The three of them were just returning to their park after stalking and downing yet another team (they were up to six now), when the stone street under their feet seemed to shiver, an audible crack crack crack on the air — this section of the city was about to sink.
Katie dropped to her knees, whipped out the map — she'd been spending some of her downtime, watching Susan's back while she picked away at one trap or lock or another, marking off where they'd been on the map. She'd even compared their map with the ones the other teams got, the layout identical but with different locations marked, not that she really expected to find anything useful. They assumed the island was going to be falling apart from the shore inward, so they couldn't just pick a random direction and go, they needed to move toward the middle of the island. Katie took a moment to orient herself, glancing back and forth between the park and the map — that way, they were moving that way.
They moved at a brisk jog, but not a flat-out run. This section of the island wasn't actively falling apart, they had time. Also, Liz needed to keep an eye out for nearby teams — running might be too distracting for her to keep her aura spread out, listening. Katie still had the map out, occasionally telling them to take this turn or that. She was leading them to a new park they could settle in, at the centre of a bunch of the roads on the island, should bring more teams stumbling into their net. (They'd personally knocked out a quarter of the competition already, which was honestly slightly absurd.) As they walked the shivering grew to a rumbling, Liz heard loud cracking and clattering, an occasional rush of water. Along with one outburst of crashing and rumbling, she noticed motion in her peripheral vision, glanced that way — some distance away, a squat tower poking above the fabric of the city tilted at an angle and began to sank in fits and starts, as they passed an intersection leading that way she could see water sloshing onto the street down there, yeesh...
"I can feel a couple other teams."
Katie cursed, stuffing the map back into her bag, as Susan asked, "Are they coming our way?"
"...I don't think so. It's kind of hard to tell, with the—"
A harsh sharp CRACK, intensely loud, the noise reverberating through her head to toe, a fissure ran through the street they were walking on, Liz staggering a couple steps as the right side of the fissure, half the street and the buildings to that side, started to tilt—
"Move! Left just there and the next right!"
Liz quick-stepped from the tilted-up edge of the street down to flat ground, and the three of them ran full-tilt, taking a left at the first intersection they came across, even as further fissures split through the street, buildings tilting as the ground beneath them began to sink, or crumbling as their foundations cracked. The noise was incredible, a constant bone-shivering and head-ringing cracking and banging and grinding, roaring and spraying of water pushing through the gaps. Liz nearly tripped as the street beneath her lurched, flailing for a few steps, there was a sudden geyser of water erupting into one of the buildings just to their left, the weight of the island making it burst through the cracks at high pressure, blowing the windows out, water sloshing out onto the street. (Fuck, Liz would not have liked to have been in there when that happened.) Water accumulating on the stones, their boots splashing, the next right turn brought them onto dryer ground, the leaves in gardens swaying and windows rattling with the force of the destruction. The ground under her feet still felt shivering and unstable, a building to the right canting as its foundation crumbled, they weren't out of danger yet, kept running along the—
As they stepped into the second intersection along this street, another team came barrelling through from the left, Liz nearly ran right into the older boy in the lead. (One of the Proficiency-level teams, definitely.) Focussed on keeping her feet on the shaking ground, distracted by all the noise and things falling apart, she hadn't felt them coming. At least the other team seemed to be equally unprepared, reeling for a moment, scrambling for wands.
"Rḗtte!" A flash of lightning struck the boy she nearly ran into before he'd even quite staggered to a stop, a bang of thunder echoing through the intersection, intensely loud enough to overwhelm the noise of the island collapsing under their feet for a moment. The boy was flung off his feet by the force, slamming into a corner wall, but Liz didn't have time to watch to see if he was being evacuated — spells were flying out at her even as he landed, Liz deflected a blasting curse away, quick stepped over an arc spell of some kind—
When the world snapped back into clarity, Liz's upward motion slowing to hang at around roof level for a second, curses were flying in at the boys from Susan and Katie, but they blocked or avoided them easily, firing back. She could feel a shiver of magic coming off one of them from all the way up here, Liz yanked that one upward with a sharp summoning charm. The boy went rocketing up into the air, shouting in surprise, while Liz was tugged downward, she barely had enough time to hit herself with a wandless featherweight charm and the ground under her with a softening charm, her feet digging into the unnaturally pliant stone, her momentum bringing her slamming down to the ground shoulder first — a very soft landing, thankfully, but she still felt a little winded.
The third boy had reflexively turned to look up at his teammate flying into the air, while he was distracted Liz aimed a slicing curse up at him with an awkward wiggle of her arm. (Hard to aim from the ground.) He saw it coming in time, catching it on a shield. Unfortunately for him, it was a directional shield, a conjured bludger from Katie striking him in the side a second later — Liz was pretty sure she heard bones crack. The boy staggered, clutching at his side and crying out, an awkwardly-aimed piercing curse punched through his thigh and hip, a spray of blood pattering against the stone. The boy was teleported out practically before he hit the ground, their team's bag left behind.
Frigid tension crawling over her skin, Liz shoved herself into a roll — the patch of the street she'd been lying on a second ago exploded, debris sent flying, she folded her arms up to protect her head, stones pelting her in the back and left side, gritting her teeth. Once the impacts stopped, she shakily pushed herself up to her feet, lurched a bit to the side to throw off his aim—
No curse came for her, though, the boy she'd summoned into the air (obviously having managed a soft landing), was exchanging a rapid series of spells with Susan and Katie — and fuck, he was good, the girls' curses dodged or deflected away, even as Liz got her bearings Susan's shield was violently broken, dove out of the way of a follow-up, conjured spears from Katie shattered and sent flying back at her, a sharp fragment slashing her along one hip, staggering back...
Liz leapt into motion before he could press his advantage, piercing and blasting curses jumping from her wand, the older boy dipping and turning out of the way or knocking them aside with graceful flourishes, striking back with an invisible hex of some kind she barely managed to lean out of the way of, a dark curse powerful enough Liz dodged it rather than try to block, an arc spell she had to quick-step to get out of the way of—
—the ground iced under her even as she came out of the quick-step (the boy anticipating her landing), Liz's feet whipping out from under her, her elbow and her head banging against solid ground, a flash of sparkling white piercing through her vision for a blink, her head ringing and her arm pounding, fuck, ow...
A follow-up spell never came — either the girls managed to distract him in time, or she was saved by the street cracking and surging under them, Liz started slowly sliding against the ice as the ground tilted. The ice poofed up into steam with a quick boiling charm, she rolled onto her hands and knees, her head spinning, forced her eyes to focus. Buildings on all sides of the square were slumping as walls were shaken apart or beginning to sink, fissures run through the street, water beginning to well up through the gaps. Katie had drawn up some of the lake water to make a cheap and easy shield, a nasty-looking orange-violet curse fizzling out against it. Susan cast some kind of spell on the water, and then Katie sent it flying right at the boy in a wave — he slashed up at the wave, probably meaning to split it around him, but with a flash of light the spell failed, instead the water exploded into a sudden rain of countless droplets, pelting the boy. Little puffs of steam rising from where he was struck, he reeled back, shouting and covering his face with an arm, the water superheated...
Rearing back on her knees, her wand hand drawn back before sharply stabbing forward, "Lacera!" her arm and hand burning, the curse overpowered as hard as she could. Grimacing, shrouded with little curls of steam, the boy saw the curse coming, took a lazy step to the side — it wouldn't have hit him anyway, aimed at the ground to his left, but the step would take him well out of danger.
Or so he assumed, anyway.
The complex blasting curse struck with a crackling boom, tearing the stones of the street apart and sending out a thick cone of debris — but it also released a cloud of grasping bolts of electricity, shivering along the puddle of water the wave had left behind and immediately finding their way to the boy. Lightning swept over him, the boy dropped convulsing to the wet ground, making thin little lapping noises. The electricity might have knocked him out anyway, but once he stopped shaking Susan hit him with a binding hex just in case, glowing blue bands of spellglow cinching around his legs and hugging his arms against his sides.
