Settling back in at the townhouse only took a couple days.
Nilanse had prepared the house for her return home ahead of time, but mostly all she'd done was go through and break the stasis spells Cediny had put down when Liz left after winter break — Liz liked to know where things were, so she preferred to do some things herself. When she came through the floo that first afternoon, the house was dark and somewhat sterile-feeling, the magic still and the air almost scentless. She floated her trunk up to her room, and the first thing she did was go around moving things out of storage. Linens and shite, like towels and bedcovers and whatever, had been folded up and stashed away in closets. Towels were moved to their appropriate places in bathrooms and kitchens, Liz picked a set of bedsheets for the guest bedrooms and carried them over, once they got there Nilanse setting everything in place with a few snaps of her fingers.
The exception was Liz's bedroom, which she actually had new sheets for. Once she'd finally started putting more effort into avoiding bad psychometric shite, the elves had swapped out her bedsheets at school for more Seer-friendly ones. Since she'd done everything more or less at once, it was hard to say how much the cleaner bed things had helped with her sleep, but they did feel nice, so she assumed it wasn't no difference — and she couldn't just bring them home with her. For one thing, they belonged to the school — though they could only be used by a single Seer, so they were normally donated out or gifted to the student after they finished — and her bed at home was larger anyway, so they wouldn't fit. But, as they were getting toward the end of the year, it occurred to Liz that this might be a problem, so she'd ordered Seer-friendly sheets ahead of time — the package had been sitting in the dining room when she'd arrived, where it'd drifted to land after being sent through the floo weeks ago now.
The set included a thin mat that was supposed to act as kind of insulator, to attempt to block any echoes from the mattress itself — not a problem with Liz's bed, the alchemical product it was made of was pretty neutral — a few layers of sheets, a thick fuzzy blanket, and several pillows. Seer-friendly stuff tended to be rather plain, but at least she'd been able to pick the colours, going for the same black and red as everything else that was already in her room — though a couple of the pillows had some decorative stitching on them, curly patterns in yellow, which she hadn't known would be there but they looked nice enough, she guessed. Of course, it was imported from Egypt, made from specially-grown linen and wool and woven by hand, so the stuff might look pretty plain but it had not been cheap. Totally worth the cost, though, she really had been feeling better since starting to take more care to avoid bad echoes.
And as she unwrapped the package, she quickly realised that the stuff felt really really nice, soft and smooth and cool and tingly — she even spent a few seconds rubbing one of the sheets against her face, before remembering Nilanse was sitting right there watching her. It was good stuff, okay? Because her brain got her wires crossed sometimes, psychometrically pleasant things also just felt physically good, and it was nice, was all. Nilanse did the making the bed part for her, partly because she was much quicker at it — mages didn't use fitted sheets, since they mostly didn't have elastic, so getting them on properly could be a pain — and also so Liz didn't end up getting distracted with how nice the fabric felt and doing something embarrassing again.
(She'd gotten into the habit of sleeping naked lately, and having the good Seer feelings going on everywhere had been distracting enough that that night she impulsively, um, worked the feeling off. Not that that was a bad thing, of course.)
Before she'd left last time, all the perishable food stuff had been moved into the underground pantry, where the preservation enchantments would stop anything from going bad, so all of those had needed to be moved back up. She and Nilanse then sat down in the kitchen — Liz in one of the stools, Nilanse perched up on the counter — and put together a shopping list. Last summer she and Hermione had intentionally run down as many perishable things as they could before leaving, and Liz's stay over the winter had been brief and somewhat spur-of-the-moment, her visits since mostly just to do a little baking/cooking and then leaving again — some food things had run out, since on those short visits Liz had only bought new things as she'd needed them. Nilanse, Cediny, and the school elves had put together a meal schedule for her with Seer-friendly stuff and took care of everything, but now that she wasn't busy with other things she'd like to, you know, help with the cooking? and also she wouldn't be so occupied she couldn't help with the planning, either. Also, she was still practising baking, and they might as well make some things to have around the house, you know. Oh, and there was the little kitchen area in the sitting room upstairs, meant for snacks and drinks and whatever, they should restock that too.
Of course, restocking on food was somewhat complicated by Liz trying to be better about Seer stuff now. Some of the food already in the house was fine, especially the animal products — toward the end of the summer she'd started switching to certain producers here in Britain that took more care about it, initially just dairy and eggs and stuff, so she could cook for Daphne, but she'd found the meat from those sources was better too. (At the time, she'd mostly been thinking about it tasting better, because of he wires getting crossed, she hadn't been changing enough things yet for it to improve her sleep or mood much.) So, all the dairy and meat and such was fine for Seer reasons, with a few exceptions, if not necessarily great, you know. At least neutral, which was good enough. Some of the other things were more mixed. Especially, like, toward the end of summer she'd been experimenting with making more foreign stuff, like hummus and whatever else, and those ingredients she'd gotten from muggle producers, which did not tend to be very good.
After talking about it for a little bit, Liz and Nilanse went through literally everything in the house, making up a list of good, bad, and meh, for neutral stuff or things she couldn't get a clear feeling on one way or the other. Some of these things were a little weird and uncomfortable, like tasting baking supplies or herbs and spices or whatever, or took a little effort, because tasting raw meat would feel gross for completely different reasons. Everything on the bad list would be gotten rid of, as well as things on the meh list which had convenient replacements with the suppliers they'd been feeding her from for months now — the stuff they were getting rid of wouldn't just be thrown away, Nilanse would make sure they got somewhere they'd be used, good. And then they came up with meals for the next week, Nilanse getting exasperated with Liz initially only wanting to do breakfast and an evening meal and maybe a snack in the middle, nagging her toward more healthy ideas, whatever...
It took a fair amount of poking from Nilanse for them to end up at scheduling four eating times in a day. Liz said eating times because they weren't all necessarily meals, per se. Shortly after waking up, there'd be a light little something with coffee, probably just some pastry thing (very French); lunch would be a couple hours later, which most days would probably still be a bit early, so they decided on mixing in some heartier breakfast things in the schedule (so more of a brunch time, she guessed); in mid-afternoon, there'd be...well, she reflexively wanted to say tea, except there'd be no literal tea involved, but in the sense of the small afternoon meal; and then dinner would be last, probably rather late in the evening. It kind of seemed like a lot to Liz, she kept feeling like they should cut out something, but most of these would be in rather smaller portions — except dinner, and maybe 'lunch' sometimes — so it wasn't like she'd actually be eating more than usual anyway, in volume.
Apparently, Cediny said little bits more often was better for people (and happened to be how the elves did things, incidentally), but the way modern humans lived on timetables meant there wasn't really room to squeeze in multiple little breaks through the course of the day. But since Liz was going to be home most of the time, and didn't have a lot in the way of obligations, there was no reason she couldn't do that. Which, sure, when Nilanse put it that way, she didn't see why not. And having her little breakfast in the morning and tea in the afternoon meant she'd have more opportunities to practice with new baking stuff...and same with having two proper meals in a day instead of one. Some things might be difficult to make in smaller portions, but there was no reason she couldn't, like, bring the half she didn't want over to Severus's house or something — fuck knows that man didn't eat enough — and there were plenty of people she could send extra baked goods off to. So, yeah, Liz was pretty resistant to the idea at first, but Nilanse wore her down over the course of the conversation.
Of course, Liz insisted on making things Nilanse could also eat as often as possible — which wasn't always, human and elves simply had different nutritional needs, but then they should just make both of their things at the same time. There was no reason Liz shouldn't also learn how to make elf food, in case there was an occasion when she needed to (or just wanted to), so that made sense to her. Nilanse seemed weirdly embarrassed, at first, but Liz managed to wear her down the same way Nilanse had worn her down about the four eating times, so.
