Liz stepped out of the bathroom into the main room of the tent, not at all surprised to find Severus already there waiting for her. She'd been told the dinner they were going to, despite being some big fancy thing, didn't really expect super formal dress from everyone, but she was still a little surprised that Severus hadn't changed into one of his fancy robes (which Liz suspected Narcissa had paid for). It looked kind of like an ordinary muggle suit, but not quite. The colour was off, for one — the trousers and coat were not quite black, an obvious blueish tint to it, something glimmery about the fabric that a lot of the shite the mages wore had — and there was a waistcoat, in a vivid dark green that set off against the blue interestingly, but no tie or anything. Which Liz thought was odd by magical standards, normally something like this would come with a cravat-ish, scarf-like thing (like the "ties" with their school uniforms), but Liz wasn't the expert on magical dress codes, what did she know. It didn't look like Hermione was here, probably off with Sirius, Dorea, and the Tonkses — they'd meet up in the box later.
Severus was reading from a journal of some kind, as she walked in he looked up, a shiver in his head she didn't know how to read accompanied by a single raised eyebrow. "Are you about ready to leave? We still have a few minutes before we'll be late."
"Just about." Liz made for the outside door, where she'd left her boots nearby — there was a little huff from Severus, but he kept whatever he was thinking to himself.
Sirius had secured them the box in the stands in part with a promise that Liz would meet the new Minister, yes, but the terms of that agreement had seemingly changed while Liz hadn't been looking. She'd thought it'd just be a brief meeting, maybe a few pictures, no big deal, but somehow it'd blown up into attending an official dinner with some fancy government people the afternoon before the final match of the Cup. At first, Liz had been very irritated, had seriously considered refusing, but Sirius and Severus had both managed to talk her into it. Since these were all big government people, they'd mostly be focused on sniping at each other, politics shite and whatever, wouldn't have much attention to spare for the random fourteen-year-old girl in the room. Maybe trying to get her on whatever side of whatever they were talking about would draw her into stuff, except everyone knew she had a proxy for political stuff — she could tell her proxy to do stuff, obviously, but Liz could just brush it off like, dunno, I'm still in school, go talk to Sylvia about it, and everyone would accept that.
Basically, there'd be some inane polite small talk, she'd probably be forced into a few pictures, but mostly all she had to do was show her face and quietly eat the free food she was given. It sounded tedious, but sure, she could do that.
Despite Sirius being the one who'd gotten the invitation in the first place, he'd ended up getting out of it, Severus 'escorting' her in his place. Liz hadn't been there for that conversation, so she didn't know why that'd happened, but she suspected it was a combination of Severus worrying Sirius would unnecessarily offend someone for his own amusement (and indirectly endanger Liz) and Sirius hating politics so not wanting to go in the first place. Which was fine, of course, she'd rather it be Severus anyway — Sirius seemed to feel the need to fill silences with pointless blather, which could get annoying sometimes.
She was also allowed to bring a friend. Her initial thought had been that she'd just bring Hermione, but Hermione had immediately suggested she invite Daphne instead. Partially, yeah, Hermione didn't really have any clothes that would be appropriate to wear to this thing — she had had nice dresses for dinner parties and shite her parents would get invited to, but those were all from before Hogwarts, and she planned to go shopping for the Yule Ball on a Hogsmeade weekend closer to the date — but she was also scheming to get Liz and Daphne more time together. And she wasn't subtle about it either — maybe nobody else had caught it, but Liz was a mind mage and therefore a massive fucking cheater. Liz didn't know what Hermione expected to happen, since there were going to be a lot of other people there so they could hardly do anything, well, but fine, whatever.
(Hermione was the only person she'd gotten outright support from so far, with the Daphne being her girlfriend now thing. To be fair, not very many people even knew about it — Dorea did, obviously, and she was positive Severus did...and Nilanse too, probably, but she'd never said anything. Still, it made her feel kind of weird, she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do with this.)
Liz would have taken some effort to not look like shite anyway, but knowing Daphne was going to be there had possibly made her put more effort into it than she might have otherwise. The dress was new — well, she'd actually gotten it like a month ago now, but she hadn't worn it anywhere yet. It was mostly a dark green, glittering a little in the light, which Liz had initially thought was appropriately Slytherin-themed and nice-looking enough for if she got dragged to one of the fancy parties Severus had to go to all the time, like the holiday one coming up — and also the fabric of the robes he tended to wear to those looked very similar, so they'd sort of match — but the white embroidery here and there made it almost look Ireland-themed, which was convenient for today. It was a relatively informal dress by magical standards, somewhat plain and even sleeveless, but Liz didn't care, it was comfortable and she thought it was pretty so everyone else could go to hell.
She'd also grabbed a bunch of the Mistwalker bracelets she'd gotten during their visit to the Greenwood over Christmas, colourful glass beads jingling around her wrists, and a necklace she'd found in Lily's jewellery box — a plain-ish gold chain, suspending a pendant in a kind of rosette design, delicately-shaped gold leaf holding some kind of vivid red gemstone carved into a flower, pretty detailed but not distinctive enough for Liz to guess what kind of flower that was supposed to be. (It wasn't huge, about the size of the pad of her thumb, but still slightly ridiculous, because she was pretty sure the gold and the gem were real.) She'd debated a bit over whether she should use something else, but in the end she'd tied back her hair with her Irish scarf again — besides, it was signed by the team now, so that made it fancy, right? Since wearing gloves was apparently a thing mages did a lot, she'd had Nilanse pop over her duelling ones, along with her tournament-standard holster, both of which she'd gotten new ahead of Jassy. The enchantments pretty simple, smooth black leather, very little in the way of decoration, very practical. And then her duelling boots, tying them right now with a tap of her wand on each, which maybe weren't perfectly appropriate for this setting, but Liz was not buying new shoes just for this. It wouldn't be that much of a hassle, since Nilanse could just pop her there and back no problem, but it was the principle of the thing.
The combination of the girly dress and jewellery and the harder, more utilitarian duelling stuff might seem odd to other people, but Liz liked the contrast. She couldn't put words to why, it was just one of those things. It was true that Liz had never really been taught to dress herself properly, because that was the sort of thing girls were usually taught by mums or older sisters or whatever, and Liz didn't have any of those, but she also thought her personal preference might just be a little weird? It was a combination of the two, she thought.
Liz tipped up onto her toes to pull down her plain black cloak — how damn short she was never stopped being annoying — whipped it around her shoulders quick. (You were supposed to wear a cloak or something whenever out of doors, but she guessed that went double while in a sleeveless dress.) Turning back to Severus, quickly enough the cloak whipped around a little and the dress fluttered against her legs, she spread her arms at her sides. "Good?"
"Yes." Severus had stood up to follow her, buttoning the jacket as he went. It was longer than the muggle style, maybe about knee-length, but that was normal for mages. Weirdly, he didn't seem to be getting a hat or anything, which Liz was aware you were supposed to do — she didn't think she'd ever seen Severus wearing a hat, actually. That was definitely not following the rules, but she expected Severus had a reputation as an odd bloke by now. He must have picked up her scepticism — she hadn't missed that odd feeling when he'd first spotted her — because he explained, "I was merely surprised. Unless I'm mistaken, I only recall seeing you under cosmetic glamours on one previous occasion — and those spells were set by Miss Greengrass, I believe."
