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)

77. Fourth Year — XXIV

The photo was as bad as Liz had expected.

The piece on the Weighing of the Wands appeared in the Prophet the next morning, which still seemed ridiculous to Liz — how much attention adults in this country were paying to a secondary school competition was something she, just, didn't quite get. Or, she hadn't at first anyway, and even now that she understood it better it still seemed rather silly. You'd think the literal rulers of an actual country would have more important things to do with their time, but whatever.

For one thing, the Daily Prophet was generally thought of as a newspaper by and for the upper echelons of society, the nobility and the wealthy well-connected commoners, who happened to be the sort of people who'd gone to Hogwarts. For some unfathomable reason, the upper class here had an intense nostalgia for and preoccupation with the school. Hogwarts was a bloody cultural institution in this country, thanks to being literally the oldest school in Britain still in operation — there had been a few small schools of magic in the Roman Empire, but Hogwarts was toward the beginning of a revival of magical education after a hiatus during the Dark Ages, early enough it actually predated Oxford — and had been a major force in magical politics and culture for practically all of that time. Also, since a lot of the people in the Wizengamot and the upper ranks of the Ministry and in business and stuff had all gone to Hogwarts, it was an experience they all had in common — according to Sylvia, rumour-mongering about recent developments at Hogwarts often served as an ice-breaker between people who didn't know each other so well. So, it seemed really silly to Liz, but she guessed it made an odd kind of sense.

People did turn up to the quidditch games and the end-of-term duelling tournaments and the like, so she maybe shouldn't be so surprised by the Triwizard shite being all over the papers. Still seemed weird to her.

It was getting rather more attention than most school events, but Liz thought the fact that it was an international event definitely had something to do with that. She'd noticed before that, in some ways, the magical world seemed rather more insular than the muggle side — Britain especially so. Part of that, she thought, was due to differences in how the economy worked, and also just the fact that the era of European imperialism had simply never happened on this side. Mages had been involved in early colonial endeavours, contributing to the creation of pockets of European influence in the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the Far East, but when Secrecy came into effect their footprint outside of the Continent had still been relatively light, the white magical population in those areas quite limited. There was still a European presence in these areas, but the peace agreement with the Americans required these settlements be politically independent of their mother countries, so they all became independent overnight — and thanks to magic's role as a great equaliser, these small groups, now left on their own, hadn't the ability to dominate their indigenous neighbours the way the muggles proceeded to.

The magical economy imploding worldwide hadn't helped matters. Mages and muggles had participated in the same society going back literally forever, so obviously splitting off and starting their own civilisation was going to have massive consequences. Some countries adjusted better and more quickly than others, but the necessity of reorganising basically literally everything had had all the various magical nations turning inward, international relations breaking down almost everywhere practically overnight. It took centuries for diplomacy to pick up to a point that they could manage much more than simply enforcing Secrecy, starting nearly from scratch.

And Britain had been especially hard hit. The country had been at a peak in their international importance before Secrecy, due in large part to the early stages of development of what would eventually become the Empire — not coincidentally, the mages, at the time under the unconventional leadership of Henry Black, had been seeing a time of unprecedented wealth and prominence as well. (Henry Black might have a reputation as something of a class traitor, but there was a reason he was still widely-regarded as the most successful Chief Warlock in history.) But then they'd been devastated by multiple disasters in a row, first the war with the Cromwells, and then the conflict over Secrecy, helping to force various dissenting parties into line, what little remained of their economy practically vanishing in the early decades of Secrecy, and then a brief but humiliating war with the goblins... Yeah, the transition to Secrecy hadn't been easy on anyone, but it'd gone particularly badly for Britain. By the time they got their feet back under them, what little international presence they'd had had already long crumbled away.

They were on an upswing, this last century or so. By the late 1700s, they'd started carving out a niche in the international apothecary trade, due to a handful of successful deals and buy-outs and the like with governments and business in countries like Holland, Saxony, France, and Venice, generations later the trade taking off to the point that British-grown potions ingredients and apothecary supplies formed a significant chunk of the market within the ICW. (As much as half in some sectors, she was told.) By the turn of the 20th Century, they'd also gotten big in fine enchanted goods, especially brooms and in time turntables and radio too, and also the production of certain processed materials, particularly ceramics. As international trade took off, diplomacy gradually became way more important, magical Britain finally starting to put together their own foreign consulates for the first time.

And then the Revolution happened. Muggle Europe had had a number of inter-imperial conflicts that could spiral into Continent-wide war, the World Wars only the worst of them, but that'd never happened in post-Secrecy magical Europe before — a limited war between neighbours now and then, sure, but nothing even close to the all-encompassing conflict sparked by the Revolution. Counter-intuitively, despite it being a big international get-together thing, and the ICW as an organisation being way more involved in things in the aftermath, Britain actually had fewer embassies now than they had before. Britain's largest, most important embassy was in Venice — Venice was their biggest trading partner — and of course they had another one in Bern (where the ICW was headquartered), smaller ones in Holland and Spain, and finally one in Massachusetts, their only diplomatic contact in the New World. There were also missions in Egypt, China, and a couple in India, but they were only occupied part-time, when there was actual business to attend to, the offices left vacant when not in active use. And, thanks to how involved Britain was in international trade, that was actually kind of a lot, most magical countries had fewer.

And outside of trade and formal diplomacy, magical countries seemed weirdly isolated. There was a fair amount of international travel going on — smoother and more easily than on the muggle side, due to magical transportation and varying laws on that sort of thing — but mostly for business reasons, or education, and sometimes for tourism. People taking a train over to Italy for a day just because, which according to Hermione was a thing muggles just did, wasn't really something that happened, and people permanently moving from one country to another, to live or just to work for a while, was actually kind of rare. It did happen sometimes, as the existence of rules around residency and citizenship Liz had read up on implied, but it didn't happen nearly as often as in the muggle world.

Though, she'd learned, that depended very much on which country you were looking at. The neocommunalist countries tended to see a lot of people move back and forth, their immigration rules loose enough that you really could pop over for lunch quick or catch a concert or whatever, starting to become more of a thing on the Continent. The Arab states had a pretty similar air of shared international culture, and supposedly some regions in the Americas did as well. According to Tamsyn, lots of people would move to China from neighbouring countries for work, but that was far more similar to the lopsided, exploitative example of migrant labour in the muggle world — that sort of thing didn't really happen in the ICW, or at least not in Britain.

(As shite as the British economy could be for poor people, if British migrant labour existed it'd be coming from here to the Continent, not the other way around. None of that was going on, though, at least as far as she knew.)

As much as the Continent was starting to stitch themselves together into a more international community — like was happening in muggle Europe, just a bit behind — Britain had never really participated in that much. Trade, sure, the occasional big diplomatic thing, such as their head of state also being the top name at the ICW (before Dumbledore lost both positions), of course. International sport stuff, quidditch and duelling, they had people who participated in those — but that was only ever a tiny fraction of the population, and supposedly British spectators were a relatively rare sight at events in foreign countries. Even in the relatively insular magical world, Britain was especially isolated, to the point that Britons had a weird, standoffish reputation to many Europeans.

But, the Wizengamot and the Ministry were aware that they were starting to lag behind the rest of the magical world — as isolated as they were, developments in technology (so to speak) and culture were slow to reach them — and were trying to do something about that. That was why they'd done things like loosen residency requirements, sponsor the construction of more hotels and temporary housing, and also pressed their bid to host the World Cup rather more tenaciously than usual, throwing out all the stops to make it as big and exciting an event as possible. There were talks about founding a school specialising in Mastery programmes (basically a university), particularly in potions, alchemy, and enchanting — things Britain was known for actually being good at — tailored in a way to expand education domestically, yes, but also bring in foreign students and formal academic and business interests. It seemed like they were doing everything they could to build closer ties with the rest of Europe, throwing anything and everything at the wall and hoping some of it will stick — which, yes, included the revival of the Triwizard Tournament.

Liz was honestly sceptical about how successful all this shite was going to be. Britain didn't have a great reputation in the rest of Europe...though it did depend somewhat on who you asked. The neocommunalists thought Britain was a backward abusive aristocratic hellscape, of course, but even the more conservative countries tended to think their leadership were a rough, disorganised rabble with an inflated sense of importance who couldn't get their shite together to save their lives — literally, after the whole Voldemort thing. She couldn't help the suspicion that this was all going to blow up in their faces...probably when the question of Gaelic independence came to a head and the people in charge showed themselves for the arrogant racist shitheads they were.

