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)

135. Fifth Year — Foundling III

Are you there?

Severus is hurt, I'm at the hospital. Saint Mungo's, I mean. I guess that should be obvious, I don't think they have any other hospitals on the magical side. It was a Death Eater thing, but he'll be all right, the healers just finished up a little bit ago. He was moved to their like recovery wing thing, but he hasn't woken up yet. They say it might be a couple days. We're allowed to wait in there where he is, but I didn't want to, so I'm out in the lobby. It smells too antiseptic in there, makes me think of bad things.

I guess you're busy. I'll talk to you later. I should be able to do the trip for the exam and stuff, I might just be a little distracted while we're there.

፠

Are you there? Katie isn't answering, and I could use a distraction. I don't think I like hospitals much.

You're in hospital? What happened?

I'm fine, Severus was hurt. He tried to talk some of his Death Eater friends out of following him, and nearly got himself killed for it like a fucking idiot.

That does sound like he maybe didn't think it through very well, but I don't think he can be blamed for trying to get his friends out of danger.

I guess. I'm still a little annoyed, when I think about it.

I can't really blame you for that, either. How badly was he hurt? Is he going to be okay?

I don't really remember the details, but the healers say he'll make it. His left leg is pretty badly fucked up though — they think he'll need a cane to walk. That's actually best case, they won't know for sure until he wakes up and they see how bad it is.

Oh, Liz. I'm sorry, I don't know what to say.

You don't have to say anything about that. I'd actually rather not think about it if I can help it. I had Nilanse bring my notebooks because I don't have anything to keep myself occupied over here, and I was looking for a distraction.

I would come over to keep you company, but I don't know if I can manage that. We're in Orléans right now, visiting and introducing Rachael to everyone.

I thought travel with babies was dangerous.

Magical travel can be risky, and you're not supposed to do intercontinental plane flights because of the radiation. We took a train, through the Channel Tunnel, which is perfectly fine.

There's a tunnel under the Channel now?

There is, it opened just last year. It's the second largest rail tunnel in the world, after the Seikan Tunnel in Japan, though the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel is actually longer by over ten kilometres. I was honestly expecting the passage to be more exciting than it was, which is silly in retrospect — it's no different than any other tunnel, only longer.

Sounds like someone did a little bit of reading up on rail tunnels.

You know how can get about things sometimes, I couldn't help myself. Right now my head is swirling with facts about the engineering of tunnels and bridges, most of which I will likely forget about by the time we return to Hogwarts. Though, speaking of the Channel crossing, I'm a little surprised these notebooks are working. I brought it with me just in case, but I honestly expected the sea barrier to interfere with the enchantments.

They worked just fine with me in Ireland and you in Britain, but I guess that's a smaller distance. And why would it matter, anyway? I assume they're connected through ambient magic, so they should work literally anywhere on earth, right?

Yes, the information should be conducted across ambient magic, but in order for that to work the environment must be continuous. Salt water breaks the flow of magic over land — there are a lot of magics that don't work across open sea.

Right, I think I read something about that somewhere. I guess I didn't think about it. They can get the floo to work across the Channel though, so maybe it's not a big deal.

I guess. I wonder if these would work if we took a trip to the Americas again, or somewhere in the Pacific.

Is that bit between Russia and I forgot what that part of America is called. How wide is that, exactly, maps never show it right.

I think the name you're looking for is Alaska. The Bering Strait is a little less than twice the width of the Channel at the narrowest point, if I'm remembering correctly. I'd think that should be wide enough to interrupt most magic, but I didn't expect these notebooks to be able to communicate across the Channel, so I guess I can't say. I don't know when we might next visit somewhere in the Americas, but we should remember to test it if and when we do.

It's possible I'll get to the Americas before you. I was thinking of going into professional duelling after school, so I'll be travelling around a bit.

I thought the ICW was only Europe.

It is, but there are other international duelling organisations, and if you're a member in one you can participate in events in any of the others. There are rules about travel and how career ranking translates between them, it's complicated, but the point is that they all work together. Though depending on how things go I might not finish proficiencies until a year or two after you're finished at Hogwarts, so maybe not, we'll have to see how that goes. Your family travels a lot, but with the baby I kind of assumed you wouldn't be going that far for a while.

Maybe not, it'll be easier to go to places we can get to by train. I remember my first time on a plane, when I was five or six, so it might be a while before we get back to the Americas. I don't suppose you'd mind if I tag along sometimes when you're travelling for duelling? It would be fascinating to see more of the magical world.

Sure, that could be fun. But like I said, there are rules about travel and stuff, and it can be complicated to go outside of the ICW. Maybe me being a fucking lady of the Wizengamot or whatever will make it easier, or

Actually no, when I think about it, if we do go through the adoption then you'd be nobility by then too, which would help with a lot of the red tape or whatever. Though maybe that stuff only applies in the ICW? I don't know, international stuff is super complicated in the magical world, we'd have to see.

Hermione?

Sorry, Aimée was distracting me. Since we all know each other know about magic now we've been catching up on some things — we're going out to a magical town to wander around for a bit and eventually get dinner. We're leaving in an hour or so.

Okay. Where?

Troyes. I'm told there are some monuments and museums and the like I might find interesting. All of us, really, as it's not as though my interest in that sort of thing came out of nowhere.

I've been to Troyes, actually, my blood alchemist is there, and I went to

Liz?

Sorry, I was second-guessing if I wanted to tell you about it. When Severus was bringing me there for the meeting with the blood alchemist, I noticed there was like a lesbian social club or whatever? I'm not sure what the right word is. They have a library, and they have meetings where people just hang out, and they do political work and stuff. So, yeah, I checked it out a couple days after we got out of school.

That sounds like it might be nice. How did it go?

It was fine. I borrowed a few books from the library, history stuff mostly, and there was some women meeting for like a weekly card game?

That's good. I do think sometimes, well, maybe I'm being a little nosey, but I know how difficult you can find dealing with some things sometimes, and magical Britain might actually be somewhat worse than the muggle side when it comes to the visibility of gay people. The culture is less homophobic, though, so maybe it balances out, but I don't know if you even know any adult lesbians.

There's Deirdre and Emily, I guess. Narcissa's gay, but I'm not talking to her anymore, since she publicly kicked D⁊E under the lorry like that.

Malfoy is part of the problem — there's a culture in magical Britain of simply not talking about it in public, which even I find grating, and I'm still not certain how much that would truly affect me personally.

I'm still pretty sure you're straight.

You are? Even given everything?

Yeah. I can show you what sexual attraction actually feels like, next time we meet in person. With mind magic, I mean.

That might be helpful, let's do that. Honestly sometimes I envy your mind magic, but then I remember how unhelpful you say it actually is and come back to earth. But before I forget, you said that those women have a weekly card game? Were you planning on going back?

I don't know. I wasn't necessarily planning on it, but I have a feeling I'm going to, some of them felt kind of familiar. Seer instinct, I think.

Well, you don't have to go if you don't want to. Did you enjoy yourself?

I guess. They were nice enough, and did you know other countries have labels on the packaging that says if it's safe for seers? More common in more communalist-adjacent countries, that's not just Britain sucking, and France is very communalist. Honestly, there was political shite everywhere, posters on the walls and meetings going on and whatever the fuck. You'll probably love it.

That's good to know. I have been curious, but it's so difficult to get good political information in Britain — the history and politics sections in the bookstores here are awful.

I have some owl order catalogues for stuff on the continent, they have better options, they even reprint a bunch of muggle stuff? That's where I got some of mine, like Lenin and Fanon and shite. Remind me and I'll bring them next time I come over. Or I guess you could spend all your time in Troyes in bookstores? I'd say you'd be boring your family, but your parents would probably be just as into it and your French relatives must be used to you nerds by now.

Ha ha, very funny. But as I was saying, I'm glad you had a good time there. I think it'd be good for you to get to know more gay people, who aren't going to follow their social programming and obediently go into straight marriages anyway, if you know what I mean. I'm not going to try to pressure you to go back the next time their card game comes up, I'm only saying.

Yeah. I have to go back at least once to return the books I borrowed anyway. I wasn't planning on going regularly, but some of the women there did feel familiar. Especially Sperantsa, I think we might actually date in the future?

Wait, really? You can tell?

Sometimes, it's not super consistent, and I can't always tell what the feeling means. I couldn't tell with Daphne or Katie right away, but I wasn't as aware of seer shite back then? Once I was better at picking up those things I could tell Katie was going to happen. And I've gotten flashes of some woman I haven't met yet who I'm going to have a long-term thing with. I mean, years, maybe decades even, we're going to live together and everything. I don't know much about her though, I think we're going to meet during the Gaels' war for independence? I'm not sure.

So there is going to be a war.

Definitely, I'm pretty sure the Gaels are going to split off and everything. I think the future serious girlfriend I saw is in Saoirse, I saw her in their militia uniform, but I don't know much besides that. And the feeling from Sperantsa was vague enough I didn't put it together until later, when I picked up the drawing she gave me.

She gave you a drawing? A drawing of what?

Me. She was making it while we were playing, I could feel her looking at me but I didn't realise why until later. Apparently she's an art student, her parents wanted her to continue on through proficiencies and do something more useful, but instead she ran away from home and everything. I think she's technically a ward of the state at the moment? It's complicated. But anyway, she felt familiar at the time, but I didn't put it together, and then a couple days later I picked up the drawing to put it away somewhere and I flashed to picking up a partway done painting of me. A naked painting, actually, which was a little weird, but it was after my blood alchemy stuff, so whatever. Sperantsa wasn't in the flash, but there were feelings with it, and I'm pretty sure we're dating at the time. The time that that flash is from, I mean.

Well that's exciting! I can't imagine what that would be like, getting little flashes of the future like that, I would be so desperately curious.

Mostly they're not very useful, they don't tell me much. Like I have no idea when this is, when me and Sperantsa end up happening. After Katie, obviously.

I'm sorry it's not going to work out with Katie, by the way. I thought it when you mentioned your far-future girlfriend, but you were still writing.

I'm not? It's not like I expect any of my relationships as a bloody teenager to last forever. And I already know me and Katie wouldn't work forever anyway, she really wants to have a family someday and I don't. It will last as long as it lasts, and that's fine.

I suppose that's a healthy perspective to have — it seems far too many people get overly invested in things, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, people can be silly about these things. Daphne actually had weird fantasies about us being together forever, actually, despite knowing it wasn't really possible, since she plans to get married for political reasons and stuff. It was always really weird to see it in her head, but honestly, I wonder how much this is Liz is broken stuff? It's hard to imagine life that far into the future.

It's not necessarily Liz is broken stuff. (I still don't like talking about it like that, you know.) I suppose that might contribute, but there are perfectly mundane reasons to have difficulty imagining what one might be doing in adulthood — I have the same problem, really. I think it might be interesting to get into healing, or perhaps spell-crafting, or maybe even politics, but I find too many things fascinating and I have such a fuzzy picture of what comes after school in the magical world that it's difficult to get a firm picture in my head. Not to mention the social elements, I have no idea what my relationships are going to look like. After Neville, I'm somewhat leery of the thought of trying dating again, if I'm being honest.

You'll be fine. I was crystal-gazing once, after the first time we did a sex thing, and I was trying to figure out if I'd messed our friendship up, you know? But I saw your first child, shortly after they were born, with your husband.

Really?! Tell me everything!

No.

Lizzzz

I didn't see much, and it's kind of fuzzy after a few months. And besides, the future isn't set — I have no idea if I'll fuck with it by telling you the wrong thing. I'm just trying to be reassuring, you know, saying that I know you'll figure it out. Dating, I mean.

Fine. I guess that's thoughtful of you, but I'm so curious now. Is that why you know I'm straight?

No, I figured that out on my own before then. I'll show you later, with feelings stuff.

Right, of course. So I guess you know Sperantsa isn't going to work out either, then. Sperança?

I don't know how you spell it. I think her family are Romanian?

Probably Speranţa, then.

Sure. And yeah, I don't know, the future-hints I got for Speranţa are weird, I'm not sure how to read them. But we could be together for a while, the timing with future long-term girlfriend is out a bit. She's several years older than me, I'm not sure how many exactly, but from the feel of it I'm pretty sure I'm well out of school by then. Though we meet earlier than that, probably only a year or two from now, we don't get together until later.

I suppose that makes sense. This is all so fascinating, you don't talk about the things you See very often.

I can try to put everything I know on a rough timeline, if you want. Honestly that might be a good thing for me to do, just to keep everything straight, you know.

I would love that. Though I'm certain I'll be compelled to pick your brain about different things, to try to work out more of what they mean.

