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)

61. Fourth Year — XV

Liz straightened as she was alerted to someone coming in through the floo — and then her heart jumped into her throat, a nervous tingle crawling across her skin, as the wards recognised Daphne a second later. Which was ridiculous, she was fine, honestly, stupid fucked-up brain... "Over here!" she called out, immediately turning back to her frying. Peeking through the crack in the oven door, squinting against the hot wind and the flickering flames, just a little bit more for these ones...

There was a brief delay, and then she felt Daphne's mind approaching from behind her. Very quietly, did she go through the floo barefoot? (Mistwalkers weren't big fans of shoes, after all.) It took a moment for Daphne to spot her — Liz was bloody tiny, crouching over to look into the oven she was probably nearly hidden by the island in the middle of the kitchen — when she found her bright sparks flickering in her head, her attention on Liz warm and tingly. "Oh, I hope I'm not too early."

"Nope, I just need a few minutes here." That looked good — Liz reached back to pick up the platter, the enchantment tingling against her fingers, opened the oven door the rest of the way. Gently, little prods of wandless magic aimed with twitches of her fingers, she nudged the cheese...fritter...things (didn't know what to call them, exactly) closer to herself, as they left the range of the oven's levitation spell the things softly plopping down onto the platter. Perfect, nailed it. Liz set the platter aside, checked on the soup quick. She had a spoon charmed to slowly stir it for her — meant for use with potions, technically, but big difference — and it looked like there still weren't any bits getting burned onto the sides, good. A tap of her wand on the rim, she cast a quick dissolving charm — also meant for use with potions, but it wasn't like she had a liquidiser or anything, this was just as good. Looked like there were still some bits floating in there, but she still had some more fritter things to fry, so she'd space out a few more charms over the time it took to make those, no problem. Liz finally turned to Daphne, standing a few feet away leaning against the counter. "Hi."

Daphne smiled back at her, bright and warm, the light glinting off the jewellery in her face, a steady pulse of something from her mind simmering on the air. She'd gone full Mistwalker again, which wasn't super unusual these days — in one of her letters she even said she was considering bringing her usual clothes to Hogwarts, but not certain, still nervous about being openly weird around the noble kids — this weird wrap dress thing gold and white glimmering silvery, lines of earthy orangish-brown and red and blue stitched in tiny little knotwork designs all through the length, and of course all the beaded jewellery and stuff that went with it. Liz was ninety per cent sure she'd seen this one before, which wasn't a surprise — the Mistwalkers made their clothes by hand (Daphne had most likely made this dress herself, the embroidery if not the weaving), and all the little stitching patterns seemed like a lot of work to do any more than absolutely necessary. (Plus, magical clothes lasted a lot longer than muggle-made ones, high-quality materials and enchantments, so.) As Daphne usually wore it, the skirt was skewed, the hem higher on one side than the other — Liz assumed there was a reason most of them did that, but she'd never asked — looped over her right shoulder, leaving the left bare, the slightest sliver of skin peeking through the folds a little above her right hip.

Liz knew enough to know this would be pretty damn scandalous by magical standards (doubly so since she wasn't wearing leggings this time), though she probably wouldn't get a second glance walking around London. Er, well, she'd get looks for how weird it was, but it wasn't, like, risqué by any means, some of the things muggle girls wore covered way less than this, but mages were way more conservative in that way. Not that it would matter, since they weren't going anywhere. It was just...kind of distracting, was all.

(Especially since Liz was fully aware, due to mind-reading superpowers, that Daphne often didn't wear knickers at all — apparently most Mistwalkers didn't — but let's avoid thinking about that just now.)

She was distracted enough staring that she twitched a little when Daphne spoke. "Hello, Liz. So we're staying in, then?"

"Oh yeah, I did talk to Severus about it, and you're right, he doesn't want me going out too much." The political situation had only gotten more complicated over the last week — Liz switching to Ars Publica and kind of implicitly supporting the Gaels hadn't helped matters. Severus thought it was unlikely, but possible, that if she were out in public without a competent adult along someone might try to kidnap her, or throw a hex or something. (Or just be annoying at her, which she didn't want to deal with either.) She wasn't even supposed to go out to the market on her own, Sirius had been along for their last grocery shopping trip. Which was a little irritating, honestly, but she realised being kidnapped or cursed by some arsehole would be way worse, so she was begrudgingly playing along. The summer was almost over anyway, she could tolerate it for that long.

When she'd asked, Severus had said something about appreciating the caution — even though asking him about it had actually been Daphne's idea, Liz had initially been annoyed at the suggestion she ask his permission to...go out on a date, or whatever? (Liz was pretty sure that was the right term, but she'd danced around it, too awkward to actually talk to Severus about it still.) She had asked him, though, so she'd tactically failed to mention that she hadn't thought to on her own.

But anyway, that had been recently enough that Liz hadn't bothered actually telling Daphne about it — the initial plan had been to meet up at her house first anyway, and just find something to do at the Refuge (so Liz didn't have to floo anywhere), so it didn't really change anything on Daphne's end. Though Liz was a little surprised she'd maybe thought they were going out, since dressed like that Daphne would get a lot of weird looks. "I remember you thinking something about my cooking back in Romania, so I thought, why not, just hang out here, maybe check out a couple things in the pensieve for fun. If that's okay?" She was maybe babbling a little bit, she actually heard the awkwardness on her own voice there at the end, ugh...

A little twittering of soft amusement in her head, Daphne just smiled. "Yes, Liz, that sounds wonderful. What are you making? It smells great in here."

"Oh, ah, this is a cream of mushroom soup, and this is some bread...stuff." She reached over to the pan on the island, charmed warm, tipped up an edge of the towel. It was one of her early attempts at baking, Nilanse practically holding her hand through it step by step, and it hadn't turned out quite right — it tasted fine, but the consistency had turned out wrong, too thick and heavy. And still a little too moist, enough you could easily pull the stuff apart with your bare hands, but she was mostly fine with that. She'd tried it in the first place because it was one of the kinds of bread Nilanse liked, so Liz could cook the whole meal proper, but it was a work in progress. "And these are fried cheese things, not sure what to call them, Hermione and I made them earlier this month and they're pretty great." Well, Liz had made them, Hermione had just had the idea and Liz had figured out how to do it, Hermione sitting on a counter chatting through the process. "I've still got to do these ones," waving at a tray with little knobby lumps of dough and cheese dotted across it, "I can only do a few at a time, or I might drop them or something. And by then the soup will be done, so, just a few minutes.

"So, I'll just, um, do that..." She trailed off awkwardly, reaching for the mottled-looking doughballs. (They weren't perfectly spherical, all knobby and uneven, the texture inconsistent, alternating between bits of cheese and herb-speckled dough, sprinkled with bread crumbs, butter and eggs faintly glistening in the light.) It wasn't that unusual to have someone else in the kitchen while she was cooking — Sirius and Hermione were both pretty useless — she was just feeling annoyingly self-conscious about it at the moment.

"Do those have egg in them?"

"Sure, gotta hold everything together with something, it won't— Oh! Yeah, the food rules, I got— Follow me quick, I'll show you." A glance at the soup to make sure it was fine for now, and Liz turned away from the stove, moving toward the stairs down. She felt Daphne following after her, mind sparking in curiosity.

It'd occurred to Liz that she'd probably end up cooking for Daphne at some point, so she should probably know what exactly the Mistwalkers' weird religious dietary restrictions were — she'd written Tracey asking about it shortly after returning from Romania. She had a page of notes about it now, right next to the Jewish ones, in a little notebook where she also had things like people's birthdays and their parents' names and addresses and stuff, so she didn't forget. No meat was the obvious one — for their purposes anything that moved on its own counted, so they couldn't eat fish but could eat, like, oysters and cockles and shite (despite that Liz was pretty sure those could move?), though they generally didn't anyway — there were a couple trees and flowers they avoided for superstitious reasons, but that was mostly it, not too much to keep track of. Dairy was a little iffy, since they had rules about cruelty to animals — most stuff produced by mages should be fine, but they wouldn't touch the dairy products in muggle grocers. And they could eat eggs, but only if charms were done to be one hundred per cent certain they were unfertilised, and only if how they got the eggs in the first place didn't break certain cruelty rules.

But the Mistwalkers weren't the only people who had these kinds of restrictions — the old druidic cults they were descended from had been very influential once upon a time, a lot of other magical religions had inherited bits and pieces from them — so there were magical producers who took that into account. Stuff from those farms was more expensive, since following the rules meant you tended to get less milk or eggs or whatever out of it, but it wasn't that much of a difference, Liz could afford it. Especially since, she'd switched to using this stuff by default recently (so she didn't accidentally slip making something for someone who cared), and anything she used cream in tasted noticeably better now, and fucking hell the cheese was so fucking good...

(According to Tracey, Mistwalker Seers claimed they could taste the suffering of the cow on muggle-made milk — Liz was starting to wonder if she'd been picking up the same thing her whole life, and just never noticed. It would explain why the Potter elves' cooking was so good, they grew and raised all their own stuff...)

So Liz led Daphne downstairs, taking a sharp u-turn into the little walk in pantry...thing. It was a little cool in here, uncomfortable, but they wouldn't be here for long. She found the egg box — the eggs cupped in moulded paper pulp stuff, the texture similar to muggle egg cartons, but put inside a wooden box instead (when she needed more the seller would replace the egg trays, but the box was hers permanently) — turned it on the shelf a little, so this one little logo was more easily visible. "Right here, see?" A sort of half-sunburst, maybe the sunrise, underneath it a spear, what might be vines wrapped around the shaft (the image was very small, hard to tell) — Liz didn't know what the symbol meant, exactly, but Tracey had said anything that had this on the packaging was usable. They even sold meat with it, for the people who followed the same cruelty rules but would still eat meat (like the Eirsleys, for example), but obviously that made no difference to Mistwalkers. For eggs it should be good enough though.

Daphne leaned a little closer to get a better look — the cloth of her dress brushing against Liz's arm a little, she could smell her perfume, tangy and citrusy. "Oh! Yes, these will be fine. Ah, so long as it won't taste much like eggs — it's a little silly, I know, but even when I know they're clean the taste of egg still makes me uneasy."

"I don't think it's silly." Liz didn't get it, exactly, but if eggs were sometimes a problem, she could see how having her attention drawn to there being eggs in something might make her uncomfortable. But Daphne could be unnecessarily apologetic about some of the superstitious stuff she'd grown up with sometimes, whatever. "And no, they don't taste like egg at all, mostly just cheese. And the cheese is also good, by the way, it's this stuff right here—" She'd rewrapped the paper funny, it took a moment turning it around to find the logo. "—and the cream in the soup is too, see right here," tapping the little ceramic jug. Also refillable, a lot of grocery stuff worked that way on the magical side, permanent containers you just went to have the seller refill for you every time — made the first purchase of each new thing more expensive, and it was slightly tedious, but she guessed it was less wasteful... "Oh, and the soup would normally have chicken stock in it, but I made some vegetable broth instead. Took longer, since I had to make it myself, but. I think everything should be fine?"

"It should be, yes. That was very thoughtful, Liz, thank you."

