Despite getting off to a very awkward start, Katie and Susan staying at Liz's house mostly went well enough. Liz had still been snuggled up with Severus on the sofa, messy and achy from crying for no fucking reason, when Katie had come through the floo, she hadn't quite walked in on them but she was smart enough to figure it out. Thankfully, Katie was aware Liz was a neurotic mess, and was thoughtful enough to pretend she hadn't seen anything — and Liz was a cheating mindreader, so she was well aware that that had been a conscious decision on Katie's part. Susan showed up a few minutes later, which, Liz was still kind of a mess by then, but it could have been worse.

There was a brief awkward pause when Severus left, nobody really sure what to do first. Katie suggested they clean up and change into less fancy clothes, so sure, they'd done that. While Liz was off alone in her room, Katie and Susan went to the guest bathroom to have a shower...together, at the same time — Liz knew that sort of thing wasn't such a big deal to mages (especially purebloods), but it was still bloody weird to her. Liz broke open a bottle of gin, and they sat around talking about whatever for a bit. Mostly the Kaunas tournament, safe topic. But it was getting pretty late at that point, it wasn't very long after cleaning up that they went straight to bed.

Liz actually ended up sharing her bed with Susan. There were enough beds for everyone — they probably didn't want to use Sirius's room, since it had his shite in it, but the room Hermione had used back in August had been cleaned out, and there was one other furnished bedroom that hadn't been used by anyone yet — but they were still doing the not leaving the miserable person alone thing. Silly, probably unnecessary, but whatever. It'd been Katie's suggestion, but she hadn't offered Susan to share her bed, because Katie was attracted to Susan, and didn't want to make it weird — she didn't say that out loud, but Liz caught it anyway...and actually Susan did too, despite not being a cheating mind reader, but she had actual social skills, so. (When Liz thought about it, that must have made the shower kind of uncomfortable? Actually, the shower being uncomfortable might be why she thought sharing a bed was a bad idea, that would make sense.) Also, Katie was kind of drunk — the gin on top of whatever she'd had at the Ball had maybe been a bit much — and shite happened, so.

It was a little awkward, but it wasn't that bad. Liz's bed at home was bigger than the ones in the Slytherin dorms, plenty of room for them to both lay down without bumping into each other. Liz could still feel Susan's mind, of course, which was a bit distracting, but she was settling in to sleep, so it wasn't that bad. Luckily, it did occur to Liz to request Susan actually wear bedclothes — she was aware a lot of purebloods normally didn't — to which Susan just rolled her eyes. Oh yeah, the Hufflepuff girls all shared one big open room, she'd kind of forgotten about that — she'd never actually seen it before, so.

Since they had that straightened out, it wasn't that bad, honestly. The thing Liz was most concerned about was having a nightmare and dragging Susan into it, like had happened that one time with Hermione. But, apparently Liz had been too tired to have actively horrible dreams — though it wasn't like she had them every night anyway — by morning Susan had the vaguest feeling that her dreams had been slightly weird, that Liz might have been there, but that was it.

And, like that one time with Hermione, Liz came to in the morning snuggled up with Susan. She had no idea why she kept doing that... Unconsciously seeking out the warmth, maybe? Liz was shite at telling when she was cold, that would make sense...

(Liz felt really awkward about it, but it didn't bother Susan at all, and it was just a few seconds on waking up, so it didn't seem important enough to figure out a way to prevent it just now.)

They spent most of their full day at Liz's house drinking. Not getting, like, super proper drunk or anything — though there were a couple points over the course of the day when Liz trended a little more drunk than she'd been going for — just sipping at whatever now and then, enough to maintain a low-level tipsiness throughout the day. Nilanse was rather exasperated with them, but she didn't try to talk them out of it. In the morning, she suggested they make some hangover potions before they were too intoxicated to manage it safely, and she'd show up every now and then to remind them to drink some water, or get some salt in them. (Liz wouldn't have thought of the salt, good catch.) Of course, since this was Liz and Nilanse at home they were talking about, they decided to solve the salt problem by making a bunch of homemade pretzels, complete with using the hovering charms in the oven to get a nice crispy-buttery layer on every surface (Liz thought muggle ones were deep-fried instead?), which was pretty fun.

Susan thought she was slightly silly for thinking baking was fun — noble pureblood culture definitely thought of this sort of thing as work, and work was what servants were for — but silly in a vaguely adorable way, so Liz decided to ignore it. She was more uncomfortable with Katie's thoughts on the matter...even though Katie had a more positive opinion, it was just an awkward one. Like, most of the time it didn't really occur to Liz that Katie had grown up in a weird, isolated, religiously conservative farming village...commune...thing, so it still kind of took her by surprise when she caught things like...

Well, watching Liz in the kitchen, Katie kind of thought this was housewife/mum shite, but not really in a demeaning way? When Liz had seen or heard implications like that before, it often came off rather condescending, but Katie was thinking more... The word that was coming to mind was impressive, but that wasn't quite right. Like, that they were good, valuable skills, they were just good valuable skills that were associated with housewifely, mum-type people. Which was a positive thing in Katie's head, and didn't at all clash with thinking of Liz as her kick-arse scary duelling partner.

Liz had no idea what to do with that, honestly.

She actually ended up cooking multiple times for the three of them that day — breakfast and dinner (they skipped lunch), and they also made a few batches of, like, biscuits or brittle or whatever the hell came to mind. It wasn't like they had anything better to do, after all. Katie wasn't completely useless in the kitchen (she helped out at home), and while Susan was, you didn't exactly not to be a super great cook to help ball biscuits, or mix a bowl full of shite while Liz and Katie were working on something else. They kind of made a mess of the place — not helped along at all when Katie made a teasing comment about something, and Susan threw the ball of biscuit dough she was working on at her, quickly devolving into a three-way play-duel right in the middle of the kitchen — but magic made the clean-up easy, and Liz was having fun, at least, so.

Chatting with Nilanse when she came by, Liz learned over the course of the day that elves didn't get drunk from alcohol — ethanol, the active chemical, just made them ill, and not in a fun way. (Some elves would drink it, sometimes, but it wasn't good for them.) Some other drugs did work, like cannabis and most of the mushroom-based hallucinogens, and things like henbane — they actually didn't get the nasty side-effects from henbane that humans had to deal with, for whatever reason — and the intoxication from the same 'liquor' that goblins had was pretty similar to alcohol for humans. Apparently goblins and elves actually drank starshine, for fun. Liz had just thought starshine was an alchemical product? Well, it was an alchemical product, technically, since it was a product that was made with alchemy, but she'd thought it was also primarily used in alchemy, and like goblin enchanting or something, she'd had no idea they drank it...

(Supposedly humans could drink goblin liquor too, it just tended to have weird effects on them. Like trippy Seer shite, and a lot of accidental magic while too high out of their mind to control themselves, it was a whole thing.)

...Now Liz kind of wanted to see what Nilanse was like drunk and/or high. This wasn't the time, though, at some point over the summer would be a better idea — Liz made a mental note to mention it later.

Anyway, they spent the whole day somewhat tipsy, talking about whatever, messing around in the kitchen, occasionally taking a trip into the pensieve. Pretty good time all around, honestly. There were down moments, it wasn't perfect fun good vibes all the way through. At one point Susan ended up crying — definitely related to Hannah, but Liz wasn't sure what had set her off, exactly — and the waves of misery pulsing off her through the air quickly had Liz start crying too. Katie handled dealing with being the only person in the room not crying way better than Liz would have, all quiet and soft and...huggy, and everything. Apparently they were a lot more openly expressive back home? Not to mention she had, like, too many baby siblings, and who the fuck even knew how many cousins. Whatever. So, that happened, and kind of sucked, Liz left a little sore (because of course she hurt herself again) and bleh for like an hour or two afterward, but it wasn't that bad. The rest of the day was pleasant enough that it wasn't really that big of a deal.

When night came around again, Katie suggested that they all share a bed this time — Liz must have been kind of drunk by then, because she went along with the idea without thinking about it that long. Three of them in the one bed would be a little cramped, though (or at least Liz thought so), so instead they grabbed mattresses from guest bedrooms and laid them out on the floor in the sitting room, Nilanse helpfully transfiguring them together for the night. (Katie was a little too drunk to manage it properly, and transfigurations done by elves tended to last longer.) She was aware that Katie normally slept naked at home — being a mind mage and/or Seer, you just knew shite about people sometimes — but the Gryffindor girls' dorm was also one big room, and she'd worn nightclothes in Romania, so, not a problem there. It took them rather long to actually get to sleep, whispering and teasing and giggling, Liz never actually decided to stop, they just gradually wore down before eventually drifting off.

Liz woke up confused, disoriented, almost even dizzy. Being dizzy was just making her more confused, because she was lying down. Bleary and unfocussed, it took what felt like ages to slowly pull herself together — it didn't help that there was a mind pressed close against hers, loud but scattered in sleep, the fuzzy chaos making it hard to pick out the parts that were her and the parts that were...the other person. (Liz had trouble telling people apart when they were asleep.) There were two other minds in the room, further away and dimmer, harder to see through the haze of the one right against her. One of them — smooth and hard and shiny, like polished glass — would occasionally flare louder, pressing against her like a cool marble against her skin, in sync with a gentle prodding of her forearm.

Nilanse, that was Nilanse.

Grimacing, body warm and heavy from sleep, Liz forced herself to move, tearing herself away from the other mind, tipped over onto her back. Or, tried to tip onto her back, there was something in the way that— Oh, that was an arm. Katie's arm — the other human mind was Susan, she could see now. Blinking, she found Nilanse overhead, inhuman face cast in gentle magical light from Susan's direction, red eyes sparkling. She guessed that might be a startling sight to wake up to for other people, but Nilanse's was a familiar face by now. Liz tried to say...something, but her throat didn't quite cooperate, coming out in a wordless groan with the vague rising tone of a question.

High voice in a soft whisper, Nilanse said, "It is being time to get up now, Liz. You are leaving for Lithuania this morning, remember?"

