February 1995
The Great Hall had only been slightly altered to accommodate the Fourth Task, the changes far, far more minor than what had been done for the Yule Ball. Liz thought the room was roughly the same size, maybe only slightly larger. Instead of a grid of tables with benches on both sides, seven to each house, there were a larger number of narrower tables, with seating only on one side — there were drinks and snacks sitting out here and there, it was around lunch time and Liz understood the Task might take a little while. The tables also weren't quite as wide, accommodating a fifth column in the middle (instead of the single table turned ninety degrees), one table at the front slightly separated from the rest, the judges all sitting in a row.
Liz thought the room was somewhat more crowded than it was at ordinary meal times, but it was hard to say for sure — there might be some extra people here, but nowhere near as many guests as they had in the Tasks held in front of the huge bloody stands. Supposedly, the event would still be being captured somehow, the feed being pumped live into, like, pubs and shite. It still seemed very strange to Liz that actual adults gave enough of a damn about this silly school event to pay it this much mind, but she guessed that there often wasn't a lot going on in the magical world — they really only had the two sports — so whatever.
Though, she did have to wonder if she was kind of witnessing the invention of magical television in real time. They had radio, of course, but video was more difficult for complicated reasons — when Liz had asked about the big magical display stuff at the previous Tasks, Babbling had explained that the different bits and pieces of the magic had been invented over the last couple centuries, but they'd only started being able to put it together very recently. (She'd described how the modular enchanting involved worked, in general terms, without mentioning that Babbling herself was a foremost innovator in the technique, to the point that some random foreigners Liz had talked to had even heard of her.) As far as Liz knew, this was the first actual large-scale broadcast, ever in the history of the magical world...though they'd kind of cheated: the devices that projected the illusion of the display were tied to each other by an enchantment similar to the one Sirius's mirrors and Rita's notebooks worked by, which had all kinds of limitations. If they wanted this to be a more useable, public thing, there was still a lot of work that needed to be done — and live broadcasts were one thing, but recordings were more difficult, video and audio captured and reproduced by different means — but it was still fascinating.
Honestly, Liz would much prefer doing this event in a room on their own, instead of in front of an audience. Having her picture taken made her uncomfortable, but she was pretty sure that was because she was feeling the attention of the person using the camera — she didn't feel the same intrusive, skin-clawing, uncomfortably penetrating gaze this time, and she hadn't really during the other Tasks either. She suspected whatever devices they used to capture the image were simply set up and left there, so she wasn't being actively examined...though, in the First Task there'd definitely been invisible elves in the arena filming them, but she hadn't felt their attention either. Maybe elves just registered to her differently, for whatever reason? The thought that who knew how many people around the country were watching her right now did make her feel rather self-conscious — it didn't hep that she was wearing trousers, worried she might flash her pants leaning over the model in a skirt, and she still wasn't quite comfortable wearing trousers — but it was only a minor distraction, not a big deal.
The intense storm of thought and feeling on the air, who knew how many hundreds of minds crammed into the room stealing away the oxygen, pressing against her, pressing into her, needing to grit her teeth and focus to keep herself from being swept away by other people's shite, eyes crawling all over her skin warm and cold and slimy and pinching — that was just fucking uncomfortable. Liz cringed away from the psychic weight crashing into her — physically, she felt people notice — swallowing the urge to turn right back around — there was no telling what the Goblet might do to her if she backed out of the Task — and forced herself to keep walking, legs numb and wooden.
After a bit of walking, blindly following Fleur in front of her — the stinging cold veela magic was stretched back around Liz, as though trying to shield her from the flood of shite given off by the crowd (it didn't work like that, but thanks for trying, she guessed) — she walked through the gossamer clinging curtain of a ward...and, in the space of a single breath, it was gone. The noise from the crowd, she meant, it was quiet in here, just the Champions and a few other minds she didn't recognise, the relief so absolute and so sudden she gasped, her pace halting for a second. She actually staggered a little, as though the weight of far too many minds had been a physical one, its unexpected absence throwing her off balance.
"Woah." Before she could teeter too far a pair of hands clasped each arm just under the shoulder, Cedric's mind rushing up to blare far too close and loud into her ears. Which was unpleasant, sure, but compared to the cacophony from a second ago it was much more manageable. "You okay, there?"
"I'm fine," she said, Cedric's hands lifting away as she properly got her feet under herself. "Just you know, wards."
Cedric had felt the wardline as he passed through it, but his sensitivity to magic wasn't fine enough to feel any difference in the environment between one side and the other. "Ah, they're solid enough to block off your mind magic, then?"
"Yeah, they're really fucking good, it's so quiet in here." Though, since they'd drawn attention to themselves by stopping only a couple steps inside the wardline, she could feel eyes focussing on her, soft tingly pressure against her skin...but it wasn't that bad. She'd noticed blocking mind magic made the feeling of people's attention on her milder, but didn't actually get rid of it completely. She suspected it was a Seer thing somehow intensified with mind magic — which would make sense, because Severus had said he didn't experience it at all — so wards that blocked mind magic left only the Sight part intact. Which was interesting, but not really something to stand around thinking about just now. "Come on, we're falling behind."
The platform at one side of the Great Hall that held the staff table had also been changed. It was sitting somewhat higher — normally it was only about knee-height on her, but now it was up to hip- or waist-height — and the table was gone. Instead there were six low rectangular diases, roughly person-sized, arranged in a row left to right. Liz would guess that was where their models would be placed, at a convenient viewing angle for the audience. She skipped ahead to catch up with Fleur, climbing the steps onto the platform, belatedly noticing that the six sections of the stage were divided with lines drawn in a curling sort of design, walking over the first line she felt another brush of wards. Apparently the Champions were isolated from the crowd, but also each other, which made sense when she thought about it — among the six of them were two mind mages and a veela, it'd be really easy for them to cheat if they felt like it.
Liz came to a stop behind the second dias — for whatever reason, they'd decided to arrange the Champions from left to right (right to left to the audience) with Durmstrang first, then Beauxbatons, and then Hogwarts, junior and then senior, which put her second to the right, next to Cedric on the end. She glanced out to the crowd, and just, kind of, awkwardly stood there, not sure what she should be doing with herself, exactly. Fuck, that was a lot of people...
...Somehow she knew Daphne specifically was looking at her. Liz couldn't see her, too many faces in the crowd, but she knew. That was uncomfortable.
Was being able to identify specific people's attention going to start being a thing? Or maybe it was just Daphne, for whatever reason — maybe they had to have had enough physical— Oh wait, never mind, there was Hermione, and Padma glanced her way for a moment, and Dorea, and she was pretty sure that was Sally-Anne... Apparently it was just people she knew well. That was odd.
That was new — though it was hard to tell if it was an ability she literally hadn't had before or if she was just getting better at interpreting what she did pick up. Magic could be funny like that, especially when it was something so intuitive as the Sight. That was kind of interesting, when she thought about it. Her mind magic got too overwhelmed in a crowd to pick out any individual person, but apparently that didn't happen with the Sight. She could even tell where their attention was focussed — you'd think all the other eyes on her would be too much to keep it straight, but apparently not.
Which was why she noticed the second Oz's eyes dropped to her hips, followed an instant later by Susan's, she couldn't help rolling her eyes. They certainly had no idea she could feel them checking her out from here, but honestly. They probably couldn't even see her very well from wherever they were, that was just silly...
(She didn't notice Severus's attention at any point, but that wasn't a surprise — she suspected he'd been recruited to help prepare the healing tests.)
Thankfully, she didn't have too long to stand around awkwardly, the event quickly got going. Not that that wasn't tedious and embarrassing by itself. Blaise's mum, who was once again taking on the job of announcer — she was technically in charge of this whole thing, but Liz privately suspected she just enjoyed the showmanship and the attention. (She could have simply hired a magical radio announcer or something to do it, after all.) Liz got the feeling she'd already said hello and explained the rules and everything, going straight into an introduction of the Champions and an explanation of their current standing. Which was completely unnecessary, but whatever.
