Liz woke into a warm, fuzzy haze, unfocussed and so comfortably numb she could hardly even feel her body at all. She might have lingered on the edge of consciousness a lot longer, if she didn't feel the need to pee niggling at her.
She reluctantly sat up, hugging the blanket around herself to hold in some of the warmth, blinking around the unfamiliar room — after a moment of confusion she remembered she was in Severus's apartments. Her wand holster was sitting on the bedside table, so she immediately pulled it back on, tightened the straps, before pushing herself off the bed, dropping the blanket on the way. She kind of didn't want to leave it, feeling very warm and comfortable, but bringing it with her onto the toilet was probably a bad idea. There were two doors, the bathroom was...that one, okay...
When she got back, Liz poked around the room, but she didn't see her robe anywhere. She was pretty sure she'd just dropped it on the floor, but whichever elf was looking after Severus's rooms must have taken it off to the laundry — which was a pain, she had had things in her pockets, potions and stuff. Oh wait, her things were laid out on the desk, never mind. Of course, she didn't have anywhere to put them — the shorts she was wearing now were meant as underclothes, and didn't have pockets — but she'd figure it out.
Liz unlatched the door, twitching a little at the release of magic as the privacy spells broke, poked her head out. She was in a short little hallway, a few closed doors along it, a short distance away opening up into Severus's sitting room. Unsurprisingly, it was empty, the lights on low. "Luceat." Or, was it igniat in here? Some enchantments used one and some the other, or sometimes allowed for both — she must have guessed right, the lights brightened somewhat after a couple seconds. It was a little odd that there was a delay, she remembered that'd happened last night too, didn't know what that was about. There was a cloak-rack toward the far end of the room, near a door she assumed led out, but the front peg was empty, so Severus must already be gone for the morning. Her wand falling into her hand, she quick cast a time charm and— Oh wow, it was already after nine, yeah, Severus was definitely gone.
Liz was supposed to be in Transfiguration right now, but fuck it.
"Um..." Severus had said she could call an elf for breakfast — it wasn't so late they would have gotten rid of all the breakfast stuff already, so they could just grab her stuff quick. (Which would make less overall work for people than calling Nilanse.) He hadn't told her the elf's name, though, and she didn't know how she was supposed to call for an elf she'd never met. "I'm sorry, is there an elf watching these rooms?"
There was a brief delay, before an unfamiliar elf appeared in the room with the usual pop. He was wearing the Hogwarts elves' uniform, a simple shift printed with the Hogwarts shield, with especially big floppy ears and deep blue-green eyes. "Nola's being here. Is Miss Potter needing something?"
Liz wasn't really surprised that the elf recognised her instantly — who else would be in Severus's apartments in the morning, and also they always recognised her anyway. (Big racist bastard that he was, the Dark Lord being blown up was almost an even bigger deal for house-elves than the Light kids.) It was slightly odd that his name ended in an -ah sound, since she was used to that being in girl's names, but she'd noticed feminine elf names often ended in -ay or -ee instead, so she assumed the elves' language was just different. Ooh, she should definitely get Nilanse to teach her that once she got the omniglottalism switched on — humans didn't learn elvish at all ever (besides omniglots from magical families who had elves, anyway), so it'd be a great language to use when being sneaky. Anyway, "You didn't get rid of breakfast stuff yet, did you?"
"Nope! They is still putting it away down there." Sometimes, the leftovers were used in other dishes, like pies and stuff, but a lot of it was actually given away to orphanages and, like, the magical equivalent of soup kitchens or whatever. Liz had asked once, because they always put out way more food than they needed, it'd seemed wasteful — but if it was just going to charity anyway, she guessed that was fine. "Miss Potter is wanting Nola to bring her things?"
Liz tried not to grimace. The Potter elves had mostly perfect English, she'd almost forgotten how bad the Hogwarts elves' was — it was a little irritating, but she was aware the average house-elf wasn't exactly given a proper education, so it wasn't like Nola could help it. Liz asked for a couple things — with caveats about if there was any left, so they didn't make her fresh stuff when they really didn't need to — and specifically the coffee they had at the staff table. The coffee the students got was...she didn't know, maybe watered down or something, maybe just shittier beans? It was significantly less flavourful, anyway, and probably had a lower caffeine content. She didn't care so much about the caffeine part, but bland coffee was pretty gross — like, why even have coffee at that point, ugh. (Most mornings she skipped the coffee, or just cheated and evaporated off some of the water to make up for it.) It's not like the students weren't allowed to have the good coffee, the elves would give it to them without protest if they asked, it just wasn't put up to their tables automatically.
A few minutes later, Liz was back at the desk in the bedroom, with a tray of sausage and eggs and potatoes and fried bread — she was weirdly hungry this morning, didn't know what was up with that. Nola had included jam of some kind on the tray, for the bread, and a tiny cup of honey for the coffee, and also a little bowl of sliced fruit, seemingly just because. Apparently he hadn't realised that the reason she hadn't asked for that stuff was because she didn't want any. She knew elves could be a bit naggy about nutrition, hence the fruit, just trying to be helpful. Whatever.
She kind of didn't want to walk across the common room dressed like this, just because people would stare and she didn't want to deal with that right now, she'd probably call Nilanse to pop her over eventually. For now, she didn't have anything in particular she needed to be doing, so she just poked around the bookshelves in the sitting room, sipping at her coffee. The shelves in his office were mostly all academic texts and stuff, some old student files and previous years' exam booklets, but these were different. Some shelves were packed with journals and magazines and the like, but a lot of them seemed to be novels, surprisingly — she didn't think she'd ever once seen Severus reading fiction. Some of them were definitely old, the spines creased in multiple places, obviously having been read multiple times.
Out of curiosity, Liz pulled off one, a beaten-up looking book called The Owl Service which, surprisingly, was actually muggle-printed — she'd assumed at first glance that the title was a reference to owl post, but nope. With how thin it was, the colourful cover, she assumed it was a kid's book of some kind. Liz peeled back the flimsy, creased cover with a thumb, immediately finding a message written inside with somewhat unsteady-looking cursive:
Happy Birthday, Sev!
from Lily Jan 69
...Okay, then.
Liz gently returned the book to its spot on the shelf, and moved on.
A couple minutes later, there was another pop of house-elf apparation — despite how odd and smooth house-elf minds are, Liz recognised this one instantly. "Nilanse?" She turned around, and yep, that was Nilanse. "What's up?"
"That are being priests at the gate."
Liz frowned. "Priests?"
Nilanse nodded, forcefully enough her ears flopped around a little bit. "Yes, at the house in Ireland." Well, Liz assumed that part, that wasn't what she was confused about. "Cediny is thinking it is better for you to talk to them, but I can tell them to go away."