Not that it was her problem — as long as the apothecary trade didn't implode, she was set for life, no matter what happened. Just saying, it all seemed so very silly and misguided...

That whole hey, we're definitely a civilised European country too, please pay attention to us thing that was going on likely had something to do with why the Triwizard Tournament had become such a big national obsession. Especially after Britain showed their whole arses at the World Cup, she assumed it was important to a lot of powerful people that this whole thing go as smoothly as possible. Which had probably already been ruined, at least in part, with Liz being forced into it...though that news would have come out at the same time as the solution to the problem, so, maybe that was fine? She didn't know. Enough important people were concerned about how the Tournament was going, the Prophet was the newspaper for important people, and it had already turned into a big scandal within literally the first twenty-four hours it'd been going on, so, Liz guessed she probably shouldn't be surprised that Triwizard shite was plastered all over the Prophet practically every day lately.

It was still severely irritating. Especially since the photo had turned out as bad as she'd expected.

They'd rushed putting together a sizeable piece on the Weighing of the Wands and the six Champions, probably working through the night so they could send it out the next morning — Rita's thing she'd done the interview with Liz and Daphne for that same day wouldn't be out until near the end of the month. (But then, Witch Weekly obviously worked on a different schedule than the Daily Prophet.) Liz had seriously considered not coming up to breakfast today — it was Sunday, so she didn't have to be up for classes, and people still hadn't stopped being stupid about this whole thing — but there was going to be a meeting of their team for the First Task shortly afterward, so she figured she might as well. Since waiting around for the meeting to start would just be inviting people to come up and bother her about whatever, she'd gone up to breakfast rather late — breakfast stayed on the tables longer on Sundays anyway, the routine at the school lazier and slower than on weekdays. So she wasn't at all surprised to find that the Prophet had already come in, probably a couple hours ago by now.

She'd put off looking at it for a bit, forcing herself to eat something. Not feeling particularly hungry at the moment, the attention of who knew how many people through the Hall clawing over her was shite for her appetite, but she knew she should eat something, especially since they'd probably be doing some duelling practice later — and she suspected trying to eat would be even more difficult after seeing the article, so. When she was done, she reluctantly borrowed Tracey's copy. Unsurprisingly, they'd decided to use the picture she'd been sort of dreading.

Liz really didn't like having her picture taken in the first place. Perhaps because they were consciously evaluating what they were looking at rather more thoroughly than people tended to, feeling the photographer's attention on her was always very unpleasant and intrusive. As harsh and sharp and sweltering as it was, it often didn't take very long for Liz to be pushed into an irritable mood that could easily last the rest of the day. The way she tended to get after having to deal with something that was just too much, crowds or whatever on days she didn't have the energy for it, exhausted and impatient and, just, done. She didn't know what it was about this specifically that was so uncomfortable for her, it just was. Some of her friends had (magical) cameras, and they sometimes liked playing around and taking pictures and whatever, but Liz always wormed her way out of it — when she'd seen Hermione's room, she'd honestly been a little surprised Hermione had even a couple pictures of her.

Also, she didn't really like seeing pictures of herself either. Liz was aware she looked like shite, thanks, she didn't need to have her nose rubbed in it. And, for whatever reason, seeing herself from the outside always made her feel kind of...weird. Like, a sort of surreal detachment, knowing that it was herself she was looking at — she didn't exactly spend a lot of time staring at herself in mirrors, but she did know her own face — but not quite feeling that, something just missing somehow. She could explicitly remember it being taken and still not quite feel like she was the same person as the one in the photo — she didn't know why, couldn't put words to exactly what was going on there, just one of those things.

Though, honestly, it'd probably bother her less if that sense of detachment was complete, and not just a weird vague something's not right here feeling. After all, she did look like shite, and she didn't like having her nose rubbed in it.

The funny thing was, she could remember a time she hadn't given a damn what she looked like — it hadn't even been that long ago, as recently as first year. Before she'd subsumed that piece of the Dark Lord, an odd inherited self-consciousness occasionally niggling at her. And then puberty just had to go and fuck with her, apparently, because of course.

(She still didn't entirely believe that Daphne actually liked her, despite being able to see into Daphne's head and knowing for a fact that she did. It didn't help that Daphne had an unreasonably high opinion of her, if she knew half of the shitty things Liz had done and how she actually felt about...things, people, Daphne would almost certainly hate her. Yes, she looked like shite, which Daphne inexplicably didn't seem to notice, but she was also a monster, and Daphne had no idea.)

(Liz tried not to let it bother her.)

She'd known, while it was happening, that she was going to hate this picture, and she wasn't wrong. The girl Champions, Liz and Artèmi in front, Fleur and Ingrid, significantly taller, just behind them to either side. For whatever reason, they'd decided to separate Artèmi and Fleur — maybe because they were wearing similar colours? — meaning Liz had ended up with one of them on either side. So it was pretty damn obvious that she looked like complete shite by comparison.

She had actually tried, since she knew there'd be cameras, but it never really seemed to make much difference. Her hair was completely fucking unmanageable, as always — she was definitely changing this shite when the blood alchemy thing came around, she'd always hated her hair. Daphne had done what she could, but there wasn't a whole lot that could be done. Plaiting it helped somewhat, giving it some structure to stop it from flying all over the place, the beads weighing it down, but it was still impossible. She hadn't actually worn her scarf over her hair that day, just shielding her neck — when she did wrap it over her head, it was mostly to hold her hair in place out of her face, which the plaiting and the beads made unnecessary — so it was very obvious that her stubborn bloody hair had already started escaping the shape it'd been wrangled into, visibly frizzing, blurring the pattern of the plaits. Compared to Artèmi and Fleur standing right next to her, in similar but distinct shades of pale blonde — Fleur's an inhuman solid silvery-white colour, Artèmi's a more naturally-textured ashy blonde — long and straight and shimmering, Liz's just looked like a mess by comparison.

The dress was fine, she guessed...in isolation. A pale sky blue sort of colour, with white stitching here and there for colour, it was nice enough. The problem was that she was...kind of visibly lopsided. It could be kind of hard to buy clothes that fit properly these days, since she was shaped funny — the combination of her chest, the misshapen deformed lumps she was stuck with flattened with an overly-tight vest (and an extra slip over that to hopefully hide any signs showing through), and her bloody huge arse could be a fucking pain to work around. Well, okay, her hips weren't actually that obvious, compared to some of the other girls in her year, but not having much of anything up top made her seem...well, visibly lopsided.

Her somewhat-recently-discovered preference for close-fitting clothes was probably shooting herself in the foot there. In order to get the bits from shoulder to waist to hug around her as close as she liked, she had to get a size small enough that it didn't quite fit over her hips the way it was supposed to. This particular dress was actually in a children's size, because Liz was short and tiny enough that she could still do that sometimes. (She always carefully cut off the tags with a charm, partially because she didn't need the cleaning instructions anyway, but also because it was a little embarrassing to still be wearing clothes meant for, like, ten-year-olds.) It hadn't been so obvious getting ready in the bathroom, with the sink partially hiding her lower body (because she was so damn short), but in the unobstructed shot of the picture, the way the skirt draped out around her hips and down, Liz could easily tell it looked wrong...though she wasn't sure how obvious that would be to anyone else. It was pretty subtle, and mages tended to cut clothes differently, so most of the people who'd see this probably didn't know what it was supposed to look like anyway...

Liz was aware most of it was in her head. Everyone knew her hair was terrible, of course — apparently, the weird magical things her hair did, like resist styling charms and potions, and stay at roughly the same length without cutting (to the point it would even grow back on its own overnight if removed), was a heritable trait. It turned up in various other families here and there, but in the culture of the nobility it was strongly associated with the Potters and their close relatives, so, lucky her. But the other stuff, it... In this photo she looked visibly lopsided to herself, noticeably bottom-heavy, but she had no idea how obvious it would be to anyone else. She could count the people who actually knew what she looked like under that dress on one hand and still have fingers leftover — most people didn't know what to look for.

She knew that, rationally, but she still couldn't help feeling like she looked like a disfigured fucking freak.

