The Good War

by inwardtransience

Despite her best efforts, Elizabeth Potter is repeatedly drawn into situations she wants absolutely nothing to do with. People just refuse to leave her the hell alone. (fem!Harry, dark!independent!Harry, mentor!Snape, F/F, playing with tropes for fun and profit)

111. Fourth Year — XLII

Liz had been unreasonably nervous the whole day, to the point that she skipped Herbology and had dinner in private in her room just to give herself a break. As Cambrian class dragged by, agonisingly slowly, she grew more and more tense and jittery — trying not to give away how uncomfortable she was, but by the glances she felt turning her way now and then she wasn't doing a great job of it.

As much as this whole desensitisation thing did seem to be working, it could still be, just, exhausting sometimes. And it was especially bad whenever she tried to take another step with it.

Luckily, she was pretty good at Cambrian, and was arguably even ahead of the rest of the class, so even as terribly distracted as she was she could mostly follow what was going on. She'd always been good with Cambrian, despite never really studying another language before (not something they'd made a point of in her primary school), which was curious when she thought about it — was there some, like, dormant omniglottalism thing going on there? She wasn't sure that made a lot of sense, since supposedly omniglottalism wasn't a strictly linguistic thing — omniglots absorbed any knowledge from people, the accelerated language acquisition had just been the most obvious in the time and place it originated — but, as Liz had learned herself with other stuff, the actual experience of a magic thing was often more complicated than how it was normally described. It'd make sense to her if omniglottalism was primarily linguistic, as some echo of the intent of the ritual that'd originally created it, but it coincidentally also worked with other kinds of knowledge. So, she could see how it'd make sense if a person with dormant omniglottalism was gifted with languages in a more mundane way — especially if they, like Liz, also happened to be a Seer, so she could cheat that way.

...If it was her Sight getting into her dormant omniglottalism — like how her Sight getting into her mind magic could have funny effects, same idea — then that might explain also doing well with her Latin study, despite that being entirely out of books with only relatively brief in-person meetings with Mg.a Madeline. At least, her tutor said she was doing well, not nearly as fast as omniglots supposedly learned things, but it was dormant and there wasn't a mind around to copy shite from anyway, so.

At this point, most of their Cambrian classes were actually held in Cambrian, primarily or even entirely. The goal of the class was for them to be at least conversant in the official language, the dialect formerly used by the government and still preferred by some guilds and stuff, by the time they took their OWLs next year. Liz would argue the curriculum actually had them at that point well before it was time to take the exam — this year they were still absorbing vocabulary and shite, and they'd occasionally take an aside for a lesson on some esoteric grammatical thing, but they spent most of their time on literature. A lot of poetry, some prose, famous works from previous centuries — now and then reaching way back, works surviving from the time of the Founding of Hogwarts or sometimes even earlier — occasionally more contemporary stuff. From older students, she knew that fifth year involved more advanced rhetoric and the like, political speeches or whatever, as well as the super precise, formal legal language. Laws were primarily written in English these days, though many written in Cambrian were still in force, and some standard contracts were still in Cambrian, various major organisations preferring the language exclusively.

So, the goal of the class was less to have them conversant with the language so much as to be competent with it, even in extremely formal, technical contexts. That did make sense, when she thought about it — if they wanted to be prepared to navigate the magical world after leaving school, a good grasp of formal Cambrian would be very helpful. The official explanation of what the class was supposed to be about didn't necessarily include that part, though.

(Honestly, she couldn't help the feeling that not mentioning that was meant to make the class seem less attractive to muggleborns, thus leaving them more easily exploitable, but she was probably being overly paranoid.)

Liz had always done well in Cambrian, but she'd jumped ahead most of her classmates starting in third year, for a very basic reason: she'd started finding herself in situations where people didn't speak English at all, and had to try to get by solely in Cambrian. The week or so she'd stayed at the Greenwood was probably the first kick in the arse — the Greenwood was all but monolingual in Cambrian, with only minimal penetration of English (and some study of Gaelic as a second language), in a dialect that was even more archaic than the official one. Actually needing to use the language for once had made a surprisingly big difference, and she kept up the development when she got back to school, occasionally talking to the native Cambrian-speakers around just because. And then over the summer, she'd ended up doing a lot of shopping in the magical world, things for the house and food and clothes or whatever, often in places where they didn't speak English very well, if at all. Some of those were Gaelic neighbourhoods, of course, but even there Cambrian could still be useful — Gaelic and Cambrian were related, not closely enough to understand each other, but monolingual Gaels had a better chance of picking up an occasional Cambrian word than an English one. The dialect in the Cambrian-speaking neighbourhoods was different from the standard language, the grammar more simplified and with a lot of slangy shite, but that was how people actually spoke it anyway, the formal language was what the class was for.

By the time she got back to Hogwarts last autumn, she'd occasionally have full conversations with Daphne in Cambrian, just because. (It was Daphne's first language, and Liz didn't mind the practice.) She would get confused sometimes, yeah, but not so much that it wasn't worth trying. And then she'd gotten a little bit more Cambrian from Muirgheal, and she started poking at publications printed in Cambrian, newspapers and eventually full novels...

Liz would definitely consider herself conversant in the language — probably had been for over six months by this point. She didn't think she was quite comfortable with it yet to call herself fluent, but with how many novels she read in Cambrian and how relatively easy it was to talk to the native speakers at school these days, she probably wasn't far away from it either.

Was three and a half years of study a reasonable length of time for people to get to this level of proficiency? She honestly didn't know — Hermione had been raised bilingual, and the native Cambrian- and Gaelic-speakers in their year and the Patils had all started English study very young, like a decade ago now. Most of them barely even had noticeable accents anymore, and Liz definitely did still have one in Cambrian...though not really that much of one, according to Daphne, she just sounded a bit stiff and formal was all. (Though, annoyingly, some of her shite from her shitty accent in English slipped in when she wasn't paying attention, like fucking up final Ls and the Þ and Ð sounds, some of the vowels. She was really inconsistent at pronouncing final Rs too, even when she was trying, it was extremely frustrating.) She suspected that was maybe a little fast, but she didn't know if it was so fast that she needed to bring in dormant omniglottalism to explain it.

Of course, being hexa-lingual — English, Cambrian, French, German, Gaelic, and the funny mixed Glaswegian dialect should count as its own thing — before the age of fifteen was unusual, but she'd only properly learned two of those, the other four were just cheating.

Most of her classmates could more or less keep up a conversation in Cambrian, but they didn't seem to be as comfortable with it as Liz was, and it definitely took more of their attention to follow what was being said. She was only partly paying attention, distracted worrying over her plans for later tonight, but she didn't have any trouble responding when Smethwyck called on her. So.

Honestly, she kind of wished the class did take more of her attention — if this wasn't so easy for her, maybe it'd be a better distraction from worrying about tonight.

The class period felt agonisingly slow, but yet Liz was still taken by surprise when Smethwyck started wrapping up, her stomach lurching and her neck prickling. In the last few seconds she had, she closed her eyes, took a few long, slow breaths — she was being ridiculous, nothing was going to happen, why the fuck did her shite brain have to be like this...

Her Cambrian class was quite small at this point, a bunch of people having dropped off after second year, when they weren't required to take it anymore. Liz still stalled a moment, letting the rest of the class stream out in the hall ahead of her. By the time she got out there, a couple of the Hufflepuff girls were still hanging around, but Hermione chased them off with the claim that she and Liz wanted to drop by the library quick before curfew. They were a bit bemused, but not really suspicious at all — thanks to all the time Liz spent on her Competency study now, she'd developed a reputation for being almost as big of a swot as Hermione. Which was kind of funny, honestly, though she couldn't quite put her finger on why.

It didn't take long for Liz and Hermione to be left standing alone in the hallway. Trying to act as casual as possible — and probably failing, Hermione must know her tells by now — Liz said, "So, did you need to go up to Gryffindor for anything?"

There was a little flicker of amusement, Hermione's lips twitching. "Did you know you're still speaking in Cambrian?"

"...Oops." She shrugged.

"I have everything — I went there to pack my bag before dinner." Hermione switched to English to ask, "Is there time for me to take a shower before breakfast tomorrow, or will I have to go back to Gryffindor for that?"

"Um, most of the other Slytherin girls have baths, and mostly in the evening, there should be an open one. Let's go, there should be a good shortcut back this way." There was a shortcut about where she remembered it, a hidden stairwell bringing them down to the first floor, not too far away from History. A couple corridors over, hidden on the base of a statue of some old king or something, was a little design of a snake biting its own tail, half-hidden in the bubbling curves lining the top of the pedestal — a hiss in Parseltongue, and the pedestal slid forward across the floor, revealing another staircase leading downward. This one was darker, the lights not maintained by the elves, once the statute slid back into place Liz had to cast a little ball of light so they could see where they were going.

When Hermione behind her cast her own little ball of light, wandlessly, Liz couldn't help smiling to herself a little.

"Was there anything in particular you wanted to get done tonight? I have some reading I could do, but it's not urgent, if you wanted to work on an assignment."

"I should work on my performance for the Task, actually. I don't have a lot of time left to finish it, and I should go through the whole thing for practise a few times before needing to do it in front of everyone." She did finish enchanting the pair of device she would need just recently, and she'd worked up an outline of what she wanted to do, more or less. The project required way more reservoirs than what she'd had sitting around, so she'd needed to order more, they'd come in just yesterday — she still needed to set the images and, of course, practise. Should be ready in time for the Task...or at least as ready as she was ever going to be.

"Oh!" Hermione gasped, a deep click of realisation echoing through the passage, quickly followed with a simmer of interest, her attention sharp on the back of Liz's head. "I remember now, you did mention that over the weekend. The magic sounds so fascinating, and, I imagine it'll take some work to string a narrative together. Ah, if you like, I can take a look at... I don't know, have you worked up storyboards or something?"

Liz didn't actually know what a "storyboard" was, but she could guess what Hermione was getting at without even looking. "I have an outline, yeah. I was going to start putting the images into reservoirs soon, I guess I can do that tonight."

"Can you do that this far ahead of time? I would think the images would decay too quickly to be useable by the time of the Task."

"Well, yeah, but you can slow that down with stasis spells, or an enchantment to draw..."

They went on discussing various means to preserve the contents of reservoirs until they got to the end of the passage — Liz paused quick to cover them with aversion spells before opening the exit. Woah, the passages had moved around down here, this didn't exit anywhere near where she was used to. They were down by... That was the house library over there, she thought? And that passage led to one of the boys' circles, so they wanted to go this way...

When they reached the fourth-year girls' circle, Millie and Dorea were standing out talking. Millie had her bath bag, and Dorea was in a nightdress and looking rather strained. Oh, Dorea had had another migraine, apparently, now that Liz thought about it she hadn't been in Arithmancy and Runes today. Hermione reflexively said hello to them — the avoidance charm held up, both girls taking a quick confused glance around the circle but their conversation didn't even slow down.

