Before anyone else could try to steal her for another dance, Liz immediately started off on the shortest path toward the edge of the dance floor, coming out in the middle of the little tables scattered around the Hall. It wasn't like she had anything better to do, so, try to find her friends, she guessed? She could just track down Severus and ask to leave now, but she wasn't freaking out or anything, might as well stick it out a bit longer. She wasn't entirely sure tracking charms would work in here, though — they tended to behave strangely in Hogwarts, part of the security on the wards...
But then, Liz wasn't a Seer for nothing, was she. So, who did she know who should be here? Hermione, of course, but she was here with Neville as an actual date date — they were probably dancing, Liz should leave them alone for a bit. Same with Susan and Hannah, and also Lily and Blaise. Chelsea was going with...some upper-year boy, she forgot — she'd definitely been told Chelsea's boyfriend's name at some point, but she was bad with names of people she'd never actually met — and Sophie and Sally-Anne were going with Justin and Wayne, but just as friends, so they'd all have someone to go with. (Also, Liz was pretty sure the girls wanted to go with other muggleborns, just to make sure they didn't accidentally stumble on some weird magical social expectations they weren't familiar with.) Liz had a feeling Sophie and Justin were going to be dating by the end of the night, but they weren't yet, and practically everyone else she knew were here with boyfriends or girlfriends, didn't want to bother them, that was probably her best bet.
Tracey and Millie should probably also be here somewhere, but Liz was kind of avoiding Tracey still — she was Daphne's best friend, she expected that to be awkward.
It seemed like, of the two of them, it was more likely that Sophie was busy dancing at the moment — Sally-Anne could be really shy about boys, and Wayne was super awkward sometimes and didn't really know how to dance — so she decided to focus on Sally-Anne. Instead of pulling her wand and casting a charm, Liz just closed her eyes and thought about Sally-Anne, really hard. This might have been rather difficult a year ago, but she'd actually been spending a fair amount of time around Sally-Anne lately — she was one of the people on Liz's rotation of Potions partners, and Liz not sitting right next to Dorea at study group meetings anymore tended to put her closer to the Hufflepuffs.
Liz wasn't sure if she really liked Sally-Anne much, honestly. She could be super Hufflepuff-ish at times, all overly friendly and self-conscious about whether she was being appropriately nice and fair or whatever. Also, she'd grown up with a lot of asinine conservative Christian stuff — she was in the process of shedding...most of the annoying, inexplicably bigoted parts of it, sure, but Liz still found it kind of weird. And not weird in an interesting way, like all the more unfamiliar religious stuff on the magical side, which she realised wasn't fair of her, but whatever. Even if they didn't get along great, having someone to talk to would be better than just sitting somewhere on her own.
It was hard to explain it, exactly. It's not like it was something she could see, or even a detectable tug, like some of her Seer moments — like with potions sometimes, and she suspected some of her instinct about when and how to dodge in a duel was the same thing. But, somehow, after a moment thinking about Sally-Anne very hard, she just knew which way she had to go. It turned out she was on the wrong side of the dance floor, naturally. She walked along the edge of the floor for a little bit, at an angle to the right direction. Once the current song was over, the dancing couples all pausing, Liz cut across the floor, weaving her way through the crowd. She reached the other side unmolested, where she was immediately asked to dance by Ollivander — not the new History Professor, the fifth-year Ravenclaw who she was only vaguely familiar with from duelling club.
Liz was somewhat taken aback, just wordlessly blinking at him for a few seconds. She'd thought it was possible she'd end up dancing with some of her friends tonight, but she hadn't expected to be asked by a practical stranger. Um...no thank you? She was looking for a friend, so...
Distracted, she'd nearly lost her sense of where Sally-Anne was, just walked in a random direction until she felt she was going the wrong way, picking it up again. (Because Seer shite was weird, sometimes she had to do the wrong thing before she knew what the right thing was — which didn't really help stop her from fucking up, but oh well.) Before too long, she found Sally-Anne and Wayne at a table, along with Tracey and Millie, and Padma and Michael, surprisingly. She had known Padma was going with someone, but she'd wanted it to be a surprise — more like she hadn't wanted her sister and Lavender Brown to go gossipping about it ahead of time — and Padma could be surprisingly good at hiding thoughts from Liz when she wanted to. Not that Liz had looked, but she tended to catch things by accident — and Michael was considered one of the most fanciable boys in their year, so that was the sort of thing Padma would ordinarily be likely to think about where Liz might see it. Good job, she guessed?
Padma did seem really pleased with herself, smiling so brightly she was practically glowing... No, she was actually glowing, that was definitely a spell of some kind — Liz wasn't sure if she was supposed to be glowing, since illusions could be funny for people like Liz, and it was pretty subtle, she hadn't noticed at first. She was also very distracting, dressed up in very foreign looking clothes (from Maharashtra, presumably), extremely colourful, with a lot of bright reds and yellows and blues, glittering golden bangles worked into the cloth here and there. The thing had multiple pieces, Liz couldn't quite tell how it worked from a distance, but she could see that it left most of her middle uncovered, the angle Liz was approaching the table from giving her a pretty good unobstructed look of her left side and her stomach from waist to ribs...
Fucking hell, why did her friends have to be so damn pretty...
The angle she was coming at, Justin and Sophie were the first to notice her, whatever they'd been talking about a moment ago split up with excitable babble. Liz mostly just brushed off the compliments — being high made her less awkward about it, but it didn't magically make her know what to say. (Wayne cutting off in mid-sentence, blushing and glancing away, didn't help.) Return the favour, she guessed, but everyone knew she was gay, and she didn't know how to do compliments in general, but especially not without being kind of creepy, so it was safer to just keep her mouth shut. Though, she probably wasn't being very subtle about trying not to stare at Padma, or Sophie, and Jesus, when did Tracey's tits get like that...well, third-year, she guessed...