Especially standing as she was right next to Artèmi and Fleur. The both of them were, just, unfairly beautiful, all...ugh. Artèmi was almost as tiny as Liz was — a little taller, but not really by much — and wasn't nearly as filled out and grown-up-looking as Fleur was. Not much different from Liz in that way...and maybe actually less, whatever curve there might be to her hips more or less completely hidden by her overly pretty lacey dress. She wasn't visibly lopsided the way Liz was, though. And her dress was really nice, bright white satin and lace and the occasional glint of silver, fine and delicate and feminine, smiling back at the camera all sweet — almost girlishly innocent, despite the fact that she was a top-tier duellist who could seriously kick arse at the drop of a hat (though probably not in that dress, at least not without ruining it). Fleur was also wearing white, though with bits in green and yellow, the dress in an unfamiliar style, loose and billowy — veela had a reputation for hating tight or restrictive clothing — but draped in a way that it didn't really hide her figure. Artèmi might not have much in the way of tits at all, but Fleur definitely did, and fucking hell she had nice legs — especially with intoxicating veela-magic fucking with her head, it was extremely difficult to stop herself from staring sometimes, just, ugh.

And even Ingrid looked fine. She wasn't absurdly over-the-top gorgeous like Artèmi and Fleur, just, you know, a normal girl. Rather tall, but otherwise pretty average. And pretty average was fucking great when you were sharing page space with Liz.

Looking at the photo, Liz did still get that odd detached feeling, the image she was seeing not quite feeling real, like it was actually her. But even so, standing between Artèmi and Fleur made up all pretty, brightly smiling back at the camera, only making how very uncomfortable Liz was more obvious, her eyes avoiding the camera to glare this way or that, stiffly fidgeting in place, the beads around her wrists drawing attention to each repositioning of her arms, her jaw visibly shifting as she nervously played with her lip ring, her hair a big damn mess, and she was lopsided...

Liz's skin crawled, cold and sharp, her chest and throat tight, her stomach twisting. Her pulse pounding behind her eyes, she was uncomfortably aware of her...everything, how she was sitting, the angles her legs and her arms were making, the curve of her shoulders as she hunched in place, she adjusted position multiple times but it didn't help, agonisingly uncomfortable. Every inch of her skin seeming too present, carrying an odd weight she didn't know how to describe — like something being pressed against her, but not really, the sense of pressure internal, as though her body were pressing against itself somehow. Every bit of it all at once, constantly nudging at her attention, the folds around her joints, she could feel the stretch over her shoulders and her hips, the cold numb weight of the malformed growths on her chest (she couldn't actually feel the things themselves anymore, thanks to Severus's curse-work), the position of her tongue in her mouth and the subtle tension in her cheeks, the pressure from the seat underneath her and her clothes hugged close around her, the cloth scratching at her, especially at the seams, too bright and sharp to ignore—

(—her pants sliding down to hook over her ankles louder than anything else, the cloth cold and sharp against her skin, every movement strange and bright, all too aware of it—)

It was extremely uncomfortable, she hated it. Eating before getting a look at the paper had been the correct decision.

The Slytherins sitting around her at the table — her friends, yes, but Draco's little clique were nearby too — could tell that she was uncomfortable. Though most of them didn't really know why, just assumed it was over there being shite about her in the paper at all, everyone knew she hated that. Tracey guessed it had something to do with Artèmi and Fleur being way prettier than her, which was close enough to correct, but also realised that saying anything about that at the breakfast table would just make Liz even more uncomfortable, so kept the thought to herself. Well, she didn't say anything out loud, at least — sitting right next to each other, Tracey could feel the cool tingle of Liz's magic on the air around her, but wasn't sure how much of her thoughts Liz was actually seeing. (Not much, she knew it bothered Tracey so she tried not to intrude, but things just leaked out of people's heads all the time, so.) Aware of the possibility of Liz seeing it, Tracey was deliberately thinking that it really wasn't a big deal, she looked fine. Anybody would look rather plain and a bit of a mess next to Artémisia Cæciné and a bloody veela, not anything to feel self-conscious about. After all, a lot of old noble families had been selectively breeding for centuries and centuries, so they tended to end up with a collection of heritable magical traits and be unreasonably pretty, and Delacour literally wasn't even human, so that comparison was obviously unfair. Tracey realised saying Liz shouldn't let it bother her wouldn't actually stop it from bothering her, she was just (not-)saying.

As much as Tracey might be trying to help, the fact that she could also tell that Liz was lopsided wasn't making her feel better. Tracey knew what to look for, having figured it out months ago now, and was even more sceptical than Liz that anyone who didn't already know about her scars would notice, but still.

Daphne thought Liz looked nice, and didn't understand why she was so self-conscious about it.

Hidden under the table, Daphne's hand snaked over Liz's leg, the pressure heavy and warm and sharp through her trousers. (She expected there'd be duelling practice at the meeting, so.) The closer contact bringing Daphne's mind flooding against hers, warm and soft and...trying to be reassuring, she was pretty sure. Daphne didn't have to understand why something bothered her to see that it did. Liz wasn't going to, just, magically feel better about herself no matter what Daphne said or thought, she understood that, but she also couldn't just sit here and watch Liz be miserable about it without doing anything.

Well, miserable was maybe an exaggeration. Uncomfortable, definitely. In fact, this grating hyperawareness, her pulse throbbing, the tension in her chest and the twisting in her stomach, she suspected there was...some kind of weird PTSD-related thing going on. (It felt uncomfortably familiar, reminded her of something, but with Daphne's mind this close she didn't want to think about it too explicitly.) Daphne's hand on her leg was actually rather unpleasant at the moment, didn't know what that was about — the mental contact was fine, though, so, whatever.

An odd flinch shivering through her mind, Daphne could back off, if she wanted her to.

No, it's fine. It's not like Daphne was making it especially worse or anything. Liz was just in one of those moods, you know, where she hated her body more intensely than usual — or at least was more conscious of how much she hated it kind of all the time — and really any physical thing at all was, just...gross. Not quite the right word, but. One of those moods where being trapped in this useless fucking meat puppet was vile and aggravating, you know the kind of thing.

...No? No, Daphne didn't know the kind of thing. This perception Liz had of a separation between her self and her body was completely alien to Daphne — her body was her, or at least a part of her, she didn't see it as a separate thing at all. She actually found the way Liz felt about her body and her relation to it rather unnerving, for reasons she couldn't quite articulate.

Oh, well. Never mind, then.

Liz couldn't help feeling self-conscious about that now, holding back the urge to fidget. (If only to avoid drawing attention to herself, and maybe cue someone to wonder what Daphne's hand was doing under the table, as had happened a few times now.) It wasn't that she hadn't known the way she felt about this stuff was a problem, she was aware it wasn't healthy — Severus's reaction that one time had made it very obvious. She just...hadn't known she was that far off. Maybe this was a mind mage or Seer thing, because the distinction between her mind and the physical stuff she was attached to seemed extremely obvious to her...but she didn't really believe that. It seemed far more likely that she was simply even more fucked up than she'd realised.

Though, it probably wasn't a bad thing that she was weird in this particular way — if she didn't feel somewhat alienated from her body (which apparently wasn't normal), how fucked it was would probably bother her more than it already did. And it bothered her pretty fucking badly already, so, that didn't sound like fun. Or, remembering something Severus had said once, maybe this was a chicken and egg thing, that she was weird about her body as a self-defence mechanism because of how much she hated it.

...Or maybe it was less to do with that directly, and more to do with some weird unconscious compartmentalisation of...stuff, related to the sofa. Kind of like those odd detached moods, where nothing felt quite real, but focussed on one specific thing and always happening at least a little bit, if that made any sense at all. Just another one of those things Severus said her brain had done to protect herself, but only made problems now that she wasn't in the survival situation anymore.

So, yeah, it probably was more PTSD stuff, then. Good to know.

She'd turned inward, a bit, thinking about that — fully within her own mind-space, so she didn't think Daphne had seen any of it. Daphne could clearly tell that the hint that Liz was even more fucked up than she'd realised was bothering her somehow, and felt a little guilty about triggering this weird little oh this is just more Liz-is-broken stuff moment she was having. Because Daphne could be silly like that sometimes, honestly, it wasn't her fault Liz's brain was trash. She really had no idea what Liz was thinking about, but she could tell she was feeling badly, and Liz feeling badly made Daphne feel badly — which seemed like it would make hanging out with Liz so much kind of miserable for her, but — but she didn't really know what to do about that.

Liz could see the logic, how Daphne had gotten from the mental conversation they'd been having a moment ago to her idea of how to help. Since she hadn't seen the direction Liz's thoughts had gone. Last she had seen, Liz had mostly just been feeling weird about looking like shite, and Daphne didn't think she looked like shite, but was aware that just saying that never really did Liz any good — hell, Liz remembered they'd talked about that, just for a second, when getting her ready for the very event that photo was from. And taking her mind off of her preoccupation with her discomfort, by reinforcing the idea that no really, you look nice, here, I'll prove it, that had actually kind of worked, at the time. Maybe not fully convincing Liz, but at least successfully distracting her. So, she understood why Daphne might think it was a good idea.

