Liz left home after her mid-morning meal, everything she suspected she would need for a couple days away packed into her bookbag slung over her shoulder. She stepped through the floo — she probably could have apparated, at their last lesson Severus said she was growing proficient with it faster than expected, but he still hadn't signed off on her doing it unsupervised — arriving after a short time of nauseating green whirling at the public floo in Ard Mhacha. From there she took another short hop to Beannchar, from where she took the water crossing to Baile na hÚige, and from there to Dumfries, where she skipped all the way across the north to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, from which she skipped from public floo to public floo down the eastern coast to London.
She still really didn't like the floo, very disorienting, each brief jaunt leaving her dizzy and nauseous. Which, one would think breaking it up into several trips would just be making it worse, when she could jump straight from home to the keyport in Old Town — or maybe two would be safer, the water crossing from one island to the other introduced instabilities. But since Liz's magic had to be fucking noisy, interfering with the magic of the floo, while she could make the trip in a single leg (or maybe two), her landing on the other end would be awful. More like her first few trips, where she was tossed violently out the other side to tumble across the floor like a clumsy idiot. If she were very unlucky, she might even manage to injure herself. Part of her was tempted to just get the fucking thing over with, but honestly, breaking it up into smaller chunks was still easier on her, even if you added up all the cumulative effects of the successive trips.
Still a fucking pain though — seriously, Severus could not sign off on her apparating alone soon enough, she fucking hated magical travel.
When she finally arrived at the keyport, she headed downstairs to the outgoing portkey lobby, the long hall with its wood surfaces and furnishings and peaked ceiling familiar after going through here for the duelling tournaments a few times now. The original plan had been to take the floo down to Bordeaux, but that would involve crossing multiple international borders — once from Britain into France, and then a second from France into Aquitania (though Bordeaux was a border city) — which would complicate matters. Not least because Liz would still prefer to break the trip up into multiple smaller legs, because fuck the floo, but also they had people in their group who might not be so comfortable making that long of a floo trip, especially in a foreign country. Susan should be fine, and Katie was perfectly comfortable with the floo, and spoke French well enough to get by if there was an incident; on the other hand, Artaimís was fine with the floo, while Chelsea hadn't been through it more than a handful of times (muggleborns didn't tend to get around much), and also neither of them really spoke French at all. If their group got separated at some point in the process, Liz, Katie, and Susan could reasonably be expected to get to their destination just fine on their own, but Artaimís and Chelsea would have more trouble — and there was a small, but real, chance that Chelsea could have a floo accident of some kind. Also, Liz being present would make the border crossings go more smoothly, so if they did get separated it was possible problems might come up, which could be further complicated by two of their number not speaking any French.
So, yeah, after talking about it with Susan for a bit, Liz had decided to arrange a portkey instead. Honestly, she probably should have thought of that in the first place. Chelsea was actually more familiar with portkeys than the floo — she'd taken one to and from the World Cup and the Kaunas tournament — and it would keep their group together the whole time. And she could get them a portkey directly from London to Bordeaux, which meant there were far fewer failure points on the way where issues could come up. She had needed to call ahead to make the arrangements, and of course actually pay for the portkey, but it was far simpler than taking the floo the whole way.
Liz quick stopped by the counter to check that their portkey was still going ahead as scheduled, before finding a chair in a corner to settle in with a book. She was early, but she'd meant to be, in case there was an issue with the portkey — besides, she was still partway through her book on the Austrian Revolution, there were worse things to do with her time.
It maybe wasn't the most politic image for the Girl Who Lived to be reading communalist literature in public, but she really didn't care at this point.
Artaimís was the first to arrive — Liz felt her peculiar soul-bonded mind as she entered the hall, a fragment of a larger hole, the web of her thoughts extending through and out somewhere unseen. She had no idea whether the body that was coming along was the same one the triplets would end up using in the tournament, but she was aware it didn't really matter. The triplets wanted to keep their soul-bond intact, so they'd been rotating which one went to duelling practice and the like, to prevent the physical development that came with that sort of exertion from causing psychological distinctions which would break them apart. There were minor physical differences between the three of them, little things that had accumulated after fourteen years of life, but they were small enough as to not really matter for most purposes, they were more or less interchangeable.
The one who showed up was dressed like "Artaimís", in linen trousers and a wraparound tunic, and she talked like "Artaimís", with a bit of a careless drawl on her rural Munster -accented Gaelic, but Liz really had no way of knowing if this was the same body that had been the "Artaimís" she'd last met. And honestly, it didn't make any difference.
Since they were the only ones here, Artaimís didn't hesitate at all to basically act as a telephone, relaying a conversation between Liz and the triplets' mother — their mother was talking to one (or both) of the others while Artaimís was here with her, which meant they were basically both talking to the same person at the same time, who could pass what one said straight on to the other. Actually, Liz could sort of see Artaimís's mother through her mind, the parts that reached over to the body here with her, which was trippy as hell. Basically, Ailís was saying that she was trusting Liz to look after Artaimís while they were off in a foreign country, but if something did happen she would be holding Liz responsible. Not like Ailís's family could do fuck all about it, but the triplets were sort of being sponsored by the House of Black, and they could make trouble for her, sure. The triplets seemed a little embarrassed by their mother basically threatening Liz, but she didn't really mind. Honestly more than anything she just found the conversation-by-proxy kind of fascinating.
(The soul bond that developed in multiple births was very very cool, she loved magic sometimes.)
After the lecture relayed from Ailís was done with, they settled in to quietly wait for the rest of the group to show up. Artaimís also pulled out a book, though hers was one of those comics that were around in the magical world — their publishing market was much smaller than the muggle one, of course, but very similar illustrated stories did exist. (Liz suspected it'd been brought in by some muggleborn at some point over the last few decades.) She'd never found them particularly interesting herself, but they seemed to be very much aimed toward children and...also kind of racist? Like, one of the most popular series was all about a mad muggle or whatever, it didn't look great. But she understood that these things were part of how the triplets had practised their English, so whatever.
It was nearly a half hour later when Chelsea showed up — still early, but just enough to give her wiggle room in case she had trouble finding the place. She'd taken a muggle train into London from wherever she lived (Liz wasn't sure exactly) and then walked to Old Town, able to find the place thanks to having come through here for the duelling tournaments, but delays happened. Katie and Susan both arrived only a few minutes before the scheduled departure time, since they'd just taken the floo here anyway.
(Katie looked great, of course. Those denim shorts were just bloody unfair.)
The portkey trip was pretty painless, all told. When it came close to time, Liz led the group over to the counter, they were pointed to one of the rooms along the hall. There was already a worker here waiting to set them up, the major difference from Liz's previous trips that the portkey was much smaller — she'd set up a private one, so it was just the five of them and the man checking them over in the room. The portkey was also a rope, as usual, but instead of the big damn web used in the big group trips she'd taken before, this one was just a single ring, with the same handles and straps every metre or so along its length. There was room for maybe a dozen people or so, with the five of them still leaving much of it empty. The bloke had them space out around it, presumably for reasons of distributing the contents of the spell envelope as well as they could to prevent interference, checked that the safety straps were properly secured to each of their wrists.
Liz tried not to cringe at being grabbed at by a stranger, but judging by the looks she got from both Katie and Susan, she hadn't quite managed it.
Her skin left crawling by the grabbing and the mind slamming against hers, she wasn't really listening to the final instructions from the man, focussing on calming down and not freaking out like a crazy person. She probably should have taken a dose of her drugs first, but it'd slipped her mind, too late now. She did check in in time to catch the countdown, had enough time to settle into a somewhat wider stance and catch her breath before the portkey burst into life and tugged her away into a storm of whirling colour.
After a moment of flying — her eyes firmly closed, to stop the clash between the visual elements and the magical elements from making her sick — they crashed back into the physical world. Liz managed to stay on her feet, and so did Katie and Susan, but both Chelsea and Artaimís toppled to the floor, the tug on the rope yanking her over a step. The room they arrived in wasn't much different from the one they'd left, the surfaces done in a similar magical ceramic, the undersides presumably littered with runes to support the focussing enchantments designed to enable safe portkey travel, though this one was mostly done in black and white, decorated here and there with a standing red lion Liz was pretty sure was meant to represent Gascony. There was a little bit of a delay as the attendant on this side gave Chelsea a hand up, double-checked that they were all okay, before they filed out of the room into the rest of the keyport.
Liz paused only a moment to tuck one of her cannabis crystals under her tongue — better late than never.
Aquitania was one of the Communalist-aligned countries that had actually survived the war without being conquered by anti-Revolutionary forces, but they had still been invaded on multiple fronts, sustaining significant damage to their infrastructure. The Italian states had invaded from the east, Spain and Portugal had invaded from the south, and Britain and the Dutch, already occupying France, had invaded from the north — their initial attack had actually been on Bordeaux itself, opening another front in an attempt to further divide Aquitanian forces. The city had even been occupied by the British and the Dutch for around a year or so, though it'd never been fully 'pacified', dealing with constant rebellions from the population and sabotage from surviving French partisans. The pre-existing transportation infrastructure in most of Aquitania's major cities had been completely destroyed, they'd had to be more or less entirely rebuilt from scratch in the decades afterward.
So, the keyport was very modern, much like the similar places Liz had seen in France, a lot of metal and glass and alchemical ceramic, looking quite similar to a muggle train station or airport or something like that. The aesthetics were somewhat different — there was a lot of red, black, and blue, some yellow here and there, which Liz knew were Aquitanian colours — but the overall vibe was similar. Customs was even almost exactly the same, the open hall with a row of counters down the middle dividing the international and internal sections of the transportation hub, a tall glass barrier crackling with wards, different from the hub in Lille only in the colour scheme and the languages on the signs.
Getting into the country wasn't a problem at all. When she'd set up the medical appointment, the hospital had sent her paperwork she was supposed to show to the customs people, the woman at the counter just gave it a quick glance before waving them through — all of their bags had to be scanned for contraband, but that only took a couple minutes. While that was going on, Liz was handed a single set of entry papers for their entire group, just in case something came up and they needed to justify their presence in the country for whatever reason, and that was it, they were done.
Chelsea was a little surprised it was so easy, they hadn't even needed to show identification at all. She'd only ever travelled internationally on the magical side for the Kaunas tournament, apparently she'd thought that'd been a special case? She'd even brought her muggle passport, but no, they mostly didn't care as much about people moving around on the magical side. It got more complicated if you wanted to stay somewhere — there were property rules and stuff to do with taxes and subsidies or whatever, that kind of thing — and there was import/export stuff, and certain kinds of illegal materials that weren't supposed to be brought across borders at all, but they normally didn't give a shite if you were just visiting. Even moving to a foreign country wasn't that difficult, for the most part, though it did somewhat depend where you were going. You'd have to register with some government office most of the time, but it was basically just filing paperwork, not a big deal.
(Getting actual citizenship could be more complicated, depending on which country you were talking about, but that was a separate matter.)
The muggle way borders and shite worked was so alien to mages that Artaimís actually asked what a passport even was — because, you see, personal identification of the kind that was normal on the muggle side simply didn't exist over here. Different world, different laws, they were fine, don't worry about it.