Apparently Sophie thought Liz and Severus dancing had been sweet — she had no idea how to respond to that, so she just didn't.
This group had been waiting for the original rush to the dance floor to clear out a little, while also saving the tables. (Apparently their friends had all had dinner here, this table and a couple of the others around.) Not long after Liz showed up, Padma and Michael got up to leave, followed quickly by Sophie and Justin, leaving Tracey and Millie and Sally-Anne and Wayne. Which was a little awkward, because Wayne was having trouble not staring at the girls all around the table — Liz and Wayne didn't see eye to eye very often, but they were very much on the same page this time — and also Liz still didn't know what to say to Tracey.
So, she was a little taken aback when Millie asked her if she wanted to dance, but actually considered it, if only to get away from the awkwardness at the table. Millie did know the men's parts, turned out, and she was pretty tall for a girl but not so stupid tall as Severus, the geometry of it shouldn't be as awkward, so sure, why not? Liz immediately realised her mistake the second they got out there, the music starting up again, and... Sure, Millie wasn't the prettiest girl in the world, Liz normally didn't notice her much at all, but her dress was nice — one of the more modern ones, smooth shiny draping silk in deep emerald green and sky blue — the red in her hair more vibrant than usual, all close and touching, and ugh...
Liz wasn't getting to the point that she was having a problem, but it was still distracting.
They were partway through a second dance — this could be kind of fun as long as she wasn't thinking about it too hard, warm and tingly and comfortable in the soup of feeling all around, the drugs making her feel kind of giddy and light-headed (in a good way), so why not — when Liz realised it wasn't just her, Millie was starting to get kind of distracted too. That wasn't so much of a surprise, really. Liz had had a feeling for a while that Millie might like boys and girls (like Daphne, or Katie), but she'd never gotten confirmation one way or another — it wasn't like it was her business, and it wasn't something Liz and Millie were likely to talk about for no particular reason. Like always, she was a little surprised to pick up that sort of thing pointed at herself, but she realised by now that she really shouldn't be, her brain was just trash like that sometimes. She didn't expect to ever stop finding it weird when other people liked the way she looked until after the blood alchemy thing, honestly.
...It did feel kind of nice, Millie's eyes warm and tingly on her skin, her attention fuzzy and soft hugging around her, Millie's awareness of her fingers on the laces down Liz's back sparking a sympathetic thrill crackling through her. She didn't mind — if anything, it was just making the silly dancing stuff more fun than it'd been a minute ago — but Liz still thought she should...not give the wrong impression. Millie was a friend, she didn't want to make things awkward later.
In the pause after the second song, Liz said, "No." It wasn't until after she felt the confusion coming from Millie that she realised that hadn't been exactly clear. "I mean, er, I'm not... I don't want to be a bitch, so, this is nice, but it's not going to be anything more than this. Am I making sense?"
By the lurching embarrassment pulsing off of her, her face going pink, Millie got what she was trying to say. "Right, I know that. I didn't mean to, er... Sorry."
...Millie hadn't really noticed Liz much either, so they were kind of in the same boat here. Right, then, this was awkward. "It's okay, I'm not annoyed or anything. I just didn't want there to be a misunderstanding, you know."
"Yeah, okay." As intensely awkward as the very brief conversation had been, Millie very much didn't want to talk about it anymore — which was fair enough, Liz didn't either.
Just to prove there were no hard feelings, Liz stuck around for a third dance — well, not just for that, she was having a surprisingly good time — but she should stop before she did something stupid while too high to properly consider the consequences, so. Liz used the excuse of needing to go to the bathroom, though she was telling the truth, she'd had a fair bit of that fizzy creamy stuff...
By the time Liz got back to her friends' table, Tracey was gone (off with Millie, apparently), but Hermione and Neville, Susan and Hannah, and Lily and Blaise had all turned up. Hermione hadn't sat down yet, a little flushed and jittery — she was hardly the most athletic person in the world, so getting a little pink after dancing for, like, at least half an hour wasn't really a surprise — greeted Liz was a quick hug before she could react. "Ooh, you look wonderful, Liz," she gushed, her mind practically simmering with a confusing mix of feelings Liz couldn't pick apart. Letting go and backing off a step, Liz physically shaking off the clingy stuff left behind, Hermione gestured around her head. "Who did this for you? Nilanse?"
Nilanse probably could have done her hair and shite, when Liz thought about it, but she wouldn't have much experience with that sort of thing. It wasn't like there would have been anyone around to practise on. "Um, no, it was actually Narcissa."
"Narcissa Malfoy?" Neville blurted out, shock shivering off of him. "Really?"
Liz frowned at Neville for a moment, confused — that reaction seemed rather stronger than the situation called for. Sure, she was aware Neville and Draco didn't get along, but it felt like she was missing something else. It could be about his parents, she guessed, Bellatrix Lestrange was Narcissa's sister... "Yeah, Severus just showed up with her around lunch, it was weird. Guess she knows what she's doing, at least — I especially like these," she said, holding out her hand to show her shiny colourful fingernails. "Neat, right?"
Sitting around the table, they ended up talking about Narcissa bloody Malfoy for a while, because apparently everyone else thought her showing up at Liz's house to do her hair and makeup and shite was as weird as Liz had. Though, not really a surprise to Blaise — he'd heard rumours that she would sometimes help her younger cousins get ready before their first formal appearance coming into courtship age (so usually, like, fourteen or fifteen), Blaise mentioning it reminding Susan that she had heard of that actually. Susan then thought (but didn't say out loud) that it sort of made sense, since Severus being Draco's godfather kind of made Liz Narcissa's kind-of-sort-of niece, the way old-fashioned pureblood types thought about kinship, but Neville pointed out that Liz and Narcissa were second cousins, through the Blacks, so. But, even with those rumours, it was really weird that Narcissa bloody Malfoy knew how to do people's makeup, with the actual physical products and everything instead of just glamours, seemed a bit...low-class and almost even muggleish for her. But then, Narcissa was a super classy lady, it made sense that she'd be concerned about glamours being disrupted in public...