"Ugh." She'd asked Nilanse to make sure she got up early enough, yeah, she remembered. "Then– Thanks, Nilanse. We'll be down in a bit."

"If you leave the mattresses, Honish and I will be washing the linens and returning them."

"...Right. Thanks."

And then Nilanse was padding away, near-silent elven footsteps moving toward the door before fading out of hearing. Liz wasn't sure why, but Nilanse often wouldn't bother apparating from place to place inside the house, getting around the slow way instead...though maybe this time she was just trying to avoid startling Katie awake.

Liz glanced to her right, following her sense of Susan's mind — she was still lying in bed, propped up on her elbows with a book. "Good morning, Liz."

"Ugh, no such thing." Liz rubbed at her face with the hand that wasn't kind of pinned under Katie at the moment. Her head was still spinning a little, didn't know why she was so bloody dizzy... "How long you been up?"

Susan hesitated for a second, before flipping over a few pages. "Half an hour, maybe? Are you okay, you look kind of..."

"Dunno. Dizzy?"

There was a flash of something from Susan's mind, a crooked look crossing her face. "Oh. Do you think you might have been dream-walking into both of our minds at once? Your aura's big enough to cover the whole bed."

"Don't think so. It should just go to the closest person."

With a sort of sheepish smile, Susan admitted, "When I woke up I was hugged against your back." She actually hadn't moved right away, lingering like that for a bit, luxuriating in the warmth and the uncharacteristic closeness. (Liz didn't exactly tolerate snuggling when she was conscious.) She might have stayed there longer if she hadn't noticed some of Liz's hair had gotten in her mouth, her face had kind of been buried in it — she liked Liz's shampoo.

...Oh. Well, Liz was relieved she hadn't woken up first, honestly. She doubted she would have reacted well to being pinned between the two of them...or being hugged from behind, for that matter. "Um. I don't know, maybe. I mostly don't remember dreams, was it especially weird this time?"

"Maybe? It was kind of all over the place. Katie might have been there too, but we might have just been dreaming about her. Hard to say for sure, dreams are weird. Can mind mages bridge two people together like that while dream-walking?"

Honestly, Liz had no fucking clue. And it's not like it was super important to think about right now, so she just shrugged. She'd ask Nilanse when they got downstairs to check if she'd fractured herself a little, just in case, hopefully the dizziness would wear off by itself. Liz reached across herself with her free hand, nudging Katie's ribs. "Hey, it's time to get up."

Katie just let out a little, meaningless nasal sound — in her sleep, Liz could tell she wasn't actually awake.

"Wake up, Katie. You're laying on my hand, and I kind of need that back." Susan snorted, amused. Wasn't sure what was so funny about that — how had her hand even gotten under there, anyway...

The unfocussed mess in Katie's head partially cleared up, but not all the way. Her arm tightened around Liz's back, hand pressing in above her hip, Katie's face turning in to Liz's hair and—

"Woah, hey!" Liz jumped away from the breath on her ear, springing up to a seat and wrenching her hand out from under Katie. Shaking out her numb wrist, she tried to brush off the unpleasant needles crawling over her skin, rubbing at her vaguely aching shoulder. (She had slept on that side, so.) Glaring down at Katie — actually awake now, though still confused, blinking unfocussed at the ceiling — Liz snapped, "Bad touch."

Susan giggled, because of course.

"Liz? Wha—?" She broke off with a yawn, finally pulled her arm away from behind Liz, shoulders rolling and legs shifting in a stretch. "Sorry, didn't mean nothing by it. You snuggle in your sleep, didja know?"

Liz rolled her eyes, trying to ignore Susan's continued giggling. "Yes, I know, I have no idea why I do that. Come on, it's time to get going."

Yawning and stretching some more, Katie set off toward the room she'd slept in the previous night, Liz and Susan going the opposite way into her bedroom. They hadn't bothered unpacking, their trunks sitting ready on the floor, but they did need to get dressed before leaving the house. It might not bother Susan, but Liz would be uncomfortable changing with someone else in here — she needed to pee anyway — so she quick grabbed a fresh set of clothes before slipping away into the bathroom. She'd just grabbed a random dress, since it wasn't like it really mattered that much, and supposedly it would be cold in Kaunas, so she'd grabbed a pair of those cotton leggings Hermione had bought for her a while ago too — Liz didn't normally like wearing trousers, but these were soft and ignorable enough that they were fine. Maybe a jumper or something would be a good idea too...or she could just get by with a cloak, the enchantments should be able to hold the cold off.

Once she was ready, she opened the door a crack, felt for Susan's mind for a second before continuing through. (Walking in on her half-dressed would just be awkward.) Liz quick made sure her bag was packed with her usual leaving-the-house and emergency stuff, before shrinking her trunk and tucking it away. Susan's denim pockets didn't quite comfortably fit her trunk, even shrunken down, so hers went in Liz's bag too, and that was everything, they started off downstairs.

Katie had beaten them to the kitchen, the room already smelling of coffee and biscuits and cinnamon. It looked like Katie was pouring the third cup — good timing — chatting with Nilanse, the elf girl sitting on the counter nibbling on a biscuit, little feet kicking in the air. "Good morning, you two," Katie chirped, topping off one of the mugs of coffee with a splash of cream and a spoon of honey, smoothly handing it off to Susan. "The biscuits just there were put in the oven for a couple minutes, should still be warm. Nilanse here tells me you're sending the ones you don't eat to childrens' homes?"

"Yeah." Liz accepted a cup of coffee, took a quick taste. Mm, not as strong as she usually made it, but Katie had gotten the cinnamon right, at least...could use just a little touch of cream... "We can't eat them all and, you know, it's Christmas. Figured the poor orphan kids could use some biscuits."

"I guess they could at that. Nilanse says you're including the werewolf kids?"

Susan coughed, nearly spilling her coffee. "You're sending homemade sweets to the werewolf home?"

For a moment, Liz frowned at Susan — that was kind of an odd reaction, considering the Boneses were one of the good families on the Wizengamot. She hadn't thought Susan was stupid about werewolves? Watching her mind, no, she wasn't stupid about werewolves, she was reacting to the political implications of Liz giving things to the generally unwanted and miserable werewolf kids, that also happened to be made with her own hands. Right, she guessed that sort of made sense, Sylvia had said it'd be a thing when people found out — Liz had already warned Rita for that reason. "Seems like the werewolf kids could especially use some biscuits."

With a little surprised laugh, Susan admitted, "Well, yeah, probably. You know that's going to be a terrible bloody scandal when people find out — the Girl-Who-Lived, personally baking, for werewolves."

"I'm aware. They don't like it, they can go to hell."

"You know, Liz," Katie drawled, mind tingling with amusement and...something else, Liz didn't quite know how to read that, "you're surprisingly mumsy sometimes."

Liz scowled. "Piss off."

(...She was getting the feeling Katie had a very weird idea of what mumsiness was.)

They didn't linger long — they hadn't woken up with too much time left before they had to leave — sipping at coffee and munching at biscuits, chattering about...whatever. Mostly about the tournament, since that was what was on their minds at the moment. Nilanse wanted to see memories of it again, yeah, Liz could show her all that in the pensieve this time too. Oh shite, the pensieve was still just sitting upstairs, could you— Right, Nilanse could move that back to her dorm room for her, thanks. Their feeling was that they actually had a pretty good shot of doing well this time. All-around more experienced, and better-trained, now that they had Flitwick actively helping, and some of the most dangerous people in the lower division (especially Artèmi, but others too) had aged out now. Summer was going to be more shaky — Draco was a fair trade for Brendan, but nobody was quite sure how Artaimís was going to do yet — between the two events this year this one was their best shot at doing well.

Katie bet that Liz would win in singles this time. Liz didn't take the bet — it was practically pocket change for her (Katie didn't have money like Liz and Susan had), but she had the same feeling too, so. Quick-step wasn't exactly a common skill in the junior division, and now that she'd picked up a wider variety of spells and had gotten her spellcasting a bit quicker and sharper — thanks in no small part to Gladwin and Flitwick pressing her in practices — yeah, that seemed pretty likely.

Honestly, Liz suspected that, come next year's events, the other teams would be nearly as intimidated by the thought of being matched up with her as people had been about Artèmi, but she didn't say anything like that out loud. Felt too much like bragging.

Liz washed their coffee cups, wandlessly levitating each up to their hooks while she was rinsing the next (she was too bloody short), and then it was about time for them to get going. A last wish for good luck from Nilanse, Liz grabbed a last biscuit, and they left through the floo, one at a time. Katie and Susan flooed straight to the keyport, but Liz broke it up into multiple legs, as she did whenever she could — flooing hadn't stopped being absolutely miserable. By the time she arrived at the domestic floo grates in London, Katie and Susan were already standing next to the exit waiting for her, Liz swept past them without a word.

The main hall of the keyport was somewhat less occupied than the last time Liz had seen it — it was pretty early in the morning, and it was holiday season. (Christmas might not be quite so universal on the magical side, but there were other holidays at this time of year, and it was common for people to take the whole week off.) It was barely dawn in London, the sky overhead — the ceiling in the keyport was enchanted to show the sky, like at Hogwarts or the Wizengamot Hall — still partly dark and streaked with colour, the east-facing surfaces of clouds beginning to glow with pinks and oranges. A glance at a clock, and yeah, they were on time, they had like half an hour before the portkey left. Once they found their way downstairs to the waiting room for outgoing portkeys, it was very obvious where their group was — there was a crowd of kids and adults blobbed together filling a good chunk of the hall, the air thick with the noise of voices and the pressure of minds.

Liz reached into a pocket of her bag, tucked one of the remaining cannabis tablets under her tongue. The crowds coming into Jassy had been miserable, and she still had some left, might as well. (Susan had promised to get her more, but it might be a couple weeks.) "I have to go check in with Severus, so he knows I made it."

"Let's go then," Katie said, nodding into the crowd.