Liz shrugged. "Yeah, I just felt like it. It's not like the spells are hard, I've picked up a couple here and there." She wasn't going to admit out loud, to Severus, that she had several copies of Witch Weekly — she'd gotten them in hope that some of the advice in there might actually help with her hair, and been very disappointed — but that was where she'd learned most of them. She hadn't done a lot, just darkened her lips a little, lined her eyes and added some glittery green eyeshadow (not super dark, it was pretty subtle), a similar colour put on her fingernails, because Ireland. They were all illusions, had required buying no actual makeup — it'd taken her a couple tries to get the exact colours she'd wanted, but it wasn't hard. They'd literally learned glamours in second year, pretty basic magic. "Is this too much?" plucking the necklace off her chest. "I'm pretty sure the stone is real, but, fancy mages, I figured it was fine."
"It's not too much." Severus hesitated just a second, before adding, "I recognise that piece: it was one of the courting gifts Lily received from your father."
"...Oh." Liz wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about that, honestly. It did sort of make sense, when she thought about it — she doubted Lily would have been able to afford something like this before, and red and gold were Potter colours... "It isn't, um, it's okay for me to be wearing this, right? I mean, there isn't some creepy subtext I don't know enough about the culture to understand?"
"No, in fact it's entirely appropriate. It's quite common for courting gifts to be passed on to the children, especially teenage girls."
So it was likely she'd have ended up with this thing even if her parents hadn't died, he meant. "Neat. We going, then?"
Over the course of the forty hours or so since the last semifinal match, there'd been a bit of a shift in the appearance of the camp. They were down to two teams now, and seemingly everybody had decided to support one or the other, memorabilia for various eliminated teams taken down to be replaced with ones for Ireland or Bulgaria instead. Liz hadn't immediately noticed the difference, because obviously the Irish were still using Irish stuff, and the Bulgarian stuff also happened to be dominated by red, same as the British. (Apparently magical Bulgarians used a red and yellow flag with a lion, kind of like the Queen's flag, you know, the one with the three lions on it? except there was only one lion, and the colours were backward, the lion red and the background yellow. Liz's poor English brain had been very confused for a second there.) The match was still a few hours off, but the camp felt a bit rowdier already, the chatter and laughter and music going on everywhere seeming just that little bit louder, a sense of excitement and anticipation thick on the air. Liz was positive people had started drinking ahead of the match, because of course they had — it wasn't a proper party until the liquor came out, obviously.
(Liz expected she'd probably end up drunk tonight too — she was going to try to be careful about it, worried she might do something stupid and embarrassing and who knew how many people about had cameras on them, but she was tiny and things happened.)
The dinner was being held at the little official village, so they went straight to the road behind their tent, headed north. The walkway was rather empty, since the match was still a few hours off, and presumably everyone was getting an early dinner or hanging out doing whatever — there were a few people walking back and forth, but not very many. They weren't that far away from the village, relatively speaking, but the camp was still fucking huge, so it'd take some minutes to get there.
They'd only been on the road for a moment, more or less alone, before Severus broke the easy silence. With an uncomfortable question, because of course he did. "You and Miss Greengrass are dating now, correct?"
"Oh, um, yes?" They'd never actually talked about it, but Liz guessed she should take this as confirmation that he'd figured it out on his own anyway — she'd assumed as much, but. "Should I have...said something about that?"
With an uncomfortable shrug in his head, not sure how to read that, Severus said, "We may discuss such things if you wish. You might have guessed that I was aware of the development, but I suspected you would be more comfortable if I waited for you to mention it to me, rather than forcing a potentially stressful conversation on you before you were ready." He probably wasn't wrong, perceptive bastard. "If you are ever having difficulties, but aren't comfortable speaking of them with me, I'm certain Narcissa will make herself available — I understand it may be...easier, with another woman."
Honestly, she wasn't sure she'd ever do that. Pass over the fact that she didn't really know Narcissa very well, and it was still, well. "Um, I don't know about that. Depending on what it's about, it might be kind of awkward — I don't know if you noticed, but Narcissa is very pretty, it's distracting." If she really needed to talk to someone, Severus would probably be her best option, for that if no other reason.
Severus let out a little amused huff. "Yes, Elizabeth, I've noticed." Now that Liz thought about it, Severus had been her healer through her pregnancy, Liz was ninety-five per cent sure Severus had personally delivered Draco — or at least he would have been present, they might have also had a midwife or something? — so he'd definitely seen her naked at some point, and Narcissa Malfoy naked was a thought Liz probably shouldn't be lingering over. "I am very professional." Well, of course he was, Liz wouldn't be comfortable with things, like, asking him to curse her so her misshapen tits stopped growing if he weren't, she was just saying (or not-saying). "Unless I'm mistaken, you aren't telling people yet."
What was he— Right, he'd gone back to the original subject, got it. "Oh, you mean, telling people about— Yeah, no, I... I did tell Hermione, but she kind of knew already? But no, I, er, I don't think I'm ready to...you know. Is that a problem?"
"That depends."
Liz waited a couple seconds. "...On what?"
"Are you and Miss Greengrass on the same page on the matter?"
"Oh, yeah, we talked about that already. She doesn't really get it — Mistwalkers don't think being gay is a big deal, you know — but she's aware I can be neurotic about things sometimes, and it would definitely get in the newspapers, and it would be a big— I mean, she knows, it's fine." Liz physically bit her lip to stop herself from babbling — she didn't know why she'd gotten weirdly talkative all of a sudden, just, nerves.
"Very well. I will ensure to keep my knowledge of your relationship to myself, then."
Like, at the upcoming dinner party, he meant, he'd try not to give away any hint that they weren't just friends. Which was a potential problem Liz hadn't considered at all, honestly. "Right, thanks." Since the conversation Severus had wanted to have was over, they immediately lapsed into silence — which wasn't unusual, neither of them were big on small talk. But, maybe she was just nervous about the dinner party (and seeing Daphne in like five minutes), maybe the topic was just niggling at her, her fingers tapping at her arms and the thought sizzling at the back of her head. After another minute or two she just couldn't hold it in anymore. "How about you, you have a girlfriend I don't know about?"
The mix of amusement and exasperation in his head was odd, didn't know what that was about. He said only, "No," the word flat and expressionless.
"I know you didn't last time I asked, I was just wondering, since the changes at the school mean you're going to be less busy now."
"I assure you, Elizabeth, I am quite content with my personal life at present." Well, sure, that's what he'd told her before, she just...wasn't certain that was really true?
