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)

81. Fourth Year — XXV (b)

Of course, now that Severus was gone, she was alone in the room with Dumbledore — last time that'd happened, he'd searched out memories of her compelling the Durlseys and then dragged her back to Privet Drive. Liz took a deep breath, trying not to think about that. Honestly, it was fine, he couldn't bring her back there if he wanted to, and Severus would be back in an hour, she was fine. To distract herself, she nodded across the packed little room toward the painting. "Who's that?"

"Ah. Come in, of course, tea should be ready any minute." Waving her on, Dumbledore started leading the way across the sitting room, weaving between the furniture. "Mind the cat, she likes to get underfoot."

She hadn't noticed there was anything else alive in the room, her mind held in as close as she could — unconsciously preparing for an attack, she hadn't quite realised she was doing that, tried to relax — hadn't seen the big fluffy orange thing until Dumbledore pointed it out. Curled up on the rug in the middle of the seating area, very much in the way, thing looked asleep. It passed into her awareness as she neared, she frowned down at it. "That's not a cat."

Dumbledore glanced over his shoulder, big bushy eyebrows raised a tick. "She's a kneazle cross. I don't know what fraction exactly, she was raised by a friend of mine — a house-warming gift of a kind, I suppose. Under the circumstances, it seemed rude to pry too closely."

That seemed like a reasonable thing to ask in context to Liz, but she wasn't the expert. She'd come across kneazle crosses before, and, yeah, that might be all it was. They had a bit of a colourful tingle to them, sort of like the difference between normal people and mages — which did make sense, since they tended to inherit just a little bit of magic from their kneazle side. There was something weirdly familiar about it, actually, though she couldn't put her finger on what it was...

(She'd almost say they'd met before, but that didn't make any sense, it was a bloody cat.)

Now that they were closer, Liz could definitely make out that the medals were for the Order of Merlin — different classes, though, Dumbledore's ribbon purple and the other two green. "The man in the middle," Dumbledore said, pointing at the blond, "is Alastor Moody, who I'm sure you're well-acquainted with by now."

"I guess." He didn't teach very many classes, at this point Liz knew a lot more from stories about him than from actually talking to him. "I would have never guessed, it doesn't look like him at all." The man in the portrait was standing a little unevenly, as though favouring an injury, but it was pretty hard to tell, his face nicked in a couple places but mostly still its natural shape.

"Yes, well, we were much younger, then. This was painted in Nineteen Forty-Nine, which does feel a lifetime ago now. And these two," gesturing at the red-heads, "are my brother Aberforth and myself." That Dumbledore had a younger brother was one of those things that Liz was aware of, but just never really thought about — he owned a pub in Hogsmeade, supposedly, Liz had seen him in passing. They looked much more alike in the painting than they did now, but probably just because Aberforth didn't dress like a colour-blind crazy person. "This was shortly after the war, when it seemed as though we were entering into a time of peace — and that the three of us were of like mind, for what may well have been the first and last time in our entire lives."

Of course, while Liz barely thought about Dumbledore's brother at all, she did know that they didn't get along. And she even knew why, or at least one of the reasons — Grindelwald had written about it. "I didn't know you two were a thing. You and Professor Moody I mean, obviously."

There was an odd little shiver in Dumbledore's mind, maybe surprise? "Did Severus tell you that?"

Liz shrugged. "I just know things sometimes — being a Seer is like that." Something about the painting, listening to Dumbledore talk about, she didn't know, she could never explain this shite. If she didn't already know Dumbledore was gay, she might not have guessed what the feeling meant, but.

"Ah, yes, I have heard. You may wish to hold close that particular revelation — Alastor can be quite private, I'm afraid, and he may not react well to hearing details of his personal life bandied about freely." That pulse from Dumbledore's head was a sort of stale frustration, and it—

...Liz suddenly knew way more about Dumbledore and Moody's relationship than she would ever have wanted to, because being a Seer could be like that sometimes.

Anyway, the painting was based on a photo from an award ceremony at the end of the war. Dumbledore had his whole famous duel with Grindelwald, and Moody had fought for years in France, and later in the 'liberation' of central Europe (mostly Germany, Helvetica, and Saxony). Liz had had no idea Dumbledore's brother had been involved, though. Not in the fighting, apparently, he'd volunteered for humanitarian relief efforts, helping get supplies into civilian areas cut off by the fighting and smuggling people (especially children) further away from the front, that sort of thing. Dumbledore said he'd even had contacts with muggle resistance movements in France and Germany and the like — in particular, his group had given a little bit of help here and there to move supplies around and to various efforts to hide or evacuate Jews (and others) away from Nazi eyes. (Which was a little odd, for the pathologically isolationist mages. Dumbledore didn't say that Aberforth had been working with a British communalist group, but Liz picked it up anyway.) Because of how the scale of their population sizes can work out sometimes, and how completely fucked the muggle side was at the time, they'd probably actually saved more muggle lives than magical, but Aberforth's official commendation on his admittance into the Order of Merlin didn't even mention his group's activities on the muggle side.

The brief version of the story Dumbledore gave her in passing had a weird thought sticking in her head — was Aberforth bloody Dumbledore a communalist? That would be quite strange, given his personal history with Grindelwald...

They didn't linger in front of the painting long, continuing on into the kitchen. It was rather more modern-looking than the outside of the house would suggest, all smooth and gleaming white ceramic and red-stained wood. Still somewhat old-fashioned by muggle standards, of course, because there weren't any electronic appliances at all, and it didn't seem quite as nice as Liz's (and not just because it was smaller), but it seemed fine enough. Liz would guess the house wasn't really big enough to have a proper dining room, the little breakfast nook in here, which might theoretically be nice and sunny if it weren't November, was probably the only dining set in the house.

The teapot was already whistling by the time they got in here, so Dumbledore went ahead and started fiddling with that. Liz was a little surprised Dumbledore knew how to cook at all, actually, since he'd lived most of his life with the Hogwarts elves taking care of everything. The table already had a platter with tea sandwiches and sausages and biscuits and the like, so. How much of this had he made himself?

None of it, turned out. He'd been able to do a few basic things for himself, like prepare tea, but really not enough to get by on his own. For the first couple months after getting kicked out of Hogwarts he'd mostly lived off take-away. Since he was living alone now, he had been getting one of his friends to teach him things — he was oddly cheerful talking about it, actually, Liz guessed he was having fun with his cooking lessons. (Which was fair enough, since he was an alchemist and all, and cooking was basically the same thing but you could eat it after.) That was still very much a work in progress, though. The biscuits were a gift from a friend, and he'd walked into Dorchester to buy the sausages and sandwiches from a muggle shop.

Yes, Dumbledore did get some queer looks walking around in the muggle world, but people just assumed he was an eccentric old man — which, to be fair, he admitted with a little winking sort of smirk, he was that — and most of them he'd spoken to were friendly about it. People had even tried to help him get his groceries and the like home a few times, which made it a little awkward to shake them off, since it wasn't like they could get past the wardline around the magical part of the town...

Before too long they were sitting down. Liz would tolerate the tea, she guessed — she preferred coffee, but she could drink tea if it was the only option — picked off a few mini-sausages and... It was some kind of dried sausage, salami-like, might as well try a couple slices. She completely ignored the biscuits, and looked like the sandwiches had, like, some kind of melon on them...or maybe that was just cucumber, hard to tell. Whatever, not worth trying. Liz was pretty sure sausage was a slightly weird thing to have with tea, so those were probably there for her anyway.

"Won't you try any of the biscuits? They're quite good."

Liz shook her head. "Don't like sweet things."

"Yes, I've heard you can't stomach sugar." Dumbledore didn't say out loud that he'd read the article in Witch Weekly where she talked about it. "I understand honey is much more tolerable for Seers."

"It is, but it still makes me nauseous anyway. Severus's theory is that, when I was a little kid, I didn't know why sugar made me feel ill, so my brain just decided all sweet things are bad. I've been paying attention, recently, and honey-sweetened things feel different, but I still don't like them." Also, she was also pretty sure by now that cotton actually was a problem, she just didn't know what to do about that — magic-made pants weren't clingy in the same way, she really didn't like them.

"Ah yes," he said nodding, "I suppose that makes sense. The human mind all too often can seem a fickle, fallible thing."

...Liz had the feeling Dumbledore might be thinking of something in particular, but she had no idea what.

There was an attempt at smalltalk from there, but it was, as always, unspeakably uncomfortable. Liz still didn't understand why people felt the need to do this, it was always awkward as hell — especially when Liz didn't really want to be talking to the person in the first place. Thankfully, after only a couple questions about how school was going or whatever, Dumbledore very quickly got to the point. Setting his cup back down with a little clink against the saucer, he let out a sigh. "I suppose you are wondering why I've asked to speak with you."

