The Good War

by inwardtransience

Despite her best efforts, Elizabeth Potter is repeatedly drawn into situations she wants absolutely nothing to do with. People just refuse to leave her the hell alone. (fem!Harry, dark!independent!Harry, mentor!Snape, F/F, playing with tropes for fun and profit)

60. Fourth Year — XIV

House-elf apparation felt different from the human kind. It had none of the sense of motion, the twisting and pulling — instead blackness slamming down for a blink and then lifting away, almost like closing your eyes for a second and then opening them to find your surroundings had totally changed. Though it was somewhat disorienting, the hard pressure slapping against her before just as quickly lifting away, and it always made Dorea a little dizzy, for some reason. Honestly, a lot of things made her dizzy, who knew whether that even meant anything.

By the way Mandy staggered, bumping against an armchair and flopping awkwardly over the armrest into it, it wasn't just her.

Dorea let go of Cherri's hand, without really thinking walked up to the chair to hover over Mandy — taking thin gasping breaths, her hands covering her face, seeming to be shivering just a little. "Are you okay?"

"No, I'm not okay!" Mandy dropped her hands enough to give Dorea a glare, her eyes streaked with red, tears gathering in the corners. "What the hell was that? Did someone bomb the World Cup? And what was with those fires, people are being m-melted!"

Dorea grimaced — yes, that had been very gross. She hadn't been hit, Ted keeping her and Mandy covered until Sirius showed up, but they had seen a few people get... Well, it hadn't been pretty. She'd actually been sick once, but they'd had to keep moving, it'd been a mess — she was pretty sure Ted had cleaned her up, she hadn't really been paying attention. "Alchemy, I think, who knows." She didn't know much about it, of course, but she'd heard alchemy could be used to do some really freaky things, when in the wrong hands. "It's okay, Mandy," she said, taking her hand, "we're okay. We're safe here."

"Where are we?" Mandy asked, belatedly looking up to get a look around the room. It was relatively plain, all things considered, a few chairs and sofas and shelves, a cabinet holding rows of protective amulets. The decoration was pretty minimal, by magical standards, utilitarian, stone surfaces covered with rugs in the seating area, some patches of ceramic or wood panels hiding the structural stone here and there, grey and creamy off-white and brown and black. The furniture was a bit old fashioned, upholstery showing the wooden frame beneath, but otherwise hardly anything remarkable.

Dorea recognised it instantly — not this specific room, but the materials, how (relatively) plain everything was. "We're at Ancient House, the Tower." Supposedly, Ancient House had once been the site of an absolutely ancient hillfort, before gradually being expanded outward into the labyrinthine, sprawling mass it was today. At the centre, where the fort had once stood, was a great stone tower, magical techniques allowing it to be built wider and taller than had been available to muggle architects of the time, the structure remodelled several times over the centuries.

The last redesign, during the 18th Century, had transformed the Tower into a sort of redoubt, a place the children and noncombatants of the family could retreat to in the event of an attack — no doubt in part inspired by the near-annihilation of the House of Black by Cromwell and her people the previous century. At the time the House had been smaller than it'd once been, but much larger than it was now, enchantments expanding the internal space multiple times to make enough room to house dozens upon dozens of people (if in relatively tight quarters), enough storage space (complete with preservation enchantments) for rations to last out for months, if not years. Dorea had been here before, each room in the residential areas had one of those cabinets, filled with simple jewellery, bracelets and necklaces, some thick with all manner of protective enchantments, others with offensive enchantments, spread all around the Tower to be easily accessed if the walls were breached. Which had never actually happened, of course — no attackers had ever penetrated Ancient House itself since the early Anglo–Saxon period, the only Blacks to survive the Protectorate aside from Nymphadora's companions had lived here — but nobody ever claimed the Blacks hadn't been paranoid and prone to obsession.

The point was, they were behind multiple layers of wards, not to mention the old ritual-based traps woven into the land itself — there were few places in the entire world that would be safer. "One of the old Black places, nobody has gotten in in over a thousand years. We're safe, Mandy, it's over."

Dorea wasn't entirely surprised when, the tension finally breaking, Mandy burst into tears — somehow, Dorea ended up squeezed into the chair with her, holding her while she cried. Dorea was a bit rattled too, she noticed a couple times that her fingers had started shaking at some point, but she hadn't been affected by the violence as badly as Mandy had...though she didn't know why that was. She guessed, as scary as it'd been, she hadn't ever really thought she personally was in danger — Ted had been there the whole time, and Sirius had caught up very quickly. As weird and silly and flakey as he seemed most of the time, Dorea was well aware that he was extremely dangerous in a fight, once he'd shown up the chances anyone would be able to touch them had fallen to practically zero. She'd been more scared for other people, honestly, the panic she had been feeling had mostly faded when the message from Severus telling them that Hermione, Liz, and Daphne were alright had arrived.

Of course, she had been in more dangerous situations than Mandy. There'd been the troll, which hardly counted, and that incident chasing after Liz and Quirrell, the dementor on the train, there'd been a few tense moments where some random person had tried to hex her in public. (A lot of people did not like the Blacks.) Not to mention that whole thing with her brain trying to kill her when she'd been a child. Mandy, on the other hand, was a pretty normal girl — her dad had some kind of job associated with the naval base in Portsmouth (Dorea didn't know what exactly), her mum mostly doing volunteer charity work when not busy at home, just, very ordinary middle-class English people. Which wasn't meant to be an insult of any kind, of course not, she was just saying. Dorea suspected hex practice in Defence class was the closest she'd ever gotten to actual violence in her entire life.

So if Mandy needed to let it out, well, that was fine. Dorea remembered being very shaken after the incident with Qurirell, she didn't mind.

Eventually, Mandy calmed down, reduced to occasionally sniffling, weakly gripping onto Dorea's jumper. Dorea suggested they maybe go to sleep — it was getting late, and there were plenty of bedrooms in the Tower, most with multiple beds if she didn't want to be alone. But Mandy didn't want to go to bed, didn't think she could, not until after they got news, were sure that all their friends were fine. (Liz and Hermione and Daphne, at least, Dorea assumed most people they knew had been at the World Cup.) Dorea wasn't sure she believed that she wouldn't be able to sleep — having cried herself out for a while, Mandy looked really tired now — but Dorea wasn't going to argue the point. She called for an elf (Nola answered, one of the older men), to bring them some tea, and also a deck of cards, just to have something to pass the time.

Of course it was a magical deck of cards, the Blacks were unlikely to have anything else on hand — Mandy, naturally, was only familiar with modern muggle playing cards. It was the standard deck used in Britain, with four suits — the Italian suits, swords, cups, coins, and batons (usually reinterpreted as wands) — each numbered one to ten, plus three court cards in each suit, knave, knight, and king — some more modern decks had magically-themed replacements, but this deck had the original ones. And, of course, there were all the trump cards, because mages still mostly used tarot decks. Mandy didn't know any tarot games, obviously (and most of them needed more than two players anyway), but it was pretty easy for Dorea to just take out all the trump cards, leaving them with what was basically a normal deck of muggle playing cards, but with the wrong suits and mounted knights instead of queens — that was perfectly fine to play rummy with, even if it wasn't what Mandy was used to seeing.

Besides, Dorea thought the drawings on the cards were nicer, highly detailed and more colourful. There were some advantages to mages still making everything by hand.

And so they sat there playing, for a couple hours, probably. They didn't talk much, Mandy quiet and downcast, Dorea's head too fuzzy to think of anything to say herself — now that they'd gotten out of danger, tea warm and fragrant, she was getting very sleepy. (Not surprising, it must be very late by now.) She kind of wanted to go to bed, tired enough she was having trouble making out her cards and figuring out what she was supposed to be doing, but she didn't want to leave Mandy by herself, either.

Until, coming back from the toilet, she found Mandy asleep in her chair, cards dropped onto the floor in front of her. Dorea dipped over into one of the bedrooms quick, came back with a couple blankets and pillows, draped one of the blankets over Mandy and left a pillow on the armrest — she didn't want to jostle her, if Mandy woke up she'd find it. Emptying her pockets on the coffee table, Dorea curled up on one of the sofas, and was out practically the second she closed her eyes.

She was woken up not long later by someone gently shaking her shoulder — at least it felt like it hadn't been very long, Dorea still feeling numb and heavy with exhaustion, she had to blink multiple times to get her eyes to focus. Someone had sent a house elf to wake her up, apparently. This one was vaguely familiar, but Dorea couldn't think of her(?) name off-hand — the Blacks had been around since literally before recorded history in the region, and had accumulated all kinds of properties over that time, the elven population of the House was surprisingly large — probably one of the younger ones from the warren here at Ancient House. Dorea wasn't even entirely sure this one was a girl — the visual differences between the men and women were pretty small.

Only half-awake, she stared at the elf for a long moment, bemused, before realising she should probably say something. "Um. Hello. Wh-what is it?"

"Miss Andi is saying it's time to wake up," the little elf squeaked — definitely young, her voice even higher than the average elf. "Miss Andi and Miss Cherri is making lunch in the garden house."

Thrown off by the use of miss, Dorea blinked at the elf in confusion a couple times before she put together that was the elf Cherri. She was one of the elves' elders — the Black elves had a chief elf, now Menae's niece Nashidme, but there were also a group of around a dozen or so who... Well, Dorea wasn't certain what they did, exactly, she didn't stick her nose in the elves' business. (The Blacks had actually let the elves of the family manage their own internal affairs since Henry took over, which was somewhat unusual, but then the Blacks were unusual.) She sort of thought of it like how the Borough had a mayor, but also a council, Nashidme would be the mayor and Cherri one of the councillors. It was weird to hear an elf refer to another elf with a title like that, but maybe that was something the younger ones did?

Whatever, not important. "Right. Thank you, we'll start down in a minute." The unnamed elf popped away without further ado, Dorea reluctantly peeling back the blanket and sitting up. It took way more effort than it should, ugh, how long had they slept...

Mandy was unsurprisingly still asleep — at some point she'd woken up enough to move over to the other sofa, her wand on the table and her denims and her bra hanging over one of the armrests. That was a good idea, Dorea didn't realise until she stood up that her denims had kind of pinched at her skin in a couple places overnight, not to mention they were kind of awkwardly crooked, that was just uncomfortable. (She'd very much wanted to get to sleep last night, hadn't thought of it.) It took a couple attempts to get Mandy to wake up, groaning and burrowing deeper into the sofa, pulling her pillow over her head — though she reluctantly started moving at the mention of food. Once they were more or less presentable, using charms in place of properly brushing their teeth — Mandy hadn't known the spell, but she got it after a couple tries — they headed out.

Cherri had popped them to the third floor, apparently, a few flights of stairs down and they reached the ground floor — not a residential area, but a part of the fortifications, hard stone saturated with defensive enchantments, open enough to allow easy firing angles at intruders but with plenty of cover here and there and everywhere. It was even a bit of a maze, too, Dorea actually almost got lost trying to find the exit. She insisted on holding Mandy's hand all the way through — the wards weren't marking her as an intruder, Cherri must have keyed her in when they arrived, but Dorea didn't want to risk one of the traps going off on her — and they eventually made it to one of the hallways leading down the hill. This was the...south hall, perfect, this way...