The first week's schedule was relatively basic, without some of the more exotic stuff she'd been curious about. The elves had figured out Seer-friendly suppliers, but they were local producers — big things she'd been playing around with included, like, chickpeas, and sesame, and cumin, which were all tropical plants that didn't exactly grow very well in Britain. (The magical world actually imported cumin from the muggle side, she'd learned, though maybe that was different in...wherever the hell cumin was actually from.) It wasn't even that easy to get rice in Britain, since that wasn't grown here either. The "rice" puddings she'd seen were often actually made with semolina — she wasn't sure why they were called rice puddings then, but whatever — and while you could get rice it was all imported, which made it more expensive. And it wasn't a close import either — the only ICW country that really grew much rice at all was Genoa, and a little less from Venice, so it had to come from further away, Egypt or Iraq or Persia...or from the muggle world, which had its own complications. So, rice wasn't a staple in magical Britain, a lot of grocers simply wouldn't even have any at all. And they definitely weren't going to have chickpeas or tahini.
That should all be manageable, though. There were ICW countries you could get chickpeas from, especially in Italy and the Balkans, though finding Seer-friendly producers would be an extra complication. They'd probably have to find someone in Egypt — they tended to make a lot of Seer-friendly stuff, for cultural reasons, and they should have chickpeas and rice she could use, and at least access to sesame products, even if they didn't grow much themselves. (Neither of them knew off the top of their heads whether sesame was actually grown in Egypt. It was a tropical plant, right, from India or something?) Liz got Seer-friendly fabric stuff from Egypt, some clothes and her bed things, they'd just have to find suppliers for food, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. But that'd take longer to arrange, she would have to wait.
Spices were also a problem — it turned out mages imported most of those from the muggle side. She didn't think it was that big of a deal — spices were used in such small volumes she didn't think it made any difference — but Nilanse still thought they should try. But, to find Seer-friendly suppliers, Liz thought they'd need to find someone where this stuff naturally grew, and in a lot of cases she didn't even know where that was. A lot of them were from the East Indies, she thought? That was kind of a long way away...
The magical world was actually weirdly insular in a lot of ways, despite how easy magical transportation was. There were reasons Britain imported spices from the muggle side, they barely even had steady diplomatic relations with countries that far away, much less serious trade. Same reason why Europe had developed alchemical substitutes for silk after Secrecy, just easier than importing it in any real volume on a regular basis. (Though that wasn't as much the case now, it had been at the time.) If Liz wanted Seer-friendly spices from the far east, she suspected she'd have to travel to wherever they were from in person and physically pick them up.
Which, she wouldn't mind doing that, when she was older — if only to have an excuse to check places out for the hell of it — but it wasn't really practical for this summer.
Their shopping list was mostly just food stuff, but Nilanse added a few extra things on at the end, soap and whatever, all right. Some of this stuff they'd be able to get at the market here in town, but others would have to be ordered from the suppliers they'd been getting her food from the last few months — Liz would prefer to go to the market for everything they could, so she could, you know, look at other shite around, just out of curiosity. But she'd agreed to not go out alone, so she needed to wait until Sirius could escort her. That would be a couple of days, probably? She hadn't planned it with him ahead of time, and she assumed Sirius was with Dorea's family at the moment, she didn't want to interrupt.
But there were a few days' worth of stuff they could make without needing to buy anything else, so that wasn't a problem. Liz and Nilanse spent the rest of the afternoon doing the baking for the next few days, things for breakfast and tea, as well as the bread for tonight's dinner. By the time that was all squared away, it was pretty much time to start dinner anyway, so they went straight on into that. After dinner, she finally got around to unpacking her things — some of her clothes she actually set aide, mostly because she had Seer-friendly replacements so she wasn't using them anymore anyway. She spent the remainder of the evening reading and sipping at a glass of mead before slipping into her freshly pleasant tingly bed.
The next day, she did manage to get a message back and forth with Sirius — he'd "love" to take her shopping and stay for a couple days, but he wouldn't be able to make it until Monday. That was fine, she guessed, the useable food they had in the house would last that long. Since she didn't have anything better to do, she thought she'd go ahead and enchant some paired notebooks for Katie. She didn't have any suitable blanks around, so she asked Nilanse to go get a couple nice leather-bound notebooks for her — Liz would just do it herself, but she'd promised not to go out on her own, so.
While Nilanse was doing that, Liz stepped outside to check the garden, which was still inside the wards so didn't count as leaving the house. She'd gone through and torn out all the grass after she'd moved in last year, left alone all the trees that had already been sitting out here, and then after a talk with Honish had decided they could put grapevines in here? Like, put up some fences here and there to support them, and they could also go against the outside walls, and there were trellises already against the sides of the house, so, why the hell not. She'd had idle thoughts about playing around making her own spiced wine later — after she finished school, she meant, but she thought it'd take a while for the plants to mature anyway, so. There were woody vines crawling up the trellises now, though they were still pretty small, the rest of the available space dominated with thinner vines showing brilliant blue-purple and white flowers all over the place. Since the last time Liz had seen the place the dirt had been almost entirely hidden with a variety of wildflowers springing up, a dozen different kinds spread at random, rising above a bed of clover — the wildflowers were her, she'd bought a package of mixed seeds and randomly tossed them all around the house a year ago now, but she hadn't expected the clover.
She'd barely been looking around for a minute before Honish appeared. The garden looks great, yeah — the clover was him? Apparently to keep the soil healthy, which, sure, whatever. The clover was fine, she just hadn't liked the grass that'd already been here, at least clover made flowers and shite, far more interesting. (The texture was nicer on her bare feet, even.) Honish said the vines would take a couple more years to start actually making grapes, which was fine. He wasn't positive how great the grapes would be, quality-wise, since Ireland was a little cold and cloudy for them, but there were ways to cheat with magic if that became a problem, they'd figure it out. What about these other vines on the fences, why were these here? Ah, to attract pollinators, okay. Liz wasn't the expert, she was sure Honish knew what he was doing. Just don't obsess over it too much, okay, the entire point had been to set up something that didn't take that much work...
Once Nilanse returned with the notebooks, Liz spent most of the rest of the day doing the enchanting work. The enchantment Rita had come up with was hardly the most complex thing in the world, but her handwriting was terrible, so she went very slowly and carefully to make sure she didn't fuck anything up. She didn't actually get around to finishing them until after dinner — they looked good to her, but she couldn't actually test them until Katie set the encryption. She bundled up Katie's notebook with instructions to activate it in a cloth bag, charmed to resist water — wouldn't last forever, but it only had to make it as far as Lothian — and handed it off to her owl.
Liz took a moment after breakfast the next morning to figure out what she wanted to get done over the next few weeks. The first firm date for something she needed to do wasn't until the Ninth of next month — two weeks away, still. She would need to get new clothes, and also she wanted to get a version of the duelling uniform with a skirt, but she'd have to wait until after the blood alchemy procedure for that. (Which would be close enough to the tournament to be kind of pushing it on the uniforms, but she could pay extra to rush the order, it should be fine.) Most things would have to wait until after the procedure, really. She had thoughts about basic sewing lessons with Muirgheal, and visiting that sex shop she kept hearing about, out of morbid curiosity — not sure why "morbid" felt like the right word, it just did — and she wanted to do those after the procedure, since she'd prefer not to be recognised. After the procedure but before the tournament in Syracuse, hopefully, photos of her new appearance would get out by then.
...There was one thing on her list she could probably do, though. She was less likely to be recognised in France to begin with, and if she was, well, French people would be less stupid and annoying about it, at least. And, she wasn't even sure what she would find there, but she was curious. She'd promised not to go out on her own, but the problem with that was the potential threat posed by underinformed Death Eater types, and they were unlikely to be hanging around in France. And it wasn't like she had anything better to do today.