I'm definitely leaving out anything directly to do with you then.

When did you get all responsible all of a sudden?

When I started giving a damn. You look happy in most of my future flashes I've gotten, I don't want to break it.

Of course then you have to give me a justification I can't rightly argue with. As very frustrating as I find only getting part of an answer, I love you too, Liz.

Sorry.

It's fine, it isn't as though I mind having a puzzle to chew over when I have nothing better to think about.

Honestly I think I got used to only knowing little bits very quickly, once my seer stuff started being more conscious. And the future is fuzzy, you know, it's not even guaranteed to happen, so I mostly don't let it bother me too much. Mostly, anyway.

Would drive me mad, I think.

I'm sorry, Liz, I have to go soon.

That's okay, thanks for distracting me for a while. I was thinking of getting something to eat anyway.

If you're not feeling well and you badly want someone to talk to, I don't mind if you write me, even if it's in the middle of the night. I'm going to put my notebook under my pillow so I can feel it if it goes off.

You really don't have to do that.

I want to. I know this must be difficult for you, and if I can't be there to help make it easier in person at least I can be available from a distance. I mean it, Liz, don't hesitate. It's the summer, if I have to sneak a nap during the day to catch up on my sleep it isn't a big deal.

Okay. Thanks.

Of course, talk to you soon.

Have fun.

I do appreciate you – you know. I don't know how to say it. Trying? I know I'm not great at expressing this stuff. Feelings are hard, and talking about them even more so. Our friendship means a lot to me, but I don't really know how to communicate that, or when, or anything, because I'm very bad at this sort of thing, and I always end up second guessing myself and just sputtering out and the moment moves on before I can figure it out. I love you too, I guess is what I'm saying.

And now I kind of want to vanish all that, so I'm going to put my notebook away before I give in to my silly neurotic whatever the fuck. Feelings, honestly Hermione, I have no idea what I'm doing.

I think you're doing just fine, for the record.

Oh shite, I thought you were gone.

We're leaving, I just checked the notebook on my way out. Good luck with Snape, remember to write to me if you need someone to talk to.

Yes, I'll try. Go away now, please.

፠

Liz had been sitting in a corner of the lobby for she didn't know how long, reading while hidden under attention-deflecting spells. After talking about it a little bit, Síomha had agreed that she could hide herself, to avoid getting stared at by the other people in the lobby, as long as she took them down when Síomha was coming to get her for something. It was sort of hard to miss Síomha's magic, even when she was distracted reading, so that wasn't hard to do.

With all the things that were going on lately, she'd kind of forgotten about the books she'd gotten at the library in Troyes — she'd been partway through the one on the women's groups in the French Revolution when Severus had been injured, it'd totally slipped her mind until Hermione mentioned visiting the same town. She kind of didn't want to bring that out in public, though she couldn't quite put her finger on exactly why, so she'd asked Nilanse to bring her the one on the Austrian Revolution instead, to help keep herself occupied. It'd been a couple days now, and Liz was still messed up about Severus, but she'd calmed down enough by now that she could...sort of successfully focus on reading. Enough to take it in, anyway, though her progress was still pretty slow.

It helped that Severus had actually woken up once, now. He hadn't been awake for very long, short enough that Síomha hadn't had time to come get her before he was under again. Apparently, Síomha had even briefly spoken to him, but he'd been very delirious, hadn't made much sense — the healers told Síomha that was normal, though, he was on so many potions at the moment. The healers were very sure that he'd be fine (except for that one leg), it was just a matter of time now. Liz was still nervous, and probably would be until Severus was awake and back to his usual self, but being told that the likelihood of him recovering from the attack had been upgraded from probably to definitely did help.

(She kind of regretted that she'd missed the first time he'd woken up, even if he'd still been very out of it, if only so she could have seen it with her own eyes, instead of just having the information relayed to her by Síomha. But she hated the smell back in the ward, reminded her of cleaning the kitchen with Petunia's eyes itching at the back of her neck, she could wait until he was awake for real.)

Besides, reading about the Austrian Revolution was far more distracting than she'd expected. It turned out it'd been a huge fucking mess? She'd kind of known that already, all of the Communalist movements going on at the time had been chaotic in their own ways, but Austria was...a lot.

The book was just getting into the absolute chaos taking over the country as everything went to hell, when Liz felt one of the notebooks crammed into the chair with her start buzzing. She twitched, a little startled, but it was just someone writing her. She tucked in her bookmark to save her page, before reaching for Hermione's notebook...but she hadn't written anything since earlier this morning. (Hermione and her parents had loved Troyes, which shouldn't be a surprise to literally anyone who'd met them.) Maybe Rita? Yesterday evening, it'd occurred to her that she probably should tell Rita what was going on, just to keep up her part of the deal — not that there was much to tell, Severus was hurt, he'd live, Liz couldn't tell her much more besides that, blah blah. But nope, not her either. She had a couple others, but, maybe Katie? She hadn't heard from her since that conversation about that dream she had, a few days ago now, but—

I'm downstairs, but they won't tell me where Snape is. Where are you?

For a long moment, Liz could only stare down at the page, blinking. Katie had come to the hospital? What...?

She didn't know how she was supposed to feel about this.

Retrieving a pen from her bag, she spread the book over her lap — and then hesitated, the tip of her pen hovering a millimetre from the page. She wasn't sure seeing Katie was a great idea. It wasn't... She wanted to see her, it... But she didn't think she'd be very fun right now. She was better than she'd been that first night, or even the day after, but she still felt kind of...fragile. And, she didn't know, she kind of doubted she'd be able to hold a conversation very well at the moment. As much as they had known each other for a while already, this kind of relationship was still new, and she didn't want to fuck it up being...kind of miserable to be around.

But also, she was kind of miserable, so seeing Katie sounded...nice. Yeah. Pushing through the rest of her reluctance, she wrote, I'm on the fourth floor, in the lobby for the active observation recovery ward, or whatever the fuck it's called, I don't remember the exact phrasing. It's on the right-hand side.

Katie started writing immediately after Liz finished, she'd obviously been waiting for a response. That's enough for me to find it. I'll be there in a few minutes.

I'm sitting in a corner. The room isn't very big, I'm hard to miss.

That you are. See you soon.

Liz packed her books back into her bag — while she'd been sitting here, they'd ended up strewn around her chair, a little bit of a mess but it wasn't like anyone could see her anyway. After a moment of hesitation, she slipped her feet into her shoes. It was getting into the afternoon now, and she'd had breakfast/lunch well before noon, it wouldn't be the worst idea to go eat something. Maybe they could go to the café upstairs? She'd need to duck into the toilet or something to call Nilanse for something she could actually eat, but still.

While she was still in paling-enforced privacy, Liz cast a mirror charm. She hadn't wanted to brave the public baths here at the hospital — especially worried that there might be people there at the same time and that they'd recognise her and not leave her alone — but last night she'd had Nilanse pop her home to steal a quick shower. So, she wasn't gross, but was still a bit of a mess. The potion job on her hair was wearing off, blowing up into its natural awful curls kinking every which way, and she could spot the signs that she hadn't been sleeping well, looking somehow even paler than normal, subtle shadows around her eyes. Annoyingly, her eyes are a little red, despite it having been a while now since the last time she'd not-quite-cried. (That did seem to keep happening, since Severus had ended up here, it was very frustrating.) She'd changed her underclothes since first coming to the hospital, but she was still wearing the same dress, starting to get a little visibly rumpled. Oh, and apparently she'd been biting her lip at some point without realising it, looking a little reddened and swollen.

...It probably wasn't worth it to bother putting on cosmetic glamours. Besides, she figured Katie expected her to not look her best right now anyway. She did heal her lip quick, but that was it, let the mirror charm dissolve. And then, after a last slow breath in private, she dispelled her attention-diverting paling. Not that she immediately attracted much attention — unless people were actively looking, they tended not to notice attention-diverting effects wear off, so it wouldn't seem to them like she'd just appeared out of nowhere, like nothing had changed. (Mind magic was weird like that sometimes.) Though there weren't that many people to attract attention from, this lobby rather smaller than the one outside the Artemis Black Centre place. It wasn't as nice either, with the white tile floor and green and white walls of the hospital hallways, illuminated by a mix of those funny light balls and a sterile white glow that had a bad habit of glaring on the golden stars worked into the floor. The chairs were reasonably comfortable, at least, set along three of the walls in the smallish room, arranged around the desk blocking off the hallway leading into the ward. There were only a few people hanging around — the approved list of visitors was more restrictive here than most places, those lingering here were waiting for people making visits to come back out.

And so Liz waited for Katie to arrive, nervously picking at her nails, trying not to start biting her lip again.

Thankfully she didn't have too long to wait — it was only a few minutes before she felt Katie's mind approaching out in the hall. She peeked in through the doorway to look around, her eyes landing on Liz, before stepping the rest of the way inside. While she made her way in this direction, Liz blinked at her, slightly taken aback. She looked the same as always, black hair an artfully disheveled mess around her head — it'd gotten a little longer than she normally kept it, dangling ends not quite reaching her shoulders — tall and athletic in the way of quidditch players (or footballers or sprinters or whatever), not really made up special or anything. She was just...dressed a little different than normal. Trousers and short-sleeved (or even sleeveless) tunics were perfectly ordinary; muggle-style denim shorts and tee shirt weren't.

Even as preoccupied as Liz still was with Severus, it was difficult not to stare.

"Hey," Katie said as she approached, before turning and flopping down into the chair next to Liz. "How are you holding up?"

"All right. Better than I was at first, anyway. I didn't expect you to just show up."

Turning to give her a little smile, Katie asked, "Good surprise?"

"...Well, sure. I just thought you'd be busy with your family and stuff."

"Not so busy that I can't get time away for something important. Sorry it took me a few days to get back to you — the flax harvest is coming up any day now, it's a little hectic back home."

"It's okay." She didn't really know what to say from there, though, feeling unaccountably awkward, distracted by the tactile presence of Katie's mind and the warmth of her arm only an inch or two away.

The silence dragged for a brief moment, Katie shifting in her chair — Liz's eyes temporarily drawn by the movement of her legs, one coming up to cross over the other at the knee — before she spoke again. "So, have you gotten any news about Snape? The last you wrote me he hadn't woke up yet."

"Yeah, he, um." She shrugged. "He woke up for a couple minutes, but he was kind of out of it? Potions, you know. The healers say he'll recover, we just need to wait for some of their poltices and shite to finish closing up, and for the heavier potions to clear out of his system."

"That's good, then." Katie didn't really know what else to say besides that, all of a sudden almost uncharacteristically awkward. Liz's relationship with Severus was still weird to her — Gryffindors tended to see a rather different side of him than Slytherins, she honestly really didn't like Severus much. Or at least she hadn't before joining the duelling team? Dealing with him when he was chaperoning their international trips was... Well, she still didn't like him, but her impression of him had softened somewhat. And Liz could be very stand-offish sometimes, and seemed rather wound up, she wasn't sure if being too...openly demonstrative would be taken badly, at the moment. Even if she quite knew what to say about Liz's sort-of-not-quite dad being in hospital.

...Liz was going to pretend she hadn't seen that last thought. "Yeah. Um, I was thinking we could go to the café upstairs, get coffee or whatever. It's been a little while since I've eaten, and I probably won't be having dinner until after visiting hours are over."

"Sure. As long as you're buying — I didn't bring any money with me."

"That's fine." Liz hesitated for a second, before offering, "I was going to have Nilanse bring me something Seer-friendly anyway, we can go to the lounge at the hotel instead. It's a little more private." It hadn't really occurred to her until the same day they'd gotten together that class stuff might be a problem, so at least part of the reason she was offering was to avoid paying for things for her...even if having a house-elf bring stuff instead might not seem like an improvement, on the surface. Nilanse would be bringing Liz's anyway, so. Though, there would be fewer people hanging around the lounge, so it wasn't a bad idea for that reason either.

"What you'll be having, are these going to be those pastries you mentioned you made earlier?"

"Yeah?"

Her lips curling a little in a smirk, "Well, if you're giving me the choice of trying your baking again, I'm not about to turn that down. And somewhere more private will probably be more comfortable for you, wouldn't it?" If she'd noticed Liz manoeuvering around the money stuff, she wasn't explicitly thinking about it.

"It will, sure. Give me a minute, I have to go tell Síomha where I'm going."

"Síomha?" Katie repeated with a little shiver of surprise, watching Liz as she got to her feet. "You mean Síomha Ní Ailbhe? She's here with you?"