The slope of the little hillock the Tower was on made actually building on it impractical, so there was a patch of mostly open ground in the middle of Ancient House, four enclosed hallways cutting through it in the cardinal directions. Despite the fact that they were curving up the hill, the floor was perfectly level, and the hallways were shorter on the inside than the outside, the space compressed to bring them to the rest of the complex more quickly — magical architecture did things like that sometimes, the stairs down to Slytherin were a more extreme example.

Ancient House was a big sprawling monstrosity, designed to house easily a dozen families at its peak. Instead of building up, they'd built out, an occasional second or third story but for the most part spread into a maze of hallways and salons and bedrooms and baths and workshops and the occasional greenhouse, all kinds of shite. If you looked at it from above, it wasn't a single solid shape, instead pockmarked with courtyards and greenspaces here and there, looking more like a bunch of separate buildings connected with a web of hallways. And that was exactly what it was, in a sense — when this place had been fully utilised, each family, a married couple and their children (and sometimes grandchildren), would be housed in one of those buildings, some of them instead common areas shared by multiple households, others had potions and alchemy and enchanting labs or whatever else.

There were a few public-facing areas, a great hall and attached bedrooms for guests, but those had never been used very often. Smaller dinners would be held at Grimmauld Place, big formal events at Castle White or Ravenhome. The Great Hall at the former had been signed over to the Ministry to use as an international floo hub shortly after Secrecy, the rest of the Castle shut up ever since, but Ravenhome was currently being renovated after a decade and change of disuse — they'd probably be press-ganged into hosting one of the big holiday parties at some point, especially as Dorea got into courting age, it was better to be prepared. But most of Ancient House was residential, meant for use by the Blacks alone, and the family had once been huge, so the place was enormous. And that was without getting into all the outbuildings scattered across the grounds, there was a lot of shite here.

There were a few hallways that sort of acted as major thoroughfares running through the whole structure, ways to easily get from one place to another without having to weave through the endless maze of homes and workshops. Sometimes they cut through the not-really-separate buildings, but mostly hugged around the edges, long banks of windows looking out over courtyards and gardens — by the angle of the shadows, it had to be midday already, it did not feel like they'd slept that long. The hallway took a corner now and then, not a perfectly straight shot, but the knotwork design worked into the tile under their feet led them on. Dorea hadn't seen all of Ancient House, obviously (most of it was shut up under preservation spells), but as long as they kept following the knotwork, staying in the main corridor, they wouldn't get lost.

"How big is this place?" Mandy asked, peeking around a corner down yet another connecting hallway. It disappeared into murky shadows after a while — the lights in the unused areas had been turned off as well, they could only see as far as the sunlight reached.

Dorea shrugged. "I don't know, honestly." There were certainly maps somewhere, to help manage the wards and stuff, but she'd never seen one. "There were literally thousands of Blacks once upon a time. We're turning here..."

After some time walking, they finally reached the South Gate, the double doors hanging open — many of the external doors were open in the summer, to help air out the absurdly oversized building — letting out into the gardens. The public areas of Ancient House were clear on the opposite end, so these gardens had never been meant for show, instead just whatever the residents felt like putting here, fruits and vegetables for the kitchens. At the centre of the space, marked off with rows of hedges, was a sort of outdoor classroom, looking rather barren with the equipment all put into storage, an amphitheatre in miniature, rows of benches facing a barren platform for the instructor. The Black children used to get their pre-Hogwarts education there, weather permitting, plus peers or clients or vassals or whoever else had been invited to join them. Aunt Cassie's had been the last generation of Blacks to be taught here, the different households switching to private tutors, but lessons had continued until the late 60s, certain Blacks teaching the children of other families in exchange for favours — Ted was looking into starting up the lessons again, in part to keep up their agreements with their vassals and because politics, but they'd have to rely on contracted tutors for at least a few decades.

But anyway, Dorea led them down an immediate left turn, circling around one side of the gardens, the walkpath lined on both sides with bushes, an occasional vine-choked arch sweeping overhead. The garden house was one of the outbuildings on the grounds, originally the gardener's house — for centuries, it was where the family contracted to keep up the grounds had lived. It had been rather further away from Ancient House proper, but as the structure expanded it'd gotten closer and closer, until it was only a short shot down a tiled walkway from the South Gate. When the arrangements had changed, the house had been taken over by one of Dorea's multiple-times-great-uncles, converted into a residence for himself and... She wasn't sure what the arrangement between Scorpius Brandon and his companions had been, exactly. Friends? Lovers? There'd been like a dozen of them living with him, for decades... Whatever, not important. It was a nice little place, airy and open, so when Dorea had inherited the title Ted and Andi had picked it as the primary active residence on site. Not the most convenient, it was a little bit of a walk to the nearest floo grate, but it was better than getting lost trying to find her way around inside Ancient House proper.

Dorea looped around the main door, following a stepping-stone path around the right side of the house toward the kitchen entrance. There was a little courtyard slash dining space slash garden here, the floor ceramic tile — showing mostly colourful geometric designs, Black ravens looking up at the viewer here and there, an occasional symbol she assumed had some metaphorical meaning to whoever had designed it, mostly botanical, oak leaves and apples and so forth — broken with patches of dirt supporting living plants, some in elevated planters to put them at a more convenient picking height, mostly berries, some herbs. Dorea plucked a few ripe bilberries in passing, handed a couple over to Mandy — she didn't recognise them, apparently Mandy had never seen fresh bilberries before.

The kitchen door was hanging open, several large windows in the wall making the room feel open and airy and bright. The room was quite large, in addition to the cabinets and the work counters and the appliances was a long dining table, taking an odd L-shape in parallel with that corner of the room — far more than they ever needed, could easily seat a dozen people. Curiously, this was one of the few kitchens at Ancient House that was obviously intended for human use, the counters and appliances too high to be comfortable for elves, the handles of pans and knives and so forth shaped for humans. That wasn't something Ted and Andi had had done since taking the place over, no, it'd always been like that. Of course, this had been the gardeners' house before, but the whole thing had been remodelled by that Scorpius bloke, and he'd left it this way too, by the L-shaped dining table would even eat here with his people.

Dorea had no idea what had been going on with Scorpius Brandon Black, and since he'd died over a century before she'd been born she probably never would.

"Good morning, Dorea, Amanda," Andi said, a little bit of an arch lilt to her tone. She was sitting at the table, a cup of tea cradled in her hands, newspaper and loose parchments scattered around in front of her. Surprisingly, she was wearing her work uniform — the soft white trousers and long-sleeved tunic, the hem at the wrist and the neck chased with the black and red of their emergency team, the long lime green jacket that would go over them currently missing. Or, it was supposed to be a pure soft white, but Dorea noticed blotches here and there, especially on her forearms, looking rumpled in general, the lines a little crooked. Her hair did look noticeably messier than normal, lazily tied back and still showing kinks and curls, one spot at her left temple noticeably frizzing. She hadn't been at the match, but she must have been called in to help with the injured — Dorea would guess Andi hadn't been awake much longer than Mandy and herself.

In fact, looking at how oddly messy her uniform was, Dorea got the feeling Andi had passed out in her clothes, but Dorea had done the same thing, so.

"Yes, girls, come on in, food's almost ready." Ted was in the kitchen, fussing over a pot — Dorea couldn't see what was in there from here, but by the smell on the air definitely some kind of stew. She didn't see Cherri, but there was a platter of sliced bread on the counter, some little dishes of butter and honey, she must have done the baking.

Of course, Dorea wasn't surprised that the elf had said Andi was doing the cooking when it was actually Ted — she didn't think Andi could cook anything (growing up with house-elves could do that), and the elves didn't really like Ted. For the most part, anyway, the elves who spent more time around the Tonkses (like Cherri) tended to be better about it. Dorea had initially assumed that the elves had absorbed a bit of the pureblood supremacist nonsense from the last couple generations of Blacks, but Cassie argued that hadn't really been a problem — most of the Blacks had been of the opinion that muggleborns had no place among the nobility, but they didn't have a problem with them joining magical society in general. (So, classist more than racist.) Supposedly, the elves didn't like Ted for stealing Andi away from the family, and blamed him for the Tonkses continuing to not use the Black name.

Which was ridiculous, obviously. Running away together had actually been Andi's idea in the first place, a gambit to prevent Orion — Dorea's grandfather, the Lord of the House at the time — from trying to leverage her into accepting (or, more likely, refusing) a betrothal. (To Pansy's father, supposedly, wild coincidence.) There were some peculiarities of the internal family law, it was complicated, for some reason it had made it much more difficult for Orion to sue her for the belongings she'd brought with her and a lot easier for Cassie to later bring her back into the family, Dorea didn't quite understand why, whatever. If the elves wanted to blame anyone, it should be Orion, for not letting Andi marry whoever she damn well pleased — she realised rich purebloods (and mages in general, really) had a very different culture around marriage, but that would have been the easiest solution to the problem. Of course, Ted was muggleborn, so that never would have happened...

...though, if they'd known how talented of an advocate he'd end up being, and especially that their child would be a metamorph, Dorea suspected the Blacks would have made an exception, but oh well.

And it was true that, despite being readmitted into the House as a constituent household — a complicated legal distinction, kind of like a client house that were acknowledged socially as being members of the main family, but didn't get the legal privileges of nobility, it was confusing — so they theoretically had the right to use the Black name, all three of them were still using Tonks. But it wasn't Ted who'd insisted on that, Andi and Ted had agreed on the matter. Getting a new Common House registered could be a bloody pain, especially if you'd angered powerful people who might interfere with the already byzantine legal process — by, say, eloping and fleeing the country with a muggleborn. Ted had come up with a trick, pressing an unrelated case on behalf of the family in the Ministry's courts, and then turning around and using the fact that, since the Ministry had treated them as a legitimate claimant, they'd already been legally recognised as a House, the paperwork would just be a formality. He'd ended up arguing it in front of the Council of Family Law, and as irritated as the judges had been, they did have to admit that the language used in the first case really did say what he said it said, and they'd ordered the Office of Records to file the appropriate paperwork to that effect — Ted and Andi had even gotten out of the usual taxes and fees required to formalise a new house, it'd been a very neat trick.

The Wizengamot had since patched up the loophole, but still, it'd been a big deal at the time, responsible in no small part for Ted's legal career getting a nice big jump-start. He'd used the same trick to get a handful more new Common Houses acknowledged before the Wizengamot got around to stopping him, but the (in)famy he got for it still attracted business to his practice, and the effect might be lessoned if people didn't recognise his name anymore. And yeah, that was definitely a consideration...but also Andi wanted to keep the name. Partially for the look of the thing, and for Ted's work, yes, but also out of spite — she'd worked damn hard to be Andromeda Tonks, and she'd need a hell of a good reason to change her name back. And she almost had, out of concern for Dora's career prospects, but Dora had been satisfied with Lady Black (still Cassie at the time) signing the permission forms for the Aurors' summer internship thing she'd done back in the summer before her seventh year — signalling to everyone that, while she might not be a full Black, the House was taking an active interest in her, making the distinction irrelevant for most purposes — so it hadn't ended up happening.

But the elves weren't likely to hold a grudge against Andi, since she'd come back, and even brought Dora with her — the elves adored Dora — so it was Ted who got the stink-eye. Which didn't make a lot of sense, but people could be silly and irrational sometimes — elves weren't any different from humans in that way.