She was starting in last place and working her way up, so first was Durmstrang's Ingrid Hannasdottir of the County of Skåne in Daneland, with ten points. (Liz was pretty sure "county" was the wrong word, but whatever.) Zabini gave a brief summary of her performance so far, trying to be politic about it — Ingrid had done the worst of all the Champions, sometimes significantly so, like when she got set on fire by a dragon. Liz wasn't surprised, leaning forward to look along the row — Ingrid's hair had grown back, she must have gotten that taken care of somewhere on the Continent — to see her face was very red, embarrassed. In second-to-last place with twelve points was Viktor Krum of Varna, Bulgaria — an amazing performance in the First Task, practically winning the team event single-handed, had been followed up with an abysmal disaster in the Second Task, getting into a fight with random muggles and nearly risking the Statute of Secrecy, and he was then penalised heavily for the smashing of the dragon eggs in the Third Task. Viktor stoically stood through the summary, his face blank. They'd talked about it, so Liz knew Viktor was extremely annoyed with his British classmates for overestimating their ability to get by in the muggle world, but fully admitted that the Third Task was his mistake, that he deserved the shite score he'd gotten. Viktor was oddly humble and self-effacing in private, honestly, it was hard to believe sometimes that he was a super famous international quidditch celebrity.
In fourth place, with fourteen points, was Cedric Diggory (of the County of Devon in England) — Zabini saying his name was immediately met with cheering and whistling from the audience, Cedric waving with a bashful sort of smile. His valiant but doomed effort in the First Task and competent but unremarkable performances in the Second and Third had resulted in him getting pretty middling scores. Though he was the person with the highest score who didn't have extra magical cheater powers, so she guessed that was something.
And then both the Beauxbatons Champions were neck-and-neck. In third place, with sixteen points, was Fleur Delacour of the Province of Gascony in Aquitania ("province" was the correct term). Zabini's summary was very complimentary of her performance so far, with an edge of a sharp tone in it — Liz got the feeling Zabini suspected Fleur's scores were lower than they should be due to racism on the part of some of the judges, which honestly was probably true. (The way she was marked down on the Second and Third Tasks had been complete horseshite.) One point ahead of Fleur with seventeen points was Artémisia Cæciné of Narbonne, Aquitania. She's shown impressive duelling skills in the First Task, but ended up losing due to strategic missteps (ha ha), finished the Second Task without too much trouble, and had absolutely dominated the Third Task, tricking the dragon into giving her the egg and waltzing out untouched in barely a minute.
Liz had no idea how she was going to do in this one, if she knew any healing at all, but she was probably going to do excellent in the Fifth Task — a plain singles duelling tournament, and Artèmi had broken Cassie Lovegood's record undefeated streak in the junior student event — so her and Fleur were probably going to be the ones to beat as they closed in on the latter Tasks. Not that Liz really gave a damn, as long as she wasn't the one in the lead.
Speaking of which, in first place with eighteen points was Elizabeth Potter of the County of Denbigh in Cambria. (Clyde Rock was in Denbighshire, so she'd been born there, but Liz probably hadn't spent much longer than a week in Denbighshire in her entire life added up, but whatever.) There was also cheering at her name, if not quite as irritatingly noisy as for Cedric — Hufflepuff could be loud when they wanted to be — she tried not to look too uncomfortable. She didn't even want to be in this bloody thing, for fuck's sake, it was annoying that she was still in first place. At least she was pretty sure she wouldn't be after today, so that was something...
The reception Liz was getting was also more ambivalent than Cedric's. She couldn't directly feel the hostility in the crowd, but their feelings were obviously still putting weight on the wards, the boundary feeling a bit hotter and...cracklier than it'd been before. More eyes on her, some of them somewhat sharper, almost like—
Well, Liz wasn't really surprised that there were people in the school who would like to hurt her if they could — Ronald bloody Weasley was an obvious example — so as vaguely unnerving as that thought was, it wasn't really news. And she couldn't judge them for it either, there were plenty of people she'd like to fuck up if she thought she could get away with it...like Ronald bloody Weasley, for starters...
Thankfully, Zabini didn't let the awkward moment go on too long, going on with her summary. After a decent if unfocussed showing in the First Task, she'd breezed through the Second without any sign of difficulty, and then effectively mind-controlled her dragon in the Third, blah blah blah. The whole introduction was over at that point, Zabini reminded them that, like the others, this Task would also award a possible total of seven points — three rounds, each rated out of seven, the average taken for their final score — which meant, with as close as the scores were, it would be very easy to see significant shake-ups in the rankings.
While Zabini was wrapping up, a handful of men and women in plain healer's clothes stepped up — two of them were levitating along collections of crates, continued toward the platform to go down the line, each of them setting down one of their crates on either end of each dias. Zabini explained that these people — impartial experts, lent from the University of Syracuse and some hospital in Holland — would evaluate the Champions' work and communicate that to the judges, giving an impression of their skill and the 'patient''s prognosis in a form a layman could understand. The boxes held supplies, potions and bandages and the like that the Champions could use — everything they would theoretically need to treat their 'patients' was in there, but there were also extras and things they wouldn't need at all, so they couldn't just guess through the process of elimination. They would have a set time to work, different for each round, finishing early would probably get them extra points, and if the timer ran out on them they'd be evaluated based on the work they'd actually finished.
Right, everyone caught up? Good, good. Let's go ahead and send up our first 'patients', then. Start the clock in five...
There was a flash of not-light, a funny twisting lurch, and healing models appeared on each of the empty diases. (The same magic they used to send food up to the tables, which Liz guessed explained why they'd decided to do it here.) The one in front of her wasn't quite the same as the one Liz had practised with — it looked equally realistic, with the very human-looking skin, complete with hints of veins and pores and freckles and shite, a messy mop of brown hair, but it was completely sexless. It was very androgynous, maybe somewhat more boy-like than girl-like — adult-sized, but no sign of tits whatsoever — and there was just a smooth featureless nothing between its legs. Liz would guess whoever was organising this stuff had decided anatomically correct models would have been inappropriate for a public event.
Anyway, right, doing the thing. Tuning out the crowd in front of her as well as she could, Liz stepped up to the dias, sank to her knees, and began casting the overly-long analysis charm. She could see there was obviously something wrong with the thing's left arm, and it'd been hit with some kind of curse along its side just over the hip — a slashing curse, blood leaking out onto the plain stone of the dias, the edges visibly scorched — but there could be something that wasn't obvious. Illusory colourful glows hovering in front of her eyes, hmm... No, just looked like the curse in the side and the damage to the arm — by the tone of the colours, the curse hadn't gone too deep, it should be relatively easy to fix. The shoulder above the injured arm was also wrenched a bit, probably from the same impact or whatever, but it wasn't serious, the regenerative potion she'd be giving anyway would take care of that too. A quick casting of that bone-sounding charm, yep, the arm was broken. Um...only one of the bones in the forearm, looked like, a relatively clean break, not a big deal. Right, Liz was probably screwed for the latter tests, but she should be able to do this one just fine.
The curse was the worse injury — it wasn't imminently lethal, but she should still start with that one. She quick immobilised the model's arm with a charm, then turned the model onto its side, so she could better access all of the curse damage. Or, at least she was about to, but she stopped immediately upon actually touching the thing — it did still feel awful, the same inexplicable stomach-churning disgust as the model she'd practised with...but significantly milder. Still bad, but not nearly as bad. That was...odd.
Anyway, she finished turning the model over, moved the arm out of the way, pulled the knees up somewhat — with a charm, the model's back was to her and she couldn't reach that far — so it would stay balanced on its own. As rather flat and androgynous as the thing was, the bones of its hips and shoulders were still enough to squish together the spot the injury was on, that would be very difficult to work with. A pillow to put under its side would be nice, but Liz couldn't conjure for shite; she checked the crates of supplies, but while there were bandages and splints and stuff, she didn't see any useable objects anywhere. Fine, fuck it — Liz broke off a chunk of the wooden crate with a charm, quick transfigured it into a hard, dense pillow, tucked it under the model's side just above the hip. That wasn't quite how she wanted it, so she transfigured the pillow a little bigger, enough that its spine arced up, spreading the wound further open, blood oozing down its back. There, perfect.
The healing job from there was slow and tedious, but not particularly difficult. The slash was relatively shallow, while there was some minor scorching in there none of the organs and shite were seriously damaged, the regenerative potion should take care of it. Cleaning the blood away with a charm, Liz started at the deepest part of the cut, carefully weaving the tissues together millimetre by millimetre. She couldn't just do that narrow length all the way to the top, though, once the deepest parts were fixed up to the level of the bits to either side she again cleared away some blood, and slowly ran along the bottom of the wound front to back, the process slow and finicky and delicate. (Stupid bloody capillaries, so annoying to get them to sit straight with the basic healing charms.) And then once that depth was done, she had to go back to the front to start on the next layer, slowly weaving shite together millimetre by millimetre, and again, and again...