She shrugged, trying not to feel weirdly self-conscious. (She didn't even know why she was feeling weird about it all of a sudden, her brain was trash.) "It was a good idea just for myself, actually. I do have psychometry, turns out, and this dairy stuff is much better than the stuff I was getting before, by a lot — I think I was picking something up all along without realising it, being a Seer is weird." The meat was noticeably better too, but it didn't make as much of a difference, and she hadn't noticed any change from the eggs, but. Though, speaking of meat, she noticed Daphne glancing at the stuff in here, uneasy shifting in her head, it was probably time to go. "Anyway, I should go finish the food, come on."

Closing the door behind them, Liz was just stepping onto the stairs when Daphne said, "Stop for a second." There was a sort of bright slippery lilt in Daphne's head, didn't know what that was, Liz turned around to ask what was up, but then Daphne was right there, and then she was kissing her, and Liz kind of forgot what she was thinking.

Standing a stair off the floor, Liz's neck ended up at a less uncomfortable angle, at least — Daphne was still taller than her like this, because Liz was annoyingly tiny, but only by like an inch or two. Though Liz hardly noticed the physical part, honestly, as could happen to her sometimes Daphne's mind suddenly flooding over her all smooth and warm and crackling and bubbling with excitement and happiness, something soft and squirming and...Liz wasn't sure what to call that, exactly (touched by Liz going through the effort to accommodate her dietary stuff, maybe?), all of it kind of sent Liz mentally flailing, a brief moment where the dizzying press of Daphne's emotions and surging affection washed out literally everything else. After a moment she managed to pull herself together enough to actually hold up her end of the kissing thing — and at this point she still didn't really know what she was doing, just following along and trying not to think about it too hard...

After a little bit — Liz had no idea how long, Daphne's mind being this loud was so disorienting it was impossible to tell — Daphne pulled back. Still touching her, fingertips cool on her cheek, Daphne's...something sizzling and tingling on her skin (not unpleasant, though kind of distracting), her mind still louder than usual but dim enough to think straight. Smiling at Liz from inches away, bright and warm, her eyes dancing. "There's a proper hello."

A little huff of a laugh surprised out of her, it still took Liz a second to find her voice. But even then all she managed was, "Er, right." Oh for fuck's sake, what was wrong with her... "Um, I mean...I should go finish the cooking." Honestly, she was so bad at this.

Daphne didn't seem to mind, at least — just kept smiling at Liz all sweet while she scrambled to remember how to do words. "I suppose you should." Another quick kiss, barely a second, and Daphne let go, retreating a step. It took a second for Liz to start moving, gathering herself with a breath — and she felt very self-conscious about it, her steps awkward, feeling Daphne's eyes on her, warm tingly pressure brushing along her hips, down her legs. She guessed following behind her on the stairs would be putting her arse pretty close to Daphne's eye level, so, probably couldn't help it...

Checking the soup quick, going back to frying cheese things, she still felt annoyingly self-conscious. Not sure how, exactly, just, distractingly aware of how she was standing, or moving, how her scarf or her skirt was resting, her skin crawling as she felt Daphne's eyes move from one part of her body to another, her breath hot in her throat. Spent a lot of time on her legs, which wasn't really a surprise. She hadn't been certain about this dress, waffling before buying it and today before deciding to wear it — the skirt was a little shorter than she'd normally go with. Not, like, short, she saw muggle girls wearing skimpier shite all the time, but the hem was noticeably above her knees, which was not normal for her. (Knee-length was a little short for her already, most of the skirts and dresses she wore day to day went at least down to her shins.) And normally she'd be wearing boots, which would cover up to her knees from the other end, but obviously they weren't going anywhere so she hadn't bothered, instead just a couple of the bracelets she'd gotten at the Greenwood around her ankles — she'd needed to cheat a little with transfiguration to get them over her heel, but they were pretty, and tinkled when she moved, she didn't know, she liked it. So there was more to look at than usual, she meant.

In fact, the noise was one of the things she liked about wearing jewellery, though she really couldn't put words to why, so she had some more of the Mistwalkers' colourful beaded shite around her wrists, jingling a little as she used her hands — which, since she was trying to finish dinner here, was pretty much constantly. She was also wearing her mother's necklace again, and she'd plaited strings of beads into her hair with careful charmwork — not Mistwalker-made, just a handful of beads she'd bought at the market a couple blocks from here, green and white and yellow (her scarf was just wrapped around her neck and not over her head like she'd been doing lately, so as to not hide the beads) — but those didn't make any noise. Could still feel them moving around, but. For some reason she normally liked the jingling, dunno, but at the moment it was making her even more pointlessly self-conscious, stiff and awkward, ugh...

Simmering unpleasantly in her chest, she was kind of beating herself up for that moment down on the stairs, embarrassed. Still felt stupid about it, minutes later, despite the fact that Daphne was keeping her thoughts completely open to her, as per usual, so Liz could see she didn't think that had been nearly as pathetic as Liz did. She thought it was kind of adorable, if anything. And there was also a hint of smugness there, that she could so easily reduce Liz to speechlessness — Liz was the more powerful mage of the two of them, and had mind-control superpowers, and was shaping up to be a pretty intimidating duellist, but a single kiss from Daphne and she immediately forgot how to do words — which, Liz didn't know how to feel about that, really, but she was going to go with embarrassing, yeah, that was kind of embarrassing, and wasn't exactly making her less self-conscious.

Daphne's attention on her while she tried to finish up the food, her heart pounding in her chest and her breath thin, all too aware of each little thing she was doing and how it might look from the outside, it was kind of a lot, honestly. Not entirely unpleasant — it was just Daphne, it was a little nerve-wracking but also kinda... — but fucking hell, she was going to have to take it easy tonight, because she was going to be, just, exhausted by the time Daphne went home...

Some more cheese things floating and frying away, Liz sidled back over to the soup, another dissolving charm, and this was pretty much done — good, only had a couple cheese things left. Poking at the soup, Daphne's mind focused, images flashing behind Liz's eyes, Daphne coming up close behind her, pinning her against the counter, one hand on her hip and the other pushing her hair out of the way, dipping down toward her neck, her nose brushing along the edge of Liz's ear, and— Liz jumped, pulling away from Daphne's mind, her skin crawling — not really in a bad way, just, wow, that was all — letting out a shaky breath, she threw a (thinly) exasperated glance at Daphne, still leaning against the counter a couple metres away, watching her and smiling to herself. "I'm trying to do something over here, you know."

Daphne just smiled wider, her mind sparking. "I know. You're pretty, I can't help myself."

Liz didn't know what she was supposed to say to that, so she just let out a huff, rolling her eyes, and checked back on the cheese things. Feeling Daphne's eyes on her, trying not to act too visibly awkward.

(Her first instinct whenever Daphne said something like that was still to assume she was lying, for some reason — which was ridiculous, because Liz would be able to feel a lie, she was very well aware of Daphne's inexplicably high opinion of her by now. She didn't know, it was awkward, that was all, she didn't know what to do with herself...)

Thankfully, it didn't take her very much longer to finish the cheese things, and by that point the soup was done, so, awesome. Grabbing the tray she'd had Nilanse bring from Clyde Rock ahead of time, Liz scooped out the soup into a waiting pair of bowls, put those on a pair of little plates on the tray (mostly to catch spills), and there was a plate with bits of fruit and cheese she had under a cooling charm over here — to snack on between trips in the pensieve, was the idea — quick grab a knife and cut a chunk of bread out of the pan, move a few cheese things onto a plate from the platter, and then put both of those on the tray, and Daphne could carry the bottle of mead and a couple glasses, and there, that was everything. Liz cast a careful levitation charm on the tray, with her wand — she could levitate things wandlessly, but it was less consistent, and she didn't want to spill anything — and started leading the way upstairs.

They were partway up the stairs, in the big overdone entryway, even the patchy Irish sunlight enough to make the too-open space bright and shining, when Daphne broke the brief silence. "Have you given any thought to putting something in here? Your home is lovely, of course, I don't mean to imply otherwise, it only feels somewhat empty."

Daphne actually didn't like Liz's house much — she'd only been here briefly once before, but even from that Liz was aware it was too big and empty and lifeless for her — but she meant "lovely" in the objective sense, knowing normal people would think so, so it didn't quite register to Liz as a lie. But yeah, the entryway was especially big and empty and lifeless, so, the thing was kind of an eyesore, the people who'd fixed the place up really needn't have bothered. "Let me guess, you think I should get some plants." She felt a cool, shifting tingle from Daphne, shot a smirk back over her shoulder so she'd get that Liz was teasing.

With a bashful sort of smile Liz could feel without having to look, Daphne said, "Well, maybe. I'll admit I have my preferences, I realise the way of things at the Greenwood is hardly typical." The implication being that she shouldn't try to force their aesthetics on Liz's house.

"No, I actually liked the indoor plants everywhere — our rooms at the guest hall were really neat, I thought. I just wouldn't know how to do anything like that, and I'm going to be spending most of the next several years at school anyway, I wouldn't want to make too much work for the elves for no reason..."

It turned out Liz was maybe over thinking it a little bit. Daphne explained how this stuff worked, generally, and it turned out that planters and trellises and stuff could be enchanted to guide the growth of plants in them — you didn't have to worry about keeping them contained, or whatever, they wouldn't grow past where you wanted them. (Which was a neat trick, Liz wasn't sure how that was supposed to work, but she guessed the Greengrasses were kind of the experts.) There were potions to occasionally dribble into the soil to make sure the nutrients didn't get depleted — that was part of how they could have plants constantly flowering and fruiting without any detrimental effects — and if she were worried about remembering to water them the planters could be enchanted with spells to draw in the necessary water (especially since it was so damn humid in Ireland). The biggest issue Daphne could see would be getting enough light, especially in some of the other rooms, but. Which, sure, that was maybe something Liz could set up some other summer — as soon as they'd be going back to school, not really worth doing anything just now, she'd think about it...

Apparently Daphne thought putting a bloody tree in the entryway would be a good idea, which, okay then...

Hermione was in the upstairs salon. In what should be a surprise to absolutely no one, she was curled up with a book in one of the armchairs — their new book for Transfiguration, Liz was pretty sure, because of course. Hermione didn't actually memorise all of their textbooks before class started, but she did read them all, and her memory tended to be good enough that she remembered most of it, or at least would know where to look to find something. Liz had no idea how she did that, Hermione's brain was just ridiculous. "Oh hello, Daphne," she said, a little absently, half of her attention still on her book.

"Hello, Hermione. You've been well?"

"Oh sure." Hermione folded her book closed, keeping her spot with a finger, so she could properly look at them to talk. "Things have mostly been quiet here — we went to Consualia with the Yaxleys last week, but that's really it."

There was a little flicker of displeasure — Daphne didn't like the Death Eater families much...or their religion, for that matter — but Daphne managed to keep it off her face. Not that there was any reason to make a fuss about it, Consualia at the Yaxleys' had turned out to be kind of boring.

The thing had been a little tense, for multiple different layers of political reasons. For a few decades now, the head of the family had been a bloke called Julian Yaxley, who was a Dark Lord supporter — Severus wasn't certain if he'd ever officially joined the Death Eaters, but he'd definitely been a member of the weird religious cult part. His son Robin was definitely a Death Eater — he was currently serving a life sentence in Azkaban for it — and so was his other son Corban, along with several grandchildren and nephews and whatever, including Severus's friend Austin. (That wasn't public knowledge, Robin was the only Yaxley Death Eater the Ministry knew about, but Severus obviously knew better.) That branch of the family had also produced Arianna Yaxley who, while not directly associated with the Death Eaters, was one of the most infamous wanted criminals in magical Britain at the moment, possibly second only to Fenrir Greyback.

