A/N: Hello and welcome back to the Owlcast! We are now a chapter away from the end of the fifteenth episode and... well... things have gotten pretty interesting during this chapter. You might notice that this one is a little shorter than the previous ones and that's mainly because this chapter contains one big scene rather than multiple. When I originally planned out this episode, I was going to have Lizzie speak with Principal Bump and end up exposing some key information about the 'mystery person' in question (whom you all obviously know the identity of by now). But I decided to take this in a different direction after taking inspiration from the original idea I'd had for this episode, which was to use the Blights in Willow's mind to expose some things to Lizzie. You'll see what I mean when you get into this chapter. But for the record, Lizzie will get a chance to speak to Bump in Episode 16, so you're still going to get the original revelations I had in mind... just not yet. XD In the meantime, while this chapter does expose some things that guys sort of already know for Lizzie's sake and then some, it's going to build up to what happens in Chapter 48. I plan to have that chapter be the conclusion to the episode, where the mystery surrounding Lizzie's memory loss and other things will be revealed.

In the meantime, thank you all once again for the favourites, follows, reviews and views. Your continued support is greatly appreciated (though I am surprised at the sudden attention this fic has been getting lately; not sure where you all have been coming from, but it's nice to have you! XD). I'll make the relevant comments about this chapter and answer reviews at the bottom. Until then, I hope you enjoy Chapter 47, even if it's not as eventful as some of you were hoping for.

Also, yes, I am aware of the Season 3 Episode 2 leaks. If you haven't seen the message I've left on my profile, then I shall put a simplified version of it here: anyone spoils the episode before the 21st, whether you tag it as spoilers or not, you will be blocked (if you have an account) or have your review deleted (if you're a guest). Please be respectful to the fans who want to wait until the actual premiere date. If you want to rant about the whole leaked situation itself, that's fine. Just don't include what actually happens in the episode itself (like revealing a specific thing the Collector does or what Luz's palisman is, to name some examples). If there is anyone who ignores me and does it anyway, then I recommend people just avoid the reviews section entirely until the airdate (though I will put a warning on my profile if such a thing does happen with any account reviews).


Chapter 47: Two Heads Are Better

The last two times Lizzie had returned to Hexside School of Magic and Demonics after her expulsion, she hadn't been alone. The first time, she'd been chasing after her panicked employer in confusion and couldn't bring herself to pass through the gates, immediately filled with dread at the horrible recollections she'd gotten from her past. The second time, she'd had a repeated reaction upon going there willingly, forcing Eda to literally shove her inside (though her nerves had ceased by the time she was inside the school). But what she'd had in common both of those times was the fear and dread she'd come to associate with the place, to the point where her legs had become jelly and her heart felt like it was trying to make a jail break out of her chest. However, it seemed that the saying 'third time's the charm' suddenly applied to Lizzie's current circumstances.

Through her short walk to Hexside, Lizzie had spent the majority of her time wisely, attempting to prepare what she was going to say to both the school guards who would likely bar her from entering the inside of the school building and to Principal Bump if she got the chance to speak with him. Despite getting in the ageing principal's good books by helping Eda rectify the trouble she'd caused during her time there and proving to him that she'd learnt from her past mistakes with her potions, her ban from the school grounds had yet to be lifted. Lizzie was certain that she'd be fine though, so long as she made it clear she wasn't there to cause trouble. It had worked the last time she was there with Eda after all, and she knew Principal Bump was an understanding man who would look beyond the rules from time to time. She just had to make sure she had her story straight.

It didn't take long before the looming wooden gates of Hexside's entrance came into view for the young blonde witch, yet she made no move to slow down or stop on the way. With her head held high and her back as straight as Eda's staff, Lizzie kept her gaze ahead and strolled through those gates like it was nothing, not once feeling a change in her general demeanour—no shaky legs, no pounding pulse, not even a sinking feeling in her chest that made her feel like she was suffocating, nor a tightening feeling in her stomach as if it was tangled in knots. For the first time in what had felt like forever, she felt fine, a fact she soon found herself smiling widely at.

'Well, what do you know. Maybe the last time I came here finally put to rest some of the issues I had.' She dared to glance back at the gates from over her shoulder as she gained closer to the steps at the other end of the stone pathway, recalling the revelations she'd had surrounding Xander's identity and what had occurred between them in the past. 'I suppose this is a good sign that I'm not letting Xander ruin my life anymore.' Her smile soon faded with the drooping of her shoulders when she faced forwards again. 'Though I hope I can eventually say the same about his tormentor.'