Finally, the tissues that could be drawn together had been — the cut was ragged enough that some bits had been lost entirely, or were just too mangled or dead to be useable. So, it was just the burned layers at the top to deal with now. Liz quick cast the charm to vanish away the dead skin...but there were still tiny little flappy bits or dagged ends left behind. They were technically still alive, but they weren't properly connected to anything, neighbouring tissues lost to the slash or to the burn, they were probably going to end up dying in the next few hours...or would leave awful scarring, at least. Liz hesitated for a moment, before going through and cutting off the hanging bits by hand — she wasn't certain this was medically necessary, but it just seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Another cleaning charm drew away the small amount of blood that'd gathered over the last couple minutes (the majority of the bleeding had been from the cut, already mostly healed) as well as the bits she'd just cut off, there we go.
Liz went to the potions crate, picked out regenerative and pain potions — one topical and one oral each — and she would also need a potion to repair the broken bone, um... This one, she thought it was this one. Not the fancy one she technically owned the patent for, obviously, that was for far more serious damage than this, just a minor thing to provide the materials necessary and prompt the body to focus on healing it — the potion was greyish-yellowish, and kind of chalky, looked very gross, but thankfully she wouldn't be the one drinking it. And that was everything, right. She went to the other crate for a package of poultice-packing stuff and some bandages, and here was a splint...yes, this size would do, there we go, perfect.
Wrapping the wound was simple but tedious, since she had to do most of it by hand. Another quick sterilisation charm laid over the wound — as well as her hands, as long as she was at it — Liz covered the wound with the funny gelatinous sheets of the packing material, then spread dollops of the topical potions over it, mixing them together with little swirls of her wand. Covering the potion mix with a second layer of packing material, she then had to wrap it up with bandages to hold it in place. Liz just cast a levitation charm on the model, lifting the whole thing into the air, so it was easier to wind the stuff around the model's waist, over and over and over and over...
Once everything was good and covered, Liz paused to give the bandage a few tugs with her finger — right, looked decent enough to her. She tied the bandage off, before gently bleeding off the levitation charm, the model again resting face-up on the dias.
And now the arm. Liz got up and moved to the other side of the dias — putting her back to the audience, but she was trying to pretend they weren't watching. Right, so, proper magical splints were actually enchanted to tug the underlying bones straight by themselves, but for that to work she had to make sure the bars were properly aligned over the bone she wanted immobilised. One of the bars held to either side, Liz repeatedly cast her bone-sounding charm, adjusting the splint a few millimetres this way or that...yeah, that looked about right. Carefully holding the splint in place, Liz cinched the ties closed, occasionally casting the bone-sounding charm again just to be sure she hadn't pulled anything out of alignment. Before too long she had all the ties tightened, and the bone was held in place, the break hardly visible to her sounding charm at all — perfect.
So, just a couple oral potions and she was done. While she'd been at home for a couple days, she had taken the opportunity to look up how the fuck you were supposed to give potions to unconscious patients. The version she'd seen Pomfrey use before, measures of potion somehow teleported out of the bottle and straight into the patient's stomach, was far too advanced for Liz to properly cast, but thankfully there was a much easier way to do it. Liz quick cast the first charm, blocking the the back of the model's throat — which also blocked its airways, it would suffocate if she left the charm on too long — carefully tipped the dose of regenerative potion into its mouth. Then, pushing its mouth closed with her free hand, she cast the second charm — the form of the magic was actually designed to interact with the magic of the first charm, cancelling it out while simultaneously triggering the model's muscles to swallow the potion. (Healing charms were very clever sometimes.) Liz quick repeated the process with the pain potion and the bone-growing potion, cast the analysis charm again to check...
Yeah, that was it, she was done. That hadn't been so hard...
After a few seconds, one of the evaluators came up and started casting analysis charms at the model, without a word. He was still working at that when there was a sudden bang, Liz startled enough she physically twitched — was that the end of their time? She'd just barely finished then, she'd probably be penalised for that. Not that she cared, honestly. She had to try her best to make sure the Goblet didn't punish her, but she did not want to be in the lead anymore. The healer finished checking her work, gave her a quick nod before turning and hopping off the platform, waltzing over to the judges' table.
They'd be given a score after each healing project, but they'd be given a single score, so the judges had to discuss it with the evaluators and come to a consensus — it'd be a couple minutes. While they were waiting, Professor Yaxley came by, asked if they wanted anything. Oh, well, Liz guessed some coffee would be nice, if it was on offer...
Liz was sipping at a steaming mug of coffee — she suspected Yaxley had told the elves it was for her, because it was the stuff they made for Severus, very strong and rich (honestly she loved house-elves sometimes) — when Zabini drew attention to herself again. Everyone had successfully healed their 'patients', if they were real people they would recover from their wounds more or less well, but they'd shown very different degrees of skill in the process, so despite that they had gotten a rather wide range of scores. The Champions would later be sent notes on the reasoning behind their scoring, but for now let's just hear the final numbers, shall we?
Zabini read the scores off from left to right, from the audience's point of view, starting with Cedric. He'd gotten a seven — Liz glanced that way to see Cedric's model had a few patches of bandages here and there, looking very neat and tidy, but she hadn't seen the condition it'd been in when he got it, so she couldn't really say how much of an improvement it was. Liz had gotten a four, which...this was a four? She thought she'd done rather well, honestly, she doubted very many people in her class could have done better...but then, Hogwarts didn't have a healing elective, so that didn't really say much. She wondered where the hell Cedric had learned healing magic...
(The notes Liz would get after the fact said she'd been marked down for barely getting in under the bell, the general haphazard sloppiness of her bandaging work, which added a minor risk of infection, and she'd forgotten the emergency nutrient potion, fuck. Oh well, not like it really mattered.)
Fleur had also gotten a seven, her model looking as neat and competent as Cedric's — the bandages and splints were in different places, but otherwise looked very similar — which wasn't really a surprise, since she had multiple close relatives who happened to be healers. (Including James's half-sister, it turned out, but Liz hadn't changed her mind about wanting nothing to do with her.) Artèmi, on the other hand, had only managed a three, ha. Liz reached past Fleur toward Artèmi's mind, just so she could shove a feeling of smugness at her — ha ha, I win.
There was a flash of exasperation from Artèmi — as well as a hint of surprise, that Liz had managed to reach her from the other side of Fleur's very noisy aura — followed with a flutter Liz read as a mental eye roll. Artèmi was good at healing magic, but the good stuff she'd been taught was explicitly for serious trauma or medical emergencies, and was all ritual magic. It was theoretically useable in the current setting, but Artèmi had a feeling she'd get a funny reaction if she started drawing spell circles and praying and making blood sacrifices in the middle of the Great Hall at Hogwarts.
Liz didn't quite hold in a snort of amusement, Cedric cutting her a confused glance. Ah, yeah, funny reaction was probably an understatement — she was pretty sure that kind of blood magic was illegal in Britain.
It wasn't blood magic, it was high ritual magic, directly invoking gods and all. But yes, Artèmi was aware. She'd tried to pick up a little mundane healing magic since she'd figured out what the task would be, but she basically had one hand tied behind her back, and unfortunately that's just the way it was.
Liz was kind of curious whether invoking gods in healing rituals actually worked, but they were in the middle of something at the moment, so she just let the contact with Artèmi's mind dissolve. Viktor got a five — not surprised he was competent, since Durmstrang had a required basic healing course in the Competency programme, but he probably didn't practise it much — but Ingrid got a seven, which was a surprise. And not just to Liz, there were audible gasps and mutters in the Hall, quickly followed with polite applause. Liz knew Ingrid had to be good at something, or Karkaroff wouldn't have chosen her as Durmstrang's junior Champion, that skill simply hadn't presented itself until literally this moment. They'd all said shite about what they were good at at the Weighing of the Wands, but Liz had been very distracted by the audience and her mental conversation with Artèmi, she didn't remember...
They moved right into the second test without delay — Zabini counted off again, there was another twisting lurch of magic, and the model in front of Liz was replaced with a fresh one. It looked completely untouched, nothing visibly wrong with it, but neither had the one she'd completely fucked up in practice with Severus. She assumed it was the same basic idea, that there was a curse attached to it she had to break — Severus hadn't really said, but she expected the third test would have physical damage and some kind of curse, multiple issues she had to try to balance simultaneously, which was going to be a fucking disaster. Not that she expected this one to go any better, given how quickly she'd killed the model last time, and it wasn't as though she'd had nearly enough time to learn how to dismantle an unfamiliar curse on someone else, she hadn't even bothered looking into it.