She'd meant to say that they didn't need to stick with her — especially since once the drugs kicked in she wouldn't have to worry about all the people around bothering her — but whatever. It took a few minutes to pick their way through the crowd, heading toward the middle, where she assumed Severus and the adults in charge were waiting. (She couldn't see him, obviously.) By the time she found Severus, Flitwick, Oz's mum (apparently volunteering to accompany them again), and, um...whatever the name of the woman in charge of the club at the Irish school was (she'd forgotten), by then the drugs had started to work. The edge of nerves from the minds pressed in all around, eyes clawing over her, faded away to be replaced with a sort of warm soft tingliness, Liz couldn't help smiling to herself a little. She really did like this stuff.

Elbowing her way through the last couple people in the way, Liz said, "Hey Severus, we're here."

Severus nodded. "Good morning, Elizabeth. I believe your team are gathered around a sofa somewhere over that way," pointing off to the right.

"No such thing as good mornings." Liz didn't wait for a response, turning in the direction Severus had pointed, amusement from Severus (and a couple of the other adults) warm and ticklish at her back.

Severus hadn't quite pointed in the precise right direction, but Liz was a cheating Seer, she found the rest of the team without too much trouble. And it was all of the rest of the team, Liz and Katie and Susan were the last to arrive — she knew Brendan, Gladwin, and Chelsea would have come from Hogwarts with Severus and Flitwick, Oz and his mum also must have arrived early. After saying hellos, they immediately devolved into gossip about the Yule Ball, because of course they did. They'd all heard about Susan and Hannah's break up, because mages were gossipy bastards, a couple other stories had come out of the whole thing, Liz didn't really care. Naturally, there'd been pictures of Liz and Severus in the papers, ugh, bloody nobles...

Out of curiosity, while stopping by the toilet before the portkey left, Liz paused at the bookstand thing to poke through the papers. The pictures hadn't turned out so bad, actually — Severus being so bloody tall did make them look a little awkward, but, well, it didn't look bad. Liz did like that dress, and Narcissa did a good job with her makeup and hair and all. (The neat swirly black-purple and red paint was even still on her nails a day and a half later, Liz had no idea how long it'd take to wear off.) She did like it, but she'd wait for the higher-quality, full-colour pictures in the next Witch Weekly before coming to a final opinion.

Oh wait shite, Narcissa had asked them to get proper pictures together at the Ball. Completely forgot, oops. Whatever, she could probably track down whoever took the pictures for Witch Weekly and bribe them for copies, who cares.

(Impulsively, Liz bought the newspaper — no idea why, blame the drugs.)

Liz was distracted by an article about an incident somewhere in the Hebrides — a stand-off between some locals and a group of Hit Wizards, had gone on for some hours before they'd agreed to Ministry arbitration of some kind of property dispute (sounded like things were still getting messy out there) — when an amplified voice called for their attention. They were doing a count now, while Liz was folding her newspaper back up she felt Severus come by, his mind sweeping over them. A few minutes later, the crowd was pouring into the portkey room, Katie once again making a point of keeping close to her back — not really necessary this time, with the drugs stopping her from freaking out, but Liz appreciated the sentiment anyway.

Um, more than she normally would, honestly, but she'd noticed she could get weirdly emotional when she was intoxicated. After a moment focussing on her breathing Liz had managed to push down the surge of tight warmth in her chest, her throat loosening and the prickles in her eyes fading away — because she'd rather not randomly cry in public for no fucking reason, thank you. That was weird.

Anyway, the actual portkey trip was pretty much the same as the other times Liz had done this. She still did not like being strapped to the fucking thing, even through the cannabis feeling distinctly...uncomfortable, if not actually panicky. Which was an improvement, yes, but still not a fun time. Portkeys hadn't stopped being very spinny and unpleasant, but Liz managed not to trip at all this time, only staggering a little because some boy to her left flopping straight to the floor tugged on the rope a bit.

The international keyport in Kaunas was, like most of these kinds of big buildings in the magical world, primarily underground. Like Jassy, Kaunas had also been practically levelled in the 40s — they'd had a nasty, drawn-out civil war followed by an invasion from Muscovy, Communalist allies turning up to help push the front back the other way, and there'd also been damage from stray bombs and bullets and the odd tank trundling through from the Nazis and/or Soviets — so the keyport was also just as modern, if rather less grandiose. The room they appeared in was mostly covered in ceramic tile, as was the equivalent space in every keyport Liz had seen so far. There might be a reason for that, maybe enchanted to help direct portkeys, to make sure people landed exactly where they were supposed to? They were in lighter colours here, sky-blues and reds and oranges, a bit of a wave at the border that was maybe supposed to suggest at the flickering of fire.

The hallway outside, though, was mostly done in wood panels. The floor was polished smooth, but there were a few places in the walls where the plain panelling was broken up with highly-detailed carved fixtures — people and horses and snakes and birds, which Liz assumed would be meaningful to someone who had the cultural background for it. Liz was aware that this area of Europe had been very late to Christianise, there were still pre-Christian pagan religions around — and not stuff reconstructed after the Statute either, like some of the ones back in Britain, but practised continuously all the way through — and even the Christianity here was heavily syncretic, so presumably the use of symbols was related to that. The weird light fixtures were probably also related? Curiously, they hadn't just enchanted the hall to be well-lit from all angles, or used the standard lighting enchantments, instead there were hanging fixtures overhead (curling lines of iron and accented with bits of colourful stained glass) that had actual fire in them, casting sufficiently bright but inconstant light throughout the space, shadows wavering as the flames flickered. Liz didn't see any fuel in there, she assumed it was magical fire, but still technically natural light, since it was generated by the flames and not directly produced by an enchantment.

Which was, of course, far more inefficient than just using a lighting enchantment — Liz assumed there must be some reason for that, maybe the local religion had some special thing with fire? Whatever.

Like in Jassy, they were led through the back way, around the place where normal travellers would be processed, the direction special dignitaries and shite went through. The waiting room here was also fancy, but in a very different way than in Romania — there was no gold around, for one thing. Instead the walls were absolutely covered with highly-detailed wood carvings, accented here and there with coloured glass, wild shadows flickering back and forth in the light from the long troughs of fire hung near the walls, mirrors on the ceiling angled to redirect the light all through the room. There were also large floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows — through the clearer sections, Liz could make out tiny slivers of the outside, bare trees dusted with snow, a river — but these didn't depict any obvious figures, instead just meticulous geometric designs done in brightly-contrasting colours, glowing from sunlight on the other side, the lines of metal between the panels gleaming in the firelight. An odd style, altogether, and probably not what special fancy foreign dignitaries would be expecting, but Liz thought it was pretty.

Shuffling around waiting, Liz and her team had ended up pretty close to one of the windows, her eyes following the colourful interlocking design out of a lack of anything better to do. After seeing the ceramic statues at the Greenwood, the craftsmanship that went into it wasn't really that impressive, but it was still pretty neat. They'd been here for a minute or two when Chelsea said, "Hey, er, what's that?"

Liz blinked at her — in the press of bodies, she'd ended up right next to Liz — followed her pointing finger over to the window. There was a line of symmetrical designs along the border of the window, a simpler four-spoke shape and a more complex six-spoke shape, with little curly accents along the lines carved into the edging of the panels. The thing that had probably gotten Chelsea's attention was that the simpler four-spoke design was, naturally, a swastika, though not the same as the Nazi one — it was lying flat, and the angles bent the opposite direction. "That's a sun symbol in some old pagan stuff."

"Actually, I think the Lithuanians use it for something to do with their storm god?" Susan said, frowning at the window. "The other one, the six-lined one, that's their sun symbol, I can't remember what they use the four-lined one for. It's something sky-related, though."

"It's definitely not a Nazi thing, if that's what you're thinking. Magical Lithuanians are communists." Not quite accurate, of course, but Chelsea was muggleborn, and Liz had no idea whether she'd looked into magical politics at all, so.

Chelsea seemed rather bemused, giving the window an odd look, but eventually just shrugged it off. After several minutes of waiting in the crowded (if pretty) room, Gladwin showed up with their entry papers. Liz was, technically, a member of a foreign government, so she was again given a special one for bloody international dignitaries — the documentation on the Lithuanian version did have a French translation (being the working language of the ICW and all), but was printed in two local languages instead of just one.

From her reading ahead of the trip, Liz knew Lithuania was actually one of the more complicated, multiethnic countries in the ICW. People had to figure out what the hell to do after the Statute, since muggle kings didn't really matter anymore, and they'd mostly decided to split up the Continent by dominant language, just to make it easier to run things. There were exceptions, though. Britain was one, just deciding to take the Wizengamot as a pre-existing national government, and Venice had had the economic and cultural power to hold onto what were basically colonies in the Balkans (at least for a little while), Aquitania was pieced together more due to long-standing cultural ties between the mages of the region, it was a whole complicated thing.

At the time, Poland and Lithuania had been slapped together in one big country...sort of. It was a personal union, kind of the same way England and Scotland had been brought together into the UK in the first place — the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania had become the same person, intermarriage leading to the same person inheriting both crowns — resulting in a big, confusing, diverse kingdom. By the time of the Statute, it'd actually been a relatively advanced, progressive country, and the magical leadership at the time had been kind of proud of how enlightened and inclusive they were, blah blah blah, so after a bit of negotiation the borders of Poland–Lithuania stayed more or less the same on the magical side as they'd been on the muggle. Technically, they were two separate countries, since they had only been united in a personal union under a king they didn't recognise anymore, but the nobility had been so interrelated and there were enough economic and cultural ties by then that the border was sort of theoretical. At first, anyway — when the post-Statute cultural renaissance that swept over the Continent reached this region, it'd sparked cultural developments that, gradually over time, made the border seem more and more important until, by the late 19th Century, everyone thought of them as two entirely separate countries.

And then the Communalist Revolution came along, which only made things more complicated, but that wasn't really important right now.