Huh, the glamour Draco (and Lucius) used on his hair must be anchored really well, because she'd never seen it disrupted in class, or even in duelling club. She wondered how the hell that worked — maybe she could convince Draco to let her try picking apart the spell...
Anyway, they were sitting talking for a bit, about whatever random thing, when Hermione asked Liz if she wanted to dance — partially still concerned about Liz after Daphne, would ask if she was okay where they wouldn't be overheard, but also just for fun — belatedly remembering to check with her date if that was okay. (Hermione and Neville being here together seemed to be working out fine so far, but Liz wouldn't bet on them staying together for very long after the Ball.) Liz wasn't sure that was a great idea, honestly. She knew from previous talks that it didn't bother Hermione if she did, really, but Liz still thought she should try to avoid having pervy thoughts about her friends, and Hermione's tits were very distracting in this dress. Also, Hermione was always super nice and understanding with her, and pretty enough — not that Liz actually had a crush on Hermione or anything, just, it was harder to ignore that sort of thing when she was kind of high at the moment. But, because she was kind of high at the moment, not being sure it was a great idea wasn't a strong enough of a reason to say no.
Hermione not knowing the men's parts was a strong enough reason. She could lead in a handful of muggle dances — apparently growing up her parents would be dragged to one fancy function or another now and then, Hermione had picked it up — but she only knew the mages' dances from the lessons McGonagall had put on for the Gryffindors ahead of the Ball. They hadn't had house dancing lessons in Slytherin, but they had in Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, which did make sense when she thought about it — a large majority of muggleborns at the school were in those two houses, and obviously they wouldn't know the mages' dances at all. McGonagall had properly explained that the parts weren't strictly restricted to each sex, but with so many students she hadn't had time to teach them both parts. So, whether Liz thought it was a good idea or not, they couldn't dance with each other, at least not properly.
Tracey and Millie returned at some point, everyone taking a break to sip at drinks or munch on the snacks set out on the tables — sliced raw vegetables, bits of fresh fruit, and little squares of cheese, apparently just laid out in case anyone got peckish between dances. There was a lot of gossip about who was here with who, which was boring, a little bit about Christmas back home, which was at least somewhat interesting, since a lot of the magical-raised people had holiday traditions Liz still wasn't so familiar with. Susan, of course, did the Mistwalker thing — sometimes with the commune on the Bones lands, but they often all packed up and went to the Greenwood instead — and Blaise's family had a similar week-long earthly-rules-temporarily-don't-apply festival thing back home in Venice, except very explicitly Roman themed in a way the Mistwalker version wasn't. Apparently in Italy they had a Roman-themed religion like here in Britain, but it was a modern reconstructed thing too — according to Blaise, the entire region had been thoroughly Christianised long before Secrecy, it hadn't been a thing before the cultural renaissance a lot of European magical countries had had in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Blaise's baby sister — half-sister, technically, from his mother's sixth husband, she'd be starting at Hogwarts next year — was in Venice with their cousins right now, actually, Blaise and his mother had briefly travelled back to Britain specifically for the Ball. For some reason, that detail made Lily's face go red...or, redder than it'd been a moment ago, anyway. Lily and Blaise's chairs had been slid right against each other, Blaise's arm over the back of Lily's chair, Lily kind of leaning into him a little bit. Lily was somewhat self-conscious about it — this was Lily's first time doing really anything with a boy, and there were a tonne of people around — but she seemed to be enjoying herself, if blushing pretty much fucking constantly.
...Liz wondered if she should be worried about that. Probably not? There were those rumours about his mother being a serial killer, but that didn't necessarily mean Blaise himself was a danger to anyone. Liz and Blaise were hardly close friends, but after living in Slytherin and sharing classes for three years and change, she had a pretty good feeling for what he was like by now — he was a bit of snarky bastard, but he seemed like a decent enough bloke. His occlumency was surprisingly good for their age, but it was harder to keep feelings contained, so Liz was pretty sure he was actually legitimately interested in Lily. There was that whole story about them getting to know each other in the bloody art club, kind of adorable, honestly. That was probably fine, Liz didn't think she needed to worry about Lily or anything, so.
(Not that Liz really cared about Lily that much, but Hermione wouldn't take it well if something happened to her, so it was still her business.)
Eventually they moved into speculation about the Tournament. Liz knew what most of the Tasks were by this point — the Third involved dragons (there was a little bit of freaking out before Liz reassured them that mind magic worked on dragons just fine), and the Fourth was a healing test, she thought the Fifth would be a one-on-one duelling tournament, the Sixth was a quidditch tournament, and the Seventh was...some kind of performance thing, she didn't have details on that one yet. The end of the Tournament was always some kind of race to the Cup, their placement based on their scores in previous Tasks, and Liz still didn't know anything about the Eighth. Everyone else thought it was odd that Viktor was making a point of telling all the Champions what he knew about the Third Task, but Liz didn't really think so — nobody else here knew how fucking irritating being famous could be sometimes...except maybe Blaise. Apparently his mother was pretty well-known in the muggle world? Enough that some very sexist and racist shite to do with her having a black kid out of wedlock had been in the bloody tabloids, news to Liz...
After they'd been talking for a bit couples started peeling off again, going to dance some more. Tracey actually asked Liz, surprisingly, which also didn't seem like the best idea. For the same pervy reasons she'd hesitated with Hermione, yes — Tracey had a similar dress, with the corset and the low neckline, tits all pushed up and very obvious — but also they hadn't talked about Daphne yet, and Liz still expected that to be awkward. Except, maybe it wouldn't be so bad? Liz had noticed Tracey watching her now and then, and the feelings from her seemed to be...well, not annoyed over breaking up with her best friend, at least. If anything, Liz thought she might be concerned for her — she might want to talk in private just to make sure she was okay.