...Though she did have an idea. It was maybe stupid reckless, but there were a bunch of professional healers around, it couldn't go that badly. Liz set aside her mug of coffee, shuffled on her knees closer to the dias. She could feel the magic crackling around the model, but she cast her analysis charm anyway — the unpleasant tangle of green and red and black was focussed on the bones, but random threads spread throughout the body as well... Not the bones, bone marrow, it was some kind of curse that targeted the victim's blood. There were various kinds that had all kinds of effects, Liz wasn't skilled enough with reading the charm to guess which this was exactly, but they all functioned more or less the same, so it wasn't particularly relevant.
Letting the illusion fail, Liz stared down at the model, bracing herself. Her hand without thought coming up to her necklace — Lily's, the one Severus said had been a courtship gift from James, a deep, vibrant red gemstone cut into some kind of flower, clutched in gleaming gold leaf — the feel of the warm metal sparking an odd numb tingle in her fingers.
A touch of luck would be appreciated, if you don't mind. She had no idea whether anyone was listening, but it didn't hurt to ask. Although at this point, she didn't really doubt that there was something out there, she just had no idea if it was watching or not. They? Whatever.
She'd admit she'd been using the rituals around the Feast of the Mother — or Imbolc or whatever the hell you wanted to call it — as a test of whether there was anything to this religion stuff. Growing up, she'd been pretty convinced church was all made up, helped along by her mind-control superpowers kicking in revealing that a lot of the adults didn't actually believe in any of it anyway, and when she'd learned about all the other shite there was in the magical world, she hadn't really given that impression a second thought. Faeries could do weird fucking magic, maybe they'd inspired myths forever ago, that was reasonable enough of a theory (and not an uncommon one among magical atheists, as it happens). But then she started to realise how bloody weird her invisibility cloak was, and that some people, at least, believed it was literally created by a god — and it wasn't the only thing like it, there were plenty of other Artefacts out there. Atheists normally said those were just fairy magic too, or maybe made with old ritual techniques that'd been lost since, but... There were also stories in History class about miracles and shite associated with Christian groups too, which could also just be ritual magic effects, but... And, she'd read an actual good book about divination, recommended by Miss Eva, and it'd properly explained what receiving a prophecy was actually like, from the perspective of the Oracle, and...
Well. Her initial scepticism had gradually worn away over the last few years, to the point that she'd decided to use the Gaelic priesthoods trying to make her feel properly welcome and shite as an opportunity. Part of the tradition around the holiday involved hanging things up outside overnight, somewhere they'd catch the dawn sun — supposedly, Bríd would sometimes bless such things somehow, for health or good luck or whatever.
It didn't always happen, but, Bríd's priesthood were also the ones who did shite like run the orphanages or whatever, one of the big things about her was, like, protecting children and orphans and whatever the fuck, so she'd thought it was more likely that Liz would be 'visited' than some random average person. It was worth trying, in any case, just to see. She'd hung up some random bits of jewellery, including her mother's necklace, a few dresses, just to see.
The priests came by in the morning, took everything down with the proper songs or whatever — the language was somewhat archaic, but her newly-copied Gaelic was good enough to follow it, mostly praise and thanks to the Dawn in Spring, the Mother of the Hearthfire, so forth and so on. (There were numerous epithets, but they never actually spoke Bríd's name, she knew from Muirgheal that there was some taboo or something. Though she wasn't sure how that worked with people who were actually named Bríd, did that not count for some reason?) When they were handed back to Liz they felt...different. The feeling was very subtle, a sense of weight — not a physical weight, it was hard to explain — a vague cool numb tingle where they touched her skin. None of it was super obvious, but perceptible enough that Liz had immediately been able to tell that, despite them all having gone through the same process, the odd feeling was strongest on her mother's necklace and one dress in particular.
She hadn't been certain why this one dress might have been singled out, it was just a random cheap muggle-made thing...until she remembered it was the one she'd worn the day of her disastrous attempt to sleep with Daphne. She didn't know the reasoning behind the choice, exactly, but she suspected that had something to do with it.
Just as this one necklace being singled out probably had something to do with its connection to both of her parents. They did say Bríd was a protector of orphans in particular, so. She'd already taken to wearing it whenever it was appropriate to — she did like it, though it was a little fancy for daily use — but since that morning she'd only taken it off to shower and to sleep. She couldn't even explain why to herself, it just...seemed like the thing to do.
Liz hadn't completely given up on the remains of her scepticism — she'd thought at first that it was very possible that the echo of magic she'd felt on her things had been from the procedure of taking them down, that it was something the priests had done...but if that was it, the feeling should have worn off by now. She hadn't really felt them do anything, it hadn't seemed like they were channelling magic at all, and it would have to be a charm effect, those didn't last very long. The feeling still lingered, days later. If what Muirgheal said was correct, they should last until Lúnasa (the harvest festival in August), or in exceptional cases even a whole year, until they could be renewed again in February. That would be an absolutely absurd length of time for a charm effect to linger, and far as she knew it'd also be odd for ritual done without any significant sacrifice. So she would have to wait and see.
Not that she could tell what the subtle magic on the things did. She was pretty sure it was light magic, faintly cool to the touch — she could still feel the warmth the metal had absorbed from her own body, but she could also feel the chill of the magic — the numb tingle sort of like stepping in out of the cold...sort of. But the feeling was too vague for her to even attempt to guess what it was supposed to do, it was, just, there.
She wasn't entirely convinced. But she was about to try something very reckless, so, she'd take a little luck if someone out there was offering.
All right, let's just do this mad fucking thing. Letting go of her necklace, Liz leaned forward, set one hand on the model's chest and the other on its forehead — immediately hit with the inexplicable instinctive feeling of disgust, of course, ignored it as well as she could. Liz reached down, down, deep into the model's magic. It didn't quite feel the same as a person, more structured and regular, almost mechanical, but it didn't matter, she channelled up a handful of energy, reached around behind and pushed. Remembering her quick-step trick, channelling her mind-and-magic through her body, and her blood sacrifice ritual, extending the magic of her body out much like she'd reach with mind magic, remembering Severus implying that the line between mind magic and soul magic was much fuzzier than normally suggested, remembering how she'd amplified Valérie and Muirgheal's minds by pushing magic into them—
She pushed, and some of the energy skated off, running along the edges of the model's magical presence like a drink spilled across a table, but most of it was drawn inside. With a flash and a crackle, the model's aura abruptly burned brighter, the magic produced by the 'natural' operation of its body noticeably more intense, if only for a moment — and Liz could feel the push of the extra magic interfering with the curse, pushing it off, the threads untangling. But it only lasted for a second, the extra magic quickly bleeding off — the body could only sustain so much magic, the excess rising away like steam off of a pot — the curse settling back into place.
Liz felt herself smiling — it worked. It'd just been a random thought, and it probably wouldn't work for more serious curses, the ones that anchored themselves in especially firmly and required serious cursebreaking to remove. But this, she could shake this one loose, she was certain of it. She just had to...
With one 'hand' held against the back of the model's magic, she reached the other up and around, enveloping the model's presence, curse and all. Carefully, bit by bit, she sank down, tightening her grip, focussing on the curse, cinching herself tight around it. Like when pulling a memory out of a reservoir (or mind), she started plaiting the boundary of her magic and that of the curse together, the threads of dark magic hot and sharp and sizzling — not between the curse and the model, she left the connection between them alone, but forming a kind of net around it. Building a connection between herself and the curse, tugging it taut between them.
And then, she again pushed magic into the model's aura, and more, and more, and more, the model burning brighter and brighter, the air around her shimmering with escaping energy. The curse loosened, the flow of magic interrupting the elements that attached it to the model — and presumably preventing its proper operation, the progression of the damage must be slowing down at this point — and she channelled through more and more, the curse slowly lifting away, buoyed up by the river flowing through the model, stretching further and further—
Until Liz twisted, and yanked — with a flash of colourless light and a crack, felt in her bones more than heard, the curse popped loose from the model, flipping to latch onto Liz instead. It grasped hungrily at the bits of her she'd plaited into it, rapidly reaching back, mindlessly zeroing in on a proper target, but Liz shoved back against it, preventing the clawing tendrils of dark magic from reaching her body, pinning it in place. Tightly held in her net on all sides, she shredded the thing apart, scrambling the structure of the spell thoroughly enough that it lost cohesion, until it dissolved into a thick rain of red and violet and silver sparks.