They stepped inside Liz's room, a quick nudge of Millie and Dorea's heads ensuring they didn't notice the door opening and closing. Her room was slightly altered from when she'd started doing her desensitisation stuff with Hermione: her desk had been replaced with one that was a bit wider, with two chairs in front of it instead of one, and there were additional hooks attached at open spots on the wall for Hermione's things, an extra glass next to the pitcher of water the elves watching over Slytherin kept full for her. Liz also made a point of hiding some more embarrassing or sensitive things when she knew Hermione was going to be around, but that wouldn't be obvious to anyone else.

Unfortunately, the bed was the same — Nilanse said the Hogwarts elves said there weren't any larger ones that Liz could use. (At least not any that would actually fit in the available space in her room.) That was going to be awkward.

"Sorry about that," Hermione said, walking over to the desk to set her overloaded bookbag down on one of the chairs. "For talking back there, I mean, I wasn't thinking."

"It's all right, I had it under control." Ditching her own bag, Liz quick renewed the avoidance charm on Hermione. She'd stopped brushing her teeth in favour of using the charm some time ago now, but Hermione still insisted on doing it the muggle way — Liz might still be in the toilet when she was doing that, could lapse when she wasn't paying attention. "Ready to go?"

Hermione gathered her teeth things, and they moved over to the bathroom. By some of the things hanging up and sitting on the counter, it looked like some people must be in the baths/showers — Millie's things, of course, and those were Daphne's, but she couldn't say for sure if Tracey was in there with Daphne or not. (Tracey, like Liz, took all of her things into the room with her, so it was harder to tell if she was in here somewhere.) Thankfully, there were available toilets at the moment, they didn't have to wait for that. Loosening her uniform robe with a swipe of her fingers over the laces, Liz pulled them over her head, her impossible hair floofing around, hung them up.

And then froze, her heart jumping up into her throat and her skin prickling, when she got to the point of dropping her knickers so she could actually use the bloody toilet — already tense and nervous about being naked later, she, just, ugh! She hated her brain sometimes, she was alone in here, for fuck's sake...

Hermione finished before her, thanks to Liz being pointlessly neurotic for no fucking reason slowing her down. By the time she got out, Hermione had even already finished brushing her teeth, and was flossing now instead, the arms of her robes tied around her waist to prevent anyone from noticing the Gryffindor-themed uniform in the Slytherin dorms. Hermione wasn't alone, though, Daphne was here now — standing at the sink, running her fingers through her hair, applying the stuff she put in before bed. She'd obviously been in the bath, a bit of pink still in her cheeks, but she must have cheated and dried her hair with charms, dressed in a flimsy pale slip. Entirely for everyone else's comfort, of course, Daphne herself normally wouldn't bother putting on anything just to get from the bath to her room, but she was aware the rest of them could be awkward about that sort of thing sometimes.

Daphne's eyes found hers in the mirror, smiled all soft. "Oh, hello Liz. I didn't know you were down here."

For a second she froze — she hadn't renewed her avoidance charm, it must have worn off when she wasn't paying attention. Oh well, not a big deal, Liz was supposed to be down here. With a little shrug, her shoulders feeling stiff, she said, "I had an avoidance charm up coming down from the library, must have forgotten to take it off. People have been being annoying with the Task coming up, you know."

A little flicker of irritation — Daphne was always gratifyingly frustrated on her behalf with people being nosey bastards — she muttered, "Ah yes, of course. I have noticed you've been absent more often the last few days, I assume that must be why."

"Yeah, it's just easier to hide in my room sometimes." A bit awkward — she could feel Hermione watching them — Liz sidled up to the sink to wash her hands, trying not to tense at both Hermione and Daphne's attention on her.

"I was wondering, I've heard that the next Task involves performative magic? Do you know what—" Liz didn't hear the rest of the question — she'd glanced up at Daphne through the mirror as she spoke, then immediately noticed the way that flimsy gown was draping over Daphne's chest. It was very, very obvious that she wasn't wearing anything under that.

Apparently that fabric was thin enough to clearly make out her nipple piercings through it. Huh.

For a flash, she was brought back to that time they'd been in bed (before it went bad), hot skin and cool metal on her fingers...

Liz didn't consciously realise she was staring until she overheard both Daphne and Hermione catching her at it — Hermione's reaction warm exasperated amusement, Daphne's more murky and difficult to read — wrenched her eyes down to her soapy hands over the sink...which were well ready to be rinsed off at this point, she'd lost track of what she was doing. Trying to pretend she couldn't feel her face burning, Liz said, "Um, sorry, I didn't catch that. Were you asking if I have a plan for the Task? Yeah, I, er, I've figured that out, I'm fine."

"Good, I was worried you might struggle with this one." For a second, Daphne considered teasing her for the staring a little, but quickly decided against it — Liz was obviously already uncomfortable, and considering their history she was worried it might come off unnecessarily cruel. "What did you have in mind?"

Before answering, Liz concentrated for a second, fighting past her embarrassment and nervousness — and a bit of arousal, of course, fucking hormones... — dried off her hands with a flick of her wrists. "Not telling. You'll just have to find out along with everyone else."

"So it's a surprise, then?"

"Sure." Liz quick cast the tooth-cleaning charm on herself, before reaching for a box of tiny potion phials sitting on the counter. According to Severus the charm actually wasn't perfect, but there was a potion that could easily take care of the rest of it. She'd brewed these for herself from the formula he gave her, and just left them out here, the other girls using them too now — it wasn't a big deal, with how tiny the amount needed each time was a single cauldron made a lot. A little bit of water out of the tap into one of the cups sitting here, she upended the phial, casting one of the mixing charms from Potions class with a tap of her wand on the rim, swish the stuff around for a few seconds, mint tingly cool all over the inside of her mouth...

Tracey came out of one of the bath rooms — must have been in there with Daphne, but she'd taken longer to get dressed to leave — Daphne sidled to the side, out from in front of the sink so Tracey could use it. Before she'd even gotten around to doing anything, she let out a light scoff, her head shivering with exasperation. "Daphne, you know we can see your piercings through that gown."

"What?" She glanced down at herself, a funny warm amused shiver reverberating through the room. Smiling a little, she shrugged. "Oops."

Liz let out a humming noise, spit out the stuff in her mouth. Filling the cup from the tap again, to rinse out her mouth with, "What, you didn't even know? I know you caught me staring." Tracey shot her a glance at that admission, but Liz just ignored it.

Daphne hesitated for a moment, not sure if it would be appropriate to say whatever she was thinking, her eyes flicking to Tracey. "Honestly, Liz, I assumed you just like my breasts. In general, I mean."

"Well, yeah, but— No," she cut herself off, "I'm going to shut up before I embarrass myself even worse. Good night."

At least the three other girls in the room had the decency to not laugh at her out loud.

Back in her room, Liz firmly closed and locked the door behind them, leaned her forehead against it with a sigh. "That could have gone more smoothly."

"Is it always still that hard to talk to Daphne? I don't really notice when there are more people around."

"...I wouldn't say hard. Just, distracting." Liz straightened and glanced Hermione's direction — while she'd been busy kicking herself, Hermione had already gotten her robes hung up, was currently dropping her tee shirt in Liz's clothes hamper. (The elves always got things back to the right person, she had no idea how they could tell.) Not surprised Hermione had started undressing right away, this wasn't nearly as uncomfortable for her as it still was for Liz. Forcing out a breath, she turned away, moved to hang up her own robe. "I don't really think trying to get back together would be a good idea, for multiple reasons — and Daphne gets that, she tries to...not make things difficult, you know. But she's still, just, fucking beautiful, you know, I can't help it."

"Ah, right." Her tone was agreeable, but Hermione's mind was open enough at the moment for Liz to tell that she really didn't get it. She'd never felt that way about another person before, it was just theoretical to her — a thing she knew other people experienced, but not something she knew what it felt like. Even after dating Neville for a while, she still didn't really get it. Hermione suspected by this point that she, just, wasn't attracted to people the same way everyone else was, though she was still open to the possibility that it would happen eventually. She didn't even know what it felt like to be distracted by someone like that, it was completely alien to her.

Personally, Liz suspected Hermione was straight, but she just needed, you know, the mental and emotional stuff to come through right to be interested in screwing someone. (A boy who was actually smarter than her would be ideal, but Liz didn't think they knew any of those.) Was that a thing? She didn't know if it was a thing, but just because nobody else was like that didn't mean Hermione couldn't be. Whatever, it didn't matter at the moment, Hermione would figure it out eventually.

Liz hadn't bothered wearing a proper full dress under her robes today — well into April, it was getting warm again, not necessary anymore — but she did have a pair of shorts and a camisole on (similar to muggle style, but made with mage-made psychometrically clean linen). Those were tossed at her laundry basket, leaving her in her usual vest and a pair of (psychometrically clean linen) pants. Plus the scarf keeping her hair back, of course, but she planned on keeping that. Her fingers went to the knot, but nerves prickled over her skin, frigid fear slithering through her middle, and she stopped — over playing around with this for however many weeks now, she found it was sometimes easier to undress if she gave herself a couple minutes to cool off in the middle.

It wasn't like there was any rush or anything, they would be here all night.

"I'm guessing those are the projectors you made. Are your storyboards around here somewhere? I can take a look, if you like — unless it's supposed to be a secret to me too."

"...No, that's fine." Someone taking a second look at it for her wasn't the worst idea in the world. She'd been considering showing it to Severus, just hadn't gotten around to it yet. "They're over here in—" Liz hitched to a stop almost right away. Hermione was looking at the completed devices sitting on an open spot in her bookshelves, holding her hair back so it wouldn't get in the way of her scanning over the runes.

And she was completely naked. Liz had expected she probably would be already, it was just... She was still a little taken aback every time, that was all.

Shaking the moment off, she lurched back into motion. "Um, I've got my notes in a drawer over here." She walked over to her desk, trying not to be too self-conscious. Or distracted by Hermione standing very naked right over there, that was being a problem at the moment — that encounter with Daphne a moment ago might end up making this a little more awkward than usual, stupid fucking hormones. Anyway, she retrieved her notes, shoved her Competency stuff back to make room. "Tell me what you think, I've, um, well I've never done something like this before, not sure if it'll turn out any good..."

Hermione moved a few things from her bag onto the desk before dropping it to the floor and sitting down — which put her back to Liz, at least, most of her body hidden by the chair and her big frizzy hair. Right, so, if she was filling the reservoirs tonight, she was going to need the bag of crystals she'd ordered, still in the package they'd been mailed in over here. Liz tore it open, quick checked they'd sent her the right things — she couldn't tell if they were the correct material just by sight, but they were clear and crystal-looking, around the size of her thumb pad, and it looked like there were plenty of them in here — before setting the bag down on her desk. She'd also borrowed a pair of wire racks for bottle potions from Severus, which she'd use to keep the reservoirs in a nice orderly array she could pick them from in order, and she'd ordered some little tie-on tags to mark which end she was supposed to start from. She'd also enchanted a thing to keep the reservoirs charged while she wasn't using them — after she'd borrowed the racks, she'd needed to dig out divots for where the reservoirs would be, aligned with the layout of the racks, would just be set on top of the racks, the enchantment keeping the reservoirs fresh. Right, that was everything she needed, she was pretty sure.

