January 1995

As the day of her return to school arrived, Dorea couldn't help a feeling of vague dread. It was hard to say what specifically was causing it — Hogwarts was a bit of a mess these days, yes, but it wasn't about that. It'd been lingering for some time, perhaps ever since the chaos around the World Cup. It wasn't a new feeling, exactly, it'd just been getting worse, slowly, until the background unease was strong enough it was hard to ignore.

Dorea had had a fine Christmas break, for the most part. Spending so much of her time off at a boarding school, she did regret that she hardly saw much of her brothers these days. Ben was six now, which was honestly a little surreal — going to primary and making school friends, and all the childish drama that came with that, and... When Dorea came home, she'd listened to Ben going off on one of his enthusiastic rambles, and he kept referencing people and events that were completely unfamiliar to her, new friends or things that had happened at school, and...

She'd felt like such a stranger. Sam had been tiny when she'd started at Hogwarts, but she'd been around all the time when Ben was little, especially since he'd been born pretty soon after Dorea's medical mess. All that she'd needed to catch up on to be ready for Hogwarts in time, she'd been homeschooling — her actual lessons with Cassiopeia or Andi, so not physically in the house, but only a floo trip away — so she'd always been around, would help keep him entertained, or watch him when Mum and Richard needed a break (especially as Sam's birth got closer). And now she was, just, never home, she missed things. The night she'd gotten back, a lot of the things they were talking about going right over her head and, just, like she was a visitor, a guest over for dinner, like she wasn't really part of the household anymore.

That night, Dorea had lain awake in bed for what'd felt like hours, staring up at the ceiling, and... She didn't know. She'd known going off to Hogwarts would change things, but she didn't like it.

Aside from her awkwardness about all that, her time at home had been fine enough. The most tense part of it had been Mum's parents coming down to visit one day. There was a lot of baggage in Mum's relationship with her parents — due in significant part to how they'd handled Mum being bisexual in general and her relationship with Rebecca in particular, Dorea understood now — but it wasn't bad enough for Mum to want to cut them off from their grandchildren completely. They weren't around very much, Dorea actually had more of a relationship with Richard's mother (and his father, before he died a couple years ago now), but they did make a point of visiting for holidays and the like sometimes. It'd gotten a little snippy at times — they didn't actually get to visit on Christmas, since they'd spent the day itself with Richard's family, maybe feeling a bit snubbed over never getting any holidays proper — and Dorea didn't miss how cold her grandparents and Mum got with each other now and then. They didn't openly shout at each other or anything, it was subtle enough that the boys hadn't noticed, but it was just uncomfortable. Luckily it was only one day, and then they were gone.

Of course, another reason they'd insisted on visiting was that they hadn't seen Ian at all yet — Dorea had hardly seen much of her newest baby brother herself. He was barely three months old now, still at the stage where babies were pudgy and fussy, and essentially helpless, underdeveloped enough to hardly show any signs of personality. Still young enough that Mum and Richard hadn't gotten through the fun months of newborn-related sleep-deprivation yet. They did have practice at this point, true, they had a whole system worked out, it mostly seemed to work, but now and then Dorea noticed that they did seem noticeably tired...which might have something to do with why Mum had been somewhat more short with her parents than usual, less patience for the subtle nagging. And on top of the normal baby stuff, they had an endlessly energetic school-age boy and a toddler to deal with, it was really no surprise that they seemed tired at times.

Dorea had actually stayed home with the boys a couple times, to give Mum and Richard a night off. They did go out, once, but the other time they just flooed over to Ancient House to stay in and relax, which was fair enough. (It sounded like they'd had a nice time, but Dorea would have been happier without Mum telling her about their bath — if they weren't careful, at this rate Mum might well be pregnant again by summer.) Her baby-care skills were a little rusty — Sam was four now, and she'd been away at Hogwarts, it'd been a while — but Ben made a point of being well-behaved and helpful, trying to be a good big brother, which was honestly very cute.

...When she thought about it, Ben wasn't that much younger than Dorea had been when he was born. That was a strange thought. When did he get so big, ridiculous...

So, her holiday with her family had been good enough, if unexpectedly depressing at times. It was the other stuff going on that made her feel...uneasy. There had been some Wizengamot business over the holiday — they did skip a few meetings around Christmas, or Yule or whatever other holidays there were around the same time, but it wasn't as big of a deal on the magical side — though there hadn't been anything especially controversial there. The new year passed, they were starting to schedule out the next few months in earnest, and there were a few big things coming up, but honestly they were mostly good news. For example, the final vote on the huge education reform package was tentatively scheduled for mid-March — assuming nothing went wrong, magical Britain should have a proper public education system starting in the '96-'97 school year, which was a very big deal.

The package they had was less than perfect, honestly, but it was still very good. In particular, everyone Dorea had spoken to about it was pleased that they'd actually managed to get academy education included — all the way up through NEWTs, even. It'd been guaranteed that they'd successfully get universal primary education, and craft school had been a pretty fair bet, but at the beginning of the process universal academy had seemed like a long-shot. In the end, there'd been a complex deal involving a few particularities about the funding of primary schools, tweaking of grants for apprenticeships and Masteries, and scrapping the proposed scholarship lottery for Hogwarts — they'd agreed to adjust the maths determining class sizes and streamline the admissions process somewhat, but Hogwarts would remain open only to the upper strata of magical society (plus muggleborns) — in exchange securing universal academy, which was, just, fundamental shift in society stuff, it was incredible.

It wasn't without its problems, though. As part of the negotiations, some of the more generous financial assistance had been reduced, and the proposals to open public education to nonhuman beings, particularly nymphs and wilderfolk, had been dropped. It would be open to the community of goblins and part-goblins who'd defected to Britain over the generations — though of course full-blooded goblins wouldn't be going to academy, since it required the use of a wand and goblins simply couldn't use them — and also any veela who happened to be living in the country — though they would be restricted to schools prepared to accommodate their particular magical traits. Which included Hogwarts, surprisingly — the Board had already announced that, should the package pass, they'd be opening the door to accepting veela (and lilin) students starting as soon as the upcoming school year.

Sirius was less than happy about the restrictions placed on nonhumans being admitted to public schools, not just the beings that were completely barred but also veela being restricted to certain schools. He was concerned about those schools getting less attention and funding resulting in a lower academic standard, but Dorea suspected that wouldn't be a problem? If nothing else, it wasn't unusual for veela clans or their international government to donate funds to help with that sort of thing, it should be fine. (Supposedly Beauxbatons, along with a number of other Continental schools with significant numbers of veela and lilin students, got a sizeable annual grant from the Empire, she thought they could expect the same thing to happen in Britain.) Dorea was more concerned about the primary schools in poor communities, honestly — especially rural farming settlements and the like, according to Andi the details of how that would be handled were rather sparing. It was very possible that transportation to schools in the towns would have to be arranged, somehow, it was all very complicated — complicated enough, and dependent on exactly what the particular community looked like, that the text of the package actually didn't address it at all — so they weren't sure how that would go yet. The new education system reaching rural communities looked like the biggest problem Dorea could see.

So, not a perfect settlement, no, but that magical Britain would be getting a public education system was still monumental. While that had provided some political complications to Dorea's Christmas break meeting with her aunt and uncle (and also Sirius) to discuss it, it was actually good news, no real complaints there.

Other political news was not so good. According to a report from Director Bones, they'd managed to identify with reasonable confidence the alchemist responsible for creating the firebombs used at the World Cup — though there hadn't been an arrest, since he was among those killed in the fighting. The more unnerving part of it was that they weren't sure where the money had come from, and they were certain he'd had accomplices — obviously, there'd been multiple bombers at the Cup — but they had no leads on tracking them down. They had identified a political organisation they thought he'd been associated with, but the Wizengamot had refused permission to allow the DLE to treat it as a criminal organisation, limiting the investigative tactics permitted to the Aurors.

Multiple voices from Ars Brittania had made the point that the group — Teulu Prydein, literally "House of Britain" — was a perfectly ordinary social association. They were primarily concerned with perfectly innocent things, the members helping each other with child care or domestic repairs, grouping together to manage primary education for their children and pooling their resources to pay for healer visits for ill neighbours, a means of networking for people to find apprenticeship opportunities and the like. They did have a minority of members concerned with security, yes, but early in the organisation's history they'd had a big problem with attempts at infiltration from actual criminal groups, most famously the Night Briar Brotherhood — the DLE had been slow to respond to their concerns, so they'd organised to take care of it themselves. The vast majority of people associated with Teulu Prydein were completely innocent, treating all of them like criminals just because one man happened to have gone to the association's weekly community dinners was absurd.