While Dorea mused over that, she and Mandy fixed themselves tea, finding seats across the table from Andi. They'd only been sitting for a couple seconds, Mandy muttering a somewhat awkward hello to Andi — they'd only met once before, briefly — when Dorea spotted the front page of the Prophet on the table, the oversized photo taking up most of the space. A gasp jerking through her, her hand slammed down on the paper, twisted it around right-side up — nearly spilling both her and Mandy's tea in the process, Mandy jumping in surprise. Her eyes arrested by the skull and snake, quick jumping down to the caption— "This isn't an old picture, it's from last night?"

"Oh, I forgot you two wouldn't know about that. Yes, someone cast the Dark Mark last night, over the fighting in the British camp."

"There was fighting in the British camp? with the firebombers?"

"No, this was a second group — coordinated, perhaps, but certainly not the same people. Please, Dorea," Andi said, one hand raised in a warding gesture, "I don't know who, or why. Read the article, and you'll know as much about it as I do."

Mandy had leaned forward, looking over the paper, frowning in confusion. "I'm sorry, Dark Mark? Is this a Voldemort thing?"

A grimace briefly crossed Andi's face. Not at the name, the way some purebloods did, but probably at the topic — as a prominent 'blood-traitor', Dorea was sure the possibility of coming home to find the Dark Mark floating overhead had been a source of constant dread during the war. "Something like that. I will explain everything after lunch, Amanda. First, the elves passed along a message for the two of you, from Hermione." From somewhere among the scattered sheets and rolls of parchment, Andi pulled out a sheet of muggle notebook paper, folded in half. Already leaning over the table to get a better look at the photo, Mandy reached the letter first, but huddled up close to Dorea so they could both read it.

Dear Dorea and Mandy,

Sirius sent us a message to tell us you're all right, that the Black elves apparated in to get you out as soon as you were out of immediate danger. I wish I would have thought of that, but Nilanshay isn't sure the Potter elves would have been able to get all three of us out anyway. It occurred to me that you might not have gotten word what happened to us, but Liz doesn't know how to send messages with the patronus charm. (I'm impressed she can cast it at all, I've read it's advanced light magic.) Nilanshay volunteered to bring a letter to the other Potter elves, who will then pass it on to the Black elves, who will pass it on to you. Hopefully it will be faster than sending an owl would be.

We're fine, all three of us. I'm writing this at Liz's house, she's right here with me. Daphne left through the floo soon after we arrived, Liz told me she used the floo password for the Greenwood. Having gotten some experience in the floo myself this summer, I don't envy her the trip from Ireland to Anglesey, but I'm sure she's fine.

We never got close to any of the fires or the fighting, but we did have a bit of a scare with Liz. It seems the panic of an entire crowd can be overwhelming for an unprepared mind mage, and doubly so for one who also happens to be a seer — she was catatonic at first, before I put the amulet Snape made to stop her from slipping into my mind in her sleep around her neck. It turns out those aren't healthy for mind mages, she was quite ill when he removed it, but she slept it off and she's fine now.

Saoirse Ghaelach and some of the Irish clergy rushed to put together a safehouse, right in the middle of the camp — they hollowed out passages underground, very quickly, I'm not sure how — we waited it out down there. It was a bit scary getting there, the sparks nearly blew over to us multiple times, but we made it, none of us got hurt. Once things quieted down, Snape escorted us back to our tent, we collected our things, and Nilanshe, Honish, and Tishme apparated us to Liz's house. We're all fine.

I am quite tired, though, the sky is starting to lighten and I haven't gotten any sleep at all yet. I'm going to bed as soon as I hand this off. If you could wait at least until the afternoon to send a return message, I would appreciate it. Nilanshay's such an excitable little girl, I'm not sure she wouldn't wake me up. I doubt we're going anywhere tomorrow, so we'll be home and easily found by the elves. I'm looking forward to the day in, almost — Liz says she's going to try to teach me the patronus charm!

Hoping you're well,

Hermione

Below that was a short postscript, in an equally familiar but far messier hand:

Severus says it wasn't the dark lord. They were most likely real death eaters, but they were acting on their own, just a one-time thing. I thought you might want to know that.

—Liz

Dorea felt herself relax a little, immediately on recognising Hermione's handwriting and then more as she read on. Mandy was obviously feeling the same thing, sighing early on, leaning against Dorea's shoulder. She hadn't really doubted that the three of them were fine — they'd still been with Sirius when he'd gotten the message by patronus that Snape had found all three of them — but it was still good to have confirmation. Though there were multiple things in the letter that were a bit... Dorea was surprised Liz could cast a patronus too, even Dora hadn't learned it until fifth year, but that was really the most minor of them.

"Have you read this? Liz says Professor Snape thinks the Death Eaters were acting alone. That they're not being directed by the Dark Lord, I mean."

Andi nodded. "I didn't read the letter, but that's my impression as well. If the Dark Lord were to announce his return, this is not how he would do it. It's too random, too unimpressive, too...common. The Dark Lord's return, should such a thing come to pass, will involve a certain sense of melodrama that this attack lacked — as someone who knew the man from childhood, I can assure you of that much."

"You knew Voldemort?" Mandy blurted out, her cheeks pinking a bit a second after, apparently not having meant to say that. Though even through her embarrassment she was giving Andi an odd, suspicious look. Most people spoke of the Dark Lord like some kind of fairytale monster, so that probably sounded like a funny thing for someone to say.

The only reaction Andi had to Mandy's suspicion was a raised eyebrow. "He was called Melinathon at the time, but yes. When I met him, he was a priest associated with the cult of Venatrix Trivia — a mystic, you might say, one of those who seek a closer relationship with the divine through mystery, ritual, and elevated states of consciousness. Quite compelling, in his own way, and showing little sign of the horror to come. My mother was one of his early followers, though she never formally continued into the Knights of Walpurgis."

"What's that, er, Vena..."

"Huntress of the Three Paths," Dorea translated. "It's what that Roman-themed religion the purebloods have call Hecate — you know, the goddess of magic, especially weird, esoteric witchcraft."

Andi's face wrinkled, scrunching her nose just a little, but her disapproval didn't show on her voice at all. "An overly-generalised summary, but I suppose it will do."

Dorea nearly said something about not giving a damn because the whole mos maiorum thing certain rich purebloods did was very silly — especially since they liked to claim it was something they'd inherited from their ancestors, practised in secret from the dominant Christians and passed down through the centuries, despite the historical fact that it'd definitely been invented wholecloth shortly after Secrecy — but checked herself at the last second. Andi wasn't very in-your-face about it, but she was a practitioner herself — insulting her aunt's religion to her face would be a needlessly hurtful thing to do.

Luckily, before Dorea or Mandy were forced to figure out how to continue from there, Ted came to the rescue, sweeping up to the table flanked with floating dishes. "Right, I'm just going to go ahead and cut you off right there — we can have an unspeakably awkward conversation about politics and religion after a nice friendly meal."

Despite herself, she couldn't quite hold in a snort at his bright, cheerful tone, giving the three of them at the table a sunny grin. "Uncle Ted, you're such a Hufflepuff sometimes."

"Guilty as charged. If you could move some of these papers, love, and I'll put the pot here in the middle..."

Ted's cooking was, as always, excellent, though in this case nothing particularly complicated — barley and potatoes and onions and leeks and...mutton, probably. The sort of thing Dorea knew Andi liked after a long shift, warm and thick and filling. The bread seemed kind of superfluous, with the barley and the potatoes, and the broth was thick enough there wasn't a lot to mop up, but it was elf-made, so Dorea wasn't complaining, exactly. (Dorea didn't think elves were physically capable of making even average food...though the mass-production necessary at Hogwarts did bring the quality down somewhat.) There wasn't much conversation at all through most of the meal, all of them apparently very hungry, little more than bland comments about the food, a few polite questions to Mandy. She and Andi had only met once before, and she hadn't met Ted before leaving for the World Cup camp, so.

After two bowls of stew and a few slices of bread, Dorea was feeling uncomfortably full. That was probably too much food, but it was good and she'd been hungry, and ugh. Andi set about making more tea — one of the few things she could actually do in the kitchen, seriously, she was hopeless — a brief warm, comfortable lull settling over the table. Actually, Dorea thought Mandy, leaning her head on a hand with her eyes half-closed, might fall asleep again. She didn't know how much sleep they'd ended up getting, but it probably wasn't very much, so, a nap might not be a terrible idea...

"Oh! Before I forget, Hermione said something in her letter about Saoirse putting together a safehouse or something during the riot? What's that about?"

Ted let out an irritated-sounding sigh. "Yes, that's going to be a problem, I'm afraid."

"Why, what did they do?"

"They didn't do anything wrong — really, they did a great job keeping as many people safe as they possibly could. The Hit Wizards were covering the village or rushing to the masked fighters, they wouldn't have gotten to the fires for a while, who knows how many lives Saoirse saved last night. But that's exactly the problem, isn't it? The nationalists are far more organised and competent than anyone realised. It's too early to say for sure now, but I suspect there's going to be a lot of paranoia over the coming months about just what the Gaels might be up to. Perhaps justifiably, to be fair, but I would be surprised if the response doesn't multiply out of all proportion."

"Of course," Andi said from where she stood waiting by the hob, "that is a long-term concern. The international situation is more pressing in the short term."

It only took a couple seconds of thought for Dorea to realise what she meant. "Oh, there were foreign nationals killed in the rioting, weren't there."

Andi nodded. "We don't have a precise body count as of yet, but while most of the casualties are locals, there are foreigners among them as well. There's a hearing ongoing in the Senate as we speak." The ICW's governing body, she meant.

"No doubt the more radical representatives are pushing for intervention, again," Ted said, a little bit of a drawl to his voice. Leaning a little closer toward Mandy, he explained, "There are a number of governments who don't approve of magical Britain, consider it a backward, oppressive, racist hellhole — and they're not entirely wrong, honestly, I mean, I think just the existence of Azkaban gives an impression all on its own. There are a few who have argued that a taskforce from the I.C.W. should invade Britain, overthrow the Wizengamot, and help to build a more democratic society in its place. They have nowhere near enough support to actually do it, but they do get very noisy about it from time to time.

"There are a lot of different ways things can go," he continued, leaning back again with a sigh. "It might not be too bad. I expect the I.C.W. will insist on sending observers to oversee the investigation and subsequent legal proceedings, and Aquitania and Daneland will likely demand further assurances that we can safely host the Triwizard Tournament. If we're unlucky, Aquitania might threaten to throw their weight behind Sicily in our current trade dispute to extract concessions from us. In that situation we'd be forced to accept the terms of one or the other to avoid getting hit with sanctions from both — which would mean throwing either the metalwork and ceramic craft guilds or the apothecary trade under the lorry, and the loser will definitely make a domestic fuss in the aftermath. Also, the American delegation vanished back home early this morning, without any explanation, which I can't help but take as a bad sign." Not Americans as in the United States, he was referring to the delegation to the ICW from the international organisation covering the magical nations of the whole of the Americas. They didn't have voting power in the Senate — the ICW, despite the name, was just a European thing — they were just there for diplomacy reasons.

Diplomatic relations between the Americas and the ICW were already terrible. That they might be getting worse was not exactly a positive sign for the stability of the magical world — the first war with the Americans had been awful, they really didn't want to do that again.

