Liz startled awake — snapping to sudden alertness, all traces of sleep burned away in an instant, fully wake.
She'd had a dream. It felt important, she was pretty sure it was even a Seer thing, but she couldn't remember — and it was slipping further away by the second, Liz trying to hold onto the details even as they evaporated away. She'd been in a waiting room, she thought, in, in a hospital? There'd been people around, talking, but it was fuzzy, an odd cold heavy pall of dread hanging over her, the words meaningless burbling in her ears. Síomha was there (as in Severus's girlfriend), she remembered that, they were sitting down to a meal, but future-Liz didn't really have the stomach for it, talking about...
She couldn't remember. She held onto a fuzzy mental image of the waiting room, the general shape without the details, the table they were eating at...in a cafeteria, maybe? It was hard to tell, an island in a forgetful fog. That was it, she didn't remember anything else.
It was important, she knew that — it felt like something bad had happened. But she couldn't remember what.
Forcing the tension out of her limbs, relaxing against Hermione (still asleep), Liz let out a sigh. While she was sleeping was an astoundingly shitty time for her Sight to try to tell her something, she never remembered her dreams anyway...
She tried to get back to sleep, but she felt too awake, the thing she'd forgotten (it was important, she knew it) kept niggling at her, keeping her awake. There was no fucking point, this wasn't going to work, she might as well get up. Liz lifted a hand over her head, summoned her wand, hit Hermione with a light sleeping charm — she was already asleep, of course, but it would help prevent Liz from accidentally waking her up — and slipped out of bed. Not that she went far, she just fished the novel she was reading out of her bag and sat down in bed, casting a soft light tightly focussed around her.
Her progress was much slower than usual, too little of her attention focussed on the words on the page. Partly, she was still preoccupied with her mostly forgotten Seer-dream thing — unfortunately she couldn't just put a dream in a pensieve, memory-scrying didn't work like that — but as the minutes passed she became more and more distracted with more obscure concerns. There were things happening today, which she honestly was not looking forward to.
The Final Task of the Tournament was coming up, on the summer solstice — there were symbolic reasons they'd done it that way, but Liz suspected it was as much to give students from the other schools plenty of time after they were sent home to make their way up here if they wanted. Students and other people, of course, the international village out in the Valley was fucking packed now, supposedly hotels all over the country were booked solid for the couple days around the Task. Liz was still rather nervous about that, yes — especially since her feeling that she was going to run into a boggart had persisted — but at this point there was very little she could do about it. She'd prepared as much as she reasonably could, there was nothing more to do but wait until the day of and do her best.
Like before the other events, the Champions and their families would be removed from the school ahead of the Task, to keep them out of reach of potential saboteurs. (The Goblet probably wouldn't punish them for being incapable of competing, but there was no use playing with fire.) The organisers, for whatever asinine reason, had decided to turn this one into a much more involved occasion. Liz had been sent a schedule of the different events, some of them with explanations of dress codes, it was ridiculous.
They were actually leaving this morning — it was Sunday, and the task was on Wednesday. After having a private breakfast with some of the staff and organisers, in the formal rooms off Helga's Gallery — Nilanse told her about it, the elves had brought her in to help arrange an appropriate meal for Liz — they'd spend a couple hours wandering around the grounds, basically getting a lazy casual tour, just because? When that was over, then they'd be moved over to that same house on the sea, where there'd be tea waiting for them. (Liz got the impression breakfast was going to be heavy, so they didn't expect people to be too hungry by lunch.) They'd be given a few hours to settle in, before leaving again in the early evening to...
...catch a play? Liz had been rather bemused when she'd seen the schedule, honestly. She knew there were a handful of theatres in magical Britain, and they did have a steady rotation of shows going on, she just...didn't really think about it. This one was all wrapped up in the national mythology of the country, with the Anglo-Saxon invasion and Myrddin and shite. Liz didn't recognise the title of the play, didn't know which story this would be exactly, but the short description namedropped Morgen of Avalon, so, she could guess the general idea. After that, they were basically taking over the entirety of a fancy bloody restaurant — or as fancy as restaurants in magical Britain got, she guessed — and then they'd be going back to the big house on the sea for the night.
Monday they didn't have anything scheduled for them until after lunch. In the early afternoon, they'd be leaving the house for an t-Ard Chaoimhe — the hill at the heart of the Refuge, not too far of a walk from Liz's house — where they'd apparently be putting on a cultural...festival...event...thing. Not one that would have been happening ordinarily, the Gaels' major holidays were between the solstices and equinoxes (plus the big Christian ones), but something they were doing specifically for the international guests. Which Liz guessed was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, since the Gaels were part of this country — you couldn't really have a cultural exchange without including them. She did expect the event to get sort of tense, though, with the whole nationalist issue still going on. That big thing was basically all they had on Monday. Liz expected it'd be lasting well into the evening, but she really didn't know how long their group would be staying there.
On Tuesday, they didn't have anything until the evening — when they'd be having a big damn formal dinner, with the organisers and government people and shite. Literally, the fucking Minister was going to be there, and officials from the French and Scandinavian governments too, it was ridiculous. Severus said there would also be professional people, like, influential Masters in whatever field and guild people and whatever, not just from Britain but elsewhere on the Continent too. The dinner seemed to be primarily a silly formal diplomatic thing, sure, but also a networking event, for the Champions as much as the important people. Really the only one who would benefit from that so much was Ingrid, since the rest of them were all famous and/or rich enough that it wasn't like they needed any connections they might make through that kind of shite, but whatever. Liz expected it to be extremely tedious.
On Wednesday, they'd have the morning to themselves, and then lunch, and then finally they'd return to the Valley for the Task in the middle of the afternoon. After spending three and a half days being dragged around to whatever, it was absurd.
Liz realised they were kind of trying to make this a whole thing — the hope was that the Tournament would be successful enough that they'd be able to restart it as a recurring event — but that they had reasons for making a production out of it didn't make it any less annoying for her personally.
As preoccupied as she was with the dream and her schedule, Liz didn't actually get much reading done — she'd gotten up a bit under an hour early and she only managed...like, twenty pages and change, painfully slow, before her alarm went off. The magic spanging through her, sharp and hard and uncomfortable, the lights coming on automatically (low, not bright enough to hurt dark-adjusted eyes) as she reached over to stop the noise, physical and magical. Magical alarms were pretty much impossible to sleep through, but they were kind of unpleasant. Hermione had jumped when the alarm went off, she let out a long groan, a rustling of sheets as she shifted around, her hands coming up to rub at her face.
The movement drew her attention, Liz's eyes lingering for a moment. The covers had been shrugged down to Hermione's waist, distracting.
