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)

127. Fourth Year — Triwizard Tournament XIX

They couldn't just sit in the middle of an empty hallway kissing forever, unfortunately — it wasn't very much longer before Liz had to go. She kind of glared at the illusion cast by her time charm...though by the soft fuzzy amusement from Katie, she suspected it came out more of a pout. Oh well.

Liz let out a long sigh. "I should get going. I'm supposed to be downstairs to meet up for the stupid thing tonight at five." With a crook of her finger, she summoned her bag sliding across the floor to slump against her leg — she'd dropped at it some point, hadn't really been paying attention — a wave of her wand casting a mirror charm. Oh wow, her hair had gotten messed up, and her lipstick was kind of smeared. Her face was also all pink, from the kissing and stuff, but that'd go down on its own by the time she got downstairs. She reached up to untie her scarf, she'd just have to redo the whole thing...

"Come now, Liz, you won the Triwizard Tournament. Can't even summon up a little enthusiasm at having all your hard work rewarded?" The sarcasm on Katie's voice was very obvious — she knew full well Liz hadn't wanted to be in the fucking thing in the first place.

So she glanced at Katie long enough to roll her eyes before turning back to the mirror, worked at retaming her hair. "If they want to reward me, they could start with not putting me right in front of a big damn crowd. That many eyes at once is really uncomfortable." When she was sober, anyway, it should be fine if she kept her drugs up.

"You know, it's not that much bigger of a crowd than we get at duelling events all the time."

"The wards block it, most of the time, I don't really notice."

Katie hummed, watched Liz for a moment. Lifting her hair out of the way drew Katie's eyes to her neck, which was kind of distracting. "At least you're getting something out of it. What I wouldn't give for a free thousand galleons — I would have entered the Tournament myself if I was old enough."

Her hands partway through tying the ends of her scarf into a knot, she hesitated. Not like it'd be saying anything Katie didn't already know. "Not to be blunt, Katie, but what the hell am I going to do with an extra thousand galleons?"

There was a little shiver of cool surprise, Katie blinked at her for a couple seconds. "Oh, well. When you put it that way."

"I was thinking of donating it, actually, not sure what to yet. Maybe start a scholarship thing — there'll be schools soon that don't charge tuition, sure, but they're not covering supplies, and sometimes that shite can get expensive. The winnings of a school tournament thing going back into education makes sense when you think about it, right?" A thousand galleons could send, like, maybe twenty kids to academy — like at Oxford or Caoimhe's, not Hogwarts — but she could probably help more people and make an overall bigger difference by ensuring people actually got through primary and craft school or whatever, and didn't have to drop out for affordability reasons. (Wands and tuition were the big expenses, so, focus on primary and craft school and the money went further.) She didn't know, she wasn't an expert, she'd talk to Sylvia about it. It hadn't come up, yet, though they probably should have considered it ahead of time — the thought of actually winning the Tournament had been very annoying, so she hadn't wanted to plan for it.

"Sure, I guess." Katie sounded distracted, still a little dumbfounded at the thought that Liz was being given a thousand galleons later today, and didn't want it.

She might have been able to guess that ahead of time if she'd sat down and thought about it, it was just... Well, she was aware that the noble kids here (and even some of the commoners, most of them were from wealthy families) had a stupid amount of money, but what that meant wasn't something that consistently clicked for her. Some of the clothes and accessories or whatever some of her classmates would be wearing on days off were very expensive-looking, and so many people over the years hadn't seemed to think much of buying an expensive racing broom on a whim, reminded her sometimes when something like that came up.

But this was a big one. A thousand galleons would be a life-changing amount of money for her — that Liz didn't even care about it, planned on just giving it away, was incomprehensible.

One of the most unremarked upon privileges of having money — Liz had learned, since actually getting access to the Potter stuff a couple years ago now — was not having to care about money.

Liz didn't really know what the fuck she was supposed to say about that, so she just...didn't. Honestly, she hadn't considered that...class stuff might be an issue until right this second — most of the class stuff she came across day-to-day was, you know, aristocratic disdain, and it's not like she gave a damn that Katie's family were dirt-poor farmers. It'd occurred to her that some people might think Katie wasn't good enough for the Girl Who Lived, there might be some nasty comments in the bloody gossip pages or whatever, like with Daphne being a Mistwalker. But, well, Daphne also had money, so it hadn't really come up as a sore spot, between them. That Katie might be uncomfortable about class stuff...just hadn't occurred to her. Probably should have, but it hadn't.

She just seemed quietly baffled about it more than anything, so it probably wasn't a problem. But Liz didn't know what to say right now anyway, so.

With a little bit of effort, she probably could have just touched up her lipstick, but she went ahead and fully redid it, cleaning it all off with a charm and starting from scratch. Katie was pulled out of her thoughts, watching her, her attention close and warm and... She wasn't sure what to call that feeling, exactly. Katie was definitely feeling something, all soft and affectionate, but Liz was bad with feelings words. Glancing to the side, Liz asked, "What?"

She turned back to the mirror pretty quickly, finishing smoothing over the stuff, but she still noticed Katie smiling at her. "Nothing. You're pretty is all."

Despite the sincerity she could feel ringing in Katie's mind, she decided to play it off. She rolled her eyes with a little huff, recapped the lipstick, gave it a little wiggle. "Pretty girly, I think you mean."

"Girls are pretty."

...Fair enough.

"You know, you're awful at taking compliments."

Liz shrugged. "Yeah, sorry."

"I can try to do it less, if it's going to make you uncomfortable. It's just, I get to do it now, you know, without having to worry about making things weird, so." So it was new and fun, she meant.

"No, it's fine, it's just..." She hesitated for a second, wondering just how much was a good idea to say here. At least part of the reason she was so difficult about it was because some part of her still reflexively assumed it was a lie — her Liz is broken shite was better than it used to be, but better didn't mean gone — so then she was wondering why the person would lie about that, but no, she was being stupid, she'd be able to feel a lie, and so she ended up too distracted by that nonsense to react like a normal person. Also, she just...didn't know how to react like a normal person? She was bad at this stuff. She'd definitely end up admitting all that to Katie eventually, but this wasn't the time for that kind of conversation, especially since she had to be somewhere soon. "It's just a little embarrassing, is all. And, well, I don't know what I'm supposed to do — like I said, no fucking clue what I'm doing."

Of course, Katie just felt amused. "The way you get all red and flustered is really cute, so you've got that going for you."

"Oh, shut up..."

"Mm." She tipped up onto her knees, sitting on her heels, leaning over Liz. Her hand came to Liz's cheek, her mind pulsing loud, and—

Liz twitched, leaning a little away. "Hey, I just fixed my lipstick."

"I won't mess it up," Katie muttered, her breath puffing down Liz's throat. Slowly, she brought her lips to Liz's, very softly, enough it kind of tickled a little, the back of Liz's neck tingling, face warming from the squishy feelings rushing through. And then Katie pulled back again, holding out a hand to help her up.

Letting herself by half-pulled to her feet, she gave Katie a flat look. "What, are you going to kiss me every time I tell you to shut up now?"

Katie grinned. "Is that a problem?"

...Liz wasn't sure how to answer that question, so instead she just picked up her bag and started walking toward the Grand Staircase. For some reason, Katie thought this was very, very funny, chuckling low in her throat, amusement bubbling warm and fluttery against Liz's back. It was only a few paces before Katie caught up, her hand slipping into Liz's, mind warm and bright and fluttery and clingy. "You just enjoy embarrassing me."

"Yep."

"Evil."

"Yep."

It didn't take them very long to reach the Grand Staircase — or it didn't feel like it, at least. There were some people around, climbing up to Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. It was the last full day, and most people hadn't even nearly finished their packing yet, and everyone knew there'd be a special event...feast...thing, so they'd also be making themselves up somewhat nice, at least. They wouldn't be in front of the whole bloody crowd, but still. Liz and Katie paused just off the stairs — Liz was going down, Katie was going up — a group of Ravenclaws passing by giving them a double-take, noticing they were still holding hands.

Katie had been giving her a couple thoughtful looks as they neared the Stairs, though whatever had been on her mind had been implicit enough that Liz hadn't been able to read it. Until she noticed the Ravenclaws giving them looks — people Katie had dated before, especially nobles, had been pretty sensitive about, ah, public displays of affection. "This is fine," Liz said, squeezing her hand a little, "but nothing too, ah, intense."

"Right, got it." She was rather pleased, actually, though Liz wasn't able to follow the logic of the thought before she was moving on, turning down to smile at her. "So, I'll see you in a couple weeks, I guess."

The trip to Bordeaux for the exam, she meant. "You can come over earlier than that — you know my floo password, and I already let you in the wards. Just, write me ahead of time, in case I'm doing something."

"I don't know if I'll be doing that," Katie said, a little reluctantly. "I get little enough time with my family as it is, being at Hogwarts most of the year."

"Right, forgot." She didn't have a family herself, you see, sometimes that kind of thing didn't occur to her. "That's fine, I know your family's important to you. Don't worry about me, I can wait."

With a little fluttering of relief — apparently she hadn't been certain whether Liz would have a problem with Katie's family taking up so much of her holiday — she said, "Thanks, Liz."

"Sure. Oh, um, I can make these paired notebooks, you write in one and it instantly appears in the other? I'll send you one when I get home, should only be a couple days."

"That sounds perfect, actually. As long as you're cool with me scrawling out the occasional sappy love letter."

"...As long as you're cool with me not knowing how to respond to sappy love letters — I'm only slightly less awkward in writing."

Frothing amusement mixing in with the squishy feelings, Katie grinned down at her. "I'll keep that in mind. I should let you get going, then."

"Yeah, I guess."

There was a brief pause, and then Katie turned to hug her — which was only slightly awkward, thanks to the height difference, but it wasn't so bad, Liz's arms around Katie's shoulders to help her stay balanced on her toes. Though, honestly, with how tight Katie's arms squeezed around her, her breath catching a little, Liz's feet might as well not be touching the ground at all. It was just a bloody hug, but she still felt a little flustered when they separated, her face warm, needed a second to catch her breath.

It was the squeezing, she thought, the feeling kind of reminding her of, like, wearing corsets and shite, but warmer, with Katie's mind and body right there.

(It was nice.)

Looking up at Katie as they stepped away, she belatedly noticed the lipstick still blotched unevenly around her mouth. "Oh, um, you kind of have..." Liz just gestured vaguely around her own lips.

Katie smirked. "Bragging rights." A little flinch in her mind, her eyes flicking to the side a bit, "If that's okay, I mean."

Rolling her eyes, Liz said, "It's fine, I don't care. As long as you know what you're getting into, you know, with all the Girl Who Lived shite."

"Like I said: bragging rights."