Liz had also set up a reservation at a hotel ahead of time — she'd initially thought they'd just wander around and find one, but Susan had made the reasonable argument that finding suitable rooms for their whole group might be annoying — but she didn't actually know precisely where it was. Thankfully, there was a big informational kiosk in the main hall of the keyport, one of the workers there was able to give them directions straight to it; extra thankfully, it happened to be in the same enclave as the keyport itself, so they didn't need to take the floo to get there. (The hospital wasn't, unfortunately, but they could deal with that tomorrow.) The woman showed the way on a fold-up map of the city...and apparently they were allowed to keep the map, okay then — Liz would have expected to need to pay for it, but whatever. It was a pretty nice map too, the different magical enclaves in the city illustrated, with landmarks to make it easier to find their way around, a streetmap of the muggle city, the entrances to the different enclaves marked, with explanations of how to get inside (in both the local language and French)...
Oh! They could actually walk to the hospital just fine! They'd leave this enclave from this exit, follow this street out of the city centre, and turn west... It was maybe a little over a kilometre total, but that wasn't that bad, was it? Yes, Liz would be willing to walk that far just to avoid a single floo trip, but if nobody else wanted to she guessed she'd take the floo. She just really hated the floo, okay.
The keyport opened straight out into a sizeable city square, which was far more green than Liz had suspected. Instead of a big open space the square was broken up into multiple green spaces, grass and trees and flowering bushes, walkpaths stitched through this way and that, some kind of monument at the centre she couldn't quite make out through the trees. (A war memorial, at a guess.) There were a variety of people out in the square, hanging around chatting or just passing through, Liz even noticed multiple people sitting out on the grass having picnics. A lot of young people, university age, but there was a sizeable school on the square somewhere, probably Mastery students.
Standing out in the square, they discussed where they wanted to go first for a couple minutes, before deciding they should go check in at the hotel before doing anything else. Right, the hotel should be...that way. A short walk brought them to a street, flanked on both sides with shops and shite — very modern-looking, constructed of yellowish brick decorated with colourful signs and cloth awnings, the shop fronts all done in clear glass. It could almost be a street in some muggle city centre, if it weren't for the things the shops were advertising, or that some of the signs were animated...or the occasional glimpse of someone doing magic, or the family of nymphs passing by. Half of the city would have been rebuilt after the war only a handful of decades ago, and Aquitanians weren't nearly so stubborn about definitely not being muggleish, so Liz wasn't surprised it was so new-looking.
At the end of the street they came to a long rectangular courtyard, several elaborately-carved fountains down the middle, somewhat more impressive-looking buildings around, a couple of them bustling with people coming in and out, some ordinary people but others in colourful magical-style suits or even more formal wear. According to the map, the local government offices were all on this courtyard, along with those for the whole province of Gascony — there were ten provinces in Aquitania, which actually had regional government stuff, unlike the sixteen in magical Britain, which were mostly just informal cultural stuff — as well as a bank and some important business whatever, you know, that kind of thing. They walked about halfway down the courtyard before turning off into a narrow side-street, tall brick buildings close to either side — according to the map, one was the local courthouse, and the other was some kind of import/export administration, border city — turned left at the first intersection, and that should be their hotel just here on the right.
That they were right next to the government offices and other important shite tipped Chelsea off that this was actually a nice hotel — yes, well, they were more likely to be accommodating of Liz's Seer shite, and to have a suite that would fit them all at once, so that'd seemed the smart thing to do. She and Susan were both filthy rich, and they were paying the bill, it was fine, don't worry about it.
The lobby made it very obvious that this was actually a nice place, all tall with polished granite elaborated with detailed carving work, some fine wooden furniture for people waiting, the handles on the drawers behind the counter gleaming gold, that kind of thing. Honestly, probably the nicest place Katie, Chelsea, and Artaimís had ever been, if you didn't count Hogwarts itself, but also Aquitania was just like that sometimes — they'd been an aristocratic state like Britain before reforming in the 19th Century, and a lot of the fancy shite the nobility had made for themselves had stuck around, just more open to normal people than they used to be. (Not totally open, there were still class distinctions in Aquitania, just not as bad as before.) The rooms here were more expensive than other hotels Liz had found, but it really wasn't that bad, the opulence was kind of just grandfathered in, because Aquitania was weird like that.
The nice hotel next to the government square was also a good idea because the staff had no problem talking to Liz in French — the dominant language here was actually gascon, which none of them spoke at all. It was one of the langues d'oc that some muggles in the south of the country still spoke, to Liz's Valérie instincts they sounded like a weird blend of French and Spanish, which she could kind of follow? a little bit? Not well enough to properly communicate, anyway, so, somewhere they'd be prepared to deal with international visitors, who'd be likely to speak French, had just made sense. The man at the counter she spoke to did have a bit of a southern-sounding accent, but it was perfectly comprehensible, no problem.
After a little bit of discussion, Liz quick scrawling out a bank note for the first night — they might or might not stay multiple nights, but she'd pay the rest when they checked out, paying the first night right away was sort of like a deposit — and then they were led upstairs to the room. There was a lift, but the attendant leading them up (a younger man, maybe eighteen to twenty or so) teasing that they were young and could tolerate the stairs. (Said in a joke, so they could have asked to take the lift if they really wanted to.) Besides, the first couple flights were super pretty, made of stone with a finely-carved bannister, corkscrewing up in a little round tower, windows looking out at the city, the narrow winding alleys and closely-packed brick buildings and gardens of the magical district and the bustling muggle city beyond, very cool. The hallway was a little more modest-looking than the stuff they'd seen so far, still with stone flooring but the walls retouched with shining wood panels, the fine chandeliers and shite from downstairs vanished in place of pretty standard flamelight lamps, the doors themselves looking perfectly ordinary. Like similar places Liz had been before, the keys were small lengths of cloth, embroidered with an enchantment specific to the look on their room door, when they reached the right one their guide held it up to the handle as he turned it with the other, pushed the door open and waved them in ahead of him.
Susan had made a good point about them all being in one space together, and since it wasn't like the money was an issue, she'd decided to get a multi-room suite, sort of like the muggle hotel she'd stayed at with Severus seeing Sauvageau...or like the rooms they were normally put in for duelling tournaments, come to think of it. This was nicer than the accommodations they had for duelling tournaments, and more like that hotel she went to with Severus, but a magical version of a similar idea. They walked into a nice, spacious common room, feeling light and open thanks to the windows taking up practically the whole outside wall. The tile floor of the hallway continued inside all the way across the space to a set of sliding doors leading out onto a balcony, and there was a small kitchen area to one side that was also tiled, but the rest was carpeted in a deep, rich Aquitanian red, the upholstery on the sofas and armchairs and shite in the sitting area also in national colours, black and red and blue. There were shelves on the walls, plenty of books, and also some boxes Liz realised would be card or board games, that sort of thing, a radio over there in a corner complete with a turntable, the cupboard underneath probably held records. Not super fancy or anything, but definitely nice.
There were three doors leading off of the common room, one into a bathroom — which was perfectly nice, if somewhat basic (no bath, just a shower) — and two into the pair of bedrooms. The original description Liz had heard was that each of the rooms was supposed to have a sleeping area and a sort of office workspace area, with a desk and shite, but with the number of people they had coming they'd converted them into double bedrooms instead. So, there were two beds in each room, each with enough to sleep two if you didn't care too much about being a little close, there were dresser drawers and stuff, fitting in the extra furniture making the both of them feel somewhat cramped. Less so in one than the other — for whatever reason, only one of the two had windows, she was pretty sure they were both more or less the same size, but breaking up the walls like that made it feel more open than it really was.
The other girls ran around checking the place out, while Liz stood near the entrance talking to the attendant, handed a couple informational packets, explanations about how the kitchens were run and the post and using the floo and some help they offered guests getting around the city, blah blah. When they got to the end and he was about to leave, Liz just blatantly said that she didn't have the right currency to tip him with, sorry, which he thought was funny — he didn't say this aloud, but she was a cheating mind-reader, so she picked up that apparently in the local culture they thought of tipping service staff as a very aristocratic thing, really only the old noble families bothered doing that, mostly showing off. (Not that they complained about getting a little extra money, just, they were payed well enough that it wasn't a big deal if they didn't get it.) Liz technically was a noble lady, which would put her in the category of people who normally did do it, but whatever, he mostly just found the apology adorable. Yeah, no, they didn't need anything else, but they might stop by the café before going to check out the town. Thanks for showing them around, right, bye.
Once he was gone, Katie drawled, "You're ridiculous, you know that." The other girls had gone off to check over the room, she could hear them chattering somewhere over in one of the bedrooms, but Katie had hung around a short distance away while she talked to the man. She didn't say it aloud, but she meant Liz apologising for not being able to tip him.
She shrugged, feeling weirdly self-conscious about it, Katie's eyes on her heavy and warm and clingy. "I don't know, I like being nice to service people. You know how shite some people can be, the least I can do is try not to make extra trouble and pay them a bit."
"You are paying him — that's part of where what you're paying for the room goes to."
"Well, yeah, but..." After completely failing to come up with words to explain herself, she just shrugged again. She didn't know, it felt different, that was all.
(It was part of her not being like Petunia thing — Petunia was awful to service people, like waitresses at restaurants or helpers at clothing stores or whatever — but she didn't know if she wanted to talk about that with Katie. Especially since it'd take a while to explain, and the other girls could come back at any second.)
Grinning at her, Katie pushed off of where she was leaning against the kitchen-area counter, taking a few steps closer to Liz, walking with a very distracting sway to her hips. Those denim shorts, seriously, not fair. "You're adorable."
"Pff, lies. I'm a scary dark witch, haven't you heard?"
"Mm..." She was very close, her hands coming up, fingertips on Liz's cheek — her mind rushing against hers, warm and soft and smooth and sweet. Gently tipping her chin up, leaning close over her, Liz could already feel her face warming, heart beginning to throb in her throat and her lips and her fingertips. Katie had been waiting, Liz could see now, she'd wanted to give Liz a far more enthusiastic greeting at the keyport, but she hadn't wanted to attract attention and make Liz uncomfortable. (The thought of getting stared at over snogging in public didn't bother her at all, but she remembered Liz talking about being able to feel eyes on her.) They were in private now, or as good as, Katie jumping at practically the first opportunity. "Very scary," she muttered, her breath tickling over Liz's lips and down her throat. "I'm quaking with terror over here."
"With something, anyway."
Katie chuckled, low in the back of her throat, and leaned down the rest of the way to kiss her. Smooth and slow and soft, feelings washing over Liz heavy and giddy, almost ecstatic, tingles running down her spine, dizzying. After a couple seconds her hands ended up at Katie's hips, as much for balance as anything — because mind mage, her feelings plus Katie's feelings was kind of a lot, made her head spin — fingers hooking into her belt loops. Katie humming against her lips, making her ring buzz against her teeth a little, fingers of one hand slipping into her hair, the other trailing light over her cheek as Katie kissed her again, fingertips almost ticklish, Liz could barely—
"Woah."
Liz jumped at the unexpected voice — there was a flash of pain as one of their lips got pinched by their teeth, but with their minds this close she honestly wasn't entirely sure which. It wasn't until Katie straightened, breaking contact, that Liz realised that had actually been herself, one hand reflexively coming up to her mouth, ow... Turning to look over her shoulder, Katie said, "Do you mind, Chelsea?"