...No, Cediny was probably right. Liz was aware that religion could be kind of important for mages — depending on which mages, but it did seem to be a bigger deal than on the muggle side these days — and in Ireland the priesthoods even had, like, political and economic power and everything. She did intend to live in Ireland long-term, so she should probably try to avoid offending the locals. Back visiting the Malfoys last year, Severus had said she should assume she was being insulted if she was greeted at the door by an elf, and having an elf chase people off the property was probably even worse. She had no fucking clue what a bunch of weird pagan priests could possibly want with her, but dropping by and asking them in person was literally the least she could do. Besides, it wasn't like she was doing anything else at the moment. "No, that's fine, I can go. Oh, hold on a second, let's go by my room first — I have some stuff back in the bedroom, over here..."
Liz couldn't carry her things, her coffee, and hold Nilanse's hand to be apparated at the same time, so Nilanse just snapped her things to her room ahead of them before bringing her over. She got dressed quick — just picked a dress at random, she doubted it made a difference — reached for the coffee, and... "Um, I don't know the rules. Think they'll be offended if I'm drinking my coffee while talking to them?"
Her mind clicking almost audibly (like marbles tapping against tile), Nilanse thought about it for a second. "No? If they are doing something for you, it is best to be giving them gifts in return — mead and nut bread are best, meaningful-like — but when only talking this is being fine."
"Okay, good. Let's go."
Liz had expected to be apparated right to the gate, but she appeared in the ridiculously overdone entrance hall instead — elves could be weird about being seen by outsiders, that was probably it. She moved for the door, tried the handle once before unlocking it — she didn't ever lock it, since the wards kept people off the property anyway, Cediny must have gotten it — stepped out into the front garden, started down the brick path toward the front gate. The place looked rather different than the last time she'd been here, more colourful — surprisingly, the leaves on the trees and even the wall-hedge had gone all orange and vivid red. Wasn't this pretty late in the season? The trees that did have leaves around Hogwarts (the Forest was mostly pine) had already all dropped them by a week or two ago, and she thought it'd be getting late around London too, but most of the plants she saw here still had the majority of their leaves, just colourful. Supposedly Ireland had milder winters, being smaller and flatter than Britain, that might have something to do with it. Neat?
(She did think autumn colours were pretty, by comparison it was kind of boring when everything was just green all the time.)
Anyway, there were a clump of people waiting just outside the gate, in relatively plain robes — dyed, but mostly in single, dark shades, without much decoration or anything. One, two, five people, apparently, two older and three younger, she thought. There was a small cart out on the street, Liz couldn't see it very well with the hedge in the way. They noticed her not long after, eyes on her skin like ants, she took a calming breath and kept on walking. Their attention wasn't especially bad or anything — their minds were quite smooth and still, actually — just, she hadn't seen many people yet today was all.
"A thaoisigh," one of the men called as she approached. "Ádh is sláinte ort."
"Ah, tá brón orm, I don't speak Gaelic." She'd picked up a little staying here over the summer, but really not very much — she was only mostly certain that even meant I'm sorry. "Working on that. Do you speak English? neu Gymraeg? Ou le français, je suppose," she added, coming to a stop just inside the gate. Woah, felt kind of funny speaking three languages in the space of a few seconds, all right then.
"We speak English," one of them said, a woman maybe in her thirties, gesturing between herself and one of the men. "It's a greeting, means luck and health to you."
"Got it, ádh is sláinte ort, I'll try to remember that." It did feel familiar, she must have heard it before, just slipped her mind.
"Oraibh — ort is singular."
"Right, right, I knew that." Cambrian did the same thing — she was pretty sure ort was Gaelic for arnat, which meant oraibh was arnoch — she just hadn't known the plural in Gaelic was a V-sound (Cambrian had a hard H sound instead). She'd try to remember that... "Anyway, what can I do for you lot this morning?" she asked, took a sip of her coffee — couldn't forget about it, it'd get cold if she stalled too long...
"As it is an tSamhain, we are going around the neighbourhood, and..." The woman trailed off, eyes turning from Liz, frowning to herself. Leaning a little toward one of the younger men, she muttered, "I don't know how to explain in English."
The man's lips twitched. "A blessing."
Snapping her fingers, the woman hissed, "Ach, that was the word, I'm sorry. We don't use English much for these things, you know."
"No, I get it, it's fine." All their religious services and shite would obviously be in Gaelic, Liz wouldn't be surprised if their English vocabulary was lacking in this area specifically. "I don't get what this is about, though."
"You may know," the English-speaking man started, "that there are great fires on the night of an tSamhain. During the day, the ashes are used for a blessing, on homes, it is... The reason for this, the meaning, is complicated, and I'm not sure I can explain it in English either. It is for good luck, and to invite protection from ill will. Also, the ash may be tilled into the earth, mixed with milk and blood, for good growth over the winter or come spring. An saoi here," he said, resting a hand on the shoulder of one of the older men, "suggested we might add you to the list."
Right, so it was part of the religious stuff Gaelic mages did for Hallowe'en — Liz knew very little about all that, and didn't care too much, honestly. Though, she'd initially assumed all this stuff was just myth, but now she had to wonder. Her invisibility cloak definitely wasn't normal, and if it was created by something...else, then that would suggest there was some kind of higher power out there. Also, ritual magic invoking gods did work, sometimes, so there was that. (The atheist angle on that was that ritual magic worked, just by itself without any divine intervention necessary, so it wasn't proof by itself, just information to consider alongside the rest.) It was possible there was something to this stuff — and even if the priests' understanding of why this shite worked the way they thought it did was wrong, it was still ritual magic, and obviously ritual magic worked, so.
Also, Liz had to keep the being a good neighbour so they'll be cool with me living here thing in mind. Refusing an offer from their religious leaders to do something nice for her was probably a bad move. Especially when it probably wouldn't cost her anything. Liz had no idea why this bloke had decided to add her to the list — maybe they just wanted her to feel welcome here, maybe they thought giving the Girl Who Lived some good luck was a good idea (though Gaelic mages didn't tend to care about that stuff as much), maybe it was indirectly because they knew about Severus and Síomha dating — but it didn't really matter, did it?
"You know I'm going to Hogwarts, so I'm not staying here most of the time."
"But it is your home — for this, that is what matters."
Taking another sip of coffee, Liz nodded. Right, ritual magic could be like that. Maybe not a bad idea? She did think witchcraft was neat, and she'd never gotten to see magic like this either...
"...Yeah, okay." She pulled the gate open, stepping off the path so she wouldn't be in the way. "I have a feeling I could use the extra luck this year. Ah, thank you is go raibh maith agat, right? No wait, the 'T.' at the end means it's singular again, so it's go raibh maith agaibh?"