Liz waited for a moment, gnawing on a bit of sausage, but Dumbledore didn't go on right away — apparently he was doing that annoying thing where people waited for a response despite one not being necessary. "Severus suggested it had something to do with the Dark Lord, and that Hallowe'en."

An odd sharp flicker in Dumbledore's mind, he said, "I do so dislike the use of that title. It does no service to anybody to accord such a man honours he does not deserve. And, I find it is to the Dark much as this You-Know-Who business is to the Light — a means of avoiding speaking a name of that which is feared. And fear of a name only magnifies fear of the thing itself."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not afraid of the name, but a lot of other people are. Maybe you can't feel everyone else freaking out scratching at your skin like a thousand hot needles or some shite, but it's really uncomfortable, it's easier to just play along. Besides, it's just what everyone calls him in Slytherin, I didn't even know what his proper name was for...I don't remember, a while. And, accord honours he doesn't deserve, honestly, nobody deserves to be treated like a bloody lord, and I'm pretty sure most people don't even mean 'Dark Lord' as a good thing, so, don't care." Dumbledore's head was shivering through most of that, but she didn't bother looking closer, because he would definitely notice. And she just didn't care what he thought of her that much, so, fuck it. "Plus? 'Voldemort' is a bloody stupid name anyway. I just can't take anyone called that seriously, so I refuse to use it."

With a sort of startled lurch, Dumbledore broke into low chuckles, his beard twitching with a smile she couldn't quite make out through all the hair. "I suppose it is all quite silly, removed from the common dread of the time. Much of what I meant to discuss is concerning Voldemort, yes. Though it is difficult to...

"Perhaps this is overdue," he admitted, glancing away to stare out of focus at the wall to her right, his mind darkly churning. "I must admit, I had gotten into the habit of keeping secrets. A degree of secrecy is necessary in wartime — if our membership were public knowledge, or the location of our safehouses, or what sources we might have to provide insight into our opponents' plans, well. It has been brought to my attention, recently, that I may have been keeping close things that...may have been better shared. Not with the public, of course, but certain considered individuals, yes. It can be difficult, knowing who needs to know what, and I have been...overly cautious, perhaps."

Yeah, Severus had called it — she was looking for an apology in there, and she wasn't seeing one yet. Of course, she still had no bloody clue what he was talking about, maybe he was getting to it.

Dumbledore waited for a moment — perhaps to allow an interruption, perhaps simply lost in his thoughts — before continuing on. "I did consider telling you some of it, years ago now. But then... I expected you to ask, that day a few short years ago, after you encountered the half-mad shadow of himself Voldemort has been reduced to. Maybe it wasn't a question you were comfortable asking in front of your cousins and Severus and Poppy, maybe we were interrupted before you could voice it. Maybe the question simply hadn't occurred to you. Regardless, I took the opportunity of the question failing to be asked to put it off for a later time. And not so long after that, the business with Severus and the trusteeship began, and, well..."

Okay, he wasn't getting any less cryptic. "What are you talking about? What question?"

"Elizabeth, haven't you ever wondered why Voldemort tried to kill you as a baby?"

...Well, no, not really. She'd assumed he tried to kill her too just because she was there — you know, finishing the job like. Voldemort had probably heard the same old stories as she had, so, leaving angry orphans behind you who might want to get revenge one day was generally a bad idea. "I don't know. I thought my parents were in hiding because he wanted them dead? And the Dark Lord was just finishing the family off while he was it, you know." Lily had gone through a lot of effort to make sure Liz specifically would survive if they were attacked, but you know, mums, doing mum stuff, she hadn't really given that much thought.

(Other than being overwhelmed by the revelation that her parents had actually loved her, but that was a different thing.)

Dumbledore hesitated for a moment, a crackle of something tense in his head, before admitting, "For all of his depravity, even Voldemort had his limits. He did have some respect for the deep history of our nation, such as that represented by the House of Potter, and a certain... Death Eater attacks rarely killed children. Even when all the adults of a family were murdered, the children were, not always, but often spared. In the entire course of the war, Voldemort himself is known to have turned his wand on a child once, and only once."

Okay, Liz hadn't known that, actually, but she couldn't say she was surprised. Given most of his followers' religion, she might have guessed — they might not all be as obsessively focussed on her as Narcissa was, but she was pretty sure they all venerated Mother Mercy to one degree or another, and she was one of those big protector-of-children-and-the-home types. Voldemort himself had been deeply religious, supposedly, had even been a bloody priest and everything, though Liz didn't know anything about the cult he came out of. So, when she thought about it, yeah, that wasn't a surprise at all.

"So, wait, I don't get it. Why would he kill me, then?" She guessed he could have just been especially angry at her parents, but she was pretty sure that wasn't what Dumbledore was getting at...

"I'm still unconvinced it is wise to tell you now," he said, voice breathy and slightly absent. "It is a...terrible weight to bear. Severus insists you are strong enough to not break under the weight, but I do wonder. He knows you better than I, of course, but you are so young still..."

He'd trailed off, continuing to stare blankly at the wall, mind fitfully turning — she waited a couple breaths, but he didn't seem to be picking up the thread again. For fuck's sake, "Just spit it out already. Or do I have to try to get it right of your mind if I want to skip the melodramatic dithering?"

Somewhat to her surprise, Dumbledore let out a low chuckle, dark amusement rolling over her. He didn't answer right away, reaching for a biscuit instead. Once he'd swallowed his first bite off of it, he started, "Voldemort tried to kill you when you were an infant because of a prophecy made shortly after your birth. He knew it had been made, but—"

"Stop right there," Liz snapped, her voice turned thick and harsh from the tightness in her chest. She could barely even breathe, just, practically choked by such an intense surge of hot exasperation, she—

A prophecy, really? All this shite was because of a bloody prophecy? Got to be fucking kidding...

"Just, stop. If there's a prophecy, I don't want to hear it."

Dumbledore's bushy white eyebrows dipped in a mild, disapproving frown. "Ignorance of one's fate may seem a comfort, but one is not truly protected by that ignorance."

"It isn't about that, you self-righteous son of a bitch!" Amusingly, Dumbledore seemed more taken aback by the insult than offended, leaning a little back in his seat and giving her a funny look, but now wasn't the time to get distracted by that. "It's never a good idea to— It's been, what, over a dozen years since this stupid prophecy was made? In all that time, didn't it occur to you to look up how prophecies actually work?"

"...It is my understanding that prophecy is one of the as-yet unexplained mysteries of our world. It is one of the subjects under investigation at the Department of Mysteries, but, I must admit, I am hardly an expert in the matter."

Honestly, you didn't need to be an expert in the matter, this was only something that had been common knowledge for literally thousands of years. Or, maybe this was just something Seers and kids from Dark families knew about, she guessed she'd never talked to Light kids about this shite... "Fine, I guess I can give someone literally a hundred years older than me a basic lesson in what the fuck Oracles are, why not. How about this — you ever heard of Oedipus Rex?"

Dumbledore blinked at her for a couple seconds again. "I am familiar with the story, of course."

"Here's a fun question for you: would our tragic hero Oedipus have killed his dad and screwed his mum if the prophecy saying he would do exactly that had never been made?"

And Dumbledore just kept blinking at her, like a fucking idiot. She could tell there was more going on in his mind, though, but she wasn't looking closely enough to guess what the hell that was about. "I suppose I'd never thought of it like that."

"Well, congratulations for missing the moral of the fucking story, I guess."

"I understand you're upset, Elizabeth, but I hardly think the profanity is necessary."

"Considering I just learned that you got my parents killed and fucked up my whole damn life because you listened to a prophecy like a fucking arrogant arsehole, I think I'm entitled to a naughty word now and then — so you can take your pedantic prudish snobbery and go fuck yourself with it." Liz was pretty sure Dumbledore was going to say something to that, his mind bristling, but she ploughed on anyway. "The Oracle doesn't create a prophecy, but is just the vessel it's delivered through. Prophecies don't simply tell you the future, they're a way that...something can use to tweak events in the direction they want. Whoever the subject of the prophecy is, the person it's for is whoever hears it — and they cause the prophecy to happen by reacting to it. Which is the whole. fucking. point — manipulating people into acting a certain way is what they're supposed to do. You don't fucking listen to prophecies, ever."

His mind fuming dark and unsettled, Dumbledore said, "And what is this something that delivers prophecies to us, precisely?"

Liz shrugged. "Gods, fate, whatever. Doesn't matter."

"It does matter, Ellie— Excuse me, Elizabeth." It was a little odd that Dumbledore had decided that he called her Elizabeth now, she wasn't sure when that had happened. "I have heard this explanation for the phenomenon before, of course, but it is predicated on the assumption that such entities exist. But there has never, in all of history, been a single scrap of proof of such a prophecy-formulating deity — in the absence of such evidence, we must rely on what we can see."

"And what, you think Oracles slip into a trance and make proclamations in verse, like, just unconsciously? That's absurd."