Thankfully, focussing on the logistics and Hermione's attention staying off of her for a couple minutes had given her time to cool off somewhat. Before her useless fucking brain could go off on nonsense and get her worked up again, Liz yanked the vest over her head, chucked it over at the basket, and sharply tugged the knot on her pants — the linen dragged over her hips before flopping down to the carpet. She nearly tipped over reaching down to pick them up, feeling jittery and disoriented, her brain sizzling and her jumpy nerves fucking up her balance, but she managed to retrieve and toss away her knickers without making a complete idiot of herself.

Unsettlingly conscious of her nakedness — except for her wand holster and the scarf holding her hair back, but those didn't really count — Liz walked toward her desk, each step feeling weird and awkward, teetering, like her legs were suddenly the wrong length. Completely in her head, of course, for some reason she got so fucking clumsy when she tried to do anything without clothes on. Well, it was only a sometimes thing when she was alone, Hermione being in the room made it worse — she wasn't looking at her at the moment, but Liz was very aware of her presence, her mind ticking away and the curly brown cloud of her hair at her desk...

Liz pulled the second chair out, forced a warming charm into it through her hand — the wood could be a little uncomfortably cold against her skin at first. Hermione's attention thankfully on her notes, not looking at her, she stepped around the chair and tugged it a little closer to the desk before plopping down onto the cushion.

For a moment she just sat there, her hands still gripping onto the sides of the chair, her skin crawling and her limbs spanging with nerves. This was fine, she was fine.

"Um, I'm sorry," Hermione said, Liz twitching a little, "could you talk me through this, please? I'm having a little trouble reading your handwriting."

...Yeah, Liz wasn't surprised — when she was writing, like, letters or homework or whatever, she did actually try to make it as legible as possible, but she didn't normally bother for her own notes. She reached over to drag the notebook closer to herself, flipped back to the front.

Hermione's attention followed Liz's arm up, eyes on her skin like ants, making Liz flinch, but she quickly looked back down at the notebook. Trying to force the tension out with a long shaky sigh, Liz paged through her notes on the enchantments she was using to get to the start of the story she'd planned out. The pages had been separated into numbered blocks — in two columns, the reservoirs that would go with one of the devices on the left and the other on the right — with a description of the image she wanted to do and the impression that went with it, most of the time with a very rough sketch of the image. Her drawing abilities hadn't meaningfully improved from when she'd first started casually playing around with it like a year ago now, but she didn't spend that much time on it, so whatever — it was mostly just a reminder for her, it didn't need to be very good. Liz went through the blocks, not reading her notes aloud verbatim so much as, just, describing what each block was supposed to be.

Focussed on explaining what she was getting at, Hermione's attention firmly on the book and away from her, over the whole process of going through the thing the worst of her nervousness actually managed to cool off. She still wasn't comfortable, of course, distractingly self-conscious — Hermione's hair tickling at her arm didn't help — but it wasn't that bad. Manageable, at least.

And a huge improvement from when they'd started doing this. The first time they'd tried hanging out in Liz's room without clothes on she'd been a jittery nervous mess, she hadn't managed to make it very long at all before she'd needed to get dressed again. Honestly, their baths barely even bothered her anymore — she always got unreasonably neurotic about the actual undressing part at the beginning, but once she was through that it was fine. She'd stopped turning the lights off weeks ago now, just, not a big deal. So, this was working, the improvement hadn't been obvious moment to moment but looking back on it she could definitely tell. Whether she'd be able to get through her brain being fucking useless in more, um, emotionally intense contexts, that was still an open question, but she was way more optimistic about it than she'd started out, honestly.

Though, since she had the whole thing arranged now, she was positive she'd have the blood alchemy thing done before she approached anywhere near actually doing anything with a future girlfriend (almost certainly Katie) — it wasn't even that far away, just a few months, if the trajectory of her relationship with Daphne was any indication the blood alchemy would happen first. She had a feeling that was going to help, a lot.

As they got to the end of Liz's notes, Hermione let out a little hum, leaning back in her chair — Liz caught a faint little flinch in her mind, the back of the chair was cold. And then Liz was the one flinching, at the feeling of Hermione's attention turning on her, but she was just, you know, facing the person she was talking to, because Hermione was very casual about this sitting around completely naked thing. (Still a little frustrated with how much easier this was for Hermione, honestly.) "Ah, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but this seems rather...personal. Autobiographical, even."

Liz shrugged — trying to come off unbothered, but how oddly twitchy the motion was seemed obvious to her at least. "Yeah, I, um... I thought about something else, I don't know, adapting something from a Ciardha Monroe book, or one of the more fun scenes in Säde Karjalainen's stuff, but I wasn't sure the... The important part is the impression, you know, that's what makes it performative magic. And I'm not– I wasn't sure I could get the impression to feel right if it wasn't personal."

There was a bit of warm, soft amusement from Hermione at Liz's babbling, she tried to ignore the hint of warmth on her face. "Oh, I didn't think of that. I suppose that makes sense. Are you sure, ah... I realise this stuff isn't really a secret anymore, it probably doesn't make that much of a difference, but I'm worried you won't actually be able to do this in front of the crowd, you know?"

"I can't feel people's attention on me at all during events — the wards they have up to prevent people from interfering completely isolate me. It should be fine, I just have to not think about what I'm doing."

"Oh! Well, in that case, this should be quite good. I think I'm going to find it, er, moving, but I'm not sure if that's just because I know you." In fact, depending on how intense the impressions ended up being, Hermione strongly suspected she was going to end up in tears by the end — which wasn't a reason not to do it, it was just personal for her. "There are a few shaky parts. Not bad! I only mean, I think we can tighten it up in places, so it'll flow more smoothly and hit harder, you know. Not that I'm an expert, of course, but, um, if we go back here, where was it..."

For a little while, they went back over the story Liz had scripted out, Hermione suggesting little changes here and there. Nothing big, mostly, just minor adjustments, for one reason or another. Hermione did wonder — mentally, not out loud — if helping her this much was cheating or not, but Liz didn't really give a shite. She didn't think it was, but it wasn't like anyone was going to find out, so, she told Hermione to just not worry about it, it was fine.

Also mentally, not out loud — Hermione had never been too particularly sensitive about Liz directly speaking into her head, but... Well, she guessed, as Liz had slowly gotten more accustomed to being physically exposed, Hermione had gotten more accustomed to being mentally exposed. At least when they were alone, anyway, it normally didn't take very long before her actually pretty decent occlumency came down. Sometimes, if she was thinking or remembering something particularly private, she'd kick Liz out then, but for the most part she just didn't bother.

Which was only fair, when Liz thought about it. The thought that she might be watching every little thought go by in her head made Hermione feel more naked than actually being naked. Especially since she was fully aware that, opened up as she was, Liz could do all kinds of freaky shite to her head before Hermione could stop her — though she did trust Liz not to, like how Liz trusted Hermione not to make this whole process of trying to get less awfully uncomfortable in her own skin more difficult for her. So, Hermione making herself vulnerable too made this whole thing feel more balanced, in a way.

Or it had at first, anyway, Hermione was getting used to her end far more quickly than Liz was hers...

Eventually they'd gotten through Hermione's ideas, going back and forth as the changes one person made would make the other person have an idea, the whole discussion taking, like, maybe an hour. It was getting somewhat late, it was a little after ten already, but they both expected actually going to bed to be uncomfortable. Worse for Liz, admittedly, but Hermione had never once slept in the nude before — it'd occurred to her that it might be better to try it on her own before doing it with Liz, but she wasn't confident enough of her roommates respecting her space to be comfortable doing it there, and they'd had some of her French relatives over for Easter break, and she couldn't exactly experiment with it while sharing her bedroom with two of her girl cousins — so she expected it to be an adjustment for her too. They both agreed that making sure they were thoroughly tired before trying to go to bed would help.

So, Liz might as well continue working on her project. Hermione pulled out a textbook and her notes — History, looked like — while Liz retrieved a fresh notebook from the shelves, the binding especially loose so she could easily set it splayed open. She wanted to be able to easily read this, in probably less than perfectly ideal circumstances, so she only split each page into quarters, marking the top corners of each — numbers and letters, the numbers increasing one by one (only up to four on these two pages) and the letters A on the left and B on the right. She got out some of her tags, wrote down 1A on one, attached it to the wires supporting the back-left spot of one potion rack, a label 1B going in the same spot on the other one. Then she'd just go down the rows left to right, columns back to front. Maybe an extra label every once in a while, just so she didn't get confused...oh, some kind of tag with a sticking charm on the end that she could move along to the next spot, so she didn't lose her place? She'd think about it, experiment to see which way to do it lead to the least confusion.

And Liz started setting the images. Looking at her original notes, now marked up a bit from going over them with Hermione, Liz wrote down a description of the feeling she wanted for it, sometimes referencing a time when she'd felt something that was about right — in extra-big letters, each drawn carefully and slowly, to make sure they'd be legible. And then she'd get out a reservoir, pick up her wand, carefully construct a mental image of the visuals that went with that block, once she had it solid and clear enough tapped her wand to the reservoir, forcing her mental image down into it. Then she lifted off the recharging thing on the appropriate rack, balanced the reservoir atop the appropriate slot, and replaced the cover.

Then she'd move on to the next reservoir, and the next, and the next. Depending on how difficult it was to describe the impression, or how complex the image was, taking down her final version of her notes and setting the reservoir could take, like, two to sometimes probably more than five minutes. It wasn't difficult, though, just somewhat slow.

It also took a lot of attention to get the image to set right, Liz focussing very precisely on drawing each letter as clearly as possible — enough attention that she simply didn't have enough leftover to pay any mind to anything else.

Like, say, the fact that she was naked right now. She didn't forget, exactly, it just wasn't important at the moment.

It all went more or less smoothly for however long — until, after over a dozen images, she felt something snap as the spell attempted to carry the image into the reservoir. Ah, fuck, she must have messed it up. She couldn't actually check — she could reach into the reservoir like reading a mind, but it would look different that way than it would in the projector thing — but she didn't have to, she was positive it hadn't worked. She quick cleared the reservoir and set it aside (she'd need to properly cleanse it before it could be reused for something this sensitive), before picking up another and trying again. When she felt it snap again, Liz let out a frustrated groan, rubbing at the bridge of her nose with her thumb...

"What is it?"

"Nothing, just, having trouble getting the image to set. It's pretty focus intensive, I think I'm getting too tired."

Hermione hummed. Leaning over a bit (her hair brushing against Liz's arm), she lifted up one of the covers and mentally counted the reservoirs she'd already prepared. "Oh, that isn't so bad. You still have more than enough time to do the rest, later."

"Yeah, just, I've already taken down my notes on this one, I want to finish it. Don't look at me, please, I need to concentrate." Not only did Hermione turn back to her book, but she actually took care to wall off her mind, presenting Liz as few distractions as possible. Because she could be very accommodating like that sometimes.

Picking another fresh reservoir, Liz closed her eyes and relaxed back into her chair, taking a few long, slow breaths in and out. She again imagined the thing she wanted to project, and focussed, forcing herself to concentrate. And once she thought she had it, she gathered up the power for the spell, and gently tapped her wand to the reservoir, letting the flow of magic suck up her mental image — not so much pushing as just letting it flow naturally, the spell carrying her intent off. This time, she felt the image smoothly click into place, perfect.

