When Liz walked into Severus's apartments, it was to find an unfamiliar naked woman laid out asleep on the coffee table in front of the hearth. She just stood at the threshold staring for several seconds, blinking...and belatedly realised there weren't any other minds in the room. That must be the training model for apprentice healers they'd talked about.
Just, fuck, she knew it was supposed to be a simulation of a working human body, but she hadn't realised it'd be that realistic...
While she was still collecting herself, the front door out into the corridor opened, Severus stepping inside. He was carrying a sizeable wooden crate in both arms, a faint tinkling of glass audible from here as he moved — he'd suggested there would be a standard set of potions she'd be allowed to use in the test, must be what those were. "Elizabeth. Close the door behind you."
She twitched, reached back to yank the door closed — probably louder than necessary, she couldn't help cringing a little at the bang. Was kind of frozen in the doorway like an idiot, just, she'd been taken aback by the unexpected naked person in the room, okay. Severus walked over toward the table, moving to set the crate of potions down. Fidgeting a little, Liz continued to stall at the door, before finally lurching into motion. She flipped the strap of her bag over her head, dropped it on one of the chairs. Her arms wrapped over her stomach, she idly wandered around the sofa — trying to act casual, and not stare at the model.
"I suppose you've packed for a couple days."
"Oh, yeah, um. I thought I should be there for all of the First, but there are also things you're supposed to do overnight on the Thirty-First. The priests aren't showing up until the First, but I thought I should be there all day the night before, you know, to have everything set up." It wasn't her religion, of course, but it seemed like the priesthoods were making a point of trying to include her — which was also just helpful of them, since they believed, at least, that these rituals of theirs conferred protection or good luck or whatever. (She had no idea if they actually worked or not, but it couldn't hurt.) If Liz wanted to live in Ireland long term, the priests welcoming her was a super big deal, with the cultural and political importance they had there, so the least she could do was play along and be respectful about it.
Besides, the things she was supposed to do to prepare weren't too onerous. The house was supposed to be cleaned — preferably by hand, with water. She'd already cleaned up before she left, and the house had mostly been in stasis for months, so, despite how bloody big the place was, that shouldn't be too much of a problem. She figured she and Nilanse would just take a quick swipe with damp cloths while they had baking going or something, in case the symbolism of doing it mattered. In the morning, before doing that, there were a couple things she'd have to buy, because apparently if you were doing it proper you were supposed to set up a bedroom for a guest, with a few special supplies and prayers and stuff, and there were a couple particular things she would need for that. A couple branches of blooming blackthorn, for example, she didn't have any of that just lying around...
According to Muirgheal, who she'd gotten most of this from — they'd only traded a few letters at this point, but she'd been willing to explain all this shite for her anyway — the bedroom, and also the extra place at dinner the night before and breakfast the morning of they were supposed to set, was for Bríd herself. The point was supposed to be to ritually welcome in spring, she thought? She wasn't entirely sure why Bríd was associated with spring in the first place — she was a goddess of fire, and a protector of children and livestock, but whatever — but the idea was that by setting up room for a guest and welcoming her with prayers and stuff, they were basically making spring want to come quicker, so they'd get a proper nice end to winter and they could start doing all the spring things well in time, so all the farming stuff could go smoothly. Muirgheal said that, to do it perfectly correct, they were also supposed to leave doors unlocked and open from dinner until after breakfast, and also switch off any environmental wards and stuff, keeping the place warm only with fire — that part made a ritual sort of sense, Liz guessed, if you tilt your head and squint. It was going to get kind of cold in the house, but fine, whatever.
(Fire was pretty anyway.)
The other big thing she was supposed to do was hang up clothes and jewellery and stuff she wanted Bríd to bless when she stopped by — outside, preferably facing the east, where they'd catch the sunrise. Supposedly they should get protection spells if it was done right, but doing it right required prayers and shite while taking them down to properly anchor the magic, so she should wait until the priests came along to help her with that. (Families normally did it themselves, but of course Liz hadn't grown up with this stuff.) During the day of, there was a whole ceremony where people ritually tilled the earth in preparation for the start of planting season (which was still at least a month away) — primarily a thing for farmers, but people did it in their gardens too — and there'd be public parties and shite from the afternoon through the night, which she may or may not bother showing up for, depended on the mood she'd be in at the time. Her participation wasn't really required, but it might be a good idea to at least briefly show her face, for the look of it.
She suspected the Gaelic priests might be low-key trying to convert her, which while slightly exasperating, wasn't really a big deal. She still wasn't entirely convinced that gods and shite were actually real...though she did have to admit there was something going on with her invisibility cloak. That thing was not normal magic, and she still didn't have an explanation for that, and Lily's ritual that Hallowe'en... At this point Liz guessed she'd say she was agnostic — she'd thought the shite at the Dursleys' church was nonsense (after her mind magic kicked in, anyway), but ever since she'd started figuring out how weird her invisibility cloak was, and how the Sight and prophecies in particular actually worked, well, she just didn't know. (It seemed reasonable to assume that there was something out there, but what form that something took? That she had no idea about.) She was rather curious about this stuff, she guessed, she just hadn't spent much time on it, since she had so much other shite going on.
Part of her was kind of looking forward to the ceremony with the priests taking the shite she'd hang up down — if she actually felt magic on them after being out overnight, that would at least be another point of evidence to consider. Supposedly Bríd didn't visit everyone every time, but...
"Muirgheal gave me a whole list of shite I'm supposed to do. Thought if the priests are going through the effort of being neighbourly I should at least play along, you know." Liz didn't feel like admitting that she was actually mildly curious about the religion part, felt weirdly embarrassing. "I should be back by Thursday morning, I think — I definitely won't miss everyone being whisked away before the Task again. We're leaving Friday evening, right?"
Severus was kneeling next to the table, arranging the little potion bottles on top of the overturned crate. Liz had noticed a sharp flicker in his head, his hands freezing for a second, when she dropped Muirgheal's name — this was the first time she'd mentioned that they were still in contact — but whatever he was thinking about that, he didn't comment. She realised it might become a bit of a scandal if it came out that Liz was writing an indentured prostitute, but that was why nobody was going to find out. Maybe she should make one of those paired notebooks for Muirgheal too, she'd already done one for Tamsyn and Hermione... "Yes, Friday evening. Do try to attend as many classes as is feasible — I understand you are keeping up with your Competency study on your own time, but there are advantages in meeting expectations whenever possible."