After a moment trying to drag herself awake — and doing a quick stretch, her hips lifting off the bed as her back curled (also distracting) — Hermione let out a long sigh. "Hey."
"Hey yourself."
"You been awake?" she asked, blinking up at the magical light hovering over Liz's head.
Liz hummed. Getting to the end of a paragraph, she quick reached for her wand, cast a colour-changing charm on the page to mark her spot before sticking in the bookmark. "Like an hour or so, I think."
"Nightmare?" Hermione had a vague feeling it might have been unpleasant, since she remembered something kind of...bleak? But the feeling was subtle, she didn't really remember, and it could have just been her own dream — when they were sleeping together, they didn't always get pulled into each other's dreams, just sometimes.
She guessed "bleak" was a decent word for her thing, so maybe Hermione had gotten it too. Didn't seem to remember it any better than Liz, though. "No, I, um, think it was a prophetic dream, actually."
"...Oh." There was an instinctive resistance to the idea, slowing Hermione's response down a little — her initial reaction to divination was that it was all obviously nonsense for silly little girls and charlatans, only forced to reconsider that as Liz started being more open about Seer stuff, and then being taught by Miss Eva instead of Trelawney. To be fair, there was a lot of bunk out there, and it could be difficult to separate the real shite from the superstition, Liz had never taken the scepticism personally. "What was it?"
She shrugged. "Don't remember. I think someone got hurt? It might have been a hospital waiting room, I'm not sure. Nothing actionable, anyway, but it was bothering me enough I couldn't get back to sleep."
"Mm." A long yawn, and Hermione pushed herself up to a seat, leaned over to get a look at the cover of Liz's book. She let out a snort, with a little shiver of amusement — this was one of those racy romance books, so. "It really doesn't seem fair, being a Seer can be so difficult, but it's not even useful most of the time."
"Doesn't seem like it, does it."
"Yeah..." Hermione leaned around Liz, looking at the clock. The gears in her head ticking away for a moment, a faint pulse of ambivalent feelings Liz couldn't quite pick out. An edge to her voice Liz didn't know how to read, she asked, "How much time do you have?"
Liz felt her eyebrows tick up. "What, trying to cheer me up again?
"Trying to cheer me up, more like. People keep saying it's safe, but I'm going to worry about it until it's over." The insistence from various parties that the Tournament was safe wasn't even especially reassuring, given the circumstances Liz had been entered under in the first place: somebody had wanted her in this bloody thing, and they still didn't know who or why. They were nearing the end, the culprit was running out of time to make their play, Hermione couldn't help the nasty suspicion that something bad was going to happen.
Liz was pretty sure someone had just wanted her to lose badly and humiliate herself, but she guessed being nervous about it was reasonable enough. Setting her book aside, she glanced at the clock herself, did some quick maths. "...I'm not in a rush." Her bag was already packed and everything, so.
"Brill. Let me just go by the toilet first."
"I was thinking showers, actually — we'll need to wash up after anyway."
"Oh, good thinking, all right..."
They didn't bother getting dressed before heading to the bathroom, Liz covering them with a strong aversion charm instead. The chances of anyone seeing through it were practically zero, she'd done this countless times now — but it still put her very on edge every time, practically vibrating with an odd blend of nerves and excitement, almost like before the start of a duel. It was always more intense when there people around, even though they couldn't see her. This time, Dorea was at the sinks getting ready as they came in, and then as they were moving from the toilet stalls to one of the showers Pansy walked by, coming out of one of the baths, Liz feeling warm and twitchy from the close brushes.
She and Hermione had a rather lengthy shower. It didn't help that Liz ended up crying again, that always fucking happened, had to wait for her to calm down after, stupid...
Back in her room, they got dressed, which was rather longer of a process for Liz. Since there were dress codes and shite, she had planned her outfits ahead of time (so she could pack appropriately), but Hermione just pulled on denims and a tee shirt, so. They'd kind of made it difficult for her, since this evening they'd be going to a fucking play and a fancy restaurant, but in the morning they'd be wandering around out on the grounds — it'd be impractical to wear the same thing for both, she'd have to change in the middle of the day. Her duelling boots and one of her Seer-friendly linen dresses (with multiple too-tight vests to flatten her lopsidedness) would be fine for the morning. Hermione plaited her hair for her, but she still used one of her fashion scarf things to shield her neck, just in case hairs escaped (and also the colours were pretty). She slipped on her poison-detecting and anti-tracking and emergency portkey rings — just routine, because Severus could be paranoid like that — along with a handful of Mistwalker-style beaded bracelets and her mother's necklace. She coloured her fingernails, a sharp vivid orange colour specifically because it stood out against the green and blue of her dress, and then spent a couple minutes in front of a mirror charm, tweaking the cosmetic glamours on her face. Not that she was doing anything especially involved, but subtle could be difficult to get to look right — she even cast a little bit of elemental sunlight (gritting her teeth against the light magic searing down her arm), to see how it'd look outside.
Right, that should do it. She'd have to redo the glamours later in the day, but that was fine. She took a moment to tie the loose ends of the charms into her own aura — turned out doing that freehand, without fucking cursebreaking spells or a specialised catalyst, was actually a subsumption trick, no wonder it wasn't something other people could do so easily — and there, she was done, they could go now.
Hermione spent the whole time sitting there watching, feeling very bemused. She didn't really get this girly shite — she'd cooperate with being prettied up when she had to for some reason, like for the Yule Ball or whatever, but it definitely wasn't something she'd bother with in any other situation. Not like she was thinking insulting thoughts about it, or anything, she just didn't understand.
(Liz wasn't sure what there was to understand? Feeling pretty was nice, it wasn't complicated.)
After quick double-checking she had everything she'd need in her bag — oh, she had meant to take that book with her, thanks — Liz covered them both with aversion charms again, leading Hermione out by the hand. She took them through an exit that came out on the second storey, so nobody would wonder why Hermione was coming up to breakfast from the lower levels. Liz would be taking one of the corner stairs to get back down to Helga's Gallery, so.
Hermione gave her a tight, lingering hug, her mind sparking with anxiety (this was the last time they'd see each other until after the Task), and then they went their separate ways.
There were a couple Tournament staff people hanging around Helga's Gallery — and a single Hit Wizard, seemingly just keeping an eye on the place — they wanted to take Liz's bag to bring it on to the house for her. She fished out her drugs first, stuck one of the crystals under her tongue and tucked the envelope under her wand holster, and then she was waved over to the right door. She was somewhat early, but she wasn't the first to arrive: Cedric was here with his parents, Fleur with her parents plus a pair of girls Liz didn't recognise. Artèmi and Viktor were in the room, but alone, chatting with the Delacours, Liz assumed their families just hadn't arrived yet.