So after lunch she got dressed in clothes more suitable to be out in public in, made sure she had a few basic essentials in her bag, and left through the floo. The trip kind of sucked, since she had multiple water-crossing to do — as usual when travelling by floo, she broke it up into multiple trips, taking the water crossing to Britain in a single leg, skipping down the island, and then crossing to Calais. They had a special floo here for people coming in from Britain that only led to Lille or Antwerp, so Liz took the former, arriving at the familiar big international floo-hub-slash-keyport in northern France. Getting through the international area to the French side of the 'border' went quickly and smoothly as usual. Once she was through, Liz paused to look over a floo network map on a wall — she'd stupidly forgotten to bring her paper map. She didn't want to take the whole trip at once, because the floo sucked, so she'd stopover in...Saint-Quentin, then Reims, and then she'd arrive in Troyes, okay.
Stepping out of the floo hub, she found herself in the familiar central square of Troyes, the same one she and Severus had crossed into from the muggle side a couple months ago now. She was arriving around noon, so it was somewhat busy, some of the brick buildings around the edges bustling with people, restaurants (or some equivalent) spilling out onto the square, tables set up outside their doors. But she thought it was actually less busy than it'd been last time — a lot of the buildings here were, like, guildhouses and shite, and those were quieter, perhaps because it happened to be a Sunday.
Liz had just been following Severus last time, so she didn't remember which way she was supposed to go next...and telling people the place she was trying to find might be a little awkward. Thankfully, she remembered the name of the street it was on, that should be easier — she walked over to one of the clumps of tables spreading out onto the square, picked what looked like a middle-aged couple and their adult children to ask for directions. Of course, she didn't know exactly where the place she was looking for was, but she should stumble across it easily enough just following the street off the square, and as long as she was close enough she could cheat with the Sight to get the rest of the way, so.
The inverse of the situation on the square, the street was actually more busy than she remembered. Like a lot of old cities, tightly-packed buildings of wood and plaster hugging close to the narrow street, though taller here, more modern construction piled on top of the old (literally mediaeval) structures, the street a narrow sunny band surrounded with shadows. The tall buildings to both sides and balconies hanging overhead had mostly blocked out the sun the last time she was here, but it was closer to midday, so, it felt brighter now. The plaster was pretty plain white, the newer bits more of a creamy tone and the older tinged yellowish, but it was still very colourful, ceramic signs brightly painted, posters plastered here and there and everywhere, some of them obviously animated, flags pinned up in windows or hanging from balconies. Like a lot of similar places she'd seen both in muggle and magical cities, the lower levels were often shops or coffeehouses or offices of some kind, the upper levels residential, and while the underlying structure hadn't been altered much, without the modern metal and glass remodeling you saw in the muggle equivalent, the different aesthetics of different uses still made the buildings look visibly distinct even from the outside, making the street look rather chaotic and colourful.
Especially when there were so many people around. The coffeehouses and meeting halls or whatever were packed, chattering voices escaping through open windows and doors, the balconies overhead holding groups of people out having lunch or whatever. The activity even spilled out into the street, people standing lingering around doors, or gathered in conversation here and there and everywhere. And Liz didn't pass through the crowd unnoticed, either, people glancing her way, attention raking over her — she'd wisely popped one of her cannabis tablets before leaving the floo hub, so it thankfully wasn't too uncomfortable — saying hello or asking where she was headed, or if she was lost or needed help or something. (Liz realised that wasn't unreasonable, since she looked even younger than she was, but it was still a little irritating.) People even tried to hand her flyers on three separate occasions — one for some kind of summer day programme thing for kids out of school, another for a concert going on tomorrow night, another for a...sort of like a youth council or something? or like a youth wing for the neocommunalists? She wasn't sure exactly. She had to brush them all off, though she was vaguely curious about that last one, wondering what the hell went on in those meetings, but she wasn't even French...
Seeing how busy the place was, a lot of people apparently at home with their families or going to meetings and stuff, she started wondering if the place would even be open. She didn't remember seeing operating hours or anything — it might have been smart to check the memory in her pensieve first, but it'd slipped her mind.
Thankfully, when she found the place — a library and café, a dark blue flag pinned up in a window over the door, a down-turned crescent moon over a bundle of blooming lilac — it did appear they were open today. The door was even propped open partway, music faintly spilling out into the street. As she neared, Liz was suddenly struck with a spike of nerves, but awkwardly standing around outside wouldn't look any less weird — what that flag meant wasn't exactly a secret. So she sucked in a quick breath and slipped through the doorway, magic trickling over her as she passed through the wardline.
It was a little roomier in here than it seemed from the outside, which wasn't unexpected — space expansion in structures with rigid walls was trivial. She was in what looked like a little shop space of some kind — racks with jewellery and placards and scarves and magazines and books and posters, little things, mostly — a counter to one side surrounded with colourful posters, some political and some art. Liz noticed one prominent sign saying this place was a member of the Société d'Azur Thérèse, which was a name she actually recognised, from her reading about the Revolution in France. They were one of the groups in the Congress of Women's Co-operatives and Societies (mostly just shortened to Women's Congress), which was one of the big-name organisations in the Revolution. Guild membership back then had often been restricted to men, but lower-class women had to work to survive regardless, and they'd ended up forming what were basically unofficial guilds called co-operatives, eventually grouping together to form the Women's Congress, which was like a big umbrella labour organisation representing a bunch of different female-dominated trades. They were one of the big groups that'd supported the Communalists in the Revolution, had even been a technically illegal organisation for a time by decree of the old government, they'd had a big part in the Revolution, it was a whole thing.
They weren't just a labour thing — as they'd gotten big and important, in the latter half of the 19th Century into the 20th, various other social and political groups had started allying with them too. The Société d'Azur Thérèse was basically, like...a big lesbian thing? sort of like a political party, or she guessed more like a faction in the Communalists? or like a social club? She wasn't sure what to call them, exactly. They did a lot of the political advocacy for women's issues generally and lesbians specifically, and also a lot of charity stuff, she thought? The books Liz had read weren't about them, just mentioned them here and there, so she wasn't entirely sure what all they were about.
Of course, the group had technically started as prostitutes banding together to help each other, but that was centuries ago now, the purpose of the group had shifted a lot since then. Old social clubs and shite tended to do that.
(Prostitutes in magical France did still have an organisation, it was just called something else now, a totally separate thing. Very confusing.)
The shop space was just right at the front, though, past that it opened up a little, shelves along the wall and stitched through the space — hardly huge but, like, decent book-store size, which was honestly more than she'd expected. How many books about queer shite could there be? There was a second level, the flag visible from outside actually hanging off the railing of the balcony just overhead, but at this angle she couldn't see much. There were people around, she could feel them better than she could see them, but not very many, someone here and there poking through the shelves, someone over at a table she could barely make out over there, some people up on the second level...
She twitched a little when someone called, "Ah, hello there!" A woman appeared out of the shelves nearby, a sleeveless tunic decorated with sparkling stars, trousers that cut off at mid-calf, scattered hair cut to ear-length and dyed blue. She was definitely an adult, but it could be hard for Liz to guess mages' ages very well — thirties, maybe? a little older? Coming this way, her attention prickling over her skin, "Are you here for something, or just to look around?"
Suddenly feeling self-conscious — she had just walked into the lesbian place, and now someone was looking at her, she didn't know, felt weird — Liz had to clear her throat before she could find her voice. "Um. Just look around, I guess."
She noticed the woman pick up on her awkwardness, which was also embarrassing, but if it made her leave Liz alone, whatever. "All right, come on in, then. It's a little quiet right now, but we'll have more people coming in later. Café's upstairs, ask if you need something, or have any questions, okay?"
"Okay..." She didn't think she was particularly likely to do that, but whatever.
