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)

83. Fourth Year — XXVI

December 1994

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The duelling club could get rather hectic in the run up to the end of the term. There wasn't a whole lot of preparation they had to do for the club's tournament itself — there were always a couple volunteers to make the announcements for the common room notice boards, swinging the stands down only took a few minutes, and Flitwick handled setting up the brackets — but the club meetings got bigger and busier as the date approached. It wasn't unusual for people who missed a lot of club meetings, or even didn't participate in the club at all, to show up in the weeks before the tournament to get some practice in. (Or in some cases, like Eustance Scrimgeour, to intimidate the competition.) Preparation for club meetings could get somewhat tedious, coming up with the plans for the day, splitting the duties between duelling team members, and then actually managing the whole thing, not at all made easier by the occasional feud between students blowing up in the middle of the hall.

After all, give teenagers permission to throw hexes at each other, and occasionally they did stupid shite.

Actually, kids doing stupid shite could be a problem at club meetings kind of often. They did have rules about what they were allowed to use in matches, and they were supposed to stick to lighter spells — at least when they had a reasonable expectation of it hitting the person, things like using a blasting curse to overwhelm a shield were fine — but mistakes happened sometimes. And sometimes, they weren't mistakes, someone choosing not to follow the rules for whatever reason. People didn't get badly injured too often in club meetings, but it did happen. Flitwick wasn't really a healer, though he could patch up little scrapes, and obviously he was a Master of Charms, so putting someone in stasis so they could be transported up to the Hospital Wing wasn't a problem — last year, there'd been a few messy incidents, Flitwick scrambling to stabilise the injured student well enough for an elf to pop them upstairs.

Once they were safely away, he'd then turn around to lay into the person responsible. Flitwick might be bloody tiny, and generally a cheerful, friendly sort of bloke, but he could give one hell of a lecture when he felt like it. He could be kind of scary, actually — voice going all hard and flat and cold, seeming to instinctively do that threatening grin the goblins had, showing pointed teeth...also he tended to lose hold of his aura when he was angry, and Jesus Christ, Flitwick was a fucking powerful mage. Seriously, Liz could feel him from the opposite end of the room, even with half of the club between them, it was ridiculous...

(It was hard to say for sure, but Liz suspected Flitwick had a greater volume of raw power available to him than even Severus. Which she would say was kind of absurd, but Flitwick was like twice Severus's age — some mages were simply more powerful than others to start with, but it also increased with age, so older mages tended to be more powerful than younger ones — and he was a former world champion duellist, so.)

The bad incidents had been rather less common this term than before, but not because people had magically become more careful over the summer — at least one of Pomfrey's new trainee healers was down here for every meeting, so rather more issues were taken care of right here in the duelling hall instead of rushing them upstairs. The much-inflated second-year class had also started joining the club, so they were also being rather more careful now about making sure people followed the rules. Having an occasional slip-up when you might only get five to ten people from each year in the room at a time was bad enough, but having more people packed in here could greatly increase the risks of people carelessly throwing around dangerous spells. Alex had taken to banning the more flagrant rule-breakers from the club, for just a few meetings and a couple times even permanently. One bloke, warned multiple times but ultimately still injuring someone with a wayward spell — a second-year even, it'd been a mess — had been dragged straight up to the Headmaster's office by Alex and Flitwick, and had ended up with a suspension for the rest of the term. And it was his OWL year, so missing two months of classes was kind of a big deal — hopefully that would actually teach him a lesson, but who could say with some of these people.

On top of the hassle of organising the meeting and managing the chaos that always resulted, it was pretty common for there to be a sort of after-meeting hang-out...thing. The meetings were usually held well after dinner — there were few classes going on at the time, so people were more likely to be able to make it — and casting the volume of magic they often did at meetings could be pretty draining, so they'd have snacks and drinks set up after, people lingering for a while chatting before finally leaving for the dorms. It wasn't difficult to sweet-talk snacks for the whole group out of the elves, they were always happy to help, but if they wanted anything other than tea or pumpkin juice they had to manage the drinks themselves. And, of course, there was finding a place out of the way to set everything up, and at least some seating, and that all had to be set up before the meeting, but then they also had to make sure people didn't come by and mess with it while they were busy with the club, it was kind of a pain.

And, of course, the duelling teams often had their own meeting just before the larger club. Even on an ordinary day, the team meetings tended to be rather more exhausting than the club — they didn't go light on their hexes, to better prepare, and they didn't need to take turns like the club attendees often had to, so they tended to be much more active — but it only got more intense as the competition neared. It was already the first week of December, and they'd be arriving in Kaunas on the morning of the 29th — they were starting to run short on prep time, especially since most of them were about to get busy with the holidays and the Yule Ball coming up. By the end of the team meetings, Liz was always sore, nursing partially-healed bruises and/or muscle aches from running around for an hour or two almost nonstop, and just tired, often didn't have the patience to deal with people being idiots during the club meeting.

She thought it was going well, though? She was getting a lot smoother with quick-step, and she could actually deflect hexes pretty regularly now — some spell envelopes she had more trouble getting the required spell to work, so those it was still safest to dodge or block, but still. Flitwick was impressed with how quickly her deflection had improved, but honestly, she thought it was possible some instinctive Seer thing was helping her get the timing right, she had a much better success rate if she just tried not to think about what she was doing too hard. Between tips from the senior team, Flitwick getting much more involved in training them up than last year, her lessons with Sirius, and hours and hours and hours of practice, Liz thought she was much better than she'd been even a few months ago. She'd done much better in the First Task than even she'd honestly expected, and that was already almost a month ago...

She had a good feeling about the upcoming tournament, this time. Last year, she hadn't done great in singles, but she was a much better duellist than she'd been over the summer, she suspected she'd have a better shot this time. The team event was maybe a little more shaky — Cynfelyn had been the strongest fighter on the team, but they'd lost him to the senior division. Losing Cass wasn't as big of a deal, especially with Susan and Chelsea as replacements, but as good as Susan was she didn't make up for losing Cynfelyn. But, since they'd only needed to replace two people, they had a rather experienced team now. Their defence work was much better than last year, but Liz's feeling was that they'd spend a lot of time on their back foot, so they might not actually do as well. She guessed they'd find out when they got there.

But she was very certain she was going to kick arse in trios. Her trio with Oz and Brendan was solid, if not excellent, but her trio with Katie and Susan was fucking awesome. Offence-heavy, but all three of them were quick and well-coordinated enough that they tended to plough over the other trios before they could really do anything about it — they'd even started beating the senior team's trios in practice matches, which was slightly absurd. Liz wasn't sure why, Susan throwing surprisingly powerful curses around and Katie's conjuration and Liz skipping around to hit at random angles, the combination was seemingly very hard to deal with. She wasn't getting too confident yet — she still wouldn't bet on them against Artèmi's trio (though they'd actually be in the senior division this year anyway) — but she thought they had pretty good odds of doing really well this time.

Flitwick thought the same, had said at a recent meeting that he'd be surprised if they didn't come back with a trophy for winning in trios. And he was the expert, wasn't he...

Of course, since Flitwick thought they had a chance to do well, he'd started drilling them really hard, Gladwin about equally evil, making sure the three of them were working for pretty much the entire meeting beginning to end. So, by the time it was over, Liz was rather sore and exhausted and miserable...and then she had the whole club meeting to deal with. And starting out tired made it rather harder to hold off the minds of the crowd. And they had Liz, like, teaching spells to the second- and third-years, so she was almost always being watched, their attention on her a constant grating pressure.

Basically, the whole thing kind of sucked. She probably wouldn't stay after at all if a bunch of their friends hadn't shown up this time. And Gladwin wanted to talk about possible recruits, ugh...

Oz and Brendan were both dropping out after winter, to focus on OWLs, so they would be recruiting two new people after the club's upcoming tournament — exactly like Liz and Katie last year. It seemed likely that Draco was going to be one of them. He had been pretty consistently one of the best duellists in their year, only really losing to Liz and Susan, who'd both gone on to join the team before him. It wasn't a hundred per cent, but if he did really well in a couple weeks (which seemed almost guaranteed), he'd probably be invited to join the team this time, and Liz suspected he'd accept. She was less than entirely thrilled about that, since Draco could be extremely fucking tedious, but she didn't think it would be that bad. They'd been playing nice for a while, with the quidditch team and all, it'd be fine. She was more worried about Susan getting on with him, honestly, they had history. The second person, they weren't so sure, they had it narrowed down to a few options — they'd see how they all did in the tournament, and decide then.

(Liz had a feeling it'd be Artaimís Ní Mhuircheartaigh. She seemed very familiar, and not just because she looked so much like other people Liz knew — the Muircheartaigh triplets were Dorea's second cousins, apparently the previous Lady Black had actually gotten them their spots at Hogwarts and everything. Liz, just, kind of felt like she knew Artaimís already, for no explainable reason. Also, she'd remembered her extremely Gaelic name the first time, which was a kind of evidence all by itself. Her first name was just Artemis pronounced Gaelic-ly — apparently their mother had named the triplets after the three faces of Hecate, which was a silly thing to do — but Mhuircheartaigh, honestly, the fuck was that shite...)

After a little bit talking updates on their potential recruits with the team, they were released back into the post- club meeting crowd. Much of the club had left when the meeting ended, the people who'd lingered behind mostly those who were more seriously into it (or else their friends hanging out just because), the vibe in the room much more quiet and relaxed than the club meeting itself. Hannah was here — she didn't like duelling much, just tagged along to steal a moment with Susan here and there — and she tended to bring along a couple Hufflepuffs, this time Justin, Sally-Anne, and Sophie...though Sophie was actually starting to get into duelling herself, just in the last month or so. Hermione had also joined the club this year — freaked out by the mess at the World Cup, wanted to learn how to defend herself at least a little — and she almost always came with Neville, and sometimes Lily. Lily was shite in a duel, but Neville could be surprisingly good...as long as he wasn't thinking about it too hard — if he was feeling self-conscious about it for any reason, he immediately reverted to a slow clumsy mess.

It didn't help that Neville kind of had a crush on Hermione these days — which was fair enough, Hermione was great, and they had been pretty close friends for years now — which could make practising duelling with her kind of awkward. Amusingly, Liz was very certain Hermione hadn't even noticed yet.