Her heart pounding hard in her chest, limbs sizzling and jumping with adrenaline, Liz forced out a sigh — that had been close.
They didn't have time to collect themselves from the fight, though, the city still shaking itself apart around them, the fissures in the street widening, water sloshing up to soak into her skirt. She forced herself up to her feet — teetering a little, light-headed, the buildings swirling around her — dried her clothes with a sweep of her wand, blinkingly forced her eyes to focus. The street tearing itself apart, little islands of stone surrounded with surging water, Katie and Susan were hopping from island to island — Liz noticed one side of Katie's shorts were wet with blood, thin trails of it running down her thigh. Katie summoned the other team's bag up to her (it'd fallen in the water at some point), Susan called, "You okay?"
Raising her voice over the noise of stone grinding and buildings collapsing, "Hit my head pretty hard, dizzy. That's a lot of blood."
"I'm all right, patched it up myself. I have a potion for your head — can you make it until we reach solid ground, just there?" she asked, pointing over Liz's shoulder. So she could dig the potion out of her bag without worrying about sinking into the bloody Lake, she meant.
"Maybe. Let's try."
They didn't have very far to go, thankfully. Entire city blocks around them beginning to drop below the water, the street splitting apart and crumbling away, the way the ground kept tilting and twitching under them really not helping with Liz's light-headedness. She followed behind the other girls — they could see more clearly than she could at the moment, with her head spinning — jogging along the bigger pieces of road left standing, hopping from one island to the next, cold, dark water occasionally sloshing up to their knees. Liz would stagger a couple steps here and there, the hit to the head making her balance waver, but she managed to keep up, keep moving.
She only fell over once, when a large wave was thrown out by a building to their left abruptly dropping, the shockwave sweeping over them up to Liz's waist, the force enough to whip her feet out from under her. Yanked down into the water, her breath bursting out in a storm of bubbles prickling against her skin, she barely managed to stop herself from breathing back in. She was sliding against the smooth stones of the street, the water trying to pull her away, she scrabbled randomly for a handhold, panic spanging through her hard and sharp, for a second or two before the obvious solution occurred to her — casting a wandless sticking charm with both hands, she slapped her palms against the stone, wrenching her to a sudden halt, her shoulders stinging from the force.
The water surged over and around her for a few seconds, and soon dribbled away, leaving Liz shaking and gasping for breath. Then Katie and Susan were there, gave her a hand up, and they kept moving, hopping along from one patch of the street still (mostly) above water to another, Liz starting to shiver from the cold lake water evaporating in the wind, her head still spinning...
Finally, they got to a spot where the street was still whole — a little damp at the edges, but it wasn't splitting apart, the buildings on either side still in one piece, the ground under their feet still and solid. While Katie started pawing through her bag, Liz drew her wand — she'd been reluctant to do that while they were moving, worried she might drop it and lose it in a crack — hit herself with a warming charm and then a drying charm. Fuck, that was much better...
The potion Katie gave her helped with the dizziness, but she was still left with a dull, throbbing headache. That would be good enough, she guessed — it was a little annoying, but not distracting enough that she wouldn't still be able to fight. The blood on Katie's skin had mostly been washed away at some point, but a dark muddy stain had been left on her shorts. Liz could actually see the slashes low on her left side, Katie hadn't repaired her shirt and her healing magic wasn't good enough to fix them without leaving a mark. Raised and reddish and itchy-looking, at least she wasn't still bleeding.
And, of course, Liz was still feeling flushed and vaguely nauseous from the fucking light magic toxicity Artèmi had saddled her with. They were still standing, but they were starting to accumulate injuries — she wasn't sure how much longer they'd be able to keep going at this rate.
Once they'd caught their breath, drank some water and shared a packet of crisps, they started moving again. But only a short time later, they came across a problem: the street they meant to take to get to the park Katie was leading them to had been flooded.
Liz frowned, examining the street. Tall, three-story rowhouses on either side went right up to the street, which was, just, gone — completely filled with water, wall to wall. But she had a funny feeling about this. The street hadn't simply crumbled apart, there was a straight, even line at the end of the block, the stones fitted with a proper border and everything, like the street was meant to end here. And she couldn't see the stones of the street through the water, dark and green-blue, Susan sent a ball of white light down, down down down... There was a bottom, like, six metres deep, the magical light throwing shadows off of shapes Liz couldn't quite make out...
She didn't think this street had been flooded — she thought it'd been made like this.
"Trap?" Susan asked, clearly coming to the same conclusion.
"Trap."
"Do we go around?"
"Not sure if that's a great idea," Katie said. "The edge of the island is right there, and one of the major streets is over that way. We'd have to go around, and we'd be in the open the whole time — that flying team is still up there."
That was a good point. "You think you two can get across without touching the water?"
"Sure. I can transfigure up a raft, we should be able to get it across with some simple charmwork. What about you?"
"I'll be waiting on the other side." Liz dug in her toes, and then jumped into an angled quick-step — she came out in mid-air, a brief flailing of arms and she caught onto the edge of a planter built under a window. A quick featherweight charm on herself, and she hauled herself up, stood on top of the planter, squishing the plants a bit. Looking back across the street, she picked a spot, and then jumped into another quick-step, a second later coming to a gentle landing on top of the flat roof. She leaned over to wave down at Katie and Susan, before turning away and starting to walk, safely far away from the water.
She was pretty sure she heard Susan scoff, barely caught a muttered word she thought might be cheater. Liz smirked to herself.
Liz walked along the flat roofs of the rowhouses with little interruption, easily vaulting the waist-high walls separating one house from the next. When she reached the edge of the row, she hit herself with a featherweight charm, and leapt off of the roof — at her reduced weight the air drag slowed her fall, a couple light banishing charms against the street enough to bring her down to a gentle landing. Looking back over the path she'd taken, she smiled. She did love how mobile she was these days, learning how to quick-step had obviously been an excellent idea. When she was ready, she planned to try to learn to fly, but until then this was still very cool.
By the time Liz had already reached the opposite side, Katie and Susan had just gotten their raft together and started casting off into the water — wood, but shaped unnaturally in a wide square platform, without any seams from boards or logs or whatever. (Transfiguration made it so you could cheat like that.) They were using some kind of movement charms to draw themselves across, their raft surging ahead in little fits and starts, ripples sent wavering over the surface. Moving somewhat slowly, especially compared to Liz's crossing, by the look of it being careful to not tip over their raft, but they were making up.
They were about halfway across when, abruptly, the raft was smashed in half, a crack splitting at the middle and punched up by a...big steel tentacle? what the fuck? Katie and Susan were flung off, plunging into the water, Liz jolted right up to the water line, both of the girls could swim, surfacing after a couple seconds, coughing and spitting up water. They spun around to get their bearings, started swimming toward Liz—
With a swirling of water and a burst of bubbles, Susan vanished — by the look of it, yanked under the water by...something. Katie spun around, her wand held over the water...but then a couple seconds later she disappeared too.
Her heart pounding her ears, holding her breath, Liz waited for them to surface again...but nothing happened, the waves thrown by the disturbance swiftly settling. Among the wreckage bobbing on the water, she spotted a wand — someone must have lost theirs.
...
Fuck it.
Liz summoned the wand in the water to herself, smoothly caught it. Susan's, this was Susan's — she set it down against the wall of the rowhouse to her right. She cast a warming charm over herself, and a bubblehead charm, cast a few of her floating light balls...and then Liz took a running leap into the water.
She couldn't swim, this was such a terrible idea, but she didn't know what the fuck else she was supposed to do.
She plunged down below the surface, the water moving in swirls against her skin but made mild and temperature-less by the warming charm hugged close to her skin, a bubble of air hugged close around her head — the water was also trying to yank her skirt up over her waist, she clamped her hands down against her hips, holding it down. Sending her glowing blue and yellow and red light balls ahead with a wave of her hand...there! At the bottom of the pool right in the middle, some distance ahead and a couple metres below her, there was a tangled weave of long round tubes, like big snakes or the tentacles of the bloody giant octopus, except these were made out of smooth polished steal, runes carved into the surface along their length gleaming a dull red. The tubes were curled in close, unmoving, two of them sticking out of the clump to wrap around Katie and Susan's legs, holding them trapped.
