I'm sorry, I didn't meant to make you think I was freaking out about the blood magic. I was a little surprised, but it's not really a big deal to me, and when I think about it I could have guessed you'd go playing around with blood runes. Some of the magic you pull out is kinda out there, yeah? But I'd be careful about this sort of thing with Christians and people like that.
Oh hey! Sorry, I was baking. Yeah, sometimes I forget what's a normal magic thing to know about — I do a lot of reading on my own, and Severus lets me in his library. Why would Christians specifically have a problem with it? I assume you mean magical Christians, I've barely even met any, honestly.
Professor Snape's library, there's a creepy thought. But Christians have purity rules, a little like the Mistwalkers, and one of the big ones has to do with blood. They don't touch blood magic, or any kind of magic that has human blood in it — at all, ever. I thought you would know that, since you grew up with muggles, and they're all Christians, but I guess they don't know about magic anymore, do they?
No, I didn't know that. Noted.
Too slow, I'm writing now. Did you say you're baking over there?
Yep. Me and Nilanse worked out a meal schedule for like the next week or so, and we decided to just get all the baking out of the way all at once. Preservation charms will stop any of it from going old, and a lot of things have annoying wait times, so it's easier to just get it all out of the way. Warm it up quick right before eating it and it's practically the same as having it fresh anyway.
You can't use warming charms on bread, it gets all gross and chewy.
You can't use normal warming charms, no, but there are specialised spells to use with food. Nilanse can't teach me the one she uses, I had to go find one in a book.
You know, I didn't think of that, but it's obvious when you point it out. Nobody else around here even has a wand — sometimes basic household charms take me by surprise. I guess having one must make cooking go a lot faster.
It's not that much of a difference from doing it by hand. It helps a lot with things like peeling and chopping vegetables, and I like handling raw meat with magic so I don't have to touch it, but other than that. You actually have to be really careful with baking, magic can mess up the process very easily. The baking we did pretty much all by hand, just sped up things like chopping nuts with a few charms.
You're still making me curious about what things look like when you can do wizardry. I'll have to come over when you're making something.
I mean, I can just make us dinner sometime.
Liz, was that just you asking me on a date?
Yep.
In that case, I'd love to. Not anytime soon though, things are really busy here. I can't remember, did I tell you I have another baby sister now?
I think you might have mentioned it at some point, but I don't remember much. Your mum doing okay?
Ecstatic. Still a little worn out, I guess, but pregnancy and childbirth really take it out of you — especially for the eighth time in twice as many years.
Eighth? I thought you said you had eight siblings, nine counting the new one. So that should be ten times, counting yourself?
There are two sets of twins in there — Jamie and Ken, Bells and Alex.
Bells Bell?
It's short for Isobel. Nobody cares about houses around here, so it doesn't feel weird. I didn't even know I had a last name until I started getting proper lessons when I was eight or so, it's just not something that comes up.
Anyway, since Mum's wiped out some of my cousins and whoever are around have been coming over to help with the littles, but now that I'm home I can take over some of it. And I never get to see them, since I'm away at school all the time — the youngest ones hardly even recognise me, as long as I've been away. I want to stay here for a bit. I'll still see you and the girls when we go to the healers, but anything else I think I'm going to put off until August, after the tournament. If that's okay.
That's fine. Like I said a few days ago, I know your family's important to you, and I wouldn't want to get in the way. Besides, I've got my own stuff going on anyway. I'm fine with just writing for now.
Good. What do you have going on over there, anyway? I assumed you were going to have a pretty quiet holiday.
Well, there's my blood alchemy procedure, that's on the 13th.
Right, I forgot about that. I'm still going to miss your hair.
I'm not. Me and Hermione are also planning on talking to her parents about the adoption at some point this summer, and Severus is going to give me last year's competency exam for practice. I've also been thinking of getting into making my own clothes? For Seer reasons, you know, I've been having a much easier time since I've started trying to avoid bad stuff, but I don't much like the Seer-friendly clothes I can find. Muirgheal has a group of friends she gets together with sometimes to hang out while they're sewing or whatever, I was thinking I would use the opportunity of looking different after the blood alchemy to sit in and pick up some stuff.
That sounds like it could be fun. Do I know Muirgheal?
It sounds super girly, I think you mean. And sorry, no, that's the person I copied Gaelic from. We've been writing ever since. She's a poor commoner, from Glasgow, so she knows a lot of things I don't get to find out just hanging around Hogsmeade, I've been learning a lot about what the country's actually like from her.
That's good, sometimes I worry muggleborns come out of Hogwarts completely unprepared. And does that sound girly? I mean, it'll be a group of girls, obviously, but in the commons men make their own clothes all the time, and as far I know the textile trades are pretty mixed. Tailors are more often men, I think? Madam Malkin is a woman, but most of the other big names in the country are men.
Muggle sensibilities, apparently. Oops. Not that I even mind being super girly, I'm just unreasonably self-conscious about it sometimes. I realise it's silly, but I can't help it.
I get the feeling muggle culture has some weird ideas about femininity.
That doesn't help, no.
I'd offer to help teach you, but I'm very out of practice. I haven't needed to do my own since the Dunbars started sponsoring me, and I was pretty young then, so I only knew basic stuff yet. Maybe you can visit over winter break, and come by the weaving house. I think you might be able to wear the linen we make here, maybe not the wool, though. If you don't get everything you want from Muirgheal and her friends.
I'll think about it. I was thinking it might be a good idea to learn the weaving part too, but Muirgheal and her friends don't do that. I've got a catalog, there are looms you can buy that will do a lot of the work for you, but also there's magic you can do in the weaving part, sort of like enchanting but without using any runes?
Sure, everybody does that. It's pretty basic, and you have to do the whole thing by hand for it to work, so I'm not sure if it'll be worth the effort for you. Honestly it might be better to just buy clean cloth, weaving is slow work.
Probably. I think I'd like to try it a few times just out of curiosity, but it does seem like too much work to do for everything. Though I guess people around where you live have to.
We split up jobs here — it's common to do the cutting and sewing yourself, and processing the flax is a group effort, but there are people who handle making thread and fabric. It takes a lot of time and skill, so it makes more sense for people to specialise in it.
That makes sense, yeah. I don't really know how things work on magic farms and shite. I've been to the Greenwood, but I was just hanging around, it's not like I asked what people's daily lives are like.
I can show you around here sometime, if you like. We're a commune too, so it's more like the Greenwood than other farming communities around. Not as nice, though, the Greengrasses are wealthier than the Dunbars. Or so I hear, I've never been myself. Maybe around the harvest, that might be fun.
Katie, was that just you asking me on a date?
Yep.
I'll have to see if I'm being dragged to something then — I'm old enough now that I'm going to start having to go to stupid noble parties. I know there's normally one in August, which I think is also when harvest stuff is going on? We'll be in Sicily during Lúnasa but
I'm sorry, Liz, the littles are waking up from their nap, I have to go now.
Right, I was rambling anyway. Talk to you later.
፠
Liz came to Severus's house early, to make them dinner before they moved on to the meeting. She had mixed feelings about this.
Not about coming over to make Severus dinner, of course — she did that pretty much whenever she could come up with a good excuse. Severus clearly didn't eat enough, the bloody hypocrite, and, she didn't know, she liked making people things. Besides, he was looking after her all the time, it was only fair to return the favour. It was the first time she'd managed to make it over this summer, but it normally took a few days after the students were gone for Severus to leave Hogwarts anyway. There were always things he had to do to close up the storerooms and the potions lab and stuff, to make sure everything would keep for however long he would be gone. She'd think it'd take less time to do it now, since he had a couple junior professors to help him, but they were also in the process of making expansions to accommodate the growing student population, which meant there was more work to do overall, so it might end up being a wash.
It was a little peculiar seeing Severus in his Severus Snape, scary dark sorcerer persona at his house, the dramatic billowy black robes somehow clashing with the rather muggle-looking kitchen. Liz thought the whole thing was silly to begin with — she still amused herself saying, privately in her own head, that he looked like a villain in some children's programme — but the contrast somehow made it even more silly. It was honestly hard to hold in a smirk.
No, the thing she had mixed feelings about was the meeting they were going to after dinner. Liz had heard about the Order of the Phoenix, obviously — Dumbledore's group had gotten into newspaper articles from the time and history books and stuff, and Severus had mentioned them, on the few occasions he talked about something to do with the war. She hadn't really expected to have anything to do with it. For one thing, she'd kind of assumed she was too young? A fair fraction of the membership the first time around had been recruited straight out of school — including Liz's parents, and Sirius — but even Dumbledore knew better than to drag actual school children into his gang of vigilantes. She thought it was kind of fucked to even recruit recent students, given the position of authority he had at the school, and also just the fame he had in magical society generally. Like, kind of seemed like he was taking advantage of people too young to know better? especially Light kids, who would have grown up with stories about his defeat of Grindelwald, or muggleborns, for whom he was the first and only magical person in a position of authority they had any familiarity with. She didn't know, maybe this was just her, but it gave her a kind of creepy feeling.
(It was possible that that feeling was entirely just because she didn't like Dumbledore in the first place.)
They'd be making two exceptions to the no children rule, and only two — Dorea and Liz herself. Dorea would be there because she was Lady Black, and the House of Black would be giving the Order a lot of financial support — their meeting place today was actually the Blacks' London townhouse, it was being set aside as a safehouse — and in exchange Dorea wanted to be kept informed about what was going on. Obviously Dorea herself wouldn't be involved, since she was only fifteen and wasn't directly useful for anything, really more like a patron than a proper member, if that made sense. And Liz was going to be there because Severus had insisted on it.
