Are you there? I want to talk about something

I'm sorry, I was out with my sponsor. I expect you're asleep by now — if you want to try again during your lunch hour, I should be just getting out of bed.

Tamsyn

I'm here. Something on your mind?

Yeah. I could use some advice on something. Do you have a few minutes?

I'm catching a portkey in about three hours, I have nothing on until then.

Well, hopefully this won't take nearly that long. I was hoping you could help me with something.

I figured as much. Is this conversion academic or personal?

Personal

Go on then, you know I can hardly judge. Whenever you're ready.

Just gathering my thoughts, I'm not really sure where to start.
You know what happened with Daphne and all.

I know you split up. It can be quite stressful to have a relationship with someone you feel you can't fully be yourself around, I understand that well.

Haven't told Corey about the diary and the murder I take it. How's that going?

Ah ah ah, we aren't talking about me. Did something happen with Daphne?

No. Nothing new, at least, she's just, you know, she watches me. I can feel it, which is a little uncomfortable, but no, that's not what this is about. Just thinking of how to explain.
You know I mentioned the sofa before.

Not in much detail, but I understood what you meant. Caning was a common punishment at the orphanage.

It was a belt, actually, but yeah, same idea, I guess. S̶o̶m̶e̶t̶i̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶I̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶
What happened is, yeah, there were already issues with Daphne, but we were in bed, and, I wasn't thinking. I knew this stuff would be a problem, but I guess I was hoping it wouldn't be, that I could just ignore it and it would be fine. But, when she pulled at my the waistband I went back there. Really bad, I completely lost it. I kind of ran away, all the way home, actually. I haven't even really talked to her since, in person. Just can't.

Yes, I understand why that might be a problem. Just to be clear, what did you want my help with, exactly?

I know I have serious issues with body stuff, you know. And I thought I could just ignore it and that would be fine, but I'm not actually fine with that. I was just pretending like I was, because I knew it would be hard to deal with, and I don't even know how.

So, you are looking for advice on how to grow more comfortable with your own body, to ultimately be capable of having sex.

Well, I'll settle for not being a neurotic mess in practically any situation I have to undress for any reason, but actually being able to sleep with a future girlfriend would be nice too, yes.
Tamsyn?

Sorry, I'm only thinking. I'm sure you realise that this is the sort of difficulty that will only fully resolve given time.

I know there isn't an instant fix, just I don't even know where to start.

I suppose I may have a few ideas to help with that. It would probably be wiser for you to speak with a professional, but I understand why you may not wish to.

Not to mention mages don't really do therapy.

That is also a problem, yes. I can try to help, adapting from what worked for me — you might have guessed I had similar difficulties when I was your age. I've also known women who've been sexually assaulted, and while the experience isn't identical, it's possible I've picked up some insight I can lean on there.
But this is going to be a very sensitive conversation, and if you're not careful it's possible you could just make the problem worse. In order to do this right, I'm going to need to know how you're reacting to what I'm saying, and that you're properly listening to the whole thing. If nothing else, to ensure that you don't come off with the wrong idea, and do something foolish.

You're saying you want to have this talk in person.

Preferably, yes. I know you said you wanted me to stay away from you, so I'm not sure how workable that will be.
Liz?

I think I'll be fine. As long as you're not breaking into my room in the middle of the night.

I was thinking a public place, lunch. In a muggle city, perhaps. I can enchant a device to blur our conversation out of the attention of potential eavesdroppers.

Okay.

I will be in the country for the next week or two — the portkey I mentioned before will be landing in France. I've been catching up with some old friends, though of course that does take some explaining.

Have you talked to your not-grandson? I'm annoyed with his wife at the moment.

I have caught up with Lucius, in fact. I'm guessing you took issue with Narcissa's statement about Aemilia Scrimgeour and Deidre Nic Cormaic. Not to say I agree with her perspective — I'm hardly one to bow to the expectations of mainstream society — but I hardly would have expected anything else. Narcissa is quite old-fashioned.

And you're the third person who's told me I shouldn't be surprised by her kicking other lesbians under the lorry. I get it already. Still annoyed.

I'm bringing you my copy of Fanon — read it.
My portkey will be arriving in a few hours, and I'll be in Europe through to the Sunday after next. I do have arrangements lined up, but I will have plenty of free time. Is there a particular day that works best for you to slip out of the school?

Gamp gave us Valentine's Day off. I should be able to get down to the village and floo anywhere without anyone paying too much attention.

Tuesday, then. If you're comfortable with the idea of meeting in person.

Yes, I'm fine. Appearing in my room while I slept freaked me the fuck out, but I get that you didn't mean to, and we've been writing for over a year now. I'm a little nervous about it, but I'll get over it. I might turn up slightly high, just in case. Actually, I might do that anyway, my Seer shite is so sensitive these days, muggle food can be a problem sometimes.

I'll expect a bit of extra silliness, then. Unless there was anything else, I can get back to you with a place to meet. A Scottish city, I'm thinking, so you don't have to floo too far.

The less flooing the better, yes.

I can apparate you back to Hogsmeade after, if you're not too anxious letting me cast magic on you by then.

Let's hope so — side-alonging still sucks, but it's better than the floo.

Agreed. I should get ready to leave soon. I'll update you on a meeting place in the evening.
I've taken a hotel room in Glasgow, but Inverness is quieter, and is only a single short hop from Hogsmeade. When you leave the magical enclave, walk toward the river. You will see a pedestrian bridge, near a Catholic church; on the other side are a pair of church towers. (There are several old church buildings in Inverness, apparently.) There is a sizeable garden around the one on the left. I'll be waiting at the brick wall on the corner there. There are multiple restaurants a couple blocks away, you can pick whichever seems most favourable to you on the day.

Right, I think I can find that. See you then.

Looking forward to it.

Just to be clear, I know it'll be on Valentine's Day, but this isn't a date.

You're adorable, Liz, but you're still too young for me.

Liz was halfway across the bridge when she spotted a figure in the distance she was pretty sure must be Tamsyn.

It was a rather dreary day in Inverness, but Liz thought that was perfectly normal here. Inverness was rather close to Hogwarts — the floo trip from Hogsmeade was done in a single hop, without being redirected at all — she thought it was just slightly further north, but not nearly enough to make any difference. But it was closer to the sea, sitting right where the river running out of Loch Ness dumped into the Moray Firth, which did have an effect on the weather — mostly in that it was even drearier and rainier than it was in Hogsmeade. Though she honestly wasn't sure how much her feeling about it was due to the weather and how much was just thanks to the pollution on the air, it'd been a while since she'd spent much time in muggle towns...

Anyway, Liz had expected the weather would be miserable, so she'd dressed for the cold — she'd pulled on a pair of those leggings Hermione had gotten her under her dress and a thick fuzzy jumper over it. All muggle-made clothes, though her boots and her jewellery weren't, but they should be mostly innocuous? The boots were just black leather, maybe slightly odd for a fourteen-year-old girl but not obviously supernatural, her bracelets just colourful beads, Mistwalker-made but normal-looking enough. Only the chain of her necklace would be showing, the pendant hidden under her dress — not because it looked too magical, but just because the big fucking gemstone was a seriously fucking weird thing for a fourteen-year-old girl to be wearing by muggle standards. Especially compared to her relatively cheap clothes, it'd just look odd, and honestly people might assume she'd stolen it or something.

Liz had gotten a couple funny looks, making her way out of the castle by herself around lunchtime on Valentine's Day. Tracey even teasingly asked if she had a date — apparently Liz looked nervous. But after blowing her friends off, she just swept silently outside to wait for a carriage. It was a somewhat cold, wet day, not quite yet warming into spring, the sky a bank of clouds only occasionally split with a patch of sunny blue. It wasn't actually raining at all, the mud left behind by a light snow fallen over the weekend. Instead of going through the Three Broomsticks, which would be fucking crowded with classes out, Liz turned the opposite direction toward the new village, the public floo on the square there. She managed to make it all the way to the floo unmolested, hardly even spotted anyone about — most of the new village was empty when there wasn't a Tournament event going on, and the few residents were mostly foreigners, not accustomed to Scotland in February being its grey and miserably Scottish self.

The floo password she'd looked up brought her straight to the city centre in Inverness. There were multiple enclaves in the area you could get to from here, Inverness actually a relatively important city on the magical side, but Tamsyn had given her directions on the (accurate) assumption that she'd prefer to floo as little as possible. It wasn't difficult to find her way out of the magical town — rather small, a few alleys around a little square — and into the muggle city. Most of the buildings around were two levels, packed close together and near the narrow streets, she couldn't see very far at all. After a couple minutes wandering, she found a corner where she could dimly see hills in the distance in one direction, in the opposite direction the cross-topped steeple of a church visible over the street — the river must be that way.

After walking for a block, it quickly became clear that she had found the river, but the church she'd spotted wasn't the Catholic one Tamsyn had used as a landmark to help spot the bridge she wanted — the church she'd found was on the opposite side of the river, across a bridge straight ahead. Glancing both ways down the riverbank, she actually wasn't sure where the hell the Catholic church Tamsyn had mentioned was? She must have gotten turned around the opposite direction coming out of the magical enclave than Tamsyn had assumed she would be. Whatever, the bridge she'd found was for foot traffic only, and there was a shorter church next to the one straight ahead, a small plot of grass open around it — she'd found the spot Tamsyn had been pointing her to anyway.

Liz had just stepped onto the bridge — a suspension bridge, steel bars and wire supporting wood runners and some kind of rubber flooring, seeming to bob just slightly with the motion of the couple other people crossing — when it started to rain. The sky was completely overcast here, without the faint glimpses of sun in Hogsmeade, a light but frigid breeze coming off of the sea. It was maybe five degrees, not really any warmer or colder than Hogsmeade, Liz had been prepared for that. She hadn't been prepared for the rain — she didn't own any muggle-style coats or anything, since she was always at Hogwarts over the winter anyway, and she'd assumed a cloak would be too out of place. It wasn't a heavy rain, thankfully, just an indecisive sprinkling, but it was cold enough that getting wet would be completely miserable.

She glanced around, making sure no one was paying her any particular attention — she didn't feel anyone watching her, just reflex — before reaching into her sleeve. Hiding it with her arms, she pulled her wand out of its holster and straight into her opposite sleeve, carefully passed it back to her right hand. She cast an imperturbable charm along the inside surface of her jumper — the wool would still get wet, but the barrier on the inside would keep it off of her dress, keeping Liz herself dry, and hopefully looking perfectly innocuous to muggle eyes. Her wand never once leaving the shelter of her sleeves, she slipped it back into its holster, groped around herself with her mind for any hints of suspicion, only finding a few minds in her range, on the bridge out over the river, and none paying any attention to her. Right, looked like she'd pulled that off with no one noticing, good.

Her head ducked against the rain, when she glanced up to check her progress she spotted a figure on the other side of the river, sitting atop the wall ringing the grassy plot near the churches, just to the left ahead. It was hard to make out much from here, too far away. They were wearing a light purple muggle raincoat, one of the ones made out of some kind of plastic, hood pulled over their head, the legs (barely little twigs from this distance) toned in a blue that must be denim, feet seeming to bob just slightly. Liz was too far away to recognise anything about them, even whether they were a man or a woman (though the purple did seem kind of feminine), but she still guessed it must be Tamsyn — from the description Liz had been given, that looked like the exact spot they were supposed to meet.