Of course, Ars Brittania's defensiveness of the group probably had something to do with doing so being in their political interest — Teulu Prydein was an explicitly nationalist group, alongside their more innocent activities was also spreading a programme of political 'education' in the commons that essentially functioned as propaganda for Ars Brittania. They weren't the only British nationalist group around these days, but they were probably the largest and most influential. Though, pointing out their political activities, that they were training their own 'security' (i.e. battlemages), only had Llewellyn pointing out that Saoirse Ghaelach was little different, but nobody was talking about declaring them a criminal organisation...aside from various members of Ars Brittania, including Llewellyn himself, but Dorea guessed the hypocrisy didn't technically make his point invalid.

Dorea found the increasing relevance of groups like Teulu Prydein and Saoirse Ghaelach extremely concerning. Honestly, it would probably be a good idea for the DLE to keep a much closer eye on them, if they'd ended up at a compromise where the DLE was forced to look at both groups in order to follow the leads from investigating the single worst terrorist attack in magical Britain since the Communalist Revolution, Dorea would have supported that. But that would never have happened — Llewellyn and his allies would have protected Teulu Prydein, and Ingham and her allies would have protected Saoirse Ghaelach, and they would have ended on a stalemate. And so, these increasingly radical nationalist groups continued to operate and grow with very little oversight.

"Concerning" was maybe too light of a characterisation. Aunt Andi didn't mince words — she felt quite confident that, unless something huge happened, that they would be having a civil war over the national question within a generation. Uncle Ted's guess was that the status quo would hold for at least as long as Mockridge remained Minister, maybe ten to twenty years, which could hopefully give them time to resolve the situation peacefully, so that large-scale fighting never broke out; Andi was less optimistic, predicted they'd be at war in five, maybe even sooner if the wrong controversy blew up.

Honestly, as seriously unnerving as the thought was, Dorea had to admit that Andi's prediction was probably closer to right? These nationalist groups were only getting larger and more influential, in some magical settlements having a thicker presence on the ground than the official government, the rhetoric quoted in the Prophet and heard in whispers walking around Charing or Hogsmeade only getting more radical. Dorea had already suggested to Mum and Richard that it might be safest to be ready to move to the Continent on short notice — which should be relatively easy, the Blacks had properties dotted here and there across Europe — and she'd feel a lot more comfortable if, should Ian turn out to be magical, they send him to Beauxbatons or somewhere.

She couldn't help the feeling that things were going to come to a head, soon, and who the hell could guess how long it would be before the country settled down again.

And that was without bringing in the Death Eaters — most of the masked attackers at the World Cup were still unidentified, and the DLE had no idea who'd cast the Dark Mark. There were rumours coming out of the darker corners of the country that something was happening, but they had very little detail at this point, the Prophet printing speculation and reports to the Wizengamot from the DLE communicating little more than hearsay.

It was a little scary, honestly. Dorea felt like she'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop, ever since the World Cup. Two shoes, really, since Liz's name had come out of the Goblet of Fire.

And she couldn't help the suspicion those were the same shoe. After all, they suspected Voldemort (in the weakened form he'd been reduced to that Hallowe'en) was active in Britain somewhere, and he would want Liz dead, for obvious reasons — if anyone could subvert security at the Ministry and fool the Goblet into picking a fourth Champion, it was Voldemort. The DLE had no proof, of course, but Dora had said the Aurors assumed that he'd been involved somehow. It helped that Lucius Malfoy had visited the Ministry during the brief window the Goblet had been awake before being moved to Hogwarts, but they didn't have any proof he'd been involved either, he hadn't gotten anywhere near the thing. Circumstance and suspicion weren't enough cause to investigate a Lord of the Wizengamot, unfortunately...and if they tried to bring it up, someone would definitely mention that he'd been cleared of wrongdoing the last time around, and the Malfoys' trend toward more moderate politics, gradually ever since that Hallowe'en, complicated matters... In short, they had nothing.

But, the suggestion that the rumours of Voldemort returning to the country were somehow connected to Liz being entered into the Tournament made Dorea rather nervous. Viewing the two things together... The Tournament would end in June — Dorea couldn't help feeling that, whatever Voldemort was up to, it would come to a head at more or less the same time.

So, when Dorea thought about it, she guessed she could say what exactly that feeling of dread was about — she couldn't help the feeling the the timer was counting down, and she had no idea what would happen when it finally reached zero.

As unsettled as she was, she put it out of her mind as thoroughly as she could, trying to act normal. The boys might still be young, but they weren't stupid, if she seemed obviously worried they might pick up on it. Her things packed up, she dropped a quick kiss on Ian's head (suffocating a surge of regret, the months away from home sucked sometimes) gave Mum a final hug good-bye — she wouldn't be seeing her off at the platform this time, not wanting to drag the baby off to London. Her trunk loaded in Richard's car, and they set off, Ben and Sam in the back seat, noisily chattering the whole drive.

Richard moved her trunk to a trolley — it was a little heavy for Dorea to lift without magic — but before she could get to it Ben was hopping up to push it himself. He needed a hand from Richard to get it moving, a little help steering now and then, but he could actually move it. Though he did have to lean into it a little bit, it seemed difficult, but he didn't let up, insisting he was helping.

He'd made a point of trying to be helpful a lot over the break, which was new behaviour from him. She didn't know when that'd started happening (she'd missed it), but it was seriously adorable.

Saying good-bye on the platform, awkwardly crouched down on her knees for a proper hug, Sam was reluctant to let go, little hands fisting in her jumper. Because she was going away again, she'd be gone forever. It took some effort to try to comfort him, and not abruptly burst into tears right out on the platform.

(She'd known things would change without her, while she was away at school for such a large fraction of the year, but she didn't like it.)

Once she was on the train, Dorea briefly ducked into a bathroom to better compose herself, before wandering the halls to find her friends. They normally sat toward the back, so she started there and worked her way forward, before long identifying the proper compartment at a glance — Hermione's big bushy hair was quite distinctive. She was sitting with Mandy, Sally-Anne, and Lily...who was accompanied by Blaise Zabini, the boy reclining in the corner with an arm over the back of the bench, Lily sitting very close. Looking a bit bashful about it, pink noticeable on her cheeks, fidgeting a little now and then, but.

...Huh. Dorea had heard Lily was going to the Ball with Blaise, but apparently it'd gone well?

There was a chorus of hellos as she walked in, Lily's face reddening a little further when Dorea glanced her way. Before Dorea could draw her wand to levitate her trunk up, Hermione said, "Hold on, let me get that." Her eyes narrowing, Hermione stared at Dorea's trunk, she took in a long breath, letting it out in a slow hiss. Then she flicked her fingers, a crackle of magic on the air, and Dorea's trunk...started to lift off the ground, drifting up to the luggage rack. There were gasps in the compartment, the rest of them staring wide-eyed at Hermione — except for Blaise, whose only reaction was an upward arch of a single eyebrow — but nobody said anything, the tension on the air thick. After all, they didn't want to break Hermione's concentration. After some seconds, Dorea's trunk settled up in the rack, and Hermione let out a heavy huff, slumping back into her seat.

"Oh my god," Sally-Anne breathed, "that was amazing! How did you do that?"

"It's only a levitation charm." Hermione said it low and casual enough, but Dorea didn't miss the shadow of a smirk on her face.

Mandy gave her shoulder a light shove. "Shut up, you know what she means. I've hardly even seen any wandless magic."

"Liz does wandless magic all the time." At the eyes flicking her way, Lily gave them a helpless shrug. "She does."

Sinking into an empty seat on Lily and Blaise's bench, Dorea let out a sigh. "Yeah, well, Liz is Liz, isn't she? She's powerful, and I suspect being a mind mage helps — she's used to working magic outside of herself, you know? But if you don't have a special talent like that, wandless magic is very rare."

"It is not," Hermione insisted. "What did you think 'accidental' magic is?" Dorea heard the sarcasm on accidental, though she wasn't really sure what Hermione was getting at.

Sally-Anne scoffed. "That so doesn't count."

"Why not? It's doing magic without a wand, isn't it?"

Dorea glanced at Mandy, getting an equally baffled look in return. She was certain they were meaningfully distinct things, but she couldn't articulate how, exactly.

"It's not actually that hard, Liz has been teaching me for a while now. It just takes practice. If you can familiarise yourself with a charm well enough to not need the incantation and the wand movement anymore, than you don't need the wand either."