Liz aimed past them, and yanked herself along and down with a summoning charm — a person's aura was normally top-heavy, their magical centre of mass higher than their physical centre of mass, the tug on her magic turning her around to coast through the water head-first, the stuff brushing smoothly along her limbs and tugging at her dress. As she got closer, she saw Katie had managed to get a bubblehead charm on herself...but Susan hadn't. Susan was still conscious, but obviously freaking out a little, bent around to try to tug at the enchanted thing holding her in place. Seeing her coming, Katie jabbed her finger repeatedly at Susan, Liz could feel her mind through the water, the thought very very loud: help her first, quickly.
A couple more summoning charms brought her slamming into Susan, grabbed onto her before she could drift past. Susan flailed for a moment, apparently thinking she was being attacked again, a bubble of air escaping, but she quickly calmed down, grabbing back at Liz. She yanked herself around right-side-up, tucked her head into Susan's shoulder — which brought Susan's face into her air bubble. Close against her ear, Susan took a deep, harsh breath, then immediately started coughing, her whole body shaking, shivering hands fisting in Liz's dress.
Once the coughing had settled down, Susan breathing more or less normally (though she was sniffling a little still), Liz asked, "You okay?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
"I can't cast a bubblehead charm on you, I'll have to take the air away to get you out."
"That's okay, I can—"
A flash of heat streaked through the water, leaving a stream of bubbles, Liz whipped around. (Slowly and clumsily, her legs lagging behind.) One of the tentacle things had unravelled, it whipped around toward her, she started to bring her wand around, but a spellglow struck it with a funny dull bong sound, leaving a scorch mark on the metallic surface, it reared back for a moment before striking for her again. Liz cast a physical barrier, shimmering silvery — she might not have done that if she'd been thinking, not sure it'd work underwater, but apparently it did, the tentacle bonking against the shield, Liz shoved back into Susan from the force carrying through. The thing slithered around, trying to reach around the shield, held back for the moment.
Liz turned back around, leaned to get Susan's face in her bubble again, her sputtering and coughing loud in their tiny pocket of air. "Sorry."
"It's all right. Get me out of here."
"Sure. Ready?"
Susan took a few slow, deep breaths, and then shoved down on Liz's shoulders. She sort of climbed down Susan, using her clothes as handholds — which was a bit awkward, yes, but Liz couldn't swim, and they really didn't have the luxury of worrying about that at the moment. She got down to the smooth steel tube looped around Susan's legs knees to ankles, the tentacle trying to catch her slammed against her shield again, shoving Liz's chest against the metal, her feet swinging on under Susan, she scrabbled to hold on, fuck. The tube was solid and unmoving, frozen in place. Liz tried a cutting charm, but it just glanced off the surface, and then a stronger dark variant, carefully aimed away from Susan's legs, but that didn't work either. Unlocking charms, bludgeoning charms, she couldn't wedge it open with ice spells, nothing was working, the runes occasionally flaring brighter as it resisted whatever magic she tried...
Fuck it. She reached under the cloth belt of her dress, slipped out one of the unlocking cantrips she'd prepared. Calling the enchantment an overpowered unlocking spell was sort of an oversimplification — what the thing actually did was inject massive destructive interference into the structure of an enchantment, which then propagated through the object, tearing any enchantments on it apart from the inside. (It was technically an example of integrated subsumption, drawing on the power of the enchantment to propagate itself, but a legal one, used in certain emergency cursebreaking applications.) She'd carved the runes into a little chip of ceramic, reached down and jabbed it against the metal of the tube. The ceramic shattered from the force, but it was supposed to do that, the spell took effect with a sharp static sizzling around her head, the fake tentacle twitching with little popping noises, the runes flaring and going dark.
Dropping the fragment left in her hand, Liz shoved herself back up with a banishing charm, her shoulder bonking into Susan's hip. She wrapped an arm around Susan's thighs, then cast a stronger banishing charm straight downward — the tentacle shivered, lurched, they swayed to the side but maybe only went up like a foot, the thing still holding on. Waiting for them to swing back to the middle of the pool, Liz kicked down at the shite still looped around Susan's legs, Susan wiggling, one coil breaking lose, the metal almost seeming to kink and start to crumble. A sweep of a featherweight charm over both of them, Liz wrapped her arm around Susan's thighs again and, the magic stinging in her arm, hit the bottom of the pool with a banishing charm, hard. This time, Susan's legs were wrenched out of the cracking tentacle, they surged up through the water, Susan flopping against Liz's back, bent over her shoulder, they were starting to slow already so Liz cast another hard banishing charm, water streaming past her—
They burst out of the water, Liz's air bubble popping. Their momentum ran out while they were still only a few feet over the water — streams and drops of water pouring off them, splattering loud against the surface — so she pushed off with another hard banishing charm, flinging them up to roof level. Susan coughing and clinging almost frantically at her dress, Liz glanced around, identified the right side of the street, yanked them to the side with a hard summoning charm. She covered a patch of the street with a softening charm the instant before they landed, and they hit the stone at an awkward angle and were sent into a tumble, rolling over each other a couple times before they came to a stop.
Liz had ended up laying partly on top of Susan, head on her stomach and Susan's hip digging into her back, but she didn't move right away, catching her breath, Susan coughing and shivering under her. That had been a hell of a thing.
She pushed herself up to a seat, teetered up to her feet — her head still spinning a little, fucking light magic poisoning. "Have to go back for Katie. You okay?"
"I'm good." Susan coughed again, let out a harsh groan. "Did you see where my wand went?"
"Yeah, I summoned it out of the water, put it over here..."
The second time went rather more smoothly than the first. Liz refreshed her warming charm, cast another bubblehead charm, and jumped back in; she summoned herself straight to where the metal tentacle was wrapped around Katie's legs, reached for another unlocking thing. This time, Katie could help cover her, when one of the tentacles came around to reach for her battering it away with bludgeoning and banishing charms, but it only took a moment for Liz to break the enchantments on the one holding Katie. One hard banishing charm to break her free, and then another to get out of the water, and then another to get some height, and then the inverse to pull them to solid ground — aimed a bit to the side of her last landing spot, so they didn't run right into Susan.
For a few moments, they just laid there on their street, catching their breath, Susan occasionally letting out a cough or a sniffle, still trying to clear her lungs and her nose. Her warming charm starting to wear off, Liz grimaced, swept a drying charm over herself.
...
"You know, I don't think I like the water."
Katie giggled, breathless and half-hysterical.
፠
The attack came in a blink, too quickly for Liz to react.
As the island further shrunk, the remaining teams were pressed closer together, sometimes bumping into each other as they fled crumbling sections of the city. Liz's team had spent more time avoiding people or running away from fights than anything really productive. One time, they'd run into a team while trying to get out of a crumbling section, but the place was too much of a mess to focus on a fight, both teams just trying to get away, occasionally trying to trip the other up but too distracted to do much. Another time, they'd sprung out of hiding on a team in mid- cursebreaking attempt, only for themselves to be set upon by a second team, Liz had called it off, mentally telling the girls to retreat — they came away with a few minor hits, but they'd managed to escape.
Since abandoning their first base of operations, they had managed to bring down a single additional team — diminished, reduced to two people from a previous fight they'd been in — but at this point there really couldn't be that many left. Liz could feel them around sometimes, packed into the remains of the island, hunting each other. Mostly older students now, dangerous, more difficult to catch them in an unsuspecting moment, more wary of ambushes, putting up detection palings before trying to crack something...
The three of them were huddled up in a little walled garden, discussing whether it would be better to just give up and make for the edge of the island, when there was a sudden flash of gold-white fire just to Liz's left and right sides, harsh dry heat and frigid light magic washing over her simultaneously — she started to move, reaching for her wand and trying to open some distance, but before she could get far hands were clamping onto both of her arms, and Liz was ripped away.