"I know, I'm still going when I don't have things going on." Well, most of her classes, anyway, she'd been skipping Herbology and Astronomy more than she really needed to. Having the excuses of both her health issues and the Tournament to get out of shite she hated was just too tempting to pass up. "And you didn't come out and ask, but yeah, I'm keeping up with my Competency stuff. I've gotten all the way through the third year material on everything, and some subjects I've actually already finished the fourth year stuff too. I went ahead and ordered some more prep books for the Proficiencies, actually, for Charms and Potions and Enchanting — Durmstrang has placement exams, so, if I'm actually ahead in some subjects that's not a bad thing. Besides, I'd drive myself mad if I had to work on just Transfiguration all the time."
She felt the little flutter of amusement from Severus, but he kept his thoughts to himself. "So you have settled on Durmstrang."
She shrugged. "Probably. I still have time to decide — I don't have to start the application process until November — but I think so. It sounds quieter than the other schools I've been looking at."
"It is quite isolated, yes. I may speak privately with Igor, if you like."
So it was Igor now, she thought Severus had been using his last name before — something must have happened during their talk at the Yule Ball. If she had to guess, deciding to have each other's back since they were both defectors from the Dark Lord, but it wasn't really her business. "You can if you want, I guess, but I don't want to get in just because the Headmaster's doing you a favour."
"I suspect that will not be an issue — your performance in the student duelling league, the Triwizard Tournament, and the Competency exams should ease any doubts that you deserve to be there." Oh, well, yeah, she hadn't really considered the Tournament and her duelling stuff, that was a good point. "We should get started now," Severus said, standing to his full height. There was a crackle of elf magic and a light pop, a coffee tray appearing on a side table. He hadn't said anything, must have arranged that ahead of time. "Did you bring your study materials with you?"
"Oh! Um, no, sorry. I can get those back to you later..." Severus had sent her all his textbooks from his healing apprenticeship shortly after Dumbledore had told her about the healing task, following those a couple weeks later with a selection of his personal notes from that time. (Not all of them, she suspected there'd been notes on Dark Arts and Death Eater stuff in there too.) His personal notes were extremely hard to read — his handwriting back then had been much sloppier than it was now, especially when just making notes for himself — honestly she hadn't used them that much.
"You may keep them for the time being. Try not to lose my notes."
"I have them under preservation spells when I'm not using them."
"Good. Turn around." She gave him a funny look, but did as she was told — not that she minded getting a break from trying not to stare at the model for a minute, honestly. There was a crackle of magic on the air, some kind of paling, and suddenly she couldn't feel Severus's mind at all, blocked by a wall of sharp crackling energy. "Director Zabini has passed along word that each of the Champions will be tested with a series of three healing projects of increasing complexity. Whoever most thoroughly and most efficiently heals their 'patients' within the allotted time will receive full marks, the other Champions evaluated by comparison."
Because healing was advanced magic students weren't expected to know very well, so they'd decided to do it on a curve. "That's something, I guess."
"The projects the Champions will be given will not be identical, but they are being designed to a roughly equivalent level of difficulty. Since the Champions will all be given separate projects, they are able to design somewhat simpler problems for the younger set. Though Durmstrang and Beauxbatons do have a basic healing class, and Hogwarts does not — I expect you will find it difficult regardless."
Liz scoffed. "Figures. Honestly, if I don't do great at this one, that's fine — I'd like to not be winning anymore, just so people will be less annoying about it."
"Given the narrow lead you have over Miss Delacour and Miss Cæciné, that you will no longer be in first place after this Task is likely inevitable." The paling dropped, revealing Severus's mind again, a faint warm flutter of amusement leaking through. "Director Zabini was able to provide me a general description of the problems that will be set to the younger Champions — this should be more or less similar to the state you will find your first 'patient' in. Go ahead."
Liz took a deep breath, and turned around. Severus was sitting in his armchair with a lightly steaming cup of coffee — there were a stack of what were probably essays set on the over-wide arms, must be hoping to get some work done while overseeing Liz's practice. While her back had been turned, Severus must have cast a couple curses on the model, because it looked kind of fucked up now. One shoulder was covered with a big mottled red and black burn, a couple slashes torn into it slowly oozing thick dark blood — a direct hit by a nasty scorching hex, looked like — and it was bleeding around the mouth, the head lolling to the side, something about the bottom of the face looking...wrong, somehow. Bludgeoning hex, maybe?
The burn looked like it would probably be really painful, the lack of any signs of it at all on the air around her kind of disorienting. Liz had to remind herself that she didn't feel anything from the woman's mind because she didn't have a mind. It was just a blood alchemy construct, not a person, it couldn't feel anything.
...That got weirder and weirder the more she thought about it.
Anyway, right, practice, do that. Liz stepped closer to the table — trying to think very professional thoughts, yes, the injuries you're supposed to be healing, focus on that — nearly started sinking down to her knees before changing her mind, reaching down to tap her wand on her boots to untie them. She suspected they'd be at this for a while, sitting on the floor with her duelling boots on would get uncomfortable eventually. Once she had them off kicked back out of the way, then she dropped to her knees, right next to the damaged shoulder. (Which put her back to Severus, but that was fine, it was only Severus.) Right, so, she could see two injuries, but that didn't mean that was all there were, she should start with analysis charms. Closing her eyes, she took a long, slow breath in and out, concentrating, before starting on the twenty-three syllable long litany, her wand swirling in little loops over the model in time with the rhythm of the spell — it turned out analysis spells were stupid complicated, she was retrospectively impressed with how Severus and Pomfrey just cast these things with an easy flick.