Tracey did know the men's parts, so...sure, why not. Might as well get this awkwardness over with. The last song was ending by the time they got to the dance floor, Tracey leading Liz into the crowd by the hand, weaving between couples — so they wouldn't be right at the edge, and therefore easily visible.
The next song started up, and Liz immediately grimaced. Of course, it had to be one of the slower, more intimate ones, this wasn't uncomfortable at all. Her mind flickering with a rueful sort of smile, Tracey tugged her closer, Liz trying not to squirm as her arm snaked around her waist. Ugh, it'd be so much easier to avoid pervy thoughts if she weren't high right now...though, then she'd be having other problems, obviously, not really anything she could do about it...
All of her friends being so damn pretty was very annoying, sometimes. Tracey was straight, so, at least she wouldn't have to deal with Tracey getting distracted as well...
The song had only been going for maybe twenty seconds, long enough for them to settle into the steps, Tracey apparently not wanting to let it hang for too long. "How have you been doing, Liz? Really."
...She guessed she probably should have expected something like that to be the first question. Honestly, she'd kind of expected Tracey to be angry with her, which didn't entirely make sense when she thought about it, not sure what that was about. "I'm okay. I mean, it sucks, obviously, but... Nilanse's been keeping me busy, you know, not letting me get stuck in my own head too much. At the moment I feel kind of great, but that's just the drugs I'm on to deal with the Seer shite, honestly not looking forward to when I have to let them wear off."
It took Tracey a moment to remember who Nilanse was — she thought Liz's relationship with her elf was somewhat odd, but she just put it down to Liz's childhood being fucked. Which, those two things weren't unrelated, Liz guessed. "I did wonder, you have trouble enough at mealtimes. Cannabis, I'm guessing." The stuff was known to be useful for some Seers, after all.
"Mhmm. Some of those little crystal things, don't know the name. Susan got them for me."
"That's good. I honestly didn't expect you to turn up tonight."
"Severus kind of sprung it on me last second — he was worried the Goblet might punish me if I skipped it."
"Ah, I hadn't thought of that..."
"Yeah, me neither, stupid bloody thing." They broke apart somewhat for a spinny thing, Liz could tell from the grip on her hand that Tracey meant to follow it with a second one, Liz passing under her arm — Tracey was taller than her, but not by that much, the angle was a little awkward. Liz stumbled a little coming out of it, dizzy, but Tracey caught her, Liz only missed a couple beats before she was caught up again. "Um, how's Daphne doing? I haven't really..." There was that conversation by charmed paper, but they hadn't communicated at all after that, and Liz hadn't seen her in person since the incident.
Tracey hesitated for a moment, thoughts turning in her head. Her occlumency was pretty decent — motivated by that time Liz compelled her to show her scars to Severus, which had turned out well in the end but had still been freaky as hell at the time — but she wasn't focussing on it that hard, Liz could tell she was considering what it was wise to tell Liz. She didn't want to break confidence with Daphne, and she also didn't want to make Liz feel worse, it was a delicate balancing act. Liz hadn't expected that Tracey would still give a damn about her feelings, really, she, just, wasn't reacting how Liz had thought she would. "She's disappointed more than anything, I guess. And angry with herself for driving you away."
"It's not her fault," Liz muttered, grimacing at the twinge of guilt. She thought she'd made it pretty clear that she— Ugh, feelings sucked...
"Unfortunately these things are just like that sometimes." Not speaking from experience, of course, but Tracey had been around enough romance stuff to sort of get it. "She'll be okay, I think, it just...might take a little while. She was really hoping you two would work out, you know."
"Yeah, I know."
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to talk about it, but what happened? It seemed so sudden, and, Daphne wouldn't tell me much."
...No, Liz didn't want to talk about it, really. Especially since, well, the big problem was stuff she couldn't tell Tracey — it was hard to explain the so much of a better person than me it makes me feel bad thing without telling her some things Liz just...didn't want to. Also, Daphne and Tracey had been friends for like forever, and she wasn't sure how she'd take that. After a long pause, Liz staring blankly over Tracey's left shoulder, only half paying attention — probably a good thing it was slow, simple dance, honestly — she eventually decided she could tell Tracey the immediate problem, at least. "Well, um... You were right, I guess."
Tracey's mind lurched with confusion, blinking down at Liz. "What about?"
"Remember, when we were talking about how Mistwalkers do relationships and stuff, and you were worried I'd do something I wasn't ready for and hurt myself?" Tracey hadn't actually said that part out loud, not directly, but it was obvious what she'd been thinking.
"Oh," Tracey muttered, wincing. "Right, that."
"Yeah. That night when I disappeared from school, we were in bed, I... I went back there, you know, with my uncle. I was... Well, scared, I guess, is the word," she admitted — slightly embarrassing to admit, even while on drugs, but it was only Tracey. "That I would get stupid PTSD shite again, next time I saw her, and I just..." She shrugged. "It's really not her fault, and I did tell her that. I knew something like that might have happened, I should have been more careful. But, you know, puberty, hormones."
Tracey let out a little huff, reluctant amusement shivering off of her. "Yeah, I get it. I mean, I really get it — there's a reason I was making a point about it, earlier, telling you about that stuff, I didn't... Well, I was worried something exactly like that would happen, honestly."
"I know, I got that at the time. You were right, I was just...hoping I could work around it, you know." Though, there was something Tracey was implying there, niggling at her, didn't know what that was...
"Yeah. You are okay, really? I mean, it can't be easy to... Well, I have no idea who you could possibly talk to about it, honestly." Because magical mind healing was both useless and absolutely horrifying, she meant.