For a timeless second, Liz was drawn through a maelstrom of intensely bright gold-white fire, flickering and swirling in all directions with no interruption, and it was fucking cold, light magic wrapped around her burning against her skin. And then the fires dissolved away, Liz left sagging to her knees, gasping for breath — probably the only reason she didn't flop right to the ground were the hands still holding onto her upper arms, a pair of minds jangling loud and bright through the contact.
The veela/lilin team they'd seen flying around now and then, who they'd barely escaped from what felt like hours ago now — they'd separated Liz from her team.
Gritting her teeth, Liz shoved hard at both of them with (wandless) banishing charms, hands wrenched away from her arms, the veela sent stumbling back. She tried to get her feet under herself, but didn't quite manage it, her head spinning — that fire-walking trip had just made the light-magic toxicity she'd been dealing with much worse — snapped off a quick slicing curse at the boy to her right. He tried to dodge out of the way, but he didn't quite make it, clipping him over the shoulder.
A swell of light magic on her left, Liz tried to stand up, too dizzy, let herself topple into an awkward roll forward over her shoulder — the important thing was she'd gotten out of the way of the roaring current of veela fire coursing through where she'd been just a second ago, pulsing cold battering her over the back. Flailing, she tossed a blasting curse over at the other veela (that one was a girl), successfully pushed herself up to her feet this time, whipped around, staggering a step, "Lacera!" but the injured boy (streaks of blood staining his white shift) got a shield up in time, the curse expending itself with a harsh bang and a crackling of lightning, a hex was coming for her back, Liz twisted out of the way, stumbled for a couple steps, the floor seeming to sway under her feet—
The roof — they were on a roof somewhere. They'd teleported her away to deal with her alone, presumably the third member of their team was fighting Katie and Susan right now, these two would go back as soon as she was done. They needed to buy time for Katie to get away, the longer Liz could stay up...
Liz ducked under another hex, fell to one knee (ow), a sweep of her wand coating part of the roof with ice, the boy's bare feet skittering on the ice before whipping out from under him and he slammed down hard, "Aigída!" a powerful curse struck her shield the instant after she got it up, the barrier cracking but it held. She let it fall, turning up onto her feet, the world spinning, a slash of a slicing curse (easier to aim when she could hardly see straight), but the girl blocked it and retaliated with a hex, Liz sidled to the side, a spell was coming in from the boy, she moved to deflect it—
—and she missed. The curse struck her in the side, hitting as hard as a bludger, Liz staggered from the force, she felt something tear, icey light magic stabbing into her chest—
She felt another spell coming, sidled out of the way, lost her balance and let herself fall into a roll, catching a follow-up spell from the boy on a quick shield, "Rḗtte!" she didn't wait to see if the boy survived it, trying to stagger up to her feet, ticklish dribbles of hot blood trickling down her side, but another hex was coming in at her, she ducked, "Affragmen!"
She saw a blue-white flicker as the veela girl cast a shield charm. And she saw the greenish spellglow meet the shield, then spread out over its surface, shifting to a bright pink — and then a rain of purplish-blue spelllglows slashed through the inside of the girl's shield. Liz wincing at the sympathetic piercing hot pain flaring over her own body as the girl was struck once, again again again, but she grit her teeth through it, "Rḗtte!" the flash of lightning taking the veela before she even fell to the ground, the force tossing her clear off the roof...
One down, one to go.
She felt another curse coming, threw up a shield — it violently shattered, green-white flames frigid with light magic gusting around her, Liz sent rolling across the roof. She got her knees under her, tried to stand up, was caught short by a spike of nausea, struggling not to vomit, she felt another spell coming, forced herself to the side, her shoulder grinding uncomfortably against the stone, the wound in her side spanging, she moaned against her protesting stomach—
"Saepem." A deep blue wall of ice appeared 'above' her head, Liz trying to turn up onto her knees, her head spinning and her stomach clenching. The wall of ice shattered with another wave of light magic, Liz immediately turned the shards of ice around with a wandless banishing charm, an instant later, "Affragmen!" the curse striking a piece of ice and bursting into a spread of piercing curses, but the boy got a shield up in time. Glaring, foreign frustration simmering through Liz's chest, he jabbed his wand out at her, Liz barely got a foot under herself, forced herself to the side with a banishing charm, rolling over her shoulder, the curse missed her easily.
"Helú!" The boy ducked his head against the blast of cold wind, ice crystals forming on his clothes and in his hair, a wave of golden-white fire was sweeping over the ground, Liz put up a shield but it was shattered a second later, the flames crawled over her uninterrupted.
And now Liz's dress was on fire. Probably her hair too.
She put it out almost instantly, left agonisingly cold, her skin stinging and burning, her head spinning too badly to see, but she could feel the direction the boy was in, tried to get a spell off in his direction, but her hand was wavering too badly — and then her stomach clenched, hard, a convulsion ripping through her, vomit splattering against the tile—
There was a flash of blue light, and she went numb and limp, swiftly sinking into blackness.
፠
Once again, Liz woke up in the Champions' recovery rooms sweating from light magic toxicity. The healers must have put a monitoring charm over her bed, she was only alone, trying to kick the sheets off of her to get some cool air, for a couple minutes before someone was walking in to check on her.
Her injuries weren't actually that bad this time, relatively speaking. The minor scraps and bangs she got during the Task she'd patched up herself, the healers here had checked over her work but hadn't needed to do much. She'd come in with some light burns, but she'd put out the veela fire quickly enough that the damage hadn't been too bad. (Most of her hair had been a loss, but not because it'd actually been burned away, the healers had decided to cut off the scorched mess themselves. It grew back overnight anyway.) She vaguely remembered she'd been hit with something toward the end there — a blasting curse, apparently, which had done the worst of the damage. It should have been even worse, but it'd been a glancing hit, the centre of the force angled away from the big arteries and shite nearer the centre of her chest, and Liz had already been flooding her own body with dark magic to try to fight off the poisoning, which had destructively interfered with the light curse, diminishing its strength. Her side and her ribs and one of her lungs had been kind of chewed up, though, she'd still been coughing up blood hours after waking up. They'd managed to heal all that without too much trouble, there was still just a little but of fluids in there she had to get up was all.
The worst part was the light magic toxicity. Between whatever the hell that spell Artèmi used was, being dragged through their fire-walking shite, and getting swept over head to toe with veela fire, she'd been in very bad shape by the time she'd gotten to the healers. Like, her immune system turning on itself and eating at her own organs bad. Liz had woken up the evening of the Task, and she'd still been bad into it, feverish and sore, randomly swept with inexplicable shivering despite feeling terribly warm, dizzy enough it was difficult to so much as walk to the toilet. She was put on a regimen of potions — one to counteract the light magic, another to suppress her immune reaction, two potions to boost her liver function and another to boost her kidney function (so she could tolerate a higher than usual dose of the first potion without being badly poisoned), and a general healing potion to patch up the damage her own body had been (and still was) doing to itself, and then finally a nutrient potion to make sure the healing potion (and one of the liver potions) had the stuff it needed to work. She was also supposed to eat, little snacks brought to her every hour or so, and to be sipping away at water pretty much constantly, so she didn't accidentally kill her kidneys...and, you know, everything else, once those stopped working correctly.
Of course, that also meant she had to piss a lot, she swore she spent half the night on the toilet, or unsteadily stumbling back and forth.
(She did enjoy duelling, but sometimes the recovery fucking sucked.)
She didn't sleep much that night, intermittently woken up to be fed more potions. Out of a lack of anything better to do, and too terribly dizzy to read properly, she spent a fair bit of time wondering why the hell her enchanted knickers hadn't protected her from the stunning spell that'd knocked her out. It could have been a more complex stunning spell, but if it had been the runes should have burned out again — she was pretty sure the healers would have included that in her list of injuries. After some time pondering the question, sweating and shivering in her bed and glaring up at the ceiling, she decided it hadn't failed: the spell must have already expended itself keeping her conscious. Maybe she should have fainted, either from the serious light magic poisoning or that blasting curse, but the enchantment had triggered to keep her awake, and hadn't recharged in time to counter the stunning spell. She couldn't think of any other reasonable explanation, had to be it.