As she gained closer to the steps of the school's entrance, however, Lizzie's attention was immediately drawn to two familiar creepy-looking figures standing tall on either side of the school's open doors, dressed in black suits, blue robes and a headdress, each holding a shepherd's crook upright in one hand.

The sight didn't perturb Lizzie in the slightest; she knew who they were from her last trip here and had since gotten used to the sight of their unsettling appearances because of it.

'The school guards. And as expected, they're blocking anyone from entering.'

She sucked in a quick deep breath and moved her hands to her satchel strap, not once breaking her stride as she made her way up the steps with an exhale. The guards had yet to react to her presence, yet she was certain those stitched up eyes of theirs were probably staring right at her.

'You'll be fine, Elisabeth. Just say it as you practiced it.'

Lizzie didn't stop once she reached the top step, instead choosing to keep moving forward with the expectation that the school guards would halt her in her tracks. She turned out to be right the moment she was inches away from crossing over the threshold of the door and she saw the two guards finally move, prompting her to come to an immediate stop at catching their legs spreading apart. Their crooks crossed over diagonally in front of her and the doorway, creating a large 'X' shape and blocking her from going any further.

The guard on Lizzie's left took the initiative to shuffle closer to her and then lean forward until they were literally a nose inch apart, loudly sniffing at the side of her face in a similar manner to how they had done before. But unlike last time, where Lizzie had been startled and ended up stumbling backwards into Eda, she stayed still and silently observed the guard's actions, merely tightening her grip on her satchel strap until they pulled back (although her eye did twitch a bit out of discomfort).

'These guys really have an issue with personal space, don't they?'

The blonde witch felt a moment of déjà vu begin creeping up on her in the form of a tingle down her spine as the pair had their stare down, with the former waiting to see what the other was going to do. The guard eventually became the one to break the silence in their distorted and highish sounding voice, daring to point the tip of their shepherd's crook close to Lizzie's face and forcing her to move her head back to create some distance.

"Trouble…" the guard said menacingly.

'Yeesh! Watch where you're poking that! You could have taken my eye out!'

Lizzie did the wise thing in keeping that thought to herself, instead raising her palms and shake her head vigorously multiple times.

"No, no! I'm not here to cause trouble!" she responded hastily, her eyes darting between the two school guards at noting the one on the right hadn't moved from its current position, only to find its gaze focused intently on her face, unblinking. "I need to speak with Principal Bump."

The left school guard retracted its shepherd's crook upon hearing this, with both guards turning their heads towards each other at the same time, almost as if they were telepathically linked. Neither of them said a word at first, with Lizzie occasionally glancing between one and the other with a frown.

'Is 'trouble' the only word they can say?'

She soon got her answer when the guard on the right shrugged and then they both faced her once more, with the right guard being the one to respond to her this time.

"Busy…" It stated in the same voice and tone as its left counterpart, causing Lizzie's shoulders and eyes to droop as she lowered her hands.

"He's busy?" she repeated with a raised brow, prompting both guards to nod stiffly and speak simultaneously (even though they sounded so alike Lizzie found she actually couldn't discern the differences in their voices).

"Yes…"

'They can only give single word answers then. Good to know.' Lizzie sighed heavily at her own sarcastic thought as she turned away from the guards. 'But it looks like this was a dead end. Guess I'll have to try again another time.'

"Thank you for letting me know," Lizzie eventually said while already making to walk away with a step forward. "I'll be—"

She was interrupted by a familiar female voice calling her name.

"Lizzie?"

The blonde witch's leg paused in mid-air with a wide blink, prompting her to glance behind her swirled to see a smiling Emira approaching the school's entrance with a grinning Edric close at her heels, the latter of whom gave the older blonde a brief wave the moment they locked eyes. Naturally, the twins were dressed in their school uniform for the Illusions Magic Track, as Lizzie expected them to be.

'And the surprises keep on coming!'

Though she knew she shouldn't have been surprised. Even with her hood up, Edric and Emira knew her voice well. They likely heard her from wherever they'd come from.