The anxiety that had been lowly simmering at the back of her mind all day suddenly spiked, hot in her throat and her head and the back of her neck practically sizzling, bringing her lurching to a stop. She knew it would be fine, Tamsyn had been nothing but nice and helpful over letters — a little frustrating sometimes, but that was just teasing, having fun with it, Liz could hardly judge. She didn't really think Tamsyn was a danger to Liz herself. Other people, sure, maybe, but not Liz — if she'd thought Tamsyn was a legitimate danger to her, she would have told Severus everything ages ago. Telling the authorities might incriminate herself, but Severus would be able to handle it. But she didn't think Tamsyn was any threat to her, so she hadn't told anyone, and, at some point after who the fuck knew how many letters over the last...nearly two years now...Tamsyn had honestly become one of her best friends.

But meeting her in person was different. And because Liz was complete shite with feelings, she really couldn't tell if the nervousness was because she knew Tamsyn was a super dangerous murderer and could easily overpower Liz if she wanted to, or just because this was their first meeting that really counted for shite, and Liz didn't want to annoy her badly enough that she stopped writing.

Besides, Liz could hardly judge Tamsyn for being a super dangerous murderer — as far as she knew, Tamsyn herself had only ever killed the one person, so they were even. And Tamsyn's had been in much more justifiable circumstances than Liz's, who wouldn't kill someone if they really had to to survive...

It was probably fine. It was fine, Liz didn't actually believe anything bad was happen.

But she was still unreasonably nervous, so she pulled out a crystal of whatever this shite was properly called and tucked it under her tongue anyway.

By the time Liz reached the shore, the tablet had already mostly dissolved, the magically-processed marijuana coming into effect. Gradually, not hitting all at once, Liz could feel it building, like walking downhill — feeling vaguely warm, and tingly, and comfortable, the knot of tension between her shoulders loosening with each step. She was a little lightheaded, enough that she paid attention placing her feet while crossing the street so she didn't trip over the kerb, but it wasn't that bad, she shouldn't make too much of an idiot of herself. The hot roiling and twisting of nerves in her stomach didn't entirely go away, but it was much more manageable, reduced to a less immediate sense of unease.

Mild enough that she belatedly noticed it wasn't just nerves — Liz was maybe a little excited to meet Tamsyn, for the first time. (She wasn't counting that time in her dorm room.) Which she guessed was fair, given how long they'd been talking, she'd just been too anxious to feel it properly before.

So, thanks to the drugs and despite the miserable Scottish weather, her steps were actually rather light and almost bouncy on the last stretch to their meeting place, enough she could feel her skirt swishing around her legs. As she passed the end of some kind of shop or something, made out of ancient-looking asymmetrical brick, an iron fence separating the street from the green space around the church, the purple-jacket-wearing figure ahead hopped off the brick wall at the corner, started sauntering toward Liz. Definitely a woman — the jacket still hid enough at this distance that it wasn't super obvious, but her gait, the sway of her hips as she walked, was feminine enough to tell.

Also, they approached near enough for Liz to feel her mind, and she was suddenly very sure this was Tamsyn now. She hadn't really noticed what Tamsyn's mind had felt like very well from that one time in her dorm room, but Tamsyn had sent her occasional memories to peruse in her pensieve — smooth and calm and warm (dark), tingling and glimmering with sparks of thought and magic, loose tendrils drifting aimlessly in the air around her, like hair underwater. Liz was pretty sure, having watched her in memories, that Tamsyn had also broken herself like Liz had, and couldn't turn the mind magic off either — which would make sense, since they'd forcefully triggered the talent under stress at roughly the same age — but while Liz's mind felt really tense and loud, crackling with barely-contained energy, Tamsyn's felt much more relaxed, less rigidly on edge and more passively drifting.

Minds did just feel different for no apparent reason, that could be all it was, but honestly Liz suspected Tamsyn's mind feeling so much smoother was at least in part because she'd more thoroughly dealt with her issues than Liz had, so she was just more...stable, in general. Liz thought her mind would also calm a bit as she got better, though she really didn't know how much difference it would make, hard to say. Not exactly something she could look up.

Liz came to a stop about halfway along the fence, Tamsyn halting a second later, only a couple steps away. She was wearing muggle shoes, Liz noticed, hiking boots, rubber and heavy canvas, and those were denims, the fit loose enough for the fabric to fold in places. Tamsyn looked vaguely similar to a lot of the purebloods at school, with the curly pure-black hair (barely visible under her hood) and long narrow nose and thin arched eyebrows, and stupid pale, her eyes a light not-quite-grey blue. She'd pierced her ears at some point over the last year or so — apparently it was much more common on the magical side in America — currently holding very muggle-style studs, little fake plastic gemstones a deep Slytherin green.

Warm sparkly flickers in her mind, Tamsyn smiled at her. "Hello, Elizabeth."

"Hi." She felt like there should maybe something else to say, but she couldn't think of it, so she just awkwardly went silent. She could feel herself grinning, though, which was a little odd. "Um, I did take something, back there," she said, vaguely waving back at the bridge...for some reason — it's not like it really mattered where she'd been when she'd taken the drugs. "So if I'm a little silly, that's why."

The smile ticked a little wider, cool amusement pulsing off of her. "I see. I'll keep that in mind, then. I like the eyebrow piercing, by the way," she said, pointing at the same spot on her own face.

"Oh, um. Thanks?" Liz thought the one in her lip was actually her favourite — she did play with it a lot, and she liked the extra stuff it brought to kissing, you know — but she did think the eyebrow one looked the best, so.

Tamsyn was laughing at her on the inside, yes, Liz realised she was socially awkward, she didn't see what was so funny about that. "I imagine you'd prefer to get out of the rain, but there was something I wanted to do right away." She pulled off one of her gloves — plain soft leather, Liz suspected those were actually mage-made — held out one hand to Liz. "If I understand correctly, you may feel a lie with mind magic alone, but skin contact will help to prompt further knowledge through the Sight. So you may know the truth of what I say, with certainty."

"...Yeah." She got the point of what Tamsyn meant to do here — she knew Liz had been wary of meeting her, so she wanted to promise she wasn't going to hurt her, and for Liz to be able to know she was telling the truth through cheater Seer powers. She didn't think that was really necessary...but it might be nice to know anyway, just in case. And it was nice of Tamsyn to think of it. After a couple seconds of hesitation, Liz took her hand, and immediately winced as Tamsyn's mind got much louder. It wasn't particularly unpleasant, at least, warm and smooth and tingly, and she was doing a pretty good job of keeping her thoughts to herself, it was just a bit much was all.

"Our first meeting was a mistake, I should have known better — I was thrilled with my success at making myself a proper body, and perhaps slightly delirious from contact euphoria, and I wasn't thinking clearly. I have no intention of harming you, ever. I'm on your side." Her eyes flicked away, just for a second. "Besides, my creator may have found the Gaunts, but I've never known any of my blood relatives — if I'm being honest, I find the idea of having one rather fascinating."

...All of that was true. She didn't feel any obvious lies, and, her Seer shite could be unreliable at times, but she was pretty sure she'd feel it if someone were planning on stabbing her in the back later. Tamsyn definitely wasn't telling her everything, she could feel that much, but Tamsyn also didn't know everything — that was how linear time worked. Liz's instincts were normally pretty good, thanks to Seer horseshite, and she wasn't getting any hint of warning whatsoever.

Tamsyn just felt like a friend, like Hermione, or Susan, or whoever. She was safe.

Liz had already thought so, of course, but she guessed it was nice to have confirmation.

"I'm not calling you Aunt Tamsyn."

A sharp flicker of amusement cracking over Liz — it tickled, she bit her lip to hold in a giggle — Tamsyn rolled her eyes. (Only pretending to be exasperated, she did think Liz was funny.) Letting go of her hand, she said only, "Regardless. Come on, let's get inside. There are several restaurants over that way." Tamsyn led Liz back the way she'd come, as far as the bridge she'd taken across the river, but she turned the opposite direction, cutting into a tiny narrow alley, the tall church on one side and the ancient-looking brick shop on the other. Very little, obviously meant only for foot traffic, the walls close in cutting off some of the noise of the city, tight and quiet...

Okay, probably a good idea Tamsyn had made a point of having Liz confirm she didn't mean her any harm — if she'd had any doubt of that, being alone with her in such a tight space might have made her nervous. Though she guessed the drugs probably helped too.

"By the way," Tamsyn said, the sudden speech startling Liz a little, "if anyone should ask, I'm an elder cousin, keeping you company on the anniversary of your parents' deaths."

Liz blinked, turned to glance at Tamsyn. She couldn't see her face at the moment, hidden by her hood. "Oh?"

"Yes. They were on a romantic night out for Valentine's Day when they got into a smash-up. Drunk driver, very tragic."

"...Okay. Why?"

Tamsyn turned enough to give Liz a flat look from under her hood, a little shiver in her mind. "I don't know if it occurred to you, Liz, but you look even younger than your age, and it's a weekday. People may wonder why you're not in school, and what I'm doing with you."

"Right, of course. I'll try to remember." Liz shrugged. "Should be easy enough — I really thought my parents had died in a car crash when I was little. Though I was told my father was the one doing the drinking."

"Ah. I didn't know a blessed thing about my parents growing up." Liz twitched at the use of blessed, seemed off — for a British mage in general, but especially for Tamsyn. Since she was also a mind mage, Tamsyn must have noticed her surprise, said, "Oh, I've been posing as a Massachusetts native lately, accent slipped. Anyway, all I knew of my father was a surname. Cole gave me my mother's wedding ring when I was...four or five? One of the older orphans took it off me a few months later, never saw it again."

...Well, that was kind of sad. "This was Lily's," she said, tugging the necklace out from under her collar. "Severus said it was a courtship gift from James."

Tamsyn reached over, gloved fingers gently turning the dangling pendant so she could see it better. "How lovely. Though the Gryffindor colours are a bit much."

"I think they're supposed to be Potter colours." Liz tucked the gemstone back down the front of her dress, fixed her collar quick.

"Ah, yes, that would make sense. I can't recall how magical culture can be about that sort of thing, is that appropriate for you to be wearing? Given its history."

"Yeah, Severus says it's common for courtship gifts to be passed on to the children — I probably would have ended up with it around this age anyway."

"Right, right. I might be a little jealous, if I'm being honest. My family are all gone as well, and I haven't anything of theirs at all."

"Diana Gaunt is still alive. Did I tell you about her? She's, um...Corvin and Mared Gaunt's daughter? I think?" She was doing this from memory, but she thought so...

Liz could feel Tamsyn watching her, curious. They'd reached the end of the alley, following the pavement to the right. The city here was very similar to the other side of the river, rather small buildings packed tight together and close to the narrow street, old. After a few seconds, Tamsyn said, "I believe the name may have come up shortly after you performed that heritage test, over the summer. I don't know if you told me anything else about her. I believe Corvin and Mared are my great-grandparents, so if she's their daughter she'd be my great-aunt."