She turned the faintly glowing reservoir in her fingers, feeling the texture of the magic inside. It was hard to say, but she was pretty sure that was right? She could check for sure when she was practising later, but she thought so. She tipped up the cover and slipped it into place. Cinching the bag closed, she sighed, "There. I think that's all I can manage tonight, starting to give myself a headache."

"I think I'm about done for the night too. Are you too tired to use those things?" Hermione asked. Liz was pretty sure she was pointing at the devices for the Task, but her eyes were closed at the moment and couldn't actually see it — she didn't need to though, it was obvious from context and she was in Hermione's head anyway. "If you're not up to it, that's fine, but I am very curious."

"Of course you are, you're Hermione bloody Granger." There was a funny warm flitter in response to that, but Liz wasn't really paying attention, thinking. Getting the impression right was also a matter of focus, but it was a different kind of focus, and didn't require casting a spell at the same time...and she should confirm that the enchantments actually worked correctly... "Yeah. Yeah, I can try. This room is pretty small, if you're right next to it it won't... Hold on, I'm going to set up on the floor over there, give me a second."

Liz slipped out of the chair, picked up one of the racks and her notebook, levitated one of the devices with a flick of her fingers — she'd practise switching back and forth later, this was just a test. Coming up alongside her bed, next to the closet, she started bending over to set the rack down, then abruptly jerked back rigid straight, her skin crawling and her nerves jangling, as she felt Hermione's eyes on her bum. She'd been comfortable a second ago, but she was suddenly intensely aware she was naked right now, and Hermione was watching her, ugh. She took a thin shaky breath, then sidled over to turn side-on to Hermione. Her attention was still on her, just, less sensitive angle. She got all her things down, and then sank down to—

Nope nope nope, let's not sit cross-legged just now. She hadn't even gotten all the way down yet, and she'd already felt, er, things, spreading — Hermione's eyes were still on her, she didn't have a good angle on that at the moment anyway, but feeling it was still making Liz far too self-conscious, her skin crawling, and— Nope. Instead she tipped back onto her knees, pressed together, before sitting back, her feet flat on either side of her hips. Right, much better.

Apparently Hermione didn't think so — she felt a harsh grinding shudder from her head, very unpleasant. Liz reflexively glanced that way to find Hermione had gotten up from her chair too, standing facing her, though she'd stayed over by the desk so as to keep enough distance between herself and the illusion Liz would be projecting in a minute. Her gaze, naturally, tipped down — she tried not to be a creep, but, hormones, couldn't help it sometimes — glanced back up as Hermione spoke. "There's no way that's comfortable."

Liz frowned, glanced down at her own lap. Was this that weird? It'd seemed like a perfectly natural way to sit to her, under the circumstances. "I guess the tops of my thighs here," tapping just over her knee, "and my ankles are twinging a little, but it's really not bad, I hardly noticed."

"Ugh. I am not that flexible, but whatever."

...Well, Liz did do a lot of stretches before and after duelling practice and the like, to make sure she didn't cramp up too bad, that probably helped. Hadn't really thought about it, but she guessed it wasn't like she payed attention to how flexible other people were, so.

Except Katie, and also sometimes Susan — Liz suspected they'd both picked the habit up imitating her — but that was absolutely for pervy reasons she wouldn't be admitting to aloud just now, or possibly ever. She always felt like such a creep watching them...

Anyway, she was doing a thing here. Forcing out another breath, Liz set the cover aside, flipped her notebook back to the first page. The first image didn't have a very strong impression with it, so she'd go with, er...this one. She counted out slots, removed the proper reservoir from the rack and slipped it into the divot in the middle of the thing, a flick of a finger flipping over a wire to hold it in place. Right, that worked just like it was supposed to, the reservoir held firm, good. Liz pushed out another breath, closing her eyes, and focussed on the feeling she wanted.

—Uncle Vernon moved faster than she could react, one big red hand coming up and whipping across, the hit came across her right cheek, her head turning with it, she stumbled a bit, shoulder coming against the wall—

—he'd yanked her around, of course, plenty of times, but he'd never actually hit her before—

—her chest growing tight and hot, her eyes stinging, one hand still covering her cheek, she sat on her bed, knees hugged to her chest—

—she didn't know what was happening, everything was getting worse, and she didn't know why, she didn't know what to do—

(That it seemed a bit autobiographical hadn't just been Hermione's imagination.)

Bundling the feeling up and shaping it into a compulsion, Liz pushed the stuff down her arm, her fingers prickling as she forced it into the little bronze disc on top of the device. She felt the magic take with a sort of pop, the floor underneath her seeming to tilt as the enchantment drew on the environment — she knew the illusion was working, but her eyes were still closed, focussed on operating the thing...

She abruptly cut it off when she heard a thick gasp, the enchantment going dark. By the time she looked back up at Hermione, her eyes were still pointed blankly ahead — where the illusion would have been a moment ago, projected as a fraction of her field of vision (so everyone in the audience would be able to see it regardless) — one hand covering her mouth, her mind still lurching with an echo of the impression, churning with... "Sorry, was that too much?"

"No, I, er—" Hermione cleared her throat, her hand dropping away from her mouth. "I'm certain that's what it was supposed to feel like, just... I knew it wasn't going to be pleasant, but feeling it is different than just knowing about it."

Turning back down to her things, Liz frowned. She freed the reservoir from its spot, returned it to the rack, wondering... "That wasn't one of the bad ones."

Dark, morbid curiosity simmering in her head, Hermione didn't quite manage to stop herself from asking. "What are the bad ones like?"

...No, she'd rather not make Hermione feel miserable just now. Especially since they were going to bed soon, wouldn't make that easier. "I'm not showing you right now. Not right now," Liz insisted, cutting ahead of an argument from Hermione. "I will later, just... I didn't get around to making the nice ones yet. I don't want to, just, leave you with the shitty stuff, without the happy ending, you know."

Hermione thought that was really sweet of her, but honestly, Liz knew some of the shite in her life seriously sucked. Some of the impressions in her little story were probably worse than anything Hermione had ever felt in her whole fucking life. Liz didn't want to make her feel completely miserable for no good reason, that just...seemed wrong?

It did give her a thought, though. She put the first reservoir into the device — nothing went with the feeling she had in mind, but the first one was pretty neutral, visually — and then bright to mind a different memory, drawing on the feeling...

—"The Patronus Charm is not motivated by a feeling of happiness, but of safety."—

—She was safe here.—

—Severus was still bloody hugging her, as a shuddering sob escaped from her, if anything even pulling her closer, and she felt herself relax, the painful tension holding her rigid dissolving away—

—her wand suddenly in her hand, she whispered, "Expecto patronum," her joints stinging electric hot and cold as it poured through her hand, pale blue-silver light streamed out of her wand, swirling into a pool and condensing into an ephemeral, silvery bird, silently drifting around the room, wings slowly flapping—

—"It's all right, Elizabeth. It's all right."—

—She felt safe here.—

Liz didn't have to spell it out. She could tell when the feeling hit — Hermione teetering back to lean against the desk, her eyes watery — that she'd gotten the message.

Anyway, Liz got to putting away her things, the device and the rack both set next to their twins, tipping up a corner of one of the racks so she could slip the notebook underneath. Hermione also packed up her school things, and took out a couple of other things. She was aware, incidentally picked up from her head when planning tonight, that Hermione had started binding up her hair before bed, so it didn't get in the way — that had been a thing she'd done sometimes when staying over at Liz's house back in August, but apparently it was more consistent now. Liz had started doing something similar, mostly because she'd gotten annoyed with the shite getting pinned somewhere whenever she rolled over or something, but also she had this stuff that sort of helped get her hair to behave? She was supposed to comb it through as much as she could and leave it in overnight, and it did seem to help some — probably the thing she'd found that had the best effort-to-effectiveness ratio. (Less effective than other things, but much easier to do on a regular basis.) Having it in her hair did get the smell all over her pillow, but it wasn't a bad smell, olive oil and sage and speedwell, so.

Of course, using a plaiting charm would fuck up the magic in it, so she had to do it by hand instead — which was a bloody pain, as frustrating as her hair was, but she still thought it was worth it, on the balance.

Distracted going over the order of operations of things she needed to do before bed, she twitched a little when Hermione spoke. "Do you need to go by the toilets before bed? I probably should."

"...Yeah, probably a good idea." Grimacing, Liz glanced over at her closet, her robes still hanging up on the wall — kind of dreading needing to undress again afterward, that was always the worst part.

"Do you think you can keep an aversion charm up?"

Liz blinked, turned to frown at Hermione. "What?" She couldn't really be suggesting they just...

Hermione shrugged — which did distracting things to her tits, Liz tried not to notice (and failed, miserably). "It'd be quicker," was all she said aloud. And that wasn't not a factor, of course, but she payed enough attention to Liz during these things to notice that the actual undressing part was the hardest on her, she tended to calm down a bit once it was far enough behind them. Especially since they were going to try to go to bed shortly, getting Liz all stressed out again would be counterproductive.

Not that Hermione thought going out with only a paling for cover was less likely to stress her out, but, they weren't likely to run into anyone anyway. It was rather late, after all, everyone else was probably already in bed. The aversion charm was more a precaution than it was strictly necessary — just in case, and for Liz's peace of mind.

...And Liz could always use mind magic to make people ignore them, or if her aversion charm slipped just wipe any memory that they'd even been there. She used to do that kind of shite all the time when she was younger, only got out of the habit when she started going to Hogwarts. (People would notice if she were absent, and were far more likely to notice the manipulation.) None of the other Slytherin girls in their year, the only people who had any reason to be here, were good enough with occlumency to stop her from doing that kind of thing if she really wanted to. The chances of being noticed were miniscule, and even if they were nothing would happen, the person wouldn't even remember it.

Was she actually considering leaving her room like this? Just, walk out, completely naked, and... It was only a short walk, sure, but still.

Though, when she thought about it, it... The risk was very low — the only person who would see her was Hermione, there shouldn't even be anyone out there, she... She'd already planned a different test today, and, this was probably actually a bigger step than trying to sleep naked with another person in the room. Or it would be, if there were likely to be anyone else out there. She really didn't think there would be, they would be alone the entire time, Hermione was probably right about the aversion charm not even being strictly necessary. For all practical purposes, it wouldn't be any different than what they were doing right now. The difference between nobody seeing them in her room and nobody seeing them out there was really just in her head.

...She was actually considering it. Fuck, this was completely mad...

After a moment turning it over, feeling increasingly giddy and jittery, Liz finally nodded. "Right, um. Let's just, er, come over here, and let me..."

They both moved over to the door, Liz jumped a little, her heart pounding, at the touch on her hand, Hermione's clockwork mind slamming against hers. Right, of course, Hermione wouldn't be able to see through her aversion charm, yes. Slipping her fingers through Hermione's, trying not to feel weird about it — holding Hermione's hand on the way down to her room was fine, doing any touching while they happened to be naked at the moment was, just, uncomfortable — Liz covered both of them with an aversion charm. Hermione's thoughts so close to hers, impossible to block out, Liz could see that she wasn't planning on opening the door herself, was going to wait for Liz to do it.

Right. So. She should just do that, then.

