When Liz woke up — numb and slow and indistinct, still half-asleep — the first thing she was really aware of was that she was uncomfortably warm, practically sweating through her sheets. She kicked blindly at them, groaning at the hard unfocussed pain thrumming through her, after a couple tries managed to drag them down to her hips, a final couple clumsy kicks freeing her legs. Shivering with relief hurt, little tines and throbs of pain shooting through her with each movement — but that was still much better.
It took a few moments, lying there stiff and feverish and sore, for Liz to realise she wasn't in her room. Blinking her eyes open, the room started as a blur, her head spinning, but she gradually forced it to resolve. The room was small, bland and featureless, made up in sterile greens and whites, nothing but the bed she was laying in and some cabinets here and there, a couple chairs. Sitting atop a narrow set of drawers next to the bed was her mother's necklace, a few beaded bracelets, and the anti-tracking ring Severus made for her ages ago, along with her wand holster — though she didn't reach for it just now, feeling too heavy and stiff. There were two doors, one closed and another open, showing a narrow glimpse of a bathroom. She was alone in here, the room quiet and stiff, no minds within reach, anyone who might be nearby blocked off by the wards that surrounded the room.
Liz recognised this: she was in the private recovery rooms for the Champions, post-Task. After the First Task, when she'd woken up Severus had been sitting in the chair just there, but he wasn't here this time.
...She was actually weirdly...something about that, she had to take a moment to swallow down the odd stiff hot feeling clawing at her throat.
Anyway, how badly injured was she, anyway? She definitely had light magic toxicity, feverish and dizzy and nauseous, but beyond that she just generally hurt, it was hard to sort out what feeling was coming from what, and what was going on. There was something holding her left arm hugged against her chest, immobilised, she could vaguely feel the bandages there, a dull hot pain that seemed to throb with each beat of her heart, so her shoulder was injured, definitely...
...Did she remember being hit with a blasting curse? A complex blasting curse too, she remembered being set on fire on top of having a bloody chunk taken out of her. Yeah, that would do it, she guessed...
She didn't really remember what had happened after that, though. Her back kind of stung, but it didn't seem to be coming from any particular place — and wasn't that bad, it was much worse in her left shoulder and her right... She wasn't sure if that was her hip or her leg, the dull throbbing pain too indistinct. They must have her on some kind of pain meds, the feeling too numb to really pick out details, which was probably for the best.
Still, knowing she was injured but not how badly was going to bother her. And there was nobody here to tell her, so. Taking a few quick breaths to psych herself up, pushing with her right elbow, she sat up to—
Sudden piercing agony lancing through her lower right side, wrenching a breathless groan out of her, Liz let herself flop back down. Suddenly feeling even more nauseous and sweaty, Liz just lay there breathing, her hip throbbing with hot sharp pain, only slowly fading as the seconds dragged by — fuck fuck fuck...
She didn't remember being injured there at all, she must have passed out too quickly for it to register properly. Whatever the hell she'd been hit with, it must have fucking sucked.
Just as she was catching her breath, the door clicked open — Liz twitched, the movement sending another flare of sharp pain shooting through her, she heard herself gasp. (Ow.) An unfamiliar mind was moving into the room, Liz glanced that way to find a middle-aged woman in plain trousers and jacket in soft, pastel colours. Toward the upper end of middle-aged, actually, Liz noticed subtle lines on her face, a few hints of grey through her blonde hair, held back in a practical bun. She was dragging a little wheeled card behind her, Liz assumed holding healing supplies.
Giving her a cool, professional smile, the woman said in smooth French, "Hello, Lady Elizabeth. I see you're awake." She'd been told Liz spoke French by...someone, but wasn't entirely confident she'd been understood yet.
"Ugh." Liz let the tension out of her neck, her head relaxing into her pillow to glare up at the ceiling. "Just 'Liz' is fine."
"Very well." The healer closed the door behind herself, the wards snapping back into place, dragged the cart closer to the bed. "My name is Évelyne Côté, I'm a senior spell-damage specialist at the Perenelle Flamel Maternity and Childrens' Healing Centre of Reims."
Liz was aware there were several of those — the Flamels put a lot of their magically-acquired wealth into charity, Perenelle particularly known for starting orphanages and hospitals. For whatever reason, the childrens' hospitals she'd started had all renamed themselves to the same thing back in the mid-19th Century, there had to be at least a dozen PFMCHCs dotted across Europe. The healer was just introducing herself, but also the Flamel hospitals were usually considered excellent institutions, trying to reassure Liz that she knew what she was doing without making a big deal about it. "Mm. Hi."
Standing over Liz's bed now, Côté smiled again. "And how are you feeling this morning?"
...Morning? "Hot. Hip hurts. Tried to sit up..."
There was a faint flash of concern from Côté's mind. "Yes, I expect it would." Her wand in her hand, she cast a quick charm — by the dull thrum that shot through her, probably something similar to the bone-sounding charm Liz knew — and the note of concern faded away. "Ah, good. I need to change your bandages, but Severus has instructed the healers to properly explain ourselves before acting, so I will need to do so first." Well, that was nice of him. "But before we get started, did you have any pressing questions for me?"
"Yeah, morning? I thought it was afternoon."
"It's the next morning now — the Twenty-Sixth, around eleven in the morning. You were kept in a healing coma through most of the night, to prevent you from waking and exacerbating the injury to your hip. The senior Champions' tournament started a short time ago, Severus is at the arena with the healers there."
Right, and that was her other question. "I'm good, then."
"Very well. The most severe injury was to your hip, on the right side," she said, pointing. "Though it was not so serious as it could have been. The damage was caused by a complex piercing curse, which Miss Cæciné had directed at the centre of your chest — that would have been a critical medical emergency, if it'd struck where intended you would likely still be in a coma now. You successfully deflected it away from your heart, but at too narrow of an angle, the curse striking your pelvis instead."
A flick of her wand, Côté cast an illusion — Liz wasn't a big anatomy expert, but she still recognised the bones of the spine, hips, and upper legs, cast in orange, a smoother faint whitish wireframe over it that Liz guessed was supposed to be the skin level. "The curse came in at an angle, like this," drawing on the air with the tip of her wand, leaving behind a glowing greenish line, "making contact with the skin here, near the iliac crest," a red mark crossing the green line, "the trajectory deflecting slightly as the curse resolved, a piercing effect lancing through the pelvic cavity here, and striking the the rim of the pubis here," another red line marking a spot in the pelvic bones, which was just as good as any other to Liz. "There it burst, releasing heat and physical pressure — various tissues were scorched or torn, and the pelvis itself was fractured here, here, and here," jagged gaps appearing in the lower part of the pelvic bones with flicks of the healer's wand, "resulting in a dislocation of the hip.
"The damage was quite severe — without treatment, you would have bled out in short order — but with the healers and bioalchemists we have available here, it was a relatively simple matter to repair it all." The healer dismissed the illusion with a careless swish of her wand. "The bone breaks were patched and immobilised as they settled — you were kept asleep through that process, to ensure the fragments didn't slip out of alignment — and the worst of the burns were excised and affected tissues regenerated. I will need to do as thorough of an analysis as I can, but I don't expect to find anything worth worrying about. However, the damage done to the muscles, tendons, and ligaments of the region was such that the area will remain stiff and sore for some time. Two to five days, I would expect." Côté picked something up off of her cart, with a series of clicking noises pulled it open into a smooth black ceramic cane. "You will need this." She set it against the cabinet next to the bed, hitched against a handle of a drawer so it didn't fall.
Liz glared at the handle — oh, she just knew she was going to hate that. But it wasn't as bad as being stuck in bed for those couple days, and she'd slept through the part she couldn't move for, so, she'd suck it up. Actually, she had gotten an injury to her hip before that had left her with a limp for a day, sounded like this one was just somewhat worse. "So, nothing broken, just aches, the same as healing joint injuries."
"Yes, I did just check the bone breaks a moment ago, they've healed. It is a joint injury, in fact, so yes, it is precisely like that. It should resolve in a few days — if the pain and the stiffness don't ease by the end of the week, I would recommend you check in with the healers here. Or your father, I suppose. Any questions for me about the hip injury?" Liz shook her head — it didn't seem worth it to correct her about Severus, just wanted to get this over with. "Very well. The next most serious is your shoulder. That was an elemental blasting curse, the effects shredding through the skin and into the muscle beneath, as well as causing some mild to moderate burns, primarily around the edge of the effected area. Dirt was rubbed into the injury before you were brought to us, which caused some minor complications in treatment." Was that Liz's fault? She had a vague feeling that was her fault. "The depth of the damage done was lesser than in your hip, but the volume was greater — considering your body weight, there were limits to what we could do in a single session."
She meant, in order to weave together new tissues, the materials for that actually had to come from somewhere — since Liz was such a skinny bitch, she didn't have enough extra stuff stored away to do much, not without cannibalising stuff from elsewhere. (Which healers did sometimes do in serious emergencies, but it was risky.) Fixing her hip had probably been considered a higher priority, so, for her shoulder they would have had to make do with topical potions. That still worked, of course, it just took longer. "Right. I know, er, I did some reading, for the Fourth Task. I get what you're getting at."
"Good, good. Your shoulder needed to be immobilised while certain tissues were repaired, I suspect that will no longer be necessary. Though, like with your hip, your shoulder will be tender for a time, and weak — I would avoid putting much weight on it for a few days, at least until the bandages come off. Oh, there will still be repair work to do, when we're done here you'll still have potions packed onto it to continue the regenerative process. You will still be able to use your left hand, but avoid putting your weight on it, or lifting anything heavier than, say, a hard-cover book.
"There were other minor injuries — burns from the fire thrown by the blasting curse, as well as from several sun-darts which struck you from behind. Those were all partially repaired, but only partially, to save resources for more serious injuries. They may still sting a little, but they'll heal the rest of the way on their own quickly enough. And, of course, you had quite severe light magic toxicity — you did say you feel hot a moment ago, so I'll be checking for contaminants while I'm here. I will need to do a final examination of your hip, and to change the bandages on your shoulder. After a bath to clean away any gunk left behind, I must insist you have lunch, as much as you can comfortably eat without making yourself ill. You will need the resources to continue healing.