When Liz and Susan found where their friends were waiting, she wasn't surprised to see Daphne wasn't here — Daphne might enjoy the show of duelling, in moderation (especially when Liz was performing), but it definitely wasn't something she had any interest in doing herself. Also, she liked to see Astoria when they could find the time, and they had family stuff going on these days, what with Heli's not-marriage with their dad and all, Liz hadn't followed the details exactly but Daphne disappeared back home to deal with that now and then. (She thought Heli might be pregnant already? Daphne hadn't said anything yet, Mistwalkers had a superstition about not speaking of it until it was past a certain point, but Liz thought so.) Tracey was here, which was infrequent but not unusual, and surprisingly even Millie — she did like duelling and stuff, but was weirdly self-conscious about not being feminine enough or whatever. Which was more people than usually turned up, but fine, she guessed they could hang around and talk for a while. Not like Liz had anything else planned.

Except a shower and bed, anyway — and the shower was going to make her too awake to get straight to sleep, ugh, this was going to be a long night...

After saying hello for a little bit — Liz and Susan had been busy helping run the club, so they hadn't actually seen most of them yet — they detoured for the food and drink and stuff. Liz had had dinner, of course, but that had been a few hours ago, and she was actually pretty hungry — a decent work-out could do that to you. Most of the food was, like, normal people deserts (it was late), all too sweet for her, but there were some chips and crisps and stuff, so that would do. She was pleasantly surprised to recognise the label on one of the bottles of mead sitting out as one she could actually drink, before belatedly remembering she must have contributed that one to the club's stash in the first place, a couple weeks ago now. Right, she was tired, okay.

She blinked, glanced around for...she didn't know exactly. She thought she'd felt a flicker of magic — not aimed at her, but somewhere nearby. Not a spell she recognised, and it'd come and gone too quickly to tell where it'd even been aimed. Maybe the elves were moving plates around or something. Oh well, it hadn't felt like a dangerous spell, it was probably fine.

Liz didn't pay much attention to the conversation going on, mostly only speaking when addressed directly. Not that there was much to say — they were talking about the stuff they'd done in the meeting earlier, which was really basic shite to Liz, she didn't have much to add. (They probably wouldn't appreciate her saying it was easy baby stuff, obviously to do the spell you just do it, she didn't understand the question.) Liz and Susan were asked about duelling team stuff, and the event coming up in Kaunas, but mostly she let Susan answer those when she could, focussing on her food. And the mead was surprisingly good, actually — she suspected the elves must have heated it or something? It was nice, warming her from the inside out, relaxing. She did like heated drinks, she should probably do that more often...

It still didn't occur to her to just do things she liked, sometimes, without being reminded of it or having some reason to, but just because she liked it. More Liz is broken stuff, she assumed — she had to wonder when this was going to stop being a problem, it was really quite frustrating.

Only half-listening to the conversation going on around her, luxuriating in the warmth from her mead, it hit completely without warming. (Or, she'd realise in retrospect, the warmth was the warning, she just hadn't known to recognise it.) Feeling flushed and itchy, difficult to sit still, her thoughts suddenly racing in a completely unexpected direction — kind of like when she had a PTSD moment, or when she got randomly super horny for no apparent reason, but not exactly like either of them. Excitement crackling down her spine, thick in her chest, she turned to look over her shoulder, she thought she'd spotted him somewhere over—

She caught herself, wrenching her head back around to stare blankly down at her remaining crisps, her fingers tightening on her knees. The thought still sizzling away, she wanted to turn around, to walk over there and, she didn't know exactly, but she forced herself to stay still, her shoulders tensing almost painfully with the effort, gritting her teeth — catching her tongue a little, but that didn't really matter just now. The heat was pulsing through her, similar to the excitement she got in that moment of anticipation before Daphne's lips reached hers, but not quite the same, holding herself back from acting on it like leaving a sentence incomplete, a step in a potion half-finished and shouting at her to move, Liz could barely do anything but stare at her plate, concentrate on sitting right here, breathing slowly and carefully.

For some reason, she quite suddenly wanted to go talk to Cormac McLaggen. Very badly. Which was very stupid, because she didn't even like McLaggen — he was a bit of a smug showy prick, honestly. Of course, he could get away with it, because—

Argh, no, stop that brain, what the fuck! He wasn't super talented and handsome or whatever — he was decent with transfiguration, she'd heard, but he was pretty mediocre otherwise. And he thought he was handsome, certainly, but that kind of played into the whole smug showy prick thing, didn't it. She'd overheard girls thinking he was a bit of a misogynist bastard, actually, and there was that whole incident with one of the girls in his year a while ago now...

Also, she was gay — a part of her brain seemed to be trying to forget that at the moment, but she thought it was pretty fucking important!

Torn between wanting to get up and go talk to McLaggen and, she didn't know exactly, and a disorienting tide of confusion, pinning her frozen in place, it took several long moments for what was happening to her to sink in. He must have snuck her a love potion. Somehow.

When she'd been at the food table, that flicker of magic. It must have been a switching spell or something. Subtle, it hadn't registered as a problem, it—

Her mug exploded, sending bits of ceramic and mead droplets everywhere, little glittery wisps of spellglow fading into the air. She barely even heard the surprised shouts and questions from around her, staring blankly at her hand, beads of blood already beginning to leak through her skin, the shattered handle slipping through her twitching fingers — she hadn't meant to do that. Oops.

The thought feeling unreal, distant — the noise of the voices and minds around her from even further away, as though leaking in from the room nextdoor — she probably shouldn't have done that. The little droplets wouldn't be carrying enough of whatever it was spiked with for anyone else to be effected, but a sample would have made brewing an antidote much easier. Oh well.

She kind of wanted to go curse McLaggen's face off, but that was a bad idea — it was hard enough holding off what the potion wanted her to do, if she went to talk to him face to face she... Well, she didn't know what would happen, but she wasn't confident she'd be able to stop herself from doing something stupid. So, leave that confrontation for later, yes, she could do that. (She tried to ignore the screaming in her head, no, she didn't want to hurt him, he was— STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!) Gritting her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut, she could feel the mead dribbling down her arm, someone was fiddling with her hand, but she wasn't really paying attention, focussed on fighting the fucking potion.

It was reminding her of way back in first year, that device Quirrell had had to press a compulsion on her constantly, too heavy and solid and unmoving to push away. But it wasn't like that, exactly, since there wasn't magic coming from outside, instead like it was just her mind doing it on its own. She'd try to force her will back on her own fucking mind, but then the stupid giddy McLaggen shite would just come back immediately, she couldn't stop it. She needed help, she needed Severus.

Blinking her eyes open, people were crowding around her, Susan was holding her wrist and poking at her hand with her wand — healing the cuts, she guessed. Even with Susan physically touching her, she'd hardly even noticed her mind there, too focussed on fighting herself. The chatter was ringing in her ears, too much at once for her to pick out a single voice, she just ignored it. "I need to go."

"The damage isn't that bad," Susan said, sealing up another little nick. "Or are you talking about what caused it? What happened?"

"Someone slipped me a l-l-l—" Liz glared at nothing, gritting her teeth — she didn't want to say what happened, it might get him in trouble! But that was fucking stupid, what the fuck was wrong with her come on. "It's a– I—"

"Love potion? Are you trying to say it's a love potion?" Liz didn't see who that was, and she was still fighting the bloody thing so couldn't pick out their mind. But she didn't even have to confirm it, there was an immediate storm of hissing and chatter, so that was convenient.

Susan hissed out a curse in Cambrian, something to do with dogs eating his prick, which was inexplicably funny to her, she barely managed to hold in a horrified giggle. (The horror was coming from the love-potioned part of her, because of course, she'd rather not think about McLaggen's prick, thanks, fucking stop it.) "Come on, let's get you up," Susan said, clasping Liz's hand and grasping her arm just over the elbow. Stiff and flushed and shaky, Liz got up to her feet. And then immediately started turning in the direction she'd last seen McLaggen, a giddy thrill thrumming through her, but she managed to catch herself before she made it more than half a step.

Susan had also reacted instantly, one hand coming around to grab her other arm — so at least Liz wouldn't have gotten very far, she guessed. Giving Liz a shaky, dark sort of smile, Susan said, "I guess we're lucky you're a mind mage, huh." That was for damn sure. "Come on, Hannah, let's—"

"No. Mind mage, remember?" She was trying to hold it in, but she really wanted to go see him, if her friends were trying to drag her away it wasn't out of the question she'd compel them to let her go before she could stop herself. Susan's occlumency was excellent, but Hannah barely knew any at all. "Hermione," Liz suggested, glancing at her over Susan's shoulder.

"Oh! Yes, of course, um..."

Their little group shuffled around to let Hermione over, taking one of Liz's arms while Susan took the other — so they could make sure she kept walking straight, Liz guessed. They were starting to attract attention from the rest of the room at this point, people wandering over to see what was happening, their friends forming a little protective shell around them. All of the people around probably would have prevented Liz from being able to see McLaggen anyway, with how bloody short she was, but she didn't want to risk it. Of course, having one person at either arm meant Liz didn't have to pay attention to where they were walking at all, she could focus all her attention on the fight against herself.

It was extremely frustrating. She tried to just force a compulsion on the part of her own bloody mind that was busy thinking about Cormac fucking McLaggen, and while it did work, it just immediately popped up again somewhere else. And she tried blocking it off, like she might a mind magic attack, but once it was isolated the influence of the love potion immediately faded away, and then it just popped up somewhere else again. Thankfully, the bit of her mind affected by the love potion was only a part of it — it was hard to say, but, maybe about a third? — and that part of her was somewhat indecisive, since Liz was very much aware she was gay so was very confused about what exactly she wanted to get out of talking to him anyway, and being so uncertain made it a lot easier for Liz to mind magic her potioned self into submission, at least until it popped up again and...

Actually, that didn't make any sense — the love potion was in her blood, so it should affect her whole brain, so its influence should be extended to the entirety of her mind. Was... Was the non-potioned part of her made up of the magic she was always channelling into her mind, produced by her soul instead of her body, so the love potion couldn't touch it? She wasn't sure if that made any fucking sense, she wasn't an expert in the technical details of how this shite worked, but...

Huh. Maybe it was a good thing that she'd broken herself as a child.

Her eyes were still closed, so she could feel most of the other minds in the room were behind them now — they must be near the doors. But no, she didn't want to leave, she hadn't so much as talked to him yet, she started to turn away with a lurch, but Susan and Hermione's hands tightened around her arms. Gritting her teeth hard enough her neck was starting to hurt, Liz reached through her own body, cutting off the potioned part of her mind from control — which was kind of sort of possessing herself, she thought? — and forced herself to keep walking, the motions stiff and awkward.