But even after the split with Poland, Lithuania was still pretty diverse for magical Europe. The government recognised two national languages, which government stuff and education and stuff were officially supposed to be in, but also an additional three regional or local languages, that got official use in the particular areas they were spoken in. The national languages were Lithuanian and Ruthenian — Liz was pretty sure Ruthenian was Belarussian? — the former in the northwest of the country and the latter toward the southeast. (Kaunas was in the Lithuanian-speaking region.) The regional languages were Latvian in the north-north — there was no independent Latvia on the magical side, like Belarus part of Lithuania instead — an odd region of Polish-speakers along the border between the Lithuanian and Ruthenian regions (Liz had no idea how the hell that had happened), and the third was actually Yiddish, spoken by Jewish communities speckled here and there throughout the country — apparently magical Lithuania was, like, as much as one-fifth Jewish? Given the various denominations of pagan sects and different kinds of Christians, Judaism might actually be the largest single religion in magical Lithuania, which was random.

Of course, not if you group all the Christians or all the pagans together, and only around twenty per cent was a pretty small plurality, but still.

The ruling class of Lithuania had been way more Polish and way more Christian than the general population — but then the Communalist Revolution happened, so, the Polish-influenced aristocracy inherited from the old pre-Statute double-kingdom was gone now. Lithuania was even one of the countries that had managed to avoid ICW occupation after the war, thanks to various complicated military and political factors that weren't really important, so the original Revolutionary administration of the country had remained in charge all the way up to the modern day. Given the diverse, complicated culture of the country, as well as what a muggle would call very far-left politics, Liz expected magical Lithuania to be...different.

And it was, though that wasn't super obvious right away. After they had all their papers sorted out, their group was led out of the fancy waiting room, and into a little courtyard outside...and of course it was bloody snowing, the weather being offensive when she first arrived in the host country was apparently just what happened. At least cold was better than hot and sunny and miserable, she knew what to do with cold. Liz hugged her cloak tighter around herself and pulled up her hood, angling her head a little against the wind — thanks to her hood, she didn't get a great look at the spaces they were moving through, but she managed to make out a little. The courtyard was pretty small, some kind of statue in the middle and some buildings around it, mostly wood with ceramic tiles on the roof, an occasional glint of metal showing here and there. Um...government buildings of some kind, she thought, maybe a hotel? Places international visitors would have to go to first, maybe.

Liz was pretty sure they were in the middle of a city, but stepping out of the courtyard immediately brought them into a walkpath lined with big bloody trees — the branches were mostly barren for the winter, but some of the brush clinging to the ground was evergreen, patches of colour partially hidden with snow scattered around at random. It felt surprisingly heavy and quiet, the chatter of the British kids even diminishing as they walked under the arching branches, instinctively lowering their voices at a feeling of...Liz didn't know exactly, there was some kind of magic on the air, too vague for her to put her finger on what the feeling was, exactly. Despite that the muggle city should not be very far away, and the crowd of people she was walking with, she swore she could hear the slow creaking of the trees wavering in the low wind, the soft hiss of snow against snow.

Eventually the walk through the park — that's what it had to be, something they were consciously maintaining in the middle of the magical settlement — came to an end, their group walking into the town proper. Ducking her head against the wind, the falling slow blurring shapes somewhat, Liz didn't get the best look at the town, but it mostly seemed to be made out of smaller buildings made primarily of wood, decorated with highly-detailed carvings here and there and everywhere — restaurants and stores and workshops and the like, she thought — and larger brick buildings, also with plenty of decoration all over the place, but these mostly done with stone and glass and ceramic — those looked like apartment blocks, maybe? There were a lot of open spaces between buildings, Liz thought they were, like, vegetable gardens or some shite — mostly empty at the moment, but it was winter, so.

Also, all the little squares here and there and sometimes even the middle of intersections had little bonfires going. Magically-produced, she thought — at least she didn't see any fuel — little clumps of people lingering at some of them to chat, warming their hands over the flames. Magical Lithuanians definitely had a thing about fire, they'd built it into the bloody infrastructure.

The walk through the town took some minutes, through the neighbourhood they'd started in and into... Well, it would be a greener neighbourhood if it weren't the middle of winter, trees all over the place and empty patches that Liz assumed would be, like, grass and bushes and shite. Of course, it was the middle of winter, so the trees were mostly barren, except for the occasional pine tree here and there, and everything was touched with a thin dusting of snow, all white and brown with only the occasional touch of green. It was obviously a residential neighbourhood of some kind — they weren't quite the same as the muggle version, but the buildings here were recognisable as rowhouses, built of a mix of brick and wood, the roofs peaked (to shake off snow, she assumed). The edifice didn't look quite right — Liz suspected the occasional door actually led to multiple homes instead of just one — the rows set to box off a semi-private space away from the road...sort of reminding her of her block back at the Refuge, though obviously on a smaller scale. Passing by, in the gaps between the rows, Liz caught glimpses of children running around playing in the snow, muffled shrieks and giggles reaching them out on the street.

After a bit more walking, they got to a part of the neighbourhood that was rather plainer, without the random bits of colour painted on window frames and edging and stuff, the bits of personality glimpsed through windows. This part of the town was rather quieter, but Liz still saw people around now and then, mostly academy-age — she didn't have to be told to guess that this was where the locals were putting up the tournament participants. A little odd that they were, just, sticking them in a random residential neighbourhood, but whatever. Whoever was leading them along — Liz actually couldn't see the front of the group from here — turned off the street seemingly at random, leading them into a narrow walkpath between a couple of the buildings, into one of the semi-private courtyards.

It wasn't until they were inside the block — surrounded by rowhouses on all sides, trees and bushes sticking out of the snow here and there, a flat patch that looked like it might be a pitch for some kind of game, a burning firepit right in the middle — that Liz noticed the flags pinned next to the doors. There was Holland, there was the one with the horse Liz remembered was Saxony, and thanks to imagery at Hogwarts around the Triwizard Tournament she knew that that one was Daneland, and she didn't know that one, or that— Oh wait, she recognised that one from her book on the Revolution, um, um... Austria, that was it — meaning the one she didn't recognise was probably Germany. And there was the red dragon of magical Britain, of course. Maybe they'd stuck all the people who spoke Germanic languages together? Assuming that one was Germany, than she thought the only one they were missing was Helvetica, but they were only partially German-speaking, and the politics were complicated, so.

Amusingly, Liz noticed the Gaelic flag, over there next to Saxony's — and not the more politic gold-harp-on-blue one either, but the white-sunburst-on-green flag used by Gaelic separatists. Not only were they using the nationalist flag, but they hadn't even put the Brits and Gaels together, the Brits were over there with Holland, practically on the opposite end of the square.

If Liz had to guess, the Lithuanian government had an opinion about Gaelic independence. Not really a surprise, when she thought about it — they were Communalists, and they didn't like Britain much, as a rule.

(Although, given the hints of building unrest Liz occasionally saw in the papers, maybe splitting them up was a good idea, just in case?)

Their accommodations this time were...kind of weird. The Hogwarts and Oxford teams went through the door flanked with the British and Dutch flags — separate from the Irish students, which continued to be very funny — leading them into a sort of foyer, a room to stow their cloaks and boots and stuff, beyond that a hallway lined with doors. And, they were supposed to take off their shoes here — their local guide (who Liz hadn't even caught a glimpse of until just now) said it was impolite to walk anywhere with rugs/carpet with your shoes still on, especially in winter. Didn't want to track mud and shite in, you see. Since this wasn't someone else's home they'd be traipsing around in, nobody would make a fuss about it, but that's why this little entryway room was here. So, they weren't required to, but Liz went ahead and hung up her cloak and took her shoes off anyway, along with, like, half their group — which slowed their progress into the building significantly, but it wasn't like they were in a big rush.

The hallway was pretty plain, mostly wood panels, the floor covered with a rug with more fiddly geometric patterns in bright colours, lit by another fire-burning light fixture overhead. There were only four doors, two on each wall, the frames carved with wavering patterns, starburst, floral-looking things that Liz thought were protective symbols of some kind. Not actual magic, just a cultural thing...though she didn't know how she knew that. Seer instinct, maybe. There were signs next to the doors, built into letterboxes, with the name of a school, team designations, and lists of student names — there was some variety, the occasional French or English or even more foreign-looking name, but they were overwhelmingly Dutch. At the opposite end of the hall was a staircase, switchbacking around once, windows overlooking the street they'd just been on a couple minutes ago.

As they climbed up, Liz was high enough now to better see around the buildings, caught a glimpse in the near distance of somewhat more modern-looking architecture, the spire of a cathedral or something, narrow needles of lampposts — that must be muggle Kaunas right over there. It was pretty close, the neighbourhood they were in must be right at the edge of the hidden magical district. That was interesting, it wasn't very often that Liz could physically see the muggle town from the magical settlement it was right next to. That one time she'd visited Dumbledore at his house in Dorchester, and she guessed you could see some skyscrapers from Old Town...

The stairs led to another, mostly identical hallway, again lined with four doors. Curiously, half of the doors here were for German schools, in Duisburg and Cologne (she was pretty sure that's what Köln was), despite not having German flags outside — there were little national flags by their doors, but... Actually, they had German and Saxon flags. Now that Liz thought about it, she was pretty sure both cities were on the Rhine, which happened to be the border right around there, and she actually had no idea which country the cities were technically considered part of. The schools there probably pulled students from both sides of the border, so. Not sure why they decided to put them in with the Dutch and British, maybe they'd needed to shuffle a bit to fit everyone, and moving the border schools had seemed to make the most sense at the time? Whatever.

Anyway, because the British education system sucked and their schools were tiny, every participant in the whole fucking country (excluding the Gaels of course) could fit in two rooms, all the Oxford kids through one door and both Hogwarts teams in another — in fact, Hogwarts didn't even have their rooms to themselves, sharing with a pair of teams from Cologne. Ridiculous.

Passing through the doors made it very clear how strange their accommodations were. Right on the other side was...kind of a common room, she guessed? It was bigger than she'd expected, a pair of long dining tables to one side, sofas and chairs scattered around — naturally, some were gathered around a sort of firepit in the middle of the room — what was definitely a kitchen over there, rather larger than she'd expect for a normal house, cabinets and appliances and a glass-fronted pantry, revealing it was already stocked. The room was rather plain, wood and ceramic without much in the way of decoration, obvious it hadn't really been lived in...except for the quilts laid over the back of some of the sofas and stuff, some of those were shockingly colourful. She suspected they'd been hand-made by someone.