...Dorea was very certain that wasn't how it worked. But then, she wasn't the one who could actually do it, was she? Though, Hermione wasn't entirely wrong, she was just underselling how large of a leap in difficulty that would be — without a wand to help focus the magic channelled into the proper form, the power requirement would be drastically increased. It was only a levitation charm, true, that was a very simple spell, but Hermione had needed to channel so much magic to get the trunk moving that Dorea had actually felt it. So, maybe correct in principle, but she was kind of leaving some details out.

"Colour me impressed, Granger," Blaise drawled. "Do me a favour, though? Don't use any wandless magic in front of Parkinson — I think you can guess she wouldn't deal well with a muggleborn demonstrating such talent in public."

A little unfocussed, as though unsure what Blaise was getting at, Hermione shot him a weak glare. "That doesn't sound like my problem."

"Maybe not your problem, but it is all of ours — you won't have to deal with her whinging about it in the common room afterward. How about this, hold up on shattering Parkinson's entire world through to the end of term, thereby saving me the tedium of suffering the results, and I'll see about arranging a dinner with Mira and her friends."

Dorea gave Blaise a double-take. Not because he'd just referred to his mother by her given name — that was odd, but he always did that, she was used to it by now — but that seemed like a very strange offer to make. Sure, Pansy could be extremely irritating, but Blaise could always find some excuse to absent himself, and to... It was pretty obvious that by arrange a dinner Blaise meant he'd introduce Hermione to his mother's Ministry and professional contacts, which, with how important knowing the right people can be in the magical world, was a hell of a thing to do for someone on a whim, over such a small favour — doubly so because his mother happened to be the head of a whole Department, and especially for a muggleborn. Meeting the right person at a bloody dinner at the Zabinis' could easily make Hermione's whole career, and Blaise was offering to arrange it for practically nothing. It was very strange.

Hermione either didn't realise how very strange the offer was, or just didn't care — her only response was to smirk back at Zabini, and joke about not making any promises.

Dorea had been cutting it somewhat close this time, but she still wasn't the last to arrive. A few minutes after she'd sat down, Hannah and Sophie turned up — but Sophie was just here to drop off her bag before going to help her brothers get settled in. (Like Dorea, they'd brought their trunk home, and it was rather harder for first-years to get the things up into the luggage racks.) When Padma appeared at the doors, there was probably only another minute or two before the train would start moving. Glancing over the compartment, she said, "Is anyone else sitting with you girls? Plus Zabini."

(The clarification had probably been unnecessary, Blaise hadn't seemed particularly bothered by being included in you girls. But then, Blaise was odd.)

"Sophie's helping her brothers, she should be back soon."

Padma nodded. "Is Neville coming?" she asked, looking at Hermione.

"I saw him with the boys earlier," Hannah said. "You know, Justin and Michael and Wayne and all them."

"Yeah, I talked to him earlier. He thought it would, I don't know..." Hermione glanced away, for a blink looking rather exasperated. "No, he's not coming, you can sit down." Padma had probably only asked to make sure there was enough room in here — the compartments did automatically expand somewhat as more people tried to sit in them, but they only went so far. Add in Sophie and Padma, and they were starting to push it.

As Padma moved to sit, Dorea slid down the bench a little, to make room, putting her closer to Lily. Now she was close enough that Blaise's hand was behind her shoulder — apparently realising the same thing, he moved his arm, settling around Lily's back instead. Lily fidgeted a little, her face going very red.

It was hard to say for sure, but Dorea suspected the embarrassment was mostly due to the audience. She remembered it'd taken nearly all of first year before Lily stopped being a stammering mess whenever she tried to talk in study group, she could still be shy in groups (or whenever Liz was around). It did look like she was leaning slightly in Blaise's direction, so, seemed like a good guess.

"Trouble in paradise?" Blaise drawled — probably picking up on the same flash of exasperation Dorea had.

"Oh piss off, Zabini."

"No, it's fine," Hermione said, brushing off Sally-Anne's interruption. "I guess, I don't know. He's been acting weird ever since we decided the Yule Ball was a date, I don't—" The train started moving then, lurching slightly under them, Hermione cutting off for a second. "Don't ask me to explain it, I think it's formal pureblood etiquette stuff."

An odd, crooked look on her face, Hannah said, "Yeah, I guess I'm not surprised. His grandmother is very strict — I would guess at some point he was given lessons in how he was to treat a lady."

Hermione scoffed. "Well, I wish he would stop it."

With a little gasp, Blaise said, in a high exaggerated tone, "Hermione Granger doesn't want to be treated like a lady? I'm shocked."

Dorea was pretty sure there was supposed to be an innuendo of some kind in there, helped along a bit by Padma quietly giggling next to her, but once again Hermione either didn't notice or didn't care — she just rolled her eyes. "I'm not a lady, thank you, and all the silly formal etiquette makes me feel like I'm in some terrible period drama. Oh damn, remind me not to show him the heritage test thing, he'll just get worse after that..."

Of course, there were then multiple questions about that. A magically-raised person having a heritage test done wasn't unusual (especially if they were nobility and there were questions about their parentage), but it wasn't the sort of thing muggleborns were known to bother with. By the time Sophie caught back up with them, Hermione had retrieved a large scroll of parchment from her things, spread it out on the window with a sticking charm — apparently, she'd been idly curious if she was related to anyone they knew at school, so she'd decided to bring it with.

"Oh, that's interesting!" Sophie said once they'd caught her up on what was going on. "Nan would love it, is it hard to do?"

"Does your grandmother know about magic? It'd be kind of hard to explain where you got it from if she doesn't."

Sophie blatantly ignored Padma's question — Dorea got the feeling Sophie's family might be bending the letter of the law a bit when it came to Secrecy. "Is this something we could do at school, or does it need special supplies or something?"

"I don't know, honestly, I didn't do it myself. Liz showed up with the pre-treated parchment and the catalyst, but I think Professor Snape did most of the brewing? I know Snape did Liz's, but I'm not sure how much Liz helped with mine." Dorea was a little surprised that Liz gave enough of a damn about her ancestry to check, but she guessed she might have been more interested in any heritable talents she might not realise she had. "I know the catalyst requires a silver cauldron, but I have no idea what the components are like. I'd ask Liz about it."

"Don't tell anyone else about it if you do," Dorea said.

The muggleborns in the compartment gave her funny looks, though the magically-raised kids just shrugged or nodded — noticing the same potential problem she had, obviously. After a second, Sally-Anne asked, "Um, why not?"

Padma took up the explanation before Dorea could figure out how to word it. "When adoptions of muggleborns into magical families were still commonplace, it was expected that they would have a heritage test of some kind done first. Or noble families would, at least. That sort of thing isn't nearly so common anymore, but you wouldn't want to give people the wrong impression."

"Out of concern they might have recent ancestors from another family, you know," Hannah said. "There was a big scandal about that, once, back in the...Sixteenth Century? It turned out a 'muggleborn' adopted by the Greys a couple decades earlier was actually a bastard by a Selwyn, was only discovered when the Selwyns used a blood-based tracking spell to find a kidnapped child, and it blew up into a whole mess. Most families started doing it after that, just to check for any possible political complications. People don't go around adopting muggleborns anymore, but that's still what people will think of if they hear Liz did a heritage test for you."

A very odd look crossed Hermione's face, but it was there and gone too quickly for Dorea to figure out what it was.

In any case, it turned out that Hermione was related to some of their classmates, if rather distantly. Hermione's great-grandfather was the infamous Nicodème d'Angeus — which was one hell of a coincidence, honestly...though Dorea guessed her magic must have come from somewhere, and it wasn't really a surprise Nicodème d'Angeus might have dumped a squib child at an orphanage somewhere. But anyway, House d'Angeus had been a powerful, wealthy magical family, not so long ago, several British Noble Houses had intermarried with them in the relatively recent past. Plus Cæciné, Grâce-Savesse, Œillèsie somewhat less so, and the Rosiers were less wealthy but numerous and wide-ranging enough they'd even ended up with a seat on the Wizengamot. She was definitely distant cousins with a good fraction of their classmates, but they would need a book full of charts to figure out how they were related exactly. Those books did exist, of course, because purebloods could be obsessive about that sort of thing, but nobody here had any on them, because why the hell would they?

"This is a magical family too," Blaise said, pointing at a string of illegible writing far toward the edge of the parchment. Dorea didn't recognise that script at all, mixed in with the Arabic way back on Hermione's father's father's side.

Hermione blinked, gave Blaise a double-take. "You can read Tifinagh?"

Blaise shrugged. "I don't speak the language, but I recognise the letters. My father is Ayneha." At the blank looks he was getting, Blaise rolled his eyes. "Songhay?"

"Oh! Isn't that a country in Africa?" Padma asked. "Just south of the Sahara, east of Ghana."