"I'll be fine, I just have more shite to work thorugh than I realised. It's probably going to be a while before I can try anything like—" Belatedly, it clicked what Tracey had been implying a second ago: Liz's freak-out moment with Daphne made obvious sense to her, because Tracey had been sexually abused, and was assuming Liz had been too. Liz hadn't known about that until just this second, somehow — she knew about, like, emotional stuff, like name-calling and not being given nice things like her cousins and occasionally being denied meals, and physical stuff, bullying from her cousins, and sometimes even being hit with serious curses (primarily by her grandfather), but the hint at sexual stuff was new.
Not that Liz was surprised, really. That it wouldn't have come up until just now, she meant — they were a lot better friends than they used to be, but Tracey could be super private, and Liz never wanted to talk about her shite either. She'd never told Liz much about her stuff, really, just kind of dancing around the edge of it a few times. And stuff like that could be...even harder to talk about, Liz knew.
But, she suspected Tracey projecting her stuff onto Liz was...kind of giving her the wrong idea. She felt herself tense up a little, but she forced out a breath, focussed on smoothly moving through the steps of the dance for a few beats — she calmed down way easier than she might have expected, honestly, thank the drugs for that one too. "It's not like that. Vernon never did anything, like, you know."
A sceptical flicker in her head — along with a warmer feeling Liz didn't know how to read, soft but clingy on her skin (some shade of concern, maybe?) — one of Tracey's eyebrows arched up. "Didn't he?"
"I think I would know if I'd been molested, Tracey. He never touched me like that."
"Yeah, Derrick didn't either." Approaching that close to it had Tracey's voice audibly tensing, seemingly trying to just blow right past it. "It doesn't always look the same, Liz. It's more complicated than that."
Liz opened her mouth to argue the point, and then immediately closed it again. Tracey did have a point, really. This wasn't even the first time the thought had occurred to her — she remembered, during the World Cup, accidentally dragging Hermione into her nightmare, talking about it after, and... It had come up since then, but it just...didn't seem right. Vernon really hadn't done anything like that to her, after all, so it shouldn't count, right? The issues Liz had because of it were, sort of, tangential to what'd happened, and not...
She didn't know. She wasn't even sure if the distinction were relevant — she was hardly an expert with this sort of thing, but it seemed like there was a point that, if the person ended up with enough sex-related issues because of it, it was close enough, even if it wasn't the actual thing? And it wasn't like she'd talked to a lot of people who had been sexually abused as kids, so it was hard to know if it was at all comparable. Severus would probably be able to tell her whether it counted, but that would require actually talking to him about it, and she really didn't want to do that.
Of course, she might have come to that conclusion a while ago, but she'd kind of been stalling thinking about it too seriously ever since the World Cup. She didn't know why, exactly, it just made her extremely uncomfortable.
(She didn't know why the fucked up sexual angle that she'd been too young at the time to understand should be so much more difficult to accept, but brains were stupid like that sometimes.)
But she really didn't want to think about that right now. "Are you okay? I mean..."
"It's alright, I'm... Well, I'm safe, it's not something that's going to happen again. My grandfather was not happy when he found out — it was one of the very few times one of my cousins was punished for something to do with me, actually." Not out of any concern for Tracey, of course, Lord Davis had just been worried it'd become a scandal he'd have to deal with, but it'd worked out in her favour anyway. "And I don't even live with that side of the family anymore, so. Sometimes it is...well. There are reasons I just came here with Millie. I'm sure you can imagine the sort of thing."
"...Yeah. Yeah, I get it."
The rest of the song passed in silence, both of them stuck in unpleasant thoughts. Neither of them really wanted to stick around for a second dance — they were both kind of frazzled by this point, they could use a distraction. They didn't move to leave the floor right away, though, she... Well, Liz wasn't sure what came over her, she just did it without thinking. Definitely not the sort of thing that would have even occurred to her if she weren't high half out of her mind at the moment, much less actually bring herself to do it. Severus had said something about impulse control or whatever, yeah, she was blaming the drugs. Not that it was a bad thing, exactly, she didn't regret doing it, just out of character enough that even she noticed it, while it was happening.
Besides, after that talk, they both probably could have used the hug, even if neither of them would ever have admitted it.
Liz stuck with Tracey as far as the table their friends were at, but she didn't stick around — she was feeling kind of antsy, she had to get out of here for a few minutes. There was a lurch of unpleasantness from Tracey's head, worried she'd unknowingly pushed Liz into a bad brain moment, but Liz didn't know how to correct that without drawing attention to it from everyone else, especially since Liz had been trying to avoid touching Tracey's mind at all since that incident in second year. (Tracey wasn't nervous around Liz anymore, like she had been for a while there, but she still didn't like mind magic.) Oh well. Liz quick ordered another of the funny creamy not-sodas — this one cherry-flavoured, which was also great, despite Liz not really liking cherries by themselves — picked up her glass and walked off.
The decorated arch leading out of the Great Hall was on the opposite side of the dance floor from here, and they were in the middle of a song at the moment. Liz probably could weave her way through the dancing couples without too much trouble, but she just decided to go around instead — if only to avoid drawing unnecessary attention, and also if there were an accident she'd probably end up spilling her drink on someone's clothes. She went all the back to the platform with the special person seats, noticed that Severus still wasn't here. A quick scan of the crowd and she spotted Severus (made easier by how bloody tall he was), dancing with Babbling. Not a big surprise, she guessed, she was aware Severus and Babbling were friends. (Also, Babbling was a lesbian, and Liz was pretty sure she was single at the moment? so a pretty safe person to dance with while avoiding rumours and the like.) Liz couldn't make out what Babbling was wearing from here, too many people in the way, but she had strung a bunch of colourful glittery Mistwalker-style beads through her hair for the occasion.