The model and Liz's mind were joined with a delicate thread of tingly magic, Liz opened her eyes again. Illusory glowing lights appeared over the model — directly carried into her mind by the spell, Severus wouldn't be able to see them — blobs and curls and jagged lines in a rainbow of colour, some traced or outlined in runes. (Egyptian, of course, her Egyptian still wasn't excellent.) All the normal functioning stuff looked fine, if a little...jittery? The model wasn't in any imminent danger of dying at least, the basic life stuff still going fine...and Liz belatedly noticed that the model did have a beating heart and was breathing and everything, which was just bloody strange. Anyway, it did look like there were only the two injuries, the burn on the shoulder and whatever that was on the face — by the sharpness and the colours of the illusions around them, the shoulder was the more urgent of the two, the face could wait its turn. The burn was relatively serious, parts of the upper layers of skin killed off (she'd gathered that already from the black parts, thanks), though she wasn't sure what had caused the gashes through it. Maybe stress from the impact of the curse, whatever. The damage on the surface layers was pretty bad, covering a pretty big part of the shoulder and upper chest, but it wasn't deep, should be relatively simple to deal with.
Liz dismissed the illusion with a flick, frowned at the nasty-looking wound — lucky she didn't get squeamish from this sort of thing, this could be pretty miserable otherwise — her wand idly tapping at her hip while she thought. Burns burns burns, how did you deal with burns again? Shock was sometimes a problem, but vitals were stable, didn't need to worry about that, and, remove any dead tissue, sanitise the area — mages were less vulnerable to communicable infections than muggles, but letting wounds get contaminated was still a very bad idea — bandage with topical pain and regenerative potions. Give them a couple oral regenerative potions to take care of any internal stuff that got missed...oh, and also an emergency nutrient potion — the healing took stuff, of course, but burns also did weird shite to people's metabolism, so it was extra important for burn patients.
Though she'd have to take care of the slashes before she did all that. Liz quick cast sterilising charms on her hand, plus the neat glove charm she'd gotten from Tamsyn — the same one she used when touching herself, but she was trying not to think about that sort of thing when there was a very naked woman right there, and Severus over her shoulder. Of course, she was only partially succeeding at not thinking sexy thoughts, she could feel the warmth on her face, and casting this particular charm wasn't really helping. (She didn't even use it very often, she preferred the pillow, but apparently that didn't matter.) Maybe it would be better if she did get squeamish about blood and whatever, because at least that would distract her, ugh. Anyway, trying not to be weird about it, she reached with her protected hand, quick cleaned away the oozing blood and—
The instant her hand touched the wound, Liz yanked at back, a hard twist of nausea lurching through her. "What the fuck?"
A swirl of confusion behind her, the motion just making Liz feel more nauseous, Severus asked, "Is there a problem?"
"Yeah, what the fuck is that?"
...Severus had no idea what she meant.
Gritting her teeth, Liz tentatively reached for the model again, the pads of her fingers lightly touching it on the arm — she cringed at the feeling bubbling up through her, hot and twisting and shivering and... Revulsion, something vile clinging at her, heavy slime and burning threads, the texture not quite like sticking her hand in a bowl full of hot sick, but the feeling coming through it was just— It was wrong, somehow, the magic twisted and deformed and grating and— "It's a Seer thing, I don't know, it's extremely gross."
Severus was silent for a couple seconds. "The construct, you mean."
"Yes."
"Curious. An echo from some aspect of its creation, I would assume. I recall some healers with the Sight dislike practising with blood alchemy constructs, though I was never told the reason why in any detail — I suppose we have discovered it." Yeah, Liz would fucking well say so, this was just vile. "Is the feeling too overwhelming to work through?"
"...No, I don't think so." It was really fucking bad, but Liz was used to fighting past people's thoughts and feelings and shite pummeling her all the time in class, she'd make it work. "It's just really gross, took me by surprise." Liz squared herself up, sucking in a deep breath, and went back to work, reaching to gently spread one of the gashes open with her fingers. It felt very very gross, magically gross, she hated this, uughhh...
(On the plus side, the model suddenly seemed extremely un-sexy to her — that wasn't a problem anymore, at least. Kind of hard to have sexy thoughts when she had to fight the urge to vomit just touching it.)
She carefully aimed a much simpler analysis charm through the gash, some sliced blood vessels and torn muscles, nothing really bad. Gently opening the other gash, repeating the charm, same thing...though, actually, one of the ribs down there was cracked. Nothing in here was really burned, though, what... There must have been two spells, the scorching hex first, followed by something which tore open the gashes, the force enough to crack a rib. Right.
"Tonus provehe," Liz muttered, with a tap at the model's forehead — there was a bright ringing noise, a blue white-flash of an illusion running down the length of the model, highlighting its skeleton. The glow lasted long enough for Liz to spot the precise location of the break, but it faded before she got a good look, so she cast the charm a second time. Right, okay, it looked like both sides of the break were still more or less in alignment, she didn't need to do anything about that, the regenerative potions would take care of it.
Healing spells were kind of like repairing charms, in some ways — in fact, you could temporarily patch yourself together with a literal repairing charm in an emergency, but a healer would have to take you apart and redo it correctly afterward or else risk serious (as in deadly) complications — but the much more complex functions involved made the process much more finicky. A standard repair charm queried either the object's 'knowledge' of what it was 'supposed' to be (probably a weird esoteric divination thing) or the user's impression of the same, to return an object to its original state. The damage was perfectly repaired in theory, but in practice imperfections in the magic channelled by the user and minor fluctuations in the ambient environment generated microscopic flaws with successive repairs, so in the real world an object could only be repaired so many times before it had to be replaced. Healing charms were kind of similar, in that they queried the body's 'knowledge' of what it was 'supposed' to be, and helped provide the energy and direction to restore it to that state.
Some of the same limitations even applied. If you were, say, repairing a broken glass, but some of the material was missing, your repair charm might work, but there would be gaps in the final product corresponding to the absent material. Analogously, healing charms worked best if all the bits were still attached, or at least present, so all the material you needed to patch it together was still there. Healing charms had the slight advantage that you could cheat, and draw out more material from elsewhere, stretching what the body already had somewhat, or even prompting it to generate more material to fill in the gaps — though, since the body only had so much in the way of reserves of stuff, there was a limit to how much of that you could do at once. (The process was also rather slow, though with magical prompting could be many many times faster than the body would do naturally.) Like with repairing charms, you needed to actually see what you were repairing, the charms only worked on direct line of sight. Also, you needed a different repairing charm for cloth than you did for ceramic, because the materials were very different and needed to undergo a different process to be put back together; there were also different healing charms for different kinds of tissue, because they also often had very different structures that needed to be teased back into shape in different ways.