The room itself was a little overly fancy, but she'd sort of expected that — this area of the Castle used to be where the Hufflepuffs (as in the family) lived, but it'd long ago been converted into the nice rooms to host important guests and shite. It felt all bright and airy, despite the ceiling not actually being that high, the soft light seeming to come from nowhere in particular. The floor was shiny white stone tile, twinkling with little chinks of quartz, hidden here and there by colourful rugs woven with complex curling patterns. This seemed to be some kind of common room, a few doors leading off, framed with fake columns to the sides and an arch overhead, the top piece carved with floral-looking nodules and a few human figures here and there. There were more of those fake decorative columns set into the walls every couple metres, with more carvings on the tops up against the ceiling, the trim above the floorboards decorated with gold filigree in curling floral shapes, dozens of paintings on the walls. They were animated, but silent — paintings that made noise, like so many around the halls of the Castle, where actually quite rare, both because the magic was more complex and somewhat modern and because most people didn't want the unnecessary noise.
Liz gave the walls a double-take, blinking. The paintings included a lot of naked people, actually. Mages could be pretty prudish about that sort of thing too (depending on context), which meant these paintings were probably old, from back when art was just like that. Like, she didn't know, Renaissance shite or something. Supposedly these rooms had still been in regular use around that time, so that would make sense.
Shaking off that weirdness, Liz stalled near the entrance for a moment. Cedric was nice enough, but his father was a racist bastard, and every time they'd met he'd been unreasonably confrontational about Liz not being a racist bastard, so, no thanks. She'd also rather wait until the drugs had kicked in before getting too close to the veela, and everyone else around was sitting together there, so. She went to check the things set out on the table over here instead. There were a few tables scattered around through the room, ringed with chairs — too few for every Champion to get their own, so she guessed some of them would have to share. Against the wall to the side was another table, a few plates with little pastries, some pots and pitchers of drinks, just to tide them over until the actual meal started, Liz was pretty sure.
It wasn't like she was urgently starving or anything, she could wait until breakfast proper, but she wouldn't mind some coffee. And there was coffee here — but Liz didn't reach for the cups, hesitating, staring at the pot. (Unreasonably fancy china, painted blue and green and yellow in curling floral designs, because of course.) There was a pretty good chance the coffee wouldn't be good. People were often surprisingly shite at making coffee, true, but it was also one of those things that could be very bad for Seer reasons. A lot of coffee wasn't exactly grown in the best conditions...and sometimes even in fucking warzones, that probably didn't help. There were places you could get psychometrically-clean coffee, but they would have had to go out of their way, and Liz kind of doubted they would have bothered...
She felt the familiar mind coming before he spoke, twinkling with good-natured amusement. "Good morning, Liz," Cedric said. "I think this is yours."
"Hmm?" Cedric had stopped a couple steps away — he was in somewhat nice robes in earthy brown and rich blue, not super formal or anything but a good couple steps up from just showing up in everyday trousers and shirt. He was holding a little plate, a coffee cup balanced on top of it, a couple little biscuits alongside. "What do—" Belatedly, she noticed a slip of paper, with a three word message in what Liz recognised as Nilanse's hand: coffee for Liz! "Oh! Yeah, I guess that is mine, thanks." As she took the plate from Cedric, she added a, "And thank you," to no one in particular, in case the elves were still listening.
There was a little flicker of bemusement from Cedric — he thought that was a peculiar thing to do. "Have the elves making you coffee special now?"
"Most coffee is bad for Seer reasons. I need to order the beans special, from this one grower in Sicily." Liz breathed in the steam rising from the cup, and ah ha, Nilanse had steeped this with cinnamon for her, perfect...
"Oh, I didn't think of that, that makes sense."
"Most people don't. I've been trying to avoid things that set me off, for a few months now, to..." Liz trailed off as a wave of tingles swept over her skin, leaving her feeling floaty, the room around her seeming to sway for a second before it settled again — drugs kicking in. "Um, I was saying, I have to go to special suppliers and stuff. It's kind of expensive but, you know, not like I can't afford it."
"How does that work while you're at school, with meals in the Great Hall and all?"
"I get my own plate sent up, have been for months now. Hogwarts does let you do that, for special dietary restrictions and things, I just had to talk to the elves about it."
"Right, right, one of the little Hufflepuffs has diabetes, I remember that came up..."
After a little bit more pointless smalltalk, Cedric went off again to sit with his parents. He actually suggested, looking a bit embarrassed, that Liz shouldn't come sit with them — his parents really did not like her which, yes, Liz was aware. She didn't feel like going to sit with the Delacours either — it was too early in the morning to deal with having multiple veela messing with her feelings — so she just picked a spot at an empty table by herself. Besides, the Delacour party was big enough that Liz kind of assumed they'd be getting that table to themselves, if she sat there she'd end up having to move anyway.
The little biscuits were pretty good, nutty and spicy, cloves and nutmeg. She figured the only point of the biscuits was to settle her stomach — coffee could be kind of harsh if she hadn't eaten anything — but they were a pretty good choice anyway. The crumbly texture and the nutty flavour, probably made with some kind of nut flour, she assumed it was something the elves actually made for themselves...which wasn't really intended to be human food, but Liz had weird tastes, so.
A few minutes later, Artèmi's parents arrived — both of them this time, her mother hadn't always come for Tournament things — and then roughly at the same time were Ingrid and her family and—
Liz blinked, staring. Why the hell was Síomha here?
Severus was still wearing magical-style clothes, but rather more practical than what he usually went with on school days — lighter, trousers and close-sleeved tunic and cloak in blue and black. (Liz randomly remembered telling him he looks better in blue, green against his skin tone makes him look all sallow, but it's probably a coincidence.) Oddly, Símoha — rather tall for a woman, which really just made the height difference between them more manageable (Liz was well aware that could be annoying) — was wearing muggle-made denims and a flannel button-up over a bloody tee shirt. That seemed really odd...though, when Liz thought about it, she couldn't remember if she'd ever seen Síomha out of her Saoirse uniform, so maybe this was normal for her, she honestly didn't know. Her long curly black hair was held back with a cloth headband...stitched in Saoirse colours, Liz noticed, because apparently she just had to remind everyone that she was literally in a separatist militia...
...
Was their relationship going well enough that Síomha was being invited to family things now? Liz was hardly an expert on this stuff, and it'd been a while since she'd last had an opportunity to tease Severus about it, but this just...seemed like kind of a big deal to her...