"And ascribing such things to the will of the gods is more rational?"

Oh for fuck's sake, come on! "So call it something else then, if you think believing in gods is silly! I don't know, maybe fucking faeries are messing with people's heads, it doesn't matter what's causing them! That doesn't change the way they work. I'm the Seer in the room, and I can tell you, that shite is not how foresight works — I couldn't write a poem to save my fucking life, and I definitely couldn't do it in a bloody trance. Do you know how trippy that shite is, it's wild..."

Dumbledore seemed rather taken aback that she had any idea what divinatory trances were like, but forced himself to ignore the tangent with what looked like physical effort. "I will admit it is peculiar, but the unconscious is a peculiar thing — at the intersection of the mind and magic itself, all manner of things are possible."

Jesus, this bloke was stubborn. "Okay, Dumbledore, let's think about this like a healer for five seconds. You've got a patient coming in who experiences these funny episodes. With no warning, they black out for a few moments, which they have no memory of. While in it, observers note that they go all tight and rigid, joints sometimes bending at uncomfortable angles, and speak in weird poetical gibberish — their voice doesn't quite sound like theirs, half-strangled, and sometimes gets a weird echo on the ambient magic in the room. When they come out of it, sometimes they go straight into a seizure, but if they don't they're just sore, like after a hell of a work-out, feeling feverish or chilled, and with a terrible damn headache, showing signs of over-channelling, they normally have to go sleep it off immediately. This stuff keeps happening at random, with no warning — there are no substances involved, it doesn't seem to be associated with a certain object or place or person, just random.

"So, what's your diagnosis, Healer Dumbledore?"

"I don't understand the point of this game, Elizabeth," he said, voice breathy with a sigh. "You know that you are describing an Oracle."

Liz gave him a flat glare. "Really? Because it sounds like demonic possession to me. Almost like they're the same fucking thing. Just a thought."

She might right now be witnessing proof of such a prophecy-formulating deity, because it looked like that might actually be getting through to him, at least a little bit. Fucking finally.

According to Miss Eva, and a book she'd found by Some-Hippie-Sounding-Name-She'd-Forgotten Lovegood, prophecies could be kind of a complicated topic among Seers. Everybody agreed that they were extremely unpleasant to channel — hurt like hell, apparently, the big ones often had them sore and tired and miserable for like a week afterward. What prophecies did wasn't really a matter of debate, and hadn't been for ages, at least not among people who knew the first fucking thing about the subject. How people felt about the whole thing could vary somewhat, depending on who you asked.

There were some Oracles, the rather more religious types, who took it almost as a calling — you know, serving as a conduit for their god to effect their will on earth, that sort of thing. There were other Oracles who were kind of put off by the whole thing, resented having control of their bodies and minds ripped away from them without their consent, to wrench events around them in directions they were completely ignorant of, and might even disagree with. It was pretty common for the latter type of Oracle to hole up somewhere in isolation, where they were unlikely to come into contact with very many people at all, to reduce the chances of being used for it, but they couldn't always manage that. Sounded like it kind of sucked, honestly.

...Now that Liz thought about it, she had heard of an alternate perspective on Oracles, trying to explain it 'scientifically' without resorting to gods or whatever. In retrospect, Dumbledore obviously subscribed to that school of thought, Liz had just kind of forgotten it was a thing at first? Because, from what she'd read and been told, Oracles themselves thought that was complete shite — that Lovegood book had completely passed over the subject and hardly paid it more than a couple sentences' worth of attention, but Miss Eva had once gone on a brief rant about how stupid it was.

Because, well, as Liz had said a moment ago, how the hell were people supposed to make a predictions in cryptic verse while unconscious? Fucking stupid.

Of course, with how much bloody nonsense there was in the divination section in bookstores and all, Liz guessed she shouldn't be surprised that Dumbledore had absorbed the wrong idea about how prophecies worked. Honestly, Liz would probably just laugh at him for being an idiot and move on...if it didn't sound like him listening to a bloody prophecy like a fucking idiot had literally gotten her parents killed.

Dumbledore had been silent for a moment, mulling over that thought, she could feel him coming to some kind of conclusion. "Are you telling me that, were you to receive a prophecy telling you of the key to end a horrible war, perhaps saving hundreds of lives, that you would simply ignore it?"

"No, I wouldn't just ignore it. I'd obliviate myself immediately."

A sharp lurch through his mind, Dumbledore stared at her for a second. "I have trouble believing that. You would truly sacrifice the opportunity to—"

"That's what you're not getting, Dumbledore, it's not an opportunity, it's a fucking trap. You seem to think you can outsmart fate, twist what you think the prophecy means into something you like, but it doesn't work that way. Whatever you think in response to it is what you're supposed to think, so you do what whoever came up with the thing wants you to do. If you listen to the bloody thing, you're a puppet, your strings being pulled for reasons you don't understand, to an end you can't predict. The game is rigged, you can't win against magic itself — the only winning move is to refuse to play." And, as the other Slytherins had learned way back in first year, Liz didn't play games.

By the moody shifting in Dumbledore's head, she was pretty sure he didn't entirely believe her. About how prophecies worked, she meant — he did believe she was being completely serious about obliviating herself if she heard one. She couldn't tell exactly what he thought about that without getting closer, but, her impression was that he thought it was kind of a selfish thing to do, that he didn't think much of her for it. Which was fine, she didn't need his approval, but it was a bit irritating that he had a Seer right here, and he was still being a stubborn arse about it. "Regardless. If you would prefer not to hear the content of the prophecy concerning you and Voldemort, I will respect your wishes. But no matter your opinion of prophecy, it was overheard by a Death Eater, who then brought it to Voldemort — and he acted upon that prophecy."

...Huh, she wouldn't have expected Voldemort to be stupid enough to listen to a prophecy. Though, it had been brought to him through an intermediary — maybe he'd thought the fact that the prophecy wasn't for him meant it was less likely to end badly if he acted on it. (Like by being blown the fuck up, for example.) Or maybe he thought his god, whichever that was, would protect him somehow. Ooh ooh, maybe that was why he'd done it on Hallowe'en specifically, maybe his god had something to do with the holiday, and he thought he'd have extra protection from fate fucking him up on that day in particular. Liz didn't know, it could be bloody anything, she didn't know enough about Voldemort and the purebloods' weird polytheistic horseshite to guess.

What she said was, "You know, just because Voldemort went and acted on the prophecy too doesn't make you any less stupid for doing the same thing." Generally speaking, the crazy fascist maniac did it first! is not actually a good excuse for doing literally anything.

His mind simmering with exasperation, Dumbledore shot her a flat, unamused look, frigid light magic prickling at her skin. "I am not attempting to justify myself, I am simply explaining the prophecy's continued significance."

Liz nodded, casually plucked up another sausage. "Go ahead, then. Don't tell me what's in it, I don't want to have to obliviate myself."

He was still unhappy with her, something hot and unpleasant crackling in his head, but it was clear he was trying to concentrate on what was actually important here, the heat dimming with each little lurch of thought. Finally, he pushed out a sigh, took a quick sip of tea. "Avoiding any details that might require reckless self-obliviation, Voldemort believes he must kill you, or else be killed by you. So long as he yet lives, in whatever form, he will continue to be a threat to you."

"Yeah, I kind of figured." If nothing else, because failing to kill a bloody baby so badly you got yourself blown up was extremely embarrassing, especially for a super special Dark Lord or whatever. There being a prophecy didn't really change that at all, she didn't think? Whatever. "Why the hell did you put me with the Dursleys, then? Sure, people wouldn't think to look for me there, but I'd probably be safer behind super old wards somewhere — like Ancient House, maybe." Sirius was her godfather, and he hadn't been arrested yet at the time...though Dumbledore had 'known' he was a traitor already... "Or the Longbottoms' or the Slughorns', I guess. You know, someone."

"That is... Well," he said, eyes tipping up to the ceiling with another big sigh. "I thought I was being so terribly clever at the time — and yet it turned out to be among the gravest mistakes of my life. Your mother's sacrifice that night was old magic, and powerful, incredibly powerful. An echo still lingered upon you hours afterward, and, I thought, that echo might be harnessed. It might be extended into a sort of ward, tied into your very blood, that might offer you unbreakable protection against Voldemort himself, as well as anyone and anything his magic touched — including his Death Eaters."

...So, it was a blood ward, he meant. Those were super illegal these days, not that Liz gave a damn. She wasn't exactly an expert on the topic, but she'd hardly ever heard of ones tied to a person instead of a location, the sort of thing that mostly only turned up in stories, but she guessed it was theoretically possible — and probably extremely effective, if it was harnessing an pre-existing vengeance ritual. Except, "That sounds difficult. I was only a bloody infant at the time, where were you going to get the power for it?"