"Yeah. No, I mean— When did this happen?" Chelsea wasn't entirely surprised — Liz and Katie dancing around each other the last several months had been kind of obvious to everyone who knew them at all — she was just a little annoyed she hadn't been told. Or, well, annoyed maybe wasn't quite the right term, something in the category anyway. And now she was wondering how that might complicate things in the duelling team, but at least she and Katie were ageing out of the junior division anyway, so there wasn't really time for them to break up and make everything terribly uncomfortable...
(Chelsea still instinctively thought the gay part was a little weird, but it was more acceptable in the magical world than the muggle side, she'd been around long enough by now that she didn't really think it was a big deal anymore. She really was just a little offended she'd been kept out of the loop, and worried about it making things awkward in the team.)
Before either of them got around to it — Liz because she was casting a quick healing charm on her lip, Katie because she wasn't sure how many details Liz was comfortable with people knowing — Susan appeared from the door into the bedroom behind Chelsea. "Liz and Katie? Last day of school, straight after that duelling team meeting."
"You knew?" Chelsea asked, spinning around to stare at Susan.
Susan just seemed a little bemused by the sharpness of Chelsea's reaction, frowning up at her. "Sure? Liz told me when I was visiting, like a week ago now."
Being told that Susan had stayed over at Liz's house for a few days already, even so early into the summer, reminded Chelsea that she was far closer friends with Liz than she was, and Chelsea wasn't super close with Katie either, so it made sense she might have found out about it later. While she was turning over that, Katie said, "She ran all the way up to Gryffindor to catch me before I could get back to the common room, very dramatic."
"Close thing, too — if I didn't cheat with quick-step to make it go faster, I wouldn't have made it in time."
Her mind giggling, Katie drawled, "You're ridiculous, you know that."
"I've been told," she said, shrugging. And the attention from Susan and Chelsea was a little embarrassing, but they mostly seemed to think it sounded romantic — instead of, you know, completely mad — so she guessed she'd take it.
Just then, before anyone else could get anything out, Artaimís skipped on out of the bathroom. She glanced over the four of them, chirped, "Ah, are we talking about Liz and Katie?"
"How do you know about that?" Chelsea demanded. "I just found out now!"
Artaimís smirked. "I guessed, obviously. I don't know if you noticed, but those two have been all over each other for months — we've got a bet with Sam that they've been fucking all along, and just not telling anyone. Speaking of which, I'm guessing you're going to want one of the rooms to yourself?"
While Susan was snickering at that, Katie said, "Actually, I think it'd be better to split us up, just to not make things too uncomfortable. Right?" she finished, glancing back at Liz.
"Sure. Sorry to lose you money."
"It wasn't that kind of bet," Artaimís said with a careless little shrug. The triplets would owe "Sam" (whoever that was) a favour, it wasn't a big deal. "So, how did we want to split up? The sooner we figure this out, the sooner we can get out and do stuff, come on!"
Smirking a little, Susan teased, "Excited to be travelling out of the country for the first time?"
"Sure am, let's get moving!"
There was a little bit of discussion there about how exactly they'd be splitting up sleeping space. They had two bedrooms, and they'd decided Liz and Katie would be in separate rooms, but they also only had four beds, so two people would have to share. Liz's mind magic was a problem, she warned them that she wouldn't be able to keep herself out of their minds while she was asleep — also, the more noisy a room was the more trouble she'd have getting to sleep herself, so she should probably be in the two-person room. The mind-magic stuff was a little freaky, though some of them had slept in the same room as her before, so they weren't that concerned about it...though Katie did mention it was far more obvious one-on-one. (She hadn't identified it for what it was at the time, but in retrospect that explained her odd dreams during the Jassy tournament.) Chelsea was at least aware of so many of them liking girls — Chelsea and probably Artaimís were the only straight people here — but that would only really be a problem if she were sharing a bed with one of them, so she should probably get the single bed, which might be easier if she were alone with Liz, but she was leery of doing that too...
"I'll take the other bed in Liz's room," Artaimís said after a couple minutes going around in circles, her mind crackling with impatience. "Our mind is bigger than hers, I don't think she'll even affect me that much."
"...That's a good point, actually, I didn't think of that." Part of why she could pull people into her nightmares was because her mind was spreading out through the room, so she ended up surrounding the other person — they were kind of sort of inside her mind already, so there was very little resistance to hold them back from getting dragged in. (Especially if they were in the same bed, that was practically unavoidable.) But Artaimís wouldn't be entirely surrounded by her, because two-thirds of her mind would be hundreds of kilometres away, all the way over in Ireland. Liz could still see her dreams, at least the part going on inside Artaimís's brain, but she shouldn't be able to drag her in like she could other people. "Yeah, we should do it that, you three can figure out your room."
They pretty quickly agreed on that — Chelsea was a little creeped out by the reminder of the triplets' soul bond, not having seen enough of that sort of thing to get over how weird it was. (Artaimís was usually careful to not draw attention to it, in team practices and stuff, to avoid making other people uncomfortable.) While the other three started figuring out who would be sharing a bed, Artaimís slung her bag back over her shoulder, snatched Liz by the wrist, and started leading the way over to the room without any windows. She didn't say it aloud, but Liz picked up that Artaimís thought the three-person room should be the one with the windows, so it would feel less cramped, which Liz guessed was fair.
Once they were alone, Artaimís switched to Gaelic to say, "That girl is such a pain sometimes. She really needs to get over herself."
"It's muggleborn stuff — their culture is a lot more squeamish about some things, and obviously they don't have bonded triplets at all." Artaimís had just tossed her bag at the nearer bed, leaving the one deeper into the room for Liz, which was honestly fine. It's not like it made a big difference. "She is trying, she's not that bad, considering. She's honestly far better than Dorea, and she's only sort of muggleborn."
"Well, I guess," Artaimís grumbled, her mind stubbornly simmering. "I was just hoping she'd get used to us being the way we are before the tournament, but it doesn't look like it's working out that way."
Shrugging a little, Liz said, "Sorry, no. You didn't get to hear the little dilemma she was in when we left, either. She doesn't want to share a bed with either of the other two—" They were avoiding using names, Chelsea (and Katie, much) didn't speak Gaelic, but if they used names she could guess they were talking about her. "—since they both like girls, but she doesn't like the idea of them sharing a bed either, for the same reason. Worried it will make me uncomfortable, you know."
"...I mean, that's not an unreasonable thing to be concerned about."
"I trust both of them, it's fine." Honestly, it wouldn't bother Liz if they did have sex — maybe if it were being hidden from her, but both Katie and Susan would realise they couldn't hide it from her, so that would never be an issue. It still didn't quite click for her why this sort of thing bothered other people. She was aware that it did, which was the whole reason she'd brought up her thing with Hermione when she and Katie had gotten together, but... Well, Katie had said she wouldn't be sleeping with other people, but that was because she wanted to...focus on Liz, or whatever, not because it actually made any difference to Liz herself. She'd told Katie as much at the time, and she'd stuck with that decision anyway, so, whatever.
(She really didn't understand why people made a big deal about it. It's not like Katie's body was her bloody property or something — it wasn't really her business what Katie did with it, and, honestly, insisting that it was felt...kind of gross? Though she didn't understand why she had that reaction any more than she understood why other people felt about it the way they did, it was all very confusing.)
Pulling herself out of that little mental loop, Liz said, "Besides, it'd be kind of a shitty thing for me to make a big deal about it, after Susan spent a couple days over at my place — and we didn't have Chelsea right in the room with us while she was over, either. If Katie can trust me with that, I can trust her with this."
"Ah, right, I guess that makes sense..." Artaimís thought there was something special about this angle to their relationship, which Liz really didn't think there was? Maybe it was different for straight people, or maybe Artaimís was just too inexperienced to know what this shite was actually like? Who knew.
Liz quick unloaded the shite from her bag she didn't actually need to carry with her, changes of clothes and, like, bathroom shite or whatever, before slinging it back over her shoulder and returning to the common room. Artaimís wasn't very far behind her, the other three girls coming out of the other bedroom a couple minutes later — they'd taken a bit longer to decide who'd be sleeping in which bed and unpacking their things. Susan did mention right away that she and Katie would be sharing a bed, in case Liz had a problem with that, but she just shrugged it off. There was a brief discussion about what they wanted to do with the rest of the day, which Liz quickly interrupted with the suggestion that they figure that out down in the café.
The rest of their first day in Bordeaux was relatively uneventful, if somewhat busy — nothing really important happened, but they were out of the hotel doing things for the rest of the day. They all had their own reasons to not really have travelled much. Liz and Susan both had the money to, but she hadn't really had access to that money until relatively recently, and then was busy with other stuff, so didn't often have the opportunity to just fuck off somewhere to hang around and...whatever people did on holiday? (She didn't honestly know, what with that problem she had with actually relaxing.) On the other hand, Susan's mom(/aunt) was the bloody Director of Law Enforcement, so she was busy, difficult for her to get away for longer than a day at a time, and security concerns often prevented Susan from ranging too far from home. Honestly, Liz was mildly surprised that Amelia had let her go to another country without adult escort, she'd expected Susan to show up with a Hit Wizard or something, but apparently Amelia had decided that five student duellists would at least put up enough of a fight to give the local police types time to come running.
Also, it was possible someone was shadowing Susan just in case. As long as they were focussing enough on Susan and not paying attention to Liz, it was possible she wouldn't even notice. She hadn't asked, but she had a feeling their trip would go smoothly enough, she wasn't worried.
The other three, well, Chelsea's family weren't exactly poor or anything, but they didn't travel much, either — they had taken holidays places a couple times, but obviously that would have all been on the muggle side. The only trip she'd taken outside of Britain on the magical side had been for the Kaunas tournament, which hadn't given them too much opportunity to look around on their own. Katie and Artaimís, their families actually were just dirt poor...sort of? Both of them were sponsored by noble families — the Dunbars in Katie's case, the Blacks in Artaimís's — but that was a recent development for Artaimís, and it hadn't really afforded either of them the opportunity to travel or anything like that. (Or not so far, at least.) Katie had been on the Jassy and Kaunas trips, but that was really it, and Artaimís had hardly even gone as far as London — from where she lived in southwestern Ireland (somewhere between Luimneach and Cill Airne, Liz thought), London was actually a pretty serious floo trip away, and they rarely had reason to go that far. Pretty much anything they needed they could get at the Refuge, or even just Luimneach or Port Láirge, before learning she'd be going to Hogwarts all of a sudden Artaimís had barely ever even left Ireland. She'd never even left the country before, at all.
So obviously they ended up doing touristy shite. They sat at their table in the café — rather fancy, a lot of granite and sparkling glass chandeliers and shite, a holdover from when this had been a place for the old aristocracy, and thankfully there was Seer-friendly stuff marked on the menu — going over the map Liz had been given at the keyport and the informational stuff she'd been given being shown to their room. Bordeaux had been a pretty important city for a very long time, dating back before the Romans had conquered the region fucking ages ago, when it became a major port city, passing through the hands of a bunch of different kingdoms ever since, even held by the English for a couple centuries, the centre of their rule on the Continent back during their mediaeval wars with the French. In the last century or so before Secrecy the region had been a hotspot for rebellions and shite, part of the run-up to the (muggle) French Revolution a century or two later, and then it'd become one of the most important cities in magical Aquitania, both for economic and political reasons. It'd actually been a conservative stronghold during the political reform process in the late 18th Century and through the 19th, but these days had a far more radical reputation, thanks to being one of the primary channels through which a lot of the support given to the French Communalists had gone through, and then being the site of resistance against the British/Dutch occupation during the war...