"Yeah, she's sitting with Severus, in there," with a little nod toward the hallway back. "He asked her to keep an eye on me while he's out. And, you know, if he wakes up I want her to know where to look for me."

"Makes sense." As odd as it seemed to Katie that the semi-infamous Gaelic separatist was, just, keeping an eye on Liz. "Go on then, I'll still be here when you get back."

The feel of Katie's eyes lingering around her hips was rather distracting — she almost forgot to be uncomfortable with needing to go back here again. The woman at the desk nodded her through without pause (recognised her), Liz stepping into the white and green, sterile environment of the recovery ward. After a short walk down a blank, empty hallway, she passed through a set of double doors — some kind of wardline along the threshold, crawling prickly and clingy over her skin, making her shiver — into the ward itself. It looked a lot like the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts, rows of beds to both sides, heavy enchanted curtains hanging from the ceiling, on a track so they could be pulled aside or yanked into place. The beds were spread somewhat further apart, and the place looked newer and somehow even more sterile, without any visible wood, all metal and ceramic, but still very similar.

It also smelled awful, a constant chemical tang, only somewhat softened by a hint of green from some potions stuff. Liz did not like it, too familiar, gave her bad thoughts.

Most of the beds were unoccupied, curtains pulled aside to show the empty space and linens so white they almost seemed to glow, only a few of them hidden from view. Liz guessed curse damage serious enough people needed to be kept under close observation after seeing the healers was pretty rare. There were privacy spells stitched into the curtains, cutting out sound, but she could still easily feel the minds behind them — the patients here were being monitored, presumably the healers didn't want to block whatever spells they were using to keep track of things. She passed one occupied bed to both left and right — the left empty save for the slow, insensate mind of the sleeping patient, the one on the right with a small group of people, the patient identifiable by his unfocussed wandering thoughts, sedated — and then a few more empty beds, before reaching Severus's on the left. She could feel Síomha in there, her mind beginning to retreat behind her near-perfect occlumency as she noticed Liz approach, Severus's mind recognisable in sleep. Hesitating at the fold in the curtains for a moment, Liz took in and out a couple long, slow breaths, before forcing herself to step inside.

Her eyes immediately found Severus's face, somehow even paler than usual, gaunt under the artificial white lighting of the ward. The bed could be bent up, but he was lying flat on his back, without even a pillow to support his head, the blue of veins under his skin visible around his eyes and in the crook of his neck. They'd cut his hair, short little wisps around his head, and since Liz had seen him awake they'd also shaved off his facial hair, for whatever reason — it'd started coming back, but everywhere, Severus not awake to direct it the way he wanted it to go, dark hairs starting to come in across the lower half of his face and down his throat. He looked weird without the familiar goatee, like his face was shaped differently all of a sudden? If Liz didn't normally identify people by mind magic, she might wonder if she'd recognise him at all, he looked wrong. He'd been put in some kind of hospital gown, the plain linen fabric thin enough to make out how bloody thin he was, the edges of bones visible at his collar and shoulders, seriously, he did not eat enough, the bloody hypocrite...

The thickness of the blanket draped over him from around the ribs down made it difficult to make out any other details — but even so, his left side seemed higher than his right, the blanket pushed up by the layers of bandages over the worst of the damage through his left hip and thigh. Supposedly Síomha had been present when they changed his bandages more than once, but Liz had consciously stayed away from the memory, the idea too unnerving.

Síomha was sitting in a chair near the bed, making her way through a thick bundle of papers. (Mostly Saoirse business, apparently.) As out of character as muggle clothes had seemed to Liz at first, she was getting the impression now that that was just normal for Síomha — every day at the hospital she'd worn denims and tee shirts, normally with a flannel button-up or a jumper of some kind, though it was missing at the moment, set aside while within the range of the spells keeping Severus's bed warm. She looked up to Liz as soon as she stepped inside — maybe before, even, she'd obviously felt Liz's mind magic coming — but she waited for Liz to stop checking over Severus and turn to her before speaking. "They changed his bandages again just an hour or so ago. They say he should be ready to be moved out of close observation as soon as he wakes up again."

"That's good. Er..." Liz found her eyes trailing back to Severus — unconscious, his mind was completely unprotected, but he also didn't react to her presence at all, it felt weird — forced herself to look away again. She didn't like it in here, obviously the smell was a problem, but she also just didn't like being around Severus when he was like this. It was hard to explain why, it was just...unsettling. "I wanted to, um, Katie showed up? We're going to tea, in the hotel lounge. You know, if he wakes up."

Síomha nodded. "Thank you for telling me, fhéileacáin. Try have to a nice time with your lover."

Liz opened her mouth to object to that particular term, before stopping herself — the Gaelic word didn't necessarily have the explicitly sexual connotation the English equivalent most often did. It wasn't any different from saying, like, girlfriend or sweetheart or whatever, it was fine. Also, her sex life wasn't Síomha's business, so that'd been an odd impulse regardless...

...and when she thought about it, how the hell did Síomha know about Katie anyway? Liz hadn't told her, she didn't think. She guessed Severus must have, him talking to Síomha about her was still a weird thought...

"Right. Um. I don't know how long she's sticking around, she's been trying to spend time with her family over the summer, you know. Boarding school."

"Sure. I'll be here."

"I know." Liz hesitated for a moment, not sure if there was anything else to say. She didn't think so? After a last glance over Severus, she turned around and slipped back through the curtains, crossing the ward the way she'd come at a quick, sharp pace.

(She hated the smell in here, made her skin crawl, burning at the back of her throat.)

By the time she got back in the lobby, Katie was on her feet waiting...and had also decided to pick up Liz's bag, apparently, slung casually over her shoulder. Um, okay then. Her eyes quickly found Liz's, lips tilting into a crooked smile. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah." Liz walked up to her, and then hesitated for a second — eyeing her own bag, resting against Katie's side rather above her hip. (Katie was taller than her, the strap was a little short.) Eventually she said, "You know, you don't have to carry that for me."

"I don't mind. Or, are you saying you want it back?" Katie was aware Liz could be rather private, maybe she was uncomfortable with someone else carrying her things, or maybe there was something in here she needed...

Her drugs had worn off a while ago, actually, but they weren't going to be eating in the middle of a crowd, so she probably didn't need them. "No, it's fine. I just don't—" She sighed. "Whatever, come on."

Liz jumped into motion quickly enough it took a few steps for Katie to catch up. Out in the hallway, she gently nudged Liz's arm with hers, mind simmering with a mix of something warm and squishy with slanted amusement. "I just felt like it. Besides, you're so tiny, and this thing's heavy — got half your library in here?"

Despite herself, Liz hunched a little with embarrassment, a subtle warmth on her face she knew would probably develop into a flush given time. Not so much because of the being tiny or the library comment, but that Katie'd just felt like it...not that she could explain why, just, feelings were hard. "Er, no, you have any idea how many books I have? I just brought something to read, and all my paired notebooks are in there." Except Tamsyn's, of course, she'd asked Nilanse to bring that back home after she'd been done with it.

Her conversation with Tamsyn had just been frustrating. Apparently, Tamsyn had talked to the people who'd nearly murdered Severus — they'd reported what had happened to the Dark Lord — and she'd been firm in her stance that her side hadn't broken their agreement. The Dark Lord had said that he wouldn't order his people to target Severus, but if he made himself a target, well, then that was his own responsibility — in trying to talk his friends into betraying their Lord, he had been making himself an enemy. There'd been a lot of insults back and forth, nobody was sure who'd thrown the first curse, but it hardly mattered. Severus's friends had decided he'd betrayed them, and had taken that personally; and they'd acted independently, without the Dark Lord's direct approval. The terms of their truce hadn't been broken.

Probably the most annoying thing was that Liz couldn't even argue the point. She'd told Severus that she'd tried to get him out of it, he'd been aware that sticking his nose in meant he would be fair game, and then he'd gone and done it anyway, like a fucking idiot. Like, sure, these were his friends, and he probably cared about them and didn't want them to die in the war to come, but it was still fucking stupid, and she, just... Ugh, it was annoying, that was all, she hated this whole fucking thing.

At least the Dark Lord had agreed to consider the matter closed, and that Severus would continue to be a neutral party until he did something else to make himself an enemy. So, Liz would have a second chance to try to convince him to stay out of it — hopefully she'd have better luck this time.

As long as she was at it, she'd decided to try to negotiate on Síomha's behalf too. The big thing stopping Síomha from wanting revenge against the people who hurt Severus was worry that it would make problems for Saoirse, so Liz told Tamsyn that, if she did do anything about it in future, she wouldn't be acting on Saoirse's behalf. She'd waited for Tamsyn to talk to the Dark Lord about it, and eventually they'd agreed that any action Síomha took against the people responsible would be considered retribution for the harm to her family. That sort of thing, blood feuds and shite, was pretty normal in certain traditional circles (if currently illegal), though it technically shouldn't count, because they weren't family...yet. Tamsyn and, surprisingly enough, the Dark Lord took her at her word that they would be one day, which they'd decided was good enough. If Síomha did do something, she might make herself a target for further reprisals, but it wouldn't be pinned on Saoirse, which was the part Síomha cared about. Liz hadn't told her about it yet, didn't want to make her have to choose between that and staying here, she'd bring it up later.

(Hopefully Síomha would kill the bastards — if the only thing Liz could do about Severus nearly being murdered was to point a seriously dangerous dark sorceress at them, she guessed that was good enough.)

The whole conversation had left her extremely frustrated, to the point that she'd been tempted to burn the notebook. But no, that would be a stupid thing to do — it was obviously good that she had a direct line to the Death Eater leadership. It'd already paid off, honestly, since she'd been able to make sure that Severus had a second chance and that Síomha didn't have to worry about dragging all of Saoirse into it trying to even the score. Those were good things, even if she'd been annoyed by how...fucking powerless she felt. Severus had been nearly murdered, and she couldn't do anything about it! He was still unconscious, whoever had done it was still out there, and... She didn't know, she just hated this, that was all.

So, she wasn't in the mood to talk to Tamsyn, so she'd asked Nilanse to bring her book back home. All her other paired notebooks were in her bag, though.

"All this is those notebooks, huh," Katie muttered, a drawling edge on her voice. "When did you get so popular?"

"I only have a few of them. Also, shut up."

Katie just smirked down at her — amused, but not really in a mean way, more... Well, she could vaguely remember what Liz had been like her first couple years at Hogwarts — from a distance, they hadn't really known each other back then — and apparently it was a noticeable difference, so far as...actually talking to people went. Having friends and shite. She was way more social than she used to be, and while there were a lot of people who still didn't like her much, there had been an obvious change in the general attitude toward her at the school, and—

"Oh, no." Liz hadn't even really thought of that. What with being the captain of the junior duelling team next year — and also running one half of the duelling club, which involved far more people — and just having very visibly won the Triwizard Tournament and all, part of the joke was because Katie thought Liz actually would be rather popular next year. Especially with the younger kids, like all the new first years and the second and third years in the duelling club, who hadn't had much contact with her in person, so were less familiar with how off-putting some people found her. She'd sort of thought of that already, but it wasn't just them, opinion had swung on her during the Tournament in general — a lot of people had been annoyed with her for being in the stupid thing in the first place, but watching her kick arse despite being younger than the rest of the Champions had still been entertaining, and normal people could be swayed by that kind of thing. "I didn't— I mean, I guess I was kind of getting that impression, toward the end of the year, but— Ugh, that's going to be fucking exhausting..."

It took a second for Katie to figure out what she was talking about, exactly — that did seem like something of a change of subject, since Liz had reacted to something Katie was thinking and hadn't actually said. They were just reaching the elevator, ended up in here with a couple middle-aged people, thankfully minding their own business and not really giving either of them a second glance. As the doors closed, Katie shot Liz a look. "You're annoyed people like you?"

Glaring at the ceramic doors in front of her, Liz tried very hard to not visibly pout; by the warm shimmering in Katie's mind, she didn't do a very good job. "You don't get it, thoughts and feelings focussed on me are very loud, and having people look at me all the time... I really just wish people would leave me alone, school is going to suck this year."

"Ah yes, I guess the adoration of the masses is a heavy burden."

"Shut up, Katie."

Confusingly, Katie glanced over at the adults in the elevator, and then she was leaning over, Liz jumped at the touch of fingers on her chin, Katie's mind suddenly very loud, and before she could figure out what was happening Katie's lips met hers, soft and gentle, so light it was almost ticklish, just for a second before she was pulling away again. Liz blinked up at her, dazed, enough that she barely noticed the doors opening again, the adults giving them glances as they filed out. What was—

Oh! Right, yeah, back at Hogwarts, there'd been that joke with Liz telling Katie to shut up, and she'd— Almost forgot about that, made sense now.