She was feeling better by the next morning, the generalised soreness and the dizziness and the headache practically gone. She was still feeling a bit flushed, but nothing serious, it was manageable. The healers thought her condition was improved enough that they stopped feeding her potions, said her treatment was basically finished. They'd like her to stay here — they'd be giving the Champions their scores in the common room anyway, probably early this afternoon — and they'd be doing a blood test later to check how the light magic toxicity was doing (and also her liver and kidneys), but just as a precaution, they were pretty sure she was good. She was actually let out of her room to have breakfast in the common room, so.
The other Champions were also here, of course, but not everyone came out for breakfast. Viktor and Fleur were both still receiving treatment, apparently — they must have gone down hard...which was interesting, did that mean one of the non-Champion teams had ended up winning the event? Guessed she'd find out soon enough. Anyway, Artèmi was up and about, but she was still wearing a few bandages, her right arm obviously weak and shaky, using her left for everything. That piercing curse Katie had hit her with must have been a hell of a thing, did some serious joint damage, from the look of it.
Liz couldn't help a bright smirk the first time she saw Artèmi. The older girl just rolled her eyes, amused despite herself.
After breakfast, she went back to her room — she didn't really have anything better to do, so she called Nilanse to please bring her a book. She wasn't really hungry by the time lunch came around, between a big breakfast and all the snacks they'd been shoving at her through her potions treatment, but she went back out anyway. Supposedly they'd be getting around to giving them their scores soon, so.
Viktor and Fleur did show up to lunch, both of them looking a bit worse for wear and moving gingerly, Fleur walking with a cane and Viktor's head smooth and hairless, the soft pink of regrown skin. (Ah, she guessed he'd been taken out by that one veela/lilin team, got himself set on fire.) The cane made it kind of hard to walk and carry her food at the same time, Artèmi was right at her elbow carrying her things for her. Liz just grabbed a few slices of sausage and cheese, a fresh cup of coffee — the staff person gave her a funny look at the combination, she shrugged back — settled into an out of the way seat with her book.
Liz didn't look up again until she heard the door open, a sudden uptick in the conversation in the room — the Champions' teams were showing up, ahead of being given their scores. Some of them were still wearing bandages, marked up from the event, but some of them didn't show any sign at all, either downed without any serious injuries or had managed to escape with their treasure. It was really impossible to say who'd done well and who hadn't, the organisers hadn't told her anything...
When she spotted Katie and Susan stepping through the door, Liz pushed up to her feet, leaving her book in her chair. They both looked fine, though she spotted the edge of a bandage poking out of the sleeve of Susan's shirt — it couldn't have been too bad, if she was up and walking around just fine already, and Katie didn't look she'd been hit at all. Ignoring the other clumps of people in the room, Liz walked straight up to them, "Did you make it out?"
Surprise and confusion sparking in the air (only somewhat muffled by the stuff pulsing off of Artèmi and Fleur's teams), they both blinked at her for a second. "You haven't heard?"
"No! They haven't told us anything! Did you make it out?"
"Oh, well, yeah, Katie got out with the gold."
"Bumped into another team on the way out, Susan stayed behind to give me time — by herself, like a—"
"Ha!" Liz was vaguely aware she was cutting Katie off, but she couldn't hold it in, bubbling up tight and hot in her chest. "Fuuuck..." Practically bouncing on her toes, her skin tingling — they'd kicked so much arse, she'd tried to hold down those veela long enough for Katie to get away and had no idea whether it'd worked, and they'd beaten Artèmi and— Her chest full and tense and crackling, like her hair was standing on end, grinning so much it almost hurt, she thoughtlessly jumped forward and threw her arms around Katie's shoulders. "You did it!"
"Fuck yeah, we did!" Letting out a thrilled giggle close against Liz's ear, Katie's arms tightened around her middle, and—
Liz's heart jumped up her throat, her stomach swooping, as her feet left the ground, held tight against Katie's chest, clutching at her shoulders.
Katie set her back down after a couple seconds, feeling light-headed (not just because of the light magic poisoning), sagging against Katie a little, still hanging on to her. She got her balance back, pulling away — but not far, her hands still on Katie's shoulders, Katie's on her waist, her face only a few inches away, her skin crawling, her heart pounding in her throat and her fingertips, tingles sprouting over her face and trickling down her neck into her chest...
For a wild second, Liz was going to kiss her.
Intense hot amusement crackling across the air snapped her out of it — her hands jumped away from Katie, she lurched back a step, clearing her throat. She glanced toward Susan to find her watching with bright eyes, her lips twitching. Biting her lip to hold down giggles, Liz could tell, feeling warmth start crawling up her neck. Oops, hadn't been thinking...
There was also amusement coming off of Katie, but also something... Well, Liz didn't know what to call it exactly, but Katie definitely knew what had just almost happened. Her lips curling into a smirk, Katie started leaning forward — her mind was open enough, Liz could see what she was doing, she froze, practically holding her breath. Fingertips light on the side of her neck, Katie dipped down close, her short hair brushing over the top half of Liz's face (smelling of sage and some kind of flower she couldn't identify), she pressed a slow, soft kiss to Liz's cheek, a tingly flush sweeping over her. And Katie lingered for a moment, leaning close, Liz's breath thick in her throat, her heart pounding in her fingertips and her teeth, close enough Liz could feel the warmth of her body, smelling of sage and tea and something smooth and sweet she couldn't put her finger on, her breath tickling down the side of Liz's face and neck.
And Katie pulled away again, standing straight and smiling down at her, Liz feeling twitchy and very warm, throbbing with her heartbeat.
She could tell her face was very red. Not just from feeling it, but also she was a cheating mind-reader — Katie and Susan were both thinking that the blushing was cute, but that didn't exactly make her feel less embarrassed.
After a couple seconds of, just, staring up at Katie like an idiot, she twitched, lurched into motion. She might as well hug Susan too, if only for appearances. There were other people in the room, after all — not that anyone seemed to be paying them any particular attention just now — and she was being kind of obvious. Still all twitchy and flushed from Katie, this hug was rather more stiff and awkward, but that was definitely just on her end. Susan was such a Hufflepuff, she actually liked hugs — she just tended not to jump on Liz with them, aware it could be a bit much for her sometimes, with the mind magic stuff.
Susan exploited the close contact to think at her, loud and clear, You're not fooling anyone, you know.
Shut up.
They dipped by the food table quick — Katie and Susan had just been in the Great Hall for lunch, but they both grabbed a couple biscuits and a cup of coffee anyway (Liz also got one, she'd finished hers earlier) — before Liz led the way back to where she'd left her things. Susan levitated over a second chair, but Katie didn't bother, just, perched cross-legged on the arm of Liz's. Almost like she was trying to embarrass her, or something.
And, actually, Liz was a mind-reader, so she knew that was exactly what Katie was doing — she thought the blushing and how Liz kept shifting self-consciously in her seat was cute. That and Katie found it kind of...gratifying? was that the word? Liz didn't know...
Anyway, the other two girls caught her up on what had happened since they'd last seen each other. The instant after the two veela had teleported her away, Katie and Susan had been hit by the third member of their team, the lilin — it wasn't a secret that Liz was sensitive to light magic, apparently they'd decided to exploit that. They'd been caught by surprise, but Liz being stolen away had given them enough warning to respond, and they'd actually managed to turn the tables on the lilin, taking him down pretty quickly. They could hear what they'd been pretty sure was Liz's fight with the pair of veela, had been debating whether it would be better to try to back Liz up or make their escape, when the sounds of fighting ended, and then the remaining veela had reappeared.