She unlocked the door, but then stopped, nerves crackling through her, her stomach lurching and her heart pounding. Taking in a long breath, forcing it out, thick and shaking, it was fine, she was fine, nothing was going to happen, she could do this...

"We don't have to do it like this if you're not up to it."

Liz shook her head. "It's fine, I want to try it. Just, nervous." She took another long breath in and out, glaring at the door, trying to psyche herself up — even bouncing on the balls of her feet a little, pent-up energy simmering. Right, her aversion charm was nice and strong, it was a short walk, just to the bathroom, she could do this. She was safe down here, it was fine.

Go. Go. Move, dammit, go!

The motion stiff and jerking, Liz unlatched the door, and yanked it open.

The fourth-year girls' circle was noticeably cooler than her room — she'd tweaked the environmental wards to make it a bit warmer when she'd started spending time in there naked, more comfortable. It was dark, the lights turned down low as they always were after curfew, the moody orange light making Liz's stupid-pale skin almost seem to glow in the shadows.

Stiffening from the chill and from nerves — coiled thick and harsh and sizzling in her stomach and her throat, crackling across her skin — her steps were awkward and clumsy, her breath hot and tense. Hermione was also noticeably nervous, a little sharp thrill in her mind, but not nearly as badly as Liz — she was more wary of the thought of how people would react if they knew she and Liz were spending time together in the nude than the actual being naked in (sort of) public part. (Oh fuck, Liz hadn't even thought of that, people would definitely assume they were having sex...) She wasn't nearly so stiff and clumsy as Liz, walking across the circle mostly normally, tugging Liz along a little by the hand. Glancing back to check if she was okay, Liz hunching in a little at the attention on her, force herself on step by shaking step...

They made it to the bathroom door, Hermione opening it for them — the lights inside flicked on, the wards detecting their presence. Relaxing a little bit — with the door closed behind them, the bathroom felt rather less exposed than the circle — she followed Hermione to the left, toward the doors. They came to a halt at the near end of the hallway turning back, Liz standing there shivering.

After a couple seconds, Hermione said, "You're going to need to let go of my hand, Liz. Unless you mean to come in with me." She personally thought going into one of the toilet stalls together would be weird, but she was willing to do it if Liz would be too uncomfortable to split up just now. Which was, just, er...

Liz snatched her hand away from Hermione's and lurched into motion, stepping into one of the toilets and closing the door behind her.

Alone, she leaned against the door, the ceramic cool against her flushing forehead, shivering with tension. She felt unreasonably exhausted, hot and stiff and jittery, like she'd just been duelling or something — just, fucking hell, this was hard...

It took a moment for Liz to stop herself from fucking shaking enough to actually do her business. She hesitated again at the door, but forced herself to move before she could work herself up too much again, stumbling back out into the main room. Hermione was already at the sinks washing her hands — she glanced around her shoulder, but her attention didn't actually find Liz, the aversion charm too strong for Hermione to see through it. (Though Liz could see through the one on Hermione without any difficulty at all, because mind mages were cheaters.) She had noticed the stall door opening — even though the aversion charm should have covered that too, probably thanks to her occlumency being pretty decent — but she couldn't find Liz herself.

Apparently, being alone and unobserved for a couple minutes had been enough for Liz to calm down somewhat — enough for her eyes to roam over Hermione's bum and the small of her back, as she came up to the sink fixing on her breasts in the mirror, swaying and bobbing from the motion of washing her hands...

Liz shook herself, wrenched her eyes away. Hadn't meant to do that, consciously, but she could be such a fucking perv sometimes — she couldn't say she was surprised with herself for exploiting the first time Hermione couldn't tell what she was doing as an opportunity to stare.

Partially in the interest of keeping herself honest — she really did try to not be a creep about her friends — she reached into Hermione's mind, gently pressed in a compulsion to... Well, that was sort of complicated to explain, honestly. The aversion charm was a compulsion (one of the arithmantic ones that only imitated true mind magic, of course) that prevented the target from consciously noticing a thing; Liz compelled Hermione to notice her, directly counteracting the action of the paling and basically cancelling it out. She wasn't sure if the mechanics of what was going on in there actually worked like that, it was probably more complicated than she made it sound — she was just acting on instinct, like she did for most mind magic things.

It did work, though: she felt Hermione's attention brush over her (lingering on he scars for a blink), Liz ducking her head, her face warming and her stomach squirming with... No, not nerves, that was guilt, actually — she had just been checking Hermione out a second ago, without her knowledge. She didn't like that she did that sometimes, it— She kind of grossed herself out a little. That wasn't an unusual feeling, when it came down to it — Liz was disgusted with herself rather often — though she did realise that was less than entirely healthy. (Honestly, she suspected she'd internalised Petunia's habitual insults, but it was hard to let that go when she hated her body for her own reasons anyway.) But, she tried not to be creepy about her friends, she didn't want to... She didn't know, make things weird? It was just so hard sometimes, she couldn't help it.

(As much as the thought of having periods again kind of freaked her out, not being so fucking distractable all the time probably wouldn't be a bad thing.)

Once they were both done washing and drying their hands, Hermione took one of hers again — not her wand hand, intentionally leaving that one free in case Liz needed it — so she let go of the compulsion, quickly dissolving away. Liz didn't stall this time, walked right out the door before she could work herself up again. She did tense up as they entered the more wide open space of the circle, nerves crackling along her back, but she just kept breathing and tried to ignore it, leading the way straight back to her room. Nobody's attention on her, the space empty of any other minds, she felt herself relax a little, her sharp determined pace slowing somewhat. This wasn't so bad, maybe it hadn't been such a mad ide—

In the heavy silence of Slytherin at night, a door clicked open.

Her heart jumping hard into her throat, a prickling wave sweeping over her skin, Liz froze.

The door leading into one of the other girl's rooms swung open, before Liz saw her she felt the familiar mind appear across the wardline — Pansy. Nerves twisting her stomach up in a jagged mess, Liz jerked around Hermione, reflexively — she could feel the bemusement ringing in Hermione's head at Liz hiding behind her, but she didn't really mean to, and she was rather smaller — hanging off of Hermione's arm, her ears buzzing and her knees shaking.

(—the ringing scrape of the shower curtain being torn away, Uncle Vernon's hand on her arm like a vise, pulling—)

Biting her lip and squeezing her eyes shut, Hermione in the way, Liz couldn't actually see what was happening. But she could see through Hermione, Pansy in her nightgown, sleepily shuffling toward the bathroom door, unconcerned.

She couldn't see them. Pansy had no idea they were here.

Leaning into it a little, to not take Liz by surprise, Hermione took a step toward her room. Her legs stiff and numb and shivering, it was difficult to get them to behave, clinging on to Hermione for balance. One step, another, back at a somewhat awkward angle, to keep an eye on Pansy. She slipped into the bathroom, a moment later her mind disappearing through the wards, Hermione leading them on toward Liz's room, Liz a useless bundle of nerves, mind gathered tense and ready to spring, shivering as though freezing...

Then they were through the door, Hermione closing it behind them and turning the lock — the wards snapped back into existence, cutting her room off from the outside world, and they were alone again.

Liz let out a long, shaking breath, a little bit of a wavering groan making its way in, letting her head bonk against Hermione's arm. The shivering hadn't stopped, feeling hot and tingly and weak, she wasn't even sure if her shaky knees would support herself at the moment, still clinging on to Hermione for balance—

"Are you okay?" Hermione whispered, tentative, worried.

She nodded against her arm — her throat tense and shaking, she swallowed, tried to find her voice. Fuck it. I'm fine, just nerves.

Hermione wasn't entirely sure she believed her, but she didn't argue about it. She just helped hold Liz up, still shaking and useless, trying to catch her breath—

Except, it wasn't just nerves. Liz hadn't really been conscious of it, not paying that close of attention to what she was feeling, but the insistent pounding of her heart, throbbing in her chest and her teeth and fingertips, feeling flushed, her skin sharp and tingling, her stomach swooping, her head fuzzy and spinning, feeling jittery and giddy...

...like coming out of doing some mad trick on a broom, or a really intense duel. It was probably partly nerves, sure — how her legs and her voice didn't seem to be working just now didn't fit — but some of this feeling was definitely coming off of adrenaline.

Huh.

Liz gradually came out of this weird little episode of hers, the shakes ringing through her working themselves out and her head clearing...as she calmed down growing increasingly aware that they were...kind of hugging right now. Of course, she had been aware that she'd been clinging on to Hermione for balance, helping hold her up, but that'd been, kind of, distant, pushed out of the front of her mind by other stuff. She hadn't really been paying attention to Hermione's arms coming around her, hands on Hermione's shoulders to brace herself...

She also hadn't really been paying attention to the implications of them, of course, both still being completely naked right now — skin soft and warm against hers, her shoulder kind of smooshing into one breast, a tickling of what must be pubic hair near her waist. Nerves thick and hot in her throat, Liz leaned back a little. Hermione's arms started to loosen, her breasts shifting, arms brushing across the small of Liz's back, fingers coming down near her hip, and—

With a little gasp, warmth starting to coil through her, Liz lurched away, staggering back a step. Sparks of what she was pretty sure were concern and confusion in her mind, Hermione's attention brushed over her, Liz felt the heat flaring on her face, waving off the unvoiced question, "It's fine, I'm fine." A quick glance around the room to confirm where they were, Liz teetered over a couple steps before letting herself flop over onto her bed, laying on her back and covering her face with both hands.

No big deal, just started getting turned on while hugging her best friend, both of them completely naked, nothing to worry about.

(Liz was maybe starting to get a little too comfortable with this whole desensitisation project of hers.)

Still radiating confusion, Hermione's attention first jumped up toward her face (still hidden by her hands), before raking down her body — seemingly by reflex, Liz could see what she was thinking and she wasn't really thinking about it — over her scars and down her middle (with a flicker of jealousy over how thin Liz was) and then below her stomach and along her hips to—

Sudden tension spanging through her limbs, Liz sprung upright again. Bouncing on the balls of her feet a little, feeling the heat on her face, she said, "Right, so bed, we were doing bed. Um, I need to fix my hair first."

Hermione blinked at her for a second, rather taken aback — but just for a second, before she realised where she'd been looking just a second ago. She was feeling a little bad about that, in retrospect. She hadn't meant to make Liz uncomfortable...

Liz was pretty seriously uncomfortable at the moment, if not in the way that Hermione was worried about. She would not be explaining that, though. I'm fine, let's just drop it, please.

Doing her best to act natural, as much as she could while puttering around in her room completely naked, with Hermione over there also completely naked, trying to ignore the tingly flush on her skin, her stomach fluttering and the vague warmth between her hips, her heart throbbing in her teeth and her fingertips and her– aagghhh... Anyway. Liz set her wand holster down on one of the bedside tables — the one that'd already been here, with her framed photos and beaded bracelets and things — untied her hair scarf and slipped it through a ring in the closet with the others. She got out her comb and the bottle of her hair stuff, plopped down onto the edge of the bed, facing the full-length mirror next to the closet — easier to do this stuff sitting down, and if she could see what the hell she was doing. Not that she really liked looking at herself in the mirror, but...

