinaire d'Angeus," Liz said, tapping on Hermione's great-grandfather.

"Yes, I saw that. I assume my grandmother must have been a squib, and—" Hermione cut herself off with a sharp shiver of shock, intense enough Liz almost physically felt it, the air pulsing around her like from a huge drumbeat. Her eyes wide, she said, "You don't think that's the Nicodème d'Angeus, do you?"

Liz shrugged. "I don't know. I don't remember what his wife was called. I can look it up when I get home. Or, you know what, I can do it right now — Nilanse?" Calling Nilanse to get a book for her just to look up a name might seem a little silly, but it was...kind of a big deal, if she was right. The Nicodème d'Angeus was...

Well, he was terrorist, Liz guessed was the way to put it. While Nilanse popped back to Hogwarts to track down Liz's French Revolution book, Hermione excused herself to go get her parents — if Daniel's grandfather really was an infamous war criminal, that seemed like the kind of thing he might want to know.

According to her book on the French Revolution — the Communalist one earlier this century, that is — the government at the time had sort of been a continuation of the government from before the muggle French Revolution...and also sort of regressed to before Louis XIV (the King of France at the time) severely streamlined the archaic mediaeval governing institutions in the country, but the details behind that were more in depth than Liz really needed to know. The magical government had been oddly decentralised, with different judicial/legislative bodies in each province (called parlements), sort of like little Wizengamots, run by the noble families with major holdings in the area and a selection of wealthy commoners or skilled professionals. Exactly how this worked was somewhat more complicated than the Wizengamot, because seats on the parlements were determined by the property holdings themselves — so, a single noble family might have multiple seats, one for each titled estate they owned, and might have seats in multiple parlements. Each of the provinces had their own security/police authority (called the maréchaussée), run independently by each parlement. Enforcement of Secrecy was managed by a special, national-level ministry associated with the Parlement of Paris, which also had other offices that handled all national-level stuff, like infrastructure and disputes between provinces, and international relations and trade and the like, blah blah. The head of state was a bloke selected on a ten-year term by the Parlement of Paris, called simply the Prince (or, much more rarely, Princess), who ran all those national-level offices, but didn't have authority over the provincial maréchaussées, which could act as a check on his power, theoretically preventing too much national-level interference in local affairs.

It was a complicated, tangled, incestuous mess, was what Liz was saying. She thought the British magic government was slow to react, she was honestly shocked the French had ever managed to accomplish anything.

Nicodème d'Angeus had been on the Parlement of Paris, as the Revolution picked up had been selected to head the maréchaussée in the capitol province. The Communalists had been somewhat successful at organising in Paris, but under Nicodème the authorities cracked down hard, many Revolutionaries killed in scuffles with the police (or 'resisting arrest' and 'escaping custody'), but many also managed to flee into the outlying provinces. And the Revolution proceeded, the conservatives' response scattered (thanks in no small part to the government's decentralised nature). The Communalists started organising labour strike actions, which provincial maréchaussée would try to beat into submission, but the Communalists started to win these fights, as they got more organised and their numbers grew turning right around to seize properties, workshops and housing blocks — and, in time, entire magical towns — wrested out of noble hands. Until, finally, provincial administrations started to fall in their entirety, the Communalists taking over government buildings and seizing noble estates and capturing their former rulers in advance of proper tribunals...or, sometimes, just storming the homes of the aristocracy and basically lynching them, because the French Revolution had gotten very bloody at times.

The Parlement of Paris had tried to stop it, scrambling to appoint Nicodème to a brand new post they called the Grand Marshall — basically concentrating all security authority into the hands of a single office, any remaining maréchaussée officers put directly under his command. But it was kind of too late, before they could hardly do anything the Revolutionaries, having already seized control of the peripheral provinces, began a concerted assault on Paris. The battle lasted a whole week, but before long they'd taken control of the entire capitol province, including the government buildings and a variety of noble properties, and they basically had control of the entire country. They'd even managed to capture the Prince in the process — he'd ultimately be executed for various crimes a few months later, alongside other officials of the old government.