A lot of shite had happened here over the millennia, was the point, so there were countless monuments and museums and whatever else. It was also a relatively important cultural centre, so there were theatres...and music things, and food markets, and an important economic centre, a lot of metal-working in particular. And wine, obviously — this was Bordeaux, even Liz knew that about Bordeaux. While they drank their coffee (or tea) and poked at pastries, they looked over everything, what they might be interested in checking out. Most of their group weren't nerdy enough for walking around in a museum to seem like a good use of their time — that seemed more like something Liz would do if she were here with Hermione — and the shops and markets and shite were less attractive than they might be, since two out of the five of them didn't have much money. (Chelsea had some, at least, though it'd need to be changed into the local currency first.) They could still look around, if they saw something they really liked Liz and Susan didn't mind paying for things, which just made everyone else feel a little self-conscious, since they were already paying for the hotel and the food, but honestly, they were filthy rich, what was the point of being ridiculous magical nobility if they didn't get to buy things when they felt like it...
They ended up spending a fair fraction of the afternoon wandering around a sort of...artsy, craftsy district, she guessed. Like, actual arts, painting and music and sculpture and whatever the fuck, but also craft trades, like ceramics and glass- and metal-working and textiles, that kind of stuff. They had some things set up for guests, in some places almost a festival thing going on, musicians performing out on the square, food carts and whatever around. Some of the workshops had demonstrations going on, or even little lessons where the participants were guided through making a simple thing they got to keep — some of those were directed at kids, but some for adults, at different levels of experience, they had calendars and shite up with the schedule. It was a pretty busy place, a lot of other tourists around — not just from other countries, but she assumed the Aquitanians mostly weren't locals either — but so long as Liz kept her drugs up it wasn't a big deal. It's not like anyone was paying her any special attention, so.
They caught one demonstration of someone making a fucking sword, which was pretty cool, even if Liz spent a good part of the show wondering what the hell it was for. People didn't really use swords anymore these days...unless they were fighting goblins, she guessed, but that didn't exactly happen very often either. They did look cool, though — the shop putting on the show had some things on display, she spent a little time looking over the weapons just because. One sword was super detailed, the handle and the sheath with a bunch of pretty work in blue and silver, which she was kind of tempted to buy, despite the fact that she had absolutely no use for it. Where would she even put it?
(Honestly, she was kind of jealous of the fucking beautiful old goblin works the Blacks had, the Potters hadn't participated enough in those conflicts to end up with anything cool.)
Since they didn't have anything better to do, they ended up catching a basic ceramics class, which Liz guessed was interesting enough. The whole thing lasted, like, maybe an hour and a half — it was a little awkward, because the 'class' was bilingual, in gascon and French, Liz and Susan had to translate for Artaimís and Chelsea as they went. (Katie's French was mostly good enough to follow along, only asking for clarification a few times.) Liz's little bowl turned out pretty decent, all even without some of the lopsidedness the others ended up with, and she'd even managed to add some little ridges and a decorative curl to the lip...but her painting job was much more sketchy. They actually had time to do all that, since magical kilns greatly accelerated the process of firing them, and, apparently Liz was pretty decent at making things with her hands, but painting was too similar to writing, so her issues with shite handwriting got in the way. Most of the girls actually had the inverse issue, their painting job looking pretty nice but the underlying structure of the bowl more lopsided, which was kind of frustrating...
Aside from her disappointment with her own painting work, Liz had way more fun than with it than she'd expected, honestly, though she wasn't sure how much that was just due to the drugs. Other academies had art classes and shite, she might consider trying out a ceramics class or something? Might be interesting.
They ended up spending more time in there than they'd planned on — the little ceramics lesson hadn't been something they'd planned ahead for, done on a whim — so they crossed a few things off the itinerary they'd started with, and decided to move straight on to the winery. Of course, the actual vineyards were out in the country somewhere, but the different places had shops in the city, and they had tastings and shite, which sounded interesting? They were the youngest people there by a large margin, and they actually almost weren't let in at all — the man only changed his mind about it when Susan said that she and Liz were Ladies of the Wizengamot, and were taking responsibility for the other three.
(Aquitania didn't have a drinking age in the modern muggle sense, but they could still be held liable if they gave alcohol to young people and they ended up getting themselves hurt. But if that did happen, in their case it would be Liz and Susan's problem, so.)
That was also interesting enough, she guessed, though some of them were way too sweet for her. The little tastes of things they were given were pretty small, but they got enough of them that they were still a bit tipsy by the end — Liz and Artaimís noticeably more than the others, since they were both kind of tiny. (Liz was even tinier, but she'd ended up having less than Artaimís, thanks to handing off the too sweet ones to Katie or Chelsea, and she was also slightly high to begin with.) The wine had made Katie a bit, er, affectionate, all hanging close and resting an arm around Liz's shoulders and smelling her hair, but she didn't really mind. It was honestly kind of nice, and Liz was tipsy and/or high enough that the occasional glances they were getting weren't bothering her that much. It might be a bigger deal if people around gave a damn, but women could even legally marry in Aquitania, nobody cared.
They'd gotten a couple little things from food carts and stuff, but not having eaten much probably made the alcohol hit harder, so it seemed like a great time to go to dinner. It was getting into the evening now, so it was about time anyway. The biggest factor going into which restaurant they picked was how noisy it seemed, wanting to get somewhere they'd actually be able to hear each other talk without having to shout, and also wouldn't be so crowded that it'd make Liz too overwhelmed. Of course, that being what they made their decision based on ended up pointing them to a rather nicer restaurant than they'd been expecting, all rich wood and embroidered tablecloths and curtains and live music, deep and shadowy and candlelit, but whatever. She got the feeling they were somewhat underdressed for this place, but the host didn't actually seem to care — he just checked they could afford it before getting them a table, wasn't even snooty about it.
A few of the customers gave them some dirty looks but, you know, who cares.
Turns out, fancy fucking places didn't work quite the same as normal restaurants Liz was used to. Their waiter came by to verbally discuss what the kitchen was making today, there were a couple options but there wasn't a real menu. Well, there was a menu, but that was just for drinks, so. There were actually a couple different courses, which was slightly ridiculous, but they had gone to a quiet, nice place on purpose, so whatever — Katie, Artaimís, and Chelsea felt a little out of place, and various shades of guilty/embarrassed over Liz and Susan paying for everything again, but a large part of why they were here was just to make Liz comfortable anyway, if it weren't for her they'd be somewhere much less over the top. Honestly. Anyway, the biggest complication was making Seer-friendly stuff, some of her things would have to be handled separately, but the waiter promised they'd figure it out, just might be some minor delays.
There were some delays anyway — the kitchen was working in batches, preparing courses for multiple tables at a time, they had to wait their turn — but that wasn't a big deal, they could just hang out chatting and listening to the music. Also, Liz ended up more drunk than she'd started — the other girls were smart enough not to have more alcohol straight away, but she'd noticed a coffee drink with chocolate and both orange and cinnamon liqueurs in it, and she'd had to try it. It was excellent, but it being great meant she'd downed it pretty fast, and even with the drink being mostly coffee with only a little alcohol, she was tiny, so. Oops. She didn't make too much of an idiot of herself, at least.
Dinner was fucking great, which, it better be, considering this wasn't exactly a cheap place. For the first course they'd each gotten a choice of soup, and there were also little side plates with, like, some kind of pan-fried sausage things, little dishes of foie gras with bits of fruit confit or whatever, that kind of thing. Liz had a seafood bisque of some kind, which was fucking great, and both her and Chelsea didn't touch the foie gras (for different reasons), but the other three inhaled it all anyway, so. Then after that there were several different things, like, some kind of roast bird, and a braised beef thing, lamprey cooked in some kind of wine sauce, and fucking omelettes for some reason? most of them involving mushrooms somehow, which was apparently just a thing here. All of those were in small portions, the idea being for them to divide them up between the five of them, it worked out pretty well. Though, Liz didn't like the bloody lamprey, the texture was just weird, but Katie and Artaimís loved the things, so whatever...
Dessert was slightly disappointing. There was some kind of cherry-chocolate cake which looked fucking incredible, but unfortunately it wasn't Seer-safe — Liz tried a tiny sliver just to check, and blech, no no no, making her skin crawl. The waiter person said they just used too much sugar in things these days (imported from the muggle world), she basically had to settle for bits of cheese and a drink made out of some kind of creamy thing mixed with a berry liqueur, which was fine, she guessed.
The drink was pretty good, actually, she was just disappointed she couldn't stomach the chocolate cake. She didn't notice she was pouting over it until she caught Katie thinking it was adorable. Oops. At this point, she'd had too much alcohol to even try to cover it up — Susan had gotten a bottle of wine for the table to go with dinner, and Liz continued to be tiny, she was the most obviously drunk out of their group — but she'd also had too much alcohol to be too badly embarrassed about it, so whatever.
By the time they were done with dinner, it wasn't really that late, but they went straight back to the hotel anyway — partly because both Liz and Artaimís were noticeably intoxicated, and the responsible people in the group thought it was better to be safely back in their rooms, just in case. They didn't go straight to bed or anything, though, instead Susan picked up another bottle of wine from the café downstairs (honestly, was she trying to make Liz do something stupid?), and Katie and Chelsea poked through the vinyls and found something to put on, and they fucked around with the cards and board games for a couple hours. They all ended up very silly by the end, blame that on Susan for buying more wine.
Toward the end of the night, Liz and Katie spent, like, ten minutes or so crammed together in one of the armchairs, which was very nice. It's not like they were snogging or anything...or, well, there was some kissing, but not only that, at least. Just, you know, being all snuggly and shite — Liz might have been too self-conscious about it, especially since this thing with Katie was still new, but she was a bit drunk, so. It might have gone on longer, but it was nice enough that there was a very real risk that she might start crying — it was still humiliating how she kept crying over fucking nothing, it'd be bad enough if it were just the two of them, but with the other three girls around she definitely wanted to avoid it — so at that point she decided to call it a night and went to bed.
Thankfully, Liz hadn't had so much to drink that she woke up with a hang-over — she did feel a little bleh, and she could definitely use a drink of water, but other than that she was mostly fine. It was somewhat early, Artaimís was still asleep, but now that she was awake feeling thirsty was going to be too distracting to get back to sleep. Quietly, she quick grabbed a change of clothes — the set she'd picked specifically to wear to their appointment — along with her bath things, and slipped out of the room.
She was slightly surprised to feel Katie's mind already out here...especially since it was even earlier than she'd realised, a subtle blush of sunrise still in the sky. She had gone to bed a little early, she guessed, but apparently Katie was the only other one up already. Following the feel of her mind, Liz immediately spotted her sitting in one of the chairs by the window, in shorts and a vest, reading a book. She glanced up at the soft sound of someone moving around, smiled when she spotted Liz. "Good morning." It sounded a little off, the vowel in "good" coming out more like the œ in French, but sometimes Katie's accent slipped like that.