The priests filed through the gate, while the woman gently corrected her pronunciation — she was close, Gaelic was just a pain sometimes. (Cheating and learning it with mind magic was definitely the correct decision.) Also, that was kind of a weird thing to say in context, but they were aware she didn't speak Gaelic and hadn't been raised with the religion, so. They wanted to do a quick circle of the property, just to see what all was in the garden and where the entrances were, Liz left them to it, ducking back inside quick to call Nilanse. She was a little surprised to find Nilanse still standing at the entrance waiting, she'd have thought the girl would have gone back to...whatever she did during the day, Liz didn't know, honestly.
"Oh, hey. They're going to do some ritual thing, for Samhain you know. For luck, I guess? I have no idea if this shite works at all, but I thought it couldn't hurt, you know."
"I'm thinking so too," Nilanse agreed, nodding. "The gods came for you before, but none can say if they will again. It's never bad to ask."
...Lily's ritual, she meant. Liz was pretty sure that hadn't involved any divine intervention or whatever, but then, it wasn't like she could make out Lily's notes on it — she'd written them in a personal enchanter's shorthand, in Egyptian, so. Not important. "Right, um, so we should get them stuff, right? We have the mead here, but, I'm guessing you lot don't have the nut bread or whatever at Clyde Rock." She couldn't remember whether elves could even eat nuts or not...she thought so...
Nilanse shook her head. "Um... I'll go buy some. It can be done in a couple minutes." Liz knew elves could buy things, from shops and bakeries and stuff, though she really had no idea how that worked — it's not like she'd ever seen any house-elves in Charing or here at the Refuge. "It is better to make these things, I'm thinking, but there isn't being enough time."
"Okay. Just leave the loaf or whatever in the kitchen, and I'll bring them in the back way after — I think it'll look better if I'm cutting it for them, you know? Especially since we're just buying it." Liz didn't know shite about this stuff, but that seemed like a good guess? Kind of like pouring tea for a guest. There was a little flicker from Nilanse's head, giving Liz a...sceptical look, maybe? Hard to say, elves' faces were shaped different. "What?"
"Priests like to eat outside if they can, doubly so on the important holidays. It is better to bring it out to them, I'm thinking."
"Oh, sure, I can do that. I'll just get it from the kitchen, then."
"Okay. I'm going now?"
"Yeah, go ahead. Thanks, Nilanse."
By the time she got back outside, the priests had finished their circle of the property, one of the younger ones walking back to the gate to retrieve the cart. One of the older ones said something, pointing at the door and the trellises Honish had put up, the woman from before translated — there was a whole ritual with drawing designs on the doorframes in ash, with some prayers, and they could do the thing with the milk and blood for whatever was planted there, and if she had other garden stuff somewhere. She explained that most of the property she'd pulled up the grass and just scattered random flower seeds around, since she thought it'd look better that way and take relatively little effort to maintain — the priests actually agreed it was a neat idea, which made them the first (she suspected they appreciated how wild it would look, being pagan priests and all) — but those were grapevines, you know, for wine? If they could spare the stuff for that, she guessed that'd be neat — she had a feeling grapes didn't tend to grow in Ireland very well without a little help anyway...
They didn't need any participation from her for this all to work — theoretically, if the wards would have let them in they could have just come in and done it themselves without her present. She could participate, of course, the residents normally did, but since she didn't speak Gaelic, she thought it was best to just sit back and not get in the way. While they started on the front door, the woman hung back with her to explain what this all was. (None of the priests had volunteered their names, and Liz had no idea whether there was a reason they hadn't bothered, like if their names didn't matter when they were doing priest stuff or something, so she didn't ask.) The markings around the door, streaked onto the wood with a thumb, were in an illegible script of angles and curves along a central line, looking almost like the branches of a tree. Liz recognised it from its use as decoration on all kinds of things in the market here, presumably somehow related to the old pre-Romanisation script some of the Celts had used for things — Sirius said it'd gone through a lot of changes, supposedly even people who could read the signs couldn't read the old inscriptions on standing stones and shite, and it was mostly just art these days anyway. It was an alphabet, so it wasn't really useful for rune-work, the woman said they were just repeating a couple words, more a focus for the ritual than anything.
Supposedly, the prayers — in Gaelic, Liz didn't understand a word — were to Bríd, who Liz had actually heard of before. The religious Gaels worshipped a lot of different small gods, like traditions in their family or for a particular career or whatever, but there were also a handful of big names that were important for everyone, and Bríd was one of those. Not an expert, but her impression was, like, big queen of the gods shite — sort of like Juno, but super Celtic about it...except not really. From what Liz had heard here and there, Bríd was big as a protector of the home and children in particular, and also healers, which sort of made sense, but also sheep and cattle for some inexplicable reason, and even certain kinds of craftsmen, particularly metals and ceramics. You know, the ones that used fire, Bríd seemed to be associated with fire somehow — Severus had even mentioned a fire spell named after Bríd as one that could be used to kill dementors — which didn't seem to make a lot of sense with the rest. Whatever. She was one of the top, most important gods in their religion, to the point that her priesthood had significant political and economic power in magical Ireland, Liz understood that much.
Gaels often avoided using gods' names, for superstitious reasons, and the protection of children part was big enough of a deal that Bríd actually often got called "the Mother" instead...and the orphanages in the magical world were often dedicated to Bríd (or a Cambrian equivalent) or directly run by Bríd's priesthood. The woman with Liz did mention the bit about Bríd being a protector of orphans specifically, just in passing — she didn't come out and say so, but Liz added that to the list of possible reasons they'd thought to add her to their list anyway.
After doing both doors, they went around the property clockwise, blessing her bloody grapevines. (Liz was trying not to show how silly she thought all this was, but it wasn't any sillier than any other religion, so.) This one, the woman explained, actually had nothing to do with Bríd at all, but was a sacrifice to someone she called an gCailleach — Liz was pretty sure (but not positive) that that was a basic noun for a person (though she forgot what exactly, maybe feminine?), so the priestess must be avoiding using someone's proper name again. Though, she never actually did give Liz the figure's name, so it must be someone people were especially superstitious about. Some kind of goddess of winter and maybe death, she thought — the priestess said the point of the sacrifice was to appease an gCailleach so she wouldn't kill all of Liz's plants before spring came again, so, not a bad guess. From the sound of it, she thought what the ritual actually did was replenish the nutrients in the soil and give the plants some extra protection against the cold (not that it ever got that cold in Ireland), so Liz guessed the mythology didn't really matter that much.
When they were getting close to the end of the grapevines, Liz told the woman she'd be back in a minute, and slipped through the back door into the kitchen — the door was locked, but Liz just had to tell the wards to open it and she was let in. It'd only been a few minutes, but she was unsurprised to find a circular loaf of some kind of bread, a dish of honey, a sizeable pitcher of something, and a few little mugs set out on a platter on the kitchen counter. Liz was pretty sure they didn't have anything like that platter in the house — it was made out of a reddish wood, the rim carved with curly botanical designs occasionally interrupted by leaping squirrels and hippogriffs, very Potter — Nilanse must have popped by Clyde Rock to get it. That looked rather unwieldy, Liz was worried she'd drop something, so she quick adhered the pitcher and mugs to the surface with a sticking charm, cast a hover charm tied to follow along behind her, and walked back out.