...Okay, then. At least she didn't have to worry about Katie being turned off by all the celebrity shite. She might be annoyed if Katie actually gave a damn about all that nonsense herself, she just knew her friends (not to mention her family) were going to be ridiculous about it, so, whatever, that was fine. After quick final goodbyes, they split up — but Liz didn't start going down the stairs right away, pausing at the top with her hand on the bannister, watching Katie.

She really did look unfairly good in denims.

"Hey, Katie."

Only a few steps up, she turned to look over the railing down at Liz. "Yeah?"

"...Shut up."

Katie grinned, started hopping back down the stairs.

A few minutes later Liz stepped into a secret passage — the same one with all the balconies she'd used to get up to the fifth floor earlier — swinging the door closed behind her. She walked down maybe about a floor or so before, just, plopping down onto one of the steps. Her arms folded across her thighs, she bent forward, enough her face nearly touched her knees. And she just sat there, breathing.

Feelings.

She was definitely having feelings. It was hard for her to get much more specific than that, though, because she really was very bad at this.

It was kind of a lot though, whatever it was. It'd already been there for...well, for a little while, at least, but she'd kind of been distracted with all the stuff coming off of Katie, and also her drugs had started to wear off, so Seer shite had started getting...iffier. Sometimes the echoes on Katie could be somewhat ambiguous — Liz was pretty sure she'd kill people at some point, but considering she planned on going for the Aurors and that there was a civil war coming up, that wasn't a surprise — but the stuff that felt closer, resonating with Liz, were generally pleasant, so that didn't bother her for the most part. But Hogwarts was just psychometrically messy, especially in the busier areas like the Grand Staircase, and there had been some people around, so she'd started feeling a little tense. And now that she was in private, no attention on her and further away from noisy Seer shite, and she didn't have a distraction, in the form of actually trying to talk to Katie and not make a complete idiot of herself, there was nothing to stop it from, just, bubbling up and...

And it was a lot. The tightness in her throat and chest, almost like she was about to cry but not quite, the feeling softer and bubblier than that, and she felt kind of twitchy, tense energy spanging through her limbs, like she'd had far too much coffee or something and needed to move, and her head felt all tingly, hard to focus on anything, even so much as to figure out what the hell this was supposed to be, jumping from thing to thing...mostly about Katie, playing over that whole moment they'd just had, the plans they'd already made for the summer, and what they might...

It was hard to breathe, from the tight heat in her throat, but it felt more like holding in laughter than tears. Not exactly like that, maybe something between the two? Altogether, it was a weird feeling, she didn't know what to call it. Excitement, maybe? Definitely an up feeling, but besides that it was hard for her to tell, she was so bad at feelings stuff.

For some reason, her thoughts bouncing around, she kept going back to Katie, just...watching her, and touching her face. The face-touching was still a little odd, she didn't know what was up with that. Her first thought had been just, you know, Katie liked it, thought she was pretty, but on reflection she didn't think that was quite it. Or not the whole story, anyway — obviously Katie did think that, even if she hadn't come out and said as much (which she had) Liz would be able to tell herself through cheating mind mage stuff. But, with the feelings coming off of Katie as she did it, she didn't think it was as simple as pretty face. Sitting here thinking about it, without any immediate distractions, it was starting to seem more like...

Well, romantic feelings. Liz didn't entirely understand the impulse, how I like this person connects into random face-touching, but she was becoming increasingly certain that's what was going on there. Thinking about it, replaying in her head, was kind of making her feel funny, practically squirming on the steps.

Not that she knew what feeling that was, exactly — again, shite at feelings things. Not a bad feeling, just, kind of a lot.

Everything was kind of a lot at the moment, to be honest? She'd had a very busy twenty-four hours — around this time yesterday she would have been...well, an hour or two into the maze, she guessed. Even before the start of the Task, there'd been stuff going on with Severus, and with Síomha, which was confusing, and the maze itself had been rather intense, if not really as bad as she'd worried — except the boggart, of course, that had sucked — and then she got bloody kidnapped, by the fucking Dark Lord, but then that whole thing had turned out surprisingly well, and the war would be starting up again, it didn't really feel like that reality had quite clicked to her yet (it hadn't been very long), but it also wasn't her problem, because it turned out Tamsyn had managed to negotiate a truce for her, which unfortunately didn't cover Severus, so, even if the Dark Lord wasn't really a threat to her she was still going to worry about him (and some of her friends who might not keep their heads down), and it also turned out that Tamsyn was the Dark Lord, or, the original her, who'd made the diary which had become the Tamsyn she knew back when she (he?) had been not much older than Liz was now, and she still didn't know what the fuck she was supposed to do with that, but also now the Tournament was fucking over, and everything had worked out more or less all right in the end (at least for her), and the extra security Severus was insisting on was going to be a pain but she still had a lot of stuff she was looking forward to going on this summer, just being away from the fucking Castle for a while, sure, but then there was her blood alchemy stuff, it was so close now, and the duelling events were always fun, and also Katie was going to be there, which was something to look forward to because they were dating now, and aaaahhhhh kissing her had felt fucking amazing, and some of the more romantic stuff could be embarrassing but that wasn't really bad, she could admit in her own head that she did kind of enjoy it, just didn't know what to do with herself, and she knew Katie was just like this, so there would be more, and she was actually looking forward to it, and she didn't know—

She'd had a very busy day, was all. It was a lot, not a big surprise she needed to take a moment to collect herself.

(The thought occurred to her, at one point, that maybe this was what happiness was supposed to feel like. And also if maybe she was a little mad to be feeling like this now, considering what had just happened last night...)

(But that was a silly thought, because she already knew she was mad.)

After a few minutes, she managed to gather herself together, more or less. She tucked another of her drug tablets under her tongue, slapped herself on both cheeks a couple times — trying to snap herself out of it, not like she thought that was going to do any good — then popped up to her feet and continued down the stairs.

She felt better after the drugs kicked in. Not that they made the feelings go away — they definitely didn't — just, less overwhelming.

Eventually, Liz reached the room the people involved in the Tournament stuff were supposed to meet in, the same overly-fancy place they'd met up before leaving the Castle ahead of the Task. She wasn't technically late, but it looked like she was at least pretty close to the last person here — there were the Champions, various family members, the judges, plus some Ministry people as well. There were going to be some big-name people at the event, she'd been informed — even including Erin Scrimgeour and Mockridge, apparently — but some of the big names hadn't been able to get here ahead of time, maybe they'd be showing up closer to the time. Zabini was here, though, and so was Fawley, the Director of International Cooperation. There were some more adults she didn't recognise, maybe important people from Aquitania or Daneland. As she was glancing around another couple came in behind her, and she was kind of blocking the door, oops...

The room was a little crowded, honestly. Good thing she'd thought to re-up her drugs, this would have been unpleasant if she were sober right now.

"Ah, and there's our winner!" That was Gamp, near a clump of tables and chairs toward the middle of the room. "We were starting to wonder if we should send someone to find you! Come, Miss Potter, over here, if you please..."

The crowd parted a little to let her through, pretty much every pair of eyes in the room turning toward her, the attention so thick on her Liz was practically swimming through it. Generally pretty neutral — they were mostly all adults, who didn't actually care that much who won a school competition for children (with the exception of the people who'd had bets riding on it) — but it was still kind of a lot, especially since the conversations going on had mostly all abruptly dropped at her appearance. Some people around even started some polite clapping which, um, okay then, some on the way to the middle of the room quietly congratulating her and whatever. Thankfully not trying to shake her hand or something, that she was a Seer having gotten around by now, just, polite little nods and the like, which was much more tolerable than getting her mind yanked around by people touching her.

The Champions and their families were sitting at the middle of the room, the judges all nearby. She wasn't the only one who was still marked up a bit — Cedric's skin was a patchwork of bandages, his hair a bit lopsided, presumably from his duel with Artèmi, Fleur had one arm in a sling, Artèmi and Viktor a little banged up but nothing too bad-looking. Interestingly, the only one of the five who looked completely unharmed was Ingrid. Liz hadn't heard much about how the Task had gone, but just from appearances it seemed like Ingrid had done rather well, even if it hadn't been enough to win. They'd all gotten here before her, the other Champions all sitting with their parents, leaving one spot in the blob of seats Liz assumed was for her.

Severus wasn't here, but she hadn't really expected him to be — between the year-end wrap-up stuff and the Dark Lord being back, he must be busy. She was just hoping Síomha had managed to get him to sleep (even if it'd required literally hexing him).

She'd been a little worried that the Champions would be, you know, a bit annoyed with her winning. Especially the senior Champions — Liz wasn't even supposed to be in this fucking thing, one of the three of them would have won if she hadn't come in and messed it up. (And she suspected Artèmi might have ended up taking second place too.) And while there was definitely some hostility from some family people — particularly Cedric's dad and Viktor's mum, who especially disliked her for other reasons — it didn't feel like anyone was too annoyed with her. In fact, more than anything she noticed relief that she seemed to be doing okay after disappearing last night.

In fact, after she sat down Cedric leaned around his mum to look at her. "Hey, Liz, are you all right? The rumour going around is that you were kidnapped by dark wizards, but they're not really telling us much."

"I'm fine," she said, shrugging. "They wanted my blood for a ritual, but I was unconscious for the whole thing, and they let me go once they were done with me."

There was some clanging of surprise from multiple directions at that admission. Fleur was the first one to find her voice, snapping, "They took your blood? Did you—" She cut off, glancing at a clump of Ministry people not far away from their tables — British law was very restrictive, she had no idea what the rules around blood magic around here were like.

"Severus did an annihilation, it's fine."

While they waited for the actual start time to come, there was a bit more chatter, mostly about her kidnapping. It was the most interesting thing that had happened lately, and some of the Champions at least were legitimately concerned about her — they had spent a bit of time with each other over the course of the Tournament — so while it was a little tedious she didn't mind too much. Besides, it was pretty easy to get through it without revealing anything she shouldn't by just saying she'd been unconscious through the whole thing, which was at least true for the ritual part. She thought Artèmi and Fleur might suspect she was lying about not knowing who was responsible or what the ritual had been about, but she didn't think they were suspicious about it — there were a lot of reasons she might not want to share that with people, if only to not accidentally tip off the culprits before the authorities could catch them, so.

Artèmi joked about Liz wishing she'd let her get the Cup first now, which...no, she wasn't, actually. The truce with the Dark Lord was a good thing, obviously, but that wasn't the only reason. It hadn't quite been spelled out to her, but they would have had no way of guaranteeing Liz would come away with a win — she was pretty sure that Barty bloke hadn't intervened in that confusing three-way fight at the end at all. Her feeling was that they would have used the blood of whoever had won. Liz was the optimal choice, yes, but maybe someone else would do in a pinch...or they'd just call that attempt a failure and try to get her some other way. And Tamsyn had negotiated a truce for Liz, and Liz alone.