The Communalists hadn't gotten everyone though, various members of the nobility and the maréchaussées had managed to slip away into hiding. They gathered together to form a sort of government-in-exile — which was called literally "the Ruling Council of the True France", because of course it was — Nicodème selected as both their Prince and the commander of all loyalist forces. And then the really nasty part of the war started. Because, see, the old guard weren't just going to let the Communalists take over, not while they still had wealth and loyal minions to spend in an attempt to retain their power — like various other revolutions through history, the worst of the bloodshed didn't happen until after the Revolutionaries had technically taken the reigns of government, a litany of reactionary elements attempting to prevent them from actually accomplishing anything by any means necessary.

Which had involved lots and lots of war crimes. Assassinations, in particular through poisonings and cursed objects slipped to people one way or another, random attacks on infrastructure, basic terrorist stuff, really. The attempts to slip a target deadly shite often killed the wrong people, messengers and assistants and domestic staff and the like, which Nicodème had thought was just as good — they might not be the leadership, but they were still supporting the Communalist cause with their labour, and the random deaths would hopefully contribute to an environment of fear which should entice the lowly peasants to retreat back to their proper place. Nicodème was also known for doing things, like, port-keying into public markets with a team of battlemages, indiscriminately slaughter anyone around, trade a few spells with the Garde populaire (Communalist militia) before port-keying out again. The actual losses Communalist forces took in these attacks were quite low, mostly civilian casualties, which was apparently actually the point.

Like, that wasn't even a guess, they knew that for certain — when the Communalists managed to finally track down and take out Nicodème and his people, their documentation had survived the battle, including Nicodème's private journals. In his own writing, he was very frank about killing any random commoners being just as good, since they were all basically guilty anyway. Liz hadn't been joking about him being a terrorist.

His journals also made it very clear that he was a huge pureblood supremacist, naturally, and also super racist against nonhumans. (It didn't help that muggleborns and nonhumans mostly sided with the Communalists.) And rabidly classist too, of course, but he was French nobility, what do you expect. To put it bluntly, he wasn't the sort of person that a muggleborn would be pleased to learn was her most recent magical ancestor.

By the time Emma walked into the library, Liz had her book open on the table, flipping over to Nicodème's introduction — there had to be family information in there somewhere. "I see the potion worked. Hermione said there was something you wanted to ask about?" Emma briefly detoured to pick up a pair of reading glasses from one of the shelves before approaching the table.

"Let's wait for her and Daniel to come back." Liz found the right page, glanced back and forth between the book and the chart... Yep, Nicodème's parents were right, and his wife. Fucking hell, what were the chances of that?

"All right. Oh, interesting, this is my mother's handwriting...and my grandfather's." There was an odd, cool edge to Emma's mind, that Liz wasn't sure how to read. Sad, maybe, but in a distant, faded sort of way. Supposedly she didn't get on with her family these days, for stupid racist reasons — if Liz hadn't been told, she might have never guessed Daniel wasn't really white, but whatever — presumably that had something to do with it.

Not sure whether she should comment on any of that, Liz just went with, "Yeah, it does that." Emma poked over the names on her side of the chart, occasionally humming to herself, for a minute or two before Hermione came back, closely followed by her father. "Hey Daniel, what do you know about your mother's family?"

"Nothing," he admitted with a little shrug. "She was abandoned at an orphanage when she was...four or five? I don't think she knows much herself." Daniel came up to the table, leaning over to look over the names. "Oh look, Tifinagh," he said, tapping at the unfamiliar, blocky script.

"That's what it was!" Hermione blurted out. "I was trying to think of the name earlier, but it wasn't coming to me..."

Daniel's lips twitched, mind flickering with amusement. "Mm. I'm told I have a Berber great-grandmother, but I don't know much about her. She definitely wasn't Twareg, though, and I think they were the only people using Tifinagh that long ago — Kabyle students first adapted it in the Sixties, I think, it spread around through nationalist movements from there."