As they started across the room, a cool prickly wave of subtle dark magic swept over Liz well ahead of them, like an autumn thunderstorm about to strike, continuing past her to sizzle and shiver on contact with the light magic thrown off by the veela (and also Artèmi's mum). As calm and solid as her mind was, Síomha's aura hadn't stopped being absurdly noisy — that shite just happened when mages were too damn powerful for their body to contain it. (It was possible to hold it in, Severus and Flitwick and Dumbledore all did, Síomha seemingly just didn't care enough to bother.) It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, exactly, but Liz still felt herself tense up a little in her chair.
Most of the time, she wasn't so viscerally aware of how easily someone could crush her like a bug, if they wanted to.
"Good morning, Elizabeth," Severus said as he approached the table — smooth and casual as usual, as though nothing out of the ordinary were happening. Whipping his cloak off his shoulders to hang off the back of his chair, he tilted his head over at Síomha. "And you remember Síomha, I'm certain."
"Mhmm. Hi?"
Síomha nodded down at her. "Elizabeth, good morning," said in Gaelic.
...Severus called her Elizabeth, she wasn't sure if she wanted Síomha to. Of course, she actively disliked Dumbledore doing it and he did anyway, so whatever, she'd tolerate it.
Síomha moved to sit down, but Severus didn't right away, still standing behind his chair. "I could do with a cup of coffee myself. Tea?" A quick acknowledgement from Síomha, and he was walking off to get the drinks, leaving Liz alone at the table with Síomha. They sat there silently for a moment — Liz staring at Síomha, fingers tapping at her coffee cup, Síomha's eyes turning to follow Severus — her mind hard and impenetrable but her magic thick and cool and tingly on the air.
Well. This was awkward.
Once Severus had gotten out of easy earshot, Síomha said, "I suppose he didn't tell you I'm coming." She spoke in Gaelic, probably assuming nobody else here would understand them.
"...He didn't."
Her eyes flicked over to Liz's, an odd faint, indistinct echo of a feeling ringing through her rigid occlumency. "I can leave, if you want."
"No, you– it's fine, you don't have to do that. I, just, didn't expect it, is all."
"All right. Very cute, by the way."
Liz blinked — she had no idea what to do with that, honestly. "Um...thanks?"
Severus rescued them quickly, returning after only a minute or two...and it was only a couple minutes after that that breakfast proper was starting up. There were a few staff and organiser people joining them, Liz recognised some of them — the only one of the judges to show up was Aritsa (made up as dramatically colourful as always), and the biggest name was probably Taliesin Fawley, who'd taken over for Crouch as the Director of International Cooperation. You'd think the country's top diplomat would have more important things to do with his time...but the Tournament was a pretty big deal, and some of the Champions' parents were actually important people, so.
She'd been told that Fawley happened to be her grandfather's ex-father-in-law — Charlus's first wife Ceinwen was Fawley's daughter — which she guessed was a wild coincidence, but she didn't see why she should care? It wasn't like that made them related in any way, since Ceinwen had died like twelve years before James was even born...
They were all told to stand up quick, they'd planned the breakfast out to have certain people sitting together, so. (Except the Delacours, they could stay there.) The Delacours and the Krums each had their own tables, shared with some staff people, and then Liz and Artèmi were put together at one table, and Cedric and Ingrid at the other. If she had to guess, they wanted the tables to be mixed, with Champions from different schools, and Liz and Artèmi got on decently well, but in retrospect it probably would have been a better idea to flip them the other way around.
As they moved over to their table, Artèmi and her parents aiming for one side and Liz and Severus and Síomha the other, Artèmi said, "Good morning, Liz. Are you as eager to settle this competition as I am?"
"Eager to kick your prissy little arse again, maybe."
There were flutters of variously disapproving or exasperated feelings from various people, but Artèmi just smiled at her, amused. "We shall see. And of course I remember Master Snape," with a little nod his way. Technically it should be Master Severus in English, but the title went with the surname in French, so. "I don't believe we've met before, however." Artèmi did suspect who Síomha was — living in Britain, she'd caught enough of the gossip going around — but there was an odd, reluctant wary waver to her thoughts, didn't know what that was about.
"Síomha Ní Ailbhe."
There was a sudden, intense flare of hostility from across the table, burning in the air harsh and frigid — Liz winced. Artèmi's rather unnerving mother — looking somewhat similar to Artèmi, short and slight with the same white-blonde hair and silvery eyes, but her hair was cropped short, dressed in plain trousers and tunic, and heavily armed, with two visible wand holsters and a dagger poking under the hem of her shirt at the hip, light magic sharp and searing cold — turned to glare at Síomha, her eyes narrowed. "Síomha Raghnaill Ní Ailbhe." She didn't quite pronounce the name correctly, not familiar with Gaelic, but it was still recognisable.
"Mother," Artèmi groaned, anxious and exasperated.
Síomha met her gaze, her head tilting just a little. Liz was sure she could feel the roaring threatening light magic as easily as Liz could, but she put on a casual, unconcerned air, her voice smooth and easy. "I am. And you are Florence Cæciné. What of it?"
Artèmi's mum didn't respond, just kept coldly glaring at—
Hold up a second, Artèmi's super intimidating, basically holy warrior of a mother was called Florence? like, literally flowering? Well, that was an inappropriate name, wasn't it...
Anyway, Artèmi sat down in the middle of her side of the table, with one of her parents to either side. Liz assumed that's what they were expected to do, but she suspected sitting next to Síomha for the whole meal would be awkward (and also they'd probably prefer being next to each other anyway), so Liz took one of the seats toward an end, Severus in the middle. They ended up getting Aritsa and some bloke from Public Works that Liz didn't know at their table, sitting at the ends, Aritsa on the further end from Liz.
She ended up straight across the table from Florence, and it wasn't until after they'd already been sitting down for a couple minutes that Liz realised that was probably not a great idea: her aura was terribly noisy, and cold, fuck...
Pretty soon breakfast appeared on the table — doing the house-elf trick where it all just popped out of nowhere, a few of the foreign guests even seemed a little startled. The table was scattered with platters and dishes of stuff, a few different kinds of bread and pastries, with butter and preserves, and there was also some cheese and, like, slices of dried beef or something, a bowl with what Liz assumed were hard-boiled eggs. That was obviously supposed to be the French-appropriate stuff — they tended to have pretty light, cold breakfasts down there — but there was also some British-appropriate stuff, though lesser in volume, some sausages and bacon, some mushroom gravy, some scones...
"I believe this is yours," Severus said, sliding a plate in front of him toward Liz.
Empty dishes had appeared in front of everyone — with the exception of a little bowl of sliced fruit they'd each gotten — but the ones in front of Severus actually already had things on them. Apparently they had expected the Champions to all sit at the centre of the tables. "Right, sorry, let me just..."