If Artèmi had gotten to the Cup first, she'd be dead right now. So, when she thought about it, Liz was actually perfectly fine with how things had gone last night — she had gotten that truce, and while she might not be particularly close with Artèmi or Viktor, that didn't mean she wanted them to be murdered. This was really the best possible outcome.

Maybe not for Britain in general, considering the Dark Lord was back, but that wasn't Liz's problem.

It wasn't very long after that that their little meeting here started properly. Zabini welcomed them all, blah blah, congratulated all the Champions on their performance in the Tournament, and Liz in particular for winning — there was also a bit about her showing up after being kidnapped last night, if she was feeling too stressed to get through the event tonight just signal someone and they'd get her out of there. (Liz felt fine, but she wouldn't mind having an excuse to ditch the event early, so she didn't say anything.) Once that was out of the way, there was a brief discussion about the scores they'd gotten in the Final, and how that ended up affecting their final ranking. The other Champions would get prizes based on their placement, it turned out, so that did actually matter.

Liz had gotten to the Cup first, so her points didn't matter. There was a three-way tie for second place in the Task, between Artèmi and Viktor and, surprisingly, Ingrid. Artèmi and Viktor had gotten to the Cup at about the same time Liz had, of course, and had been very close to winning; Ingrid had also made it to the Cup, if somewhat late, but had gotten through the whole Task without hardly getting injured at all, so the judges had decided to bump her up to the top as well. Cedric had been downed by Artèmi, hard, but that'd been very close to the middle, and his performance otherwise had been decent, so he got third place. Fleur hadn't gotten quite as close to the middle, and had made a few bad missteps on the way, so she ended up at the bottom.

After giving everyone (except Liz) points for the Final, they had Artèmi and Viktor tied for second place, Cedric and Fleur tied for third place — only a single point down, because the Tournament had ended up being very close — and then Ingrid in last. Ingrid had managed to narrow the gap between her and the rest down to only four points, but it hadn't been enough in the end — she didn't seem particularly irritated about that, at least, had probably resigned herself to losing months ago. But having ties was actually a problem, because they only had a single award for each spot, and doubling them up at the last minute wouldn't really work. The judges had discussed it, and broke the ties basically on a vote for who they thought had had a better performance in the Tournament overall.

They'd decided to break the tie between Cedric and Fleur in Fleur's favour, putting her in fourth place and Cedric in fifth. That seemed straightforward enough to Liz — Cedric's performance had been generally mediocre, while Fleur had some real stand-out efforts in some Tasks...and had honestly been hurt in the scoring due to some of the judges being stupidly racist, so. The other tie had broken in Artèmi's favour, putting her in second and Viktor in third. Viktor's performance had been ambivalent, a mix of excellent and mediocre or even outright awful scores, while Artèmi had been more consistent; also, that Artèmi had done so well against older competitors was simply fucking impressive, so some of the judges thought she deserved extra credit for that reason alone.

Of course, Liz was even younger than Artèmi, so it didn't seem that impressive by comparison, but she realised it still should be in a vacuum. Most mages their age would get easily flattened by mages the senior Champions' age — Ingrid even hanging on as well as she had was pretty unusual...though she did tend to lose badly in Tasks where the juniors and seniors had directly faced each other, so, yeah, that's about how it went. Liz and Artèmi were not normal. There was the mind magic, sure, which was cheating a bit, but their magical abilities were, like... Okay, maybe not literally one in a million — the magical population was pretty small — but the general feeling of the phrase was about right. And they were both nerds of somewhat different kinds, so they were also just more knowledgeable than most people their age could be expected to be, and when it came to magic knowledge often was power, so.

Granted, it'd still been an extremely close contest with the senior Champions, but that it was even close at all was fucking wild. Not impossible, but statistically improbable, so the judges were impressed enough to bump Artèmi up over Viktor.

Once that was out of the way, Zabini moved on to explain how this whole award ceremony closing feast thing was going to work. There were already a bunch of tables being set out on the grounds somewhere; the Champions and all the VIPs would be seated at the tables on a platform in the middle, somewhat like at the Yule Ball. Also like the Yule Ball, the Champions themselves would be seated last. There would be a little tent at the edge of the space, where they would wait for everyone to take their seats. After some quick announcements, they would be called up one by one as they were introduced, from Ingrid up to Liz; they'd walk up to the platform at the middle, where they'd be congratulated by the judges and a few VIPs, and receive their prizes; then they could move to their seats and sit down. The other Champions would recognise their seats because their families would already be there, but Liz's spot was special, being the winner and all, she'd know it when she saw it.

And then there would be the actual meal part — like the Yule Ball, there would be multiple courses, they'd get cards with the options they could select from. Though, this event was somewhat less formal than the Yule Ball, so the options wouldn't be as fancy, but the same general idea. Liz tried not to scowl through the description: assuming she was being given the same options as everyone else, they wouldn't be able to take her Seer shite into account. She didn't remember the stuff from the Yule Ball being particularly bad...but then, she hadn't really noticed how bad food could be for her until she started being more careful about avoiding messy stuff.

Oh well, she could take the hit for one day, it wasn't that big of a deal. She was in a good mood to start off with, maybe that would help.

There wasn't that much time until everyone else would start going out to the party area, so the Champions would be brought out to hide in the tent in only ten minutes or so. Go ahead and chat amongst yourselves until then, they would tell everyone it was time to get moving.

The other Champions and their families got up pretty much immediately, and went around talking to whoever — there were VIPs here, presumably they were using the occasion for networking reasons, like the overly formal nonsense before the Final. Of the other five, Cedric and Artèmi didn't really need to — the Diggories were nobility, if not quite so filthy rich as some, and the Cæcinés were absurdly wealthy and well-connected, like, top-tier Society shite — but Liz guessed it was just ingrained social habit at a certain point. She didn't move, though, and she wasn't really surprised when Viktor didn't either, sitting at his table with his arms crossed and blankly glaring in a seemingly random direction.

After a few minutes, politely(-ish) brushing off a few people coming to babble about her winning the Tournament or the kidnapping or whatever, Liz got up and moved over to Viktor's table. They ended up spending the rest of the time they had left talking about quidditch, interrupted occasionally by someone coming by to make inane smalltalk about whatever. It wasn't the first time, when they ended up near each other in an idle moment it was the most obvious thing to talk about, since they both played (if at very different levels). And her team had been the only one who'd even come close to being competition for Viktor's, she'd gotten second place in that Task, so.

He wasn't really surprised she was dropping quidditch next year, though. It turned out he'd been in a very similar circumstance a few years ago now, but he'd decided to pull out of duelling instead — he still practised, of course, but he simply didn't have time for his studies, professional-level quidditch, and competitive duelling. At first she was a little taken aback by how smoothly he took it, without even any of the questions or anything she'd gotten from the friends she'd told about it so far, but if he'd been in the same spot himself, yeah, that made sense. Though, talking about it did make her wonder, considering she was a pretty good seeker, if she'd be able to get into a professional team before even leaving school if she kept with it.

...Eh. Honestly, she did like playing quidditch, but if she had to pick one (which she did) it would be duelling. Besides, getting into professional duelling was actually much easier than quidditch, she just had to wait until after she finished school, since they had that whole student tournament thing. And duelling was a lot more versatile than quidditch, since she didn't have to stick with a team in formal seasons, could just pick and choose events going on all over the world all the time. So, still the correct decision.

Thankfully, it wasn't very long before it was time for them to leave. Someone suggested Liz's bag would get in the way over the course of the evening, which she guessed made sense, so she called Nilanse to hand it off. (The packet of her drugs discreetly tucked into her glove, just in case.) The six of them were led out by some Tournament staff person, leaving the crowd in the room behind. It was a warm sunny summer day — not particularly hot, this was still Scotland, but nice — but the grounds were surprisingly empty and quiet, no students hanging around doing whatever as you'd normally expect when the weather was like this. They were leaving tomorrow, so some people probably still had packing and shite to do, but also everyone had been called back to their dorms ahead of the event. She expected at least some of it was because the staff wanted to lecture them into making themselves presentable — there would be cameras, because of fucking course — but also just to leave the halls and grounds clear, so the workers setting up the thing could do their jobs without dozens and dozens of overly excitable, nosey children getting in the way.

And there were workers still around, putting on the finishing touches. Down the cliff near the drive from the Castle — past the quidditch pitch, but still some distance away from the gates, where there was a decently large patch of flat, open ground — they'd set up sprawling rings of tables, arranged around a wide platform about two feet high, where stood some more tables. There were a mix of humans and elves crawling through the place, some with trays and tubs of whatever floating along behind them, fiddling with stuff set up on the tables, a bit far away for Liz to quite make out from here. There was a tent near the set-up, which she thought was actually the same one that they'd waited their turn for various Tasks inside, just relocated over here. Inside, a few armchairs and sofas had been set up, looking rather empty without the snack table that'd been here on previous occasions, a couple doors toward the other end leading to toilets — fully functional ones, despite being in a temporary tent, because the magical world was ridiculous like that sometimes.

Liz hadn't gone since she'd gotten up this morning, so she quick dipped into the toilets first. By the time she got back, the furniture had been rearranged, enough seating for all of them dragged to the middle and arranged in a little circle, the rest pushed to the walls out of the way. Cedric happened to be facing the bathrooms, when he saw her come out he gave her a wave. Obviously she was supposed to take the single remaining empty seat in the circle.

At least they'd thought to leave her a single-person armchair, instead of expecting her to sit in a sofa with someone. People knowing about her being a Seer really did have benefits.

As she plopped down into the empty seat, Fleur said (in French), "We were just discussing what plans we have for the summer."

"Ah. Well, Cedric and I have the duelling tournament in Syracuse in about a month. Artèmi too, I assume."

Artèmi and Fleur were together in a two-seat sofa, Liz sitting between Fleur and Cedric. She didn't miss that Ingrid was seated as far as possible from Fleur while still being in the circle — she'd never gotten fully comfortable with the veela mind magic thing. Smirking around Fleur at her, Artèmi drawled, "Yes, of course. Enjoy your last tournament free of any risk of being forced to contend with me."

She could point out that she'd done pretty well the times she and Artèmi had fought in this Tournament, so she'd probably do better than she had back last summer, but Artèmi was also wrong. "Three tournaments — Hogwarts has our Competencies at the end of fifth year, we don't move up until then."

"Right, of course, I forgot..."