"Whatever the case, I'm certain we're going to be very busy over the next few weeks. The first meeting of the Wizengamot after the incident is scheduled for tomorrow morning — we'll be opening with a preliminary report from the D.L.E., though I'm not certain how much Amelia will have to say by then. I don't expect there will be much substantive work done, all politics. Amelia will likely ask to be granted emergency investigative authority, and the funds necessary to fully utilise them, which I expect she'll get, if only because it would not look good to oppose it, but beyond that, no. I expect a lot of bickering in circles. If we get all the way through it without Ingham and Llewellyn accusing each other of treason, I'll be shocked."

It wasn't a secret that the Inghams were prominent supporters of Gaelic independence — which was kind of ironic, since they happened to be one of the founding families of the Wizengamot, but she guessed things changed over fifteen hundred years. (They'd even been British at the time of the Founding — not Roman British, the Inghams were from beyond the Wall — because history was complicated like that.) Llewellyn was in Ars Brittania, the current head of the family generally thought of as the leader of the faction and one of the most prominent British nationalists in the country. Naturally, Lady Ingham and Lord Llewellyn intensely despised each other.

She didn't know how anyone could say Ingham might have done anything treasonous, at least related to this event, since the Gaels had been the ones being attacked. (Unless they wanted to blame the Death Eater attack on the Gaels, which made absolutely no sense.) Given who the targets had been, accusing Llewellyn of being somehow associated with it made more sense...but more wasn't exactly very much, was it. Dorea asked, "Is there any reason to believe Llewellyn had anything to do with it? Ars Brittania didn't exactly get on with the Death Eaters, and the firebombings don't really seem like his style." Say what you want about him, Llewellyn was a very...civil, dignified sort of man, it was hard to imagine him planning something like this.

"You might be surprised," Andi said, returning to the table with the tea, carefully pouring them all cups. "About Ars Brittania and the Death Eaters, I mean — several of the most prominent Death Eaters were born to previously Light families. In my grandparents' time, the Lestranges, the Selwyns, the Averys, the Wilkses, the Notts, the Parkinsons, the Davises, the Traverses, and the Princes were all members of Ars Brittania. Some of them zealously so." And all of those families were in the Allied Dark now...with the exception of the Lestranges, Selwyns, and Princes, who'd been in the Allied Dark during the war but afterward switched to Ars Publica.

"...I suppose, I wasn't thinking back that far." Some of this stuff had been covered in her politics lessons with Aunt Cassie, just, it sometimes felt like ancient history and not really relevant. It wasn't really that long ago, though, especially with how long mages lived, sometimes she forgot. "But Ars Brittania opposed the Death Eaters in the war."

"Yes and no. The politics of the Knights of Walpurgis and Ars Brittania overlap in significant areas — they opposed the Dark Lord, yes, and some aspects of the movement, but they often found themselves acting as collaborators, knowingly or not."

"I'm confused," Mandy said. "I thought Ars Brittania were light?"

Andi nodded, idly stirring her tea. "They are. But what does 'light' mean, exactly? The Light can coherently be spoken of as a collection of similar cultural and religious groupings, but once we begin to speak of government, specific policy, well, that becomes more complicated. The politics of those we call the Light are diverse, and have always been so, and have changed over time. People's politics are influenced by their social attitudes and cultural identification and traditions, yes, but their material interests, what benefits them and their families, their personal beliefs and experiences, these will vary widely within a grouping of any significant size. Many among Ars Brittania and the Allied Dark hold certain material interests in common, and share certain beliefs, which can often guide them to arrive at similar conclusions — no matter how much the language they use to describe themselves and their politics may differ."

To Mandy's visible confusion, Dorea translated, "They're all rich, elitist purebloods, and British nationalists. And also very racist, and kind of sexist sometimes too."

"There is some disagreement, at least in the Allied Dark — especially from the families historically associated with Ars Publica or Common Fate, like the Yaxleys or the Bulstrodes. But that's all generally true, yes. There's far more overlap between the Death Eaters and Ars Brittania than you might expect if you're only thinking in terms of Dark and Light."

And that wasn't even getting into economic relationships, contracts still in force going back generations, which could make things even more complicated. The Wizengamot was a big incestuous mess, it was impossible to get straight answers on things sometimes. "Okay, so," Dorea started, "is there any reason to think Llewellyn, or someone else in Ars Brittania, might have been involved? In the firebombings, at least."

Andi and Ted glanced at each other, sharing an uncertain, wary sort of look. After a few seconds, Andi said only, "Saoirse Ghaelach."

"...What?"

"This isn't the first time the organisation and competence of the Gaelic nationalists has...caused concern, shall we say," Ted said, a bit of a sardonic drawl on his voice. "There was a lot of hand-wringing in some corners when Síomha Ní Ailbhe and her team tracked down and killed the Glasgow Seven."

An infamous gang of vampire murderers — they'd been killing people for probably decades, but the pattern of disappearances had first been noted with a string of them in magical Glasgow in '79, the vampires responding to the announcement by appearing in the market square and bragging about it, revealing there were seven of them, hence the name. Even after the war ended, the Aurors had failed to do anything about them, Saoirse Ghaelach instead tracking them down to a muggle village in Leinster (nowhere near where the Aurors thought the Seven had been based) and taking care of it themselves. Dorea remembered the announcement, Cassie complaining about the big scandal sparked off by the whole thing — it wasn't that long ago, she'd been ten at the time, the year before she started at Hogwarts.

"As impressive as that was," he continued, "if you're the sort who might worry what the Gaels are up to, this incident at the Cup is even more concerning, for the hints it makes to Saoirse's numbers and training and coordination — but it is only the last in a series of unnerving hints. The existence of Saoirse is not a secret, and never has been. Their politics, their goals, they are more subtle about that, moderating themselves in public, but they're not exactly hiding it either. They intend to secede, eventually, everyone knows that. Is it so unreasonable, seeing how the Gaelic nationalists have been organising themselves, preparing...that certain people might not feel the need to respond in kind?"

"...You're saying Ars Brittania is organising their own group to fight Saoirse Ghaelach."

Ted shrugged, shaking his head. "I don't know — I haven't heard of anything. But then, if they were putting something together, I'm not the kind of person they're like to tell, am I?"

"But, why would they bother? If the Gaels try to secede, they'll be fighting the Ministry anyway, there's no reason to put together their own thing when the Hit Wizards already exist."

"Because the Hit Wizards were so very effective against the last insurrection we had in this country."

...Oh. That was a good point. And Saoirse had seen most of their growth after the war, it would kind of make sense, watching another group rising and the Ministry not doing anything about it, clearly they had to take matters into their own hands. (Sort of like the Order of the Phoenix, when she thought about it.) Dorea had no idea what to say to that, just blankly stared at Ted, her mouth hanging open a little but no words coming.

"Of course, I can't say for certain whether Llewellyn and Ars Brittania have anything to do with such a group, or even that it exists in the first place — and if it does exist, whether they're responsible for the attacks last night. I am saying," he said, slow and heavy, raising a finger for emphasis, "that it makes sense for Ingham to suspect as much. I fully expect the mood in the Wizengamot to be vicious, for who knows how long. Things are about to become very tense. After all, Saoirse can hardly fail to respond to this attack — why should the Gaels respect or trust them, if they let some random bigots kill their people with impunity? No, this is going to be messy, no doubt about that."

Mandy looked very tense, sitting stiff in her chair, her face pulled into a grimace. Dorea wasn't sure how much of all this she understood, exactly — explaining modern politics wasn't a priority in History class — but she didn't need all the background to understand the potential dangers of two nationalist militias organising opposite each other. She was muggleborn, after all, she'd be very much aware of the Troubles. "How messy?"

"If we are very fortunate..." Because Andi had grown up among the nobility, and had picked up a very silly flare for the dramatic, she trailed off there — taking a slow sip of tea, letting the anticipatory silence linger. Her cup met the saucer again with a light clink, her eyes turning back up to Mandy. "...there won't be a war."

Mandy groaned, slumping forward to let her head thunk against the table. Her hands came up to the back of her head, brownish-black curls tossed around in random directions — Ted's hand snapped forward, yanking her tea away before her hair got in it. Not sure what else to do, Dorea rested her hand on Mandy's shoulder, and just sat quietly. She didn't think there was anything to say. Pointing out that, if it did come to war, at least neither side would want to genocide people like Mandy out of existence, probably wouldn't help.

The Blacks did have properties on the Continent, maybe she should have one made ready to move to on short notice, just in case...

---

Liz heard the crackle-whoosh of the floo, a familiar mind appearing in the other room just as her presence registered on the wards — Sylvia had arrived, right on schedule. "We're in the kitchen!" Turning back to Hermione, "You want to go down and grab the cheese quick?"

"Sure, be right back." Hermione finished pouring the coffee — Sylvia really did have perfect timing, the reliably consistent travel time was one of the advantages of the floo — before heading for the basement, disappearing downstairs just as Sylvia walked into the kitchen.

The mages Liz had met were mostly older people, the youngest around her parents' age (like Severus and Sirius), or younger people, whose time at Hogwarts overlapped with hers (even if only barely, like Dora) — Silviana Slughorn was one of the few she knew at all who were in the generation between, grown up but not that grown up yet. She'd mentioned that she remembered Severus starting to teach at Hogwarts, when she'd been in third year, so she was, like, mid-twenties? Liz didn't remember exactly. A decade older than Liz and her friends but a decade younger than Severus, anyway. She certainly looked young, cheeks round and rosy, no sign of wrinkles on her hands or around her light bronzeish-greenish eyes — which didn't look quite natural to Liz, but mages were like that sometimes — dark blonde hair with a hint of reddishness, most visible where the light caught it, vibrant and thick and curly. She actually looked too young, like an early university student, maybe even still in sixth form, because magical ageing was ridiculous like that — it was bloody impossible to guess how old anyone was supposed to be just looking at them, she'd given up by now.

She also dressed very normal, compared to most adult mages Liz knew — she had no idea if that was a generational thing, a cultural thing (the Slughorns were deep in with the guilds, very middle-class for a noble family), or if it was just Sylvia, she didn't know enough people to say. Today she was wearing a sleeveless dress made of a creamy off-white fabric that was probably linen — it turned out a lot of stuff on the magical side Liz had assumed was cotton was actually linen, the texture was different but they looked similar — embroidered with wandering plants and flowers in vibrant colours. There was a bit of jewellery, no piercings but a pair of silvery necklaces, one hugging closer to her throat and a longer one vanishing under her dress, a few rings on her fingers, beaded bracelets tinkling at her wrists, her lips and eyes subtly darkened and/or lined with cosmetic charms, a faint twinkle when she blinked probably some kind of eyeshadow. She could probably pass without suspicion on a muggle street, but there were hints of magical aesthetics Liz was familiar enough with by now to notice — rings were more common on the magical side, for example, that twinkling from the eyeshadow wasn't natural, the beads seemed vaguely Mistwalker-ish, and the way the dress was laced closed, stitching down from the left side of the neck to her waist where it turned to cut across her middle to end low on her right hip, partially hidden by the colourful, filmy, semi-transparent scarf tied around her waist. Would be a little odd-looking to muggle eyes, Liz thought, but compared to some of the weird shite mages wore it wasn't actually that out there.