"Unless you have any questions for me, I can get started."
"No, no, let's just get it over with."
The whole process was, as should be expected at this point, extremely uncomfortable. Côté started with taking blood samples, which wasn't so bad. She needed one to estimate the severity of the light magic toxicity she still had, and a second one to measure the levels of certain alchemical by-products already in her system — using a bit of maths, the former would be used to calculate the dose of the proper potion she'd need to completely eliminate the remaining contamination, and the latter the maximum dose she could be given without poisoning her. The first one just involved dripping her blood into a little potion vial, setting it aside to process, but the second one Côté spread over a sheet of parchment, colours crawling over it in a branching web, Côté clicking her tongue as she looked over it. Liz got the feeling that her system was already stressed dealing with the treatment she'd gotten while unconscious — those kinds of potions could cause serious kidney or liver damage if they weren't careful. Obviously that could be fixed if it did happen, but Liz would prefer to spend less time in hospital, thanks. She could deal with mild light magic toxicity for a day or two if it came down to it.
(She was pretty sure the couple days she'd have to wait for them to properly grow replacement organs she would feel even more miserably ill, so. As annoying as mild light magic toxicity was, it was the lesser evil.)
No contest, the worst part of the whole thing was Côté checking her hip — she managed to not completely freak the fuck out, but it wasn't even a close comparison. Liz was in what she figured was some kind of hospital gown, soft, psychometrically-neutral linen, bleached white, rather loose and featureless. (Different from the pyjama-looking things Pomfrey had for long-term stays, she assumed it was a Continental thing.) It was tied closed, knots down her right side, Côté undoing them with a couple gentle pulls on the ends, and folded the flaps up over her—
Liz jolted, the bed seeming to lurch under her, as she realised she wasn't wearing anything under the gown — she was, abruptly, completely naked from the waist down. Gritting her teeth, she covered her face with her unrestrained arm (blocking Côté off from view), and focussed on her breathing, trying to stay calm.
Which was not fucking easy. There were some bandages there, inside the shell of her hip, Côté mopping up some sticky potion goop left behind. She did make skin contact at points in the process, her mind nudging into Liz's — so she picked up that the healer had been warned that Liz could be sensitive about things, there wasn't any way to get around the stuff she had to do so she was just trying to blow through the steps as quickly and efficiently as possible. Maybe Liz could have used a bit more warning (and/or a calming potion), but, honestly she appreciated that. Côté cast several grasping pinching stabbing analysis charms, which was uncomfortable, but the physical examination was even worse, Côté's fingers prodding in at the soft fleshy bits inside her hip, even pulled her knee up and to the right so she could get underneath and inside her thigh, Liz's fist and teeth clenching, her wrist shaking against her cheek and her breath burning in her throat...
Honestly, if Côté's mind against hers didn't feel all cool and calm and professional — aware that Liz found this very stressful, determined to run through her checklist as quickly as she thought she could without perhaps missing anything, a faint niggling of concern at how thin Liz seemed, though she wasn't sure how much of that was due to the intense healing she just went through — Liz might have thrown a wandless banishing charm at the woman just to make her stop touching her.
As it was, she did make it through, but by the end her nerves were spanging with tension, her whole body feeling hot and sharp, not helped along by the way she was shaking making her injuries flare, the consciously deep, even breaths tugging at the bandages on her chest. Côté tying the gown closed again didn't help that much; maybe misreading Liz shivering for being cold, she pulled the discarded blanket up to her ribs, cast a warming charm, and then something that seemed to make the blanket heavier, hugging around her and pressing down...
Liz was a little surprised when that did make her feel better, a little, some of the tension loosening away — but even weirder, the shivering gradually slowed as the warmth seeped into her, and... What the fuck? Had she actually been cold? She'd thought the shaking was from nerves, she'd felt too warm, feverish (and still did), but, she was aware that light magic toxicity didn't actually make her physically warmer, just made her feel warm, it... She was bad enough at figuring out when she was cold in normal situations, apparently light magic toxicity just made it worse, Jesus...
"Liz? Do you need a moment?"
"No, I'm fine, just– just get it over with."
Dealing with her shoulder was also uncomfortable, though it was less overwhelmingly unpleasant. There were ties at her collar, but they didn't open it up enough, she had to get a couple down her right side as well — Liz needed to uncover her face for Côté to comfortable get at the one at her right shoulder, the air feeling surprisingly nice on her flushed, sweaty skin. Côté needed to fold the gown open to the bottom of her ribs (about the level the blanket was at), but only on the left side, she kept the right side mostly covered, which Liz guessed was something, at least. Removing the bandages hurt more than she'd expected, the adhesive material gripping on to less-than-fully-regrown skin, Liz gritting her teeth against it, her breath hissing. The hot burning pain was cooled off somewhat by whatever that stuff was on the washcloth she was using to wash off the used potions — of course, she didn't like sitting here while Côté mopped at her chest, but the effects of whatever that stuff was was pleasant enough that she tried to focus on that, and just not think about what was happening too hard.
She felt a mild, persistent edge of fascinated curiosity from Côté through most of the process. Where the scars on Liz's chest came from wasn't exactly a secret, that Liz had survived the Killing Curse somehow was referenced in medical literature — though there hadn't been any proper studies on it, so nobody knew how, what the after-effects would be like, just guesswork. The thing that Côté did professionally was work with spell damage, so naturally she was curious, but she held herself back from poking at them, didn't want to make Liz any more uncomfortable than necessary.
...Honestly, she found Côté's academic curiosity far less unsettling than Pomfrey's pity. If anything, the woman being preoccupied with her work and thoughts about the medical implications of Liz surviving the Killing Curse was a convenient distraction, something for Liz to focus on despite the physical shite going on. Still awfully uncomfortable, yes, but it could be worse.
In the process of taking off the bandages, Liz's left arm was freed from the stuff holding it in place, feeling numb and stiff and clumsy. Côté helped Liz sit up once all the potion gunk was cleaned off — Liz grimaced against the twanging of pain seemingly at random through her torso, gritting her teeth, reflexively holding the right side of the gown against her — doing her examination of the muscles and tendons and shite with Liz upright, checking to make sure everything had attached and settled in place correctly. She had Liz test her range of motion, in her shoulder but also bending her elbow and using her hand — which was uncomfortable, the joint stiff, trying to move it making the whole area burn with a low, hot pain (sort of like the ache after a really hard work-out). There would be an occasional flash of a more sharp, stabbing feeling, Liz wincing, her shoulder was very not happy rolling up and to the right, but after a couple minutes looking it over Côté decided everything was looking okay, had Liz lay back down again.
The process of Côté spreading more healing and pain potions over the wound — a patch on the upper-left quarter of her chest still looking all red and mangled, had started bleeding from multiple places already — was uncomfortable, yes, but compared to the extreme unpleasantness of examining her hip or the pain of unwrapping and testing her shoulder, it wasn't really that bad. Enough she managed to actually calm down a little by the time Côté was done. Her left arm was kept free, Côté repeated her directions about not actually using it for anything serious, she'd need to get the bandage looked at before bed — though, Liz would be staying here for at least another night, so she wouldn't have to force herself to make the trip to the Hospital Wing for that.
Unfortunately, Côté couldn't give her a large enough dose to entirely clear the light magic toxicity without poisoning her — this was the largest dose she felt comfortable giving her, but she had to be very sure to eat something as soon as she was out of her bath. The potion hit like gulping down a cold drink, relief seeping from her stomach outward, the unpleasant warmth lessening somewhat. More important, the dizziness was significantly better, Liz was far more confident in her ability to limp her way into the bloody bath now. And that was everything Côté had on her list, unless Liz had any other concerns. No, no, she just wanted to get the fuck out of bed already...er, actually a hand up would be nice, not having full use of her right hip or left shoulder was bloody awkward...
Liz had never used a cane before, Côté gave her tips, watched her take her first few unsteady steps toward the bathroom before her attention slid away, repacking her cart. Her progress was slow, grimacing with pain each time she put weight on her right foot — leaning some of her weight on the cane helped, but it didn't completely solve the problem. Gradually, step by step, she learned how to lean into it, to turn off her foot in a way that prevented the worst of it. (She'd have to work out the stiffness eventually, of course, but she had to wait until it wasn't so tender first.) By the time she made it into the bathroom, yanking the door closed behind her with her left hand, each step still fucking hurt, her right hand tight and shaking on the head of the cane and her breath hot in her throat, sweat beading on her forehead and her neck, but she was moving, at least.
(She really did hate feeling trapped.)
Like a smart person, Liz had remembered to bring her wand with her, but she'd forgotten to ask about clothes — thankfully, there was a neatly-folded pile sitting on the counter next to the sink. She limped her way over there — impatiently, frustratingly slow even in such a small room — to see what they'd set out for her. Oh, these were actually hers, they must have gotten one of the Hogwarts elves to go through her things, or just asked Nilanse. Knickers, the feel of the muggle-made cotton instinctively unpleasant — if anything, phasing out other things she was sensitive to was just making the vaguely sharp, prickly feeling more obvious — but she hadn't worked up to dealing with that yet. There were long stockings, magically-raised wool, only come in by owl-order earlier this week — the muggle-made leggings Hermione had gotten her were mostly cotton, she'd had to stop wearing them. A long-sleeved button-up blouse, silk, Potter red stitched with yellow along the hems, which was completely unfamiliar to her — she suspected Nilanse must have gone back to Clyde Rock to find it — a bit looser and thinner than she'd normally wear without an undershirt (and there didn't seem to be one here), but Liz guessed they had to make space for her bandages. At least there was a fuzzy wool jumper (the same one Tracey's mum made for her ages ago) she could wear over it if she felt she had to. There was also a scarf here (one of her silky muggle fashion ones), so yeah, they'd definitely asked Nilanse to get clothes for her, some random Hogwarts elf wouldn't have thought of that.