...Babbling probably hadn't gone all-out with full Mistwalker dress. She had taken out her facial piercings out of respect for normal mages' sensibilities, so.
Anyway, Liz continued on, hopping down off the platform into the other side of the Hall. She was nearly to the cleared area around the archway when she hitched to a stop at a nearby call of, "Good evening, Miss Potter." She glanced around, looking for the source of the voice—
"Oh, Professor Ollivander. Hello." Their new History Professor was a massive improvement over Binns, even if some people would have rather kept the 'free' period. He was rather thin, and tall for a pureblood — though shorter than Severus, and not so terribly scrawny, because Severus was such a hypocrite about Liz eating properly — with long straw-blond hair held back in a loose pony tail, tonight plaited and decorated with beads. (Which looked girly to Liz, but she realised by now that mages had different standards for these things.) He also had oddly metallic-looking, silvery eyes that were definitely a magical trait, and culturally associated with Seers, despite Liz being pretty sure that the two things had nothing to do with each other. Whatever. He was slouching back in his seat a bit, nursing a drink and smiling up at her, his mind pulsing with warm, bubbly contentment. "Um, did you want something? I was just on my way out," she said, nodding toward the arch.
"Ah, well, I did want to talk to you about something." Ollivander glanced around his table, the couple junior professors around, some kind of calculation ticking in his head. "I'll walk out with you."
...Probably thought she'd be more comfortable talking about whatever it was without people right there. Liz grimaced, but just shrugged it off. Ollivander was nice enough, and he wasn't stupid enough to try anything in public — besides, despite technically being considered a Light family, they were even political allies these days and everything. Liz didn't know him very well, hardly ever spoken outside of class, but she was sure there was nothing to worry about. She, just, wasn't really in the mood to talk to anyone at the moment, but fine.
Right on the other side of the archway was Helga's Gallery — the lights turned way down, the difference made up with more of those pretty glass lanterns every few metres, the highly-detailed forest-themed stonework on the left side throwing shadows at multiple angles. This really shouldn't be here, there were multiple rooms and the duelling hall between Helga's Gallery and the Great Hall...also, it'd been rotated ninety degrees. But Liz had long suspected the internal geometry of Hogwarts was really more a suggestion than anything, and subject to change at a moment's notice, she was sure it'd be back to normal tomorrow.
"This is marvellous craftsmanship," Ollivander said. He stepped a little closer to the stonework, reaching out with one hand to let his fingers lightly run over the branches as they walked. "This sort of nature scene was not unusual in pagan Norse architecture, though this is perhaps a masterwork of the style. And an excellent demonstration of the preservation spells integrated into the Castle wards — you can see such quite well on other works of art throughout the structure, but none are so old as this. According to legend, this was carved by the hand of a nephew of Helga Hufflepuff herself, in the first half of the Tenth Century, finished by, perhaps, Nine Forty-Two. Over a thousand years, without any sign of erosion, as though it were made only yesterday."
Liz had no idea what to say to that ramble, Ollivander seemingly just filling the air, so she went with. "Yeah, it is neat." After a brief pause, she realised she did have a question about that, actually. "You know, I was wondering, is that the same bloke who did the carvings on the main doors?" Those weren't nearly as well-preserved as the Gallery, smoothed down enough it was a little hard to make out parts of it, but they were exposed to the elements, so. They'd also been stretched out funny, so didn't quite look right anymore — it was assumed that the Entrance Hall had been made much taller at some point, the doors stretched to fit, kind of messing up the carvings. Supposedly they told the story of the Founding in a long series of pictures, but it was hard to tell just looking at them; Liz had seen a breakdown in a book somewhere, with arrows pointing at particular figures and explaining what the events were supposed to be, which made more sense, but she didn't really have the cultural background to get the logic. She assumed it would have made sense to people at the time.
"We assume so, but nobody can say for certain. So much knowledge of that time has been lost — no documentation from those first few centuries survived Ignatius Gaunt's occupation of the Castle intact, and the oral history tends to be focussed on particular larger-than-life characters, primarily the Founders themselves. We've even forgotten the artist's name, now known only as a favoured nephew of Hufflepuff. The carvings must date to roughly the same time, and the style is all but identical, so it is not unreasonable to conclude both works were done by the same hand. But that is only supposition, there is no firm proof available."
"...Oh. Well, that sucks."
His mind shivering with amusement, Ollivander drawled, "Indeed," almost even sounding like Severus for a second. "It is unfortunate, how easily the past can be forever lost. My profession may try to preserve whatever knowledge we can, but we are not infallible, nor omnipresent. Far too much of our own history simply...slips through our fingers, unnoticed, disappearing into the unobservable void of the past."
Ollivander sounded rather solemn, cool sadness colouring the air around them, which she guessed wasn't really a surprise — as big as the Ollivanders could be on enchanting, he must really give a shite to have become an historian instead. This wasn't really new information, he certainly gave the impression of caring about his subject in lectures, it was just way more obvious without all the other students around kind of blocking out his feelings. "It's not really unobservable, at least not for Seers. I've gone spirit-walking back to the time of the Founders."
"Ah, well, those techniques aren't perfectly reliable, but they do provide fascinating insights, yes. I've heard from colleagues that you've offered to explore Gaunt's old hideaway for them."
"Yeah, I haven't heard back yet. Do you know what's going on with that?"
Glancing at her with a bitter sort of smirk, Ollivander said, "Politics. There is the difficulty you might expect surrounding your particular fame and the scandal around the trusteeship and your presence in Ars Publica, but there is also the subject matter to consider. The period surrounding Ignatius Gaunt is deeply foundational to all manner of interests in our country, often in unexpected ways — some may fear to have certain preconceptions questioned with such evidence as you might uncover. Not to mention, more traditional archaeologists and historians are loathe to rely on Seers, for a variety of theoretical, academic, and even self-interested reasons. I don't think you realised the hornets' nest you were stepping on when you made that offer, it's all terribly complicated. It may be some time before you get an answer one way or the other."