There were already people hanging around in here, presumably one of the Cologne teams. A few quick friendly waves and hellos back and forth, and their guide started explaining, speaking English with a very noticeable accent. This would be a common area for the families that lived here, this was open to everyone. Of course, they would be provided meals — they'd be shown where that was later — but the kitchen and everything in it was also free for them to use, if they run out of anything just tell one of the staff and it'll be taken care of. Through that door there was a common bathroom — show common courtesy, please, they didn't want to force the tournament officials to take disciplinary measures — and those four doors led to private spaces, one for each team. (The doors were right next to each other, Liz assumed space expansion was involved.) The first room they found would be a more private living space, the hearth should already be burning — it was tied into the wards, don't try to put it out, but they didn't need to worry about trying to feed it wood to keep it going either, the magic took care of that — and there would be a couple attached bedrooms, with bunkbeds. It'd been a little awkward trying to cram everyone in here, sorry about that, but the bedrooms had attached bathrooms, so they suggested splitting up by sex where feasible.

The accommodations were odd, but thankfully other people thought so too, Brendan asked her question before she could unthinkingly blurted it out like a weirdo. Apparently, Lithuania had needed to scramble to alter their plans. The winter tournament normally had much fewer participants than the summer tournament, thanks to the holiday, and the locals had only expected to have to deal with a normal winter tournament; but then, the ICW authorities had decided to move the dates to better align with the Triwizard Tournament and the Yule Ball — they'd thought it was likely that one or more of the Champions might also be in a school's duelling team, which was a good call — and suddenly it didn't overlap with the major holidays anymore. So, a bunch of schools had belatedly changed their minds and informed the Lithuanian organisers that they would be participating. The problem with that being that they suddenly had far more people coming than they'd been preparing accommodations for.

The reason why this part of the neighbourhood had seemed quieter from the outside was because it was new — the Lithuanian government had built it all in the last couple months. It was public housing, basically, after the tournament was done it'd be parcelled out to locals looking for a place to live in Kaunas. Not that they went through housing that quickly, it'd most likely take years to fill it all. It was split up kind of funny because apparently multi-family homes like this were normal in magical Lithuania? At least in the towns. There would be a grocery and a clinic and a primary school built into the block too, right now those spaces were holding offices for staff and supplies for the participants and the like — except the clinic, which was running already, they could go down there at any time if they needed anything — but it'd all be retooled once the tournament was done.

That seemed...kind of odd. Liz would say it was a lot of effort to go through just for a duelling tournament for school children, but she guessed the local government had just decided to exploit the opportunity to build more housing for the city, which they'd probably end up needing eventually anyway. And, the whole system they had going here, with multiple families living together in a block with a whole bunch of shite, everything they'd need within walking distance, actually just sounded super Communalist to her — from what she'd read about the Saxon Revolution, anyway, she wasn't an expert.

Seemed unpleasant to Liz — she had the feeling she wouldn't deal well with the minimal privacy — but it wasn't really her business how people a thousand kilometres away decided to live. She suspected this might actually be super convenient for people who were trying to raise kids and shite, it taking a village and all that.

Anyway, their guide pointed them to the doors for their teams (unnecessary, there were signs), someone else would be by in a bit to bring them to lunch, show them around. They had time to settle in until then. The rooms for the teams turned out to be pretty similar to the ones they'd been given in Romania. The materials were somewhat different — warm brown wood panels, the sofas and stuff showing more of the underlying wood frame, and of course the hearth crackling away was new — but the same basic idea. The common room was smaller than Liz remembered, but she guessed they also had the much larger one right out there they shared with their neighbours, so.

There were only two bedrooms, but they were also significantly bigger. They did decide to split by sex, for bathroom reasons — also it was much closer to even than last time, with Liz, Katie, Susan, Chelsea, and Mrs. Bagshot on one side and Severus, Oz, Brendan, and Gladwin on the other — and Liz was a little worried about comfortably fitting five people in a single room, but it wasn't that bad. There were three pairs of bunks, so they even had one extra bed, drawers and closets and desks, more space than she'd been expecting, honestly. (Space expansion was definitely involved somehow.) The attached bathroom was also bigger than she'd expected, with a pair of toilets, a row of sinks in front of the mirror, a pair of shower stalls, and one of those big baths obviously meant for multiple people — Liz was going to go out on a limb and assume that Lithuanian mages had the same thing about being cool with people bathing together as British purebloods. The place looked slightly off, she had a feeling some of it had been magically duplicated (so was technically conjured), but it seemed functional enough. It was less private than she would like, but it wasn't that bad, she'd tolerate it for the week.

After unloading their things, they went back out to the big common room, which was currently occupied by the entirety of the two teams from Cologne (plus their adult chaperones). They sat around waiting for their guides to show up, some of them sipping at drinks acquired from the kitchen. It was a little awkward, for the expected reasons, by which she didn't mean the language barrier — Britain was one of the few magical countries with its old aristocracy still intact, and Germany and Saxony (whichever one the Cologne kids were actually from) were both neocommunalist. (And even important neocommunalist countries, since Grindelwald was Saxon and he was currently imprisoned in Germany...in an ICW-managed facility the Germans didn't actual control, the German government regularly demanding the site be handed back to them and/or that Grindelwald be released, so there was also that.) For some of them that wasn't a big deal — Liz was pretty sure Katie and Oz were neocommunalists (or at least close enough to count), and Susan's family's politics kind of leaned that way — but both Hogwarts teams also had plenty of nobles on them, so. Yeah, could understand why it might get a little uncomfortable, considering. As long as nobody mentioned Grindelwald or the war, they were probably fine.

If Krum's mum being inexplicably cold to her hadn't been suggestion enough that there was a rumour going on around the Continent that Liz was a neocommunalist herself, the time they spent waiting in the common room just gave her more proof — she was approached by multiple Cologne kids coming to say hi, weirdly friendly. Mostly they just wanted to talk about the Triwizard, but Dumbledore also came up, and... Yeah, she was pretty sure they thought she was one of them. Which, that was fine, she guessed, it was just a little weird, she wasn't sure where people had gotten that idea...

(She was very sure at least some of the Cologne kids were aware Oz was related to Grindelwald somehow — they recognised the name "Bagshot", at least. It's not like they thought it was a super big deal or anything, they just noticed, was all.)

After a bit of sitting around chatting, a local guide turned up, but he just took one of the Cologne teams. And then there was another guide a few minutes later, but she just took the senior Hogwarts team. The third guide to show up was theirs — a plainly-dressed blond man, like most of the staff Liz had seen so far quite young, barely out of school age. (Liz assumed most of the guides and stuff were, like, Mastery students or something.) He led them out of the hall, getting names quick, blah blah blah, before starting out on a long speech about how the tournament would be working this time around.

Lithuania had put in a bid for the winter tournament, because they didn't really have the facilities to host the larger numbers that came with the summer tournament — this winter tournament being rather larger than most, they'd had to scramble to throw together something that would work for the duration. So, a lot of this would be much more slapdash of an operation than Jassy had been. Their guide — they were told to call him Dovilas — led them to where they'd be taking meals first. It still felt a little early for lunch to Liz, but she'd only had a few biscuits for breakfast, and Lithuania was a couple hours ahead of Britain, so whatever. In the middle of the newly-built neighbourhood the participants had been put in was a sizeable courtyard, which Liz suspected would be a sort of market square thing at some point in the future. There were long tables lined with chairs all through the courtyard, dotted here and there were foodstands, putting out clouds of fragrant smoke and steam, clumps of students gathered around them filling platters from the things set out — Liz spotted a couple speaking with the cooks, probably making requests. (Some of the cooks were nymphs, which was interesting.) Cloth shades had been hung over the width of the courtyard, more or less completely hiding the sky — convenient, since it was snowing at the moment — and it was much warmer within the courtyard. Perhaps not quite a proper indoor temperature, but comfortable enough — they wouldn't freeze, at least.

Liz had felt the tingle of magic crossing the wardline, she assumed they must have put some kind of environmental enchantment over the courtyard. Difficult to do over such a large, open area, they'd probably carved runes into the paving bricks somewhere.

Anyway, food would be available here from around six-thirty in the morning to a bit after ten at night — just go ahead and grab whatever you want at any time. There was also a kitchen in the block they were living in — attached to what would eventually be the primary school, Liz gathered — where they could go if they needed anything during off-hours, and of course the kitchens in their common rooms, but this was easiest. The different stands had different things, and of course they could make requests, within reason. Dovilas asked if anyone had questions, about food restrictions and the like. He pointed out a particular stand for Brendan, everything they made would follow the Jewish dietary rules (though he could of course ask the cooks at the other stands to check whether something that looked safe actually was), but accommodating Seer stuff was more complicated — he actually seemed a little shocked that a Seer sensitive enough to have problems with food sometimes would want to participate in things like international student duelling tournaments at all.

Their animal products were mostly from magical-raised sources, but Dovilas wasn't sure whether they would have been raised and/or slaughtered humanely enough to be a problem for Liz or not. (Though the seafood should be fine, of course.) They hardly ever used cane sugar here, most of the sweeteners came in the form of honey, berry syrups, or, more rarely, the concentrated sap of a special magically-altered birch tree — sort of like maple syrup, Liz guessed, but done with trees they actually had here — none of which should be a problem for Seer reasons, he didn't think? She'd probably just have to try things and see how it went for her, sorry he couldn't be more help...

Being a Seer could be a pain sometimes, but at this point Liz was getting used to food being randomly unpleasant for no identifiable reason. Better to avoid if she could, but if she couldn't, oh well. At least she didn't have to worry about cane sugar being used at some point in the process of making sauces and stuff, the rest was probably manageable.