This time, she'd been sent up mash that she knew would be made up of potatoes and carrots — and probably whatever else they thought they could sneak in there, because getting her to eat vegetables was difficult — drizzled over with mushroom gravy, a couple sausages alongside. It smelled very herby, rosemary and thyme and whatever else. On a side plate was a piece of toast spread with what Liz knew would be spiced almond butter, and her fruit bowl was actually a little bigger than the others', with berries and nuts. She was about as picky about eating fruit as she was with vegetables, but the elves kept trying — not too pushy about it, though, that's what the nutrient potion was for, just a little nudging with what they made for her. Pretty normal breakfast for her these days, there was some variation but it generally looked something like this.
Speaking of her nutrient potion, she downed that quick, getting the taste out of her mouth with a bite of potato, then set to slicing up her sausages. There was talking going on, as people fixed themselves this or that, but Liz didn't really talk at all, focussed on her own food. It was just polite smalltalk anyway, whatever.
Oh hey, there was actually a layer of some kind of light cheese sauce in the middle of the potatoes — didn't even notice until she started stirring it around, hidden in there.
Liz might not be bothering to talk to anyone at all, but she was listening...or at least half-listening. She noticed Florence was hardly speaking either, still staring at Síomha. Síomha herself was still acting perfectly casual, she and Severus talking with Artèmi and Aritsa and Mr Cæciné and the Ministry bloke about...whatever, mostly basic getting to know you shite. Mr Cæciné was amusingly taken aback that Síomha was literally a radical separatist, but Aritsa seemed rather tickled, started babbling off about...the Saoirse militia uniform, apparently? Liz wasn't even sure how she knew what that looked like, wasn't exactly something you tended to see around Hogwarts.
And the whole time Florence's magic kept fitfully smouldering away. Her occlumency was solid enough that Liz couldn't really see what she was thinking, but the hostility carried through into her magic, her aura very noisy, and unpleasantly, intensely cold, sharp and scorching against Liz.
Artèmi's mum's reaction to Síomha was confusing at first — they'd obviously never even met before — but after several minutes suffering under the constant frigid burn of her magic, Liz thought she might know what was going on here. She knew from picking up shite from Artèmi's head that Florence was some weird religious zealot who took going around hunting down evil bastards to be some kind of sacred calling or some shite. (It was weird and unnerving, honestly.) Síomha was a dark sorceress, and was part of a militant nationalist separatist movement and everything, so she could almost see why Florence might be unreasonably hostile toward her...
...but at the same time, it didn't make any fucking sense at all. Saoirse weren't even that politically radical, honestly — they just thought the Wizengamot was horseshite and wanted their own government, which seemed fair enough to Liz. Síomha hadn't even really done anything. The militia did some, you know, basic keeping the peace, conflict resolution shite — the DLE wasn't exactly highly trusted in many Gaelic communities, would rather look to their own to deal with issues whenever possible — and the thing Síomha personally was most well-known for was hunting down and killing a gang of serial murderers. Liz generally didn't expect the Light to give a shite about non-humans, but even if she assumed that didn't apply to aesthetically similar people outside of Britain (she really had no idea one way or the other), nobody doubted that the Glasgow Seven had definitely been guilty. You'd think that'd be exactly the kind of action Artèmi's mum in particular would approve of.
And yet, furious, hostile light magic filled the air around her, frigid and terribly unpleasant, making her skin crawl.
It didn't let up, on and on. She tried to hold it back, firm up her own aura against it, but it wasn't working very well — the drugs didn't help, didn't have the attention to maintain something like that while also trying to eat (and maybe pay attention to the conversation, if she had the brain-space to spare). Before long, Liz was feeling a little queasy from the light magic, and her head was starting to hurt, her teeth aching, like they sometimes did in intense cold.
And then Síomha said something (Liz didn't hear what), Florence's aura flaring even harsher in response.
Liz slammed both hands against the table, her fork clattering loudly — she hadn't properly licked it off first, getting gunk on the tablecloth, but fuck it — pushed herself stiffly up to her feet. The conversation at the table had abruptly gone silent, but she wasn't really paying attention — she levitated all her breakfast things up with a sweep of her wand, and walked over to the other end of the table, behind Síomha. "Move over, please."
Síomha glanced at Liz over her shoulder, a mild pulse of bemusement leaking out, but Severus started moving right away, sliding his things over and getting up to switch chairs. While they were doing that, Aritsa said (in southern-sounding French), "Ah, not enjoying Florença's bracing company, I take it."
"She's fantasising about murdering Síomha, and being all vicious and self-righteous about it. It's giving me a headache."
Needless to say, Liz's side of the table and Artèmi's family didn't get on very well after that. But sitting over here put Síomha's noisy aura between her and Florence — she wasn't giving any visible sign of animosity, but Liz suspected she was pushing her own magic against Florence's, kind of an invisible arm-wrestling contest going on throughout breakfast. Síomha's dark-tinted magic was much less offensive, and it was sort of acting as a breakwater, entirely blocking Liz off from Artèmi's mum, so, much more comfortable over here.
Liz hadn't realised the light magic assaulting her had been so overwhelming that she hadn't even been properly tasting her food until she suddenly could again. Thank Síomha for that, she guessed...even if it was only a problem in the first place because she was here.
(Artèmi was very embarrassed, which was honestly kind of funny — so breakfast wasn't all bad, at least.)
፠
Liz found the tour around the grounds very tedious. Maybe it would be more interesting for people who hadn't already been going to school here for years, or who enjoyed doing shite like hiking, but she just found it painfully boring. She kind of wished she'd brought along something to read, honestly — it might be difficult to read while also walking around, but at least it would be something to do.
Probably the most interesting part of the whole thing was when Fleur's cousin Doriane decided to introduce herself, but even that was interesting for a kind of embarrassing reason. She was, just, a little distracting, was all. She was a bit older, maybe early twenties, and rather taller than Liz, in close-tailored linen trousers and a sleeveless blouse, short-cropped black hair fluttering in little wisps around her head, her eyes a vibrant veela orange. Weirdly for a veela, she had several piercings, a few in each ear and one in her eyebrow, and Liz suspected her tongue was pierced too. She even had a visible tattoo — Liz hardly ever saw those on the magical side, in Britain either seen as muggleish or associated with certain criminal groups (or both) — a band of gold-orange veela fire wrapped around her upper arm, flickering whenever she moved, woah...