Because Daphne didn't know that Liz had moved on to brooding over the various weird issues Vernon being an abusive arse had left her with. And Liz was never less in the mood for sexy stuff than when she was remembering the sofa.

It started out relatively tame. Daphne's mind pulsing warm and soft, focussing intently to make sure Liz would see it, Liz recognised it as a memory, or at least building from one — that moment after Liz was about ready to go, standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, Daphne looming behind her. Except from Daphne's perspective, of course, but Liz had gotten weirdly accustomed to seeing herself from the outside when Daphne was letting her imagination get away from her like this. It helped that the Liz that Daphne imagined didn't really feel like herself to Liz, which she realised now was probably because of this weird shite she'd just been thinking about, but whatever.

There'd been that moment, Daphne burying her face in Liz's hair, arms wrapped around her waist. Except, this time, Daphne pressed forward more, her hands on the edge of the counter, sort of pinning Liz against it. Which, she did realise Liz would be uncomfortable with that in real life (she didn't like feeling trapped), but those things didn't tend to bother her just in Daphne's head — as long as Daphne was aware it was something she shouldn't actually do, it wasn't a big deal, Liz rarely bothered commenting. Pressed close against her back, Liz's body warm and firm against hers, the sweet vaguely floral scent of her shampoo thick on her breath, the skin of Liz's neck hot and smooth. She could feel the thrill running through Liz, going noticeably tense and all but squirming — Liz had already known Daphne could feel that, it'd come up before — which, as always, Daphne found weirdly delightful — Liz thought it was weird, that was, Daphne just enjoyed it — almost smug, pleased that Liz was enjoying herself, an invitation to go on—

Liz had already felt uncomfortable, and this wasn't really helping, her skin crawling and her chest and stomach, just, generally unpleasant (she wasn't sure what to call the feeling exactly), but that did happen, sometimes, when it was first starting, until Liz managed to break through her brain being fucking stupid, so Daphne didn't take it as a sign to stop. (She might not even have noticed, honestly, Liz wasn't making a point of pushing the feeling at her — it was hard to remember, sometimes, that Daphne couldn't feel Liz there as clearly as Liz could her.) Daphne's imagination was as vivid as ever, kissing Liz's neck, hot and tense and twitchy, her breath rasping in her ears, her hands wandering over the close-fitting blue fabric, tracing over Liz's hips and waist and up her ribs, Liz's arse pressing into her thighs (because she was so short) as her back arched into her, tipping onto her toes that way she did, as though straining to get closer to her, taught and eager—

Somehow, kind of skipping over how that happened exactly, the zipper was loosened, enough to push the straps down off her arms, the top of the dress bunching around her waist even as Daphne's wrist pushed up her skirt, fingers searching for her knickers, her other hand at Liz's chest, she—

Some frigid, harsh feeling lurching through her, Liz yanked her leg out of Daphne's grip, and pulled herself in, breaking contact. Leaning away, her skin crawling with hot-cold prickles and her throat aching and her stomach twisting, she tried to keep her breath mostly level, to not flip out at the breakfast table like a complete fucking mess. Not that it was working perfectly well, she could feel the eyes on her skin like wasps, but.

"Oh no, Liz, I don't—" Daphne cut herself off, switching to English — she'd seemingly reverted to Cambrian without thinking. "I didn't mean to make it worse, I'm sorry."

It took a moment to find her voice, for no particular reason, her throat just tensing up and not cooperating, her tongue oddly numb. "It's alright. I'm, just...not in the mood right now." The use of that particular phrase got a few odd looks from the others at the table, but Liz was pulled in too much to pick up anything clear from them. She was pretty sure Tracey had guessed sexy thoughts had been involved, at least, judging by the sigh and the roll of her eyes...

She was aware that Daphne didn't know how bad the scars on her chest were — with the sexy thoughts they traded now and then, it'd definitely come up. It was kind of odd that her...mistaken impression of what Liz looked like had lasted so long, considering how many times they'd gotten...pretty physically close, by now. Daphne assumed she was just tiny in general, and super athletic, and probably still didn't eat as much as she should — way better than she used to, of course, but especially with all the running around in duelling practice she did these days, she was aware her intake was still rather light — so she, just, didn't have much there, her preference for close-fitting clothes hiding what signs there would otherwise be. Which was the default assumption most people made, really. A handful of people she knew suspected something was off, but Liz could count the ones who knew for certain on the fingers of one hand.

Er...Severus, Pomfrey, Tracey, Katie (she'd walked in on Liz changing once in Romania, which had been terribly awkward, but Katie was thankfully tactful about it), Hermione (put together after staying at Liz's house for a while), and... Yeah, that was it, she could still count them on one hand. Right.

No wait, she'd mentioned it to Tamsyn, talking about romance and sex and stuff back in like February or something, so it was six. So, not quite, actually. Whatever, not like it was important...

Normally Liz, just, didn't give it that much thought, really. Who knew when the hell Liz would be comfortable with doing anything more than snogging or whatever (not like she was even quite comfortable with that yet), so it wasn't like it mattered at all. Just theoretical at this point. Daphne's very vivid imaginings were inaccurate, yes, but that was actually fine, seeming less real to Liz made it less uncomfortable. Which she realised was slightly weird, since she assumed most people would have unpleasant feelings about their girlfriend imagining them to be far prettier than they actually were, but Liz was seriously fucking weird sometimes, so. It didn't really matter, Liz hadn't ever even really considered correcting Daphne's mental image of her.

But for some reason, right now it was bothering her. Maybe it was an extension of the weird, unpleasant mood this fucking photo had thrown her into, she didn't know...

She was lying to Daphne, about kind of a lot of things. Or, if not actively lying, at least allowing her to make bad assumptions or come to inaccurate conclusions. That was fucking obvious, she meant, Daphne still had an unreasonably positive opinion of her — Daphne had no idea Liz was a monster. (And this wasn't Liz just being dramatic, she'd literally murdered a woman and subsumed her soul.) There were things about her, things she'd done, that, just, Daphne would hate her if she knew. Normally, that didn't really bother her — well, a little bit, sometimes — but for whatever reason, at the moment she...

(Liz was aware she was kind of a shitty person, but the times she actually felt bad about it were pretty rare. And most of those were only when she thought she might get caught...)

Besides her completely irrational belief that Liz was a good person (seriously, Liz was still very confused by that), she also thought Liz was actually attractive. And not the disfigured, scarred mess she really was. She knew Tamsyn had made a whole point about that not being as big of a deal as she probably thought it was, but... Well, Tamsyn didn't think it was a big deal, but Tamsyn was about as fucked up as Liz was — Daphne was...pretty normal, really. Mistwalkers might seem weird to other people, but it was just cultural, a difference in their priorities and how they interpreted social stuff, they weren't, like, emotionally different like Liz and Tamsyn were. And Liz was a freak, so.

It had never seemed worth doing anything about, since she didn't think it'd ever matter — if she was being completely honest, Liz simply didn't expect this relationship to last as long as it would take for her to get over her issues enough to actually take her clothes off around Daphne, so. But it was really bothering her right now. Not that she could quite put words to why, her head a hot scrambled mess, but. She felt, just, kind of terrible, on top of her my body is disgusting and I hate it episode she was still having, it, just.

(She wondered if this was what guilt was supposed to feel like. If so, it kind of sucked.)

She was vaguely aware people around her were talking, but she'd been absorbed in her own thoughts enough she hadn't heard any of it, meaningless noise ringing around her. Her skin crawling and her stomach lurching, Liz pushed herself to her feet. "Come on." Without any explanation, she turned and started walking away.

Of course, the without any explanation part wasn't really helping — she ended up having to backtrack for a moment, explain that she meant just Daphne, she wanted to talk about something in private. For once, Liz and Daphne going off alone together didn't have thoughts flickering in people's heads that they were, er, having a moment, because apparently Liz was visibly uncomfortable enough that everyone thought that seemed unlikely. Most people thought she was having a brain moment, and just didn't want to be in the Great Hall anymore, which was slightly embarrassing — Liz still wasn't comfortable with everyone knowing how bloody mad she was — but whatever, she guessed she'd take it.