As Sylvia spotted Liz she smiled, a little lopsided, the left side of her mouth curling. "Hello, Liz. I hope I'm not late — I was caught up in a morning meeting with Hector Grey and Holly Glanwvyl, lost track of time." Liz remembered Holly was the proxy for one of the weird, religious, Mistwalker-adjacent-but-not-themselves-Mistwalkers families — not the head of the family herself, supposedly Lady Glanwvyl was elderly and preparing for retirement — and the Greys were one of the good Light families, but she didn't know a Hector Grey off-hand. New political allies since Sylvia had taken over the proxy job, anyway.

"No, you're right on time, this should just be finished now." Liz switched off the hob and the oven, before even tipping the door open to check inside — she was pretty sure it was— "Oh yeah, this is ready. Go ahead and start carrying things over to the table while I deal with this."

Between the three of them, it didn't take them very long to move everything over to the dining room table. (Liz, Nilanse, and now Hermione mostly ate at the kitchen counter, but Sylvia would have papers and stuff, the table was better.) She hadn't made anything that complicated, mostly just stuff for them to put little sandwiches together. She'd found this stuff that was some kind of big crispy crusty thing — savoury biscuits, but bigger, and usually with a lot of herbs in there — which were apparently common in the north, and she'd also made flatbread. Nilanse was starting to teach her to make bread, but it was a work in progress — this batch was fine, but not as good as Nilanse's yet. (She was going to figure this shite out before even trying rising bread, because that sounded more complicated.) There were bits of different kinds of cheese and dried meats, a little bowl with some beef and mushrooms she'd cooked the shite out of and mixed in with baked beans, some leftover prawn bisque from yesterday. (One of Hermione's favourites, apparently, turned out it wasn't too hard to make — though she'd used prawns instead of fucking lobster, because she'd have no idea what to do with one of those things, honestly Hermione.) There was also some hummus, because it turned out she liked this stuff, though she was still tweaking the recipe, not entirely happy with it yet.

Though, actually getting the ingredients was more annoying than actually making it — sure, there was some tedious grinding and mixing and shite, but it wasn't any worse than the ingredient preparation in some of the potions she'd made. Garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, those were no problem — though the olive oil was imported, and kind of expensive — but the primary ingredients were chickpeas and tahini, which itself was a sauce made from roasted sesame seeds, and they didn't sell either chickpeas or sesame seeds at the market down the street. She'd found a way she could get them by owl order, but it was much cheaper to just go buy them from a muggle grocers — she'd flooed over to Dublin quick and found one with all kinds of weird Mediterranean food, presumably intended for immigrants or whatever, and there, no problem. She decided to cheat and just buy pre-made tahini, but she still ground the chickpeas and did everything else herself, since the helpful Lebanese lady there said the pre-made stuff didn't last very long, less wasteful to just whip it up as she used it.

Of course, she'd needed to abandon her shopping at the register and run off to have her money changed, because like a complete fucking idiot she'd forgotten she was in a different country now, and obviously they didn't take British pounds, stupid...

Anyway, simple stuff, very snacky, but it was good and they'd had a relatively big breakfast anyway, so whatever. It wasn't like Sylvia cared.

They hadn't been sitting for very long when Sylvia let out a surprised hum, fingers even coming up to her lips. Setting down her cup with a little clunk, she said, "I do love the coffee you make." There was a bit of an accent to her voice, Celtic-sounding, though Liz had no idea whether it was from Cambrian or Gaelic. "How do you get that... I'm not sure what that is, the spiciness to it."

"I brew it with cinnamon."

"I'm not convinced there isn't some trick to it she isn't telling me," Hermione said. "I tried it once, and it just came out with this awful aftertaste, burnt."

Liz shrugged. As far as she knew there wasn't a trick to it, but who the fuck knows, maybe there was something she was doing without really thinking about it. "I'm not surprised, you burn everything."

"I'm not that bad."

"You're definitely that bad." Seriously, Hermione could make tea and cheesy pasta (as in the stuff that came dried in a cardboard box), and that was pretty much it, it was very sad. "I understand now why your parents were worried about you feeding yourself while they were away."

"Oh, shut up, you."

There was a bit of conversation during the meal, mostly inane smalltalk nonsense. Sylvia and Hermione were both aware of the other's existence, Liz had mentioned them to each other, but they'd never actually met before — so of course they had to do all the basic getting-to-know-you stuff, which Liz always found tedious and kind of baffling. She meant, most of it was stuff she didn't really care about — and not just because it was often stuff about strangers, a lot of it was stuff she didn't give a damn about even when it was about herself — and also she just ended up very confused. She meant, she never knew what to say, or what was expected for an answer — they often didn't seem like proper answers, polite half-truths that...

With things like this, she often felt like everyone else had been handed a script at some point, that explained all the different things they were supposed to say when, and Liz had just missed that day. She could kind of play along, with a bit of trial and error, feeling out if she was going in a wrong direction by how people reacted, but it was still tedious as all hell. Luckily, this time it was focused on Hermione and Sylvia, so she didn't have to talk much.

Hermione gave her a funny look when she added a scoop of her beef-and-beans concoction and a slice of cheese to a piece of bread she'd already spread some hummus on. This must be one of those things she liked that everyone else thought were gross, tasted good to her...

Anyway, Liz could tell Hermione was actually having more fun than usual with this conversation — being a big damn nerd, Hermione wasn't that much better with smalltalk and the like than Liz was. (Though she did have more practice, getting dragged to silly social functions with her parents' friends and colleagues.) See, Hermione didn't know many magical adults either, besides their teachers at Hogwarts, so she had very little idea what people did when they grew up, exactly. And Sylvia had a little bit of a story there, because apparently she'd done some post-NEWT study in alchemy at Caoimhe's Academy before continuing into an artificing apprenticeship, which she'd just finished this spring, and alchemy and artificing and apprenticeships were all things they didn't really tell them much about at Hogwarts. (There wasn't an alchemy class, artifice was an interdisciplinary field and primarily post-NEWT, and apprenticeships were the sort of thing your family was supposed to help you with — and muggleborns could all just get fucked, she guessed.) Of course, Sylvia admitted she hadn't had the typical experience, since the Slughorns were nobility (if only technically) and, more importantly, had a bunch of professional connections in the potioneers' and enchanters' guilds, which were easily leveraged into a favourable apprenticeship, but still.

And Sylvia had married not long out of school — after her alchemy classes, but before her apprenticeship — which was also of interest to Hermione, for reasons that didn't quite click to Liz right away. Yes, they'd been younger than Hermione was entirely comfortable with, and it had been arranged by their families — but Sylvia was very clear that a marriage done without the consent of both parties was super illegal, and she had chosen her husband. Just, there was legal and money stuff that came with a marriage, and with the way the law worked their families had a say in that, and there were politics to think about, it ended up being a negotiation between the man, the woman, and their respective families, sometimes getting long and drawn out and very contentious, it was a whole complicated thing.

The expected order of things (especially among the nobility) was for the arrangements to be made sometime between their fifteenth birthday and getting their NEWTs — with all the complicated cultural shite that came with that, courtship and negotiations and contracts and blah blah — having the wedding in the year or two after graduation, and then having kids immediately, starting in on politics or an academic career or whatever once the kids were all off to school. There were some practical reasons for this, related to fertility and whatever, it meant the generations among the rich people tended to be squished pretty close together — Liz had noticed most of her classmates' parents had had them when they were in their mid-twenties, sometimes even late teens, which was apparently very normal. Poorer people usually married later, since they had to build up wealth to support a family first...assuming they even could do that. According to Sylvia, a lot of especially poor people who couldn't make a decent living often just didn't marry at all, or at least not legally, sometimes they had their own more informal arrangements, whatever.

Sylvia's plan had been to finish her apprenticeship first, and use the time she was at home with the kids to continue her academic work, doing experiments and submitting papers to journals and shite in her free time. That wasn't so unusual, especially in the more well-off professional families, but was odd in the nobility — it had a vague air of selfishness, or as the sort of thing the commoners do, but the Slughorns were already seen as rather eccentric and only barely nobility by the people who cared about that sort of thing, so Sylvia didn't really care. (During the explanation, Liz realised that Ailbhe, Daphne's mum, had also done that, but her reluctance to marry straight out of school probably had more to do with being super gay.) And that was still the plan, doing politics so Liz didn't have to wasn't going to take all of her time, she could do Wizengamot stuff and mum stuff at once...though she might need to take a break for a few months around the birth(s), they'd already talked about temporarily handing the job off to a cousin, it was fine. It would slow her artificing work down some, but it wasn't like she really needed to do that, for making-a-living reasons, she just thought it was neat, so she didn't really mind.

(She was right about artificing being neat, and Liz did like making things...)

Anyway, one of the things Hermione had latched on to, which Liz hadn't even noticed at first, was that Sylvia had been born a Slughorn, married, and was still a Slughorn — her husband had married into her family. According to Sylvia, the woman joining the man's family was more common, but it was done the other way around sometimes too. If you go back far enough, with why the law works the way it does, it was all because men were the ones who did violence best, and since women would be too busy being pregnant to really protect themselves it just made sense that way. (Though apparently even back then some people had still done matrilineal marriages, but it'd been particular to certain tribes.) But as wands became more common, the practical value of big strong men being able to swing around big damn swords lessened somewhat — other things became more important, like the properties and the politics of the families involved, and how they interacted with each other and the rest of the families in the area. Patrilineal marriages were still more common, since the sword-swinging period had resulted in most families being patriarchal, but sometimes it made more sense the other way around, and some groups even preferred matrilineal marriages, for cultural or religious reasons. The Blacks, as an example, had an absolutely ancient rule dating to pre-Roman times that children were members of their mother's clan, which resulted in a long tradition of matrilineal descent that was temporarily replaced by a patrilineal one in the Roman period (Roman law was super misogynist, apparently), before reverting back to matrilineal with the fall of the Empire, before switching to primarily patrilineal again in the last few centuries, it was a whole thing.

Sylvia's husband was a commoner, it turned out — from one of the comfortable professional families, but still. With the economic and social dynamics going on, it just made more sense for him to marry into her family than the other way around. That sort of thing did happen sometimes, especially when the woman was from a higher class than the man. The man marrying into the woman's family happened frequently enough that the pre-prepared marriage contracts you could walk into the Ministry and pick up didn't specify which way it went, you had to fill that in yourself.

Hermione seemed to find all of that fascinating, for reasons Liz didn't entirely follow. Feminist stuff, maybe? Whatever, not really important. She guessed how marriages and families and shite worked was the sort of thing you needed to know to exist in a society, but it wasn't like it was ever going to be Liz's problem — even if she could legally marry another woman in this country (and she couldn't), that didn't seem particularly likely to ever happen anyway — so it was kind of hard for Liz to work up the mental energy to think about it that hard.

There was also some academic talk, which was way more interesting to Liz. Maybe she should look into artificing — she was going to live for a long time (possibly forever, if she had anything to say about it), she would need something to do with her time...

After some time talking about what artificers did — design new (magical) technology, basically, including sometimes the necessary materials, which was what the alchemy was for — the conversation started to lag. They'd all more or less finished eating by this point, occasionally munching on a piece of dried beef or cheese but mostly done, Liz idly swishing the remains of her coffee. The pot was empty, but there'd been two cups in there for each of them, which was probably enough caffeine for now — Liz was tiny, after all. Not that she ever actually felt caffeine that much, honestly, didn't know what was up with that.

"Well," Sylvia said into a little lull. "To business then, shall we?"