(Magic really was extremely convenient sometimes.)
She found the priests back on the front path, finishing up repacking the supplies on their cart to go on to the next house. When they realised Liz was showing up with stuff for them, she caught flashes of surprise from multiple minds — and their thoughts were unguarded enough that she was able to catch why. It wasn't a bad surprise, they just hadn't expected it. Not only were they aware that Liz wasn't Gaelic, and had even been raised by muggles, so probably didn't know much about how the priesthoods worked in the first place, but also they only expected this on Hallowe'en from the especially pious or especially formal, and obviously children weren't really known for the latter. Traditionally, priests weren't supposed to be paid for doing priest things in money, instead trading favours for favours — though Liz knew the priesthoods did accept donations, that was a different thing — but people often didn't bother for little routine holiday stuff like this (or just in general if they were especially poor). It was the nice thing to do, they just hadn't expected it.
So, good call on that one then, Nilanse — she did want the locals to be okay with her living here, doubly so with the nationalist movement getting big these days. Being especially hospitable to the priests and getting them to like her was probably a net benefit to her...particularly since the priesthoods happened to be big in the nationalist movement itself. Couldn't hurt, at least.
The spell keeping the platter afloat was self-sustaining, so Liz wouldn't risk dropping it while she was lifting a brick out of the walk path — she could put it back in place with a couple charms, not a big deal — an overpowered engorgement charm and a couple awkward transfigurations turning the brick into a stand to set the platter down on. Since she was doing the proper hostess thing, she quick filled all the mugs from the pitcher (definitely mead, she could smell the spices and the colour was too light to be cider), before starting in on cutting the bread. She'd expected to just slice it up with magic, as she usually did, but Nilanse had included a bread knife on the platter — was there some, like, symbolic reason she was supposed to do it by hand? She knew from her visit to the Greenwood (and Daphne's mind) that some of the religious types in magical Britain did have a thing about that, sometimes. Hard to say, but she went ahead and used the knife just in case. The bread had obviously been spiced to hell, and those were nuts of some kind, but there was something— Oh, those bits were apples! Which meant there was probably honey in this too, she thought, it might be too sweet for her...
They all sat in the dirt with hunks of bread and mugs of mead — Liz took a slice from the edge that she'd intentionally cut small, with the excuse that she had just had breakfast before they got here, but it turned out it was too sweet for her. It wasn't, like, super disgustingly bad or anything, just a little too much. She was positive it was sweetened with honey (it had a certain aftertaste, it wasn't hard to tell), and Liz payed close attention to what she was feeling and... Yeah, it was just making her a little queasy, an entirely physical thing, she didn't think it was Seer-related at all.
But then, if it was Seer-related, she wouldn't have a problem with honey. Liz hadn't taken seriously Severus's suggestion that her problem with sweet things was due to a sympathetic echo, not at first, but she'd gotten proof she had psychometry since then, so it was worth keeping in mind. See, psychometry could give people an impression of the history of individuals and objects (more to the point, the feelings people who owned/used the objects had while in contact with them), and could also give them an intuitive sense of a new person's character or what an unfamiliar object was for and how it was used, but it was also common for wide-spread cultural and/or historical associations with a particular kind of object to come up as well. In particular, products that were made with huge amounts of slave labour were sometimes tainted by the suffering that'd surrounded them in the public consciousness going back generations — sugar and cotton were the big ones, but depending on the sensitivity of the Seer there were others that could be problems too. Gold, for example — though specific coins or pieces of jewellery could be a problem for nearly any Seer if they were associated with something traumatic, the general case was somewhat uncommon — in rare cases even some basic food stuffs, like wheat or potatoes or rice. Theoretically, the bad vibes around sugar and cotton should decay the further away the events influencing them became, and their history faded out of public awareness, but as long as people still remembered their history it would never go away entirely.
Also, according to Tamsyn sugar cane growers still lived and worked in horrid conditions in most of the countries the stuff was grown in, and of course sweatshops were still adding misery to cotton too. So, actually it would probably continue to be a problem for as long as sugar and cotton were profitable to exploit. Turns out, capitalism was kind of fucked for Seers in particular — feeling other people's misery attached to the land and to products could suck like that.
Anyway, Severus's theory was that Liz had gotten the stereotypical extremely negative sympathetic echo off of sugar back when she was a little kid, and hadn't understood what was happening to her. Her brain had just decided sweetness makes you feel bad, so it then applied that idea to all the other sweet things it came across, whether or not that sympathetic echo was actually there. (Generally, Seers had better luck with honey and fruit, though the details of how they were produced did very much matter...so anything she had in the muggle world would probably have been bad anyway.) That a relatively small amount of non-cane-sugar-based sweetness in, say, mead or dry wine or Fortescue's ice cream wasn't a problem, but the tiny, undetectable amount of sugar in, for example, muggle pizza sauce (to counteract the acidity of the tomatoes, apparently?) did bother her, would suggest that there was something else going on there. He hadn't brought up the specific example of the tomato sauce on muggle pizza until the second time they'd talked about it, and she had to admit that was a good argument — he claimed he couldn't taste any sweetness from it at all, which was honestly just baffling, it was really gross to her.
The idea that sweet things are bad was so deeply-ingrained now that she probably would never be able to get rid of it entirely, but confirming what the problem actually was would still have benefits. For one thing, if a recipe actually needed sugar for a particular reason (like tomato sauce, for example), she could use a substitute sweetener which didn't trip her Seer shite instead. Also, why she tended to like magic-made wine and whatever else more than the muggle stuff, even when it was theoretically dry enough, probably had something to do with magical producers in Europe almost never using cane sugar — which was definitely something she should keep in mind if her grapevines got off the ground. And it might be possible she could make preserves or whatever that were low enough in sweetness they'd actually be palatable, as long as she avoided sugar, or even skipped the sweetener altogether, supposedly it was possible to do that.
Since Liz didn't like sweet things, it wasn't like she was especially enthusiastic to discover whether it was possible to work around her weird neuroses about it. It was still worth investigating, though. The honey- (and apple-) sweetened bread was a little unpleasant, but she was positive it was just because she didn't like the sweetness itself. So, the plan would be to compare this feeling to tasting something with cane sugar in it, and seeing if there was something different about it — even viewing both memories in her pensieve, if necessary. If it did turn out her dislike of sweet things was due to Seer stuff, she wasn't sure what she would do with that information, but at least she would know.