They hadn't realised at first that Liz had managed to take out one of her attackers — Katie had started running away at the first sign of veela fire, but then turned right back around at Susan's shout that he was alone. Already injured from his two-on-one fight with Liz — Katie and Susan were amusingly dumbfounded that she'd somehow managed to knock out one and injure the other, even twenty-four hours later — they'd beaten him without too much trouble...and they came away with their team's bag too, adding whatever gold they'd managed to swipe off of who knew how many teams to their total.
Then they'd started their escape. They'd made it most of the way to the edge of what remained of the island before stumbling across one of the senior teams — they'd also been down to two members, one of them presumably evacuated during a previous fight, but it hadn't seemed worth the risk, Katie making a break for it while Susan bought her time. It'd been a hell of a fight, Susan keeping moving and throwing big curses all over the place — not even trying to aim that well, just being loud and distracting and dangerous — she was pretty sure she'd managed to injure at least one of them before she was hit. The important thing was that she'd managed to cover Katie's escape — she made it all the way to the shore without further incident, jumped in and swam away as fast as she could. After a couple minutes, a house-elf had appeared to teleport her away, and that was that.
Susan had taken a pretty bad hit, she'd been let out of hospital early this morning — she still had some bandages around her chest, but supposedly those would be taken off in the evening. She'd have a topical potion she'd have to use for a little bit after that, but she'd be fine. Katie had gotten a check-up after being teleported out, but she'd only been handed a single potion, a healer fixed up her sloppy healing job on her side, and she'd been done. Not bad, over all.
At breakfast and lunch today, there'd been displays up in the Great Hall playing selected highlights from the Task, people taking bets on who would get the best individual score. The safe bet, surprisingly, was on Ingrid. Her team had focussed on the cursebreaking side, creeping about under concealment spells and cracking into one stash after another after another, clearing out whole streets. Artèmi and Viktor were probably at the bottom — neither of their teams had brought in any treasure at all — with Cedric and Fleur in the middle, having at least brought back some gold. (Fleur had gone down really hard, like Liz stubbornly fighting through multiple hits before being evacuated, but one of her teammates had fire-walked out with the bag.) Annoyingly, the betting going on was between Ingrid and Liz — the common consensus was that they would be in first and second place, the only argument was on which was which.
At the irritated scowl on her face, Katie snorted, mind sparking with a mix of soft and cool feelings Liz didn't know how to read. "We did get second place, you know."
Liz blinked, glancing up at her. "Huh?"
"Second place? The teams, I mean."
That wasn't entirely clear, but Susan continued the explanation for her. "We haven't gotten the Champions' individual scores yet, but they did tally up the gold the teams brought in. The only team who brought in more gold than us is Ingrid's — add in the other teams, and Hogwarts got first overall, Durmstrang in second."
"...Oh." Well, she guessed that made sense? They had managed to get the bags off of, like, a quarter of the entire competition, and Susan had cracked a few hidden treasures while they were waiting for another team to fall in their net, so. She really shouldn't have expected anything else? It was even kind of impressive that Ingrid had managed to beat them at all, when she thought about it. "Shite." She shrugged, glanced up at Katie. "You're welcome for the prize money, I guess."
The Champions were competing for the big prize money at the end, of course, but the organisers had seemingly decided that the additional participants needed some kind of reward as well. That wasn't new, they'd done that in all the previous Tasks that took volunteers as well, the prizes were just somewhat better for this one. In the First Task, everyone who'd participated at all got a half-galleon, and the winning team got an additional bonus of a galleon each — that didn't sound like much, but a galleon was actually pretty good money for most people, so it wasn't bad. (Well, pretty good money in Britain, anyway, but their economy was kind of fucked, it wasn't so impressive for foreign students.) The Second Task, the participants had gotten a little commemorative trophy thing, but not any monetary reward at all...though she guessed they could probably sell that if they wanted to. Hermione had sent hers home, not wanting her roommates to fuck with it — colourfully-painted ceramic, the base carved with curly spiralling designs, very magical Britain. The Fifth Task had had some pretty serious prize money for first and second place, and a much more modest one for all quarterfinalists — Champions had ended up taking most of those spots, so the winner and runner-up rewards hadn't been given out at all, only awarding three of the smaller quarterfinalist ones (including to Katie and Chelsea) — and the reward for the Sixth Task had only gone to the winning team, ten galleons split between them however they liked.
The Eighth Task came with rather more serious awards. Every participant would be getting a commemorative coin — they were made out of real gold, and would probably be worth pretty good money by themselves. In addition to that, the three teams that brought in the most treasure would get prize money: five galleons for third place, twelve galleons for second place, and twenty-five for first place. Five galleons was pretty respectable, but twenty-five was serious money. As in, literally more than some people made in a year? Poor people, anyway — Severus's salary was right around ninety (the exact number depending on the year), which was a comfortable middle-class kind of income — but still, that was kind of ridiculous for some random school competition.
Of course, the thousand galleon prize for winning the Tournament was a stupid amount of money, but it was kind of supposed to be — it would be pretty decent money for the winner to live comfortably on while going through Mastery study or an apprenticeship or whatever, a nice little investment to get them started on the rest of their lives. In Britain, anyway, but it was still pretty decent for the foreign students too.
Liz and Susan didn't need the money, of course — the Boneses actually didn't have the cashflow that the Potters did, but they were basically a cultural institution, they'd always be fine — so they'd agreed ahead of time that, if they did win a prize for this Task, Katie would get the whole thing. Her family were dirt poor peasants, twelve galleons was a lot of money to them. Add in the galleon and a half she'd gotten for the First Task, and the two and a half for the Fifth Task, and she was up to sixteen total — that was, what, a bit more than four thousand pounds? And it was actually more than it sounded, with how fucked the British economy was, that was pretty respectable. Probably more than her parents...
Er, Liz actually wasn't sure her parents made any money at all — a lot of those little agricultural communities were basically subsistence farmers, and she didn't think they even had money? Like, buying and selling and shite they had to do with outside markets would go through the Dunbars, she was pretty sure. (All of Katie's school supplies were paid for by the Dunbars, they even gave her pocket money and everything.) Anyway, the point was, sixteen galleons was almost certainly more gold than anyone in Katie's whole family had ever seen in their lives, so yeah, significant amount of money.
(Of course, sixteen galleons was the kind of money Liz could throw around and not think about, because the magical British economy was extremely fucked.)
There was a faint wiggle of discomfort at Liz mentioning the money — Katie was very much aware that she was the single poorest person in her entire year — but she brushed it off easily enough, aware that Liz wasn't trying to rub it in. Smirking down at her, she drawled, "You're welcome for keeping you in first place."
"Ugh, don't remind me..."
Not long after the Champions' teammates showed up, the door opened again, and the judges filed in, along with Blaise's mum. It took a moment for the chatter in the room to die down, when it did Zabini going through a quick introduction, before giving an overview of how the Task had gone in general. They'd all been busy with their own things, and the Champions at least hadn't gotten to see whatever snippets they'd been showing downstairs. Then there was a reminder of how their scoring was being evaluated, and then the totals each school had managed to bring in, blah blah...
Liz wasn't paying that much attention, honestly. She didn't really care how she did — sure, she did try in the Tasks, but that was just because she didn't want to embarrass herself in front of all of Europe, it didn't make much difference to her what her actual score was. And, well, her little friendly competition she had going with Artèmi did entertain her, so she guessed she did care a little that she was beating Artèmi, but other than that. (Wouldn't even be a thing if Artèmi hadn't made a point of taunting her at that first duelling tournament nearly a year ago now, so really this was her own fault.) But even if she were inclined to give a damn, she probably wouldn't be paying that much attention anyway.
Katie was sitting on the arm of her chair, right there. So, as uninterested as she was in the scoring, there was little enough to stop Liz from getting distracted.
She thought she'd be able to do it. Try dating again, she meant.