This might not make a lot of sense, but honestly seeing herself was less uncomfortable now that she was fully aware that being disfigured the way she was was certainly a temporary state of affairs. There was even a specific time limit — just a little less than three months now. It still sucked, she did still hate it, but she was fixing it, and soon. She still didn't enjoy having her fucked-up body shoved in her face, but it was rather less...grating than it used to get sometimes.

She flipped her hair around in front of her shoulder, tried to bring as much of it together as she could — which wasn't super easy, since her hair was big and impossible sometimes. The cap off the bottle, Liz moved to try to dribble a little bit onto her hair, but her hand felt unsteady. So she stopped, clenching the bottle in her hand, taking in slow, deep breaths, trying to calm down.

(If her hormones could shut the fuck up right about now, that'd be nice.)

"Liz? Something wrong?" Glancing over her shoulder, Hermione had already dealt with her hair while Liz had been uselessly stalling. Liz knew it was loosely plaited together and coiled up with charms, but most of it was actually hidden from view, wrapped up in a silky-looking cloth of some kind, a rusty orangish colour. Supposedly it was a strategy she'd pieced together based on advice from her Tunisian relatives, which made a kind of sense — Liz suspected Hermione's hair being the way it was was from the Algerian side of the family. You know, how super frizzy and big black people's hair could get? Daniel kept his hair too short to really tell, and while Emma's hair might be a bit curly it looked far more manageable than Hermione's, so, best guess. Or maybe Hermione's hair was just like that for some reason — it did seem to frizz up even more than normal when her aura got noisy — who the fuck knows.

But right, she'd asked Liz a question, pay attention. "Um...it's nothing, just— I'm still a little jittery, I'm going to make a mess..."

"Ah." A little flicker of guilt — leaving the room naked had been Hermione's idea, felt a little bad over how hard a time Liz had had with it — she said, a little tentatively, "I could help with your hair, if you like. As long as it's not anything too complicated."

...The uncertainty was because Hermione wasn't sure whether she had the skill to do whatever it was — she thought of Liz as far more into girly shite than she was herself, worried it might be something she didn't know how to do. Honestly, the thing Liz was more worried about was...something else. (She did remember how she'd reacted to Narcissa washing and styling her hair.) But she should get her hair done up properly, and she didn't want to make a mess trying it herself, so... She sighed. "It's not complicated, you just have to comb this stuff through it and then plait it."

"Right, I can do that much. Um..." Hermione glanced around the room, her mind ticking. "Let's do it like this." She went back over to the desk, picked up one of the chairs and carried it over to where Liz was still sitting on the bed, set it down a little to her side, facing the closet. "Here, you'll go here, and I'll sit on the bed — our heights should come out about right that way, I think."

"Okay, sure." Liz tipped down onto the carpet, stepped over in front of the chair and plopped down again — wincing a little, the chair had cooled off while they'd been doing other things. Her eyes went to the mirror, followed Hermione as she climbed onto the bed, shuffling on her knees around behind Liz, twisting around to sit with her legs crossed, her knees nudging the backs of Liz's arms a little, mind flicking louder and quieter. The edge of self-consciousness in there reminded Liz she was being a creep again, turned down to stare at her own knees instead.

"I should probably get any tangles out first. Do you have a brush for that, or can I just use the comb?"

Liz shook her head. "My hair doesn't get tangles."

"...Really?"

"Nope." She flicked her hair around behind her shoulder again — a finger in Hermione's mind, she vicariously felt it brush over Hermione's legs — held her comb back over her head. "Here, see for yourself. Go ahead and started from the front, you're not gonna catch on anything."

Simmering with clear scepticism, Hermione took the comb. She pulled Liz's hair more properly behind her shoulders first (Liz trying not to flinch at the occasional brush of fingers on her shoulders or neck), before reaching forward with the comb, gently angling in just behind Liz's hairline. She drew it back, slowly — fully expecting to catch on a knot before too long — but the comb smoothly carded through Liz's curly, zig-zagging hair, only a little bit of resistance now and then from friction, too many hairs trying to squeeze through the same gap. All the way from her hair line, leaning back and stretching her arm out to get down to the very ends, Hermione breathed, "Oh that's so cool." She took a second swipe through, just a touch faster and less carefully than the last, but the comb got all the way through the length of Liz's dense hair without catching on anything. "That's just— How? Did you treat this with something?"

"No, it's just like that. It's part of the magic on it, it resists tangling. I'll get a few if I've been flying, at least if I don't plait it first, but for the most part I hardly ever get any."

"...That's amazing. I'm so jealous, I can hardly even get a brush through my hair at all on bad days."

Liz scoffed. "Yeah, well, it's also fucking impossible to deal with — most hair care things, both muggle and magical, just plain don't work, it'll throw off glamours and even chemical dyes, it'll resist hairstyling charms enough that I have to plait it a few inches at a time, and it's so fucking stubborn it'll even unplait itself if I give it enough time. Oh, and it'll stay at the length that it wants, if I try to trim it it'll just grow back overnight. It's fucking frustrating, I'm getting rid of it in July." She had told Hermione about her scheduled blood alchemy procedure, one of only a couple of her friends who knew about it. British mages could be peculiar about that sort of thing, so.

"Oh well. Did you still have the bottle?"

"Right, sorry..."

Since she'd already been a little set off to begin with, Hermione doing her hair ended up being exactly as distracting as she'd suspected. Her mind slapping up against Liz's from little incidental touches was jarring, when Liz (rather awkwardly) asked if they could be touching all the time to prevent that, Hermione unfolded her legs, sitting with her calves dangling over the bed, so her knees could reach Liz's arms near the elbow. She couldn't see anything, even through the mirror, but knowing she was kind of sort of between Hermione's knees at the moment, even with the chair in the way, was a, er...a thought. She was trying to not think about Hermione's legs, or really Hermione's anything, just, staring straight ahead, keeping her head as blank as possible...

Hermione was tired, but trying to do it right, focussed, like she could get when working through an essay or learning a particularly difficult spell, her clicking and clacking clockwork mind narrowed in on a steady rhythm, glowing and simmering in the background warm affectionate feelings. She remembered how stiff and cold Liz used to be (and still kind of was sometimes), how badly she would (and still did) react to being touched, Hermione rather pleased that Liz was letting her do her hair at all, a touch smug, but also, er, Liz didn't know what that feeling was, exactly...

And Hermione playing with her hair was...kind of ticklish, but also just felt kind of nice? She wasn't even sure how, exactly. She'd started at the top, carefully combing the oil stuff in a few inches at a time, gradually working her way back, her hair shifting and turning, the gentle scratch of the comb against her scalp, Hermione's fingers occasionally brushing along her hairline or nudging her ears, the little tugs and folding of her hair weirdly pleasant, the subtle smooth pressure of the oil, her skin tingling, sort of reminding her of the first taste of really good chocolate, but different, obviously, the nice warm tingles were just sort of similar...

The feeling wasn't necessarily sexual, but Liz's reaction to it definitely was. The flush hot on her face spreading down her neck, her heart throbbing in her throat and her teeth and her fingertips. As Hermione worked her way down the back of her neck, Liz's head tipped forward a little, the occasional brush of fingers against her neck and shoulders, the sway of her hair tickling her back, her skin hot and tingling, flaring more intense with each incidental touch, Liz gritting her teeth and gripping onto the sides of the chair. Her breath harsh in her throat, but trying to keep it as smooth and level as she could (to hopefully not be obvious about it), heat coiling tense, fisting her toes against the carpet, eventually her pulse began to throb between her legs too, hot and tense and distracting, because of fucking course, she crossed her legs, locked tight at the knee, grimacing when, as more time passed, she noticed a tickle of damp heat start to weep through– fuck, fuck fuck fuck...

Liz did feel a little disgusted with herself — more than a little, honestly. Just, she wished her useless fucking body would just shut the fuck up, she didn't— Why did she have to be such a perverted bloody freak about this?! It was Hermione, and she was just doing her impossible hair, for fuck's sake, she couldn't...

The one bright side was that Hermione couldn't tell at all. Liz sure felt like she was being obvious about it, and Hermione did think she seemed a little tense but, well, that just happened sometimes, it didn't register to her as anything out of the ordinary — besides a sign that she shouldn't drag this out any longer than necessary, already finished applying the oil, the bottle set aside and moving on to dividing the (now smoother and straighter) mass of her hair into thirds with the edge of the comb.

Though, Hermione's obliviousness might not be a good thing, necessarily. The possibility that Liz could be having sexy thoughts about her at any given moment simply wasn't on Hermione's radar, not even in the slightest. Partly just because, yes, Liz was in the "friend" box in her head, but also she had a completely unreasonably negative self-image when it came to her appearance. (She liked her own intelligence, yes, and considered herself to be morally principled and generally correct about it, the negative feelings about herself were mostly limited to her body.) That someone might not think that Hermione was as plain and unappealing and fat as she thought she was simply didn't occur to her — much less that someone might actually like her, she'd been completely blindsided by Neville...

(Liz still suspected Hermione's exceptionally fit parents had given her a complex or something, how thoroughly negative her own impression of her looks was was still baffling.)

Not that Liz did like her, necessarily. She meant, not in a way that she had any intention of actually doing anything about — they were friends, and Liz was perfectly happy with keeping it that way. She was mostly okay at handling friendships these days, but if Daphne was any indication she might completely fuck up anything more than that. So, not only was it something that wasn't on her mind with Hermione in particular, even if the thought did occur to her she had negative motivation to do anything about it, didn't want to fuck it up.

The only change to their relationship Liz had in mind was the adoption, which would make them, like...cousins or something? So, yeah, negative interesting in dating Hermione, or anything like that.

But Hermione was also completely oblivious to people checking her out sometimes. Granted, that didn't happen super often — unless she happened to be wearing muggle denims at the time, her arse in those things was so distracting...

Negative interest in dating, yeah, but hormones were a bitch sometimes. She couldn't help the sexy thoughts, they just happened. About pretty much all of her girl friends, honestly, and she'd be lying if she claimed that she'd never had inappropriate thoughts about Hermione specifically before. Especially if she happened to be wearing denims at the time, Jesus...

Especially since she'd started helping her with this desensitisation thing — before she'd just been working on imagination, but now she saw Hermione naked all the time, didn't need to imagine it anymore. By this point, she could picture Hermione quite well.

And she had gotten off thinking about her, because of course she had. She almost always felt disgusted with herself immediately afterward — she usually did when she masturbated thinking about her friends, she wished she wasn't such a fucking perv, but she couldn't help it, hormones were such a bitch, it just happened...

It especially happened when her girl friends went out of their way to be nice to her. Like, for example, helping her with her whole learning-not-to-freak-out-about-being-undressed problem, even when it made her uncomfortable, and being all gentle and considerate about doing her hair.

She hated it, she wished she wasn't like this, but she really couldn't help it.

By the time Hermione was tying off the plait, Liz was a flushed, tense, twitchy mess, so distracted that it almost hurt. And Hermione was, of course, totally oblivious — once she was finished, she just let out a cheery little, "There! Done. Sorry that took so long, your hair's so dense."

Liz let out an affirmative wiggle of a hum, she cleared her throat. "Um. Thanks."

"Sure." That noise was definitely a yawn. "So. Bed?"