...Well, that was stupid. And she was so curious, too — Gaunt had had a massive influence on the history of magical Britain, and it'd looked like there'd been a hell of a fight down there...
The opposite end of Helga's Gallery led straight out onto the grounds, to the side of the Castle between the greenhouses and the cliff edge, the exit in the same place as it was when they weren't fucking with things. Hogwarts was on a sizeable hill right against the Lake, the cliffs coming as close as a few metres from the back walls. (Students actually weren't supposed to go back there at all, the staff concerned kids might go falling off like idiots.) The road up to the main entrance followed the shallowest side of the hill, behind the greenhouses the grade was noticeably steeper, the ground uneven and rocky, covered in grass and wildflowers and the occasional stubborn bush. This side of the grounds wasn't really used for anything, and they didn't bother keeping it clear, the Forest making its nearest approach to the Castle just down the hill here, as soon as the ground was flat and thick enough for trees to root properly.
The general shape of the area was the same — the greenhouses to the right, the edge of the cliff over the Lake to the left, the Forest ahead and below — but the area looked very different. Someone had come by and flattened the ground in tiers, a semicircle around the exit several metres in diametre, a drop, and then another semicircle, and then another drop, and on and on, at least...five tiers? It only reached halfway to the edge of the Forest, but still, that would have taken some serious work to move that much stone and soil. And they hadn't just flattened the ground, the place had been transformed into a garden — a lot of rosebushes, taller trees stretching up here and there (apple, maybe?), blooming red and white out of season, lightly dusted with snow glittering all colours of the rainbow from the lamps set on posts along the curling walk paths. Liz could see people wandering around, little more than colourful shadows, the lamps didn't hold back the nighttime gloom enough to make out much detail, dark and solemn and quiet.
This might be the drugs making her slightly silly, but Liz thought it was very pretty. She actually froze for a moment at the doors, looking over the shadowy, glittery, colourful gardens, the light snowfall tinted with rainbow streaks in the lamplight, her breath inexplicably thick in her throat. She hoped they were keeping this here, it seemed like a lot of work to go through just to rip it up afterward...
Feeling Ollivander's attention on her, curious and tingly, Liz wrenched herself back, cleared her throat. "Um. You wanted to talk to me about something?"
"Ah, yes. I'll get straight to the point, shall I?"
"I'd appreciate that." It was a little cool out here, whatever environmental spells they'd set up only partially holding back the winter night. Liz didn't mind though, it felt surprisingly good on her neck, sharp and fragrant on her breath — all the bodies must have been warming up the Great Hall a bit, she hadn't really noticed.
Smirking a little, Ollivander said, "I'm certain you would, I'll leave you to your walk in but a moment. I'm told Mister Krum was overheard discussing certain matters with the other Champions. Concerning dragons, and healing."
...Apparently Viktor had decided to add Liz's tip about the Fourth Task to whatever he was telling the other Champions. Not that Liz cared — it's not like she was really trying to win this bloody thing, and they might as well all start on an even playing field. "Yeah, I heard about that." She'd nearly said something explicitly about the Tasks, but she had a feeling that Ollivander himself had talked around it to avoid whatever rules teachers were supposed to follow about not helping the Champions. She wasn't sure why a professor she barely knew was suddenly trying to help her with this bloody Tournament, but whatever.
"It does seem that you lot have put together quite a schedule for the rest of the year. From what I've heard, you've managed to plan all the way through the beginning of April. Do you have any gaps in your schedule you haven't made arrangements for yet?"
Oh, that was clever. "Um, I have a pretty full year, but I don't know what I'm doing in May." She knew the basics of almost all the remaining Tasks already, the only one she didn't know anything about was the Eighth.
There was a little flicker of surprise, Ollivander's eyes widening for a second, before breaking into a smile. Apparently, he hadn't expected her to know that much about the Tournament already. Glancing away for a second, he took a casual sip of his drink, his mind shifting with thought — probably figuring out how to word his advice without technically breaking the rules. "Ah. My family has a certain reputation for the crafting of wands, but truly we have cultivated knowledge in all applications of runework — or the graphic arts, as Professor Babbling would insist we call it. Magics set with runes are far more stable than simple palings, but there is no such thing as perfect security. In fact, some more superstitious practitioners believe Magic Itself will not allow such a thing, but no matter. Do you know much of cursebreaking, Miss Potter?"
Liz felt her eyebrows stretch up her forehead. "No, not really." She felt minds approaching, glanced back at the doors — a group of giggly students were coming out into the gardens behind them. They were still some metres away when she noticed the cold prickly touch of veela magic, at least some of them must be from Beauxbatons. Liz started walking, picked a random path through the bushes, Ollivander smoothly following alongside her. "I mean, I know of it, obviously — Severus is pretty good at the healing kind, and I've read all the Ciardha Monroe novels. But I'm only a fourth-year runes student, so." They did cover cursebreaking in Runes class, but not until the NEWT level, and only as a special side topic, since it wasn't actually on the exam. Cursebreaking could be seriously dangerous if you weren't careful, it wasn't something they wanted people playing around with before Mastery study.
"Mm, Monroe's novels can give you a good impression of some of the culture around professional cursebreakers, as well as general good practices, but they're not meant to be academic works." Well, no, obviously... "They are very entertaining, though. Have you read What Tide Reclaim? Perhaps my favourite of the whole series."
She had just said she'd read all of them. "Um, yeah, I remember that one being really good. There's not as much, you know, interesting politics and stuff, but some of the magic is neat, and there's a lot more—" Liz lurched to a stop in the middle of the path, what Ollivander was hinting at suddenly clicking.