Dumbledore seemed slightly surprised that she could figure that out for herself, which was honestly kind of insulting? Like, obviously a ward tied in blood would need blood to work, and infants naturally didn't have very much, so the ward would be super weak and not really worth it? (Or might just suck the life out of her, more likely.) Seemed to her you didn't even need to know very much about blood magic to figure that out — of course, she did know a fair bit about blood magic, but Dumbledore didn't realise that. Still. "True, such a thing could not draw from your blood alone, without serious consequences to your health." I.e., sucking the life out of her. "I thought, however — believing myself very clever — that the echoes of the ritual might be tied to the bond between mother and child. Lily had passed, of course...but a woman who shared her blood yet lived, and therefore may suit as a surrogate under the correct circumstances."

"You're fucking kidding me." Liz didn't even really think about it, the words, just, burst out of her — her mind simmering and her chest burning with...she didn't know exactly, just something. That was so fucking stupid, she couldn't believe that was why she'd been stuck with the Dursleys, it didn't...

Rearing back in his seat a little, his bushy eyebrows arching up, Dumbledore said, "I'm sorry?"

"You better be, because apparently you cocked it up from the very beginning! Petunia doesn't share Lily's blood, they were both adopted!"

His mind lurching, Dumbledore's already pasty wrinkled face actually paled a few more shades. "Are you certain?"

"Yes, I'm certain, Petunia has only been telling me about it my whole bloody life! My grandmother had some kind of medical condition, I don't know what exactly, it's not important. And she wasn't just making it up to make me feel shitty and unwanted, I did a heritage test over the summer — my biological grandparents were called Daniel and Caroline Britnell, no Evanses in there anywhere."

"...I had no idea," Dumbledore muttered, low and slow, staring blankly at the wall over her shoulder. "It was never mentioned to me, I had never even heard rumour of it. Aside from the expected gossip you might hear concerning any gifted muggleborn — you might have heard similar talk around your friend Miss Granger."

"And just how many conversations did you and Lily have about your personal lives?"

Dumbledore pursed his lips, but didn't answer — which was itself answer enough. Liz hadn't actually known for certain, but given the age difference and their different social positions, it'd seemed a pretty good fucking guess.

"Honestly, it's not like anyone needed to tell you. Have you ever actually met Petunia? They look nothing alike, it's fucking obvious." Sure, siblings could sometimes look pretty different, but the physical differences between Lily and Petunia would be very extreme, they had basically no features in common. And neither of them looked like the Evanses either — they'd died before Liz was born, she'd seen pictures — but she wouldn't expect Dumbledore to have ever met them. McGonagall certainly had, at least, she'd already been doing the muggleborn introductions back then...

It was, just, infuriating. Liz bit out a sharp sigh, leaning over the table to rub at her face with both hands. Trying to keep herself from venting the frustration bubbling in her chest by yelling at him — mostly because, while it might feel good in the moment, she realised it wouldn't actually accomplish anything. She'd wondered before why the hell Dumbledore had left her with the Dursleys, completely subverting what he was legally supposed to do — which had eventually come around to bite him in the arse, because of course it was always going to, inevitably — and while she'd had a feeling she wouldn't like it, whatever it was, she'd expected something better than this. This was, just, fucking idiotic.

Okay, like, maybe the blood ward thing wouldn't be a terrible idea...if she were a poor commoner or a muggleborn or something. If Dumbledore had just left her at Clyde Rock with the elves, she would have been fine — the wards there were pretty intense, but even if someone managed to get through them the elves could just pop her away at the first sign of trouble. Dumbledore had thought Sirius was a traitor (though that could have been easily straightened up with a single conversation), and maybe sending her to the Longbottoms wouldn't have been a great idea — Neville's parents had already had a baby to take care of, and putting more shite on them after the attack might not have seemed appropriate — but the person her parents had wanted her to go to if her godparents weren't available was actually Lady Slughorn. Which still seemed random to her, she wasn't aware of any relationship between her parents and the Slughorns which would justify that, but that's what their will said...

And that would have been fine. The Slughorns weren't a particularly wealthy family, relatively modest by the standards of the nobility — what they were was well-connected. It would have been trivial for them to pass Liz off as an orphan of one of their professional contacts they'd volunteered to care for, or the child of one of their commoner clients they were fostering. (That was apparently a thing more wealthy families did sometimes, practically raising the children of poorer families they were associated with to give them better opportunities, it was a whole weird thing.) Their wards might not be the best in the world, but with a little cleverness nobody needed to know Liz was with them in the first place.

And if they did find out, well, the Slughorns had friends who could take care of that. Hell, if they were really worried about her safety, they could have asked for a couple Eirsley bodyguards to watch over the house — the Eirsleys were all trained as battlemages from childhood, could be seriously scary when they wanted to be, and having the Eirsley commune available as a place to retreat to would be an excellent fallback plan. (Trying to attack the Eirsleys on their own land was basically suicide, and everybody knew it.) And the Slughorns were all big nerds, so if she'd been with them, she could have been getting a world-class magical education from the moment she began to talk. They might not have been able to deal with every emergency that could have come up, sure, but they knew people who could, it would have been fine.

Hell, if it came down to it Dumbledore could have given her to Cassie Lovegood — that would have been better than Petunia! She was hardly the most stable, reliable parental figure, skipping all around the world to go to duelling events and having adventures and shite, but if she just couldn't bring herself to settle down somewhere to take care of her dead ex-girlfriend's kid, she could have just left Liz with the Lovegoods and checked in once in a while. Nobody would have even thought to look for her there. She was the last heir to a noble family and everything, nobody would have expected to find her being raised by bloody Mistwalkers. (And not even one of the clans respectable enough to have been made nobility at some point.) Liz's understanding was that the kids on the Lovegood commune were all raised collectively — they didn't really do marriage there, she'd heard, they reckoned families and stuff very differently — so they could just hide Liz in the middle of all the other Lovegood kids, nobody would notice. And the Lovegoods might be creepy weird religious fanatics or whatever, but they also had decent academic and professional contacts (if not as good as the Slughorns'), so Liz would have been educated just fine with them too. Liz would guess, worse as far as her education and socialisation into the magical nobility were concerned, better for safety reasons — nobody would find her there, and attacking Mistwalker settlements was also a suicidally terrible idea.

Even assuming the blood ward would have worked, Dumbledore had no reason to believe that Petunia would know enough about anything to teach her any of the shite she would have to know, when it was time for her to come back into the magical world. Liz was mostly caught up on magic — she knew more about the fun esoteric traditional witchcraft stuff than even kids from some of the more old-fashioned Dark families these days — but she was still way behind on politics and economics and, like, society junk. Now, she mostly didn't care about all that, would rather just pay people to take care of it for her and ignore stupid noble shite as much as possible, but she could acknowledge that Dumbledore (or pretty much any responsible adult) would probably rather that she did it all properly. And Dumbledore definitely hadn't checked whether Petunia would even be willing to do so — a single conversation with her should have been enough to figure out that she hated magic, and wanted nothing to do with it...and would resent being saddled with her sister's magical child — probably even if Liz weren't magic, but that just made it worse — especially just leaving Liz on her doorstep without even asking first, seriously, what the fuck, Dumbledore...

Like, any of those would have been a better idea than leaving her with Petunia — even if the blood ward worked! It was the stupidest fucking thing, because even if his idea went absolutely perfectly according to plan (and the Dursleys weren't abusive bastards), Liz would still have been underprepared for her return to magical Britain, would need to work to catch up with all the shite the noble kids had growing up on top of dealing with all the Girl-Who-Lived nonsense. And Dumbledore himself had suggested that the protection he tried to give her would only have worked against the Dark Lord himself and the Marked Death Eaters — most of his followers hadn't been Marked, and who knows, Liz could have been found by any one of the other fucking maniacs obsessed with the mythology around her, anything could have happened. Either of the alternatives, giving her to Lady Slughorn or Cassie Lovegood, would have turned out better in the long run — she'd have been safer, and better prepared to deal with House Potter stuff and for people being fucking stupid about Girl-Who-Lived shite all the time — even if everything went perfectly. Even in the ideal, pretty, storybook version of his idea, it was still bad.

Of course, instead of properly raising her like the Slughorns or the Lovegoods would have, the Dursleys were horrid abusive bastards, so she turned out a complete fucking mess — and was probably going to be one, to one degree or another, for the rest of her life. And the super special blood ward, the reason he'd done it in the first place, had never fucking existed, because he'd assumed Lily and Petunia were related by blood, without actually checking. Or even asking anyone who'd known Lily personally, because, she'd known since she was like six or seven or something, it wasn't out of the question she might have told some of her friends. Fuck, he had Severus working with him, and he was even a Dark Arts expert and everything, hadn't Dumbledore ever consulted with him on the blood ward? He'd known Lily was adopted, had since they were little kids, she didn't...

It was, just, the stupidest thing ever. That this was the reason she'd been stuck with the Dursleys was fucking infuriating, she hated it.