She meant, he'd joined the Death Eaters young, and it hadn't taken very long before he'd defected — and spying on Dark Lords was dangerous work, he'd fully expected he wouldn't survive. And even after the war, he'd known the Dark Lord wasn't gone permanently, and once he returned he would go right back into his old almost-certainly-lethal spying job. It made sense to Liz that Severus would avoid, you know, relationships and stuff, if he believed his life had an expiration date. Not only would that be kind of a shitty thing to do to someone, get them to care about you and all only to get yourself inevitably killed, but she kind of had the feeling Severus wouldn't want to leave orphans behind. (Which did make her wonder about what her parents had been thinking, but that was a separate issue.) But, now that he was her guardian and all, he couldn't go back to spying — he'd said as much to her, kind of thanking her for saving his life in a weird indirect way, so that was a thing. He could actually do stuff like that, and not have to worry about what might happen, things were different now.
Ask Liz before her Hogwarts letter had come, when she'd still been using mind magic to force the Dursleys to (barely) tolerate her presence in the house, if she'd been perfectly content with her life the way it was, she probably would have said yes. And she would have been horribly, horribly wrong.
Not to say she thought Severus absolutely needed to get a girlfriend to be properly happy, she was just saying, she didn't think he'd thought about it that hard either.
"Well, if you change your mind, I guess, I have it on good authority, by which I mean I'm a mind-reading cheater, that it would be very easy for you to get a girlfriend if you wanted to. Which I personally don't get, but it turns out I'm super gay, so what do I know." Though that he was really smart, had multiple Masteries and all, was a powerful mage and a mind mage, and had as high-class a job as teaching at Hogwarts (which Liz knew now was kind of a big deal) would probably have more to do with it — Liz knew some women did think he was handsome (and even some of the girls at school, which was always weird to come across), but mages were big on career and magical accomplishments, so. Also, all the stuff to do with her probably helped? While out in public on the muggle side, Liz had caught multiple women assume he was a single father — they did look sort of similar, if you didn't look too closely, so it wasn't an entirely irrational assumption to make — which almost always made him seem more attractive to them. She didn't get why, exactly, but since she was all famous and shite she assumed the effect would be even bigger for mages. Probably? She didn't know. Point was, she suspected he wouldn't have any problems dating or whatever, if he decided he wanted to.
Somewhat to her surprise, Severus let out a little huff of laughter, his mind bubbling with surprised amusement. Before she could ask what that was about, he said, "I apologise, you sounded very much like Cassie for a second there."
...Cassie Lovegood? Liz knew they'd been friends in school, but they weren't really in contact anymore — she'd asked at some point, he'd gotten an occasional letter but they'd hardly seen each other since she'd graduated from Hogwarts. There were definitely worse people to be compared to, so, "I'll take it. Anyway, I'll drop it now, just saying, you never know what might—"
It struck without warning, hard, a clanging shiver running up her spine, like the ringing of a bell, her skin tingling and her stomach lurching. Liz froze, her breath catching in her throat, as the reverberation continued echoing through her, hard and cold and tense, solid enough it brushed aside everything else, for an instant there was only the one thought and the unshakeable, undeniable certainty, she knew—
"Are you alright? Elizabeth?"
She twitched, stared up at Severus for a second before finding her voice, the echo fading away letting her breathe again. "Um. You're going to meet someone."
His exasperation crackling around her ears, "As much as I do appreciate the concern, Elizabeth, it isn't—"
"Tonight," she insisted, cutting him off. "I'm not being stubborn and nosey or whatever, I just had a Seer moment, it—" She lurched a step forward, grabbing for his hand, Severus was too dumbfounded to snatch it away in time. Actually touching him made his mind a lot louder, but he was much better at occlumency than she was, she didn't have to worry about keeping them separate — the echo she'd gotten was quiet, the moment of insight passed, but touching magnified it a little bit, she could... "Yeah, I'm sure of it. You're going to meet someone, tonight's important."
Severus's mind was a bit noisy, but he was keeping her away, so it was kind of hard to read, fuzzy behind occlumency barriers. She did catch his scepticism though, irritation, and something else she couldn't quite pick out, too mixed up and half-hidden. "Who?"
Liz frowned, trying to focus on the echo — but it'd gotten too quiet, it slipped through her fingers, she couldn't... "Well, a woman, obviously." Severus snorted. "Um, I think she's a dark witch, or her magic's attuned to the dark, or however the hell you want to say it. Or, that could be you, I guess? I don't know, it's hard to say — Seer shite doesn't work like that, you know. She's important, though, I can tell that much."
For a long moment, or at least it felt like it lasted a while, Severus met her eyes — face all but expressionless, gaze heavy and unblinking. She was pretty sure he didn't believe her. He didn't think she was lying, he definitely believed she'd picked up something — she didn't know how having a Seer moment would look from the outside, but it had been intense enough it'd stopped her in her tracks, so — but he was more sceptical as to her interpretation. Sure, she'd gotten a flash that he'd meet someone tonight who was important, but she could be misreading why this mystery woman was important...which was a good point, actually? It wasn't like there'd been anything in that flash she'd gotten that suggested it was his future girlfriend (wife?) they were talking about here — except for that being what Liz had been thinking about at the time. The Sight worked by picking up the resonance of knowledge in the future, like how a glass might ring if exposed to sound at the right frequency, you know, and while the Seer couldn't aim perfectly, there was a relationship between what they were thinking or feeling and what information they could pick up. Kind of like glasses of different sizes and shapes would react to different frequencies, if that made sense. So, while the topic they'd been talking about at the time didn't prove anything, it was suggestive...
Severus could be as sceptical as he liked, but Liz was pretty sure — and she was the Seer here, so there.
Finally, Severus wormed his hand out of hers, letting out a little sigh. "I suppose I will take your premonition under advisement. Shall we go?"
"What? Oh right, stupid dinner party, almost forgot..." Seer moments could be really disorienting sometimes, okay. She was just remembering now that the World Cup final was going to be in a few hours, abruptly bringing a smile to her face, this was going to be great...
Severus ticked up a single eyebrow at her, but turned to lead the way without a word.
For their (semi-)fancy dinner party thing, they'd taken over what was apparently the dining hall for the officials living in the little village thing. The building looked practically identical to all the others, with the same wooden siding and plain shingled roofs, raw materials with very little sign of decoration anywhere, but larger than the others, a more oblong rectangle among the mostly-even squares of the little houses. There was a big sign on the front, which ordinarily had information about the meal schedule and stuff posted on it (in French), but was currently plastered over with a notice that the hall was being occupied by a private party for the afternoon (also in French). Liz wondered what the people not invited to the party were supposed to do for food, but that was a stupid fucking question, because there was food all over the place in the camp, obviously...
There were a few people wandering around, but this area of the camp was pretty empty. Empty enough that Liz spotted Daphne long before they reached the dining hall — from a distance, she was mostly identifiable by the sunny blonde hair and the colourful, asymmetrical Mistwalker-style clothing. (Daphne had come to the World Cup with a sizeable group of Mistwalkers, and hadn't bothered even bringing any normal person clothes.) She was sitting on a stool (presumably conjured by whoever escorted her here) some metres away from the door into the dining hall, her feet idly kicking in the air as she waited. Shortly after Liz spotted her, she must have noticed Liz and Severus, waving over at them, but she didn't get up, waiting for them to approach.