Some of Monroe's novels were based on actual events, crazy situations he'd gotten wrapped up in during his career as a freelance cursebreaker, but What Tide Reclaim was one of the ones that was entirely fictional. Still hinting at real-life things, and Liz was pretty sure it was suggesting a political point, but it wasn't something that had actually happened, anyway. In the story, some country around Indochina (she forgot which) had made an artificial island a couple miles off-shore, a sort of sanctuary for mages, quickly built up into a densely-populated city in the generations after Secrecy. Everything was going fine for centuries, until an especially strong earthquake caused enough of a shift in the currents of ambient magic that the enchantments holding their floating island together couldn't draw enough power. Once the government realised the problem, they immediately ordered a total evacuation — everyone got out well in advance of the disaster, but most of their stuff had to be left behind. The government was focussed on getting important documents and artefacts out of their headquarters there while they still could, but this place had also been inhabited for a long time, there were temples and old tombs and stuff, filled with all kinds of things worth preserving, not to mention all the belongings people might want back...and, perhaps, valuables left behind that might be worth stealing before they vanished under the sea.
The government and a bunch of society and religious groups hired as many cursebreakers as they could contact on short notice to scramble through the island and recover whatever they could before it was gone forever — which often required breaking the security on the temples and tombs and shite, hence the need for cursebreakers. There were also mercenaries on the island, sent by private citizens to grab their things, and also a bunch of thieves looking for a lucky break, and various other unsavoury characters hoping to strike it big pilfering the place before it sank. After the set up, What Tide Reclaim was basically nonstop action scenes, probably the most consistently exciting of Monroe's books, his quasi-autobiographical main character bloke trying to do his job — with a time limit, so rushing more than was safe and taking a lot of sloppy shortcuts — while also fighting off people hoping to steal and sell off the priceless relics he was carrying, and even rescuing a few people who'd been missed by the evacuation. All the while, the enchantments holding the island together began to catastrophically fail, the ground splitting apart under their feet, entire city blocks crumbling away to sink into the sea one by one. It was a hell of a book, once she'd gotten far enough into it Liz hadn't been able to put it down, had accidentally stayed up until nearly three in the morning...sleep-deprived enough she'd nearly made a big fuck-up in Potions later, oops.
Liz was positive Ollivander hadn't mentioned that specific book for no good reason. They had a pretty sizeable lake, right here in the Valley. Unless she was very much mistaken, Ollivander was suggesting that they were going to make an artificial island, dotted here and there with hidden 'treasure' protected by wards and enchantments; the Champions would have to recover as much of the 'treasure' as they could — by cracking the security and recovering them, yes, but also by taking them off of each other, so they'd have to fight off people trying to steal whatever they'd managed to get the whole time. And, oh yes, the enchantments holding the island together would be slowly 'failing' while they were at it, so they'd be working on a time limit, and on top of everything else would have to deal with the ground collapsing under their feet and sinking into the water.
...Jesus. That was fucking awesome. If she weren't already a Champion for stupid reasons, she'd probably volunteer to participate in this one anyway — it did sound big enough to take extra participants, like she knew some of the Tasks would — because holy shite, that sounded like so much fun.
"Right, I get it now. Cursebreaking."
"It is a very useful skillset, don't you think?"
"Mm." Liz frowned, clicking her lip ring against her teeth. Maybe expecting the NEWT students to be able to do some simple cursebreaking was reasonable, but Liz was only a fourth-year. She knew some enchanting by this point, and some basic analysis spells, but she'd barely even learned the fundamentals, and hadn't started with wards at all yet — she'd be lucky to figure out whatever security they were going to put up even did, much less actually crack it. "It's a very complicated skillset, though, I'm not sure how much I'd be able to learn by May. I mean, if I were in What Tide Reclaim, I'd probably be more like... Was her name, like, Dew or something like that?"
There was a flicker of amusement from Ollivander. "Do you mean Trương Tuyết Diệu? the peasant thief?"
The fuck was that? "Um, no, it was definitely written with a D."
"Diệu is written with a D. The sound was similar to an Đ. when the romanisation was designed, but Vietnamese has continued to evolve since then. If I remember correctly, the name literally means something like mysterious snow-archer — I suspect Monroe might have been making a reference to something, but I'm not sure what."
Okay, fine, maybe it was...whatever the hell he'd said. If he had been making a reference, it'd probably been something relevant to the character's culture, and not the lesbian stereotype Narcissa had told her about just this afternoon — or maybe that had been what Monroe had been getting at, that'd be kind of funny in retrospect. "Yeah, her, I think. I don't think I'd be able to learn cursebreaking on short notice, but sneaking up on people and hexing them in the back after they've done the cursebreaking for me is something I can do." Assuming they were talking about the same character, anyway — a sort of thief-with-a-heart-of-gold type ambushing the treasure hunters in an attempt to bring some money back for her poor home village, it was a whole thing. She'd been Liz's favourite character in that one.
Ollivander seemed to think that comment was very funny, for some reason.
[The sound was similar to an Đ.] — The convention I'm using, when letters are spoken aloud in dialog, is just to put the letter in caps followed by a period. Ollivander is referring to a letter in the Cambrian alphabet here, which is often written with an eth (Đ, ð). It's the same as the double-d in Welsh, with the same letter name, spelled èdd (eð in Cambrian). An eth happens to represent the same sound in IPA, like a TH. but voiced, as in breathe. Diệu is a name in Vietnamese — Chinese origin, written 妙 in Chữ Hán — which would have probably been pronounced with an Đ. in Middle Vietnamese (hence the spelling), but in the modern language starts with [j] or [z], a Y-sound or a Z-sound, depending on dialect. Ollivander's translation isn't 100% reliable here, but diệu is usually only used in compounds, he's being a little poetical.
And that's more than enough babble from me, see you for the final part tomorrow.