She relaxed her control after only a few steps, though — it seemed like forcing too much of a separation between the potioned and non-potioned parts of her mind was a really good way to accidentally fracture herself. Shuddering, she let the barrier she'd enforced for a second there dissolve, feeling flushed and giddy, the few memories she actually had of McLaggen swirling in her head — they weren't exactly friends, she wasn't sure if she'd ever even spoken to him before — bouncing between little fantasies about what they could— Quidditch, he liked quidditch, that was probably something they could talk about...

The obsessive thoughts constantly itching at her head, the butterflies fluttering away in her stomach, almost making her nauseous, feeling flushed and twitchy, Liz bit out a groan. "Is this what it's always like for normal people? Because this is fucking miserable."

Hermione's mind felt pretty dark and cold, didn't know what that was about, but Susan actually let out a low chuckle. "No, the potions make an imitation, not the real thing. It's kind of...exaggerated, I guess."

"Oh. Good." Because, honestly, if she made Daphne feel like this all the time, she'd feel a little bad about it. Dealing with this for more than a few minutes at a time sounded completely fucking exhausting.

"Do you know who made it?" Hermione's voice sounded off, low and flat and... That was probably anger, Liz guessed (didn't have the attention to check her mind right now), but it was a weirdly cold Severus-ish sort of anger. That was...interesting.

Liz had the thought that she'd maybe been a bad influence on Hermione, and couldn't quite stop herself from giggling. "Um, sorry. And yeah, of course I know who it is, I can't stop fucking thinking about him, it's awful. I'm super gay, honestly, for fuck's sake..."

"She won't be able to tell you who it is," Susan said, before Hermione could actually get out the question. "As long as the potion's in effect, she won't want to get him in trouble."

"But I'm a lucky mind mage, remember? It's—" There was a sharp lurch in her head, fear and disgust and she didn't know what, even, stealing the words from her mouth. Because, Susan was right, he probably would get in trouble if she told anyone, and that wouldn't be fair to him, and if she got him in trouble he definitely wouldn't want to talk to her then, and— "Fuck, you're right. Never mind." Maybe if Liz didn't already really not want to talk to the magic police for her own reasons, she'd be able to power through that, but it, just— "Okay, I'm giving myself a headache. I can't do the occlumency splitting your attention thing, you know, this is really fucking hard."

"It's okay, we'll take a shortcut. Take a left here, there are stairs that—"

"No. Take me to Severus's office." Liz would rather not have Pomfrey deal with it, that sounded embarrassing.

"...You mean the one up on the fourth floor? I think the Hospital Wing is closer."

"No, she's talking about the one in the Slytherin dorms. That hallway back there goes straight to Slytherin, right?"

"Wait, no." Liz was being fucking stupid, there was a way easier solution than just having Susan and Hermione walk her all the way there. "Nilanse."

As usual, she felt a deep whisper of magic, an echo ringing out — a few seconds later, there was a sharp little pop of house-elf apparation. "Hello Liz, and Hermione." Liz had blinked her eyes open when she'd called for Nilanse, the little elf was looking up at Susan, her head cocked curiously.

"Susan Bones," she introduced herself, an edge of humour on her voice. "Nilanse, was it?"

"Yes, hello!" Her head tipping back the other way, quickly enough her ears visibly wiggled, she asked Liz, "Are you needing something? Oh, what is that, there's being some funny magic on you."

Liz was distracted by the thought that Nilanse could see the potion acting on her somehow, so Susan answered the question first. "Someone slipped your lady a love potion. She's fighting it off, but she's going to need an antidote."

Nilanse glared, the vivid red of her eyes almost seeming to burn — woah, that was freaky. Liz was pretty sure she was imagining it, but still. "I'm not knowing if we elves can fix that. I can ask Cediny?"

"No, just take me to Severus's office. He can handle it."

"Okay! One second." Nilanse disappeared with a snap of her fingers and a pop, Hermione was two words into a question when she reappeared with another pop, startling Hermione badly enough Liz felt her twitch. "The wards on his rooms are being too good, but his office is being open," she explained, holding up a hand.

But Hermione didn't let go of her arm right away, her fingers actually tightening a little, sharp frigid mind shimmering. "I would say come up to Gryffindor and tell me you're okay, but it'll probably be after curfew by then. Can you get a message up somehow? I don't know if I'll be able to sleep, if I'm worrying."

No real point in worrying about it, Severus would take care of it, but Liz well understood that brains could be stupid and irrational sometimes. "Nilanse, if I give you a note, could you bring it up to Hermione in the Gryffindor dorms?"

"Ah, one second." Nilanse snapped her fingers, there was an invisible flash of magic — Liz felt Hermione twitch, just a little, though that could just be from sensing the spell. "Oh, sorry, did that feel funny? The wards up there are blocking how we elves see, so I put a mark on you. I didn't think you might feel it."

And Liz was reminded that elves directly bound to another being tended to slowly absorb the tone of their magic and bits of their personality — so she wasn't a bad influence on just Hermione, turned out.

"It's fine, Nilanse, you just startled me. How long will the mark stay on?"

"About a week, I'm thinking? I'm not knowing for sure, I only did it in practice." A week was a long time for a charm effect to linger — a comparable tracking charm might only work for a few hours max — but elf magic worked by different rules. "I will take it off when I bring the note."

Liz was pretty sure Hermione wasn't offended by the presumption of Nilanse putting a tracker on her (they'd spent a few weeks living together at Liz's house in August, and they'd gotten on perfectly fine), was just curious about the elf magic, because Hermione would never stop being Hermione. While she was saying a last comment about that, Susan got Liz's attention with a squeeze of her hand. "Before you take the antidote, have Professor Snape get his name out of your head."

"...Why?" Inviting Severus to read her mind didn't sound fun to her, honestly — not that she thought he'd do anything bad, it was just uncomfortable.

"Love potions interfere with memory, and sometimes the victim even forgets who the target was. It doesn't happen one hundred per cent of the time — I think it's about two in three? — but I was told to write down the name if I think I've been dosed, just in case."

It was slightly concerning that Susan had been given instructions for what to do if she thought she'd been slipped a love potion, but it actually wasn't a surprise, when she thought about it. Her mother(/aunt) was the Director of Law Enforcement, and she had enemies out there — she suspected Susan had been given instructions for what to do in all kinds of emergency situations, just in case. Liz kind of wondered if the memory issues were bad enough for someone to forget being raped while under the influence of a love potion — the, ah, physical consequences would be left behind though, so that sounded horrifying — but she didn't want to put that idea in Hermione's head just now. She seemed angry and worried enough already, honestly. "I kind of hope I forget, honestly, this is awful."

A couple wishes for good luck (which seemed unnecessary) and reminders to let them know if she was okay (which also seemed unnecessary, but giving a damn could suck like that), they finally let her go. Nilanse's smooth, soft, inhumanly warm hand in hers, hard blackness slapped against her, and she was suddenly standing in Severus's office. It was dimmer than usual, the lights out and only a low-smouldering fire in the hearth. It seemed he wasn't in at the moment. Now that she was thinking about it, she hadn't seen him at dinner either, he must by busy somewhere. For a second she considered going to the Hospital Wing instead — she knew she could be a pain to deal with, she didn't want to make more trouble for Severus than necessary — but she'd really rather not deal with Pomfrey unless she had absolutely no other choice. And he always said she could come to him whenever she needed anything, so it was his own fault, really.

Approaching the door into his apartments she started pulling her wand to knock, before belatedly remembering that he'd added her to his wards a while ago, so she just pushed the door open instead, electric magic crawling over her skin. The sitting room was dark too, she quick checked the back hall to confirm he wasn't here. Damn. "Hey, um, can you find Severus?"

Nilanse hadn't popped away, quietly following her around — Liz assumed she was keeping an eye on her, to make sure she didn't go running off to McLaggen instead. Which probably wasn't necessary, but Liz appreciated it anyway. "You named him a friend of the family the first time you came to the Rock."

"...Is that a yes?"

"Oh! Sorry, yes, I can find him," Nilanse confirmed, sheepishly shuffling a little. She glanced at the door into Severus's office, Liz felt a faint crackle of magic in the air and it closed seemingly by itself, the wards snapping back into place. Nilanse followed that up with a snap of her fingers, casting a surprisingly powerful spell, Liz's breath hitching for a second, visible for a blink as a blue-green glow over the doors leading back out into the castle before fading away again. "I'll go bring him." Another snap of her fingers, and she was gone.

...Liz was pretty sure Nilanse had just locked her in. Normally Liz would not be pleased being locked up somewhere — she hated feeling trapped — but at the moment it was probably for the best. She didn't think it was likely she'd lose the battle against the love potion that badly, but it wasn't an unreasonable precaution. She was kind of surprised Nilanse had thought of it, honestly — maybe Cediny had given her instructions for what to do when Liz was in danger? Or maybe she'd just thought of it herself, that girl was pretty sharp...

Sometimes she thought it was some horseshite that elves weren't allowed to go to school. The Potter elves knew how to read, because one of her recent ancestors had been a bit of an eccentric and had taught them himself, and Liz knew for a fact that some of the healing assistant elves at Hogwarts could read too, but according to Sirius that was very rare. The elves had their own magical tradition and history and stuff, but that was all oral, passed down generation to generation person to person — which, as one might expect, was somewhat less reliable than a physical record. (Elves tended to have better memory than humans, but still.) Their magic worked different, but there was no reason they couldn't study other stuff the same as anyone else, but of course mages had to be pointlessly racist. It wasn't as though house-elves needed proper education, after all, what would they even use it for?

Or, she guessed, it wasn't so much mages being racist as British mages — Liz had learned since starting to look at Proficiency options that other magic schools did accept elves. They had their own elf-specific magic programme, of course, complete with their own version of the big exams and shite, but other subjects were mixed. And not just elves, Liz had overheard Artèmi talking about one of her History classmates, and Liz was certain that was a goblin name...

Wilderfolk weren't allowed to go to school in Britain, even if they had a parent who was a human mage and everything, it was so fucked...

Anyway, Liz was feeling very antsy, holding back the urge to find a way to break Nilanse's spell or apparate out (which was a fantastically terrible idea) so she could go find McLaggen, she needed to do something to occupy herself. She glanced over Severus's alcohol cabinet, but that would probably be a mistake — getting tipsy would make her self-control even worse, and she was having a hard enough time of it already — so wandered over toward the bookshelves instead. There were fewer books in his sitting room than in his office, but it was disproportionately the more interesting stuff — students were far more likely to see the books in his office, after all. Not to say they were all controversial or Dark Arts stuff — though there was plenty of that, naturally — some of it was just super personal, like that kids' book signed by Lily she'd stumbled across last month.