So, while the process of sealing up the gashes was tedious, it wasn't really difficult — she was basically just casting very delicate, fiddly, slow repair charms. She started way at the bottom of the wound, occasionally casting analysis charms and cleaning away the blood so she could see what she was doing, millimetre by millimetre weaving the rent tissue back into shape. Most of it was super easy, thankfully, the cuts were unexpectedly clean, it was just a slow process, requiring charm after charm after charm, inching her way back up to the surface. The blood vessels run through the woven material of muscle fibres were somewhat more difficult to handle, a complex interlace branching everywhere like dense roots, sometimes she didn't get things lined up correctly and had to carefully rearrange bits around, a couple times she even had to slice apart things she'd already fixed so she could get the damn little tubes lined up and fixed, reweaving the fibres around them, bloody pain. Once she fixed all that stuff, getting to the top, there was a layer of funny gel-like stuff, run through with more fibrous bits, which she kind of just dragged out from the healthy parts to patch over the hole — she wouldn't have gotten the structure precisely right, but the potions and the body's natural healing process would fix that for her. Another charm drew together the lowest layers of skin (which was actually super complicated, with multiple layers structured differently and with all kinds of shite built into it), but then she was getting into parts that were damaged by the burn, so she stopped there.
And then she repeated the entire process all over again with the other gash. Like she'd said, super tedious.
The burn was quicker and easier to deal with, mostly because the things she was able to do about it were far more limited. Liz didn't have the ability to just grow skin back, like Pomfrey and Severus had done for her a few times now, that was way more advanced healing stuff, but the more basic treatment she could do. Covering the whole area with a quick sterilisation charm, she then cast another charm to...sort of scrape off the dead parts. That wasn't something she had to think about, the complicated spell — seventeen syllables, because of course — took care of that for her. The part of the textbook she'd found it in describing the thing was kind of interesting, they'd exploited how some spells affected living and nonliving materials differently to design a spell that obliterated only dead tissue to leave the living stuff untouched, which was very clever. It only affected a rather small area though, so she had to cast it a bunch of times to make sure she got everything, blackish or yellowish patches gradually vanishing bit by bit. Good thing she'd decided to study Latin, she'd probably have much more trouble remembering these long bloody incantations if she didn't understand what they meant...
Anyway, once that was done, she hit the whole area with a second sterilisation charm, and then reached for the supplies Severus had set out. She needed poultice-packing material, which would be in the packages right here, and some bandages, which, um, okay, there was a roll of stuff here, good. And, um, potions, potions... These were topical ones — you could tell because they were in lower wider jars, with screw-on caps — she had to open a couple and sniff at the contents before she found a topical regenerative, and, um...this one was a standard topical pain potion, okay. That was everything.
Liz reapplied her clean hands charm, and then hit her hand with a sterilising charm just in case, before opening a package of packing material. The stuff was an alchemical product, little squares of a funny porous, gelatinous cloth, she covered the whole burn with the stuff, and then spread some of both potions over it, using her wand to make sure they were thoroughly mixed together and spread over the entire area. Then a second layer of the packing stuff went over that, which was then covered and held in place with bandages — she cheated and used a featherweight and hovering charms to hold the model halfway sitting up, its arms floating up out of the way, so she could wind the bandages around it with some basic charm work. Around and around and around, occasionally tucking and folding things under itself to make sure it was held in place, and...that would do. She quick tied it off, tugged at the edges of the bandages, to make sure it would hold okay. Yeah, that looked about right.
"Good," Severus said, Liz a little startled — she'd been focussed on her work, she hadn't expected him to comment. "Now the other one."
Right. Another analysis charm, and, the damage was pretty minor, just some bruising, and... Frowning, Liz tipped the model's mouth open with a thumb, "Accio." A sizeable chip of smooth white bone came flying out, one edge jagged and cracked, a noticeably different material on the inside, some blood around — one of the model's top front teeth had broken in the impact. That was possible to fix, but at a glance over the potions set out, she didn't think any of those were the right one. Oh well, she just set the chip of tooth aside, cut out a tiny rectangle of the packing material and folded it over the exposed inside of the tooth, that would hold for now. Besides that, it was just bruising, relatively bad, but the regenerative potions she was already going to give for the burns would take care of that. A couple basic healing charms took care of the nicks here and there, but she didn't think there was anything else to do there...
Though there was still something wrong with the jaw, the lower part of the face looking all weird and crooked. "Tonus provehe," a shimmer of the skeleton flashing in front of— Oh, the jaw was dislocated! Um...was there a charm to fix that? She kind of doubted it. Maybe she could, just...
Liz did know a charm that forced the muscles to relax, go all loose, so she cast that, and... Well, the process was kind of weird, but it wasn't really difficult. Gripping onto the model's jaw with one hand, thumb on one side and fingers on the other, every few seconds she tapped the model's head with another mutter of "tonus provehe," adjusted the orientation of the bone bit by bit — slowly, carefully, feeling for any resistance, trying not to tear or pinch anything. Eventually, after a few minutes of fiddling around, she got the thing to, kind of, grind and pop back into place, which felt and sounded unpleasant, but it wasn't like the model could feel pain anyway, so whatever. The jaw was opening and closing like normal again, that seemed better? Liz cast the super long complicated analysis spell again, and...yeah, it looked like the area around the joint was rather irritated, but she thought it was okay? It didn't look like she'd broken anything, anyway.
She fingered through the collection of potions until she found a couple oral regenerative potions, and an emergency nutrient potion, and a pain potion, why not — the burns should be covered by the topical one, but the jaw wouldn't be, so. Once she had them all out, she turned back to the model, picked up the first bottle in line and...
"Oh, shite." She glanced back at Severus over her shoulder. "Um, I don't know the spell to get potions into unconscious people, so I guess I'd just give it these to take when it wakes up," she said, pointing at the line of bottles. Of course, it wasn't going to wake up, since it wasn't real, but that wasn't the point.