"Hey, Liz!" Edric greeted as he and Emira stopped between the two guards and Lizzie righted herself to face them properly, with the former having since relaxed their stances and removed their shepherd's crooks from in front of the doorway. "Didn't think you'd ever be brave enough to come back, you know, since you're banned and all."

Lizzie rolled her eyes at Edric's teasing, yet she mentally noted that unlike the last time she'd encountered the pair at the Knee, she didn't seem as bothered by their presence. Perhaps what happened with the Slitherbeast had caused her to see the twins and their younger sister in a different light, she concluded.

"Ha ha," Lizzie replied sarcastically, eventually raising a brow. "Though you're one to talk. Shouldn't you two be in class right now?"

Lizzie blamed Luz for being able to remember that. She knew the human teen's schedule off by heart at this point.

Edric and Emira both turned to look at the school guards when Lizzie said this, obviously very wary of their presence and how they were going to react. The moment the guards turned their way and focused on them, though, Emira faced Lizzie with her hands behind her back, her smile gone.

"We were asked by our teacher to clear up a mess in her photo class," she explained, pausing to sideways glance the guard to her right. She resumed in a low voice and leaned closer to the older blonde once it had looked away (with Edric sighing heavily and wiping a sleeve across his brow when the left guard did the same with him). "Apparently, there was a fire. It burnt up a student's memory photos."

Lizzie sucked in a breath through her teeth and cringed as Emira pulled back and stood straight again. She hadn't taken that class during her time at Hexside due to her chosen magic track, but she was well aware of the dangers of messing with the photos pulled out of people's brains. Every student was lectured on this to avoid incidents like this from occurring.

"Oooooh," she eventually remarked. "Is the student okay?"

"No idea," Edric answered with an open-armed shrug, jabbing a thumb towards the doorway behind him. "But last we heard, the principal was dealing with it."

'Ah. That explains why he's busy.'

"So, what's going on with you?" Edric tilted his head as his eyes looked Lizzie up and down. "You looked a little disappointed just now."

Lizzie's brows raised at the comment (taken a bit off guard by the fact her disappointment had been noticeable), but she was soon waving the younger witch off with a hand.

"I just needed to speak with Principal Bump about something. But since he's busy, I was just about to—"

She cut herself off when Xenia's words from before suddenly echoed within the confines of her head, her eyes growing wide as she shifted her gaze between Edric and Emira.

'Isn't there anyone else you can ask who might know who this person is? Surely there's someone who could give you an idea.'

"You two!" Lizzie blurted out without warning and pointed two fingers at them with crossed arms, causing Edric to lean back with a wide blink and Emira to cock a brow. "You were hanging around me when I was in high school!"

"Yeah…" Emira agreed with a slight squint and an amused smile, folding her arms across her front. "Pretty sure that's how we remember it too."

Lizzie shook her head and ran her fingers through the sides of her hair, taking a step or two back with an exasperated sigh.

'At least explain yourself first, Elisabeth! You can't just go blurting things out like that!'

"You mentioned Xander back at the library," she clarified in a tremulous tone. "So, if you know who he is, then maybe you know about the people connected to him."

Emira and Edric exchanged frowns then. They stared each other down for several seconds before Edric shook his head and shrugged his shoulders with a noise of confusion, prompting Emira to return her attention to Lizzie.

"Who's 'Xander'?" she enquired, causing Lizzie to mirror the frown still on her face.

"Xander Blackwood." The name only caused the twins to blink at the blonde witch in unison, prompting Lizzie to huff and hold out her hands towards her satchel underneath her cloak. "The one whose face I scarred with my exploding potion?"

The additional information caused Edric to gape and click his fingers out of realisation, with Lizzie mentally sighing at finally managing to get them to understand.

"Oh! Your relative!" he cried, only to furrow his brow and scratch a finger at his chin with a quick look to the sky. "Didn't know that was his name."

Lizzie leaned back a little with an arm across her chest, her eyes narrowing at Edric's last comment. "You didn't know his name?"

"You never told us," Emira replied matter-of-factly, causing Lizzie's frown to deepen as her eyes darted between the Blight twins with repeated blinks. "Just like you never told us how he's related to you."

"W-What?!" Lizzie shrieked and stuttered, pointing a shaky finger at Emira when her voice rose one or two octaves. "But you told Luz and Amity he was my relative!"

"Because that's what you told us," Edric stated, remaining unfazed by Lizzie's jaw dropping. "You always referred to him as 'my relative'."