Blinking her eyes open, Liz let out a shaky sigh. At some point, she'd tipped back away from the model, sitting on the floor and leaning back against her hands — physically distancing herself from the model as she ripped the curse away, she hadn't really been consciously aware of that. She felt a little jittery, but that was probably just nerves, and she had a sharp, throbbing headache, but besides that she felt fine, she didn't think she'd strained anything. Tipping back up onto her knees, she cast the analysis charm again...and yeah, the curse was gone — some damage had been left behind, but there were no lingering signs of foreign magic whatsoever.
Liz felt herself grinning. As very reckless as that had been, she was completely powerless to stop the intense thrill of victory, all but squirming on her knees in front of the dias. (She did enjoy winning at things, after all.) She'd managed to pull off basic cursebreaking on her very first try, improvised from scratch — unfortunately, she suspected it counted as soul magic, which people could be super squeamish about, so she couldn't really brag about it without making whoever she was talking to uncomfortable, but still.
(This wasn't a thought she would have allowed herself to have when she was still too fucked up by the Dursleys to admit that she was good at things, but sometimes she really was rather impressed with herself. She wasn't sure whether that counted as progress, exactly, where her mental health was concerned.)
There was still the damage the curse had already managed to do so, let's get that finished quick. Let's see, um, a basic regenerative potion, and another to replenish the damaged blood...this one, right. She quick gave those to the model, and then tracked down a basic pain potion for herself — it tasted fucking awful, chalky and sour and vinegary and blech, but it worked, her headache tapering off over a few seconds, so whatever. And that was it, Liz sat back away from the dias and picked up her cup of coffee again.
She tried not to gag at the first sip — ugh, the lingering grossness of the potion and coffee taste did not mix well...
One of the examiners came by after a minute or two, silent analysis charms crackling over the model. Both eyebrows crawling up his forehead, he turned to Liz. She expected him to say something, but instead he just started casting analysis charms on her — she grimaced against the magic clawing over her, sharp and intrusive, glared up at him. After two, three, four spells, he gave her a flat, unimpressed look before turning and walking off without a word.
...Okay, then.
Liz had actually finished relatively quickly this time, it was another ten minutes or so before the bell went off. While the judges deliberated, Yaxley came by again — um, if she could ask for some of those little sausages for her? She was suddenly rather hungry, that trick flipping the curse had actually taken a lot out of her...
She was a few sausages into the little plate she'd been handed before Zabini finally stood up to give them their scores. Cedric had, once again, managed a seven, and Liz was given a six. Despite the fact that she wasn't trying to win, she still couldn't help smirking to herself — her random idea had worked, ha. Though she probably didn't have to worry about still being in first place after this Task, because Fleur had also gotten a seven again. Fleur was only two points behind her, so even without getting their scores for the third test yet, they were probably already tied, at least.
The rest of the scores weren't so important, since two of them obviously weren't healers and Ingrid was far enough behind that there was no way she was catching up without a lot of luck over the next few Tasks. Artèmi got a five — she'd also done better on the second test than on the first, probably for similar reasons Liz had — Viktor had only managed a four, and Ingrid got a six. Wow, Ingrid was kicking arse in this Task, easily the best of the junior Champions, Liz had had no idea she was so good at healing magic. Not that it would make any difference, as far behind as she was, but damn.
Without further ado, Zabini counted them off again, and her third test was teleported onto the dias with another lurch of magic.
And fuck, this one looked messed up. Funny deep bruises scattered all over the place...but not really bruises, exactly, must be some kind of weird curse damage. There was bruising, of course, turned reddish and purplish from blood pooling under the surface, but the upper layers were blistering and peeling, oozing some kind of whitish-yellowish fluid Liz thought must be pus or something? She didn't know what the fuck spell had caused that — it looked painful, and very gross. One shoulder was also looking rather misshapen, something must be broken in there, some kind of fire spell scorching one side of the head, hair burned away making the model look rather lopsided. It'd also been hit with a few cutting curses, along its legs up to its waist, most of them pretty superficial but at least one looked nasty, a steady dribble of blood leaking out onto the dias.
Jesus, whoever was setting up these models had really gone to town for the third round. A glance to either side showed that Cedric and Fleur's were equally mangled-looking, but it also seemed like they had a more serious problem to deal with first — Cedric's was spitting up some foamy-looking shite (very gross) and Fleur's looked like it was having a seizure or something, fuck, Liz would have no idea what to do with those. (By the look of it they'd already be critical before she could cast an analysis charm and read it to figure out what the fuck was even happening.) There was no way Liz would be doing well on this one — she wasn't even sure what she was supposed to do with the weird not-bruises — but she couldn't just give up, if only because the Goblet must be watching, she had to try. The deep slash there on the thigh was the bit she could see that was probably most imminently lethal, she didn't even bother checking, she should at least try to slow down the bleeding before going to the effort of casting the lengthy analysis charm...
The cut was a nasty-looking thing, starting just inside the hip and curving down toward the inside of the knee, its course through the thigh deep and ragged. The deepest part here was where the worst of the bleeding was coming up, Liz quick tracked down a blood-replenishing potion to give to the model, then cleared the wound out as well as she could, cast the more narrow analysis charm for wounds. Fuck, this thing was a mess, tissues and blood vessels shredded by the passing of the spell...but most of the bits were still here, and there was very little in the way of dead stuff, she should be able to just draw it together again...
Liz started casting a finicky slow healing spell, starting with the source of the worst of the bleeding, intending to repair a mangled blood vessel. But the spell, inexplicably, failed to resolve — the charm tried to sink into the tissues she was targeting, but then just unravelled to no effect. What the fuck...?
Frowning, Liz laid her hand on the wound (ignoring the fact that she was getting blood all over her fingers), concentrated on the feel of the thing through the instinctive disgust. There was some kind of magic lingering in the cut, sharp and tangled and... It must be one of those curses that prevented healing spells from working properly. Damn.
Oh well, at least Liz knew what to do about that. She settled in, taking a slow, deep breath, her eyes falling closed — and she reached for the model, around and deep into it with one hand, plaiting her magic into the crackling bundle of the curse with the other. This one seemed smaller and weaker than the previous curse, getting a grip on the thing didn't take nearly as long, this shouldn't be a problem at all.
It would occur to her, in retrospect, that attempting to dislodge the curse with the model's blood on her hand was a horrible fucking mistake.
Her magic amplifying the model's aura loosened the curse's grip on the wound, Liz twisted and yanked. The curse popped loose and— There was a snag, a resistance against her pull, almost like the hem of her skirt getting caught on something, it—
A gasp of pain slipped out of her throat as something hot and sharp dug into her hand, she lurched back away from the dias, falling hard on her bum. She grit her teeth at the heat lancing through her fingers and into her palm, she could feel the curse clawing at her, stuttering and misshapen from her tinkering, the colours shifted with an edge of static hissing in her ears. She must have done something to it somehow, she knew it was possible to tweak a static charm to alter its effects, but she didn't...
Cringing, she examined her hand cradled in her lap, messy with the model's blood...and also her own blood, she realised. The sharp burn throbbing, hungry tendrils of magic clawing at her, she could see her skin split open, like cracks slowly splintering up her wrist— "Ah, what the fuck," what the fuck what the fuck, Liz brought her wand over to point at her hand, but then hesitated, she didn't know what the fuck to do about this, she flared her aura, flailing at the magic dug into her hand, if only in an effort to slow it down, buy herself time to think, but then the curse flashed brighter as she took a breath, her aura lapsing back to its resting state, lancing in deeper, and—
Liz felt something in her hand snap, agony shooting up her arm wrenching some noise out of her throat, tears prickling in her eyes, fuck fuck fuck fuck...
A mind abruptly appeared nearby as it passed through the wards, a hand on her forearm bringing it crashing against hers. A sharp masculine voice speaking in French, "What is— You flipped a curse."
Gritting her teeth against another white-hot flare of pain, Liz nodded. "There was a character change, I don't know what I did to it. It's spreading..."