"Well, at least one of you has heard of it before. Imuhagh territory is just to the north of Songhay, and they're a sizeable minority in the country, so you see Tifinagh around. That's one of the major Imuhagh clans on the magical side, I've seen the name before."

Giving Blaise a funny look, Sophie said, "I didn't know you even knew anything about your father. You never talk about him."

"I don't see him much," he said with another careless shrug. "We've visited a couple times, but that's really it. And, I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a lot of racist bastards in Slytherin, they don't exactly have a high opinion of Africans, so nobody's interested enough to ask — also, my weird and complicated family history is none of anyone else's fucking business."

...Fair enough.

After a brief, awkward silence, Hermione asked, "Do you know how to transliterate that, so I can look it up later? My dad might find anything I can find interesting, at least."

"Shite, Granger, I don't know, they don't write the bloody vowels. I can give you the consonants, I guess, but I have no idea how it might have be written up here. You might have better luck with a Tunisian text, honestly."

"Yes, well, unfortunately I don't read Arabic..."

They spent a bit talking about Hermione's family tree, what the different coloured lines on it meant, how the magic worked — a lot of that was just conjecture, since no one was really sure. (Analysis potions using blood as a focus were a NEWT topic, and they didn't cover divinatory potions much at all.) It was actually perfectly normal for Hermione to have magical ancestors, the dominant theory these days was that all muggleborns did, magic just skipping a couple generations for complicated environmental reasons. They were even more likely to be related to the nobility than you would expect simply based on the fraction of the total magical population they made up. Nobles had all kinds of social reasons why they might want to get rid of a squib in the family, but most of those didn't apply to commoners, especially poorer ones — doubly so because a lot of poor commoners never used wizardry anyway, so one of them being a squib didn't actually make that much of a difference.

...Now that Dorea thought about it, universal academy education would probably result in getting wands into the hands of a lot of the poor commoners for the first time. Wands were expensive devices, and required thorough education to use properly — they'd always been an upper-class thing, that hadn't really started to change until the last couple centuries. Except, she didn't remember anything about the subsidy going to the Ollivanders to help cover the cost of people's first wands being increased, so it was possible poor people wouldn't be able to afford them anyway? And she had no idea whether the Ollivanders would be able to handle such a large, sudden spike in demand...maybe they hadn't messed with the subsidy yet so they could ramp up the need for new wands more gradually, give the Ollivanders time to adjust...and it was probably better to increase the number of people getting active schooling more gradually anyway, just for logistical reasons...

Once that was done, Hermione took the chart down again, tucking it away. (There was definitely space expansion involved somehow, the roll of parchment was wider than her bag.) There were plenty of other things to talk about — magical Britain was a rather eventful place these days, as complicated as the politics of the moment could be, and with the Dark Lord threatening to come back, and Gaels and Brits sniping at each other. The muggleborns seemed slightly horrified that they didn't already have universal education — except Hermione, who mostly just seemed exasperated — but at least that problem was being fixed.

Magical Britain was behind the times in any number of ways (relative to both their muggle and magical neighbours), but they were starting to make progress — just compared to when Andi had been Dorea's age, it was a noticeable difference. It just seemed frustratingly slow sometimes.

And there was plenty of gossip to go over, of course, especially since most of them hadn't seen each other since before the Yule Ball. Lily and Blaise had gone together, and they seemed very obviously couply today, that was new — but nobody really drew attention to it, they all knew how shy Lily could be. Padma was actually dating Michael Corner now, which, Dorea hadn't known about that, when had that happened?! They'd gone to the Ball together, apparently, Padma had kept it a secret until they'd just showed up together...at least partially to mess with her sister, Dorea thought. (Their relationship was kind of weird sometimes, and none of Dorea's business.) Michael was probably the most fanciable boy in their year — Neville was a close second, but he could be really shy and awkward — Mandy and Sally-Anne didn't even seem to be trying to hide how very jealous they were.

Sophie and Sally-Anne had gone with Justin and Wayne, and from the sound of it Sally-Anne hadn't had a great time. Sophie had, though, all smiling and blushing about it, but didn't give a clear answer when asked if they were together now — Dorea got the feeling Sophie and Justin hadn't quite come to a firm decision on that yet themselves. Everyone was acting happy for her and everything but, honestly, Dorea had... Well, she wasn't certain that would work out very well. Sophie and Justin came from very different backgrounds, to put it mildly — while that was never really important just hanging out with the study group, Dorea had a feeling there were things that would definitely come up in a romantic relationship. Justin was a nice boy, yes, but his family was very well-off, and he could be a bit...condescending about it, at times, Dorea was worried that if they actually tried dating Sophie would start finding his attitude aggravating before too long. It wasn't impossible that it would work out, but she had a bad feeling about it.

But that wasn't her business, so she kept her thoughts on it to herself.

What, no, she hadn't heard Hannah and Susan had broken up! She'd thought... Well, she'd heard the duelling team might be getting back late, she hadn't really given Susan not being here a second thought. Apparently it'd been in the bloody papers, which wasn't really as much of a surprise as it should be — one would think that teenagers' dating lives weren't a matter of public concern, but Susan was the daughter of a famous war hero and the last remaining heir of one of the Seventeen Founders — but Dorea had mostly stayed away from the papers. She had gotten some updates from Andi and Ted, but she'd been trying to have a relaxing holiday with her family, she hadn't been keeping up.

When Hannah explained what had happened, Dorea failed to hold back a wince — she'd seen that coming. Dorea couldn't say she and Susan were especially close, certainly not as close as Hannah and Susan (obviously), but even from her position it was obvious that Susan took her responsibilities as the last child of her family very seriously. There'd never been any doubt in Dorea's mind that Susan would, eventually, be getting married and having children like all the other good purebloods. And Hannah, for all her over-the-top Hufflepuff-ish friendliness, was not interested in being reduced to Susan's paramour. So, this was just kind of inevitable.

That didn't mean it wasn't sad, of course, she was sorry that... Well, that things weren't different, she guessed. (Same-sex marriage wasn't legal in Britain like it was in some other magical countries, and even if it were Society types probably wouldn't stand for it anyway.) A couple people seemed slightly surprised by something Dorea had said...and, of course, Sophie just came out and asked if she'd stopped being "super weird" about Hannah and Susan being lesbians. Through a grimace, suddenly feeling very put on the spot, Dorea admitted she'd been being an idiot about it before, sorry, she was mostly over it now.

Honestly, she still didn't know why it'd made her so uncomfortable at first, she... It was just one of those things, she guessed. It'd, just, kind of creeped her out, and she couldn't even say why, exactly. It was still slightly weird, really, like, she was...aware of it, when Hannah was talking to her, but not in the same... It was sort of similar to Blaise being in the room with them, but not quite the same, it was hard to explain. That was probably less than entirely ideal, it did make her slightly uncomfortable (or at least self-conscious?), but there was really no telling if that would ever go away or not.

After waffling back and forth about it for most of the holiday, Dorea had finally taken a train up to see Rebecca, only a couple days ago — Mum had probably been a bit overcautious, Rebecca had been way more understanding about it than either of them had expected. Well, rather dumbfounded that Dorea had had no idea Mum and Rebecca had been together, but she'd been, like, three, okay, she didn't— Whatever. They'd talked about it, and... Rebecca had said that it did sort of make sense that she might be a little self-conscious about it, since keeping an eye on any potential romantic or sexual angles to an interaction was normally something she only had to worry about with boys, so finding out some of her friends were lesbians or bisexual or whatever, it was kind of edging in on relationships she'd thought were safe. "Safe" wasn't Dorea's word, Rebecca had put it that way, but she did see what she was getting at...

Of course, Rebecca thought the implications of that feeling were still kind of messed up, because of what it suggested about gender, but a lot of that was kind of over Dorea's head, feminist philosophy stuff that she didn't really know enough about to follow. But that was just the culture Dorea had grown up in, there wasn't anything she could do about that — Rebecca had insisted she didn't think Dorea was a bad person for still being a little awkward about it, it was just the way things were sometimes. That weird self-consciousness might go away, it might not, it was really impossible to say.

So, she was mostly over her initial reaction to some of her friends turning out gay, she was sorry about being an idiot about that for a little while. Over it enough that she did legitimately feel bad for Hannah and Susan — they'd been together for like a year, and, the whole situation just sounded like it sucked, that was all...