Lizzie's jaw began to twitch as her finger drooped, her hand falling limply to her side. She slowly lowered her gaze to the floor, her eyes gradually widening while she tried to process everything she was hearing.

'I never told anyone how Xander was related to me or mentioned his name? Is that why it was so easy for my mind to make me forget his name and face to begin with? Was I already actively trying to erase him from my life?'

A hush fell around the trio of witches then. Lizzie felt her joints freezing up in a way that almost convinced her that she'd been petrified. Her mind flipped through the conversation from her dream like pages in a book, with specific sections suddenly standing out to her.

'That argument doesn't make any sense with what my memories currently show. I've always believed he's bullied me right through school, but the things he was saying to me…'

Before Lizzie knew it, her hands were flying to her chest and her fingers were digging into her clothes, her breathing suddenly erratic and loud. For a moment, she was certain she was on the verge of having some kind of panic attack… until a pair of hands clamped firmly on both of her shoulders. Her breath hitched as she raised her head, being met with Edric and Emira staring at her with creased brows and a hand stretched out each towards her.

"What's going on, Liz?" Edric asked in a low voice, and surprisingly that question was all it took for the blonde witch to break.

With her whole body starting to tremble under their hold, the twins' eyes widened in sync when the older blonde squeezed her eyes shut tightly and hunched her shoulders, pressing a palm to her mouth with a lowered head.

"I don't know anymore!" she answered in a muffled and brittle tone, sounding like she was on the verge of crying. "I thought digging for information on what I don't know would help me make up my mind, but the further I dig, the more confusing things seem to be getting!" Lizzie moved her hands to her fringe and stretched at the skin of her forehead with her fingers. "I don't know where anything starts nor where anything ends and I—"

A gentle squeeze of her shoulder from Emira halted her trembling and her sentence, prompting the blonde to open her eyes.

"Then start from the beginning," Emira encouraged in a gentle tone, allowing a small smile to slip onto her face at the same time as her twin's when Lizzie raised her head with a shaky intake and exhale of breath through her nose. "We can't help you if we don't know what's wrong, right?"

"Wait, what?" Lizzie uttered with a creased brow and briefly switched her focus to Edric to see his smile widen slightly. "You'd both do that?"

"Why not?" The younger twin responded, a faint red flush sprouting to his cheeks with the raise of his shoulders. "I mean, we do still owe you for what happened at the library."

Lizzie hadn't planned on having yet another emotional conversation with two of the few witches she least expected to, but she knew she needed to get it off her chest to someone soon. Otherwise, she was certain she was going to explode, just like that time one of Eda's hoarding cupboards upstairs burst open because it was overflowing with clutter shoved inside.

'Well, I suppose I could do worse…'

"Fine," Lizzie relented with the droop of her eyes and shoulders. "You might want to get comfortable, though. It's a long story…"

"If it delays us from class a little longer, I'm game!" Edric joked, leaving Lizzie to shake her head with a gentle facepalm.

So, with the three of them sitting at the bottom of Hexside's steps and Lizzie sandwiched between Edric (on her left) and Emira (on her right), the blonde witch gave herself the necessary time to calm down and then did exactly as Emira had instructed her to do: start from the beginning. She spent the next how many minutes relaying to the Blight twins pretty much everything she'd told to the Owl House residents last night, with the addition of context where necessary (such as her carriage accident, her memory issues, what the current deal between her and Xander was, and so on). During this time, the school guards remained at their posts and allowed the three witches to talk, leaving Emira to listen with a hand resting against her cheek and Edric leaning forward with his hands clasped over his knees, the pair occasionally nodding and keeping eye contact with Lizzie to show they were paying attention to everything.

Upon reaching the end of her explanation, Lizzie released a heavy sigh and leaned her back against the steps, with her head tilted to the sky and her eyes closed. She couldn't quite describe the feeling that washed over her in that moment, yet the best way she could think of was that she no longer felt an intense pressure pushing down on her. It was literally like she'd finally shoved a heavy weight off her shoulders, and she couldn't help wondering if talking about her problems with multiple people recently had helped to relieve her of that burden.

'Wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. I have a knack for keeping things to myself when I shouldn't.'

Meanwhile, Edric had sat up straight with wide eyes and a gape, with Emira creasing her brow and pursing her lips, keeping her cheek resting against her palm.