The healer bit out a sigh. "I should still be able to disrupt it, one minute." A slice of the healer's wand, and a hard sharp barrier of magic came down, hot and unpleasant, everything below her elbow suddenly going numb — or, not numb, she could still feel the pain, but limp, isolated somehow. It was extremely unpleasant, but she couldn't even quite explain how, something digging into her elbow and almost seemingly like it was biting her arm off, she cringed away, reflexively trying to tug her arm out of his grip, her heels scritching against the floor.
"Take this, for the pain." Her eyes were watery with tears, but she spotted the bottle after a second, took it and threw it back. Again, it tasted awful — he must have gotten it from the pre-prepared potion crates — but it did reduce the sharp hot throbbing in her hand somewhat, Liz letting out a little sigh of relief. She could feel the healer was doing something in her hand, quivering little tendrils of magic reaching through her, trying to tug at something in there — another flare of pain always following an instant later, not so bad through the pain potion but still unpleasant, Liz gritting her teeth and squeezing her eyes shut, trying not to squirm against the wall of white-hot metal cutting her off from her forearm — interrupting the natural flow of her magic, she realised, preventing the curse from spreading up her arm, which was obviously the right thing to do but it was extremely uncomfortable — didn't want to make the healer's job more difficult than it needed to be by moving around too much...
There was another crack, a pop of something shaken loose, surprising a little gasp out of her. Her hand was just an indistinguishable mass of dull pain at this point, it was hard to feel out what was actually going on down there, but...was the curse snapping her finger bones somehow? What the fuck had she even done to that thing?
The healer muttered something under his breath Liz was pretty sure was a swear of some kind. "You're feeding the curse. I can isolate it, but I need you to stop fighting me."
"I'm trying."
"Try harder. I expect you'd cut off half of the power going into this damn thing yourself if you simply stopped pushing your mind out."
Her chest abruptly hot with frustration, she snapped, "I can't — I broke my brain when I was seven fucking years old, I literally don't know how to turn it off!"
The healer paused for a moment, an unpleasant sharp lurch going through his head. "Childhood legilimens, of course. I apologise, I should have realised." She felt a flicker of a spell, presumably another summoning charm, a second later he was holding a potion in front of her again. "Take this."
She didn't bother thinking about it for a second, maybe freaking out a little bit about the curse eating her hand — and in a blink Liz was carried off on an overwhelming wave of nothing, the world falling away, all thought and feeling suffocated in a big soft pleasant blank, and she was far from here, drifting off far far away...
It wasn't until she started trickling back to herself — after a timeless instant of floating on a sea of warm soft comfortable nothing, pleasantly empty, incapable of even the smallest thought, simply being — that Liz realised she'd been given a calming potion.
A short time must have passed, because she realised she was lying limp on her back — she knew, with a vague sort of certainty, that she'd been sitting up a moment ago. There was a mind against hers, efficiently shielded from her view but still soft and smooth against her, little warm prickles lifting away now and again. As the thick numbness started to dissolve, feeling dimly coming back to her as though from a great distance, she noticed her hand hurt, a low throbbing burn, but she also felt something cool and wet — a potion of some sort, spread over her skin.
She blinked her eyes, it took a moment to focus, the world blurry and spinning around her. She found the healer — middle-aged, messy brown hair, facial hair trimmed neat and professional — meticulously wrapping a bandage around her hand. His eyes flicked her way, noticing her watching him. "Are you awake in there?"
Liz's tongue still felt uselessly numb, so she just hummed.
"I've stripped the curse and repaired most of the damage. However, the area will remain tender for a short while as the healed tissues settle into place. You may remove the bandage as soon as it stops stinging — should be only a few hours, I expect." The healer tied off the bandage, cast some kind of charm over her hand, before gently setting it down near her stomach. "Do you understand?"
She hummed again.
"Words please, Miss Potter — I need to know you understand my directions or I haven't finished the job correctly."
Right, right, she knew that. It took a moment, clumsily working her too-numb tongue in her too-numb mouth, before she was reasonably sure she could actually get the thing to work correctly. "Yes. Thank you. Freaky."
The healer let out an exasperated huff. Leaning a little closer over her, he whispered, "That was very foolish, Miss Potter. Soul magic is extremely dangerous, and is not to be played around with. I most strongly recommend you do not attempt such a thing again without training from a proper teacher."
"I know, thought I could. First one worked. Stupid."
"That was terribly risky to begin with. You must be very careful to control the environment when attempting such magics, and isolate out any element that may work as a bridge, or an additional formant. Like I said, it is not to be played with."
"I know. Won't do it again."
"Good. I'll go inform the judges you'll recover." The healer leaned away, and then he was on his feet, and walking down out of her peripheral vision.
For a long moment, Liz just laid there on her back, staring blankly up at the ceiling of the Hall — hidden with a flattened illusion of the sky above, thick with winter clouds. Not looking at any particular thing, just blankly staring upward, the details looming in her eyes only to slip back out of her attention, unimportant. Nothing felt important at the moment, she just lay here, existing, the floor hard and cool against her back, her clothes hugged warm and soft around her, her injured hand still throbbing with sharp, dull heat. She drifted, thoughtless, idly playing at her lip ring with her tongue, the metal clicking against her top teeth — her head empty enough the impact almost seemed to echo, clunk, clunk, clunk...
It occurred to her that she'd probably be embarrassed to be seen completely out of her mind on calming potion — kind of literally out of her mind, the protective distance imposed by the full dose separating her from the world around her, from herself — but at the moment she was physically incapable of feeling embarrassed. So instead it was just a thought she had, floating up from the warm, soft, peaceful depths of her mind only to flit away again, unimportant.
Noticing the chain of her necklace against her neck (the pendant had flopped to her right when she laid down), she wondered if this said anything about all this...religion and gods and shite. Probably not. From what she'd been told, it only worked by small nudges anyway, it couldn't stop her from choosing to do something stupid. Besides, she hadn't actually been in danger? With all the healers in the room, the chances that she'd seriously hurt herself messing around like an idiot were pretty low, not worth intervening in.
And they did call Bríd "the Mother" — Liz was under the impression that it was a perfectly normal parenting thing to let children do stupid shite in controlled settings, so they knew not to do that sort of thing later, when there might actually be serious consequences. So, yeah, that she'd done something stupid and hurt herself while wearing her supposedly blessed necklace didn't actually prove anything.
...At least, that logic made sense to her, but she was also high out of her mind at the moment, so who could say.
Thinking about fucking up reminded Liz that she had been doing something. She grasped blindly around herself, cringing a little away from the light magic (Fleur), found Cedric's mind — right, it felt like he was still working. She had no idea how much time had passed, but she'd fucked up pretty close to the beginning of the test, there was probably still a bit left...
Liz didn't take the full dose of calming potion very often, but it really was very pleasant. She felt all floaty — like she wasn't quite in the world, but sort of drifting along the surface of it, not feeling quite real, none of it could touch her (safe) — and also, just, warm and soft and comfortable and good. She knew she didn't tend to register the little pleasures as much as most people, which was probably why she liked drugs so much, and winning at things, and masturbating, because it got through whatever Liz-is-broken numbness she had going on in there, and actually felt good...
Though that was getting better, she thought — her down moods sucked, yes, but honestly, thinking back on it from the remove imposed by the calming potion, her baseline was much higher than it used to be. It didn't really feel like it, most of the time, but, you know, normal just felt like normal, that was how normal worked. The Seer shite was worse than it used to be, which could be a strain, but...well, she actually liked things now — she totally understood Severus's thing about being stuck in survival mode, in retrospect, she'd thought he was kind of full of shite at first but looking back on her own childhood it was so fucking obvious...
(But she wasn't going to linger on that, because if she thought too much about how Severus had basically saved her life she'd probably end up crying even through the calming potion, and while she couldn't feel embarrassed at the moment she did know she would be after the fact, so.)
(But then, Severus had said that not being able to spy anymore because of her meant that he felt he had a future now — he might not have even met his future wife and mother of his future children if not for her, and definitely wouldn't have been open to a proper relationship with her if he were still so certain he was inevitably going to get killed spying on a Dark Lord anyway — so she guessed they were even. That felt right somehow, fair.)
Though, sure, Liz might be doing better now as a baseline, but she did still like being intoxicated anyway. Kind of a lot if she was being honest — even if it was often a little embarrassing in retrospect, since she tended to act...weird. And by weird, she mostly meant normal? Maybe "normal" wasn't the right word. But, with alcohol and especially with marijuana, she tended to be far more social, and actually enjoyed being around people in a way she honestly almost never did when she was sober. Just hanging out with a couple friends, sure — having Katie and Susan over for a couple days had been great, honestly, and that month or so Hermione stayed with her over the summer had been nice — but crowds, no, even before her Seer shite started getting too much she hadn't liked parties or whatever. She couldn't really do it at all if she wasn't on something, but it was fun, she kind of got normal people in a way she really hadn't before, it felt good...