When he'd told her about that conversation he'd had with Dumbledore, she'd been kind of taken aback by it, honestly. It wasn't like it's something she'd asked him to do. She kind of expected not to like the Order much? She didn't know who'd all be joining, but they were a Light group, and Liz did not think very highly of Light politics. (In particular, the pointless stupid bigotry against nonhuman beings common in the Light was very frustrating.) Sirius had talked about them a little at some of the lessons they had, because, when teaching her something rather more dangerous — like that big vanishing curse she'd cut down that troll in the maze with — he'd be reminded of disagreements he'd had with people in the Order. He mostly just seemed to complain about them, honestly — he had had friends in the group, sure, but even people he'd liked he'd found frustrating sometimes. Apparently James had lectured him after a skirmish once for killing a Death Eater with an obviously dark curse, which was...
(It was always vaguely exasperating to be reminded that she and James probably wouldn't have gotten on — she had a feeling that, if he'd survived, they would have ended up having a very complicated relationship.)
(Unless she would have ended up being a very different person with her parents alive, she guessed, but she didn't think she wanted to be the kind of person who'd get along with James. Which was also an uncomfortable feeling to have, so, honestly she sometimes wished Sirius wouldn't talk about her parents at all.)
Not that there would be no one there worth talking to. Daedalus was a member already — Dumbledore had invited Sylvia, primarily due to her connection with Liz, but she'd turned it down — Severus's Auror friend Vance she briefly met back when they opened up Gaunt's place seemed all right. Dora would be there, Moody was a bit unpleasant to talk to but at least he had his priorities straight. (More than Dumbledore and his sycophants, anyway.) Surprisingly, Severus said that Emily Scrimgeour was joining this time — he suspected Dumbledore had reached out to her due to her family connections to both the Chief Auror and the Chief Warlock, and while the Scrimgeours' politics didn't really align with Dumbledore's Emily deeply hated the Death Eater types, so it was more of an enemy of my enemy situation. How motivated Emily supposedly was to get involved was a surprise to Liz, there must be some personal history there she didn't know about. Of course, Severus suspected Emily was there at least in part to spy on the Order for her uncle, to make sure they didn't get into any nonsense to sabotage the Ministry, but they were more or less on the same side, at least. And she guessed Sirius was okay too.
So, while there would be some people there who Liz shouldn't find as annoying as the more straightforward Light types, she still expected to not get along with the Order very well. She'd assumed they would be meeting up again, with the Dark Lord back, and she'd assumed she wouldn't be invited, at least in part because she was too young, and she'd been fine with that...but then Severus had actually made a good argument. Since Liz was the Girl Who Lived and all, she would be important to the effort to oppose the Dark Lord, if only symbolically — everyone with half a brain knew it'd really been Lily who'd defeated him the first time, but there was all that stupid myth-making around that Hallowe'en, whatever. The Order also thought she would be in danger — they didn't know about the deal Liz and the Dark Lord had made, and Severus had a good point about underinformed supporters anyway — so would want to be taking efforts to make sure she was safe, if only because losing her would be a big morale hit. At least a small piece of Order business would be about Liz, specifically.
Severus had said, very reasonably, that she should be present for that reason — he didn't think she would want the Order attempting to make decisions for her without her participation. Which, yeah, that was a good point, actually. She was pretty sure she was going to hate these bloody meetings, but she did still appreciate that Severus had thought of it.
Was it weird to be grateful to someone for roping her into something she was certain she wasn't going to like? Whatever, feelings were confusing...
Liz turned up at Severus's house a couple hours early, carrying a bag of ingredients and some freshly-baked bread. (She and Nilanse had baked the bread they'd need for the next week or so over the course of yesterday and today.) It didn't take long to get the duck simmering, the air in the little kitchen swiftly filling with the rich smell of meat and the sharper tinge of herbs. She sat at the table with a novel for a while, occasionally tossing a charm at the pot to give things a stir, eventually adding vegetables when it was time — she still didn't like vegetables much, but Nilanse insisted, and she remembered Severus nagging her about that kind of thing. He'd probably be pleased she was actually trying. There was a bit more to do as it got toward the end, Liz mixing in the beans — pre-cooked, didn't want to deal with that whole process at Severus's place — magicking out any bones or cartilage or whatever and shredding up the meat with a few charms, adding some cream, tasting the broth and making a few adjustments to the spices...
She was pretty sure that was good? Her tastes were bloody weird, she was very much aware of that by this point, it was hard to tell if something she liked would be palatable to anyone else. It seemed fine, though — it wasn't as though this was a particularly off-the-wall thing she'd put together this time? Based on some of the stews and shite the elves had made for her lately, just with a couple little adjustments. Nilanse was familiar with her tastes by now, and took that into account when planning her meals, so she'd tried to make it a bit more normal. She thought it was fine.
The stew was divided into bowls, the bread warmed up with some careful charmwork — couldn't use standard warming charms, those tended to do weird things to the texture of some foods — and then stepped out into the sitting room to call Severus in for dinner. He was catching up on correspondence at the moment, sitting in his armchair with a letter floating in the air nearby, scrawling at parchment in his lap and occasionally flipping through a textbook splayed across the arm. She was aware that he was constantly writing a litany of people, other potioneers and healers all across the ICW, and he tended to fall behind in the end-of-term rush, needed the first couple weeks of summer break to catch back up.
Liz couldn't help smiling a little at the letter charmed to float in easy view — she'd taught him that spell, one she'd found in one of her favourite charms books.
Severus was wearing his scary dark sorcerer robes (which were still very silly), though they didn't do their dramatic swishing on the way to his seat in the kitchen. Honestly, Liz suspected he did that on purpose somehow — some kind of wandless magic, maybe? — and that it didn't happen when they were alone kind of suggested she was right. The performance he put on in public was very strange, she still didn't entirely understand what was going on with that. Some character he'd decided to play, obviously, but it was the why she didn't get — it could be trying to repel people from being too friendly (Severus was very private), maybe there were some esoteric political reasons behind it (something related to needing to be a spy, maybe, and held on to after it wasn't necessary anymore out of habit), or maybe just because he found it entertaining, it was really impossible to say.
At this point, Liz honestly suspected the latter. She was certain the creepy shite in jars in his office were there entirely to freak out small children, because Severus was unexpectedly silly like that sometimes.
They were quiet at first, just silently starting to eat — neither of them were much for smalltalk — until Severus asked, "Did you bake the bread?"
"Mhmm. Nilanse and I did. I've been cooking for a while, even if it was just basic stuff, but I didn't used to do any baking. She's been teaching me since last summer, I think I'm getting the hang of it by now."
"I would say so — it's quite good. I'm aware of how sensitive bread can be, to achieve the correct consistency."
"Yeah, my early attempts were pretty iffy, coming out much better now." It'd been pretty common for her early projects to not rise properly, and come out all thick and hard and chewy, but these little mini-loaves had turned out all light and fluffy, the crust rich and crispy from the garlic butter she'd fired into it. It was pretty great — she wasn't sure she'd say it was the best baked thing she'd ever managed, but it was definitely up there. "Also, I added vegetables to the stew, aren't I responsible."
His mind shivering with amusement, Severus drawled, "Yes, I had noticed that. This is certainly an improvement compared to your cooking last summer, so far as nutrition is concerned."
"I blame the elves — they keep sneaking vegetables and even fresh fruit into my meals."
"I cannot see how this is a development which requires blame." Liz rolled her eyes, but didn't interrupt. "I'm surprised you eat the fruit in particular — I had the impression you dislike fresh fruit."
"I mean, I don't like it, but, so long as it doesn't have bad Seer shite on it, I'll eat it." With the elves going so far out of their way to make her food which didn't trigger Seer issues, she'd feel bad if she didn't actually eat what she was given. Of course, she (with Nilanse's help) was making most of her food herself again, but at this point she was just used to it. Also, Nilanse would nag her about it if she didn't at least try.
"You are still taking your nutrient potion."
"Yes, Severus, I'm still taking my nutrient potion — the adjusted one you gave me the formula for, after we set up the special Seer-friendly food."
"Good. We may wish to do another test later in the summer, to check whether further adjustments need to be made. A few weeks after the blood alchemy procedure would be ideal."
"Sure, we can do that. How likely do you think it is I'll be able to stop taking nutrient potions entirely?"
"I wouldn't count on it," Severus said, a little delicately, the corner of his lips curling. "It is not unusual for people to have nutritional deficits in their diet, but you have other health issues, and are also likely to require serious healing work with some regularity — it is quite common for duellists to routinely take nutrient potions, as a precautionary measure. I would recommend continuing the treatment indefinitely."
Fine, she guessed she could just keep taking them — it's not like taking a little potion every morning with breakfast was that much to ask for. They did take quite a long time to brew, but she could make two weeks' worth at once, she could find the time.
Severus turned to asking her how she was settling in at the house, and most of dinner was taken up with talking about their summer plans. Between the medical check-up for the duelling tournament, her blood alchemy procedure, shopping for clothes and stuff once her body was shaped differently, and the duelling tournament itself, she was going to be pretty busy through July — she wasn't going to have a whole lot of free time until August. Not that she'd be constantly occupied or anything, she'd have several days in a row where she had nothing on here and there, but, there was just a lot going on. Or it felt like a lot, when she laid it all out. She'd want those off-days to relax, anyway, being in public could be annoyingly stressful sometimes. Severus was also going to have copies of this year's Competency exam for her in a couple weeks — she was going to take them and Severus mark them, to give her an idea of what she had down and what she still needed to work on — and they still meant to work on a less intoxicating version of her cannabis tablets at some point. Severus had written some colleagues for some information about certain things, but he hadn't heard back yet, they'd start up with that once he had everything they needed to do it properly. He'd hoped they'd be able to start this summer, but he expected they wouldn't be ready until August, or possibly even into the autumn term, he wasn't sure.
She asked if she could help with the research, but he said there was a lot of extremely technical healing and alchemy stuff involved she didn't have the necessary background for, which was fair enough. It wasn't urgent, she could wait.
(Honestly, she liked how the stuff she was using now made her kind of high, but she realised that wasn't a permanent solution. Unfortunately.)