It took a moment — standing there breathing, most of her weight on her left foot, the hand on the cane wavering a little — for Liz to breathe through enough of the discomfort lingering from the examination to reach for the knots of the gown. Opening up the collar and undoing the rest down to her waist — there was one at hip- and another at thigh- level, but she was pretty sure she wouldn't need to undo them — she wavered for a few seconds, the thing hanging off her, trying to figure out how to do this without hurting herself. Okay, how about— She backed up to the sink counter, and managed to lean her way up onto it, reaching her right hand over to pull on the faucet to make sure her weight was fully up. Getting it off her left shoulder hurt, Liz gritting her teeth, but it wasn't that bad. Once the gown was down around her waist, she wiggled up to the edge of the counter, her right hand braced on the lip, and hopped down to her left foot — gravity did its job, the gown sliding right off her down to the floor. Right, that hadn't been too bad.
She just cheated getting on and off the toilet, using featherweight charms. She shouldn't do that all of the time, not putting any weight on her hip would lengthen her recovery time (and maybe make things not grow in right), but trying to do this with only one working hip and one working arm just seemed too hard. Luckily, the bathtub was raised enough that she could just tip over and ease herself onto the rim, where she could easily reach over to fiddle with the water faucet.
While she was trying to get the temperature right — it was hard to tell how warm it even was, the light magic toxicity fucking with her — the cane, leaning against the edge of the tub, slid over and clattered to the ground. Liz turned back to lean over the rim, staring down at the thing on the floor, all the way down there...
It took her a moment to remember she could cast a wandless summoning charm, she could get that back when she needed it. Right. She was maybe slightly delirious, she should have thought of that immediately...
It'd barely been a week since she'd met up with Tamsyn, she hadn't had much time to start trying to apply her advice. She had already started having baths instead of showers, when she had the time for it — she'd snuck out to the muggle world to get some candles, because fire was pretty and fiddling about lighting them with wandless magic was a good distraction, and tested to make sure she knew a water-proofing charm good enough to protect a book before, just, trying that. It was extremely awkward at first, tense and uncomfortable, but she made it through. And the second time was easier than the first. She'd ordered some more bath stuff — in particular, there were hair treatment potions you kind of had to soak in for a while, so couldn't really be used in the shower, might be worth trying — but they hadn't come in yet. Well, they probably had now, but not before the Champions had to leave ahead of the Task, anyway.
Besides the bath part, she'd also started trying, just, she spent a bit of time alone in her room working on her Competency stuff as a matter of routine, and just being naked for that — but she tended to be, kind of, jittery and nervous, couldn't concentrate on her stuff very well, so got dressed again before too long.
It was kind of frustrating and seriously uncomfortable, Liz spent a fair bit of time this last week feeling inexplicably on edge. If someone thought to ask her about it — which they wouldn't, because only Tamsyn even knew — she might not have said she was making any progress. But then, she wouldn't really expect to have yet, Tamsyn had said it could take a long time and it'd only been a week and a half. Maybe she was a little loopy from all the potions and shite she was on, maybe she was already feeling on edge from being injured (especially since she was having trouble moving around, all slow and shite), but this bath was super easy, actually. She'd hardly been bothered undressing — focussing on it as a problem to be solved, working around her injuries — and sinking into the tub was just a relief, tension shivering out of muscles strained by all the awkward shite she had to do to move around without hurting herself, dull aches scattered all over her body slowly loosening in the warmth.
Once the water level seemed high enough, Liz shut the faucet off with a couple wandless flicks of her fingers, and just lay there, letting the warmth of the water seep into her — despite that she'd already felt flushed and feverish, but light magic toxicity was really confusing for her sense of temperature, not worth thinking about that hard. She didn't float, exactly, too dense for that, but her weight was reduced enough that it wasn't too uncomfortable to prop her head on the rim and just...
Liz didn't like being in hospital. Honestly, the boredom was a big part of the problem in previous visits — though she could always get books or homework brought up to her, so a manageable part, at least. She fucking hated medical exams, like a lot. The charms were uncomfortable, and it usually involved people touching her, while insufficiently dressed, ugh, hated it. She had no idea whether she'd have been able to get through the one just now if she'd been at a hundred per cent. Both light and dark magic toxicity tended to make people a bit delirious, and who knew what potions she was on, and pain could also make you kind of silly, who knows...
(She was going to stop thinking about that, because remembering Côté poking around her hip was making her deeply uncomfortable.)
So, given how much she hated being in hospital, it was maybe kind of silly how much she was getting into duelling? Tossing battlemagic at each other did tend to result in injuries — sometimes pretty serious ones, even. That was less common at her level, but it did happen (as her current circumstances proved), and it only became more common in more professional settings with older mages. A lot of younger teenagers simply didn't have the power to effectively cast serious battlemagic, after all. As she got further into it, and ran into more experienced duellists who were just better than her, serious injuries resulting in hospital stays were going to become more common.
Which, considering how much she hated being in hospital, one might think that thought would be somewhat discouraging — it really wasn't though. The point of all the banned classes of spells was to exclude things that couldn't be reliably healed, so the chances of being permanently disabled were almost zero. (The likelihood of dying due to a failure of the safety wards was higher, and even that had only ever happened a tiny handful of times.) People had been refining healing magic for literally thousands of years, after all, they'd gotten quite good at it. As uncomfortable as the process could be at times, the recovery period was always much shorter than it'd be for muggles, and the long-term consequences were basically zero, which was really very neat when she thought about it. Like, Liz wasn't an expert, but she was pretty sure the injury to her hip would have resulted in a months-long hospital stay for a muggle, and probably never fully recover...
It was just fun, though. She couldn't even explain why, exactly, there was just something about it. The magic was complicated and varied, interesting to learn about and practice and stuff, and also just felt good to do — more powerful magic often did, battlemagic simply tended to have high power requirements, due to what was effectively a slow arms race proceeding over millennia, and channelling magic was exhilarating. And winning felt great, of course, though she couldn't really explain why that was either. Even just almost winning, when she'd thought she'd had Artèmi for a second there...
Being in hospital sucked, yes, but as miserable as it was to be hurt and stuck in one spot with nosey healers and not allowed to escape to her own room — and sometimes to even be immobile, difficult to do anything under her own power — it wasn't nearly enough to really turn her off. Especially since serious hospital stays didn't happen that often. She just enjoyed duelling too much for occasionally being sent to the hospital to seem like that big of a deal.
Which she realised was maybe slightly mad, but Liz was slightly mad, so.
She was distracted enough thinking about all that, that it took her a moment to realise that she'd somehow managed to relax — not perfectly comfortable, of course, her injuries still aching, the burns left on her back she'd been told about unhappy to be in warm water, still feeling a bit feverish and dizzy from the light magic toxicity. The thought occurred to her that, as odd as it was under the circumstances, she didn't know if she'd ever felt this at ease without any clothes on. She didn't know how she felt about that.
Of course, thinking about the fact that she was naked at the moment quickly started to make her feel vaguely nervous — did she remember to lock the door on her way in? — so maybe she should just get on with the washing up part already...
Liz carefully push-pulled herself up onto the rim when she was done, but before starting to drain the tub, the water helping to take some of her weight. Of course, that meant she was kind of dripping all over the floor, but that wasn't a big deal, she'd just hit it with a drying charm. Speaking of drying charms, there were towels in here, but doing that by hand while she didn't have full use of one arm and couldn't even stand up properly seemed like it'd be a fucking pain — so she summoned her wand to herself, and carefully layered multiple charms to dry herself off instead. Her hair poofed up into a terrible mess, of course, even trying to be careful about it, but it wasn't like she would be leaving the recovery area today anyway, it didn't matter.
A quick drying charm at the floor, and Liz gently tipped down onto her left foot. Passing her wand to her left hand, she summoned the cane up with a crook of a finger, catching it before it could fall again, limped her way toward the counter. Despite herself, she snorted in amusement at her own appearance in the mirror — her hair was such a mess, a waving jagged asymmetrical cloud around her head and shoulders, peeking out from behind her back, ridiculous.
Getting dressed was a bit of an ordeal. Since she couldn't put her full weight on her right foot, putting on pants the normal way was just impossible. She pulled herself up onto the counter instead, bringing her feet up into reach — gritting her teeth against the sharp flares of pain in her hip — so she could get the bloody thing around her ankles, pulled them up with her left hand as far as she could while sitting down. Then she tipped down to the ground again, leaning onto one foot, so she could use both hands to pull her pants properly into place.
Once she had them on, she spent like thirty seconds just leaning against the counter heavily breathing, her injuries throbbing with her heartbeat, sweat prickling at her forehead and her neck. That was way harder than it really should have been.
The rest of it was easier, thankfully. With one shoulder annoyingly stiff and painful, getting the shirt on was unpleasant, but she grit her teeth through it without too much trouble. Like an idiot, she almost just stepped into the skirt like normal before a hard stab from her hip reminded her that was a bad idea — sudden and bad enough Liz actually let out some kind of noise, again hitched against the counter trying to catch her breath for a moment. She had to repeat the trick from doing her pants, leaning up onto the counter, pulling it up over her knees, and then standing again so she could pull it up the rest of the way. Her painful shoulder also made wrapping her scarf around her neck and up over her head, to keep her hair back out of the way, rather more difficult and unpleasant than it needed to be, but she managed that without too much trouble.
For a moment, Liz just glared at the jumper. Did she really need that? On the one hand, this blouse was a little flimsy to be wearing on its own, but on the other, nobody else was going to be around anyway...and getting the bloody thing on was going to hurt...and she did already feel plenty warm, at least...
She'd bring it with her — if she started getting cold enough to notice she could just put it on later. Liz folded the jumper over her left arm, glanced around the bathroom quick to make sure she wasn't forgetting anything (double-checking her wand holster at her wrist to make sure she'd put it back), before limping toward the door out. In fact, she hadn't locked it, which kind of made her squirm in retrospect, but whatever, it wasn't like anyone had actually tried to come in. She paused at the bedside table for a moment to put on her mother's necklace and Severus's anti-tracking ring — and also to give her cane-hand a rest, catching her breath for a moment — before continuing on to the only other door, and through it into the main room of the recovery area.