"...Yeah." She was kind of dreading trying to get to sleep, honestly, she did not expect that to go well. But first she had to get up, and get this chair back over to her desk — hopefully without giving away how humiliatingly turned on she was at the moment. (She had a nasty suspicion that there'd be a damp spot on the chair, she'd have to get it out of Hermione's line of sight quickly.) She was trying to force a few girding breaths, when at least a partial solution to the problem presented itself. "Um, okay for me to turn down the lights?"

"Yep. Ah, this is my side right?"

Liz glanced in the mirror — Hermione was gesturing at this side, opposite from the side table with Liz's things on it. "Mhmm." Her breathing not quite cooperating at the moment, it took two tries for her to get the enchantment key out, the lights tinting a deep red and dimming. Hardly enough light to properly illuminate anything, just a subtle, featureless red glow, outlining the furniture, enough to get around and little more.

It was the same setting Daphne had used when they'd decided to stop trying to sleep. The association had made Liz a bit uncomfortable at first, but after giving it more time the feeling had faded — this level of light really was convenient, so.

Of course, Liz's stupidly pale skin almost seemed to faintly glow red in this light, but it wasn't enough for Hermione to actually make out any, er, incriminating details, so that was fine. She pushed up to her feet — knees a little shaky, it took a second for her to find her balance — dragged the chair back over to the desk. Just in case, she hit the seat with a drying charm...and then aimed a second one between her legs, why not.

She cringed, clinging onto the back of the chair, barely strangled a gasp in her throat — that would be why not, fuck that was cold...

By the time she'd mostly settled herself again, Hermione was already in bed. So Liz should, just, do that. She padded over toward her side of the bed, trying not to feel too self-conscious — she did feel Hermione's attention brush over her at some point, vague and unfocussed, the light too dim for her to make out much. Standing turned at a somewhat awkward angle, to not face Hermione straight-on, she folded the corner of the covers down and sat, the sheet smooth and soft and cool and pleasantly tingly on her skin. Turning and slipping in under the covers, the soft tingles spreading wherever she was touching the sheets, just, vaguely nice.

Liz had asked Nilanse to talk to the Hogwarts elves about dealing with Seer stuff, but she'd only wanted to arrange food, specifically — Nilanse had brought up other issues with them on her own initiative. Turned out, the elves actually kept a small collection of psychometrically-neutral bed things for students or staff who needed them. (Trelawney and Miss Stacey used them, and apparently there were a few other students too, but Nilanse said who was private information the elves wouldn't share with outsiders.) They didn't put them on all the beds by default, because they were more expensive to make...and also they could only be used for one person ever, since some Seers woul be bothered by used ones, they had to be kept separate from the other bedsheets and donated out after the Seer left (or sometimes handed over to them at the end of their time here). If Liz had simply mentioned that the default bedding bothered her, she could have gotten the special Seer ones at any time — but of course she hadn't realised that was an option, so.

The default bedding hadn't really bothered her, at least not that she'd consciously noticed. But Tamsyn did have a point about subtle, subconscious cues maybe building up enough to trigger nightmares — or at least just be exhausting, making normal daily stuff more difficult — so she still appreciated Nilanse thinking of it when Liz hadn't. And she was sleeping better since she'd started trying to avoid bad echoes, but she'd kind of done everything at once, so it was hard to say if changing the bedding specifically had made any difference. It was comfortable, though, so whatever.

(A lot of Seer-friendly stuff felt more physically comfortable, even ignoring the explicit psychometric stuff. She wasn't sure whether they were actually more comfortable, or if her brain was getting her wires crossed and they were really just more psychometrically pleasant, it was honestly impossible to tell.)

Of course, as nice as the sheets were, actually lying here was still very uncomfortable. Liz had shared her bed with Hermione before, when a few of them had decided to camp out in her room for a few days, back at the end of term last year — so she had been aware that it might, er... Well, it was sort of cramped. The beds in the Slytherin dorms were plenty roomy for one person (especially when that one person was as tiny as Liz), but they weren't really meant for two people. Even laying as close to the edge as she could, an elbow and a foot all but falling off, it wasn't possible to avoid touching Hermione at all. At least not in a position that would be at all comfortable to actually fall asleep in? She normally slept face-down, and Liz guessed she could probably manage to avoid touching Hermione completely if she was halfway over the edge, with one arm and a leg hanging over, but she wouldn't be able to sleep like that...

There were two problems with touching Hermione. One was that the occasional touch, coming in and out of contact as one or the other of them shifted in place a little, had Hermione's mind slamming against hers intermittently, over and over, which was, just, jarring. On those previous nights, Liz had solved that problem by, just, positioning herself so she and Hermione were barely touching — which made Hermione's mind loud, yes, but since she'd also been drifting off to sleep that hadn't been a problem.

But that wasn't an option tonight. That time, she'd used a small dose of calming potion to help her sleep, but she wasn't supposed to do that while working on her desensitisation stuff — it might help in the short term, but she didn't want to be reliant on the stuff to do this kind of thing in the long term. Also, under the circumstances at the time, Liz getting distracted hadn't been nearly as much of an issue.

When she'd been planning this step, Liz had been more worried that she'd be feeling too exposed and anxious to possibly relax enough to get to sleep. The possibility that she might get distractingly turned on had come to mind, but she'd thought it a lesser risk — while inconvenient (and terribly embarrassing) horniness did happen while doing this desensitisation stuff with Hermione, it was less common than, just, being a neurotic mess, so.

The familiar edge of fear — learned from her childhood, she knew, liable to present itself whenever she felt vulnerable, that Vernon might burst in at any time and drag her away to the sofa — wasn't even really there at all. She was a bit nervous, little snaps of tension through her limbs or along her spine, stomach and throat tight and her head sparking, but that wasn't why.

Honestly, the second problem was that Liz was very distracted.

Hermione was right there. She could feel her mind, sure, but she could also feel the weight on the mattress, the warmth of her body, could hear the soft rasp of her breath.

And Liz knew she was naked. Most of the incidental touches were places that might not be covered by bedclothes anyway, the occasional nudge of an arm or a leg, but she didn't need to feel it, she knew it. That thought was, just, sizzling away in her head, completely impossible to ignore.

Hermione was in her bed, naked, right there — without really meaning to, her brain running away from her, Liz found herself trying to figure out what position she was lying in, images flickering through her head, not just of her best friend's naked body, which would be bad enough, but it was worse than that, because Liz just had to be such a fucking creepy pervert sometimes, imagined flashes of Hermione's arms around her waist, Liz's face at her breasts, Hermion'e teeth nibbling at her neck, feeling hot and flushed and twitching, her skin tingling and crawling, Hermione's fingernails on her back and thigh between her legs, he heart pounding in her teeth and her fingertips and—

Fuck.

Just, fuck.

"This isn't going to work."

It took a moment for Hermione to respond, sleepy and unfocused. (She was having much better success at relaxing than Liz was, naturally.) Her voice a grumble, "Why not?"

...No way could Liz give the I'm a horny bitch and having very pervy thoughts about you right now explanation. Conveniently, she had a far more innocent one she could use. "Your mind keeps going quiet-loud-quiet on me, it's really jarring."

At first, Hermione considered suggesting they just get closer together, to prevent going on and off, but she realised Liz wouldn't be comfortable with that — she wasn't confident she would be herself either. After a few seconds she asked, "Is the blanket enough insulation? I don't think I need it at all, it's warm enough in here."

Liz was slightly confused, not sure what Hermione was thinking...but of course she was a mind mage, it only took a glance to figure it out. "Um. We can try that, I guess." It wouldn't solve the second problem, but it was worth giving it a shot, at least.

The mechanics of what Hermione was suggesting were somewhat awkward: she was thinking they cold fold the sheet and the blanket over to, kind of, sandwich the two of them, separately, so they'd have a couple layers of fabric between them. Of course, for best effect that meant getting the things under them, which meant they had to get up. Liz grit her teeth as moving to sit up had things moving, she could feel things slipping against other things. Her hand reflexively went to the wet heat between her legs — not to do anything, the same impulse that had her getting blood all over her fingers when she first got her period...so of course this time she got fluids on her fingers, oops. She took a quick surreptitious glance at Hermione, but she hadn't noticed, quick dried them off with a flick of her wrist, and moved to (a little shakily) stand up, things throbbing and tingling, uuggghhh...

Liz pulled the blanket her way, and Hermione pulled the sheet her way, after a little finangling they had them laid over the bottom sheet, the other half bunched up in the middle of the bed. She laid back down again, and pulled the blanket back over, wrapped around on all sides. The fabric was a bit fuzzier than the sheets, but not unpleasantly so, and still Seer-friendly. And very warm, cocooned in it, this should be perfectly comfortable to sleep in.

Theoretically.

Because, while this did solve the first problem — Hermione's mind did get a little louder when they nudged each other now, but it was pretty subtle, the layers of fabric providing enough resistance to prevent Liz's mind from so easily spreading into her aura — it did fuck all about the second problem.

Hermione was still in her bed, completely naked, right there. And Liz's brain wouldn't shut up about it, and she was still far too keyed up, hot and twitchy and tense and ugh.

Maybe this would have been doable if Liz hadn't already been set off. And it wasn't getting better.

In fact, it was only getting worse, feeling Hermione there, hearing her, her whole body tense and spanging with— She pressed her face against her pillow, gritting her teeth and squeezing her legs together, feeling damp heat spread over the top of her thighs, her heart pounding and...

This was not going to work.

Liz did try. Doing her best to not think about Hermione or have any pervy thoughts — and failing, badly — focussing on her breathing, as slow and level as she could manage, trying to cool off. Trying lying this way or that, looking for some position that was comfortable enough, and didn't get too much against Hermione, and avoided putting as much pressure on things as possible. It didn't really work, Liz flushed and tense, gritting her teeth each time she moved, sharp hot tingles throbbing through her middle, ugh...

She was not going to be able to get to sleep, once she got this keyed up she could never fucking stop. Like, this was the level of distractingly horny that she couldn't pay attention to class anymore, had to sneak off to take care of it — or, at night, get off before actually making it to sleep. But of course that wasn't an option right now, with Hermione right over there. She mostly wasn't aware of it in the moment, but she knew from Daphne's mind that one time — and also watching herself in the pensieve, out of curiosity — that there would be noises, and that would be, just, intensely fucking humiliating...

But there was no way she was getting to sleep like this, body flushed and practically aching from tension, her head all but sizzling. It simply wasn't going to work.

Also, she was definitely leaking on the blanket — that was gross, she was going to have to send this off to be washed in the morning...

"Liz." She twitched at Hermione's voice, not expecting it, a little guilty squirm sweeping through her. (She had just been having pervy thoughts, couldn't fucking stop.) "You keep moving."

Trying to find a comfortable position was keeping Hermione up, naturally. She cleared her throat, took a breath, to make sure her voice would sound level and normal. "Sorry. Just, this isn't working."

Hermione didn't respond right away, her mind sleepily ticking along. "Okay. Would putting something on help?" Giving up on the naked part of the sleeping together thing, she meant. It was late, she didn't want to have to go all the way back up to Gryffindor unless it turned out to be truly necessary — getting up and walking up there would just wake her up again, it'd take ages to get to sleep. She did have class in the morning, so.