She'd timed this whole thing pretty well — by the time they were done eating there were only a few minutes before Severus wanted to leave. The time Severus wanted to be there was actually early, but there were a few people he wanted to speak to privately before the meeting. He expected he could catch people after — it was pretty common at these kinds of meetings for people to linger afterward, sipping at drinks and talking about whatever — but that would be socialising. If he got the business he had out of the way ahead of time he could leave straight after the meeting, without having to deal with everyone else.
Liz was aware from previous discussions about things that he usually had a strategy for dealing with social functions, but it was still vaguely funny to hear him talk about it.
After quick cleaning up with a few charms, she briefly dipped by the toilet, double-checking in the mirror that she was more or less presentable. Not like she really gave that much of a shite, but she knew there would be people there who didn't like her much, and she'd be getting a fair bit of attention — no reason to feel self-conscious about being a mess on top of all that, especially since taking her drugs would be a bad idea. (She did have secrets she didn't want to unthinkingly slip out, after all.) She was hardly made up fancy at the moment or anything, but it seemed fine, so she met back up with Severus in the sitting room.
One cheating tandem apparation later — Liz hated being side-alonged, this way was much less uncomfortable — and the world snapped back into clarity. They were in a little urban greenspace, with a play area for the local kids including swings and shite. It seemed fairly nice, clean and in decent shape, but nobody was around at the moment — given the time of day, she assumed everyone was home for dinner anyway. She didn't recognise the place, but by the city smell on the air she assumed they were in London somewhere. Severus led them out from under the tree they'd appeared next to, crossing through a tingly curtain of magic (concealing spells, prepared apparation point), stepped off the grass onto pavement, followed the street for a little bit.
It looked like a rather nice neighbourhood, the houses crammed tightly together on both sides of the narrow street tall and broad and well-maintained. Relatively new, she thought, dating to when big parts of London had been rebuilt after the war, maybe? She could hear dogs barking and the muffled burbling of televisions from multiple directions, in a few places dinnertime conversations leaking out through open windows, even some faint smells of cooking. There were cars parked on the street here and there, but not very many — guests, she thought, there must be parking spaces behind the houses they could get to from somewhere. Not from this side, these weren't proper rowhouses, the structures separate, but most of them were pressed practically right up against each other, in some places tiny narrow alleys that weren't nearly wide enough to slip anything bigger than a motorcycle through. There weren't front gardens, the houses' front faces coming right up to the pavement, but she assumed there'd be private space in the back, and probably room for cars and the like? Whatever. It was far more cramped than, say, Little Whinging, but it seemed nice enough, she assumed this was a relatively well-off neighbourhood.
She didn't get a whole lot of time to look around, though — the greenspace was barely a dozen metres behind them when Severus unexpectedly hitched to a stop. "Read this," he said, holding out a slip of paper he'd retrieved from seemingly nowhere. Curious, she leaned over to get a good angle.
The Blacks' London townhouse is located in eastern Islington, London.
Liz blinked, frowning down at the little handwritten note. (Dumbledore's handwriting, she realised, the same as the note that'd come with her invisibility cloak years ago now.) It wasn't a surprise that the Blacks had a townhouse in London — a lot of the noble families did, primarily as a place they could host meetings and parties and shite conveniently nearby the Ministry (or the muggle royal family, further back). The Potters actually used to have one ages ago, but it'd gotten caught up in one of the big fires that'd ripped through the city at some point, and they'd never bothered replacing it. She was pretty sure Dorea had mentioned it before, something about it needing to be cleaned up after her seriously unwell grandmother had died in the house (suicide, Liz assumed but hadn't asked), the place seriously neglected over the previous decade or so. Sirius had grown up there, but he'd had a shitty childhood, had only mentioned it to her in the context of never wanting to step foot in his childhood home ever again in his life — which she sympathised with, if she ever saw Four Privet Drive again it'd be too soon. She'd heard the Order would be meeting in the Black townhouse, which did make sense, since the Blacks were involved and there would be room for—
Oh hey, where did that house come from?
The next time she glanced up, it was to find a house that definitely hadn't been there two seconds ago. It was visibly older than the buildings around it, constructed of stone and iron in black and grey, the frames of the windows and the curly pattern along the roof suggesting it was definitely a pre-War design, and honestly probably well older than that. (Liz wasn't exactly an architecture expert.) It looked like there'd been some work done on it recently, visible shimmering on portions of window frames or the stone walls that hadn't worn down to match the rest yet, the handrails framing the stairs up to the door gleaming like muggle stainless steel, not matching the rest. She thought the Black arms on the door was fresh as well, the ceramic still smooth and vibrantly colourful.
Liz glanced between the house and the slip of paper. "Wait a second, was that the Fidelius?"
"Very good, Elizabeth." Severus flicked his fingers, in a gesture a lot like someone pitching away a fag or something — the slip of paper burst into flames only a few inches away from his hand, quickly reduced to wisps of ash. She'd like to make a joke about Severus being a needlessly dramatic bastard, but honestly that was just cool, suave as hell. "All of the Order's safehouses are protected with the Fidelius, when feasible. Come."
Severus walked the short distance over to the magically-hidden house, smoothly climbed up the stairs. She'd completely failed to notice he was wearing magical clothing in muggle London until the silly robes billowing on his way up the stairs drew her attention to it — he must be using some kind of attention-deflecting charm, but those things didn't work on Liz. Somewhat to her surprise, he opened the door and walked straight in instead of knocking or something...but she guessed the Fidelius meant that anyone turning up would have been explicitly invited. Working that out only slowed her down by a couple seconds, Liz stepped inside shortly after him, the door swinging closed behind her.
She found herself in a tall sunny foyer, the floor above cut away over the entryway, and then the floor above that, and another — it was hard to tell how many floors from this angle, but definitely more levels than it looked like from the outside — a glass ceiling way overhead funnelling light all the way down to them. In fact, it was unusually sunny, the air above softly glowing gold, she suspected there was some kind of enchantment amplifying the natural light. The floor was black tile, seeming to stubbornly refuse to glimmer in the sun, deep and uncorrupted like the black of the night sky, the walls deep red wood, a bench and a hat stand silvery metal decorated with curling serpentine designs. The wider entryway narrowed into a long hallway extending deeper into the house, paved in the same black tile but the walls instead a deep green textured with orange-yellow, doors lined on either side, a staircase visible at the opposite end leading to the upper levels. It was far more clean and nice-looking than she remembered from what little Dorea and Sirius had told her about the place, but it did have a sort of sterile feel to it, a place not properly lived-in. She had a feeling it'd looked very different in here only a couple years ago.
"Ah, Severus!" She jumped, glanced up — a head popped into view over the first floor railing, a mind appearing at the same time. She should have felt them before they got that close, there must be enchantments blocking off her cheating mind-mage-slash-Seer senses. A man maybe around Severus's age, blond and square-jawed, Liz didn't recognise him. "Unfashionably early as always. We're meeting up here, take those stairs up and I'll show you."
Liz's first impression was that the first floor was somewhat more homey than the ground level, the floor carpeted and the walls covered in wallpaper painted with curling patterns in soft greens and blues and oranges. She guessed the ground floor was intended to be primarily for guests, sort of like the outer rooms at the Malfoys'. The blond man was a bit down the hall, he waved them through a door into an oversized sitting room — definitely expanded, the doors to either side out in the hall were too close for this to fit in here, enough armchairs and sofas to seat dozens of people. Like, a third to a half the size of the Slytherin common room, maybe? Which seemed slightly absurd for a private house, but the whole point of the nobles' townhouses was to hold parties and shite, so whatever.
The sitting room was rather dark, but more in a cosy way than a dreary way — the upholstery and the carpeting in blacks and deep rich reds, the walls and the ceiling shaded more toward blue. The ceiling was covered in ceramic tile, almost seeming to absorb the light from the lamps here and there — the light sources framed with delicately-shaped stained glass in curling red and green and blue, reducing the glare and aiming the light upward — setting the ceramic to glowing like the blue of the sky on a sunny day, giving off enough indirect light to evenly illuminate the room without being hard on the eyes. Neat trick, she assumed that was done with some alchemical treatment. The walls were partly hidden with shelves constructed of polished wood varnished a dark reddish colour, some of the shelves holding rows of books, in other places various trinkets or whatever — some enchanted paraphernalia, there was a chess set there, multiple Order of Merlin medals for some reason.
Hanging on the wall over the hearth was a sword and scabbard, overwhelmingly white, the scabbard decorated with curling silvery wire and glittering with countless tiny diamonds, the double-edged blade a blueish-silver that reminded Liz of her pensieve, or patronus light, but also showing streaks of curling rainbows that moved and shimmered as her angle changed, like sunlight on oily water. It was amazingly beautiful, she couldn't help, just, blankly staring at it for several seconds — goblin work, definitely, the Blacks must have captured it in one war or another. It looked pretty, but Liz was certain it was also very deadly — goblin blades were enchanted to never lose their edge, and it should also slip right through shield charms and defensive enchantments — because goblin blacksmiths didn't see why beauty and function should be mutually exclusive.
...You know, when Liz thought about it, that kind of felt like how she liked girly shite, and dressing up all pretty, but was also shaping up to be a damn scary duellist and all. It wasn't contradictory in the least to do both — that hadn't quite clicked, at some level she wasn't fully conscious of, until she saw the breathtakingly beautiful but also super deadly goblin sword hung up on the wall.
It was actually kind of a nice feeling, not that she could even begin to explain why she was having such a strong reaction to a bloody sword. Feelings continued to be hard.