"Yeah, she's my...great-great-grandmother. I think. Daphne says she's one of the Hartwrights' elders — you know, the Mistwalker clan. Um. My great-grandfather was kicked out — rapist bastard, apparently — but she's probably got other kids, you know how Mistwalkers are, so I bet we've got living cousins over there."

Tamsyn nodded, her head ticking and flickering, Liz not quite sure how to read that. "Hartwrights. I'll look into it. Thank you, Liz."

"Sure. I'm told she goes by Britnell now, Diana Britnell."

"Of course, thank you." The buildings around them were starting to look more modern — like in old Guildford or in Paris, the street-facing ground floor remodelled to more contemporary standards, leaving the one (or two) floors above in the original brick and plaster. It was too damn cloudy out for the modern metal and glass to glimmer in the sunlight, but. "I can tell the Britnells about you, if you like."

"Don't bother. Daphne tells me Hunter Britnell — that's my great-grandfather — was kicked out of the family, basically disowned. Weird Mistwalker cultural stuff, he's not considered family anymore. Apparently he raped a girl and refused to cooperate with their own weird justice system thing they've got going on there. They'll have to admit they're related to him to admit they're related to me, and Daphne says they're not gonna want to do that. They'll probably still talk to you, though."

Tamsyn's face was still hidden by her hood, but Liz felt the wince in her mind. "Ah. Never mind, then. There's a few restaurants up at the corner here, and more over that way..." Her pace slowed a little, distracted, thoughts turning over something. "Britnell, Hunter Britnell..."

"Hmm?"

"It's only I swear I've heard that name before, but I can't remember where. Should he be around my age? Did he go to Hogwarts?"

...It was very weird to be reminded how old Tamsyn was — though Liz would argue the fifty years spent trapped in a book shouldn't count. "I don't think so, no." Mistwalkers generally didn't. Daphne was only there because the Greengrasses also happened to be nobility — the rest of the people at the Greenwood didn't — and Cassie Lovegood's mother was an Ollivander, so. "And I think he's, like, a decade older than you or something? I don't remember exactly."

"Mm. I know I've heard it before, but it's not coming to me. I'll ask around and get back to you."

"You really don't have to." It's not like Liz had any interest whatsoever in meeting the rapist bastard, so it really didn't matter if Tamsyn had heard of him before.

"I'll ask regardless, I suspect it's important. Anyway," she said with a sharp sigh, coming to a sweeping halt near the corner. "Where do you want to eat? I checked ahead of time, they're mostly all decently quiet this time of day."

There ended up being rather more places to choose from than Liz had expected, in the central part of the city where all the things were. (According to Tamsyn, Scotland was trying to make tourism happen, which would explain the hotels and nice restaurants and stuff.) There were a couple Indian restaurants around, which she guessed wasn't a big surprise, but Liz could be boring and very English sometimes, she'd rather not. A couple were too nice-looking just for Liz and Tamsyn to talk over lunch at — those generally weren't open until dinner anyway. She didn't know, Liz didn't actually care that much, whatever worked...

They ended up going to one of those pubs that also served food? which Tamsyn said was a relatively new thing, but Liz didn't pay that much attention, what did she know. The place was rather old-fashioned-looking on the inside, all the surfaces made from wood panels, the furniture wood tables and chairs and benches, a lot of it didn't match, as though they'd just accumulated shite from wherever and thrown it together. The walls were also rather messy, with old posters and newspaper clippings and signs and shite, some of them very old, rusted around the edges or the colours fading a little — Liz got the feeling this place had been around in one form or another for a long time. It was rather dimly-lit, the windows partially blocked with heavy curtains in a vague greenish-brown, the lights overhead dim, enough to see clearly but easy on the eyes.

There were a few people around, mostly sitting at the long bar along one side of the room, but not very many — it was very quiet, the unidentifiable music piped in from somewhere mixing evenly with the couple conversations going around. They were only in here for a few seconds — enough for Liz to decide that, sure, this was private enough — when someone behind the bar noticed them, called over. Liz tried not to give Tamsyn a double-take when she answered in an American accent — that was bloody weird, a warning would have been nice. Tamsyn said they'd prefer a table, the woman behind the bar told them to just pick a spot, she'd come see them shortly.

Tamsyn went way into the back corner, where there was a little four-chair table, quiet and dark and out of the way. Unzipping her raincoat, she asked, "Are you comfortable with your back to the door?" She didn't say out loud that she wanted to keep an eye on people moving around to make sure their privacy spells would remain inconspicuous.

"Yeah, it's fine," this place is small enough I can feel everyone here anyway. Even the pair of men in the kitchen, through the wall — wards would cut her off, but in the muggle world Liz's range could be far less limited. Actually, she could feel people in the neighbouring restaurant too, somewhat more dimly, and there was someone in a flat overhead, but the thicker walls blocking off the pub from its surroundings made those minds somewhat more faint, more easily ignorable. She'd be fine not being able to see people, was the point. She hung her bag over the back of a chair, made sure her necklace was under her dress before starting to pull her arms through her jumper. It was a little wet from the sprinkles outside, she didn't feel like sitting in it for however long...

She felt Tamsyn's eyes on her, mind simmering with surprise. She'd been aware of everyone in the room, but she hadn't noticed the men in the kitchen — she could feel them now that she'd intentionally reached that way, but she had to actually look. The minds outside the pub were detectable to her, but it took actual effort, she definitely hadn't noticed their presence passively. She'd had no idea Liz was that sensitive all the time, no wonder she got overwhelmed in the Great Hall.

Once she had her jumper pulled over her head — her hair floof-ing all over the place, of course — Liz just gave Tamsyn a helpless shrug. "Honestly, I thought this was normal until Severus reacting to shite I say made it clear it wasn't. I don't know why I'm like this."

...It was possible it was due to some peculiarity of the interaction of her mind magic and the Sight, but Tamsyn couldn't truly say. Magic could be difficult to predict like that. Tamsyn shucked off her raincoat, hung it over the back of one of the chairs. Liz caught herself staring, forced herself to glance away — the jumper Tamsyn was wearing clung close to her figure, making the curve of her breasts and her waist very very obvious.

Liz was suddenly remembering that she knew what Tamsyn looked like naked — she'd sent Liz various memories to put in her pensieve which featured a lack of clothes, the one where she'd learned to fly unassisted and also a few of her having sex with people, to help Liz confirm for certain that she was gay. (Which had apparently seemed like a reasonable thing to do to Tamsyn, because she could be very strange sometimes.) And now Liz was remembering that she'd touched herself watching those memories before, glimmers flickering in and out, argh, she bit hard on her tongue trying to distract herself, stop it, brain, what the fuck.

Maybe the drugs had been a bad idea...

Her mind warm and shimmering with amusement, Tamsyn drawled, "I'm flattered, but you're still too young for me."

Liz glared at her — the heat she could feel on her face probably ruined the effect of the expression, but she couldn't really help that. "Shut up, this is your fault."

"Yes, well, I am a bad person, you know."

Falling into a chair across from Tamsyn with a harsh huff, Liz changed the subject. Hopefully talking about something else would distract her, just, try not to think sexy thoughts and it would go away. Or, if she was lucky it would, shite could still get annoyingly distracting at times, bloody hormones... "Anyway, what's with the accent?"

"I told you I've been posing as an American. She'll probably check my I.D., so I've got to get in character."

"Thought you were supposed to be my cousin."

One of Tamsyn's eyebrows ticked up. "My mom went to America for college — and she found Jesus while she was at it, hence the name."

A waitress, the same woman who'd greeted them from behind the counter, showed up before Liz could ask what she meant by that. She'd guessed they'd be ordering food, so she came with menus, asked if they wanted a drink while they were looking it over. Coffee, coffee would be good, but the stuff from the shitty coffee machines was— Oh, they did a proper French-style cafetière thing, that'd be great, then. Tamsyn asked for cider, after checking that it wasn't too strong — she had said she'd apparate Liz back to Hogsmeade when they were done — and the woman did, in fact, check her ID. Tamsyn did look pretty young, so she guessed that made sense — apparently she was going by Mercy Anne Creswell, which was a funny name. They chatted a little bit about America and Boston and oh, visiting her cousins, how nice, anyway, she would give them a minute and come back later...

Liz wasn't paying much attention, glancing over the menu — which was very short, unsurprisingly, since it was a pretty small place and they only had two blokes in the kitchen. It was the lunch menu, maybe they scaled up later in the day? Anyway, normal stuff, a couple sandwiches, macaroni cheese, chips, and haggis for some fucking reason? She guessed they were in bloody Scotland. She should eat, but muggle food could be— Oh, actually, they had a fishcake thing that sounded decent, and fish mostly didn't trigger Liz's stupid Seer sensitivities, so...not a big fan of leeks, but if they were cooked to hell in the sauce it should be fine, and she could always pick them out...

Once the waitress was gone, Liz muttered, "Mercy?"

"Mercy Anne, yes. Massachusetts is like that." Tamsyn reached into a pocket, set a little ceramic disc on the table — Liz felt a faint crackle as the privacy spells snapped into effect. "A large fraction of the original settlers of New England were from radical Protestant sects, nonconformists and reformed types. Do you know much about that sort of thing?"

"No, not really." She hadn't payed much attention in muggle school, and they didn't spend a lot of time talking about muggle Christian sects in history class at Hogwarts. Or magical ones either, for that matter...

"Ah, well. Short story, they thought the Protestant Reformation hadn't gone far enough, that the Church of England was still a bit too Roman for their tastes. Though they weren't only in England, you saw similar groups in Holland and the north of Germany, dotted here and there. They weren't well-liked by most European states, so when the New World opened up they fled there. The muggleborns of these radical Protestant sects often remained in their communities — magical Christians tend to be strongly Catholic, or Orthodox — and this was well before the Statute, so they developed a small magical population of their own over a few generations.

"So, when the Statute was imposed, these sorts of Christians were the majority of the magical population in Massachusetts — and they still are, to this day. Massachusetts is still a theocracy, local government is literally run out of church houses. It's a very stuck-up, socially conservative sort of Christianity too, but in a rather different way than you might be used to here in England."

"We're in Scotland right now." A flicker in her head, Tamsyn's lips twitched. Oops. "Sorry, drugs, I know what you meant."

"Naturally. In any case, one of the peculiar things about the culture there is their naming conventions — Mercy Anne is a perfectly ordinary name for Massachusetts. I once met a man named Consider John, and another woman at my school is named Temperance Joy."

Liz sniggered. "Consider John. Consider John for what?"

Giving Liz a flat look, not matching the amusement shivering in her mind, Tamsyn recited, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin — and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

"...Was that the Bible? Since when do you have Bible versus memorised?"

"Well, I've got to play the part, haven't I?"

The waitress came back around then, with their drinks — she came with the whole coffee press thing for Liz, which was good, because in retrospect she'd forgotten to clarify that she didn't want any sugar with it. (She was given a little plate with sugar cubes and a tiny little pitcher of cream, but she didn't have to use them.) Tamsyn — Mercy Anne, Liz guessed, should try to remember that — ordered the shepard's pie, with a comment about as long as she was in Scotland; the waitress joked that, well, if she was going for Scottish, haggis was on the menu, ha, no thanks, she was good. The shepard's pie would be a bit, it was slow during the day so they didn't have stuff just sitting ready to go, so it'd need to bake and everything — Liz's would also be a little bit, just didn't need to cook for as long. Tamsyn said that was fine, they weren't in a rush, but she'd missed breakfast, so add a plate of chips so long as they were waiting, those should be pretty quick, right? Five to ten minutes, perfect. Yeah, that was it, thanks.