"They're probably magical — the orange over there is the animagus trait, and the purple is the Sight. I don't know much about magical countries outside of Europe, maybe they use the same script down there. Anyway, the thing I'm curious about is this," she said, tapping on Nicodème.

Emma leaned over the table, her glasses perched on her nose visibly shining, ending up rather close to Liz; she caught herself staring, and forced herself to look away. Thankfully, nobody seemed to have noticed Liz getting distracted for a second. (Hermione's mum was surprisingly pretty for her age, okay.) "Nicodème Apollinaire d'Angeus," she read out. Continuing in mostly natural-sounding French, "You have to admit, Daniel, that does have a very particular feel to it. You know how pompous these magical types can be."

"Perhaps. Come to think of it, 'Athénaïs' also sounds like a name you might hear on one of these so-called purebloods." The last word alone was in English. "You girls think my mother might be, oh, what's the word..."

"A squib," Hermione said, in English — Liz knew the proper term in magical French now, thanks to her Competency reading, but Hermione almost certainly didn't. "All of these surnames up there — d'Angeus, Grâce-Savesse, Cæciné, Œillèsie — those are old noble families of magical France. Well, the Cæcinés are based in Languedoc, which is a different country on the magical side, and Grâce-Savesse is a magical site near Lyon, and I'm not sure which side of the border that's on."

Liz shrugged. She didn't know either, and also who gave a damn. "The point is, super racist pureblood types who might think kicking out a squib is a great idea." They should probably be grateful Nicodème hadn't just murdered Hermione's grandmother in the cradle, honestly — he was a huge bastard, after all. "The point is, Nicodème d'Angeus was one of the final leaders of pre-Revolutionary France, and these days is an infamous war criminal."

Heads shivering with surprise, Daniel and Emma just glanced at each other. While they processed that, Hermione asked, "Are you sure it's him?"

"Pretty sure. The names of his wife and his parents are right. Also, apparently there was a rumour going around in the years before the Revolution really kicked off that he and Mélisande had a young child who mysteriously disappeared — most people assume they were a squib, but there's really no confirmation on that one way or the other. The rumours don't even agree if it was a boy or a girl."

"...You're kidding."

"Nope. Look, right here," she said, handing the book over to Hermione. "It's toward the end of the section about his children with Mélisande." She specified because Mélisande was actually Nicodème's second wife — his first wife had been killed in some feud with another noble family, it was complicated and Liz honestly didn't care. Of course, Mélisande was also like thirty years younger than Nicodème — by the time they married Nicodème had actually already had grandchildren from his eldest son, who was himself older than Mélisande — but that was aristocracy for you.

While Hermione smouldered over that — how good the nobility could be at making embarrassing children disappear was pretty unnerving — Emma asked, "You mean, the same Nicodème d'Angeus who was the last Prince of France."

Liz nodded. "I think so. I assumed Hermione must have magic in the family, most muggleborns do, but that's a hell of a name to find, isn't it?"

Hermione's parents glanced at each other again, Liz could feel meaning passing between them somehow. It wasn't mind magic, obviously, they were both muggles, she wasn't sure how they were doing that. After a moment, Daniel bit out a sigh. "One way to find out. Hold that thought." There was a side table by one of the armchairs, holding a phone, a little notebook next to it to take down whatever. Daniel picked up the cordless handset, tapped out a number from memory — it was longer than Liz thought a phone number should be, but then, she'd never made an international call.

Because Daniel was calling his mother right fucking now, apparently. No point in waiting, Liz guessed? Okay then...

The handset held against his face, Daniel waited for the call to go through, wandering back toward the table. Liz heard a click and a muffled voice from here, Daniel responded in French. "Yes, it's me. Happy Christmas, Mother. ... No, no, everything's fine here, Rachael's napping at the moment. ... Of course we will, Mother, I'm not about to forget. ... Oh, did she really? Well, she's my sister's girl, what did you expect?"

"Mailys get in trouble again?" Hermione asked.