Liz spent a bit wandering around the shelves, scanning over the books and magazines and whatever. She tried to avoid the other people around, which wasn't very difficult — there weren't many, and the woman who'd spoken to her seemed to be busy reorganising the shelves (things must get moved around), and the girl sitting at one of the tables in with the shelves (school age, but older than Liz, Proficiency student) was very busy, surrounded with a bunch of old political pamphlets and big thick books. Taking notes, researching for some history paper or something, by the look of it. A few people came in and out over the next however long, but nobody bothered her, which was good. Gave Liz some time to feel less weird about being in a place run by the big damn lesbian society, with the big damn lesbian flag hanging in the window.
She quickly realised the books were mostly pretty normal, though. There was some queer shite, obviously, but it wasn't, like, all queer shite. Lots of political and history stuff, she even recognised a few books she owned already, recommended by Tamsyn to learn about the Revolution in France...and there was almost a whole shelf of Comtois's book, so. She wouldn't recognise titles or the names of most authors, of course, but it looked like the political stuff was all communalist (or neocommunalist) — not just from France, they had copies of Grindelwald's famous prison diaries and histories of the Revolution in Saxony, and Austria, and some stuff from Aquitania and Sicily (whose communalist-adjacent governments actually pre-dated the Revolution), some Greek stuff, entire sizeable sections on things in Lithuania and Illyria...
So, more of a communalist library than it was a queer one, but that did make sense when she thought about it — the Société d'Azur Thérèse was a communalist group. Most associations for gay people in the ICW tended to be at least friendly with the local communalists, since they were usually good on queer shite, so.
There was also gay stuff, but not... It was mostly politics or history or, like, sociology or whatever the fuck, but just involving gay people. The books were very normal-looking, for the most part, though they sometimes seemed very not normal if you looked at it for long enough — the central argument of one book she picked up was apparently that gender was fake which, um, okay then? Liz was pretty sure men and women existed, she must not be quite understanding something...
At one point she hopped up the stairs to check out what was up here. There was a sort of kitchen area place to one side, most of the balcony filled with a spread of tables, sofas and such over toward the other end, which she guessed meant this was the "café"? It didn't really look like one? The kitchen area didn't look like a normal kitchen, she guessed, probably geared toward very specific things — Liz didn't know enough to identify some of the equipment in there, but she assumed it must be specialised coffee-making stuff or something — and there wasn't anyone staffing it at the moment...and no signs of a menu, or prices or anything. Confusing, but whatever. The music was coming from up here, some kind of turntable standing in the corner against the railing — the music wasn't familiar to her, with a lot of twanging guitars and fucking oboes or some shite (she didn't know instruments), but it was inoffensive enough, she'd mostly just been ignoring it. (Liz wasn't a music person.) There were more shelves along the back wall here, some books, thick binders that she assumed must be records of something, and some boxes that might be board games? She didn't recognise the titles, but she didn't have a better guess. (Not like she knew much about magical French board games to begin with.) It was pretty empty, the only people up here a single woman sitting with a cup of coffee, reading a book in an armchair way over there, a group of older women — probably at least a hundred, but it was hard to say, magical ageing — sitting around a table chatting over a board game of some kind. Liz glanced around for a little bit, before turning back around and returning to the bookshelves.
Were the books for sale? Or, well, the sign outside said it was a library, so maybe she could borrow things? If she had to read them here, though, like that girl doing research over there, she didn't know if she'd want to. For one, it'd take her longer than a sitting to get through the things she thought looked interesting...and also she'd feel kind of uncomfortable reading queer shite in public. She realised this was a her problem, but she still wasn't quite over feeling weird about it. Hell, she'd taken her drugs just to come here, and she'd still felt annoyingly self-conscious about it on the way in. She was feeling calmer now, but still.
While she was wondering over whether it was worth asking that woman from before how this place worked exactly, or if she should just copy down titles that sounded interesting and order them from somewhere else, some more people started coming in. Not that the place ended up packed, or anything, it was a group of like eight people? They didn't come in all at once, in singles or pairs, gathering together upstairs, the woman she'd spoken to before and the researching girl meeting them up there...
Liz was idly flipping through a book on the Austrian Revolution when she felt someone walking toward her, the same woman from before. She'd gone by a few times, zigzagging back and forth across the place, but it was different this time — Liz could feel her attention on her, knew she was coming specifically to speak to her. That was fine, she guessed. She'd mostly left Liz alone, picking up that she didn't want to be bothered, and she did want to ask about the books.
"So quiet, I hardly even notice you over here," the woman said as she approached. "Find anything interesting?"
Folding the book she'd been looking at closed, Liz slipped it back onto the shelf with a shrug. "Some. Are these books for sale, or do you lend them out, or what?"
"You can take a few out, if you like — we only ask that you try to get them back before too long. If too many books disappear into your hands, you may lose your borrowing privileges." That was reasonable enough...and probably more than reasonable, but Liz guessed they were communalists. "I'm sorry, I was in the middle of something earlier, and I didn't get your name. I'm Josiane."
"Muireann." Obviously she wasn't going to be using her real name, she'd thought of that ahead of time.
"Oh dear, that's not French. Was that, ah, Myrrane?"
Slowly, annunciating more clearly, Liz repeated, "Muireann."
"Mirène?"
She shrugged. "Close enough."
"I am sorry, I don't have the head for languages, I'm afraid. Where are you from? I assumed you're from around here, your French is so clean."
"No, I'm an omniglot."
Josiane let out a long low oooh, a funny bright prickling from her head Liz didn't know how to read. "Yes, that would do it, I suppose. You would be British, then? They have most of the omniglots, and your name doesn't sound Northern."
"Not British," Liz said, firmly, for the purposes of staying in character — Gaels generally didn't like being called British. "I live in tAnacal na Caoimhe, in Éirinn."
"Ireland? Is that Éirinn, Ireland?"
"Yes, it is. I didn't mean to switch languages there, sorry. I just do that sometimes." She hadn't meant to, even, she'd just slipped saying the name of the town. Did it even have a name in French? If it did, she couldn't think of it, she might have never heard it before...
"Ah, of course, I know there is... Well, I'm sorry for assuming." The national question heating up wasn't exactly a secret, but Josiane also didn't want to possibly ruin the mood by mentioning that whole your country is teetering on the edge of a civil war thing. "You've come quite some way! What brings you here?"
"I'm seeing a blood alchemist here in Troyes — I need something done, but it's illegal back home." She thought that was safe to admit, since the people who knew the Girl Who Lived was seeing a blood alchemist were pretty few. "When I was here earlier I saw this place passing by, I had nothing on today, so I thought I'd check it out. We don't have places like this where I'm from, or people like the Society."
"I don't know about that, I'm sure they're around. But I assume they may be harder to find over there. I can look it up for you, if you like? We have a list, upstairs, of sister organisations in other countries."
...That might not be a good idea. It was safe enough to come to a place like this in France, where, even if someone recognised her, nobody really gave a shite, so they wouldn't make a big fuss about it. Liz didn't know what the reaction would be if she showed her face somewhere like this in Britain, but she did know some people would be extremely fucking stupid about it. Magical Britain wasn't, like, flagrantly homophobic or anything — better than muggle Britain, even — but it definitely wasn't as accepted as it was here in France. Like, variably, she meant, messing around when you were young was mostly acceptable, but hanging out in a place like this would...kind of be sending a message. Or, it'd be interpreted that way, anyway.
Of course, that message probably wouldn't be something Liz would even disagree with — the problem was that people would annoy her about it. And hate mail, there'd certainly be hate mail...
Josiane seemed to pick up on her hesitation, a warm sticky feeling of some kind crawling over her. "It can wait for some other time. Or I can give you their information, and you can go see them whenever you like."