Liz wasn't really paying attention to most of that, once she'd gotten her own order in. (Honestly, she'd picked up what was going on more from the waitress's mind than what they were saying out loud.) It was fine if they had to wait a bit, Liz wasn't starving, personally — she had been to breakfast today, so. Though she was hoping the potatoes were local, less likely to be grown with slave labour than if they were brought in from some third-world country. Mostly she was focussed on her coffee, pushing the press down just a little so she could dribble a bit out into a cup to taste. She figured she was going to let it steep for longer, but she wanted to check first...

After taking a sip, Liz just frowned down at the cup for a second. That felt slightly...off, a faint sharp sourness, tingling on her tongue. Unless the waitress lady had decided to poison her, it was probably a psychometric echo of some kind. Of course, it was very possible the coffee had been grown by slave labour in some third-world country — that wasn't so much of a problem on the magical side, but she was aware it could be on the muggle, according to Hermione the coffee trade was kind of fucked. The coffee itself tasted fine — if weak, needed to steep longer — and the Seer shite wasn't overwhelmingly bad, just vaguely unpleasant. Oh well, she guessed she'd deal with it. She checked the cream, dipping a fingertip in and tasting it, and that seemed fine, hopefully a dash would help cover it up a little.

"Something wrong?"

Liz shook her head. "Echo on the coffee. It's not that bad, I can still drink it, just a little annoying."

"Ah, yes," Tamsyn muttered, her mind churning with hidden thoughts. "I don't envy you the Sight, honestly. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to even eat normally with psychometry, especially in the modern world." The muggle side, she meant.

"Mine isn't too bad, Miss Eva gets really ill sometimes, and even if she doesn't taking in too much sensitive stuff can give her nightmares. It isn't..." Liz trailed off, blinking to herself. "Fuck."

"What?"

"I just realised, I get nightmares all the time, and— I do get in contact with less things that are bad for Seer reasons than I used to, but not nothing. Like, the food at Hogwarts is better than muggle stuff, usually, but it's still not perfect, and of course being around people can be bad, and obviously my pants are cotton, at least." Liz realised talking about her knickers was kind of an odd thing to do, if she weren't slightly high at the moment it might have occurred to her to be embarrassed about it. Also, wow, she was rambling, but, drugs. "Mostly the echoes themselves don't bother me that much, I can just ignore them, but even if she can get through a thing Miss Eva sometimes has nightmares later, and I just thought that that might be why? Why I keep having nightmares, I mean. Or at least that it doesn't help."

Tamsyn was quiet a moment, her attention on Liz — not in an uncomfortable way, just thoughtful — thoughts pittering away in her head. She wasn't really trying that hard to keep Liz out, she could tell there were bits she'd read or learned of the Sight and mind magic and psychology, trying to decide how plausible that was. "It's not impossible, I guess. Though, I think you would notice if your nightmares were about whatever you touched that day."

Liz shook her head. "That's not how psychometry works. I mean, you don't— I think you meant to say, like, that I'd have a dream about whatever poor bastard picked the coffee or sugar or cotton or whatever, right?" A faintly confused flicker in her head, Tamsyn nodded. "Right, well, for most things, psychometry isn't that precise. I don't get those kinds of details, or anything, just the feeling attached to it, that's what comes through. And, if I've got that stuff bubbling away in my unconscious or whatever and go to sleep..."

"...then it might be expressed in nightmares with a similar tone, right, I get it now. When you put it that way, it sounds very likely, in fact. I know you've already been taking some small measures to limit your psychometric exposure, but it might be worth it to take it more seriously."

"That's fucking hard, though," Liz groaned, slumping back in her chair. "I mean, you have no fucking idea how many things suck. I can eat whatever I want without too much trouble, but I have to be able to control where it's coming from — there are magical producers who are careful about that kind of thing — but obviously I can't do that at school, or if I'm at a restaurant or a party or something. And some places have echoes, which I won't know are a problem until its too late, and sometimes random objects, and sometimes people give me something, and I can't avoid them all the time. And cotton is a problem too, I've mostly eliminated cotton, or keep it from touching my skin at least, for everything except my pants, and there isn't anything I can do about those — knickers made out of anything else make me uncomfortable for other reasons. Like, sure, maybe my Seer horseshite does have something to do with me having nightmares all the bloody time, but I don't know what the fuck to do about it."

Tamsyn hummed, frowning down at her cider. "I see how that could be a problem — no wonder so many Seers retreat into isolation."

"Yeah, I totally get the hermit thing, honestly, sucks sometimes." And her Sight only seemed to be getting more sensitive — or at least she was growing more conscious of it, anyway — so it was only going to keep getting worse. That was a depressing thought...

"How frequent are these nightmares, exactly?"

Liz shrugged. "Couple nights a week, I guess. Sometimes more, sometimes less. It's not that big of a deal, if I can get back to sleep after, but that doesn't always work... Honestly, I don't think it's as bad as it used to be, but I have been trying to avoid things as much as I can, so." She'd assumed it was just getting better because she was at least making some progress with her whole fucked-up abused kid issues — also, these last few months, being under less stress in general due to blatantly skipping class whenever she felt like it — and that probably helped, but she guessed it was impossible to tell how much of her not feeling quite so shite all the time was because of one thing and how much was the other. Brains were complicated like that.

"And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume they're often..." Tamsyn hesitated for a second, glancing away as she considered how to put it. "...re-traumatising?"

Were they about Liz's fucked-up childhood, she meant. "...Mostly, yeah. Which does make sense, when I think about it." That eating food that had been raised by people trapped in a shitty situation would bring Liz back to when she had felt trapped and helpless made intuitive sense. Or at least it did to her, anyway.

Tamsyn sighed, rubbing at her cheek with one hand. "I'm sure you realise repeatedly being sent back there like that isn't likely to help you move on. You are doing much better than when we first started speaking, of course, but at the very least I expect constantly being subjected to such sensitive nightmares would...slow your progress. So to speak."

"Yes," she hissed, trying to force a stronger exasperated tone than she really felt at the moment (drugs), "I realise that, Tamsyn. I just don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do about it."

"Well, let's think about it. There may still be stressors you can—" Tamsyn cut herself off, Liz was temporarily confused before she thought, oh, obviously, waitress lady was coming back. She had their chips, as soon as Liz smelled them she was abruptly hungry, snapped one up hardly before the plate hit the table — ah, excellent, the imitation chips they made at Hogwarts just weren't the same. And these didn't feel like they were going to be a problem for Seer reasons so, just, awesome, yay chips. Whatever was in the little sauce cups that came with probably had sugar in them, though, but that was fine, they were great on their own anyway.

Waitress lady asked if there was a problem with her coffee, no, she was just waiting for it to steep longer. She didn't believe Liz — apparently she'd made a face at the press, Liz hadn't even noticed — but she couldn't exactly explain about her Seer issues, so she just said again that the coffee was fine, compelling the muggle woman to believe it this time. Okay, they were wrapping up the prep work and getting their things in the oven — which wasn't quite true, Liz could feel them in there, they'd thrown Tamsyn's together first because it had to bake longer, they were lazily poking away at Liz's fishcake since they had plenty of time if they wanted them to finish at roughly the same time — that was cool, they had chips, thanks.

Once the waitress was gone, Tamsyn said, "If the coffee is going to bother you, you can order something else."

"Nah, anything they have is just as likely to be a problem." Liz quick took a taste of the coffee. There, that was better — now that it was much stronger, the unpleasantness of the Seer shite was less glaring, she could at least try to ignore it. She could feel Tamsyn watching her fix her coffee, dark slimy flickers in her head. "What?"

"Only a couple minutes ago, you suggested that will possibly give you nightmares."

Liz shrugged. "Yeah, well, that's being a Seer for you. I'm used to it."

"Perhaps you feel differently, but if I were you I would not simply surrender to the inevitability of being miserable."

"I'm not, just—" Liz bit out a sigh, shaking her head. "You don't get it, Tamsyn, it can't be fixed. This is just what being a Seer is like — we have to accept a certain amount of misery just to, you know, exist in the world. Miss Eva's surprised I manage to go to school and have friends and shite at all, without a grounding potion or anything, and I don't want to take a grounding potion, they sound awful. I mean, they make you kind of slow and spacey, and, I think I'd be uncomfortable with that for other reasons — it might make it harder to defend myself if I have to, you know...and stop myself from getting lost in other people's heads too, when I think about it." The latter was why Severus hadn't made a point of suggesting she consider it, she remembered now, but Liz actually suspected the former would be the bigger deal, for her.

"I'm not suggesting it can be fixed, but there's no reason you can't do whatever possible to make it easier for yourself. This isn't a black and white matter, Liz — it is perfectly feasible to do things to make your daily life more pleasant without any need for a cure for the Sight."

...Well, that was obvious, when she put it like that. Actually, now Liz was remembering talking to Severus about...something, she didn't remember exactly, and he'd admitted that her issues would probably never go away entirely (there was no cure), but they would become less of a problem with time. And with, you know, actually doing something to deal with it, instead of just ignoring it and hoping it gets better on its own. They'd actually had that conversation multiple times, because Liz could be a fucking idiot sometimes, and just wouldn't...

The Sight wasn't the same thing as her abused kid issues, but. Yeah, that the only option wasn't just to give up and deal with the nightmares should have been fucking obvious.

Liz let out a heavy sigh, shaking her head to herself. "You're right, obviously you're right. I'm an idiot, sorry. But, I wouldn't know where to start. Life is really complicated, you know, lots of things can be a problem..."

"Food," Tamsyn said, flat and low.

"...What?"

"What does this Miss Eva of yours do for food?"

There was a second there that Liz almost said something about that Miss Eva not being of mine, but then realised that was a weird thing to say, and would also kind of make it super obvious that Liz thought Miss Eva was distractingly...just distracting. She had told Tamsyn about that already, sure, but also she tried to avoid being a big damn pervert if she could help it. The drugs just made it kind of hard to remember that sometimes — after all, she wouldn't actually be embarrassed about it until later, and that was future-Liz's problem. "Um. She gets food sent from home?"

"Mm." Tamsyn happened to be in mid sip, waiting for Liz to answer, set her glass down with an audible clunk. "And you said there are suppliers that are comfortable for you. Is there any reason you can't have food sent from home as well?"

"Well, sure, I have done that sometimes, when I didn't feel like leaving my room, you know." The food the Potter elves would send her was fucking good, of course, but it wasn't always clean for Seer reasons — obviously, if she were to make a habit of trying to do this they'd talk about figuring that out first. "But, um. I have an agreement with Severus, I can skip meals when I have to but I still have to show my face in the Great Hall sometimes. And my friends would start worrying pretty quickly."

"In my time, I knew of a handful of students with serious medical issues — the elves made their meals special, sent them up with everyone else's. It seems the elves know where particular people are sitting, somehow."