There was a little bit of talk about the event in Syracuse, Cedric mentioned that she'd be their team's captain for next year, so then there was some teasing about that, because of course. Viktor would be spending a lot of his summer on quidditch stuff, which wasn't a surprise to anybody. Liz mentioned that she was still trying to get the historian/archaeologist/whatever types to let her try spirit-walking down in Gaunt's place, which directly led to questions about what exactly that entailed — Artèmi and Ingrid seemed to be reasonably familiar with that kind of trippy divination stuff, at least, even if they hadn't heard of the specific technique Liz was talking about. Artèmi actually suggested she might be able to get her in contact with other researchers throughout the Continent, if she could prove it'd gone well with Gaunt's place, if she would be interested in that sort of thing? Which, yeah, sure, that sounded pretty neat? The couple spirit-walking trips she'd taken had been intense, and the hangover from the drugs involved kind of sucked, but it was still really fucking cool, so, she didn't think she'd say no to more opportunities to play around with it.

Apparently, while this kind of divination wasn't unheard of, it was pretty rare that historians or archaeologists ever had access to someone who could do it. As Liz's book on the topic had noted, while non-Seers could do this kind of magic, it was far more effective with actual Seers — a non-Seer probably wouldn't get a vision clear enough they could copy a useable memory into a pensieve for other people to look at, which would complicate things. Seers could find it pretty difficult to, just, live day to day, so the ones who might be functional enough to work with academics on such a thing were somewhat limited to begin with, but spirit-walking could also be kind of...traumatising. It wasn't unheard of for a Seer to spirit-walk their way into someone's head, and then feel them die, in first-person. Seers were generally normal people, aside from their ability to pick up echoes and shite, so they weren't emotionally prepared to deal with that kind of thing, as a rule — you did get someone doing something like that now and then, but they could normally only manage a few trips before it just got too stressful and they had to quit.

Liz, though, was already fucked in the head. It might be trippy as hell at times, but she wasn't really concerned. Artèmi didn't come out and say as much, but that was what she was thinking — if she'd managed to make it this long as a childhood legilimens and Seer, Artèmi suspected she'd be less susceptible to that sort of difficulty, so.

Fleur was going to be revising for her Proficiencies. She'd originally been set to be finishing them up this term, but she'd decided to delay them somewhat to focus on the Tournament. Though she wouldn't actually be returning to Beauxbatons next autumn — she'd just take the written exams and finish her projects whenever she was ready, didn't need to attend class to do that. And after that, she was already looking into options for an enchanting Mastery, with the ultimate goal of becoming a cursebreaker, which was awesome. Cursebreaking as a career wasn't as exciting as the Ciardha Monroe books made it sound, of course — even Ciardha Monroe's actual career absent all of the exaggeration for the purposes of good fiction had been quite unusual — but it was still very cool, and also rather impressive, considering the academic background and the sheer raw nerve that went into it.

Between the six of them, Fleur was probably the one with the most interesting future ahead of her, honestly. Cedric wasn't really certain what he wanted to do with himself, but Liz suspected he'd end up being inevitably drawn into politics. (Hopefully he wouldn't suck as much as his father and uncle did — Cedric wasn't nearly as much of a racist bastard, so that seemed a pretty good bet, but still.) Viktor was sticking with professional quidditch, of course, and his family was wealthy and well-connected enough that he didn't need to worry about a back-up career. Ingrid had thoughts about becoming a healer, or maybe an artist — she was good at the former and loved the latter, but wasn't sure if it would be a viable option, for a mix of financial and social reasons. (Liz understood Ingrid's mother was a reasonably well-known politician of some kind, but Daneland was a democracy, so that didn't necessarily mean they had money.)

Artèmi and Liz were both thinking of going into professional duelling, both due to being rich enough to not really need to worry about a proper career and not having any better ideas of what to do with themselves, if for somewhat different reasons. The scandal around Artèmi's birth meant she was rather less welcome among high society circles than the average Cæciné, and while she could do her schoolwork as expected (even near the top of her class) she didn't think she had the motivation to go into academia, or even get through a Mastery. (She didn't express the thought aloud that directly, but Liz caught it anyway.) The only thing she really liked, that she felt passionate about, was fighting — and also sex, but she didn't say that part aloud either. And not just duelling, she was really into martial arts in general, both with physical weapons like swords and totally unarmed. She didn't have to worry about money, so, she'd probably just study that kind of thing while duelling professionally, she didn't have a specific direction in mind.

Liz kind of felt similarly to Artèmi when it came to the academic angle — she probably could get a Mastery in something, like potions or enchanting or whatever, but she didn't think she wanted to? The idea wasn't viscerally unappealing or anything, but it wasn't particularly appealing either. She went quiet for a little bit, as Artèmi talked about her whole I-just-want-to-fight(-and-fuck)-people thing, and Ingrid about probably settling for being a Healer (in her very iffy French), thinking about...

Well, if she was being honest, she'd always been shite at thinking about the future. It just... She didn't know, it never felt quite real was all. She was aware this was a Liz is broken thing — Severus's silly questionnaires often asked what she thought about future stuff, and while he didn't think it was a problem she didn't have concrete plans, how she didn't really have anything to look forward to also bothered him. And, she didn't think that was different now, exactly, it was just less hard to imagine, she guessed? Possibly due to a combination of actually having things (and people) she liked now, and also her Sight kicking in properly. She remembered finding it pretty much impossible to imagine herself as an adult, but now she'd Seen herself as an adult, so, kind of cheating, but the block wasn't there the same way anymore, was the point.

But that didn't necessarily mean she knew what she wanted to do. Professional duelling, sure, because she did enjoy duelling, and it didn't come with a lot of pressure? She could decide how much she'd participate, and when and where, so, if she wasn't feeling up to being in public she didn't have to — really a good option for her personally, when she thought about it, what with her Seer shite. She'd been seriously considering learning how to make her own clothes, to the point that she had a list of supplies worked up that she was wavering back and forth on actually ordering, and was also talking with Muirgheal about getting some basic lessons. (It was pretty common for poor people to know how to make their own things, they all learned growing up.) That wasn't a job thing, though, just something she thought was a good idea to get around some psychometry-related issues? The Seer-friendly stuff didn't tend to be clothes she actually liked the look or the feel of much, so.

Also, she wouldn't want to go into it professionally? Not only was it not the easiest job in the world, but she knew from Muirgheal that getting an apprenticeship could be kind of a big deal for normal people. Not the best-paying work in the country or anything, of course, but it was a pretty great option for people who couldn't afford to go to Academy, and with the way the economy in Britain worked there were a limited number of opportunities available. If she went for it, she'd be taking a position that would be much more meaningful to someone else, when really all she wanted it for was just...hobbyist stuff. So, even going through an apprenticeship to learn the special magic they kept within the guild, and then just not continuing on into a career and using it for her own things, would be a kind of shitty thing to do? Could theoretically pick it up somewhere else, since she was going to be travelling a lot for duelling anyway, but, well.

But there was one thing that she occasionally thought about, which was at least interesting. When she felt a lull in the conversation, she said, "You know, sometimes I've been thinking about going to culinary school. You know, muggle cooking stuff, I understand it's not as much of a thing on this side."

Liz got a mix of weird and confused looks at that, but there was a funny bubbling in her stomach from whatever Fleur was pushing into the air, the veela smiling at her. "There are a few, but it isn't as common among mages, no. You cook?"

"Sure." That was a surprise to everyone except Artèmi, who'd picked it up from her head at some point, and Cedric, because she'd brought things to team meetings a few times — but even the two of them were a bit taken aback by the idea of Liz going to muggle culinary school. "Mostly stuff I figured out myself or learned from the Potter elves, you know, but. I don't know, it's fun. I don't think I'd want to, like, get a job in a restaurant or something — that sounds kind of hard, honestly. I'm not sure what I'd do with it, just, I don't know." Not like she had a goal there, it was just the only thing (besides duelling), that she thought she'd want to do at all.

Honestly, getting to the point of wanting to do anything was technically progress. She might not really be going anywhere with it, but she thought that was still something.

"Well, I think that sounds wonderful," Fleur said, into the silent bemusement of the rest of the Champions. "And I wouldn't be too concerned that you haven't any plans as to what you will do with that sort of education. You are still young — you have all the time in the world to figure out what you want."

"...Yeah, I suppose."

There was a little bit more talk then about what they were planning to do over the summer. Liz didn't mention the blood alchemy thing — though Artèmi was aware already, since she was a cheating mind mage too. (She hadn't actually peeked, Liz's thoughts were just very very loud.) She wasn't the only one to be a little taken aback when Fleur invited them all to come visit the Delacours...and the only ones who ended up taking her up on the invitation were Artèmi and Viktor. Ingrid really did not like the idea of being surrounded by so many veela for however long, and the invitation had been for them and their families, and Cedric was aware (but too polite to say aloud) that there was no way in hell his parents could avoid being offensively racist to their hosts for that long. (He did kind of want to come himself, but he knew it'd mean an argument with his family, so.) Liz thought visiting a veela village might be very interesting, actually, but she couldn't go for personal reasons — Lise Delacour would be there, and she didn't want to stumble across her by accident...

...or by 'accident' — it was definitely possible someone might decide to use her presence as an opportunity to get them in the same room at the same time, so. Fleur had half-expected her to refuse for that reason, and while she was a little sad about it — not because she'd been scheming, she legitimately just wanted to stay friends with the other Champions — she didn't try to talk her around. Liz didn't mind if Fleur wanted to stay in contact or whatever, she just wasn't visiting the Delacours, was all.

They were in the middle of talking about potential meet-ups they could do down the road — some of them were enthusiastic about remaining friends after the Tournament, Fleur the most but also Cedric and Viktor (though he was very quiet about it), and Artèmi, Ingrid, and Liz weren't as motivated but also weren't opposed, so — when an illusion abruptly started being projected along one wall, showing the dinner area just outside. The place was very busy now, people already seated up at the high tables and hundreds of students milling around the rest, finding their seats. They must be getting close to time now, then. Some of them got up to go by the toilets quick, probably assuming they didn't have much time left in here.

Somehow, Liz and Cedric actually ended up sitting alone. Cedric watched Viktor and Fleur walk off, before leaning closer to her, his voice low and soft. "By the way, I forgot to say earlier. I'm sorry if people give you trouble for beating me out. I told Hufflepuff that there are no hard feelings on my end, that I'm satisfied with a Hogwarts win, but I can't control what everyone does about it, you know."

"I know." Some people had been bastards about Liz 'cheating' her way into the Tournament, and it hadn't gotten better as she'd done well in the early Tasks — especially since she was outshining the 'real' Hogwarts Champion. Hufflepuffs had been extra shitty about it at times, but it wasn't so bad. She assumed it helped that she had friends in Hufflepuff. Honestly, Gryffindors were the worst, but a lot of their house had already decided they hated her for other reasons years ago, so. "If people have been being shite about me winning I haven't actually noticed much lately. I've been pretty liberal about taking days off and hiding in my room, for Seer reasons — Severus convinced me I am actually allowed, so."