"… Wow," the former remarked breathlessly, placing a hand to his chest as if someone had knocked the oxygen out of his lungs. "That was a lot."

"That's what King said too," Lizzie responded through a quiet snort as she cracked open an eye and sideways glanced Edric.

"At least that explains your reaction back at the library," Emira muttered with drooped eyes, prompting Lizzie to sit up again. "We had no idea you'd lost your memories."

"Or that he was your cousin," Edric added with a goofy smile.

"Neither did I, apparently," Lizzie mumbled sarcastically and rubbed a hand against the back of her head (or rather her cloak hood because she still had it up). "This has all been a recent development and it's still taking time for me to process."

Edric's smile widened into a grin. "I don't blame you! I'm still trying to take it in! All this time, I thought he was your brother. Boy, was I wrong!" Emira scowled and stretched a hand behind Lizzie to lightly flick Edric's closest ear, causing the younger greenette to flinch and close an eye while covering his ear with a hand. "Ouch!"

Lizzie huffed as her shoulders slumped, remaining oblivious to the antics that had occurred behind her. "That's why I was hoping to speak with Principal Bump." She leaned forward to rest her arms on her thighs. "I figured getting some information from him might help me make up my mind about whether or not I want to know what's going on in my head. But now I'm not so sure if it's a good idea…"

Within her peripheral vision, Lizzie thought she saw Edric and Emira peer round her and at each other, but she didn't pay it any mind for the moment, instead choosing to turn her gaze to her boots.

'It seems like the further I dig, the bigger the hole gets, with the light at the other end nowhere in sight. Yet I suppose that's because I don't know what I've forgotten and what I actually don't know about.' Lizzie ran her hands down from her forehead to her jaw with a quiet groan, stretching her skin between her fingers. 'Why has my brain made everything so complicated?'

Edric clearing his throat caused reality to yank Lizzie back to the present with a flinch, helping her to remember she wasn't on her own and where she was in a blink of an eye.

"I don't know if it would help," he began with the straightening of his back. "but do you remember anything you told us about your cousin?"

Lizzie immediately shook her head to this. "I don't even remember telling you about him, so anything you can tell me would be greatly appreciated."

Edric nodded at Emira then and crossed his arms, causing the older of the twins to return it and shuffle closer to Lizzie, resting an elbow on her shoulder.

"Not long after Ed and I started to hang out with you, we asked you why you were always on your own," she elaborated.

"You seemed like a cool enough person to hang out with," Edric commented. "So, we thought it was weird we never saw you with anyone else."

Emira furrowed her brow and twisted a finger into her own cheek, her next words spoken quietly. "But you answered rather bitterly, basically telling us to go ask your relative since he's the one who 'threw you away'." Lizzie's eyes widened, prompting Emira to raise a palm in surrender. "Your words, not mine."

"… I said that?" Lizzie questioned after a short delay.

"You did." Emira retracted her elbow and held up the index finger she'd been poking her own cheek with. "It was the only time you brought it up, in fact. You were never a fan of giving away anything personal about your life, even to us."

"We didn't know he was bullying you until we started following you around without you knowing and witnessed it ourselves," Edric added, causing Lizzie to lower her head to hide the roll of her eyes and a faint smirk.

'Yeah. As if you two think I didn't know you were stalking me.' Her smirk soon faded as she raised her palms to eye level and stared at them with a frown and a forced blink, bending her fingers slightly. 'But what I said to the twins can't be right. Because I sound like I'm saying that we were once…'

Lizzie's thoughts trailed off with a wide blink before the word she'd wanted to say could form, her head jerking upwards when it resonated with a recollection echoing in the crevices of her mind.

'I should be the one apologising, really. I did steal from you and get your friend in trouble.'

'We're not friends.'

'Xander kept interrupting Xenia every time she called him my 'friend'. And when I was joking around with him afterwards…'

'Aw. What happened to us being 'friends'?'

'T-That was never true and you know it! Stop twisting the basilisk's words!'

Lizzie released a loud, breath-sucking gasp and leapt to her feet, causing Edric to yelp as he and Emira shuffled back to avoid being knocked off the steps.

"Holy Titan! His reaction makes so much sense now!" the blonde witch yelled and smacked her hands against the top of her head, acting as if she'd just found the answer to ending world hunger. "And in my dream…!"