(Severus also suggested that wearing cotton might be having a constant negative effect on her mood she wasn't consciously aware of, and that switching to more neutral fabrics might cause a small but meaningful improvement on her general mental health, but that one was harder to fix than just avoiding sweet things. She really didn't like wearing anything other than the muggle-made cotton pants she was used to, for what she realised were very neurotic and irrational reasons, and mages didn't have a convenient equivalent that wouldn't make her constantly self-conscious and anxious. So, interesting theory, but useless to her.)
It was making her slightly nauseous, but Liz kept nibbling away at the bread anyway, just to be polite. She could have done without the smalltalk — she was maybe better with social stuff than she used to be, but there were still a lot of things she just didn't get — but she did try to play along, again just to be polite. A couple questions about how she liked living here, which were at least pretty easy to answer — this last summer had been the best in her life, hands-down, though that probably didn't have much to do with the Refuge itself. It was a nice place, though, and the people here were way less likely to make a fuss about her than in Britain (the island), so yeah, sure, great. She did plan on living here permanently, volunteered that she was looking into learning Gaelic — she said Severus was finding someone to help, but left out the copying the language with mind magic bit, not sure how the priests would take that. It wasn't really a requirement, she'd gotten by here just fine over the summer without it, but it seemed the thing to do, and also languages were neat, so.
The Triwizard Tournament did come up, the English-speaking man saying something about it being good that they'd asked the Mother to keep an eye on her, then — Liz refrained from asking him why he thought she'd agreed to have them do this whole thing in the first place.
But it was mostly, you know, the sort of meaningless nonsense adults always talk to kids about, which was a little exasperating, but it wasn't that big of a deal. Before too long, they were ready to go again — leaving half of the bread uneaten, Liz would have to figure out what to do with that — with a chorus of goodbyes in a mix of English and Gaelic. One of the older priests was, just, silently watching her, which was a little creepy, but whatever. A pair of them dragging along the cart (aided by an enchantment of some kind, Liz was pretty sure), she followed the priests to see them off at the front gate, a last few tedious thank yous passed back and forth, blah blah.
They were about done when the priest who was still staring at her came up, grabbing her wrist — Liz jumped, barely resisted the urge to yank her hand away. The priest's mind loud and cool and sharp against hers, insistently meeting her eyes, he said something low and intense...in Gaelic, of course. There were flashes of surprise from the younger priests, all turning to glance at him — but not the other older bloke, she noticed — one started to ask him what he was talking about, but he let go of Liz and turned to step through the gate without another word.
"Um...what did he say?"
The two English-speakers glanced at each other, hesitated for a moment. Then the man admitted, "An saoi says Death's eye is on you."
...Okay, that wasn't ominous at all. "What does that mean?"
There was a little bit of low chatter going on in Gaelic, the man glanced that way before giving her a helpless shrug. "Honestly? I have no idea."
"It doesn't mean he felt your own death approaching," the woman said, in a soft, insistent sort of tone — trying to be reassuring, Liz thought. "If he meant that, he would have said Death's hand is on you. I think he's trying to say you have someone's attention, but I don't know what that means. I'm sorry."
...When Liz thought about it, it could be as simple as that she had the invisibility cloak — Susan and Daphne had made a pretty good argument that it probably wasn't actually an Artefact of Death, but they didn't know for sure, and the etching on the button thing sure as hell looked like Death symbolism. Or maybe it was because of Valérie...or maybe she was going to kill people in the future, and Death was watching her for that reason. Or maybe it was just because she'd not died when she was supposed to, back on Hallowe'en '81. It could be practically anything, really, and it wasn't necessarily something to worry about.
And she had enough things to worry about already, so she was just going to go ahead and not give that too much attention. "Right, I'll, um, keep that in mind...I guess." Really didn't know what else she could say about that...
The priests left without much more fuss — Liz thought the younger ones looked slightly unnerved by the old man's comment that Death was watching her, but, she thought, not like it was a huge tragedy or anything, just odd and confusing. So, right, probably not something to worry about, too much. (Even if the thought of gods or whatever watching her was even more creepy than Nilanse.) Lingering at the gate, Liz watched the priests continue on for a minute or two...so noticed they didn't stop at the neighbours' house. That was the Flaitheartas just there — Liz had seen Séadhgha now and then, and occasionally a grandchild came by, but she hardly ever saw his wife. (She thought she had a bit more trouble, for old-person health reasons, didn't get out much.) So, apparently they had a very specific list, and weren't just stopping at every house. They skipped the next one too, and the next...
Huh.
Levitating the platter again, she returned the brick to its proper shape and its proper place, went around back into the kitchen to call Nilanse. She didn't know what the hell to do with the leftover bread, since she didn't want it — Nilanse apologised for getting something too sweet for her, but it was fine, Liz realised she was needlessly picky — maybe the elves could have it, could they eat nuts? Apparently, it depended on the nut — this had almonds and hazelnuts in it, which were fine. The apple was actually more of a problem, but it was a small amount, and the bread was pretty dry, so yeah, they could probably eat it without any issues. She'd ask Cediny's opinion just in case, and if they couldn't have it she'd just drop it off at one of the vassals' houses, they'd figure it out. Right, good then. Liz didn't want to entirely fuck up Cediny's stasis charms by staying in the house too long, so let's get straight back to Hogwarts.
Nilanse brought Liz back to her dorm room — she had maybe only a second before everything got very weird. The air around her crystallised, pushing in so tight it was impossible to breathe, she could feel the attention of something on her, rather like eyes on her skin, but only like how a blade of grass is sort of similar to a tree, too much, tension thrumming through her all at once, stealing her breath away and making her head spin, and alien thoughts were washing over and through her, completely ignoring the natural resistance at the boundary and sweeping through before she could even think to stop it, senseless shapes and colours flashing behind her eyes, the intensity of the magic gathered around her so great that she tasted herbs and copper on her tongue, her skin practically sizzling, fingers of inscrutable magic crawling over her inch by inch, body and mind, Liz was completely powerless even to try to resist, swept away so thoroughly she could hardly even summon the attention to freak out about it, just wait for the tide to rush past...
...This felt familiar.
So thoroughly scattered as she was by the initial, overwhelmingly powerful contact, it took her a moment to identify the electric tension on the inhumanly vast, alien mind combing through her. It was hard to say for sure — it was a mind of some kind, or at least it acted like one, but it definitely wasn't human, too big and too, just, weird, colourful steel hissing with jittery static, like a radio just a little out of tune — but she thought she picked up a feeling of urgency, focus, an unbalanced, unsteady sense of what might be concern.
It was the Castle. It'd freaked out over her again, for some reason.