Severus nodded. "Very well, I expect the judges will consider that acceptable." He drew his wand, pointing toward the model. He probably wanted to do analysis charms to check her work, Liz leaned out of the way to make sure he could aim properly. A few dense crackles of magic passed by her, crawling over the model — of course, Severus cast them in a blink, silently and with barely a flick, because healers were absurdly good at such finicky charmwork. It was only a few seconds before Severus dropped his wand hand, gave her another nod. "Good enough. If this were a practical exam in an elementary healing elective, as various other schools have, I would mark this as Exceeds Expectations — I'd expect a five or a six from the judges in the Task."
He didn't say anything else right away, Liz left just blankly blinking back at him. It was only basic healing, true, but healing magic was fucking complicated — she'd only been studying this shite for a couple months, she hadn't expected she'd be that good at it yet.
"If you like, I may set up a second problem comparable to the first test, or we may move on to the second level."
"Oh, um... The first one they give us is just going to be basic healing stuff like this one was, right?"
"More or less similar, yes."
"Okay, then it's probably fine to move on to the second test." Might as well not waste more topical potions and packing material if they could help it.
"Very well. Step away, and I'll reset the model and prepare the next test."
...The model could be reset? She guessed it made sense that they'd want it to be reset-able, in case a student seriously fucked it up, but she had absolutely no idea how the fuck that was supposed to work. Probably some weird ritual magic shite, whatever.
That took a few minutes, Liz standing up with her back to the table, idly turning her wand in her fingers. She had the healing Task this weekend, and at the end of the month was the Fifth Task — that was the singles duelling tournament — she'd have Wizengamot stuff in March to do with the education reforms — she was supposed to have some meetings with Sylvia running up to the final vote, and she should probably be at the Wizengamot Hall in person for big votes like that — and the Sixth Task was at the beginning of April — that one was a quidditch tournament, she'd already negotiated with Cedric about how they'd split quality players between them, but it was still going to be annoying. (Thankfully, she could just use most of the Slytherin quidditch team, so it shouldn't be too bad.) Shortly after that was spring break, when she'd have her blood alchemist meeting, and at the end of the month was the Seventh Task — that was some kind of performance or something? Dumbledore said he'd help her prepare, they were going to have meetings about that that month...
For fuck's sake, when did she get so busy? Aside from the last two Tasks of the Tournament, her May and June were pretty open, at least — especially since she wasn't required to take the final exams this year — but over the summer she'd have the duelling event in July, she'd try to schedule her blood alchemy thing for immediately afterward, and she was turning fifteen so she'd be expected to start showing her face at silly formal pureblood events, there'd be one that August, and she'd probably get so many invitations for shite around Christmas this year too, which she'd have to plan around popping down to Switzerland to take the Competency exams, and she would have already started the admittance process by then, hopefully she'd be able to visit Durmstrang over winter break, squeezing it in in the spring would be a pain, which meant she might be going to Sweden around the same time, she should probably look into finding someone to copy the language from as long as she was there, and...
Just, she had a lot on this year, that was all. Nothing she had to worry about imminently, though she should think about drawing up a schedule just to keep everything straight...
Liz was going in circles thinking about her very busy April coming up when the paling went down, Severus saying it was ready now. Right, okay. She turned around and...the model looked perfectly normal, actually, untouched. Or, no, there was a little twitch every few seconds, barely noticeable, some muscles tensing a little for a blink — must be a curse of some kind. Proper cursebreaking was probably beyond her abilities at this point, but she guessed she could give it a try. She dropped back in place on her knees at the table, again cast the overly complex analysis charm.
Yep, there was definitely something there — not that she'd actually needed the analysis charm to tell her that, she'd been able to feel the curse on her own. The point of the analysis charm was to give her more information to work with, but it...really wasn't doing that. Maybe if she had more experience, could read the Egyptian, maybe she'd be able to interpret the thing to give her something useful, but this was pretty meaningless to her. The glows she was faced with were very sharp and jittery and insistent — the bright vivid colours and the eye-drawing edges to the illusions Liz knew indicated this was a potentially lethal condition that required intervention immediately. And by where the bad parts were concentrated, it looked like the curse — depicted by the analysis charm as a jagged-edged greenish-blackish-orangish blob adhered to the model and clawing at the glows depicting the activity of its body — was mostly targeting the nervous system...especially the brain stem and the spinal chord, looked like. There were trails of runes dancing around that Liz couldn't really interpret but, when she thought about it, she wasn't sure they'd give her that much useful information anyway — casting magic on active nerves was very difficult, it was possible whatever the analysis charm was trying to tell her was just scrambled nonsense anyway.
...Right, so, this was completely useless. Okay, then.
Liz dropped the analysis charm, and reached forward with her mind instead, gritting her teeth the whole way. She didn't expect the model to feel any less gross with mind magic than it did with physical contact — and she was right about that, ugh, vile fucking thing, she hated it so much. Except she didn't feel much here at all — besides the disgusting presence of the model itself, and the sour actinic crackle of the curse — because she'd need to use her magic, stupid, fuck. She did the whole pushing magic through your body thing she did in preparation to do a quick-step, but instead of colouring the ambient magic around herself reached out to the model, the curse hot and sharp and cloying against her not-fingers. Right, so, she guessed this was sort of like copying a memory, she wanted to encircle the curse and separate it from the model and pull it away, so she did basically that, started stitching a barrier between the model and the curse, yanking apart the threads joining them, and—
"You're losing her."
"What?" She blinked her eyes open to find the model had started thrashing against the table, very much like Dorea in one of her bad episodes — had she just shoved the model into a seizure somehow? why?! "Fuck! I don't know what—" The thing was starting to fucking froth at the mouth, thick white what the hell even was that shite, Liz grabbed its shoulder and shoved it onto its side, so it didn't suffocate, which was annoyingly difficult to do, shoving hard against her grip, shivering and shaking and jerking around and— Liz managed to free her wand hand, cast the analysis charm again.
The illusion she was presented with was practically screaming in alarm, parts of the model's nervous system burning red...and there were patches of it that had turned into a heavy, sick, too-deep black. Was that... Was that massive cell death inside its brain stem?!
After a couple seconds of gaping at it, there was an even more urgent shift to the illusion as the model's heart gave a last few stuttering beats before going still — it kept breathing for a few more seconds, but soon that stopped too, different parts of the illusion shifting red and black at different rates as it began to die. It hadn't quite stopped shaking, though, weaker little tremors still shivering against her hand. This was definitely too far gone, though, she had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do about this.