Liz did find her somewhat confusing. For one thing, she really wasn't sure why Doriane had introduced herself — she came over to where Liz was walking, seemingly just to say hi, and then she was leaving to join the Delacours again. The whole thing was odd, didn't know what to think of it. Also, she didn't entirely feel like a veela? Her magic was as bright and flickering and intensely light as any veela Liz had met, but she didn't feel any nudges from the funny soul magic stuff, none whatsoever. Maybe Doriane was just especially good at controlling it, but that didn't seem super likely. Liz knew that there were humans who lived with veela (and lilin), part of their culture and all...but she didn't think those humans would have veela-feeling magic? How would that happen, even? Also, Doriane did say Fleur was her cousin (though she didn't say how they were related, exactly), but at the same time, Fleur called Mr Delacour her father when he definitely wasn't really, so, maybe the humans with the clan were considered part of the family, and all the Delacours just called each other cousins? But then, she didn't feel human...quite. It was strange, she kind of wanted to ask, but she didn't know if that would be rude — maybe she really was a normal veela, and was just trying to be polite by not shoving at her, hard to say.
Of course, Liz also found Doriane somewhat distracting. She spent most of the conversation trying not to stare, and she suspected she might have actually been visibly blushing a little by the end. (Severus certainly seemed a bit exasperated with her, so.) It was even possible Doriane had cut the conversation short because she thought she was making Liz uncomfortable, for reasons that had nothing to do with having uncontrollable pervy thoughts.
Doriane was fucking hot, okay! Couldn't help it...
After the tedious extended tour of the grounds, they were portkeyed off to the familiar big Victorian-looking manor on the sea. There was a sort of early afternoon tea waiting for them in the dining room — shining black stone floor and rich deep red curtains, the furniture finely-carved magical ceramics, way nicer than it really needed to be — the meal more in what Liz thought of as a Continental style little sandwiches and pastries and whatever, with the addition of some pickled and fishy stuff she assumed were meant to be Scandinavian. Nilanse knew her well enough to realise she probably wouldn't be very hungry: she was sent a little delicate tea sandwich -like thing, rye bread with cream cheese and...prosciutto, probably, with a couple more of those nutty spiced biscuits.
She wasn't sent more coffee — she was aware that Cediny thought she drank too much caffeine — instead some hot chocolate...except whoever made it had gotten creative with it. It was thick and creamy, spiced, and with an edge of citrus to it, probably some orange extract or something? Whatever it was, it was pretty good, Liz wasn't complaining about not getting more coffee.
(Really, she should have arranged something like this ages ago — eliminating psychometrically toxic shite was great, yes, she liked not having nightmares, but this stuff Cediny and Nilanse and everyone had put together was always amazing. Even if they did keep trying to get her to eat more vegetables.)
After the brief, small meal, they were showed up to their rooms. With the weeks or months between Tasks, Liz mostly forgot where they'd been put between visits, but she was positive they didn't have the same rooms every time — she had no idea what the thinking behind it was, but presumably the staff knew what they were doing. Like usual, there was a private sitting room, a couple sofas and some armchairs arranged around the hearth or in front of a wide window overlooking the rather sad gardens, doors leading off into bedrooms. This one had a tiny kitchen area, which really wasn't up to much more than preparing tea. Liz remembered that'd been there during some of their stays but not others, seemingly random.
Their things had been moved here ahead of them, into the four bedrooms branching off of the sitting room. (Rather small, little more than a bed and a dresser, but it was comfortable enough, Liz didn't really care.) There was a little bit of confusion when they arrived, checking through the rooms, but they got it straightened out pretty quickly — apparently whoever had moved their things for them had put Severus and Síomha's bags in separate rooms. That was a little odd, but maybe there was some old-fashioned sensibilities at work here? They weren't married, after all...not that Liz expected that was going to be the case for very much longer. Or hell, maybe some wires had just gotten crossed at some point, whatever.
Though, the thought of Severus and Síomha actually sleeping together was fucking strange, so Liz was just going to go hide in her room with a book now.
Liz wasn't completely unselfconscious, she realised her own feelings on the whole Síomha thing were...weirdly ambivalent. On the one hand, Severus didn't really seem the type? You know, swooping around all dramatic, looking like a villain from some silly cartoon show for children, hardly ever emoting at all — it was honestly hard to picture him dating, like a normal person. She'd been aware he saw women occasionally before, and his first date with Síomha had been, er...going on nine months ago now? something like that? So, she knew rationally it shouldn't seem odd, but it was somehow incongruous at the same time, couldn't shake the feeling. But on the other hand...
What was it he'd said? Back when they were in France, um... I have the basic decency to not behave like a lecherous boor in the presence of the female sex — expectations for men are abysmally low, I'm afraid. Something like that. But, she didn't just mean basic not being a creepy arsehole stuff (she just thought that comment had been funny), it was... There were those Seer glimpses, and as reflexively weird as the idea of Severus getting married and having kids and shite might seem, it...
Well, he took care of her, as difficult as she realised she made it for him. So.
Also, Severus was hardly the most affectionate person in the world — she honestly wasn't certain she'd ever seen Severus and Síomha make physical contact at any point ever. Not that that necessarily meant anything, when she thought about it? She'd only seen them in the same place at the same time on three occasions, counting today...and one of those had been before they'd started dating.
And all of those occasions had been in public, with other people around. She guessed she really had no idea what they were like in private. Severus treated her differently when they were alone, so, presumably the same principle applied. Síomha seemed pretty stiff and private herself, so...
She didn't know. Ambivalent was a good word for it.
(Still very sure they were getting married — soonish, maybe '97 or '98.)
(Liz even knew she'd be wearing green at the wedding.)
She spent the afternoon reading, curled up in the chair in her bedroom, since it wasn't like she had anything better to do. Eventually, Severus reminded her — Liz pressing the cover down against her skirt, so he wouldn't see what she was reading — that they'd be leaving for the bloody play in under an hour. Right, the schedule. It was still a little early, Liz didn't need that long to get ready, but she might as well go ahead and get changed anyway.
They didn't need to go full formal with it — though they would on Tuesday, of course — but they did need to at least dress nice. She'd decided to bring the same dress she'd worn to the special dinner with important people back during the World Cup she'd gone to with Daphne, and the shoes and the gloves from the Yule Ball. (She didn't have that many nice clothes, stalling until she could get the blood alchemy procedure done.) It didn't take long to actually change, redoing her cosmetic charms was probably the longest part, fiddling with the corners of her eyes and the exact shade of her lips and the sparkle put into the eyeshadow part (done with a charm she wouldn't admit to getting from Witch Weekly). Her fingernails and toenails were coloured white, to match the embroidery stitched into the dark green glittery cloth of the dress, with a little narrow band right at the tip in gold, which she tried to get to actually look like gold, like she'd stuck tiny little slivers of foil at the tips of her nails. She thought it looked okay? Probably wouldn't pass if anyone looked really closely, but they shouldn't.