After awkwardly moving on from that topic, thank God, they moved on to more Yule Ball -related gossip. Dylan had ended up going with some sixth-year Ravenclaw whose name Dorea couldn't match with a face off-hand — yes, Dylan had actually asked her to the Ball, and yes, she had turned him down. (She had kind of regretted doing it, but it just...hadn't felt like the best idea. Plus, she'd wanted to go home for the holiday, so.) Tony had been involved in some kind of relationship drama, but none of them had been involved so they didn't have much in the way of details, there'd been some scandal going on with some fifth years that Dorea didn't really care about. Instead of going with her fiancé, Deirdre — who, as one of Slytherin's dorm supervisors, had been invited by default —had turned up with Emily Scrimgeour, because of course she had. If those two kept snubbing their future husbands, that was going to become a problem eventually. Andi had heard through the grapevine that some of the involved parties were starting to get fed up, someone was probably going to issue an ultimatum soon, that could get ugly. Pureblood family drama usually was.

Through that topic, Hannah was scowling a little, irritated. Except, Deirdre and Emily had gone through the whole courtship thing, to the point of both of them being engaged...and also neither of them were expected to carry on their family single-handedly, it was not the same situation Susan was in. But whatever.

There was some more gossip, mostly about older students Dorea didn't know very well, wondering about what Liz and Viktor Krum had been talking about while they'd been dancing — people had noticed that they were talking about something, but nobody had been close enough to eavesdrop, there weren't even rumours about it. Mentioning Liz had Sophie commenting on how...almost delirious she'd seemed — she'd definitely been on something, presumably to help take the edge off of the psychic noise of such a large crowd — but she hardly ever smiled that much, seemingly uncharacteristically cheerful, so Lily (and most of the compartment) thought that was probably fine, at least she'd enjoyed herself — some of them had been worried about how plonking a mind mage with the Sight down in the middle of the Yule Ball would go — and as odd as their relationship could seem from the outside Liz and Professor Snape had been surprisingly adorable together, they—

"Wait a second," Dorea said, interrupting Sally-Anne in the middle of a comment about the opening dance. "Liz went to the Ball with Professor Snape?"

"Yeah, didn't you know?"

"I've been avoiding the papers, remember, I heard almost nothing about the Ball. I thought Liz was going with Daphne — didn't Liz even have a fabric sample for her dress and everything?"

"Our dress-shopping trip was before they broke up."

"...Liz and Daphne broke up? When did that happen?" Dorea wasn't surprised exactly — she'd expected Daphne would be put off by something Liz said or did eventually and would break it off — she just hadn't realised she'd missed so much. This was what she got for trying to have a nice holiday, she guessed...

It turned out, most of them didn't actually know — they hadn't found out about the break-up until Liz had told them during the Yule Ball itself. The only exception was Hermione, who'd actually known about it ahead of time. When Liz had come to her house to do the heritage test, they'd talked about it, a bit, in more detail than would have been appropriate to get into in public. So, it turned out Hermione was kind of the Liz expert today...which was a pretty common thing to happen these days, honestly...

The thought had Dorea struck with a squirming feeling of discomfort. It had been the three of them, together, but she wasn't really in the loop anymore. The only conversations she had with Liz these days were polite nothings, or schoolwork-related — she honestly couldn't remember the last time they'd talked just because, it would have been a while ago. And as much as she had been very confused and irritated with Liz abruptly cutting her off with no explanation, she did realise, in retrospect, that it was kind of her own fault. Dorea hadn't offended her intentionally, just, mind magic sort of made her nervous, and there was really nothing she could do about that. And, she knew Liz couldn't help how cold and sharp and odd she could be — child abuse could seriously mess people up sometimes — that she wasn't malicious, necessarily, but as she got increasingly powerful and dangerous, studying duelling and everything...

Dorea getting so uneasy with her wasn't perfectly rational — as Hermione had pointed out, as theoretically threatening as Liz was, she'd never done anything objectionable to her friends — but sometimes feelings weren't rational. The straw that broke the camel's back might have been her less-than-ideal reaction to Liz telling her about her feelings for Daphne, but it'd already been a problem before then, obvious looking back on it.

It wasn't... Normally it didn't occur to her, until Hermione said something to make it very clear how out of the loop she was, but Dorea did regret that she'd...well, that they weren't so close anymore. She just didn't know what she was supposed to do about that, if anything.

(Apologise, she guessed, but she didn't think she was necessarily in the wrong for finding Liz a bit intimidating — if Liz felt a lie, she'd probably just make it worse.)

After a couple back and forths about Hermione having actually talked to Liz about it, the timing — that was why Liz had gone home unexpectedly, Dorea had wondered about that — Sophie asked, "Do you know what happened? They seemed so sweet together, I thought..."

"We're probably going to be seeing a lot of couples breaking up for a bit," Blaise said, with a languid sort of shrug. "People often start dating before they hit courtship age, and it's difficult to keep a relationship healthy while going through the ritual of arranging a marriage at the same time."

"Is that a preemptive confession I just heard?" Dorea gave him a raised eyebrow, glancing down at Lily sitting next to him.

He scoffed. "Black, I'm a commoner, and a foreigner — Mira might have tried to get me into a Noble House if she could, but the chances of that are extremely slim. Especially since people would know that's what she's trying to do, and such open ambition is gauche." True, good point. Mirabella Zabini might be wealthy — very wealthy, if you included her investments on the muggle side — but wealth wasn't the only thing the nobility cared about. "How about you — your fifteenth is in February, isn't it?" Dorea was slightly surprised that Blaise knew when her birthday was off the top of his head. "Does the Lady of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black plan to entertain suitors in the near future?"

...She didn't know, maybe? It'd certainly be simpler than dating. Since she was the Lady of the House, there was nobody to pressure into something she wasn't completely on board with, so she might as well use the meetings that went with the whole thing to, well, meet people. The Hogwarts student body was a small fraction of the population at large, and with courtship stuff she'd have complete control over the timetable. So, maybe, she'd think about it. Andi had said it was acceptable, since she was already the Lady of the House, to put these things off until after she finished school, or just until summer, when she'd have more free time, so.

Thinking about it, Dorea had taken long enough to respond that Padma actually got there first. "Why, Zabini, plan on putting your name forward?"

His lips tilting in a smirk, he drawled, "I think me being Lord Black would be a little on the nose, don't you think?" Blaise even pointed at his own face as he said black, to make it very clear what he meant.

There were a couple (slightly awkward) chuckles at the joke, Dorea rolled her eyes. Once the compartment was quiet again, Padma said, "But no, I don't think that's it. The reason Liz and Daphne broke up, I mean. I asked her about it before — I know Daphne plans to go through with a proper courtship, and her fifteenth was in November. Liz said she's fine with that, it doesn't bother her."

Dorea blinked, turned to frown at Padma. "Really?"

"That's what she said," shrugging a little. "And I don't think she was just saying that, but it can be hard to tell with Liz sometimes, you know. She's fully aware that, when we get older, a lot of her dating prospects are probably already going to be married to men — actually, she joked that that didn't bother her as long as she wasn't asked to mind the children."

There was some giggling in the compartment at the thought...though Dorea noticed Hermione and Sophie weren't joining in, both of them frowning. She didn't know what that was about. "I don't know, that seems really out of character to me, she might have been just saying that. I'd think Liz would be..." She trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentence.

"More possessive?" Hannah offered.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Why, though?" Sophie asked, frowning. "Maybe you didn't notice — you weren't on the dress shopping trip — but Liz is really really generous. She offered to pay for all of our dresses and things, on a whim, just to make the whole process less of a hassle, just write a single cheque and not worry about all the coins." For some reason, Lily was blushing again — her family was poor, she must have found something about Liz offering to pay embarrassing. "She wasn't even fussed about us paying her back. I mean, I did, obviously, but she was super casual about the whole thing. And do you know how expensive that stuff is? It wasn't a small group, either."

"Well..." No, Dorea didn't know where she was going with that. That didn't quite feel right, but she couldn't articulate why not.

"Liz is sitting on the Potter fortune, of course," Hannah said, "which is no small amount of gold. The apothecary trade, all the patents they're holding, you know. But, most nobles, when they burn a lot of gold on something, it's for the look of it — their generosity is meant to be seen — and if they do a favour for someone — like buying expensive formalwear, for example — it's meant to be...well, a favour. The expect to be paid back. But Liz didn't grow up with that culture, you know? She does nice things for her friends just because."

Looking a little exasperated, Hermione admitted, "Liz bought hundreds of pounds worth of books for my birthday last year — the year before last, I mean, Ninety-Three. She gave me a budget of a galleon, I tried to argue her down, but she wouldn't hear it."