She was pretty sure Josiane had just guessed she wasn't out yet or something, and wasn't ready for people she actually knew her to know about it, but it didn't hurt anything for her to assume that, so. "Yeah, sure, we can do that."
"But you were thinking of borrowing something? What were you looking at?"
For a few minutes, they zigzagged through the shelves, Liz trying to track down all the books she'd thought looked interesting. She was only planning on taking a handful, partly just because she wanted to remember which ones were from here, keep them separate from her books, and also she didn't want to...give a bad impression? You know, just waltzing in here from a foreign country and snapping up a bunch of books for free, she didn't know. She was a new person, so, it was probably better not to take too many, at least until they better trusted her to bring things back. It didn't seem like Josiane was worried about that, but still.
Josiane hadn't read literally every book in here, obviously, but she had read some, or at least knew a little about the topic. The book she'd been looking at about the Revolutionary women's groups during the war Josiane actually swapped with a different one — she said the one Liz had been looking at was a very boring names and dates kind of history, this one was better — and she had a lot to say about the Revolution in Lithuania. Which wasn't really a surprise, Liz guessed? There were a few things about Lithuania that made it rather different from most other ICW countries, and it'd been a fucking mess in the war, it'd become something of an object of fascination with both historians and, just, random normal people since. There was even a lot of fiction set in that time too, it was a whole thing. (Though not so much in Britain, it was more a phenomenon of international neocommunalist culture.) Liz was somewhat curious about fictional adaptations of this stuff — the Säde Karjalainen books had turned out to be really interesting, though of course this would be a totally different kind of thing — they didn't have fiction books here, but Josiane had recommendations, pulled a publisher's catalogue off a spot on a wall and started marking it up, babbling off about different authors and subjects people frequently played with...
As long as they were talking about fiction, Josiane pointed out that, er, romance books were a thing too, if she'd be interested in that — yes, she was aware, there was a publisher in Britain who put out plenty, thank you. Liz was a little surprised that Josiane had actually heard of Pandemos before, but she guessed she shouldn't be. Whatever.
Josiane also handed her copies of a few magazines while they were at it. One Liz actually recognised, basically the French equivalent of Witch Weekly? Another was put out by the Women's Congress, and was very explicitly political — which made sense, since they were basically a political party now. (Or something like that, French politics were weird.) The last one was...well, queer shite, she guessed? It wasn't put out by the Société d'Azur Thérèse, more a general thing, you know, for queers at large and not just women. Liz didn't have to bring the magazines back, and there would be instructions in each of them to get a subscription if she wanted, they would owl them all the way to Britain, so. Didn't seem very likely she'd do that, honestly...though, the Witch Weekly -equivalent might be useful sometimes, and the political one might be interesting, at least...
There was a big book behind the counter by the door, where Josiane wrote down her name and the books she was taking out, presumably to be checked against later to make sure she'd brought them back. Liz had to spell out her false name letter by letter, which she guessed was fair enough — Muireann Nic Cnáimhín was probably difficult for a French speaker to spell. (She didn't think that was a real Gaelic family? Or if they were, they weren't anyone of any importance, so there wouldn't be any consequences if anyone found out she was using the name.) Liz noticed the sign saying the bit about the Société d'Azur Thérèse, and as long as she had someone who might know right here, who the hell was Blue Theresa anyway? Instead of straight answering the question, Josiane just pulled a booklet out of somewhere and tucked it in with the rest of the books, apparently that would explain, okay then.
Liz suddenly had a lot of extra reading to do over the next couple of weeks, but she guessed she didn't really mind. She wasn't supposed to be leaving the house much anyway.
"There we are," Josiane said, the big book slapped closed and tucked back under the counter. "Were you in a rush to get home?"
"Um...not sure." She quick cast a time charm with a snap of her fingers — an intense clattering of surprise, Josiane sharply leaned back from the counter, blinking wide-eyed at the illusion. Right, she was supposed to be a normal person today, almost forgot. She was distracted by that enough that she almost didn't take in the time before the illusion dissolved away. "No, I have a few hours before I need to be home to start dinner. Why?"
"Ah..." Still staring at where the illusion had been, it took a second for Josiane to find her voice, physically shaking herself to focus back on Liz. She actually convinced herself that Liz must have a specialised focus of some kind just to check the time, which seemed a little silly, but she wasn't about to correct her — if she'd been thinking she wouldn't have done something flashy like that, the whole point of using a false name and everything was to avoid attracting attention. (Also, don't comment on people's unspoken thoughts, creepy bitch.) "That is, I came to find you in the first place to ask if you wanted to join us upstairs. Some of the local women gather here on Sunday afternoons, play cards, talk. Nothing serious — political meetings are held at the Congressional offices on the square, during the week — it's just a social gathering, casual."
"...Oh." She was kind of surprised she was being spontaneously invited to some social thing for the local queers or whatever, but she guessed she maybe shouldn't be? They were probably just trying to be friendly. She didn't count as local, but whatever. And she didn't see why not? It's not like she had anything better to do, and if it got uncomfortable she could simply leave, so. "Um, sure, I guess."
Grinning, Josiane led her through the bookshelves, then up the stairs at the back to the upper level. The group of older women who'd been here before were gone now, nine people sitting around a pair of tables they'd pushed together, a tenth over in the kitchen area. Liz recognised the woman who'd been reading up here earlier, as well as the researching girl, but most of them had come in since she'd gotten here — there were two who might be teenagers, but the rest were all adults, Liz definitely the youngest person in the room. Josiane detoured by the shelves before continuing that way, reminding Liz about her offer to look up similar groups in Britain.
Turned out there wasn't much — and none actually in Ireland, with the exception of a few sanctuaries people could go to in emergencies. There was a social club somewhere in London, which didn't sound very appealing to Liz — the impression she got from the notes in the directory was of a very high class sort of establishment, so, like, a place for rich gay women married to rich men to meet each other to screw around, because Britain — and a rather informal group in Glasgow associated with the local communalists. She wasn't surprised that was basically all they knew about, Britain was just less politically organised than a lot of other places in general. She'd told Josiane that there wouldn't be anything, and it'd turned out she was right. So yeah, Liz didn't need the information on either of those, she was fine.
Josiane returned the directory to its spot on the shelves, and then led the way over to the group of women. They were already in the middle of some kind of card game, the chatter petering off a little as Josiane approached, looking up to her — there were cards scattered over the table, apparently they'd started playing while waiting for Josiane to catch up. "Now everyone, we have a visitor from the Isles today, let's not scare her off. I'm sorry, bichette, but your name is very Irish, I don't want to get it wrong."
Frowning up at her, Liz repeated, "Bichette?" She knew what that meant, of course — literally a young doe, it was used as a term of endearment on the muggle side too — it was just completely out of nowhere.
Josiane smiled down at her, unrepentant. "Is that too much?" Simmering warm amusement, not just from her but some of the women at the table too, apparently she thought Liz was kind of adorable. Which wasn't news, Liz had picked up on that earlier — it was something about the eyes, supposedly, and also she was just frustratingly tiny.
But unfortunately there was nothing she could do about being frustratingly tiny, so Liz just rolled her eyes.
The French women all had about as much trouble correctly pronouncing Muireann as Josiane had, but Liz just brushed any apologies off, she was aware people had trouble with Gaelic. (Besides, it wasn't even her real name, so it wasn't like the mispronunciations bothered her.) One of the women right away noted that they were saying Irish (irlandais) and Liz was saying Gaelic (gaéliquois), and asked what the difference was — she was aware of the nationalist stuff going on, and wanted to make sure she had her terminology straight for reasons of not causing offence — so then Liz had to explain that Ireland was a place, but the people were Gaels, who also lived in the west of Scotland — which she very consciously called Alba, for staying in character reasons — so obviously couldn't be called simply Irish. She seriously doubted it was the proper term, she'd just made up gaéliquois off the top of her head — they didn't speak a lot of French back home. Honestly, she wouldn't be surprised if there was no proper term? Why would there be? Cambrian and English were used for official stuff back home, but never Gaelic, so she wouldn't be surprised if there simply wasn't one. You could bring it up with the political people here, she guessed, yeah, it might actually matter one day...