Liz shrugged, leaning back in her chair. "Sure. I'm guessing the Wizengamot is mostly still dealing with the World Cup." It hadn't been that long, only a few days, with how big a deal it all was she imagined they were still busy.

"In part, yes, though there was a major development just yesterday. Ah, would you prefer to talk in private?" This was asked with an obvious glance across the table toward Hermione — it was family business, after all, a lot of the nobles could be very particular about that.

"I can go do something else, if you like," Hermione offered.

"It's fine, you can stay. Don't worry about it, Sylvia." It's not like Liz had any big secrets or anything they'd be talking about. And, well, she was still thinking about adopting Hermione, so Potter stuff might actually be her business one day.

"All right, then. The only vote of any substance we've had was on a proposal to direct the D.L.E. to cooperate with the I.C.W.'s demands per the World Cup incident, and to grant them emergency powers to accelerate the investigation." Reaching around to poke through her bag, hanging over the back of her chair, Sylvia added, "Both of those points pertaining only to this one investigation, of course — thankfully someone caught that oversight before it hit the floor."

Liz snorted. "Well, good to know we only almost became a police state, I guess." Although, if the ICW fully exploited their oversight, it might have actually been an improvement — the politics of the Senate tended to be better than the Wizengamot's, if only somewhat. Whatever.

"Yes, that would have been embarrassing." Sylvia finally got the right stack of papers out of her bag, a pretty thin bundle, probably no more than five or six pages. Dropping it to slap down on the table between the two of them, "There's the text of the order, if you're curious. It passed, though I abstained — the vote was done on very short notice, so I wasn't able to contact you, and I'm uncomfortable with granting the D.L.E. this degree of prosecutorial freedom. Perhaps we haven't much choice in the present situation, with the I.C.W. breathing down our necks, but even so."

"That's fine." Liz wasn't sure what she would have wanted done anyway — the people who'd attacked the camp were almost certainly bastards, but the DLE were the police, so were also bastards. Especially in magical Britain, where the law was stupid and the punishment for breaking it was Azkaban. So, yeah, caution was warranted, she got it. "Do we know anything new about the attackers?"

"Not much, I'm afraid. The fires were created with what was clearly a novel alchemical product. In fact, I have a report from Mysteries here..." Sylvia picked through her bag for a moment, coming out with a rather taller stack of parchment, dropping it on top of the last one. "Unfortunately, the components aren't anything we can trace back to find the creator. It seems they exploited the reproductive mechanism of ashwinders to spread the curse, itself isolated from the caustic qualities of dragon's blood — the latter is relatively expensive, true, but it's not a restricted substance. They would have needed a significant volume of the stuff to make so many vessels, the D.L.E. is asking venders to report any large sales, confirming statements from merchants through confiscating their records. It's possible they might find something, but if the bombers were smart they could have spaced it out over multiple purchases from multiple venders, or perhaps gotten it directly from the reservation or from leatherworkers, neither of which are likely to have kept a record of the transaction. I suspect the search won't turn up anything."

"Are they allowed to do that?" Hermione asked, her mind fluttering with a kind of anxiety. "Just take businesses' records like that, I mean. Doesn't magical Britain have any privacy laws?"

Sylvia wiggled one ambivalent hand in the air. "Yes and no. Ordinarily, no, the D.L.E. wouldn't be able to just take someone's documentation like this, though not due to some protection of privacy — any documents you keep are your property, belonging to your family or whatever institution they were compiled for, and the D.L.E. can't confiscate property outside of reasonable public safety concerns. In this case, they can do what they did due to the expansion of their powers I mentioned before. We do have laws to ensure privacy, within certain limits, but only for the nobility — limited to certain genera of family secrets, it's not a general principle — and for children. Referring to the age of contract, of course, so under the age of thirteen — the ones around the trusteeship and Black were allowed, but I'm surprised Dumbledore didn't press a claim over those articles about you back around the time you started at Hogwarts."

Liz blinked. "He could have done that?"

"Yes, the dissemination of your gifts and aptitudes and references to private conversations that were featured in those articles are forbidden without the permission of the head of your family — at the time, Dumbledore held that authority. I remember there was talk about lining up support for some claim against the Prophet, but then no claim was made."

...Okay, then. Liz had to wonder how many ways Dumbledore had done a shite job of taking care of her she didn't even know about.

"Anyway, the riot. I don't expect anything to come of the investigation into the firebombers. The masked attackers, we don't have much to go on there either. They've confirmed all the convicted Death Eaters are still in Azkaban. Someone from Mysteries confirmed the Mark is still dormant while they were at it — Director Fox claims there is some evidence of activity from the Dark Lord, but they don't believe he was involved in this attack."

"Wait, the Ministry knows the Dark Lord is still around? I thought they thought he was dead. You know, permanently."

Her lips curling and her head flickering with exasperation, Sylvia said, "The official position of the Ministry is that the Dark Lord was destroyed on Samhain Night, Eighty-One. The Department of Mysteries has insisted from the beginning that he endures in some form — their theory is that he created a horcrux, or possibly multiple, reduced to a shade haunting the mountains of Albania. Albania agrees, they've put a quarantine over the area and have decided to simply wait him out." According to Tamsyn, while a horcrux could temporarily keep a person together without a physical body, the shade still slowly lost coherence over time. It could take decades, maybe even a century, but the magics making up the Dark Lord's spirit would slowly unravel before dissolving into the ambient magic of the environment entirely. It wasn't unusual for a horcrux to outlast the person it belongs to, sometimes by literal millennia, the Egyptians had a bunch of them from old priests and shite. "Oh, a horcrux is a sort of cursed object that—"

"I know what a horcrux is — Severus has the same theory." He hadn't spelled out what a horcrux was, exactly, Tamsyn had told her about that, but it was obvious in retrospect what he'd been referring to.

"Oh!" Sylvia chirped, tipping back in her chair a little, blinking at Liz. Surprised a fourteen-year-old girl knew about sacrificial soul magic, she would guess. "All right, then."

"I don't," Hermione said, sounding slightly irritated, "what's a horcrux?"

Sylvia hesitated for a second, before leaving it at, "A very unpleasant bit of black magic, it's not important."

"You kill someone, capture their soul and remodel it into a copy of yours, then bind it to an object enchanted to hold the altered soul's shape and enforce a sympathetic bond with your own, so it doesn't decohere when you die." With a shiver of revulsion — she clearly wasn't comfortable with this sort of magic, didn't even want to think about it — Sylvia shot Liz a disapproving look, which Liz returned with a dismissive shrug. "It's the Dark Lord, and Hermione's a muggleborn — if he's still around, it is important for her to know."

"Yes, well, I appreciate that, but— That's just horrible, people actually do magic like that?"

"...It's very rare," Sylvia said, slowly, after an obvious moment of hesitation. "The existence of horcruxes isn't a secret, but the...exact process of making one isn't widely known, secrets held by ancient priesthoods or individual sorcerers. As sensitive as soul magic can be, recreating the ritual from first principles would be very prone to error. So, they're not something you see very often, but users do turn up now and again."

"Ugh, that's vile..."

"I agree entirely, Hermione, it's not the sort of magic any but the most depraved would ever even contemplate."

Liz didn't know, she thought the circumstances that had led Tamsyn to studying the things were perfectly reasonable. The original hadn't even intentionally killed the person she'd used to create the Tamsyn Liz knew — it was an accident, she'd just gone ahead with using Myrtle since she was dead anyway. Sort of like Liz subsuming the rest of Valérie, since her mind had already been permanently broken anyway. Waste not, and all that. But it was quite possible Sylvia (and Hermione) would consider Liz and Tamsyn to be examples of the most depraved, and people tended to look at you funny when you came up with justifications for killing people and playing with their souls, so she kept her mouth shut.

Anyway, Sylvia told them what Mysteries knew of what the Dark Lord was up to, which wasn't much. Their assumption was that he'd made at least one horcrux, but they didn't know how many — supposedly, a Seer with them had determined there was likely more than one, and that all pieces of the Dark Lord were in Britain and Albania, but beyond that they didn't know — and that an odd shadow-being later identified as the Dark Lord had turned up in the Albanian mountains as early as March '83. He mostly stayed there, preying on animals and the occasional muggle passerby (probably subsuming them to sustain himself), until late in '88, when he'd started exploring the boundary of the wards the Albanians had put up to keep him contained — Sylvia pointed out that that happened to be seven years after Lily killed him, probably some after-effects of the ritual wearing off. Their regular monthly check-in for July of '91 noted he was missing. They alerted the Ministry, Fudge decided it wasn't worth worrying about anymore, but Mysteries kept an eye out.

Liz hadn't known that unicorns had been turning up dead around Hogwarts starting in February of '92 — the things were seriously hard to kill, more than one being found within a month had immediately had red flags going up in Mysteries. According to the report Director Fox had given to the Wizengamot, Mysteries had (correctly) determined that Quirrell had been possessed by the Dark Lord, that he'd been using unicorn blood to slow the damage being done to his body (probably accelerating the damage to Quirrell's mind, but Liz doubted the Dark Lord had cared). They hadn't been able to track where the Dark Lord had gone afterward, but their assumption had been and still was that he was in the country somewhere. There'd been little hints, fluctuations in ambient magic, reports of unusual animal activity, occasional insight from one Seer or another, which they assumed were signs of the Dark Lord doing something, perhaps trying to get himself a body back, but at this time they had nothing specific to report.

Which, that was somewhat unnerving — Liz hadn't really given much thought to where the Dark Lord had gone after the incident back in first year, just that it was away. It sounded like Mysteries thought there'd been a noticeable uptick in activity from him lately, and that couldn't be good...but at the same time, nothing had really happened yet. Hermione seemed a bit freaked out, but Liz would wait until there actually was something to worry about before...worrying about it, yes.

"In any case," Sylvia was saying, "whatever the Dark Lord is up to, Mysteries is confident he had nothing to do with the attack on the World Cup. The D.L.E. has been interviewing known Marked Death Eaters in relation to the incident, but I don't expect that to turn up anything either — the emergency powers granted to the D.L.E. don't include the authority to ply suspects with veritaserum. The only one who's consented to have his truthfulness verified by Mysteries is Snape, but he didn't know anything. Either the Death Eaters aren't responsible, and those who are simply replicated their appearance to deflect suspicion — perhaps as a false flag, as the muggles would call it — or they are responsible, and Snape isn't being kept in the loop."

She was surprised Severus had done that, actually...but people were keeping an eye on him, because of her, he'd probably just done it so they couldn't accuse him of anything and get her put with someone else. Or make some other trouble for him, she guessed, she didn't know. "It could be either. The stuff with me isn't exactly a secret, Severus has said most of them are probably thinking his loyalties are suspect now." Or that it was a long-term plot to be able to hand Liz over to the Dark Lord as soon as he returned, they couldn't know for certain until he failed to do so, but Severus doubted many would be able to convince themselves of that. Apparently some had suspected him during the war — which was fair, considering he had actually been a traitor — so it would be easy for them to assume he'd gone entirely to the other side now. It'd even made some of the stupid parties and shite Narcissa dragged him to very awkward, it was a whole thing.

(From what Liz could tell, Narcissa herself didn't seem to care that Severus had flipped on them...but from what little Liz knew about the cult of Mother Mercy, she suspected Narcissa herself was done with the Dark Lord anyway. She guessed that could happen when some of your followers worshipped a protector of children, and then you went ahead and tried to murder an infant.)