...Actually, that might just be Scots — Liz was pretty sure Katie's native language was a funny mix of Scots and some dialect of Cambrian, whatever the proper term for the thing the rural farmers up around the Borders spoke — but whatever, the point was she still understood it. "Good morning. It's early, how long have you been awake already?"
Katie shrugged. "We usually get up around sunrise at home, I'm used to it."
"Sounds fucking miserable, but okay."
"Don't have a lot of artificial lights out on rural farms — people mostly rise and fall with the sun. In the summer, that means waking up early." Well, sure, that made sense, Liz guessed she just hadn't really thought about it. "Also, a lot of the harder field work is better to get out of the way before the height of the afternoon, when the day's at its warmest. Mornings are active, back home, afternoons are lazier."
...That also made sense, when she thought about it. "Sounds miserable, hate mornings. Though, not as much these days as I used to, probably being better about Seer shite helps?" Liz shook the thought off. "Anyway, I was going to have a shower quick, and find some bloody coffee."
Katie's lips twitched, inexplicably amused. "Sure." Liz had turned and gotten about halfway across the common room to the bathroom when she asked, "Hey, what time is our appointment?"
"Um, around noon. It should take like an hour, I figured we'd get a late lunch right after, then decide what we're doing from there."
"So, we have time to go out and find breakfast somewhere, just the two of us?"
Liz turned to glance back her way, feeling one of her eyebrows arch up — she was kind of tempted to ask you mean, like a date? but that felt silly even in her head. "Sure? There are cafés and shite around, we can go do that."
"Of course there are cafés and shite around, we're in France." Her tone was low and dry, but an edge of bubbly giddiness came through the feel of Katie's mind anyway.
"Technically this is only France on the muggle side, magical France is a few kilometres that way," she said, pointing in the direction she was pretty sure was northeast. Katie knew that, of course, rolling her eyes at her — she hadn't meant France literally, but Liz wasn't sure what figurative France was supposed to be. "But yeah, I'll just go have my shower, and then we can go."
After the words had already left her mouth, Liz was belatedly self-conscious of the fact that she'd just flatly told her girlfriend (still new-feeling) that she was going to go be naked for a bit — it didn't help that Katie did have a brief, vague sexy thought about Liz in the shower. But it passed quickly, without Katie drawing attention to it, just giving her a nod and a little smile. "See you in a bit."
Liz put a sealing charm on the door, on top of just locking it, which she probably wouldn't have felt the need to do if she hadn't made herself randomly self-conscious about the fact that she'd be naked in here. What with her desensitisation scheme, she was better about this kind of thing, but that didn't mean she didn't still have moments.
The medical exam they'd be going through to clear them to participate in the tournament was somewhat less extensive than she'd done to prepare for her meeting with Sauvageau — she'd done it the previous times with Severus which, while always somewhat awkward, wasn't really a big deal. Though, they normally only did the couple brief tests that might change over time, he was already familiar with all the big things about her health, so there were portions he actually just filled out by memory or copied from her file in the Hospital Wing. Since they wouldn't be able to do that here, this one would be longer than the ones with Severus, but still not as extensive as her last big medical exam for the blood alchemy stuff. She had brought notes from Severus to help explain some of the big things they might notice, it should go relatively smoothly.
Of course, she would still be getting looked at, and she'd planned what she'd be wearing with that in mind. She actually had the same dress she'd worn on her last healing trip — psychometrically-pleasant linen, a soft green with a little bit of geometric embroidery in white along the hems. It was laced up the back, enchanted to do and undo itself at an intentioned brush of a finger, to make undressing and re-dressing easier, which she would have to do at some point during the exam. She'd also be wearing muggle-style strappy heels, which could be slipped on and off easily enough, and she'd be skipping any physical cosmetics in favour of just charms, in case anything might interfere with the healers' spells she could just remove them and reapply them when it was over.
One of the things that had changed was what she would be wearing under it: the somewhat-too-small vests she normally used to flatten her chest weren't the best thing to be wearing, for Seer reasons. Mostly, she'd just tolerated that, since she was neurotic enough about her disfigurement that it would do more harm than good to replace them with something that'd be psychometrically better, but do a worse job of hiding her lopsidedness. But, since eliminating bad shite had been making such an obvious improvement in her mood, she'd started deciding, well, fuck it, you know? This was something that was going to be fixed soon anyway, and yeah, she was going to be self-conscious about it if there were other people around — and that was a problem she could avoid pretty easily just by making sure she was high for it. She was probably going to need her drugs to get through being manhandled during the exam anyway, so it really made very little difference. For underclothes she instead had a simple white cotton shift (and also pants, obviously), imported from one of the special Seer-friendly producers in Egypt, and fuck, it felt really nice, honestly a little distracting at first until she got used to it, smooth and soft and tingly against her skin.
When she'd made the decision about what she'd be wearing, she hadn't realised she and Katie would be going on a date just before the appointment.
Liz could make out her lopsidedness, looking at herself in the mirror. It was subtle, it was possible it wouldn't be obvious to someone who didn't know what to look for? But she could tell, her chest visibly misshapen.
...
And that was fine. Katie had seen her scars before — walking in on her changing, during the Jassy trip — and there would be strangers around, yeah, but nobody would be paying her any special attention, and she'd definitely be taking a dose of her drugs before leaving their rooms. It wasn't a big deal, she'd be fine.
After applying her cosmetic charms, wrangling her stubborn bloody hair into a plait and tracing over her eyes and darkening her lips and colouring her finger- and toenails, she still needed a moment to gather herself, standing at the door breathing. Gritting her teeth, she broke her sealing spell with a sharp slash of her hand, and forced herself to step back out into the common room. Unreasonably self-conscious, her skin practically crawling, she had her arms folded around her, somewhat hiding behind her old clothes, which was silly, but she couldn't help it. Katie was standing in the kitchen — writing a note to leave for the others, which was good thinking — Liz quick slipped by, she had to go get her bag out of her room, be right back...
She might have delayed in the bedroom longer than she really need to, waiting for her drugs to kick in. But even while being fucking ridiculous over her stupid scars, she couldn't help an odd, stomach-flippy thrill — her blood alchemy procedure started on Thursday, three days away, this was practically the last time she'd ever have to worry about this.
Once she'd ridden out the moment of dizziness as the drugs kicked in, Liz swept back into the common room, quietly closing the door behind her. (Artaimís was still sleeping.) "So," she chirped, "we about ready to go?"
"I'm ready if you are." Katie had also changed while she'd been in the shower...or, well, partly, anyway. Liz was pretty sure those were the same unfair denim shorts from yesterday — Katie had never encountered denims before starting at Hogwarts, had quickly decided she loved them — and a sleeveless top that seemed to fold closed across her front, Liz was certain it was tied in place. So, also picked something that could easily be removed for exam purposes, she guessed. "Susan is in the bathroom, by the way — she said she's probably just going to order something up to the room for them, she'll make sure Chelsea and Artaimís are up in time."
Sounded like it hadn't been necessary to leave the note, then, but okay. "Right, good. So, leaving?"
Once they were out in the hall, Liz belatedly remembered that they'd need a key to get back in, but Katie had taken one of them, right. Her mind fizzling a little with clingy amusement — she'd realised right away Liz had taken her drugs, she got very silly sometimes when she was high — Katie snagged her hand, and they started off down the hall. Katie was leading them toward the stairs, which, Liz might have preferred the lift, if just because going down stairs was always vaguely awkward in heels, but it wasn't a big enough of a deal for her to say anything. Besides, between Katie's grip on one hand and her other hand on the bannister, she wasn't in any actual danger of stumbling.
Liz could feel Katie's eyes on her, would know she was watching even if she didn't have a direct line into her mind, through their hands. Her attention had been drawn by Liz's slightly awkward steps on the stairs — it'd totally slipped Katie's mind that the stairs might be an issue, since she didn't often wear heels herself — so Liz could see that she'd noticed that Liz's lopsidedness was visible almost right away. Her eyes didn't really linger on that, though, passing over it as... Not really ignoring it, just— It didn't have the same importance to her that it did to Liz, that she was all disfigured and shite was just a fact that Katie was aware of. Little different than her eyes being green, really, not exactly positive or negative, no particularly strong feelings about it either way.
So, actually not like Liz's eyes being green, when she thought about it, since Katie liked her eyes.
What Katie's attention did linger on was how the way the laces pulled the dress in around Liz's body outlined her waist and the curve of her hips — her face felt noticeably warm by the time they got down to the lobby.
Stepping out of the hotel onto the street, Liz cleared her throat. "So, where are we going?"
"I was thinking we'd pick up some things from somewhere, and find a spot in the gardens. In that first square with the keyport, you know?"
Liz glanced up at the sky, shrugged. It was a reasonably nice day, warmer this far south — compared to Ireland, anyway, she actually might start getting a little hot in this dress later in the day, Katie dressed better for the weather — some fluffy white clouds but generally sunny. She didn't like the sun, much, but that was mostly due to her fucking pale skin burning too easily — in the morning and with the trees around there, she should be fine. "Sure. As long as we find me some coffee, I was serious about that. Bloody morning person."
A little low chuckle in the back of her throat, Katie gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Yeah, yeah, you'll get your coffee..."
The government courtyard was already busier than it'd been when they'd come through around midday yesterday, which made sense — as early in the day as it was, it was Monday, more likely to be busy than a weekend. It was loud enough that they didn't really talk much, just weaving their way through the square, making their way back toward the big green square. The street just beyond, there were some restaurants and cafés and stuff, maybe they should pick up breakfast here along the way? Some of them looked a little crowded which, again, made sense, people picking up breakfast on their way to work. They did dip into one of the more crowded ones on this street — unfortunately, Katie's argument that the locals were likely to know the best places was very reasonable — but they didn't end up getting anything here. Seer-friendly stuff wasn't marked on the board, and the workers were too busy to flag down and ask. It'd be a pain to have to wait in line only to be told way at the end that they couldn't do anything for her, so they left and decided to try their luck elsewhere.
Thankfully, it only took a little bit wandering around the edge of the big courtyard before they found a place that was perfect. Things were marked for whether they were Seer-friendly or not, thank you, but also they had a thing where, basically you could assemble your own little charcuterie board thing? Sort of, it wasn't just charcuterie-type stuff, there were also, like, tiny pastries, it was pretty cool. Unfortunately the little pains aux chocolate weren't Seer-friendly, because they were adorable — was it weird to think pastries were adorable? — but whatever, Liz and Katie spent the couple minutes while they were waiting for their drinks talking to one of the workers, putting together their box to carry off.
Their breakfast box tucked away in Liz's bag, each carrying their drink in their off-hand, they wandered through the gardens filling the centre of the square, looking for a decent spot. There were some people hanging around, but not as many as the last time they'd come through — that had been midday on a Sunday, presumably students from the school on the square had been out having lunch, but they were more likely to have classes today. It wasn't too difficult to find an empty grassy patch, a few wildflowers allowed to wander about, speckles of yellow and white and purple, enough trees around it wasn't too sunny in here. It probably would be later, but there were trees on the east side, blocking off a fair portion of the morning sun — it'd be a lot brighter in here at noon, but for the moment it was nice and cool and comfortable. The brush and the trees also meant this spot was somewhat private, breaking line of sight, yeah, this was good.