She was shaken out of her distraction by introductions getting going — Severus already knew people, and obviously most people in the country would recognise her by sight, but she'd only met a few of the people in the Order before. The only other non-adult present was Dorea, saying hello with a kind of awkward smile...more than anything because she was worried Liz might still be in bad shape from her kidnapping and all, but didn't think showing concern would be taken well. (Her occlumency continue to be pretty shite.) The blond man who'd shown them the way in was Sturgis Podmore, which wasn't a name Liz recognised off the top of her head. Lupin was here, looking somewhat tired — it was near the new moon, so whatever was wearing him out was probably unrelated to his condition — sitting in one of the armchairs and nursing an oversized cup of tea, though he actually stood up to say hello to her and Severus. She tried not to make a face at being called Ellie — he'd normally called her Miss Potter back when he was their Defence Professor, but she guessed he wasn't bothering to be polite anymore.
Random strangers being overly familiar with her wasn't unusual, since she was a celebrity or whatever and they felt like they knew her already, but most of them had at least started calling her Liz now. That was thanks to Rita, she was pretty sure — the newspapers used to always call her Ellie, but once she'd had her first proper interview with Rita she'd switched to Liz, and other writers had gradually started following her lead, since she was the expert on all things Liz Potter now. She had no idea why Lupin was behind the times.
Besides them, there was only a man around Daedalus's age named Elphias Doge — Liz's old proxy under Dumbledore, before she'd fired him and replaced him with Sylvia — and a younger man with long red-orange hair in a ponytail and an animal fang of some kind dangling from one ear, who turned out to be William Weasley, the eldest of the Weasley brothers. She was vaguely aware of his existence, from gossip, but he'd finished Hogwarts before she'd started. William (he insisted she use his first name) was working for the Egyptian goblins as a cursebreaker these days, which sounded fascinating, actually.
Unfortunately for Liz, the conversation didn't turn to cursebreaking and the African goblin nations, instead people breaking into inane gossip and politics stuff. Oh well. Severus went off to have a brief, quiet conversation alone with Podmore — he must be one of the people he wanted to speak with privately before the meeting — abandoning Liz with Dorea, William, Lupin and fucking Doge. It didn't take long for Liz to remember why she'd been so enthusiastic to fire this bastard, immediately going off about his concerns about what dark creatures might be brought to Britain by the Dark Lord this time — as though there weren't nonhuman beings indigenous to the Isles, and as though Lupin wasn't sitting right there, the racist bastard. She'd barely even been here for a few minutes, and she was already both bored and irritated.
She didn't have to tolerate it very long, thankfully, before Dorea leaned closer to quietly ask if she wanted to see the library — yes please, thank you. Dorea led her out of the room, down to the end of the hall — at the front of the house again, a railing blocking off the drop down to the entryway — and around the corner, then through wide double doors left hanging open. The library was all done in House of Black colours, the carpets and the walls and the shelves in black, the tables and desks in deep red, seating upholstered in one or the other (or both), lamps and the railing around the stairs up to the second level cast in gleaming silver, decorated with snakes and birds, their eyes glittering moody red. It was a little dark in here, shadows clinging over the shelves and in corners, but that was fine, she could cast lights herself.
Dorea warned her that some of the books were cursed, and to check before touching anything, before turning around and leaving Liz alone in here. Um, okay then. Old magical families tended to be pretty protective of their libraries, but she guessed she wasn't that surprised that Dorea seemingly didn't care as much.
...Or maybe she just wasn't making a big deal about it because Liz's grandmother was a Black? She remembered Dorea did sometimes used to make a point about them being cousins. Whatever.
By the time someone came for her, she was sitting in an armchair on the upper floor, slowly picking her way through a book on childhood mind mages. She'd been kind of excited to notice it, because from the description it sounded like she might finally get a proper explanation for why transfiguration was so hard for her, and hopefully strategies to actually deal with it. Unfortunately, it was at least a few centuries old, and written in Cambrian — handwritten, preserving some of the eccentricities of the author's dialect, and apparently the Cambrian in Eudora Alcmene Black's time and place was rather different from what they taught at Hogwarts these days. There was plenty of Latin mixed in here too, and some of the terms were Greek, it was very confusing. No way she was getting through this without a dictionary, and taking copious notes. Not that she'd really mind, it'd be good practice, she just realised she wasn't going to make much progress sitting here in the library waiting for the meeting to start.
So Liz was rather startled when they were was a sudden shout of, "Baby cousin! There you are!" Jerking in her chair, she felt out the familiar mind before her eyes actually got that far — she didn't recognise Dora visually, since her face changed too much (also it'd been a while), but the spiky snarl of pink hair around her head was probably enough to identify her even without the mind magic. She must have come straight from work, still in the black and silver duelling trousers and tunic of the Auror uniform, though she'd ditched the flashy red cloak somewhere. "We're about ready to get started down there, if you can stand to tear yourself away from this creepy fucking place."
...The library wasn't that bad, was it? It was a little dark, but it seemed comfortable enough to her. Shrugging off her confusion, she said, "Yeah, fine. Is it okay if I borrow this?" turning the cover toward Dora as she approached the table.
"I dunno, you'd have to ask the Little Lady..." Dora leaned over a little, lips twitching silently as she read the cover. "Oh! Yeah, I can see why you might be interested in that — not a lot of literature about people like you out there, is there? Used to be more common, before the Statute. Come on, let's get out of here, bring that with and we'll ask Dorea."
Liz hadn't realised this thing was older than Secrecy — she hadn't noticed a date anywhere — but that hadn't actually been that long ago. Popping up to her feet, she carefully tucked the ancient book under her arm, and followed the uncharacteristically tense-looking metamorph toward the stairs down. "Childhood mind mages were more common before the Statute?"
"Sure," Dora said, with a careless little shrug. "More magical children were born to people who didn't know shite about magic, back then."
"...Oh. Right, never mind." It used to be pretty common for undereducated, superstitious people to react badly when their children started showing signs of magic, assuming they were possessed or something. If the child in question happened to have the mind magic trait, it wasn't a shock that the stress might be enough to trigger it early — the same thing that'd happened to her, basically, just more likely to happen before mages went into Secrecy. She should have thought of that. "I guess a lot of the old stories about how fucking creepy we can be actually come from back then, huh."
"Mhmm. We weren't nearly as good at dealing with mind magic accidents back then either. Like, you know, fracturing? The potions to fix that weren't invented until just this century — they didn't have treatments yet, more often than not they just put the poor kids out of their misery."
So, not even a hundred years ago, her little encounter with a dementor on the train at the beginning of third year would have been a fatal accident? Fuck, that really put things in perspective. "Well, fuck me, I guess. Good thing Severus knows what he was doing, I like only being mildly insane..."
Dora giggled. Turning to walk backwards, so she could smirk down at Liz, she chirped, "You wouldn't want to be totally sane — that would make you normal, and normal is boring."
"Sure. Still like the hair, by the way."
"Thanks! I liked how huge and everywhere yours was when you were little, but it looks like you've made it behave somehow."
"Takes like an hour of soaking it in a potion, it's a fucking pain."
"That's being a Potter for you, I guess." Dora continued walking backward out the same double doors Liz had entered through — she paused out in the hallway for a second, head tipping back and letting out a sigh, before turning toward the meeting room. "I don't know how you can stand it in there, the curses all over the place make my skin crawl."
"Oh, um, I didn't notice, actually." She had felt dark magic on the air, but that just made it feel vaguely cool and comfortable. A couple times her hand had gotten close to a cursed book, and that was unpleasant, sharp and clingy and nauseating, but cursed objects just being around didn't bother her at all.
Letting out a little snort, Dora muttered, "You've been spending too much time in Snape's house."
"Severus doesn't curse his own things — that's very much mad inbred noble behaviour."
"Ha! Fair enough..."
The meeting room was far more full than it'd been when Dorea had brought Liz off to the library. She had no idea how long she'd been away, but clearly it'd been long enough for the rest of the group to arrive — there were well over a dozen people bustling around in here now. The room itself looked different, even: someone had shoved the armchairs and sofas off to the walls, instead conjured a big wooden table ringed with chairs, a couple teapots and plates of biscuits or whatever sitting waiting. By the time they showed up, people were making their way toward seats, starting to pour tea.
After a couple seconds glancing around, she felt eyes on her, followed the attention back to Severus — he was standing at the opposite end of the table from Dumbledore and Shacklebolt and Doge, one hand on the back of a chair at the very end, watching Liz with one eyebrow curled up. Oh! Yeah, a spot at the end seemed like a great idea, but before sitting down she had to ask Dorea about borrowing the book. She held up a finger to Severus, to wait — Dorea was more toward the end of the table Dumbledore and the tall people were at, she slipped through a couple of chatting Aurors (one was Severus's friend Vance) and—
Tamsyn.
Liz hadn't noticed her at first, too many tall people around, too many minds close together, some familiar and some not, crowding out her senses both physical and magical. But as she got closer a gap opened up, and she spotted her. Not quite looking like herself, at least to Liz's eyes, in a muggle-style dress with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders — even her aura felt a little off, quieter and more self-contained than Liz was used to. It was definitely Tamsyn, though, maybe just— Yeah, she took a turn saying something, and Liz caught the American accent, in her Mercy Anne character.
What the hell was Tamsyn doing here?!
She, just, gaped over at Tamsyn for a couple seconds, before forcefully shaking off the moment, making herself continue on to Dorea. Tamsyn must be infiltrating the Order. Doing a fucking good job, considering she'd managed to get herself in on the first meeting, how had she even done that?! It didn't seem like anybody had noticed Liz's reaction to her, which was good. She suspected that fingering Tamsyn as a spy would count as breaking her truce with the Dark Lord — it hadn't been explicitly included in the terms, she'd had no idea Tamsyn would be infiltrating the Order, but she couldn't imagine why it wouldn't count. Also, she'd probably end up incriminating herself? There was the covering up she'd done for the Dark Lord's little reunion party, of course, and she'd probably have to admit to agreeing to a truce, but also she'd been covering for Tamsyn for way longer than that, all the way back to the idiotic Chamber of Secrets fiasco. She really didn't want to have to explain all that, for multiple reasons.