It was, as she'd expected, empty. The common room — sofas and armchairs and little side tables and coffee tables, the furniture and the carpets and tapestries hiding the walls mostly all done in white and a light orangish-brown, a little bit of black here and there — was much the same as she remembered, with the sole exception that she was the only person here. Of course, between the three Champions competing the first day she'd been the only one seriously injured, so that wasn't really a surprise — presumably Artèmi and Ingrid were watching the senior tournament with everyone else. There was one of Babbling's displays here, but they were between matches at the moment, a couple of people visible, must be straightening up the field after the previous match, one of them evening out the chalk circle...
The long table that had had food all over it after the First Task was mostly empty — there was a pitcher of water there, and that was it. Some water was probably a good idea, since she had been unconscious for nearly twenty-four hours. She started limping that way, gritting her teeth against the dull pain in her hip, the strain on her right wrist. Trying to walk with a glass of water would probably be a bad idea, but she could just float it over to one of the side tables and then walk over there...one of the ones near the fireplace sounded like a good idea, bad angle on the display, though...
Pop!
Liz lurched in surprise at the noise, a smooth shiny house-elf mind suddenly appearing a few feet away — accidentally putting too much weight on her hip. The flash of sharp pain nearly had her toppling over, but she managed to hitch up against a sofa instead, dull heat radiating through her lower-right side, hissing curses through grit teeth.
"Oh! Is Miss Liz being hurt? Tanly can be getting Mistress Évelyne?"
"I'm fine, you just startled me." She'd thought she was alone, the bloody popping... Blinking her eyes open, there was a familiar elf standing nearby — a young man (wrinkleless face and disproportionately large ears) with big glittering green eyes. Tanly was in the kitchen staff, Liz had come across him a few times in the past. "Can you tell if I'm sitting down or standing up before you pop in?"
His head tilted, making the oversized ears flap a little, odd sharp sparkly elf feelings sizzling in the air. Confusion, Liz was pretty sure, but elf minds could be hard to read. "...Tanly can guess?"
...He meant, whatever he could sense from a place before going there wasn't enough to reliably tell what she was doing. Right. "Okay, I'd prefer it if you didn't surprise me when I'm trying to walk. Kind of difficult at the moment."
"Tanly will remember," he said with a sheepish sort of nod. "Tanly was coming to say, we is making lunch for Miss Liz, but Miss Liz is needing her own things, so it is being some time." If they'd already started, Côté must have tipped them off that she was awake and would be needing to eat.
Tamsyn's advice about desensitising herself was a bit of a pain, but arranging food she could eat without psychometrically poisoning herself had just been a plain good idea. After getting back from her meeting with Tamsyn she'd gone down to the kitchens, after asking around had found herself talking to Nadsy, one of the senior elves on the kitchen staff. (There were a few, but Liz usually talked to Nadsy.) They'd discussed the problem for a little bit, and then Nadsy had called Ros — the chief elf at Hogwarts, an older woman with a surprisingly severe, imposing sort of bearing (relatively speaking, by elf standards) — and Liz had called Nilanse, who'd called Cediny, so they could talk logistics.
Hogwarts raised some of its own food, either things the elves managed here or produced on lands that were held by the institution of the school, but also had numerous contracts with various people to supply the majority of what they needed — the volume of food necessary to feed a castle full of a few hundred children was kind of ridiculous, keeping up a steady supply was actually extremely complicated, they had shipments coming in pretty much constantly. Nilanse was familiar with the suppliers Liz actually liked, and had done some research on her own time into people who actually made an effort to make psychometrically-pleasant food for Seers and the like — which had been news to Liz, she hadn't said anything about it — and Ros was familiar with the school's contracts, so they could figure out where the two groups overlapped. Where they didn't, Liz could either pay the school to buy the things she needed, or simply allow an informal arrangement between the Hogwarts elves and the Potter elves to figure it out themselves. The advantage of the former was that the kitchens allocated a small fund for special things for each student, just in case, and where Liz's food went over that amount it would be paid for from the Potter accounts, but would require official paperwork; the advantage of the latter was that it was a verbal agreement they could adjust at any time, but Liz would have to pay for everything.
But Liz was filthy rich, so that wasn't a big deal — they went with the verbal agreement. (There was a small fee for people who had special diets, Severus had had to sign a release, but that was it.) They had a system worked out, though it'd only just started being properly implemented, only a couple days before she'd left for the Task anyway. Nilanse explained how the whole thing went once they'd worked it out. Twice a week, Nilanse would go down to the kitchens, where she'd plan out Liz's meals over the next few days with whoever's job it was at the moment (just breakfast and dinner, she didn't consistently eat lunch); they'd make up a shopping list, Nilanse would tally it up in a book of suppliers and their prices she'd worked up — she'd actually shown Liz the book, Nilanse's handwriting narrow and cramped and sharply angular; she'd bring the totals for each supplier to Cediny, who would either arrange a trade or withdraw the necessary funds, depending on the House's relationship to each supplier; Nilanse would pop around the country to pick everything up, and bring it straight to the Hogwarts kitchens, where it'd be stored away in its own cabinet until it was needed. There were still a couple kinks to work out, but it sounded like the first shopping trip had gone smoothly enough. Seemed like doing two a week was a bit much, but Cediny said they'd be able to make sure the herbs and the very few fruits and vegetables Liz would actually eat would be fresh, which, she guessed that made sense...
The whole time they were working it out, Liz had felt unreasonably fidgety, had to resist the urge to tell them to forget about it. She didn't know, the elves going so out of their way for her just made her feel...something. But, Severus was constantly saying she was allowed to ask that considerations be made for her mental health, and that's basically what this was, so...
(Still made her uncomfortable, it seemed like too much somehow.)
Of course, the other downside was that she couldn't just get her food whenever on short notice, the elves needed warning to actually make it. The elves had ways to cheat with magic to make things quicker than it would take Liz — it wouldn't take ages, just, longer than if Liz asked for whatever random thing they had available in the kitchens at the moment. "Good, thanks. Can I get some coffee?"
Shrinking, his head dipping and his shoulders pulling up a little, Tanly said, "Tanly is sorry, no. Mistress Évelyne says it is being bad for the potions Miss Liz is taking."
...Well, shite. Fine. "Never mind. I'm fine then, I guess."
Once Tanly was gone, Liz limped over to the table, poured a glass of water and took a couple big gulps, before refilling it and levitating it over to a side table next to one of the armchairs by the fire. By the time she got to the chair the stiff whatever in her hip was burning, the ache increasing with each step into something that was starting to remind her of those times she pulled a muscle really badly in her leg — she suspected the half-healed shite in here really hadn't liked Liz accidentally stepping on her right foot when Tanly surprised her. Getting down into the chair was awkward, needing to avoid putting too much weight on her right foot or her left arm, but she managed it, relaxing into the cushions with such strong relief her hands were shaking, fuck...
(Duelling was great, but being injured really did fucking suck sometimes.)
Liz took a moment to settle in, take another drink of water. Despite how warm and feverish she already felt (stupid light magic), choosing this chair had been a good idea, the fire actually felt really nice. Wasn't going to need her jumper, though, she just left that hanging over the armrest. Anyway, once her hands had stopped shaking and she didn't think she'd look quite so injured and pathetic, she called, "Nilanse?"
There was a brief pause, and then the excitable little red-eyed elf appeared in front of Liz's chair with the usual sharp pop. "Hello, Liz! Are you feeling better? Healer Évelyne said earlier that the soul poisoning might be a problem still."
"I'm awake now, at least. The light magic toxicity isn't that bad, honestly, my hip is way worse — walking is hard right now."
Her mind going all dark and cool and shimmery, Nilanse's brow wrinkled as her eyes narrowed a little, frowning. "That is not a surprise. Your leg was almost blown off with that last curse."
...Well, when she put it that way, it was fucking obvious that walking would suck for a while, wasn't it. It was pretty easy for healers to reattach limbs, if they got to it quickly enough (and they would have in this case), but still, Liz hadn't thought of it like that. She was a little unnerved in retrospect now. "Right, ah. I'm going to be stuck here for the rest of the day, so I was wondering if you could bring my book bag? And a little potion phial."
"For the memories?" Nilanse guessed. Liz had gotten into a habit of sharing duelling memories with Nilanse, in the pensieve, she might as well copy them now before it slipped her mind. "I can do that. I'll be back in a minute." A snap of her fingers and a pop! and Nilanse was gone.
She wasn't gone for very long, though, probably less than a minute later she reappeared again. Liz's bookbag was set down next to her chair, and Nilanse handed Liz the potion bottle — copying memories was pretty fiddly magic, in took a couple tries for Liz to fight through the light magic toxicity and get the bloody thing to work, but she managed it after a few minutes. She couldn't be entirely certain that they'd actually work until she checked in the pensieve later, but it was probably fine. Once Liz capped and handed off the bottle, Nilanse disappeared again.
Somewhat to Liz's surprise, Nilanse was back almost immediately. Not for any particular reason or anything, she climbed up to sit on one of the arms of the other chair by the fire, legs folded up and hands gripping her heels, rocking back and forth seemingly in an effort to contain the irrepressible energy typical of house-elves. Nilanse wanted to talk about the tournament which, fine, Liz guessed — it wasn't like she could go through the memories with Nilanse just now anyway.
They were a few minutes in when Liz belatedly realised that Nilanse had decided to keep her company just because, since she was alone in here. She really could be terribly slow on the uptake sometimes. That was nice of her, Liz guessed, but not really necessary...
Nilanse had put her paired notebooks in here — they should have been at a certain spot on the bookshelf, she must have guessed Liz might want to check them. She had three paired notebooks now: the one Rita gave her and then two she'd made herself, one paired with Tamsyn and the other with Hermione. Not that she'd been planning on making one for Hermione so soon, since they were both at school anyway — before summer, sure, there was still time for that — but Liz had mentioned that she'd made one for her French penfriend so they didn't have to keep sending slow letters back and forth, and Hermione thought the magic was very cool. Which, to be fair, it was. Liz had actually made that pair with Hermione, showing her how it worked. They hadn't used it much yet, since they were both at school, but Liz guessed she'd gotten that project out of the way early.