"So, you completely fucked up my entire life, for nothing. Good to know."

If she'd had occasion to wonder how Dumbledore might react to being confronted with how badly he'd screwed her over, she would have expected him to...she didn't know. Not really care? She realised her feelings where Dumbledore was concerned weren't entirely rational. She, just, when she thought about him, the first thing she thought of was still him threatening to turn her over to the magic police if she used her mind-control superpowers to defend herself, and then dragging her back to the Dursleys — it'd take a hell of a lot to overpower that first impression. Granted, he'd kind of just stepped back and stayed out of the way when the guardianship stuff was happening, but that could be for any number of reasons. He certainly hadn't at all seemed apologetic in the comments Liz had seen, and the stuff with Sirius and the school and all...

The impression Liz was gotten, was that he didn't really give a shite when he ruined other people's lives. Which she'd always thought was kind of odd, since he was supposed to be a 'good' person and all, but just in a normal people are always such hypocrites sort of way.

But she was a cheating mind mage, so she could tell that he was definitely feeling something unpleasant — all mixed up cold and hot and sharp and suffocating. On the outside, only showing in the sharp little sigh he let out, glancing away from her again, a little bit of extra twitchiness in his hands, but the storm in his head was surprisingly intense, shame and guilt and self-directed anger blended up into a mess she couldn't even begin to pick apart from this distance. She probably shouldn't be surprised that he actually gave a damn, but she honestly was, a little.

"I realise that, Elizabeth." Dumbledore hesitated, starting and stopping before he managed to get out a whole syllable, before letting out another sigh and standing up. He picked up the pot, trotted over to the hob — apparently the tea was gone. Liz hadn't noticed, she hadn't quite finished the single cup she'd been given yet. (If she needed to fiddle with something to distract herself, she was just grabbing more sausages instead.) Cleaning it with a tap of his wand, and then refilling it with a charm and setting it to boil, he leaned against both palms on the edge of the counter, his back to her. "I know the consequences for what I have done, I... I am aware that...certain difficulties in childhood can leave scars that the victim will carry for the rest of their life. I have no illusions as to my responsibility for what wad done to you."

Liz grit her teeth, but he meant "scars" metaphorically. She had no intention of carrying her literal scars for anywhere near that long — she'd be getting rid of those as soon as possible. (Probably after the duelling tournament, in August. Nine months. Yes, she was counting, of course she was counting.) After a second of talking herself down, she realised Dumbledore was done already, standing there staring down at his tea kettle. "I still haven't heard anything that sounds like an apology."

Turning a sharp glare at her over his shoulder, an edge of frustration slipping into the mess in his head, he snapped, "And what would that accomplish? Do you intend to suggest that an apology from me would make any difference to you whatsoever? We both know that what has been done to you is not a harm that may be remedied with words, no matter how sincere they may be. If I thought there were anything I could say that would repair, even in small part, the damage I have done, you would have them — but I do not believe any such words exist. It feels to me that such a demonstration of regret would be an offence in its own right, diminishing my mistakes to the like of a social faux pas that might be forgiven with a simple I'm sorry. If I could repair what I have done, return to that Hallowe'en and do it all over again — do it right this time — naturally I would do so. But that is not a remedy within my reach, there is no righting this wrong. I understand that as well as, I'm certain, you do. In light of all that, what can I possibly be expected to say?"

Liz frowned down at the table — feeling his eyes on her skin like ants, tight heat hard in her throat. She grabbed another mini-sausage off of the platter, just to have something to do with her hands, idly turning it in her fingers as she struggled to swallow the heat down, get control over her voice. "That," she muttered, pointing at him with the sausage without looking. "That's what you're supposed to say." She bit into the sausage, mechanically chewing, hardly even tasting it.

Honestly, she'd never expected to get a real apology from Dumbledore. (He was talking as though that wasn't what it was, but it was, basically.) If she'd felt even the slightest hint of a lie anywhere, maybe it'd be different, but. Yeah.

She had no fucking clue what she was supposed to do with that.

"I don't forgive you."

"I would hardly expect you to." There was a wiggle in his head, maybe...not disappointment, exactly, but something similar. Shaded more toward a grim sort of resignation, she thought. It definitely didn't feel like a lie, was the point — though, it was hard to tell whether that was because Dumbledore thought he didn't deserve it, or that she was an evil bitch who just didn't have it in her heart to forgive anyone for anything. That sort of thing she couldn't be sure of without intruding, and Dumbledore would notice that.

"How about this?" Liz took another couple breaths, stealing herself to get the words out. "I stop having nightmares of Vernon beating me and Petunia locking me in that fucking cupboard, and maybe then I'll think about it."

There was an unpleasant cold shudder in his head, another hot flash of guilt. "...Yes. I suppose that would seem appropriate."

They were quiet for a few moments, Dumbledore fiddling with the tea and Liz idly munching at sausages — though she should probably slow down, they were getting magic pizza on the way back to Hogwarts. She, just, didn't know what to say, at this point. Liz hadn't even been here for all that long, but it sure felt like a lot of shite had happened, she had a headache...

(Also, she didn't want to cry in front of Dumbledore, so she was trying not to think about any of it too hard. Not for the normal reasons she ended up crying, it was just so fucking stupid, frustrating, she hated everything.)

Eventually, Dumbledore returned to the table, settling back into his chair with a sigh. While he was pouring his tea, Liz said, "You figured this out a while ago. That you fucked up, I mean — that's why you didn't try to contest my guardianship."

A grim sort of look on his wrinkly hairy face, Dumbledore nodded. "I will admit, when I was informed of the proceeding investigation I was...quite taken aback. I had a few... Let's call them 'enlightening' — an ironic word, perhaps, given the subject matter. I had a few enlightening conversations with Severus and Poppy, discussed the matter with friends of mine. I soon came to the conclusion that, yes, if you and Severus felt this was the best course, the least harmful thing I could do would be to simply stay out of your way. Though I did expect the trusteeship would be dissolved after it was transferred to Severus."

Liz shrugged. "That was the plan, at first. Severus argued it might be easier on me if we keep it. Like, courtship stuff, you know, he can just tell everyone to piss off for me, that kind of thing." The primary reason had actually been because she couldn't be tried as an adult — for getting caught playing around with restricted Dark Arts, for example — for as long as the trusteeship remained in place, but she wasn't going to tell Dumbledore that part. They'd dissolve the trusteeship once Liz had her Proficiencies, and could legally apply for a licence to study certain useful magics — so, not until she was eighteen or nineteen, probably. She'd almost certainly already be an adult under muggle law when that time came around, but until then it was just more convenient to keep it.

"Ah yes, you are getting to that age aren't you," Dumbledore muttered, an odd cool shifting in his head. "I will always find it fascinating to observe how culture changes over the decades. When I was your age, it was expected for young people to take a couple years off after their NEWTs before continuing into Mastery study or settling down — travel the world if they could afford to, or else simply enjoy their independence for a time. I'm uncertain when and why that changed."

"...The Revolution, probably." A bunch of noble families had been wiped the fuck out in the fighting, Liz wouldn't be surprised if the survivors thought being rather more careful about keeping their numbers up was a good idea. Of course, the actual courtship process, with all the social ritual and the legal and property negotiations and shite, would have always been around, but from what Dumbledore said the timing was new. She hadn't realised the tradition was that modern, everybody talked about it like the nobles getting married straight of Hogwarts was just the way it'd always been done. Maybe it was for her friends' parents, and their parents, maybe even their parents getting caught in the early years of its development — they would have been born well before the Revolution, but some of them might have been young enough at the time to be the first generation this was done with — so, maybe that was enough for it to feel completely normal...

"Perhaps. Despite our fortune in avoiding the worst of the fighting, the institutions of our nation were yet deeply affected by it." Dumbledore paused for a moment, his mind still fitfully turning. Liz wasn't looking closely, but she could tell even at this distance that Dumbledore really didn't like people being pressured into marriage at such an early age — but, given how the legal structure of houses and junk worked in magical Britain, there was literally nothing he could do about it. Felt like an old frustration, which, fair, that was seriously fucked up. She'd kind of expected guilt for his own role in inspiring the Revolution in the first place, but his brain had stuck on the courtship part itself, apparently. Finishing a sip of tea, his cup lightly clinking back against its saucer, Dumbledore let out another little sigh. "I expect you may be wondering why I wished to speak with you."

"It's crossed my mind." As big as all the stuff they'd talked about was, it didn't seem like a reason to insist on talking to her — it was all in the past, she and Dumbledore never interacted at all, there wasn't really any point.

"Severus informs me that you have been aware of Voldemort's continued existence for some time."

"Yep."

Dumbledore paused for a moment, as though expecting her to have more to say than that, before finally continuing on toward the point. "Ever since his appearance at Hogwarts in first year, I have been attempting to track his movements. In his present form, however, that is very difficult to do. A number of my associates and myself have concluded that he remains in Britain — and has even, we believe, begun on a plan to return himself to proper life."