Once they agreed, Katie drew her wand, and conjured a sizeable blanket with a wide swish. The blanket wasn't that big, it shouldn't have taken that much power to conjure — compared to what she was capable of, anyway, Liz had seen her do more energy-intensive stuff in duels before — but there was a pattern of curling vines with rose blossoms every so many inches all the way around the edge. (The flowers didn't match the plants at all, totally different species, but whatever.) The middle of the blanket was dominated by a circle woven together in a sort of Celtic knot pattern, inside of it a big red heart, which meant the same thing to mages it did to muggles, though Liz honestly wasn't sure if that predated Secrecy or was borrowed in later on.
The volume of the material wasn't at all special, magically-speaking, but the detail was. Looking closely, the stitching was smeared together, obviously not embroidered by hand, the colours just kind of blurring into each other, but it was still impressive. As in, the kind of magic students generally weren't expected to be able to do, impressive — she was already aware that Katie was good with transfiguration magic, so she wasn't really surprised, but still.
But instead of commenting on that — Katie didn't need her to point out it was good work, she knew that already — Liz let out a sharp, derisive snort. "Show-off."
Katie smirked back at her. "Gotta bring my O. game when I'm out with a girl, right?"
"...You know, that phrase kind of has a different vibe to it when you translate it into magical terms." Thankfully, Katie didn't seem to notice the pun she could make with vibe, instead just bursting into giggles at the idea of an orgasm game.
Actually, when Liz thought about it, it was possible Katie didn't even know what a vibrator was — she was aware that mages had equivalent, er, devices, but they were called something different. It was possible one of her muggleborn friends might have mentioned them at some point, but she didn't know one way or the other, and it'd be kind of awkward to ask.
They sat down on the blanket — Liz handed Katie her coffee so she could peel off her shoes first, and use both hands to keep her skirt from getting in the way — and set up their breakfast thing, which was actually pretty neat. The box they'd been given to carry their breakfast in could be unfolded out into a platter, their items inside folded up in individual pieces of wax paper, so, they gently tipped the contents out onto the blanket, Liz quick reshaped the ceramic panels of the box, and then they unwrapped and arranged the items on the tray, very neat. They had tiny pastries, and slices of meats and cheeses, some of them on top of little circles of toasted bread and some of them out on their own. There were a bunch of little things, which added together weren't a huge volume, the diminutive size of each thing meaning they'd been able to pick out a pretty wide variety.
"Right, so," Katie said, once they'd gotten the whole thing unpacked. "Which ones were whose again? I know there were some that we weren't sharing..."
"This one is mine." A crispy layered pastry with crumbly white cheese and sweetened with honey, which might seem a little odd, but it didn't have any sugar in it at all, so it was one of only a handful of their sweet pastries she'd actually be able to eat. "Las terrines here are yours, yech..."
Her mind going all light and giggly, Katie said, "What is it with you and mince on this trip? It seems like the sort of thing you'd like."
"I do, sometimes — unless it's got that weird aftertaste some offal can get, it depends. I don't like it when it's cold, though, feels all weird and slimy..."
"I dunno, seems like a perfectly normal lunch thing back home. This stuff is much nicer though, it's ground fine enough it doesn't have any bits in it."
"Ugh, let's not talk about bits when I'm trying to eat, okay..."
The actual food part of breakfast was pretty great. When Liz had asked for her coffee as strong as they could make it and completely unsweetened, the people at the café had given her looks — and reminded her that they did have Seer-safe honey, but no, she really wanted it black — but they'd done as she asked, and it was very good. Definitely too strong for Katie, though, she even thought the smell was a bit much. The tiny pastries were also great, and the sausages and the dried meats (beef, and one was pheasant, apparently, somehow), and there were a few bits of toast spread with hazelnut butter and dotted with raisins, which were very good. Getting a bunch of little things to try instead of one big thing had been a good decision, it was definitely more interesting.
The conversation for the first little bit was super practical, just sorting out their breakfast, dividing the things between their sides of the platter. A few of them Liz ended up splitting in half with carefully-aimed cutting charms, since they only had one and they both wanted to try them. It took a couple minutes to get it all sorted out, and once they had Katie decided to jump straight into a serious topic. "So, how is Snape doing? I don't think I've heard news for a couple days."
"He's doing fine. Well, you know..." Liz made a little ambivalent, wiggling gesture with one hand. "Not fine, but he's recovering well enough. They moved him out of close observation the day after you dropped by. He's still not on his feet yet, but he's mentally present enough to start getting frustrated with being stuck in bed."
"I'm sure Professor Snape makes a great patient," Katie drawled, a dark, cool sort of amusement fluttering in her head.
"Yeah, it's annoying for literally everyone involved. When I was there the day before yesterday, they were already talking about getting him home soon as possible. Maybe today, or tomorrow."
"Is he going to be ready for that so early? It sounded like he was in pretty bad shape and, well, you said he's not on his feet yet..."
Liz shrugged. "Normally no, but he's a healer himself, so some of his care he can take care of on his own. Or at the least he can tell if something's a big enough of a problem they need someone to come in. He will need someone keeping an eye on him, at least for a little while, but it seems like Síomha's willing to do that, so."
"Huh," Katie grunted, a flinch of surprise in her head. "I didn't realise they were nurse you when you're injured close. I guess I don't know either of them that well, but."
"Oh, they're getting married."
An intense shivering of surprise in her head, Katie jumped, jerking around to stare at her. "Wait, seriously?"
Liz had just taken a bite of toast and sausage, it took her a few seconds to swallow, humming and nodding her head. "They're not, like, officially engaged or anything, I just know for Seer reasons. It's going to be a couple years yet, I think, but I'm pretty sure that's happening. They're going to have children and everything."
"...Huh. Wouldn't have figured that..."
It was hard not to giggle at the blank, bemused look on Katie's face, her mind flat and cool and dumbfounded.
There was a little bit more talk about Severus, just, yeah, he was fine — she'd made one of her bonded notebooks for him, actually, she was supposed to write him at some point today — he should be recovered enough to teach by the time term started, but he wouldn't be able to chaperone the tournament. Which meant they would be down a male chaperone, but Liz had already fixed that by just asking Sirius to fill in for him. Sirius was bloody thrilled at being asked, she got the feeling he just appreciated being included in her life things, hopefully the exuberance cooled off a bit by the time they actually went, because he could be a bit much. Thankfully, he wasn't meant to go on the girls' side anyway — there were reasons the team was supposed to have one man and one woman for chaperones — so he shouldn't be too annoying. He'd be Gladwin and Draco's problem.
Katie found Liz passing off dealing with her godfather to Gladwin and Draco very funny. Which, yeah, Liz had to admit that was kind of funny — she got the feeling that watching Draco and Sirius interact was going to be entertaining. Poor stuck-up bastard...
Then there was a little bit of talk about the tournament itself, because of course, that was only a few weeks away. Though, most of their previous conversations about the tournament had been with the team, so they'd been, you know, super practical — talking about their strategy fighting as a team, coordinating their trios, what they thought their prospects were like this time, what they'd heard about other teams, blah blah. This time it was a lot more about the other parts of the trip. What they knew about Sicily, how much time off they were likely to have, and what they wanted to do with it. They'd both have friends making the trip to watch — Lord and Lady Dunbar would even be there, which Katie thought was a good sign so far as her scheme to land a proper adoption went (though she didn't say that part aloud) — so at least part of their time off would have to be spent with them. Katie wanted to make sure they could arrange a date while they were there, which, yeah, Liz didn't see any reason they couldn't do that.
Liz was pretty sure this was technically their first date right now — was it odd to already be talking about what they'd be doing for their second one? They hadn't even finished their breakfast yet. She didn't doubt there would be more dates — she was pretty sure they'd be together through the entire school year, beyond that her Seer feelings were fuzzier about it — but still, that seemed off to her. Not the expert with this stuff though, so, whatever.
"I guess we've got to be a little careful with what we do," Katie drawled, smirking at her a little. "Maybe sneak out at night? I get the feeling the Mediterranean sun is not going to be kind to you."
"It should be easier by then, actually."
She blinked, a shiver of confusion in her head. "Hmm?"
Liz shrugged. "Yeah, that's one of the things I'm fixing with the blood alchemy."
"You mean..." The confusion only intensifying, Katie wasn't sure how to interpret that. She kind of thought Liz was suggesting that she was going to be significantly changing her skin tone — she'd known Liz was going to look different the next time she saw her, but this was starting to sound like more than she'd been assuming.
"I won't be that much darker. It'll be noticeable, because I'm so impossibly pale," she said, gesturing at her own forearm — stupidly white, enough she could easily make out the greenish-blueish lines of veins, all but glowing in the indirect morning sunlight. "But it's not like I won't still look like a white person when it's done. The big difference is that I should actually be able to tan, instead of just burning straight away. We can go out in the day without me being fried to death, is the point."
"Ah, okay." Katie was sort of curious about the other work Liz was having done, and also a little... Well, she liked the way Liz looked now, and she would miss her hair — she wasn't super happy about Liz going and changing on her. But, while she didn't really like the idea, she understood that it was important to Liz — that she badly wanted the scars gone, in particular — and it wasn't really her call what Liz did with herself, so. She expected it to take some getting used to, was all. Besides, once she processed through that series of thoughts, it didn't take very long for her to move on to imagining their Sicily date. "You know, you could probably pull off one of those southern dresses really well."
"My hair's going to be more red than that, but sure, I will be able to dress like that, when the scars are gone." The mental image Katie was having involved one of those light, silky, backless dresses they had in some warmer places, and it was also really...glowy, sunlight shining on her skin. And also her hair, which in Katie's imagination was lighter and more orange than it would be, but. "Though, I was actually thinking we might want to go out into the muggle town? You know, with the Triwizard Tournament and everything, I might pick up an annoying amount of attention. We could, I don't know, take a walk along the beach there, get some ice cream or something? Or whatever they have down there, I don't think they call it that." She was slightly cheating, she was pretty sure she'd seen a glimpse of that looking ahead through a crystal ball, but they probably would have come up with the idea anyway.
A funny warm bubbly lilt in her mind, Katie gave her a look Liz didn't quite know how to read. "The beach, huh? Planning to pack a swimsuit?"
Liz returned the look, but she couldn't hold her face still, her lips twitching. She wasn't sure what to call that giddy thrill simmering in her stomach and prickling on her skin, but Katie was clearly picking up on it, smiling back at her now. "Like I said, I will be able to dress like that, when the scars are gone. I have a clothes-shopping trip planned with Hermione, since suddenly being a different shape means I'm going to need all new stuff anyway."
"What, going shopping with Hermione and not me? I'm hurt."
The words had Liz hesitate for a second — as much as she didn't understand jealousy stuff, she was aware it was a thing that happened, didn't want her thing with Hermione to cause problems — but the tone on Katie's mind made it very obvious she was just teasing. "Yeah, well, you did say you wanted to get as much time with your family as possible. I'm going to need to get a lot of stuff, it'll probably take multiple trips, so." Also, Hermione needed some proper magical clothes, and she didn't want to accidentally draw too much attention to class stuff by offering to buy Katie things. "Besides, wouldn't you rather be surprised?"
"I suppose that can be fun too. I'll admit, I am a little curious what this new Liz is going to look like."