"She bought me a whole new potions set out of nowhere," Sally-Anne said, blushing a little. "Just, with no warning, showed up outside Hufflepuff one afternoon with a case full of stuff. Said part of why my potions were so inconsistent was because my equipment was too cheap." Liz had spent a lot of time working on potions with Sally-Anne lately, it wasn't really a surprise that she'd noticed, at least. "I tried to ask how much it cost, so I could try to pay her back, but she just changed the subject — kind of awkwardly, if I'm being honest."

Sophie nodded. "Yeah, Liz just does stuff like that. If there's a problem, she's going to fix it, in the bluntest, must bull-headedly straight-forward way possible — whether the person whose problem it is asked for the help or not." There were more giggles, because...that was very Liz, when Dorea thought about it. "I didn't guess that the same way she's not selfish with her things would apply to being super not jealous about relationships and stuff, but when I think about it it makes a kind of sense, doesn't it? Liz is just like that."

"Sometimes I think she should be in Hufflepuff with us," Hannah said. "But then she'll do something like casually admit to fantasising about murdering Ron Weasley, and I remember she's also a cold-blooded snake. No offence of course," she chirped with a bit of false cheerfulness — missing a bit of her usual energy, probably still down about her recent break-up — throwing a teasing wink at the Slytherins in the room.

In a low, amused drawl, Blaise said, "Oh, no offence taken, naturally. Down in the dark, dank, dismal dungeons in which we lurk, that there is a compliment."

"Zabini is speaking for himself and only himself, of course," Dorea said, aiming for flat and serious — and probably missing the mark a little, her lips twitching.

"Of course."

"So what did happen, then? With Liz and Daphne, I mean. It was so sudden, just leaving school in the middle of the night, and— I'm surprised she ran off, honestly — I'd think she would have tried to, I don't know, talk her out of it or something." She couldn't have just compelled Daphne to change her mind, that sort of thing probably wouldn't stick, but Liz just letting her go like that seemed out of character.

Padma started saying something, but Hermione interrupted her before she got more than a couple words in. "Liz broke up with Daphne."

Dorea blinked. Hermione was staring at her, frowning — looking rather exasperated, maybe, though Dorea couldn't guess what that was about. "What?"

"You're assuming Daphne broke up with Liz, but it was the other way around. Liz broke up with Daphne."

"...Really?"

"Yes, Dorea, really."

Dorea noticed that Sophie and Padma were both giving her funny looks too — not quite the same as Hermione's, but she still couldn't help the feeling she was being judged for that assumption — but before she could decide how to respond Hannah was already talking. "Oh no, was it... Well, you know how Liz can be about hugs and the like, I was worried they might have...intimacy issues, you know."

Hermione hesitated for a very suggestive second, before saying, "That's private."

...Okay, when Dorea thought about it that actually made a lot of sense. Hermione probably hadn't meant to give away that Liz had told her that she and Daphne had had "intimacy issues", as Hannah had put it, but the pause made it kind of obvious, and... Well, that had never occurred to her before — she didn't spend a lot of time speculating about her friends' snogging and whatever — but Liz could be extremely prickly about being touched. And Dorea knew she had scars in, er, sensitive places, and... Yeah, that made a lot of sense, once it'd been pointed out to her.

Something about that was making her feel rather uncomfortable, but she couldn't put her finger on why — some thought looming just out of reach, like a word at the tip of her tongue.

"But she did talk to you about it."

"Excuse me, I'm not going to go mouthing off about the things Liz tells me in private just because our friends are nosey sometimes." Hannah grimaced a little, chastened, gave Hermione a sheepish little nod. "It was multiple things, really, she— I think Liz and Daphne were having way more problems than was obvious from the outside. Relationships can be that way sometimes, you know — one of my classmates in primary school had no idea her parents were having marital issues before being told they were getting divorced, with no warning. I'm not sure how much she'd be comfortable with me telling you. Just, it's complicated, neither of them were really in the wrong, so it's not worth being angry at either of them over it or picking sides or whatever, let's leave it at that.

"Actually, um. Don't tell Liz I told you all this, but..." Hermione glanced away for a second, gazing blankly out the window, forced out a puff of breath. "I'm a little worried about her, it... Have any of you noticed how Liz talks about herself sometimes?"

Most of the compartment shot each other confused or uncomfortable looks, Dorea for one not quite sure what Hermione was getting at. Most of them except for Blaise, who immediately said, "Her relatives convinced her she's evil, obviously." When everyone turned to look at him, a couple people letting out little gasps or mutters, Blaise just scoffed at them. "Are you being serious right now? She used to openly call herself a 'creepy devil-child'—" He said the phrase with a sharp sort of emphasis, though Dorea wasn't sure what that was meant to suggest. "—where did you think she got that from? And whenever the Gryffindors and whoever accuse her of doing black magic, or some other grisly— It doesn't hurt her if people think she's a monster, because she already thinks she is. Honestly, we're not even really friends, and I noticed that way back when we were firsties!"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking of," Hermione said into the uncomfortable silence. The Hufflepuffs in particular seemed rather taken aback, probably at the implication that Blaise thought they were shitty friends for...not noticing Liz had a really low opinion of herself, she guessed? She'd never really thought about it, Liz never talked about when something was bothering her...but then, Blaise's point was that that stuff didn't bother her... "I'm not sure if I should be telling you this, keep it to yourselves, but, Liz said part of why she did it was because she... Well, Daphne has a high opinion of her, but Liz thinks she's a bad person, she... She said it felt like she was lying to Daphne, somehow, made her feel increasingly guilty, I think."

Suddenly, in a flash, Dorea felt terribly uncomfortable.

"So, um. I know Liz can be really awkward about this sort of thing, but I think it might help if we...you know, what we were talking about earlier, about Liz being generous and helpful and stuff, but say it to her. Don't go out of your way to make a point of it, you know, just, when it comes up? She'll probably seem really uncomfortable about it, I know I got in the habit of avoiding saying anything too, I don't know, affectionate, because she always gets so awkward, but I think we should do it anyway. I think she needs to hear it, you know."

As the rest of the compartment started in on plans for their campaign of kindness — except Blaise, who just contributed the occasional sarcastic comment (mostly about how terribly unsubtle their ideas were, Liz would figure out what they were doing immediately) — Dorea just sat quietly, her fingers squirming fitfully in her lap. Teeth clenching, enough it almost hurt, heavy cold dropping her stomach...

"You're scared of me."

It was nearly a year ago now, where the whole scandal around Liz's custody had been going on. Clearly trying to capitalise on the current topic of public obsession, Skeeter had somehow figured out Liz's old home address, approached her relatives, big splashy article on the front page of the Prophet — speculating about her abuse in front of the whole bloody country. Liz had been in a...fragile mood, for good reason, on the way up to lunch Dorea had held her back for a moment, for what had seemed like a well-needed hug...

"I'm trying not to be. I don't mean anything by it, but... Well, sometimes you are scary."

"Yeah, they thought so too."

Dorea mostly remembered feeling, just, confused. She'd guessed "they" was supposed to be referring to Liz's relatives, and, she hadn't known what Liz had meant to imply by saying that. Liz didn't just say things, for no reason, it must have meant something to her, something Dorea hadn't been able to figure out at the time. She'd just been confused, and hurt — Liz casually comparing her to her abusers felt like a slap in the face — and, just, certain she was missing something, but not sure what it was, looming over her for the rest of the day...

She'd mostly forgotten about that exchange, later, when the thing on her mind had been the incident in the library — the obvious moment, when their friendship had properly broken. But, she was starting to have the creeping feeling that that moment had been a lot more important than she'd realised at the time.

"It doesn't hurt her if people think she's a monster, because she already thinks she is."

A crooked smile, thin and fake-looking, brittle. Liz had glanced away, eyes turning to the wall, the forced smile flickering away. Not anger, or hurt, no heat in the feeling the fake smile was supposed to hide, instead...

...exhausted. In retrospect, the feeling Dorea got was that she'd just seemed tired.

Because, people around her being frightened of her, thinking she was dangerous, or evil, or insane, it didn't bother her. It wasn't something that she had any particular feelings about, accustomed to being thought of as a potential threat, a monster, thoroughly enough that she'd long ago begun to believe it herself. Probably ground into her by her relatives, who the hell knew what kinds of things they'd said to her, all through her childhood...

It didn't hurt her anymore. Instead she was just tired.

The last couple pieces of the familiar puzzle that was her ex- best friend falling into place, Dorea finally came to realise how badly she'd fucked up, without even realising it was happening.

No wonder the comparison had occurred to her — Dorea didn't know when she'd started thinking so badly of her, but she— She was still doing it, just in this conversation! It'd snuck up on her, she didn't... She remembered, when they'd first met, she'd found Liz...sad, her oddly flat demeanour and general...unsociability taken more as signs of isolation, of... And broken — she'd known about some of Liz's more serious problems way before the rest of their friends, first witnessing a pretty bad panic incident that first Hallowe'en, quickly noticing how she seemed to freeze up whenever anyone touched her, she...