"...What the fuck happened?"
"She's dead."
"Yeah, I can see that! What did I do wrong?"
"It can be difficult to determine from a remove, but I assume you were attempting to interpose yourself between the patient and the curse." Severus waited for a response, so Liz just nodded, her hand still holding the 'dead' model lying on its side. "For those with the necessary skill with soul magic, that is a viable strategy for dealing with curses such as this one. It does require care to prevent the curse from latching on to the healer in turn, but that is not a serious danger so long as the curse is properly isolated. And for the more cavalier sort, taking the curse upon themselves may even be the intent — it is not unusual for a healer sufficiently skilled in soul magic to transfer a curse from a patient and then simply subsume it before it can harm them. I've used the technique a number of times myself, it can be quite expedient when time and attention are at a premium." Either for a serious case you didn't have the time to waffle about with or when in the middle of a battle or something, he meant.
But the point Liz latched onto was, "Soul magic? That was soul magic?"
Severus arced up a single eyebrow at her, amusement shivering off his head. "What did you think it was?"
...Well. "I didn't think about it, I guess, it just seemed like the thing to do. It didn't feel that different from mind magic, it's a pretty small step, really."
"And so it is." Liz was pretty sure Severus was making a point with that, but she wasn't sure what, and he moved on without explaining better. "Most cursebreaking in the field of healing requires special potions or ritual to attune the healer's essence to the patient's, or vice versa, or otherwise mediate the interaction between the two — it is not so easy for most to perform. I believe your attempt just now is only possible due to your talent for spirit magic we discovered over the summer."
"Oh." Right, she was aware that 'spirit magic' thing was helpful for healing, she just didn't really know what it was. "You mean, it's kind of like mind magic, but attuning myself to other people's magic, and manipulating it if I want to. The same way mind stuff works."
"That is a drastic oversimplification, but yes, more or less. I expect it's also responsible for the ease you've had extending your aura to affect blood sacrifice, as well as your accelerated progress with quick-step and apparation."
If he said so? She still wasn't entirely sure what the implications of this were, honestly...
"However, while this is a viable strategy — and likely your best option, given the limited time you have to study and the complexity involved in directly dismantling an active curse — it can not be executed so simply. For a curse actively affecting a body, the action of the curse must be halted before it can be removed. In beginning to isolate the curse, you intensified its effects on the patient — essentially, the strength of the curse remained the same but it was concentrated onto a smaller area, accelerating the damage to the patient. That is a risk one may take if the curse is sufficiently slow-acting or the healer quick enough to isolate it before too much damage can be done, but it is always better to first halt the action of the curse if at all possible. Or, alternatively, somehow shield the critical tissues such that the patient is temporarily immunised — which approach is most practical depends on the particulars of the curse."
So, the curse had been slowly killing the model's nerves, and as Liz started to pull it away, the full power of the curse was focussed on a smaller area, quickly killing a hole in the model's brain steam. Got it. "Okay, and how the fuck am I supposed to do that?"
"One must determine the mechanism of the curse, and somehow circumvent it or prevent it from resolving. Once it has been halted it may be safely removed."
...
That sounded difficult.
"Elizabeth, are you all right?"
"What?"
Severus didn't answer, just glanced down at Liz's hand — still tightly clamped on the model's shoulder, firmly holding it in place on its side.
Realising what she was doing, Liz's hand snapped away, a shiver of relief running through her at the sudden lack of revulsion, but still feeling— Fuck, she didn't know, feelings were hard. "Oh, um. Yeah, I'm fine." She was weirdly jittery, but she didn't know why. She guessed the thing dying has been pretty intense, that might be it...
For a few seconds, Severus just stared at her, dark thoughts ticking away out of sight. "This isn't what it would look like."
Liz blinked. "What?"
"In the unlikely event that Miss Black's condition should begin to resist her treatment, it would not look like this."
"Oh, I wasn't thinking about that." But even as she said it she second-guessed herself, frowned, staring sightlessly at the dishevelled blonde mess of the model's hair. "I don't think I was thinking about that. Who knows, maybe I was, I'm not exactly the most self-aware person around."
She'd only seen Dorea have a full-on proper seizure a couple times — most of the time it was just migraines. Several times she'd had these episodes where she'd kind of go limp for a second, which was apparently a tiny blink-and-you'll-miss-it seizure, which were mostly not a big deal...unless she happened to be halfway up a flight of stairs at the time. There had been a while there when Dorea was under healer's orders not to climb the Grand Staircase alone, so someone would be around to catch her if she fell, but those episodes had stopped once the dementors were gone, so. From what Liz had heard, she still got migraines and sometimes she would get "auras", which was a muggle medical term for some weird pre-seizure symptom stuff, that never actually progressed to a proper seizure, her treatment catching it right at the edge, which sounded rather stressful for Dorea but it was better than actually having the seizure.
That first one in the library was still rather scary to remember, honestly. Liz hadn't known what was happening, and Dorea's mind had gone all— It'd freaked her out rather badly at the time, she still didn't like thinking about it.
...Maybe she had been thinking about Dorea. It hadn't really been conscious, but, that would make sense.
"Why do I still..." Liz trailed off, not really sure where that sentence was going. Her throat tight with frustration, even if she'd known what the hell she wanted to say it would have taken a few seconds to find her voice again anyway. "We're not even friends anymore, not really."
"Relationships are rarely so simple."
"It is simple, she—" Feeling the ominous prickle in her eyes, Liz cut herself off with a sharp breath. "I don't want to talk about this."
For a moment, Severus just silently watched her, and she thought he was going to make her talk about it. That was hardly unusual, after all, sometimes he insisted that something was important enough that they couldn't just pass it off, they should actually deal with it. (More to the point, Liz should deal with it, and not just ignore her problems and hope they go away.) Liz felt tension build as the silence dragged on, anticipating the seriously uncomfortable conversation about Dorea they were about to have, feeling herself hunch down under the weight a little and— "Fair enough."
Liz sighed, trying to keep it quiet, to not make it quite so obvious how very relieved she was. She did not want to talk about Dorea.
(She'd tried, really hard, she hadn't done anything to her.)