As they went, leaving the overwhelming noise of the Great Hall behind, it became increasingly obvious that Daphne was a bit nervous. She was doing a much better job of hiding it, still seeming as calm and vaguely pleasant as always, but Liz was a cheater. Liz wasn't looking close enough to see what Daphne was thinking, but she went ahead and cut it off anyway. "It's okay, I just want to show you something."

"Oh, okay." Daphne wasn't entirely reassured, but the harsh unpleasant itching did noticeably decrease, now more confused and curious than worried. "You do have that meeting with the rest of your team for the Task to get to."

"This will only take a minute."

The walk down to Slytherin passed in awkward silence — awkward on Liz's part, anyway, Daphne's mind still bubbling away pleasant and warm. As much as Daphne was normally the sort of person who liked to fill silences with pointless blather, she knew Liz was terrible with smalltalk, and at some point had started to actually like their quiet moments. Which wasn't really a surprise to Liz, she still didn't understand why people felt the need to talk about stupid shite all the time...

Daphne was a little surprised when, after reaching Slytherin and going down to the fourth-years' circle, Liz led her into her room. Daphne had been in here, of course, just, not very often — being alone with Daphne in her bedroom made her uncomfortable, in a way that being alone together in Daphne's room didn't. She didn't know why that was, just one of those things. Liz whipped the blanket off her bed, folded it over once — which was somewhat difficult to do, as bloody short as she was, but it didn't need to be perfect — laid it over the floor, plopped one of the pillows down toward one end.

"We're going into the pensieve?"

"You're going in the pensieve — I have a meeting to get to." Liz walked up to the pensieve, sitting toward the back of her desk, and just pulled out all the memories, flicking them away to dissipate into nothing. All the ones in here at the moment were her own, mostly scrying-related stuff, if she wanted to look at them she could just copy them again. (She mostly didn't leave other people's memories in here unattended, in case she knocked the pensieve over or something and lost them.) Her wand tapping at her hip, Liz hesitated for a moment, thinking.

...A memory of her getting dressed after a shower would probably be ideal. Liz could be pointlessly neurotic about shite, so she didn't exactly have a lot of options to choose from, and something routine like that was the least likely to have other unpleasant stuff that went with it. (It probably wasn't a good idea to show Daphne Severus cursing her to stop them from growing, for example.) Of course, since it was something routine she did literally all the time without thinking about it, the memories kind of blurred together, so it was hard to isolate one to copy. The first clear shower-related memory she thought of was the morning she got her period for the first time, but that didn't seem right either — also, her chest being fucked up hadn't been quite as obvious then. More recent was better.

After a bit of concentration — uncomfortably aware of Daphne watching her, patient and curious — Liz finally managed to isolate a memory, the silvery mist successfully drawn from her head. Cleaning up after a duelling practice last week, she'd managed to distinguish this one by using the injuries she'd gotten as a sort of hook — which meant this probably wasn't a completely innocuous one to be showing Daphne, but it was the best she had. It wasn't that bad, a little bruised up, she'd had an obvious mark from a cutting curse that hadn't quite fully healed yet — there'd been an obvious reddish line along her hip at the time, but it was completely gone now — and she hadn't been able to isolate out how stiff and awkward she'd been undressing beforehand, and applying the bruise cream and stuff in the middle, but it would have to do.

A cold hard something clenching around her chest, Liz's hand shook, the silvery thread jumping and swaying. Her skin crawling and her stomach twisting, she did not want to show Daphne this. She couldn't help feeling that, as soon as Daphne saw what she really looked like, she'd be disgusted with her, and she wouldn't like her anymore, and that would be that. But, in a way, that was kind of the point. Would it be better to have this moment now, get it over with, or to wait who knew how long for it to come out later, and just face the same situation anyway?

Honestly, she probably shouldn't have put it off this long — Liz knew exactly what Daphne looked like naked, she'd given her a couple memories by now. (They were currently bottled and tucked away in the back of her trunk, where no one would stumble across them by chance.) That obviously hadn't been done with any expectation that Liz would return the favour — the first one, Daphne had had Liz copy it just before going home, Liz hadn't even known what it was until after she'd already left — and Daphne was well aware of how pointlessly neurotic she could be, she, just... She didn't know.

She should just get it over with. If she just kept putting it off, and off and off, and she actually did loosen up enough to get anywhere with Daphne, and then... That sounded...bad.

(Besides, if Daphne did break up with her, that was probably the right thing for her to do. Liz was a monster, after all.)

Liz jerked back into motion, tapping her wand against the side of the pensieve — the memory swished down to touch the surface of the potion and was instantly absorbed, the energy enough to give the contents only the faintest glow. Forcing out a huff of breath, Liz carefully picked up the pensieve with both hands, moved to set it down on the floor near the pillow.

"What is that?" Daphne asked, her voice hardly a whisper. She'd noticed how hard of a time Liz had had copying it, that hesitation at the last second there — the constant warmth of her mind dimming somewhat, like clouds passing across the sun, she had a feeling that she wasn't going to like whatever this memory was about.

Liz didn't know how to answer that question, so she didn't. "You'll see. If I don't go now I'm going to be late, so. Um. See you after." If Daphne would want to see her at all, of course.

By the time Liz was closing the door behind her, Daphne still hadn't moved — standing in the middle of the room staring down at the pensieve, her mind fitfully turning.

The meeting of their team for the task was being held in the same room near the duelling hall that the duelling teams usually met in — they'd actually cancelled the meeting for today to do this instead — which made sense, since Liz and Cedric had recruited basically the entirety of both teams. They'd been told it was going to be a big fight, like the team event in the ICW tournament, but with teams of twice the size and with a third party involved. The fourteen-person fights could be bad enough, a forty-five person one was going to be ridiculous, nobody was going to be able to tell what was even happening, but she wasn't the one planning this stuff. Also, Cedric was actually in the senior division duelling team this year — apparently he'd only turned down the invitation to join the junior division last year because of the exams — and the both of them were more familiar with the people on the duelling teams, already used to working together, so it'd seemed the obvious thing to do. A couple people in the senior team hadn't been able to participate, for whatever reason (including Alex, so they were short their captain), they'd found replacements and an extra person to fill out the fifteen. Liz hadn't been a part of that process, Cedric had asked if she wanted to participate but she'd just told him to go ahead — she didn't know very many of the upper-years anyway, so it wasn't like her opinion would have counted for much.

The meeting was pretty much completely miserable. Liz still hadn't gotten over her mood, agonisingly self-conscious and, just, she felt really gross, that was all. On top of that, she kept wondering if Daphne had gone in the pensieve yet, she must have by now, eyes on her skin crawling like wasps, what she was thinking about it, what Daphne was doing right now, how long it would be until she saw her and what would happen then, just around and around in circles to no fucking point. She even took a quick sip of calming potion, but it didn't really help much. Hyper-aware of her own body, the way she was sitting and moving and each fold of skin, an odd tension as though pushing against itself, her...everything just hurting, a dull featureless ache, as though her insides were all twisting themselves into painful knots, or like shattered glass inexpertly pasted back together...

She was extremely uncomfortable, was the point. The team members, more familiar with her moods by now than the practical strangers they'd brought in to fill the empty spots, could mostly all tell that she was having a bad day, but they also knew she didn't like it when they drew attention to her being a fucking mess, so nobody said anything about it. Not that they had to say anything, the glances weren't subtle enough for her to not notice.

But then, most of them probably didn't realise she could feel their attention on her literally all the time, not just when she was paying attention to it. Even people who'd known she was a Seer assumed it was something she had to consciously do — or at least that part of it, obviously they knew there were people who were sensitive to things sometimes, but for some reason it rarely clicked that feeling people looking at her was the same kind of thing. It sounded too much like a spell to them, she guessed, or maybe a mind magic thing, not something they'd heard about before as a stereotypical Seer problem. Of course, it was a thing some other Seers got too — Miss Eva had admitted that she could feel people's attention as well, it was just more subtle, wasn't as intrusive for her as it was for Liz (because Liz was specifically an empathic Seer, was Miss Eva's theory) — but for some reason it wasn't an issue people talked about, in the stories and stuff. Which was silly, but whatever.

And, of course, Katie and Susan spent the whole meeting bloody hovering, which was a little irritating, but not really enough to be worth complaining about.

Actual planning for the event was hampered by not really knowing what it would entail, exactly. They'd been told duelling would be involved, but the details were pretty sparing — where exactly it would be held, what the goals actually were, anything like that. It was assumed they'd be out in the grounds or in a patch of forest somewhere, if only because there was nowhere else there'd be room for all of them at once, and it was probably just a last-man-standing fight? Hard to say. Brendan thought it was likely that they'd have a base they would have to defend, but beyond that they really knew very little.