"Yeah, you have seemed less stressed lately. I guess it took time to feel out how to manage it." Cedric was well aware that some Seers never learned to manage it, but Liz was still going to school like a normal person her age, so it was probably fine, right?

Liz shrugged. "Honestly, just sleeping better makes a big difference — I've had way fewer nightmares since I've arranged clean food." And also drugs, of course, but the duelling teams were already aware she did that. "Anyway yeah, people haven't been bothering me that much. I guess if someone does harass me for kicking the 'real' Champion's arse, I'll just tell them to take it up with you if they don't like it."

Chuckling under his breath a little, Cedric rolled his eyes. "You do that. I know the circumstances weren't the best, but honestly I'm glad you ended up dragged into this thing — I wouldn't have beaten Fleur and Viktor regardless, at least this way Hogwarts got the win."

"I mean, Fleur and Viktor are both bloody monsters in their own ways, so I can't really blame you for not keeping up. Also, they're both a year or two older than you, so." Cedric was pretty talented, but he was talented by normal person standards. Under the right circumstances he might have been able to get an edge over Krum, but he was simply never going to beat Fleur in a straight contest — the magical abilities all veela had, the mind magic and the elemental fire stuff, were just too much of an edge.

"The age difference didn't seem to stop you."

"Yeah, well, I'm a cheater."

By the time all the Champions were back out of the toilets — it looked like the girls had all touched up their cosmetic glamours while they were away — there was an amplified voice calling for everyone's attention, a figure up on the platform holding her hands up. The quality of the illusion wasn't great, the distance and the angle making it difficult to tell who that was — the spell carrying her voice through was better, though, that was definitely Zabini. There was a lot of shuffling around in the crowd, people dashing for seats or shushing each other, maybe half a minute before they calmed down enough for Zabini to get to business. Some basic stuff welcoming everyone to the closing ceremony, blah blah blah, Liz was only half listening.

Then Zabini went into talking about the revival of the Tournament, only some of which Liz had already known, going all the way back to Dumbledore and a few government types in all three host countries floating the idea decades ago now. Apparently, Dumbledore had first started talking to people about it all the way back in his first decade as Headmaster, in the 50s and 60s — trying to build up more international relationships in the wake of the Revolution, as part of a general effort to hopefully make the outbreak of such a large-scale war more difficult in future. It'd been slow going at first — Aquitania and Daneland had just been on the opposite side of a war from Britain in the recent past, British troops had even directly invaded Aquitania — the project then interrupted by the political upheaval in Britain during and immediately after the Dark Lord's rebellion. It'd gotten a kick in the pants in the late 80s, not coincidentally around the same time Zabini herself had become Director of Education here in Britain — she'd loved the idea, while Dumbledore had had trouble getting the previous Director to cooperate much more than the minimum — and once all the players had been in place the concept had quickly coalesced over the last few years.

Once that was done, she gave a quick summary of the Tournament itself, Hogwarts (while still run by Dumbledore) volunteering to host, the selection of the judges. Then she went into the fuck-up around Hallowe'en, some outside party interfering in the process of the Champion selection — but the judges had decided to run with Liz being bound to compete, and added a second trio of junior Champions. They'd been trying to redesign the concept of the Tournament to involve more participation from other students anyway, make it more of a competition between the schools in general than had been seen in the classic Tournament, so adding an extra three Champions hadn't taken much doing, and was just following along with the theme anyway. Then she went through the Tasks, talking less about the Champions' actual performance so much as the planning and implementation, which school had been responsible for the concept and individuals who'd been key to getting it to work. A lot of the people who'd worked on the Tournament were actually present at the high tables, Zabini frequently breaking in her monologue to lead the crowd in a round of applause, the person in question standing to give a bow.

And then she got to the end, after thanking the various people involved in setting up the maze actually going into Liz's kidnapping. Not that she actually knew much, just explaining that the Aurors said it had been the culmination of the scheme that had gotten Liz entered into the Tournament in the first place — also including the abduction and impersonation-by-polyjuice of Maximillian Ollivander, well-wishes for his recovery — and that the investigation was ongoing. Thankfully, Liz had been returned, injured but alive, the Tournament ending on a somewhat confused note, but at least not in tragedy.

This year's Tournament had been something of a trial, to see if a modernised version of the old, mediaeval event could be instituted going forward. Zabini was thrilled to announce that the experiment had been successful: the three schools and their host governments had agreed just days ago to hold the Tournament every four years going forward. Even after the near-disaster of last night, Headmaster Karkaroff had confirmed just this afternoon that Durmstrang was still committed to hosting the next Tournament during the '98-'99 school year. Beauxbatons would host after that, in the '02-'03 school year, and then the Tournament would return to Hogwarts in 2006 — and the Tournament would continue in that fashion indefinitely, until reforms had to be made.

It looked like Zabini was interrupted by applause at that news, but even by the time she got back to her speech Liz ended up missing some of it, distracted. If she did end up going to Durmstrang — it was hardly the only school on her list, but it was one of the likelier possibilities — she would probably still be there the year they hosted the Tournament. In the Continental system, people normally did their Competencies around age 15, a year earlier than in Britain, but then Proficiencies were expected to last at least three years — sometimes longer, depending on how many subjects the student was taking, or if they were delayed by outside responsibilities. (While the OWL standard was slightly more advanced than Competencies, Proficiencies were actually considered a somewhat stronger qualification than NEWTs, it was a little harder for NEWT students to get into Continental Mastery programmes for that reason.) Liz would be taking her Competencies a year late...or half a year late, technically, since she'd be aiming to take them this December. So, while the '97-'98 school year would be her NEWT year if she stayed at Hogwarts, in a Continental school she wouldn't be finishing her Proficiencies until 1999, even assuming the minimum of three years.

...She wondered if anyone had ever participated in two Triwizard Tournaments before. Probably? There'd been a time, in previous centuries, when the students of all three schools had been primarily adults, and the programme might last rather longer, or students might come and go multiple times over the course of their life. While this Tournament had involved more open participation than most, there had still been team events — it wasn't unreasonable to assume someone might have been in a position to compete in multiple Tournaments in the past.

But if she did end up going to Durmstrang, she'd have to legitimately enter just for the fun of it. Getting forced into this one had been a pain, sure, but it'd be very funny if she managed to win this stupid thing twice.

Anyway, by the time Liz checked back in with what was going on, Zabini was finishing up some final acknowledgements to people who'd had a hand in getting this whole thing working, blah blah. Once that was done, she asked the crowd if they were ready to welcome their Champions — the illusion was only carrying Zabini's voice through to them in the tent, so Liz could only tell there'd been a roar of applause in response by the motion of the crowd.

Realising she was about to be called out, Ingrid got up from their circle of chairs, walked over toward the entrance — but Zabini didn't go straight to it, instead running through a summary of Ingrid's performance in the Tournament. She didn't go into too much detail, though, just a quick comment on most of them, but especially highlighting Ingrid's surprise victories in the healing and treasure-hunting Tasks, as well as the glass sculpture she'd made by calling down lightning and managing to slip through the maze in the Final uninjured. (She did have talents, obviously, just not necessarily ones that were directly useful for most of the Tournament events.) Eventually Zabini did call for Ingrid to come forward, so she slipped out through the flaps of the tent.

A couple seconds later Ingrid appeared on the illusion cast over the wall. The people who'd set the thing up had left gaps between the tables to allow a straight shot up to the middle, Ingrid taking the path up — waving back at the crowd, most of whom were clapping. Just politely for the most part, it looked like, though Liz noticed a group back that way who were more enthusiastic about it, standing up and everything, presumably Durmstrang people. Ingrid stepped up onto the platform, and was met by a line of VIPs to congratulate her, including the judges and a few other people Liz couldn't make out from here, some handshakes and stuff, blah blah. At the end of the line were representatives from the three governments involved, who would be directly awarding the prizes to the Champions. When Ingrid got to the first one, an unfamiliar man's voice carried into the tent, they must have made sure the other Champions would get to hear this part too.

From Beauxbatons/Aquitania, Ingrid was getting a week-long, all-expenses-paid trip for herself and her family to somewhere in the country — there were options, Ingrid would be sent the details later — and when the time came a guaranteed entry to a Mastery programme of her choice at Beauxbatons. That was actually a big deal for Ingrid in particular, Beauxbatons happened to have one of the best healing programmes in the ICW. From Daneland/Durmstrang, Ingrid was getting credits with producers of various kinds of enchanted products that she could pick from — maybe sounded less exciting than getting a free vacation somewhere fancy, but might actually be more valuable in raw monetary terms, depending on what they were offering. In addition, Durmstrang was waiving her tuition through the end of Proficiencies, and was even reimbursing everything her family had already paid up to the present date, in lieu of Ingrid doing well enough to actually get prize money. (And that wasn't nothing, Durmstrang was not cheap.) Britain/Hogwarts was also giving Ingrid a free vacation — Liz wasn't sure how attractive that was, since they weren't as appealing of a destination as Aquitania, and there was also a civil war heating up — and credits with suppliers of various products, which Ingrid would probably actually find a use for. And then there was a little trophy thing, to keep as a memento, you know.

Liz hadn't realised there'd be more awards than just the prize money, but she guessed that made sense? The whole point was to foster more contacts between the three schools and their host countries — incentivising the Champions, at least, to visit after the Tournament was done was one way to do that, in some small way. Cedric's prizes sounded very similar, she guessed that the credits he was being given would probably be somewhat more valuable than Ingrid's. Hogwarts was also refunding his tuition, maybe that was something the schools had all decided to do for their Champions?

While Cedric was still making his way up to the platform, Fleur turned to Liz. They were all standing now, gathered in front of the illusion and waiting their turn — some of them hadn't sat back down since their trip to the toilets, Liz had just decided to join them rather than keep sitting in the now empty seating circle by herself. Giving her a warm little smile, Fleur said, "You look to be in a good mood today!" She didn't say aloud that she'd expected Liz to seem rather out of sorts, what with the kidnapping and everything.

"Do I?"

"You're smiling," Artèmi said. She didn't point out that, obviously, she and Fleur would be able to tell her mood regardless — it'd been the look to be that Liz had been confused by anyway. "I'm not sure if you realised this, but your expressions tend to be pretty flat. You're nearly as broody as Viktor here."

Viktor's mind flickered a little with amusement, but he didn't let the feeling show, turning a displeased frown over at Artèmi. "I do not brood."

"You're doing it right now. No offence meant, of course, dark and brooding is a good look on you." And then Artèmi winked, slow and exaggerated, making Fleur giggle a little.