She knew taking this high of a dose of calming potion regularly was a bad idea — it was kind of hard on the body, it was very much an only occasionally sort of thing. (And those occasional uses should be restricted to the rare times it was necessary for mental health reasons.) But it was nice while at least, and she liked feeling good, not having to worry about all the shite that bothered her all the time ruining it for her, it was nice.
She should do drugs more often, was what she was getting at. She remembered Severus had said something about asking around about a marijuana-based thing to help with Seer stuff, she should check if he'd come up with anything yet, and she could ask her Hufflepuff friends about stuff, and Oz, Oz seemed like a bloke who knew about drug stuff...
Spacing out a bit, feeling all warm and pleasant and good, she belatedly realised her own fingers were idly playing at the waistband of her trousers — she lifted her hand away, letting it rest limp on the ground at her shoulder-level. Of course, the downside of being high out of her mind was that she sometimes did things without thinking about it, which could be fun, yes, but apparently she had to watch out for nearly touching herself in front of the whole bloody school.
Oh, what the fuck — Liz planted her boots on the floor, if only to stop her feet from wandering, and frowned up at the ceiling, repeatedly clicking her lip ring against her teeth. Trying to focus on that feeling more than anything else. Because, calming potions overwhelmed most feelings, but apparently she could still feel horny through them. Good to know?
Also, so not the time...
If they could hurry up and get this whole thing over with, that'd be great.
After an indeterminable time lying there staring at the ceiling and playing with her lip ring (and trying not to have completely random sexy thoughts), there was a sudden bang, the sound seeming to reverberate through Liz toe to head. Time? That must be the end of their time. Numb and vaguely dizzy — her vision seemingly on a delay, a half-second behind the movement, smearing — Liz pushed herself up to a seat. Her head spinning, it took her a moment to adjust, the crowd in front of her resolving into view. Oh, hello there, everyone. Of course, they were just finishing up the test, they still had to discuss the scoring, so Liz had to wait longer...
Yaxley came by again while they waited, no, Liz didn't need anything. Honestly, she kind of wanted chocolate biscuits, but the ones they made here would have sugar in them. Oh wait, did the elves have her ice cream? Since her being a Seer had gotten out they'd started completely replacing the (already reduced) sugar with honey, which actually went with the nuts and spices and stuff really well, it was sooo good, she loved house-elves sometimes.
The elves did, in fact, have her ice cream. Liz awkwardly cradled the bowl in her lap — her injured hand was kind of useless at the moment — trying and mostly failing to resist the urge to squirm in place with each spoonful, just, uuggghhh...
(She was very certain she was making embarrassing noises, but she was too high to care at the moment.)
Spacey from the calming potion and distracted by her ice cream, it thankfully didn't feel like very long before they were moving on to the scoring. Zabini gave a little introduction, blah blah, Liz wasn't really listening, before she finally moved on to the scores themselves. Cedric had been given a six for the third test — averaging the three tests, his final score for the Fourth Task came out to a seven, easily his best performance in the whole Tournament so far. (Though Liz didn't think it was enough to catch up with the rest of them?) Liz had not only failed to heal her 'patient', but had also managed to flip a curse on herself, necessitating help from one of the evaluators to prevent her from being hospitalised. Naturally, that'd resulted in a zero for the third test — the lowest possible score was supposed to be a one, which she guessed meant that counted as being disqualified? Whatever. Her score averaged out to a three, which was actually her worst performance so far. Liz gave the crowd a little shrug, surprising out a few laughs here and there.
Honestly, she was pleased with a three in this Task — with how close Fleur and Artemi were behind her, there was basically no way she would still be in first place.
Like Cedric, Fleur had also gotten a six, averaging out to a seven for the Task, which meant Fleur was in first place now, good. Artèmi had managed to keep her patient alive, at least, but her healing job was awful, so she'd been given a two. Which meant her final score for the Task was a three, meaning Liz was still one point ahead of her — ha. If she could be not in the lead anymore, but still beat Artèmi, that was about perfect, she thought. Which she realised was silly, but Artèmi got under her skin, she couldn't even explain why. Just one of those things.
(That she was distractingly pretty was definitely part of it.)
Viktor had done similarly terrible, also getting a two, giving him a final score of four. Somehow, Ingrid had actually done the best on the third test, ending up with a seven — Jesus Christ, how the fuck had she managed to do that? Liz hadn't even known what some of the shite on her model was, just, she hadn't known Ingrid was that impressive at anything, that was all. Like Cedric and Fleur, Ingrid had also ended up with a perfect seven for the Fourth Task, the statement met with surprised muttering and applause, the loudest part the pounding of feet and some kind of chant from the Durmstrangers. (It wasn't English, or French, Liz had no idea what they were saying.)
Before getting into the new ranking, Zabini had a few announcements to get through. The next Task would be a one-on-one duelling tournament, at the end of the month. There would be two separate brackets, one for the junior Champions and one for the seniors. Since three people was obviously too few to hold a proper tournament, yes, students would be able to participate. Each school would be given a certain number of slots, she understood the duelling club at Hogwarts would be holding some kind of selection the weekend after next, please ask them for details.
The Sixth Task would be a quidditch tournament, at the beginning of April, each of the six Champions putting together their own team. They can start recruiting now if they like, talk to them about it if you're interested.
Right, so how about we get to the rankings, then? As close together as the Champions were, there was a bit of moving around — in fact, no one is in the same place as they were before this Task, the whole table has been shifted around. In last place was Viktor, with sixteen points, the announcement raising various noises from the crowd. Liz knew there'd been a pretty solid expectation leading up to the Tasks actually happening that Viktor would dominate the Tournament — which was fucking ridiculous, just because he was a world-class quidditch player didn't necessarily mean he was good at anything else — and he had kicked arse in the First Task, but he'd been steadily dropping down the rankings ever since. Apparently, after the Fourth Task, he'd finally managed to bottom out.
And just above him with seventeen points was Ingrid — lifting out of last place for the first time since the Second Task. Though, given the Tasks that were coming up, Liz didn't know how long that would last. Back in the First Task, Ingrid hadn't struck her as a particularly excellent duellist, and there was no way whatever team she'd put together would be able to beat Viktor's (especially since the good Durmstrang fliers would want to be with Viktor). So, being not in last place was probably going to be short-lived for Ingrid, but Liz guessed they'd see.
A few points above Ingrid with twenty, Artèmi was in third place. Liz was a little confused by the use of third place until Zabini explained that they had a tie for second place — Liz and Cedric both had twenty-one points. After thinking about it for a moment, mostly ignoring the sudden storm of clapping and whistling and shouting from the audience, she was actually rather pleased with that result (in a very vague, numb sort of way, because calming potion). She was still beating Artèmi, which was good...if only by one point, so she suspected she might lose her lead in the next Task — bluster aside, she wasn't confident of her ability to beat Artèmi in a one-on-one duel. (Though she wouldn't admit that out loud, naturally, and certainly not where Artèmi could hear.) And, people have been shitty about Liz beating Cedric from the beginning. She didn't want to be in this bloody thing in the first place, but if she was going to be stuck doing it, she guessed it wasn't the worst thing to do with her time — and the excuse to get out of classes and exams was nice, honestly — but people could be bastards about Liz not being their real Champion and for making perfect handsome Cedric Diggory look bad. Cedric had tried to help, telling people to go easy on her whenever he could, but he didn't control everyone, so. And, Liz could imagine people might also be bastards to her for no reason if Cedric started kicking her arse, in a more smug sort of way, so, both Hogwarts Champions holding second place together was an ideal result for her purposes.
Not that she expected it to last, of course, but it was good for now.
And, naturally, Fleur was in first place with twenty-three points — that shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. She'd had a pretty consistently great performance through the whole Tournament. Honestly, her score would probably be higher if a few of the people on the judges' panel weren't such racist bastards about it...
...Or, maybe some of it was misogyny, actually. Hard to say.
Anyway, that was it, the Task was over, see everyone at the end of the month. People were moving around and stuff, but...Liz still had ice cream. She only had one hand that was working properly, she kind of doubted she could stand up without spilling it everywhere. Especially since the calming potion tended to make her kind of light-headed. That sounded like a bad idea.