It'd happened slowly, she hadn't really been conscious of it. As Liz started talking more, in the process admitting to darker thoughts — like openly wishing she could get away with murdering Ron Weasley, for example — and becoming more dangerous, learning how to duel, and the way she just seemed to know things about people, obviously picked up through mind magic without anyone noticing, unreasonably powerful for her age, casually using wandless magic, her aura sharp and wild...

At some point, the same coldness that Dorea had initially found pitiable had become...unnerving. And she didn't know when that'd happened, she hadn't noticed it.

Over the course of a couple years, she'd become just as suspicious of Liz's motives as the kids whispering in the halls as they passed, the ones so offended she wasn't the perfect Girl Who Lived they'd been promised. She didn't know when or why, she hadn't even noticed it happening.

Dorea had blamed Liz for breaking off their friendship, seemingly for no reason and without warning. Even after Hermione had explained what Liz had been thinking at the time, she still had, at least partially — after all, Dorea couldn't well be held responsible for idle thoughts she hadn't even expressed aloud. But now, looking back, it seemed very obvious that she'd already been on thin ice, before that day in the library. And she hadn't realised.

Remembering, just before Liz had told her about Daphne, a brief pause, idly playing with the edge of a page of her notebook, a thoughtful frown...

"I guess I can tell you, before it happens and you find out that way."

...Liz had been testing her. She'd already been planning on asking Daphne out by then, and Dorea had put her on the spot, catching the suggestion that she was interested in someone and asking about boys, and... Liz had suspected she would react badly, and had decided to get it out of the way ahead of time, just in case. She'd been testing her.

Dorea had failed, miserably.

And she'd already been on thin ice, without realising it, that had been the last straw, not the first. So Liz hadn't had anything more to say to her — she'd just collected her things, gotten up, and left.

Because — coming on slowly, without her realising it — Dorea had started to think as badly of her as all the nameless people who'd distrusted her over the years. (Reminding her of her abusers.) So, instead of suffering her presence — instead of tolerating the suspicion and unease she must have felt from Dorea's mind — she'd simply removed herself from the situation.

At the time, it'd seemed to come out of nowhere, that Liz was acting irrationally, unexpectedly — unpredictably, which only made her even more unsettling to be around, worried there might be some outburst without any warning. And with someone as powerful and potentially dangerous as Liz, an unexpected outburst could be very bad.

But, in retrospect, Liz's behaviour made perfect bloody sense.

It was Dorea's fault, she'd poisoned their friendship. And she hadn't even known she was doing it.

She hardly spoke for the rest of the train ride. She sat quietly, the conversation around her meaninglessly burbling in her ears — her throat burning, the realisation sitting like a hard frozen stone in her stomach.

The Hogwarts Express seemed to exist in its own time, the trip passing quicker or slower depending on the day, the length of time passed within its walls never seeming to quite match with the rest of the world. The trip didn't seem to last any longer or shorter than usual, but yet they arrived in Hogsmeade in mid-afternoon, the sun not yet having vanished behind the hills to the west. Listlessly, going through the motions, Dorea dropped her things off in her room, joined most of the study group up in the library. She couldn't really remember what they'd talked about, honestly, she didn't speak much.

The duelling teams returned later, shortly before the dinner hour — from what Dorea had heard, they hadn't been certain the adjusted schedule would permit them to get back before classes started again, but it looked like they'd just squeezed by. Oddly, they came in by floo — the teams pouring out of Flitwick's office, of all places — rumours quickly trickling through the rest of the Castle. When the news reached them in the library, Dorea hesitated for only a couple seconds before getting up, leaving without a word.

When she got down to Slytherin, Liz's door was hanging open. Dorea stood at the threshold, looking in. Liz's bag was sitting at the foot of her bed, gaping open and partially unpacked, two sets of the black and silver trousers and jackets of the duelling uniform laid out over the surface. From this angle, Dorea could see Liz's bedside table, a disorganised tangle of metal and glass, necklaces and beaded bracelets, a small collection of framed pictures, a couple of her parents, one of Liz and Hermione with the Irish National Team's chaser squad. Dorea had heard she'd framed a copy of the picture of her and Daphne that'd found its way into the Prophet, that must be the one turned face-down — she probably hadn't been to her dorm room since before the break-up, hadn't had the opportunity to put it away yet. The picture frames were joined by two pieces made of coloured glass, presumably trophies from the Tournament, but Dorea couldn't make them out properly from here. Liz must have won a couple events this time.

Liz was standing at her desk, side-on to Daphne — black leather duelling boots poking out from under her plain white and green checked muggle-style dress, typical for her when not expected to be in robes, a reddish-violet cardigan pulled overtop against the winter chill, her rebellious hair held back with a glittery blue and silver scarf. (She never had learned how to coordinate colours properly.) Her pensieve had been moved to the middle of her desk, leaning with one hand propped against the wood, her wand was in her other hand, gently extracting blue-silver memories out of her head and depositing them into the pensieve, one after another.

Once Dorea had collected herself, she waited until Liz was between memories to speak. "Hello, Liz."

Her wand frozen halfway to her temple, Liz glanced her way. "Hello."

"Can I come in for a minute? I want to talk to you about something."

For a moment, Liz stared at her, eyebrows dipping just slightly in a subtle frown. Then her eyes flicked up at the ceiling, she let out a little sigh. "Fine." Her wand vanishing back up her sleeve, Liz walked to the door, held a hand out across the threshold — Dorea took it and stepped through the door, the wards parting to let her through. Liz immediately let go, turned back toward her desk. "Make it quick, I didn't get lunch and I wanted to finish this before going to dinner."

Dorea hesitated for a second, before closing the door behind her — it was probably better that they weren't overheard, but she didn't want to make Liz feel trapped either. Liz hardly reacted at the sound, so she probably needn't have worried. Slowly drifting closer, grasping blindly for words — jumping right into it seemed like too much, somehow — she asked, "Are those memories of the tournament?"

"Mhm. I promised Nilanse I'd copy them for her, I figured we'd go over them tonight. Probably Hermione too, she couldn't make it out this time."

...Liz's relationship with her elf continued to be very odd. Standing next to Liz at her desk, she still wasn't sure what to say, her eyes idly wandering. "Souvenirs?" she asked, tapping the top cover of a stack of books. Printed by mages, definitely, she could tell by the binding, but she didn't recognise the titles — they were in French. Novels, looked like.

"I sat next to Säde at the Yule Ball, they sounded interesting."

Dorea was temporarily confused, before she noted the author, Säde Karjalainen. She didn't recognise the name, but she wouldn't necessarily expect to — she didn't keep up with magical literature on the Continent. Or in Britain that much, to be honest.

"Look, I'm bloody hungry, and I really do want to finish this before dinner," Liz said, nodding at the pensieve. "What's this about, Dorea?"

"You know, Hermione is mustering the troops for a kindness offensive."

That maybe wasn't the clearest way she could have put it, but Liz obviously picked up on what she meant, biting out a thick sigh. "Of course. Still worrying about the break-up, I assume."

"Among other things, yeah. And, we were talking, about you, and I realised I..." If she tried to explain her whole thought process, she'd probably just end up babbling — besides, Liz didn't really need to know all that, did she? "I'm sorry."

Liz was silent a long moment, when some seconds passed without a response Dorea looked down at her. Dorea had unexpectedly shot up a couple more inches over the last few months — she'd noticed over the holiday that she was noticeably taller than her mother now, meaning she'd somehow ended up taller than both of her parents — her eye-level had to be right nearly a foot higher than Liz's now. (It was odd how Liz hadn't seemed to grow at all, if she was any taller than she'd been in first year it was hard to tell.) Liz was just staring up at her, face completely blank.

Dorea felt a faint, cold sharp prickle, like needles at the back of the of her neck — Liz's mind magic, not actually intruding, she didn't think, just... "Liz?"

"What for?"

"...Well, all of it, I guess. For, um, that day in the library, but...but before that, too. I know I was... I know you wouldn't have hurt me." Carefully in past tense, because she was less sure of that now that they weren't really friends anymore, and she didn't want Liz to feel a lie. "I'm not... I don't know why I forgot that. I'm sorry."

While trying to find the words, she'd looked away, by the time she turned back Liz wasn't staring anymore. Her head turned down, away from Dorea, her face hidden by her hair and the scarf — seeming to stare at the pensieve, her fingers running along the rim, tracing the runes, the soft pale light playing on her skin. She was silent a long moment, after several breaths muttered, just, "Oh."