Listening to whatever his mother was saying, Daniel silently nodded at her, and then rolled his eyes — it seemed Hermione's cousin Mailys was in a rebellious phase. "I doubt that'll work any better with Mailys than it did with Anne when she was that age. ... Ha, well, that's teenagers for you. ... No, I got the well-behaved child, thankfully, I'll be sure to brag to Rémy about it when his start hitting puberty — thank you, chérie." Daniel shot Hermione a playful wink, she rolled her eyes, smiling a little. "Ah, well, she did manage to peel herself away from her books long enough to get asked to a school dance coming up, but I suspect she'll spend the whole night talking the poor lad's ear off about whatever crosses her mind, so we'll see how that goes."

"Dad."

"Neville knows what Hermione's like, if Hermione babbling off about nerdy shite bothered him he wouldn't have asked her in the first place." Hermione glared at her, her cheeks pinking a little as Emma failed to hold in a snort of laughter. Liz gave her the best innocent look she could manage. "What?"

"Yeah, she got home a couple days ago. ... Christmas, in fact, which is a pain, but we'll make it work. ... No, I actually wanted to ask you about something else. Does the name Nicodème Apollinaire d'Angeus mean anything to you?"

Liz wouldn't necessarily be able to hear anything from the telephone, but she was a cheating mind mage — she knew from eavesdropping on Daniel that his mother had gone completely silent.

After several long seconds, she finally heard the muffled murmur of a response. "One of Maïa's school friends came over and... What would you call this?" he asked Liz.

She wasn't sure what the proper name of it would be in French, but she could come up with something, she guessed. She considered it a moment, before saying, "Une potion qui écrit de l'ascendance." Slightly clunky, but it got the point across, she thought. Also, if Daniel wasn't one hundred per cent certain his mother knew about magic, telling her that was technically breaking Secrecy, but she doubted anyone here cared.

Daniel repeated the phrase, "and the results are very interesting. ... That's hardly the most pressing matter, is it? From what she told me she wanted to see if she has any heritable magical talents — as well as the expected intellectual curiosity, of course, this is Maïa we're talking about. ... Are you going to keep avoiding the question, Mother? ... No, why would—" He bit off a sigh. "Yes, Tienne, Happy Christmas." It sounded like Hermione's grandmother had handed the phone over to her younger aunt, for some reason. Whatever Sébastienne said next, Daniel reared back a little, shock rippling through the air, turned to give the headset a baffled frown. "Ah, well, I don't see why not. ... No, it's just me and the girls, and Maïa's school friend. ... Yes. ... Hogwarts, actually. ... Mhmm. ... Wait, what are—" Daniel again pulled the handset away from his face, frowning at it. "She hung up."

There was a numb sort of surprise in Hermione's head, creeping, like cold droplets trickling down Liz's back. "Did... Did I hear you say 'Hogwarts' talking to Tienne?"

Giving Hermione a sort of baffled look, Daniel asked, "She asked if you and Liz are attending the magical school here in Oxford."

...Oh. Well. Hermione's aunt Tienne knew about magic, okay then.

While Hermione and Emma processed that revelation, Daniel went to return the handset to its place, and then took a couple steps further, leaning to look out the windows. "I think I must be going mad, because my sister said they would— Oh for fuck's sake." Daniel hissed a string of French cursing through his teeth, finishing off with a deep sigh. "I'll be back in a minute."

Before Daniel had even gotten through the doors, Hermione had already rushed over to take his place at the window. Liz knew when she spotted what Daniel must have, surprise intense enough for Liz to shiver with it — her hair even visibly fluffed up a bit, static on the air. "Mum! Grand-mère and Tienne are down there!"

"I did expect they might be," Emma said, her voice halfway a sigh.

"But, but— How did they even get here so fast? They live in Orléans!"

"...I'd guess they apparated. Your aunt must be a muggleborn too." Liz couldn't think of any other reasonable explanation. Hermione's grandmother was obviously a squib, and it wasn't unusual for magic to skip a generation or two — Daniel wasn't magical, but Tienne was only his half-sister, so, who knows. This shite happened sometimes.

Hermione glared at her. "Liz, that means I only have more questions."

"You always have more questions."