"Yeah, they send my nutrient potion up every morning." Honestly, when Liz thought about it, her potion probably wasn't strictly necessary anymore, but it was possible there were still gaps in her diet, and it's not like it was hurting anything to keep taking it.

"And is there any reason you can't arrange to have more psychometrically-neutral meals sent up to you as well?"

She didn't see why not, in principle — the possibility had simply never occurred to her. "I mean, it's not like there's a specific thing bothering me, like an allergy or whatever, some of the suppliers Hogwarts uses are just iffy. And I wouldn't even know how to go about doing that."

"I would try going down to the kitchens and asking to speak with someone about your diet. I expect they'll be willing to work with you on it — house-elves can be almost pathologically accommodating — though it may go more smoothly if you have Severus along. The Hogwarts kitchens are supplied under contract with various parties, and I'm not sure how much freedom the elves have to go elsewhere — they almost certain don't have the ability to pay anyone. You may need to set up an arrangement where they plan meals for the week with your elf — Nilanse, was it? — and she dips into the Potter accounts to procure the necessary ingredients from suitable suppliers, and brings them to the kitchens. A Hufflepuff in my year was diabetic, she had an arrangement like that for a handful of things, I don't see why you couldn't do something similar."

...

Yeah. Yeah, that seemed reasonable. It might take a bit of finagling to sort it all out, especially with how fucking stupid and complicated the magical economy could be, but... She didn't know why trying to figure out something like that hadn't occurred to her.

That was a lie, she knew why — she was used to feeling miserable, and sometimes it still didn't occur to her to try to do something about it. Fucked-up abused kid brain, blah blah.

Liz let out a long sigh, shoving her cup of coffee away from herself. The coffee was fine — not the best she'd ever had by any means, but fine — but now that Tamsyn had her thinking about this stuff, it was just...abruptly way less appetising. Now that she suspected her Seer shite might be causing her Vernon nightmares (at least some of the time), it was hard to keep on drinking something with bad psychometric echoes on it. "Yeah, you're right, you're always fucking right. It just... Honestly, it didn't seem like serious enough of a problem to do anything about — it didn't occur to me that the psychometric shite was maybe actually doing anything to me until literally just a few minutes ago, and... Ugh. Ugh, that's all. Yeah, I'll do that straight away, when I get back to school."

"Good," Tamsyn said, smiling a little. "What else was there... I don't imagine you use real parchment very often. Animal products and the like in potions are probably unavoidable, but I don't imagine that's common enough of an issue to go out of your way to do anything about."

"Not really, no." It could be hard to tell, but Liz was pretty sure the potions that she took regularly didn't have any psychometric horseshite going on — there were animal-based in ingredients in them, but they were mostly from things that were too bloody stupid for their experiences to leave much of a mark anyway.

"A few minutes ago, you mentioned that you mostly eliminated cotton — and that's one of the big ones, I've heard. Is there any particular reason you can't entirely eliminate it? There are magical producers of linen who make an effort to remain as psychometrically pleasant as is feasible."

...Well, that was about as good of a segue as she could hope for. "Um, there is a reason, and it's actually connected to the thing I wanted to talk to you about in the first place?"

"How does—" The confusion was split with a sharp flash of surprise before it could hardly settle in properly. "Ah! Wearing anything other than the style of pants you're familiar with can draw attention to parts of your body you're self-conscious about."

Liz nodded. "That's one way to put it, I guess."

"I suppose that makes sense. If you would like to talk about that now...?"

"We've still got time before our food is done — might as well get the unpleasant bit out of the way."

"Very well." Tamsyn was quiet a moment, her mind turning. Considering how exactly she wanted to go about it, Liz guessed. Honestly, Liz had expected this conversation would be seriously uncomfortable, so it was maybe a good thing that she was high at the moment? She'd probably be kind of dreading whatever Tamsyn was working up to, but in her present state of mind she could, just, wait, warm and comfortable and patient, idly munching on the chips — these really were very good. Finally, "Are you familiar with exposure therapy? It's a muggle idea."

"...It sounds familiar, but I can't place it, no. Severus might have mentioned it at some point." Tamsyn using the same words as Severus was probably a good sign, so far as the suggestion she might know what she was doing went.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he had — many professionals highly recommend variations on it for the treatment of post-traumatic stress." Oh, well, there you go then. It'd make sense if Severus had it in mind during their various Liz is broken conversations, but didn't bother actually telling her what it was, because she didn't need to know all the head-shrink horseshite herself. Wait a second, wasn't post-traumatic stress a muggle term...? "The general idea is to 'expose' the patient to stimuli known to provoke a response, but in a controlled, safe environment. It is often suggested that one start with a more mild expression of whatever the triggering stimulus is, and gradually increase the intensity of 'exposure' as the patient becomes accustomed to it. In time, as the patient sees that they're perfectly safe, the association of the trigger with danger is incrementally weakened, and may even be eliminated entirely.

"Now, while this strategy may be effective, it can also be very stressful. After all, the patient does need to be exposed to something that provokes an anxious response, repeatedly, in order to build tolerance to it — it only works if it's uncomfortable. And it is not recommended that someone do it themselves. This is why I wanted to talk about this in person, Liz," Tamsyn said, setting her glass of cider aside so she could lean forward over the table a little. Her voice low, intense, insistent, "This therapy is not meant to be done independently. Normally you would have a professional on hand, who can tailor a safe environment such to control the exposure and prevent any serious reaction. If one isn't careful, it's possible to further reinforce the association between the trigger and the response. It is not something you can take shortcuts with — it's slow, and methodical. If you try to move too fast, you may only end up hurting yourself. It's very important you understand that."

Liz sighed, trying not to roll her eyes — honestly, Liz was well accustomed to the reality that she was a fucked-up mess, she was aware there weren't shortcuts with this shite. "Yeah, I get it. And, if you're going where I think you're going with this, I'm pretty sure having a professional on hand would just make me more uncomfortable anyway."

A little shivering of cool amusement in her mind, Tamsyn's lips twitched. "Yes, that did occur to me. Before I can give specific advice, I do need to know a little bit more. You've told me about the incident with Daphne — you don't have to tell me what precisely was meant by 'went back there', I can guess well enough." Oh, good, Liz didn't think these drugs were good enough for talking about Vernon in public to be a good idea. "I recall you're also sensitive about the scars on your chest."

"Yeah, I know we had that whole conversation about that ages ago, but getting over it isn't so easy as that." Liz had commented, in passing, that ever getting with anyone didn't seem very likely, since she was a disfigured freak and all — she hadn't known then how feasible it was to simply fix it with blood alchemy — and Tamsyn had tried to reassure her that there were plenty of people out there who wouldn't be turned off by it. Hadn't believed her at the time, honestly. In retrospect, Tamsyn had definitely been right about that, because there were multiple people now who knew about her scars but still wanted her anyway. Not very many, true, just Daphne, Katie, and Susan — she'd shown Daphne, in her pensieve, Katie and Susan had both caught glimpses of her during duelling club trips. (Susan wasn't actually interested in her, really, she just noticed her now and then — Liz well knew how hormones could be sometimes — but Daphne and Katie definitely were.) Liz knew a couple boys who liked her (but kept it to themselves, because they knew she was gay), but they didn't know about her scars, so. Still.

Despite that Liz knew Tamsyn had been right, now, it still didn't feel like it. She still felt like a disgusting disfigured freak, who people would be revolted by if they actually saw her. Because sometimes feelings were stupid like that.

"If only it were so easy to overcome such things — I had my own difficulties to work through, if you recall." Yeah, Liz remembered, that'd come up a few times. She'd guess nearly being gang-raped as an eight-year-old (or whatever age it was) could do that to a girl. Her mind could get even louder than usual when she wasn't paying attention to it — like when she was high, for example — she had a feeling Tamsyn had actually caught that thought, a slight lurch in her head, but she moved on without lingering on it. If Liz got to the point she could just brush past her shite like that, that'd be great. "So, you are especially anxious being seen undressed by other people, And that bad trigger with Daphne, of course," Tamsyn added, avoiding explicitly referring to someone taking off Liz's pants.

"Yeah... Honestly, it's not just that, being seen or whatever, I don't like being undressed in general."

A sharp flicker of surprise on the air, Tamsyn blinked. "Oh?"

"Yeah, it— I don't know, it's hard to explain. Just makes me vaguely nervous." Well, no, it was pretty easy to explain, actually. Liz hesitated for a second, before admitting, "If I took too long in the shower, Petunia would burst in and... My room was downstairs."

"Ah, I see." Tamsyn did get what she meant — that Petunia would sometimes drag her all the way from the bathroom to her cupboard without letting her stop to get dressed — but she also got that Liz didn't want to talk about it, so. "Yes, I can see why that might be a problem. How do you handle bathing, then?"

Liz shrugged. "I have showers. Short ones, mostly, unless I'm beat up from quidditch or duelling and the hot water is nice. Had to have baths a few times when I was in the Hospital Wing, constantly nervous the whole time, hate it."

"Right, right. And, dare I ask?" She had no intention of actually asking out loud, but they were both mind mages, so she didn't really need to.

Rolling her eyes, Liz admitted, "I don't undress for that. I always have a vest on, at least, and... I can't do it if I'm not under my bedsheets or something, even with my door locked and the wards keeping out everyone else and everything. I know it's silly, but I just— I can't. Too nervous to get in the proper state of mind, you know."

"Yes, I understand. But I suppose that makes it rather obvious what our starting point should be, doesn't it?"

"What?" Liz had the uncomfortable feeling that Tamsyn was about to talk to her about trying to masturbate in, um, more exposed ways — still in private, just not so obsessively covered — which would just be an awkward conversation.

Tamsyn definitely saw that thought, lips twitching and her mind shivering, but she didn't address it. "If you were simply anxious being seen by other people, it may be difficult to arrange a safe level of exposure to start with. That the issue is being undressed in general actually makes this simpler, in a way. I suggest you start with having a bath."

"...Really." While not nearly as awkward as talking about touching herself, being told to have a bath as advice for dealing with her mental health issues still seemed kind of odd.

Tamsyn just smiled in the face of her disbelief. "Yes. A bath. You can start off being quick and efficient about it, but once you feel you're up to it..." She trailed off, glancing away for a second. "There are a variety of products, sold on the magical side. Additives. Some simply for the fragrance, some to make the texture of the water more pleasant, some have mild healing effects, to ease minor surface damage, or as a moisturiser or exfoliant. Some have tactile effects, that can feel rather like a massage."

Those sounded very much like things for other people to Liz. "What are you getting at?"

"I would suggest, after acclimating yourself to much more business-like baths, coming to take your time with it. Candles and scents and salts and bubbles, maybe bring a nice book — charmed impervious against the water, of course. Try to relax, and perhaps even grow to enjoy yourself. Ideally, to get to the point that you hardly even think of the fact that you're nude at the moment. Or at the very least for that thought not to seem so unpleasant."

That sounded...hard. Tamsyn had said that this whole exposure therapy business would be difficult, just... "Honestly, I think it might be better to just start with the, you know, more involved version. Having more distractions, like the funny shite you're adding to it and having a book to pay attention to and everything, might make it easier to, just, not think about it."