She tried to charm the black parts of the heels green to match her dress, but she wasn't sure it quite looked right. But again, nobody should look too closely, it should be fine. Actually, no, her dress was dark enough she could probably just leave the black the way it was and not worry about it, never mind...
By the time she was ready, she was still a little early, but not early enough that she could justify reading some more — also, she had a feeling she was approaching one of the sexy scenes, and it'd be a little awkward to be interrupted in the middle of one of those. She wasn't surprised to find Severus sitting in the little common room, changed and ready to go — relatively nice robes now, again in blue, she noticed — sitting in one of the chairs by the window with a journal. Liz walked over and flopped down into the other chair with a heavy sigh. "I can't believe they're dragging us out to a bloody play."
There was a quiet flicker of amusement from Severus's head, but his face didn't even twitch, eyes still on whichever journal that was. Um, French, Liz tilted her head for a better angle...healing, that was a healing journal, okay. "One would expect an international exchange such as this to feature cultural events."
"Waiting until the last fucking minute, but sure." Liz frowned. "Also, doesn't magical British theatre kind of suck?"
"We are not well-regarded for our contribution to the performing arts, no. Though international companies will sometimes practise in Britain — I understand some consider venues in this country to be less prestigious, attended by more forgiving audiences, which may be used to refine a performance before bringing it to the major artistic hubs on the Continent."
...So, theatre in Britain was useful because it sucked. Got it.
Silence immediately fell, Liz just sitting here and Severus reading — neither of them generally felt the need to fill silences with pointless smalltalk, so. Though she did notice that he could actually play along with normal people, way better at it than Liz was. She wondered if that was something she'd get better with at time, or if Liz was, just...bad at social stuff. Or, well, Severus had actually put effort into learning to get on with people — just to survive in Slytherin back in the day, and then the whole wartime spy thing — while Liz had a really hard time working up the energy to bother. She didn't see why she should bother making nice with people she didn't care about. There was the whole thing with, you know, existing in society together, and being actively rude could definitely make problems for her down the line, if people decided to hold a grudge — so, she did try not to be actively rude. Just, there was like there was a script other people had learned for how these interactions were supposed to go, and it was so weird and alien to her, she didn't know...
Luckily she was filthy rich, because if she actually needed to, like, work with people, convince someone to give her and let her keep a job or whatever, she suspected she might have been kind of fucked.
She didn't mind just sitting here quietly waiting — she had glanced at the time before coming out, and it couldn't be that much longer. But as long as she had Severus here, she was curious about something. Liz glanced over at the door to their room, still closed. Naturally, she could feel Síomha's presence through the door — there were privacy spells on the wards that did block her off, but they wrapped around the whole suite, the internal walls mostly see-through — and while she couldn't read Síomha's thoughts at all, she'd at least be able to tell when she started moving in this direction. "So. Síomha."
There was a funny lurch in Severus's head, not sure how to read that. Wary about this conversation, maybe? "I suppose that was meant to be a question of some sort."
"Inviting her along to family events now, huh?"
"Oh? Is that what this is?" he said in a drawl, eyes flicking up to hers and arching an eyebrow.
Liz rolled her eyes. "Oh shut up, this isn't about us."
"I don't believe I suggested anything of the sort."
"Whatever." Apparently sarcasm didn't read to her as a lie if it were obvious enough. Or, maybe just because he only meant to tease her...or embarrass her enough to get her to drop the subject, whichever. Did it count as lying if you fully expected the other person to disbelieve whatever you were saying? "You can tell me to piss off, you know, I'm just curious."
A wiggle from his mind, Severus let out a thin sigh. "Of course. I apologise."
...What for?
She was pretty sure Severus caught her confusion, though she didn't really know how to interpret the tangled mix of feelings he had in response. And she didn't get an explanation for it either, he just moved on. "It was entirely impulsive."
"Hmm?"
"Inviting Síomha. We were speaking of the end of term and the Final Task, in relation to our respective plans for the summer. I did not intend to ask if she wished to accompany me this time — it was entirely impulsive."
"Oh." That was a...weird thought. Both that Severus would do something like that and that he and his girlfriend were obviously talking about Liz when she wasn't around. He hadn't explicitly spelled that out, sure, but it was between the lines. She guessed it really shouldn't be a surprise — when you're technically legally responsible for someone, Liz could see how that was the sort of thing that might come up with the person you're dating — it just made her vaguely uncomfortable. "It's honestly hard to imagine you being impulsive."
Severus let out a quiet snort, a dark cold shudder in his mind. "I have no such difficulty — I made a number of terribly foolish decisions in my youth."
Well, sure, but Liz meant now — she was well aware that he'd been a bit of an idiot when he was her age. Or, she knew he claimed as much, she was honestly sceptical. Other than ending up in the Death Eaters, of course, but honestly, she kind of understood why that'd happened the way it did? She meant, he had all the little Light kids being cruel bastards — there had been a lot of baby Death Eaters in Slytherin, then as now, and the Gryffindors back then hadn't been any better at telling apart the different factions in the Dark than they were these days — and the Death Eater types had initially also been bullying him, but then gradually switched over to trying to recruit him as they realised how talented he was...more enthusiastically after he killed his abusive bastard of a father over the summer (with accidental magic, but still), and by then most of his non- baby Death Eater friends had stopped talking to him, including Lily, and they were offering to set him up with apprenticeships and shite, and getting by in this country could be fucking impossible for muggleborns (which Severus effectively had been, due to his mother being disowned), or really anyone who didn't have connections into some field somewhere...
Yeah, she knew Severus was still carrying a lot of guilt for how much he'd fucked up as a teenager, but Liz didn't blame him for it. As far as she was concerned, he'd been handed a shite deal, and managed to survive long enough to get himself out. And mostly on his own, too — Liz had only managed to turn her own shite around as much as she had with a possibly unreasonable amount of hand-holding from various people, and she didn't think he'd gotten that kind of help? Severus hadn't had a Severus, she guessed she was saying. And he was aware of that too, like, trying to be that person he hadn't had for kids going through Hogwarts, like, honestly Liz thought he'd managed to turn out a far better person than she had any expectation she would, regardless of whatever stupid shite he'd done when he was her age, so.
She realised it was a little absurd that she was calling someone who'd admitted to her that he was literally a serial murderer a better person than she thought she'd ever be, but those murders were to stop Hogwarts students from being abused, so, those were good deeds in her book.
(Which was extremely fucked up, yes — or at least she knew Daphne would think so, which was kind of her measuring stick for these things — but she hadn't ever stopped being a creepy evil devil child. She was just more subtle about it now.)