(Because it didn't matter what she did, it never did — just like it hadn't mattered that she hadn't actually been cheating off of Dudley's maths test. Liz was wrong, always, even when she did the right thing it was still wrong, because it was Liz doing it. It was as simple as that.)
"If you wish to continue, I may reset the model and set up a second test."
She did consider it, but only for like two seconds. "No, fuck it." Slamming her wand back into its holster, Liz flopped down to lay on the floor on her back, glaring up at the ceiling. "Just, fuck it. Unless you can teach me how to recognise the entire range of curses they're going to be using and how to 'halt' them or whatever the fuck, just in the next couple hours, then it's fucking pointless. I'll still try at the Task, I know the Goblet might punish me if I don't bother, but I'm just smashing my head against a wall at this point. There just wasn't enough time to learn healing from scratch, and there's nothing we can do about that."
There was a flash of some unpleasant feeling from Severus at the beginning, not sure what that was, but it was quickly buried with something softer and...some shade of sympathy or something, she didn't know, whatever. Not disappointed or annoyed with her, at least. Which, um, that was a concern, now that she thought about it — Severus had gone through all the effort to get a model for her to practise with and everything, she hadn't been thinking about that... Instead, after a brief pause, he admitted, "I suppose you're right about that. Given the complexity of the subject matter, you have made remarkable progress with healing magic in such a short time. Personally, I'll feel more at ease knowing you're proficient enough to hold yourself together long enough to reach a proper healer in an emergency. We'll just have to be satisfied with that much, no matter how the Task turns out."
...Honestly, Liz hadn't expected Severus to take her giving up at something this well. She'd thought she was in for a lecture, at least. She didn't know how to feel about him being so cool about it.
"I would prefer you hold on to those healing texts, and continue your studies when not occupied with other matters. But I understand it is not an interest of yours, so if you make little progress from this point, that is acceptable. We may be finished for the evening."
"Right, thanks. And, um, sorry for... I don't know how hard it was to get your hands on the model..."
"It was hardly any trouble at all. I told an associate of mine at Saint Mungo's that I have students here who are interested in studying healing, and he handed a pair of models into the care of the school. I understand they were slated to be replaced with an updated design regardless. They will be kept in storage in the Hospital Wing going forward. Poppy is pleased to have practice models to better train promising students with — she has petitioned the Board for such resources on multiple occasions."
"Oh." Well, that was good, then — Severus had exploited the opportunity of Liz needing practice to do Pomfrey a favour...and also Saint Mungo's, when she thought about it? Obviously it was better for the hospital long-term if promising students coming out of Hogwarts had more experience with healing, so. It did sound like this bloke had just given Severus two of these models for free, that was probably why. Liz was aware Pomfrey sort of acted as an unofficial healing teacher, giving informal lessons to students who asked or were recommended by their head of house, it was a whole thing. "I'm glad me being stuck in this Tournament could be an excuse for you to solve one of your other problems, then."
She felt a sharp flicker from Severus, his eyes on her, a faint tingle of his mind nearing hers. Checking for sarcasm, she suspected — he wasn't going to find any, she was being completely serious. She glanced 'down', found him standing over the table, a big bottle of some kind of transparent potion in one hand. While one of her hands went self-consciously to her thigh — it was fine, her skirt hadn't ridden up when she was flopping over, just reflex — Severus said, "Yes, it was quite convenient. I believe Poppy has finally forgiven me for that stunt we pulled with your spinal injury last year."
Liz rolled her eyes. She remembered Pomfrey had been extremely irritated with them for doing that ritual to instantly heal her back without her knowledge or supervision, which Liz had mostly just found annoying. It really didn't seem like any of Pomfrey's fucking business to her.
The procedure to return the model to its default state was relatively simple — but then, Liz supposed it was designed to be fixable, so that made perfect sense. Severus drew a thin stream of the potion out through the bottle with curly little swirls of his wand, sprinkling it down over the model, lips twitching with a whispered litany. Eventually, there was a sharp snap-crackle of magic, a thin puff of blue-white vapours lifting off of the model, and it was done. Severus put the bottle away again, a flick of his wand covering the model with a conjured sheet. Probably just to make Liz more comfortable, which wasn't really necessary at this point — how super gross and wrong the model was had abruptly made its appearance entirely unappealing. Which, Liz wasn't sure why, exactly, it wasn't like it actually looked any different, but Seer shite was weird like that sometimes.
"It is still quite early yet, if you wanted anything before you left." Like a drink or food or something, he meant.
"...I don't know, dinner wasn't that long ago, and I'm really not hungry. That thing was extremely disgusting, you know." It was still odd how strong her reaction was, but, well, Seer shite was weird sometimes, who the fuck knows. "Or... You know that cinnamony-creamy thing? I don't know what you call that, that thing's great."
Amusement pulsing off of him, Severus said, "Of course." She felt him moving away, going to mix her drink — which, he really must not be annoyed with her if he was willing to do that without even being properly asked, good. He needed to step out into his office to get something, when he came back in he said, "You will only be getting the one, as you intend to floo home."
Liz rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know. The floo is bloody miserable, I'm not about to try it drunk." At least Hogwarts wasn't very far from the Refuge, but the water crossing was still miserable...
A couple minutes later, Liz was sitting on one of the armchairs, her bag shoved out of the way, curled up hugging her mug to herself. She'd hardly even tasted it yet, just holding it under her face — it smelled amazing, cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves and apple and cream, this shite was great. Also it was warm, Liz still hadn't gotten very great at telling when she was cold. Of course, that she was bad at that for some inexplicable reason was something she was aware of, so she'd gotten better about anticipating it, making a habit of dressing warmer in the winter. Changing out of her uniform robes after class, she'd pulled a cardigan on over her dress, and she'd already been wearing the muggle cotton legging things, the scarf holding her hair back today one of the ones with a bit more substance to it, wrapped securely around her neck. It was hard to imagine she'd be too cold like this, but it wasn't like she was wearing gloves — her hands had gotten cold when she hadn't been paying attention, the ceramic against her skin was almost painful, hot and sharp and prickly. As delicious as this thing was, Liz was more just enjoying the smell and the warmth at the moment.
(Maybe she should consider wearing gloves regularly...)