Of course, just the personal stuff was really interesting too. As weird as it was to think to herself, she didn't actually know that much about Severus — plenty of stuff picked up reading between the lines, sure, and there was that talk they'd had that really bad night a year ago now, but... Well, when they had super private conversations, it was usually Severus interrogating her about one thing or another, he didn't tend to volunteer much. He was private like that, which, you know, fair enough. But she couldn't help being curious about him sometimes, so she distracted herself poking through his bookshelves, trying to think about literally anything other than Cormac fucking McLaggen.

(As curious as she was about Severus, she still only had mixed success.)

She had to have been at it for several minutes, and Severus still hadn't show up yet — what was taking so long? It shouldn't have taken more than fifteen seconds for Nilanse to pop over, explain the problem, and pop him back. Maybe Severus would have preferred to take the floo instead — he could be a paranoid bastard, she wouldn't be surprised if he didn't like letting other people teleport him around — but for that he'd just have to apparate to his house and floo straight here, so, maybe only a minute tops. He must be busy, in the middle of brewing something, maybe? It could take a little bit to get to a spot he could safely put a potion into stasis, that must be it...

She was just wondering if she should have bitten the bullet and gone to see Pomfrey instead, when the hearth suddenly flared green and Severus came staggering out. (He really was very tall, it was uncomfortable for him to get through the floo sometimes.) Looking over her shoulder, she was surprised to see he was wearing muggle clothes — nothing special, trousers and a jumper in black and blue, dropping a nondescript jacket on a nearby chair, no different from the stuff she usually saw him wearing when they went out into muggle—

"Oh shite," Liz hissed. "It's Saturday, you were with Síomha, weren't you? Sorry, forgot..."

"Don't worry about it, Elizabeth." Well, that was a silly thing to say, obviously being told not to worry about something didn't stop anybody from worrying. Brains, unfortunately, didn't work like that. "Are you all right?"

"I managed to stop myself from doing anything stupid, if that's what you're asking. But this is fucking miserable, I'd like an antidote now, please."

Severus gave her a funny look, but with her mind magic too occupied with herself she couldn't even begin to guess what that was. Whatever he was thinking, he apparently didn't think it important enough to comment. "Fennis." Severus's by-now familiar healing assistant appeared after a couple seconds, silently looking up at him for instructions. "I need my emergency brewing kit, and a square of plain vellum, number three." One of the standard paper sizes, he meant, no. 3 was about the length of Liz's arm elbow to fingertips on each side — Liz used them to plan out rune schemes sometimes. Though the ones they used in Runes were paper, obviously, not proper fancy parchment. "Also, please inform Hector that I will need to speak with him in his office, perhaps twenty minutes from now, regarding the use of a love potion on a student."

Fennis just nodded, and disappeared again — Liz had seen Fennis several times, but she hardly ever heard him speak, a quiet, serious sort of bloke. Several seconds later, a sizeable dark canvas bag appeared on the coffee table, seemingly out of nowhere — presumably Fennis had sent it here with the same magic Liz was sent her nutrient potions by — in a blink Severus was sitting on the edge of the sofa sorting through it, setting up a smallish cauldron on a little wire stand. "Do you know how you came in contact with the potion?"

"It was in my mead. Switching spell, I think." She couldn't think of any other way McLaggen could have gotten it into her mug without drawing attention. And switching spells were, just, basic magic, wouldn't have registered as a threat...

...though, it was odd that her Seer shite hadn't warned her. But then again, maybe not — that stuff worked by feeling an echo of the experience to come, and it looked like this was going to be taken care of without anything bad happening to her. She suspected she would only have gotten a warning if she couldn't have resisted it on her own, which was sort of irritating.

Also, the potion itself mostly felt good, annoyingly, all giddy and exciting and— Just, Liz knew love potions didn't register to spells that detected harmful potions and poisons and the like either, so it's possible she wouldn't have gotten a warning even if she couldn't have done anything about it. Hell, assuming she was still under the influence of the potion when McLaggen...did whatever he meant to, she probably wouldn't even register it as a bad thing, and then she might forget shortly afterward, so might not get a warning of that either. That just got creepier and fucking creepier the more she thought about it...

"Do you have a sample I can test?"

"No, sorry. When I realised what was happening, I had an accidental magic outburst, and the mug exploded." Which was a little embarrassing, honestly, accidental magic at her age, but oh well. At this point, Severus had seen her in enough embarrassing situations that it shouldn't make any difference anymore.

He glanced over his shoulder at her for a second, before turning back to his cauldron. He'd poured a little bit of some kind of liquid in there, she hadn't seen the bottle, mixed it with some water drawn from the air, and was now pulling bits and pieces of one thing or another out of the bag, stirring as he went. "Are you hurt?"

She shrugged, even though he wasn't looking at her at the moment. "Couple scrapes. Susan healed them for me." Her hand did kind of sting a little, still, but it wasn't that bad. She'd hardly noticed, honestly.

"Good. I will need your blood in a moment."

"What for? I thought you were brewing an antidote." She started walking closer anyway — obviously Severus would know what he was talking about better than her. Oh, love potions were targeted, so maybe the counter also had to be targeted, she hadn't read anything about it but that would make sense. Targeting potions to the user did odd things sometimes, but...

"There are multiple different varieties of love potion, which may operate by distinct mechanisms. I need to know which type you were given before I can formulate the proper antidote." Oh, right, that was obvious, never mind. "Once I've narrowed down the possibilities, it may take a few minutes to brew the antidote itself. I trust you recall the fundamental mechanisms of antidotes to mind-altering potions."

"Yeah, counters to mind-altering potions are themselves mind-altering potions — I'm guessing there are going to be side-effects."

"I have no means available to determine the strength of the dose you were given, so yes. The symptoms are most often quite similar to depression, though it should only last an hour or two."

Liz grimaced — and she hadn't even been doing that bad lately, thanks to taking plenty of breaks and, ah, Daphne-related stress relief. Hopefully Severus was right about it being temporary, being thrown into an episode or whatever because of it would suck. "Fine. Let's just get it over with."

Whatever Severus was brewing didn't take very long. Once it was ready, he conjured a brush — not really like a paint brush, more like the kind you'd find in a kitchen, to brush egg or oil over things — poured a puddle of watery blue-green stuff onto the sheet of parchment, spreading it out over the surface with the brush. Some of it ended up getting onto the table, but apparently that wasn't a big deal, Severus just focussed on getting it spread out more or less evenly. Liz noticed that the potion seemed to be sinking into the parchment, slightly tinting it, but somehow leaving the parchment looking dry, weird. Severus had to dip the brush into the little cauldron a couple times to get enough stuff, but before too long he was done. He pulled a little pen-knife out of the bag, cast a quick charm on the blade, and then held a hand up toward her. "I need your blood now."

Liz stepped closer for a second, started reaching for his hand — she hitched for a second, a sudden surge of panic, no, she shouldn't cooperate, Severus had already said something about talking to the Headmaster, she had to— Gritting her teeth, hard enough to hurt, she forced herself to keep moving. Once she was close enough Severus gently took her wrist, holding her hand over the parchment. He pricked the pad of a finger — the knife was sharp enough she barely felt it — waited for several droplets to splatter onto the parchment, not all in one place, guiding her hand in a little spiral to spread them out.

Oh, that was neat. There were little sparks of magic as her blood hit the surface, and the droplets spread out into the material, like anything wet hitting a piece of paper, but way further than the little drops of blood should allow. And they didn't just form the random blobs you would expect, threads of red stretching into angles and curls, gradually forming what were definitely runes — Egyptian hieroglyphs, specifically. Some kind of analysis spell in potion form, clearly...which you would have to do, since the presence of her own magic would interfere with a charm. This was so cool, she loved magic sometimes.

(It even managed to temporarily distract her from the compulsion to think about McLaggen, which was a plus.)

Once the parchment was scattered with a dozen or so droplets of blood, Severus healed the cut with a quick charm. He didn't let go right away, turning her hand over in his for a couple seconds, before releasing her with a little nod. "Miss Bones's healing work is amateurish, but acceptable."

"I'll tell her you said so." Susan would know to take it as a compliment — Severus was a healer himself, and notoriously hard to impress.

For whatever reason, Severus seemed faintly exasperated, but he didn't say anything, leaning over the parchment, eyes flicking over the runes drawn by her blood. Pointing at one set of runes and then another, "Moonstone and ashwinder, naturally." Liz was aware practically all love potions used both, it'd come up before...though she wasn't really sure what love potions used moonstone for, it was most often used as a reservoir... "Knotgrass and clover, this is the targeting element. Sage, not unusual, and...valerian...?" His fingers tapping at the table, Severus stared at nothing for a few seconds. Which was fair enough, Liz guessed, she wouldn't have expected to see valerian in a love potion either — it was in her calming potions, but she hadn't had any today. Finally, he bit out a sigh, pushed himself to a feet. "One moment."

Severus slipped out into his office, presumably to look up love potion formulae. Without any better idea of what to do with herself, Liz drifted over to a nearby armchair, and flopped bonelessly down into it. She closed her eyes, and tried to relax — her brain still wouldn't shut the fuck up, her limbs stiff and twitchy with nerves, so she wasn't doing a great job of it, but.

After a few seconds, she belatedly realised this was the chair Severus usually sat in.

It didn't take long for Severus to return, a book splayed open across on arm. Muttering under his breath, he flipped through the pages for a bit, before jabbing a finger down on a particular page. "Here it is, valerian and salamander blood allowed him to skip any lengthy stewing stages — to limit the risk of discovery, I expect." Severus was quiet another moment, fingers tapping at the page as he thought. "Yes, this should be a simple matter. Fennis?"

Severus asked Fennis to go fetch a couple ingredients he would need that apparently weren't in his emergency bag, and before long the antidote was coming into shape. Watching Severus brewing was always sort of interesting. He didn't run off a formula, of course — there was no formula, he was inventing this particular antidote on the spot, just by looking at the formula for the love potion. And the idea he had in his head seemed to be more a general outline than a strict set of instructions. Like, he prepared ingredients first, leaving them arrayed around his little cauldron, but then actually brewing, his left hand was dedicated to stirring, slowing down or speeding up or switching stir patterns seemingly at random, picking out and adding ingredients with his right hand. He'd usually pick up more than he needed, dropping it in a bit at a time, sometimes using the whole handful but at other times putting some of it back, returning to an ingredient he'd already used a couple times. Plenty of actual theoretical Potions knowledge went into it, of course, but Liz suspected there was a large degree of instinct involved too, feeling the potion as it developed and just doing what felt right in the moment.