But she wasn't about to say any of that out loud. Severus would be uncomfortable about it, what with that guilt and all...and also possibly worried about setting a good example, or whatever the fuck, and it'd become a whole thing, not worth it. "Things are going well with Síomha, then. If you're impulsively inviting her to things like this."
"It would seem so. Though perhaps including her in this particular occasion was unwise — needing to cover up the murder of a Champion's parent would be terribly inconvenient."
Liz snorted — well, at least Severus wasn't worried about what might happen if Artèmi's mum decided to do something stupid. She had been, a little bit. Not that she personally gave a damn what happened to Síomha, barely knew her, but she knew Severus did, obviously, and...well, Artèmi's mum was kind of scary. But Severus knew Síomha's abilities better than she did, so, if he wasn't worried, there probably wasn't any reason to be.
"That was a joke, Elizabeth. I fully expect Madame Cæciné to control herself for the duration of the event."
"Right, sure." That she didn't pick up any sense that he was concerned about it was the point. She let silence linger for a couple seconds. "So...am I winning that bet of ours, then?"
Liz's teasing actually managed to make Severus uncomfortable. It was pretty subtle visually, just the slightest grimace on his face, his posture in his chair shifting just a little — but it was much more obvious in his mind, a sudden flash of hot squirming exasperation and uncertainty and, yes, embarrassment, an echo in her stomach and clinging at her skin. Like, actual embarrassment, which was weird, she could hardly recall picking that up from Severus before...tiny little flickers of it, maybe, but. He didn't answer for a moment, his eyes stubbornly fixed on his healing journal. After a long, dragging, uncomfortable moment, he said, barely above a mutter, "I'll admit, it does not seem quite so implausible as it did last autumn."
"Well I should hope so, if you're inviting her to family events."
Another shiver through his head, he glanced up at her, eyes narrowing in a light glare. "You needn't sound so smug about it."
"Maybe not, but it's fun." Severus rolled his eyes, the air around him thick with exasperation, before turning back down to his journal — Liz bit her lip to keep herself from laughing at him. Once she thought her voice would be mostly level, she said, "No reason to be so embarrassed about it, Severus. You are allowed to like someone."
"Turning my own words against me, I see."
"I'd think you'd be pleased — if I can do that, it proves I was actually listening."
Severus was trying to keep up his annoyed act, glaring down at his journal, but she felt the shiver of amusement break through the cloud of creeping nauseous discomfort anyway. "I suppose, then, that I have only myself to blame for my presently proceeding humiliation."
"Yep. Your first mistake was showing up at my hotel room that summer." She reflexively thought of the first time that'd happened, when they'd come to terms to allow her to live alone without him going to the authorities, but she didn't really think it'd been inevitable at that point? Just the first thing that occurred to her.
"Too often the foolishness of a decision is only clear in hindsight." Of course, he actually meant that it hadn't been foolish at all, but he'd phrased the statement as a general case, so he could say that without any wiggle of duplicity. Because Severus was unreasonably good at lying without lying.
(Or, very reasonably, when she thought about it — the Dark Lord was a mind mage, he'd gotten practice.)
"Don't worry about the bet, by the way, I decided the day of I was going to use it on a wedding gift anyway." Twenty galleons was a lot of money for normal people. Severus was pretty well off by magical standards, being an educated professional at an exclusive school and all, but it wasn't small change even for him. Though, she was pretty sure the Ailbhes had money? They were one of the more important Gealic clans, though she had no idea exactly how wealthy they were — less than Liz, probably, but other than that...
"You are impossible, you know," Serverus muttered, mind again shivering with exasperation. She actually caught an explicit thought, which meant he'd almost certainly meant for her to see it: at times, she could be almost as irritating as Lily.
...Given that they had been best friends for like a decade, she was going to go ahead and take that as a compliment.
"I'm certain you realise that one does not, traditionally, pay for one's own wedding gifts."
Oh, well, obviously — there was an easy fix to that, though. "I'm certain you realise that now I just have to spend more than that." Severus just got more exasperated, which was honestly kind of funny. "What exactly do you even get people for wedding gifts anyway?" It wasn't like she'd ever been to a wedding before, she really had no idea.
Also, twenty galleons was kind of a lot of money? It'd be hard to spend that much on almost anything, honestly — she expected she'd have to try to get the total up, which would just be wasteful. It'd be better to put the twenty galleons and however much of her own money in an account they could use for whatever, that'd make the most sense. Hell, she could probably make a down payment on a fucking house for them, with that kind of gold...
...at least, she assumed they'd need somewhere else to live. Severus probably didn't want to stay in his parents' old house forever — also, not a lot of room for kids — but some of the bigger Gaelic clans basically had their own villages for everyone, maybe they'd live there? Probably not her business, but.
She had no idea if Severus actually meant to ask that question (he hadn't pushed past the reflexive discomfort at the idea yet), but she got out ahead of it anyway. "Never mind, I'll ask someone else later. Síomha's coming this way."
A little flare of surprise, Severus glanced over at the door. "...I did not realise your magical awareness was that broad."
Liz just shrugged — she realised that was weird, she'd already had this conversation with Tamsyn.
A few seconds later, the door clicked open, and Síomha stepped into the room. She'd changed into the style of dress Susan insisted on calling 'modern', despite still looking very dated to muggle eyes, which Liz hardly ever saw but was aware was more common further away from the nobility. Sleeveless, very loose and drapey, the kind of thing you saw in photos of women from the 20s — though this one was belted in at the waist, outlining her figure a bit better, they didn't always do that. The dominant colour was a deep, rich crimson, run through with here and there and everywhere with twining Celtic knot -looking embroidery in black and green and yellow. The embroidery wasn't just in thread either, there were strings of glass beads and metal wire worked into the fabric too, glinting and shimmering in the light as she moved. The skirt was pretty long, but it was split up into different overlapping segments as it went down, which was enough to still get little flickers of her legs with each step. Her feet were still bare, a pair of heels held in one hand, folded over her other arm a shawl or cloak of some kind and in her hand a red beaded hat that matched the dress — Liz knew you needed both a cloak (or similar) and a hat when outdoors to be considered quite fully dressed by certain stuffy magical types, so.
After blinking at Síomha for a couple seconds, Liz turned a raised eyebrow at Severus. Okay, wow. Good catch.
"I suppose you feel that was appropriate."
"Hey, at least I didn't say it out loud!"
Síomha, of course, completely missed the silent part. Her mind was still closed up too tight to catch any explicit thoughts, but for just a second her occlumency wavered enough to release a sharp pulse of confusion — Liz didn't quite manage to hold in a snicker.
Somehow this chapter got away from me again, so I decided to split it in two. There's actually a time-skip here, so whatever. The second half still needs a couple days of work, you'll get it when it's done.