Liz didn't care that much, honestly, and that wasn't just because she was in a terrible mood at the moment and was having serious trouble even paying attention. It wasn't like she was trying to win this stupid thing — she hadn't even wanted to be in it, she wouldn't be here if she had any choice in the matter. (Well, no, she likely would have helped in this particular event anyway, but still.) She'd be satisfied with getting her rematch with Artèmi, it made no difference to her how it went otherwise. Everyone else was at least hoping for a Hogwarts victory, though, so she kept her mouth shut.

The meeting was pretty pointless, mostly talking around in circles about what the specific instructions for the event would end up being, who the other teams were likely to pick. Their knowledge of who the other schools had brought along was pretty spotty — some had cousins who were going to either school, but they were hardly likely to help Hogwarts cheat — so both topics were all speculation. It seemed likely that the Beauxbatons team would include plenty of veela and lilin, because of their fire magic, not to mention the ability to transform into big bloody birds, which could easily be a big advantage in a fight.

Cedric pointed out that they were allowed an off-hand thing of some kind — traditionally, that would have been an enchanted shield or sword or some shite, but there was no reason they couldn't bring a broom. Letting the Beauxbatons team have uncontested control of the sky would be a bad idea, so at least some of them should be on brooms. And if Durmstrang realised the same thing, they would definitely field some fliers — they had Viktor fucking Krum on their team, after all — and Hogwarts didn't want to be the only ones without air support. Given how many veela and lilin Beauxbatons was likely to have, putting...a third, five in the air and ten on the ground, that sounded safe. Cedric would confirm with the judges that they were allowed a broom, but they should assume that was the case for now, and the air team should probably practise flying together and casting hexes in flight.

Everyone kind of assumed Liz would be in the air, since she was one of the better flyers here, but no thanks — her mind magic could theoretically be a big asset, since she could keep track of where everyone was while manoeuvring, but she had absolutely zero experience casting from a broom. Maybe if there was more time before the event, like, a month, she'd have enough time to practise up, but no, she'd be far more useful on the ground. Not to mention her quick-step trick, one of the big edges she had on most of their competitors, would be completely useless on a broom.

Also, Artèmi would almost certainly be on the ground, so.

A few of them weren't particularly happy about that, but the more they talked, the more it seemed like the junior Champions would all be on the ground and the senior Champions all up in the air, so that seemed weirdly appropriate. She didn't want to actually be in charge of the ground team, but she also didn't see why anyone would need to be in charge. It was going to be a chaotic fucking mess anyway — there would be ten of them, pick a partner and stick together, chances were they wouldn't have attention to spare for anything more than watching each other's backs. Nobody seemed particularly happy about that idea either, but it was quickly agreed that a fifteen-fifteen-fifteen (or ten-ten-ten) match was going to be too messy and unpredictable to effectively plan for anyway (especially without knowing more details), so they didn't really have a choice in the matter.

Liz and Katie were partnering up, of course, and it was quickly decided that, once again, Liz's job was to focus on Artèmi. She was likely to be the Beauxbatons team's strongest duellist, despite her age, but Liz was also the only mind mage on their team — she'd probably just lose if she tried a direct mind-magic fight again, but she'd be able to tell immediately if Artèmi was compelling other people and help them break it, so she should try to stick close to Artèmi, and take her out if possible. Liz wasn't confident of the latter, but who knows, they might get lucky. Artèmi would probably have Alexis and Évariste backing her up, which meant Liz and Katie would be outnumbered, so they should have a second pair backing them up. They decided on Susan and Oz, there, that would do.

And that was practically the end of the meeting right there. It did drag on a bit, talking in circles about various details, but nothing really important came up after that. And there wasn't a lot of practice they could do right now anyway, just, revise some spells that might be useful in a group setting, discuss tactics with your partner, and that was really it. And yet the meeting dragged on and on, seemingly to no point at all...

As shite of a mood as she was in, and as nervous as she was about Daphne, Liz was getting extremely impatient.

Finally, after what felt like fucking forever (but couldn't have been more than a couple hours), the meeting started breaking up. They didn't leave all at once, the flyers hanging back to arrange a practice session later in the week, a couple pairs huddled together discussing whatever, but Liz would really like to go hide in her room now. Maybe she'd practise scrying for a bit — spending some time away from her body sounded great right about now. She was practically the first out the door, half the group trailing behind her. Oz started skipping up to talk to her about something — he wanted to try to distract her from whatever was bothering her and cheer her up, because he could be such a Hufflepuff sometimes — but Katie caught his sleeve, muttered something to him Liz didn't catch from here. Thank you, Katie.

Liz wasn't entirely surprised when, turning the corner, she found Daphne waiting at the end of the corridor into the Entrance Hall. She had kind of half-expected she'd run into Daphne pretty quickly once the meeting was over, but she still twitched, her breath catching in her throat and her step hitching for a second. Her heart pounding, feeling so tense and bright and sharp she almost felt her skin would leap right off her bones, she forced herself to keep walking. Daphne's mind was rather cool and stormy, a little thrill did run through her as she spotted Liz, picking herself up from where she'd been sitting waiting against the wall, for some reason it was strangely difficult to read her. Her eyes on Liz as they approached, there was definitely some kind of expression on her face, not that that did Liz any fucking good — any ability she'd had to read faces had deteriorated after her mind magic kicked in, if someone's mind was too cloudy to read she was pretty hopeless.

Not knowing what Daphne was feeling was not making her less nervous. She could probably figure it out pretty easily if she, just, looked, but she...kind of didn't want to...

It didn't take long before they were at a conversational distance, Liz jerking to a halt. She felt she should say something, her voice thick in her throat, but she didn't really know what, so she, just, stood there like an idiot, uncomfortably aware of her teammates coming up behind her (eyes on her skin like wasps). But Daphne didn't stop, in a blink crossing the couple steps Liz had left between them, her heart jumping hard up her throat, reflexively retreating—

Gently, warm and soft, Daphne's arms wound around her, and she leaned over a little to turn her face into Liz's hair. Her mind suddenly flooding over Liz, overwhelming, cooler than usual, unpleasantly shifting, but from this close...

...Oh.

For a long moment, Liz just stood there, frozen in numb confusion.

With a little twitch, she stiffly started to move, worming her arms up, around Daphne's shoulders, tipping up on her toes a little to reach more comfortably. Daphne's arms shifted a little in response, to their natural place around Liz's waist, tightening around her, hugging her closer against Daphne. Warm and soft, and, she didn't...

"I'm sorry, I didn't know."

The tension in her chest started to break, Liz clenched her shivering fingers around her own wrists, she had to choke it down to find her voice. "It's okay. You..." She trailed off, not really sure what to say. The question bouncing around in her head was too much of a mess to straighten out into words...and she didn't know how Daphne would react to her asking it.

Somehow, the possibility that Daphne really wouldn't be put off hadn't quite seemed real, she'd hardly considered it. Liz didn't know how she felt about this development, confused and, just, too much, she didn't...

(...fragile, sharp shards pasted together but not properly repaired, rubbing against each other with a feeling like nails against a chalkboard. It wasn't a new feeling, it'd come up a few times in the last year or so, but she still didn't know what it was — and asking Severus what the hell a feeling meant was kind of awkward.)

Throat hot and sharp and eyes stinging, "Oh shite," she lurched back, Daphne letting her go. Covering her eyes with one hand (Daphne had the other), Liz forced through slow, deep breaths, desperately trying to control herself. Crying in private was one thing — she still wasn't entirely comfortable with it, especially when Daphne was around, but she was working on it — but crying in public was another thing entirely. Tension thick and icey, Daphne's mind soft and cool against her, "Fucking thing," why couldn't she just control herself for—

Oh. Fucking hell, she'd completely forgotten about that. She'd been...four or five? something like that, and they'd been in some kind of clothing store — a nice one, shopping for Dudley, Liz had just been along because Petunia didn't trust her to not make a mess of things if she were left alone. One of the women working there had spotted her eyeing a nearby dress — she didn't remember even so much as what colour it'd been, just that she'd thought it was pretty — and suggested Liz try it on. Liz had been a bit surprised when Petunia had let her, but in retrospect she'd probably just wanted to avoid making a scene...or drawing suspicion, not that the employees would have been able to do shite if they'd realised Liz was being abused anyway, but whatever. Liz had tried it on, and of course she'd loved it, she never got nice things, but of course Petunia had come up with some excuse why they wouldn't be getting it (for the spectators' benefit), because Liz never got nice things — just that Liz had obviously wanted it would have been reason enough for Petunia to keep it from her, probably. Liz had already been miserable at the time (she forgot why), before she'd really known what was happening she'd been crying, and...