"If that's what works," Tamsyn agreed, with a little shrug. "But if it becomes too much— It's all right to feel a bit anxious, but as soon as you feel you're in danger of panic, you need to stop. That's very important, Liz — this is why I wanted to have this conversation in private, to be sure you understand. A manageable degree of anxiety is part of the process, but further traumatising yourself will not make anything better."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it." Honestly, it's not like Liz wanted to hurt herself, she wasn't an idiot. "I've had baths before, and it's never gotten so bad I thought I was in danger of completely freaking out or anything. And, I think it'll be easier if I have something else to do, you know? Having candles to play with and a book to read is probably the smart way to do it."

"Very well, I can see the logic. And once you're comfortable with that level of exposure, you'd then move on to the next step — in this case, spending more time undressed in situations you ordinarily wouldn't. Still privately, of course, but, sitting alone in your room reading a book, or doing homework, perhaps. Playing with your pensieve, practising scrying. Though I suppose it may be impossible for you to reach the necessary state of mind to do that kind of magic until you've grown less uncomfortable attempting it in the nude."

"Yeah, er, that's going to be...difficult." Liz had long been in the habit of spending as little time naked as possible, just sitting around her room doing shite without clothes on was going to be weird.

"You work up to it. Small doses, incrementally increasing. Of course, in order to fall asleep you must be able to relax, so, attempting to sleep in the nude would be the step after that — once you've accustomed yourself to spending longer and longer periods of time undressed."

"Of course. I guess potioning myself would be cheating."

There was a brief second of confusion, before Tamsyn said, "Oh, your calming potions. You should avoid taking those — you're not going to train your brain into feeling safe in situations you currently perceive as threatening if you don't permit yourself to feel and work through the anxiety that comes with it."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I don't know, that... I mean, it's going to be kind of miserable, you know, super awkward and shite, but, does this really work? It seems too easy somehow."

"Yes, Liz, it can work. Exposure therapy is very reliable, I've read — it's used less frequently than it might be, since some practitioners are leery of the risk of re-traumatising their patients, but it does work. It simply takes care, to limit the exposure to something you can manage, and patience, to allow time for your fear response to adjust. Don't push yourself too hard, take your time with it, and it should work."

...Right. Right, that was...good. Honestly, Liz had been worried Tamsyn would be recommending something way more extreme than, just...spending more time naked by herself — she'd seemed so serious, in the notebook, wanting to talk about it in person...

"Hopefully, by that point, you will have trained yourself to become comfortable enough with your body that everyday things won't remind you of...certain unpleasant memories. So you'll be able to eliminate that final bit of cotton."

"Yeah, I get it. That... Well, if the psychometric stuff is causing my nightmares, cotton is a bad one, so... Good, that'd be good." Also just for general crazy person reasons? She was very much aware that the way she could be about this bloody thing she was stuck in was not healthy — the way Severus and occasionally her friends would react to things she said sometimes made that obvious. (Because she was a cheating mind reader, she was aware some of her friends knew she hated her body, which was honestly just kind of embarrassing.) Severus had said more than once that it was something they should work on, but the impression she'd gotten was that he didn't know how to deal with it, exactly, and was wary of stepping on any landmines related to Vernon stuff and her relationship with Daphne, so. Yeah.

Oh, and if she stopped being so weirdly self-conscious about her pants, she'd be able to wear sexy underwear! And she was going to do the blood alchemy thing this summer, so she'd actually have tits before too much longer, so she could do that sort of thing proper, that sounded like fun. Which was maybe a weird thought to occur to her when talking about something so serious, she was blaming the drugs — besides, it probably wasn't a bad thing to have a fun motivation to get over her stupid fucked-up brain issues...

She was certain Tamsyn had caught at least part of that thought, but she didn't say anything. Just smiled at Liz, her mind sizzling and popping with warm amusement. She thought Liz was just adorable, in a somewhat condescending way — which was a little annoying, but Tamsyn could be a little annoying sometimes. "So it is. That would address the psychometric side of the problem, but that wasn't what you actually wanted advice on. To get to that point, there is an additional series of steps to work on. Do you have any friends you trust, absolutely? Someone who you know would never harm you, even should they have the opportunity to, who is always on your side."

Liz didn't even really have to think about that one. "Yeah, Hermione." Maybe just because she'd been friends with Hermione longer — Liz wouldn't have said she was really friends with anyone besides Hermione and Dorea before, like, sometime in '93, maybe — but she was also a cheating mind-reader, so. Out of her friends, Hermione was probably the most honest with herself about the fact that Liz was not a good person — she didn't know Liz had actually killed someone before, but if she found out she probably wouldn't be that surprised. (Especially since it'd kind of been an accident, overestimating her abilities and recklessly hurting someone was the kind of thing Hermione wouldn't find surprising at all, and she believed Liz was totally serious when she said she'd considered murdering Ron bloody Weasley, so.) Hermione knew that, but she also thought Liz was a good friend, which Hermione thought was almost more meaningful than being a good person. After all, Liz failing at the latter was just the way her brain was sometimes, and she actually tried to do the former, it took effort — and Hermione recognised that, and appreciated it, thought it was actually more meaningful than just intuitively getting normal person morality or whatever.

And Liz was a good friend to Hermione personally, so it was sometimes kind of hard for her to remember that she maybe wasn't such a good person in general. Like, she didn't forget that Liz was kind of objectively shitty, it just didn't seem important most of the time. When Liz had caught that thought, she'd been reminded of how Liz felt about Severus sometimes — it'd been kind of weird seeing it from the outside, honestly...

Tamsyn was mostly certain she knew who that was, but she asked just to be sure. "That's the bookish Gryffindor, right? The one you've considered adopting into your House?"

"Yeah, her. Honestly I think I am going to do that, it's just...kind of a big deal? You know. Nervous. Also, hard to find the right moment to bring it up." And she had to be careful about how she brought it up, too — she was aware Hermione had a close relationship with her parents, she didn't want to offend her by implying she should abandon them or whatever.

Though, Liz could also just claim her parents as vassals and have done with it. That would take some explaining, but it'd be good for multiple reasons, actually, since then her parents would have legal protection in the magical world, and Hermione's sister was magical, so, Liz could adopt her too as long as they were at it. Though, if they did this then Rachael wouldn't legally be considered a muggleborn anymore, so she wouldn't get automatic acceptance to Hogwarts, but Liz could get her a spot, since she was a super special magical lady and everything...she'd have to pay tuition, but it wasn't like Liz didn't have the money...

"Perfect. The next step, then, in your quest to immunise yourself against certain sensitivities, would be to repeat these exposures with Hermione. Start with having a bath, together, and work your way up from there."

...Okay, then. Liz realised single-sex groups bathing together was not at all a big deal in the magical world — and back in Tamsyn's time probably not the muggle world either, come to think of it — but it was still seriously weird to her. "I don't know if I can do that."

"Do you expect it to be a problem due to your discomfort with your own body that you are going to attempt to train yourself out of in any case?"

...

Well.

That was a good point, and also totally not fair.

"Um. I don't know, it might be kind of awkward anyway. Not on Hermione's end, I guess, she's gone to nude beaches and stuff on holiday, just... Um." The thought occurred to Liz that she might be able to help Hermione too — Hermione had an inexplicably low opinion of her own appearance, Liz still didn't know what was up with that. There were little things, like her teeth and her hair, but mostly she thought she was way fatter than she actually was. (Even her mental image of what she looked like was wrong, it was weird.) But, Liz didn't know how the hell she'd get that point across without coming off like a— "I don't want to come off like a creepy fucking perv, you know. She does know I'm a lesbian."

Tamsyn shrugged, as though that weren't a problem at all. "Then explain what you're doing — you'd almost certainly have to anyway, when it comes time to move on to the later steps." Sitting around her room doing whatever, she meant, it'd be kind of hard to get someone to do that with her without explaining why. That conversation was going to be bloody awkward, but Hermione already knew some of it — Liz had accidentally pulled her into a Vernon nightmare that one time — so maybe it wouldn't be too bad...

Liz idly wondered if Hermione had ever lazed around reading a book naked before...and then realised a second later that that was a stupid fucking question, because of course she had.

And then Liz was immediately distracted imagining that — in the Granger's library, which was super nice but probably too exposed for that kind of thing — because Liz was a creepy fucking perv sometimes.

Her mind shivering with amusement again, Tamsyn smirked at her. "You will want to make your intentions clear and set boundaries ahead of time, of course. Besides, at least in the early stages, I expect you'll be far too uncomfortable to even consider, ah, getting assertive, shall we say."

Liz rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't do anything, honestly, Tamsyn. I just don't want to, you know, be weird about it, and make her uncomfortable. And I probably would be weird about it, because hormones, can't help it."

"You know, other people can't feel it when you look at them."

...Point. "They can still tell when I'm checking them out, though." She wasn't sure how, honestly, but she'd long suspected her ability to read people without mind magic had severely atrophied at some point.

"And you will be able to feel if you're making her uncomfortable, and stop." That was also a good point. "You would talk about it with Hermione ahead of time, and if she thinks your sexuality will make her uncomfortable, then you'll simply have to find someone else. I don't expect it will be a problem, however — those nude beaches you mentioned would have had men at them as well, you know."

And that was also a good point. "Christ, Tamsyn, do you ever get tired of being right all the time?"

"I can't imagine why I ever would." Tamsyn smirked back at her, Liz rolling her eyes only intensifying the amusement shivering and tickling at Liz's skin — warm on her face, like standing in the sun, because being a mind mage could be bloody weird sometimes. (Or, hadn't Severus said the way she perceived other people's feelings was a Seer thing? She honestly still wasn't entirely sure what the difference was, they didn't feel like separate things to her.) "In any case, the way you go about it may need to be slightly different with Hermione. Or, perhaps not, when I think on it. I don't see why you can't simply ask Severus for permission to have her visit sometimes — he may be more cooperative if you explain what you're trying to do. Severus will be familiar with the concept of exposure therapy, so he may have questions, but judging by what you've told me of him I expect he won't try to interfere."

"Right." If she came to Severus and said she was trying to actually do something about her fucked-up issues with stuff he'd probably be pleased, honestly. Maybe not super happy with the way she was going about it, since Tamsyn had admitted there were risks, but, you know, better than nothing. Explaining she wanted to bring Hermione down to the dorms so they could spend time together naked would be seriously fucking awkward, but. "Um, I might write him a letter instead of talking to him about it, just to keep my thoughts straight, you know." She was liable to loose track of what she was saying when she got flustered, so.

"If you feel it necessary. Of course, assuming all goes well with Hermione, the final step would be to desensitise yourself to being physically undressed by someone else — to prevent that event with Daphne from reoccurring." A sly tilt in her head and her lips curling with a smirk, Tamsyn drawled, "Though, you would need to work up to that as well, and I expect you'll want to save that part of the process for someone you plan on shagging."

Liz rolled her eyes. "Thanks, Tamsyn, figured that out for myself. So— Oh, hold up a second, they're finishing our food."