For the whole walk down the hallway with all the shop fronts and shite, Liz was silent — feeling weirdly self-conscious, her skin almost crawling, her arms folded over her stomach and her face very warm. Katie sauntering along next to her — mind all warm and squishy, amused with her, but still with a tense edge of concern and uncertainty, not sure what to do with herself — wasn't making her feel any less weird, skin prickling and her stomach fluttering each time her eyes swept over her.

It was a little annoying, honestly, Liz had no idea what the fuck was wrong with her all of a sudden...

The lounge was downstairs from the lobby...or at least the lobby she'd first seen. There actually was a main entrance onto the street down here, with a larger, fancier, rather old-fashioned-looking lobby, the doors opening out into Old Town somewhere — the hotel didn't solely cater to hospital visitors, international travellers came through here too, just the upstairs lobby was connected to the hospital. The more public areas of the hotel were down here, there was a restaurant, the baths, stuff like that. The lounge Liz had lingered in reading before was two floors down from the hospital-facing entrance, following the same aesthetics of the upstairs lobby and the hallways and stuff, reddish brown-carpets and wood-pannelled floors, directionless lighting in the gentle yellowish tone of a flamelight enchantment. There were sofas and armchairs scattered around the space, some gathered around coffee tables or the hearth — not connected to the floo, old-looking off-white stone, lintel carved into curling floral shapes, the inside blackened from countless years of soot — the upholstery in black and various shades of red and orange.

It was nice enough, the colours muted and the light low enough to be easy on the eyes. And while there was seating for a little more than twenty people, there were never nearly that many around. At the moment there were only a couple men reading newspapers and one women with a trio of children, one a sleeping infant and the other two occupied kneeling at one of the coffee tables and scribbling away with pastels. In passing, Liz noticed that the woman definitely wasn't speaking a local language, she understood most of those by now — the only one she wouldn't be able to follow was the Scandinavian language they spoke in the northern islands, and that one she'd at least recognise. By the sound of it, maybe something Slavic? or maybe Baltic, Lithuanian or Latvian or Prussian. Whatever, not her business.

Besides, if she wanted to eavesdrop on people speaking foreign languages, she should wait until after the blood alchemy thing coming up — then she'd actually be able to learn them while she was at it. Assuming the omniglottalism worked correctly, she guessed she'd see.

This was probably a more reasonable amount of people to be around when calling Nilanse. She got that Nilanse never went out — she was younger than Liz, and had spent her whole life until Liz had shown up just at Clyde Rock with the other elves — and could be a bit...nervous, around strangers. Just Liz's friends at home was one thing, but calling for her in the middle of a populated public cafeteria, Liz wouldn't have done that if she'd been thinking straight at the time. It was probably better for Nilanse to get out more, though. She got that this wasn't really a big deal for elves, since it wasn't like they left home much, but it didn't seem like being so isolated would be very good for them...

When she did call Nilanse, she seemed more curious about their surroundings, glancing around the room with her big red eyes, than she was nervous about the strange humans in the room, so apparently this was fine. Thankfully she'd done the baking for the week before Severus had gotten hurt, so there was stuff prepared out for some days yet — there was even still extra for Katie too. After a short talk about that, Nilanse popped out again, leaving Liz and Katie standing in a quiet corner of the lounge.

Silence dragged for a few seconds, but before it could get too awkward — Liz had no idea what to do with herself right now — Katie rescued her by saying something first. "So, I've been meaning to ask, are we still on for the trip to do the exams?" Liz's bag settled on the coffee table, Katie flopped down into a two-seat sofa. She leaned to rest her arms over the back, stretched out enough to pull her shirt up a bit, showing a band a skin over the waist of her shorts. "If it's not working out, I'll have to figure something out quickly."

"No, it's still on." Liz hesitated a second, glancing back and forth, before sinking into a nearby armchair. Feeling Katie's eyes on her, close and warm and prickly, she shuffled in place a little, self-consciously crossing her legs — still feeling very weird and squirmy, and she still didn't know why, which continued to be annoying. "Um. Severus helped me set that up ages ago. The hotel's even already paid for and everything, I got Susan's half just a couple days ago."

"Susan's half?"

With a little awkward shrug, "She insisted on splitting the cost. It's not like I care, and I'm pretty sure I have more money than the Boneses anyway, but you know, whatever. If we end up wanting to stay for an extra day or two, just to hang around, that's also fine — the hotel said there's no rush on getting us out of there. It is the summer, but their peak season isn't until August. We can't stay too long, though, my blood alchemy thing is scheduled for that Thursday. So, we're leaving on Sunday, going home on Wednesday at the latest."

"Right." There was a wiggling of amusement from Katie's mind, the corner of her lips visibly curling — Liz realised that was probably more information than she'd needed, just, babbling. "How long is the blood alchemy going? The recovery can't be that long, you'll want to..." She paused, frowning to herself a little. "...break it in, I guess? Seems weird to say. But there's only a few weeks left before the tournament, and I think you'd want time to get used to it."

"I'm not changing that much." Actually having tits might end up changing how she held herself a little, but Sauvageau had told her not to expect much there. "I guess it might mess with my channelling resistance a little, I might want to practise casting big spells some, but." She shrugged. "But no, it's not a long recovery. I'm getting there on Thursday, and I should be going home over the weekend. Saturday, if everything goes according to plan, but I might need to be kept later if something goes wrong."

"Is that in Bordeaux too?"

"No, Troyes. Why?"

With a sort of uncomfortable flutter in her head, Katie said, "I don't know, I was just thinking you might want someone there with you. I assume that would have been Snape before, but, I'm guessing he's not going to be out of here by then." There was a delicate, forcefully casual tone to her voice saying that, Liz wasn't sure how to read it.

"...Fuck, you're right, I forgot about that." She probably shouldn't be there alone. Not that she really wanted someone along, especially since Sauvageau had warned her that she was going to be ill and, just, generally fucking miserable in the time between the different procedures. The hospital probably wouldn't be very happy if she didn't have an adult with her, and unfortunately there weren't very many of those she'd even be somewhat at ease being around when she was feeling awful — and more to the point, incapable of defending herself. After turning it over for a few seconds, she said, "I guess I can ask Sirius to go with me, he'd probably be up for it. Thrilled, honestly, that I'm asking him at all. He can be kind of pathetic about our relationship, sometimes."

Katie didn't really know what Liz meant by that, but she realised it wasn't her business, so she decided to avoid the potentially uncomfortable subject by just ignoring most of the babbling. Which Liz appreciated, honestly, she didn't know why she kept doing that. "Troyes is French, right? Somewhere in the east?"

Trying not to grimace, Liz said, "You really don't have to visit. I'd prefer you didn't, honestly. I'm going to be ill, and not at all in the mood to be seeing anyone. And I'm sure I'd be even less fun than I am right now."

"I wasn't suggesting I'd visit, I was just asking. As long as you have someone with you." That wasn't a lie — Katie didn't know shite about blood alchemy, but she didn't like the idea of Liz going alone. Dropping by Saint Mungo's was one thing, but she doubted she'd be able to visit Liz at a hospital in a foreign country anyway. "Though, maybe you could tell someone where you'll be anyway. I know you don't like dealing with people when you're not feeling well, but I bumped into Sirius Black at the Tournament events a couple times, and he can be very intense — it might not hurt to have someone else along to play keeper."

...That was also not a bad idea. "I wouldn't know who to... Susan's always bored as hell over the summers, maybe I can ask her to come with. Her aunt's paranoid letting her go places, especially with everything going on these days, but Sirius is probably good enough for protection."

Katie let out a sharp breath, giving Liz a wounded sort of look, hand over her heart — fake, of course, just joking around. "What, you're thinking of asking along Susan, but not me?"

"I don't know, I assumed you'd want to go back home — you're already going to be away for a few days that week. And, honestly, I... I don't know, I'd feel weird about it. With how hospital gowns and shite are, it..." She didn't really know how to end that sentence. It didn't seem entirely rational, but the thought of Katie being there felt inexplicably humiliating.

Thankfully, she didn't actually have to explain that. "You don't want me seeing you until you're good and ready," Katie said, smiling all big and warm, her mind practically giggling.

Feeling the heat on her own face again, Liz admitted, "Well, yeah, I guess." The thought Katie was having was that her issue was, you know, modesty concerns — that the clothing hospital patients were given often weren't the most concealing, and with people coming in to check things or whatever, it might not be very practical to avoid Katie...getting a good look. Which made sense, sure. Liz didn't think that was quite what she was worried about, but exactly what the problem was wasn't something she could even explain to herself, so she guessed that was close enough. "And, you know, I wouldn't be... I'll be miserable, really, my alchemist warned me about that.

"Even just today, I'm already..." She didn't know the words for how distracted and unfocussed and weird she was feeling at the moment, so she just gestured vaguely for a moment before moving on. "And that's with Severus being hurt, I'm sure I'd be even worse company when ill from the blood alchemy. So, yeah, honestly I'm fine with you not visiting."

Katie gave her a funny look, a cool lurch in her head. "You don't have to perform for me, Liz."

...She had absolutely no clue how to respond to that. Thankfully, Nilanse rescued her by popping in their food just then — she'd have to do something nice for that girl, she'd been a fucking godsend lately.

With her morning coffee and for afternoon 'tea', Liz had been having a lot of bread-based things, but the two 'meals' were still different. The ones that went with her morning coffee tended to be sweeter...relative to Liz's tastes, of course, which still probably wouldn't be very sweet to normal people. Raisins or apples weren't unusual, flavoured with honey, this week they'd even made biscuits with toffee pieces in them. The ones that went with 'tea' were normally more toward the savoury end — things with cheese or bacon in them were pretty common. A more creative one they did recently was taking little dollops of shredded beef in gravy and wrapping them up in buttermilk scone dough to make these little flakey filled buns, they'd turned out surprisingly well. A lot of the more savoury ones were probably not the sort of thing other people would have with coffee, but Liz realised her tastes were weird, and honestly didn't give a damn what other people would like. It's not like she was cooking for normal people, so it didn't matter.

She was cooking for Nilanse, though, and the savoury ones were more likely to be edible for her. So that worked out nicely.

In fact, Nilanse had sent her a couple of those beef-filled scones — they were noticeably warm to the touch, Nilanse must have taken care of that while the coffee had been steeping. Katie's plate had a slice of the apple cake — Liz had had that with her morning coffee earlier — and also a pair of the toffee biscuits. She'd suggested the apple cake, knowing Katie would be put off by the combination of coffee and one of the savoury things, but she hadn't mentioned the biscuits, Nilanse must have done that on her own initiative. Not a big surprise, Liz was already aware that she liked Katie — when she mentioned that they were dating now, Nilanse had been unexpectedly pleased, doing that thing where she bounced on her toes with excitement and everything. No idea where that had come from.

Well, okay, not no idea. She did talk to Nilanse about things going on, so Katie came up a bunch, thanks to the duelling club. And she always showed Nilanse memories of the duelling events afterward, and the Triwizard Tasks, Katie had helped in some of those. And when Katie had visited, she'd talked to Nilanse all normal, and... She didn't know. It'd taken Liz by surprise at the time, but in retrospect she guessed it did kind of make sense.

Liz suddenly had the random thought of asking Nilanse if she wanted to borrow her romance books...or, she guessed she could order some straight ones for her? Nilanse was getting to that age — she would be fourteen now, though Liz wasn't sure if elves matured slower than humans or not — and it wasn't like she got out much, so maybe she'd like that kind of thing?

Come to think of it, Liz didn't know how, like, romance and sex and stuff was normally handled with elves. They didn't marry at all, as far as she knew. She was aware of who the elves' mothers were — like Nilanse's was Tisme, and Honish, um...one of Cediny's nieces, she lived on one of the other properties, her name was escaping Liz at the moment — but she didn't remember if any fathers had ever been mentioned? She didn't know whose Nilanse's was, other than that she was reasonably certain he didn't live at Clyde Rock, which was honestly kind of strange when she thought about it. She should maybe ask about this stuff at some point — it seemed reasonable to at least know how these things were supposed to work before Nilanse got to the point she was actually seeing someone, so she wouldn't be completely useless if they ever ended up talking about it.

...Probably shouldn't ask Nilanse herself, though — she had a feeling that conversation might be terribly awkward. Cediny would be able to tell her, or maybe Tisme. Honish, even, maybe she'd bring it up next time he was over to talk about gardening stuff.