Some of the other kids in their study group wanted some now too, especially the muggleborns — which made sense when she thought about it, since too many owls hanging around muggle neighbourhoods might draw attention. Sophie had asked if it was possible to make several books all bound to each other, and Liz didn't see why not? Theoretically you'd just use the same key glyph and you could sync as many books as you wanted, so. The muggleborn girls all wanted a book tying them all together, so they could chat over the summer — Liz was partway through the enchanting on that, with a little help from Hermione — and there was a short list of paired books people had asked for too. Hopefully, after working on the group books with her Hermione would be able to make them alone, so Liz wouldn't have to do them all herself — it wasn't a kind of magic Hermione had much practice with, though, so they'd see.
Anyway, while chatting with Nilanse, Liz checked her paired books to see if anyone had written her. Rita said the piece about the event — which she wasn't writing this time — was probably going to include some speculation about her rather vicious duel with Delacour, Liz might end up needing to put out a statement to clarify whatever racist nonsense they came up with. Yeah, Rita was starting to get a pretty good sense of her politics at this point, that was a good fucking guess. Sighing to herself, Liz summoned up a pen, scrawled out something about how she'd get back to Rita about that later — she was still in hospital at the moment, so, when she had the attention for it.
Tamsyn had also written to her, just making a joke about getting her arse kicked, but also a sarcastic comment about not knowing when to stay down — Liz was pretty sure that was actually a compliment, that she'd kept trying to fight even after it was obvious she was fucked and her shoulder was hit pretty badly. Sometimes you had to read between the lines with Tamsyn. Unlike Rita's note, that didn't need a response right away. Hermione's message was a bit more pressing, though:
Please write to me when you see this, Liz. That last curse looked nasty, there was a lot of blood. I think the iliac vessels must have been damaged? Some of us were panicking a bit — that injury could very easily be fatal with only muggle medicine — Tracey tried to reassure us that that should be easily fixed. But none of us know that much about magical healing, and I'm sure you're aware how irrational worry can be. There really was so much blood, it was scary.
The healers won't tell us anything. Honestly, Sally-Anne could probably use one of your calming potions. I really can't overstate how bloody it was.
Nilanse came to find me — she saw your book glowing, and assumed I was worried. (I expect the glow is something only elves can see, because I didn't know they did that.) The healers have told her that you're not in critical condition anymore, but that you're in a healing trance, and will likely be in hospital for a few days. That does help — Nilanse really is very sweet sometimes — but we are still worried. Please write back to me as soon as you see this.
Honestly, it hadn't occurred to Liz that her friends would be that worried. It often didn't occur to her that people might give a damn what happened to her in general — she knew she had friends and stuff who cared about her now (and Severus), but it wasn't really something she felt, instinctively, if that made sense — or what that would have looked like to watch. Liz didn't remember getting the wound to her hip at all (must have passed out immediately), and, she knew how safe duelling was, in large part because of how very good magical healing was. But, her friends didn't follow this stuff that closely, wouldn't have read up on the emergency stasis wards and stuff, and... Yeah, she guessed if her being knocked out was especially bloody, it made sense if they'd kind of freaked out a little. Especially the muggleborns, who weren't quite as used to the way magic could be sometimes.
Liz had once had her spine broken, in the muggle world she would have been paralysed for the rest of her life, but it'd been fixed overnight — she was used to healing magic doing mad shite sometimes. Sally-Anne, not so much.
"Thanks for checking in with Hermione," Liz said to Nilanse, as she tried to figure out what to say. "Sounds like they needed it."
"You're welcome, Liz, it was no problem. One of the elves here told me where she was." Nilanse was bound to Liz, so she could find her wherever, but finding other people was a lot more unreliable — especially in Hogwarts, the wards had anti-tracking spells and the like. Their connection kind of went under the wards, so Nilanse could still find Liz, but as long as Hermione was in the castle she was invisible to her...but the Hogwarts elves could still find her, because they were bound to the wards, so they could see everything the wards could.
(Elf magic really was very neat sometimes.)
After a bit of wavering — Liz never knew how to deal with concern, it was weird — she wrote, I'm awake. I'm out of bed and even had a bath and everything, but I'm going to be stuck here for a day or two, maybe.
A response started coming in a couple minutes later, while Liz and Nilanse were talking about the different funny ways human and elf magic interacted — though a lot of it Nilanse couldn't explain, just instinctive things she hadn't exactly studied. The letters appeared as Hermione wrote them (because magic was neat), Liz noticing partway through. Oh good, I was worried. I'll tell the others. How are you feeling?
Fine, more or less. Still a bit feverish from light magic toxicity, and trying to walk fucking sucks — healing magic makes things really stiff and sore, you know. I'll have to use a cane until the stuff in my hip finishes healing up and loosening out. It's annoying, but I'll be fine.
T̶h̶a̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶n̶,̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶,̶ ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶c̶e̶r̶t̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶m̶i̶s̶e̶r̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶
Maybe these books weren't a great idea — sometimes I miss the ability to revise my letters before sending them.
Liz snorted. "You know, Hermione is very silly sometimes."
Her head bobbing, Nilanse said, "She is a good sort, but her thoughts are very fast and loud, and she lets herself get carried away without pausing to think things through."
...That was really perceptive, actually. Not that Liz should be surprised, Nilanse was a clever little shite. "And you can't even read her mind, it's really busy in there. I have no idea how she ever focusses on anything, ever." I say stupid shite no matter how many tries I have to fix it, so I lose nothing. "You know, I've been thinking of adopting her."
Nilanse's bright over-large eyes blinked, and then blinked again. "Really?"
"Yeah. Don't say anything, I haven't mentioned it to her yet." Liz realised a second after she said it that that she'd unthinkingly said that in the imperative (or what would be the imperative in French or Latin), so, for stupid reasons, Nilanse was now magically obligated to do what she said. Oops. She tried to avoid doing that, phrasing things as requests or preferences, but she slipped sometimes... Oh well, it was a little thing, probably wouldn't make any difference. "I, um, well, I'm super gay, and have absolutely no business having children ever—" She would definitely fuck them up. "—so I was thinking of adopting Hermione and passing everything down to her kids. And, being a muggleborn can kind of suck in this country, so, it's not just so nosey noble types get off my back about continuing the family or whatever, it's also good for her, you know."
Liz was a little concerned that Nilanse wouldn't be happy about that idea. She was the last Potter, after all — the elves were part of the family too, it was important to them. But Nilanse straightened in her not-seat, tense, almost vibrating in place, her mind bright and sparking, a grin spreading across her face. "That's a great idea! Hermione's nice, and clever, she'll make a good Potter."
"Yeah. I might adopt some of my other muggleborn friends too, but, it depends on how it goes. Definitely going to start with Hermione."
"Good, that is good — the House has been so few for so long, the more people the better." They were less likely to die out and be absorbed by a closely-related family if there were more of them, she meant. Probably especially important for the elves, really, since apparently the Potter elves actually had it relatively well by comparison, and that might change if they ended up being brought into another family. The brilliant glassy colours of her mind dimming a little, Nilanse hesitated for a second. "Some of the older elves will be disappointed, I'm thinking, if you're not to have children yourself. But, so long as there are to be children in the House, they will come to be happy, in time."
Oh, well, disappointed was less than ideal, she guessed, but Nilanse knew the elves of the House way better than Liz did, and she didn't seem that concerned, so. "That's good. I'm not making problems on purpose, you know, just... I am the way I am, and I can't help that. At first the idea to adopt muggleborns was just so people wouldn't bother me about marrying so much, when that starts being a problem in a couple years, but, I am trying to do the right thing. For you and the rest of the elves, you know. I'm not having children myself, but I can still make sure the House survives, and that you lot are going to be okay."
It could be her imagination, but she thought Nilanse might be a little taken aback that Liz had given any thought at all to doing the right thing by the elves. Which was a little silly, she was technically legally responsible for them — she might be a mess, but she wasn't that thoughtless...
(Of course, they had kind of been an afterthought, the implications for them only occurring to her after she'd already settled on the plan of adopting muggleborns anyway, but she still wasn't used to this bloody noble lady shite, she was trying, okay.)
Her lunch turned up around then. The kitchen elves had made her a lentil soup with chicken and carrots and smelling very obviously of parsley and black pepper, with a few bits of bread spread with some kind of soft cheese stuff — lentil soup wasn't her favourite, but she guessed that was fine. There was also a little bowl of fruit, mostly berries, which, um... Well, as long as they weren't overly sweet, they'd probably be edible, they'd have to see if Liz bothered eating them at all. The tray also included her nutrient potion — which was definitely a good idea, since her body would be running low on things stored away due to the healing — as well as a slightly steaming mug of something. She wasn't supposed to have coffee, so, what was that?
Tanly explained it was a kind of spiced milk — stuff that went into a particular alcoholic drink, but without the liquor part. (They'd also left out the syrup, obviously.) It should taste somewhat similar to the spicey creamy thing Severus made for her sometimes, so, sure, she guessed she could try that, thanks. Except, she thought she was supposed to be having a heavy lunch, hadn't Côté said to eat as much as she comfortably could, to recover from the intense healing she'd gotten? This was relatively light, all things considered. Tanly explained that the more experienced elves were concerned the soul poisoning would make her sick if she ate too much — actually, she should be careful not to drink the spiced milk too quickly, in case the dairy upset her stomach. It was more important to get some food down, at least, and see how she tolerated it. If she kept her lunch down fine, then they could make something heavier later in the afternoon. Nilanse agreed that that was super reasonable, actually — she'd talked to her mother and a couple of the other older Potter elves about recovery from serious light magic toxicity when it became obvious this was going to be a regular problem for Liz, which was also news to her — the lentil soup had been planned ahead of time, and they had roast beef and cheesy potatoes and mushroom risotto ready to make over the rest of the afternoon and evening, if she was feeling up to it.
Right, okay, that all made sense, thanks. Côté could have said something about that, at least...
After trying it, Liz was kind of ambivalent about the soup, but the spiced milk was great, actually — she shouldn't be surprised, the kitchen elves really were very good at what they did.