Yvonne didn't come out and say that they might want to have the terminology straight for when the Gaels inevitably split from Britain to make their own country, but the implication of why she might want to check with official types was obvious.
While dancing around the complicated politics in Britain at the moment, they made Liz a seat at the table next to the girl she'd spotted researching before — Clarisse, who was a Proficiency student, trying to finish off her summer homework early. The other teenage-looking girl was called Sperança (didn't sound French), who actually hadn't gone for proper Proficiencies at all, and was instead in a school for the arts, which Liz had hardly even realised was a thing on the magical side. She joked that her parents were very proud, the colour of her mind making it obvious that was meant to be sarcastic, there was definitely a story there.
But before Liz could even consider whether it was polite to ask, the person she'd felt over in the kitchen area was coming out, levitating multiple trays around her. There was coffee and little pastries and biscuits and the like, basically afternoon tea (if somewhat more French). Setting things down, the woman assured her that she'd been listening when she and Josiane showed up, there was a cup for her—
"No thanks, I'm fine," Liz said, picking up and moving the cup back onto the tray before the woman could start pouring.
"Oh? If you don't like coffee, we can find something else."
"I love coffee, but I have to be careful about what kind. I'm a Seer, food can be iffy."
"Katia," Josiane said, apparently the woman's name, "do we still have the...?"
"Mm, I think we may. One minute, Muireann, I will go see..."
After a couple minutes, Katia came back with a pastry and a drink for Liz, which were kind of mixed. The pastry was great — pain aux raisins, the spiral pastry all buttery and flakey, and the custard in it was...was that frangipane? what was that doing in there? Whatever, it was shockingly good, like, tasted good but also had the tingles which came with a lot of pleasant psychometric stuff. Liz actually made a kind of embarrassing noise with the first bite, just, the tingles were kind of intense, was all. The drink she didn't like as much. It was some kind of grape soda, she guessed? There was extra flavouring that might be herbs of some kind, she wasn't sure exactly. It was a little sweet, and she wasn't a fan of the bubbles — especially on top of the good-Seer-tingles, the feelings just didn't mesh well — and also she didn't think the two things went together very well? She wasn't normally as sensitive to things at a single meal not going together...or at least felt differently about it, to the point that she was sometimes surprised by other people being a little grossed out by whatever she was eating. It wasn't even the taste so much, she didn't think, there was something in the soda that was almost syrupy, stuck to her tongue a little, which then just felt weird with the flakey pastry. After a little bit she decided to finish off the pastry before getting back to the soda, which was an improvement, though she still didn't like the drink much.
Katia had brought the packaging back with her (the pastry had been moved onto a plate and warmed up a little) pointed out a little design of a raindrop inside of a triangle, which was also repeated on the label of the soda bottle. Anything with that little marker on it should be neutral for Seers, if not actively pleasant — she'd also see them on menus at cafés or restaurants sometimes, though there was a possibility of contamination in that kind of place. It should be on products imported from Saxony, Germany, Daneland, Austria, and Lithuania, who also all used the same labeling...though not Aquitania or Holland, apparently, the labeling in Aquitania was different and they didn't have a standard in Holland at all. There was a similar idea in some things back home, yeah — it wasn't a standardised thing, something a few producers did just because — but she hadn't known about this one, that was helpful, thanks.
(She guessed there were advantages to the Sight officially being considered a disability in some countries. Yet another thing Britain should really catch the fuck up on.)
And once that was settled they, just, played cards. They were using a tarot deck, which Liz knew was common in the magical world — tarot cards were primarily for playing with, they were also used for divining since they were just something people would have on hand — though she was pretty sure they'd actually combined two decks to accommodate the number of players they had, her guess confirmed the first time two copies of the same card were played at once. The game wasn't particularly complicated, cards assigned different values, everyone lay down one, the person with the highest value takes the trick, the person with the most points at the end wins the round, blah blah. It was new to her, but it wasn't complicated, she picked it up quickly enough, cheating a little with mind magic when she got confused a couple times. They were playing in teams, probably also because they had so many players — and Liz being here meant they actually had an even dozen, so making four teams of three was easy enough.
A couple of the women joked that her team had an unfair advantage, having the Seer with them, but it didn't work like that, really. With eleven other players (or nine excluding her teammates), all of them dealt cards at random and making decisions about which to play each trick, the next trick shaped by the results of the previous, there was simply too much randomness involved for Seer hints to be worth anything at all. She occasionally got a nudge that playing one card in particular would be an especially good or bad idea, but that was pretty rare.
Honestly, the mind magic was a bigger advantage, even without actively looking, but she hadn't told them about that.
And while playing they, just, talked. Liz didn't participate much, when she wasn't being directly asked something, listening. A lot of it was over her head, about people or things she didn't know enough about it. The others all lived in this general neighbourhood, so they knew a lot of the same people, heard the same local news going on. Not only did they all know each other simply because they lived nearby, but there were also relationships going on Liz was picking up hints on — some people at the table had dated each other in the past, but she didn't think anyone was presently together? If they were they weren't obvious about it, at least. It didn't help that they were all friends, what with being in this political group thing together and coming by to hang out every Sunday, and it could be hard to cleanly distinguish friend and dating feelings, especially when not actively having squishy thoughts.
The most obvious relationship was between Clarisse and Katia — Katia was actually Clarisse's mum. Clarisse herself was straight (or at least straight-ish), but she had two mums — Liz was aware two women having a child together was trivial with blood alchemy, had been a known thing for literally thousands of years now — and Katia was active with the Society and mostly managed the kitchen stuff here. So, growing up Clarisse had spent a lot of time here after school or during the holidays, apparently she'd been doing her homework at one of the tables down in the library for as long as she could remember. Which meant she was basically a fixture here, the other women had all known her since she was a child — so she kind of had a bunch of pseudo-aunts, Liz guessed.
The odd one out was the other girl, she was actually somewhat new here. She wasn't originally from this neighbourhood — she'd moved out of her parents' house shortly after finishing Competencies and switching to art school, was living with a few other young people in public housing nearby. (Liz thought she might have actually run way from home as a minor, and been given some kind of protection by whatever kind of programme they had here for abused children, but nobody said that and obviously Liz wasn't going to come out and ask.) There was something about Speranţa — Liz inconsistently heard a ts sound in there, it depended on who was saying it — that seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Must be a Seer thing, she guessed she was going to know Speranţa better in the future — she had similar faint feelings about some of the other women here. Maybe she was going to keep coming by now and then? That would make sense.
Speranţa had a sketchbook propped up against the edge of the table, would scribble at it a little between her turns. By the sharp prickles of attention on her skin, she suspected Speranţa was drawing her — a little odd, but she was high enough not to find Speranţa's grasping, analytic attention too unpleasant, so whatever.
So, there was a lot of gossip about people she didn't really know — either friends or family they all knew, or just public figures Liz might know about if she payed attention to French stuff — and talk about current events, most of which she didn't have anything to contribute to. She guessed she shouldn't be surprised that politics came up, since this was a (neo)communalist group. People did keep trying to include her, asking questions and shite — Liz brushed off most of the personal stuff, partly because she hadn't exactly come up with a full backstory for Muireann Nic Cnáimhín, but it didn't help that she was honestly kind of shite with normal smalltalk anyway. You know, bland little getting-to-know-you questions, she'd hardly know what to say to a lot of them when she wasn't pretending to be someone else.