If Severus found out that she'd known who'd murdered Ginevra this whole time, and done nothing about it...she didn't think he'd be happy with her.
She wondered if Tamsyn had any idea how incredibly awkward of a position she was putting Liz in. She didn't like this. Some warning would have been nice, at least, they were lucky it looked like she'd managed not to give anything away...
Anyway, Dorea didn't have a problem with her borrowing the book — just double-checked that she knew the charms to take care of old books, her aunt Andromeda would be annoyed with her if she didn't get it back in a reasonable amount of time, blah blah. She returned to the spot at the end Severus had saved for her, trying not to act at all suspiciously. As far as she knew, Severus was the only other mind mage in the room (besides Tamsyn herself, of course), so he was the most likely to pick up that something was going on. Didn't seem like there was anything to worry about, though — while she'd been finding Dorea, he'd gotten wrapped up in a conversation with Daedalus. Talking about her idea of putting her winnings from the Tournament into a scholarship of some kind, it turned out.
Severus didn't give any external sign of this, putting on a very flat, professional, unconcerned act, but she picked up that he was actually weirdly pleased by the suggestion. If Liz had to guess, he was pleasantly surprised that she wanted to do something so, she didn't know, mature or whatever with it — it was a stupid amount of money, and she could have spent it on whatever frivolous nonsense she wanted. Of course, she had plenty of money to spend on whatever frivolous nonsense she wanted regardless, but she guessed it was the principle of the matter. Severus agreed that, in the long run, helping to send people to primary or craft school or whatever would have a larger impact than academy, though there were political implications to keep in mind. She didn't think they were bad political implications, but the four of them — Liz, Severus, Daedalus, and also Emily Scrimgeour, who was down at the end here with them — ended up talking it over while taking their seats, fixing tea and shite.
Oh no, she didn't want anything — she doubted this stuff was Seer-friendly anyway, and she liked not having nightmares, thanks. It was fine, she'd survive until she could get home, honestly. Severus conjured her a glass of water, which was good enough.
The chatter around the table continued on for some moments, until Dumbledore called, "Thank you for coming, everyone." She heard it well enough from clear on the opposite end of the table, despite all the people chatting — he wasn't raising his voice, his low grumbling old-person voice at a normal conversational volume, but there was a faint tingle of magic on it, some kind of spell carrying the words to all their ears. It didn't feel quite exactly the same as the spell Severus (and apparently also the Dark Lord) used, but something similar at least. That was apparently supposed to be a sign everyone was supposed to shut up now, the noise in the room swiftly tapering off, everyone turning to look at Dumbledore.
She couldn't see Tamsyn from this angle. She was on the same side of the table as Liz, blocked from view by the people between them.
Dumbledore was sitting on the end, in clear view of everyone, in his usual garishly colourful robes, gazing around the table over his tinted spectacles. "It has been some time since we have met like this," he said, his beard curling with a humourless smile. "Would that it were under better circumstances. First, I wish to clarify the purpose of our reunion. You have all heard the rumours, I am certain, but I am afraid they are not simply frightened paranoia this time. It is my regretful duty to inform you, my friends, that the Dark Lord Voldemort—" There was a chorus of flinches and frightened squeaks around the table at the sound of the name, Liz rolled her eyes. "—truly has returned."
Somewhat to her surprise, while people had an absurd, overdramatic reaction to Dumbledore just saying the name, the reaction to his confirmation that the Dark Lord was back was much more...solemn, she guessed. No frightened gibbering, no arguments — she heard a few hissed whispers, but little more sound than that. It was quiet, the people on the other side of the table — she could see Daedalus straight across from her at the end, Emily next to him, and then Lupin, and then Severus's Auror friend Vance, and then an Auror she didn't recognise, and then Podmore, and then a couple other people she couldn't see clearly from this angle (maybe Shacklebolt?) — looking tense, worried, but more or less calm, watching Dumbledore and waiting for him to continue with whatever he meant to say. Given how fucking terrified people could generally be about the Dark Lord, to the point of having superstitious freak-outs over his name, it was actually slightly impressive. She guessed that would be why these were the people who joined Dumbledore's questionably effective vigilante group in the first place.
That they had any respect for Dumbledore at all in the first place kind of undermined her impression of their competence, but that was beside the point.
After letting the firm silence stretch on for a moment, Dumbledore said, "But we have a number of new faces here — to help our discussion move more smoothly going forward, I think it would be best for everyone to introduce themselves briefly, before we get started proper. If we could simply start at this end and move down, Elphias? Mercy Anne?"
And so they went all the way down the table, each person saying their name and a very brief explanation of what brought them here. That did seem a little silly to Liz, but she guessed if they were going to be working together through a literal war it made sense for everyone to know each other's names, at least. Doge went first — apparently he'd been in Gryffindor with Dumbledore, they'd been friends literally their whole lives, and he'd been one of the original Order members the first time around. Tamsyn introduced herself as Mercy Anne Creswell, she hesitated explaining what the hell she was doing here, glancing at Dumbledore, who jumped in to say that Mercy Anne was helping him with a special project which, unfortunately, must be kept secret from the rest of the Order for security reasons. That got some glances and mutters from the rest of the group, but nobody argued — Liz would guess certain people having special secret projects wasn't exactly unusual in a group like this.
...Was Mercy Anne double-spying? like, spying on the Order for the Death Eaters and spying on the Death Eaters for the Order? Severus couldn't do that job anymore, so Liz thought it might make sense to have a replacement — though she assumed Mercy Anne would be the opposite, her ultimate loyalties actually being with the Dark Lord. But Dumbledore didn't say anything about what this special project was, so it was hard to say.
Next were Moody and Shacklebolt, who were obviously both Aurors. Podmore lived in Avebury, and had been present for the battle there in...1972 or '75 or something (Liz forgot exactly), had joined the Order after witnessing their intervention in the fighting. Dorea's father had been in the Order the first time, of course, she'd donated the use of this house to the Order, and would be funding potions supplies and things like that — since they were one of the wealthiest families in the country, the House of Black was undoubtedly the Order's largest financial backer, Dumbledore made a point of thanking Dorea for their support.
Liz belatedly realised that Sirius wasn't here today. Odd.
After them were Dora, Severus's friend Vance, and Hestia Jones, more Aurors, and then there were the Weasleys. Arthur was the father of the Weasleys at school, and had been a contact but not actually a member the first time around. Apparently he'd been put under the Imperius by a Death Eater at the Ministry, after being discovered by Edgar Bones (Susan's uncle) he'd turned spy for the Order through the rest of the war — passed them information on Death Eater activities at the Ministry, used his contacts there to help hide muggleborns and their families and get prior warning to Order members being targeted, that kind of thing. Moody said Arthur was responsible for saving dozens of lives in the chaotic last couple years of the fighting, which wasn't something Liz would have expected of the Weasleys' generally affable, unassuming dope of a father, but okay. William was the eldest of the oversized family, and had a lot of foreign contacts through his cursebreaking work, humans but also goblins and veela — Liz got the impression he was mostly recruited for diplomatic reasons, but any professional cursebreaker was also going to be terrifying in a fight, so there was that too.
And then at their end of the table there was Lupin — Dumbledore openly said he'd be keeping an eye on werewolves and other underground groups for them, which seemed kind of shitty to do to Liz, since by the reaction some of the people present hadn't realised he was a werewolf. Emily hardly reacted, though, even scowled at someone down the table openly gasping, which was good. Liz liked Emily, she would have been disappointed if she were stupid about werewolves for no good reason, like seemingly half of the fucking country. As far as her own introduction went, Emily was pretty vague on why exactly she was here — Liz thought she was double-spying, on behalf of both the Order and the government (specifically the high-ranking Scrimgeours in the government, the Chief Warlock and the Chief Auror), but she was too politic to directly say that. Then there was Severus — he wouldn't be spying this time, his relationship with Liz making him too vulnerable, but he still had a lot of contacts in dark corners of magical society which might be useful (not to mention he was the only healer at the table) — and then Daedalus, who was another veteran of the first war, though Liz wasn't quite certain what his usefulness to the Order was exactly, and lastly Liz herself, everybody already knew who she was.
Once the introductions were out of the way, Dumbledore went about catching everyone up, explaining what they knew about how they got to this point. He actually went all the way back to that Hallowe'en, which seemed pointless to Liz — everybody knew about the Dark Lord's first defeat, obviously — but she got that he was just trying to establish a baseline, whatever. Liz was pretty sure Dumbledore knew how exactly the Dark Lord had managed to tie himself to life, since she knew Severus at least was aware he had horcruxes, but he didn't come out and explain that to the group — instead he just said vague shite about the Dark Lord telling his followers that he'd done some kind of magic to protect himself from death. Hard to imagine how these people could be expected to effectively kill the Dark Lord if they didn't know how, but whatever, Liz wasn't in charge of this trainwreck. He also didn't mention the prophecy, making it sound like the Potters had just become enough of a thorn in his side to want to kill them specifically — which, you know, fair enough — leading to the attack on that Hallowe'en, and Liz blowing him up.
"Wasn't me," Liz said, reflexively.
Eyes flicked over to her, Dumbledore cut off in mid-sentence. A mild tone to his voice she didn't know how to read, "Excuse me, Elizabeth?"
"I'm not the one who defeated the Dark Lord, I was a fucking baby — honestly, the story the Light tell about that night is incomprehensibly stupid. My mother powered a vengeance ritual with her own life, once he tried to curse me—" She pressed the fingers of both hands together, then pulled them out with a little poch! noise. "Walked right into her trap, like an idiot. I just sat there while it all happened, because, you know, baby."
Apparently that was a surprise to at least some people in the room, muttering and glances going back and forth. Someone, she couldn't tell who from here, asked, "How do you know about that? I mean, you were..." They trailed off, seemingly realising that you were only a baby at the time was kind of a ridiculous thing to say while defending the official story.