He wasn't actually annoyed, but Viktor rolled his eyes and let out a huff anyway.

"Maybe Viktor doesn't, but I brood," Liz said. "Comes with the whole fucked-up childhood thing."

"I'm certain being a Seer doesn't help, either." Artèmi left off the childhood legilimens bit, which she thought was more directly responsible for Liz seeming a bit off at times — it was a bit rude to draw attention to the fact that someone was mildly insane in public.

"Sure. But yeah, I am in a good mood, actually. Maybe it's weird, with what just happened last night, but..." She hesitated for a second, but she didn't seem any reason why she shouldn't tell them this? It was probably going to be in the bloody papers soon anyway, so whatever. "I just got a girlfriend, a few hours ago, right before I had to come down for this thing."

"Oooh!" Fleur squealed, her sympathetic excitement crackling over Liz's skin and bubbling in her stomach. "Congratulations! Is it anyone we would know?"

"Probably — Katie Bell."

"Ah... That was the taller girl on your team for the Eighth Task, yes?"

"She was," Artèmi said. "She's also on the Hogwarts duelling team, she and Liz fight in trios together. Very talented with transfiguration, and her elemental magic is quite good as well." Of course Artèmi's brain immediately went to her evaluation of Katie as a duelling opponent, Liz was aware by now that she had little space for practically anything else.

Because Viktor's brain had space for little else, he said, "I think she was on your quidditch team too, one of your chasers. Not bad."

Liz turned to give him a raised eyebrow, tried to imitate Severus's unimpressed drawl. "Are you referring to her playing, or how she looks in those trousers?"

Giving her a very similar look back, he said just, "Both." Joking, of course, he'd only meant the quidditch thing — she would have a very hard time telling when Viktor was being sarcastic if she weren't a cheating mind-reader.

"New relationships are always so exciting," Fleur said. "I wish you two luck and happiness, truly. Ah, and I believe your Director is about to call me up now..." While waiting for Zabini to get through the summary of her performance in the Tournament, Fleur went around giving the three of them quick hugs. That was a little awkward, since her arm was still in a sling, but they got around it. Liz did hesitate for a breath before accepting — veela minds were very very loud, their magic uncomfortably light — but it was only a few seconds. Probably wouldn't have gone along with it if she weren't feeling well (and also high), but.

The hug was very nice and warm, Fleur soft and sweet, and she smelled— Okay, stopping before she got sexy thoughts, thank you...

(Fleur absolutely knew why Liz abruptly pulled out of the hug — mind simmering with slanted amusement, lips curling in a crooked smirk — but she was nice enough not to draw attention to it.)

Now that the more social Champions were gone, the three of them just stood and watched the illusion quietly. Fleur's prizes also little different from Ingrid and Cedric's. Before too long, Fleur's turn was done, and Zabini began Krum's introduction. He moved over toward the exit, Liz felt his mind going low and cool and snarly, his shoulders hunched, practically glaring through the exit. She was well aware by now that Krum did not like cameras, or crowds — which she guessed sucked for him, being an international quidditch star and all.

Once Viktor was gone, she felt Artèmi's attention turn to her. Not her eyes, she was still watching the illusion — Viktor walking along the cleared corridor, shoulders stiff and head stooped a little, clearly unhappy — but Liz could feel it regardless, pins and needles on her skin and the hair at the back of her neck standing up. "Good luck."

She blinked, glanced over at Artèmi. "You mean with the summer tournament?"

"No, I don't suppose you'll need luck with that." It wasn't really a compliment, said flat and casually, more a statement of fact — which was still flattering, of course, coming from someone like Artèmi. "I mean in the civil war your country is careening towards."

"...Ah. Noticed that, did you."

"Liz, one would need to be deaf and blind, or possibly dead, to miss that. Everyone is aware, going back months now. Some countries are already preparing to accommodate refugees, or implementing security measures to contain spillover."

She hadn't heard about that, but she guessed she wasn't exactly surprised — Britain was obviously a fucking mess, it made sense that other countries would notice and start taking precautions. "Right. Well, don't worry about me, I don't plan on getting involved."

"I'm not certain you'll have that luxury." She wasn't spelling it out, but Artèmi was thinking about Girl Who Lived stuff, and that—

...

Artèmi knew the Dark Lord was back. How the hell had she figured it out so soon? She guessed it wasn't really that big of a secret — certain offices in the Ministry were aware, just planning to keep it on the down low for now — and it would make sense for the Cæcinés to have contacts. Just, it hadn't even been twenty-four hours yet.

"Um, I'm transferring to a school on the Continent after next year. I'll be far away soon, hopefully."

A little surprised bubbling in Artèmi's head, tension Liz had hardly even noticed softening, she breathed, "Oh! Good, that's smart. Do you know where yet?"

"Not Beauxbatons — I'm thinking somewhere smaller, quiet."

"Of course. Good luck getting into a place you like, then."

"I'm not sure luck will have anything to do with that, either." Partly because, you know, she'd been studying for Competencies for over a year already, but also being the Girl Who Lived and the winner of the Triwizard Tournament didn't hurt. Artèmi just hummed, acknowledging the point.

Viktor's prizes were somewhat more impressive-sounding than the previous ones — though there was a repeat of a free vacation in Aquitania and his tuition at Durmstrang being refunded. The person giving out Britain's prizes was Erin Scrimgeour, which, seemed like this wasn't important enough for the bloody Chief Warlock...though Liz suddenly understood why when Viktor got to her: Viktor was being given the Order of Merlin, Third Class, fucking hell. Liz gaped at the illusion for a moment as Viktor dipped to his knees in front of Scrimgeour, the Chief Warlock taking the medal on its ribbon from an assistant, holding it up and reciting what was obviously a prepared statement, Artèmi's mind next to her shivering with shock...

That was...kind of a big deal? Foreigners being accepted into the Order of Merlin were vanishingly rare, they'd hardly even bent for the World Cup riot last summer. There were pretty good reasons for that, considering how the silly social club had been integrated into the government over the last few centuries — there was some prize money with a third-class membership, sure, but it also effectively made Viktor a British citizen now? Like, not literally, Liz didn't think, but the privileges that came with membership sort of made him one by default. And not even a normal citizen either, since third-class members had the right to petition the Wizengamot for certain reasons, which was one of the things just the nobility could do...

She had not seen this coming, that was all.

As Zabini started introducing Artèmi, Liz felt her glance this way, eyes tingling over her skin. "Well, Liz, it's been fun. I'll be seeing you around at duelling events, I'm sure."

"Count on it."

Artèmi briefly clapped a hand on Liz's shoulder as she passed by, her mind blaring loud and bright and cold (light), waited at the entrance for a few seconds until Zabini called her forward. And then Liz was alone in the tent.

It felt rather cooler in here without all the other minds filling the space — maybe the enchantments on the tent doing something funny to the character of the ambient magic. Brushing it off, she cast a quick mirror charm, gave herself a look over. Her hair and her lipstick hadn't been fucked up since she'd last checked, and of course her nails were still fine. Her dress was sitting a little funny — she had a tendency to melt into chairs when she was high, which could drag things a little askew, but at least it hadn't bothered her hair this time — she tugged it back into place, running her hands along the fabric to smooth it down...and then had to stop herself when she did it a few more times just because, felt all smooth and silky and pleasant.

She remembered she'd been contemplating using that one glamour, but she didn't really care that much. It would help her face come through better on camera, and maybe smooth over some of her little scratches and bruises, but neither of those were important enough to put in the effort to keep the glamour up all evening. She was fine like this.

...She did like this dress, even if it was obvious — to her eyes, at least — that she didn't have any tits under there. But she was going to be solving that problem soon. The 13th — twenty-one days left.

(The thought had her breath catching, excitement bubbling up her throat and prickling over her skin, her reflection grinning.)

Artèmi also got a third-class membership in the Order of Merlin, and then once she'd found her seat Zabini started in on Liz's introduction. Her strong start in the First Task, even taking down Ingrid and Artèmi while they were occupied with her teammates, blowing the Second Task out of the water (though the Sight really was cheating), her dramatic staring contest with a dragon in the Third Task. She'd flubbed the healing Task pretty badly, then was the runner-up in the duelling tournament, losing to Artèmi after a very impressive flashy exchange, and then in the quidditch tournament, losing to Viktor in a frantic, chaotic, violent match. Her little illusion-story in the Seventh Task had been moving, and used some impressive enchanting for a student of any age, and then her team had seriously kicked arse in the Eighth Task, hunting down other teams and stealing their treasure with brutal efficiency. And then the maze, Zabini mentioning the "graceful beauty" of her deflection work against that one hex-tossing pillar, killing a troll with a shockingly effective vanishing curse of some kind (Sirius had taught it to her, not something people normally learned), making her the youngest known troll-slayer in recorded British history (which she hadn't realised was something people kept track of), then the chaotic fight with Viktor and Artèmi to reach the Cup, managing to swipe it out from under them — only to disappear, causing panic for several hours before she'd returned, injured but alive.

...Well, when Zabini laid it all out like that, Liz was rather impressive, wasn't she?

She'd only taken a few steps outside of the tent before the attention of hundreds of people came slamming into her — like in the Eighth Task, when a surge of water had nearly swept her out into the Lake, heavy and smooth and yanking her along, but much warmer. The force was enough to freeze Liz in place, teetering for a breath, before she managed to force herself forward, putting one foot in front of the other. Too much for her to pick out the gaze of any particular person, an undifferentiated mass, warm and soft and smooth and cool and clingy and fuzzy and sharp and hot and ticklish all at once, too much for her to hold onto, slamming against her and then continuing on, like water rushing past...

The feeling was very tactile, her weird mind-mage-slash-Seer shite interpreting it as a physical touch on her skin, and that could get very overwhelming very quickly on bad or even baseline days, but she was already in a good mood, not to mention rather high at the moment, so she just didn't focus on the feeling, letting it patter and brush and tickle at her and then letting it go, like standing in the shower as water ran down her body, and just kept putting one foot in front of the other, feelings and thoughts cast from the minds all around so thick to turn the air into soup, practically swimming along...

It was kind of nice, honestly. She'd noticed before, that attention on a normal day (or when she was sober) could be grating, or overstimulating, but there was a point where the attention grew so much (and/or when she was high) that it just became a tide of feeling, hundreds of gazes with a mix of emotions behind them turned into an unintelligible smear, hardly even feeling like attention anymore, an outside intrusion on her, and more, like, sitting in a hot bath, or wrapped up in fuzzy cosy blankets, or flaring her aura, her skin set alight.

It was a lot, yes, but honestly rather...exhilarating? The general mood probably didn't hurt, people all excited over the Tournament on top of the normal energy of the end of term...

She was definitely glad she'd taken her drugs, though, this would be far too much without them.