Anyway, Katie needed to take a bit to fix up her coffee quick — Liz normally took hers black, but Nilanse had sent along little things of honey and cream for Katie — Liz using the somewhat awkward, dragging silence to smash apart her buns with a fork, making a mess of pastry and meat and gravy. They could just be eaten by hand, but that was easier to do without making a mess if she was eating at a proper table, Nilanse had probably sent a fork with her plate for that reason. After putting in a little cream and honey, Katie made a little face with a flinch in her head, and then reached to add some more. "Your coffee is very strong, you know."

Liz shrugged. "I like it. Did Nilanse put the cinnamon in yours?"

"Think so. It's good, I'm not saying it isn't, it's just a lot."

Yeah, well, true. "I don't really get the point of having weak coffee. If a thing is supposed to be a thing, it should taste like that thing. If that makes sense."

"Yes, you are blunt like that," Katie said, her mind bright and frothing, lips curling with a smile. Not entirely sure she followed the connection Katie was making, but fine, whatever. There was some sparkling in her head as she took a bite of the cake, letting out a little hum. Gesturing at the plate with her fork, she said, a little muffled by the cake still in her mouth, "This is great, though. You made this?"

"With Nilanse, yeah."

"Mm. We should really have that dinner date at your place."

"We can do that." The timing was a little bit of a problem, with how many things they both had going on this summer, but she was sure they'd figure it out. If nothing else, Liz had gotten a glimpse in a crystal ball of them sitting out on one of the balconies at her house as the sun set. "You just like me for my cooking, is that it?"

"Well, that's not the only reason," Katie drawled, her voice pitching down, a bit of a curl on it and her thoughts going all slanty. Liz was pretty sure that tone was supposed to be flirty, and, she wasn't making any effort to keep Liz out of her head, so she could see... Well, minds tended to be busy, there were a lot of Liz-related thoughts going on, but the thing Katie was actively focussing on was meeting up after the Eighth Task — Liz getting a little giddy when she'd learned they'd won, hugging Katie, who'd randomly decided to spin her around a little, because fuck it, and then there'd been that close, intense moment when Liz had almost kissed her, Katie's heart suddenly racing as she realised what—

Shifting in her chair, Liz pulled herself away a bit, cleared her throat. Katie's mind could be very intense sometimes — in a different way than Daphne's, but it could still be a little overwhelming, especially with Liz already a bit...overwrought, with Severus and everything.

"And I don't really think that's a bad thing, is it?"

It took a second for Liz to realise Katie meant liking her cooking. "Oh, ah, no, that's fine." Honestly, it was kind of nice, but it was hard to articulate even to herself in her own head what that feeling was, exactly, so she just kept it to herself.

Or, mostly kept it to herself, anyway — over the next few seconds Katie noticed she was visibly blushing. Downside of being so damn pale, she guessed, easy to tell.

They were quiet for a little while then, eating and sipping at their coffee. Liz wondered if she should maybe be trying to say something, keep conversation going, but she didn't know what to say. She hadn't gotten a good night's sleep since before Severus ended up here, and feelings were exhausting — not to mention having to be in public for most of the day. Hiding under concealment spells helped, but it still wasn't ideal. Her head was a bit fuzzy, hard to focus — hence the babbling, and thoughts going off on random tangents — and she was still feeling annoyingly awkward and self-conscious and she still didn't know why. She hadn't been nearly this weird about it last time she'd seen Katie, she didn't know what was going on.

...Maybe it was just because she hadn't gotten any warning, and wasn't exactly at her best at the moment. And, she didn't know, she just felt off, that was all.

"So," Katie chirped out of nowhere, startling her a little. "Have you been paying attention to the tournament in Damascus?"

"Um, no, not really." She was talking about an international duelling competition going on in Syria this week. The World Championship would be held later this year — it was held every five years, though it used to be offset, held on years ending in two or seven, they'd just recently adjusted it to land on multiples of five — and there were a handful of big tournaments being held around the world that basically functioned as qualifying rounds. Duellists needed to have above a certain rating to get invited, and then a selection of people from these tournaments would be invited to the big one to be held at the end of November, beginning of December — it was going to be somewhere in west-central Asia this year, one of those cities along the old Silk Road, she didn't remember exactly where. All the big-name duellists in the ICW were competing in the Damascus tournament, Liz had heard a little about it but she was too distracted lately to pay that much attention.

"Ah, I've been catching matches on the radio when I have the time. They're about twelve hours behind — the managers in Damascus are sending recording to the League in Helvetica, who then rebroadcast it in I.C.W. languages. The Cambrian announcer they got is a little formal, but I can follow it well enough." Katie's dialect was very northern, enough that Liz had a little trouble understanding her when she slipped into it sometimes. "Anyway, I caught a match just before I came here between Orsula and Čierny."

"Orsula, that sounds familiar..."

"Orsula Licitra? She gave a demonstration with Cassie Lovegood our first day in Romania."

"Oh! Right, I remember. So, she might be going to the championship, then?"

They spent the next little while talking about duelling, which was honestly nice — it was a good distraction from...well, everything going on. The commentary on duelling matches tended to go on a lot longer than the match itself, especially at the professional level and especially retrospectively. It was common to keep memories of matches so they could be looked over in a pensieve after the fact, so commentators talking about past matches could go into far more detail than was available in live commentary. A lot of duels only lasted a few seconds, and even in longer ones exchanges went by so quickly it was difficult to say much of anything about it, live commentators really more talked about the duellists' backgrounds and competitive prospects and provided colour commentary more than anything. Of course, that had a value of its own — the goal of live commentators was often more to give an impression of what watching the duel felt like for those who couldn't actually see it, which could still be entertaining.

Katie liked both, but for different reasons. The live commentary could just be fun sometimes, very dramatic and emotional, while the retrospective commentary was more interesting for nerdy reasons, going into fine detail about the spells used and the duellists' different tactics. Liz preferred the latter herself, since it was more useful to her and she kind of had trouble imagining what was going on in live matches, but Katie's first exposure to duelling had actually been in the form of live matches broadcast on the radio. As much nostalgia as anything else, she guessed. Anyway, since the matches Katie was catching were being rebroadcast after the fact, they were kind of a mix of the two, first impressions recorded from the live duel followed by analysis of the memories, which Liz thought was maybe the best way to do it, appealing to both preferences like.

Once again, Liz was reminded that she should get memories of duels at some point, since she had a pensieve and all. That she could do that was something that'd occurred to her multiple times, but it just wasn't a priority, so it kept slipping her mind. The packages were fragile, they weren't safe to send by owl post or through the floo, so she had to go there to pick it up in person — that was kind of a pain to do when she spent most of her time at Hogwarts, and there were so many things going on, she kept forgetting. It didn't help that it wasn't like it'd be useful for anything — watching professional duels might give her some ideas, but it wasn't like they could directly teach her spells or anything, and personal styles varied so much she might not be able to adapt much anyway — so the motivation to do it wasn't strong enough to power through the hassle. But now that she was thinking about it, that was kind of feeding into her bad at relaxing shite, so that was itself a good reason to do it anyway. She should try to pick some up before school started, something entertaining to do in her off-time, that seemed like a good idea.

But anyway, Katie didn't think Licitra had a decent shot of actually being invited to the championship, which had only been more obvious in her duel with Čierny. (Some Moravian duellist Liz might have heard of once in passing, she didn't follow duelling that closely.) Cassie Lovegood was one of the favourites to win this year — she'd been at the world championship in '86, though she hadn't come away with the title (the American who'd won had retired since), and she'd missed the one in '90. She'd been busy intervening in some fucked up situation in eastern Europe at the time, involving a Hungarian Dark Lord or something? or maybe that was something else, the timing might be a little off. Liz didn't remember exactly, the point was she hadn't been there. Cassie Lovegood's profile had only increased in the years since her last appearance at the world championship, with all the crazy vigilante shite she got up to, in sports magazines and stuff everyone was talking about her as the person to beat.

Cassie Lovegood was also at the tournament in Damascus, and easily beating the piss out of anyone unlucky enough to be matched with her, to nobody's surprise — Katie was trying to catch all of her matches, but as busy as things were at home that wasn't always possible. These days she was fast, in her spellwork, sure, but she also just teleported all over the field too quickly for people to follow. Quick-step was pretty common at the professional level, practically required to keep up — being so much less mobile than your opponent was just too much of a tactical disadvantage — but in recent years Lovegood had switched to this weird thing that hit like a literal lightning strike, zipping through the air with a flash of light and a boom of thunder, releasing a burst of electricity whenever she landed. Some kind of elemental magic thing, apparently? It was faster than quick-step, and didn't have some of the same disadvantages, like needing line-of-sight, and it was also just loud and kind of overwhelming to be faced with. Apparently it was fucking intimidating to fight her these days.

As it should be, Liz thought — Cassie Lovegood was fucking intimidating. And also hot, but that was a separate thing.

After talking about that for a while, they moved on to their own duelling tournament coming up in a few weeks. They were pretty optimistic about their chances this time around. The Hogwarts teams had been on an upswing over the last few years — the good duellists tended to be disproportionately nobility, so the teams had been hit hard by the war, finally starting to recover now — and their team this time was pretty solid. Gladwin, Katie, and Liz were all experienced by this point, and Susan and Chelsea had both done well at their only event before this one — and Chelsea had noticeably improved since then too, that girl was a surprisingly quick learner. Their new people were Draco, who was good enough he'd only been narrowly edged out of being invited to the team a couple times before, and Artaimís, who was their weakest point but still pretty decent for only being a third year. With the exception of Artaimís, Katie and Liz both expected all of them to place pretty well in singles, and they should kick arse in the team event too. Sometimes in practices the junior and senior teams would fight each other, and they'd actually managed to take down the senior team a few times, so, she thought they had a decent chance of taking a win.

Liz thought her trio with Artaimís and Draco might do okay, but her trio with Katie and Susan was absurd — they'd already won at the winter tournament, there was absolutely no way they weren't clearing this one. Katie was also in a second trio, with Gladwin and Chelsea, and they'd probably also do pretty well? Didn't have nearly as good of odds as the one they were in together, though. Susan was a very solid duellist, but put her together with Katie's combat transfiguration, a very rare skill at the junior level, and Liz's quick-step and mind magic, and it simply wasn't fair. There were a few other dangerous trios around Liz was aware of, but the chances of being matched with them weren't too high, and even then she wouldn't bet against them — anyone unlucky enough to get matched with them were probably fucked.

Liz had seen predictions for the upcoming tournament in one of those sports magazines, and the three of them were expected to win, so that wasn't even just Liz and Katie saying that. With Artèmi's trio aged out, there was hardly even any real competition anymore..

To keep her skills sharp in the weeks running up to the tournament, Katie had been stealing an hour here or there to pop over to the Scrimgeours' to practise — their lands were nearby, she could theoretically even walk there if she wanted to. Most often she played around with Eustace, but there were other Scrimgeours who were into dueling, she could normally find someone to practise with her whenever she had the time. While she was talking about that, Liz found herself squirming in her chair, avoiding her eyes.

Maybe she should be practising too? She wouldn't want to get rusty, and after her procedure she should at least check that she could still channel magic the same as always. A lot of things would be being replaced, including literally all of her skin, so that could have an effect on how magic flowed through her, and... She didn't know, just seemed like a good idea. The problem was that she didn't have people conveniently around she could walk over and ask, and it wasn't like she could just drop in on a duelling gym or something — both because they might be weird about the Girl Who Lived showing up and because she wasn't supposed to be going out alone...

Sirius, maybe she could ask Sirius to practise with her — they had done a lot of that during the Triwizard Tournament, so he'd probably be up for it. That seemed like a good idea, yeah, she'd do that.