"Me too." Or, she did know what she was going to look like, because Seer, she was more looking forward to what it was going to feel like. In that glimpse she'd caught, she was pretty sure she'd been wearing a bloody bikini? The bottom had been hidden with a light skirt of some kind, but she'd been able to see the top, and, she could hardly imagine dressing like that, in public, and it was less than a month away...
She had the impression she was going to feel very different about her own body after the blood alchemy was done. Which was good, that was the whole point, it was just difficult to imagine what that was going to feel like. Looking forward to it though, intensely, whenever she thought about it completely failing to hold in the excitement, her lips twitching with a giddy grin — Katie smiling back at her, still feeling a little weird about the blood magic itself, and Liz looking different, but easily picking up on how happy it was already making her, and it hadn't even happened yet, she might not entirely like it but she was still happy for her...
(Honestly, she appreciated how willing Katie was to overlook her own discomfort with this kind of magic, it hadn't occurred to Liz before she'd brought it up a couple weeks ago that that might be a problem. And yeah, she could admit that having all of her skin replaced was kind of freaky when you thought about it, so, she understood being leery of it, but Katie was still legitimately happy for her despite her own misgivings, it was nice.)
Talk bounced around a bit, nothing particularly important, things going on back at Katie's place, things Liz was doing to manage Seer stuff, blah blah. Katie had altogether too many siblings — she couldn't imagine having a single baby, much less ten, Katie's mum was insane — and then she had a bunch of cousins and shite too, their rural community up there somewhere around Lothian far more populated than it sounded at first glance. Not for the first time, Liz thought that the population issues some of the nobility talked about sometimes were overexaggerated. It wasn't so much a population issue as a class issue — the number of people who had access to wand magic and did things like go to Hogwarts had declined, yes, the nobility had shrunk in size quite a bit over the last couple centuries, but the country had plenty of people. They were just mostly farmers, or packed into what were basically slums in the cities, and weren't allowed to do actual important shite. And that wasn't even counting the nymphs and the wilderfolk, who'd be a pretty big fraction of the population if they were given proper citizenship and everything. But, Liz guessed when these types talked about our people, they weren't talking about poor commoners and nonhumans.
Again, not for the first time, she wondered how Communalist thinkers would describe the situation in Britain. She should look into that, she was sure there'd be something somewhere. She kept that train of thought to herself, though — Katie's politics might be a bit more radical than those of most of their classmates, but not full-on Communalist radical, so.
At one point they talked a bit about school, and, like... Liz would be transferring out after OWLs, yeah — at this point, she was getting an increasingly strong feeling that it was going to be Durmstrang, but that wasn't settled yet — but she didn't know what she'd be studying, exactly. Katie was hoping to get into the Aurors, or maybe professional quidditch, Liz was already aware of that — she was even kind of sort of helping with getting her an in with the Aurors, setting her up with Dora and everything. Part of her scheme to not have to leave home, you know, she got that. Katie had a firm goal, even if there were multiple ways she could think of to get there, but Liz, just, didn't, really. Of course, she didn't need to, since she had Potter shite to lean on and everything, but her lack of life plans was even more obvious when talking to someone who had pretty firm ones.
Even if Katie's life plans seemed a bit odd to Liz — her end goal was to stay home, and have a big family and everything, like what she'd grown up with. Probably not as many children as her mum...but still enough to feel like kind of a lot to Liz. That was the end goal, becoming an Auror or getting into professional quidditch or duelling were just a means to gain enough of a reputation that she could leverage into an adoption with the Dunbars, so she didn't end up getting married out. She did like quidditch and duelling, and had a perhaps unrealistic image of the Aurors' calling or whatever, sure, but the whole point was to continue living in the same rural agricultural community she'd come from, probably literally in sight of the building she'd been born in, and have lots of babies. Which, you know, alien to Liz, but it was what Katie wanted, so whatever, it didn't need to make sense to her. She had firm plans, she knew what she wanted, was the point.
It was still very difficult for Liz to imagine the future, at all. But she didn't know how unusual that actually was. From thoughts she'd picked up from people, and assurances from Severus, the impression she had was that people having as firm of plans as Katie was unusual, at their age. Or, not that unusual? It was pretty normal for noble kids, at least, to have their future more or less planned out for them: they'd have a marriage arranged with some other noble kid when they were fifteen, and they'd have the wedding straight after leaving Hogwarts — or after taking a break to travel, or do Mastery study, if the pressure on them wasn't too intense — at which point they'd be expected to have children pretty much straight away. It didn't get more open-ended until later, when their children were old enough to be off at academy themselves — it was pretty common at that point for nobles to start getting into academics, or some intellectual profession or another, or politics or business, something. When you did see nobles start being active in society younger than that, it was normally because the elder members of their family were literally all dead, like in the case of the Malfoys. Regardless, the point was, most of Liz's classmates did have pretty solid plans for their lives well into their thirties, whether those plans were actually theirs, something they'd decided for themselves, or were just what was expected of them.
They'd gotten to the age that some of the kids in her year had started announcing betrothals over the last few months, which was bloody strange. Not her business, but honestly, Liz couldn't imagine thinking about getting married already...
She wouldn't be getting married, because gay, but that was hardly the point.
She didn't know, she guessed she might go into Mastery study? But, that'd really be going through the motions, it wasn't like she felt particularly interested in anything. She thought she'd go into professional duelling — she definitely had the talent for it, and it'd be interesting, an excuse to travel all over the world and do whatever — and, this was going to sound kind of silly, but instead of doing Mastery study, lately she'd been getting the idea that it might be fun to go to muggle culinary school. Not like she expected she'd do anything with it, just, it sounded fun, you know? That was something she could imagine herself doing, at least, if only for the first...however many years bloody culinary school was expected to take, she had no idea. Only bringing her up into her, like, early or mid twenties? Which weren't really long-term plans, she guessed, but that was the best she had.
Katie actually really liked that idea, which she guessed probably shouldn't have been a surprise. It was just leaning harder into the parts of Liz's personality that she most appreciated — you know, being super scary in a fight, but also such a mum, cooking dinner for her guests and making snacks to bring to team practices and baking biscuits for the werewolf kids and whatever. It seemed very Liz, to her. Which, Liz always felt vaguely embarrassed talking about this stuff, but when Katie put it that way...
At some point, Liz was determined to stop feeling irrationally self-conscious about being super girly, but that day was not today.
They ended up tipping into a very political conversation about the status of werewolves in the country. Liz did understand how that'd happened — floating the idea of going to culinary school, Katie saying that made perfect sense, Liz being a little embarrassed about it, which cued Katie up to tease her about donating baked goods to the werewolf kids, into talking about werewolves generally — but it still kind of felt like it'd come out of nowhere. Thankfully, Katie's upbringing was more culturally than politically Light, so she wasn't on that nonsense about werewolves being inherently evil subhumans or whatever the fuck, and was inclined to be a lot more sympathetic. (Which Liz had already known, obviously, from back when Katie first found out about her donating extra stuff to the werewolf kids, and sending their group homes Christmas gifts and shite.) The registry system was, of course, fucked up — werewolves had to submit themselves to being what were effectively slaves held by the government in exchange for the right to survive. And the living conditions they got in exchange weren't exactly great, either. They were safe on the full moons, sure, but Liz still thought it was a shite deal, and she was a little relieved they were on the same side for this one.
But the topic still ended up making Katie rather uncomfortable. See, Plan A for her future involved getting into the Aurors — given the respect and cultural caché they had in British society, that was probably the easiest way available to Katie to get what she wanted. The problem with that was, if she did successfully become an Auror, than she'd be responsible for enforcing the shite laws against werewolves...and a variety of other awful fucking nonsense the Wizengamot had come up with over the centuries, of course, they just happened to be talking about werewolves at the moment. That thought made her uncomfortable.
She didn't like the idea of needing to fuck over other people to get what she wanted. Especially because she had a nasty suspicion that, when it came down to it, she'd probably go through with it — and Katie didn't like that about herself. Liz really didn't know what to say about that, or if she should even try to say anything at all, at least partly because Katie hadn't said anything about it aloud.
(But especially since, if she really had no other choice, she was pretty sure the only difference between the two of them was that Liz wouldn't feel bad about it.)
So yeah, it was a pretty heavy conversation, so Liz wasn't really surprised when Katie jumped at an opportunity to get out of it.
Liz felt Katie's eyes on her suddenly sharpen, focussed somewhere on her face. She'd been in mid-sentence, but the feeling was distracting, breaking off to give her a look. "What is it?"
"I'm sorry, just, you have a..." She started gesturing at her own face, but then stopped, with an odd sly warm slippery feeling Liz didn't know how to read. Her lips tilting into a smirk, eyes all but sparkling, she drawled, "You know what?" Leaning over, turning onto her hip, propped up with one hand, her other coming up to Liz's face, fingers gently turning her more toward Katie. Face only inches away from Liz's now, she whispered, "I'll get it myself."
Her mind brought close by the fingers on her cheek, Liz could feel what Katie meant: there was a little streak of hazelnut butter at the corner of her mouth. Did she, um...
Coming closer, Katie's nose bumped into her cheek a little, nudging against Liz's as she turned her face at a different angle. And then, the tip of Katie's tongue, smooth and wet and hot, dragged over the skin just above the edge of Liz's jaw, slipping up to her lips. Katie hovered there for a second, breath tickling over her skin, a soft kiss on the corner of Liz's mouth. Then she leaned back a few inches, her eyes dropping down, and then she licked Liz's face again, getting the bit of stuff she'd missed, and then she was kissing Liz, slow and warm and soft, it took her a couple seconds to respond properly, just, um...
Katie pulled back an inch, her nose still tickling against Liz's, her fingers wrapped around toward the back of Liz's head, slipping into her hair. Eyes on hers, Liz could make out in her peripheral vision that Katie's lips were pulled into a crooked smile. It took a moment for her to find her voice. "What the hell was that? You could have just said I had a mess..."
Her mind bright and giggling, Katie just said, "This was more fun."
...Well, sure, but...
Amused by her speechlessness, because apparently Liz was adorable when she got all flustered (ugh), Katie just kissed her again.
A few soft, light kisses, on the surface of her lips — which was still making her all warm and her scalp tingle, at least partly just because the mental contact could make this stuff pretty overwhelming. Especially when Katie was feeling all silly and affectionate, giddy and fluttery. After a few seconds, she leaned in further, pushing Liz back a little, her lips parting, her breath tasting vaguely of coffee and bread and whatever else, Liz's hand unthinkingly coming up to her neck, skin smooth and warmed by the building summer sun, she felt the squirming shimmer in Katie's mind, and then she was leaning in harder, oh, snogging now, okay, her fingers in Liz's hair pressing in against the back of her head, her skin crawling, heart pounding in her lips and her fingertips, hand clutching at the lapel of Katie's shirt (as much for balance as anything), her head spinning...
Eventually she was being pushed back far enough that she was tipping over, Liz had to break away, catching herself on her elbows before she could flop all the way back. Katie followed her, though, her hand still buried in Liz's hair, the kiss was barely broken for a second before Katie was back, coming back in to nip at her bottom lip, catching her piercing a little, Liz let out a hum, muffled by Katie's lips against hers, leaning more of her weight over her, mind flooding through her soft and smooth and sweet, filling her breath with cream and rosemary, Liz let her arms relax, laying down, Katie's hand cupping the back of her head catching her weight so she didn't just flop straight down to the blanket, gently lowering her down, kissing her all the while, Liz's skin crawling and her stomach squirming, her heels directionlessly kicking against the blanket, channelling the pent up energy...