Daphne's weird wrap dress thing was in green and yellow and white, which were Greenwood colours, but Liz guessed in this case also doubling as Irish colours. (And not just in the sense of the team: Liz had learned recently that, despite themselves being British, the Mistwalkers as a rule supported the Gaelic nationalist cause, for complicated reasons she hadn't really followed.) It looked somewhat more complicated than usual, with smaller details Liz couldn't see from here, beads woven into the fabric glittering in the patchy sunlight, more around her wrists and neck. Someone had played with her hair, flowers but also just lengths of grass plaited into it — sounded odd, but Liz was aware that was a thing some light-haired people at the Greenwood did, green vivid against the yellow — a bunch of purplish blossoms framing the left side of her face. Because Greenwood people liked plants, that was a whole thing with them...
Daphne stood as they neared, vanishing the stool with a flick of her wand. She was wearing leggings, Liz noticed, which wasn't something Mistwalkers typically did, probably just a consideration made to the sensibilities of outsiders — and the skirt would be pretty scandalously short by magical standards without them, at least on one side, so yeah, probably good thinking. And only on one side, because the hem was crooked, as seemed to be the case with most Mistwalker stuff, dropping around her knee on the left but reaching pretty high up her thigh on the right, but with dangling bits stretching down a few inches below the hem, strings of beads dyed green and yellow and red and blue, swaying and bouncing as she moved — the screen of beads wasn't really thick enough to cover anything, exactly, hence the leggings, Liz guessed. That was a bit more complicated than the Mistwalkers usually bothered with (especially since they made everything by hand), the beads stitched into the pattern, and the length of cloth seemed to have a finely-embroidered band down the middle, a complicated knotwork pattern with the Greenwood wheel inserted every few inches, which was also unusual, Liz assumed Daphne had dressed up a bit for the occasion. (By the standards of her people, of course.) The flowers to the left of her face were mostly pansies and petunias, plus a bunch of lilac, enough of them to line her face all the way from forehead to the bottom of her jaw, hiding her ear and holding back her hair on that side. The dress thing was wrapped such that a patch of her side on the left was showing, a glint of one of the piercings along her hip — the jewellery was gold with green stones, Liz noticed, which was odd, normally the Mistwalkers just used steel...
Liz noticed she was staring, and forced herself to stop — or tried to, anyway, she had little confidence that she wasn't being very, very obvious. Daphne was pretty, okay, couldn't help it.
"Hello, Liz," Daphne said as they got to a comfortable conversational distance, brightly grinning. "Master Severus," she added with a little nod to him.
Liz was having trouble finding her voice for a moment — partially because she never knew what to do with basic social niceties, but yes, also because she was still a bit distracted — so Severus actually got there first. "Miss Greengrass. I trust you didn't walk here from your camp alone." Leaving unstated that it wasn't exactly safe for a noble girl (especially one who happened to be the future lady of her family) to wander alone in a place like this, where just anyone could be about — especially looking like this, but Liz was pretty sure Daphne didn't pick up on that part.
"Oh no, my mother walked me here. She had business to attend to with...someone with Public Works, I think, I'm afraid I wasn't listening — I expect she's still over there somewhere," nodding off to her right. Daphne left unstated that her mother was accompanied by a couple fighters from the Greenwood, at least one of whom was surely keeping an eye on Daphne while she waited. The Greenwood might be full of soft hippie types, but they weren't stupid — it wasn't that long ago that nobles assassinating their enemies or kidnapping their children to use as leverage had been the norm. They might be living in somewhat more civilised times now, but that didn't mean they didn't still take precautions, just in case.
Daphne must have noticed Liz in her head, eyes flicking back to her. Smiling, a brief flash of a light kiss on her lips — imagining the greeting she would give Liz if they weren't in public right now, and making sure Liz saw it — eyes turning down a little, the warm, tingly pressure of her attention trailing down her neck and along the neckline of her dress, jumping along the embroidery, lingering for a moment around her hips, the patch of skin between the hem and her boots, the glittering of the beads around her wrists dancing in Daphne's head, eyes jumping back up to Liz's, another flash of imagination, complete with the feeling of ghostly fingers along her neck, and—
Pulling away, Liz glanced over to the side, cleared her throat. That was a little much all at once, was all, she just needed to take a breath for a second. And honestly, Daphne, Severus was right there...
(At least Daphne liked the dress, she guessed.)
Liz managed to stumble out an awkward hello at some point — Severus's exasperation was a physical thing around her, like an oh god, the kid I'm responsible for is a bloody teenager now kind of feeling — and they thankfully made their way inside before Liz could make even more of an idiot of herself than she had already. Unsurprisingly, there were already people inside, they were hardly left alone for a few seconds before there was a call of, "Ah, Lady Elizabeth!" and the new Minister was making his way toward them.
It was possible Liz was paying less attention to the political situation in the country than she really should — she had her own shite going on, and that was what she had Sylvia for. She was aware Fudge had been forced out of office pretty early into the scandal around Sirius's false imprisonment, but they hadn't selected a new Minister immediately, leaving the managing of the Ministry to his Undersecretaries (the ones who hadn't also gotten swept up in scandals and removed) and the Directors instead. The political situation had been too unstable at the time, nobody had been confident of their ability to hold a vote and get the person they wanted in. Finally, months later, they were just now getting into replacing the Minister and a number of Directors — some were keeping their jobs, but others were getting the boot, there'd been a slow trickle of news and more scandals to do with it over the summer — a lot of backroom dealing going on as the new political factions crystalised. It was a work in progress, last she'd heard.
The new Minister was a bloke called Cuthbert Mockridge. The name was vaguely familiar, Liz assumed she must have seen his name in the paper at some point — he had been leading the Goblin Liaison Office before, which was an extremely important post, he'd been well-known before. He was also quite old, and not in excellent health. He'd been a Hit Wizard during the most recent "goblin rebellion" — given how the goblins dictated the British economy, it might be more appropriate to call them mage rebellions — around the turn of the century, sustaining pretty serious injuries during a (failed) attempt to take one of the goblin enclaves somewhere in the north. He'd even been held prisoner for a time, his release guaranteed by negotiations at the end of the conflict, it was a whole thing. Picking to head the office someone who'd actually fought against them might seem odd, but the goblins respected warriors rather more than politicians, so it actually made sense — in fact, Sylvia said part of the reason they'd picked Mockridge was to reassure the goblins that, despite the political instability in Britain at the moment, they one hundred per cent intended to honour the treaties between their peoples, they didn't have to worry about the mages trying something. Or, more to the point, suggesting the goblins didn't need to 'rebel' again to press their interests, it was fine, the mages weren't forgetting about them, don't worry about it.
Since he was rather old at this point — older than Dumbledore, even, though he really didn't look it — Sylvia was certain he'd been picked as a sort of placeholder, that they'd replace him once the political situation stabilised. Exactly like Erin Scrimgeour being picked as the new Chief Warlock, they didn't intend his tenure to be very long. Possibly more interesting in the long term was Dirk Cresswell, a talented and somewhat politically-radical muggleborn (and young, only Severus's age), being promoted into Mockridge's previous office, making him the most highly-placed muggleborn in the Ministry at present, and therefore the single most visible and politically-powerful muggleborn in the country, but Liz didn't care enough to investigate the implications of that. This shite was what she had Sylvia for, after all.