"...At this point, probably not."

There was a flicker of confusion, a faint rustle of cloth — she felt the vague brush of Hermione's attention on the back of her head, turned to look her way. "What do you mean? Is something wrong?" She was suddenly worried Liz had been lying here struggling with PTSD-related shite for however long, and she hadn't even noticed, and...

Liz grit her teeth, frustration burning in her throat. She'd already been rather irritated with herself, sure, but— She did not want to tell Hermione the truth about this...but she also didn't want Hermione to feel guilty about Liz freaking out right next to her and not doing anything about it, not even noticing. Because, Hermione was more explicitly aware of her issues than most people, since she'd been pulled into Liz's nightmares — more than once, even — and Liz had been forced to explain it to stop Hermione from jumping to worse conclusions, and of course whatever observations she'd made while doing the desensitisation thing...

Hermione thought Liz was having a Vernon moment over here, and that it was at least partially her fault. When really it's just that Liz was a fucking creep and couldn't keep her thoughts to herself, was working herself up having completely inappropriate thoughts about Hermione, which she did not want to admit, she didn't want to ruin it, but she also didn't want Hermione to feel guilty over nothing, especially when she was always going out of her way to try to be good about it, that would be shitty to just let happen, but she didn't want to creep Hermione out, she might not...

Oh, this was a terrible idea.

Hissed through clenched teeth, nerves crackling (bad idea, bad idea, bad idea), Liz whispered, "Fucking distracting."

"What?" She hadn't heard it.

"I said it's fucking distracting!" Liz let out a groan, tipping over onto her back — her arm falling kind of halfway on top of Hermione's, shuffled to the side. Gesturing around them, pointing at Hermione and her own head in turn, despite it probably being too dark in here for Hermione to make it out, she snapped, "My bed. Naked girl. Overactive fucking imagination, apparently! I'm sorry, I'm trying not to, but I can– fuck..." she groaned, rubbing at her face with both hands.

To her surprise and relief, Hermione's didn't come over all disturbed about it. Though, her initial reaction was frustrating enough on its own: confusion. For a few seconds, she just laid there, silent in the dark, her attention vague around Liz's head, mind clicking in a jerking, uneven rhythm. "...Really?"

"Yes, really. Sorry." She thought that was worth saying again, despite Hermione not seeming offended (yet), why did she have to be such a fucking perv...

It took a bit for Hermione to find her voice again, Liz taking the pause to try to calm down, swallowing down the tight heat bubbling up her throat, breathing. Tentatively, Hermione started, "I didn't know you, er..."

Liz let out a sigh. "I don't mean anything by it, I'm not trying to scheme my way into your pants or anything, but, well, I do have eyes."

The response to that comment was, of fucking course, dubious confusion.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Liz groaned, letting her arms flop back against the bed. "Honestly, Hermione, your self-image is so absurdly unrealistically awful, it's frustrating sometimes. I get that you don't feel people's attention on you like I do, but I catch people checking you out all the time, I have no idea how you can not notice." Which honestly didn't mean much, she hardly knew what existing moment to moment was like for normal people...

"Er..."

"That's not weird," responding to an unvoiced thought, "it's perfectly sensible. Your tits are really, you know, eye-catching, and have you seen your arse in denims, Jesus. I try not to walk behind you when you're wearing those, because I will stare, and I try not to be a fucking creepy pervert about my friends, but it's fucking impossible sometimes, honestly..."

At this point, now that Liz had actually mentioned specifics, and sounded more frustrated and nervous than anything, Hermione did believe her. But, surprisingly, still not creeped out. She was feeling something, shivering and sparking in the air around them and reverberating back through Liz, but...

"Flattered" wasn't the right word.

There was a bit of a thrill to it, subtle at first but quickly growing deeper as the realisation that Liz was being completely serious clicked into place, warm and thick and sparkling and...

Hermione generally didn't think of herself as attractive, at all — it just wasn't a thing that was on her mind. It helped that she still didn't think she'd ever really felt that way about anyone, so it was a foreign experience to her, something she didn't quite understand in other people. Even after her doomed attempt at dating Neville, that hadn't actually made much of a difference. Neville was, you know, Neville, he hadn't exactly been very verbal about this sort of thing. Partially out of nervousness, yes, but also Hermione suspected there was a bit of courtly manners to it, that there were scripts for what a proper young lord was supposed to say to a woman, when Neville did try it almost struck Hermione as something out of some silly period drama, always very superficial and difficult to take seriously...

She did know Liz was a lesbian, of course, but the thought that Liz might be attracted to her was, just, something she'd never thought about. If she had had occasion to think about it, she guessed she might have dismissed it, assumed that...that Liz was out of her league, so to speak. Hermione thought of Liz as much prettier than her — which was absurd, but not really news — and, well, her one previous girlfriend was Daphne, and she could tell Liz liked, say, Susan, and Katie Bell, and some older women, like Cassie Lovegood and Miss Eva and the Irish chasers — well fuck, Liz hadn't realised Hermione had completely read her like that, all of those were spot on — she would have assumed she was, just, really not Liz's type.

(Liz would actually say Hermione and Daphne were pretty similar in a lot of ways, physically — their faces and hair were different, Hermione a bit thicker, other than that — but she wasn't going to interject, that would be awkward.)

But she hadn't thought about it, it'd never really occurred to her as a possibility. The realisation that Liz had been laying over there, kept from sleep distracted imagining her, getting herself worked up, was intensely...something.

Liz didn't know what to call that feeling, and neither did Hermione.

It was definitely sexual, though. Not attraction, no — Liz was pretty sure Hermione didn't and never would like her like that — but something, a shivering thrill warm and thick and tingly, and...

Hermione's mind retreated somewhat, turning back in on herself to go over the complicated messy series of realisations and thoughts and feelings she'd just had. Blinking at the vague shape of her head in the dim bloody light, Liz was intensely curious, barely managed to stop herself from intruding, just...

That was a weird reaction, that was all. Liz had expected to creep Hermione the fuck out, for her to...she didn't know, not want to do this anymore. (Maybe not even want to be friends at all, like what happened with Dorea — and that'd just been finding out she was gay in general, not even about her — but she'd been trying not to think about that, Hermione was different.) And she didn't know what this feeling was, exactly, it was interesting — but she felt like she was already on thin ice, didn't want to...

She felt the pressure building, the constant clockwork activity of her mind drawn more in sync, louder and more focussed — considering saying something, but not sure she should, nerves squirming in her stomach and anticipation tingling in her throat. The pressure easing, a little, as her mind relaxed beginning to reveal a subtle warm pulsing glow, she muttered, "You can take care of that, if you want."

"Take care of what?"

"It helps for me, sometimes. To sleep."

"...What?" She couldn't mean...

But that was a stupid question, Liz was in her head — she definitely did mean.

Feeling her own voice waver, not sure what that was, she asked, "Are you being serious right now?"

"Mhmm. It's fine, I don't mind." There was a discordant wiggle from Hermione's mind, a partial lie.

To Hermione, saying I don't mind would suggest she had no particular feelings about it one way or another. If she'd said it wouldn't bother me, that would be the truth — but she did mind...just not in a negative way. Still thick with that thrill from before, whatever the proper word for that feeling was, feeling all warm and squirmy and tingly, Liz's rambling from a moment ago still ringing in her ears..

The thought of Liz getting off to completely uncontrollable, impulsive sexy thoughts about her was gratifying, she felt good about it.

And she was intensely curious too, the way Hermione could get about new things, anticipation sparking around her. She realised it was a rather odd thing to do, wondered what her reaction to all this said about her — she suspected it was nothing good, honestly — but she didn't let that bother her too much just now, letting herself get carried away, buoyed on by that weird warm thrill. (Definitely a sexual feeling, even if Liz didn't know what to call it.) The thought of Liz touching herself thinking about her was gratifying, yes, but, thinking about Liz doing it now, right here, was fascinating, her mind all thick and hot and sharp with...

She wasn't just okay with Liz doing it — she wanted her to.

"Um..." What the fuck was happening, honestly, she... Her skin crawling and her heart pounding in her throat, she was actually a little lightheaded, she...

Liz was deep enough in Hermione's mind, just, baffled, she really couldn't believe that Hermione was serious about this, but at the same time she could see it, her strong mechanical mind turning in unison, she was completely serious, it— She was deep enough in, following her thoughts, out of confusion and disbelief more than anything else, one of Hermione's hands was resting on her hip, pressure had been building in her mind ever since she'd temporarily turned inward a moment ago, taught with tension, nerves crackling alongside the tingly hot thrill coursing through her, warring between hesitation and fascination and curiosity and embarrassment and excitement—

Deep enough in her mind, Liz caught the precise moment that Hermione's fingers reached over to start lightly tracing along her labia.

Liz's hair abruptly stood on end, a sharp thrill jolting through her, she snapped up to a seat. (Even as thrown as she was, she still noted that Hermione used the proper term in her own head, which was weirdly funny.) She turned to stare down at Hermione, only the vaguest impression of her face visible in the red-tinted shadows. Her mouth opened, as though about to say something, but nothing came out, eyes wide and...

Hermione was a little embarrassed — she couldn't see Liz very well, but she could tell she was looking at her — but she shoved it out of mind, closing her eyes and letting her head tilt to the side, away from Liz.

She was just going to...seriously? Liz didn't— What was even happening, what the fuck...

Her mind pulsing warm and tingly, focussing, there was a sharp thrill, a sympathetic shiver carried through Liz, only making the heat in her middle burn hotter, her heart pounding and her limbs tensing, her breath catching in her throat. There was a curious flicker in Hermione's head, attention brushing over Liz as she looked back her way. "You could feel that?"

"...Yeah."

Fascinated, an odd giddy glee bubbling in her head, for a second Liz thought she would giggle aloud — instead she circled her fingers up again, pressing in close around her clit, colourful sparks skittering through her aura, a sympathetic shiver slithering through Liz, flushed skin crawling and her pulse throbbing, she pressed her knees together, biting her lip...

Her breath thick and hot in her throat, her pulse throbbing insistently in her ears and and her teeth and between her legs, she...

Liz swallowed, her throat tense, squirming lust and crackling anxiety mixed up, it took her a couple tries to find her voice. "Um. Are... Is this really okay?"

Hermione's voice came out kind of breathless, but still audible. "Yes."

"...Are you sure?" It didn't seem like it should be okay, she...she didn't want this to be a big problem tomorrow, and for them to...

Another sympathetic shiver echoing through her, Hermione didn't really answer — instead she let out a thin, breathy sigh, Liz's legs and fingers twitching at the sparks and shivers ringing off of her. There was a rustle of fabric, Hermione's legs shifting against the bed, aura pulsing warm and heavy and soft against her, undifferentiated pleasure again rocking through her, and then again a second later, Hermione humming, colourful sparks behind her eyes, and—

She was really— Just, Liz sitting right here, listening to her, and she didn't—

She wanted her to—

Fuck it.

Liz's hand snapped over to the side table, fingers finding her wand — lurching around onto her knees, she duplicated her pillow.

---

Hermione, you're confusing poor Liz — and also the readers, probably. Stop that.

Anyway, Seventh Task next, bye.