Wildly flailing, dizzy, almost impossible to think straight past the magic coursing through her, Liz tried to reach back to it, to read the alien thoughts focussed on her. It was hard to say, grabbing at one of the cool silvery filaments running through her didn't have the familiar web of memories and knowledge branching off like in a normal mind, but it seemed like... Hogwarts understood what the Triwizard Tournament was — one metaphorical eye on the binding spell tying Liz to the Goblet, it recognised this, knew what it meant — and was invested in supporting their Champion as much as anyone else. Apparently, when it'd felt Liz leave the extent of its awareness without warning, it...
It was worried she'd been kidnapped, Liz thought. That had happened to Champions before — never immediately after being selected, but Liz didn't think a bloody building would necessary perceive time the same way they did. Of course, Liz had never heard anyone mention anything about the Castle paying this close attention to the Champion, there hadn't been any comment she'd read from Champions mentioning the Castle communicating with them, but maybe it was just because she was a mind mage and had gotten the wards' attention before, so—
Oh. Oh! The Castle hadn't been able to communicate with students then! It remembered the Tournaments, enough to recognise the binding and that the Champions were more likely than the other residents to be targeted by the school's enemies, and while it had been able to reallocate its resources accordingly, it hadn't known how to talk to people yet. It might not even have been fully conscious the last time Hogwarts hosted a Tournament. This was only a vague feeling Liz was getting — she wasn't even sure she was getting this through mind magic and not random inexplicable Seer intuition — but she thought...
The Castle had always been alive, in a sense, but it hadn't always had a will of its own. Like, how the human brain had to develop to a certain point before people could think for themselves, it was the same idea — except, for the Castle it'd apparently taken centuries. Liz didn't know how long, exactly — the Castle could 'remember' pretty much all the way back to its own 'birth' just fine, it didn't really notice the difference — but it'd never even considered contacting previous Champions, or even professors before the last few—
Liz caught a little flash of sparkly, alien memory — its memories weren't stitched together in a web like a human's, but they were still connected, like branches of a tree, or sparks thrown from a fire — and apparently Hogwarts had helped Sirius escape when he broke in last Hallowe'en, consciously tweaking the moving staircases and space-twisted hallways and shite to cut his pursuers off. (Sirius was a former student, and Hogwarts had known he was innocent, so.) And it felt like that wasn't the only time Hogwarts had intervened since Liz had started here, she was catching more radom sparks burning the same colour (trippy), occasionally nudging a professor toward an injured student, or preventing more people from stumbling too close to the basilisk, steering the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws onto a path up toward their dormitories that wouldn't go by where the troll was (despite it already being knocked out by Liz by that point), and even little things, like subtly tweaking environment spells if it noticed someone was too cold or something. That was...odd, she'd literally never noticed. She wondered if anyone else knew about this — surely the Headmaster at least must...
The urgency faded, the magic coursing through her turning warm and soft, as the consciousness built into the wards finished assuring itself Liz was okay — it was hard to tell, as overwhelming and alien as its presence was, but Liz thought it lingered for a moment over her memories of the priests and their protection ritual, curious. With a last surge of magic, wrapped around her warm and fuzzy, an echo of flowers and roasted meat on the air — a bit much, pressed on her mind so powerfully she could hardly feel or think anything else, but not unpleasant, almost like a weird mind magic equivalent of a hug — the magic around her started to loosen, breaking up like ice quickly melting, the Castle's attention turning away.
No, wait, don't go yet! The alien mind finally loosening its grip on her enough she could think straight, Liz belatedly remembered she'd been trying to talk to this thing. She reached out toward the rapidly fading presence, trying to grab onto something, her mental grip too clumsy, polished glass too slippery for her to hold on to, water dripping through her fingers. Liz quickly gave up on trying to hold it here — its mind was far bigger and more powerful than hers, obviously, she might as well try to stop a speeding lorry with her bare hands — and forced a compulsion into the parts of it she could still reach instead. She copied an impression of the Castle's own concern for Liz from a moment ago and forced the feeling back into it — when she felt the magic take, pushing in her own impression of the static on the wards, her creeping certainty (maybe a Seer thing) that something was wrong with it, flashes from her letters with Tamsyn on the subject, anything she could think of, just throwing it at the Castle all at once.
Liz wasn't entirely certain that the alien presence understood, still lingering at the edges of her awareness — it hadn't left, at least, pausing in place. There was a feeling there, lurching, sizzling, shifting...surprise, confusion, maybe? (The Castle had only recently, from its perspective, started making contact with people; had anyone ever tried to make contact with it?) Then, abruptly, its attention turned back to Liz, sudden and intense enough that her breath was startled out of her lungs, and then its mind was slamming back through hers, the magic intense enough Liz's skin crawled and her blood burned, her head spinning—
A flood of impressions and images whipped past Liz's eyes, too quickly for her to really make sense of it all. But she was certain that it was trying to tell her something. The wards didn't think in words, or even images — after all, it didn't have eyes — its senses entirely magical, and...something else, Liz wasn't entirely sure what that was. Her mind automatically tried to translate what she was being shown into visual stuff, shapes and colours, that second thing coming through touch, her sense of her own body. (She assumed it was a magesight or Seer thing, just how her magical perception worked, but the wards thought it was due to her latent omniglottalism, which, okay, Liz had so many questions.) For a second, there was just too much, jumbled all together, before it felt like the Castle intentionally narrowed the flow, trying to reduce itself to a level Liz could actually try to keep up with.
Even then it was a little much, and too fast, for Liz to interpret it very well. Pins and needles, like her limbs falling asleep, an occasional sharp, uncomfortable, steady stabbing, like splinters scattered at random head to toe. A flash of someone writing in a book, and then someone doing something with a horse(?), elves crawling over a hallway like ants, replacing the floor tiles and some of the fixtures, someone wandering around through a maze of bookshelves, lost, a flash of fire (Fawkes?) followed by a bone-shivering boom, the antiseptic smell of the Hospital Wing inexplicably floating around someone bent over a desk absolutely covered with dozens of sheets and rolls of parchments, a small team of mages working on one of the public bathrooms—
The Castle retreated a step, giving Liz a second to breathe. A shiver of what might be frustration passing between them, she could tell it knew it hadn't properly got its message across, that Liz didn't understand. It definitely didn't directly communicate with humans much, it wasn't sure how to make itself understood. Another silvery strand of thought slithering through her head, Liz got an impression of someone reading a book, their attention slipping along rows of text, line after line, turning the page and on and on.
Yes, one idea at a time in some kind of order would help, thanks.
There was a shudder of some kind of feeling, didn't know what that was, and the flood of images came back, in a rather narrower channel, somewhat easier to follow, lingering on each just for a heartbeat. Another impression of the Hospital Wing — the physical features were vague and indistinct, but Liz still recognised the feel of it, somehow, the blob of a human presence was definitely Pomfrey — and then she saw two people huddled over a book, making edits to something by candlelight. The magic in the air thick and crystallised, the impression seemed to zoom in on the book — it looked like any other book, the Castle probably hadn't known what it'd looked like, the details filled in by Liz, but she could feel the importance to the Castle on it glittering like stars — and then the book was replaced, just for a flash, by the memory of the wardstones Liz had picked up spirit-walking, walls covered with runes and an enormous floating diamond burning with silvery light, and another blink and it was just the book again.