Mockridge was a relatively tall man, had once been thick and broad-shouldered but had turned reedy with age. His long silvered hair had been pulled back in a bun sort of thing (not exactly, but similar), his facial hair a darker grey, nearly reaching his collarbones but trimmed into smooth angles and well-groomed, a pair of plaits framing his chin capped with little silvery beads. (Not unusual for magical commoners, Liz had seen similar on a lot of older men just walking around.) Wearing one of those old-fashioned magical suits in green and white (supporting Ireland), he walked with a noticeable limp, leaning on a cane — goblins couldn't use wands, but their weapons were cursed by their own methods, and resisted healing just the same. He was accompanied by a handful of other officials, all of them politely moving at his slower pace rather than walking ahead to get to Liz and Severus and Daphne first.
"Hello, hello," he said, with a bit of a wry smile. "Pleased you could make it, my lady. Cuthbert Mockridge," offering a hand.
Most of the nobles didn't generally shake hands, but Liz knew the commoners often did — they normally gripped higher up the arm, but it was the same basic idea. The coverage of her gloves and wand holster weren't enough to prevent skin contact, but his occlumency was actually very good, smooth cool walls pressing against her before retreating again as he let go. "Nice to meet you, Minister," she lied. "Just Liz is fine, by the way, you don't have to do all the silly my lady stuff."
He just smiled at her, vaguely amused for some reason. "Yes, then I'd be Cuthbert of course." Then introductions with Severus and Daphne quick — apparently Severus and the new Minister had met at some point. "Excuse me, do all of you speak French?" Liz did, of course, and so did Daphne — though not fluently, and she had a noticeable southern accent, for some reason — and Severus understood it just fine, but he mostly only read journals or listened to speeches at conferences in French, so he couldn't speak it much at all. (He had an absolutely atrocious accent.) The Minister decided that would have to do, and immediately switched to French to introduce the people with him, who (with the exception of his wife and a single bodyguard) were all diplomats.
Because Liz was being introduced to bloody foreign dignitaries now. Being the Girl Who Lived was wild sometimes.
The Chancellor of Bulgaria was here, along with his wife and children — the children weren't present, off with some assistant, apparently. He seemed like a perfectly pleasant bloke, for the most part, which was kind of funny, given how shite Bulgaria's politics were. There were also officials from Holland, Spain, Portugal, Venice, Romania, blah blah, plus the owner of the Bulgarian team and a manager from the Irish one. (Not that Ailbhe bloke from a few days ago, this was a new one.) The introductions were pretty tedious, especially since she got a lot of the same comments of sympathy over the whole custody thing and the basic questions adults asked young people, over and over, very annoying.
The sharp, frigid hostility from some official from Venice (Liz didn't know enough about their internal government to recognise the title) had her skin itching, her spine straightening and her fingers twitching. It was common knowledge she was a mind mage, Liz was certain the man knew she could feel that, but he apparently didn't care.
Since this shite was probably important for her to know at some point, Liz had been learning a little bit about the rest of the ICW — partially from books recommended by Sylvia or Tamsyn, partially talking with Sylvia and Daedalus about things during their occasional meetings. The important thing to keep in mind about international politics was that the communalist revolutions, and the war that proceeded them, were really not that long ago by magical standards, recent enough that most of the people in power currently could still remember that time. In some countries, the people in government now were the same people who'd been in charge then. The current politics of the ICW were very much a result of that period, everything was connected to the Revolution when you got down to it.
Liz knew enough by this point to notice that all the foreign dignitaries here were from conservative countries, most of them still ruled by old aristocracies. And therefore, obviously, allies of Britain — Holland, Spain, and Venice especially were close allies. Bulgaria in particular was an interesting case: the country had completely fallen to the Revolutionaries in the latter years of the war, but the ceasefire had been called while the new government had still been trying to put down the counter-revolutionary insurgency that followed. In the aftermath, conservative forces had been put back in power...and then immediately began a campaign of reprisals, communalists (and 'sympathisers') imprisoned and many of them even executed. They had what they felt to be just cause — after all, the local communalists had collaborated with hostile foreign powers in a time of war, which was technically treason — but nobody reasonable denied that they'd swept up a lot of innocent bystanders too. To this day, Bulgaria was a kind of a halfway military dictatorship, the economy controlled by a handful of old-blood aristocrats but the government dominated by the military, the country still technically under martial law. They remained one of the most stridently anti-communalist voices in the ICW's Senate, and there was no sign of that changing any time soon.
Venice was probably the most like Britain, politically-speaking. They were governed by noble families in a body much like the Wizengamot, and their economy was highly stratified by class, much like Britain's. They were even dominating a minority national group, a lot like the British did the Gaels — though, when Liz thought about it, the nymphs were probably a better comparison. Originally, in the first century or two after Secrecy, Slovenia had been part of Venice, only becoming an independent country relatively recently, and Venice still held parts of the Adriatic coast that should probably be Illyrian. Most of Albania and parts of Greece had also been Venetian, but they'd been taken back in bits and pieces since Secrecy began.
The situation of the native Slavs on the Adriatic coast (and Slovenia before independence) was...not exactly great, to put it mildly. There were other minority ethnicities in Venice, and they were often disadvantaged too, but the Adriatic Slavs had the worst of it, no contest. They had basically no political rights at all, and were little more than slaves on farms and in workshops owned by Venetian nobles. If anything, the repression was even worse now than it'd been at the beginning of the century. Illyria (with allies) had managed to liberate the coast during the war, only for it to be handed back to Venice in the peace settlement — the locals had almost universally preferred to join Illyria (and not be slaves anymore), there had been protests and riots and stuff...so then the Venetian military had cracked down on them, hard. It hadn't been pretty. The locals were still under close observation, allowed less freedom of movement than before, to prevent potential uprisings. Illyria frequently threw up a fuss about it in the Senate, but the conservative countries still had enough votes to stop the ICW from intervening...
...especially since Venice always countered with claims that Illyria was supporting dissidents inside Venetian-held territory. Which was probably true, to be fair, but who could blame them?
The situation in Slovenia wasn't that much better, honestly. Talking to Tamsyn about it, if Liz understood correctly, it was kind of like how European countries still economically dominated a lot of the former colonies, even if they didn't politically control them anymore? Like, Slovenia was technically independent, sure, but they had an unelected aristocratic government like most of the conservative countries...and many of those noble families were Italian, transplants from Venice. Some of them were Slovenes, but they'd kind of halfway adopted Venetian culture during their rule of the region — most of them went to the fancy school in Venice, even primarily speaking Italian (or whatever it was called) at home, it was a whole thing. And Venetian noble families owned a lot of land and important businesses inside Slovenia, so, despite the change in the political situation, Venice still owned Slovenia in a very literal sense. There had been some reforms, the circumstances of Solvene commoners a little better, but the improvement was pretty marginal.