In retrospect, that whole thing with Daphne had been...kind of a bad idea. Though, not really in retrospect — she had known that at the time, she'd just...done it anyway? Thinking back on it, she'd even been aware of exactly what the big issues were going to be. She remembered making it clear with Daphne that it was going to be difficult for her, and at any time she might have to call it off. While she might not have spelled it out for Daphne, she'd been thinking of the physical stuff — that she still had issues that hadn't been dealt with yet, and it was going to get in the way of...things. She'd known that, but she'd decided to, just, do it anyway, like a fucking idiot. No idea what she'd been thinking there.
Well, no, honestly, she did know what she'd been thinking: pretty girl, nice to me. Liz was kind of pathetic like that, when she thought about it...though yes, fine, the little Severus in her head, she did understand why she was like that. It was Dursley stuff, it always came back to Dursley stuff in the end — nobody had ever given a damn about her before, she still didn't really expect people to actually like her. Friends were enough of a surprise already, but...
And she did enjoy it, as much as she might complain to herself about it sometimes, as fucking confusing as it could be, she did like...you know, people giving a damn, having friends, that sort of thing. People being interested in her, romantically or whatever, even if she weren't at all interested in them, she... She did like it. Most of time she didn't talk or act like it, she knew, she mostly didn't even admit it to herself, but...
...Well. If she didn't like having friends, there was a pretty easy solution to that, wasn't there? It wasn't like she had to keep talking to them, she could just...not. And if she didn't like Katie's attention, she could...you know, not encourage it? Like Susan said earlier, she wasn't fooling anyone, Katie could tell she was interested, they'd had that talk back at New Year's...
Sometimes all this stuff, Severus and her friends and the handful of people harbouring romantic and/or sexual feelings for her, sometimes it could be...kind of a lot. But that wasn't even a bad thing, necessarily, Liz just wasn't very good at dealing with feelings — or, you know, relationships, she didn't know what the fuck she was supposed to do half the time. People kept telling her she was a good friend, but it honestly didn't feel like it, she was, just, bumbling through it and trying not to come off like a complete bitch. She was trying not to scare people off...
(The whole thing with Dorea still kind of hurt when she thought about it, so she mostly didn't.)
It was hard, and it was confusing and kind of vaguely intimidating, but she did like having people. It felt good, even if she had trouble putting a word to what those feelings were exactly. So really, it wasn't any surprise that she'd managed to convince herself she should try to actually date Daphne, despite knowing it was a bad idea — because being around people who liked her felt good, and she'd wanted more. Daphne being extremely fucking pretty didn't hurt, of course, and also that she was generally very understanding of Liz being a mess, it... Well, she'd known it was a bad idea, but she'd wanted it enough that she hadn't really cared.
Especially after kissing that first time, there was no way it hadn't been happening after that. Kissing was nice, turned out.
And one of the big things...mostly wasn't an issue any more? Would hopefully be completely resolved before too much longer, but. If nothing else, that was one good thing about Liz being a fucking idiot about dating Daphne: pushing herself too hard and blowing the whole thing up had eventually (like a couple months after the fact) been motivation to actually work on her issues, instead of doing nothing and hoping they'll magically go away on their own, like the biggest fucking idiot. Not to say that problem was entirely solved now, of course. How she felt about her own body was fucked, she'd always known it wasn't healthy — or, well, she'd never really given it that much thought before certain conversations with Severus, but yeah, once it was pointed out to her, she could admit that. And it wasn't completely better, she did still hate it, sometimes, kind of grossed herself out if she lingered on certain things too much.
What she had managed to do was get better at dealing with it. To the point that the thought of being naked around Hermione didn't bother her at all anymore — the process of undressing was still uncomfortable, sometimes, especially if Hermione was watching. (Undressing while feeling eyes on her reminded her of Vernon and the sofa, which was stupid, she hadn't even been conscious of this stuff yet back then.) She could get through it now, and even without too much trouble, if she had good motivation to.
And she definitely did have good motivation to — sex was nice, turned out.
That was something she'd have to talk about with Katie, before they got that far. Oh, um, she didn't mean Hermione, though obviously they would have to talk about that too, and that was going to be awkward as hell. (She would stop sleeping with Hermione if Katie wanted her to...but honestly she'd rather not? was that an option? Yeah, not looking forward to that talk.) She just meant, she was comfortable with Hermione now, but she expected it might take some doing to get over her initial stupid neurotic nonsense with someone new. They'd have to be a little careful about that — not nearly so cautious and drawn out as the whole desensitisation programme she'd done with Hermione, of course, but it would be better to...be careful. Not push herself too hard, you know. And there were still things that were going to bother her regardless, they'd have to talk about that too. Which, that was also going to be awkward, just for different reasons...
Though, there probably weren't as many things they'd have to be careful to avoid than Liz assumed? Hermione touching her bum, for example, had made her kind of uncomfortable the first time, but she'd gotten over that pretty quickly...
(Liz was temporarily preoccupied with sexy thoughts, remembering.)
Anyway, given that it was already the end of May, by the time Liz and Katie got around to doing anything was almost certainly going to be after the blood alchemy thing. Maybe this was unreasonably optimistic on her part, but she hoped having that done would completely do away with her body-related problems. The things that really bothered her, those would be gone — her chest, that would be fixed, the lines on her bum (and lower back and upper thighs). Liz hoped, now that she'd worked on getting through things in her head, once the physical part was fixed, then she'd be all better? Like she said, optimistic, but, it felt to her that...
Well, to put it bluntly, having Vernon thoughts seemed almost impossible, because it literally wouldn't be the same arse he'd whipped anymore — even all her skin would be replaced, completely different. She realised that sounded kind of insane, like, giving her the same vibes as that...detached, unreal feeling she got sometimes, when she thought about it...but that's what it felt like to her? Get rid of the scars, and she got rid of...it, you know? Did that make sense?
Maybe that was a little insane, but Liz was a little insane, so. She suspected Severus wouldn't really like that kind of thinking, but she couldn't help how she felt about it.
It might turn out that getting the procedure done wouldn't instantly fix the physical stuff, but, well, it couldn't make it worse. She was uncharacteristically optimistic about it, honestly, she couldn't wait.
And the other big problem — the thing that had really bothered her, in the end, enough that the effort it would take to push past her freak-out hadn't seemed worth it — wasn't really a problem with Katie either. Katie had fewer illusions about what kind of person Liz was — she knew Liz was a cold, vicious bitch sometimes, she didn't like... Daphne had had a bad habit of trying to excuse away Liz's more obvious...antisocial moments, you know, would insist she was a good person despite all evidence to the contrary. She still thought Liz was a good person, even after the break-up, that talk they'd had...
Of course, Katie kind of did too, she just had a different idea of what a 'good person' was. It came down to their different cultural backgrounds, Liz thought? Like, the Greenwood was very, you know, peace and love, caring community types — Katie had also grown up in a weird conservative agricultural commune, just a very different kind of one, and closer to mainstream magical culture. To Katie, Liz came off a lot like the noblewoman in certain old stories, and also happened to tick off most of the ideal mother boxes.
Which, that was kind of super embarrassing? even if most of the things that made Katie think that were things Liz actually liked about herself. Like, the cooking and baking was one thing, and Liz did enjoy doing that. She also... Well, at some point Liz had developed a habit of solving her friends' problems for them, when she noticed. There was replacing Sally-Anne's potions kit, and dealing with Hermione's roommate problem, and catching Pettigrew for Dorea, things like that. Offering to pay for everyone's Yule Ball stuff, in part as a cover for Lily not being able to afford it, being polite about it, you know. Most of it was...
Well, Liz wouldn't say she was a nice person — she knew some of her friends thought she was, which always struck her as odd — most of the time she, just, thought of a way to deal with something, and did it just because she could. It was just because they were her friends, she was hardly likely to notice if it was some random person, and she actually gave a damn what happened to them, so, if she saw a way to fix something, it just seemed like the thing to do? She didn't even really think about it that hard, honestly, just did it. Though, when she did think about it, maybe at least part of it was that she still wasn't confident of her ability to do friends (people were hard sometimes), so she just...wanted to do nice things for them, when she could? to be helpful.