Liz's hand had ended up at Katie's hip at some point, but as she laid all the way down the hand in her hair slipped out of the way — and it came around to the hand on Katie's hip, taking it by the wrist, moving Liz's arm down on the ground against her side. Katie's weight leaning more over her, pressing against her chest — the pressure making Liz uncomfortably aware of her lopsidedness (especially when she noticed Katie noticing) — some of Katie's weight held up by her hand pinning Liz's wrist to the ground, above her head—
A cold prickle trickling down her spine, the nice squirmy warmth was interrupted with something hard, sharp. Not fear, exactly, just, uncomfortable. Katie noticed her tense up a little, pulling back an inch, her breath still tickling against Liz's lips, but enough to make out her face. She hadn't actually said anything yet, but Liz could tell she was wondering if something was wrong.
"I'm okay," she said, sounding a little breathless. "Let me just, um..." It took a little bit of shuffling, finding leverage with a hand on Katie's forearm and a knee against her thigh. Pushing with her elbows and a heel, with a sharp twist she flipped them over, pushing Katie over onto her back, Liz on top of her, pinning her wrists to the ground at either side of her head. She'd ended up in a slightly awkward position, her knees kind of caught with her skirt, her thigh between Katie's legs and her hip kind of digging into her stomach, but she'd managed it.
One of them had also kicked their breakfast tray at some point — she quick glanced over her shoulder but the thing had already been empty anyway, who cares.
Turning back to Katie, she leaned more forward, her weight pinning down Katie's wrists, kissed her long and slow and heavy. Pulling back only enough to speak, she whispered, "That's better," before leaning in to kiss her again.
Katie chuckled low in the back of her throat, coming out muffled and nasal. She waited until Liz had pulled away to sneak a breath to drawl, "Let you do that." Another slow kiss, Katie's tongue pushing up against hers, back arching under her, knee coming up to hook her foot around Liz's shin. "I am stronger than you, you know." Teasing, she actually hadn't quite realised what Liz was doing until she found herself on her back, but she could have fought her if she felt like it.
"Mhm." Leaning back a few inches, she repositioned herself a little, hands moving up to Katie's, fingers slipping together, Katie squeezing back. Meeting her eyes in a hard stare, "Are you sure about that?" Her lips curling into a smirk, she pushed, magic filling her chest and her head hot and sizzling, she could feel her aura crackle against the air...and then she immediately stopped when she felt Katie cringe, leaning away as far as she could with the ground against her back. "Oh, sorry..."
"It's okay," Katie muttered, shaking her head. "Your aura's just really cold sometimes, surprised."
...Truth — she wasn't freaking out over being reminded how much more magically powerful Liz was than her, she'd just been a little startled. A nice warm summer morning, and of course Liz was warm too, flaring her aura like that had just been like getting a sudden frigid breeze right in the face, taken by surprise.
She did feel faintly intimidated, though — like, not super pressing, but something that was niggling at the back of her mind — so Liz let go of her hands, one instead resting on her shoulder and the other slipping through her hair. And she couldn't be that bothered, because once they were freed Katie's hands immediately moved to clutch at Liz, one finding her hip and the other worming up her side, as Liz kissed her tracing over her clavicle, that was distracting...
It didn't seem like she was that bothered, but Liz pressed a silent apology into her mind anyway — her lips were otherwise occupied at the moment — which maybe hadn't been helping things, because that was just drawing Katie's attention to how deep Liz was in her mind right now. She hadn't been unaware of that, just, not really thinking about it, and... She did trust Liz not to hurt her, but...
It was different, from Daphne. Of course Daphne had been aware of how dangerous mind magic could be, and that she'd hardly be able to resist if Liz decided to actually use the power she had over her, but... It had only been theoretical to her, the possibility that Liz might hurt her hadn't seemed real — her faith in Liz had been absolute, and honestly almost...childlike? She meant, naïve, it'd struck her as strange even at the time. To Katie, the threat was real, she was very much aware of the fact that Liz could do things to her, mess with her memories or change her, if she wanted to. It was there, even if she wasn't explicitly worrying about it, ticking away at the back of her mind. Because Liz was only a person, and people did bad things sometimes.
Katie had seen some of the mind magic tricks she'd pulled in duels — especially more recently, doing wild shite like twisting people's senses of the outside world to disorient them (which was a deeper intrusion than most people probably realised, one step short of outright possession) — she'd been present when Liz had enthralled basically all of Gryffindor all at once, that time she'd stared down a dragon, or forced her opponent to surrender in the Fifth Task. And, well, Katie herself was only a person, she admitted to herself that she'd be very attempted to abuse it, if she could do what Liz could. Smooth over arguments by massaging people's feelings, make it so people simply didn't remember embarrassing shite she'd done or mistakes she'd made, steal shite she wanted that it didn't seem appropriate to ask the Dunbars for...
The possibility that Liz might do something to her was far more real to Katie than it had been to Daphne, but she trusted her not to. Not with the absolute faith Daphne had had — like you could count on an oath sworn by one of the old fae, who, like house-elves, were physically incapable of breaking their word — but an active choice she was making. She was aware of the danger, but she cared about Liz, and she knew that Liz cared about her, so she chose to believe in Liz, to trust that she wouldn't betray her like that. Like an oath sworn by another human, which you knew they could break at any time, but you kept faith with each other anyway, because that was simply what people did.
Liz honestly really appreciated that, though she couldn't express to herself why. It just felt different.
Her attention split between turning over that, and the snogging, and Katie's fingers tickling at her throat, that was distracting, Liz shook off the serious thoughts. Pulling back enough to smirk down at Katie, she muttered, "I told you, scary dark witch." That was why her aura felt cold to Katie, it was much darker than her own magic.
"Can't fool me. I know the truth now."
Liz hummed against her lips. "What's that?"
Bubbly amusement fluttering through Katie and into Liz, the hand tickling at her throat moving around toward the back of her neck, Katie whispered, "You're really just a big kitten."
...What?
Distracted trying to figure out what she meant by that — aware Liz was in her head, Katie was playing it too close to see right away — she was caught by surprise when Katie's fingers pressed into the back of her neck. Liz jerked a little, their teeth clicking together (oops), Katie turned her face away, focussed instead on kneading at Liz's neck, shivers running through her, since Katie's lips weren't really available at the moment anyway she just flopped down to rest her head against her shoulder, there was a little bit of shuffling, repositioning their arms, and then Katie was able to find a better angle, fingers pressing in with a constant rhythm now, Liz could feel the strength dribbling out of her limbs, hands weakly fisting in Katie's shirt, breathing against her skin — she'd ended up with her face tucked into the crook of Katie's neck, without really noticing it happening — practically shivering at the warm soft pulses radiating out from her fingers, wandering over the back of her neck and low over her hips, guuhhh...
Liz had absolutely no idea how Katie did this, or why it felt so fucking good. It was honestly a little embarrassing, she could feel herself, just, melting, but she couldn't help it...
Her breath whispering through Liz's hair, Katie muttered, "Kittens have an off-button back here too, you know."
She didn't know, actually, not much experience with cats, but she'd just take Katie's word for that one. "Mean."
"Really? It certainly doesn't feel like you think I'm being mean right now," Katie drawled with a teasing lilt, her fingers pressing in harder, Liz weakly squirming against her, warm and soft and shivering and...
She didn't have a response to that, so she just groaned back at her.
The next little bit was, just, a pleasant smear. Katie working little pinching circles against the back of her neck, tracing her lower spine and over her hip (which was distracting), Liz barely capable of coherent thought, her body and brain reduced to fucking gelatin, she could hardly even move, soft and tingly. She wasn't completely passive, since her face had ended up here she, just, idly kissed at Katie's neck, often needing to pause to breathe — she could feel Kaite twitch as her breath brushed over wet skin, a sexy twitch. Well, Katie was being mean, so Liz might as well be mean right back, working at her neck with tongue and teeth. Between the way Liz was fucking melting — Katie got a thrill from being able to do that, which almost felt smug? but was also definitely sexual, not quite sure what to call it — and the job Liz was doing on her neck, after a bit Katie was very turned on, hot and tense and twisted up. Still keeping up the steady kneading at Liz's neck and hips, just, distracted.
Because Liz was a cheating mind-reader she was aware Katie was having rather explicit sexy thoughts. She was preoccupied with the idea of moving her lower hand around to Liz's front — touching her, with the sun on her skin and the floral scent on the breeze and Liz's breath against her neck, imagining her voice and the feel of her on her fingers — but she was aware that might be a little, you know, soon. (This was literally their first date.) And they were in public, so, there was that.
(Liz tactfully didn't point out that she could put up an aversion paling nobody would be able to see or hear them through. Actually going through with that felt like it'd be a little much, just now.)
Besides, after a long pleasant warm smear, Katie muttered, "We should get going. I think it's about time we need to meet up with the others, to make our appointment."
That was, unfortunately, very reasonable. Instead of moving, Liz just groaned against Katie's neck.
Katie giggled. "Come on, Kitten," she said. Her fingers ceased their kneading, hands instead moving to push gently at Liz's shoulder and hip. "Time to get up."
Forcing her fingers to loosen their grip on Katie's shirt, she pushed herself up a little, frowning down at her from a few inches away. "Did you just call me kitten?"
"Sure," Katie chirped, grinning. "Do we not like pet names?"
"...It's fine, I guess." Liz rolled herself off of Katie — a bit clumsily, still feeling a little weak and shaky. Once she was out of the way, Katie sat up, and set about fixing her shirt. Apparently Liz making fists in it had messed it up, to sort it out Katie even partly untied it to do it back up properly. And, um, it turned out the shirt was tied closed in the front, over either hip, so partly undoing it meant, you know, partially undressing. She was wearing a bra (muggle-made), but still. Liz didn't realise she was staring until she noticed Katie noticing, smirking back at her. Her face hot, Liz forced her eyes away, cleared her throat. "Um. I don't mind, just, rubbing my face in how bloody tiny I am some more."
"Kittens may be tiny, precious, and adorable, but they're also vicious — it doesn't take long for the claws and the teeth to come in, they're deadly pretty young. It's actually a perfect comparison, when you think about it."
...Well, sure, but it was still vaguely embarrassing. But she thought being vaguely embarrassing was part of the point of pet names, so whatever.
Katie just smiled at her, all soft and warm and affectionate (undercut with lingering arousal, which she was trying to ignore until it went away). Once her shirt was put back in order, she pushed herself up to her feet, holding a hand down to her. "Come on, Kitten, we have places to be."
So that was just what Katie was going to call her now, apparently. Rolling her eyes, Liz grumbled, "Ugh, fine," let Katie help pull her up...
(Judging by the teasing they got from the other girls, Liz and Katie were being very obviously couple-y for the rest of the day — except for during the medical appointment itself, when Liz was too uncomfortable from being prodded by strangers. She just told them to piss off, if they didn't like watching them at it they didn't have to look.)
(Liz wasn't about to apologise for being in a good fucking mood for once.)