Sort of like how Liz could tweak charms to better fit what she wanted them for — or get more power out of them, in the case of battlemagic — without really thinking about it, except with potions instead. No wonder Severus was kind of bad at explaining things in Potions class sometimes, Liz would have no bloody clue how to tell someone else how she did what she did with charms...

(Liz would say it was weird how some people were especially talented with particular kinds of magic for no apparent reason...but Hermione had always gotten maths stupid quickly, and that kind of seemed like the same idea. Maybe brains were just like that sometimes?)

It wasn't long before the potion was done, Severus pouring it out into a conjured cup to cool — thick and greenish-brown, ugh, this was going to be gross. "That will need a minute before it's safe to drink."

"Sure. Susan said you should get his name from my mind, since I might forget who it was after the potion is gone."

"A wise precaution. We will delay until the potion is ready, to minimise the likely emotional distress."

...For 'betraying' McLaggen, right, she got it.

Of course, waiting a couple minutes for the potion to cool meant needing to endure the love potion for another couple minutes. Liz leaned forward in the chair far enough her head was practically between her knees, held down with her hands folded behind her neck, just, trying not to think. She still felt all flushed and jittery, which was seriously annoying, stomach twisting with nerves, and, ugh, she hated this, that was all. Also, she had a terrible fucking headache, but she was pretty sure that was more from repeatedly mind-magicking herself than the love potion itself.

She hoped McLaggen turned up to the next duelling club meeting, because she was so kicking his arse for this.

"It's almost time," Severus said, startling her a little. "Are you ready?"

Liz forced out a long sigh, partway strangled by her own legs against her chest. No, she wasn't ready, not really — she realised she was a massive fucking hypocrite here, but she hated having other people poking around in her head. But she wasn't confident in her ability to fight past the love potion enough to tell him, so, fuck it. "Just get it over with."

Normally, Severus was subtle enough that she could hardly ever feel him there — though, she had no idea what fraction of the time he picked things up without her noticing was just because her mind was super fucking loud, so he technically wasn't touching her at all — but at the moment she was holding herself so tight, trying to control herself, that his presence was immediately obvious, the familiar mind oozing in at the edge of her awareness, worming its way inside. He moved very quickly, though, slipping through smoothly and easily enough she probably couldn't have stopped him if she wanted to (which she kind of did, for stupid love potion reasons), multiple tendrils of thought moving around too subtly she couldn't even follow them. Severus was the far more experienced mind mage, after all, and had been trained by the literal fucking Dark Lord, she wasn't surprised she couldn't keep up.

As pulled in as she'd been, she hadn't really been able to feel Severus's mind before — he'd gone hard and sharp and cold, the way he got when he was extremely angry (and possibly contemplating murder). She guessed that wasn't really a surprise either.

A couple seconds in, there was an odd shudder in Severus's mind, shock and...she didn't know exactly. He must have found something in here, but she didn't know what. He didn't say anything about it, though, just slipped right back out, Liz once again alone in her mind. "I have it. Here," with a little scrape of something against the table.

Liz sat up, reluctantly, feeling weirdly stiff and sore. She reached for the little teacup-sized thing, started raising it toward her lips — and then froze partway there, barely holding back the urge to chuck it away. Squeezing her eyes closed, she forced a long breath in and out through her teeth, her chest burning and her head pounding. She was fully aware that this potion would make her not like McLaggen anymore, and part of her was seriously freaking out about that, because that was extremely fucked up, messing with her head like that — sometimes she was reminded that Severus was a very dangerous man — but for fuck's sake, it was an antidote for a fucking love potion! Also, what the fuck would it even accomplish, or had she forgetten she was super gay? She didn't even like boys, she'd checked!

...Though, getting her own fucking mind to behave probably wasn't helped by Liz still...kind of not wanting to be. Sometimes she wished she could, just, be fucking normal for once, about literally anything. Of course, when she'd figured it out she hadn't really been surprised, because of course she was going to be a freak in this way too, why would she expect otherwise? But just because she'd expected to be a freak didn't mean she didn't sometimes wish she wasn't.

Ugh, she'd thought she was over that, for fuck's sake...

Taking another deep breath, she squared herself, and then threw the potion back as quickly as she could, not giving herself time to change her mind. The shite was awful, thick and syrupy-clingy, and yet somehow almost chalky at the same time, the kind of harsh sour taste that clung at the back of her throat after, making her shudder, bleh. Severus was holding out a glass of water, so she snatched that away and started chugging it down, rushing to wash out the shite clinging at the back of her tongue and her throat, eeuugh, gross gross gross...

Liz clunked the glass heavily back down on the table, letting out a thick puff of breath. "Fuck, that was disgusting."

"Yes, I'm afraid that can happen with improvised antidotes." Potions could be adjusted for taste, but that took extra work, the original formula was normally pretty gross — the potions here at Hogwarts were at least fiddled with enough that they weren't completely vile, for the most part, but obviously Severus couldn't do that while making it up on the spot. Her own homemade potions tended to be pretty gross, since she didn't know how to fix that, but she mostly only used topical stuff anyway, so it hardly mattered.

And now it was occurring to her that she hadn't really tasted the love potion at all, McLaggen must be pretty decent at potions, she hadn't known that before...and now she was trying to not be kind of impressed by that, because ugh, STOP IT!

"...How long is it supposed to take to kick in?"

"You should begin to feel it any second now."

"You know, there being a delay doesn't really make it easier to— Woah..." It hit like tripping down the stairs, a sudden falling sensation thrumming through her with a lurch, making Liz feel rather dizzy. She let herself fall limp back in Severus's chair, feeling her weight sinking into the chair, pinned like something was pressing her down from above. Tines of cold prickling through her body, from her chest out, leaving a heavy weakness behind, pulling her down, down, "Fuck..."

"How are you feeling?"

"Mm. Cold." That part was getting worse, she kind of wanted to draw her wand and cast the charm, but she didn't really feel like moving...

She noticed Severus moving in her peripheral vision, looked up. He'd stood, picked up the fuzzy reddish blanket folded over the back of the sofa. He stepped closer, unfolding the blanket and...reached to lay it over her.

...Um.

Brushing off her bemusement, Liz grabbed at the blanket, shrugging it over her shoulders — moving was taking way more effort than it should, her body feeling all too heavy, but at least she hadn't needed to get up. Her feet coming up onto the chair, she hugged her knees to her chest, and wiggled back and forth a little to properly tuck it underneath her. She wasn't sure what good the blanket would do, since the cold was coming from inside of herself, as the seconds went by a yawning aching pit opening up in her chest — almost like the feeling of needing to cry building up, but not quite the same thing — and being wrapped up in the blanket and hugging her arms tight around her legs made that feel better. Or made it get worse more slowly, at least...

"How much do you remember?"

"What? Oh..." Her thoughts as heavy and slow and tired as her body, the question hadn't quite clicked. And trying to remember was...kind of hard, everything a fuzzy warm blur. "Um. I know I was dosed with a love potion, but I don't remember much." She thought it'd been slipped in her drink somehow, but she...didn't even remember what she'd been drinking at the time. Honestly, it didn't seem that bad, however much time she was missing sort of like the pleasant fuzziness that could happen sometimes if she had too much alcohol — not really remembering what had happened, but knowing she'd had fun (which didn't happen very often, she didn't usually drink that much) — which, considering she knew she'd been slipped a love potion, was seriously fucking creepy? Was this what it always seemed like after? "I didn't do anything stupid, did I?"

"When I asked a few minutes ago, you told me you came straight here."

"Oh. Good." She had been at a duelling club meeting, so presumably someone would have noticed something was wrong and intervened pretty quickly — nothing really bad would have happened, not with her friends around. But she could have seriously embarrassed herself, so, yeah, good.

"Do you remember who the potion was targeting?"

...She really felt like she should, but it was too fuzzy, not quite clicking. "No. I know it was a boy, which was so confusing, but I don't remember." It was hard to say for sure, but she was pretty sure she caught a faint flicker of amusement from Severus. She was so tired and unfocussed, not really paying attention, and also he was really really angry — reminding her of that time she'd made Tracey show him her scars, the same dangerous frigid sharpness — the flicker was barely detectable through it, but she thought so. "No, you don't get it, Severus, it was really weird. Like, potion-brain telling me he's great and I should go talk to him, but, like, what did I think was going to happen? Like the potion made me kind-of-but-not-quite forget I'm gay or something, it was so..."

"Yes, I understand that can be quite disorienting."

"Is that how Narcissa gets through shagging Lucius?" Liz had no idea if they ever had sex or not, but they must have at least once, for Draco to exist...

Severus let out a sharp huff of breath, a little surprised laugh. "No, certainly not. A love potion will cause a person to think any sexual incompatibility to be less important, but it has no effect on physical arousal or attraction whatsoever. They also frequently induce memory loss, as you're discovering just now, which may cause the experience to be quite distressing in retrospect." Oh, right, that made sense, when she thought about it. "However, there are potions that may be used to...induce a state where such activities may seem far less unpalatable."

There were potions out there to make the drinker super horny, Severus meant. Maybe they could even be targeted to a particular person to make the attraction part work correctly, Liz didn't see why not.

"It was Cormac McLaggen."

"Oh, that bastard. I'm so hexing the shite out of him at the next club meeting."

Another flutter of amusement leaking through Severus's tightly-controlled rage, he drawled, "I don't imagine you will get the opportunity quite so soon — he won't be at the next meeting. If you'll be alright here on your own for five, ten minutes, I need to go speak with the Headmaster."

...Right, honestly it'd completely slipped her mind that McLaggen might actually see consequences for slipping her a love potion. She wasn't used to other kids doing shite to her actually getting them in trouble. The Slytherins harassing her in first year hadn't gotten in trouble until they'd stupidly tried to get her in trouble first, and since the Goblet people threw hexes at her all the time, she just avoided them and ignored it... "Um. Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Very well. I'll be back soon." With a roar and a burst of greenish light, Severus vanished through the floo, and she was alone.

Once the flames died down, the room was quiet and still — and cold, Liz hugging the blanket tighter around herself. Feeling all too weak and heavy, her thoughts slow and bumbling, she just... She couldn't guess how long she was sitting there alone, staring blankly up at the ceiling, featureless moments sliding by. It didn't occur to her to do anything but sit here, she didn't have the energy for it, hardly even had the energy to think, just, waiting.

Turned out the side-effects of love potion antidotes were kind of miserable. Didn't hurt, at least, she guessed it could be worse...