"My thought exactly. So, it's still early, but it doesn't seem the investigation is going anywhere — which the I.C.W. is not happy about, but it's too early to say what they're going to do about it. Most likely, restitution to the injured and relatives of the dead — they've already demanded the Ministry cover the cost of any healing work foreign nationals have needed, which is going to be quite expensive on its own — and there's been rumblings of economic and political sanctions, moving the Triwizard Tournament. It's probably too late to move the Tournament, but beyond that, who can say. Nobody is happy with Britain right now, to put it mildly."

Funny, Liz wasn't either.

"So, there's not much going on with the World Cup incident. If you have questions, I can try to answer them, but I don't know much. But, there has been one major development in the last few days." Sylvia pulled out another bundle of papers, shuffled through them for a moment before pulling one out, setting it down on the table between them.

It only took a moment for Liz to recognise the three concentric rings of boxes as the layout of the Wizengamot, each of them labelled with the name of a noble family — this must be the seating chart. In addition to the names, each of them was colour-coded by which faction they were in, with the exception of the government seats and most of the first row, which belonged to the Seventeen Founders (most of which didn't exist anymore). The Light in yellow (with Ars Brittania in a light purple) and the Allied Dark were on either side of the government seats, together making up about half, across from them the other half split evenly between Common Fate in green and Ars Publica in red. Just looking at it, it was immediately obvious why the Wizengamot never got anything done: Ars Publica, Common Fate, and the Light each only had about a quarter of the votes, they'd all have to team up with someone to get a majority.

"This is the old chart, before this summer. This is the new one, in effect as of yesterday." Sylvia put down a second sheet of paper, above the first one. In this one, the green of Common Fate and the red of Ars Publica took up about two-thirds of the circle. The red was nearly twice the size of the green...though there was something odd going on — some of the red seats, like a third of them, were crosshatched with black, making some of the names kind of hard to read. The rest of it was all the purple of Ars Brittania, meeting the green of Common Fate near the government...seats...

Hold on a second. "I thought the Dark was going to be taking over. Common Fate is kind of half and half, right, which means this is actually even. And what's going on with these ones?" she asked, pointing at the seats with the crosshatching.

Sylvia let out a sigh. "Nobody thought we were going to get an outright majority, but that we would certainly increase our share, and might be able to control the body with allies in Common Fate. But there were a few...surprises, in the way it went. We always thought we were going to lose Lestrange, Selwyn, Thorpe, Prince, and Gamp," pointing at each of their seats on the new chart in turn — Gamp was green now, but the rest were all purple. "However, we expected all but Lestrange to go to Common Fate, Prince, Selwyn, and Thorpe all going to Brittania was not accounted for. Prewett and Smith were supposed to stay in Common Fate—" They were both purple now. "—and Yaxley was supposed to come to us." They were green instead. "On the plus side, we weren't certain we were going to get Ollivander and Peakes, and Bones is with us now, which is huge — Bones has always been the heart of Common Fate, for as long as the faction has existed, they've never joined us before, not once. But Common Fate is a few votes shy of what we expected, overall.

"Also, it's not half-and-half — all the strongly dark-leaning families in Common Fate have joined us now. The faction today is half former Light families, joining the light-leaning members who stayed put. They lean significantly away from us now, I expect they'll vote with Ars Brittania more often than not."

"...So we've actually lost, and the Light is more in power now." Which meant she'd just switched to the losing side, good job, Liz...

"Eh... It's hard to say whether this is actually worse for us or not. One could argue the new arrangement of the factions is simply reflecting the pre-existing opinions of the membership. We already knew mostly where everyone was going to end up — there were a few surprises, and those surprises mostly weren't in our favour, but they don't change the general picture much. It might actually be good for us in the long run, due to the cultural legitimacy we'll get from Bones being seen among us, especially since Amelia is siding with Bríd over Ciara. And having you with us now doesn't hurt either." Because of the whole Girl Who Lived nonsense, she meant, but Liz wouldn't bet on it — she thought it was more likely that the Light families who might have given a damn what she thought before would instead decide she was an evil dark witch or whatever, and give her up as an enemy now. But she wasn't the expert, so. "We'll have to wait for votes to start coming in to get a clear picture. But in the short term, I expect things are going to be very tense. We might actually lose a few Directorships, depending on how things go over the next couple months."

A lot of this politics shite was over her head, but Sylvia was saying they weren't completely fucked, she'd followed that much at least. "Okay, then. And this, the black stuff on some of the Ars Publica people, what's that about?"

There was a flutter of exasperation from her head, Sylvia's lips twisting with a grimace. "Yes, well, that's a whole...problem. I suppose. It's a similar concern to Ars Brittania being larger than expected, really, I suspect things are going to become quite difficult over the next few years. You know, the Inghams and the Monroes are traditionally considered the leadership of Ars Publica — Bríd and Ciara, currently, I'm pretty sure you've met both of them at some point."

Possibly, but she didn't remember them, honestly. She was aware those were the Founders in the faction, and mages could be silly about that sort of thing, just, you know, her visits to the Wizengamot had been tedious and she was shite with faces. "What about them?"

"Well, Bríd and Ciara are having something of a feud at the moment. They couldn't agree on a direction for our politics and... Basically, there are two factions calling themselves Ars Publica at the moment, one led by Bríd Ingham, backed up by my grandmother and the Eirsleys and the Scrimgeours — this is the larger one," she clarified, tapping the Potter seat on the chart with a finger, coloured plain unmarked red. "—and the other led by Ciara Monroe, backed up by the Rosiers and Stryke, the bastard." Liz didn't see the thought, exactly, but she got the feeling that Lord Stryke had told Sylvia he was on their side. "We got Bones, but Ciara's people got the Ollivanders, which is...unfortunate. Though the upside is we don't have to deal with Malfoy, I guess..."

Liz didn't think Narcissa was that bad...but she guessed they never had talked about politics, so. "Okay, sure, we have two Ars Publicas — Artēs Pūblicae?" Her Latin still wasn't great, not enough to try reading anything actually important yet, but she thought that was the correct plural? Ars is feminine, right? "Whatever. Yeah, let's have two, not confusing at all, but what does that mean, exactly? I mean, is it just Bríd and Ciara not getting along and being petty about it, or...?"

"It depends on what you're..." Sylvia trailed off, let out a little sigh. "There are cultural divisions within the Dark. You'll notice we have all of the old religious communes, Eirsley, and Tugwood, and Greengrass, and Smethwyck, and Glanwvyl," tapping the names as she went, "and also some of the newer ones who come out of the guilds, like my own family and the Greys. Ciara's people, these are mostly old aristocratic families — Monroe, MacMillan, Stryke, Malfoy, even Burke and Ollivander, depending on how you look at it. These different backgrounds mean we have different traditions, different values, and different interests, which leads to different strains of political opinion. We have more in common with each other than either of us have with Common Fate or Ars Brittania, so I imagine we will still vote with each other some of the time, but there are some very important differences.

"The thing that directly caused their falling out is the same reason I'm worried about Ars Brittania pulling more families than expected, only made worse by the events at the World Cup. The one issue that best predicts who ended up on which side is the national question — we all support independence for the Gaels, or at least some degree of autonomy, and they don't."

...Oh. Yeah, in that light, she could see how the British nationalists drawing more people away from Common Fate than expected might make Sylvia nervous. Though, on the other hand, she was saying a full quarter of the Wizengamot supported independence, which was honestly better than Liz had expected — some of them were Gaelic themselves, of course, but still. "So, you're worried people are going to be stupid about Saoirse and overreact, is what you're saying."

"I'm not sure it is an overreaction. The building of their own organisations parallel to the Ministry is very much intentional — Saoirse Ghaelach are undoubtedly serious about pushing for independence, someday, and it's not irrational for those opposed to it to be unnerved when they realise how competent and popular they are. But we're not at a crisis point yet. I'm not worried we're stumbling toward an imminent civil war, no, but I am worried that a few idiots with their heads wedged up their arses could unintentionally push us in that direction, far too easily. We're not in danger yet, you needn't worry about that too much, but... Well, the national question will come to a head, in our lifetimes. No question about that."

"Okay, I understand." Honestly, Liz would prefer the Ministry stop being bastards and just let the Gaels have their own damn country if they really wanted to, but she didn't expect that to actually happen — there'd been a big revolt and everything on the muggle side decades ago, she didn't expect it to go any different for the mages.

"You do support independence, right? Gwen gave me the impression you did, but I never did ask."

Liz shrugged. "I think people having their own country if they want to is a reasonable principle." Not a perfect one, of course, sometimes people did it for stupid reasons, but it wasn't a bad place to start from. "For Ireland specifically, I'm English, so I don't get an opinion. But I like this house, and if being nice to the nationalists means I'll get to keep it through a revolution, if that ends up happening, than I guess I'm going to be nice to the nationalists."

For some reason, Sylvia seemed to think that was really funny, even laughing out loud and everything. Hermione didn't laugh, but she also thought it was funny, hiding a smile behind a bite of cheese but completely failing to hide the twittering in her head. Which was a bit annoying, honestly — Liz was being completely serious...

After that, there was some more stuff, but it was pretty tedious. In the weird incestuous aristocratic system they had in magical Britain, politics was the Wizengamot and the Ministry, yes, but also other stuff. Cultural and religious stuff, you know, parties or donations or whatever, ways to hint at your values (and therefore politics) without coming out and saying it, all look at this good thing I'm doing, aren't I so very virtuous. It also worked as networking stuff within the nobility (and closely-related Common Houses), building relationships between them that might come in handy later, that sort of thing. Liz wouldn't be expected to participate in most of all that, since she was still young and new to this, but Sylvia said it was something she should start thinking about. Which was annoying, but whatever.

One of the things people did if they were lazy about it, wanted to signal support for something without having to actually do anything, was to make donations — since nobles were nobles, this was obviously one of the most common things they did. To hospitals or schools, guilds, or for arts stuff, you know, whatever. Apparently the biggest outstanding thing the Potters had was writing off the royalties they were owed for various potions at certain institutions — primarily Saint Mungo's, but there were others too — which technically counted as a donation, despite not actually putting any money into it. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the secretary before Diggle (Liz forgot who that had been) had made a big commitment in her name to a thing to support war orphans — she was actually still paying for half of the tuition fees for a couple kids attending Caoimhe's Academy (the families who adopted them paying the other half), which she guessed was neat, she hadn't known about that. The Potters didn't have much besides that, though, since they were a relatively new family and weren't big into the arts and stuff — or particularly religious, a lot of things other families did was related to religion somehow or another — and they'd just been coasting along while Liz was too little, so.

Speaking of paying people's tuition, maybe they could do, like, a scholarship thing to help muggleborns into apprenticeships and Mastery programmes and stuff? She knew that could be really difficult for muggleborns, since a lot of times it required knowing the right people, and obviously muggleborns didn't have family connections they could lean on, it was very stupid. She meant, she had all this money she was never going to use anyway, she might as well throw it at something useful — that it would annoy the more irritating purebloods was a side-benefit, yes, no reason to smirk about it, Sylvia. She didn't know, potions and alchemy and healing stuff, probably, since it was what the Potters were known for, and Severus also happened to be an expert with that stuff, so she could ask him which candidates were better. (She had all this money she wasn't using, but she realised it would be stupid to just leave it open to whoever applied for it, it would have to be strictly limited to a couple people.) Whatever, she didn't know, Sylvia could think about that and get back to her, she guessed.