According to Sylvia, the rulers in Slovenia were keeping their own people from protesting things not getting better with independence in part by turning the blame on scapegoats — in particular, non-humans. There used to be a lot of wilderfolk and veela up in the hills of the country, but they'd been almost entirely pushed out by what were essentially racial pogroms targeting them. Because of course.
Venice had had a kind of similar cultural domination in Illyria, Albania, and Greece...and Macedonia...and most of the Balkans, actually — Venice had been and still was very economically important, they had a lot of influence in the southeast of the Continent — but the first three, at least, had gotten rid of the last vestiges of it during their communalist periods. But the conservative countries in the Balkans were still heavily influenced by Venice. The currency Liz had used in Romania? Yeah, that was a Venetian standard, multiple countries in the Balkans still used it. There was kind of a cold war going on in the region, the more communalist-leaning countries (Illyria, Albania, Greece, Austria, Moravia, Sicily) supporting favourable political movements under the table in the conservative countries (Venice, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, plus Tuscany and Genoa), while the wealthy countries of northern Italy used their economic power and that of their conservative allies (particularly Spain, Portugal, Holland, and Britain themselves) to strangle them into submission, the neo-communalists stubbornly holding out in part due to support from countries like Aquitania and Saxony and France, and also allies from outside the ICW — especially Egypt, plus Syria and Turkey and Persia, mostly just because they hated Venice (and honestly fuck Venice, so, fair) — it was a whole extremely complicated mess.
The politics of the person Liz had chosen to represent her in the Wizengamot weren't exactly a secret. So, given all that, feeling some hostility from the Venetian official was not in any way a surprise. Especially since a lot of the Potters' apothecary trade went through Venetian companies at some point, Liz didn't know exactly...
Anyway, there was a lot of standing around and talking for a while, very tedious and terribly boring, but it could be worse — pretty much everyone here had solid occlumency, for how full the room was it was actually pretty quiet. Before too long, they were all sat down at the single long table down the middle of the room. They had assigned seats, of course, Liz, Daphne, and Severus ended up close to the Minister and Oblanski, surrounded with the quidditch people and a few officials from the ICW in Switzerland. (Or Helvetica, whatever, Liz didn't care.) Which, not so bad? At least she wasn't stuck close to that Venetian arse, and that bloke from Portugal kept giving her a funny look...
The meal itself was a little odd. Liz only knew about fancy high society shite from books and television or whatever, so she wasn't exactly an expert, but she'd kind of expected them to get individual things? You know, the waiters and shite bringing a prepared plate or bowl or whatever to each individual person. Instead, it was kind of more like meals at Hogwarts, where there were dishes sitting out for people to serve themselves from — though passing them was rude, they were supposed to stay more or less where they were — except there were also multiple courses? Like, at first there was soup and bread and stuff, and after a bit the staff swept by to remove those and replace them with main dishes, and then a while later those were replaced with desserts. So, kind of like a combination of the two things, Liz guessed?
Whispering with Daphne, Liz was told that this was the way the old money people did it, also common in formal diplomatic dinners — the style Liz knew from muggle films and stuff was more common in eastern Europe, and also used by new money types. Okay, then? Bloody nobles, had to find a way to be classist snobs even within formal fancy dinners...
The dinner was fine, Liz guessed, mostly just kind of boring. The people sitting around them would occasionally talk to her and Daphne, mostly more patronising adult talking to stupid child shite, but for the most part they left them alone, more interested in whatever inane nonsense they were talking about. Some of the food was kind of overly fancy, the way stupid rich people could get about things sometimes, some of it completely unrecognisable, but she managed to find things she could eat — with some help from Severus, he'd been to enough of these things to figure it out. (Him picking out her food for her with a whole bunch of big important adults all around them watching was a little humiliating, but she would like to eat something, so.) Annoyingly, all the wine they were serving was too sweet for her (per Severus, she'd taken his word for it), so she'd ended up with some kind of mineral water, which she didn't really like, but it wasn't like there was anything better.
The desserts, when they eventually got to that point, were all vile sugary monstrosities, naturally. That she wasn't bothering to touch any of it drew some attention from their neighbours, Severus waved down one of the waiters, who came back a few minutes later with some kind of...coffee drink thing? It had orange liqueur in it, apparently — normally Liz didn't like fruit-flavoured things (too sweet), but this was surprisingly good, she ended up having two of them. (She was only slightly tingly from the alcohol by the end of the dinner, must not be much in there.) Severus warned her that this drink normally had a scoop of sugar added to it (because of course it did), but she remembered the name anyway.
Most of the way through the meal, Liz and Daphne were left alone, just talking about...whatever came to mind, she guessed — a lot of academic stuff, about the Cup, what Daphne knew of foreign countries, what they were doing for the rest of the summer, blah blah, Liz didn't remember all of it exactly. Done in whispers, for the most part, so none of their neighbours would feel the need to jump in at any point. They'd started off mostly communicating through mind magic — Daphne didn't mind having Liz in there, so there was really no reason they needed to talk out loud at all — but, um, there'd been a problem with that pretty quickly.
The problem mostly being that Daphne enjoyed teasing her too much.
They'd only been sitting down for a hardly a minute, the waiters still going around getting people's drink orders, when she felt a touch against her knee, Daphne's mind abruptly splashing against hers. With Liz's arms folded on the edge of the table (which was probably rude, but she didn't care), the gap between the hem of her dress and the top of her boots was the only bare skin Daphne could easily get at without being really obvious about it. Skin contact wasn't really necessary for Liz to keep an eye on what Daphne was thinking, but she guessed it did make it easier...
It was fine, at first. Now that nobody else could hear what they were talking about, Daphne was just asking how she was doing. Daphne was aware of the nightmare incident — Liz had mentioned it a couple days ago, which had been really embarrassing, but it'd come up somehow — and worried about some things way more than she needed to, really, she was fine. There hadn't been a repeat incident, and sure, things had been kind of awkward ever since the others had gotten here, since that meant Dorea was here now, but it wasn't so bad. Especially since Dorea mostly just seemed to be avoiding her — she meant, not completely, they did have some of the same friends and would hang out in the same group together, you know, but Dorea didn't really make a point of talking to her, if that made sense. Liz caught Dorea watching her, sometimes, especially when Daphne was around, but it wasn't a big deal.
Daphne was more annoyed about the whole thing than Liz was, honestly. Because the Mistwalkers could be silly sometimes, she'd never even come across the idea that anyone would have a problem with someone else's sexuality until after coming to Hogwarts — it was completely alien to her, and even after a couple years she still didn't really understand it. Liz pointed out that it was maybe more about her being a mind mage, Dorea wasn't comfortable with either and it was hard to say which was the bigger deal, but Daphne thought that was silly too. Liz was her friend, obviously her being a mind mage wasn't any kind of threat to her.
Except, if Dorea was so worried Liz might use her mind magic against her, maybe they'd never been as good of friends as Daphne thought. (Or maybe Liz had done something to freak her out without realising it at the time, and it was her fault, but she kept that thought to herself.) Daphne let out a huff, not really convinced, but she changed the subject anyway.