Petunia had not been pleased with her for causing a fuss.

She'd completely forgotten that had ever happened, why the hell was she remembering it now? Honestly, her brain, what the fuck...

She wiped at her eyes with her sleeve, it kind of hurt to breathe, her chest and throat too tight and hot, but it wasn't too bad, at least she'd caught it early. Daphne just patiently waited for her to stop losing it like a crazy person, trying to push out soft warm feelings at her — which only sort of worked, Daphne not in the best of moods herself at the moment. She was holding back the urge to touch Liz, hug her or something, realised that that wasn't what Liz wanted right now. Without really considering what she was doing, Liz pushed a tangled mess of feelings at Daphne, not sure what to call all that herself, but the point was that the restraint was appreciated, especially in public. They had her duelling teammates coming up only a few steps behind her, completely breaking down here would just be fucking awkward...

"Liz? Are you okay?" A haze of feeling wafting off of Katie, cool and shifting and prickly, confusion and concern and...suspicion? Liz glanced that way, reflexively, to see Katie was giving Daphne some kind of look — ah, the other stuff was pointed at her, but the suspicion was pointed at Daphne. (Feelings directed at her were more intrusive than ones that weren't, but it could get confusing when someone was feeling multiple things at once, only some of which were at her.) Probably thought Daphne had done something, which was very silly. Obviously, if one of them had done something to hurt the other, it would have been Liz. But then, she guessed Katie didn't really know Daphne at all, so.

Her voice coming out a little croaky, Liz said, "I'm fine, just..." She trailed off as she realised she didn't have any way she could possibly finish this sentence — it wasn't like she was going to explain what was going on out here in the hallway, with Katie, yes, but also Susan and Oz and... "Today just sucks, is all. I'm going to go down and hide in my room."

They all seemed to accept that, letting Liz (and Daphne) go without further comment. But she didn't want to go through the Entrance Hall, where there'd be who knew how many people, so she turned around instead. She took a left just before Helga's Gallery, a turn a bit later bringing them to the rather less ornate continuation of the Grand Staircase underground, tucked out of view just behind the main stairs. Apparently Daphne thought this was far enough out of the way, because they hadn't even quite reached the stairs when she said, "I am sorry. I knew they were there, I simply didn't realise they were...so extensive."

Daphne was trying to be delicate about it which, even through the weird fragile mood Liz was in, was kind of funny. Seriously now, it's not like she didn't know what they were talking about, Daphne could use the word... "It's fine. I'm not sure what you're apologising for, honestly."

"Well, I..." She hesitated for a moment, a hot shivering through her mind, a nauseous lurch of discomfort and...some shade of guilt, probably. It was uncomfortable to be so close to, Liz grit her teeth, holding back the urge to tear her hand away. (She suspect that would just make Daphne feel worse.) "In our, ah, sexy thoughts we've traded," the phrase said with a faded hint of humour, still amused by Liz's term for it, "what I have imagined of you has been...quite inaccurate. I didn't mean to..." Hurt her, she meant.

"If it bothered me I would have said something."

A sceptical slant in her head, a subtle lilt of laughter on her voice, Daphne said, "Liz, nghariad, you hardly ever simply tell me. If I want to know how you're feeling for certain, I must ask."

...Well. Liz had absolutely no idea what to say to that — it didn't help that she was slightly thrown by the term of endearment. (Her Cambrian still wasn't perfect, especially less formal speech, and the Mistwalker dialect could be a little odd, but "love" was basic vocabulary.) Daphne wasn't wrong, exactly, but...

"And in any case, you have said something now. In a manner of speaking."

"...I guess. That's not why, though, I just..." Liz trailed off, not really sure where to go with that sentence. She knew what had been bothering her, but she wasn't sure how exactly to put that to words, or whether she should be saying some of that to Daphne at all. She still felt weirdly bad about lying to her all the time, about... Well, she wasn't lying, precisely, it wasn't as though she'd consciously said or done anything to mislead Daphne (aside from little everyday things here and there, she guessed), but Daphne's unreasonably high opinion of her sometimes made her feel like she was lying to her, even though she technically wasn't.

Daphne was a good person, and Liz was...not. Sometimes that really bothered her.

They were at the bottom of the stairs now, the little landing below ground, corridors leading to Slytherin and Hufflepuff at right and left, ahead the highly-enchanted doors guarding the path down to the wardstones, magic so dense the air seemed to sizzle. A few steps into the room, Liz slowed to a stop, the tug at her hand halting Daphne a second later. People hardly ever came this way, so they should be mostly alone, far more private than Slytherin would be. Liz did still plan to go hide in her room — it was barely lunchtime, but today had already been exhausting, she was done already — so they had to finish this conversation here.

Not that she was really sure where to go with it, the brief delay not nearly enough time for Liz to figure out how the hell to translate the mess going on in her head into sensible words. Especially since there were things it probably wasn't a good idea to actually tell Daphne. Like, some of the other things she was lying about, for example — she suspected she could disabuse Daphne of her odd notion that Liz was a good person pretty easily, but admitting that she'd literally murdered a woman and subsumed her soul would cause more problems than it would solve. She wasn't sure how likely it was she'd get in actual trouble for it — if for no other reason, Daphne wouldn't have any evidence, and also it'd happened in a foreign country... — but Liz didn't actually want Daphne to break up with her. She could admit it would probably be in Daphne's best interest to, for various reasons, but Liz was just selfish like that, she guessed. Or maybe she was just in a shite mood at the moment, and being overly self-critical about it, who the fuck knows. It wasn't all in her head, though.

(Daphne should hate her, but Liz knew that that actually happening would suck, so she wasn't exactly motivated to fix it.)

Also, even just on the specific thing they were talking about, Liz had a feeling that Daphne wouldn't react well to her being entirely truthful about that either. Not that Liz was certain she'd be able to get the words out anyway. Daphne had been unnerved just by Liz being, a bit, detached from her body — learning just how much she hated it would be an extra few levels of unnerving above that, and, Liz wasn't sure how Daphne would take that. Probably be worried she might do something to herself, she thought. Not that Liz would, of course — taking her frustrations out on her body would hurt her, obviously, since she was stuck in the bloody thing — but that just seemed like a natural thing for someone to worry about, right? Besides, she already had more than enough scars, that seemed kind of obvious to her, but, things that seemed obvious to her weren't always to other people, so. She already had Severus being unnecessarily concerned for her mental health, she didn't want to bother Daphne with it too.

So, she couldn't really get into it too much, but maybe just the basics... "It didn't really bother me that you were imagining me wrong, at least not by itself. It, just, felt like I was lying to you, I guess. And I'm feeling especially disgusting today, because of the photo, so." Liz shrugged. "It seemed like the thing to do at the time."

There was a little flash of something sharp in Daphne's head, but it came and went so quickly she didn't catch it. "You're lovely, Liz."

Was it just her, or was Daphne using her name more than usual? Her feeling was that, when people did that, they were trying to get her to pay more attention to what they were saying. Which was silly, as though she wasn't paying attention in the first place. "What? I mean..." It kind of felt like she was making a point, but Liz wasn't sure what.

An odd little smile flickering at her lips, Daphne lifted the hand that was still holding Liz's up to chest level. Her free hand came up to meet them, her fingers tracing over the bones under the back of Liz's hand — it tickled, a little. "Do I seem disgusted to you?"

...Oh. Well. "Right, I get it. So it doesn't..." She had to break off to breathe for a moment, the tight heat in her chest strangling her voice, the pasted-together shards roughly scratching against each other. "It doesn't bother you at all?"

"The rose is coveted despite its thorns, and one can hardly make love to the sunset."

"...Huh?"

Daphne smiled. "It's from a poem. I'll send you a copy later — I don't trust myself to do it justice reciting from memory. It will be in Cambrian, of course."

"Of course," she repeated, not sure what else to say. Just, a bit taken aback that Daphne planned on sending her love poetry, like, was that...just a thing that was going to be happening now? Okay, then...

"I can see it troubles you terribly, however. It... Is there nothing that can be done about it?"