Time seeming to drag by at a crawl, but also smearing past without her noticing, it was impossible to guess how long it'd been when the floo flared green again, Severus stepping through. He was carrying a ceramic mug in each hand — seemed like it'd be really hard to carry drinks through the floo without spilling them, but. On his way closer, he said, "McLaggen is being sent home. He's currently suffering a lecture from Hector and Minerva while waiting for his parents to come retrieve him. He may also lose his prefect badge, but that is unfortunately Minerva's decision."

"...Oh." She really hadn't expected him to get in trouble, it was kind of surreal — he hadn't even hurt her at all. Shaking her confusion off, Severus was standing over her, holding out a mug for her to take. Which would require moving, unfortunately, Liz really didn't feel like doing that at the moment. But she assumed that would be that warm creamy cinnamon drink he made for her sometimes, and that stuff was really good, so, fine, she guessed. Worming her hands out from beneath the blanket, she didn't really uncurl at all, both hands holding the mug in the valley between her shoulders and her knees.

She was pretty sure Severus had made it rather stronger this time, the burn and the citrusy aftertaste of the orange-flavoured liquor more obvious. Of course, the first time he'd made it for her — Christmas of '91, she remembered — she'd only been eleven, apparently she was old enough to make it proper now. It was really good as always, but honestly, she was mostly enjoying the warmth, feeling it burn down toward the aching cold pit in her middle. Didn't make it go away, no, but it was making her feel a little better.

(The smell was nice too — the orange was reminding her of that perfume or something that Daphne used...)

Severus had set his own drink aside, packing up his emergency bag before sitting down. Not everything was going back in the bag, ingredients he'd sliced or whatever and ended up not using, implements that would need to be washed. Blankly watching him work, Liz muttered, "I thought love potions weren't banned at Hogwarts." Severus, and sometimes Sinistra or Flitwick, would find some other way to punish offenders, since they couldn't really do it officially. Actually assaulting another student was still against the rules, of course, but if nobody got hurt...

"They are now — new Headmaster, new rules." There was an edge to Severus's voice, maybe pleased? Made sense, supposedly he'd been trying to get them to ban love potions for about as long as he'd been working here.

Liz hadn't realised that was something the Headmaster had control over, she'd thought it was school rules stuff that they'd need the Board to deal with. If it was that easy, "Why didn't Dumbledore ban them, then? I still don't understand why they're not illegal to begin with."

"Love potions do have legitimate uses. They are effective counters for certain curses and poisons — even for those which they do not fully disperse, they are ideal to stabilise the patient for long enough to prepare a proper treatment. In my person opinion, love potions should be restricted to healers, as is done for various other dangerous or abusable potions. But, unfortunately, I do not write the laws in this miserable backward cesspool of a country." Tying his bag closed again, Severus sank down onto the sofa, plucking up his own mug. Normally he had rum or something in a glass, he must have decided to get something warm this time. "There are also established social uses of the potion, of course. I've always thought the practice unpleasant, and it's falling out of favour these days in any case."

"What social uses?" Liz somehow doubted people going around dosing each other with love potions was something that anyone would think was good and normal. People could be pretty apathetic about awful shite going on, sure, but that seemed like a bit much.

Severus let out a sigh. "Among some segments of Light society, it is considered an acceptable way to signal romantic interest. Though the practice is, as is perhaps not surprising, sharply gendered. The Light can be rather more particular about adhering to strict gender roles, and they are often of the opinion that romance should always be initiated by the man — a woman approaching a man on her own accord is unseemly." Liz clearly felt the sarcasm on his voice, because obviously that was ridiculous. "If a man is failing to pick up a woman's hints she's interested, she may find a way to slip him a love potion keyed to herself, to be certain he receives the message. The reverse, a man dosing a woman, is almost always considered inappropriate."

"...That's fucking stupid."

Severus shrugged, a dark lurch in his head, obviously didn't disagree. "As to Dumbledore's thinking, he was of the opinion that we should take a lighter hand in incidents where no one was hurt. It is possible that he hadn't a proper understanding of how distressing the experience can be, even without an associated assault — he spends far too much time around his friends in the Light, to whom stories of their daughters dosing boys to get their attention are nothing but amusing gossip. Children will be children, he would insist, and that enforcing undue punishment would itself be harmful. However, I'm of the opinion that, even should the perpetrator fail to successfully dose their target, the attempt itself is a warning sign, and that the staff should intervene immediately to prevent more serious incidents down the line. Hector, thankfully, agrees with me on this matter."

Liz let out a little hum, but didn't say anything, focussed on taking a sip of her drink — not that she had any clue what she would say, anyway. She was terrible at guessing what things other people would think were unacceptable, or worth worrying about. Of course, she was also bad at guessing what she would instinctively feel was wrong. Like, she used mind magic on people all the time, but love potions seemed...different, somehow. She could permanently change how people felt about her, theoretically — that was pretty invasive mind magic, and a little risky, but she didn't doubt she could do it — but, she didn't know, she couldn't put words to what the problem was, exactly, the thought just felt really gross to her. Making people feel things in the moment — like when she'd pressed fear on Draco, Millie, Pansy, and Theo back at that house meeting in first year — to make a point, sure, but that only lasted a few seconds. And she was just making a point, not trying to get anything out of them, that just...

Of course, she had compelled people to give her stuff before — mostly back before she had money, things she needed — but love potions just felt like a different thing, crossing a line. She couldn't say why, just one of those things. Since love potions were legal, she'd assumed that was just a her thing...but then everyone she'd talked to had similar feelings about it, and now the Headmaster was on board. She didn't know, it was confusing.

"The school is taking action, yes, but you may wish to consider a response as well."

Lost in her thoughts enough wandering in slow circles about that, Liz had lost track of her surroundings, just blinked at Severus for a bit. "What?"

"McLaggen will miss a few weeks of classes, including the Yule Ball, but that is all. While Hector is taking the matter seriously, he believes McLaggen's motives should earn him a lighter punishment — in slipping you a love potion, he intended only to humiliate you in public. If his intent were some manner of assault, I have no doubt that Hector would insist on a much harsher sentence, but as it is, no."

Oh, so McLaggen was a completely different kind of bastard than she'd thought. Didn't really make her feel better about it, somehow, but that might be the antidote messing with her head. "Why? I mean, what was the point?"

Dark, sharp exasperation slashing through his head, Severus said, "It seems McLaggen is displeased with your performance in the Tournament. He's convinced you need to be... There's a strong element of misogyny in his thinking, I'll leave it at that."

...Yeah, Liz was going to stick with learning that McLaggen hadn't actually been planning on raping her didn't make her feel better, actually. She wasn't sure how slipping her a love potion was supposed to put her in her place or whatever, especially since she was very sure someone would have immediately noticed something was wrong, but it was still creepy as fuck, her skin crawling and her stomach twisting. She really hated people, sometimes.

"The school may not be taking harsher measures. In the lack of an associated assault, dosing someone with a love potion isn't a crime, so there is nothing to be done there. However," Severus drawled, one eyebrow arching up, "he did attempt to offend the dignity of an unmarried Lady of a Noble House."

"Oh. Right, I forgot about that." Mostly because all the noble stuff was fucking stupid, and the rules about when people could get away with stuff and when they couldn't were just confusing. "You're saying I can sue the shite out of him."

"Precisely. I would prefer that we do so. From what I know of them, his parents aren't likely to take the matter seriously — I wouldn't be surprised if they will be more angry with Hector for sabotaging their son's OWL year. If nothing else, forcing financial consequences on the family, and embarrassing them in the court of public opinion, should motivate them to prevent any such thing from happening again. Whatever consequences McLaggen may face from his own family might, I hope, dissuade him from attempting to dose another girl in the future. But, in order to sue the McLaggens, you will need to give some sort of statement to the relevant court, and I understand that experience may be unpleasant. It's your decision."

"...Let me think about it, I'll get back to you." Liz's head was far too fuzzy at the moment to weigh the options properly. She didn't really give a damn about what McLaggen might or might not do to other girls — or, at least not enough to subject herself to being interrogated by whatever arseholes at the Ministry managed this sort of thing...and also Severus said the thing about public opinion, so, this would get in the papers, and then people would bother her about it, sounded like a fucking pain. When she thought about it, she guessed that was why Severus was leaving it up to her, since he knew it'd probably be miserable for her.

Honestly, she was inclined to agree to do it, because Severus gave a damn even if she didn't — and he put up with enough stupid horseshite because of her, it really only seemed fair to return the favour — but she felt really numb and unfocussed at the moment, thinking was hard, she suspected she might feel differently after the antidote wore off. So.

"Fair enough." Severus paused for a moment, taking a sip of whatever he had over there. Something was going on in his mind, thoughts turning over, but Liz couldn't tell from here — considering what to say next, maybe. It felt like it was going to be something really serious, actually, but it was hard to work up the energy to worry about it too much. "There was one other matter I wished to discuss."

Liz waited for him to get on with it, but he didn't, seemingly waiting for a response. "Okay...?"

"Valerie Etienne."

...

Oh.

She vaguely remembered, he'd read her mind before giving her the antidote, though she didn't really remember why. He must have seen something about Valérie while he was at it.

Severus knew she was a murderer now.

The weight pressing on her even harder, the cold ache in her middle growing deeper, Liz set her drink aside — the arms of the chair were wide enough the mug could balance there without a problem — hugged her legs tighter against herself, the blanket pulled taught. Eyes were crawling on her skin like wasps, the lines on her back already beginning to throb (Uncle Vernon's voice like the buzz of a distant bee in her ears), but she ignored it as well as she could while she was already tired and unfocussed. Pressing her forehead against her knees, a knot in her throat, she wasn't quite sure she could get her voice to cooperate, so she just hummed, "Mhmm."

If this was going to happen, it was probably better that it was while she was all down from the antidote. She wasn't sure she even had the energy to properly freak out at the moment. Just curl up in the chair, stealing what little warmth the blanket offered her while she still could.

Oh, she just noticed she was still wearing her boots, on Severus's chair, oops...

"What happened?"

...He must not have seen much of the memory if he needed to ask. Her voice still wasn't cooperating, it was annoyingly hard to breath, her chest tightly wound up and freezing cold, it took several slow breaths to find her voice. Even then it wasn't coming out quite right, low and grinding. "There wasn't enough. She had— The language stuff was too big, I didn't have enough mind stuff to hold it. So I used hers. It... When I burned it in it broke her, I, looking back it's obvious, fucked it up, stupid..." Her throat burning, her eyes stinging, there wasn't really anything else to say anyway, so she let herself trail off, focussed on her breathing, in and out, slow, in and out...