Liz couldn't say she was surprised — being stuck as some weird disembodied spirit thing seemed like it would kind of suck. "Do we know what he's trying?"

A little shiver through his head, he blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I'm not an expert in blood alchemy or soul magic, but there can't be that many rituals to make a new body and bind himself to it. Maybe there are certain implements or materials we can try to stop him from getting."

"...Unfortunately, that would not be practical. While the methods he may use are limited, the components necessary to perform them also have common uses in alchemy. They are largely routine supplies, unrestricted by the Ministry and simple enough to acquire." Dumbledore delayed a moment to take a sip of tea, his mind churning. "So far as the blood alchemy is concerned. The soul magic component is somewhat more difficult to arrange — but again, it may be easy enough for him to do so without raising alarm. There is one method that... I have had a friend with knowledge of the muggle world keep an ear out for certain...suggestive disappearances."

"Pregnant women, you mean." The classic, basic method to bind an unattached spirit to a physical form was the homunculus, which involved basically swapping places with the soul of a baby before it was born. Liz didn't know any of the details — supposedly it was really messy, on top of being extremely fucked up just in concept — but she knew that much.

A harsh cold lurch in his mind, Dumbledore was very disturbed that she knew enough about the Dark Arts to guess what he meant...which was a little silly, honestly. Liz didn't know how to do it, obviously, but she could read — (in)famous mages had used homunculi to return to life often enough before the modern era, she'd first heard of the magic in a bloody history book. "Yes, precisely. We haven't found anything, as of yet, but that is not necessarily reassuring — it is possible Voldemort performed the associated ritual outside of the United Kingdom, or he may be using another method entirely. We have heard whispers, there are signs of his activity in this country, but they are subtle enough that we can glean very little of his intentions."

Liz nodded — that was fair enough. Obviously Voldemort would be trying to be sneaky about it, and Dumbledore knew fuck-all about proper divination. She wasn't surprised he didn't have much more to say about it than the bloody Ministry had, after the attack on the World Cup. "You think he entered me in the Tournament, somehow."

"It is a possibility," Dumbledore said with a nod, failing to cover the shiver of surprise from his mind. "It would not have been a great challenge for him to do so. I don't doubt that, for all its power, Voldemort need only an hour or two uninterrupted in the Goblet's presence to discover a means to subvert it — as lax as security on the premises can be at times, I expect he could have found that opportunity. To what end he has done so, what he means to accomplish, that I cannot guess. A number of the upcoming tasks have the potential to be quite dangerous. Perhaps he has agents who will subvert our safety precautions in one way or another, perhaps he expects that you will withdraw and accept the Goblet's judgement. Perhaps he simply wishes for you to be embarrassed, competing against mages years your senior, and in so doing dispel some of the mythology that has developed around you since his defeat that Hallowe'en — if that is the case, I daresay he is most irritated by your success in the First Task," he added, an arch lilt on his voice, giving her a sort of half-smirk over his tea cup.

"I guess. It was only the First Task, though, I imagine they're only going to get harder. Except the next one, of course, that one's going to be dead easy."

"Oh? I understand you haven't spent much time in Edinburgh."

"Never been." Well, that wasn't quite true — she'd been to the magical quarter a few times, but never the muggle side, so it hardly mattered. "But, you know, I'm a Seer? With Hermione along to figure out the riddles for me, should be a walk in the park. And if someone tries to grab us while we're there or whatever, I'll feel any mages coming with mind magic, so, yeah, we'll be fine."

"Good, good." There'd been a little flicker of surprise and confusion at the Seer reminder — apparently that hadn't occurred to Dumbledore as an advantage, because he really knew fuck-all about Divination. He took another slow sip of his tea, before saying, bland and casual, "What do you know of dragons?"

...Fucking kidding me, dragons? This was supposed to be a school competition! "Ah, not much, honestly. Does Parseltongue work on them?" That would make any task involving dragons super easy.

Dumbledore frowned, his mind shivering. "Now that you mention it, I have no idea. I suspect not, but I'm not entirely certain one way or the other. In any case, as any other creature with a brain, dragons are vulnerable to mind magic."

"Oh, well, that shouldn't be a problem, then." Magical creatures were a little more difficult to influence than normal animals, but generally easier than people — she could probably make a dragon do whatever the fuck she wanted without much trouble.

"Indeed. Has Severus had the opportunity to teach you any healing magic?"

"...No? not really? He's pretty busy, and it never came up..." Also, most healing magic was pretty damn difficult. There were a few basic charms, like ĭoto and the like, but mostly they didn't start people on proper healing magic at all until after Competencies, at least. Like on the muggle side, it was primarily a postsecondary subject, so.

"Yes, of course. It may be worthwhile to ask him about his early healing education — concerning especially the detection and treatment of conditions and injuries simulated with alchemical mannequins. Perhaps he may even be able to demonstrate a few interesting tricks, if he can convince one of his colleagues to lend him a model."

Wait a second, was he suggesting...?

"Also, I wonder— I suspect, as busy as Severus is, that the two of you don't get out much, so you likely haven't been to the theatre, or to a performance by a magical orchestra, or anything of the like. Do you know much of performative magics?"

"No, not really." She knew some of them used something very much like the thing she did with her voice — or, Tamsyn claimed they were both kinds of enthrallment, anyway — to get the audience to literally feel the emotions associated with whatever was going on, but she'd never witnessed it herself. "Should you be telling me all this? You are one of the judges..."

Blue eyes tinkling behind his faintly-tinted glasses, Dumbledore smiled. "Why, Elizabeth, I'm sure I have no idea what you mean. I am simply discussing topics of common interest with the great-granddaughter of an old friend. If these topics seem to coincide with certain upcoming events, well, they are on my mind, I'm sure it's merely happenstance. One of the judges of so prestigious an event as the Triwizard Tournament could hardly be seen to cheat, after all."

Despite herself, Liz could feel a smirk twitching at her lips. "You wouldn't want to be seen at it, no. Did you actually know my great-grandfather, or is that just an excuse?"

"It is always better to avoid a lie whenever possible — one never knows when a particularly subtle mind mage or perceptive Seer may be about," he drawled, a suggestive edge of humour in his head. Which, yeah, good point. "Boni was some years younger than I, we weren't acquainted until well into our respective careers. Shortly before you grandfather's birth, I believe, I recall that being mentioned. In time, we became quite close — I was among the first on the scene upon our local communalists' attack on the Longbottoms, though I unfortunately arrived too late to do anything but help sort through the wreckage."

Liz had heard about that. The British communalists had mostly all been imprisoned or killed by the late 30s, the movement effectively suppressed, leaving only a few cells of resistance fighters behind. In '42, one of these cells had attacked the Longbottoms at their home — the family had been deeply involved in domestic anti-communalist activities throughout the period, and at that point had already been supporting the counter-Revolutionaries on the Continent with supplies and fighters for years — somehow managing to sneak through the wards and blowing up half the manor with some kind of alchemical explosive. The survivors had already killed or detained all the attackers before the authorities had arrived, but by then the majority of the family were dead. It had been by far the worst single attack on magical British soil since the last war with the goblins shortly after Secrecy, and would remain so until the Dark Lord's campaign really kicked off.

Liz's great-grandmother had been a Longbottom, and almost all of the Potters happened to also be there for some kind of family lunch or something — when the dust settled that day, there were only two Potters left alive. Her grandfather, a teenager at the time, had only survived because he'd slipped away from the boring adult talk to poke around in the woods looking for rare magical plants — because he'd been a huge bloody nerd like that, apparently — and Lyndon, the same bloke who used to live in her house, just hadn't shown up that day, for whatever reason. (Supposedly he'd been a bit of an eccentric shut-in, so.) Liz had always wondered why some big fancy noble families were so small, despite having been around for centuries (and in a few cases literally millennia), and it turned out there was practically always some kind of story like the Longbottoms' and Potters' if you look back a couple generations. Because magical Britain could be seriously fucked sometimes.

She really had no idea what she was supposed to say about the reference to her family nearly being wiped out by Revolutionaries long before she'd been born — if Charlus hadn't decided to wander around in the woods like the biggest herbology dork she wouldn't even exist — so she just decided to ignore it. "So, you asked me here to offer to help me cheat on the Tournament."

"Well." Leaning against the table a little, both hands wrapping around his cup, Dumbledore stared down at the tea, let out a little hum. "The majority of our countrymen, including the Ministry itself, may seem determined to plug their ears and cover their eyes — but whether they choose to acknowledge it or not, Voldemort will return, in time. And we are, perhaps, even less prepared to face him than we were then, more divided. It would be far too easy, should pressure be applied in the wrong place at the wrong time, for our nation to fracture as thoroughly as if I were to throw this pretty little porcelain cup at the wall."