Eventually the talk about duelling and stuff, just...petered out, and they were left sitting in stiff silence again. It didn't help that Liz was maybe not doing a good job of keeping up her end of the conversation. She was tired, and it was hard to concentrate, her thoughts continually turning to Severus, self-conscious squirming about how much of a mess she was right now, eyeing Katie's legs or the strip of skin showing at her waist and getting distracted with random sexy thoughts, which often then led her around to feeling gross and uncomfortably aware of it, at one point got in a random downward spiral all pessimistic about her relationship with Katie and Severus being hurt and how fucking exhausting she feared this school year was going to be, to the point of wanting to just stop, which she immediately recognised as bad thoughts and forced herself to focus more closely on something Katie was saying about how miserable duelling outdoors in Sicily in the summer was going to be, would practically need to take multiple showers a day to deal with being sweaty and gross all the time, which reminded Liz of that time Katie had suggested they share the jacuzzi-looking thing they'd had in their bathroom in Iaşi, which was a thought to have, she'd suggested they'd be in swimsuits or something, and they would have at least one day off in Sicily, Liz should probably get one — after the procedure, obviously — but even if they weren't fully naked being in one of those with Katie would probably still be a lot, random sexy thoughts about that, but she did wonder if she'd even be able to wear a swimsuit, since it'd basically have to be a muggle one and muggle-made stuff could be an issue since her Seer shite started being more sensitive, and actually she'd been planning on getting a bunch of new clothes after the procedure but maybe she wouldn't even be able to, because avoiding bad psychometric shite was extremely frustrating sometimes, and Seer-friendly clothes often didn't have a lot of variety and tended to be kind of boring, it'd be a lot easier if she could just make what she wanted, she should take Muirgheal up on that offer to help teach her — after the procedure but before the duelling tournament, so Muirgheal's friends would have basically no way of recognising her — though there had to be charms to speed up that kind of thing, but it was often easier if you knew how to do it by hand first anyway, like with washing dishes or folding laundry or whatever else, but maybe dressing flashy wasn't a good idea, since people might just look at her more, and people already paid too much attention to her, this year was going to be exhausting, and how was Severus going to teach classes if he couldn't even walk...

She was barely here, basically. She did talk some, but it was hard to concentrate on anything, she sounded unfocussed even to herself. Annoyingly, the coffee didn't seem to have helped at all. So when Katie paused, for whatever reason — maybe she'd asked a question Liz had managed to miss? — Liz didn't say anything, and then she didn't say anything, and the conversation, just, stopped.

It didn't take very long for Liz to... She didn't know what, feelings were hard. Her skin prickling and her stomach squirming, she forced herself to sit still, cleared her throat to make sure her voice would come out right. "Um, I'm sorry, it... I'm really not good company right now, if you asked me I probably would have said not to bother coming. Sorry."

There was a cool, stuttering lurch in Katie's head, not sure what that was supposed to be, the look she gave Liz somehow seeming to clash with it, too soft. "It's okay, Liz. You don't need to perform for me."

...Okay, that was the second time Katie had said that now, but Liz still wasn't entirely sure what she meant by that. Wasn't all social shite a performance, at least partly?

"I can go, if you want me to. I'm sorry, I probably should have asked before just showing up, but I thought..." She hadn't liked the idea of Liz waiting here alone, had been focussed on doing something about that, other considerations feeling too far away in the moment. "I don't know, I wasn't thinking it through, I guess."

Slumping deeper back into her chair, Liz let out a groan, her eyes drooping closed. She felt strangely unmoored without the sight of her surroundings to anchor her, the chair under her seeming to sway in a descending spiral, her body feeling heavy — sleep deprivation, she was pretty sure. She blinked her eyes open immediately, fought to focus, straightening in her chair again. "No, I don't– it... I don't want you to leave, I'm just...you know, shitty company right now. Too tired. I don't want you to be bored, or annoyed, or...I don't know..."

"I came because I thought you might like my company, not the other way around. You don't have to worry about entertaining me."

Liz didn't really know what to say to that. Like, she'd kind of already known that, and Katie wasn't trying to keep her out, so she could see she was telling the truth, but it was still...she didn't know. She didn't know how she was supposed to respond to this kind of thing, Katie, just, deciding to hang around because she thought Liz shouldn't be alone, and not really caring that she was no fun at the moment, just because. So she ended up, just, sitting there, leaning forward on her arms, crossed over her stomach and propped against her thighs, her skin prickling and her throat thick and her insides all bluh, Katie's gaze on her soft and shifting and thoughtful, and she could feel her face was definitely red, she hadn't needed to pick up Katie noticing to figure out that...

Katie thought the blushing was cute. It was very obvious when it happened, with how pale she was, and Katie had noticed a year ago now how easily flustered she could get — which was kind of entertaining? Not really in a cruel way, just Liz was normally all flat and, you know, Liz about things, but then she'd get all flushed and awkward — mostly hunching in and avoiding people's eyes, like she was doing now, sometimes audibly stammering — with really very little prodding. And yeah, Liz had noticed that too, though it hadn't really started becoming a problem until quite recently. She was blaming hormones...

...or maybe it was just an indirect consequence of her mental health being better in general? Severus had said shite about being stuck on survival mode or whatever, and, how she wasn't really great at managing positive emotions, maybe it was more of that. Though she wasn't sure what to call this feeling, or if it even were a positive one, just... She didn't know, Katie might think it was cute, but Liz mostly just found it deeply embarrassing.

After a short, uncomfortable silence — uncomfortable on Liz's end, anyway — Katie said, "Come here."

Liz blinked, glanced up, belatedly noticing Katie was patting the empty cushion next to her on the sofa. "Huh?"

"If you're not up to it right now, we don't have to talk. We can just sit, for a while."

Okay, she wasn't up to talking at the moment, that was true, but she didn't really think she was up to, er, not talking either. But Katie wasn't thinking of anything like that, she did mean just...sitting. Not that Katie wouldn't be getting anything out of it either, even if nothing really happened, even if Liz outright fell asleep on her — which she did sort of expect to happen, if they were here long enough — just the closeness was more than enough for her.

Because she was here for Liz, today — she really didn't have to entertain her.

...That did sound kind of nice, honestly. So long as being that close to Katie's mind wasn't...too much. She hesitated a moment, but it really did feel like Katie wasn't expecting anything more than, just, sitting, so. "Um. Okay. We can do that."

"Come here, then," Katie said, smiling all soft and warm, and bluh, Liz had to look away again. "There's not really room for both of us on your chair."

Liz stalled another moment, still feeling all squirmy and self-conscious — her face annoyingly warm, because of course — before pushing up to her feet. She teetered a little before she caught her balance, tired enough she was rather light-headed. Honestly, she felt more tired than she had before food and coffee, that didn't seem fair, somehow. She circled around the coffee table, Katie's eyes on her warm and fuzzy the whole way, and sank down into the seat next to her. Close enough for their legs to touch — the fabric of Liz's skirt was still in the way, but that wasn't enough to keep Katie's mind from flooding into hers.

When they were just talking, Katie had mostly managed to hide how worried she was about Liz. She hadn't been putting much effort into shielding her mind, just, she hadn't been actively thinking about it, which could pretty easily prevent Liz from noticing something, if the person was keeping themself distracted enough. Katie knew a bit about Liz's history — mostly from the stuff that'd ended up in the papers, they hadn't talked about it too directly much — so she knew how important Severus was to her, and that she didn't really have anyone else who... Well, she'd guessed that Liz wouldn't be dealing with it well. If anything, she kind of appreciated that Liz had given up trying to put on an act of being mostly okay and was letting Katie...

Was letting herself be vulnerable around Katie, she guessed was the way to put it. She didn't like thinking about it that way, made her uncomfortable, so she decided to stop. Besides, she hadn't really been trying that hard to pretend she was all right, but she guessed it was maybe reflexive. She hadn't really noticed, but Katie had, so maybe she just hadn't even realised she was doing it.

Or maybe Katie was just reading into Liz's behaviour things that weren't there — with how terribly un-self-aware Liz could be sometimes, she could honestly go either way on that.

Liz was distracted from turning over that by Katie's arm settling over her shoulders, drooping down her side, fingers brushing against her arm. And then they just...sat there. Katie had been serious about them not having to talk at all if Liz didn't want to, she made no effort to fill the silence at all. Her thoughts smooth and warm and comfortable, not really thinking of anything else at all, just, focussed on Liz, quiet. Or, not quiet, exactly — being this close to her mind was still loud — but it wasn't busy in here, observant, fingers idly brushing in little circles over Liz's upper arm.

She really hadn't expected Katie to be content to, just...sit here, with her. But then, she guessed she was still always blindsided by people actually liking her, wanting to do something nice for her just because. Something was pounding in her head about that, her throat thick, but she decided to ignore it for now. Too tired at the moment to put too much energy into figuring out whatever was going on in here.

Not sleeping enough tended to make Liz feel cold, and Katie was warm, and comfortable, so without really thinking about it she shuffled closer against Katie's side, leaned in to rest her head against her shoulder. Or, that was the idea anyway, but her angle was a little off, so she ended up with her head pressed against Katie's chest instead — caught to a halt by her jaw digging into Katie's breast, in a way that she honestly thought might be uncomfortable? She wasn't entirely sure, since she didn't have tits herself, but if it was Katie didn't pay it any mind, if anything her mind just getting warmer and fuzzier. There was a bit of a thrill at Liz snuggling up against her, but not a sexy thrill, slower and...cushier than that, not sure how to describe it, exactly...

Katie smelled green, like fresh-cut grass, except a bit drier, like, halfway toward straw or something like that, with an edge of something sharp and earthy she couldn't identify. Something she'd picked up from home, probably. Didn't she say a bit ago now that the flax harvest was coming up? flax was a grassy sort of thing, right? Whatever. Her fingers still making idle circles on Liz's arm, her mind warm and soft and comfortable, she could tell Katie was wearing a muggle-style bra, something plastic on the strap digging into Liz's cheek a little through her shirt. Which was a little weird, because mages didn't generally wear bras at all, but then they didn't normally wear denim shorts either. She was pretty sure Katie had mentioned going out to the muggle world with the Gryffindor chasers before — Johnson was muggleborn — which was probably where she got her muggle clothes.

Getting new clothes after her procedure wouldn't just be complicated for Seer reasons — she kind of didn't know how bras worked. Like, the basic concept, sure, but that didn't mean she'd know how to...stuff. She did like corsets (the tightness felt nice to her, couldn't explain why), but modern muggle clothes weren't really designed with them in mind, so if she wanted to keep wearing that sort of thing bras would probably be necessary. That was a solvable problem, though, she'd just do what Katie had — as far into her mind as she'd wandered, thinking about it had the memory come up without really trying, Katie and Johnson standing close in a muggle changing room, topless (the memory shaded with awkwardness, Katie trying not to be too obviously distracted by her friend) — she could just ask Hermione. She might not seem the super girly type who'd like going out shopping with her friends or whatever, but Liz was sure it would work out. In fact...had they talked about that already, or did Liz just know it was going to happen for Seer reasons? She honestly couldn't remember which it was...

Liz's distraction had pulled her away from the memory just on her own, but Katie was also very intently thinking of something, trying to attract her attention. She was aware Liz was in here, of course — which was a little uncomfortable, hairs at the back of her neck standing up, but it was just Liz, she trusted her (kind of consciously reminding herself of that, to stay calm) — trying to occupy her with something innocuous but also pleasant. It was some kind of holiday celebration, she thought, the memory a little fuzzy with age, but the colours and the smells and the feelings still coming through vibrant. A cool night, bonfires bright and crackling, one of the adults was telling a story, complete with funny voices and the occasional illusion for effect, but Katie didn't remember what he'd been talking about very well. Mostly she remembered the smell of roasting meat and smoke and honey on the air, spices and herbs lingering on her tongue, the warmth and softness of the other children around her, they were gathered on the grass listening, snuggled together against the chill of the deepening night, the grass tickling at her skin, her cousin's hair smooth on her cheek as she teetered on the edge of sleep...

A little preoccupied with the memory — a bunch of the kids around there all snuggled up together like that and even falling asleep in a big pile seemed weird to her, but she realised Katie was from one of those tight agricultural communes around the country, and Liz was more sensitive about touching than most people — she wasn't paying attention as Katie's arm shifted, her hand moving upward. She didn't really notice until fingers suddenly started pressing in at the base of her neck, gently kneading just above the little nub there. A funny little tingly feeling pulsing down her spine, some kind of noise slipped out of her throat, she wasn't sure what, exactly. She leaned closer against Katie, warm, her arm slipping around her waist. Fingers still making little circles against her neck, she turned her face more against Katie's chest, better angle, Katie's fingers wandering a little higher up her neck, gently but firmly pressing in, almost making her shiver, mmmm...

Sleepy, she vaguely remembered there'd been a moment last time they met in person, when Katie had started kneading at the back of her neck, and Liz had had to make her stop, because she'd been trying to say something, which had been impossible while she was doing that. It felt unreasonably good, shooting sparks behind her eyelids and her spine going all liquid, feeling far too heavy, it didn't feel worth the effort to keep sitting up, letting herself droop over. Except she felt her shoulder dig uncomfortably into Katie's ribs — for Katie, she meant, she was picking that up from her mind — so Liz pulled away a little, the bridge between them kept open by the hand on her neck, leaned over to prop one hand on the arm of the sofa on Katie's other side, the other on Katie's shoulder for balance, shifted up to get her knees under her — a little awkward, her skirt getting in the way, let out a little frustrated huff. Once she was up and turned around sideways, she flopped across Katie's lap, her forehead pressed against the side of the armrest, Katie's thigh under her throat. There, that was more comfortable.