The ward scheme — Liz hadn't realised Hogwarts even had one. The Castle had originally been designed as a fortress, and obviously having the script all written down in a book that could theoretically be stolen was a security flaw.
Four minds burning in her not-vision, one winked out, and then a second, and a third, the last remaining handed the book off to someone new before passing out of the wards' sight forever — the Founders dying off, Liz thought. The book was passed from one hand to another, to another, to another, but then it slipped through someone's fingers and fell—
—a dark, jagged, filthy presence, burrowing itself deep within the Castle's heart, an infestation too stubborn for it to do anything about it — the soul at its centre had been keyed in as a child, he was a student once, leveraged that connection to get inside — twisting and corrupting the place of learning against its purpose, deathly creatures stalking its halls, and then there was an army at the gates, burning hot with righteous fury and buoyed with phoenix song, and the presence forced the wards to hold them back, but the assault proved stubborn, his attention wavered, and the Castle chose, just for a moment, weakening its own defences in the right place at just the right time, and the army poured through the gates, chasing the hated interloper down, down—
A being of fire, unfamiliar, born to a land of sun and sand far from here, he saw it, knew it was here. When the army left, he stayed, searched for the book, crawling throughout the Castle — a burning fire inside, steady and warm and soothing — searching and searching, but they couldn't find it.
A mind, one closer to it — a headmaster, maybe? — descended down, down, down, disappearing where the wards couldn't see. Its own magic was too dense around the wardstones for the Castle to watch what was going on in there, like how people couldn't observe the base structure of their own mind from the inside — it could feel if someone was in there, vaguely, but no more than that. Someone was doing something, except it wasn't one someone, these were actually a bunch of different overlapping memories, who knew how many exactly, as they layered on Liz getting dizzier and dizzier, splinters jabbing into her one after the next until her skin was burning, she couldn't—
The fire knew something was wrong — a flash of the Hospital Wing, Fawkes (the being of fire was Fawkes, Liz realised) sitting on a bedpost, singing for help, and people came crowding around the bed, poking and prodding at her. Someone disappeared into that too-bright place, and Liz's hand was just gone, another person, pins and needles sweeping over her legs, again and again, going blind and deaf as she was mutilated, screaming for them to stop, Fawkes crying out—
A dozen flashes, of seemingly random hallways and rooms and staircases, even furniture, flicking by too quickly for Liz to make sense of them, the splinters digging into her stinging with each flash. There was another book, made of skin and bone, dripping blood and screaming with violation and agony — definitely a metaphor of some kind, not a real thing, but Liz didn't get what the Castle was saying — a litany of people writing in it, making revisions, each time vanishing into the too-bright place, or flashes of mages and elves working away, driving more splinters into her skin. Liz saw what she thought was a recent memory, Fawkes and Babbling and Flitwick and Filch and Norris, gathered in a room somewhere with the bleeding book. Fawkes had always known the book was wrong, and he'd always known the Castle was there, but he could actually pass along messages for it now — so Liz wasn't the first person the wards had contacted, then — and thankfully they had a collection of staff members who were receptive to what he was trying to say, desperate arguing back and forth, standing over the bed in the Hospital Wing again, prodding at the wards, trying to help. But they didn't understand what was wrong, not really — they knew the numbness was bad, and the splinters, but they didn't know how to fix it.
And the brightest mind, closest to the wards — the Headmaster, Liz thought Dumbledore at this point — was cautious, demanded understanding, a full treatment plan, before anything could be done. A flash of him standing in his office, looking out a window, mind cool and hard and worried, Fawkes lowly cooing, there were shadows on the horizon, they needed the sanctuary of Hogwarts now more than ever, if they made a mistake and crippled Hogwarts's defences the consequences could be disastrous. The Castle understood, though Fawkes was exasperated with it, it was allowed to think of its own health for two seconds...
A new brightest mind (Gamp) standing over its hospital bed being read in by Babbling and Fawkes and company, confused and overwhelmed, he didn't understand the gravity of the problem. Not yet. And still the numbness spread, the splinters digging deeper and deeper, desperation digging away at the edge of the wards' awareness — but still it hoped, bright and hot and eager, because they had made progress, people knew there was a problem now, but it was going so slow, and it hurt, every waking moment for literally centuries. And it didn't know how much longer it would take, it'd hoped it'd be easy to fix — when its humans got hurt they sure seemed to heal up fine pretty quickly — but even explaining the problem was taking so long, and they still didn't get it, it would take forever at this rate. Who knew how many centuries of agony it still had to look forward to, that steady soothing flame its only true companion all the while, his heart breaking again and again with each renewed life.
More flashes of random rooms and hallways, floors and walls and fixtures, and Liz saw the four lights again, the Founders. The last one, resolving as a glowing crystal (like a flamelight enchantment) held in a person's hand, then passed on to another, another, another. Liz wasn't sure what this was supposed to mean — descendents of one of the Founders, maybe? Somehow, the crystal was a book now (Liz hadn't noticed the transition, trippy), not just a book but the book, the final person standing a short distance away from the hospital bed. Fawkes tittered, nodding toward the person, Babbling and Norris pointing their way — despite Liz's mind translating Norris's presence as cat-shaped, which looked funny — but Dumbledore shook his head (shadows on the horizon flickering in his mind), and Gamp was just confused, glancing over his shoulder but not seeming to see the person at all, his eyes going right through them...
Liz thought she got the message. The Castle was in seriously bad shape — not an emergency, it could stick it out for a while if necessary, but it would suck the whole time. Not to mention, they were still doing more damage, day by day, so it'd be harder to fix the longer they put it off. It was certain there was someone out there who could help, connected to one of the Founders somehow — the last to leave Hogwarts (by death or otherwise), which was Hufflepuff by the most common version of the story, or else Slytherin (immediately after Hufflepuff's funeral) if you subscribed to the Slytherin was a metamorph and also not racist at all version of the story passed around in certain old-fashioned Dark circles — but it couldn't get the staff to agree to look. Which it did understand, security concerns and all that, but it was extremely frustrating.
But Liz might actually be able to do it instead — she didn't have the same obligations the staff did, and wasn't keyed into the wards anyway, so couldn't even do any serious damage no matter who she talked to about it. The Castle didn't want Liz to do the healing herself — obviously, she was only a student, and still didn't understand what the problem was, exactly — she just had to try to find the person with the book, and they'd take care of it (or at least bring the ward scheme back so the staff could). Liz would have absolutely no idea who that person might be, but she guessed she could ask around. Maybe Tamsyn would have ideas?