Belatedly, Liz realised Daphne was anxious, the sharp bite of copper on the air and needles pricking at the back of her neck. Liz had noticed that feeling, of course, it was hard not to — which was apparently a Seer plus mind mage thing, sometimes she wondered what things felt like to Severus — but she hadn't realised the feeling was coming from Daphne. Put a bunch of people in a room, and things could get confusing like that, everyone's feelings all mixing up into an indistinguishable soup. Daphne obviously noticed her noticing, Liz blinking at a flash of warmth, Daphne's thumb rubbing along the side of Liz's knee in a way that was probably supposed to be reassuring, but was mostly just distracting.
It was Mistwalker stuff, Liz saw — going out in public dressed like she did at home, taking absolutely no care to pretend to be a normal person, was still a very new thing. She'd been told growing up that people would react badly, and that would negatively impact the Greenwood in the long run, and she realised that was probably an overreaction, but it was, well, she wasn't used to it yet. She had gotten some funny looks and comments from Brits over the last couple days — but not Gaels as often, since it wasn't really a secret that the Mistwalkers were on their side — it hadn't really been that bad, so far. Foreigners had actually been more consistently polite than their own countrymen, since they were more likely to write it off as some foreign group they weren't familiar with and just move on...though there were exceptions. (That Venetian bloke hadn't liked Daphne any more than he had Liz, for example.) The worst had been when Daphne and one of her cousins — not really related, Liz didn't think, it was just common for people on the Greenwood to call each other that — had been sent out to get drinks for their group, and the first seller they found spat at them and refused to—
What?! When had this happened?
A couple days ago, early in the morning — it was before Daphne met up with Liz and the others. No, she hadn't said anything about it, it hadn't occurred to her as worth mentioning. A lot of people didn't think well of her people, Liz already knew that. If one man being very rude to her was the worst she had to deal with over the course of their time here, Daphne would be satisfied with that.
Well, that was complete shite. Who was this person?
Daphne didn't know his name, and why did Liz want to know anyway? (She hadn't thought it through, honestly, she just kind of wanted to know who it was.) Liz's anger on her behalf was very sweet, of course, but completely unnecessary. The merchant probably hadn't realised that Daphne was one of the very few Mistwalkers who also happened to be nobility — if she wanted to, there were means available to make his life far, far harder for offending her. Unless he had some noble patron somewhere, the chances that he'd be able to fight off a claim for restitution in the Ministry's courts were practically zero. There were reasons common people avoided offending nobles on the few occasions they crossed paths, after all.
She could even challenge him to a duel over this, and permanently disfigure him in some way, doing so would be fully within her legal rights. She wouldn't, of course, she was just saying, that she hadn't done anything about the incident had been a choice, not because she hadn't any options.
As much as Liz had been learning a bit about how magical law worked, she still hadn't been aware of the full extent of the legal privileges reserved for the nobility. Just, Jesus Christ, that was ridiculous...
(The more she learned, the harder it got to not think of the communalists as the good guys.)
While Liz was distracted thinking about how completely fucked up magical Britain was, Daphne had gotten distracted by something else — her hand shifting, fingertips drifting in little circles over Liz's knee. As in, over Liz's knee, the very bottom of her thigh. Slightly higher than the hem of her dress would fall standing, actually, it'd bunched up a little when she sat down, but not really, um, anywhere, still way down there. Still, it was a bit, um, and the flashes of imagination in Daphne's head didn't help.
Seeing Daphne imagine her naked was very, very weird...but kind of impersonal, in a way? Liz meant, the picture she saw in Daphne's head wasn't very much like what Liz actually looked like — Daphne still had no idea how bad the scarring on her chest was — kind of like it was a completely different person, little different than the random sexy thoughts she saw in people's heads all the time. Except, a completely different person with her face? So, kind of surreal, but it didn't make Liz feel exposed in the same way she suspected it would if Daphne's mental image was at all accurate.
Liz had the feeling that normal people would be hurt by their girlfriend (or whatever) imagining them to be more attractive than they actually were, but Liz thought she preferred it this way.
Though, um, this was kind of getting to be a bit much, really distracting and...kind of uncomfortable. If they could talk about something else now, that'd be great.
With an odd lopsided, fluttering chorus of amusement and regret and affection, Daphne turned her a quick rueful smile. She did apologise for making Liz uncomfortable, she hadn't meant to get distracted. It was only, well, it could be difficult to prevent her thoughts from going down those lines while she could feel Liz inside of her. The innuendo was definitely intentional — it came with an intense flash, like that first imagined kiss ages ago now, Liz taken out into—
Liz jerked sideways in her seat, pulling her leg out of Daphne's grasp, the images and feelings assaulting her immediately cutting off. Leaning further over the table, she covered her face with one hand, rubbing at her forehead. Mostly to keep any reaction there might be from being obvious to anyone else around them — she could already feel her face warming, and she felt weirdly out of breath all of a sudden, just, she didn't want to make too much of a scene. She could feel a niggling of suspicion from Severus next to her, his attention prickling over her shoulders, but he didn't draw attention to it.
Imagined experiences weren't as...cohesive, or powerful as the real thing, or even a memory, that was true. But still, an impression of Liz fingering Daphne, from Daphne's perspective, was not something she wanted to see.
...Well, no, that was kind of a fascinating thought, honestly — if Daphne wanted to have very explicit sexy thoughts at her, Liz was... Yeah, that was fine, that was something they could play around with sometime. Just, while surrounded by a bunch of fancy strangers and also Severus, sitting right next to her, was not the time for it. Even if they were alone right now Liz would probably have to take a breather anyway, because whoo, that was a lot...
(Daphne had a very vivid imagination. Liz had already known that, sure, but wow.)
While Liz was trying to catch her breath, there was a spike of surprise and anger from Daphne. Self-directed anger, Liz was almost entirely certain — she wasn't in Daphne's head at the moment, but feelings focused on her were usually more clingy than this. "Oh no, sorry, Liz, I—" Liz wasn't looking, but by the tinkling of beads moving she was still certain Daphne had started reaching for her, perhaps just to set a hand on her arm, before instantly second-guessing herself. "I'm sorry," she finished, lamely.
"It's fine, just, too much."
"Yes, I should have known it would be, I just... I wasn't thinking."
Liz dropped her hand to shoot Daphne a slightly awkward smile. She still kept her head bowed a little, hopefully enough for her scarf to hide her face from most of the table — the heat on her face hadn't even started cooling yet, after all, that'd probably take a while. "It was a funny joke." That thought was probably going to occur to her when looking into people's heads now, because apparently Daphne was a bad influence. (Before that incident last Christmas, Liz would never have guessed Daphne was such a pervert, she seemed so calm and classy most of the time.) "But maybe we could leave, um, the funny jokes for when there aren't people around."
As loud as the conversation at the table was, Liz's whisper wasn't so quiet Severus couldn't hear it — by the flicker of exasperation in his head, she had the feeling he had a pretty good idea what was going on over here. Which was embarrassing, but he didn't otherwise react, so Liz decided to try not to think about that.