The conversation was rather one-sided, Nilanse brightly babbling on while Liz ate. She hadn't really felt hungry a moment ago, but now that she actually had food, fucking hell, she was starving, barely had time to get a word in. Mostly, Nilanse was talking about how adopting people would actually work — more from the logistical and social angle, and how the elves would handle it. The properties they had sitting around were limited, and would quickly run dry if Liz adopted all her muggleborn friends and they all wanted their own household. Of course, they could just buy more, or build new homes on various bits of land they owned, it wasn't really a big deal. But Clyde Rock was fucking huge, there was no reason several families couldn't live there at once — they had in the past, back when there were a lot of Potters. And having everyone in one place was just more efficient, as far as supplying all the homes with the food and whatever else they needed. As they got a couple generations down the line, everyone fitting in Clyde Rock would increasingly become less manageable, but they wouldn't have to worry about that any time soon.
(Jesus, Liz didn't even want to think about her friends' great-grandchilden, that was fucking mad.)
Though, even if they did have enough properties for everyone to have their own household, Nilanse thought it was better for them not to — if people lived together, and their kids grew up together, they were more likely to be close and everything. There had been issues in the past when a house was split across multiple households that had little contact with each other, and they eventually developed different interests, so then you had internal conflicts in the house which could cause all kinds of problems, it was a mess. Liz had seen the results of something like that in the Yaxleys, where there were different factions in the House whose politics were so different they'd been on opposite sides of the war...and actually, something similar happening in the Longbottoms had resulted in the first Potter leaving to start his own family, so, yeah, that was a thing. Nilanse thought it would be especially important if they were basically starting a new House Potter by adopting a bunch of people in — they hadn't started in the same family, and would have different backgrounds and stuff, so them staying close was probably more important for long-term social cohesion than it was for logistical reasons. Which made a lot of sense, actually, that was a good point.
Liz was kind of surprised that Nilanse knew enough to think of all that, actually. Since, you know, it wasn't like house-elves got proper formal educations or anything. The Potter elves could read, which she was told was unusual in Britain, but Liz got the impression that most of them didn't use it very often — Tisme's handwriting was pretty clumsy and child-like, honestly, unpractised. Nilanse had always had a lot of interest in the family history — that she was born when the family was on the edge of dying out, the only remaining Potter being raised somewhere away from them, the future very uncertain, had probably had an effect on the attitude of the elves that might have influenced Nilanse growing up — and when her relatives had run out of stories to tell her she'd moved on to books. Liz had seen Nilanse with a book now and then, while they'd been living together in Ireland over the summer (kind of comically oversized for her), but she hadn't realised how serious she was about it — she claimed she'd gone through all of the history books in the library at Clyde Rock, and had been picking her way through anything else that interested her, occasionally going back to books she'd already read once as she grew up and might understand them better.
She'd even been sneaking some of Liz's history and politics books once she was done with them, she admitted, a little sheepishly. No reason to be awkward about that, it was fine, Liz didn't care if Nilanse was reading her books when she wasn't looking. Honestly, if Nilanse wanted more reading material she could just order more for her. Though, a lot of the good material Liz could get from the Continent was going to be in French — what, Nilanse was trying to teach herself to read French, what the fuck...
Liz couldn't just give Nilanse the ability to speak French — even if she knew how to do that, elf minds were shaped different, she might break something on accident — but there were potions out there to help speed up language acquisition. She didn't have to do it the slow way. Liz could look into it, see if there was a formulation for elves...
Around that time, Liz noticed she had another message from Hermione. Are they letting you have visitors? Sophie in particular will feel better if she can see you're all right with her own eyes. Please don't agree if you're not up to it at the moment.
Liz frowned, glancing at the door. She hadn't been told she wasn't allowed visitors. Just to be sure, she asked Nilanse, and no, she hadn't been told anything about that either. She hesitated a moment, before setting her book on her lunch tray so she could write, I haven't been told anything about not being allowed visitors. I'm not sure how great of company I'll be at the moment, light magic toxicity isn't fun. If you're worried I'm locked up here alone or something, I'm eating lunch and talking to Nilanse right now.
Nilanse seemed a little uncomfortable at the thought that Liz would buy new books for her, and look for a special formulation of those potions, but Liz was pretty sure it was just house-elf cultural programming stuff — the Hogwarts elves used to act so weird whenever Liz so much as thanked them, gradually tapering off as they realised she was just like that. (Which she did kind of get, honestly, it wasn't like Petunia had ever shown the slightest hint of gratitude for all the shite Liz had done around the house.) You'd think Nilanse would have gotten used to the idea that Liz was just like this by now, but Liz herself was occasionally taken aback at reminders that Severus or her friends actually gave a damn about her, so. Once she got over that moment of awkwardness, she was very enthusiastic about it — practically vibrating in place, the air around her sparking and jingling with magic, because elf — especially when Liz pointed out that it was a lot easier to find stuff in English on the muggle side, Nilanse knew practically nothing about muggle history after the Statute. How had Liz never realised how huge of a swot Nilanse was before now...
A response from Hermione appeared a couple minutes later. That's good, that you're not alone up there. I was going to ask if I should get some things from your room, but on reflection I suppose if you have your book Nilanse must have already done that. Obviously, Hermione, honestly. We would still like to visit, if that's alright.
Yeah, that's fine. Who all is coming up?
I'll ask, give me a minute.
"Some of my friends are coming up to visit," Liz said, setting her book aside. She'd mostly finished her lunch, she should probably do that before they showed up...and decide if it was worth feeling a bit overheated to be more covered up. This shirt really was kind of flimsy, and, Liz couldn't really tell she was lopsided, at least not very well, because of how she was slumped in the chair. (Moving deeper back into it would be awkward to do without straining her hip or shoulder, so she hadn't bothered.) Her friends mostly knew about her scars already anyway, though some of them still didn't know how bad it was, and while the thought of people seeing her like this did have an edge of anxiety niggling at the back of her mind, it wasn't really that bad, probably manageable...
"Oh, good. I will leave when they come, I'm thinking." Elves did have a whole not being seen thing — but also, Liz suspected Nilanse still wasn't super comfortable around humans yet. She had admitted that when Liz and Severus showed up at Clyde Rock was literally the first time she'd even seen a human in real life, so...
Liz was scooping up the last of her soup when Hermione started writing. Myself and Lily, Millicent, Sophie and Sally-Anne, and Tracey and Daphne. If that's alright.
...She wasn't sure if Hermione meant to ask if she would have a problem with that many people coming up, or with Daphne in particular. Both did sound kind of daunting, to be honest. But after a moment of hesitation, she wrote, That's fine. When are you coming?
We're leaving now. We should be there in about ten minutes.
Oh, well. Liz had kind of assumed they'd want to stay and watch the senior Champions' duelling tournament...but then, Liz wasn't really paying any attention to the display either. Watching duelling wasn't nearly as much fun as doing it, and it was missing the sound — if she couldn't hear it, she'd at least prefer there to be commentary, like when they broadcast duelling events on the radio. And she noticed their friends who were especially into duelling weren't on Hermione's list, so.
Liz quickly finished her lunch, and then laboriously got up and limped her way to the toilet. She didn't need to go that badly — she hadn't been eating or drinking anything for 24 hours, after all — but she'd rather get it out of the way before people showed up, so she didn't have to struggle to move around with her friends watching her. By the time she flopped back into the chair by the fire, her hip was burning again, Liz out of breath and her hands shaking, flushed and sweaty — fuck, walking was hard...
Nilanse had disappeared while Liz was in the bathroom, which wasn't a big surprise. Liz pulled a couple books out of her bag — she was partway through a novel and Peau noire, masques blancs, wasn't sure if she had the attention for the latter at the moment (some of the shite Tamsyn recommended to her was pretty heavy) — but before she could make up her mind the door clicked open. It wasn't one of her friends though, the guarded mind was unfamiliar, Liz turned toward the door and—
She blinked. That was a Hit Wizard, in the fancy glittery black and violet and gold uniforms the Wizengamot guard wore — complete with the actual bloody sword hanging at his hip. What the hell...?
"Lady Elizabeth," he said, dipping his head a little. "You have a number of visitors out in the hall."
"Yeah, er, I knew they were coming," lifting up the book paired with Hermione's. Though, she realised after the fact that that gesture was probably useless if he didn't already know what it was. She was a little too preoccupied with the fact that, "Are you standing guard outside the door?"
"Yes."
"...Why?"
A flutter in his mind, unreadably vague through the cool smooth shell of occlumency, the man gave her a flat look. "You are a Lady of the Wizengamot. There are many guests in the Valley at the moment."
...
Okay, then. She guessed that kind of made sense, when she thought about it — she was technically a government person, the purple-uniformed Hit Wizards were like a formal guard of honour, or the muggle Queen's Guard or something. They'd basically sworn their lives to protect the Wizengamot, it was a whole thing — as incomprehensible as it seemed to Liz to take the ridiculously fucked up and corrupt magical government so seriously — and that they might have security concerns with all the extra people around wasn't unreasonable. Just, it didn't generally occur to her that she was important enough of a person that someone in power somewhere (probably Susan's mum?) would think to post guards outside her hospital door, it was so surreal...
After he'd confirmed she was fine with her visitors coming in (and more to the point, already knew who they were), he went back out, and her friends were let in. She wasn't at all surprised when the Hufflepuffs were through first, Sophie sweeping into the room at the front, Sally-Anne not far behind — Liz grimaced at the unpleasant hot-cold sharp crackling of concern in Sophie's head, tried to pull a little away. Sophie quickly spotted her, rushed over to the fire...and then paused a couple of metres away, suddenly awkward. Her first impulse was to leap into a hug, but Liz generally didn't do hugging, and she was in a chair and Hermione had mentioned she was still injured, she kind of didn't know what she was supposed to do, a flash of memory in her head of being much younger and visiting a grandparent at a muggle hospital and feeling very out of place...
"I'm fine, Sophie, really." Abruptly, Liz remembered back last year, the first time Dorea had had a seizure, and Liz had kind of been freaking out...