Liz rolled her eyes. "Lily's notes on the ritual survived the house getting half blown to hell, I've got them somewhere. They're in code, though, I haven't gotten very far at picking them apart. But it's the only thing that makes sense — honestly, can you think of any other possible explanation?"
The conversation moved on pretty quickly from there because, no, there was no other possible explanation, obviously Liz was correct about what happened that Hallowe'en. She got the vague feeling that Dumbledore was irritated with her, but both Severus and Emily were amused, so she didn't really care. Anyway, the Dark Lord was blown up but didn't quite die properly, his disembodied spirit ended up in Albania for some reason — Dumbledore had no idea why there, but Liz guessed it didn't really matter — he lingered powerless for a decade before escaping the wards the Albanian government had put up to contain him. He referenced the Dark Lord's scheme to get the Philosopher's Stone in an early attempt at returning to life, without explaining how much of a disaster that whole thing had been, assumed that he'd been in the country ever since. They didn't have many details here, but Dumbledore assumed that he'd managed to get into contact with a loyal Death Eater, who'd orchestrated his resurrection just last week.
There was, unfortunately, very little information they had about the resurrection itself. Dumbledore and Mercy Anne had tracked down a couple places the pre-resurrection Dark Lord had stayed during the preparation phase — Tamsyn leading Dumbledore on a goose chase, apparently — but they'd covered their tracks well enough that there hadn't been much evidence left behind. Dumbledore thought the effort had been spearheaded by one, maybe two Death Eaters, occasionally leaning on help from other people in the organisation but mostly kept close to the chest. (For security reasons of their own, Liz assumed.) They didn't know much about the resurrection itself, whoever had been with the Dark Lord hadn't been stupid enough to leave materials behind, but they knew it'd required Liz's blood — they'd subverted the Triwizard Tournament in an effort to get their hands on her.
This had required somehow charming the Goblet of Fire to spit out a fourth name. The Ministry's current best guess as to how that had happened was that the culprit — Dumbledore blamed the Dark Lord himself, given how difficult it would be to mess with such an old, powerful artefact — had infiltrated the Ministry to reach the Goblet in the very short window between when it was activated and when it was moved to the school. There'd been maybe a day or two, meaning they probably would have needed an inside man at the Ministry to arrange that. To ensure the Tournament went according to plan, they'd placed someone at Hogwarts to keep an eye on things — Maximilian Ollivander had been attacked after his final interview for one of the jobs teaching History but before moving into the Castle, someone impersonating him for the entirety of the school year, possibly using polyjuice. Someone would have needed to prepare the ritual itself, since the Dark Lord hadn't had a body yet, and the Death Eater impersonating Ollivander would have been too busy to do it, so there must have been at least two Death Eaters closely involved, assuming the second one wasn't the same as their inside man at the Ministry. Dumbledore had had some people ask around about the kind of rare potions/alchemical components that would have been needed for such a thing, but they hadn't found much in the way of leads. It looked like the Death Eaters had (wisely) spread around where they were getting things, keeping it all to small proportions to avoid drawing attention, so he didn't expect they'd be able to follow the paper trail to identify any of the people involved.
Unfortunately, it seemed the Death Eaters had done a very competent job — Dumbledore didn't think they'd be able to uncover the culprits even after the fact. Maybe if the Ministry weren't still focussed on prosecuting the apothecaries involved in supplying the firebombing attack on the World Cup they'd be able to do something, but the Ministry's efforts were focussed in the same market but in the wrong direction, which accidentally worked to kind of cover up other stuff going on. The Death Eaters got away with it, basically.
Not that Liz was really surprised. They were talking about people who'd nearly managed to overthrow the government last time around — it was really no shock that a small handful of them might be clever enough to operate in secret while the Ministry was distracted with other matters.
"The only witness we have to events," Dumbledore said, after spending some time explaining how completely blindsided they'd been, "is sitting right here at the table with us. Though my understanding is that she was unconscious for the duration of the ritual, and so has very little information to share. Unless you have remembered anything of use since we've last discussed the matter, Elizabeth?"
Eyes flicked her direction again, she tried not to wince at the attention suddenly clawing at her skin. "No. Like I told you, Dumbledore, I don't remember anything."
"That does make sense, when you think about it," Emily said, rescuing her before Dumbledore could try to press her again. "Rituals are extremely sensitive business — I don't know enough about these sort of Dark Arts to speak to specifics, but to create a body like that would be some manner of ritual alchemy, yes? The energies involved would be absurdly complex. Potter's aura is noisy, and she's a mind mage, I imagine they knocked her out so she couldn't disrupt the ritual."
"It's not unusual to incapacitate physical sacrifices in ritual magic, even when they're only animals, for that reason. Mind magic is far too disruptive to isolate from a ritual this complex. If Liz were conscious through it, she would have contaminated the ritual, knocking her out was the only option." That explanation was from William, which was a little bit of a surprise — Liz didn't normally credit people from Light families like the Weasleys with knowing that much about this kind of magic, talking about ritual sacrifices and the like. But then, he was a cursebreaker, he must have studied this stuff.
"Okay, hold up a second." That was Hestia Jones, one of the Aurors, leaning a bit to the side so she could see Liz better. "So, you were abducted out of the final Task, they knocked you out, used your blood in a ritual to bring You-Know-Who back...and then they just...let you go?"
Liz shrugged. "Yeah."
"Why?"
"Well, I don't fucking know, do I?" That was a lie — the Dark Lord (and also Tamsyn) had made it very clear that letting Liz live was politically advantageous, for whatever reason — but she couldn't exactly explain that without admitting to their truce and stuff. Not like anyone would notice the lie anyway, besides Severus (and also Tamsyn), so whatever. "I just woke up in the middle of a creepy graveyard, they told me touching the Cup would bring me back to Hogwarts, and whoosh, there I went. I didn't stick around to ask questions."
"Did You-Know-Who say anything to you?"
Liz rolled her eyes. "I didn't stick around. Maybe he was there, I don't know — I didn't see any weird-looking snake-man or whatever, but maybe he doesn't actually look like that? Maybe it's a glamour or something."
"I can assure you, Elizabeth," Dumbledore said, "that is Voldemort's—" Frightened squeaking. "—true appearance. Though, upon reflection, I suppose it is possible that whatever ritual was used to return him to physical life may have given him a more natural human face. We may know more when he decides to reveal himself to the public, but that may not be for some time yet."
"Well, all right then. And no, I still don't have anything to tell you. It's not like waiting a week made what happened any different — time moves forward, you see." There were some flashes of exasperation or irritation or whatever at Liz mocking Dumbledore, but she didn't really give a shite. She thought she was funny, and Emily was trying to hide a smirk with her tea cup, which was good enough for her.
Thankfully, Dumbledore seemed to accept that there wasn't any more information Liz could give him...or at least that he wasn't going to get anything useful out of her here and now. The conversation instead went on into events since the resurrection. There wasn't really that much to say, unsurprisingly — it had only been a week. The Aurors, Moody and Vance doing most of the speaking for them, confirmed that the DLE, at least, was aware that the Dark Lord was back. Even if people in the Order hadn't managed to tip the leadership off, they were in contact with people who had the Dark Mark, so would have been able to confirm it themselves very quickly. (Apparently the Department of Mysteries had very quietly informed certain people in important positions too.) Both the Minister and the Chief Warlock had been read in, there'd been a couple secret meetings — Moody had been brought in on them, thanks to his seniority and connections — and they'd decided to try to keep it quiet to prevent a panic, while they began preparing for the fighting to start. There was even a request for additional funding from the DLE to deal with it already making its way through the Wizengamot...though, they were using the Gaelic nationalists as an excuse to justify it, which was annoying, but whatever. Even while still keeping it a secret, the Ministry was moving much more quickly this time, thanks to the early warning and having competent people in charge, hopefully they'd be at least somewhat prepared when the time came.
The big scandal that'd started up when Sirius had been exonerated was actually very good for them, it turned out. A lot of the collaborators and shite who'd still been around from the end of the war had been chased out, and they'd gotten very lucky with their leadership — Mockridge himself was a fighter, from the most recent goblin uprising, and was ideologically opposed to the Death Eaters, so they could be confident they'd have him on their side. As much as it might have been convenient for the Order in particular to have their leader also heading the Wizengamot, Erin Scrimgeour was far more universally respected than Dumbledore was these days (or had been ever, honestly), and was also a former Auror and firmly anti- Death Eater, so she was really about as good as they could have hoped for. Vance reported that Scrimgeour was annoyed by the Dark Lord's return, since she'd only intended on holding the position temporarily through the political crisis and had not signed on to lead the country through a war, but "annoyed" was much better than terrified, and at least they didn't have to worry whether she was a sympathiser or something. Some of the Department heads were sketchier, but the top leadership had worked out excellently for them this time around.
Well, Scrimgeour and Mockridge (especially Scrimgeour) had a low opinion of the Order specifically, but they were firmly on the same side of the coming war, at least, so that didn't really matter.
There was some discussion then about where exactly they could contribute. The Ministry had far more wands than the Order could ever muster, and was in the process of recruiting more — since their leadership was actually decent this time around, they could count on the DLE to do most of the actual fighting. They also had the resources to keep an eye on economic stuff, like apothecary supplies for Dark Arts shite or properties showing suspicious activity, which the Order didn't really, so they could leave that to them. They did have some people with financial expertise and with contacts in the guilds, so they could keep an eye out for stuff just in case, but it wasn't a big priority. Oh, so that's what Daedalus's actual use to the Order was, economic espionage stuff, okay then. One thing they could do was try to keep an eye on known Death Eaters, and counter early attempts at recruiting.