"Um." It took a second for Liz to tear herself away from the odd idea of Daphne sending her bloody love poetry — mostly because it'd just reminded Liz that that was a thing she could do. Not love poetry specifically (or maybe that too?), just, she was shite with words in person, there was no reason she couldn't tell people squishy shite in written form instead. She remembered she and Daphne had a deal to do that if something came up, it just hardly ever did... "Ah, no, it's— I mean, yes, it can be fixed, just, apparently puberty can do weird shite to your fundamental identity, so I couldn't have it done right away. Dumbledore probably should have gotten someone to take a look at it before puberty fucked it up, but whatever, too late for that now." Sometimes she wondered how long it was going to be before she stopped finding new reasons to be angry with Dumbledore. "Severus is going to find a good blood alchemist, over the summer, probably."

"Oh! So it can be isolated, then, I did wonder..."

"Severus thinks so." Some curses were too thoroughly hooked into the person's magic and shite to be easily untangled, or the damaged parts could be too close to critical organs to remove without risk of further issues, things like that. Liz had stumbled across stuff about that reading about blood alchemy over the summer, but Severus had reassured her it was fine. Before that incident in first year, most likely not — he suspected that, were it possible to repair before she'd subsumed the active parts, Kat Turner, the school healer before Pomfrey, would have taken care of it while Liz had been here before being sent to the Dursleys (unless Dumbledore vetoed it, which was possible) — but he'd gotten a pretty good look as he was cursing the shite to stop growing, and it shouldn't be a problem. "At the latest, I might have to wait until winter break, because I'm bloody tiny," and because eighteen months from her first period would be in August, so the mark might fall too late in the summer to get it done, "but next year at some point, definitely."

"Oh that's wonderful. I do hope that goes well for you — blood alchemy is often more an art than a science." And Daphne really did mean for you, because apparently Liz being a disfigured mess really did make absolutely no difference to her. Which, that was still weird, and yet... Well, Liz hadn't seen it coming, and yet at the same time was somehow completely unsurprised. Though, her thoughts on fixing it weren't entirely on Liz feeling better about herself — it'd occurred to Daphne that, as she was now, Liz definitely wouldn't ever be able to nurse a baby herself.

Despite herself, Liz let out a low huff of laughter, her lips twitching. "Honestly, Daphne, I didn't even think of that. I'm not ever having any of those anyway, so."

"Truly?" Daphne asked, blinking, surprise ringing from her head unreasonably loud. "Why not?"

Okay, on reflection, Liz guessed she should have expected that reaction — she was aware that Mistwalkers could be kind of odd about children and shite. Just, hadn't thought of it, she guessed. "Um, maybe you didn't notice, but I'm kind of a little gay?"

And now Daphne was laughing, which, Liz had said it like that on purpose, so. Fuck, she was distractingly pretty when she was smiling all bright like that — not that she wanted to do anything about it, still in a shitty gross mood, just saying. "You know, Liz, blood alchemists long ago devised a solution to that problem as well."

...Well yeah, sure, but, that wasn't the real problem, was it. Liz had no business being a mother, that should be obvious to anyone who thought about it for five seconds. "Yeah, well, still not doing it."

"If that's what you want, as I believe we'd all be the lesser for it."

Liz couldn't imagine how the world would be anything but worse with children raised by her in it, but, whatever, she didn't want to talk about it. "I was thinking I might get other stuff done while I was at it. The blood alchemy, I mean. Like my hair, you know, so tired of it being a mess all the time." Unfortunately, making herself taller probably wasn't feasible...

Daphne wasn't so stupid as to not notice the clumsy subject change, but she played along. "I like your hair."

"Yes, well, I'm the one who has to live with it, so."

"Oh! Of course I don't mean to suggest you should take my opinion into account. I only mean to— Well, you know."

"Yes, I know." Daphne would be a little sad to see Liz's hair go, because she did like it, but she also wouldn't want Liz to force herself to put up with something she hated just for her. The comment was mostly reflexive, she honestly hadn't meant to suggest Liz shouldn't do it. "I was thinking of changing the colour too. A nice dark red, maybe."

"That could be nice. Like your mother's?"

"No, darker than that, more like Alexis. I mean Torralba, Artèmi's trio partner?"

She belatedly realised she'd used Cæciné's first name too — she wasn't sure why she'd started doing that, hadn't noticed it happening — but Daphne obviously knew who she meant anyway, sighing out a long ah with a nod. "Yes, I can see that. You would use green and white..." Daphne's free hand lifted from the back of Liz's, past the left side of her face to finger her hair — that also tickled, a little. "...and maybe blue. A light blue, like the noonday sky in summer."

"...Poetry again? Where's this coming from, all of a sudden?"

Smiling, Daphne drawled, "I'm sure I couldn't say." Her hand moved, coming forward, palm warm against Liz's cheek, tickling against—

Liz sucked in a sharp breath, lurched a step away. "Sorry, I'm still, you know. Bad mood."

"Of course, I wasn't thinking." Not about that, anyway — Daphne still had her hand, so their minds were close enough that Liz could very easily see that Daphne was rather...preoccupied, at the moment. Liz wasn't entirely sure how the conversation they'd been having had led into Daphne really wanting to kiss her right now, but her mind went at unexpected angles like that sometimes, so.

(None of their friends had any ideas how bad of a pervert Daphne was, it was honestly kind of funny.)

Even just seeing Daphne thinking about it was making Liz rather uncomfortably self-conscious, sharp and tight and tingly, and also a bit nauseous for some unfathomable reason, so, yeah, let's not do that right now. "Um. I was going to go hide in my room. Practise scrying, maybe — get away for a bit, you know," she said, waving vaguely at herself with her free hand.

A cool flash, Daphne frowned a little, just for a second, before covering it with a mild smile. She didn't think exploiting scrying to escape from the physical world was quite healthy, but she assumed Liz realised that, and pointing it out likely wouldn't be helpful. Which, yeah, Liz knew it was kind of fucked, but she was doing it anyway, so. "I'll go up to lunch, then. I'll see you later?"

Liz shook her head. "Tomorrow, probably."

"Very well." Daphne's free hand came up, gently patting the back of Liz's. Staring down at their interlaced fingers, Liz could feel the unspoken words bubbling in her head, flickering soft and sharp and cool and warm, too unfocused to pick out any particular thing. Slowly, gently, her grip shifted, lifted Liz's hand and ducked her head down a little to...softly, kiss Liz's knuckles. Um? Briefly clasping Liz's hand again between both of hers, Daphne gave her a subtle, warm smile. "Sleep well, nghariad."

She let go of Liz's hand, turned and walked back to the stairs, disappearing up step by step. For a long moment, Liz could only, just, stand there, watching her go.

...What the hell was that about?

Once Daphne was out of sight, Liz shook off the moment and jerked into motion. She was, just, done with existing today, playing around with scrying sounded like an excellent idea. Or, she did still have some of her spirit-walking potion, maybe she could get lucky and catch something from her dorm room...

---

Poor Liz, body dysmorphia's a bitch...

Anyway, yeah, been a while, I know. Been feeling generally miserable lately, so I haven't been writing as much in general, and I kept getting distracted with other projects. Also, I just kind of hated writing this chapter, it was weirdly difficult for some reason. It's finally fucking done now though, so, moving on.

The First Task is the next chapter, woo! The scene after that is the party afterward, and then Liz and Dumbledore will finally have an overdue talk, and then immediately after that will be the Second Task already — not the canonical one, remember there are nine — and then another party, and then we'll be on the ramp up to the Yule Ball. Actually, on reflection, I think I'm going to completely skip the Second Task right to the party after it — it's pretty uneventful, and I've got a shitload of scenes in this year to get to still, so. There are still 45 items on my outline of fourth year, but I'll probably be deleting some and fusing together others as we go along...and also there's one I need to add I can think of off the top of my head. Actually, as I'm writing this I just decided to kill a minor subplot, so it's 42 items now.

So we've got...
Triwizard Tournament V-VI — First Task
Fourth Year XXIV — Liz and Dumbledore have a talk
Triwizard Tournament VII — Second Task
Fourth Year XXV-XXIX (count subject to change) — run up to Yule Ball
Triwizard Tournament VIII — Yule Ball
Fourth Year XXX-XXXII — winter duelling tournament
Fourth Year XXXIII — Liz and Dorea have a talk
Triwizard Tournament IX — Third Task
Fourth Year XXXIV-XXXV — stuff with Liz and Severus
Triwizard Tournament X — Fourth Task
And that brings us up to the beginning of February, where some new subplots come in — so yeah, that looks about right. Liz has got a couple fun months coming up, doesn't she.

Blah blah, what am I doing, until next time.