The talk about the situation back home was honestly easier than personal stuff. She was hardly an expert, but she did hear stuff secondhand from Severus or Tamsyn or Muirgheal or whoever, or her friends or the minds of random people around when things got in the papers. (She still didn't read them, most of the time, though she realised she probably should.) Things were very shaky right now, if not breaking out into open violence, yet. Or, at least not in most of the country — there was occasional violence certain places in Scotland, where the population was more mixed, mostly in the form of spats between individual Gaelic and British families. There was the occasional assault or theft or whatever going on on the British side of the border too, but it was hard to tell if that stuff was to do with the British nationalists or one of the criminal groups around...or both? Apparently there was a low-key turf war going on between Teulu Prydein and the Night Briar Brotherhood, but that wasn't new, and while there might be an incident now and then it wasn't really a hot conflict or anything. In a sort of tense balance, she guessed, for the moment, tempers high ever since the World Cup but nobody actually fighting yet.
There'd been no telling how long that was going to last before, but now with the Death Eaters in the mix, well, Liz simply didn't know enough to even begin to guess how that would mess with the delicate balance they were in now. Probably blow it the fuck up, honestly, though she couldn't guess when, or how.
She did tell them there was a rumour the Dark Lord was back — she didn't see how a few French queers knowing about it should affect their truce at all, so. Of course, since she was supposed to be some random Gaelic girl, she talked about it in the same way Gaels tended to when the topic came up, like it was some distant thing and not their problem...which she guessed was sort of accurate now, for her. (That was still odd to think about.) The Dark Lord pulling his shite was going to kick things into motion, because if nothing else when the government was distracted with the Death Eaters would be an excellent time for the Gaels to make their move.
It would be soon, now. Liz couldn't say when, Seer shite wasn't that precise, there were too many moving pieces, too many people making decisions. But soon.
(...Spring. She had a feeling about next spring.)
(She might still be in the country by then, but she could avoid it for a few months.)
At least a couple of the people around the table figured out who she really was, which Liz guessed was only expected. The Girl Who Lived wasn't nearly as a big of a deal in other countries, Beauxbatons was an Aquitanian school and not French, and they had different ideas about what was appropriate to put in newspapers, so she'd kind of been hoping she could get away with it? She had been recognised the last time she was in France, but...um, that one boy (forgot his name) actually knew her from student duelling, which not everyone followed very closely. (Duelling was a popular sport, but student duelling was somewhat more niche.) She guessed the Triwizard Tournament was flashy enough of an event that things about it might have gotten around, and she was sometimes recognised in other countries, just...
She didn't know. She'd like to not be famous Liz fucking Potter all the time, that was all.
She was a little nervous the first time she noticed that someone knew who she was...but then nothing happened. A few of the people in the room had figured it out, including both Clarisse and Speranţa, and everyone just kept calling her Muireann, and acting normal. Playing along. She relaxed after a little bit, realising that nothing was going to happen, and she just...kept playing cards, listening to the conversation passing back and forth over her head.
Liz didn't get to just be normal very often. It was nice, honestly.
(It seemed a little ironic that she felt normal at the lesbian place, but she realised that was a Liz is broken thought, trying to ignore it.)
They'd been going on for a while — there was a clock in the room, but Liz wasn't really paying attention to the time — before she felt another mind cross into the wards, a little distracting. The minimal in and out traffic had tapered off pretty early in the day, it'd been a while since anyone new had come in. Before too long someone came bounding up the stairs, and oh, this was Clarisse's other mum and Katia's wife, right then. (Liz tried not to stare when they kissed hello, all casual.) It was getting later, they happened to be between hands at the moment, and after a short discussion they decided they were done for the day.
The group was somewhat slow to break up, stalling chatting, Liz one of only a few to move to go right away. There was a lot of hugging and cheek-kissing and shite (France), but thankfully nobody moved to touch her — being a Seer really was the best excuse, should have told people about it ages ago. (That she hadn't known about it herself until relatively recently was beside the point.) While nobody was moving to touch her, there was a lot of talking at her, asking about how she was feeling about...things, and if she was planning on coming back sometime. She'd be coming back at least to return the books she'd borrowed, of course, but, she didn't know. This was kind of far away for her to come every Sunday just to sit around and play cards or whatever (though that'd become a lot easier once Severus signed off on her apparating alone). She didn't know, they'd have to see what ended up happening.
Honestly, she'd had a weirdly nice time, so she might come by every once in a while. But it wouldn't really be practical to do it very often, with the travel time involved, and how fucking busy she could be sometimes.
Liz had just gotten through the (somewhat overly lengthy) good-byes, and was starting toward the stairs when she was interrupted with a call of, "Hey, Irish." That was Speranţa — she could pronounce Liz's fake name more or less fine, but she'd settled on calling her Irlandaise most of the time anyway. She'd stood up from the table, was holding a sheet of paper she'd ripped from her sketchbook out toward Liz. "You can keep that."
"Oh, um." Suddenly very self-conscious — not only was Speranţa watching her, but she'd felt a few of the women turn this way too — Liz reached out to take the paper, turned it around to see the drawing. It was in black and white, obviously, just done in pencil, and she was hardly an art person or anything, so she didn't really have the words to describe this sort of thing. It seemed kind of smeary? She assumed that was on purpose, it looked like Speranţa had smeared the graphite with a thumb in some places, making softer blobs than the solid edge of a pencil could do, and the lines seemed kind of wild and random in places. Again, not an art person, but she thought Speranţa had quick sketched an outline as a guide, and then traced over the lines she wanted multiple times to firm them up, and then filled things in and did her smudging and stuff, which left some tail ends of lines sticking out that didn't seem to need to be there, fainter than the traced-over lines and the filled parts making it look kind of rough and fuzzy. Though, Liz guessed the rough fuzziness was the intended effect for her hair, there were more of those excess lines around there...
The figure in the drawing, obviously supposed to be Liz, was slouched back a bit in her chair, holding a spread of cards in one hand — oversized, both because Liz was tiny and because magical playing cards tended to be somewhat larger than muggle ones — and tapping at the soda bottle with the other. It was obvious even to her, as ignorant about this stuff as she was, that Speranţa had focussed on getting her face and hands right, the softer lines there less random-looking and more hinting at subtle contours or shadows or whatever. She didn't think it was entirely recognisable as her own face, but Liz didn't know if that was an effect of the drawing actually being imperfect or her usual issues with herself, hard to say. Not like she recognised people by their faces regardless, she was shite at that in general.
As much as she was not an art person, it was a obvious Speranţa had put a fair bit of effort into this — this would have taken so many strokes of a pencil to make, Liz could see that much, at least. It wasn't a surprise Speranţa had been drawing her, she'd been able to feel her attention, but she hadn't realised she'd spent the whole time on it? She'd stopped feeling Speranţa's attention on her some time ago...or at least not nearly as consistently. Looking at it now, she guessed by then Speranţa already had the general picture of what she was doing down, and just needed to trace over and fill in things or whatever, so didn't take nearly as much constant attention on Liz to figure it out. She'd thought Speranţa had moved on to something else there, a while ago. But apparently not.
Looking down at the drawing, Liz felt her face start going warm, all squirmy and— She didn't know what feeling that was, exactly, but it didn't take long until her skin was practically crawling from the eyes on her, uncomfortably self-conscious, resisting the urge to...she didn't know, trying to be normal about it anyway, not give away...whatever this was. Not that trying to hide it was doing any good — she could tell from the minds in the room that it was obvious she was having some kind of moment here.
Speranţa was close enough for her thoughts to be clearer, she thought the blushing and stuff was because she was flattered. Which was as a good a guess as any? Better than anything Liz had, she was so bad at this...