Liz thought that was kind of optimistic, honestly. Most of the people here were all from Light families — commoners more than nobility, but she could make a guess at the segment of society they came from by the simple fact that they mostly had English names — and were all at least middle-class types, as demonstrated by the fact that they all had wands. She kind of doubted they moved in circles that would let them intervene in the Death Eaters' recruiting efforts. They just wouldn't know enough people in more Dark social groups where the Dark Lord had done well the first time around, and, they were worried about the Death Eaters getting around in the, like, underground or whatever, less-than-legal elements of society, and these people were far too straight-laced to, what, casually walk around Knockturn Alley looking for anyone suspicious. These people probably thought everyone in Knockturn Alley was suspicious, and they would be very obvious — nobody was going to talk to them, they wouldn't get anywhere. The Aurors would have somewhat better luck, she guessed, but Aurors weren't exactly popular among those types either, so as soon as they got marked they'd probably get frozen out.
It wasn't like she was an expert at this kind of thing either, but honestly, she thought it was doomed from the start. The people at the table here struck her as more likely to draw suspicion and get themselves targeted by criminal types — or just avoided out of paranoia, so they never managed to accomplish anything useful. Maybe William would do okay, if he dressed down a bit? Lupin would fit in, he guessed, though ever since the Werwolf Registry had started up there were fewer and fewer people like him actually around anymore. The real exceptions were Severus and Emily, and maybe Dora if she could put a damper on her absurdly colourful personality for five minutes, but everyone else just seemed...
...too clean? She didn't mean literally clean, of course — it's not like the people they were trying to watch were physically dirty all the time or anything — it was more a vibe, she guessed. She didn't know, she just had a feeling they weren't going to do very well, was all.
There was some discussion then about whether the Night Briar Brotherhood were going to side with the Death Eaters or not. They were pretty sure Teulu Prydein wouldn't, but the Night Briars were more complicated. It didn't help that it kind of wasn't a single coherent organisation? The Night Briars were more like a conglomeration of a bunch of different criminal enterprises and shite that only loosely coordinated with each other, shared some organisational and cultural quirks, which made predicting what they'd do in any given situation pretty much impossible. Moody thought they'd see some cells and individuals work with the Death Eaters, and some maybe even join up — which was pretty much what had happened last time, apparently — but some of them had ideological disagreements with the Dark Lord, or valued their independence too much. He fully expected to see a super complicated gang turf war spark off once the Death Eaters started trying to recruit in earnest...which had apparently also happened last time, somehow Liz had never heard of that before.
Liz 'remembered' that Augustus Travers had been at the graveyard — Vance gave her a suspicious look for suddenly pulling new information out of nowhere, but the other Aurors just made a note of the name and moved on. She still hoped that the child brothel raid coming up would implicate Travers, but if it didn't she could point the Order at him too. From what Rita told her about him, and what she'd found out reading random people's minds in the memories Rita had given her building their case, Travers was a huge bastard, so fuck that guy, she was going to throw whatever she could at him.
(It belatedly occurred to her that trying to get Travers arrested or killed might be breaking their truce, but she wasn't doing it because he was a Death Eater, she was doing it because he was a sick rapist bastard and could go straight to hell. Hopefully that was fine?)
Lupin was going to be taking up his old job of infiltrating werewolf groups in an attempt to head off recruitment efforts, which also seemed like a bad idea. The situation for werewolves was different than it'd been the first time around — the Registry had been implemented since the end of the war, most werewolves in the country were effectively under the custody of the state now. The ones who'd refused to submit to the DRCMC, like Lupin himself, were effectively outlaws. Lupin had the resources and connections to live most of the time outside of the country, where they had reasonable laws around lycanthropy, but that wasn't true of most werewolves, who effectively now had to live in secret, hiding from the Ministry, in horrible poverty and/or working for criminal groups who were willing to cover for them (mostly Night Briars). As hard as his life had been, Liz was honestly sceptical of Lupin's ability to fit in with those types of people, for a lot of the same reasons she thought the other Order people would have trouble looking out for recruitment elsewhere.
He was just too...soft. She couldn't even say what she meant by that, necessarily, that was just the word that came to mind. He'd stick out, she didn't think it would work.
Other jobs people had to do involved preparing supplies and safehouses, both to support their vigilante stuff when the fighting proper started, and also to protect people who were being targeted by the Death Eaters. In particular, the Order had done a lot of work to get vulnerable muggleborns and 'blood traitors' out of the country the first time around, and they would definitely want to do that again, since that was actually something they were better suited to than the official government, for complicated reasons. Since they had some warning this time, it'd be smart to set up their safehouses and shite ahead of time, and start reaching out to muggleborns and mixed-status families they were familiar with, to lay the groundwork before it was actually necessary. This part of the conversation actually went pretty long, since it was something they'd had so much success with last time, and arguably one of the most useful places to direct their efforts.
...Except, Liz didn't think muggleborns were actually in danger this time? The Dark Lord's speech had been weird, and confusing, in places definitely going over her head, but that part had been pretty clear. Sure, there might be issues toward the beginning, with overzealous followers who hadn't gotten the memo about the change in political priorities — the same concern Severus had about people targeting Liz, you know. But, once things actually got off the ground, and especially after the Dark Lord went public, she didn't actually think it'd be a problem this time. Or maybe that was going too far, any political unrest was going to result in shite happening to the more vulnerable groups of society, but, she didn't think the Death Eaters were going to go out of their way to target muggleborns specifically...or at least, if they did it wouldn't be at the Dark Lord's direction, just random violence. It shouldn't be a priority this time, she didn't think.
But she couldn't exactly explain that without admitting that the story she'd been telling of what she remembered that night was total horseshite, so she kept her mouth shut. It's not like being overcautious about it would hurt anyone anyway — they'd just be wasting their time, which Liz didn't give a shite about.
Of course, they were also concerned about security for the Order and their families, and a variety of important names in the country, which also made sense. The people in the group here who had close family they needed to worry about being targeted were actually pretty few, for whatever reason, and for the people who did, they were mostly already covered. The Weasleys were a concern — William said that they couldn't do much more with their wards than he'd already done, for structural reasons, so they would remain vulnerable as long as they lived there. They couldn't put the Fidelius over it either, since that required pulling back the wards that were already there — there was an element of sacrifice in the Fidelius to get it to work properly, forgoing other forms of protection to invest their trust in the Secret Keeper alone — and William was concerned doing that would cause the house to literally collapse. The Weasleys' home was a slapdash improvised mess, apparently. They were safe for now, but if they caught wind that the Weasleys were being targeted they'd probably have to evacuate, Dumbledore would make sure there was a safehouse they could move to if it came to that. There were actually pretty serious wards over the Tonkses' house, thanks to lingering paranoia on the part of Dora's mother, concerned her elder sister (Bellatrix Lestrange) might get it into her crazed mind to 'visit' one day — Dora was certain her parents would refuse Dumbledore's help, but if William wanted to take a look that was probably fine. The house Dorea's family lived in was less protected than most, but they had all the Black properties they could flee to in event of an emergency, and honestly when the fighting picked up they should probably relocate regardless, they simply weren't safe there.
Part of Shacklebolt's job was supposed to be keeping an eye on the Minister, just in case, but they were already having problems there. In the week since Liz's little interrogation after the Task, the Chief Auror had apparently reported his suspicions of Shacklebolt's divided loyalties to the Minister — he was being kept well away from the Minister's security arrangements, and was being watched for suspicious activity basically whenever he was at the office. There was some outrage and frustration expressed by some of the Order people at that, but honestly Liz thought that was perfectly reasonable? Dumbledore was a private citizen now, and didn't have any right to stick his nose into Auror business, he really shouldn't have been involved in the events of the night. It'd been very obvious Scrimgeour's patience with Dumbledore and Shacklebolt had entirely run out, she wasn't surprised he'd actually taken measures to try to prevent Dumbledore from interfering in Ministry business.
A couple people said shite about maybe doing something about Scrimgeour or the Minister — Liz noticed Emily go tense and watchful, almost seeming to stop breathing — but those fucking insane ideas were quickly shot down, and they had a far more reasonable talk about just having someone less thoroughly tainted by association with Dumbledore keep an eye on the Minister. Moody himself was still trusted, but he was also busy, and had medical issues that prevented him from being on 24-7. What he could do was make sure one of their people ended up close to security arrangements, so the Order would be kept informed on developments — recruiting one of the Hit Wizards directly on the security detail might be ideal, but until then he'd put Jones close enough to keep an eye on things. It seemed Jones was a recent recruit, and wasn't known to be an Order member by anyone outside of this room yet, so that should go smoothly enough.
They didn't have to worry about Erin Scrimgeour — the Chief Warlock's security was managed by the Wizengamot guards, who could handle it just fine, and also Scrimgeour was still pretty fucking dangerous herself, even after having retired decades ago, which helped. There were a few other people they were concerned about, certain Department Directors that the Death Eaters might find useful to subvert, editors for the Daily Prophet, leadership of certain guilds, that sort of thing. The list was kind of long, honestly, and a lot of them had political or even personal reasons for not wanting to cooperate with the Order, which would make keeping them protected somewhat difficult. Some of them, they could do something as simple as just sending a letter to inform them the Dark Lord was back and warn them to be careful, but others they might want to keep an eye on, further complicated by the list being long and simply not having enough Order members to watch them all. But they didn't necessarily need to be Order members, maybe they could just hire people to spy for them, they'd look into it...
It sounded like the list was winding down, when Vance asked, "What about Potter? She's a major target as well, certainly."
"Of course," Dumbledore said, "though given the sensitive nature of any of the circumstances around the Girl Who Lived, I had intended to approach the matter privately."
Liz scowled. "Don't bother, I'm fine."
There was some muttering from other people, but the first person to actually raise her voice to speak to the whole group was Emily. "Is Liz a target? She was returned unharmed after the ritual — I think it's safe to assume that, if the Dark Lord wished to harm her, he could have simply done so then."
"We have no idea what he intended to accomplish in sending her back," Vance said, leaning around Lupin to shoot a look over at Emily. "Until we have a better idea of his goals, it would still be wise to take precautions."