They were let loose to get themselves some food, and Liz decided to play it safe, just got some fish and bread. She hadn't realised that, before baking it, they'd stuffed the fish with mushrooms and...something similar to quark cheese, maybe? But the cheese didn't seem to be bothering her, so. The bread was really dark, chewy and almost grainy, with an odd...vaguely sour, nutty sort of taste to it? Some kind of rye bread, apparently, Dovilas said they didn't grow a lot of wheat over here. It was fine, just, she was glad she'd taken the risk of putting butter on it — the butter also wasn't bothering her, seemed like dairy products at least were probably safe. There was also some kind of mushroom and beans in gravy thing, so dark it was almost black — the gravy had a high blood content, apparently — which was also way more peppery and garlicky than she'd expected. She'd only gotten a little bit, using it as her test of their meat-based things, and it seemed fine? She didn't think it was bothering her for Seer reasons, at least...but that could just be because her drugs hadn't worn off yet, hard to say. The food would probably be fine.

After they were done eating, Dovilas led them to the arena — as cramped as the tour schedule was, there were multiple other teams on the street, little clumps kept close against their guides, heads ducked against the snow. Probably, like Liz's team, getting an explanation of how they'd slapped this shite together. They had a theatre here in Kaunas, which was partially used for plays and shite, yes, but when it was built they also... Well, what it sounded like, was that they'd built a full proper duelling arena partially in expanded space, but most of the time half the arena was folded away into a pocket, leaving just half of it, the floor adjusted to be appropriate for a stage. While that was super convenient for the use it normally got, it raised problems when it came to big events like these. Preparing for the event, they'd mirrored the arena into expanded space — temporarily doubling the entire building, because magic could do wild shite like that — and when the roster had expanded they'd mirrored it again to make a third stage. At that point, though, they were already stressing the building's wards, they couldn't safely expand it any further. (Expanded space collapsing with a crowd of people in it would be very very bad.) With the number of teams they had, three stages maybe wasn't quite enough — the schedule was going to be pretty cramped, and they might have to figure out a way to hold some of them off-site.

The arena was... Well, Liz would believe it was normally a theatre. Like seemingly everywhere else here, the construction seemed to be primarily of wood and ceramic. They came in through the lobby, polished black tile under their feet and the ceiling arching up over their heads — as she'd come to expect by now, the hanging light fixtures here and there were holding flickering flames, the light natural — the underlying wood showing in pillars every few metres, carved with finely-detailed designs. Most of the surface of the walls and ceiling had been plastered over, the entire surface painted with murals — extremely colourful, forest scenes here or a few people in the middle of what looked like an intense conversation there or even a battle scene over there, the images separated with complex geometric designs. Liz suspected the scenes would be familiar references to people who knew anything about magical Lithuanian theatre or literature. It was pretty, but there was a lot of it, at some point the colours just kind of smearing together to Liz's eyes.

There were signs with arrows pointing off this way and that (written in French), a big board fixed to a wall that Liz suspected would be a timetable once the events actually started, hallways leading off left and right, a pair to either side leading deeper into the building. There were also stairs, leading both down and up, curiously — after a moment looking around, Liz guessed that the seating had three levels. Dovilas led them down the wide, sweeping set of stairs — reminding Liz of how the Grand Staircase at Hogwarts split into two branches and curled back on itself going up that first level — and they stepped through the doors into the theatre proper.

Unlike the arena back in Romania, which had clearly been modelled off of the old Roman coliseum, this arena looked oddly...boxy. The seating fanned up and out in rows, sort of reminding Liz of that muggle cinema Dorea's family brought her to for her birthday that one time, except the rows weren't straight, spreading out a bit the further you got from the stage. Sort of like a clamshell, she guessed — or, three clamshells, since there were two levels above them. Liz couldn't really see the levels above them, but it looked like the seating had been mirrored on the opposite side of the duelling floor, so she could see those seats, she assumed it was the same on this side. The duelling floor itself — made out of the same reddish soil she remembered from last time — was rectangular, the narrow side facing them. There wasn't seating fanning out along the long sides, but there was still room for spectators there — Liz thought it might be standing room only, three long hallways stacked directly on top of each other (presumably connecting the three levels of the seating area to each other), separated from the stage only by the occasional pillar. She assumed there must be enchantments to stop people from just falling out, the top level would be pretty far to fall.

Looking at the duelling floor, Liz was noticing some weird lensing artefacts in her peripheral vision, and it...just didn't quite look right. There must be enchantments that messed with the light (and probably sound) so everyone could see (or hear) it more or less well from wherever they were sitting. It only took thirty seconds before it started giving Liz a headache — she looked away from the duelling floor to stare at Oz's back instead — but these kinds of spells interacted oddly with Seers (and sometimes mind mages), so, probably not a problem for anyone else.

Dovilas led them down through the rows of seats toward the floor, babbling along the way. There would be commentary in various languages, like back in Jassy — they'd split the pre-existing audio redirection enchantment to take care of that — but the somewhat limited space meant that it might be difficult for people to get to the section they'd actually understand anything in. Sorry about that, just the way it went sometimes. Unlike in Jassy, where the spectator and participant areas of the arena were completely isolated from each other, here there was a staircase that just let them step right down to the floor. They walked across the duelling area, the clay-heavy soil firm under her boots, Dovilas reassuring them that this place had the same ICW-standard safety wards they were used to, and finally through a door right about at the midline of the arena. This led them down some stairs, and 'backstage' — when the theatre was folded out into a duelling arena, the backstage area was moved underneath the floor...somehow.

(Magical architecture was wild sometimes, just don't think about it.)

This area was all done in ceramic tile and wood-panelled floors, very simple without the decoration they'd seen elsewhere. There were waiting rooms, with displays that would show them duels going on over their heads and elsewhere, changing rooms and showers, a little kitchen if they wanted something between bouts, even a fully-stocked infirmary — the emergency stasis was stable enough to get them to the local hospital, but it was just simpler to treat injuries on-site whenever feasible. After pointing out bathrooms and stuff, Dovilas led them to a back hallway, long and shadowy. Go left or right and they would come into the 'backstage' area beneath the other arenas, but the one in the middle was the only place they would find these: five stone archways built into the wall, the entire surface absolutely littered with runes — the lines and wedges of cuneiform, Liz couldn't read it — that didn't lead anywhere, the inside plain ceramic tile (also with more cuneiform on them).

Liz figured out what this was partway through the explanation — helped along when one of the archways suddenly started giving off a flood of twisty tingly magic, a distorted swirly image of another room appearing in place of the tile backing, a stream of people beginning to step through. They were paired gateways, like what they used to stitch the different parts of the Greenwood together. Gates were still Liz's favourite form of magical transportation, though they weren't very practical — they necessarily existed in pairs, one gate leading only to one other gate, and the enchantment needed to be tied into proper place wards to function correctly. (Daphne's dad's mobile gate was very much not standard practice.) Dovilas explained how they worked, pointed out a sunburst design next to each one, if the gate was inactive simply touch your wand to it and it would switch on. Each gate led to a different area of the prepared field, their timetables would have a matching numeral to indicate which gate was closest to their stage. Liz was confused for a second, before she noticed the stylised delta under the sunburst attached to the gate they were gathered in front of — they were using Greek numerals, like in the Slytherin dorms, the gates numbered alpha through epsilon.

After a very brief explanation of what gates were — probably not necessary, Chelsea was the only one who looked confused (the magical-raised kids would have heard of them before, even if they'd never gone through one) — Dovilas activated the gate, and led them through. The gate led them into a little wooden hut, some seating scattered around, a fire merrily crackling away in the hearth. There was a big map pinned onto one wall, showing the different stages in the area (all labelled with numbers which would also be on their timetables), arrows pointing off marked with Greek numerals toward the other areas of the site, matching the numerals for the gates. There would also be maps on the field here and there, in case they got lost, and there would be staff around who, if they were really far behind, would be able to apparate them straight to their stage, just ask someone if they needed help.

Right, so let's get a look at the field, shall we? Dovilas led them through the door...out into a forest. The ground was thick with grasses and shrubs, mostly already brown for the winter, stone-paved walk paths stitching this way and that, and, just, trees, there were a lot of trees. There were some with barren branches here and there, but most of them were pine, still thick and green, the needles partially hidden with a dusting of snow. And it was snowing here too, maybe even thicker than it had been in Kaunas, though it didn't seem to be quite sticking on the ground, the grass and walk paths remaining clear — some kind of environmental magic, clearly, but it wasn't doing anything about the chill, Liz pulled her hood back over her head, hugging her cloak around herself again.

They were now roughly seventy kilometres upriver, Dovilas explained — the same river that went through Kaunas also went through this forest, a bit west of where they were standing. Having most of the single and trio duels here had always been the plan, though they'd had to expand construction significantly when the roster grew on them. The area they'd blocked off with avoidance wards was pretty sizeable, enough to pack in all the stages they would need, but try not to wander outside of the wards if they could help it. This region was a nature reserve on the muggle side, so it was relatively isolated — and they had also informed the muggle government what they'd be doing here — but there were still people around, so they'd gone pretty intense on the avoidance spells, just in case. If they wandered outside the border of the wards, even mages might have trouble finding the place again.

There were smaller stages, intended for singles, and larger stages for trios. The stages themselves were built with stone — into which they'd carved the same ICW-standard duelling wards, he assured them — each surrounded by very simple wood risers. Liz could tell they'd slapped all this together on relatively short notice, it definitely seemed much less...stately than the set-up in Romania. Though, that was fine, Liz didn't really care — the duelling was the important part, and they'd gotten together everything they needed for that perfectly fine. It might suck for the spectators trying to catch matches, though. Not to mention, the spectators and participants weren't separated at all, which would make getting around a little more difficult, but as long as she tried to get where she was going a few minutes early it shouldn't be a problem.