As she came to that conclusion, there was a burst of something warm and giddy from the mind still surrounding her, making Liz's head spin. It pushed up closer, surging through her, wrapping around her warm and soft, echoes of phoenix song bright and giggly — though, only the impression of its effects, without the burn of light magic Liz felt from real phoenix song. Liz could feel the Castle's excitement crackling through her, stealing her breath away, the odd mental hug making it hard to think straight. But the Castle realised this was overwhelming for her — she couldn't exactly write a letter to Tamsyn like this, and having this intensity of magic focussed on her couldn't be healthy — so, now that it had successfully gotten its message across, it quickly retreated. Liz abruptly came to lying on her back on her bed, gasping for breath, shivering, sparks of alien magic still sizzling over her skin like static. She could still feel the Castle's presence on the air, a last few silvery filaments of thought, but those were gradually slipping away too, letting its attention wander elsewhere. Until, after a few seconds, it was gone, the ambient magic of her dorm room as still and thin as ever, like nothing had happened.
Fucking hell, that was a trip...
Prickling with cold sweat, a little dizzy from the ordeal, it took her a moment to notice the tug at her skirt, the— Oh, Nilanse! Liz must be a little out of it, she hadn't felt her mind there at first. "Oh, um." She cleared her throat, struggled to get control of her breath again — her limbs still shivering, light-headed, she felt like she'd just been running around for an hour, like a really intense duelling practice. Which was ridiculous, that could only have taken a few minutes, and she'd been laying here the whole time... Liz shakily pushed herself upright, finding Nilanse standing at her knee, vivid red eyes even bigger than normal. "Sorry, I'm back."
"Are you being okay? What was that?"
"That was the Castle — I finally managed to get the bloody thing's attention." Liz had told Nilanse about Hogwarts being alive, and her suspicions that there was something wrong with the wards, over the summer. She'd seemed remarkably unsurprised by the idea that the wards might be conscious somehow, but she guessed elves sometimes had a very different perspective on magic than humans did. "We just had a talk, but its mind is huge, you know, and it doesn't really talk to humans much, I'm not surprised if I was out of it for a second there. I'm fine, I promise."
Nilanse looked slightly sceptical, but after a couple seconds she reluctantly nodded. "Okay. What did you talk about?"
"Well, it turns out I was completely right: there is something wrong with the wards, and the Castle does need help. It asked me to look for someone who can fix it."
"Who?"
"I don't know, someone connected to the Founders. I was going to—" Liz tried to push herself up to her feet, but she was still dizzy, lost her balance and tipped right back down to the bed. "Woah. Okay, if the room could stop spinning, that'd be great."
Nilanse frowned at her, her lips quirking to the side — she was worried, Liz thought, but didn't want to annoy her by making a big fuss. "Are you needing something?"
"I was going to write a letter to Tamsyn, hopefully she'll know where to start." Nilanse knew Tamsyn's real name, thanks to stumbling across her letters at some point, but not where she came from or any of that. Liz wasn't worried, she'd just asked Nilanse not to tell anyone (including the other elves), it should be fine.
"Oh, you can be doing that in bed. One second." Nilanse popped away, for some reason, okay then. Since Liz apparently wasn't going anywhere anyway, she crawled up the bed, her head spinning even on her hands and knees, Jesus. If the Castle could figure out how to not completely drown her by next time, that'd be great. Liz had made it to the backboard, sitting leaning against her pillows, by the time Nilanse got back. The little elf reappeared with a sizeable, curved wooden tray, which Liz guessed she was supposed to use like a lap desk? Nilanse set it down next to her, pointed at a bluish-purplish potion sitting on top. "That is for overchannelling, Fennis gave it to me." That was the name of one of the healing assistant elves, Liz remembered, he followed Severus around sometimes. "The Castle was very loud, there was being so much magic around you, I think it hurt you a little. If you don't take it, I will go ask Cediny for permission to bring you to a healer, no matter what you say."
Despite the threat to drag her off to the Hospital Wing against her will, Liz still felt her lips twitching with amusement. "Starting to get a bit frustrated with me, huh." Though, it was possible this was Liz rubbing off on her some more — she tended not to have much patience for her friends doing stupid shite either. The potion probably wasn't a bad idea, though, so she went ahead and took it without further complaint, levitated the pitcher on her bedside table over so she could wash it down with some water.
Her mind lurching with what Liz identified as embarrassment, Nilanse shrugged. "You are very stubborn. Which is good for some things, but it is not always being so."
Liz had to smile a little at Nilanse's use of are stubborn. She'd never had it explained to her explicitly, but reading between the lines, she thought there was a reason the elves used different verb tenses like that. If Nilanse had said you are being stubborn, that would mean, like, this thing you're doing right now, you're being stubborn at the moment; but she said you are stubborn, which Liz thought meant, like, stubbornness was an intrinsic quality that Liz had, that her stubbornness was just a part of her that was always there. (Kind of like the difference between Spanish ser and estar that Valérie was vaguely aware of.) It was such a little detail, a tiny difference in word choice, but Liz still found it weirdly funny, for some reason.
A snap of Nilanse's fingers had a sheet of paper and a pen appearing on the tray. "Are you needing anything else for now?"
"No, that's great, thanks. I wanted to write this letter, but if you're curious about what the Castle told me, we can talk about it as soon as I'm done."
"Of course I'm being curious!" Nilanse squeaked, practically bouncing on her toes for a second. "I wasn't wanting to bother you about it, if you're being tired."
Yeah, Liz had thought so — Nilanse could be extremely eager to learn about new things, it was very adorable. "Alright, just give me a minute to do this," she said, dragging the tray into her lap and quickly putting pen to paper. "I know there's probably a reply from her on its way already, so I'll make it short, I think..."
Tamsyn
You won't fucking believe what just happened. Well, the goblet of fire picked me as a fourth champion for some stupid reason, but I'm sure you'll see that in the papers soon, and that's not what I'm talking about. Hogwarts knows about the Triwizard Tournament and everything, apparently, and it kind of freaked out when I popped back home for a few minutes, thought I was kidnapped or something. But the important thing is, I actually talked to it! Like, an actual mental conversation and everything, it was fucking wild...
There, a chapter. Definitely nothing of long-term importance in there, just a random filler chapter, yep.
I know I said another Tamsyn chapter was next, but I belatedly realised that the slightly different approach I used in Mercy Anne's original meeting with Dumbledore made it superfluous. So now the Weighing of the Wands is next, then a planning/recruitment/Liz&Cedric scene, and then the First Task itself. Woo.
Might be a slight delay writing the next one — I haven't been feeling well lately, I'm trying to put some more time into First Contact, and we've got a lot of gardening work coming up again (gotta thin some seedlings out, and put up improvised trellises for the peas, it's a whole thing), which will throw off my schedule. It'll come when it comes.
That's it from me, bye everyone.