WIthout really thinking about it, Liz held up a hand toward her. After a short hesitation Sophie took a few more steps closer and took it — between both of hers, gently, cautious, like she was worried she was going to somehow hurt Liz worse. Liz tried not to grimace against the tangled mess of feelings pummelling her even louder from the skin contact, flashes of thought and memory slipping past. Sophie's hands were really soft and nice, and warm, fuck, Liz must have been getting cold without realising it again. She caught that Sophie thought she seemed weak, even smaller than usual, somehow pale and flushed with a fever at the same time, and noticeably thinner, her hair more of a mess than usual making her look proportionately smaller, the memory of the end of the duel hanging behind her eyes, Liz's shoulder already mangled and blackened and bloody from an earlier curse, deflecting another right into her own hip, blowing a nasty hole into her, there was so much blood, burning bright in Sophie's eyes, she couldn't look away—
"I was never in any real danger," Liz said — putting a little bit of power on her voice, trying to make herself sound more convincing, for Sophie to believe it. (Tamsyn's trick with enthrallment, instead of directly compelling trying to put a feeling on her voice, but she had no idea how well it would work, Liz didn't have a lot of practice with it.) "It's not like how we grew up, where getting hurt really matters, the shite they can do to fix people up with magic is amazing. I broke my spine at that quidditch match last year, and Severus fixed it overnight. And there are special wards for duelling, if someone's badly hurt they're put in stasis so they'll live long enough for healers to get to it — if that last curse hit me straight on and shredded my heart, I would live. Though I'd be in stasis for a while, because it'd take like a week for them to grow a new heart from scratch." Which was something they could do despite blood alchemy being illegal in this country, she had no idea why the line was drawn where it was. Or why they couldn't just, say, chop off Moody's leg and grow a replacement. Some weird effects of curse damage, maybe — supposedly curse scars would just come back if they weren't properly isolated and cleansed, might be the same idea...
For a few seconds, Sophie just gaped at her, some of the storm in her head smoothed over with blank amazement. She'd known healing magic was better than medicine in some ways, but she didn't know that much about it, she didn't... "They can do that? Just, regrew whole organs?"
"Sure, they do it all the time — people's liver or kidneys and shite getting fucked up by badly-made potions is super common, they have several experts at Saint Mungo's that it's all they do. I get it probably looked scary, but it was just a game, the danger wasn't real. I'll be back to normal in a few days. Okay?"
Sophie's mind didn't really stop being a mess. The concern and the anxiety and the freaking-out-ness was mostly gone, gradually suffocated under Liz's subtle enthrallment and Sophie's own warm, soft relief, Liz could feel the tension going out of her. But there was something else, confusion and sharp frustration, almost bitter — more harsh and unpleasant than Liz hardly ever found in Sophie's head, as nice and sunny and Hufflepuff-ish as she usually was. Without really thinking, she followed the thought: it was sinking in just how incredible magical healing was, which, when you thought about it, was another reason why Secrecy was extremely fucked. Hell, Sophie personally had relatives who would definitely still be alive if they'd had access to magical medicine.
...Yeah, she wasn't wrong about that, Secrecy was fucked. It probably wouldn't help for Liz to point out that cancer (which killed her grandpa) was barely a nuisance to mages.
"Good. That's good, um." All the mixed up shite in her head was kind of a lot, really unpleasant to be in contact with — Liz reflexively started worming her hand out of Sophie's, she let go. Sophie was actually tearing up a little — which wasn't a surprise to Liz at all, if she was feeling all that at once she'd probably cry too — retreated a couple steps. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to— Ugh," she groaned, her hands flicking in front of her chest, as though trying to shake something off. "I need a minute, can someone..."
Sophie was a little embarrassed, but honestly Liz got it — this whole thing was reminding her a lot of that time Dorea had a seizure, honestly. She was a little surprised Sophie actually cared about her that much...but then, she guessed she probably shouldn't be, they did spend a lot of time together these days. Liz wasn't sure how it'd happened, but the dynamics in the study group had shifted in a way that resulted in Liz hanging out with Sophie, Sally-Anne, and Padma way more than she used to. Maybe Liz intentionally sitting away from Dorea and then Daphne had something to do with it, and there'd been a couple attempts at dating followed by break-ups in the group, recently Susan and Hannah had been kind of bad, and the effects of that...she didn't know...
The list of muggleborns she was considering adopting for her own reasons did include Sophie (and Sally-Anne), so finding out they were apparently closer than she'd realised wasn't really a bad thing. It was just an odd feeling was all.
Sally-Anne and Daphne crowded around Sophie, doing the whole soft huggy comforting thing — that part Liz didn't understand, when she was feeling overwhelmed she preferred space to collect herself — Hermione slipping in front of Liz's chair instead. "Hello, Liz. You do look a little feverish, I assume that's the light magic toxicity?"
"Mhmm. Nothing they can do about that, the potion breaks down into shite that'll poison you if you have too much, can only take so much at a time."
"Ah, interesting, muggle medicine has a similar problem sometimes." Hermione glanced around for a second, spotted the other armchair by the fire across from Liz's. She started dragging it closer, not very easy with the feet catching on the carpet, quickly gave up and used her wand instead.
While she was doing that — standing there awkwardly not meeting her eyes, shrinking into herself a little — Lily said, "Hello, Liz. I'm glad you're okay."
Not sure how she was supposed to respond to that, but thankfully Tracey took care of that for her. "For a certain definition of okay, at least." She sauntered up to half- lean against, half- sit on the arm of Liz's chair — the arms were wide enough that Tracey wasn't uncomfortably crowding her or anything, but looming over her like that was just a little awkward. Especially since Liz wasn't sure whether Tracey could see down the front of her shirt from that angle... "You know, the point of deflecting a curse is to turn it away."
Liz rolled her eyes. "Oh really, I'm not supposed to hit myself? Thanks, Tracey, never would have figured that out on my own."
"Nothing to feel embarrassed about, you can be thick like that sometimes — but you're welcome."
Lily felt somewhat horrified with Tracey mocking her for getting injured, which was very funny.
"Yes, yes, you're hilarious," Hermione said to Tracey, sounding rather exasperated. That was put on, though, she didn't feel exasperated — she didn't think the joke was not funny, if rather less funny than Tracey thought, but mostly she just thought that Liz and Tracey's friendship was vaguely adorable. She settled her chair with the arm only inches from Liz's, and flopped down to a seat, her bushy hair audibly floofing around her head. "One day you two are going to give someone— Oh, is that Fanon?" she asked, leaning forward to look more closely at one of the books set on the other arm of Liz's chair. Hermione's pronunciation of the name was obviously French, switching languages like she did sometimes.
"Yeah, Clara sent me her copies." That was what she called Tamsyn with her friends, a French girl she'd randomly come across visiting France over the summer she'd made up to explain who she was constantly trading letters with.
"Oh! I didn't think they would know about Fanon on the magical side, that's interesting. Is that the first one of his you've read? What do you think of it so far?"
"Well, I've barely started, honestly..."
The conversation went on that tangent for a while, which was just fine by Liz — she'd prefer not obsessing over her being injured right now, thanks. Unsurprisingly, Liz and Hermione were the only people in the room who'd ever heard of this book or the author before, Hermione had to explain that it was a politics thing, and not exactly mainstream. She actually ended up going on a rant about the politics of the end of the colonial period that probably wasn't necessary, ended up summarising herself by saying he was a muggle communalist. Liz didn't think that was quite accurate, but close enough to give the magic-raised people in the room an idea of what they were talking about, at least.
Apparently Hermione had first read this same book ages ago, when she'd still been too young to properly understand it. Her parents had some politics stuff in their library, but they had pretty much everything by Fanon — Daniel had been a child in France during the Algerian Revolution, and his mother had made a whole point about his father being half-Algerian and that the revolutionaries were definitely the good guys, so when he'd later come across Fanon's work in secondary school he'd been far more open to it than his (largely white) classmates. Hermione told a story of some incident that happened with Emma's side of the family when she was a child, which had been confusing, her parents later explaining that Emma's family was stupid about Daniel sometimes for racist reasons. (Which Liz still thought was weird, because you could barely tell, but racism wasn't exactly rational.) That had sent Hermione on a long reading binge about race and the history of colonialism and slavery and the Communist and decolonial revolutions of the 20th Century, which had included Fanon — a lot of that had been over her head at the time, of course, but that was where she'd first come across...well, a lot of stuff, honestly.
Hermione asked Liz how she'd ended up with his books — from 'Clara', yes, but why? So she explained about Narcissa kicking Deirdre and Emily under the bus, and how very angry she still was about it. She'd commented to 'Clara' that she didn't understand why Narcissa would do that, since she was a lesbian herself and everything — that she'd tried using a crystal ball to come up with answers, but nothing she'd gotten was useful, and it was really frustrating. 'Clara', bafflingly, had sent Liz her copies of Fanon. Which, Liz had no idea what the hell that was about, but she'd guess she'd find out as she read them...
There was a sharp click from Hermione's head: she knew why Tamsyn's response had just been to suggest she read Fanon. But she kept the reason back, away from Liz, thought it would be better if she figured it out for herself. Which was fair enough, she guessed.
(Liz suspected it might have something to do with the reasoning behind the title of the book, but that was just a guess at the moment, and didn't really explain why.)
The conversation moved on from there, mostly about politics and stuff. Which, as rather stiff and cold as the topic seemed to Sally-Anne and Lily to be talking about while essentially visiting Liz in hospital, she preferred it this way. There was only so much dealing with sympathy and reassuring people she was fine she could handle — she was pretty much tapped out of the emotional energy necessary after talking down Sophie. They moved a sofa closer, making a little triangle with Liz and Hermione's chairs. The openings at the corners were narrow enough that Liz would have trouble getting through in her current state, but if she had to she could just move the sofa out of the way with magic, it wasn't a big deal. It was only a two-seat sofa, Daphne and Sophie and Sally-Anne crammed very tight together — which looked uncomfortable to Liz, but she was aware that none of the three of them were particular about personal space — Tracey staying where she was at the arm of Liz's chair. After a bit sitting around chatting she kicked her feet up on the arm of the sofa, reclining against the back of the chair over Liz's shoulder — which continued to be a little awkward, but it was only Tracey. Lily did something similar on Hermione's chair, but sitting much more prim and contained, instead of sprawling all over like Tracey.
Liz abruptly remembered Katie reclining in a very similar position on the arm of her chair during the Task — a much smaller chair, they'd been far closer together than she was with Tracey now — and then she remembered Katie nearly kissing her in Kaunas. She tried to force herself to pay attention to the conversation, so she didn't get too distracted.