"Are they?" Tamsyn's head tilted, eyes reflexively following her attention to stare unfocussed at the bar — the kitchen was on the other side of the wall just there. There was a little shiver of surprise as Tamsyn confirmed what Liz already knew. She could feel out what was going on over there when she consciously reached for them, but she wasn't aware of things that far away in that much detail, just, by default. "None of our discussions of mind magic gave me the impression your awareness is so broad. You weren't actively keeping an eye on them this whole time?"

"Not really," Liz said, with a little shrug. "Without looking, I get the general vibe, mostly, I guess. I felt a shift in there, I glanced that way, and hey, they're thinking about finishing up our order, would you look at that. Aaand now the waitress lady is moving back that way... Should be just a minute or two now."

Tamsyn was shaking her head, a mix of surprise and confusion and curiosity flickering in her head. "I can't imagine sustaining such a generalised... I would find it quite overwhelming, I suspect."

"It can be. Honestly, I think this is more a Seer thing than a mind magic thing — Severus seems to think how I pick up people's feelings is mostly psychometry, and that's what tipped me off that something was going on over there."

"...That would make sense. Seers perceive impressions carried through the ambient environment, but mind magic operates through direct resonance — in order to perceive the minds of everyone in the environment you'd need to attune segments of your mind to all those in the area, and perhaps extend your aura out to maintain contact with all of them. I'm not sure you'd be able to maintain coherence that far out."

"Yeah, it's definitely a Seer thing, then." Liz would say that was good to know, but she was pretty sure it made zero fucking difference.

"It should be even more difficult to sneak up on you than it is a common mind mage. I suspect it would only be possible with the use of heavy anti-scrying amulets."

...Well, that was good to know, she guessed.

The waitress lady turned up with their food pretty soon, which was good — the chips were gone by now, and Liz was still hungry, for some reason. She was blaming the drugs...or she was just really bad at telling when she was hungry and didn't eat enough, also possible. She'd put on some weight since Severus had started nagging her about it, but she was still pretty tiny. (And a lot of that was muscle anyway, which probably wasn't a bad thing, necessarily, and it was one of the few things about her own appearance she actually liked, so.) And it smelled really good, the steam from the fish leaking through the breading, and, she was pretty sure that was the sauce? The peas and leeks were in some creamy whitish-yellowish sauce, the menu said white wine and lemon, which Liz knew she liked, variations on that had turned up in the food the elves had sent her more than once...

...though it'd never really occurred to her to ask how to make this kind of thing herself. She didn't see why she couldn't, just, remake basically this same thing at home. If she understood correctly, the fishcake was just a fillet of some kind of fish with a few chunks of cheese surrounded with mashed potatoes and then coated with dried breadcrumbs and then baked, she could theoretically do all of that, but she didn't know how to do the sauce, exactly, very French. She assumed, just, milk and wine and butter and lemon juice, some herbs, cook the shite out of it until enough steam escapes that it thickens a bit...maybe a dusting of flour for texture...

Yeah, she guessed she knew what she was going to work on cooking-wise in the summer. Nilanse had already helped her get the basics of baking down, next were sauces.

The waitress lady made a little bit of fuss about Liz not drinking her coffee, and, honestly Liz didn't know what the fuck to tell her about that. Obviously, she couldn't just tell the muggle that there were unpleasant psychometric echoes on the coffee, and she was worried it would give her nightmares involving her abusive uncle. So instead she just said she was fine, she didn't need anything, and gently compelled the woman to believe her.

Liz and Tamsyn were silent a moment, poking at their food. She tasted the sauce and tried a bit of leek quick — the sauce was good, and without any unpleasant psychometric echoes, and the leek was fine, she guessed — before scooping some of the peas-leeks-sauce mix over the top of the fishcake, so it would soak into the breading. She went ahead and tried a bite of the fishcake, just in case — like the cream in the sauce, the cheese maybe wasn't excellent (not like that one really good magical supplier), but it wasn't offensive for Seer reasons at least, which meant it was probably fine, and the fish was fine, and so were the potatoes and bread, good, good.

Also, fucking hell, this shite was good — Liz must just be hungry, she hadn't realised...

"Back to the matter at hand," Tamsyn said after a couple minutes. "Though I think that about covers it. Did you have any questions for me?"

Liz hummed, shook her head — Tamsyn caught her in the middle of a bite of fishcake, of course, took her a moment to answer. "No, I think I'm good. I was just saying, before I noticed our food was coming, just, like, kind of surprised that that's it. I mean, it's going to be super uncomfortable, but, just, seems like cheating somehow, like it should be more complicated than that. Honestly, when you were being so insistent about talking in person I kind of expected it would be something, I don't know... Like some weird ritual magic horseshite or something."

Her mind shivering again, warm and bubbly, Tamsyn smirked. "I believe you're already planning to do the weird ritual magic horseshite this summer."

"Ha, yeah, that's true."

"There are risks with doing something so sensitive as exposure therapy on your own," Tamsyn said, a hint of a serious note slipping back into her voice. "I wanted to be sure you were taking in that warning, so I could be reasonably confident I wasn't simply giving you a new and creative way to hurt yourself."

And Liz had enough of those already, of course. "Sure, I guess that makes sense. But, um. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm going to hate it at times, but I can do that. I can try at least. Thanks, Tamsyn."

"Of course. I was in the neighbourhood anyway, after all. Besides," breaking into a warm, sly, teasing sort of grin, "what are cousins for?"

"Ugh, shut up, Tamsyn." They were technically cousins of some kind, of course, but Liz was related to half of her fucking class if you went back far enough, and she still thought it was silly to give a shite. Honestly, they had a great-great-great-great grandparent or some shite like that in common, and neither of them had known that until they'd done blood tests, it hardly mattered. "What are you doing back in the country anyway? I thought you were being careful about showing your face here, what with the whole unholy abomination thing. Catching up with people I guess, but, how are you even doing that?"

The answer, it turned out, was carefully. Since standing ICW law considered Tamsyn to be a highly illegal magical construct and not a real person (and British law was technically even worse somehow), she had to be extremely cautious about letting anyone know who she was. It helped that the magical country she was going to school in had recognised her Mercy Anne cover story, so she had a 'legitimate' identity to fall back on, but things could quickly get out of hand on the off-chance that someone recognised her. (It'd been a good fifty years since the original Tamsyn had been walking around Britain as a teenager, so even people who'd known her might not recognise her without being prompted, but it wasn't out of the question.) And, of course, it'd been a long time since she'd spoken to anyone she'd known before the book — that her creator had known, technically, but the inherited memories still felt like hers, so that she hadn't existed yet hardly mattered — and a lot could happen in literally fifty years. Finding out where her friends were, planning a way to approach them, and sounding out whether they'd freak the fuck out and try to turn her in was complicated.

The Malfoys had gone more or less smoothly — though she was still disappointed that Andy, who'd been her best friend (and also lover) for years last she remembered, had been dead for over a decade now. "Disappointed" was probably too weak of a word, honestly, Liz could feel the chill on Tamsyn's mind talking about him, and they didn't linger on it. (Tamsyn was rather amused when Liz said something like, Actually giving a shite about people sucks sometimes, huh?) But the Malfoys had known about the book, they'd written to her for years, so that introduction had taken far less explaining...though it'd still been awkward, especially her first in-person encounter with Narcissa.

It turned out, Lucius had intentionally planted Tamsyn on Ginevra so she could possess her and use her to sic the basilisk on students and generally be a pain in Dumbledore's arse. The plan had been to make Dumbledore look seriously fucking incompetent, get a bunch of his allies pissed at him by petrifying their kids, and then allow Ginevra to be caught — her memory heavily altered, so she couldn't explain about the possession — to create a big scandal around her father in the Ministry (and the Weasleys and Prewetts in general by extension). Lucius had hoped it would sabotage certain legal reforms that had been in process at the time, to do with protections for muggles and the administration of Secrecy, which they hadn't had the votes to defeat in the Wizengamot. And that was a dumb package, Liz actually agreed once Tamsyn explained it — she thought the (rather minimal) legal protections for muggles and particularly the families of muggleborns were reasonable (honestly far less than what she thought should be the bare fucking minimum), but the restrictions on imports from the muggle world, supposedly in interest of better preserving Secrecy, were absolutely ridiculous.

Liz was aware some mages bought things, like, furniture or cutlery or clothing and the like in the muggle world, where such things were cheaper, and some regularly went to muggle grocers' for food; the reform package Arthur Weasley had been spearheading would technically make that sort of thing illegal — economic activity with the muggle world would have been restricted only to officially-licensed importers. Of course, that kind of restriction was practically unenforceable — Tamsyn knew from Ginevra's memories that Arthur's family themselves even bought groceries at the nearby muggle village, and likely had no intentions to stop doing so after the new law was in force — so it would almost certainly only be enforced selectively, as an additional weapon against political opponents. Say, some Light bastard deciding to investigate one of the restaurants the Malfoys were sponsoring for using muggle suppliers, that kind of thing.

Apparently the scandal Tamsyn had whipped up had ultimately resulted in the package being dropped, which Liz guessed was a good thing, because that shite was just stupid. Should probably get around to those legal protections for muggles at some point, though.

So, the Malfoys had known about Tamsyn, and she'd even successfully done them a big damn favour quite recently — her reunion with Lucius had gone pretty well, probably for those reasons. Not so much with Narcissa, though. See, Narcissa was big into the cult of Mother Mercy, they could be very serious about children. To secure her cooperation in the plot, Tamsyn and Lucius had promised her that no children would be permanently harmed in the process — petrification kind of sucked, sure, and they'd miss a lot of class, but it could be healed just fine, and they'd catch up, it wouldn't do any lasting damage. Tamsyn had planned to make a body for herself from the beginning, which she'd known would require human sacrifice, so she'd had no intention of keeping that promise when she made it.

Narcissa had forgiven Lucius. Worried he might not approve, Tamsyn had kept him in the dark about her plans as well — Narcissa had believed him when he explained that he hadn't known, so he'd been let off the hook. She hadn't forgiven Tamsyn.

Honestly, Liz didn't give a shite. If Narcissa felt horribly guilty for unknowingly contributing to the rather grisly murder of a child, well, good. Fuck her.

(Tamsyn found Liz's anger at Narcissa over the article amusing, but she was tactful enough not to say anything about it.)

Approaching other friends, she had to be more cautious about. Hardly anyone knew about the diary, and those Tamsyn's creator had told were mostly dead now. They weren't old by magical standards, but shite happened, knocked off by accidents or in the war. She had managed to get in contact with a couple people she'd known before, but more often she introduced herself to the families of old friends who weren't around anymore — it was pretty easy to come as Mercy Anne, say she was the original Tamsyn's daughter, she'd heard about whatserface from her mother's journals, thought she would drop by as long as she was in the country. From what Liz knew of the timeline, she was pretty sure Tamsyn was too young to be the original Tamsyn's daughter, counting from when she'd disappeared, but whatever. Magical ages could be hard to guess by sight sometimes, she could just be claiming to be older than she actually was...which she was actually already doing — Tamsyn's creator had been sixteen when she made the diary, so that was the age Tamsyn came out, meaning she was physically eighteen now, but she was claiming to be in her early twenties. (She'd wanted to go straight into Mastery study, so she'd lied about her age so people wouldn't look too hard at someone finishing Proficiencies 'early'.) Whatever, not important.