...Okay, then. Dorea wasn't sure what to say now. She hadn't expected instant forgiveness, of course, just...something more than that to work with.

Finally, Liz said, "Why now?"

"It only clicked what I did wrong when I was on the train ride over here." Trying to force a teasing note into her voice, Dorea said, "I don't know if you noticed, Liz, but you're not the only one who can be an idiot about feelings things sometimes."

"Oh." There was another long pause, Liz didn't look up, fingers still idly playing with her pensieve. She took a deep breath, let out a sharp little sigh. "Well. Apology not accepted, then."

...Right. Dorea guessed she probably deserved that.

"What, you thought you'd, just, walk in here half a year later, say you're sorry, and...everything would go back to the way it was before?"

"No, it's— I wasn't thinking that. I'm... I know I hurt you, and, I don't expect that to just go away. Just, I feel badly about it, and...I wanted to tell you that."

Liz turned back to frown up at her, the expression mild and kind of vague. Confused? "You didn't hurt me."

Yeah, Dorea was going to go out on a limb and assume Hermione had guessed right about that one — Liz had been hurt, she was just shite at recognising her own feelings for what they were. (For abuse-related reasons, presumably.) But she didn't know how to say that, at least without putting her foot in her mouth, so she just muttered, "Liz."

A look flickered across Liz's face too briefly and too indistinct for Dorea to interpret it, and then she turned back down to her pensieve again. Again, she was silent for a long moment, her fingers idly playing along the ceramic — Dorea could feel the tension on the air, but she wasn't sure if that was actually an effect of Liz's aura or if it were just in her head. "Yeah." Her fingers fell from the pensieve, her knuckles settling on the desk instead. It was subtle, especially with her hair and her scarf in the way, but Dorea thought she saw Liz's shoulders tense, just a little, an edge that hadn't been there a second ago slipping into her voice. "Yeah, you're right. It did hurt. Still does.

"I was trying. I'd never done it before, you know," Liz said, turning to look up at Dorea again. Her face was mostly blank, but noticeably tight around her eyes, her gaze hard and sharp — holding back something, Dorea's stomach squirming, trying not to grimace. "You were my first friend, ever, I never— I didn't know what to do. I was trying."

Her throat thick, hot, Dorea ground out, "I know."

"I never did anything to you," her voice cracking just slightly.

"I know. I know that, Liz, I'm sorry."

Liz stared up at her for a long moment, her lips silently working now and then, not quite finding words. Dorea could feel a sharp, prickly chill on the air, a heavy tension like an approaching thunderstorm, Liz's magic slipping a little. It definitely wasn't Dorea's imagination, her eyes were visibly watering — at the moment Dorea couldn't remember if she'd ever actually seen Liz cry. Well, that incident with the Dark Lord's shade back in first year, she guessed, and she'd gotten close the morning details of her abuse had been leaked, but other than that...

That Liz was clearly on the edge of it now just made Dorea feel worse.

Finally, Liz looked away, turning back to her pensieve. Her voice low and thick, "So yeah, apology not accepted." Her face turning a little further away form Dorea, well hidden behind her scarf, one hand came up — presumably wiping at her eyes — she cleared her throat. "Leave. I still want to finish this before dinner." And collect herself before going back out in public, Dorea guessed.

"Liz, I don't—"

"Leave me alone, Dorea."

Her breath catching in her throat, Dorea cringed, her chest clenching and her stomach twisting at the harsh hurt on Liz's voice — it'd come out of nowhere, sudden, Liz had clearly been trying to keep her tone as cool and flat as always, but... "Okay. I'm sorry." Every motion feeling stiff and clumsy, her breath tight and painful in her chest, Dorea walked away, leaving Liz at the desk. She hesitated at the door for a moment, looking over her shoulder. Liz was standing still at her desk, shoulders tense and her head bowed, the fingers of her left hand, resting on the edge, shaking just visibly. Dorea felt like she should say something, but she had no idea what.

So she left the room, gently pulling the door closed behind her. Dorea turned and leaned against the wall, her head tipping back and her eyes slipping closed, forced her breath out in a heavy sigh.

She hoped that talk had done Liz some good, because Dorea just felt miserable.

She'd been standing there a short moment, trying to get herself back under control so she could get up to dinner, when she heard one of the doors click open, some low chatter spilling out into the circle. It cut off quickly, someone saying, "Oh, Dorea. Hello."

Dorea cleared her throat, took a quick swipe at her eyes before looking around. The voice was Daphne's, she was with Tracey and, to Dorea's mild surprise, Millie — as far as she knew, Millie hadn't spent much time with Daphne and Tracey until very recently. Though, maybe she shouldn't be surprised, she'd heard just on the train that Millie and Tracey had gone to the Yule Ball together. (Just as friends, that is, she knew Tracey at least was straight.) "Hello." After a quick nod at Tracey and Millie, she asked, "How are you doing, Daphne?"

"...Well enough." As cool and composed as Daphne could be (when she wanted to), she was hardly showing any sign of still being broken up over it...though Dorea guessed the uncharacteristic hesitation had been hint enough. Her eyes went to Liz's door for a second. "Is everything all right?" Whether that was curiosity over what just happened between Dorea and Liz, or concern (for Liz, Dorea, or both), Dorea really couldn't tell. This girl could be seriously bloody opaque when it suited her.

Whatever Daphne had meant to ask, Dorea was going to assume she was wondering if Liz was okay. She forced out a single empty laugh, shaking her head. "If you want to know how Liz is doing, you should ask Hermione — I'm not exactly kept in the loop these days."

Tracey let out a sharp scoff, her eyes rolling. Most of their friends hadn't picked sides in Dorea and Liz's...issues, but Tracey had very obviously sided with Liz from the beginning. (Which was fair enough, Tracey had been more Liz's friend than Dorea's anyway.) But Millie hardly reacted, calmly said, "Yes, let's go find Hermione at dinner. I wanted to ask her about something."

Whatever that was about, Daphne and Tracey seemed just as taken aback as Dorea, both cutting Millie quick glances. She had no idea what Millie could possibly want to talk to Hermione about, honestly she kind of wanted to come with just to find out. "Well then, let's go before the tables fill up." Daphne took the few steps over to where Dorea was standing. Her eyes went to Liz's door again, just for a second, before turning a soft smile on Dorea, holding out a hand. "Come. I'm sure your holiday was more interesting than mine."

Dorea hesitated for a second, eyeing Daphne's hand — not, like, super creeped out or anything, just awkwardly aware that Daphne was... Well, no, Dorea was pretty sure Daphne was bisexual, actually, like Mum. That thought was the kick in the pants she needed to just get over herself already, take Daphne's hand and let herself be tugged over to the other girls. "I don't know about that, I just stayed at home the whole time," she said, the four of them moving for the exit.

"Well, that's fine enough, isn't it." Now that Dorea was walking out with them, Daphne dropped her hand. "Oh, I forget, what was the baby's name?"

"Ian," Dorea said, rolling her eyes. "Apparently my mother named him after a lead actor in a musical she liked, a couple years ago now."

"Ah, yes, Gail does like theatre, doesn't she. I didn't realise before speaking with her that muggles even have musical theatre."

Well, that was a terribly silly thing to say. "Of course they do, it came out of opera same as mages. It's called Into the Woods, I saw it with her — twice, actually — and it's... Well, we have a recording of the music with the original cast at home, but I don't think you can get it on vinyl..."

[Ayneha] [Songhay] [Imuhagh] — The Ayneha are an irl ethnic group — or more accurately, a collection of related ethnic groups — located primarily in the western Sahel, especially Niger and Mali. The Songhai Empire was a large Ayneha polity in existence during the 15th and 16th Centuries — "Songhai" refers specifically to...I guess you could think of it as the aristocracy, European historians ended up using their name for the state they ruled. In-universe, British mages (and most of the ICW) still call the modern country there Songhay, though that's not what the Ayneha (and various minority groups) themselves call it. Imuhagh is another name for the Tuareg people, who have a long history of association with the Ayneha and other local groups.

Oh, hello, Dorea. Looks like she's having a great time, no problems here.

Writing has been frustratingly slow lately, thanks to what took me weeks to figure out is a depressive episode — I'm so self-aware, guys. I also took a bit to write for First Contact, trying to work on getting the next part of that out. I may or may not do that again this time, the next chapter of this fic will be the Third Task, so I might feel like doing that right away instead. That scene should be quite short, enough I might even decide to put it together with the following scene, but I guess we'll see.

Right, bye then.