But that wasn't the only branch of the family — because people had to make this shite complicated for her, there were also factions within families she had to keep track of. At some point in the last month, Jules (as Severus called him) had retired in favour of an Albert Yaxley; the new Lord was from a different branch of the family, and had radically different politics. (Liz wasn't sure how the title was passed down, since it obviously wasn't just a father-to-son thing, but it wasn't her business and she didn't really care.) That branch of the Yaxleys was deeper in the guilds, way more populist and definitely not Death Eaters — it was early to say, but Sylvia thought Albert would end up being one of the more guild-friendly members of Common Fate going forward, a huge shift from Jules's time in charge.

Unfortunately for Albert, by the time he took over the family the invitations had already gone out, and it would be very rude to cancel. And it'd also been too late to invite additional people he'd like better, so he'd just had to put up with throwing a party for a bunch of Death Eaters at his house. He'd been there, along with several of his people keeping him company — after all, it would also be rude for the host to just not show up — Liz had met him, briefly. He'd visibly brightened a little greeting her and Severus and Hermione, his curiosity prickling at her skin — he also hadn't gone cold and stiff like so many of the guests had talking to Hermione, had seemingly made a point of welcoming them all to his home, looking directly at Hermione as he said it. Mostly to annoy his more annoying relatives, Liz thought — she hadn't missed the hostility in the minds around them at Albert's implication, Albert internally smirking to himself — but still, he'd seemed pleasant enough. But yeah, kind of tense and awkward.

And, of course, the guest list had all been Allied Dark people before recent political developments, but the faction didn't exist anymore...and they hadn't all ended up in the same faction. There'd been a lot of discontent going on around her, the new political divisions in the group like a fresh wound, some of the junior members of this family or another dissatisfied with their superior's new allegiances, a lot of jockeying trying to get one up on the other or trying to firm up ties between people they liked but weren't allied with anymore, all kinds of shite — and all done subtly, unspoken, because being too open about it at a holiday gathering would be uncouth. It'd been very tense, even without people being racist about Hermione and weird about Liz, just generally uncomfortable.

And that was without getting into Severus's friends feeling the need to meet her for whatever reason — Constance Rowle at least hadn't been too bad, though the long sleeves made it very obvious how they knew each other (which was interesting, she hadn't heard of very many women Death Eaters) — and bumping into Narcissa and trying not to think about how she was definitely sleeping with this Livia Davis woman standing around chatting with her and her friends — and was also scheming to set Severus up with Nicolette Rosier, which was at least mildly funny (she was going to fail again, Rosier's hair was the wrong colour and her magic wasn't dark enough and the French accent was wrong) — and the sheer bloody awkwardness of her introduction to Bertie Yaxley, her part of the trade Severus had made for the tent they'd used at the World Cup.

Though it didn't turn out so bad, honestly. After the adults had gotten through the silly introductions and everything (Liz trying not to smirk at the name Ethelbert) and they were alone for three seconds — observed but out of earshot, since leaving opposite-sex teenagers unchaperoned was unseemly — Bertie immediately apologised for the whole thing. It was politics, apparently: his parents didn't want to be associated with the crazy Death Eater branch of the family anymore (despite his father at least definitely having been one), and they were trying to send a subtle signal about which way they were leaning by having their son formally introduced to the Girl Who Lived. They weren't actually intending this to be an opening move to eventually try to negotiate a marriage, they just wanted it to look like it, and for other people to notice them doing it, because politics. (They wouldn't say no if that did end up happening, obviously, since their son becoming Lord Potter would be a big win, but Bertie didn't say that part out loud.) He'd asked them not to — no offence meant, of course, but he planned to continue into Mastery study on the Continent, and had no intention of marrying any time soon — but they hadn't listened to him, so yeah, this is uncomfortable, sorry about that.

So, it's started off super awkward, but it'd gone mostly fine. They'd ended up spending most of the few minutes they were expected to stick together talking about Durmstrang, since apparently he was going there — there wasn't room at Hogwarts for all of the noble kids, some of them went other places. (Though not many went to Durmstrang, they had entrance exams you couldn't just bribe your way through.) It did sound nice, small and quiet and relatively isolated, hearing about it from someone who actually went there opened up the margin between it and her second choice (still the University of Syracuse) even further. Especially since Proficiency students weren't required to live in the dorms if they didn't want to, she could get a flat somewhere nearby and apparate in instead. She might actually have to write him with further questions, about the school and how the hell she'd go about finding a place to live in a foreign country — she warned him not to get the wrong idea, she was zero per cent interested, to which he just rolled his eyes — but yeah, that didn't turn out so bad, definitely worth it for the use of the tent.

The weirdest part of the day had been this one brief interaction with Draco. They'd spent some significant time flying and passing around a few quaffles — the 'party' was dull, just a bunch of stuffy adults standing around gossipping, so a lot of the kids found other ways to entertain themselves — and Draco had found a moment to pull her aside. All shifty and uncomfortable and very suspicious, Draco had warned Liz and "Uncle Severus" to watch their backs. Liz tried to ask Draco why, did he know something, but he refused to answer, just repeated the warning a couple times and then awkwardly flew off.

When Liz told him about it after leaving, Severus speculated that Lucius had been one of the attackers at the World Cup, and Draco had overheard his parents arguing about it. (He was certain Narcissa hadn't known about it ahead of time, but she wasn't an idiot, if Lucius had been involved she definitely would have found out after the fact.) What Draco was thinking about that, he was less certain. Perhaps he was just a little freaked out by his father doing terrorism — obviously he knew he'd done things a long time ago, but finding out he was doing it now was quite different — or he'd misinterpreted what he'd overheard, and thought his parents were talking about further events to come. He might even suspect the war was in the early stages of starting up again, and was trying to give Liz and Severus a heads up — which suggested he was rather conflicted about which side he should be on, now that he was aware Severus was a traitor to the cause and he was friends with Liz, which Severus thought was interesting. Liz didn't really give a damn about Draco, though, so she'd just shrugged it off. Whatever, she'd passed along the warning, that was as much involvement as she cared to have in that whole mess.

Besides that, the whole thing had just been kind of boring. Honestly, Daphne really shouldn't have any concern that some other magical religion might steal her away. Liz was fully aware that Daphne was hoping Liz might convert to...whatever the Mistwalkers called their religion, she didn't actually know. Since Daphne wasn't pushy about it or anything, and literally never even said anything about it, just an idle thought sometimes, Liz had decided to just ignore it — as long as Daphne kept it to herself it wasn't really bothering her, so. But anyway, the ceremony at the Yaxleys' had been way less interesting than the Greenwood's. It'd kind of reminded her of going to church with the Dursleys, actually? Not that plain and boring, it had more of a quirky magical flavour to it, but they were hardly about to entice her away or anything. Not that Liz planned to ever convert to the Mistwalkers' religion either — she didn't really get religion, honestly, didn't know why she'd bother — she was just saying.

Liz projected a pulse of exasperation at Daphne — honestly, no reason to be silly and jealous about it, she did not like the Yaxleys' better than the Greenwood — Daphne's eyes flicked at Liz before responding to Hermione as though nothing had happened. "As messy as things have been lately, I suppose that's the best you can hope for. By the way, Emma is well, I saw her earlier today. There are a pair of midwives from the Lovegoods' keeping an eye on her — I'm told there are concerns, but they're confident both mother and child will come through."

They got distracted talking about that for a little bit, which was a little irritating, because Liz had only meant to set the plate with a few cheese things down for Hermione on the way through. ("Oh! Thank you, Liz, I do love these...") But she understood this was Hermione's mother and baby sibling they were talking about, serious medical things and whatever, so Liz just quietly waited and tried not to show her impatience. Though, some of it was new information. Apparently Hermione had already been aware there were issues with the baby — some structural defects, Liz didn't follow exactly, and it was kind of turned the wrong way around in there? which could make the birth more difficult, and Emma was already having problems, so, extra difficulty wasn't helping matters. That was all shite they could tell with tests and whatever, and since getting to the Greenwood they'd done a thing like what Pomfrey had told her about, ritually creating an exact copy of Emma's body (in the form of an illusion) that could be peeled apart to get a look at precisely what the insides looked like, including the baby. So, they knew exactly what the defects looked like, in more detail than the muggle scans would give them — something to do with some of the fingers and toes not growing right, and Liz didn't know what a cleft palate was. Daphne said the cleft palate was easily fixable with magic, though the fingers would take more time, small treatments over the course of years. Doable, just something they couldn't fix in the space of an afternoon.

Hermione was slightly shocked that a cleft palate (whatever the hell that was) was something they could just fix in the space of an afternoon, but that was magical healing for you. Liz assumed it involved blood alchemy, which was possibly illegal, but it wasn't like the Mistwalkers gave a damn about stupid rules, so...

(Hermione thought it was very possible that her baby sister would be retarded too — supposedly physical defects often came along with neurological ones, which wasn't something the Mistwalker healers would be able to do anything about — but she didn't say anything about that out loud.)

Also, Emma was already doing exercises with the midwives to fix the baby not sitting the right way around problem — but that was kind of hit and miss, so they might or might not get that sorted before the baby came. Which the midwives were predicting would be the first week of September, probably the Fourth or Fifth. "Wait a second," Hermione said, "I was told it would be later in the month. Centred on the Fifteenth, I think. Give or take a week, of course, but..."

"I have heard the muggles count up the weeks from conception, yes?" She waited for a nod from Hermione. "We use divinations. Assuming there are no unforeseen developments, it will be the first week of September."

"Fascinating, I hadn't realised divination of the future was that reliable." It wasn't, normally, but Liz imagined having the pregnant woman in question available to use as a focus changed things — Liz couldn't do it from here, but she didn't doubt these midwives could be much more accurate. "I would have preferred later in the month, honestly, getting out there so soon after school starts is going to be a pain..."

"We never do anything at the beginning of term, Hermione," Liz said. "I'm sure you could entirely skip the first couple weeks of class and not miss anything. Just ask Severus to let you use his floo if McGonagall is being stubborn about it, I'm sure it won't be a problem."

"Well, I'm not going to skip a whole couple weeks of class...but you're probably right, I guess. Never mind."

A couple more comments back and forth and they were done with this conversation, finally. Once they were through the hall into the other salon, the windows looking out over the back garden and the field beyond, Liz cast a privacy paling over the doorway — there wasn't a physical door, and Hermione was probably close enough to hear them, so. She led the way out onto the balcony, set the tray down onto the little table here (moved earlier today from the other balcony). It was a little cool out, a light breeze plucking at the hem of her dress and her hair, but it was a sunny(-ish) day, and well warm enough to sit out here, Liz thought. Turning to Daphne, she asked, "Good?"

"Yes, this will be wonderful," Daphne said, smiling. Right, good, the Mistwalkers did like to do everything out of doors, so she'd assumed so... The glasses set down in empty spots on the tray, Daphne pulled her wand, started gently peeling the bottle open with a couple charms. "I don't recognise the label on this one. One of the Gaelic priesthoods, I believe?"

"Hell if I know, it's just what they were selling in the market over here last time we went." Liz wouldn't be surprised, supposedly a lot of the priesthoods made things like that to sell for some extra cash, it was a whole thing. "Anyway, let's just— Oh shite, I forgot spoons..."

Luckily the missing spoons was an easily fixable problem: Daphne just transfigured a couple out of pieces of cheese. (Liz felt kind of stupid, she'd nearly run back down to the kitchen.) It took a little bit to straighten out all the shite on the tray, moving things around where they could both easily reach, but then they were sitting down, and there, food, good.

As vaguely irritated as Liz had been at the time with the diversion talking to Hermione, it'd succeeded in distracting her for a moment, her annoyingly self-conscious mood broken for now. She still felt Daphne's attention brushing over her warm and tingly now and again, tracing over her face or around her shoulders or down her side. But it was pretty superficial, and nowhere Liz could be weirdly sensitive about, so for whatever reason she wasn't getting too neurotic about it. And besides, Daphne had distractions in the form of the view from the balcony and the food and talking with Liz, so she wasn't putting a whole lot of energy into staring at her at the moment anyway.

The food ended up holding a decent part of her attention — when she took the first bite of soup there was flashing in her head, making a little surprised noise, her fingers even jumping up over her lips, which...seemed like a bit much. "What is this?" she asked after a moment.

Liz frowned a little. She didn't mean it in a bad, what the hell did you feed me way, she thought it was really good, it just seemed like too much. If Liz couldn't see in her head she might assume Daphne was lying about it, but. "It's just mushroom soup."

"But it's so— You did something different, I can't put my finger on it..."

The paprika, probably. They'd used paprika in fucking everything back in Romania, and while that was a little much, Liz had had the feeling putting some in the soup would turn out good — and it had, this had turned out pretty great, thick and smooth and flavourful, a little bit of multiple kinds of tanginess from the herbs and the lemon juice, slight sharpness from the black pepper and the paprika, not bad. Just, not great enough for Liz to think it was really worth the over-the-top reaction. Oh, also she'd added some potato for texture, but she wasn't sure how obvious that should be to anyone else...

Daphne obviously really liked the stuff, slowly savouring each spoonful, sometimes letting out more audible humming, her mind sparking and shifting. Liz suspected her feet were even kicking under the table a little. Like she'd said, a bit much — Liz was a good cook, but she wasn't that good...

(It was making her feel kind of, um, something — flattered, maybe? — so Liz just tried not to think about it too hard.)

Daphne asked a little bit about the field and her neighbours and stuff, but that didn't go very far — Liz never did anything with all that, and she didn't know that much about her neighbours. She was able to point out a few houses she knew who lived there (though her pronunciation of some of the especially Gaelic names might have been off), but she didn't have a whole lot to say about any of them. A bit of complaining about the more nosey ones, but. Oh, she'd done the shite in her garden, tore out the grass and just scattered seeds around at random — she'd never really liked the plain grass people had in the muggle world, boring and fake-looking, and also a pain to maintain — though Honish was keeping an eye on that for her now. Had to repeatedly have Nilanse tell him to not make more work for himself. She didn't care that much what it ended up looking like, precisely, messy and random and natural-looking was the whole point...

At some point in the garden conversation, Liz twitched at a touch on her leg, down just above her ankle, Daphne's mind rushing up against hers — louder, but not overwhelming so. That...would be Daphne's foot. Okay, then. She started randomly tracing up and down Liz's leg, from her ankle to her knee, with what was probably her foot toward the bottom, but the angle meant the point of contact would go more up her leg as she went, her skin smooth and warm against Liz's, barely perceptible prickles from hairs. That was, er, distracting, but it wasn't really a problem, this was fine...

There was some more talking, politics and school stuff, blah blah. Daphne wasn't entirely in the loop with what was going on politically, but that's just because there was so bloody much, the situation changing day by day — and obviously she wouldn't have to take over her family's seat on the Wizengamot for some decades yet, her mother would read her in when she had the time. Liz wasn't paying that much attention, honestly, enough to know that Britain was a mess and people had decided Liz supported Gaelic independence now for some inexplicable reason (which she kind of did, to be fair, but to be unfair people had no way of knowing that), so were being even stupider than usual about their Girl Who Lived nonsense, whatever, she didn't care. And she knew significantly more details than Daphne about what was going on at Hogwarts right now, with the reforms and everything, since Liz had direct access to Severus and he'd talked about it a few times, so. Some of that was kind of interesting, she guessed, they'd have new professors and everything, and people supervising the dorms, so things might not be such a mess anymore...

Liz was babbling about that when, completely randomly, she picked up a very sexual thought from Daphne — preoccupied with running her leg along Liz's, half listening to Liz talk and half daydreaming, wrapped up in bed with their legs tangled together and— Hoooo, okay then...

"I was wondering, earlier."

"Huh?" Liz noticed her own voice came out sounding a little breathless, tried not to grimace. But, in her defence, that flash had been kind of, er, intense — Liz was still a little baffled by how vivid Daphne's imagination could be — she was taking a second to collect herself, feeling a little flushed and twitchy. "I mean, what about?"

"Does Hermione know about us? I suspected as much, back at the World Cup, but she never said anything."

...Liz wasn't sure if she wanted to know how Daphne's brain had gotten from sexy thoughts to Hermione. "Yeah, she does. Did I never mention that?"

"I don't think so." Daphne didn't seem particularly annoyed about it, at least — of course, Liz recalled that she didn't entirely understand why Liz wanted to keep it to themselves for now in the first place, so she wouldn't be.

"Oh, well." Oops? "I'm not— I didn't tell her, she already knew. You know I mentioned I told Dorea about the gay thing back at Hogwarts? Well, she figured out what was going on with us in Romania, and told Hermione. We don't really talk about it, I'm too bloody neurotic over it for no good reason, but she knows."

"I thought so." Daphne took another slow bite of her soup, a little piece of the bread balanced on her spoon along with, her mind sparking. (Liz really didn't think it was that good, but whatever.) "It is likely better for you to know, I did tell my parents, and Tracey. Not Tori — I fear she would gossip about it incessantly the moment we return to Hogwarts. I didn't ask first, I do hope that's all right."

"...I kind of assumed you would." People who had parents tended to tell them shite, and Liz guessed that probably went double for Daphne, with how Mistwalkers could be about privacy (in that they didn't think they needed any). And she'd already known Daphne had told Tracey, since she'd sent her a letter ages ago now, blabbing off about how Mistwalkers went about this kind of thing. Partially advice, and partially warning her, she guessed?

Liz was well aware that Tracey expected this to...not go very well. Because Liz's brain was fucked up trash (Liz's words), and Daphne was a Mistwalker, you know, they could be very...physical. Since they lived different on the Greenwood, they had very different priorities, which had odd effects on how they thought good people were supposed to act — their morality was built different, top to bottom. And, like how they thought of traipsing around in someone else's house as violating a politeness thing — so, it was rude, but not "trespassing" in the sense that both muggles and mainstream mages thought of it — they processed all kinds of things very differently, including personal relationships.

Like, in particular, Tracey had warned Liz that Mistwalkers tended to jump to sex pretty quickly — because all the cultural reasons other people had for why they shouldn't just didn't exist. There could be a lot of religious purity nonsense wrapped up in that kind of thing (for mages too, turned out), but Mistwalkers didn't think of sex as...sinful, Liz guessed was the word. If anything, their beliefs kind of encouraged people to screw around, you know, a lot of silly shite about nature or whatever (it's just what bodies do), and closeness and pleasure and all that, and they had a whole thing about doing things to express what they thought or felt. (Not only for this kind of thing, but just in general, Mistwalkers were really big on not bottling things up, you know.) So yeah, put it all together, and they thought the physical act of love (as Tracey had insisted on calling it) was kind of a big deal, in that's a good thing that people should do if they want to, definitely didn't try to shame people for it or whatever. They thought that was an extremely shitty thing to do, actually, that prudishness was almost literally sacrilegious, if that made any sense at all, it was a whole thing.

For the Mistwalkers, having sex with someone just because you liked them and wanted them to be happy (and wanted to be happy with them) was a perfectly normal, good person impulse to have...and getting knocked up when you weren't really ready to take care of a kid was inconsiderate — it did reflect poorly on the person's character, but just because it was rude, not whatever judgemental nonsense other people had. (Liz didn't entirely get why normal people cared about that, but she remembered the kinds of things Petunia said about women she didn't like.) So, yeah, their morality was just built different, that was one way to put it.

The impression Liz had gotten was that Tracey was worried — that Daphne wouldn't be happy, yes, but more that Liz would hurt herself. She meant, that Daphne would want to go further than Liz was comfortable with, and she would try to play along and end up going past what she was ready for, and end up fucking herself up worse than she was already fucked up. Which, Liz wasn't completely blind to that problem, actually. She was very much aware that, if they were trying to...do something, and she had a bad Vernon moment, that that would almost certainly make it harder the next time she tried to do something like that, you know. Not that it really mattered just now, since she didn't plan on trying to do anything like that any time soon — if nothing else, she at least had to figure out how to stop crying for no good reason first — but she was aware making things even worse for herself was a possibility. She was being careful.

And, well, she had talked to Daphne about it, she knew that it was very possible they would never...get anywhere. Daphne wasn't super happy about it, but she did a pretty damn good job of respecting Liz's boundaries —better than a lot of their friends at school did, honestly, with the hugging and whatever (Hannah) — so Liz didn't think it was a problem? Daphne did have a very active imagination, which could be uncomfortable sometimes, sure, and she got pretty touchy when they were in private (see right now, the thing with her leg, finding some convenient way to be touching her just because she wanted to), but she didn't get pushy about it or anything. After all, being pushy about sex stuff was breaking the rules — and not in a way that was just rude, but in a big way, criminal or sinful or whatever you wanted to call it, so. Liz thought it would be fine.

...Probably. She did kind of half-expect this thing with Daphne to blow up in her face eventually, but it was fine for now.

But anyway, "It's okay, if you tell a few people. I just don't want everyone gossipping about it, you know." She knew she'd have to deal with that eventually, she just...wasn't ready yet.

There was a sympathetic fluttering in Daphne's head, warm and clingy and vaguely nauseating — and since they were physically touching right now, it was louder than it'd normally be, uncomfortable, Liz reflexively rolling her shoulders in a pointless effort to shrug it off. The more Daphne got to know her, the more some of the things Liz was stuck with bothered her. In this case, the Girl Who Lived nonsense in particular. Liz would have quite enough to deal with without it, and people would keep projecting their crap onto the symbol they'd made out of her, and she'd be stuck with it her whole life, and it, just, Daphne really wished she didn't have to deal with it, sometimes.

Liz had no idea what to say to all that, so she just shrugged, and changed the subject.

(She should probably tell Daphne at some point that she planned on moving away after OWLs, but she didn't want to — she had the feeling Daphne would take it harder than Hermione had.)

After the soup and most of the bread was gone, they lingered on the balcony for a little longer, sipping at the mead and munching on the cheese things, just, idly talking about whatever. She didn't know, she could never really remember where conversations had gone after the fact. She assumed there was a lot of nerdy shite in there — Liz had been involved, after all — and they might have talked about duelling for a while, and maybe some history stuff connected to that? Which reminded Liz once again that she'd meant to buy memories of famous duels from the past, she kept forgetting...

Eventually, they decided to move back inside — at least partially just because Liz was starting to get a little cold. Liz set aside the tray with all the dishes and stuff (she'd take care of this later), the platter with the cheese and fruit set on one of the sofas around the pensieve. So, they were playing around with this now, if Daphne had memories she wanted to see...? Liz was feeling weirdly self-conscious again — the rubbing her leg all through dinner and the occasional sexy thoughts had maybe gotten to her a little bit — Daphne's attention on her warm and tingly and clinging, trying not to be too awkward. She certainly felt like she looked awkward, too aware of how she was standing, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and repositioning her arms again and again, fiddling with her scarf and her hair, but she didn't know how much of that was in her head...

It didn't help that she realised this was kind of silly, poking around the pensieve, but she didn't really know what else to do? She felt like she should do something entertaining as long as Daphne was here, but she really didn't have a lot of options. Maybe they should have gone out to see a film or something instead, the political situation wouldn't stop them from going out in the muggle world...though Daphne would have needed to wear normal clothes for that...

Oh well, too late now.

It wasn't making it any easier on her that Daphne really didn't know what she wanted to do, memory-wise. She was well aware that Liz didn't have an overabundance of pleasant experiences to ask after — she was vaguely curious about Liz's life before they'd met, but she knew that she probably didn't want to know, and she was also curious about her relationship with Severus, but she doubted Liz would be comfortable sharing too much. Trying to think of anything she reasonably could actually ask to see, well, it was difficult. And memories she could show Liz, well, she didn't know. Something from a visit to Flakstaðey, maybe, Liz might like that, one holiday festival or another...

"Liz."

She twitched, hitching to a stop — she had been pacing around the pensieve, her wand anxiously tapping at her hip. Half trying to think of something worth showing her, half watching the possibilities flickering around in Daphne's head, had kind of lost track of her surroundings. Blinking down at Daphne, "Huh?"

"Sit with me," she said, patting the empty cushion next to her.

For some inexplicable reason, Liz found the thought of doing that vaguely intimidating, which was ridiculous, it was only Daphne. Huffing to herself, she slipped her wand back into its holster, and flopped down next to her. The little spin and the fall had her skirt rumpling up a little, showing more of her thighs than it should, she straightened it down with a hand — she felt herself tense a little as Daphne attention landed on her a second later, the warm tingly not-touch running over her, but that'd probably be more uncomfortable if her skirt was sitting too high up right now, so.

Daphne sidled a little closer to her, her hand finding Liz's, lacing their fingers together — her hand felt warm, but Liz was pretty sure that was just because she was inexplicably cold half the time. Her mind bright and warm and bubbling, with a slanted edge of something cooler and...not unpleasant, exactly, but definitely less bright and sunny, Daphne said, "You needn't try so hard to entertain me, Liz."

...She hadn't realised her being so neurotic and weird was obvious from the outside. Okay, then. "I know, I just..." I don't want you to think I'm boring.

"Liz, you may be many things, but you are hardly boring."

She didn't know, people who didn't know her well tended to assume she was way more interesting than she actually was. She was pretty sure Daphne was just biassed, because she liked her, for reasons Liz still didn't really understand.

As deep as Liz was in Daphne's head at the moment, it was impossible to say how much of that thought she'd picked up — she hadn't intentionally projected it, but while Liz was inside her head, and with how bloody loud her mind was by default, she didn't know. She'd definitely picked up something, judging by the flash of exasperation, the little huff, but she didn't say anything about it. She just sat there, holding Liz's hand, her mind glowing bright and soft and warm against her.

(Liz had no idea how someone could feel so...pleasant all the time. Honestly, she was starting to suspect what Liz was picking up was less about anything Daphne was actually feeling, and her mind or magic or whatever was just like this.)

Sitting this close, Daphne was pretty much entirely inside of Liz's aura — well, the bubble where the magical field she was projecting was more powerful than anything else around was mostly due to her noisy mind, so the use of the term "aura" wasn't technically correct, but whatever. Daphne could feel it as a sharp, fragrant chill on the air, like an autumn breeze. It gave her goosebumps, but not really in a bad way? She found it kind of exciting, a little giddy thrill — not an overwhelmingly strong feeling, by any means, but it was definitely there.

And there was definitely a sexual note to it — it wasn't a hundred per cent sexual, but it was partly — which Liz still thought was weird.

Daphne's mind twittered a little with amusement. It really shouldn't be a surprise — power was attractive.

...Yeah, Liz had heard that idea before, but she didn't really get it. She either had no reaction at all to feeling other people's magic, or she found it intimidating. She didn't like being reminded that there were mages around who could squish her like a mildly annoying insect — personally, if their positions were reversed, being able to feel that Daphne was stronger than her would be a little scary. Not really scary, she assumed, because she didn't think Daphne would actually do anything to her — maybe like how feeling Severus's magic didn't bother her (unless she was in a panicky mood at the time) — but she was certain she wouldn't like it.

Fair enough. (Daphne was pretty sure this was down to her issues, but she didn't spell that thought out explicitly.) It did matter who she was feeling it from, it wasn't a reaction she would have with just anyone. It made a difference that it was Liz's magic, specifically. Surrounded by her, kind of like how Liz could feel Daphne's appreciative glances, making her feel small and vulnerable — using "vulnerable" here in a sexy way that didn't entirely register to Liz. Like, she could see the feeling Daphne was describing, flushed and tingly and giddy, that just wasn't a word Liz would have thought of to use.

The feeling Liz associated with the word was hardly pleasant, after all.

And, saying Liz's magic around her made her feel small was ridiculous, because Daphne was significantly bigger than her. Like, sitting right next to each other like this, Liz's head barely topped her shoulder...

There was another shivering of internal laughter — obviously Daphne didn't mean literally. She turned a little in her seat, the fingers of her free hand coming around, gently pushing Liz's chin up. Her heart jumping up in her throat and her skin crawling — even after having done it plenty of times now, the moment just before a kiss was still kind of nerve-wracking — she had to lean back a little, her head tilting up — because she was so bloody tiny — the soft touch against her lips had Daphne's mind pushing even closer against her, making her completely lose her train of thought for a second, soft and light and nice and bluh, jewellery a lone island of hardness, Daphne's warm affection and giddy pleasure making her head spin, tingling down her spine. Pulling back an inch, her thumb lightly running along the edge of her jaw, Daphne whispered, "You're adorable."

...It took a second for Liz to remember what'd happened a second ago, that Daphne meant Liz being tiny was adorable. That was a bit embarrassing, really, and kind of annoying — Liz hated how small she was, and she'd barely gotten any taller since puberty started being a thing, it was extremely frustrating (she had the nasty feeling she was never even going to top five feet) — but at the same time it was kind of... She could tell Daphne believed what she was saying, and that was...fine. Like, Daphne was aware she was a decent duellist (and getting better by the day), but her being 'adorable' didn't subtract from that at all — and even fed into each other, in a weird way, contrast. Like how Liz liked the combination of girly things with her duelling boots, kind of a similar idea. So. If Daphne liked that she was annoyingly tiny and 'adorable' she...guessed that was fine.

But that thought was also kind of embarrassing, so Liz just rolled her eyes and said, "Shut up." And also kissed her, since it seemed like the thing to do.

As much practice as she'd gotten by this point — objectively not much, she knew, but it seemed like a lot to her — Liz still didn't entirely know what she was doing, with this whole kissing thing. Most of the time, she'd end up just...sitting there awkwardly, her hands tense in her lap (except the one Daphne was still holding onto this time), not sure what to do with herself. It didn't help that Daphne's mind flooding over her was a bit overwhelming, it was hard to focus much on what she was physically doing — not that that was a bad thing, exactly. Since Daphne was always enjoying herself, it was that feeling washing over her, warm and smooth and tingly and... It was a bit much, she could barely breathe, her face burning and her skin crawling, but it was...

Well, it felt pretty damn good, honestly. Being this close to someone's mind would probably be pretty unpleasant if they were feeling practically anything else, but this was nice. Thick enough it could be kind of hard to remember to follow along with the kissing part, moving in time with Daphne the way she was supposed to, but.

Unless something got her attention, anyway — Daphne's hand slipping through her hair, under her ear toward the back of her head, kind of tickled. One warm, soft (overwhelming) kiss after another, Daphne was slowly leaning further over her, but Liz could only tilt her neck so far without straining something, and Liz's free hand ended up on Daphne's shoulder — her right shoulder, the one her dress covered — partially just to hold herself up, her centre of gravity fucked as she leaned further back, gently beginning to push Liz onto—

"Nope, nope." Liz gave Daphne's shoulder a light push back. Thankfully Daphne retreated easily enough, far enough for Liz to sit upright again — though not much further than that, Liz could feel her breath on her face, only a couple inches away. "Sorry, um, let's not do that." Daphne had been aiming to lay Liz down on her back, and, she suspected she wouldn't have reacted to that very well.

(Liz hated feeling trapped, after all. She was just being careful.)

"Okay, I'll remember." Liz could feel Daphne make a mental note about it, which was kind of a funny thing to watch happen — she could tell Daphne had several mental notes like that about her, which was kind of embarrassing, but she decided to just be glad that Daphne was trying. (See, Tracey, they were both being careful, they would be fine.) "How about we do this instead, come on." Daphne kind of tugged on the hand she was still holding a little, beckoning her closer with the other. If Liz couldn't see what she was thinking, that definitely wouldn't have been enough to figure it out.

Liz grimaced a little, gritting her teeth...but it would probably be fine, it was only Daphne. A little reluctantly, Liz wormed her fingers out from Daphne's, turned halfway around in her seat, her legs crossing over Daphne's lap, the beads around her ankles jingling as she lifted her feet up onto the cushion on Daphne's other side. Pushing down with her feet on the cushion and a hand on the back of the sofa behind Daphne's head, she lifted herself up and forward. She twitched a little at Daphne's arm settling around her waist, but that was fine, her hand moved from the back of the sofa to Daphne's shoulder — the bare one this time, Daphne's skin smooth and soft and hot against her fingers.

Daphne twitched a little herself, it turned out Liz's hands were cold. "Sorry. Apparently I get cold really easy, I mostly don't notice." Liz wasn't sure why she was saying that, she cut herself off with a little sigh, staring down at the fold of embroidered cloth crossing over Daphne's chest. She was a little embarrassed, she thought, flushed and stomach-squirmy — she was sitting in Daphne's lap now, and that was kind of, well. She realised it was probably more convenient this way, given their relative heights — her eye-level was actually higher than Daphne's now, though not by very much — which was why she'd gone along with the idea in the first place. Liz was, just, so sick of how small she was, she hated it. Also, she was realising just now her skirt had hitched up a bit in the process, but she didn't think it was high enough for Daphne to actually see anything...

Oh well, she was wearing shorts under this anyway, that was fine too, she guessed. This was a little awkward, was all, but just because Liz was sensitive about being too damn tiny, she was sure she'd get over it once she had a distraction.

Her mind shivering with amusement again — always laughing at her, so mean — but also with a tingly, squirmy slant she didn't know how to read, Daphne took Liz's other hand by the wrist. "I'll have to warm you up, then." Daphne brought Liz's hand up against the side of her neck, twitching at the cold, letting out a little breath.

Watching her, for some reason Liz was swept with a wave of prickly tingles, her stomach swooping, her fingers slipping down her neck, eyes following her throat down to her chest and— Okay, then. She let out a little puff of breath, then dipped the couple inches down, dropped a quick kiss on Daphne's lips. A tense tingle building up along her spine, an odd thrill, Liz whispered, "You're silly," her lips just barely brushing against Daphne's with the words, tickled. And that was distracting, so she kissed her again, soft and lingering and mmm...

Daphne had been about to say something else teasing, but she was kind of occupied, instead just hummed, the vibration carrying through into Liz, that kind of tickled too...

As kind of embarrassing and awkward just on principle as sitting in Daphne's lap was, she did have to admit it was very convenient — this way would be way easier on her neck, at least. Also, leaning down into her, Daphne was kind of pinned against the back of the sofa, her head tilting back to rest against the cushion, so Liz was the only one who could move freely, so she ended up setting the tempo this time. Which, yes, she still didn't really know what she was doing, but this was kind of fun, her fingers worming their way into Daphne's hair at the back of her skull, the fingertips of the other lightly tracing over her shoulder (it tickled, a little, Daphne flinching under her now and then), pressing down one soft, slow kiss after another, not actually bothering to pull back properly between them — it was less disorienting if their faces stayed touching somehow, so Daphne's mind stayed at more or less the same volume — their noses still touching, close enough she could just barely feel a shadow of Daphne's lips (though she might be imagining that), breath passing back and forth wet and hot for a second before coming down again...

As bright and intense as Daphne's mind was from this close, washing over her like sinking into a bath, it was kind of hard to think straight, but she was warm and soft and nice, so Liz didn't really try, just kind of...relaxed against her. (Into her, mind magic -wise.) Some things did jump out at her, the slight tugging of the ring in Daphne's lip against hers, the faint hint of the tendons in her shoulder shifting under her skin — her hand on Liz's lower back, Liz was annoyingly conscious of that, the scars under there burning, as though flushed hotter than the rest of her back, couldn't help the paranoid thought that Daphne would be able to feel them through multiple layers of cloth. Trying to avoid thinking about it especially firmly because she was pretty deep in Daphne's head, and she didn't want her to see that, but consciously trying not to think about something meant she kind of already was, she couldn't—

And Daphne did see it, because of course she did — Liz hadn't intentionally pushed the thought into her head, but at this point the border barely existed anyway, so it hardly mattered. There was a fluttering, cool and squirmy and...something, anyway, and she didn't directly respond to the thought, but she didn't remove her hand either, fingers gently running up and down, tracing her spine through her dress (pretty close to the same spot she'd broken in that quidditch game, Liz realised), which was kind of... "Ticklish" wasn't the right word. It was close, weird sharp prickles shooting out, making her feel tense and twitchy, hard to sit still, her toes curling against the cushion over there. Daphne's other hand had ended up at her knee, running back and forth in little circles along the outside, sometimes following that big tendon that stuck out there, which was also not-ticklish, distracting, Liz had to resist the urge to shift in her seat, since her seat at the moment was Daphne, and that sounded uncomfortable...

She could feel Daphne's mind narrowing in, turning hotter and sharper, hyperfocused. Not like how Liz could get, how everything just kind of blurred together in a pleasant warm smear, kind of the opposite, intensely aware of the vaguely creamy herby scent of the soap she had here, the lavender from her shampoo, her hair faintly scratching at her cheek and her neck, flopping down to tickle her upper arms, the weight and warmth of Liz's body against her, shifting a little as she breathed or lost the struggle to hold still, the subtle repeating curves of her spine under her fingers, the skin of Liz's leg smooth and warm, noticeably tense with restrained motion, her lips soft and warm and slow and almost adorably cautious — Daphne thought it was kind of sweet, which was very weird, it's just Liz didn't really know what she was doing, but okay... — and Daphne was trying to behave, didn't want to scare Liz off, but she was definitely having sexy thoughts, increasingly as the seconds went on, her mind focusing sharper and sharper, her heart pounding in her throat and her fingertips — Liz could feel it throbbing through her, but she was certain she was imagining that, mind magic — and she couldn't help herself, flickers of her hand running further up Liz's leg, under her skirt, her imagination unnervingly real — though from Daphne's perspective, obviously, so it wasn't that bad, and Liz could always feel Daphne's hand actually still on her knee so she was never confused about what was happening — but as much as the thought was sizzling away in her head she never actually tried it, which was good, that probably would freak Liz out...

(Especially since Liz was sure the scars continued onto the back of her thighs, but she didn't know how far they went down, exactly — it wasn't like she could see them herself.)

(...She could see them herself, in her pensieve. She should probably check at some point, just so she would know for certain how visible they were, but she kind of didn't want to.)

Liz had pulled back a little, preoccupied with the thought, but Daphne stole her attention back by snagging her lip ring with her lips, giving it a little tug — with an odd tingly thrill, a gasp catching in her throat, well fine then, Liz focused back on kissing her (as much as she could through the blinding pressure of her mind). She could feel Daphne's lips were parting, so Liz followed along, the kiss different now, not proper snogging or anything, but warmer and wetter, their breath mixing thick and hot, after some seconds she felt Daphne's lip ring accidentally click against her teeth, oops, an eager thrill building in Daphne, Liz could feel the excitement sizzling under her skin, kind of intoxicating, Liz could barely think, just breathing it in, Daphne's mind warm and ecstatic, exhilarating, sympathetic prickles crawling along her spine and her arms, her toes fisting in the sofa cushion and she might have accidentally pulled Daphne's hair a little (oops), her breath turning thin and shaky and...

And it was starting to get to be too much — nice, yes, obviously, but that was kind of the problem. The flush on her face burning hotter, the pressure starting to build in her chest and her throat starting to tighten, making it even harder to breathe. And she tried to ignore it, hoping without really thinking about it that if she just didn't pay any attention to it it would go away, and she would stop being absolutely ridiculous. Because she didn't want to, it was fucking stupid that this happened every time, she didn't want to stop kissing Daphne right now, as embarrassing as sitting in her lap had been at first (she was so sick of being tiny) it was more comfortable this way, this had turned out to be very pleasant, and Daphne's hand on her leg and gently catching her bottom lip with her teeth, a whole-body throb lurching through her, and woah, okay then, that was a hell of a rush, and she didn't want to stop, she really didn't want to stop. But she had to, the tightness was only growing worse and worse, she was practically holding her breath at this point, she could already feel her eyes start to sting, she couldn't— She had to.

I'm going to have to stop soon. This time Liz actively projected the thought into Daphne's mind — she definitely heard it.

There was an odd lurching, Liz almost felt like the sofa was tilting under them. The thought wasn't explicitly articulated, just an intense flash of rejection, a feeling more than anything. Daphne didn't want to do that.

...Well, she didn't want to either, they were going to have to, because Liz could feel it coming, if she didn't get a breather she was doing to start crying any second now.

Daphne was well aware of that, but she didn't want to stop anyway. The hand on Liz's leg coming up, brushing over her neck (Liz shivered), slipping into the hair at the back of her head, her thumb rubbing along her cheek, the hand at her back tightening a little, Liz could feel Daphne's fingers pressing in over her hip, it's okay, tugging on her lip with the next kiss a little, pulling her closer, her mind warm and bright and soft, stay with me.

Liz let out a noise at the back of her throat, not sure what that was — protest, maybe? It came out as a hum, their lips buzzing a little. Leaning back, half-heartedly, pushing against Daphne's hand, but before she could pull away very far Daphne caught her lip ring with her teeth, and Liz was falling into her again, shivering with a little gasp, Daphne leapt on that, snagging her lip proper, a hot brush with the tip of her tongue, Liz twitched, her hands reflexively tightening, she caught the faint flash of pain in Daphne's head (she'd definitely pulled her hair that time), but she didn't seem to mind, kissing her some more, soft and slow but insistent...

...This was a terrible idea.

Stay with me.

She couldn't breathe, the tightness in her throat enough, she was worried if she tried it would come out as– her face and her chest burning, her eyes prickling, her head swimming, this was a terrible idea. But she didn't really want to stop, and Daphne's mind warm and soft around her, pulling her in (stay with me), her fingers were shaking, it was hard to convince herself it was important, when she could be doing this instead, and she didn't want to...

The pressure building, her chest so tight and hot it hurt, her head going light and dizzy — in an entirely different way than she'd already gone light-headed, kind of doing both at the same time, which was bloody weird and really disorienting — and when she pulled an inch away to breathe again (their noses still touching, keeping their minds close), her breath came harsh and shaky, her lungs not quite cooperating. There was a wave of frigid prickles sweeping over her, like being hit with an intense winter wind out of nowhere (eyes on her skin like wasps), she couldn't help a brief flash of terror (Uncle Vernon hated it when she cried), but she tried to ignore it, and just kissed Daphne again, warm and soft and bluh, the narrowing focus loosening a bit, something slicker and tinglier, didn't know what that was, and Liz's face was burning and her eyes stinging and her throat aching—

She failed to quite hold her breath, her chest clenching on her, a low little ergh sound grinding out of the back of her throat — coming out funny and nasally, since Daphne's mouth was kind of in the way at the moment. Her ribs already beginning to feel the strain so soon (she'd forgotten how much crying hurt), she tried to ignore that, tried to hold it in, but it was far too late by this point, it was too much, her head so packed full she felt it might burst, her breath burning tense in her chest, her eyes stinging, squeezed tight shut, she could already feel the first tears hot and ticklish against her skin, and she could feel her fingers shaking, she moved her hand out of Daphne's hair (didn't want to accidentally pull it again), gripping her shoulder instead, the texture of the embroidered cloth rough in her hand. She couldn't breathe, her chest aching and her head pounding and—

She shook, a muffled cough wrung out of her, the force jerking her face against Daphne's, click, a bright spark of pain in her head, might have pinched Daphne's lip between their teeth, oops. But she didn't try to stop or push Liz away or anything, while Liz scrambled to take another breath, heavy and shaking, barely managing to get the air past her protesting throat, piercing pain shooting along her ribs again as she shivered, and Daphne's grip on her didn't loosen at all, hand at her neck pulling her back in, their lips buzzed as Liz groaned, her hands shaking, tightening around Daphne's shoulders, the left fisting in her dress a little.

The spike of fear had mostly boiled away already, Daphne's mind soft and inviting and overwhelming, affection thick and warm coursing through her, Liz shivered (another sob grinding at the back of her throat, she tried to swallow it), a thumb rubbing along her cheek and the other hand over her back, Liz turned more into her, not really thinking about it, just wanted to be closer, sinking in, warm and soft and comfortable, a pleasant contrast from how everything was already starting to hurt (she'd forgotten how much crying hurt), her throat and face burning and her chest clenching, and Liz pressed in harder, their teeth clicked again (she didn't accidentally pinch Daphne's lip this time), jewellery hard and smooth against her tongue, she could still taste the herbs from the soup and the mead on her breath, she couldn't breathe, the pressure building harder and harder, she...

She couldn't keep going. Her chest convulsed again, drawing another low grinding moaning whatever out of her (the building pain along her ribs throbbing, stretching down her back and stomach), her face dipping down and to the side to stop herself from messing the kiss up again, drawing in a gasp thin and shivering, and she tried to kiss Daphne again, but she only made it a few seconds before she had to break away again, another coughing sob and a shivering gasp, her eyes and her throat burning, and she couldn't, you kind of needed to be able to control your breathing for at least several seconds at a stretch to kiss someone properly, and she just couldn't.

So instead she just cried. Leaning down, her forehead pressed against Daphne's shoulder, her hands fisting in Daphne's dress, and she, just, lost it.

Daphne's fingers gently combing through her hair, the other hand tracing slow circles over her back, pressing little kisses against the side of her head, her forehead near her eyebrow, her cheek, her shoulder, whatever she could reach from there (which wasn't very much). Her mind still glowing smooth and soft and warm, there was... Not pity, exactly, it didn't feel quite the same, something clinging at her — very demandingly from this close, strings of glue pulling at her skin, honestly rather unpleasant — it was similar but not quite the same thing, more tingly, she didn't know what to call that.

And she, just, held Liz while she cried. Which was bloody weird, but Liz's head was too much of a mess at the moment to think about it too hard.

As close as Daphne's mind still was, Liz could see she thought Liz sounded funny. She meant, not like how crying people normally sounded...somehow, Liz wasn't sure what the difference was, exactly, just that Daphne noticed she sounded different. Which, might just be because this was literally the second time she could remember doing it since she was, what, eight? She didn't remember exactly. (It would have been before she made Vernon stop, so she should have been eight or nine.) Or maybe it was— She wasn't consciously trying to not cry anymore, but she could still feel her body fighting itself, each of the choking coughing noises painfully wrung out of her, her body clenched tight trying to hold it in. Which probably did make it sound funny.

Somehow Daphne managed to catch that she used to be punished for crying — there was a burst of something very unpleasant in her head, Liz flinched away reflexively. It melted away quick, in favour of that not-pity feeling, Daphne hugging Liz closer against her, light little kisses dropped one after the other on her head. Disoriented by...all that, it took a second for Liz to catch the low-simmering anger, half-hidden by the rest. Daphne thought a child being punished for crying (in general, it being Liz specifically just made it personal) was especially evil, for some reason, but Liz was far too scattered at the moment to even begin to guess why.

It was hard to think much at all at the moment, really, just...too much. Liz was only vaguely aware of all that (she hadn't meant for Daphne to catch the bit about Vernon hating it when she cried), overwhelmed, just, too much, overflowing with something warm and thick and suffocating, Daphne's affection and not-pity coursing through her, the unfocused pain seemingly coming from nowhere and everywhere, she'd forgotten how much crying hurt...

She had no idea how long it lasted, several minutes at least, but eventually it was all wrung out of her, leaving her feeling strained and raw and flushed and tired. Her throat was still burning, her sides and her stomach sharply throbbing, like she'd pulled muscles — she might have, actually, it turned out Liz was bad at crying, which she hadn't realised was a thing a person could be. (If she had to guess, she'd trained herself to not cry ages ago, but while she knew logically that she was safe now, bodies were stupid, so her stupid body stupidly tried to stop itself, so then she hurt herself like an idiot.) Daphne's fingers were still gently combing through her hair, drawing random circles over her back and along her hip, which felt nice, honestly, over the dull pain kind of everywhere a low trickle of soft pleasant tingles. For a little while she just kept sitting there, breathing, her raw throat turning it thin and harsh and shaky, mentally following Daphne's hands — she belatedly realised her own hands were still fisted in Daphne's dress, but she just left them there for now — and just... It was weirdly comfortable, was all, she didn't want to move.

She was surprised how tired she was all of a sudden, honestly she felt like she could use a nap...

But as tired and warm and comfortable as she was, she didn't want to, just, fall asleep on Daphne — that sounded like it would be embarrassing. And that thought abruptly reminded her that she'd just cried all over Daphne, her stomach squirming, and oh god, she was leaking...

Sniffling, her breath crackling in her nose (gross), Liz leaned back, finally loosening her hands, her fingers protesting, held tight too long, the joints stiff and sore. Daphne's hand in her hair (reluctantly) pulling away, dropping to land on her hip instead, the other shifting more to the other side to make room, Liz shifted in place a little — only noticing as she moved that she'd turned around at some point, one knee outside of Daphne's hip and the other one pretty high between her legs, and when had that happened? (Liz remembered Daphne often didn't wear knickers, and then forced herself to stop thinking about that.) Realising she was, er, basically straddling Daphne right now (thin hairs stretching way high up the inside of Liz's thighs) was making her even more embarrassed, made even worse when she swept the back of her hand across the middle of her face and it came away wet, ugh, gross...

"Sorry, um..." Her voice didn't come out quite right, harsh and croaky, she cut off to clear her throat.

Daphne took the opportunity of the delay to say, "You haven't anything to apologise for, Liz. You're allowed to have feelings."

...Liz had no idea what to say to that, so she just didn't say anything. Sniffling again, her hand reflexively coming back up — her face was noticeably wet, and she was still leaking, because of course — she said, "I'm gonna go wash up. I could also use a sip of a pain potion, I think I pulled something. So, um. Let go?"

"Oh!" Daphne gasped, her hands springing away from Liz's hips, as though burned. "Of course, I'm sorry."

"'Sokay." Awkwardly, stiff and sore, one hand against the cushion next to Daphne's head, she leaned over onto one knee, managed to push herself down onto her feet — trying not to notice their thighs slipping against each other as she moved, but not because it was distracting in a sexy way, she wasn't sure her brain was capable of that feeling at the moment, it was mostly just weirdly embarrassing. She was a bit dizzy, her head stuffed up and flushed and sweaty, she took a second standing over Daphne to get her balance.

...She'd kind of messed up Daphne's dress, a little, her skirt pushed higher, bending around where Liz's knee had been a moment ago, the part crossing over her chest scrunched up and twisted. Oops.

"Um. I'll be back in a couple minutes." She lingered a moment, staring blankly down at Daphne — it felt like there should be something to say right now, but she couldn't think of it, so she gave up and started off. Her steps slow and stiff, she felt Daphne's eyes on her the whole way across the room (crawling on her skin like ants). She closed the door to her bedroom behind her, some of the tension dribbling away as she felt the wards snap into place, let out a shivering sigh.

There was a charm to clear out a stuffed-up nose, she took care of that first, so she wouldn't keep leaking. She didn't remember the spell off the top of her head — she'd seen it in the basic healing book she'd gotten school shopping with Hermione, hoping to pick up a couple things so she could patch herself up mid-duel better — but the book was right here on the shelf, she cleaned off her hands with a charm quick before picking it up. The charm was pretty each to cast, thankfully — though it tickled, Liz sneezed a couple times after, which just made all the aching muscles in her middle throb even harder for a moment, ow. Might as well take care of that quick too, she pulled a pain potion out of her stash — one she'd looked up last spring, to help deal with the muscle cramps she'd started getting. (Probably related to the one she'd taken a few times for period cramps, though it was a more blueish colour and tasted different.) It didn't make her feel completely better, but it was an improvement, she guessed that would do for now.

Liz went over to the first half of the bathroom, with the sink and the mirror — woah, she looked like crap, her hair scattered and her dress crooked, her eyes red, her face all flushed and puffy. And also visibly wet, under her nose and around her eyes and along— Oops, she'd definitely drooled on Daphne, ugh...

(That was humiliating, she abruptly didn't want to go back out there.)

Forcing out a little sigh, Liz (stiffly) unzipped her dress and pulled it over her head, hung it off the doorknob, whipped off her scarf. Cheating and tying her hair back with a styling charm — not what that was meant to be used for, but do what worked — Liz splashed at her face with water from the sink, wiping all that shite off. While she was at it she rinsed off her neck and the top of her chest too — fucking hell, that felt unreasonably good, her skin crawling and her toes curling, didn't know what the fuck that was about...

For a moment, the sink still running, Liz leaned against the counter, dripping, blankly staring at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were still red, but she didn't think there was anything she could do about that.

The potions had helped, but she still felt kind of miserable, tired and sore and raw. It turned out crying kind of sucked, really.

With another unsteady sigh, Liz finally shut off the water, dried herself off with a charm, and pulled her dress back on, loosely wrapping her scarf around her neck again. Belatedly dismissing the styling charm with a (wandless) flick of her fingers, Liz grimaced at her reflection — she still looked kind of terrible, but this was an improvement, she guessed. At least she wasn't leaking anymore. She switched off the light with a hoarse mutter of the enchantment key, walked back out into her bedroom.

She drifted to a halt, a few steps from the door, her breath turning thick and— Feeling flushed and twitchy, not so much externally as on the inside, like jagged, sharp pieces inexpertly pasted together, like she might easily shake apart from the inside out, scraped raw by the things rubbing together, fragile. Not a physical feeling, exactly, just, kind of like after subsuming that piece of the Dark Lord, or the dementor incident, the mental equivalent of accidentally scraping her hand on the cheese grater, but not the same thing, more like, like...

Like undressing, staring down at the arm of the sofa, the scars on her back already burning in anticipation, Vernon's eyes on her skin like wasps. It felt like that.

The reminder had an echo of it lingering in the air around her (unavoidable, like a bad smell), the phantom scrape of the upholstery on her chest, Liz squeezed her eyes shut, hard, blotches of meaningless colour, took in and out a long, shaky breath. She was being ridiculous, she was being ridiculous, nothing was happening to her, she was still behind the wards, she was fine...

She didn't want to go back out there. It was rather startling how much she suddenly did not want to go back out there.

Like, it'd kind of come out of nowhere, she'd felt fine a second ago. Or, more or less, anyway — it turned out crying sucked, she'd been honestly kind of miserable, but not...

It was humiliating. She'd completely lost it and, just, she— She'd been leaking on Daphne, she hadn't said anything or even really reacted at all, but Liz knew she— It was really gross, and she felt disgusting, and she knew, logically, that Daphne didn't care — Liz hadn't picked up anything like that from her head, way less disturbed over it than even Liz had been, even at the time, before this whatever this was — but just because she knew it logically didn't mean— She was inexplicably scared (Vernon hated it when she cried), even while knowing Daphne wasn't going to do anything to her — couldn't do anything to her, even if she wanted to — felt exposed, vulnerable, sitting on the couch while Vernon lectured her, knowing what was coming and not being able to do anything to stop it — she had absolutely no idea how Daphne could possibly enjoy feeling exposed and vulnerable — even though she knew nothing was going to happen to her, she was being—

She, just, didn't want to go back out there.

This was so fucking stupid, she was fine! Honestly, she knew nothing was going to happen, but she couldn't— She hated her brain sometimes, she was so sick of feeling like this...

(Sometimes she wondered how long it would be until she was better, but always quickly distracted herself, because that thought was depressing.)

Stiff and pained, Liz wandered back to her potions stash, pulled out one of her calming potions. She didn't take it right away, stood over her desk, tightly gripping the bottle around the cap, idly tapping it against the wood, clunk, clunk, clunk. She wished she wasn't like this, she hated that she needed mood-altering potions to keep herself even passably functional — not constantly, she only needed them sometimes, but that didn't stop it from being extremely frustrating. (And humiliating, she didn't like that people knew about it either, but she'd realised very early on that hiding it would be pretty much impossible.) She especially didn't want to need them just to hang out with Daphne, that thought was—

True, this wasn't a normal situation. It wasn't like she made a habit of crying all over Daphne or anything — and she didn't plan to, either. But she still hated it.