Though she was worried about the weather, since the stages were outside, and it was literally snowing right now. Dovilas just grinned at the question, and led their group over to the nearest stage. They climbed up the stairs onto the platform — the instant Liz stepped foot on the top, the duelling wards crackling over her skin, the wind and the winter chill lifted. That was much better. In addition to the temperature and cutting off any wind, the wards on the platforms would also prevent any water from gathering on the surface — and instantly vanish any blood that fell on them, incidentally (not that it'd be very easy to steal blood to curse someone with when the audience was right there) — they would be perfectly safe and comfortable to duel on. Right, that was her concerns taken care of, thanks.

Like that first day in Romania they would get a show from professional duellists, seemingly just for the hell of it. Unlike in Romania, there would be multiple duels going on on different stages, a handful of professionals just playing around with each other for the next few hours, they (and the rest of the teams) would be free to wander around and watch whoever they wanted. Dovilas preferred their team stay together, just to avoid anyone getting lost, but besides that, he didn't really have a plan for them at this point. He did have a list of who would be fighting where, they had a vote on who they'd go see.

Oh, Säde was here! Säde Karjalainen — Liz wouldn't have remembered the surname off the top of her head if she hadn't just heard Dovilas say it — the woman who'd been at the Yule Ball with Arvīds (Liepiņš, that is, the Durmstrang judge). Liz had the list of her novels back in her bag, still planned to see if she could track down some copies in town on her off day, but she really had very little idea what Säde was like as a duellist. Her vote was for Säde, but unfortunately they ended up deciding on Charis Perdikis which was...fine, Liz guessed. Was probably going to be a little crowded at that stage, Charis was one of the top-rated duellists in the ICW at the moment — hadn't he been a semifinalist at one of the big tournaments just last year...?

Which was relevant, because it'd been long enough that her drugs were wearing off. It took a short walk to get to the right stage, and by the time they got there the minds crowded all around were already starting to grate on her a little. The problem with using her drugs to get herself through dealing with being in public was that she was not prepared to deal with this shite when they wore off...and she'd left the envelope in her bag in her room, like a fucking idiot. She grit her teeth, concentrated on her breathing for a moment — pulled in a little bit, instead of relaxed sprawling all over the place as she'd been when she was too high to care, made it a little easier, but it was still, just, uncomfortable, stifling and sharp and crackling, a random alien feeling tugging her this way and that, ugh, she really wished people could just keep their shite to themselves.

(Liz realised she was the problem here, but it wasn't like she could do a lot about it. That's what she got for breaking herself like an idiot, she guessed.)

Once they got to the right stage, Liz immediately made for a back corner of the stands — she'd rather not be completely surrounded by people at the moment, thanks. Her team followed her after a confused second, she grit her teeth at their attention brushing over her, but it wasn't that bad, thankfully. (The cloak kind of prevented any sexy attention, which was a plus.) And there was something else to draw their eyes, the duel already started by the time they got here — two unfamiliar men (she wasn't sure which was Charis) dancing around throwing flashy colourful spells at each other, occasionally pausing to trade taunts, voices amplified for the audience (though they weren't speaking in English, and only occasionally in French). They obviously weren't trying to win, just playing around, for fun. Liz had done the same sort of thing sometimes in duelling club, but of course it was a lot more big and impressive when professionals did it.

Liz sat right in the back corner — which was still open, the teams that'd gotten here before them keeping to the front rows — where at least she'd have two sides without minds pressing in on her. And there also wouldn't be anyone behind her, so she wouldn't be able to feel eyes on her back, this was about as comfortable as she was going to get here. Somewhat to her surprise, Severus appeared at the front of the group to claim the seat right next to her. Okay, then?

Their group had hardly even settled in for a minute or two, her teammates excitedly chattering, when Severus's wand appeared in his hand. A subtle little twist and there was a familiar hiss of magic appearing on the air — Severus's favourite privacy spell, cast tightly around them. Liz quick felt out the magic around them, but it looked like he'd cast it close enough that Susan and Chelsea right in front of her wouldn't be able to hear them, alright then.

He paused a brief moment — Liz suspected he'd noticed her feeling out the magic, waited for her to confirm whatever they said would be kept private before getting on with it. "Are you all right, Elizabeth?"

"...Um, do you mean right now, or in general?"

Liz had no idea what the hell that tingle of amusement was about, she hadn't said anything funny. "Both, I suppose."

"I don't know, fine, I guess." She'd never been great at answering that sort of question, honestly. "I'm not completely miserable over Daphne, if that's what you're asking. I mean, it sucks sometimes, but I'll be okay."

"I assume the day with Miss Bones and Miss Bell went well."

"Oh yeah, sure. A little awkward at times, I guess — it turns out I snuggle in my sleep."

Severus showed no sign of it externally, but she could feel him laughing at her on the inside. Still a little annoying, but at least she got what was so funny this time — just because it was embarrassing for her didn't mean she couldn't get why someone else might find it funny. "If you are having difficulty, you will tell me." It wasn't quite a question.

Liz rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Severus, I'm fine. I think we can just assume our normal agreement that I say something if I need help still stands, and move on, please." Really, if something wasn't actively reminding her of the fucked up shite around the break-up and how much she hated her body and how she was kind of evil, she mostly felt pretty normal, so she'd very much prefer it if Severus just shut the fuck up about it now.

"...Very well." She wasn't sure how much of that last thought he'd picked up, but by that little hesitation there, she suspected it was at least some. "I did notice you retreated to the corner very quickly."

"Oh, um, drugs wore off. I left the rest with my stuff in our flat, like an idiot." Trying not to feel too self-conscious, she just shrugged — she was aware Severus wasn't super happy with the idea of Liz relying on drugs to comfortably function in public, but.

"Ah, I see. Speaking of which..." Severus reached into his pocket, pulled out a simple paper envelope. "I consulted with an associate of mine, and I am told that he is not familiar with any substitute for the use of grounding potions that would be suitable for your purposes. This is a recreational formulation altered to prevent common unpleasant side-effects. I reduced the strength by half — hopefully that should strike a reasonable balance between mitigating the worst of the psychometric echoes while minimising the inadvisable effects on your mood, but it is still far from ideal. It will have to do for the time being."

...And now Severus was giving her drugs? Okay, then. "Um, thanks." Bemused, Liz took the envelope, squeezed the sides a little to make the lip gape open. The little gemstone-looking crystals were mostly green with a purplish tint to them, the sheen of the light on some of the faces looking weirdly golden. Didn't look quite the same as the ones she already had, but she wouldn't expect them to — he'd probably used a different formula, and she expected Susan's alchemist was unlikely to be quite so good at his job as Severus was. She plucked out one of the little things and tucked it under her tongue, then slipped the envelope into the pocket on the inside of her cloak she'd hardly ever used before. There was a button to hold the pocket closed, but she really had no idea how well that would work, hopefully the things wouldn't just spill out everywhere...

"I would avoid taking these whenever you expect to have a delicate conversation, or might need to fight, or run. Depending on how they affect you, they may not be suitable for class either. This is only a temporary solution, for when you must be seen in crowded public settings."

"Yeah, no, I get that. Honestly, I completely understand now why some Seers just decide to go the hermit route, it's really exhausting sometimes."

There was a sharp, cold, unpleasant flutter from Severus, a brief pause before he found his voice again. "It is curious that your Sight remained so thoroughly unconscious until last year — though not unusual, I'm told. Some psychometric Seers repress their potential as children, the sense only surfacing as they become better equipped to interpret what they are feeling. Similar to mind magic in that way, I suppose. Unfortunately, I cannot guess how...much deeper your sensitivity may become — a fraction of your perception may still be unconscious, and the breadth of a Seer's contact with ambient magic is a function of their baseline channelling threshold." Meaning a Seer picked up more shite the more magically powerful they were, because Severus simply didn't speak plain English.

...And mages slowly grew more powerful every time they used magic, and Liz was constantly using magic, thanks to how she'd broken her mind as a child, so her Seer shite was always going to get slowly worse, for her entire fucking life. The tablet under her tongue putting a little slur on her voice, she drawled, "Oh well, thanks for the excellent news, Severus, that makes me feel much better."

"The hope is that we will be able to continually develop better strategies to manage your Sight. If it is any comfort at all, my associate is optimistic — his opinion is that, as you have continued to attend school for this long with only modest accommodations, there is a very good chance that it will remain manageable for the foreseeable future. As you better learn the shape of your particular sensitivities, it may even become easier."

Oh, well, that was a little reassuring, actually. "Your associate? Why do you keep calling him that?"

"He's a Death Eater. He asked me to avoid using his name — in the event that the Dark Lord returns, he would prefer not to be punished for aiding the enemy."

"...Right." Right, that made sense. In that light, Liz was kind of surprised that whoever it was had risked giving Severus advice at all — the Mark was getting darker, after all, she wouldn't be surprised if some of the Death Eaters were freaking out about that. (It had seemed like Karkaroff was.) But then, she guessed Severus and whoever it was were friends...or something like friends, so.

Actually, when she thought about it, it was very possible that Severus was even lying about their gender, if he was trying to keep their identity secret. Liz had noticed before that most of his friends were women, and Severus was a sneaky bastard, seemed like the sort of thing he would do.

"Thanks. I mean, um, I know you're really not happy about me drugging myself to get through stuff, so... I didn't expect you to do something like this, honestly."

There was a sharp flash from his head that Liz was certain was exasperation. "I have concerns, yes, but the improvement in your mood and even your sociality while under the effects is blindingly obvious. And, naturally, living under such constant stress isn't healthy either — at a certain point, one must choose one's battles. I believe we've had a discussion to that effect on a few occasions." Explaining why he was letting her borrow books on dark magic, and even helping her with her blood-subsumption ritual and instantly learning languages, he meant. "It is hardly an ideal solution, of course, but research into treatments for psychometric stress is frustratingly limited to grounding potions, and similar strategies to block the Sight in its entirety. If I had more free time available, I might be able to—"

"Woah." The world seeming to tilt around her, her vision smearing, Liz gripped onto the bench with both hands. Swept with pleasant warm tingles, she suddenly felt very lightheaded, that odd, vaguely numb distance — like those moods where her she felt oddly removed from her body, but without the feeling extremely disgusting part — hitting with a sudden lurch. Almost like missing a stair, falling out of herself, making her feel extremely dizzy for a second. After the initial moment passed, staring at Chelsea's hair and taking a deep breath in and out, the world started to settle a little, the swirling stopped. The feeling of distance and the general numb tingly warmth didn't go away, Liz suddenly much more relaxed. The press of minds around not grating on her now, just, like, warm raindrops speckling her skin, the wind tugging at her flying on her broom — she could definitely feel the crowd was there, feelings brushing over her skin and thoughts dancing behind her eyes, but it just slipped away, like water through her fingers.