"I've been meaning to ask," Severus started after several moments of quiet, she blinked her eyes open, "but there have always been other concerns when we've met since term resumed. I have heard via the interminable gossips among the staff that your study group has continued to meet."
Liz grimaced. "You're asking how I'm dealing with Daphne being around all the time."
"Yes. It's perfectly normal to need some time to recover from that sort of emotional upset, and being forced into close proximity can make that more difficult."
"I'm fine. Well, no, it—" Cutting herself off with a sharp sigh, Liz took a sip of her drink, buying herself time to figure out what the fuck to say. Though, this shite was good, she should get the recipe from him so she could make it at home... "I mean, it's super awkward, obviously. We've barely talked at all since then, honestly, and I can feel her..." Liz trailed off, her fingernails tapping at the ceramic.
They didn't talk at all, their friends had made a point of putting them on opposite ends of the table from each other. Liz had told everyone not to be angry with Daphne over it, that it wasn't her fault, and apparently Daphne had also told people the same thing, so nobody was taking sides or anything, so they'd apparently conspired to try not to make it too uncomfortable for them. They were kind of doing the same thing with Susan and Hannah at the same time — though some people had taken sides on that one, it was complicated — Susan normally ended up sitting with Liz and Hermione and Padma, Hannah opposite with Daphne and Tracey, the two ends of the table separated with various Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. Tracey had actually apologised to Liz for not being around much these days, which was silly, Tracey had been friends with Daphne for like a decade already, of course she'd want to stick close to her — Tracey had actually seen this coming, had warned them and everything, thought the whole thing was predictable but still kind of...tragic? She didn't know...
As much as their friends had been trying to separate them, they couldn't stop Daphne from looking at her — and Liz could feel that, every time. It was honestly hard to concentrate on any of her school work during study group meetings because of it.
"I hurt her. I didn't..." Threatening tightness building in her throat, Liz forced out a sigh, trying to break it up with another sip. "I know it was the right thing to do, I haven't changed my mind about that. It just— It wasn't going to work, me and Daphne, and... If it didn't happen then, something would have come up later, and, well, it wouldn't have been any better if it happened later, you know. And, I did explain all that, but I still hurt her, I can feel it every time she so much as glances at me, and... I just hate this, that's all.
"But I'm fine, you know," she insisted in response to the cold hard something in Severus's head. "Like, I miss her, obviously, it... Well. My friends are making a point of being nice, they're scheming — I caught it from Lily, they talked about it on the train back, they're doing it on purpose and everything. And, that's not so bad, honestly, I thought it would bother me but it's kind of..." At some level, the thought that there were people who actually liked her was still a little surreal. She never knew how to react to people being nice, it took her aback every time. "But it's not the same, I can tell my mood hasn't been great. Not, like, really bad, a problem bad, but not great. But I'm not like completely miserable or anything, I'm doing fine, mostly. Just, it fucking sucks is all, you know? Feeling other people's shite is miserable, especially when it... I wish I didn't have to do it, you know."
Feeling Daphne hurt whenever she looked at Liz, yearning and regretful and frustrated and concerned, and knowing that it was Liz's fault, sucked. Sometimes a part of her wished she could go back to not giving a damn about anyone, because it could be fucking miserable.
(Liz did actually know for certain what guilt was supposed to feel like now, but she wouldn't exactly call that a good thing.)
"So, yeah, it's awkward, and it's terrible sometimes, but I'm mostly doing fine. You don't have to worry about it or anything."
Through the cold whatever the hell that was came a warm bubbling of amusement, a wry sort of smirk tilting Severus's lips. "I'm certain you realise I will worry regardless."
Yes, well, that's just what happened when you gave a damn about someone, wasn't it? Feelings sucked like that. "Yeah, I know, I'm just saying." Honestly, she'd rather Severus would forget about it, because knowing he was paying attention made her uncomfortable for some reason, but she realised that was an unreasonable thing to ask. "But forget about my drama, nothing's even happening. I've had a pretty uneventful first month of term, honestly — well, other than the bloody dragon, of course. What about you, how's things with Síomha? Wait, didn't you make a whole point about the three of us going out to dinner or something over break, I completely forgot about that..."
There was a flash of exasperation from him, making Liz flinch a little — he didn't enjoy talking about his relationship with Síomha with Liz any more than Liz had liked talking about Daphne with him. Letting out a thin sigh, "Yes, I had intended to, but in the end our respective schedules were tight enough it simply wasn't practical. It would still be appropriate for the two of you to meet properly, but it will have to be delayed for another time."
Because, of course, it was normal and expected when adults were dating to meet any kids they had at some point. Severus was still her legal guardian, so she realised that was technically what it would be — as bloody odd as it still felt to put herself in the category of Severus's kid in her head, other people talked (or at least thought) like that all the time, so. "Yeah, that's fine, whenever that happens, I guess. She seems nice enough. I mean, not nice, but, you know what I mean."
"Yes, I know what you mean," he said, flat and cool, no hint at all of the laughter bubbling away in his head audible on his voice.
"Shut up."
"Did I say something?"
"Don't play dumb, I can feel you laughing on the inside."
"I could instead laugh aloud, if you prefer."
"No, don't do that either — it's always bloody surreal when you do shite like laugh, like you're a normal person or something."
Severus continued laughing on the inside. Which was fair enough, she'd been at least halfway trying to be funny that time. But he didn't keep laughing, it trended toward a quieter sort of thoughtfulness — ticking by in that way his mind often had, steady and clicky like the innards of a clock or something. Some kind of...deep cool feeling she didn't know how to read coming off of him in soft pulses, he stared down at his drink — he'd gotten himself something while mixing hers she didn't know enough about liquor to tell what it was — idly sloshing it this way and that, the ice tinking against the glass. She waited, it seemed like he was working his way up to saying something, or was at least considering it, it took several moments of quiet before he finally spoke. "Síomha recently suggested her family and I should meet."
...That wasn't that weird, was it? Granted, Liz didn't know how these things went, but she was pretty sure that was a normal thing for people to do, eventually. They'd been dating for, what, four months now? Was that long enough for meeting the family to be the done thing? Liz didn't know, but. "Don't you know her mum already?"
"Professionally, yes — