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)

71. Fourth Year — XXII

Hello again, darling. I have a memory I would like you to look at. Stanley is being so terribly stubborn — if you could keep an eye on his response to my questions, see if he knows anything he's not giving away to me. I've hidden the bottle in a set of cosmetic potions (I expect you wouldn't use the one to curl hair anyway) unless the post wards at the school are much different from my time, they should arrive tomorrow morning. I don't need the rest of the set back, you can keep them if you want.

Sending me cosmetic potions, I'd almost think you're trying to tell me something.

And I almost feel you're accusing me of something. No cause to be so sensitive about it, sweet girl, I was only thinking that a young woman receiving an order of cosmetics isn't anything anyone will look twice at.

Anyone who knows me at all would, since I don't use that stuff at all, but whatever. It doesn't matter anyway, nobody is going to see it — all of my post is being redirected to Clyde Rock, the elves filter out the shite before passing it on to me. Don't bother trying to hide it next time, I'll just tell the elves to keep an eye out for the memories. It's not like they're going to tell anyone.

That is unusually cautious. Something young Severus suggested, perhaps?

Yes, but this one isn't just him being a paranoid bastard. I started getting way too much post to actually deal with after a certain issue of the Prophet earlier this year, can't imagine what that was about, and it started getting meaner after the hearing. It got really bad the last couple months, people just assume I support the gaelic nationalists for some reason — I'm told people are sending me lethal curses and poisons kind of regularly now, the elves have been forwarding them to the DLE to maybe track them down.

Oh dear, oh dear, how frightful. For the record, darling, that is the kind of the thing that should, without doubt, be included in our part of the anniversary issue at the end of the month. Having the sympathy of the public on your side may lesson future smearing of your reputation, and publicly shaming your enemies can be a powerful tool.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. We'll talk about that later.

፠

I looked at the memory. You're barking up the wrong tree, Stanley doesn't know anything about the Atwell accounts. His assistant looks all nervous, but that's because he's worried you might know about the secret sex club he goes to. You might want to look into that one.

And I was so sure Stanely was involved. Oh well, back to the drawing board on that one.
I doubt Beauchêne's private life, while embarrassing, is worth digging up — I understand there are many things about this country that are still new to you, but men with the gold to spare patronising brothels isn't newsworthy.

Maybe, I guess. I might just be a silly ignorant person, but do most brothels kidnap little kids from muggle or poor magical families and keep them locked up in the basement?

Oh, dear. You tease me, darling, I'm sure you know that is not normal. It is exceptionally illegal, in fact.

Hell if I know. Mages can be bastards, and I honestly completely forgot brothels are a thing here.

Yes, it can take some getting used to. Is there anything more that you can tell me? Getting Beauchêne on his own to grill him about it might not end well.

I don't remember anything big, let me check. Okay, I'm back. I don't think Beauchêne takes part in the kid-raping part himself, he just knows what goes on downstairs. He was worried about Augustus Travers finding out if he gave anything away, that's the only name I have. He also thinks something called moon-watch is involved somehow, but I don't know what that is.

"Moon-Watch" is a colloquialism for the Night Briar Brotherhood, an old guild of thieves and assassins. In the last century or so, they've nearly monopolised the black-market smuggling operation in Britain — I wouldn't be surprised if an underground brothel is getting supplies from them. They are not pleasant people, I'm afraid. And neither is Augustus Travers. He managed to slip under the radar at the end of the war, the slimy weasel, but my sources say he's just as bad as his cousin Cyrus. Maybe worse, even.

It's possible to be a worse misogynist bastard than Cyrus Travers?

Oh, sweet child, I'm afraid so — there's always worse. This is quite a mess we've stumbled on here. I do have contacts in the Brotherhood, but poking around may end badly for them. Having sources does me no good if they go and get themselves killed. And approaching Travers could well get me killed, and from what I'm told it would not be quick. Is there anything else?

Not really. Except, Beauchêne often goes there on his lunch break, on Tuesdays. If you follow him you can find the building, at least.

That will do marvellously, Liz, thank you.
I may need more help from you to put together a case to bring to the DLE — as well as a nice front-page article timed for the evening after their raid on the place, naturally. This is going to be a big story, especially if there are noblemen involved, I'm not sure you realise how big. Some of the memories I'll be bringing you might be unpleasant, I'll understand if you need to step back.

Shut up, Rita. I'm going to help you save those kids, and put those fuckers away. I might need calming potions to get through any bad stuff, but I'll be fine.

Of course, I should have guessed. Well, let's be heroes then, shall we?

You're ridiculous.

Glass houses, darling.

---

Leaning against the side of the carriage, her heavy eyes falling closed, Liz let out a sigh. It was barely ten in the morning, and she was already barely keeping her eyes open — if this could have happened on a different night, that would have been great...

"Liz? Are you alright?"

"Mm." Liz pushed herself upright, forcing herself to look at Daphne on the bench next to her. Normally, looking at Daphne didn't exactly take effort — she really was distractingly pretty, sometimes — but her eyes were being slow at the moment. "Sorry, I'm just tired. I didn't sleep well."

The air around her lurching, warm and...something, Daphne's brow creased in a faint frown. Concern, Liz was pretty sure — she looked away, resisting the urge to shift self-consciously in her seat, fighting off the pointless creep of embarrassment.

Going out into the forest to practise the Unforgivable Curses — or, the two that weren't completely pointless for her, anyway — had maybe been a bad idea. In Liz's defence, it's not as though she could have anticipated she would get nightmares from it, she hadn't even remembered the ones she used to get when she was little until she saw the Green Death. It didn't happen every night, but it did happen often enough that it was starting to get seriously annoying.

Though, even while it was eating into her sleep, it could be worse — she hadn't had any of the familiar Vernon nightmares at all since. The weird, trippy, green-flash ones could be irritating, but they didn't leave her in nearly as bad of a mood as the Vernon ones could sometimes, so, mixed bag.

If it weren't for the feeling terribly cold after, she might actually call them an unambiguous improvement. Liz often didn't notice when she was a little cold, until she wasn't anymore, but she really did not like actually feeling cold. Like, a lot. Actually, she was developing a theory that her weirdness in general about temperature was because of that night, being super magically cold from the Green Death fucking up her baseline somehow, but that could be complete shite, for all she knew...

Last night, she'd stayed up reading later than she should have in the first place — partially just losing track of time, but also she'd been all tense and vaguely anxious about today, so she probably wouldn't have been able to get to sleep easily anyway. This was her and Daphne's first actual date — unless having her over at the house counted...or that afternoon in Jassy...or the party after the World Cup final, for that matter... — and Liz still had absolutely no fucking clue what she was doing with all this, and she was unreasonably worried she was going to fuck it up. Unreasonable, because Liz wasn't sure if there was a way you were supposed to do this stuff anyway, and she was pretty sure Daphne wouldn't care if she made an idiot of herself. So. She'd still been worked up enough over stupid nonsense that, even if she hadn't distracted herself reading, sleep might have been a problem anyway.

Then she'd woken up to screaming and a flash of eerie green light at...well, stupid early, anyway, she didn't know when exactly. After calming down, she'd tried to go back to sleep, but she'd still felt cold, almost painfully so — and wrapping herself up tight in her blanket didn't help. She didn't really expect it to, when she thought about it — obviously she wasn't actually cold after these nightmares, it was just in her head — but it was still very frustrating. Eventually she'd given up, and left for the showers — she didn't know why a hot shower helped, since it was just in her head, but whatever. She hadn't gotten around to checking the time until she'd gotten back to her room.

To find that, even after struggling to get back to sleep for however long and having a shower, it'd been quarter after four. And since she had just had a hot shower, she'd been feeling far too awake to get back to sleep. (There was a reason why she normally showered hours before she planned to go to bed.) Meaning that, thanks to randomly having stupid nightmares, she'd gotten maybe three hours of sleep, maybe less.

And it happened to be on the night before she and Daphne had planned a date. Because of course.

(Maybe she should have asked Severus for a dreamless sleep potion ahead of time, just to make sure, but it hadn't occurred to her. If she asked, maybe he'd let her keep a single dose in her room, in case it did occur to her...)

"Are these the usual nightmares—" Because Daphne was annoyingly observant sometimes, she'd noticed a long time ago that Liz had trouble sleeping sometimes, and, with what she'd guessed about Liz's relatives, had come to the obvious conclusion. By, like, March of first year, or something like that. She did have experience with Tracey, and it wasn't like she'd ever said anything about it (Liz hadn't even known until a couple weeks ago), but still, kind of annoying. "—or is there something going on that's particularly bothering you? This term has seemed rather quiet, so far..."

Quiet at Hogwarts, anyway — there was still a lot of ridiculous politics shite ongoing, but they were relatively insulated from all that here. "Not really, I've been fine so far. Good, even, or at least by my standards. It's just..." Did she want to tell Daphne about it? She'd only ever told Severus and Hermione anything about this shite, and even them not very much. She, just, didn't like talking about it. She didn't like talking about a lot of things, really, hardly unique...

"We needn't talk about it, if you wish not to."

"No, it's just... I'd kind of forgotten about this, but I used to have a lot of nightmares when I was really little. Well, I always remembered I used to get them, but not what they were, you know." She vaguely remembered she'd get punished for waking up screaming and crying or whatever — it was at least part of where the Uncle Vernon hated it when she cried thing came from, she thought. "I don't remember most of it, but I know it'd end with bright green light, and I'd wake up scared out of mind and very, very cold."

Daphne put together what that was immediately, her head jerking with a sudden pulse of horror, thick and frigid and harsh. It lingered for a while, but other things creeped in over the next seconds, warmer and softer, not unpleasant to be sitting next to — except the clingy, uncomfortable pity, but there was enough else going on Liz could mostly ignore that. "Oh, Liz," she breathed, her hand finding Liz's on the bench between them, fingers meshing with hers. Which, Liz didn't really get the hand-holding thing — any skin contact made Daphne's mind louder, that was the biggest effect for Liz — and it could make Liz a little uncomfortable (trapped) when it was her wand hand, but Daphne was sitting on her left, so this was fine. "I'm so sorry... You said you'd forgotten — have they started up again?"

"Yeah, I..." Liz hesitated for a second, frowning down at her knees. Telling Daphne she'd taught herself to cast two of the three Unforgivable Curses probably wouldn't go over well. "Yeah."

Daphne was silent a moment, gently gripping Liz's hand, mind shifting with affection and pity and...something dark and cool, not sure what to call that. "We can do this some other time. If you're not feeling well."

"I'll be fine, I just might be a little out of it at times."

"You shouldn't force yourself on my account, Liz. If you're going to be miserable the whole time, I won't be having fun either."

...Oh, well. Liz hadn't thought of it that way, honestly. She didn't want to call it off, though — as vaguely nervous as she'd been last night, she had been looking forward to it. Maybe, "How about we just go to lunch, and then come back to the castle, find an empty room somewhere, and just hang out for a while. Though, if we're not really doing anything, I might fall asleep..."

"That's alright." In fact, Daphne seemed weirdly...flattered by the idea? Didn't think that was the right word, not sure what Liz was picking up exactly. "We have a couple minutes until we get to the village, here..."

A little bit of shuffling around, and Daphne passed Liz's hand over to her opposite hand, her arm looping around Liz's back. Gently tugged in closer to Daphne, there was a faint hint of nerves for a second, but Liz was just too tired to bother at the moment — leaning close against her, head resting on her shoulder, she managed to relax without too much trouble. Almost seeming to sink into her, fuck, she was tired...

Mm, Daphne was warm...

She'd definitely spaced out for a while, might even have halfway fallen asleep, jerked upright when the carriage came to a stop. (Barely missed clunking Daphne on the chin — Liz was pretty sure Daphne had been smelling her hair, which was an odd thought, she decided to ignore it.) Feeling inexplicably self-conscious, Liz cleared her throat, took a moment to straighten her dress and her scarf before opening the door and hopping down to the ground. There were several other carriages in the roundabout, plenty of students milling around. She knew most of the rest of them couldn't see the thestrals — Liz hadn't taken the carriages for the first time until the beginning of second year, after she'd already seen Quirrell die — but they still seemed to instinctively avoid them, despite their random bustling around not getting too close to them. Which was kind of neat, Liz had no idea how that worked.

It was a nice, sunny, pleasant day, the breeze a little cool but not bad enough that Liz had bothered wearing long sleeves — near the last they were going to have until spring, she thought. Turning back to Daphne — who seemed oddly amused with her for some reason — she clasped her hands behind her back. In part to prevent Daphne from trying to grab at them. Them being a thing was still a secret, and there were people around...

"So, um. Where are we going?"

---

I followed Beauchêne and found the site, but they're being very careful about their wards — and no wonder, given what you learned from our hapless little friend. I have a cursebreaker I know on it. It may be some time before we'll be seeing any progress, I'll be working on other projects in the meanwhile.

All right. You didn't ask, but Bobbin doesn't know anything about the French delegation. You might have better luck talking to the Minister.

Our new Minister is far more cautious with the press than Fudge, unfortunately. And he may still be holding a grudge over a little something I wrote about him back during the war, when I was still young and reckless.

Now I'm curious.

Oh, it was nothing serious. I might have implied he was having an affair with a goblin master smith. But honestly, I don't know why he took that so personally! You know how goblins can be about outsiders, that one would take such a shine to him was truly a compliment, when you think about it.

I'm pretty sure the goblins would be even more scandalised by that than mages, which would just make his job harder, but whatever.

By the way, darling, a little bird tells me he spotted a charming young man who looks very much like your guardian out in the muggle world, with a woman he didn't recognise. A young woman, and my little bird thought they seemed very, shall we say, friendly. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that?

Not really. I assume Severus probably sees women now and then, but he doesn't exactly gossip with me about his sex life.

Yes, I thought he might not. Oh, well.

፠

I wonder, sweet girl, is there anything important you've perhaps forgotten to tell me?

I still don't know anything about Severus's sex life, and I honestly like it that way.

No, not that. If you remember our little deal, it goes both ways. I can't give you what you want unless my colleagues see me as the Girl Who Lived expert, and I can't do that if someone else gets a story first.

What the hell are you talking about?

You were seen — there are pictures. Even nice pictures. You seem so shy and flustered, how precious.

People get pictures of me all the time, Rita, you'll have to be more specific.

Don't play the fool with me, Liz. You're terrible at it. You were spotted in Hogsmeade with your pretty little girlfriend — Daphne Greengrass, unless Stella is much mistaken, the smug bitch.

Shite. How bad is it?

At this very second, I am looking at a photo of the two of you, huddled in an alleyway. Nothing too, shall we say, immodest. It's quite sweet, truly, your adoring public will love it.

My "adoring public" can get fucked, for all I care. How the hell did that happen, I put up privacy spells first.

Such magics have weaknesses. Most of them prevent anyone from paying any particular attention to you — but if someone already knows you're there, they don't forget, they simply can't focus on you any longer. If someone was already following you, and decided to, say, point a camera at the alleyway...

Son of a bitch. Can you make it go away?

I'm afraid not. Stella brought it to the editors before I heard of it — I only learned of it because she couldn't resist having me called into the meeting in an attempt to embarrass me. The cat's already out of the bag, and it's not going back in.

Well, fuck. I knew this would happen eventually, because obviously my private life is national news, for some fucking stupid reason, have I mentioned I hate this country? I just hoped I could keep it secret for longer.

When were you planning on telling me?

I don't know. Later. When I was ready.

Liz, you know this could not have stayed secret for long. It's a miracle you kept it to yourself as long as you did, shut up in a castle with a gaggle of gossipy nobles.

I know.

And I can't keep up my reputation as the Girl Who Lived expert if Estelle sodding Beringer steals a march on me.

I know, dammit, you don't have to rub it in.

Good. With a bit of quick thinking, I was able to save face — I've convinced my bosses that I was keeping the secret for you, and that I will need your permission before I can tell them anything. In order to stay on your good side, and secure future pieces for the paper. I may be able to salvage things, but it isn't going to be easy.

I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking about that. I just didn't want to talk about it yet. You might have guessed my relatives don't like queers much.

I understand, darling, I do. These things can be difficult for any young woman in the public eye, even ones who don't have the trials you do. But we have to play with the hand we're dealt, I'm afraid.

I know you want something from me, stop pretending we're friends and just get to the point already.

I can elbow my way into co-writing the article to come, but I need as much as you can tell me. I realise this may be uncomfortable, but you don't want Stella to write it alone — if I'm involved, at least I can keep any nosey speculation out of it.

And you get another byline on a massively popular Girl Who Lived article.

You don't expect me to work for free, do you? A girl needs to eat.

Fine. I continue to hate this country, but fine. What do you want to know?

---

By now, Liz was rather familiar with Daphne's routine — all the Slytherin girls, really, she just tended to pay more attention to some than others. Liz had learned it was actually pretty common for mages to bathe multiple times a day, which had been a surprise at first, but now that she knew how magical plumbing worked, it wasn't like they had to worry about wasting water, so that wasn't a big deal, was it. Daphne would have a quick shower in the morning, along with Tracey, Pansy, and Millie — Liz knew they didn't have showers at the Greenwood, so Daphne at least must do something different at home — which required a little bit of staggering, since there were only two shower stalls. (Most of the time, anyway — the first year or two, it hadn't been unusual for Daphne and Tracey or Pansy and Millie to shower together, though that'd gradually trailed off over time. Which seemed fucking weird to Liz, but she realised purebloods didn't think that sort of thing was a big deal.) Daphne would then have a somewhat more leisurely bath later in the day — after classes but before dinner, if she could manage it, but sometimes their schedule didn't allow that, and she had to do it later.

That she often still did with Tracey, which Liz did feel slightly weird about, but thanks to being a cheating mind-reader she knew it was perfectly innocent. They mostly just...sat around chatting, about whatever, apparently? Liz was aware that bathing was a far more...social thing for a lot of more conservative purebloods — that used to be a muggle thing too, before plumbing got to a point that it was practical for everyone to have a bathroom in their house — and both Daphne and Tracey (also Millie, but not Pansy) would have grown up with it, just one of those things. Daphne had admitted to Liz, when they'd been talking about it once, that she did have the occasional sexy thought, because hormones, but it turned out Tracey was straight, and was not at all interested, so, nothing had ever happened between them.

Things had happened with Daphne and other people, though — there was that thing with Susan Liz had already known about, but that hadn't been Daphne's first kiss. And the Greenwood was, well, the Greenwood, people there were less stuck up about these things. Because Liz was a cheating mind-reader, she was well aware that Daphne was the only Slytherin girl in their year who'd done sex stuff already. With both boys and girls, in fact — turned out Daphne didn't care which someone was, like Katie, Liz had suspected as much but she knew for certain now — and even a nymph at least once, back in July. Liz knew that for sure, she'd stumble across memories now and then. Daphne had kind-of-sort-of tried to hide those memories at first, at least not consciously think of it when Liz was around, concerned they'd make her uncomfortable (and also since she didn't have the permission of whoever she'd been with to share the memories) — and it did make Liz feel kind of weird, she couldn't put her finger on what feeling exactly (feelings were hard), but it wasn't a big deal.

Though, it'd been a while since Daphne had done anything with anyone — when they decided they were dating now, while on the Jassy trip, she'd stopped doing things with other people. Which Liz wasn't really sure about, honestly. Like, sure, she understood that that was just kind of the expected thing, when you were in a relationship with someone — at least without asking first, she guessed — but Liz was such a neurotic mess, she still had no idea how long it'd take for her to be able to...do that. And she didn't want, um... For Daphne to get too frustrated, she guessed, with Liz being the way she was. If she wanted to go to someone else for sex stuff now and then, Liz would be...not happy about it — if she weren't a mind mage, she'd maybe be more paranoid about Daphne deciding she liked the other person better or whatever and breaking up with her, but she was very aware of Daphne's unreasonably high opinion of her, and, there was nothing to worry about there — but she would get it, and wouldn't make a big thing about it.

It'd come up before — not out loud, Liz had had the thought once, bumping into a sex memory, and Daphne had noticed — and Daphne felt that would be inappropriate, more than Liz did. Which, given the attitudes they'd each grown up around, you'd think it'd be the other way around. The only way Daphne would be comfortable with having sex with someone else while in a relationship with Liz was if Liz was involved — she meant, if the third person was both of their girlfriend, like with her parents and Heli. (Apparently that sort of thing was way more well-tolerated on the Greenwood, and various other dark-leaning subcultures, than just screwing random people, so in retrospect Daphne's feelings on the matter actually made a lot of sense.) But, with as much trouble as Liz was having with her silly neurotic abused kid brain issues just with Daphne, that didn't seem likely. Well, maybe if it was Susan or Katie — she thought she trusted them well enough that her stupid brain stuff would be mostly manageable, no worse than it was with just Daphne — but they were both already dating other people, and Daphne didn't really know Katie at all...or maybe Hermione or Padma, but she had no idea whether they even liked girls or not...

But anyway, the point was, there were pretty regular times at which Daphne could be expected to be in the bathroom down in the dorms. So, when Liz finally worked up the nerve to leave her room, one Tuesday morning, she wasn't surprised to find Daphne standing at the sinks, finishing up with her normal morning stuff. She was already fully dressed, Mistwalker-style jewellery tinkling at her wrists — she hadn't quite gone as far as wearing the clothes at Hogwarts yet, but she was working up to it (which was funny, because most mages actually thought the piercings were a bigger deal, and it wasn't like they didn't already know she was a Mistwalker, but whatever) — just finishing up her hair, running something through it, Liz didn't know. (She was aware Daphne's hair took a bit of maintenance, but she didn't really know what all was involved.) Liz hesitated at the threshold for a moment, watching her — fuck, she was so pretty, how did she do that...

Daphne glanced over at Liz's reflection in the mirror, smiling. "Good morning, Liz."

"...Hey." She finally started moving, walking toward Daphne at the sinks. Glancing around, she groped over the room with her mind, looking to see if anyone else was in here — didn't feel like it, and she didn't see anyone's things set out for when they get out of the shower, so, Liz thought they were alone. She came to a stop, facing the mirror next to Daphne, her hands splayed out on the counter. It didn't take long for Daphne to realise something was up — Liz was only here to talk to her, she'd already done her much simpler morning stuff before getting dressed nearly an hour ago — the motion of her hands through her hair slowing, watching Liz through the mirror. Staring down at her hands, Liz muttered, "It's today."

There was a short pause, a flicker of unease from Daphne. "You're certain?"

Liz nodded.

Daphne didn't respond, her head flickering with some kind of thought — Liz wasn't looking closely enough to pick up much, though she did notice that the gentle warmth usually in there had cooled somewhat. After a couple seconds Daphne moved, her hand coming on top of hers, her mind conducted across the contact, concern and irritation and affection blaring louder. (The irritation wasn't pointed at Liz, annoyed for her and not at her.) "I'll be here the whole day."

Taking some of the weight off her hand, so Daphne could slip her finger through hers and get a grip — which was a little uncomfortable, grabbing at the back of Liz's hand like that, but whatever — Liz nodded, muttered, "I know." Not that she thought that would help, really. She knew from when her custody stuff had come up, whenever Liz and Severus had had the smallest interaction eyes had been drawn straight to them — she didn't expect people were going to be any less annoying about her and Daphne. "I am sorry about this. I mean, people are going to be nosey shites about you too, and, well." Skeeter had warned her that there was a bit about Daphne in the article, and it wasn't particularly flattering. She hadn't been super detailed, but Liz assumed it was, like, backwards superstitious weirdos corrupting our Girl Who Lived or whatever.

She could see in her head that Daphne was aware it was going to be bad, that it could actually cause problems for her family if things went really badly (because magical Britain continued to be terrible). But she just smiled, squeezing Liz's hand a little. "Don't worry about me, Liz. I knew this day would come, in time — I knew what I was getting into. I'm more concerned about you, I know you won't find the attention pleasant. Do you have a calming potion on you?"

Liz rolled her eyes. "Yes, Daphne. There's one in my bookbag, back in my room." She hadn't bothered bringing it with her to the bathroom, since she'd be going by her room on the way out anyway.

"Of course. If at all becomes too much, tell me so and I'll cover for you." Stop people from following after Liz as she fled, she meant. "I'm sure Professor Snape will understand if you must retreat to his rooms for a time."

She was temporarily confused by the suggestion, before realising that, obviously, all the Slytherins knew where her dorm room was — they couldn't get in, but they could knock on her door and be annoying — but they couldn't get to her at all if she hid in Severus's apartments. That made sense. Didn't think it would be necessary, but. "Yeah, I, um. Hopefully it won't be that bad..."

"I'm sure it won't, but it always pays to have an exit strategy."

Well, Liz wasn't about to disagree with that...

Since they were alone in here anyway, Daphne snuck a kiss, soft and slow, fingers light on Liz's cheek, the flood of her mind getting much closer making Liz a bit dizzy. Even that brief moment made her a little flustered — she couldn't say why, maybe just worried about it being obvious, and people were about to know, they'd probably be able to guess what Liz and Daphne were up to when they were out of sight at the same time now... — she tried to just ignore it, not to notice how kind of twitchy she felt, stopping by her room quick to get her bag. Daphne hung close by her as they went up the stairs, through the common room — mostly empty by now, people up at breakfast — out and up toward the Entrance Hall, slowed down by a gaggle of second-years on the stairs...

Stepping into the Great Hall, Liz's eyes trailed over the tables — the post hadn't come in yet, but it was well into the breakfast hour, it should be any minute now. Very aware of Daphne looming over her shoulder, Liz hung to the back wall of the room, making straight for the Slytherin tables. There were still spots open, some people not having gotten up yet, the fourth- and fifth-years they most often sat with probably hadn't needed to save her a spot at the back yet. (They usually did, it was well-known that Liz didn't like being crowded, but it wouldn't have taken any special effort this time.) Liz noticed an empty spot on the back bench right next to Tracey, so she took that one, Daphne sitting right on her other side — sandwiched between Daphne and Tracey was fine, they'd keep any nosey people from being a pain.

Liz did gather a little food on her plate, but she didn't eat much, just fitfully poking at it — her stomach lurching and her chest tight, she wasn't hungry. People did notice, Tracey and Millie and even Draco and Pansy, weirdly enough, the concern from Daphne spiking sharper. She just waved off questions if she was alright, sipping at her coffee (the stuff at the students' tables wasn't great, but it was still coffee) and occasionally glancing up at the open windows overhead.

So she noticed right away when a flood of owls poured into the Hall, swirling around in a confusing mess before banking down toward the tables with a noisy rustling of feathers. Her breath freezing in her throat, fingers tightening on her fork enough to hurt, this was it, people would notice the article pretty quickly, she thought. Only minutes now, seconds. Liz twitched at the touch on her knee, but it was only Daphne — the enchantments on her uniform robes blocked most of Daphne's mind from coming through, hadn't noticed at first. Honestly, she would rather Daphne not do that — Daphne's mind was warm and pleasant enough that she mostly didn't mind the touching (it was even nice most of the time), but she was already nervous, and without the her mind getting super loud part, well — but it wasn't worth making a thing about, and she wouldn't really know how to communicate that right now without attracting attention...mind magic, she guessed...and she suspected Daphne was doing that just as much for her own comfort anyway, this would affect her too...

Liz could barely even breathe, tight and fragile with tension (like a bunch of shards of glass roughly pasted together, the edges rubbing against each other — sitting on the sofa as Vernon lectured at her, Petunia hissing about freaks, but she was trying not to hear that), this was going to be awful, she just knew it...

She jumped as an owl landed near Tracey, her skin sizzling with nerves, fuck. "Hey, Tracey?" Daphne said, leaning around Liz. "Pass me the society section, please?" She wanted to read it, so she would know what was in it. Liz wasn't going to bother, reading articles about her always put her in a terrible mood for the rest of the day, but Daphne could tell her if there was anything she needed to know.

"Oh sure, one second." Tracey accepted her paper from the owl, the thing winging off again, yanked off the twine holding the roll together. A bit of shuffling around, Tracey pulling the sections apart, looking for—

She abruptly froze, her mind ringing with shock. Liz glanced that way, and immediately found out why — there was a sizeable full-colour picture at the front of the society pages (going fuzzy and grey at the edges, as mass-produced colour photos tended to), of Liz and Daphne. Kissing, obviously, Liz had known it would be, but it was still surreal seeing it. Squirrelled away in an alley off the main street, out of the way, Daphne's arms around her waist, holding her close, her arms over Daphne's shoulders, their faces half-hidden by their hair. (Liz noticed she was stretched up onto her toes, because of course, she never stopped being annoyingly short.) After a second or two, Liz tipped back, Daphne's arms loosening — her hands settled on her hips instead, which Liz knew was rather distracting — her head tipping down and to the side somewhat, taking a second to collect herself. Liz noticed her face was very red, because of course that came through clearly in the photo, naturally. Daphne was saying something, one hand slipped up, nudging her chin, Liz looked up at her through her hair — Liz didn't remember this (she'd been very tired), but Daphne must have been teasing her, judging by how the Liz in the photo rolled her eyes, muttering something. And then there was a twitch, the photo jumping back to the beginning, Liz and Daphne kissing again.

"Did you know about this?" Tracey asked, tilting the paper a little more toward Liz.

"Yes." She held out a hand for the paper.

But Tracey didn't hand it over right away, probably hadn't noticed. "Did you, I don't know, announcing it in the Prophet seems like a bit much..." And definitely not like something Liz would do, Tracey was aware of how she felt about bloody newspaper articles about her, like her personal life was anyone else's fucking business. Not to mention, the photo definitely looked like it'd been taken without them knowing...

"I had nothing to do with it, but Skeeter warned me." Some of her friends were aware she had some kind of deal with Skeeter, but she hadn't told anyone the details. "Can I have that? Daphne wants to read it."

"Oh, of course, sorry, here..."

Since Liz wasn't going to get any eating done anyway, she moved her hand under the table, Daphne's quickly finding it as she splayed the paper out in front of her with her free hand. The skin contact had the added benefit of more easily picking up Daphne's reaction to the article in real time — Liz wasn't watching what she was thinking too closely, not enough to pick up any of the content or anything, but this was enough. She fiddled with her coffee cup with her free hand, trying not to notice the sharpening feeling in the air around her, people finding the article, surprise and confusion and curiosity and...

"I didn't know about this!" Pansy said from across the table, an odd high edge to her voice Liz didn't know how to read. There was some pretty obvious activity going on in her head, an unexpected thrill, Liz couldn't help looking closer and— She'd thought Liz was competition for Draco, apparently? That was hilarious, she did realise Liz didn't even like Draco, right? She barely even tolerated him most of the time. And he obviously knew that, Draco had a much milder reaction to the revelation that she was apparently gay himself, reading over the article right next to Pansy, though Liz wasn't really sure what to call that warm-cool twitching in there, so. Very silly, but, Pansy was pleased enough with the 'competition' being eliminated she probably wasn't going to be a bitch about it — Liz was already aware that Pansy didn't have a great opinion of queers, and even lesbians in particular (which was weird, since she'd grown up in the Allied Dark, while they were being led by Narcissa, but whatever) — so she guessed that was something. "How long has this been going on?"

"It's in the article."

Liz twitched. "It is?" That definitely wasn't something this Stella woman would have been able to find out on her own.

"Yes, right here," Daphne said, pointing at the article with her free hand. It must be something Skeeter contributed. She was aware that Liz had told Skeeter some stuff, so she could keep the speculation to a minimum, though again, she didn't know how they'd done that exactly, the notebooks were a secret.

Right, that makes sense...

Breakfast could have been worse, Liz guessed. There was an uptick in the noise of conversation, activity as people shifted around, and she was sure people were thinking shite at her — but the enchantments on the table did their job, Liz couldn't feel most of the room at all. That didn't affect the people at her table, of course...though she did expect that there was something that muffled things as they travelled, so that was pretty muted too. She was mostly just picking up curiosity, surprise, some people being weirdly excited and..."happy" didn't seem like the right word, but she wasn't sure what to call that bright giddiness from minds here and there. Liz did recognise the feeling, similar to how people could get about celebrity gossip sometimes, or around holidays, she just didn't know what the right word was. Not bad at least, even if it was a little distracting, smooth hot tingles crawling over her skin. She did pick up some hostility (disapproval?), cold and sharp and sometimes slimy (disgust?), but not a lot, mostly drowned out by the other stuff.

(Liz had been getting the feeling lately that Narcissa had been exaggerating how cool people were about gay stuff, but she really had very little idea. Not something she could easily confirm one way or the other...until today, she guessed.)

She did actually pick up things from other tables, though it took her a moment to notice — the clinging feeling of eyes on her, sometimes cold and sharp, sometimes a familiar warm, tingly pressure, like someone pressing up against her. She'd thought that was just from her table, it'd taken some minutes, as it kept happening but nobody nearby was actually looking at her, the angles they were coming from, those were getting through the enchantments...which would only make sense if she was picking it up through Seer shite instead. There was that whole thing Severus had said about empathic legilimency, and how the way things felt to Liz actually wasn't normal mind mage stuff. Liz had been sceptical, at the time, but she guessed this was pretty good confirmation that she really did have psychometry.

She was still sceptical of it being why she didn't like sweet things, but whatever.

And Daphne didn't think the article was too bad either — despite not preventing it from happening in the first place, which Liz could admit wasn't really her fault, Skeeter had held up her end of the deal by making it less bad, at least. Most of the time, Daphne didn't bother telling Liz about particular lines (by thinking about them very loudly so Liz would hear), but the general vibe Liz was getting wasn't so bad, some of the tension in Daphne's head loosening with relief. It was impossible to know what angle this Estelle Beringer woman would have gone for, but given her reputation — Liz wasn't familiar with her, apparently she was one of the regular writers for the society pages, a lot of nosey gossip and scandalous rumours — it probably wouldn't have been great, a lot of, just, intrusive shite, whatever. Daphne had actually flinched when she saw the byline, but the tone was pretty mild, less oh my god, big scandal, everyone, the Girl Who Lived is a queer, and shagging some superstitious dark magic abusing barbarian! and more d'aawww, the kids are growing up, aren't they adorable, how sweet. And Skeeter even included a bit about leaving the poor girls alone — she even directly quoted Liz talking about how difficult this shite could be to figure out without everybody and their mum sticking their noses in her business — which Liz hadn't expected, honestly. She kind of thought the whole point of the society section was nosey fucking noble twats not minding their own business, seemed contradictory...

There was some stuff that wasn't great — in particular, Beringer thought Daphne was trying, likely successfully, to convert Liz to her weird, backwards religion. (This part was definitely Beringer, even while both retreating to a more neutral style Daphne knew both writers well enough to recognise the different angles they took.) And she wasn't pulling that out of her arse, there was some evidence for that, or at least what other people might think was evidence. Everybody already knew about the piercings, which was a Mistwalker thing (though not exclusively), and there was the fact that she'd gone to the Yule celebration at the Greenwood — Beringer called it Yule, even though that definitely wasn't what Mistwalkers called it — even bringing in that she'd moved to Ars Publica along with the Greengrasses and Boneses (and a few other families with similar backgrounds) and her interest in witchcraft and the Dark Arts...which, Liz wasn't sure how that last one had anything to do with Mistwalkers, but whatever. The Dark Arts bit was mostly rumour, the sort of thing people had been making up ever since she'd shown up at Hogwarts and been inconsiderate enough to not be the pure light Girl Who Lived they'd all expected — Beringer even included an allusion to gossip that she'd hospitalised four of her fellow Slytherins as early as Hallowe'en of her first year with unspecified illicit magics, which had to be the snake incident, which was absurd, she'd hardly even known any dark magic then, it'd literally just taken Parseltongue, bloody idiots...

Anyway, that part wasn't so flattering, though it was...less bad for Liz. From what Daphne was thinking, Liz was mostly coming off as an innocent little girl who didn't know any better, getting dragged into a creepy cult thanks to someone actually showing her some affection for the first time in her life — Beringer was leaning on both Liz growing up with muggles, so was too ignorant of their world to have the proper disdain for the weird isolated communities at the fringes of magical Britain, and what little had come out of the Dursleys, to portray her as far more emotionally vulnerable than anyone who'd ever actually met Liz would believe she was — which Liz thought was rather demeaning and she kind of hated it, but it wasn't that bad. Daphne got off worse, since she was the scheming dark witch seducing the innocent little girl into a creepy cult with her feminine wiles. Beringer didn't literally use that phrase, but it was basically what she meant.

At least the article didn't state all that as a fact, definitively, coming off a bit ambiguous, like, is this a thing that's happening, or isn't it, who can say? Liz had the feeling Skeeter had softened it somewhat — Daphne's religion had come up, talking about her stay at the Greenwood, so Skeeter was able to include a bit about Liz saying she had basically no interest in that whatsoever. Of course, Liz probably hadn't helped with saying that she'd kind of thought the Greenwood was great, and had had a lot of fun on the Solstice (even if she couldn't remember some of it), but oh well.

So, Daphne hadn't come off looking great, and they were playing the fragile ignorant abused kid angle with Liz more than she was happy with, but it could have been worse. But it was bad enough that Liz was sure the public reaction was going to be pretty terrible. She suggested Daphne should make it so all her post was redirected somewhere, like Liz did, just in case she got anything nasty — except it turned out she already did that, everything that came for her stopped by the little post office thing at the Greenwood to be sorted before it was forwarded on to Hogwarts. Alright then, good, Liz would have felt terrible if Daphne got hurt because of one of Liz's obsessive creeps...

It could have been worse. Which wasn't a high bar, when it came to stuff to do with Liz, but.

Unfortunately, Liz couldn't stay under the nice shielding enchantments on the table forever — they had to be at Transfiguration pretty soon. The Great Hall had thinned out some by now, people heading off to whatever they had on this morning, but Liz still cringed at the weight of too many minds crowding around her, grit her teeth and kept walking. Being able to feel the eyes following her as she walked by tables really didn't help, emotions positive and negative clinging or clawing at her. (She'd rather not have the positive ones either, since it was still unpleasant having them pointed at her, but she was aware expecting people to completely ignore her would be unreasonable.) At least she was wearing the billowy uniform robes, so there was really nothing to stare at, that would have been a pain, far too much on top of everything else. As long as it stayed at this level, people paying attention to her but not being too intrusive about it, she could probably make it through the whole day.

And as long as this didn't keep happening — they passed by one bloke (Liz wasn't sure who) imagining them having sex which, ugh, could he not? That was just...really unpleasant to stumble across, sharp and cloying and sticking to her, lingering after she'd already moved on, her skin crawling and her face hot and her stomach churning. (She never had managed to eat much.) At least his imagination wasn't nearly as vivid as Daphne's could be...though it was pretty graphic, and, just, ugh...

Still holding Liz's hand, Daphne gave it a little squeeze, mind pulsing smooth and warm and comfortable. Which reminded Liz that Daphne still had her hand in the first place, hadn't been paying attention, but it was out now anyway, so whatever.

Near the doors they were met by some of their friends, a good chunk of the study group. They lingered for a moment in the Entrance Hall, a little toward the front doors, so they were mostly out of the way — Liz didn't miss how Susan and Tracey and Neville (surprisingly) kept glaring at anyone who looked at them funny. Confirming the story was true, some stuff like oh, why didn't you say anything, so happy for you, blah blah. Some people were lying about the so happy for you part — a couple thought the gay stuff was weird (or gross or immoral or whatever), or else they just didn't get Liz and Daphne specifically — but all of those were polite enough to play along. Hannah gave Daphne a big dramatic hug (but thankfully skipped Liz), not because she'd just found out, of course Susan and Hannah had already known, just sympathy over having their private lives bandied about in public.

There'd actually been something in the society pages about Susan and Hannah over the summer — people had been sniffing around with all the drama going on associated with the political realignment, someone had dug it up and made a whole thing about the only remaining Bones heir dating a girl. The family would die out if Susan didn't eventually have kids, which was the sort of thing silly purebloods cared about, especially since the Boneses' representative at the first meeting of the Wizengamot had been literally Merlin, yeah, it'd kind of become a whole thing. Though, as annoying as that had been for them, Hannah was a pretty innocuous light commoner, her family vassals of a pretty innocuous light Noble House (and also her father and grandfather were both war heroes, apparently?), so the tone of their article had been very different, without the trash that'd been flung at Daphne (and of course without the demeaning condescension Liz got). So, mixed bag there, Liz guessed, hard to say which of them had gotten it worse. The article today hadn't even said anything about Liz being the last Potter...

Hermione asked them if they'd be comfortable with her clipping the photo, and keeping it. Liz was aware that Hermione hadn't exactly had any friends before Hogwarts, it was still kind of a big deal to her, and she liked having pictures of her friends — Liz didn't get why, exactly, just one of those squishy normal person things. She hardly had any of Liz, though, since she didn't like having her picture taken. Not that Hermione said any of that, the only part she said aloud was that it was a cute picture...which was a common opinion, apparently. Daphne didn't mind (in fact, she was considering saving it herself, for similar reasons), so Liz sighed, fine, whatever, knock yourself out...

The walk up to Transfiguration was a bit of a pain, eyes and thoughts clawing at her, Liz just focussed on putting one foot in front of the other, her breath hot and sharp in her throat. The actual class wasn't so bad, but then, people did have something else to concentrate on. Or, it wasn't so bad for the people staring at Liz reason, but she did continue to hate Transfiguration — and they had double sessions only this year, it was miserable. Liz had had idle thoughts of maybe studying to be an artificer, but that required a Transfiguration NEWT (or Proficiency, she guessed, since she'd be at a school on the Continent by then), and she honestly didn't know if she could do that...

She should learn some conjuration for practical reasons — and also for duelling purposes, obviously — but she could just pick that up from Severus and Sirius or whoever, didn't need to take the whole Proficiency course. Sounded like, just, making herself miserable for no good reason. Maybe she'd take the Alchemy course, which was taught with Transfiguration for Competencies but separate at the Proficiency level, but she didn't know if she could stand five more years of this shite, or however long it would take her to finish. And then continuing to study it at the Mastery level, no, she wasn't doing that. She hated Transfiguration, so fuck it.

Which meant she was back to not really knowing what she was going to do after graduation, but she guessed she had time to figure that out.

In Transfiguration, she sat at a table with Daphne, Tracey, and Millie, so she did get an occasional glance now and then, but it wasn't so bad — occasionally distracting her when she was trying to do something, but manageable. She even noticed the (new) Professor's attention now and then, something going on in his head, didn't know what to call that. So of course she reflexively reached out to him without thinking, and—

He felt old. Carpenter had been a young teenager at the end of the war, and had heard a lot of Girl Who Lived stuff for the next decade — the Carpenters had been a Light family, now one of the more liberal members of Ars Brittania, it would have been around a lot — and it was kind of surreal to him that the Girl Who Lived was old enough to be dating now. He hadn't realised it'd been that long, he was a bloody adult now, it was weird.

Okay, that was probably her favourite reaction the story had gotten so far — it was absurdly funny, Liz was having problems not smiling at him like a creep.

After a dragging double period, they were finally let out...into the crowded halls, everyone let out of class at more or less the same time, all making their way down to lunch. On the Grand Staircase, Liz couldn't help cringing a little at the attention on her, ducking her head under the weight, unpleasant sharp something dragging across her — everyone would know about it by now, word spreading around to those who hadn't seen the paper, whispers bouncing around the hall, their eyes on her skin like wasps...

Nope, she wasn't going to lunch. All the attention on her was making her extremely uncomfortable, she'd been constantly fighting it for hours already, she could use a break. Besides, she wasn't hungry anyway. When they got to the Entrance Hall Liz turned right instead of left, heading back toward Slytherin instead. Daphne offered to keep her company, but it was fine, Liz was just going to be hiding in her room poking at their Transfiguration homework (ugh), Daphne should just go to lunch.

And she actually did just do her Transfiguration homework — there'd been plenty of times over the last few weeks where she'd claimed she was doing reading and homework alone in her room so she could focus without everyone's mind all around being too noisy, but had actually been terribly worked up by her unrelenting libido she'd been dealing with lately, the moment of privacy exploited to take care of that. This time, she wasn't in the mood at all, feeling too anxious and gross and nauseous, for what had to be the first time in nearly a month. Well, not really, she wasn't always annoyingly distractible, but it certainly seemed like it sometimes.

Not that she was pleased about not being inexplicably horny for once, of course. Not worth it.

Liz cut it pretty close, lingering in her room long enough that she was just in time for Potions. The door was still open — Vitale did the same thing Severus did, the sound of the door being yanked closed signalling the start of class (though she used her wand for that) — but looking over the room, it didn't look like anyone was missing. Liz stalked across the room, her spine stiffening as eyes found her, gritting her teeth, dropped her bag roughly on the floor, flopped down to a chair at a table near the middle of the room. "Hey."

"Hello, Liz." There was an odd, shifting feeling in Sally-Anne's head, not sure what to call that. (Though it was making Liz vaguely nauseous, she tried to pull back a little.) "Um, were you not at lunch?"

"No, I was taking a break. I can feel everyone staring at me, you know," she said with a vague gesture at her own head.

"...Right. Um." Sally-Anne drifted into an uncomfortable silence, not sure what to say. And she didn't manage to find anything, silently scrambling for words right up until the door banged shut (Sally-Anne jumped), and Vitale started talking.

Liz barely managed to keep herself from biting out a sigh — well, great, this wasn't awkward at all...

Potions was a double hour too — this year all of the required classes were, for some reason — the beginning lecture taking maybe about an hour. Not just Vitale talking the whole way through, but drawing out way more participation from the class than Severus normally did, asking questions or having them collectively logic through a problem, with only a nudge here and there from Vitale. Liz mostly didn't participate, partially because it didn't help her classmates who didn't know this shite so well if she just answered everything for them (Daphne and Susan and Draco were usually pretty quiet too, for the same reason), but also she was just uncomfortable, and probably wasn't paying as much attention as she might normally. People kept taking glances at her, yes, but also Sally-Anne was uncomfortable, a niggling edge of something that occasionally had her shifting in her seat, and, it was just awkward, Liz was having trouble concentrating.

She ended up doodling along the margin of her notebook, just to give herself something other than the eyes on her skin like ants to focus on (Petunia ranting about freaks at the edge of hearing, going in and out like a badly-tuned radio). It only kind of helped.

Eventually, they got up to the brewing part of the period, Vitale giving a brief explanation of the potion for the day before setting them loose. Once again they were doing it in teams — they normally only worked alone when they were being tested on something, since twenty-one cauldrons were a lot for one professor to keep an eye on — so, as per usual, Liz went off to collect the supplies they'd need while Sally-Anne copied down the directions. (Her handwriting was much better, the first time they'd partnered up she'd had trouble reading Liz's copy at all.) It actually took three trips, Liz returning first with the cauldron and the utensils, and then the components they'd need in two batches.

While Liz started carefully slicing the ginger root, Sally-Anne measuring out the half-white, she asked, "Why are we using a copper cauldron?"

"Oh! Um..." Finishing off her measuring, she glanced over the directions for a moment, before reaching for her bag. "Hang on a second, I know this..." She retrieved the handouts they'd been given at the beginning of the year, gathered together with a clip, flipped through them until she found a chart of the primary interactions. "Let's see, um... Ginger is here, and the alcohol is, um, and alihotsy and— Oh! We're in an autumn environment, and with... Would this explode in an iron cauldron?" she asked, sounding a little unnerved.

Liz shrugged. "Probably. I think it'd just smoke in a lead one — pewter, whatever — but using iron would not be pretty." Actually, thinking about it, it might melt a lead cauldron — it depended on whether the fire affinity grew intense enough, she wasn't sure. But it'd definitely start smoking before that, and Liz had a feeling the fumes would be very bad for you, you'd never get that far brewing in a lead cauldron anyway, so it hardly mattered.

"...Okay. So, um, the copper is to ground it, then? Is that why we're using alihotsy roots? I thought that was weird, mostly we use the leaves..."

"Maybe. Different parts of the same plant often have different properties, I'm not familiar enough with alihotsy to say one way or the other. It sounds like a good guess, though, and that is why we're using copper with this one, to drag the environment more neutral, same reason we're using silver utensils. I think so, anyway, makes sense to me. Some potions won't tell you what kind of cauldron or utensils you should be using, I think mostly due to copyist error—" She'd noticed it in some older or less professional books. And Vitale, and Severus before her, often didn't tell them why they needed to use a particular cauldron, expecting the students to figure that shite out themselves, so explaining it was still useful. "—so you'll want to look over the directions and check first. Also, copper is reducing, which is important for this part," she said, tapping somewhere in the middle of the directions, "but that's more advanced, I think we're going to talk about that next year, and it's not as important as the safety reasons. I think this one would still work without that reducing effect, like in a silver cauldron, but we definitely shouldn't use iron or lead, so. They'd both make this potion too volatile, with the environment and affinities we're working with."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"Good. Here, take this..."

The rest of Potions dragged on from there, poking at the mood-lightening draught they'd been assigned — a specialised healing potion, apparently, intended to treat the down mood that often lingered after certain curses (nightmare curses in particular, though there were more exotic ones), or as a side-effect of certain antidotes, especially for love potions. (Counters to mind-altering potions were also mind-altering potions — and it was standard practice to overshoot the estimated strength of the first potion, to make sure you got it all, meaning the patient would inevitably be left with some of the antidote in their system — though the effects were temporary and treatable.) It was somewhat complex, toward the top end of the potions they'd made in class difficulty-wise, though it wouldn't really be a problem for Liz on her own. But she'd been reading ahead, and practising in her own time, and was also a cheating Seer who cheats, so. Even keeping an eye on Sally-Anne when she was taking a turn at something, enough of her attention was free to notice the occasional flash of attention on her — not a lot, everyone was busy, but it was still irritating.

It didn't help that she couldn't do her cheating Seer thing at the moment. Opening herself up like that would mean people watching or thinking about her would be way more intrusive, and terribly distracting, it wouldn't help with the brewing anyway. If she was careful, focussing on what she was doing as intently as she could, she could sometimes power through it — she'd managed it maybe half the time, back when people were being silly about her and Severus — but she couldn't do that and coordinate with a partner at the same time.

Also, Sally-Anne was close enough she'd end up inside Liz's aura, spread out like that, which meant dealing with what was going on in her head anyway. Sally-Anne was often kind of uncomfortable in Potions — she'd had a few big accident their first couple years, wary, and also just didn't like the subject much. (Liz had a feeling she'd avoid brewing after graduation if at all possible, but she guessed that was why apothecaries sold pre-made potions.) That could be distracting enough on its own, but Sally-Anne was especially uncomfortable today, head shifting and gnarly, occasionally shuffling in place, fidgeting. It was bad enough that, even without mind magic, Liz would probably be able to tell.

Liz wasn't looking close enough to see exactly what she was thinking, but she suspected Sally-Anne was uncomfortable with Liz liking girls. Which was, just, awkward, but oh well.

Eventually they got to a stewing stage — technically a reducing stage, Liz suspected, but the difference hardly mattered — and Liz had already prepared the ingredients for the next couple steps, just giving her hands something to do. (Also, she was more consistent with a knife than Sally-Anne.) So now they were, just, standing here watching the oily-looking greenish-blue potion simmer, waiting for their timer to count down, Liz's fingers tapping at the table. (Liz was pretty sure the oiliness would be properly integrated in a later step, but she wasn't sure how, exactly...) It was, naturally, very awkward.

Glancing around quick to make sure nobody was paying them much attention — only maybe half the class had reached the stewing stage, even slowed down talking things through with Sally-Anne they were still roughly in the middle, the room a little nosier as people chatted while they waited — Liz got Sally-Anne's attention by tapping at her notebook with a pen. She wrote a little more carefully than usual, hopefully it'd be at least halfway legible. Is this going to be a problem?

A shivering of confusion through her head, Sally-Anne frowned. "What do you mean?"

Liz glanced up to give her a flat, unimpressed look (copied from Severus). More people were getting to the stewing stage, it didn't feel like anyone was paying any attention to them, so Liz just dropped the pen. In a low mutter, "Partnering with me, after...the news this morning."

"Oh!" she chirped, the mix of feelings shuffling around her head temporarily washed out with a flash of surprise — though that broke apart a moment later with a squirming mix of discomfort and uncertainty and...embarrassment? guilt? something. "No, it's not– I didn't mean to—" Sally-Anne's hand came to rest on the back of Liz's, she twitched, reflexively jerked it away. "Um, sorry..."

Grimacing at the cold, roiling mess in Sally-Anne's head, Liz said, "It's not that, just, skin contact makes people's minds much louder. That was just kind of a lot, is all."

"Oh really? I guess that makes sense..." She was aware that Liz didn't like hugs and stuff, so. And now she was wondering how, um, doing anything with Daphne was supposed to work...

Despite herself, Liz felt a smile twitching at her lips — Sally-Anne hadn't really consciously decided to think about that, her thoughts had just gone in that direction on their own. "Mostly, I get overwhelmed and end up breaking down crying like a crazy person. Big mood-killer, that." Liz was a little surprised with herself, just coming out and admitting that, but being amused with Sally-Anne's random impulsive perverted thoughts probably helped...and also people tended to find her less threatening when they realised how much of a neurotic mess she was, so.

Sally-Anne's face abruptly went very red, embarrassed that Liz had caught that thought. "Um. Right, er. Sorry. Anyway, I was saying, um, it's not... My family can be really, well, and I'm still...getting used to things." Her parents were pretty conservative Christian types, she meant, and she'd been raised with it, too uncomfortable to come out and say that for whatever reason. "They're still not happy about the whole...magic thing, and, I still haven't told them about Hannah and Susan..." She also didn't come out and say this, but she was worried her parents would tell her she couldn't be friends with them anymore if they knew — and Sally-Anne didn't want to do that, and she doubted she could convincingly lie about it, so she'd be avoiding that argument for as long as possible.

Liz found herself frowning. She'd had no idea Sally-Anne's parents were causing problems for her, they'd even come to the Greenwood and everything...though, in retrospect, they'd seemed...kind of uncomfortable. Liz hadn't paid them a lot of attention, written it off at the time as the Greenwood being a bit much, but... And Mr Perks had been very quiet and standoffish while they'd been in Romania, so, maybe there was something to that, and Liz was just being oblivious again. "I'm guessing the holiday at the Greenwood didn't help."

"No, it, um, really didn't. That's why my dad insisted on going with us to Romania, not wanting me to be alone with...those people, you know."

"...And he didn't notice Susan and Hannah are a thing?"

Sally-Anne just shrugged. Which was fair enough, Liz guessed. It wasn't like they made a habit of snogging in public, and straight girls could be pretty affectionate with each other sometimes — it could be pretty easy to not see it if you didn't want to.

"Don't you have younger siblings?" Liz was pretty sure. Sophie had more, including a pair of brothers who were definitely bonded twins who'd just started at Hogwarts this year — didn't know how they hadn't noticed something was going on there before Sophie turned eleven, but whatever — but she thought Sally-Anne had some? At least one, her mum was one of the ones who'd gotten pregnant over the holiday. "You know they could easily be mages too — if you have the same mother, and you haven't moved house, it's very likely."

She grimaced. "Yeah, um. Yeah." Sally-Anne knew for certain at least one of her younger siblings was magical, but Liz wasn't picking up any more details than that.

"...Are you okay? I mean, going home for the summers, you know." She did have other friends who might be better options, but if it was an emergency, Liz was sure the Ministry and the Headmaster could be convinced to cooperate — there were laws on the books for this exact situation — and, well, Liz did have spare bedrooms. It might be really awkward, especially if she was still being weird about Daphne by then, but, her other friends had parents who'd need convincing...

"What do you— Oh! No no, nothing like that, it's not... I'll be fine. I'm more worried about Michael and Grace, honestly."

"Right, okay." Liz still made a mental note to suggest, um, Sophie and Hannah, probably, and maybe Hermione too, they should keep an eye on Sally-Anne anyway, just in case. She knew from personal experience that things could escalate very quickly, seemingly with very little warning and for no apparent reason — and unlike six-year-old Liz, Sally-Anne did have friends who could watch out for her, so long as they knew they should be paying attention. "So, our timer's almost up here. If me being gay now is going to be too distracting from potions stuff, I won't be offended if you want to switch partners." It wasn't as though she liked brewing with Sally-Anne anyway, and they weren't particularly close either, it wasn't a big deal.

"No, it's not—" Sally-Anne cut herself off with a huff, her eyes tipping up to the ceiling for a second — her discomfort and embarrassment intense enough Liz felt flushed, her skin crawling. "Um. I'm not, like, freaking out about it, or anything, just... Some things about the magical world are still a little weird to me."

Liz felt her lips twitch. "There are queers on the muggle side too, you know."

"Oh shut up, you know what I mean." Yeah, but the way she'd said it was just funny. "It's not a big deal, I just need to...adjust. You know. I was uncomfortable with Hannah and Susan at first, but I got over that, so. Maybe just give me a few days? I am sorry about this, I know it must be uncomfortable for you, with the mind magic and all..."

"It's fine, I'm used to it. Anyway, time's up." Liz switched off the timer just before it went off, the sound was annoying. "Go ahead and start with those right there — we're going to drop the pieces in one at a time, wait for the last to sink under the surface before doing the next."

"Wait, the directions don't say anything about— Oh, we just did a stewing stage, so we're neutralising first, I get it..."

The rest of Potions passed uneventfully, their mood-lightening draught turning out more or less how it should. (Liz had the feeling she could have done better alone, but she suspected it'd get an O anyway, or at least an E.) Sally-Anne continued feeling distractingly uncomfortable — her embarrassment over their earlier conversation and occasionally worrying about her younger siblings didn't help — but it wasn't that bad. Though Liz was still sceptical whether Sally-Anne would, just, get over it that easily...but maybe she shouldn't be, when she thought about it? She meant, Sally-Anne was fine with Susan and Hannah — honestly, Liz hadn't even noticed she'd had a problem with them at first, but Liz wasn't as close with the Hufflepuffs, so. And the Hufflepuff girls even all shared a big open dorm room, so if she was fine with that, Liz didn't see why partnering up in Potions should be a problem. It'd taken Liz a while to get over it herself — and sometimes she still wasn't entirely comfortable with it, she had moments now and then — which would be annoying, suffering through class for that long, but Sally-Anne had already done it once, had said she just needed a few days to get her head on straight, so...

She didn't know, maybe it'd be fine? And, Sally-Anne wasn't nearly as uncomfortable with the mind magic part as, for example, Dorea was — thought it was weird and kind of creepy, but wasn't particularly worried Liz would do anything to her with it (a characteristically Hufflepuff-ish faith in other people was probably helping there) — so it wasn't going to be a big deal, maybe. Liz would wait and see.

Liz was a little surprised that Sally-Anne was the only person in their friend group thing (so far) who was uncomfortable with the gay part...besides Dorea, obviously...but then she remembered they'd gone through this already with Susan and Hannah, so. Never mind.

From Potions she went straight up to Arithmancy — which was a bit of a walk, meaning they barely had time to get up there, bloody pain. As before, the walk through the halls was a bit...bracing, eyes clawing over her skin, the air thick and hot and cold and sweltering with thoughts and feelings and ugh. At least the magic of the castle was dense enough that the walls of the classroom mostly blocked off everything going on outside. And the Arithmancy class was smaller than most — Liz, Hermione, Dorea, Draco (who was surprisingly good at maths), Padma, Hannah, Lily, Lisa, Justin, Wayne, Michael, Su Li, Dean Thomas, and that was literally it in their whole year — and most of them knew her decently well, so it wasn't too bad being crammed in here with them.

Arithmancy went more or less like usual. The third year class hadn't been so bad — difficult at times, but she'd managed to keep up — but they'd barely started getting into anything new yet, and Liz was already having trouble. It wasn't the concepts involved, she generally got magic theory fine, but the maths were starting to get, just, confusing. She didn't entirely get vectors, and the way maths worked with them was dumb and nonsensical, she didn't understand why they couldn't just be added up or whatever like anything else. Well, because they were kind of like arrays, she guessed, but she hadn't gotten those either, that'd been the thing she'd been the worst at last year...

Liz wasn't ready to give up yet — she could always ask Hermione to help her with the maths some day, or even Draco if she was busy — but she was starting to get the feeling she wasn't going very far with Arithmancy. Which was frustrating, because she remembered being good at maths as a little kid. She must have lost the skill over the really bad years, like with drawing. Though, when she thought about it, the thing she'd been good at as a little kid was basic computation stuff, which she was still good at — she'd noticed some of her classmates actually needed to add up or multiply things by hand, and couldn't just do them in their head. All the weird algebra and arrays and geometry and vectors and even bloody calculus, which they'd be getting into later, was a different thing, and she wasn't good at all that in the same way. She was good with the theory, and it was all interesting, so she'd try to stick with it at least through OWLs, but she wasn't certain anymore that she'd do well enough to get into the Proficiency level, and if Mastery-level stuff was anything like the arithmancy for apparation she'd been shown that wasn't happening either. (Liz still wasn't convinced that multidimensional numbers made any sense at all, and weren't just nerds fucking around with everyone stupider than them for laughs.) So, she guessed that was two reasons her idea of studying artificing was out — to get licensed normally required post-NEWT qualifications in Arithmancy as well as Transfiguration, so.

As frustrated as Liz was getting with some of the material, the class was fine, at least. Though she could have done without Michael and, surprisingly, Su imagining Liz and Daphne snogging.

The next jaunt through the halls wasn't as bad — a lot of people had sixth period free, they'd be in their dorms or going to dinner or hanging around in the public common rooms on the lower floors, the halls much less densely crowded than before. Their Runes class was similarly tiny, much smaller than last year, since they had enough kids taking the class to get well over the newly-imposed twenty(-one)-student maximum, but not nearly enough for two full-sized classes. Liz liked it this way, honestly. There being fewer students in a class made it more likely that people would pay attention to her, which could be rather distracting when she was trying to focus on whatever they were doing, but also made the environment far less noisy, which made it much easier to get through classes and actually get anything out of the lecture or whatever. Much more than the normal twenty students they had here, and Liz was pretty sure she'd barely be able to concentrate on what the professor was saying, or even make it through the hour on the bad days — the class sizes back in primary had been around twenty-five or so, and after her mind-control superpowers kicked in she'd had serious problems actually learning anything in class (not that anyone had cared) — but even the normal twenty was a problem sometimes. Around a dozen was about perfect, she thought.

Which was another reason Durmstrang might be a better choice than Syracuse — supposedly the class sizes in their Proficiency programme were often around a dozen, and sometimes even smaller in exotic subjects. That might seem unreasonably small, but people often only took two or three Proficiencies, a lot of the NEWT-level classes at Hogwarts were in the single digits too. Syracuse was a bigger school, though, so that was another point in Durmstrang's favour.

Today Runes was mostly a language lesson. Unlike in Norse runes, where the pronunciation of the original words had influenced how the symbols were drawn, but were used entirely for their meaning, so they didn't need to know the underlying language, Egyptian hieroglyphs were often used for their sounds, so they did actually have to know the language. Especially since, inscriptions in Norse runes were usually very literal, following the format of academic enchanting, but in Egyptian, it was common to use more natural, even poetical language, describing what you wanted the enchantment to do rather than the plain, arithmantic structure of the enchantment. You could use hieroglyphs the same way as Norse runes, if you wanted to, but being able to use more figurative language broadened the things you could do — and also made it more difficult for someone else to come around and interpret your script to crack it, so defensive enchantments and wards in particular tended to be very metaphorical and obscure, sometimes literally written as poetry. Which was very very neat, Liz agreed with Hermione, this shite was so cool.

(Besides, while arithmancy could be used to describe magic, it wasn't really how people did magic — human brains were fuzzy, emotional things, so obviously human things like doing magic could also be fuzzy and emotional. This way made more sense with how magic actually worked, Liz thought. Also, it required less maths, so there was that.)

Learning the language was a little hard, though. It wasn't related at all to English or French or German — Babbling claimed it was related to, like, Arabic and Hebrew, that sort of thing, and Hermione agreed it was sort of similar, in some ways, so. Also, they weren't one hundred percent sure how it'd been pronounced. Hieroglyphs had never entirely been abandoned as an enchanting script — though there was a time that it'd only been used in tiny, isolated magical communities in the region, or by individual masters of the craft dotted around the Mediterranean and passed on to students one to one — and it'd been in use for thousands of years, so of course the spoken language had changed in that time. The language used in magical Egypt now was descended from the one hieroglyphs had originally encoded, but by now it was very different, grammatically and phonetically.

During a cultural renaissance of sorts the Egyptians had had leading up to Secrecy, they'd come up with a system to vocalise hieroglyphs, based on the language spoken at the time and some guesswork, comparing with old Greek inscriptions and Akkadian — another ancient language that'd died ages ago but had been preserved for enchanting, and also a distant relative of Egyptian and Arabic and stuff. (They'd also be learning that script too, in a later year.) Nobody claimed it was a hundred per cent definitely how the language was pronounced way back when, but each sound in the system corresponded with a sound in the old language, one to one, so you could read it aloud and name different symbols and stuff, and could even be used as a spoken language if you were a nerd. Apparently, it wasn't unusual for enchanters and wardcrafters who didn't speak each other's languages, when meeting each other at conferences and stuff, to default to using this system, since at least it was something they would all know. Which might well be the single nerdiest thing Liz had ever heard, honestly...

The sounds were kind of a pain, since apparently languages in the area liked a lot of weird throaty stuff. There was a sound way at the back of the throat that Liz still wasn't great with, and she didn't get the strong consonants — or "emphatic", as Babbling usually called them — one hundred per cent of the time, saying or hearing them. That was something Hermione was at least vaguely familiar with, since it was also something Arabic did, she'd been helping Liz practise, but it was a work in progress. And, the grammar was different, but not really that bad, once she got used to it. It was kind of like Latin, in how everything inflected in funny ways and word order didn't really matter (though could be played with for emphasis), the rules were just different — also, words sometimes got suffixes and prefixes and stuff, but mostly they were inflected by changing the vowels around, kind of like in English with things like song/sing/sang/sung, but a lot more complicated. Supposedly, the modern Egyptian language didn't do that anymore (mostly), so that was all reconstructed...and some of it was actually straight copied from Arabic, so some of the very basic Arabic Hermione had picked up from relatives actually applied. Which meant she could help Liz with that a little, though she didn't have as much trouble with this as she did the sounds — it was weird, listening to consonants for meaning and vowels for grammar, but it wasn't that bad.

So, it was a weird Frankenstein of a language, and not related to anything she'd ever studied before, it could get pretty confusing at times. But Liz wasn't complaining, she was kind of having fun with it — she liked languages, they were neat. She was definitely switching on the omniglottalism when she did the blood alchemy thing, if that was an option.

Anyway, Runes class was pretty unremarkable today, mostly just another language lesson — there was some theory reading, more about how enchantments and wards worked, and some geomancy stuff, but in class they were mostly focussed on the language. They spent most of the period on a particular verbal thing, because it turned out Egyptian verbs were complicated. There was a brief talk at the end about geomancy, which they'd be doing an essay on due in a bit over a week, and then they were passed worksheets to fill out for next time. Ugh, they had to actually write in the script for this one (the cursive version, very Arabic-looking), instead of the romanisation they were usually allowed to use for these things — Liz's handwriting was terrible, they always came out looking wrong...

After dismissing them, a bit of shuffling and chatter as people started moving, Babbling called, "Miss Greengrass, Miss Potter, stay behind a moment, please." Of course, Babbling asking the both of them to stay behind had pretty much everyone in the room glancing their way, Liz didn't quite stop a flinch. Grumbling, she tipped up to sit on their table, waiting for the room to clear out. Which it did rather slower than usual, people dragging their feet, curious glances shot between Liz and Daphne and Babbling, ugh, would they just stop that already...

It took what felt like bloody minutes, which was ridiculous, but finally everyone else was gone — though, the door was still open, so Liz could feel Hermione, Lily, and Padma were all lingering right outside. Which was very silly. Liz guessed they were worried Babbling was going to be a bitch about the article this morning, but Liz seriously doubted it. If for no other reason, Babbling was a lesbian herself, so that'd be rather hypocritical of her, wouldn't it? It wasn't really a secret — there'd been a big scandal decades ago now about her shacking up with an...Ingham(?) who'd kind of been skipping out on her marriage arrangements, like the situation right now with Emily Scrimgeour and Deirdre — Liz was positive it'd come up at some point, maybe they'd just forgotten. Daphne wasn't concerned either, probably aware of the same thing.

Liz had noticed a lot of the staff were queers, of some kind or another. There was Babbling, and Sinistra and McGonagall, and Dumbledore, and properly others too, fuck knows, not really Liz's business. Supposedly, the Board preferred professors who didn't have families, free to put all their attention into their students, so it was common to hire people old enough for their children to be grown up — and preferably their grandchildren too, with how mages did extended families — or had some personal reason for being single — either just not interested in that stuff, like Flitwick, but this also included Severus, who Liz thought had been too fucked up and depressed for a serious relationship to really be possible for a good while — or were just super gay, and couldn't get married for that reason. Which seemed like a weird hiring preference, Liz had a feeling that wouldn't go over well at a muggle school, but the magical world was weird sometimes.

Once they were alone(-ish), Liz hopped back down, slung her bag over her shoulder, and started toward the desk. Daphne, walking with her, was about to ask if something was up rather more politely, but Liz got there first. "Is there a problem?"

"Not yet, at least." Babbling finished jotting something down on one of the notebooks on her desk, before straightening and giving the pair of them a crooked smile. "I'm going to have to ask the two of you to split up for partner work. I'm not singling you out, this is a standing policy of mine — I do the same thing with every student couple in my classes I become aware of. It's been some time now, but I do still remember being a teenager," she drawled, the smile twitching up more toward a smirk. "Enchanting is a form of ritual, and a...distraction at the wrong moment can end messy."

"Of course, Professor, you're right," Daphne said, voice a little breathy with a suppressed sigh. There was a lurch of disappointment in her head — they had been doing partner work together before — but she wasn't really surprised, because that was a good point. Liz wasn't either, honestly, she should have seen this coming, if they were working together in Potions she would have expected the same talk there too. "I suppose you would prefer to work with Hermione?" she asked Liz.

She shrugged. "Or Padma — Hermione might want to stick with Lily. We'll figure it out. Thanks for not telling us in front of the whole class." With how people kept staring at her today, that would have been unpleasant.

"Yes, well, some matters are best discussed in private. Or with an illusion of privacy, at any rate — if you ignore the eavesdroppers," she called, leaning back a little to aim her voice more toward the open door. There was a faint squeak from out there, that would be Lily. "If either of you do want to talk about anything you prefer be kept properly private, you know where to find me."

"...Right, sure." Liz wasn't entirely certain what Babbling meant, but that seemed like the thing to say. "So, we can go now?"

"Yeah, get out of here — I have to straighten a few things up before I can get down to dinner. Good luck, you two." With people being nosey bastards, she meant. The article this morning had reminded Babbling very much of the scandal around her and that Ingham(?) girl — Babbling would have been the Daphne in that situation, the evil devious Mistwalker corrupting the good noble girl — she was extremely sympathetic, but she was trying to keep it to herself, to not make them uncomfortable by being overly personal and familiar. Which Liz appreciated.

But that was a good point, Liz had skipped lunch and barely gotten anything down at breakfast, she was annoyingly hungry — she'd been trying to ignore it since halfway through Arithmancy, it was distracting...

Liz had barely even stepped out into the hall when Hermione said, "Lily said we can swap partners, if working with her is okay with you, Daphne?" Lily wasn't great at Runes, but she was very determined to get better at it. Not only was competency with enchanting a very good skill to have for future career prospects, but being able to do your own runework also cut down on a lot of the expensive enchanted shite you had to buy — Lily was from a relatively poor family, so it was a good thing to learn just for that reason. Hermione was Hermione, but Daphne had gotten plenty of practice with this stuff before even starting at school, so working with her was probably a lateral move, or maybe even an upgrade, for Lily's purposes.

"Of course. I'm not as practised with Egyptian as I am with Norse runes—" Both of her parents did know the Egyptian script — in fact, Liz suspected their first several conversations had probably been in the vocalised system, until Víðir got better with English — but it wasn't something Mistwalkers in general used much. "— but I'm sure we'll make do. Shall we?"

"Yes, I'm bloody starving, let's go..."

On the way down, Padma insisted on talking to Liz (and Daphne) — saying it like that made it sound like Liz was annoyed about it or whatever, but it was fine, she and Padma got on pretty well in general. She was the only one in Liz's social circle who really had any appreciation for divination (except Daphne, she guessed), so, they did end up talking kind of lot sometimes. It was just the normal sympathetic, oh, how are you doing, blah blah, nothing interesting. Though, since she did know Liz, she quickly transitioned into more nerdy stuff, which was way less awkward.

But just since the conversation moved on didn't necessarily mean Padma's thoughts had. Her occlumency was actually pretty decent, though she didn't make a point of keeping Liz out most of the time — she wasn't as comfortable with Liz poking around as, say, Daphne, but she had mind mage relatives back in India, so she knew what it could be like. Apparently, the news had mostly just made Padma sad, and vaguely worried, for weird reasons. Liz was aware that Padma's parents were pretty strict, had very particular plans for her and her sister's future (which included eventually marrying noble British boys to further establish the family's foothold here), and the thought had occurred to Padma almost right away that her mother especially would never let her get away with dating a girl, at least not without a big argument. Not that Padma wanted to, necessarily — she was all but certain she was straight — it was the principle of the thing. Just, sometimes Padma wished her parents weren't so on her arse all the time (Liz's words), being reminded of it like this was a little depressing.

And, on a similar tangent, Liz and Daphne were both the heads of noble families (future head, in Daphne's case), so they would both have to marry some man eventually. Theoretically, Daphne could pass the responsibility off to Tori, but Tori was far worse at playing by the nobles' rules — Liz got the impression most people thought Tori was bloody weird, but generally nice and harmless, which was kind of funny because she was actually a devious little thing, she was just so cheerful and friendly on the outside that no one noticed — so Daphne didn't intend to do that. She also had big sister feelings about dealing with all the politics and shite so Tori didn't have to, kind of protecting her in a way, but Padma didn't know about that part — so, yes, Daphne was planning on marrying eventually, at some point down the line. Which wasn't quite as big of an imposition as Padma was thinking, since Daphne did like boys too, but she still thought it was kind of sad that their relationship was doomed.

Which was very silly, for multiple reasons. Seriously now, they were fourteen — Liz realised nobles often arranged these things very early, but she personally thought the assumption that any relationship at their age would last forever was fucking absurd. (She was well aware that Petunia had had multiple boyfriends before meeting Vernon, and this was one area where Petunia was actually normal.) Also, Padma was maybe forgetting that Daphne was a Mistwalker, so, even if she were actually gay, there was nothing stopping her from being with someone she was properly attracted to...you know, just like Daphne's own parents? Honestly. Liz knew from poking around that Daphne legitimately thought having a three-person (or more) thing like her parents (a category which included Heli, at least in the privacy of her head) would be ideal, which, her parents had definitely been an influence there, but Mistwalker culture could also just be like that sometimes. She thought it was more...fair, with more than two people, for reasons Liz couldn't quite follow. Not sure that was even the right word, honestly...

Also, Liz had absolutely no intention of marrying a man ever — thanks to memories Tamsyn had sent her, Liz was pretty much one hundred per cent certain she didn't like boys at all, not even a little bit. She'd be adopting people to get anyone who cared about the House continuing to exist for silly cultural reasons off her back, but obviously Padma didn't know that. She was mostly sure she'd be offering to adopt Hermione, or actually probably her and her baby sister (and also her parents, as vassals or clients or whatever the fuck was convenient at the time), since Sylvia had agreed it wouldn't be a problem with the Potter family law stuff, but it was better for practical reasons to wait until Hermione was at least fifteen...which she was now, actually. Um. Well, Liz guessed she just needed to work up the nerve to do it, and who knew how long that would take.

And she should talk to Severus about it first — Sylvia had pointed out that the trusteeship meant Severus would also become Hermione's legal guardian on the magical side, but currently that was technically the Headmaster, so, shouldn't be a problem. (Hermione had actually spoken to Severus, at least.) But adopting Hermione had been Severus's idea in the first place, Liz doubted he'd have a problem with it...though he might not have realised at the time that he'd end up responsible for her too... Whatever, she'd ask him before bringing it to Hermione.

Dinner was bloody miserable. The enchantments on the tables were still doing their job, which continued to be great, big improvement — but they didn't do shite if people kept coming over to bother her, stepping inside the range of the wards. Also, she'd never done great with random nosey arseholes talking at her, just in general. Apparently, they'd all gotten their gossip out of the way, and now felt the need to come up and talk to her about it, ask questions about something in the article or whatever they'd been speculating with each other about since, and it was fucking awful. She didn't want to talk to people about this in the first place — she wasn't even used to it herself yet, definitely not comfortable talking to practical (or actual) strangers about it — their thoughts and feelings clawing at her making her terribly uncomfortable, and she was trying to eat...

She gave up before too long, fleeing down to the kitchens. The elves, at least, were accommodating enough to ignore her when she wanted to be left alone. Daphne didn't come down with her — the elves made her uncomfortable, due to the whole magically-reinforced slavery thing, which was fair — but Tracey did, and she was accommodating enough to talk about things completely unrelated to the article specifically or her relationship with Daphne generally. They spent most of it speculating about the Triwizard Tournament coming up soon — the teams from the other schools would be arriving in just a couple weeks, the elves and Filch had been going around cleaning up the school ahead of time, some more Ministry people were in the Valley, putting up some temporary housing for families and spectators, Liz could feel the anticipation on the air, everyone very excited. (When not distracted by politics or her shite, anyway.)

Liz had been pretty confident Artèmi would be the Beauxbatons Champion, until Tracey reminded her of the age requirement — you had to be seventeen to enter, but Artèmi was only a year older than them (if she went to Hogwarts, she'd be a fifth-year), so she wasn't eligible. That...didn't seem right. Liz was unreasonably confident Artèmi would be participating in the Tournament — for no real reason she could put words to, which meant it was a Seer thing — and if she could enter she'd definitely be picked — who the hell would the Goblet pick above her? — but Tracey was right, she wasn't old enough. That was...weird. Supposedly most events allowed participants from among the rest of the student body (hence why Beauxbatons and Durmstrang were both bringing sizeable teams), and obviously Artèmi would volunteer, maybe that was all Liz was picking up. Liz was pretty sure she'd be competing herself too, but she'd always intended to volunteer to back up whoever the Champion would be in the events where that was allowed, so, probably the same idea.

(Her Seer-feelings were strangely ambivalent, honestly, but she knew that much for sure.)

Tracey was convinced, but that still didn't seem quite right to Liz — she felt very certain that Artèmi would be the Beauxbatons Champion. But she couldn't be, she was too young. It was very confusing, Liz had no idea what was up with that. Oh well, she guessed she'd find out in a couple weeks.

Speaking of competition, Liz had a meeting of the duelling team to get to straight after dinner. They had enough time to linger for a little bit after they were finished eating — babbling about the Triwizard and the duelling tournaments coming up, Liz poking at a little bowl of her ice cream (apparently one of the elves had quick whipped up a tiny batch for her when she'd walked in, because elves were thoughtful like that) — before it was time for them to get going. Tracey took the stairs up, heading to the library for a study group meeting, but Liz continued on into Slytherin, quick changing into duelling clothes. Liz still didn't like trousers, but duelling in a skirt was awkward, so. (Shorts bothered her less, for whatever reason, but the magic-made trousers she'd gotten were baggier, and she'd rather not deal with people staring at her arse just now, thanks.) She'd drawn an annoying amount of attention going through the common room on the way in, so she took a secret exit instead — it brought her out near Transfiguration, so she had to take a few turns and down a little twisting staircase in a corner to get back to the ground floor near Helga's Gallery, but it wasn't that much further of a walk than just going out the front door.

Liz had noticed that, since she'd started paying more conscious attention to those inexplicable nudges, she hardly ever got lost — being a Seer could be a pain, but it was also neat sometimes.

She probably should have been surprised to find Daphne waiting for her, leaning against a wall near the entrance to the duelling hall, but she wasn't in the slightest, likely also for Seer reasons. When Liz turned onto the hallway, she wasn't alone, talking with Susan — also changed for duelling, in muggle-made denims and tee shirt, which continued to be very un-pureblood-like behaviour, but whatever. (Susan's denims were an unusual deep green, but that was machine stitching, so that must be something muggles actually did, and not just Cassie Lovegood being...well, a Lovegood.) Susan saw her coming first, shot her a smile and a little wave, before seemingly saying goodbye to Daphne and vanishing through the doors.

Feeling oddly self-conscious with Daphne watching her (her eyes on her skin warm and tingling), Liz clomped her way closer, her boots a little loud against the tile. Lurching to a stop a couple steps away, "Hey. What's up?"

"Nothing really, I just thought I would stop by quick. I might be in bed by the time you get out." Daphne would probably still be awake when Liz got out of the meeting, but she went straight into the shower afterward, and by the time she was done and got her stupid hair to dry it'd be pretty late. (Which meant she wouldn't be able to get to sleep until stupid late, but it was better than stinking up her bed.) "How are you doing? I've hardly had the chance to ask all day..."

"I'm fine. The article wasn't as bad as I was expecting, honestly." Not for Liz, at least, but Daphne had seemed more tired reading the parts about herself than anything. "People have been being stupid about it, but, well. Skipping mealtimes helps, and I've been in an up mood lately, so. I'm okay, really."

Daphne was a little sceptical, which was kind of annoying...though not really unreasonable. She was aware that Liz wasn't a hundred per cent comfortable with the gay thing herself — which she didn't take personally, knew it was a muggle culture thing, and also something her relatives might have been bastards about — and wasn't certain whether Liz would actually tell her if she was having a bad PTSD brain day (Liz's words). Her thought was that Liz wouldn't tell her about intrusive Vernon memories or whatever, because she didn't know Petunia had actually been worse about this one — about lesbians specifically, anyway, Vernon had a very negative opinion of gay men. (Vernon privately suspected Marge was a lesbian, so was somewhat softer on queer women, because naturally he had to find some way to be a hypocrite about it.) She had been getting faint Petunia flashes now and then, and she hadn't told anyone, so it wasn't an entirely unreasonable concern — but they were faint, so it wasn't a big deal.

Rolling her eyes, Liz muttered, "Oh, honestly..." She sidled a little closer, reaching to take both of Daphne's hands. Which made her mind way louder, of course, the cool sharp niggling of concern and doubt a bit irritating — but Daphne was always pleased and flattered when Liz initiated physical stuff, so that helped. "I mean it, I'm fine," she insisted, bobbing their hands up and down a little for emphasis. "A little worn out, mentally, from keeping everyone's thoughts and feelings off me, but I've had much worse. I'm okay, really."

Her doubts didn't entirely go away, but the reassurance helped — not to mention the touching, Liz had noticed that in normal people before. (And herself too, sometimes, she assumed it was the same basic idea as that moment in the Hospital Wing after Dorea's first seizure last year.) Her mind gradually returning to its normal warmth, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, her thumbs rubbing over Liz's knuckles, Daphne gave her a somewhat ambivalent smile. "Good. I was worried."

"I know." Mind mage. "I'm more worried about you, honestly. Especially with how obsessive creeps can be about me..."

"You're sweet, but I'll be alright. While you were in Arithmancy I sent a note back home to take extra precautions with my post for the foreseeable future." Good, that was a good idea. Liz didn't care about random people at the Greenwood as much as Daphne did, obviously, but Daphne would be miserable if someone got cursed by something meant for her, so. "I was cornered by a few older boys on my way back down, but that was the worst of it."

Liz frowned — and this time not at Daphne once again calling her 'sweet' despite that being bloody ridiculous. "Who?"

"I'm sorry, Liz, I'm not telling you that."

...She was concerned Liz would confront them and blow it up into a way bigger deal than it was, and probably get herself into trouble, at least detention and maybe worse. Which, honestly? Fair.

"I wasn't in any danger — they weren't being particularly threatening. Rude, yes, but I'm not concerned." And Daphne wasn't just saying that, Liz was in her head so she could tell she hadn't been frightened at all. Irritated, and a bit offended...mostly on Liz's behalf, if she was reading this correctly. Apparently there'd been some rather crude sexual comments involved, which didn't necessarily bother Daphne in principle — though coming from practical strangers like that was very rude by Greenwood standards — but she'd known Liz wouldn't have appreciated people talking about her like that, so. "I will tell Professor Snape if I believe anyone is becoming a threat to me. I promise."

"Okay, good." Severus was way scarier than Liz, and actually had authority to punish people for being arseholes without getting into trouble, so yeah, better choice. "So, if we're both good, I need to get in there," nodding toward the doors. "I think the meeting should be starting any minute now." She didn't hear any spellwork going on, still sounded like just chatting, but.

Daphne gave a heavy, disappointed sigh. Kind of playing it up, like — she did enjoy hanging out with Liz, for some inexplicable reason, but just being silly, you know. "Very well. I'll see you tomorrow, then."

Liz didn't know what else to say, so she just went with, "Yep."

Daphne started moving, but not to grab her bag and leave, still holding on to Liz's hands, and she'd already leaned halfway down before Liz realised what she was doing — because even with mind magic, she could be unreasonably oblivious sometimes. For the briefest of instants, it occurred to Liz that doing this out in the middle of the hallway probably wasn't a great idea, but fuck it. The news was out already anyway, and they were alone out here, it wouldn't make a difference.

Besides, kissing was nice, so there was that.

It was just, you know, a light little kiss, but somehow, Liz wasn't entirely sure when it'd happened — an odd warm lurch in her stomach and her skin crawling — her hands were in Daphne's hair, Daphne's arms wrapped low around her back, pulling her closer, and— This wasn't the first time they'd done this, Liz's arms over her shoulders for leverage and Daphne helping to hold her up on her toes, pressed close together, but it was always, Liz didn't know. The mind magic part was a lot, of course, but that wasn't different than normal, Daphne's arms around her very distracting. Like, normally the physical part could get kind of washed out by the mind magic part, but her attention kept being drawn to the warm soft pressure around her waist, one of Daphne's hands just over the back of her hip, very very distracting. For some reason, Liz couldn't say why, exactly, it just burned its way into her attention, it was odd. And the kissing had gradually gotten, er, more as Liz got used to it — not proper snogging yet, she didn't think, but it did get kind of hard to breathe at times.

Aaannd there it was, now she was getting inexplicably (or not so inexplicably) horny again — was wondering where you'd been all day...

Liz was startled out of it, an unpleasant shock thudding through her that practically had her hair standing on end, by the sound of someone lightly clearing their throat from nearby. She jumped away from Daphne, nearly tripping over her own feet for a second. Alex was standing just outside of the doors, watching them with one eyebrow raised, mind simmering with warm amusement that didn't show on her face — Liz hadn't noticed her there before, Daphne's mind from so close loud enough to blot out everything else. "We're just about to get started. Unless you'd rather stay out here, of course."

"No, that's not—" Liz cut herself off to clear her throat — her voice had come out...wrong. She wasn't sure how, exactly, just that she hadn't sounded like herself for a second there. Also, that would be a silly thing to respond to with an actual answer in the first place, Alex had just been teasing. Of course, she had no idea what she should say, and it was getting increasingly difficult to think straight the longer she floundered, her face burning and her fingers twitching and her stomach twisting. "I, I'm coming. Um, bye," she shot back at Daphne — which was maybe rude, but her head was an odd mix of all soft and warm, and bubbling with amusement, and flicking with concern, so she probably didn't mind — and slipped through the doors, reflexively ducking her head as she passed by Alex. Somebody had conjured seating not far inside, sofas and shite, Liz noticed a spot on a sofa (empty except for Katie), started headed straight for it.

And tried not to notice people glancing her way as she came in. She was certain her face was very red, she felt uncomfortably hot and flushed, eyes crawling on her skin like ants (Petunia hissing about freaks somewhere in the background), she tried to ignore it as best she could. Thankfully, nobody was making a big deal about it, going right back to their conversations without any fuss. Liz flopped down into a seat, and then immediately started fidgeting, trying to find a comfortable position. It was annoyingly difficult, she was having trouble sitting still.

The sizzling of nerves didn't help, but her face was still very hot, and she could feel her heartbeat pounding in her throat and her fingertips and— Yeah, she was desperately trying not to think about that — especially since being distractingly turned on in public was extremely embarrassing. (Thankfully, from the thoughts she was picking up, nobody noticed that part, just the embarrassment part.) She would hope it would go away if she just ignored it but, at least these days, that didn't actually work. The meeting would be something different to focus on, and they'd get into practice soon enough, that might help...

Liz's eyes kept flicking back Alex's way, feeling kind of...she didn't know, exactly. She was pretty sure nobody had actually seen Liz and Daphne kissing before. That was a weird thought, she didn't know how to feel about it.

Oh wait, fuck, by this point the whole bloody country had probably seen the photo. Never mind.

Speaking of, just as Flitwick was clapping his hands, getting everyone's attention, Katie sidled a little closer to her. "Hey, Liz." She pushed herself against the backrest at an awkward angle, so she could pull something out of her pocket, unrolled it to show to Liz. "Mind if I keep this?"

Liz just had to glance at the square of paper — the photo from the paper this morning, obviously — before flopping against the backrest, groaning. "Oh, for fuck's sake..."

Katie, naturally, just laughed at her. Because of course, that was just Liz's life today...

---

A couple days later, Nilanse rushed her a letter — Liz had been completely dumbfounded when she'd realised it was from the man who'd taken the picture. He wanted permission from her to sell copies.

This had been very confusing, for multiple reasons, so Liz had gone to Severus to ask about it. Apparently, as a Lady of the Wizengamot, she did have some control over her name and her image — if he had gone around selling copies of the picture without her approval, she could have sued him within an inch of his life. Now that he'd mentioned it, she did remember talking about that before, that the kids' books and other shite about her was dubiously legal, it was a whole thing. Only dubiously, because the Girl Who Lived in there was obviously a character who had barely anything to do with her (the drawings didn't even look like her), and Liz had been named a National Treasure not long after that Hallowe'en, which complicated things.

It was all very confusing, but the short version was that this bloke did need her permission. Taking a picture and selling it to the papers, when it was something newsworthy, was fine; selling pictures of her to private citizens, just because, was not. Severus had written a letter to the man, telling him in no uncertain terms that they would not be doing that, and also that if something like this happened again he and Severus would be having a...private chat. Severus didn't come out and say anything directly threatening, it was more implied — when he said that he wasn't doing anything about it this time due to advice from his friends, he meant he'd talked to people who knew the law better than he did, so knew there was nothing they could do about the photo in the paper, but Liz was pretty sure the photographer was supposed to read his friends as former Death Eaters, and that they'd talked Severus out of murdering him for concern he'd be an obvious suspect.

(He'd given her the letter to go over before sending it, and she was positive he'd written it to sound like a threat to leave her alone, but not in a way he could actually get in trouble for, subtle like. Severus really could be very scary sometimes.)

Liz had sent her own letter immediately afterward, reiterating that she would not be signing off on him selling copies...but also asking for a copy for herself — a proper one, on a more durable material than flimsy newscopy. She'd framed it, it was sitting on her bedside table now.

As much of a fucking pain as this whole incident had been, it was a nice picture.

---

Well, Liz is having fun, isn't she? Ironically, starting the part where Liz and Daphne were in the carriage, I was having the same problem as Liz, had to give up for the day only a couple hundred words in. Sleep is hard, time is fake, blah blah.

Anyway, this chapter is already long enough, so I'm not going to bother commenting on anything else. Beauxbatons and Drumstrang arrive in the next scene, so let's get this trainwreck started.