So Liz just stayed here, savouring another spoonful of her ice cream — mmmmm...
She was pretty sure both Cedric and Fleur, and also maybe Artèmi, considered talking to her for a moment, but then their minds retreated, leaving Liz alone on the platform with her ice cream. But she wasn't alone for very long — it was impossible to tell how long, her sense of time was always super wonky when she'd taken a calming potion, but it wasn't that long later when she felt a clump of minds approaching her. Um, Hermione, Susan, Padma, Sally-Anne, Neville, Lily, Michael...
Padma and Michael were still together, and so were Hermione and Neville, but Liz had a good feeling that they'd be breaking up soon. Maybe Valentine's Day would help Hermione make up her mind, felt like there was something to that...
(Liz was pretty sure Hermione didn't really get dating, exactly — that it wouldn't be a problem with Neville in particular, but just having a boyfriend in general. Which was fair enough.)
"Are you okay, Liz?" Hermione asked, still some steps away. "They said you'd hurt yourself somehow? I didn't understand what she meant by that, honestly..."
Michael said, "She must have flipped a curse on herself — can happen to cursebreakers sometimes, accidentally take a curse onto themselves instead of breaking it. I assume that bloke took care of it, though?"
It took a couple seconds for Liz to realise the question was directed at her. "Oh! Sorry, loopy from a calming potion. Yeah, I'm fine," she said, holding up her bandaged hand, "curse is gone. Just have to wait for it to heal."
"That's good. I did wonder, with you staying up here..."
Liz tapped her spoon against the side of the bowl. "Potion, dizzy, didn't want to spill."
"You know," Susan drawled, "you could have just levitated the bowl."
"...Oops." That hadn't occurred to her at all, for some reason. Speaking of which, "Where did my wand go? Oh, never mind, found it." It was in her holster — she didn't remember putting it back there, but she could feel the handle, must have just slipped her mind.
There was a mix of bemusement, concern, and affection from the minds around her, but nobody made a point of how weird Liz was acting, just gathered in a circle on the floor. Except Michael, anyway — now that he'd said hi and knew she was fine, he was going to go find his other friends, whatever. As floaty as she was at the moment, it was kind of hard to pay attention to the conversation and her ice cream at the same time, so she kind of drifted in and out. There was a little bit of talk about the Tournament at first, teasingly asking if she was happy with not being in first place anymore — yes, very much, thank you — and how bloody complicated healing magic was, into talk about the Tournament in general, and then into other stuff, Liz didn't know, she only checked in every once in a while.
Yes, she did realise she was making funny noises, she fucking loved this ice cream, okay...
After a bit, Katie came by, Liz glancing up as she felt her mind cross the wards — she was volunteering for Liz's team in the quidditch tournament. Oh, well, that was great, actually. Liz was the better seeker, so Katie would be one of the chasers — she'd caught the snitch every time they'd played each other, and do not bring up that time she lost anyway, that doesn't count, shut up, Katie. Hey, did she think she could get the Weasleys for their team? They were the best beaters in the school, so. Katie hesitated for a second, said she would ask, at least — some of Liz's friends assumed she meant they'd be reluctant to play with someone who their younger brother, at least, thought had killed their sister, but Katie was actually thinking that they were working on other things these days, might not want to spend the time on quidditch. (Katie had no idea what they were even up to, just knew that they were occupied.) See you at the club? yeah, Liz could hardly miss it, could she, with the Tournament-related stuff they'd be doing, and they were still working on their new team members, very funny, Liz was very tiny, but she wasn't that much shorter than Artaimís, shut up...
Katie left, hopping off the platform to rejoin her friends and waltz out of the Great Hall. Liz watched her go, frowning to herself a little — she didn't know why Katie had to be such a pain sometimes. Like, she knew Katie wasn't trying to be mean, and she never said anything that was actually insulting, just vaguely irritating. Amusing herself the whole time, like a game. Liz tried to play along, like she did a lot of social things, even if she didn't entirely get what was going on. After one of these more bantery conversations with Katie, she always felt like she was missing something...
Liz twitched at a touch on her knee, Hermione's hyperactive clockwork mind suddenly pressing loud against hers. "What?"
There was some kind of feeling going on in Hermione's head, but the thought wasn't explicitly articulated, the constant mechanical clicking too busy to follow it for herself, made her dizzy. "You all right? It looked like you were spacing out."
"Oh, I'm fine. Katie has a nice arse, is all, might have been staring a little." Taking another bite of ice cream — almost gone, sadly — Liz was battered with a sudden storm of surprise and realisation and amusement from everyone around her. "Did I say that out loud? I didn't mean to say that out loud. Oops." Gesturing at her own head with her spoon, "Calming potion, I'm very high right now. Sorry."
Her grin audible on her voice and simmering bright and eager on the air, Padma asked, "Is there something going on with you two? I was wondering, but I wasn't sure if I should ask — you do seem to get on so well, and Katie is, you know." That Katie was bisexual wasn't exactly a secret, Padma could just say that.
"Also," Susan said, her mind frothing with silent laughter, "if they're in a room together for longer than five seconds they immediately start flirting."
Liz frowned. "We do? Is that what that is?"
Raising her voice a little over a rash of giggles, Susan said, "Yes, Liz, that was flirting. Honestly, when we stayed at yours for a few days over the holiday you two were at it constantly, it's hilarious." More giggles, because of course, today was a laugh at Liz for being an oblivious social incompetent day apparently.
...Oh. Answered that question, then. "Maybe a little, I guess. We did almost kiss in Kaunas, but I wasn't, you know, with Daphne and everything it didn't seem right. Too soon I guess?" Fighting to focus past the mixed reactions from the minds around her — a mix of vicarious excitement and squee so cute, and being sad over Liz and Daphne breaking up, which she guessed was fair — she asked Susan, "Do I flirt with Artèmi? Is that what that is too?"
"Yes, obviously. I'm pretty sure she encourages it on purpose to mess with your head."
Yeah, Liz could see that. She remembered feeling pretty sure Artèmi was teasing her when they met over the summer, but... Whatever. She guessed that explained why Artèmi got under her skin like that, then. Honestly, with the distance imposed by the calming potion giving her a little perspective, she was pretty sure she might actually have a crush on Artèmi, a little bit, maybe — which was silly, because Liz didn't even think she liked Artèmi that much. She was kind of a nosey, condescending bitch? And super up-tight about some things, too. But feelings could be weird like that, not worth thinking about too hard.
Honestly, she'd always thought it was weird when she noticed other people having sexy or romantic feelings about people they didn't even like...and she didn't not think this was weird. But Liz not really understanding her own feelings wasn't new, was it.
Artèmi really was annoyingly pretty. And she wasn't that much taller than her, so snogging would be way less awkward.
...Liz did not need to sit here thinking about snogging Artèmisia Cecinà.
"Anyway," Liz said, setting her empty bowl aside. Belatedly, she realised someone had been talking, oops. "The full dose of a calming potion makes me loopy, so I think I'm going to go down and hide in my room until I embarrass myself even further. Before. Before I embarrass myself further. Though I prolly will embarrass myself once I'm done hiding in my room, I'm kind of embarrassing when I think about it..."
"You mean so you can think about Katie Bell's arse some more, in private," said in a thick, sarcastic sort of drawl.
For a couple seconds, Liz just blinked at Sally-Anne — apparently she was really over the lesbian thing, if she was comfortable making jokes about Liz touching herself thinking about their friends. Well, Katie wasn't Sally-Anne's friend. Still. Then she shrugged. "Maybe a little, yeah." There was a mix of gasps and laughter, scandalised in the fun, delighted sort of way, which she guessed should have been the obvious reaction. (Well, except Neville, he just seemed desperately uncomfortable, poor bloke.) "Shouldn't have said that either, I guess? Like I said, embarrassing, hide in my room, bye."
...
"Um, Hermione, can I get a hand up? This one's useless, and everything's all spinny..."
Liz, you're drunk, go home.
Back to this fic, wee! Gonna do at least two more scenes before switching back to First Contact again for a bit. Might be delays on the next scene, I'm not 100% sure how I want to frame it, but— No wait, thinking just now I solved it, never mind. May or may not be a relatively short scene, but this is me, who the fuck knows. The scene after that is centered on a certain much-anticipated reunion, very hype.
Anyway, bye.