For the first...however long, she hadn't really been able to see much — she remembered she'd been practically blind on entering the Great Hall for the Yule Ball, Severus leading her along — or really hear either, her vision smeared into nonsense by the too much tugging at her, meaningless burbling and ringing in her ears, just putting one foot in front of the other on autopilot. But eventually she started to adjust, first making out the clapping and cheering and whistling, shapes beginning to resolve out of the colourful nonsense. She was still going in the right direction, the high tables ahead, and she noticed now that there were illusions overhead, must not have been picked up by the one in the tent for whatever reason. (Might need a mind for a target to function properly, illusions could be like that sometimes.) The way the tables were arranged, the high tables at the platform in the middle, nobody would have an angle to see up there very well, so they'd set up something so everyone could see what was going on — the image was a bit distorted, light bent as it was redirected, but Liz could easily make out the entire platform ahead and up, all the tables and all the people sitting and standing there.

A little looking, and she spotted a circular table in the middle, only partially occupied. Severus was there and, surprisingly, Hermione, Sylvia, and Daedalus — didn't know what was going on with those choices, but whatever. One of the empty chairs at that table had a taller back, with a glittery golden design worked into the top edge...sort of looked like a flame pattern? Maybe referencing the Goblet of Fire. She would guess that was supposed to be her chair, which was silly, but whatever.

After felt like long minutes, but couldn't have been longer than fifteen or twenty seconds or something (how far away was the tent, exactly?), Liz reached the steps onto the platform. She teetered a little on the first step, tipping back down to the ground again. Right, heels, pay attention, stupid — shifting her centre of gravity a little, she hopped right up onto the platform, there we go. The attention on her deadened somewhat, there must be some kind of wards around the high tables, not enough to cut the pressure on her off entirely but enough that it wasn't quite so difficult to focus on her surroundings.

Zabini met her at the top of the stairs — grinning, her mind frothing with a mix of warm clingy feelings, too difficult to pick out of the mess all around. She hadn't been paying too much attention to how Zabini had greeted the other Champions, but she thought it'd involved hand-touching of some kind? But obviously everyone knew she was a Seer now, so Zabini didn't reach for her, instead gracefully bobbing in a shallow curtsey. Liz curtseyed back, still remembering it from Sirius's silly dance lessons ahead of the Yule Ball ages ago, not realising until her thoughts caught up a couple seconds later that she hadn't needed to do that? Especially since she'd actually dipped lower than Zabini, which suggested Zabini had a higher social status than she did which, despite Zabini being a Department Director, she didn't — just a nod from Liz would have been appropriate. Oh well, the society etiquette rules were fucking stupid, and it was too late now.

Since she'd already 'messed up' once she just went ahead and curtseyed to all the VIPs lined up to congratulate her as well. The judges, Ministry people, some of whom she didn't even recognise, whatever, it wasn't important. Definitely breaking silly society etiquette, but who gives a shite — also, it was weirdly fun? She didn't know why, maybe it was just because she was high at the moment, and slightly delirious from all the stuff pushing in on her...though the attention dribbled off as she moved further from the edge of the platform, apparently it didn't count if people were looking at her through the illusion. But, she was feeling a bit silly and bubbly and, well, girly, she guessed, and she was having fun with the curtseying, so she just kept doing it. There'd be an occasional camera flash, distracting Liz, glancing back at the source — startling some of the cameramen when she met their eyes, they were under attention-diverting spells — but she shook it off, kept moving on to the next person...

And eventually she got to the end of the line, reaching the person handing out the prizes for Beauxbatons/Aquitania. The middle-aged man was vaguely familiar, but Liz couldn't quite place him — maybe he'd been at the Yule Ball or the formal dinner a couple days ago, she didn't remember. Anyway, congratulations, blah blah. Apparently Liz was getting extra free vacations, more than would be practical to use all at once, she could split them up into multiple trips. Um, she guessed that might be nice? though she kind of doubted she'd be using it any time soon, probably not until after she was out of school, at least. Like Viktor, Liz was being given, um, she guessed pre-approval for a kind of a residency thing — if she decided she wanted to legally live in Aquitania, she still had to apply, there was paperwork and stuff, but it'd be automatically approved if she did. Not something she would ever use, but whatever. Her Mastery study at Beauxbatons would be covered, which also wasn't something she would ever use, and the school was also gifting her a number of magic texts, which she definitely would use, despite them being in French and also post-Proficiency stuff. (Even if she wouldn't understand them now, she'd catch up.) She was kind of curious about exactly what was in there, but unfortunately she couldn't check — these three people weren't physically handing over the prizes so much as just informing them what they'd won, they'd be sent along or ready to pick up later, so.

Then Liz was passed along to the Danish bloke, who she knew was a government person, but she couldn't remember his name or what exactly his position was. They were also giving her free vacations (though somewhat less than Aquitania had) and doing a similar residency thing, which might actually be useful, if she did end up going to Durmstrang but decided she wanted to live off-site (which Proficiency students were allowed to do). Or, did Durmstrang students get legal residency anyway? She didn't remember, whatever. The school was gifting her a set of enchanting/potion/ritual supplies, which sounded neat! if not super special, since she probably had access to whatever was in it already, but still cool. She'd decide how interested she should be once she actually saw the thing.

Scrimgeour joked that she couldn't receive an Order of Merlin, Third Class, since she already had a first-class membership, so that'd be kind of pointless. (Over that Hallowe'en, which Liz thought was stupid, since she'd done nothing but lay there, but whatever.) Liz was being given credits with certain clothing and ceramics producers — you know, the kind of craft products that were actually well-regarded outside of Britain, so they might went to tempt a foreign Champion with — and also a free custom Nimbus 2100 when they came out next year — Britain was also known for their broom manufacturers — which, um, seemed kind of pointless? She already had a Cleansweep 9 that she actually played quidditch on, which was perfectly adequate for her purposes, and also the Firebolt Sirius had gotten her for Christmas while he'd still been a fugitive, which she hardly even used. She'd flown around some on breaks, because the thing was fun, but the quidditch pitch at Hogwarts simply wasn't big enough for the speed advantage of a Firebolt to even show at all, so. The 2100 was Nimbus's effort to compete with the Firebolt, and according to the previews that'd been in quidditch magazines and shite it wasn't even as good — arguably worth it, since it would be significantly less expensive, but still not quite there — and she really didn't need three broomsticks. Maybe one of her friends would want it? She would say Katie could have it, but her housemates might be annoying about her arming the competition...

The set of books and protective equipment (for, like, handling alchemy shite or whatever) Hogwarts was gifting her was likely to be far more useful. Though, she was also having her tuition refunded — all six of the Champions had — and she had no idea what she was going to do with that money. Add it to whatever she was putting the thousand galleon prize into, she guessed.

And of course there was the thousand galleon prize itself and a trophy for her to keep (the Cup was staying at Hogwarts until the next Tournament), but she'd be sent the key for a vault at Gringotts in the next few days, and the trophy would be sent to her whenever the engraving on all six of theirs were done, maybe a week or two. Honestly, probably better not to give her anything to keep track of, since she was a little silly from all the mental noise and also high...and she kind of assumed there'd be alcohol with dinner...so she'd probably end up losing it, this way was safer.

Nobody was giving her handshakes or anything, respectful of the Seer thing, so, a few more curtseys at various people around, and a final wave up at the air over her head — she knew that'd be picked up by the illusion she'd seen earlier — and Liz turned toward her table. The people already sitting there got to her feet as she approached, Hermione starting to move toward her and—

Liz felt herself let out some kind of noise as Hermione suddenly slammed into her, arms squeezing bone-grindingly tight around her, pinning her arms to her sides. Hermione was babbling into her ear...or, into the top of her head, technically, because Liz was so bloody short. Her voice sounding rather sharp and frantic, Liz had missed the opening bit, disoriented by the surprise hug, caught up around, "—nobody had any idea what happened, and they wouldn't let us come in to see you, and when I came by the recovery rooms the next morning they said you weren't there, and Tracey said she didn't see you in Slytherin, and I didn't—"

Oops, she'd kind of forgotten her friends might come to the recovery rooms looking for her. If she was being totally honest, that people would be worried, just, hadn't occurred to her? She could still be bad about that kind of thing sometimes — thinking about it, obviously they'd be anxious about it until they actually saw she was all right, but, abused-kid brain, whatever. Her notebooks she had paired with her friends' were probably going to have half-panicked messages in them, she hadn't thought to check...

"Hermione," Liz snapped, hoping to cut her off. It worked, Hermione abruptly falling silent, Liz awkwardly bringing her hands up around her back, which was not easy to do with her arms pinned. "I'm fine. They didn't hurt me, and they sent me right back."

"Who were they?"

"Not now, I'll tell you about it later."

There was a short pause, before Hermione's grip around her loosened — she didn't back off all the way, retreating enough so she could actually look Liz in the eye, her hands still on her shoulders. "You're certain you're okay." Her scepticism was intense, carrying through her hands on Liz's skin, worry hot and scratchy. Hermione didn't exactly put a lot of trust in Liz's ability to evaluate how badly hurt she was, both physically and emotionally...which, while rather annoying, she had to admit was fair.

Liz rolled her eyes. "Yes, Hermione, I'm fine. I'll tell you about it, later." Ordinarily, she would wonder how much of what'd happened was safe to tell Hermione, but she guessed she'd have to read her in on basically all of it? Her truce with the Dark Lord would apply to Hermione too, so. Good thing she'd already copied the memory, she could just have Hermione come over early in the break and send her in there, that'd tell her basically everything she needed to know.

Once Hermione backed off — not really convinced Liz was as well as she claimed, but willing to play along for now — Liz was greeted by Daedalus, the colourful little man practically vibrating with excitement, Sylvia rather calmer but still grinning at her. Since she had her money and politics people right here, she blurted out that she was thinking of putting her prize money (and refunded tuition, she guessed) into a scholarship or something, maybe for poor people going to craft school, to help cover the supplies and whatever? Daedalus seemed rather taken aback by the sudden change in topic, Sylvia amused, and there were some kind of weird surprised fuzzy feelings coming off of Hermione, but the adults said they could talk about that later, right, it was just on her mind...

Severus was waiting over by the overly fancy chair that was apparently supposed to be hers for the night — intending to push it in for her, she guessed. His mind was as smooth and cool and quiet as always, though Liz did pick up a faint edge of tension (probably worry about the Dark Lord being back) and a warm shifting feeling she didn't know how to read. Not that she ever quite knew how to read Severus even on a good day, inscrutable bastard. She was shite at reading faces to begin with, but his expression seemed completely blank too. Or, maybe there was something there? It was very subtle, though, his eyebrows not quite even and a slight quirk to his lips, meaningless to her.