In retrospect, she kind of wished she'd let Katie kiss her, before going on to explain that she wasn't ready for anything at the moment. Just because. Katie was really attractive, okay, she was curious, couldn't help it...
(Oh well, she had a Seer-related suspicion she and Katie would end up dating at some point anyway, she guessed she could wait.)
The whole time, talking about Algeria and the colonial period (which was only somewhat familiar to the magic-raised people in the room) and Ireland, and how it was different from the situation with the Gaels on the magical side, and how fragile the politics of the country were at the moment, the whole time Liz could feel Daphne's attention on her. Not constantly, her eyes would slip away to whoever was talking at the moment, paying attention to the conversation, but they would intermittently come back. Trailing over Liz's arms or her legs (most of her body hidden from this angle), but the majority of the time lingering on her face. Just, watching her, thinking...
Liz tried not to, but she found herself occasionally glancing back her way too, she—
They hadn't talked in person, at all, since that night. Daphne had been around, of course, at meals or study group meetings or whatever. Even when they were in groups, they didn't really talk directly to each other, Liz stiff and awkward (guilty), Daphne sore and sad and concerned — because that girl was far too nice for her own good, Liz broke up with her and she still worried about her — and holding herself back on purpose, giving Liz space, because she'd been pretty clear about wanting that, and Liz didn't bloody well know what the fuck to say herself, and—
She sighed, rubbing at her face (ignoring thoughts from multiple minds wondering if she was getting tired and they should let her rest). This was fucking stupid.
"Could you girls give us a minute? Me and Daphne, I mean," she said to the general air of confusion.
Liz tried not to grimace at the reactions to that, a confusing mix of feelings crackling over her skin. The clearest thoughts were Tracey's (physically closest) — she guessed that Liz was going to try to patch up the awkwardness so they could go back to being friends again, so she just hopped off the arm of Liz's chair and walked off without a word. Lily followed pretty quickly, the Hufflepuffs packed into the sofa with Daphne tight enough that it took a moment to worm their way out. Sophie's mind was bubbling with excitement, all warm and... She thought Liz and Daphne might be getting back together, which was silly, but okay...
Hermione hesitated, lingering behind the rest of the group, glancing between Liz and Daphne. "You sure you're okay?"
Liz rolled her eyes. "Yes, Hermione, I'm fine. Go on, it'll only be a minute." With obvious reluctance — which was very silly, honestly, what did she think was going to happen? — Hermione slipped between her chair and the sofa, and went to join the rest of the group, standing waiting a short distance away. They were muttering to each other, very obviously speculating over what Liz wanted to talk to Daphne about. Tracey was extremely sceptical of Sophie's theory they were getting back together, openly calling her a silly girlish romantic, and what was wrong with that, really...
And so Liz was left by the fire alone with Daphne. Watching her, curiosity simmering on the air, stifling. After a brief second, she asked, "How have you been, Liz?"
Liz quick cast a privacy paling before answering. "Fine. Been taking a lot of days off to get through all the Tournament shite and everything, but."
"Yes, I've noticed." It was hard to tell if it was more or less often than last term, Daphne hadn't exactly kept a tally. She did keep any eye on Liz (concerned), but she tried not to be too intrusive about it. Liz looked a bit unnervingly thin at the moment, especially with her hair being a larger mess than usual, but Daphne hadn't noticed it getting especially bad before, that must be—
"That's from the healing, yeah." Liz felt attention on her, bright and sharp and eager. She followed it back to Sophie with the rest of the girls — Sophie twitched a little at being caught, focussed back on the conversation going on over there, her face going pink. "I talked to Clara about... I've been trying to put more effort into dealing with shite, you know? I've set up stuff with the elves to get more Seer-friendly food, and I'm trying to, you know, deal with...other problems." She didn't really want to talk about that night if she could help it. Daphne got what she was talking about anyway, so she didn't really have to make it explicit. "So, trying to do better, we'll see how that goes. How about you, what have I missed?"
Daphne could tell Liz was flailing to change the subject away from herself, but she decided to play along. "Oh, nothing much. Tori has been somewhat tedious recently — she's starting to get a little silly about boys these days, you know how it is."
"I don't know how that is, in fact."
The rather dumb gay joke got a surprisingly intense reaction from Daphne, mind blooming bright and warm and sunny — she was pleased Liz was trying to work on her issues and everything (and that Liz was actually talking to her), joking around like normal just helping the feeling slip louder into her aura. "Yes, well. I do wish I could be at home more, with the baby coming in a few months. I can't be there for the preparation, so much, but at least I'll be able to return home for the birth." It wasn't really spelled out in her thoughts, but Liz gathered there was some stuff Mistwalkers normally did in advance to welcoming a new addition to the family, making changes to the home and religious stuff and the family, just, hanging out together being all close and shite. Daphne had been too young to remember doing it when Ailbhe had been having Astoria, was maybe a little bitter over not being able to be home for it this time, felt like she was being left out of something important.
"Oh, you can talk about that now?" Liz had suspected before they broke up that Heli was already pregnant, but Mistwalkers had some superstition about not talking about it early on. "How that going?"
"Well enough." Daphne abruptly switched to Cambrian to say, "Mother Heli doesn't have the same difficulties Mother Ailbhe does."
A little bemused, Liz just blinked at Daphne for a second — Daphne didn't used to refer to Ailbhe and Heli like that. That was a little odd, but not really Liz's business, she guessed. "That's good." She took a breath to say something else, but didn't come up with anything, just, falling awkwardly silent. Trying to ignore how the other girls kept glancing at them, just making her more uncomfortably self-conscious...
A funny sort of warm-cold affectionate-amused-sadness wafting off of Daphne, she gave her a little soft smile. "I've missed you."
"...Yeah." Liz just stared back stupidly for a moment, before breaking her gaze, glancing over at the fire. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" Daphne, being the absurdly nice and forgiving person that she was, legitimately meant that question, she had no idea what Liz was apologising for.
"I wasn't ready. You know, for... I wanted to, I wanted to be able to, to, you know, just do a fucking normal person thing for once. I was being stupid, I should know by now that my Liz-is-fucked-up issues won't go away, just, pretending they're not there. I should never have done it in the first place."
Frowning to herself, uncertainty simmering in her head, Daphne said, "We talked about this already, Liz." And she wasn't sure how Liz would react to Daphne repeating her half of the conversation. She thought Liz blamed herself too much, that Daphne had been as responsible as Liz — it did take two, and Daphne had arguably started it. Niggling at the back of her mind unspoken, she couldn't help the worry that Liz beating herself up about it would make it even more difficult for Liz to open herself to love next time, that, in berating herself for not considering the harm she might do to herself, she was only doing further harm...
Liz sighed — yeah, there was no point in having that conversation again. The way Daphne thought about these things was simply too different. "It doesn't matter, I... I thought, if it got too much, I could just stop, and it would be fine. Honestly, at the time, it just...didn't occur to me how me being fucked up would affect you. Because I'm a shite person like that."
"I still wish you wouldn't talk about yourself that way." Daphne understood now, since Liz had done her best (without mentioning Valérie) to make it very clear, that she wasn't really a good person. It still made her uncomfortable anyway.
Despite herself, Liz snorted out a laugh, her lips twitching. "You're ridiculous, you know that? I admit my motivations going into our relationship were entirely self-centred and selfish, and you're still more concerned with my opinion of myself."
Daphne smiled, mind all sunny and pleasant again. "Yes, well. I can't help what I am any more than you can."
...Fair enough. "Anyway, I wanted to... This is stupid, this, not being friends thing. Can we, just...go back? To before."
There was a pause, Daphne hesitating. Not because she didn't want to go back to being friends like normal — naturally she did, despite Liz fucking it up, because she was too nice like that — but because she wasn't entirely certain what Liz was expecting. Their friendship going forward would be different than it'd been before, and there was nothing to be done about that — people were changed by their experiences, their relationships shaped by their experiences with each other, that was simply the way people worked. And, Daphne had no confidence in her own ability to keep her thoughts entirely platonic. Somewhat to Liz's surprise, she actually had zero interest in ever getting back together — Liz's rant over that charmed parchment about how she was a shite person, actually, had managed to get the message across, Daphne was rather strongly put off now, romantically-speaking — but none of their friends had any idea how terrible of a bloody pervert Daphne was, especially with their history, she would not be able to keep her thoughts entirely innocent around Liz...because apparently being an evil bitch didn't make Liz seem less physically attractive, which, okay then...
"That's fine. I mean, I know things won't be the same, and thoughts happen. I have pervy thoughts about our girl friends all the time, and I catch people thinking about me now and then already, it's fine."
"Oh good. Then yes, of course I would like to, I never wanted otherwise. It isn't..." Her mind dimming a little, like a cloud passing across the sun, Daphne hesitated for a second. "I have missed you."
"Yeah, I... I've missed you too." Liz had been trying to push it down the whole conversation, her chest tight and hot, but she could feel it on her voice that time — and it wasn't her imagination, Daphne could hear it too. Letting out a groan, she slumped deeper into her chair, one hand coming up to rest her wrist across the bridge of her nose. "Good, glad we have that straightened out. Can this conversation be over now, please?"
With a funny mix of amusement and sympathy, Daphne said, "I suppose you've met your feelings quota for the day." Liz could feel the sarcasm on feelings, kind of low-key making fun of the way Liz would say similar things sometimes.
"Yep. Being injured is stressful, and between this and talking down Sophie earlier, I am so done." She had the feeling Daphne might have something else she wanted to say, a thought bubbling up, but Liz's wand was in her hand before she could, dispelling the paling with a flick. "Hey you lot, we're done over here, you can stop pretending like you're not watching."
Daphne realised that she'd just bailed out of the conversation, of course, but she didn't take it personally, seemed to be warmly amused more than anything. Because this girl was too bloody nice, it was absurd.
"I was thinking of calling the elves for more food — I'm bloody starving again already — do any of you want anything while I'm at it? Snacks or tea or something, did you even get lunch at the tournament..."
And I thought this scene would be short, haaaaa...
Anyway, planning on doing a couple more scenes for First Contact, may be a little while until the next scene of this will be posted. Live updates of writing progress are available on the Discord.
Kay bye.