Severus was such a damn softy sometimes, it'd probably be a lot harder on him if she started crying. She already gave him enough trouble, might as well not make it worse, if she could help it.

Hopefully they wouldn't stall too long. Most of the time, they'd keep people in holding somewhere at the Ministry for a bit, while they straightened everything out, but she didn't want to...wallow in it. The dementors would probably knock her out pretty much immediately, and she'd just never wake up, that seemed better, really...

Severus was quiet for a time, his mind flickering, hot and vaguely nauseating. Liz wasn't sure how to read that, and she didn't want to get closer to find out, she honestly didn't want to know what he was thinking right now. "That is what the reservoir is for."

"What?"

"The reservoir I made for you to practise with. You would bridge the subject's mind to the reservoir, acting as an intermediary so as to allow their mind to regenerate, until the information in the subject's mind and the reservoir reach equilibrium. Then you may subsume the information from the reservoir, piecemeal, at your leisure. When I learned you had acquired French on your own, I had assumed that was how you managed it — it is the only safe method to do so, as I thought I had made clear in our lessons."

Oh. Well, she felt like even more of an idiot now! That was fucking obvious now that he'd pointed it out, she'd completely fucked up everything forever for nothing. Not that she could say she was surprised, she was far too good at ruining everything she touched sometimes. Just, she'd never really given that much thought to which fuck up would be the end of the line for her, but it was such a stupid, little thing...

"After assimilating her knowledge, you must have noticed something was wrong very quickly. What did you do?"

...Liz didn't want to tell him about the second round of subsumption. It hardly mattered at this point, not anymore, but she didn't want him to... "I... She wouldn't wake up. Her mind was all...wrong. Too small, and twisted up, and... I didn't know how to fix it." And she hadn't wanted to go ask anyone, because that would basically be admitting to serious crimes, and that seemed like a bad idea. "Could it be fixed?"

"Without examining her myself, I can't be certain. But no, from what I can assume was done to her, I suspect her condition was most likely terminal."

"Oh. Good." She had wondered if she'd been doing the wrong thing, if Valérie could have been saved if Liz had sucked it up and gotten her help instead — she didn't honestly care that much, but it was a little bit of a relief to know she hadn't fucked up twice. "Um. I vanished her. She— I can only do so much at once, and I didn't know if she could...still feel anything in there. I didn't think so, but. So, I finished her off first." Being vanished bits at a time and not being able to do anything about it seemed like it would suck. "And then, yeah, cleaned up. Um. I blanked their memories, the people in the store, just of me and Valérie. And I left."

Severus was silent another moment, his mind turning. Liz didn't look up, her head still against her knees, holding the blanket tight around her. She didn't want to look up, didn't want to see...she didn't know, exactly. She didn't—

This was going to be hard enough already, she didn't know if she'd get through it if she had to look at him.

"I suppose that will likely have been sufficient."

...What?

"Why didn't you call me? I hope you kept your emergency portkey and beacon on you while travelling to a foreign country, and I understand Nilanse could have found me regardless."

"I..." Her voice trailed off, just, very confused all of a sudden. She thought that should be obvious, right? Also, how could that possibly matter now? And besides, she didn't...really know how to answer that. Asking Severus for help just hadn't occurred to her at the time — she'd been kind of freaking out, and then she'd been high on calming potion and not thinking straight, and...

Generally, when she'd done something bad, running off and finding an adult was the last thing on her mind.

But even if it had occurred to her, she probably wouldn't have. Quiet, hardly a hiss, she admitted, "I didn't...want you to hate me." It was still kind of absurd to her that he hadn't already, even while knowing that that was abused-kid-brain talking, because this shite was fucking frustrating sometimes. Like, all the adults around ever had either despised her or been largely apathetic to her existence, that Severus actually gave a damn and didn't think she was an evil freak he'd be better off without was one of those things that never quite properly clicked for her.

Severus let out a sharp sigh, his mind lurching. "Elizabeth..." He didn't go on right away, hesitating, clearly trying to figure out how to say what he had to, at this point.

She knew he hadn't, of course, that was fucking obvious at this point, but if she was being completely honest it still didn't feel quite real, sometimes. And she was always making shite harder for him, and, she didn't understand it, why he bothered. (Why this had gone so well, but she'd never gotten it to work when she was little, no matter how hard she'd tried.) But, honestly, she still didn't know why her friends tolerated her, or Daphne—

Oh fuck, Daphne was going to be devastated when she found out, that was...

She'd ruined it now, obviously, but — hugging herself tighter against the cold inside, sunk heavy into the chair — she couldn't say she was surprised. She was a creepy freakish devil child, she ruined everything, just the way it worked...

Lost in her head, still fighting to control herself (she didn't want to make this even harder on him), she almost missed it when Severus started talking again. "What you did was terribly foolish, yes. But, in no small part, I share responsibility for Valerie's death."

"...What?"

"If you recall, it was I who taught you how to properly subsume knowledge in the first place, and I did so with the understanding that you would in time use that ability to acquire French. It was my intention that you do so under proper supervision, but I didn't... I realised, in Romania, that I hadn't made that sufficiently clear. You acted rashly, yes, but that is my mistake as much as it is yours. I will be present when you acquire Gaelic, and I will walk you through the process beginning to end — and going forward, with proper caution, communication, and planning, hopefully we may prevent anything like the incident with Valerie from ever happening again."

Severus kept pronouncing Valérie's name wrong, which was a funny point for her brain to stick on, but. His accent in French was, just, awful. That was really the only clear thought to come through, because she was, just, confused.

I will be present when you acquire Gaelic — as though that was a thing that was still going to happen.

Going forward, we, again — as though this wasn't the end of the line, like...

"...Aren't you t-turning me in?"

There was a sharp shiver in Severus's mind, it took him a couple seconds to answer. "No. Did you think I was going to?"

The hot tension in her throat just getting worse, hugging her legs tight enough she could feel herself shivering a little, she didn't know if her voice would cooperate. So she just nodded, the rustling of her hair seeming weirdly loud.

"Elizabeth, you... You haven't forgotten how badly you respond to dementors. You thought I intended to turn you over to the Ministry for practising restricted Dark Arts, resulting in the death of another human being. Even at your age, that would result in a prison sentence — and you would not last a week in Azkaban, so that would naturally become a death sentence. And you...simply cooperated, without protest?"

...Well, yeah, she guessed she had. For one thing, Severus did kind of have her trapped — he already knew enough, and he was also a cheater mind mage, so she couldn't lie to him. And if she refused to answer, he could just read her mind for it, it wouldn't even be hard for him — especially as bluh and fuzzy as she was from the antidote, she might not even notice — so there was really no point in not just...

Even if her life wasn't literally over, it... Like, it'd occurred to her that she might not even be in that much trouble — it'd happened in a foreign country, and Valérie was a muggle, she actually wasn't sure if she'd even be charged with anything. The French government would (being communalists and all), but they'd have to find out about it, and Britain would have to agree to extradite her, and she was a fancy noble lady or whatever the fuck, so that didn't seem very likely. Even if British people thought she was evil and all turned on her anyway — which they definitely would, so many people already thought she was evil and she hadn't even done anything yet (so far as they knew) — it was the principle of the thing, you know? So, it would make her life a lot harder, definitely, but she wasn't sure how likely it was that she'd actually be dementored to death.

But it didn't really matter. She was a fucking mess, it— She couldn't go back to what her life had been like, before. It might take a while, she couldn't guess how long, but she didn't doubt she would end up falling apart, whatever that would look like, or she'd just give up and off herself. She'd managed on her own, before, but that was before, before she'd actually starting doing pretty okay, and life didn't suck all the time, that the best she got wasn't, just, not actively miserable. And maybe it was a little irrational, maybe she wouldn't go right back to the mess she'd been before, but...

She couldn't help the feeling that, if Severus was done with her, she was probably fucked anyway.

And, maybe this was the antidote messing with her head — Severus had said the side-effects could be depression-like — but she did kind of feel like she deserved it, for killing Valérie. She wasn't going to go out of her way to get herself dementored to death, but... Well, if Severus was going to turn her in for it, that was...fine. She always made a mess of things, she'd basically fucked up his entire life over the last couple years, and, if he wanted to get rid of her now, that was okay, she wasn't going to stop him. Even if that meant her literally dying, that– whatever, she guessed, she didn't really have the energy to care enough to do anything about it. If that was what he wanted to do, fine.

...It was definitely the antidote, but knowing that didn't stop her from feeling the way she did about it.

But she didn't really know how to say any of that, or if she should even try. So instead she just shrugged. Except, she didn't just shrug — her throat so tight it hurt, her eyes stinging and her skin crawling, she didn't entirely manage to keep it down, but she tried to choke it off anyway, straining, hugging her legs even tighter and squeezing her eyes even harder shut. It was starting to sink in, that she was fine, Severus didn't—

She didn't understand. She didn't understand why Severus put up with her, especially when it was something like this, and she was so confused. Her head was such a scattered mess, she couldn't begin to put a word to what the fuck she was feeling, but she did know it was too much, she couldn't hold it in anymore, tears pooling hot in her eyes and her throat throbbing, ugh...

"Elizabeth." She twitched at the hand on her knee, hadn't noticed him moving, shrinking at the shifting prickly mind nearing hers. "Children make mistakes. Power magnifies the consequences of those mistakes, but that doesn't change the heart of it. The important thing is to learn from them, and to not repeat them. I expect I don't have to worry about you running off to experiment with subsumption on your own again."

The movement sharp and twitchy, Liz shook her head. "It w-was r—" Choking on a sob itching its way up her throat, she could tell immediately that her mouth wasn't going to get that word out right. "—scary." That was why she'd agreed not to pick up Gaelic without Severus — even thought she'd already agreed before she actually had, made the decision not to do this stuff alone without talking to him about it — when she'd figured out that she'd broken Valérie she'd freaked out really badly, and she kept worrying about Aurors showing up for weeks afterward... She'd been doing lots of illegal shite for like half her life now, but those were mostly little things, it seemed she'd found where her line was by accidentally stumbling across it like a fucking idiot.

She didn't feel that bad about Valérie being dead, honestly — especially now that Severus had confirmed for her that her mind couldn't have been fixed. But she'd rather not get dementored to death, thanks — at least not when she didn't have a love potion antidote fucking with her head — and she was pretty sure she wouldn't deal well with a sane prison either (she hated feeling trapped), and some risks were just too much.