"Um..." She scrambled for a second to figure out what the fuck she was supposed to say — this wasn't exactly a situation she'd been in before. "...thanks?"
Her mind sparkling with amusement — the character of the feelings coming off of the women in the room more of an aww small child being adorable kind of thing, which was just a little embarrassing — Speranţa said just, "Sure. See you around, Irish."
"...Yeah." For a couple seconds, Liz blankly stared back at Speranţa. Then she just turned and walked away without another word, before she could embarrass herself any worse than she already had.
She stumbled out of the hearth into the dining room at home some minutes later, after a truly awful number of spinny miserable jumps through the floo. Needing to take several separate trips sucked, but since she'd started breaking long distances up into smaller pieces she hadn't had another incident where she crashed to the ground and maybe hurt herself — still hated it, but a lesser evil. She took a moment to gather herself, taking slow deep breaths, trying to settle her stomach and stop her head from spinning.
She was still standing there with her hands on her hips, breathing, when there was the sharp pop of elf teleportation, startling her a little, a familiar glassy mind appearing only a few metres away. "Liz, you're back! I was wondering where you went."
"I went out to a bookstore, got caught up," she said, giving a Nilanse a little shrug. Which was close enough to the truth, if somewhat less awkward to say. "I didn't think I was late to start dinner?"
There was a tinkling from Nilanse, almost like glass beads dropped to bounce off the floor — Liz wasn't sure how to read that, elf minds were so different. "You aren't to be going out alone, Severus said. You were gone so long, I was thinking if I should tell him."
...Oh, Nilanse had been worried about her. Or maybe not actively worried something bad was happening — if Liz understood how the bond thing worked, Nilanse should have been able to feel she was fine — but just, like, vaguely suspicious something she didn't know about was going on, or something. "Um, I was in France — I figured I'm not exactly likely to bump into Death Eater types who might like to take a shot all the way out there."
Her mind gritty and cool, Nilanse gave her a look she decided to read as very sceptical.
"I'm sorry, I didn't think of– well. I'll try to remember to tell you where I'm going next time. Just in case, you know."
Some of the sharp edges smoothing over, with a twitter of something that might be surprise (maybe), Nilanse said, "You don't need to be doing that." There was something funny about the way she said it, an almost wavering, wheedling tone. Uncertainty, Liz thought, or maybe embarrassment?
"No, I should have. I didn't—" Liz let out a sigh, glanced away for a second. "I'm still not used to people giving a damn what I'm up to, I guess. With everything going on, and the Dark Lord being back and all, and, that memory was probably scary to watch, and I guess it's... Well, I didn't mean to worry you, is what I'm getting at, just, thoughtless. I will try to remember to tell you, next time."
Nilanse just stared up at her, with those big vivid red eyes of hers, seemingly at a loss for what to say.
"Anyway, I have some books and stuff I was going to put away — I'll be back down to start dinner in a couple minutes."
"...I'm being here."
Liz really didn't know how to interpret Nilanse's mood — elf minds were bloody inscrutable sometimes — but it didn't seem bad, just, maybe, taken aback and thoughtful about something Liz had said. Not something she thought she had to worry about, at least. Though honestly, she wasn't sure if Nilanse would tell her even if it was serious — Nilanse was maybe even more reticent to talk about her feelings as Liz was...with Liz, anyway. A lot of the more, er, formal parts of it had broken down over the couple years they'd known each other — not that Nilanse had ever been that overly proper to begin with, probably helped along by her having been so young at the time — but Liz was aware that there was still some...elf–human stuff going on, sometimes. She might treat elves differently than most humans, and consciously avoided wording anything as a command they would be magically obligated to follow, but that didn't mean that all that stuff wasn't still there. Even if only implicitly, what Nilanse had been taught growing up about the 'proper' way things were done.
Honestly, Liz tried to avoid thinking about that stuff as much as she could. It made her uncomfortable.
But it didn't seem like Nilanse was about to say anything else, so Liz walked off up to her room. Just so she didn't forget, she tore out a few slips of paper, wrote down reminders that this books wasn't hers, and stuck them to each of the covers with a charm. She didn't know what to do with the drawing, so she just set it down on her desk — she'd figure out where she should put that later.
...Looking at this thing was making her feel very weird, but she still didn't know how or why.
After a couple seconds, her eyes were drawn to the notebook sitting open on her desk nearby — the one connected to Katie's, she'd left it here so she could tell at a glance if Katie started writing on it. She wasn't sure how long it'd take to get to her, or when she'd get around to activating it. The process was a little odd — she'd done all the other paired notebooks herself, but she wanted the full encryption for theirs, and that required the user's blood — so she'd decided to give it a few days before she'd start to worry about Katie figuring it out. But there was writing in the notebook now, Liz leaned over to read it.
Is it working? This is some impressive enchanting right here, honestly I can't quite make it out, which I hope isn't a bad sign for my runes OWL. Did you script it yourself?
I've decided to ignore that you just expected me to do blood magic, by the way.
I guess you're away. Sunday dinners are a big deal around here, so I might not be able to get back to this until tomorrow. Assuming this bloody thing is working anyway.
("bloody thing" see what I did there?)
Liz reached for a pen, didn't bother sitting down to write...though honestly she probably should have, her handwriting wasn't coming out very good this way. It's working. I know a lot of people don't like blood magic much, but it's just being used as an identification key, sort of like a reservoir — it's perfectly legal. At least, she was mostly sure about that. She hesitated for a moment, her pen rolling in her fingers, before adding, I'm sorry, it didn't occur to me that you might be uncomfortable with the blood magic part. Mixing your blood into ink so you can write runes with it seems like the kind of thing that might make other people squeamish, especially with how mages can be about some kinds of magic, but it doesn't bother me at all. I just didn't think of it. Sorry.
And she was well aware that Katie was seriously considering becoming an Auror too, which made asking her to do dubiously legal blood magic especially uncomfortable. Oops.
And no, I didn't come up with it myself. I can't tell you who, though — that's someone else's secret. Liz waited a moment for Katie to write something, but when it didn't come right away — the book should flash to signal her that there was a fresh message in it, but Katie had said she would be busy — she skipped to a fresh line. I'm about to go start dinner. Maybe we'll catch each other tomorrow.
Liz stalled, watching the page, her eyes occasionally flicking to the drawing nearby. After a minute or so had passed with no fresh writing beginning to appear, she flipped the book closed. At least she'd confirmed the enchantments were working, didn't have to worry about that — though she was honestly a little worried that Katie had been put off by the casual use of blood magic, she really should have considered that. With as much time as they spent at duelling team meetings being violet little monsters together, sometimes she forgot that Katie was a...relatively normal person. Comparatively speaking, anyway, she had grown up on a weird religious agricultural commune...if a different kind of weird religious agricultural commune than the Greenwood...
It might be a little paranoid, but she couldn't help the niggling thought that the casual use of harmless-but-creepy blood magic might be making Katie...have second thoughts. But there was nothing she could do about that right now, not until Katie got back to her notebook. Liz just had to wait, and try not to work herself up about it in the meantime.
(Liz could be pretty good at avoiding thinking about things when she really wanted to.)
But anyway, dinner, yes. She should change before heading back downstairs — wearing her somewhat nice actually leaving the house clothes while she was cooking was just going to end up with things getting splashed on them, and stains could be tedious to deal with even with magic...
I'm going to be changing the chapter-naming format somewhat, so things will be somewhat easier to find going forward. I'm (very slowly) working on a reread, adding things to the summary/glossary thing as I go (which is only posted on AO3) — chapter titles will be revised, and some of the larger chapters are going to be broken up. Though, again, this is only being done on AO3 — adjustments like this are easier to do on that site. This fic is stupid long, though, and I'm working on enough other projects that I don't have a lot of time for it, very much a long term thing.
Anyway, bye.