Since they meant noble families literally, the Potters had vassals, and like tenants on the land they owned and shite, which was fucking ridiculous, Liz preferred not to think about that. With some families, it wasn't unusual to, like, throw religious holiday stuff on their lands, but Liz didn't want to do that — she didn't know shite about magical religion, and she had no idea what the locals believed, pushing something on them would be a shitty thing to do. Just leave them to do their own things, whatever. It was pretty common for lords/ladies/whatever to do shite for people on the major holidays, you know, holiday gifts or whatever, making a show of being special generous good people. (Liz was probably being too harsh, she didn't doubt that a lot of them had good intentions doing it, just trying to be nice to the people they had responsibilities to, but aristocracy was inherently stupid, she couldn't help it.) Apparently, the tradition on Potter lands was to just void the obligations people had to make in the months with major holidays, like, taxes and rent and the fraction of whatever they made that they owed to the family or whatever...but since the Potters weren't religious at all, but kind of semi-Christianised culturally, that was basically just Christmas and Easter. And that was complete shite, like, literally the least they could do, stingy bastards. She guessed they could start doing something better than that, but she didn't know what would be expected, she didn't know much of anything about magical—

Oh shite, she'd just missed Lúnasa — what Sylvia called it, one of the major holidays, some harvest festival...thing. There'd been stuff going on in town, Liz had noticed, but she hadn't been paying that much attention. And that was one of the really important ones too, and it was too late to do anything about it now, oh well. She guessed they could start doing more with whatever the next– Samhain, they could start doing that with this Hallowe'en, then. Not that Liz had any idea what would be a good thing to do, if Sylvia wanted to put something together, Liz would just sign off on it, whatever...

(That she was an actual lady with literal vassals made her very uncomfortable whenever she was reminded about it, literally the least she could do was not be a bitch about it.)

Normally there would be invitations to the holiday parties the nobility always did, because obviously fancy rich people like having parties, but Liz probably wouldn't get any for at least a little while. She was still young, still in school, and this year there was the Yule Ball with the Triwizard Tournament and everything, so. (Not that Liz planned on going to the bloody Yule Ball, but the fancy mages presumably didn't realise that.) Sylvia expected she'd get an invitation for next Lúnasa — especially since she'd be (just barely) fifteen by then, and ugh, don't remind her about the whole courting thing... — but until then, not something she needed to worry about too much. When she was grown up, she'd be expected to take her turn hosting the things, but that wasn't something they had to start thinking about for a good while yet.

Sylvia was a little annoyed at the news that Liz was going with Severus to some holiday thing in a couple days, Liz forgot the name — Consualia, that was it, thank you, Hermione. Not just because it'd all be people in other political factions (though that didn't help), but apparently because it was something to do with the very silly not-Roman religion thing some people did, and it turned out some of the more traditionally Celtic religious people did not have a high opinion of that. Which wasn't really Liz's business, because it wasn't like she believed in either, but whatever. Sylvia did think it was funny that she was bringing Hermione with, since a lot of the same people who did the mos maiorum thing also didn't like muggleborns much (and were just elitist, self-righteous bastards in general), so, silver lining.

There was a bit more talk about arts stuff (Hermione had questions about music and theatre and shite), which Liz entirely didn't care about, and there, they were done. A few more pleasantries, Sylvia packed up her things, and not long later she was gone through the floo, leaving Liz and Hermione (and Nilanse) alone in the house again.

Not long later, they'd been talking for hours, ridiculous...

"Okay, that was worse than I expected."

Liz blinked, turned to Hermione. She was standing a couple feet away, staring at the empty fireplace — you didn't actually need a fire going to use the floo, which was neat — something cool and...spiny simmering away in her head. "What? I like Sylvia..."

"No, Sylvia's fine, I just... I knew the magical government was a backward, mediaevel, corrupt mess, but— It's just even worse than I thought, is all."

"Yeah, that's fair. I mean, I know I shouldn't complain, since this backward, mediaevel, corrupt mess benefits me, but." Liz shrugged.

"I get what you mean." In her head, Hermione was comparing it to knowing that the Empire had been (was?) actually, literally evil, but at the same time knowing that she'd benefited from its existence in more ways than she could even account for. Which wasn't a bad comparison, actually? Liz might theoretically be in charge of Potter stuff, but she couldn't do whatever she wanted, since it all had to function within the laws and customs of the society it existed in — kind of like how people in first-world democracies could theoretically vote to end their continuing exploitation of the third world, but there were all kinds of things in the way of that actually happening, so yeah, good comparison. "As I learn more about what the country outside of Hogwarts is actually like, sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't have been better off going to Beauxbatons."

Apparently, when McGonagall went to meet with muggleborns' families, she just informed them they were going to Hogwarts, with very little details about what Hogwarts was actually like and what their options were — Hermione's parents, being Hermione's parents, hadn't accepted that, and had badgered McGonagall and supposedly also someone at the Department of Education until they'd gotten sent literature on a few different schools. Since Hermione also happened to have French citizenship, she would have been automatically accepted at Beauxbatons too — Beauxbatons wasn't in magical France, but France had been completely fucked in the Revolution and the British/Dutch invasion, they'd made a deal with Aquitania to send their muggleborns to Beauxbatons in the meanwhile and they still hadn't gotten their own stuff straightened out yet — so they'd primarily looked at Beauxbatons and Hogwarts. Apparently Hermione had even gone to a hello, yes magic is real, we're seriously not kidding, welcome to the magical world thing for muggleborns and their parents at Beauxbatons before ultimately deciding to go with Hogwarts.

Liz wasn't sure why, honestly. Beauxbatons sounded like the better school to her. Though, maybe it was just because it was smaller, Hermione hadn't been any better at making friends than Liz was at the time...

"Well, I'm glad you didn't. If you had decided to go to Beauxbatons instead, we probably never would have met."

"Oh!" Hermione turned away from the fireplace, looking at Liz wide-eyed, with an odd hot flutter in her head. "Yes, of course, I didn't mean— I don't regret the decision, I'm just saying, I wonder sometimes."

"Yeah." Liz bit her lip for a second, the words itching at her throat, before blurting out, "I'm leaving Hogwarts."

Hermione blinked, taken aback, enough that she even reared back a little. "What?"

"I've been talking to Severus about it and, just, I hate it there. I can get by okay most of the time, but I just..." It probably wasn't a good idea to tell Hermione that it'd gotten bad enough that she'd literally contemplated killing herself at one point. Liz didn't think she'd take that very well. "I'm going to transfer out after OWLs."

For a long moment, Hermione didn't say anything, just staring at Liz, something cold and slimy and unpleasant mingled in with the surprise in her head. Liz grew increasingly nervous as the silence went on, avoiding her eyes — she noticed she was fidgeting with her skirt, forced herself to stop. Finally, "I suppose I can't blame you, especially after last year. And I know you hate all the Girl Who Lived stuff — do people care about that as much on the Continent?"

"Severus says no."

"Right, then, that's probably a good idea. I'm going to miss you, but you should go anyway."

Despite herself — it didn't matter whether Hermione approved or not, Liz was going to do it anyway — she felt herself relax. "I'm still going to be around. I mean, I'm not moving away, you know. And, I got this magic notebook from– ah, Clara, you know, you write in one and it's instantly copied in the other? We can make some of those." She'd remembered at the last second that her notebook with Skeeter was supposed to be a secret. Clara was Tamsyn, what she'd decided to call her mysterious French penfriend who sent the duck — for some reason, "Tamsyn" had made her think of Taliesin, and iesin meant, like, "shining" or "bright" or whatever, which had made her think of Clara. Seemed as good of a person to credit it to as anyone. "And the bedroom can just be yours now, when you want to visit or whatever — it's not like I'm going to use it for anything else, you know..."

Hermione was smiling at her, her mind all warm and bright, which was making Liz feel weirdly embarrassed, for some reason. "That's true. Where are you thinking of going?"

"Um, I'm not sure yet — I don't have to start applying to places until, like, winter next year. But I'm thinking probably Durmstrang, or maybe Syracuse. I'm still looking."

"Oh, Syracuse is lovely. The city, I mean, the muggle city, obviously I've never been to the magic school." Of course Hermione had been to Syracuse before, she'd been bloody everywhere. "I'm not sure you'd like it there, though — it's very sunny and warm, and you didn't seem to like the heat much, that day in Iași."

"Yeah, the school sounds really good, but I don't know about the weather. Come on, let's get the leftovers put away." Different things would be going away in different places, but they had to get everything into the kitchen for that part — thankfully, it was relatively easy to just magic everything over. Liz didn't quite manage to catch all the dishes, her levitation charm spread out too much, but Hermione picked up the rest before she could say anything. "Oh, thanks. Anyway, Durmstrang also sounds good, and they do get a lot of snow there, but you can always put on more layers, I think it'll be easier to deal with."

"That makes sense. Isn't Durmstrang really selective? I think I heard something about entrance exams..."

"Yeah, I'll have to take the Competency exams — that's what they call the OWL-level ones — and also Durmstrang's own exams, and there are interviews and stuff. It sounds like a pain, not sure I want to bother with it, that's part of why I'm still looking at other schools. It's also more expensive than Hogwarts, a little bit, but I can definitely afford it."

"Oh, I forgot you'd already be paying the tuition fees at Hogwarts." Which was silly, the only people who didn't pay to go to Hogwarts were muggleborns — so Hermione went for free, despite the fact that her parents could also definitely afford it. "I'm sure you'll be able to get in, you really do very well when you put your mind to it." Well, now that was Hermione and Severus who were confident of her chances... "My parents have been researching Mastery programmes already, because of course they are, but a lot of those teach in French, so there are far more options there than for secondary schools. Though I might go to muggle university too, I don't know yet — Professor Babbling attended Aix-Marseille and Oxford alongside her Mastery study, you know, I might try to do something like that." That sounded like way too much work to Liz...especially since she hadn't done any muggle school stuff since primary, she'd have to catch up... "What are we doing with these?"

"Um, there are these platters, they've got preservation spells on them, they're— Hang on a second, I'll get it..."

---

Mandy Brocklehurst's family — I randomly checked the wiki, and apparently Mandy is canonically half-blood. She's in my notes as a muggleborn, and has been referenced as a muggleborn previously in this fic, so I don't care, fuck the police.

Right, that went longer than anticipated, but this is me, so of course it did. There was also a lot of involved worldbuilding stuff that I'm not sure is interesting to anyone besides me, but I'm the one writing this shit, so there.

According to my outline, there are precisely four scenes left in the summer, two from Liz's POV and two from Tamsyn's. Tamsyn's is definitely going to a single chapter, but if Liz's scenes go long I might have to split it. But still, leaving for Hogwarts in three (maybe four) chapters! Finally! Woo!

Someone reminded me that I was going to do a politics write-up — that's just about finished, just going to need some editing to make it viable. Also, there are going to be tables and images and stuff, so if you're reading this on FFN and you want to see me ramble about fictional politics for 30k plus words, you're going to have to check it out on AO3. Depending on whether I can get the formatting to cooperate I might actually take screenshots and upload the images instead, so, might take a while, we'll see.

Right, that's all from me, bye now.