There was a shivering of warm, clinging amusement from Katie's mind, overwhelming from this close, but she didn't say anything. She thought it was kind of funny how quickly and easily Liz was, just, melting, but not in a mean why, really more adorable than anything. (Which continued to be a bit embarrassing, but whatever.) Katie's right hand dropped from her neck, lightly trailing down her spine — Liz squirming a little at the prickles running through her — her left hand brushing through her hair, moving it up and over Liz's head, draping over the armrest. Because her hair was so big, it took multiple swipes, but eventually it was all out of the way.

Liz let out another unconscious noise as Katie's fingers found her neck again, gently kneading under the base of her skull, the other hand pressing in a bit firmer at the top of her shoulders, thumb on one side of her spine and a couple fingers on the other, over the next few seconds knots melting away, her limbs almost shaking, feeling weak and heavy. And Katie's hands kept wandering, gently kneading along her neck or pressing in at the sides, tracing over her spine or into her shoulders, but it didn't take very long for Liz to lose track of the individual touches, dissolving into a vague, general feeling she didn't really have a word for, other than that it was really nice, she could hardly even feel her legs anymore, her head spinning, Katie's mind becoming muffled, like her vision turning blurry, the colours still present but the shapes smeared away, thoughts indecipherable but feeling still coming through soft and warm and sweet, cream and rosemary...

...she didn't know why Katie's feelings for her tasted like cream and rosemary, of all things, but it was nice...

After an indeterminate time floating, Liz abruptly startled to alertness, a sharp thrum racing through her, making her hair stand on end. She flailed for a second, then snapped up to her knees, shoved her hair out of her face and away — feeling a little confused, she glanced around, still in the hotel lobby, Katie sitting right here. Before she could find her voice, she was distracted by the feeling of a featureless brownish blanket sloughing down off of her shoulders to pool around her waist, stretched over to cover Katie's bare legs. The fuzzy fabric rubbing against her arm, there was a tingle of magic, conjured.

Liz blinked down at the blanket, before looking back up at Katie, only inches away, close enough still to feel her warmth, the odd grassy smell around her. "Um. Did I fall asleep?"

With a warm clingy feeling Liz couldn't quite read, smiling at her, Katie said, "Yeah, you passed out really quick. You were only laying down for a couple minutes before you were out, I think."

"Oh. Sorry." The weird snap of alertness that'd woken her up was starting to wear off — the feeling not going away entirely, leaving behind a niggling sense that she was forgetting something, she needed to be somewhere. But it was enough for a squirming of nerves to settle in her stomach, because of course. Her fingers playing with the fabric of the conjured blanket, Liz had the random urge to pull it back up, cover herself, managed to fight it off. Fuck, she was in such a weird mood today...

"It's okay, Liz, I didn't mind. It seemed like you really needed it."

...Probably, yeah. She hadn't been sleeping well the last few days, it'd been catching up with her lately. Reaching up to run a hand through her hair, her fingers ending up at the side of her neck — and she remembered that...whatever Katie had been doing, the memory kind of fuzzy, since apparently she'd passed right out, but— She forced her hands down into her lap, feeling the warmth on her face, cleared her throat. "Right, er. How long was I out?"

Katie shrugged. "Not long. Less than an hour, probably."

It didn't seem like nearly that much time had passed, but she guessed sleep could be like that. "Okay. I, ah, I need to go."

With a flicker of...surprise or confusion or something, Katie gave her a little frown. "Oh? Is something wrong?"

"No, just, I feel like I need to be somewhere. That's what woke me up, I think it was a Seer thing." A sudden snap of realisation, she felt herself tense. "Oh! Maybe Severus just woke up! I think that's it." It was just a guess, because Seer shite couldn't be that convenient, but it felt right.

"Ah, I guess we should get you back to the hospital, then."

"Yeah, let's go." Disentangling herself from the blanket with a bit of clumsy flailing, Liz jumped up to her feet, teetering for a second on her heels. Katie just vanished the blanket with a flick of her fingers (a crackle of waste magic on the air, inefficient but she managed it), which was way easier, Liz should have thought of that. In her defence, she was suddenly feeling a bit jittery — there was no telling how long Severus would stay awake, still had potions in his system, she didn't want to miss it.

It didn't take them long to get going. Nilanse had already popped away their dishes — she hadn't even noticed that happening, might have been asleep at the time — and Katie swept up Liz's bag again, and then they were leaving. Walking along the hall, she kept glancing over at Katie, some kind of feeling squirming in her stomach, all warm and something. She really wished emotions came with, like, labels or something, or if there were a book somewhere she could look up fucking symptoms in, would make this shite much less confusing...

Thinking about it, it was a little surreal that she'd just...fallen asleep in Katie's lap, for like an hour or whatever. She didn't know why that felt so weird, it just was. Also, she had no idea why Katie touching her neck like that felt so good, that seemed so fucking random.

It felt like kind of a lot, somehow. She couldn't say a lot how, though, because she was shite at this — all she knew was that she felt all squirmy, and it was really hard to avoid staring at Katie for no apparent reason.

Once they got off the stairs, stepping out onto the hallway that would bring them back to the hospital, Liz grabbed onto Katie's hand. And they kept walking, silent, Katie's mind washing over hers warm and smooth and soft, an echo of cream and rosemary lingering on her breath.

The nerves started prickling at the back of Liz's neck as the elevator doors closed, her stomach swooping as they sank. As they stepped out onto the hospital floor again, she froze, hitching to a stop only a few metres onto the spell damage floor — Katie didn't notice immediately, continuing a couple steps until the she felt the tug at her hand. Turning back toward her, mind simmering (loud, carried through their joined hands), she asked, "You okay, Liz?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I just..." Liz trailed off, not really sure how to finish that sentence. It didn't help that it was a lie: she wasn't fine, not really. Her skin practically crawling with nerves, her stomach twisting, she didn't know how she'd find Severus, if there might have been other consequences from the fight, like damage to his brain or something, or if the healing might not have gone very well and his hip was going to be worse than they'd thought and he wouldn't be able to walk with a cane, even, or what the hell she was supposed to say to him, she wasn't used to visiting people in hospitals, her only real experience with it was Dorea's seizures and stuff, and she couldn't— "Just nervous, I guess."

An edge of something cool and sharp running through her head, Katie gave her hand a little squeeze. "He'll be all right. Snape's a tough bastard." Of course, she wasn't really sure about that — she had no way of knowing any more about how Severus was doing than Liz did, and honestly knew even less about healing — it just felt like the thing to say. Though she was confident Severus would be fine, she just didn't have any real reason to think that, was the thing. Kind of like how Liz just knew things sometimes, except Katie wasn't a Seer, just, no justification for that feeling at all.

She knew that wasn't unusual, normal people just believed shite all the time. It was always weird to see it, though.

After a minute or two catching her breath — Katie just standing there holding her hand, feeling all calm and warm and confident — eventually she gathered herself enough to keep going. She kind of didn't want to, honestly, because if she actually saw how Severus was doing, it'd be a real thing, and not just a worry in her head, and that was kind of scary. But at the same time, seeing Severus unconscious was also scary, and seeing that he was awake and fine would be an improvement, right? It'd be less to worry about, at least. Hopefully. Not like there would really be less for her to worry about, when she thought about it, because there would still be the long recovery Severus was in for, and then even after he was better, he might just do something fucking stupid and get himself almost killed again...

As much as Severus giving a shite had worked out for her, she kind of wished he'd just left his friends to their own devices. She realised that wasn't reasonable, but she didn't care, she was unreasonable about things sometimes, fuck off.

(She knew Severus didn't really care about himself, but she did, dammit. She wasn't ready for him to not be around anymore.)

It'd gotten bad enough that she was all tense and twitchy by the time they reached the familiar lobby of the recovery ward, her breath thick and harsh against her throat. They'd barely even been here for a few seconds before the opposite door, leading deeper inside, swung open and Síomha stepped into the lobby. Her eyes finding them, attention cool and sharp on Liz, she hitched to a stop. "Ah, there you are. He's awake, I was just coming to find you."

...Right, so her feeling had been correct. Okay. So she just had to...go in there, then.

She didn't realise she was squeezing Katie's hand tighter until she caught the burn of discomfort through her head. Snatching her hand away from Katie's, she said, "Oh, um, sorry. I should, er... I don't know if they'll let you back there, you know, they mostly just allow family in this one."

"That's all right, I can go home." Katie glanced over at Síomha, with a mix of curiosity and unease — did Katie not approve of Síomha? or Saoirse, for that matter? She couldn't actually remember it ever coming up, now that she thought about it... "Here, you should take this back," she said, passing the strap of Liz's bag over her head so she could hand it over.

"Right, um, thanks."

"Sure. Write to me about how Snape is doing, or if you need anything."

"I'll try to remember." It shouldn't be difficult, she'd promised to give Hermione, Susan, and Rita updates, she could just do all of them at once. "Um, so..." Glancing away from Katie, she eyed the door into the ward — nerves crawling over her skin, tense and sharp, squeezing her chest. "...I should go..."

"You should. Come here, quick." Liz was confused for a second, but she figured it out pretty quickly with a glance over. Katie was dipping down a bit, her arms coming up, so Liz turned back around, Katie's mind again blaring loud as her arms slipped around Liz's waist, her own arms coming up to loop over Katie's shoulders. Because Liz was frustratingly short, she was tipped up onto her toes, Katie leaning down a little awkwardly, her knees bending, and even doing that she was still taller, as she squeezed Liz close forcing her spine to arch back, why was she fucking tiny...

She felt tears prick at her eyes, but she was pretty sure it had nothing to do with her usual frustration with being too bloody short.

After some seconds she felt Katie's arms start to loosen, so she pulled back, once her arms were free took a quick, surreptitious swipe at her eyes — it didn't feel like she'd actually leaked, but just in case. She cleared her throat, staring down at somewhere around Katie's knees she muttered, "Thanks. For, um...you know." At least she hoped Katie knew what she meant, because Liz sure as hell didn't.

If Katie was at all confused, it wasn't strong enough for Liz to feel it at all, her mind still all warm and fuzzy. "Take care of yourself, Liz. I'll see you on Sunday."

"Sure. See you."

With a last soft crooked smile at her, Katie turned and walked out of the hall, Liz watched her go until she disappeared through the doors. Then she took a long, slow breath, trying to push down the nerves clawing at her throat, then turned to follow Síomha into the ward. It was hard to move, her joints stiff, her heart pounding in her ears, Liz kept her eyes on the floor in front of her, focussed on putting one foot in front of the other, navigating by the feel of Síomha's occlumency-smooth mind ahead and to her left. Nervously wringing at the strap of her bag with both hands, she consciously took breaths in and out, in and out, anxiety crackling almost painfully across her scalp and down her spine...

She hated the smell in here. As soon as she stepped across the wardline, it was already burning at her throat with each breath — Liz froze, her whole body going tense with the sharp, sudden feeling that she did not want to be here. But she was being ridiculous, she was fine, Severus was fine, after a couple breaths — trying not to think about Privet Drive, the smell far too similar to that damn bleach cleaner shite Petunia bought — she forced her feet into motion with a lurch, pushed to catch back up with Síomha.

Severus was awake. They were only partway down the ward when he felt them coming — Liz felt his attention turn toward her, feeling her magic on the air, and then begin turning inward, trying to contain himself. He wasn't pushing himself out, but he wasn't doing a good job of actually shielding his mind, icing over in patches before loosening again, simmering with unfocussed frustration. They still had him on pain potions and shite, apparently he didn't have the focus to keep occlumency up while high out of his mind on who knew what.

Despite how very tense she was, Liz felt her lips twitch with a smile — being frustrated that he couldn't control his mind while high on pain potions after being almost murdered was, just, very Severus, that was all.

Síomha walked ahead of her, pulling aside the curtains and stepping inside the little space around Severus's bed, but Liz stopped a few metres away. Staring down at the floor, her hands tight enough around the strap of her bag the joints of her fingers were starting to hurt, her breath thick and harsh in her throat, chest tight and tense enough it was hard to breathe much at all, her skin crawling. She didn't know what to do, she didn't want to be here, she had no idea what the fuck she was supposed to say, she didn't think she could do this—

Sucking in as deep a breath as she could, Liz stepped closer to the bed, and looked up to find Severus's eyes.