A smile twitching at her lips, she let out a long, shaking breath. Fuck, that was much better...

"Elizabeth?"

"I'm fine, just— Ngeh." Looking up at Severus, the motion had her vision swirling again — reminding her a lot of the first time, at that one party in Hufflepuff, Susan's stuff didn't do this nearly as much. "It just hit really suddenly, is all, I'm fine. This is half-strength? What the hell is the full-strength shite like? Jesus..."

For a couple seconds, Severus just stared at her, shifty uncomfortable thoughts clicking in his head. "If you are having an adverse reaction..."

"No, it's fine, it's just, Susan's stuff doesn't have nearly as much of the swirly dizzy stuff with it. Don't have to tell me twice not to try duelling on this stuff, fuck." She paused for a second, biting her lip. "Do you think it's possible to, like, turn the dizziness down but keep everything else? Because this is about perfect, as far as the Seer stuff and not feeling inexplicably gross goes, but I kind of feel like the bench is slowly spinning right now."

There was a frigid flicker in his head at the feeling gross bit — probably putting together that was a reference to her frustrating body issues, because he was clever like that. Probably shouldn't have said that part, but oh well. There was a pause, Severus considering the problem, Liz's eyes drawn back to the stage. Her head being all spinny and her eyes not quite cooperating was making the duel look kind of funny, a faded trail of motion blur left behind them as they moved, the spellglows seeming brighter and sharper than usual somehow, glittering with colour. Like the sparks of magic in the smoke she used for spirit-walking, actually...

...She almost thought she could see where they were going to move before they did, a spark of magic before the spellglow properly bloomed to life. It was extremely subtle, and she wasn't really seeing seeing it, with her eyes...and she didn't always guess right. It was possible it was just her imagination, that she'd developed enough duelling instincts to guess, from knowing how duels normally went, but she had a funny feeling...

"From what I know of the mechanics involved, that would be...difficult. I assume something of the like must be possible, but it would require experimentation — I simply won't have the time for such a project before summer."

Distracted by the duel, it took Liz a second to remember Severus had been talking to her. "Huh? Oh! Right, okay, just wondering."

Severus felt exasperated again, also with a low cool... Not sure what to call that feeling. "You might consider formulating an alternative to standard grounding potions for yourself. You have sufficient skill in potions to attempt it, and my brief look into the subject would suggest it would certainly be an original product, fit for publication — an academic paper in a professional journal under your name will look very impressive to any Proficiency programme. I will assist, of course, but it will need to be delayed until the summer."

Oh, well. Of fucking course any Proficiency programme would be impressed if she had an original potion published in a fucking healing journal. People might give it a somewhat funny look if she was splitting authorship of the paper with her legal guardian — did the magical world have, like, ethical guidelines or something about that? But, yeah, probably still impressive. "Are you... You would do that?"

"Of course. I am not a psychometric Seer, so I would require a partner to help better target it in any case. I expect you would have useful insight into the process and the effects — your contribution would be more than enough to justify putting your name on it. Unless you have something more worthwhile to spend your summer break on."

"...Well, I've got the other duelling tournament and the blood alchemy thing, but once that's done with, not really, I guess." It was just...a little absurd? Though, when she thought about it, standard grounding potions sucked — even Severus had admitted he was loathe to recommend one, worried it'd make her depression stuff worse — so coming up with her own fix seemed like the obvious thing to do? She, just, hadn't realised she was already good enough at potions to start inventing her own medicine. With Severus's supervision, but still. She had no idea how long it would take to finish a project like that and get it published somewhere, it might not be out by the time she'd be applying to schools, but it was still a good idea anyway. "Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks."

"It's no trouble — my name would be on the thing too, after all." She got the feeling that was supposed to be a joke — Severus felt amused, anyway — but she didn't really get it.

"No, I mean..." She trailed off, not really sure what she meant. For a moment, she watched the duel still going on, only really half paying attention, still trying to... Well, feelings were hard. The pause went on for a little bit, but Severus didn't move to get rid of the privacy spell, curiosity tinkling off of him high and clear like— It was kind of reminding her of a wind chime? Weird. "You're always going out of your way to do shite for me, and I'm— Well." She'd been about to say something not so nice about herself, Severus didn't like it when she did that, terms of our abusers, blah blah. "I don't always, um, I suck at this sort of thing, I probably wouldn't even be trying now if I weren't kind of high at the moment, but, I'm really bad at making it clear I...appreciate it, you know. I guess. So. I didn't mean thanks just for the potion thing, but also kind of in general, if I'm making any sense at all."

"You are." There was an odd feeling in Severus's head, no idea how to read that (feelings were hard), Liz just kept watching the duel. These kinds of conversations were always easier if she didn't have to look at the person when she was doing it — it didn't bother her most of the time, just when there was uncomfortable feelings shite involved, which was odd. Apparently the same principle still applied when she was—

Oh shite, that was why! When she was a little kid, Petunia interrogating her about something, all squirming and uncomfortable and half-terrified, demanding Ellie look at her when— The embarrassment and confusion of feelings conversations unconsciously made her think of Petunia, that was why. Fuck, she hadn't put that together until literally right this second...

She would say something about maybe being high not being so nice all the time, but if she weren't on drugs right now that realisation would probably be unpleasant — at the moment, she was just thinking oh hell, how did I never notice that before? Honestly, she had to be the least self-aware mind mage in history.

Anyway, she was still thinking about that when Severus got around to talking. "I think you will find, Elizabeth, that an adult going out of their way to do shite for a child in their care is, in fact, perfectly ordinary."

...

Nope, she had nothing. "Shut up."

"Very mature, Elizabeth," Severus drawled, warm amusement pelting over her.

She nearly made a joke about it being perfectly ordinary for kids to be annoying little shites to the adults responsible for them, but that felt like too much somehow. "I'm going to make fun of you so much when you and Síomha have kids." There, that was better.

By the hard lurch of surprise in his head, Severus turning to glance at her, he didn't think so. She belatedly remembered that she'd never told him she was pretty sure there'd be kids, maybe she shouldn't have done that? Oops. "I shudder to imagine what horrors would be unleashed upon the world should that come to pass." Severus dismissed the privacy spell with a flick of his fingers before Liz could even think to respond. That conversation was over now, apparently?

Liz stared up at Severus, trying to choke back her irritation — he was such a fucking hypocrital bastard sometimes. He got all stern and serious whenever Liz talked about being a freak or a creepy devil child or whatever, but there he goes and implies that any kids he'd have would definitely end up super fucked up because of him, and just expects that to pass without comment. Was she not supposed to notice that? Sure, she realised Severus was about as much of a mess as Liz was in his own way, he'd never really tried to pretend he wasn't, but it was, just. It was almost like he didn't realise he was contradicting himself, when he said shite like that.

(Besides, Liz thought he wasn't doing so bad with her, she was arguably less fucked up than she used to be, so.)

(...Actually, when she thought about it, it was possible he'd meant to imply that any children of Severus Snape and Síomha Ní Ailbhe would be super fucking weird — that one was fair.)

Something bumped against her knee, she twitched, glanced down to see Susan leaning back to look up at her. Her face was upside down from this perspective, it looked kind of funny. "Are you two done with your private talk now.?"

"Sure, I guess. What is it?"

"Chelsea asked a question about the duel a minute ago, and I was just thinking, do you know any good illusion spells? For our trio, it might be a neat trick to get Katie a few extra seconds to conjure up some stuff." At the moment the plan was just for Liz to distract them as much as possible, by quick-stepping up in their faces and doing big flashy spells.

"I'm a mind mage, Susan, I'm amazing at illusions. Oh shite, after I quick-step up close to people I can make them think I'm standing, like, a foot to the left or something — something that small I can probably do with mind magic, why did I never think of that..."

"Wouldn't you need to do two illusions at once, though? One of yourself standing somewhere else and another to make yourself invisible...and I guess four more to cover the other two in the trio."

"No, no, I'd just rotate their vision relative to their sense of their own bodies — which would be a compulsion instead of an illusion, I guess—" Actually, she suspected it might technically count as a very limited form of possession, but she wasn't going to explain that just now. Or possibly ever, if she could help it, since normal people thought possession was freaky as hell just in principle. "—but I can do that to three people at once no problem. They'll break it pretty quickly, but it'll buy a few seconds, at least."

"Um...you're the mind mage here, I'll take your word for it. You know, if you hit them with that, we can probably knock out all three before they recover, Katie might be better off hitting one with a stunning spell than working on conjuring stuff."

"Fuck, you're right. Ugh, I feel like such an idiot, should have thought of this ages ago. Hey, get Gladwin's attention, I want to practise that tonight..."

Weeeeee...

Took a bit longer to get this chapter than usual, partially due to slow writing days, and partially due to breaking to work on First Contact for a bit. I'm going to start doing that more — the current plan is to write for First Contact until I feel like I'm hitting a block, and then switch back to this fic, back and forth on whatever schedule ends up feeling natural. We'll see how that goes. The next section of First Contact is maybe 1/3rd done? Maybe a little more than that, it's difficult to say. It'll come when it comes.

For this fic, we've most likely got two more Lithuania chapters, then popping back to Hogwarts, then pretty much straight to the Third and Fourth Tasks. Oh, I'm also about to do a complete read-through, compiling notes as I go for a companion piece with worldbuilding/character notes and summaries and stuff — so you poor readers don't have to go back through this entire monstrosity to find something. I'll also probably be changing the chapter titles, because "Fourth Year — XXXI" is absurd.

Right, see y'all next time.