Despite what Dorea seemed to think sometimes, Liz did have a sense of self-preservation. And when it was triggered it tended to set off full-blown panic attacks, so, that was fun — she remembered she'd broken the bottle and cut up her lips trying to get a calming potion down, made such a mess...

There was a hard lurch in Severus's head, something unpleasant, but as occupied as Liz was with the mess in her own head — and trying not to cry, which was completely fucking useless at this point — she really couldn't tell what was going on in there. "I wish you'd called me."

"I'm sorry." She wasn't sure what she was apologising for, exactly, it just seemed like the thing to say.

"It's all right, Elizabeth. Remember this, and learn from it, and it'll be all right."

They sat there for a while, Liz curled up in the chair, hugging the blanket tight around her — she was actually starting to get rather uncomfortably warm, but she didn't want to let go — her head pressed against the top of her knees, shaking and shivering. Liz was, of course, bad at crying, because that was a thing a person could be — it fucking hurt, and she couldn't stop it, but fuck it, whatever. (If Severus wasn't going to get angry with her for literally killing a woman, it didn't seem likely he'd be fussed about a little crying.) Severus didn't move, she thought he was kneeling in front of the chair, leaning an elbow on one of the arm rests, his other hand on her leg, his magic hovering cool and pleasant around her. Not making a point of trying to talk at her, just, waiting for her body to stop being fucking stupid and for the crying to stop.

Liz still hated crying, which was annoying, because she'd been doing it kind of a lot over the last few months. And she hadn't gotten any better at it, still not managing to breathe properly, pulling muscles in her sides and all. Sucked.

It started easing off, after what had to be several minutes at least, though she didn't really feel better — her chest and her throat sore, her head and her sides aching. And her head was still a scattered confused mess, so, apparently it hadn't even accomplished anything this time. Hadn't Severus said something once about the point of crying being to let the pressure off, like lifting the lid from a boiling pot? Hadn't even done its job properly this time, what was the fucking point. Sniffling, Liz loosened out of her ball a little, lifting a hand to—

And she got snot all over the back of her hand, of course. "Ugh, gross..."

There was a flicker of amusement from Severus. A pulse of ticklish magic crawled over her, some kind of cleaning spell, the mess on her hand vanishing. "Do you want to stay here tonight?"

"Oh. Yeah, thanks." Going back to her dorm room would probably mean people trying to talk at her, and she just didn't want to deal with that right now. The question bubbling up her throat, she hesitated for a second, but, fuck it. "Why are you being so nice to me? I literally killed a woman..."

Severus bit out a sigh. "I'm not pleased that your recklessness caused her death. But there is nothing I can do about that now. My priority must be your well-being — and I can't imagine how cruelty would accomplish anything. And I admit I... I expected something like this might happen, in time. It is perhaps for the best that you learn this lesson now, instead of putting it off for who knows how many years."

...What?

She didn't say anything out loud, but Severus must have felt her confusion anyway. "People like you and me, the gifts we were born with can present an advantage, but they can also lead to terrible accidents. Considering what your life was like before reaching Hogwarts, and your interests... I wasn't certain you might kill someone in a foolish accident, but neither am I particularly shocked. It may seem callous to say, but if you make it through your teenage years having caused fewer deaths than I..." Severus sighed, deep and bitter, his mind darkly simmering. "Well, I suppose I'll call that progress."

...

She had absolutely no idea how the fuck she was supposed to feel about that.

"Um, I probably will? I'm not likely to end up fighting in a terrorist campaign, you know."

His eyes had turned away, staring moodily into the distance, but at that he turned back to give her an odd, sharp look. "Are you certain about that? You know as well as I that the Dark Lord may well make his way back to proper life."

"...I don't think he's super likely to let me join his club?"

For some inexplicable reason, Severus seemed almost exasperated. "I told you once, years ago now, that you must learn how to see the whole board." Back in first year, he meant, talking about her feud with Draco while playing chess at the Christmas feast thing. "Should Voldemort return, what happens next? How does the Ministry react? How do the Gaels?"

"Well, the Gaels probably use that as an opportunity to break off."

"Yes, most likely. And what happens next? How does the Ministry react? Ars Publica? the Mistwalkers? the northern islanders? What happens in Strathclyde?"

...He meant they'd probably have a big damn civil war. And there might well be a lot of factions, and it wasn't out of the question that Liz might end up being drawn into one of them — especially since she was pretty good at battlemagic, and people would know that, thanks to the duelling tournaments and stuff. "Right, I get it."

"But that's a separate matter. This incident was unfortunate, but if getting this lesson out of the way early may prevent you from starting down an even more dangerous road later, so be it. Assuming you know, now, to be far more cautious with such magics in the future."

Liz nodded. "I mean, I'll play around with stuff, but... I think I'm, just, gonna avoid anything that requires another person for it. You know? Once I get the omniglot thing switched on I won't need it anymore anyway, and I can...occupy myself with less risky stuff. Like, I've been thinking about teaching myself how to make my own clothes lately, weaving and whatever..."

Sharp and sudden enough she twitched, Severus laughed — she didn't know what the hell that was about, but okay. Quickly quieting down, a smile lingering on his face and his mind twitching, he said, "That is a much less risky hobby, yes. If this experience helped to turn your interests in a safer direction, well, a stranger's life is a price I am willing to pay."

...She had no idea what the hell she was supposed to say to that, either. She, just...hadn't expected Severus to be... Sure, she'd learned over the last few years that she could trust him, but...she hadn't realised she could trust him this much. It was very weird, that was all.

(Speechlessly staring over her knees at him, tired and sore and confused, she wondered if this was what actually having a dad was like for normal people. Though, she guessed normal people didn't accidentally kill people very often...)

(Liz felt very weird about that thought, but she couldn't really say how. She was blaming the antidote.)

"I should inform Deirdre and Eirian that I'll be in for the rest of the night. Will you be all right alone for a few minutes?"

She realised she was a fucking mess, but honestly, she wasn't going to explode if he left her alone for a few minutes. "Yeah. I think I'm going to have a shower, I'm all bleh." She'd completely blanked on the right word for what she'd meant at the last second, but she guessed just making a noise was fine. Belatedly, it clicked that Severus had kind of implied that he hadn't planned on coming back to the Castle at all tonight. "I'm sorry. For ruining your date with Síomha."

Severus sighed again — he seemed to be doing that a lot more than usual tonight. "We're adults, Elizabeth. We're both aware that the other has responsibilities that may pull us away from our time together. Such is to be expected, and hardly worth making a fuss about."

"You know, you're being all understanding and shite. It's weird."

"Perhaps you are forgetting that I was nothing short of a complete disaster when I was your age."

...She was, a little, honestly. He was so calm and put together now, it was hard to imagine he'd ever been as much of a fucking mess as she was. Maybe she'd think that would explain it, but if anything, Liz thought she would have way less patience for her shite if she were in his place, she still didn't really get it...

Apparently they were done here, or at least for now — Severus had kind of implied he didn't plan on leaving her alone, at least for a little while (though she didn't really get why), but hopefully he wouldn't make a point of talking about...stuff, for the rest of the night. She was exhausted, okay, she didn't know how much more serious talk she had in her. Maybe they could call down to the kitchens for something, crying made her hungry — ooh, chips, really salty, that sounded amazing right about now. Severus was standing up, so Liz started moving too — it didn't take too much effort to convince herself to get up, maybe the antidote was wearing off already — grimacing as her legs protested, her joints throbbing with a dull ache. Held herself too tight in one spot too long, apparently, ugh...

A last little comment about being back soon, Severus started— "Wait." He hitched to a stop, turned back to her with an expectantly raised eyebrow. "I..." She definitely should say something, the words wanting to escape bubbling in her chest...but she didn't know what, exactly, her head too much of a scattered mess to straighten out. It felt like a lot had happened, even though the big thing was kind of that something hadn't happened and she just...didn't know what to say. She never fucking knew what to say, she was so miserable with words, and feelings. Maybe writing him a letter later would be a good idea, probably take a hundred bloody tries to get it right...

But, words weren't the only way to say something.

Hesitantly, stopping and starting, she stepped closer, the smooth cool tingle of his magic slipping against hers. Not really sure what she was doing with herself, she, just, loosely grabbed at his jumper, the cloth soft and fuzzy in her fingers, pressing her forehead against his chest. After a second or two, almost cautiously, she felt one hand settle behind her shoulder, the other on her head, fingers parting her hair. (Her throat aching, and her stomach twisting, her fingers reflexively clenching in his jumper, ugh, feelings were hard.) She could feel the surprise flickering in his head but, pulsing warm through it, she thought he got the message.

(Thank you.)

It didn't take very long before the tension in her chest was winding tighter, her eyes stinging— "Ah!" She jumped away from him, almost tripping over her own feet, scrambling to wipe at her face. Stupid thing, she'd just been crying like five minutes ago... "For fuck's sake, have I mentioned I hate crying?"

"It may have come up." Severus kept his voice mostly level, but she could feel him laughing at her on the inside.

"Ugh, shut up." She sniffled a little, but she managed to stop herself from breaking down again like a fucking baby — she was getting so sick of crying at the drop of a pin, if that could stop happening that'd be great. "I'm fine, I'm going to go clean up now. Go do...whatever."

Thankfully, Severus left before Liz managed to do anything else to embarrass herself. Liz picked up her forgotten mug, took a big swig of the stuff to try to loosen up her throat a little — the stuff was still warm, but it didn't really help much. She only had a few minutes before he'd be back, probably, and she didn't want to make him wait for too long — he'd already put up with far too much stupid shite from her today, after all — so she could go clean up quick. And, it was getting pretty late, but she was weirdly hungry (maybe also due to the antidote wearing off?), and those chips sounded excellent, she was imagining the potato crumbling apart now and it was making her even hungrier, hopefully it wouldn't be too late to ask for some food? She wasn't sure what the elves' schedule was like, Nilanse hardly seemed to sleep at all. Oh shite, she'd promised to send Hermione a note before bed! She'd have to do that after Severus got back, she didn't know where the writing stuff was.

So, she should really get in the shower already — thankfully there weren't classes tomorrow, she had a feeling this was going to be a long fucking night...

---

That happened. In case any of you forgot that Liz and Severus are both kind of shitty people.

Severus: "Maybe you should avoid practising Dark Arts that are likely to kill people on accident."
Liz: "Yeah, I was thinking of picking up sewing."
Severus:*facepalm*because those are interchangeable hobbies...

Anyway, I'm gonna go now. Four chapters until the Yule Ball. Bye.