Because they couldn't just be friends, tolerating her had to benefit them somehow, or Liz would feel she was...she didn't know, not holding up her end. Which she realised was kind of fucked in obvious ways — like just being nice to her was something that she owed them for, like — but she couldn't really help it. Especially since it wasn't even conscious in the moment, just, acting...
But anyway, the cooking and stuff — increasingly these days bringing snacks to study group and duelling team meetings or whatever else, since she was out of class so much this year and had nothing better to do, and why not — and also impulsively taking care of her people, Katie kind of thought she was, you know, mumsy. Which was a little embarrassing, but Katie didn't think it in a, like, demeaning way, or anything, she thought that was a good thing? And yeah, Liz did enjoy the cooking and stuff, and she did try to be a good friend (if not for the greatest reasons, mental health-wise), so. She might be uncomfortable with the label Katie put on it, but those were things Liz actually liked about herself.
Though it wasn't just that — Liz being a cold bitch sometimes and also a scary dangerous duellist Katie also thought of as mum stuff. That seemed weird and contradictory to Liz...but that's because she was thinking like a muggleborn, having absorbed the cult of domesticity that got big during, like, Victorian times (according to Tamsyn). Morality on the magical side was often more primitive. She didn't mean that in the insulting way, but literally — that it came from an older time, in this case literally mediaeval.
Before the creation of the Ministry around the time of Secrecy — or arguably before the Isles were united under a single kingdom, but that had made a smaller difference — there had been no single legal authority above the ruling magical houses that they'd all recognised. So there'd been nobody who could arbitrate disputes between them — the Wizengamot, sure, but that was voluntary, and didn't have much in the way of enforcement mechanisms. And so you had various magical families fighting each other in tiny small-scale wars, or getting into blood feuds that could last generations. It got very messy sometimes, in more extreme cases entire noble families (even Founders of the Wizengamot) had been wiped out entirely. That stuff generally didn't happen anymore, but where and when the Ministry was weak, or the people involved didn't respect the official bodies for whatever reason — like during the war, or increasingly these days between Cambrians and Gaels — you did still see that sort of thing crop up from time to time. The old stories and legends and stuff were still influential in magical culture, back when that was just how people handled disputes, so it tended to be the ethics people fell back on if there was nothing to stop them.
Liz might think that, in that kind of ethical system, women would basically be expected to be quiet obedient baby factories, but again, that was thinking like a muggleborn. How misogynist mages were did tend to depend on how Romanised they'd been way back when, but there was more to it than that. Because they'd have to take care of children and shite, the women were expected to stay at home, while the men might be off elsewhere doing whatever — but that left the family potentially vulnerable to their enemies. There were wards, yes, they would have vassals and shite who might be set up to defend the household when the lord and his sons weren't there to do it themselves.
But the final line of defence was the women — the lady of the house, mothers, unmarried adults. Traditionally (at least in the Dark), magical noblewomen would be trained to defend themselves, and while they did get different training from the men, that's because it was geared to a different purpose. The battlefield, magical duels and shite, those had rules, but the women of an aristocratic household were expected to defend themselves and the children of the family by any means necessary.
Honour, you see, was a game for men — women were taught to fight dirty.
So, Liz being really dangerous with a wand, and even times she'd done things, like, going up to help Hermione with her roommates and immediately moving straight into beating them up, how she could be cold and cruel to people who threatened her and her people (or even just to anyone who wasn't her people), to Katie that was just more mum stuff. Liz was the Lady of a Noble House, and she was basically exactly what Katie expected a Lady of a Noble House to be like: good to her people yes, but a cold vicious bitch to anyone who fucked with them. And, since people like that were generally the good guys in those old stories and shite Katie had grown up with, she thought of that as a positive quality.
When Katie said Liz was mumsy, she didn't mean the same sort of person that Liz thought of when she heard mumsy — once she understood that better, it started being less embarrassing. Still embarrassing, like when Katie joked about it at their last duelling team meeting (Liz had brought snacks that time), just, not as much as it'd been at first. Kind of similar to Severus's you are a girl moment, when she thought about it, trying not to feel weird about being girly sometimes, yeah.
Of course, Katie also thought this mum stuff was fanciable...which was also kind of embarrassing? She wasn't sure if that was the right word for it. You know, part of the reason someone liked her being because she thought she'd be a good mum was...a thing. Not the whole reason, of course, but it was part of it, and Liz didn't know how she felt about that.
But anyway, Katie was a better idea than Daphne for that reason, that she was more realistic about what kind of person Liz was. (Unlike Daphne, Katie definitely believed Liz was capable of murder.) They also just had more in common? Sure, very different backgrounds and all, but, they were both super into duelling, and played quidditch and all — they played the same position, even. Katie enjoyed watching both more than Liz did, but she didn't mind, like, having a game or a tournament or something playing on the radio while working on stuff...and mages didn't have television, so that was the form events were broadcast in. They had relatively similar tastes in fiction — not the, er, erotica, it wasn't like she'd come out and asked about that, she meant the other stuff — and, hell, they even had pretty similar political opinions at times. Daphne tended to be really soft, all peace and love why can't everyone get along and stuff, which just came off to Liz as so naïve sometimes. Katie had a bit more faith in certain Ministry institutions than Liz did — though not the Wizengamot, which was apparently a common distinction with commoners — but still, they agreed on a lot of things, just in general, was the point.
Katie didn't make Liz feel guilty for being a shitty person, because sometimes she was a vicious bitch too.
And also, they just got along really well? A lot of the times, with Daphne, Liz had felt like...she didn't know, like it wasn't really natural, like they had to try. More on Daphne's end, honestly, though mostly because of Liz — Liz was a fucking mess, so Daphne had been careful not to make her uncomfortable, you know. And Liz had to keep some of her more, er, antisocial thoughts to herself, mostly just because they made Daphne sad, and Liz didn't want to do that...
She really did think dating Katie would work out better. Uncharacteristically optimistic, even — she had a really good feeling about it, though she couldn't quite explain why, even to herself. She didn't think it was a Seer thing? Honestly it might be, it could be really hard to tell, but she didn't think so. It was possible this was just like Daphne again, talking herself into it because she wanted to believe it, but she didn't think it was that either. She just thought they would work out really well, was all.
And she already knew Katie was interested...and also she was hot, so. There's that.
Liz thought she was doing better, just in general — actually dealing with her issues for once, and, trying to avoid eating psychometrically bad shite all the time made her feel surprisingly better. (Maybe due to having fewer nightmares now, so she could sleep normal?) As stressful as this year had been in some ways, she...she was doing pretty well? Not perfect, by any means, she still had days (and she still wasn't sure what happiness was supposed to feel like, exactly), but less shite, at least.
She thought she was in a decent place to try dating again — without totally fucking it up this time. She wanted to try it again, not just in general, but with Katie specifically. She had a pretty good feeling about it.
This wasn't the time, though. For one thing, they were in public right now...and also Katie was still dating Leticia Prewett? Though, their relationship sounded kind of weird, even just hearing Katie talk about it — she wasn't sure if "dating" were the right word, or if they were just shagging? or was there even a meaningful distinction there? Liz didn't know, personal relationships were fucking confusing even when they were hers, much less other people's...
Not right this second. But soon, though.
Liz was temporarily distracted thinking about how that would go (and imagining snogging her), before trying to force herself to pay attention to what Zabini was saying. It was really more difficult than it had to be, with Katie sitting right there.
She shook herself out of her thoughts about Katie and dating (and snogging and magical culture and sex) in time to catch the final scores. Oh, for fuck's sake, she'd just opened a four point lead! She wasn't even supposed to be in this fucking thing, why couldn't someone just kick her arse already?! Uuuggghhh...
The groan was audible, Liz slumping back in her chair — Katie laughed at her, because of course.
Going into the final task, scores are looking like this:
Liz — 43
Fleur — 39
Cedric — 38
Artèmi — 37
Viktor — 37
Ingrid — 32
Poor Liz, can't even lose properly.
Next is checking in on what Tamsyn's up to, woo, see you then.