Before Hermione could figure out how to respond to that, Emma burst into laughter — she sounded somewhat hysterical, but Liz guessed that was fair, this was a pretty wild situation.

From that point, things pretty quickly got...well, kind of a lot. Liz's theory that Hermione's grandmother was the squib child of an infamous war criminal turned out to be entirely correct. Athénaïs, a slender older woman with sharp hazel eyes and greying blonde hair, didn't remember much about her family at all, but she did know that she'd been born into the House of d'Angeus, and what her parents' names were. She'd been abandoned at an orphanage in '39, before the Revolution got really bad, and had been young enough she hadn't really known anything about it at all. She'd had no idea what happened to her family until Sébastienne — only nineteen (Athénaïs had her very late), tall and loud and boisterous, hair cut short into a tangled curly dark blonde halo around her head — started at Beauxbatons, and learned about recent history.

Athénaïs told Daniel that her father had been an absolute bastard, more than anything she'd been vindictively pleased when she'd heard they were all murdered by Revolutionaries. In her opinion, the Communalists had given the House of d'Angeus and all of their peers what was coming to them. Liz had had no idea Hermione's grandmother was such a badass — Hermione hadn't appreciated the comment, but Sébastienne had laughed out loud, Arthénaïs giving her a quiet little smirk.

And Sébastienne wasn't the only muggleborn in the family, either. Hermione's cousins Aimée and Théodore were both mages — Aimée had started at Beauxbatons the year after Hermione had started at Hogwarts, and Théodore was following her the coming autumn — and their younger brother might be too, it was too early to tell. Sébastienne privately suspected some of Eugène's kids might also be magical, but they didn't know, for the same reason they hadn't known about Hermione.

See, the Statute of Secrecy was fucking stupid — turned out you could tell your family, but only the people in your household. Athénaïs had been pretty sure Sébastienne was magical early on, but she kept it secret from her other children — except Rémy, who'd been a teenager and still been living with her at the time — because she was worried that the evil aristocratic government she'd assumed was still in power on the magical side would just take Sébastienne and obliviate her. She had been a single muggle woman (her second husband having recently died) with three children to take care of (one of them actually a grandchild), it hadn't seemed an unreasonable thing to be worried about.

If she'd known the Communalists had killed all those bastards — the word she used was sous-merdes, because apparently Hermione's grandmother had a mouth on her — she might have just rolled the dice, but she hadn't, so she'd played it safe instead. They might not know about Aimée and Théodore at all if their father (and later their mother too) hadn't still been staying with Athénaïs, helping her with the kids and the bills, when Sébastienne's accidental magic started showing.

So. Yeah, that was fucked up.

Liz didn't stay around for the whole story, packing up her things and excusing herself after she got the general picture of what was going on. As entertaining as Hermione's grandmother had turned out to be, this seemed like private family stuff, she felt very out of place hanging around. She'd definitely get the rest of the story from Hermione later, yes, nice to meet you, see you later, blah blah.

As though Hermione had needed any more reasons to think the Statute of Secrecy was horseshite, honestly...

፠

You needn't have cleared the page, Liz. I'm not sure what crimes you think you confessed to me here, but I would not use it against you in any case. I didn't respond because I simply don't know what to say.
I̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶ I need to think, about what you've told me. I don't think it is quite so terrible as you clearly believe, but I am
I'm uncertain, I guess. I need time to think about it.
If you wish not to go with me anymore, so be it. I am disappointed, but I understand.
cyda ćyfeiłgarwć ac elusen

---

As a reminder, that last line is an old-fashioned closing for letters that the Mistwalkers use, literally means "with fellowship and charity".

So, Dan, your grandfather is an infamous anti-communist war criminal. Merry Christmas! :D

Yule Ball next. What with my self-imposed wordcount cap, it's going to be two, maybe three chapters, because I'm a wordy bitch. I'm going to write out the whole thing beginning to end, no matter how many chapters it takes, and then post it all at once. Expect it to take somewhat longer for the next update to come. After that, I'm going to focus on writing some scenes for First Contact for a bit, before coming back to this one again. Stories, woo, fun.

Bye.