He wasn't spelling it out, but he meant that the Gaels might take the opportunity of the Ministry being distracted to finally declare independence. And, Liz wasn't an expert in the present state of magical British politics and economics, but even she knew that, if the Gaels tried to break away, things would quickly become very, very messy. Liz would be shocked if Glasgow didn't end up on fire at some point, and who the hell knew what the northern islanders or the Mistwalkers would do...

"And regardless of the wider circumstances, Voldemort will come for you, personally. When the day of his return finally arrives, you will be in terrible danger — our interests will be aligned to no small degree, no matter your opinion of the current government or myself. And you may be at near as much risk from our side of the conflict. People will look to you, due to your role in his first defeat, and some may be less...restrained in their demands than others. My hope is that, when that time comes, we will be able to set aside whatever enmity may still remain, and work together to face our common threat.

"That time is swiftly approaching, it may come sooner than either of us realise. I thought it would be best to...clear the air, so to speak. And I acknowledge that you have no reason to trust me — due to my mistakes where you are concerned, yes, but our politics also seem to have very little in common. In the lack of such a common threat, we might never have any cause to see each other as allies. So, I had hoped, that offering what assistance I am able to see you through this Tournament would help to build some good will. Not to the degree of a proper honest friendship, no, I don't expect that much, but simply to develop something of a working relationship. Should you be open to it, of course — I do understand if you wish to have nothing to do with me whatsoever."

...It probably wasn't worth explaining that, if war did break out again, she would be packing up her shite and everyone she gave a damn about and leaving the fucking country. Or maybe just stay in Ireland, actually, since the Gaels would probably break off anyway. That would mean a war too, of course — if rather less extensive of one, the Ministry too distracted with Voldemort to put as much effort into it as they might — but Liz might actually be able to be convinced to contribute to that one. The Gaelic nationalists' politics were, as far as she could tell, much better than those of the rest of the country (at the very least they wanted to completely dismantle the house system, which instantly put them head and shoulders above almost everyone else), and she did like her house, so, if it came down to it, she'd be willing to do her part for the cause or whatever so she could keep it. Of course, she was likely going to still be a teenager when that happened, so she'd probably just be contributing financially, she was just saying.

The Voldemort shite, on the other hand, wasn't any of her business. The magical government fucking sucked, and she hated most of the people in the bloody country anyway, it just wasn't worth. And, even if the muggleborn genocide thing did happen, she'd still want nothing to do with it — as long as she got her muggleborn friends out, she failed to see why she should give a damn about people she never had and never would meet. Of course, Hermione would probably want to stick around and help, which would complicated matters, but.

Also, fighting Dark Lords seemed like a really good way to get dead — her parents had certainly proved that well enough. No thanks, she preferred living, actually.

What she said was, "You know, if you wanted me to agree with you politically, you should have tried maybe talking to me about this stuff literally ever. The first people who taught me bloody anything ended up being my Slytherin classmates, and they don't like you much. Hell, this is the first real conversation we've ever had, and I've already read The Bremen Prison Diaries months ago — at this point, I've literally gotten more political education from Gellert bloody Grindelwald than you."

Dumbledore grimaced pretty much through that whole thing...until Liz mentioned the Diaries, at which point he visibly blanched. Tee hee.

"But yeah, sure, I can play nice." For as long as it suited her, obviously. "So, dragons? What's that about?"

They spent the next several minutes talking about the Third Task — which was scheduled for January, Liz was pretty sure. Dumbledore quickly shook off his disquiet at the mention of his infamous ex-boyfriend, and got right into it, playing coy to amuse himself. He didn't come right out and say what the Task was about, sort of talking in circles about things that made it obvious what he meant without directly saying it. Following the letter of the rules, while flagrantly breaking their spirit, but Liz also thought he was just having fun playing around for the hell of it. He started off talking about international laws on transporting various dangerous magical creatures across borders, and how dragons in particular, being especially large, conspicuous animals, were among the most heavily restricted. The procedure to move four adult dragons to Britain from overseas would be complicated enough in itself, but the negotiations beforehand would likely go on for months — even the paperwork would take weeks to straighten out, poor Ministry clerks had a hell of a tedious job sometimes...

On a completely unrelated tangent, was Liz aware that there were two dragon species native to Britain? Of course, his example of transporting four dragons was chosen completely randomly, and of no external significance whatsoever. Yeah, Liz was sure it was.

From there he babbled on a bit about dragon psychology and their reproductive cycle — Liz shouldn't be surprised Dumbledore actually knew rather a lot about dragons, probably included in his research for that famous paper on the properties of their blood — especially focussed on how vicious nesting females could get, changes in their hormone chemistry associated with egg-laying, it was a whole complicated thing. But, Jesus Christ, the Task involved nesting females somehow? That was suicidal, what the fuck were they thinking?! Good thing mind magic worked on dragons, because otherwise this could have gotten nasty. He went on a little bit about the danger egg-poachers faced — dragon eggs could sell for a hell of a lot on the black market, but it wasn't out of the ordinary for poachers to literally die trying to acquire them.

So, they were supposed to steal an egg from a nest for the Task, okay then. Shouldn't be a problem for her, but the other Champions might be kind of fucked...

...Huh. So, she hadn't done bad on the First Task, the Second Task should be dead easy, and it sounded like she had an unfair advantage in the Third Task too. It was starting to look like she might actually do pretty well in this stupid fucking thing. If the Dark Lord had put her in this thing to make her look bad or get her hurt or whatever, he might end up very disappointed...

Dumbledore also talked for a little bit about the blood alchemy constructs trainee healers practised spells on, so, the Fourth Task must involve a healing test of some kind...maybe actually using the models he kept talking about. That one might be more difficult, Liz should probably start looking into healing magic right away...

From back in the living room, Liz heard a knock on the door — it must have been an hour by now, Severus was back. Dumbledore moved to stand up, but Liz got there first, her bag slung back over her shoulder and stepping back into the sitting room before Dumbledore had hardly gotten to his feet. (He was old.) She threw the door open, which she realised was rude, since this wasn't her house, but she didn't really care, and it was only Severus. He was a little surprised to see her instead of Dumbledore, but she spoke before he could get anything out. "I need to learn healing magic — Dumbledore says it's the Fourth Task."

One of Severus's eyebrows ticked up, his mind simmering with surprise and confusion and suspicion, but it didn't make its way into his voice at all. "I see. I still have my introductory textbooks, at home. I'll get them to you before the end of the month."

"Neat, thanks." It would set back her Competency study a little, but she still had like a year left, it'd be fine. As long as she kept studying alchemy, anyway, she was way behind on that still...

They didn't leave right away, lingering for a couple minutes for boring adult smalltalk, which was tedious, but fine, it wasn't like it required much participation from her anyway. Severus's mind kept simmering cool and dark with...something, didn't know what the hell that was about. It was hard to say, exactly — he did have pretty good occlumency, and Liz didn't want to get too close — but she thought Dumbledore had mixed feelings about their little meeting. Not extremely unhappy about it, but... Well, Liz was a fucked-up creepy devil child, she wouldn't be surprised if he was slightly disturbed by how she'd turned out. Which was entirely his fault, so he could go to hell.

Anyway, they left before too long, thankfully. Once Liz was out the door, there was a brief delay, Severus lingering to exchange whispers with Dumbledore, she didn't catch any of it — she got the feeling Severus was a little exasperated with him, so probably not anything important. And then the door was swinging closed, Dumbledore's mind vanishing from her perception as the wards snapped closed, and they were done.

They walked all the way out to the apparation point in stiff silence. Normally, Severus was pretty good about not filling the air with pointless blather, so that wouldn't be a problem, but it was strangely uncomfortable this time — not on Liz's end, he felt oddly tense, for some reason. Once they passed into the shadow of the same tree they'd arrived under, privacy spells crawling over her skin, Severus came to a stop...and didn't immediately reach out his hand to apparate them. "What is it?"

"If you would prefer your privacy, I may bring you straight back to Hogwarts instead."

"...Why?"

An off-kilter wiggle of confusion running through his head, he turned a mild frown on her. "I do understand why you may wish to be away from me for a time...but it appears that you do not."

Understand why, he meant. "No, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Did Dumbledore not speak with you of the prophecy?"

"Yeah, but he didn't tell me what it says. And don't you say anything about it either — I've never actually done an obliviation before, I'd probably fuck it up."

Severus seemed somewhat amused, in a dark unpleasant sort of way — see, Dumbledore, Severus knew how prophecies worked... "I would recommend against attempting to obliviate oneself. Severing a memory with mind magic is far more reliable."

...She wasn't sure how to do that, honestly, but it probably wouldn't be too difficult to figure out. "Yeah, I guess. Dumbledore didn't get it, argued about gods not being real, it was very stupid."