He actually looked slightly better than the last time she'd been here, only a couple hours ago. The bed had been tilted somewhat, sitting him up a little, but at a pretty shallow angle, nowhere close to sitting upright — Liz guessed the damage to his hip would make sitting up uncomfortable. A thick poofy pillow under his head managed to prop his head up enough that it wasn't too awkward to look at them, the blankets pulled up to cover his shoulders. She wondered if that was because he was cold, or if he was just self-conscious about how very boney he was, the hospital gown stuff didn't do a great job of concealing that. But, not only was he sitting up, and looking at them, awake, but there was noticeably more colour in his face, still bloody pale but looking rather less gaunt. He didn't quite look like himself, his hair cut down to wisps scattered in a mess around his head, the lower part of his face darkened with a few days' growth, but he still felt like himself so that made little difference to Liz, and moving and with more colour to his skin, he looked less unnervingly...like...

...well, like he was already dead, she guessed. How stupid pale he was, thin to the point of almost seeming skeletal, the vibes hadn't clicked at the time, but it was obvious in retrospect.

Something churning in her throat, her fingers shivering around the strap of her bag, she just stared at him for a few seconds. He found his voice first, thin and a little hoarse, but still recogniseably him — but even then, all he said was just, "Elizabeth."

All thick and twisted up, half-strangled by something, she managed to grind out, "Hey."

And then they, just, stared at each other, for several seconds. Apparently Severus didn't have any better idea of what to say than she did. At least he had the excuse of being dosed up with potions, Liz just continued to be very bad at this shite. She had no idea what was going on in her head, honestly, she couldn't think, thick and fuzzy and loud, her ears ringing...

She twitched a little at another voice, not expecting Síomha to speak. "I think I'll give you two a moment alone. I should get a few messages off anyway." At the opposite side of the bed from Liz, she leaned over close to Severus, their faces only a few inches apart, her fingers on his jaw — making direct mental communication easier, Liz realised, the same way people got very loud with physical contact. She was too scattered right now to not eavesdrop...not that there was really much going on. It seemed like Síomha was more talking in feelings, a rush of relief and something clingy and squishy she couldn't quite put words to and also frustration with him for almost getting himself killed like an idiot...

It felt like Síomha was actually kind of angry with him? a little bit? At least, she didn't think that was the anger for the people who'd hurt him Liz had seen before, but she couldn't quite follow the logic that led to it, Síomha not thinking about it clearly enough. The vague impression was that—

Oh. Oh, she got it now — it wasn't explicitly spelled out in Síomha's thoughts at the moment, but there was enough for Liz to figure it out on her own. Síomha was also aware that Severus didn't really care about himself much — he'd fully expected to die in the fight against the Dark Lord, and had accepted that ages ago, until the situation with Liz had made it impossible to take up his spying job again — and, she had more details about what had actually happened than Liz did, having picked it up directly from Severus's mind before he was put under, somehow she thought this was connected. Like, Severus had been reckless, because he thought getting people he cared about out safe, doing something to sabotage the Dark Lord before the war even got going, was more important than keeping himself safe.

Síomha was annoyed with Severus for not thinking about her first. And Liz too, of course, but that was more a matter of principle, with herself it was more personal.

But that wasn't the overwhelming feeling, just the most confusing one, the rest much more squishy and warm and...honestly probably kind of private, but Liz couldn't help it. Severus seemed bemused by all of that, which was honestly kind of funny (if hypocritical of her), and it felt like Síomha agreed, more amused by his inability to come up with a response than anything. Síomha leaned in the rest of the way to give him a slow soft kiss on the lips — that was a little weird to see, because, you know, Severus — and then Síomha was standing upright again. She quick glanced at Liz, but she started walking off without a word, pulling the curtains closed again as she left.

...Okay, then.

Silence hung for a moment, Liz standing there with absolutely no fucking clue what to say, hands wringing at the strap of her bag, something churning in her throat. That Severus clearly didn't know how to handle this situation either didn't really help. After a few tense, awkward seconds, he said, "What happened while I was out?"

So, they were just going to be casual about it then. Liz could maybe deal with that, okay. "Um, nothing much. At least not with me." It was starting to get uncomfortable just standing here, as tense as she was — she glanced around and spotted a chair, summoned it over here with a flick of stiff fingers. Getting her bag off and hung over the back of the chair took longer than it really should, got the thing caught up in her hair, ugh. She should really see about getting home so she could do the potion thing in the bath. Sitting down brought her face down to an angle it was a little awkward for Severus to look at her, his chin nearly meeting his chest, oh well. "I've just been at the hospital, so... Nobody's told me about anything big going on."

Severus seemed a little relieved about that, which was a little confusing...until Liz realised he'd meant to ask what had happened with her. It's not like he'd expected any big events or anything, just...

"I've been fine. I mean, not..." She didn't know how to finish that thought. Obviously she hadn't really been okay, but it's not like anything happened, and she kind of didn't want to... She didn't want to complain about it, she guessed — Severus was the one who'd been injured, she was just... "We've been staying in the hotel here. Spent most of the time reading, when I could focus on it."

His eyes drooping closed — he looked tired — something in his mind turning, at once some tension loosening and also an uncomfortable lurch, for some reason. "You two have been getting along, then." Liz and Síomha, he meant.

"...Yeah, sure. It's a little awkward, but she's fine." Suddenly, Liz remembered the conversation they had in the cafeteria a couple days ago — you're the only person who can decide what your relationships mean to you — she glanced away, staring at the pure white fabric covering the bed, fingers fidgeting with her skirt, that something churning in her throat getting stronger, her stomach squirming. "Um. Yeah, we've just been...waiting."

"Good." Severus took a slow breath in and out through his nose, then his eyes blinked open again, finding hers — it took a couple tries, unfocussed, still drugged up. "I know this...must have been difficult. I'm sorry for—"

Blurting it out without really meaning to, Liz said, "No you're not."

Confused, unfocussed mind swirling a little, Severus just blinked back at her for a couple seconds. She might have expected some exasperation at, just, interrupting him like that, but he was too out of it to have that kind of reaction, she guessed. Which was uncomfortable to notice, honestly — those flashes of exasperation at a thing she did or said was, just, an essential part of Severus being Severus, it felt wrong not to get it. "Excuse me?"

"You don't care. Sure, maybe you didn't mean to hurt people, me and Síomha, but that doesn't matter." Her chest tight, throat harsh and hot, prickling in her eyes, she grit her teeth, forced a breath. Coming out a little strangled-sounding, she ground out, "Go back, and you'd do the same thing again."

For a long moment, Severus just stared back at her, an unsettled lurching in her head. His mouth was hanging open just a little, only a couple millimetres between his lips, but he didn't say anything — because she was right, and they both knew it. Which made the apology he'd been trying to make kind of horseshite, because he didn't really mean it, and they both knew it.

"You don't—" It hadn't come out right, her voice not quite working — Liz cut herself off, cleared her throat. It took a few breaths to be sure she'd be able to get the words out, hot and thick and harsh in her throat, almost painful. "I got a message to the Dark Lord, it—"

A sharp flare of shock, his eyes going wide, Severus said, "You— How did—?"

"It doesn't matter." She still didn't want to tell him about Tamsyn. It was even more complicated now, with her sneaking her way into the Order and everything. "I have a way to contact him, I never left the hospital. It isn't— The point is, he said it's... He said this was between you and...whoever did this. That it doesn't count as acting against him, you still haven't... That pardon I got you is still good, I guess."

Severus stared at her, scrambling for words. Or, she guessed, more like stumbling for words, since he wasn't quite thinking straight, with the drugs and all. And since he wasn't shielding his mind at all, she had a pretty good idea of what he was thinking — she wasn't intruding, and he was a bit fuzzy at the moment, but she got the general picture. He was having feelings about Liz trying so hard to protect him — hard to put her finger on what those feelings were, exactly, maybe guilt or something? — but it also didn't really matter. He had absolutely no intention of taking that deal. The coming war, everything that came with it, was too important for him to stay out of. He literally couldn't imagine it, it wasn't even in the realm of possibility.

"I can't do this, Severus. I'm not ready to—" She felt her voice fucking squawk, cut herself off. Her throat was burning, that churning something trying to break out, her vision going all wavery, she quick swiped at her eyes with shaking fingers, coming away wet. Ugh, of course she had to start fucking crying, this was difficult enough without her own body fucking with her. She felt warmth on her face, but that was probably mostly for feelings reasons, it was too soon for it to be embarrassment for the crying, though Severus's attention on her was making her feel uncomfortably exposed, but she tried to ignore it, glaring back at him instead of shrinking away. Her voice came out all thick and unsteady, barely getting it past her throat, and it kind of hurt, speaking slowly to make sure it was understandable. "It wasn't worth it. Whatever you were trying to do, it wasn't. Maybe you d-don't care, but I do, and Síomha. You're not alone, anymore, it's not– I c-c-can't..." She had to stop again, her voice not cooperating...

...and she didn't really know where she was going with that, honestly. The not-quite-crying was kind of getting in the way, she'd started stammering, the random shaking in her hands apparently making her mouth too clumsy to talk, and also breathing was hard, throat and chest too tight and hot, she couldn't... And, she did kind of know where she was going with that...kind of. But she didn't know if she could actually say it, and not just because her body wasn't cooperating at the moment.

Thinking, in the privacy of her own head, that she didn't know what she'd do if Severus were gone, that it scared her, just thinking that made her feel pathetic. She didn't know if she could actually say it out loud.

She was still struggling to breathe, taking another swipe at her eyes, trying to work up to talking...though she wasn't really sure what she'd say at this point even if she were capable of it. But she didn't need to, she was still trying to fight down the fucking pointless crying when Severus muttered, "Okay."

"...What?"

"I won't—" He cut himself off, his attention leaving her. She looked up — her vision watery, she had to wipe at her eyes again to make him out properly — to find Severus was staring off up and to the side, his jaw working silently. His head was kind of a mess, she couldn't quite tell what was going on, but she thought... "I can't do nothing. I'll continue brewing potions for the Order, and healing if they need it. But I won't put myself..." His eyes turned back to hers, dark and unsteady, something on the texture of his attention, hard but soft at once. "I'll be more careful — if not for my sake, then for... I promise."

Truth.

He wasn't just saying that, he meant it.

Liz opened her mouth to respond, to say...she didn't know, exactly, this was what she'd wanted to happen, but she hadn't really believed he would, and she didn't know what she was supposed to say to that, a thank you or something didn't seem right somehow, but her head was a fucking mess, she couldn't figure out the right words, her head pounding and she felt her eyes spilling over, one of her knuckles almost jabbing into her eye when she reached up to clear them, her hands shaking too much, and the shite all worked up was too much, she couldn't breathe, she tried to get the breath to fucking say something, this was kind of important, and she knew if not my sake then for— he hadn't finished the sentence, but she was pretty sure he meant her, if not only her then also Síomha and, like, random Slytherins with fucked-up families or whatever, people who needed him, but it was at least partially her, and this was important and she should fucking say something, but when she tried to breathe there was a hard sharp lurch through her chest, and some kind of noise was wrenched out of her throat, she covered her mouth with a hand, squeezing her eyes shut, hot and wet and stinging, and she couldn't—

"Elizabeth." Flinching, she forced her eyes open, looking up, blinking to clear the image. Severus was giving her some kind of look, her vision too blurry to make it out, his head too much of a mess to read. The blanket had been shrugged down a bit, one arm freed, a hand held out toward her — the gesture wasn't very clear, but Liz knew what he was thinking anyway.

And so for at least the third time she could think of, Severus held her as she cried, bent over the hospital bed at an awkward angle to press her head against his chest, her hands fisted in the thin linen gown — one of his arms loose around her back, the other buried in her hair to cup the back of her head, his mind a swirling storm of thoughts and feelings she couldn't make any sense of at all. It was impossible to tell how long it went on, painful sobs wrung out of her one after the other — she didn't know why crying had to hurt so fucking much — but it didn't really matter.

Severus was going to be safe, he wasn't leaving her alone. That was the important thing.

(At some point, he started crying too, but she was sure that was just her stuff getting to him. Being a mind mage could be overwhelming like that.)

---

D'aww? D'aww.

Jesus, that went far too fucking long. Katie's visit wasn't originally planned, but I decided there wasn't enough in this part of the outline...and then it took forever. And this is after making roughly two thousand words of cuts, lol, I'm impossible. Next chapter should be short at least? ._.

More than enough babble from me at this point, see you next time, bye.