Lizzie could practically picture the puzzle pieces in front of her slotting together while she mentally replayed the dream conversation on loop—her not wanting to fail for him, Xander getting annoyed at her not wanting to help him, her pointing out his two-faced nature… She was beginning to understand his conflicting behaviour so much better now! But…

'Something's still not adding up.' Lizzie slowly lowered her body to sit on the steps again, with Edric and Emira slowly straightening themselves out and observing her in silence the entire time she stared at the school's gates. She was oblivious to Edric looking to his sister and jerking his head at her with a raised brow, with the older greenette responding with a shrug and brief shake of the head. 'Why was Xander arguing with me about my project? On top of that, we apparently stopped being friends by the time I met Emira and Edric. Did this all have something to do with that person controlling him?'

Lizzie wouldn't have been surprised if it was. She recalled the crow phone conversation had implied that this person was pushing Xander to have her locked up in the Conformatorium. And although during their brief meetings he'd tried to convince her otherwise, last night's conversation with the residents of the Owl House had her convinced it was all just for show. Thus, she reasoned, it would make sense for Xander's obsession with her results in school to be because of this person, to gain his love and admiration, as he'd said. But why? It was the 'why' she couldn't seem to figure out—

"OH!" Edric's loud cry made Lizzie sit up straight and hunch her shoulders, bringing her deep thinking to a screeching halt. She whipped her head towards him as he leaned forward and jabbed a finger at her, shoving it close to her nose. "You mentioned your cousin's surname was 'Blackwood', right?"

"Yeah…" Lizzie answered slowly and moved away from Edric a little, her narrowed eyes looking between his face and finger once with a squint. "Why?" But instead of answering her, Edric placed his hands on Lizzie's shoulder and pushed himself up to peek over her head at Emira, ignoring the blonde witch's wince and shout at the newly applied pressure. "Ow! Hey!"

"Doesn't Mom know someone with that surname?"

Emira knitted her brows together and rested her chin on the back of her hand, supporting her elbow with her other one. "Now that you mention it…" she muttered and turned her golden eyes to the sky. "She did. I think he was in the PCA with her until a year and a bit ago."

"Oh yeah!" Edric exclaimed as he removed his hands from Lizzie's shoulder and plopped back beside her, with the blonde witch grumbling under her breath and briefly rubbing her palm against her shoulder. "It's coming back to me!" He pursed his lips and stroked his chin repeatedly, squinting and frowning so much that Lizzie could see his forehead wrinkle like worn clothes. "What was his first name again? Cedric? Aldrich—?"

"Wait!" Lizzie repeated and interrupted Edric as she focused on Emira. "A year and a bit ago, did you say?" Emira nodded to confirm her own words, causing Lizzie to click her fingers and cup her other hand underneath her chin. "That lines up with what Principal Bump told me about Xander. He was in the year above me, which would have made him sixteen at the time; it was mentioned Xander joined the Emperor's Coven after two years of training, meaning he would have been eighteen when he graduated, and Principal Bump did say the PCA pressured him into having me expelled, which would make sense if this person was—"

Lizzie interrupted herself the moment her own words processed in her head, the realisation sparking in the same way one would expect when putting the ends of two live wires together. Fear's electrical fingers crawled across the young witch's skin and had the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, causing her to instinctively bring her arms round her middle as the metaphorical cogs in her head turned.

'Hold on. If this 'Blackwood' was in the PCA… that would mean he had a kid who attended Hexside. And Xander's surname is Blackwood, and he's my cousin…'

Emira was the first to notice the colour drain from Lizzie's face like paint dripping off a blank canvas after having a bucket of water chucked onto it. She shuffled closer to the older blonde with a furrowed brow and reached a hand out, opening her mouth in preparation to ask if she was okay. Unfortunately, Edric, who currently couldn't see Lizzie's reaction due to her back facing him, distracted his sister with a breathless gasp and a smack of his hand against his thigh.

"Wait a sec! Wouldn't that make Xander his kid?" Lizzie didn't respond to the question. Her eyes widened to the point her veins were visible at hearing her suspicions out loud, her confirmed fears now leaving her frozen to the steps. Emira turned her wide eyes repeatedly between the older blonde and her brother as Edric continued with a yell and leapt to his feet, smacking his palms to his forehead. "Is that guy your uncle, Liz? Oh my Titan! As if having one relative hate you wasn't already bad enough—"

"Ed!" Emira snapped at Edric and caused him to swirl to face her with a wide blink. She gestured her hands towards Lizzie, who currently looked like she'd been hit by Luz's ice glyph. "Not helping!"

Edric opened his mouth ready to apologise the second he saw Lizzie's horrified expression. But that opportunity was lost when the twins heard Lizzie's breathing hitch in her throat, followed by the blonde witch hearing her own teenage voice shouting from within the confines of her head.

'He hates my family and wants to see me fail for whatever reason! So, he'd want you to continue scoring higher than me!'

'Huh?! What was—?'

Her thought was immediately interrupted by a sharp pain slashing across the front of her skull.

The blonde witch screamed and immediately jumped to her feet, her palms flying to her forehead and pressing down hard against it. She instantly knew what this pain was… and yet the pain pounding within the confines of her skull felt more intense than the previous times, as if someone was taking a hammer and banging it repeatedly against her head. Her eyes began to sting against the sunlight, forcing her to squeeze them shut. And then there were her knees, which were literally knocking together in a way that suggested they were struggling to maintain her own weight.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

"Lizzie?!" Emira called out the blonde witch's name as she got to her feet, yet Lizzie could barely hear her.

Her ears were ringing and drowning out the surrounding noises as if she was underwater, and that was without the fact she couldn't even hear herself think above the commotion going on within her own head.

Lizzie's fingers dug into her scalp as she attempted to take a step forward, ignoring her struggle to keep a solid grip on her skin due to how clammy her skin had become. All she could manage to think past the pain was that she needed to get back to the Owl House—back to Eda, to King, to Luz, even Hooty! One of them would be able to help her, surely!

The second her foot touched the ground, though… her leg wobbled. Her body swayed to the side as if it was a thin piece of parchment. Her arms fell limp and dropped lifelessly from her forehead. Before she knew it, she was losing her balance and falling towards the ground, her eyes opening to the sight of a blurred and swirling mess of purple, black, blue and green. She felt her back collide with the hardened dirt, pushing the oxygen out of her lungs with a strangulated gasp.

The last thing she recalled seeing and hearing were the colourful messes and inaudible voices of whom she assumed were Edric and Emira leaning over her, obviously worried about what had just transpired.

And then… everything fell silent, her vision swallowed by black.


A/N: Yeah. I couldn't resist the opportunity to have Edric and Emira interact with Lizzie here. Outside of the fact they get very little screen time as is, they are written in this fic to have been associated with Lizzie during her high school years. Makes sense they can provide some information for her to work with, even if it isn't as much as what Bump knows. Also, gives me the opportunity to expand a little more on Lizzie's original dynamic with the twins. I'll admit, this was the first time I've had to write them completely originally without a canon situation to back it up, so I am hoping I managed to capture their characters okay. It was pretty difficult for me to write, honestly. But yeah, as mentioned above, the cliffhanger is going to set the stage for the remainder of the revelations to come in Chapter 48, so don't let your guards down yet. You're gonna get answers to Lizzie's memory issue and why she fainted soon... I promise. The latter was going to be added to this chapter, but it would have been too much and I felt like this ending acted as a better and more conclusive transition into the next chapter.

Also, I'm gonna say this now: I've recently discovered in Season 2 how close in height Emira and Edric are to Eda, meaning they both should be taller than Lizzie. I plan to rectify this in Season 2 by giving them a growth spurt the next time Lizzie sees them during that season (and yes, sixteen year olds can still get growth spurts. I looked it up. XD). So, yeah. Just saying this now in case anyone questions it before I get there.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's get into the review responses:

Guest (Chapter 46 - Jan 2nd): I think this chapter has answered your question, unfortunately. Sorry. XD As much as I would have liked to have Lizzie do that, she is currently under a ban from the school grounds because of her expulsion. Also, there's very little expansion on the teachers related to Lizzie's chosen magic track, so I think I would have struggled to make it work, with the addition that they know nothing of what was going on between her and Xander.

Gry26: While I do like this idea, what I currently know about the relationship between Xander and Lizzie in the past contradicts this for reasons I can't say. XD Though I think it's intriguing you chose Darius for this, because he and Lizzie may or may not have an encounter coming up in Season 2 somewhere. Can't say where, but I'll give you a hint: it's not the obvious one. ;)