Liz was moving toward her chair, but then, without quite realising what she was doing, she was grabbing onto Severus, her hands fisting in his silly billowy robes, quickly enough her head kind of ended up bonking into his chest. Oh weird, how had that happened?

Severus felt about as startled as she did — she hadn't seen it coming, either — one arm lightly looping around her seemingly on autopilot. She, just, stayed there for a few seconds, leaning into him a little...and then remembered where they were. Jerking away from him, "Oh, sorry! I didn't mean to, um." She knew Severus was always very private about their relationship, reverting to Miss Potter when in public, carefully putting up privacy wards and shite when they were in his office or whatever. He did have a reputation as a scary bastard to uphold, after all — he couldn't be doing things like hugging silly teenage girls while the entire bloody school was watching. "I blame the drugs."

She must not have fucked up too badly, because he just drawled, "Naturally," all thick and sarcastic, feeling more amused than anything. So.

Her chair might be a bit much, but at least it was comfortable — padded, and definitely enchanted. Hermione ended up just to her left, Severus on her right, Sylvia and Daedalus— Oh! She thought she got it now. The Champions were supposed to be seated with their families, but of course Liz didn't have one of those, so whoever had arranged this (probably Severus) had gone with, you know, House of Potter people. Sylvia was her Wizengamot representative, and Daedalus was her managing secretary, and Severus was technically still trustee, so, they were all House of Potter people, even if they weren't actually related. And Hermione, well, both Severus and Sylvia were aware she was considering adopting her — Daedalus knew she planned on adopting people, but not Hermione in particular, she didn't think? — so her being the only one of Liz's friends who'd been invited up here made sense for that reason. Not that this was all the Potter people, obviously they were missing the elves.

...Liz nearly called Nilanse, just because, but she'd probably find being dragged up here extremely embarrassing, so never mind. Also, pretty much all the mages around would be weird about it, but avoiding making Nilanse uncomfortable was actually the first reason that'd occurred to her.

While their little group had been sorting their stuff out, everyone else at the high tables had been finding their seats too. Liz noticed that, like, only half of the chairs at their table were actually occupied — she guessed they must have planned the layout before they'd realised it would be the orphan sitting here, so. Once everyone was down, Gamp then stood up, getting everyone's attention. There was a brief little speech about the end of the Tournament and the school year, blah blah, moving right into calling for the feast to actually start, let's party, woo.

Gamp sat down again, the air ringing with cheering and whistling from the crowd of students all around — more at the prospect of actually starting the feast than over the speech itself, Liz was pretty sure — and then some stuff appeared on the tables. Not a full proper meal, though — everyone still had to order their food, like back at the Yule Ball. Little cards had appeared along with a pen, for people to mark off what they wanted to have, and food had appeared on the tables, like, platters of cheeses and slices of cured meats and sausages and whatever, little bits of toast with stuff on them, some sliced raw vegetables, some kind of fish stuff...

She was temporarily distracted by the stuff appearing on the table...and then blinked down at her plate, confused. Leaning a little toward Severus, she said, "Um, I didn't get one of those," pointing at the little menu card thing he was looking over.

"Yes, your dishes are being prepared separately, to accommodate your Sight. It would be terribly inefficient to prepare a selection of courses for a single person, so your meal is being planned for you — I understand Nilanse has been consulted. The starters and drinks," he added, nodding at the table, "should all be fine. I asked."

"Oh. Thanks."

"Thank the kitchen elves, when you have the opportunity. I'm told one of the elves occasionally tasked with managing meals for students with restricted diets raised the issue early in the planning for tonight."

"Sure, I'll remember to do that." She really should drop by the kitchens before leaving tomorrow, having more Seer-friendly food really did make a noticeable difference for her sleep. Since they'd made a point of accommodating her, she might as well try things, while waiting for the first proper course to come in. She wasn't going to bother touching the vegetables, of course — she'd eat whatever the elves put on her plate, but she still didn't like them, especially raw and unseasoned — but of course she'd always eat cheese or sausage, and some of the little toasted things seemed interesting, at least. And this pitcher was mead! One of those spiced ones, holy crap, this was good...

(She was definitely going to be drunk by the end of the night.)

Hermione fussed over her a little bit at first, obviously still worried about her, but she quickly got distracted talking with the adults. She still didn't really know that much about how magical society actually worked, and the different careers and shite people had, or really much about politics besides the showier stuff going on in the Wizengamot that made it into the papers. And Hermione's defining character trait was curiosity, so she had endless questions. Sylvia and Daedalus didn't seem to mind, but Liz guessed they were also nerds in their own ways, and it probably helped that Hermione's enthusiasm about things was infectious sometimes. Or, Liz thought so, anyway.

It probably also helped that Sylvia knew Liz planned on adopting her, so she'd need to know a lot of this shite eventually anyway.

She noticed right away that Sylvia was avoiding the alcohol — apparently she and her husband were trying for a child at the moment. Good luck with that, Liz guessed? Hermione and Daedalus were both a lot more bubbly about it (though Daedalus had already known), but Liz was already aware that she could be a bit odd about babies. Just seemed like a lot of work to her, and not the best time, with a civil war coming up? Also, your body being hijacked to grow a person inside of you just sounded creepy as hell, no thanks.

The noise of hundreds of conversations going on meaningless burbling in her ears, only half-listening to Hermione and the adults chattering on about whatever, Liz sank back into her chair, cupping her glass of mead with both hands. The air was thick with the thoughts and feelings of everyone gathered out on the grounds, the whole school and all their guests, one feeling or image occasionally jumping out of her but mostly all smeared together into an unintelligible whole, warm and heavy and tingling against her skin, almost ticklish, squirming in her chair a little. She was still a little sore from last night (Hermione kept glancing at the nasty bruise on her face), but she felt weirdly comfortable anyway, at least in part thanks to the drugs, slightly detached, one foot here at the table and the other buoyed away on the magic thick and fuzzy and fragrant around her...

This year had been hard, but she still thought it worked out more or less okay. The stuff with Daphne had been a disaster, sure, the Tournament very stressful at times, but she thought she'd made a lot of progress with her stupid brain issues? And people were going to be fucking stupid about her winning the Tournament next year, that was going to be a pain to deal with...especially if the Dark Lord's return was made public, what with her being the Girl Who Lived and all, that was going to suck. But it was only one more year, and then she could get the fuck out of here, she could make it through one more year. And hey, people knew she was a Seer now, so if people being annoying idiots was getting too much she could just claim she was having a bad Seer day and hide in her room — they didn't even get proper marks in fifth year, assuming everyone was taking the OWLs, so she could skip class basically whenever she wanted without consequence. Except Charms, and Runes, she was hoping for good recommendation letters from Flitwick and Babbling...

And she was dating Katie now! That was exciting! They'd been dancing around it for like a fucking year at this point, and— She had to tell Hermione immediately, kind of interrupted the conversation everyone else had been in the middle of, oops. It'd be a couple weeks before Liz could actually see Katie again, since she'd be busy with her family, but that was fine, she could wait. And honestly, she was a little curious what these sappy love letters of hers were going to look like...

And her blood alchemy thing was only in a few weeks. It being so close was terribly exciting, whenever it occurred to her she could hardly sit still. She was so fucking ready to not have to deal with her annoying fucking hair anymore, and her scars— It was hard to imagine, almost, what it would be like to, just...not have them anymore. She guessed, sort of similar to her problem with the future not really feeling real most of the time, it was hard to picture what she would be like after, even though she'd Seen herself — rather a lot of herself, since she'd managed to catch a couple sexy moments — but those glimpses were from the outside, and didn't fully click as herself, and her scars were, just, so firmly burned into her mind, drawing attention — more present to her than a lot of her other features, in a way — so them being gone was—

She did want it — badly. But it was hard to picture what it would be like, which made the prospect of the upcoming procedure slightly unnerving — also helped along by it being pretty serious magic, fuck-ups were possible — but any nerves over it were hardly even perceptible through how much she really fucking wanted it, she'd never wanted anything, this much, and it was only three weeks away, she couldn't fucking wait...

It almost felt wrong, to be in this good of a mood. She'd been kidnapped last night, and had gotten kind of beat up, and was sitting in a ridiculous gilded chair, because she'd actually won this stupid Tournament, and she wasn't even supposed to be in the fucking thing. And the Dark Lord was back — he might be more sane than last time, but there would still be a war, people would die. She'd negotiated her way out of it, sure, but it would still affect people she cared about, one way or another...and Severus couldn't just keep his nose out of it, because of fucking course...

She was worried about Severus, but all the other nameless people who'd end up getting killed just... It probably didn't say anything great about her that she didn't really care, but she'd already known she was a monster, so she guessed that wasn't a surprise, was it?

She probably shouldn't be in a good mood, but she was anyway. Sitting here sipping at her mead, only half listening to the others talking, apparently she was visibly up enough that Hermione's concern for her had gradually dribbled away. This year had been kind of fucked, but it'd all worked out more or less okay, and she was left feeling...weirdly optimistic, honestly.

She was figuring out her Liz is broken stuff, and getting better at managing her mind magic and Sight, and she actually, you know, had friends, and Severus...and Sirius too, she guessed. She'd worked out some of her more sensitive points, so her relationship with Katie should hopefully go better than her very inadvisable attempt with Daphne. She had a truce with the Dark Lord, so the threat of the overpowered mad bastard who'd murdered her parents coming back to finish the job was, just...gone — she hadn't quite processed that yet, she thought. People were even bothering her less than they used to, as they got used to her, and had started following the culturally-ingrained try not to stress out the Seers rules they would have grown up with, and even the rumours about her being secretly evil had been gradually dying down...though now the people who didn't like her had far more political reasons for it, but that was mostly racist horseshite, so they could get fucked. And she was getting the fuck out of Hogwarts soon, to a quieter school, hopefully, where they wouldn't care nearly as much about the stupid Girl Who Lived shite, and she could, just, be a reasonably normal student for once...

For perhaps the first time ever, she thought she was actually going to be okay. Like, future tense.

It was a very weird feeling.

(She wondered, again, if this was what happiness was supposed to feel like.)

Her random contemplative mood was interrupted by a loud clatter of magic, hundreds of spells going off at the same time. Liz perked up in her chair, tense, but it was just the first course turning up. Ooh, she had soup, that smelled good...

The scent of rosemary inexplicably reminding her of her moment with Katie earlier this afternoon, Liz felt herself smiling.

---

And that's the end of fourth year! Wow, that was fucking long! lol

Fifth year is already outlined scene-by-scene up to the start of winter break. But before I start on that, I'm going to work on something else — if I'm feeling it, I might go for a couple scenes before switching back to this fic, we'll see. Merry Christmas, see you bitches when I see you, bye.