"Sure enough, but not special precautions. Unless you believe Liz is likely to be targeted by someone other than the Dark Lord and his people."
Further down the table, out of sight from here, Doge said, "She does live in Ireland, I believe? I recall hearing something about old Lyndon Potter's townhouse, at the Refuge. The Refuge is a stronghold of Gaelic nationalism — we must keep in mind the possibility that Saoirse may use the coming unrest to their advantage."
Liz bit her lip, barely holding back a comment about how she supported Gaelic independence, so Saoirse would have absolutely nothing to gain by attacking her. Besides, she'd caught in Barty's head that a large part of why he hadn't just swiped her when she was out visiting the market or something last summer was because Saoirse had been keeping an eye on her — the militia would have noticed her disappearance immediately, and they hadn't wanted to risk having the Gaelic priesthoods on their tails over kidnapping the Girl Who Lived right out from under their noses. (Supposedly priests knew a lot of weird ritual magic and Dark Arts and shite, not the kind of people you wanted after you.) Sure, Saoirse just gave a damn about her for political reasons, but those were still reasons. She was probably safer at the Refuge than she would be in Chester or Canterbury or Newcastle or some other British nationalist stronghold.
The Gaels' interests were served by Liz being alive and well and more or less friendly with them. On the other hand, she'd probably be better for Teulu Prydein or even the Ministry as a martyr — she was most convenient to them when she couldn't actually say anything to disagree with them or make them look bad. Maybe not the best political expert in the country, but from what she knew, she'd take her chances with Saoirse Ghaelach, thanks.
(Besides, she liked her house, and didn't want to leave.)
There was a brief exchange about how much of a threat they thought the Gaelic nationalists might be to Liz specifically — she missed at least part of it, distracted with her own thoughts, but it sounded like they'd at least come down on the Death Eaters being a bigger problem. Which they weren't really, unless they were acting alone on old information, neither of them were really a threat to her, but whatever. By the time she caught up again, they were passing that subject to talk about what kind of security arrangements would make sense for Liz. Podmore suggested that the simplest option would be to simply put the Fidelius over her house. "No," she blurted out.
Eyes flicked her way again. "I agree resorting to the Fidelius may be premature at this juncture," Dumbledore said, "but did you have a particular objection to the idea, Elizabeth?"
"Yeah, no way in hell am I letting someone put the Fidelius over my house. I'd have to take the wards I already have down — I'm not even sure how to do that, they're goblin-made — and I'm not giving someone else control over who can and can't visit. Absolutely not."
"I'm certain we could arrange to have Severus made the Secret Keeper," Lupin offered, as though he thought that was some kind of mitigating factor. Severus would be better than some random bastard in the Order, or Dumbledore, but she still wouldn't like it.
So Liz tried very hard not to glare at him, and probably didn't so a good job of it. "Severus doesn't decide who comes and goes now. It's my house, I'm the master of the wards."
"We will not be securing Elizabeth's home with the Fidelius," Severus agreed, before anyone at the table could get more than a couple syllables into an objection. Apparently having someone her age manage the wards of her own house was something normal people thought was unreasonable — which was a little annoying, because she was pretty sure Dorea had been master of the Black wards ever since her aunt had moved on, and nobody was freaking about that, but whatever. "I have examined the ward scheme myself, and it will suit for most purposes short of an assault personally led by the Dark Lord. At the very least, they will endure long enough for her to flee to a safe house. In the event of such an emergency, I'm certain one of the house elves will be capable of relocating her. Elizabeth and I have already discussed secondary safety measures, such as reducing the time she spends alone, so she will be less likely to be caught unawares."
There was a brief pause, it took a second for Liz to realise he meant for her to pick it up. "Oh! Yeah, I'm sure Nilanse will be able to pop me out if something happens. And, um, I have Susan coming over tonight, she'll be staying for a couple days."
"That would be Susan Bones, the niece of the Director of Law Enforcement."
"That's the one. Um, apparently she'll have a bodyguard along too? Her m– um, her aunt was always kind of paranoid about someone kidnapping Susan or something, and with the Dark Lord back their security's even higher than normal. So, I guess there'll be an Auror in my house for a little bit, that's probably going to be annoying. And there are plans to have other people over, and I'm going to be visiting people and going to bloody France and Sicily and shite, and I assume moving around makes me even harder to pin down for an attack or whatever. Seriously, I'll be fine, we're already on it."
There was a little more discussion on the topic after that, but it didn't go anywhere. Liz shot down having William look over her wards. The more people who knew about a ward scheme, the more vulnerable it was to attack — no offence, Weasley, but she didn't even know him. (At least he didn't seem offended by the refusal, just dropped the offer without any further argument.) Someone brought up the idea of having someone posted to watch the house which she immediately shot down as well. For one thing, having someone out there watching the property would make her less likely to notice someone spying for the Death Eaters, so it'd paradoxically make her less safe. Also, she wasn't letting a rotation of nosey strangers through her wards, so they'd be pretty useless out there regardless. Sort of similar to her issue with William's help, her wards were most useful when there were fewer people who could get through them — if nothing else, some Death Eater could use the Imperius to have them carry in an alchemical bomb or something — so letting them in to keep an eye on things would just be making an additional point of vulnerability, completely unnecessarily.
She also didn't want a bunch of random Dumbledore sycophants fucking spying on her, but she didn't say that part aloud. It was a bad idea without even bringing in her personal discomfort with it. Since it was convenient at the moment, she did bring up that Saoirse was looking out for her — Severus helped by mentioning that Síomha had explicitly promised they would do so, which Liz had...forgotten about? had she heard about that already? She couldn't remember. But anyway, Saoirse had the homefield advantage at the Refuge, so they'd do a better job of looking out for anything suspicious than random Order people would anyway. She was fine, really, they had it covered, don't worry about it.
Honestly, bringing up Saoirse might not have helped — most of the people around the table obviously didn't trust the Gaelic nationalists much, especially with something as 'important' as the Girl Who Lived. But they weren't going to force protection she didn't want on her. Well, okay, they might have, if they could get away with it, but doing so was somewhat complicated thanks to Liz having control of her own wards. They really couldn't do anything without her cooperation.
The vibes she was getting through cheating mind magic stuff was that the Order wasn't exactly happy with her not cooperating. But they didn't think it was suspicious behaviour, exactly. She caught explicit thoughts from both Lupin and...um, someone from further down the table — it was difficult to tell who from exactly, too many people sitting too close together — that she was being a very typical teenager and not taking her own safety seriously. Even Dorea was more open to taking their help, and her family were muggles, living in a muggle neighbourhood...which was relevant, for some reason? The common feeling was that she was just being difficult, and not that she had ulterior motives for not wanting their help. Which was annoying, but good enough, she guessed.
Thankfully, once they were through the list of people they thought might be targets in the short term, the meeting was pretty much done. It was clear that most of them meant to linger for a while, to further discuss whatever point or just chat about more casual social stuff. But Severus was about as socially awkward as she was — before she'd hardly even realised the meeting was technically over, he was already on his feet, Liz scrambling to follow. It took a few minutes for Severus to extricate himself from some people trying to get in some last-minute comments or questions about whatever, Emily asking Liz about the tournament in Syracuse while she waited, and then they were leaving.
The sky was colouring with sunset by the time they got back out onto the street — they must have been in there for a couple hours, at least, but Liz hadn't checked the time at any point. Wordlessly, Severus led her back to the greenspace they'd started in, and then right under the same tree, a tickle of privacy spells brushing over her skin. A quick apparation, and they were back in Severus's living room.
She was kind of amused with how quickly Severus had gotten the fuck out of there once the meeting was done, but she kept that thought to herself. "So, that was the Order of the Phoenix, huh."
"So it was." Severus stepped away, glanced over the papers and such sitting on the coffee table — the correspondence he still had to get through, she assumed. "I take it from your tone that you were not particularly impressed."
"...They're all right, I guess. At least they've got nerve, setting up to fight the Dark Lord. Oddly, that they're even afraid of his name kind of makes it more impressive? I'm not sure if that makes sense."
Severus let out a faint scoff, his mind flickering. "They're impressively reckless, at any rate. Few in that room would have any hope of survival should they come to face the Dark Lord — they should pray that day never comes for them."
"Yeah. Honestly, at least they're trying, but I don't expect much. I don't think they're going to do a very good job of interfering with the Death Eaters' recruiting, and they have kind of weird ideas about what their goals are going to be? Like, I don't think muggleborns are in danger this time. I couldn't say anything, because I'd have to explain about the truce and all, but there was a big long speech..."
With a little sigh, Severus said, "Caution is still warranted. Even if it does come to pass that the Dark Lord has reformed his politics such to no longer target muggleborns for violence, the same may not hold true with all of his followers. And I would expect muggleborns to be particularly vulnerable in the event of any manner of political unrest regardless."
"True, I'm just saying." Liz hesitated for a second, wondering if there was anything else to say about the meeting. She didn't think there was, really — the thing had gone on quite long enough all on its own without the two of them picking over it in the aftermath. "Anyway, I should get back home. I've got guests coming over. And translating this book is going to be a pain, too," she said, waving the book she'd borrowed in the air.
"There will be another meeting of the Order in a week."
She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, let's see how I'm feeling about going to that one. Honestly, when they weren't being bloody annoying, this one was just kind of boring."
There was a pulse of exasperation from Severus's mind, but he didn't say anything to argue the point. Besides, he would know she'd feel the lie if he tried — she knew he didn't disagree with her.
Thing. Woo.
Mostly recovered from the surgery and the covid at this point — have gotten back to my typical writing output the last few days — so hopefully we'll be getting back to normal going forward. I'm going to jump over to the secret project and write a couple scenes for that before continuing on with this fic, updates continue to be on the Discord. There should be a link on my profile if you don't have that yet.
Anyway, bye.