But she couldn't, just, not go back out, leave Daphne out there wondering what was wrong, and it wasn't really getting better, so she guessed she just had to swallow it. Biting out a bitter sigh, Liz twisted off the cap and took a sip of the potion, smooth and sweet on her tongue, tingling on its way down her throat — not taking the whole thing, just a little bit, she didn't need all of it. (Also, if she came back out dazed half out of her mind, that would be really obvious.) The magic passed over her in a numbing wave, the sizzling panic inundated, Liz sagged as tension she hadn't been fully aware of relaxed away.

And the low dose worked, thankfully. She still felt kind of miserable, still didn't want to go back out there, but the echo of Vernon and the sofa had gone away, so it was manageable, at least. This would have to do.

Wiping at her eyes — with the end of her scarf, since she didn't have anything else to hand — another casting of the nose-clearing spell — which made her sneeze again — and she thought she was...mostly passable. She backtracked to the bathroom quick, and yeah, she kind of looked like shite, eyes somehow even redder than they'd been a bit ago, fuck, but there was nothing she could do about that, and it had to have been a few minutes by now, she couldn't just leave Daphne out there alone forever. A last brief moment in private, cursing her fucked-up brain and her complete inability to act passably normal for even a single afternoon, Liz finally opened the door, walking back out into the pensieve room.

Daphne was on her feet, like she'd been pacing around the pensieve, nervous, had stopped and turned to face the door by the time Liz got out here. She'd fixed her dress while Liz had been gone, once again draped around her the way it was supposed to be, but her hair was still a little mussed up, crooked. "Oh, Liz," she said, relief thick in the air around her. "I was wondering if something was the matter."

"Yeah, sorry. I needed to look up a spell, it took a minute." Liz was definitely not telling Daphne about her moment in there, she really didn't need to know about that. She'd probably take it the wrong way — also, it would be embarrassing, and Liz hated being like this, she'd rather they just move on now.

As Liz wandered closer, sinking back into Daphne's mind, she noticed Daphne knew she'd taken a calming potion. She could tell, somehow, Liz had no idea, she wasn't thinking about it explicitly enough, just, something about Liz had tipped her off. That was...irritating. At least she wasn't being all judgey about it, seemed more concerned than anything (and maybe vaguely guilty, which was absurd, it wasn't her fault Liz was fucked up), but still. Luckily it hadn't worn off yet, the embarrassment wasn't bothering her too much, so she guessed this was fine.

It was less fine when, as Liz approached Daphne and the pensieve, Daphne took a step toward her, reaching for her hands — Liz reflexively stepped back out of reach, not something she really thought about, it just kind of happened. There was a bright sharp flash from Daphne's head, hurt, "I'm sorry, just— I'm still kind of..." Not sure what to say, she wiggled a hand vaguely. "Um. I'd rather just play with this thing now," Liz said, waving at the pensieve.

"...All right, if that's what you want." Daphne thought that, if something was bothering Liz, they should talk about it, but she realised Liz definitely didn't want to do that, and she wasn't going to force a conversation Liz would undoubtedly find extremely unpleasant on her against her will — which was nice of her, thank you, Daphne. Hot, slimy guilt was still simmering at the edges of her mind, worried she'd done something wrong. They really should talk about it, she didn't like leaving potential problems to fester, made her nervous, but she realised this wasn't the Greenwood, and she had to respect what Liz wanted.

"I'm fine, really. You didn't do anything wrong, I'm not angry with you or whatever." She had kind of encouraged Liz to not avoid breaking down like a crazy person this time, but Liz was responsible for her own decisions, and she was mostly annoyed with her fucked up brain continuing to be fucked up, which she couldn't reasonably blame Daphne for. So. "I just want to distract myself with something else, is all."

Daphne wasn't entirely reassured by her insistence that she was fine, but some of the tension in her mind loosened, apparently deciding to accept that for now. "Very well. Was there anything in particular you wanted to look at? I suppose I may have a few ideas..."

It was awkward, at first, but Liz powered through it, and before long she was more or less back to normal. Some of the memories Daphne picked didn't really help...except they kind of did, in the end. Like, one of them was from a visit to Flakstaðey, swimming in a little cove with some of her paternal relatives and the local selkies — and apparently people there swam naked. (Which was fucking ridiculous, Flakstaðey was stupid far north, how weren't they freezing?) In the memory Daphne was, like, maybe eight, or something like that, so she wasn't distracting, but there were kind of a lot of people there, which was just weird and embarrassing. And there were grown women around, and some of them were distractingly pretty (especially since they were very naked), and Liz felt very weird trying not to stare at Daphne's aunts and cousins and whatever with her standing right there, it was uncomfortable.

But sometimes even the awkward ones led to things to talk about, which worked very well to get Liz out of her weird rut. Like, Liz noticed that the selkies in that swimming memory pretty much just looked like humans — except for when they looked like seals, obviously, changing shape entirely, like wilderfolk. Which, it turned out selkies were wilderfolk? Liz had assumed they were a kind of merfolk instead, or at least that's what it sounded like from what she'd heard. Like nymphs, or various other nonhuman beings out there, merfolk had been created through some primitive ritual magic, people transforming themselves into something else way back in prehistory (they weren't sure when or how or why). They weren't all the same, there were merfolk all over the world and there were several different races, some of them looking very different — maybe they'd just diverged as they'd spread, or maybe there'd been multiple rituals, the different groups descended from different originating populations, nobody knew for sure. Liz had never seen a selkie before, but she'd assumed it was like that, that they were another merfolk population.

Turned out, no, they were literally just wilderfolk — apparently there used to be a whole bunch of different terms for wilderfolk based on which animal they turned into, but the rest had all fallen out of use over the centuries. (In English, anyway, Daphne's father's native language still used a few different words.) There were a fair number of them all through the north — from the Baltic Sea all the way through the North Sea to Greenland and north into the Arctic (and even eastern Canada and the Arctic shore all through Canada and Siberia, though Daphne didn't know much about the ones further away) — and there were even separate populations in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean who were probably distantly related, but Daphne didn't know for sure. The term "selkie" was sometimes also applied to wilderfolk who turned into things like dolphins and even bloody whales (which was apparently a thing), but there'd normally be local terms for that, "selkies" were mostly just seals. Though when she thought about it, Liz probably should have guessed they were wilderfolk, since there were all kinds of stories of them interbreeding with humans — merfolk couldn't have children with humans (though maybe they could with blood magic?), and definitely couldn't just to decide to live on land if they felt like it, so.

Liz couldn't help wondering how many of the seals and whales people hunted, or the dolphins and shite they had doing tricks at like theme parks and shite, were actually people, but she had the feeling Daphne wouldn't respond well to that question. And she probably didn't know, anyway.

Which, all that was kind of neat, and fascinating to think about, they ended up talking about aquatic wilderfolk for long enough that Liz was completely distracted out of feeling awkward over that whole crying all over Daphne thing. So, that helped.

It turned out Daphne actually had wilderfolk ancestors on both sides of the family — her father's family had somewhat distant selkie relatives, her mother's father was a Greenwood native (and therefore related to the wilderfolk living with the Mistwalkers), and her mother's mother's family claimed to have relatives who'd been raven and owl wilderfolk centuries back. (Of course, they also claimed to be descended from a goddess — Ailbhe was named for her mother's family, and the Ailbhes claimed descent from a Clíodhna Ní Bhláithín, the elder sister of the much more famous Caoimhe Ní Bhláithín, and according to legend their grandmother had been the literal Morrigan — but a lot of Gaelic families said shite like that, so.) Of course, the thought of raven and owl wilderfolk — apparently some post owls were actually people too? — reminded Liz that her great-great-grandmother was a bloody swan, as in a bird, and birds laid eggs. Were there people out there who hatched from eggs?

According to Daphne? Definitely. Supposedly, if a wilderfolk woman was human-shaped during pregnancy and for the birth, the kid would be human (with the animagus trait), but if they were animal-shaped they'd be wilderfolk — so, yes, literally every single avian wilderfolk, including Liz's great-great-grandmother, had hatched from a fucking egg. That was...weird, that was seriously bloody weird. How did Daphne not get that that was weird?

(Though, thinking about it, Liz was starting to understand how serious some mages could be about the treatment of animals, and being very very certain the eggs they ate were unfertilised — it was really very difficult to be certain any random animal wasn't secretly a person. In fact, it was so difficult that there was a very high chance that Liz had actually eaten wilderfolk meat before. Wild.)

Wilderfolk were neat, yes, and it was kind of fascinating to think about, but honestly Liz was way more curious about nymphs — she had talked to a couple at the Greenwood over Christmas, but she didn't really know much about them. Of course, Daphne had grown up with nymphs, so she knew plenty, and had more than enough memories to draw on. And Daphne actually thought it reflected well on Liz that she wanted to know about them, most magic-raised people could be remarkably incurious about the other peoples they shared these islands with, so she was very much willing to talk about nymphs now instead. Though the nymphs at the Greenwood were integrated with the humans of the community, so they weren't really that different, but they could get into that anyway, why not...

As shaky as it'd been for a little bit there, Liz recovered completely before too long — they even ended up kissing for a while again, on some little rocky island in the north somewhere. (She'd already known that it was possible for people using a pensieve together to touch each other in there, but obviously she'd never tried doing that before. Daphne thought something about it felt off, but Liz had hardly noticed the difference.) So, this weird little date of theirs had turned out okay in the end? she guessed? It could have been better, Liz would really like to stop being a crazy person at some point, but Daphne seemed to legitimately enjoy teaching Liz more about the Mistwalkers and wilderfolk and nymphs and whatever else, and she had liked the soup, so, yes, she was calling this a qualified success. Alright, then.

Also Daphne must have been happy with their awkward little not-date, despite Liz losing her shite for a bit in the middle, because at the end of the evening she had Liz copy a final memory from her head, teasingly refusing to explain what it was — Liz checked it later that night, and it turned out to be Daphne touching herself out in the middle of a bloody field somewhere. Just, fucking hell, that was all. This girl sometimes, honestly...

(Liz did, um, have fun with it, obviously, she was just saying.)

---

So that's a thing that happened. And omg why is this scene so long? I was originally trying to narrate out the Consualia scene, but it'd gotten to 10k words and I'd barely even gotten anywhere with it, and I decided I hated it, and I cut it, just stuck in that short summary in this scene instead. So that was 10k words I didn't need to write. lol

And it was, like, literally the day after that decision that I got sick. I know it's been a while since I updated — my parents came over for a couple days, which distracted me, and then I did 10k words of writing that were completely unnecessary, and then I was too sick to do shit for like a week. Writing has been hard in general lately, but all that definitely didn't help. I've also had original fiction shit and other fanfiction stories dancing in my head distracting me, because of course. In the meantime, I posted a 35k word explainer of the politics in my worldbuilding, like a nerdy bitch — that's over on my AO3 account, if you're curious. There are charts, it's very silly.

Anyway, one Tamsyn chapter and then we're moving on to Hogwarts. Fucking finally. Bye now...