Warm, tingly relief sizzling in her head, Daphne smiled back at her. "I suppose I can contain myself, if I must. Though, I don't imagine we'll be left alone until after the match is over, and who knows how long that will be." Relaxing a bit, Liz was back in Daphne's head enough to see she kind of regretted that second sentence, had said it without thinking, preoccupied by how long it would be until they could get alone. Because Daphne wanted to kiss her, partially as an apology but partially just because, and she was annoyed that she couldn't right now. Not annoyed at Liz, just, you know.
For a moment, Liz considered clarifying that that's all there would be. Kissing, she meant. And even just that could be a bit overwhelming at times — they hadn't even worked up to snogging yet, Liz always needed to take a break before they got very far. (As much as Daphne seemingly didn't mind, Liz still didn't want to start crying in front of her for no reason.) Having sexy thoughts, very detailed and intentionally where Liz could see them, that was fine, could be, um, a thing they could do, but...
Liz was very much aware that she could be neurotic about things, she was a mess just in general, but some of the things she was a mess about made...this difficult in particular. If nothing else, Severus's reaction to things over the last year had made it very, very clear that her feelings where her body was concerned were in no way healthy. She could have guessed that herself without his reactions to cue her in, but... She wasn't even comfortable being naked alone — in her locked bathroom, behind the door into her bedroom that only she could open, in her house under pricey goblin wards, through which she could tell where everyone else on the property was, and it still bothered her — so she had no doubt whatsoever that, um, anything more than just that would– a problem, it'd be a problem.
Daphne being so damn pretty, and unreasonably nice to her, and Liz kind of wanting to...do things, at least theoretically, got kind of distracted by the idea sometimes (enough that she got herself off thinking about it semi-regularly), didn't make her issues magically go away.
And she had absolutely no idea how long it'd be before this stuff started getting better — some of her other issues had gotten better, but others hadn't, really, and it could be hard to predict sometimes? She was kind of worried that trying might actually make it worse. In retrospect, it was pretty obvious that she'd actually been more, um, unstable after leaving Privet Drive. The nightmares had been mostly new, not starting in earnest until after she got to Hogwarts — she'd had a few now and then, but it'd never been a regular problem before — and things had gotten worse just in general, that big downswing she had the first couple months at Hogwarts. Like, she'd had moments where she got inexplicably anxious and paranoid, and sometimes she could get flashes that felt way too real, but she was pretty sure that time in the bathroom after Pansy stole her clothes had been her first full-on panic attack ever. It wasn't terrible all the time, obviously, it came and went, and she'd gotten better at managing the down-swings, for the most part, but...
She had brought that up with Severus, in one of their talks, worrying that she was slowly going mad or something — like, her life had gotten objectively better, so why did she sometimes feel worse than she ever had back at Privet Drive? (Well, not ever, but since she made it stop, anyway.) The explanation hadn't entirely made sense, but Severus had said that was just a thing that happened sometimes. People who went through a lot of shite, sometimes their brains would shut down stuff that got in the way of getting them through whatever it was, and doing that too much for a long time could kind of get them stuck in a survival mode sort of thing — the brain not shutting that shite down anymore meant the person could actually feel it now, which could make things after some shitty thing way more miserable than the shitty thing had actually felt at the time, because brains were fucking stupid. And since Liz had been stuck in survival mode for so long, her brain didn't entirely remember how to not shut that shite down, which led to things being really inconsistent and confusing, and she'd never really learned how to deal with things like a normal person, hence being inexplicably miserable at random intervals despite her life being objectively better now.
Which was fucking stupid, but brains were trash, so whatever.
And Liz had just been reminded a few days ago that these particular issues were kind of...sex-adjacent? Vernon had never actually done anything...like that, but she suspected it kind of didn't matter. (Which was getting way too close to unpleasant thoughts she didn't want to deal with, so she mostly didn't.) She didn't have to try to know that, if things with Daphne ever did get to a certain point, it would be very easy to accidentally be thrown into a brain moment, which would be extremely, just, terrible and humiliating and bluh, and maybe just set her back and make fixing this shite even more difficult — after all, adding unpleasant shite to the pile wasn't likely to help her deal with the unpleasant shite she alaready had, if that made sense.
She kind of suspected that she simply wouldn't be capable of attempting anything more than, just, the kissing they'd already been doing, until after she did the blood alchemy thing. And that wasn't going to be until next summer, probably.
Which certainly felt like a long time, when Daphne was being so damn pretty and inexplicably nice to her and she did want to sometimes, but she guessed that was just the way things were.
She considered saying something about all that, but she was just being silly and neurotic again — Daphne already knew that. Well, not all of it, no, but enough. They'd talked about that already, that Liz was fucked up, and there was no telling if or when that would ever change. Which was why Daphne was apologising, probably, because she was aware of all that and had been worried she'd crossed that line without realising. So there was really no point in trying to talk about it, then, especially since it was very uncomfortable and she didn't want to, and also they were surrounded by strangers at the moment.
Her hesitation had gone on way longer than necessary, Daphne giving her a curious look. "The match won't be that long, we'll have time." I wasn't just saying it's fine, it didn't bother me for Liz-is-fucked-up reasons. Well, a little bit, but that wasn't the main problem. Sexy thoughts are something we can play around with, if you want, just not in public.
Daphne nodded, a knot of worry Liz hadn't noticed loosening, her mind brighter, her usual steady cheerfulness enough Liz almost thought she could feel the warmth on her skin. "I wouldn't be so certain. Quidditch isn't a particular preoccupation of mine, I'll admit, but I do know that matches can go on for some time. Didn't the previous final last for five whole days?"
Yeah, Quebec versus Ireland, Liz had heard about that. Technically, a quidditch match could only end once one of the seekers caught the snitch. In that game, both of the seekers had been seriously injured early in the match, badly enough that they'd both been hospitalised for days — both teams had alternate seekers, of course, but they could only be switched in between matches, so they'd had to just keep playing until the seekers were released from hospital. Ireland's seeker had made it back to the field first, by that point both teams' scores had been well into quadruple digits, all the players completely exhausted. Ireland had been over a hundred points behind at the time, but Lynch (the same Lynch as the current captain) had immediately caught the snitch just to finally end the game, four days, nineteen hours, and thirty-seven minutes after it'd started.
But that wasn't going to be a problem this time — in fact, it was so unlikely Liz couldn't help a little scoff at the comparison. "The match will be short this time. Trust me."
What is this, Liz showing a modicum of emotional intelligence? It's almost like she's growing up or something, how cute.
Chapter was going long, because I am the wordiest of all bitches, so I decided I might as well split it. My issues writing haven't cleared up yet, so I really can't say how long it'll be until I have the next chapter — two or three days, probably. Which makes this ending a little awkward, but it's better than dropping a 25k word chapter on you guys, and also fuck the police.
The random idea that I should do the youtube thing is becoming more serious. I'm planning out a history series, but if there are particular worldbuilding/politics/media/fandom topics people would be interested in hearing me expound on like a fucking nerd, I'm taking questions.
Anyway, enough from me, bye.