"I am sceptical myself, but I'm familiar with the perspective of various Seers and Oracles, and I'm not surprised you would rather forget a prophecy than involve yourself in fate." Liz wasn't entirely sure what he meant by that. Maybe just that she didn't play games, he had been at the Slytherin House Meeting when she'd told Draco and company that, years ago now... "He did tell you how knowledge of the prophecy made its way to the Dark Lord."

What the fuck did that have to do with anything? "Yes? He said a Death Eater overheard it." Which meant the prophecy had actually been for both Dumbledore and the Death Eater, but the distinction hardly mattered. "Why?"

"...He didn't tell you." Severus's mind went very cool and still as he confirmed that she...didn't know who the Death Eater had been? Surprised, and confused — if she had to guess, he hadn't expected Dumbledore to withhold that information, and didn't know what to make of the choice to.

"No. Why, is it someone we know?" She didn't see how it would make any differ—

"Elizabeth..." There was sharp, unpleasant flicker in his head, intense enough Liz flinched. His voice dropping, into one of those not-whispers he liked so much, "...I was that Death Eater."

"...Oh, that clever bastard." If Liz had the timeline right, Severus would have been pretty young at the time still, so would have been trying to prove himself to his new friends and especially the Dark Lord himself — having really important information to give him would have been a big fucking deal, Liz doubted he would have thought about it even for a second. Since Dumbledore also heard it, as soon as he had an idea of who it was talking about, he'd move to protect them — her parents had been in hiding well before that Hallowe'en, presumably this prophecy was why — which would then tip off the Dark Lord. Once Severus realised who he was targeting, he would have instantly defected, bringing intelligence that the Dark Lord was aiming for the Potters specifically, cueing them to go even deeper into hiding...their isolation giving Lily enough time to prepare her ritual, so when the Dark Lord finally found them he got himself blown the fuck up — lulled into a false sense of security by the prophecy being delivered to Severus and not himself, clearly the trap had been Severus getting his best friend killed — fulfilling the prophecy. If she was interpreting this correctly, events only went according to plan if both Dumbledore and Severus specifically heard it.

That was, just, frustratingly well-designed, she didn't even know the contents of the prophecy and she could still tell. She didn't know how the fuck Dumbledore refused to believe something out there was doing this shite on purpose, because that was absurd...

"Excuse me...?" Severus muttered, very confused.

Liz rolled her eyes. "Whatever, fate's a bitch, doesn't matter. Come on, let's go get magic pizza." Still feeling rather bemused, unsettled, Severus reached to set a hand on her shoulder anyway, and a blink later they were disapparating.

Liz had never actually been to the magic pizza place in the evening before. She'd been here in person around lunch a couple times, but most times she'd had magic pizza, like over that first summer, Severus (or Sirius) had gone to order while she waited at home. It'd kind of slipped her mind that they might be rather busy — people must have gotten out of work recently, the place was packed. Mostly all in professional-style robes — like Severus's brewing and healer stuff, sleeves tailored close around the arms to leave the hands free — or the eccentrically-colourful suits popular with the more well-off commoners. Middle-class types, enchanters and healers and people working in the Ministry and the guilds, by the look of it, picking up dinner on their way home from work.

It was terribly noisy inside, all of the dine-in tables full, but thankfully they weren't expected to wait in there — they waited in line for only a few minutes to give their order, and were handed a ticket and asked to wait outside, the ticket would glow when their order was ready. There were plenty of people hanging around waiting out on the street too, but it wasn't that bad. It could have gotten pretty dicey, but Severus had covered them with some kind of attention-diverting charm — not deflecting attention from them entirely, she didn't think, just making them seem uninteresting and not worth bothering. She had no idea how her overactive mind magic might interact with that, but it seemed to be working...

The whole time, Liz was silently turning over Severus's behaviour. Obviously, he'd expected Dumbledore would have told her how the prophecy got to the Dark Lord — some of the flickering in his head was probably him still wondering why he hadn't. Liz realised, in retrospect, that that was why Severus was being so odd about this meeting. She'd thought it was just because, like, fuck Dumbledore, but. "You were really worried I'd be angry with you. About the prophecy, I mean."

Severus was a little startled when she started talking without warning, the question itself raising a quiet little wiggle somewhere in there. "The possibility had occurred to me, yes."

Liz got a vague feeling of dishonesty from that — not an outright lie, just severe enough of an understatement to trip her weird mind-mage-slash-Seer instincts. (She didn't actually know for sure which one her lie-detecting thing was.) He'd been rather more worried about it than he was trying to play it off like, which was...odd.

Somehow, she hadn't realised Severus cared that much about what she thought of him. That was... She didn't know how she felt about that. It was definitely something, and she didn't think it was a bad something, she just didn't know what to call it.

Better not to dwell on it though — she suspected she wouldn't deal well with crying in public. "Funny, you're usually not stupid. You only did exactly what whoever made the prophecy wanted you to do. Was there any way you could have known it would put us in danger?"

"...No. The prophecy referred to—"

"Stop that! Don't tell me!"

"I will not tell you any sensitive details you couldn't reason out on your own." ...Well, at least Severus was taking her preference not to know anything about it seriously, she guessed — it didn't feel like he was just condescendingly humouring her, like Dumbledore had. "The terms of the prophecy were sufficiently vague as to refer to several different individuals, and it mentioned a child yet to be born. In fact, I suspect the prophecy was delivered at the very same moment you were being conceived."

Liz grimaced hard enough to feel her own nose wrinkling. "Gross."

No reason to laugh at her, Severus, straight sex was super gross. Well, sex was kind of gross in general, really, but she was gay and all, so, she didn't want to think about that, okay...

"So anyway, you couldn't have known, and as soon as you knew the Dark Lord was targeting Lily, you defected."

"Yes."

"Right. So, why would I be angry with you?"

There was a warm shivering in his head, amusement and...something else, not sure. "It didn't occur to me that you would be so philosophical about it. You may not hold me responsible for your parents' deaths, but I certainly do."

"Well, that's stupid."

"It may be — but, as you may have noticed, people are often irrational."

Sure, but, she wasn't used to Severus being silly like that. "Even if I did, it's..." Liz hesitated, not sure if she wanted to say this out loud — or even how. Eh, fuck it. "I don't know Lily and James, I don't remember them at all. Even if I did think it was your fault — which I don't, fate's just a bitch like that — I still wouldn't... It seems to me, if I have to choose between people I don't even remember, and getting all offended or whatever on their behalf, or..." Okay, no fucking clue how she was supposed to refer to their relationship, she just vaguely waved between the two of them instead. "It's obvious which one is more important."

"...Yes, I suppose it is." Severus said it as smoothly and casually enough, but he was doing an even worse job of covering up the mess in his head than usual. He was surprised that he was more important to her than her parents, which was very silly. Honestly, she didn't even remember them, they were practically just names to her — like, obviously? At least, she thought that was obvious, but people could be very silly about their bloodline and heritage and blah blah blah — and not just the noble mages, though they could be extra creepily obsessive about it — so maybe it wasn't obvious to him.

Sometimes she did wish she could have known Lily, at least, but...well, she was dead now, had been forever. Maybe if it was a more recent thing, and she could still remember her parents, even a little bit, she might feel differently about it. But she didn't, so. Yeah, seemed obvious to her.

And, it wasn't just surprise, there was other squishy shite in there, but she was just going to pretend she couldn't see that. Just dealing with her own feelings was weird and confusing enough, she was good, thanks.

"I don't think it's your fault, but if you really want to make it up to me, you can do me a favour."

Severus turned back to look down at her, one eyebrow arching up in that way he had. "Oh?"

"Next time you hear a prophecy, just obliviate yourself."

His little snort of dismissive laughter was far quieter than the bubbling warm amusement crackling in the air around her.

---

[Generally speaking, the crazy fascist maniac did it first! is not actually a good excuse for doing literally anything] — The exception, of course, is if we're talking about killing Nazis, then it's fine! :D

In case anyone forgot about Dumbledore and Moody being an antagonistic old gay couple in my headcanon, that never stopped being a thing. Because it amuses me, and fuck the police.

Anyway, woo, that went long than I expected, because it always fucking does. I'm not super happy with it in places, but oh well, shit happens.

Dumbledore actually apologising, and offering to help Potter without his hand being forced? Shocking, I know. It's almost like he reflected over his past actions and managed to learn something! I know I tend to write canon characters pretty OOC, but this one really takes the cake, doesn't it.

Gonna wrap this up before I babble too long. I've had multiple people suggest I set up a Discord server or something, so fuck it, I went ahead and did that. I'm completely new to this shit, so it might be a mess for a while, and I'm definitely going to end up using it as a dumping ground to babble about whatever's on my mind instead of bothering Leigha about it, but. So, people can check that out if they want. FFN likes to chop out links, so just hop over to my AO3 account instead — it'll be in the notes at the end of this chapter over there, and also on my profile.

Right, enough from this nerdy bitch, bye then.