The big reunion she was planning for this trip was Julie. Liz remembered that one, Julia Davis — Julia Monroe, now, but her name had been Davis when Tamsyn had known her. (A great-aunt of some degree of Tracey's, Liz assumed.) She'd been in Tamsyn's year in Slytherin, and had been one of the first purebloods to decide the creepy muggleborn legilimens was worth talking to, and had eventually ended up being Tamsyn's first real friend ever? She'd been friendly with some adults in London — she'd gotten on with one of the girls volunteering at the orphanage, would let her borrow books from home and stuff, and she'd known some local prostitutes and gang members and Reds and stuff — but the first one her own age, at least. After that first bad summer Tamsyn had gone to Julie's house over the summers, so she didn't nearly get killed by German bombs again, and toward the end of the time Tamsyn remembered they'd been close enough they'd even have sex sometimes, seemingly just because. (Liz had seen memories of them together, which she was trying not to think about, since Tamsyn was sitting right there and they were trying to have a conversation.) After the original Tamsyn disappeared, Julie had been one of the few people to bother actually trying to find her, when first looking up Tamsyn's name Liz had found an old ad she'd posted offering a reward for information about her.

Julie was still around, but it'd been a long time — she was a grandmother now. Granted, she wasn't that old by magical standards — middle-aged, maybe, but she could still live for another hundred years if she was lucky — but it was still seriously bloody weird to Tamsyn that Julie had grandchildren now, fucking hell. (Sometimes it still felt like it'd only been a couple years to her, hard to adjust.) It was hard to tell how Julie would react, and she had to be more careful than usual approaching her, because the Monroes were one of the more dangerous magical families to annoy. If the Monroes caught her snooping around, they'd probably be very firm about getting answers, and if they decided to take the whole being a highly illegal magical construct thing seriously, Tamsyn might have to flee the country for her life — and they might alert the authorities, who shouldn't respond quickly enough to stop her from escaping, but that would make coming back to Britain much more difficult. So, cautious, very cautious.

It was risky, yes, but she still wanted to try. Julie had been her best friend, after all, Tamsyn missed her — giving a shite about people could suck like that sometimes.

They talked about that for a while, and about the American school Tamsyn was going to — it did sound neat, and Liz kind of wanted to copy the local languages Tamsyn knew now, but that would be rather conspicuous to do in the middle of a muggle pub — and about the duelling team and the bloody Triwizard Tournament, and the big public education package coming up in the Wizengamot soon. You know, normal shite. When politics came up, Tamsyn remembered she'd brought books for Liz. She surreptitiously unshrunk them under the table before handing them to Liz so she could tuck them in her bag. Unexpectedly, they were in French — Peau noire, masques blancs; L'An V de la révolution algérienne; and Les Damnés de la Terre — but Liz could read French now, so that was fine. She was pretty sure Tamsyn had mentioned this Frantz Fanon bloke before, the name was familiar, but she had no idea what any of this could possibly have to do with why Narcissa was such a bitch. She'd read them, sure, just seemed random.

They were at it for a bit — Liz could tell, because her drugs wore off. She didn't bother taking another dose. The thing she'd been nervous about had been meeting up with Tamsyn in the first place, and the conversation about her little problem, now that that was out of the way and the pub was so empty it wasn't really a big deal. And besides, by then Tamsyn thought it was about time for them to get going anyway — Liz would be expected back at school at some point this afternoon, and Tamsyn had things to do. Tamsyn settled their bill, and led the way back outside. It was raining even worse than it'd been when Liz had gotten here, she ducked her head against the characteristically miserable Scottish weather, scowling. (Warming and impermeable charms would be enough to handle this just fine, but she couldn't just pull her wand out and do that in the middle of muggle Inverness.) After a couple minutes wandering around, Tamsyn found a narrow little alley that would do, cast a couple privacy palings to keep any curious eyes off them.

"Right," Tamsyn chirped, tucking her wand away again. "I assume you've been side-alonged before?"

"Yes, of course. Can we just get it over with already? I want to get the fuck out of this bloody rain."

Covered by the hood of her rain jacket, Liz couldn't really see the smirk twitching at Tamsyn's lips — but she didn't need to, the wry amusement on Tamsyn's mind was completely out in the open. "Very well." Tamsyn sidled up close to Liz's side, linking their arms together. Which made her mind way louder, of course, but Tamsyn was concentrating on the magic she was about to do, so it wasn't too intrusive. (She was rather less experienced with apparation than Severus, so she was making very sure to do it properly, to avoid accidentally hurting Liz.) Liz could feel Tamsyn pushing magic out around them, enveloping Liz, brushing over her skin at once cool and sharp and warm and tingly, a funny almost ecstatic thrill to it... "Ready?"

"Yeah, go." Liz pushed out her own magic and—

Tamsyn's magic around her clenched in and twisted, hooking into Liz and pulling — wait, what was—

After an unpleasant second being yanked and squeezed and twisted around in a tight black void, the real world came slamming back, Liz stumbling as her head spun, a wave of sharp tingles crawling over her skin. She suddenly had a pounding headache, her stomach lurching with unexpected nausea, ooohh, fuck fuck fuck...

She felt the sharp flash of confusion and exasperation and concern from Tamsyn, almost painful from this close. "Liz, are you..." The arm around hers loosened, Tamsyn's mind moving around in front of her, and her hands were on Liz's face, her shoulders, and—

"Woah, hey hey!" Liz snapped, staggering back and slapping away the hands trying to flutter down her chest. "Ugh," she bent over, her hands propped on her knees, trying to force her head to stop spinning. It was easing, a little, it was just slow. Blinking her eyes open, Liz glanced around — they weren't actually in Hogsmeade proper, just off one of the footpaths leading up into the hills, the village only a short walk away. It was a little warmer in the Valley than in Inverness, and it wasn't raining and windy and fucking miserable, small fucking favours...

"I'm sorry, Liz, I didn't mean to— I was worried I might have splinched you." She could tell that was the truth, the hissing concern and frustration obvious now that Liz didn't feel quite so overwhelmingly shitty.

"I'm fine, I just— Being side-alonged is fucking awful, is all..."

"Why did you flare your aura as we were leaving? I didn't see it coming, you nearly disrupted the envelope." And that would be what the frustration was about.

"I was doing the..." Oh, fuck, Liz was a fucking idiot sometimes, hadn't been thinking. Straightening with a sigh, grimacing against her still-pounding head, Liz admitted, "That was my fault, sorry. Severus is teaching me apparation, we got to the point I've been powering my half of it and he's been doing the steering for me. I was halfway through doing my part when we took off — I should have said something about that first, forgot."

Oddly, Tamsyn was confused, staring at her with a frown, uncertainty swirling in her head. "You've been... How does that work? That shouldn't be possible."

Liz shrugged. "I don't know, he just does."

"He would have to envelope your body, as in any side-along apparation, but also your aura, while casting. And he'd have to maintain that hold in transit through Apparation Space. Liz, that's absurd."

She just shrugged again — Severus hadn't acted like being able to do that was a big deal when he first suggested it to give her some practice, but she was aware Severus wasn't exactly an average mage himself, so. "Supposedly a lot of the terms cancel out, so it's easier both for me to do it — like training wheels for apparation — and takes less strain for him too, compared to normal side-along apparation. I guess it's possible it's the sort of thing you can only do if you're a huge bloody mind magic and witchcraft nerd like Severus."

"...Well, yes, I suppose it might be possible for an expert witch. The degree of awareness of the interaction between your aura and the environment I expect would be necessary is hardly common, and would be difficult to achieve. But he is a Master of Potions, so I'll admit it might be within his abilities."

"Also, we've literally done it, so it must be possible."

Tamsyn rolled her eyes, unamused. "Yes, yes. Honestly, I'm quite impressed — that's very difficult magic. Even mages like us don't see that sort of talent every day."

They were talking about Severus, Liz didn't see why Tamsyn was so surprised. "Sure. I guess I've learned my lesson to try not to help other people, then, because that sucked."

"Liz, attempting to apparate inside another person's apparation is not helping. It only makes it much, much harder."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it already. The headache's not going away, so I'd really like to get inside and have a lie-down now."

A dark sharp flicker of some kind going on in there, Tamsyn frowned. "If it's not improved by the evening, you should check with a healer. There could have been physical effects from shearing your aura when I disapparated." She didn't think it was super likely — having one's magical presence interrupted could be very uncomfortable, but it was hardly ever bad enough to cause harmful secondary effects on the person's body — but if there was damage it was important to get it fixed before it was allowed to get worse.

Which Liz would definitely be sure to do, because she loved seeing healers so much. "I'll remember. Um." Liz hesitated for a moment, awkward. According to her friends she was a lot better than she used to be, but she was still shite at a lot of social stuff — like, goodbyes, for example. "Um, thanks for lunch. And, you know, the advice."

Tamsyn sighed, shaking off her concern that she might have accidentally broken Liz somehow. "Of course. Good luck in the duelling tournament — I may have to ask for a copy of your memories, if I don't manage to get in."

"Sure." Liz had sent Tamsyn copies of her memories from the First and Third Tasks shortly afterward, but she was actually going to be in the country this time. She was going to try to make it, but depending on what the security was like, and if anyone seemed to be paying too much attention to her, she might not be able to make it — horcrux, unholy abomination, blah blah. "Um. Bye, Tamsyn."

There was a pulse of warm amusement — kind of a you silly, adorable child feeling, slightly condescending, silently mocking her for her general awkwardness — Tamsyn's crooked grin half-hidden by her hood. "Talk to you later, Liz."

Right, okay. She would just...go, then. Shrugging off her awkwardness as best as she could, Liz turned away from Tamsyn and started down the path. She could feel Tamsyn's attention on her for the first few metres, her eyes focussed on the back of Liz's head — but then there was an electric burst of magic, a mild crack of apparation, and she was gone. Liz relaxed a little as soon as the eyes were gone. Tamsyn hadn't been thinking anything bad, and she hadn't really thought there was any threat or whatever (like she'd hex her in the back or anything), she just didn't like being watched.

So. That had gone well. Honestly, Liz didn't know why she'd been so wary of meeting Tamsyn in person — she could be so bloody paranoid sometimes...

I asked Lucius about Hunter Britnell, he reminded me where I've heard it before. Hunter Britnell is an enforcer for the Night Briar Brotherhood — mind mage, very dangerous. Do not seek him out, under any circumstances.

Oh, really? Don't go try to track down my rapist bastard of a great-grandfather? Thanks, Tamsyn, never would have thought of that myself.

I'm deadly serious, Liz. He's on the DLE's kill or detail board, only a couple spots below Arianna Yaxley. He's an extremely dangerous man, I strongly advise you maintain that determination to have absolutely nothing to do with him.

Of fucking course he is. At this point, I don't expect any of my relatives to not be complete bastards.

I would make a joke about my parents having been properly married, thankyouverymuch, but I'm quite certain my father had been under the influence of a love potion at the time.

Shut up, Tamsyn, you know I didn't mean you.

Ginevra Weasley.

Well, fine, I guess I did mean you, but shut up anyway.

Oh hey, look at that, a perfectly ordinary chapter where nothing interesting happened at all. Can't imagine why I'd have anything to comment on, should be good.

Fifth Task is next.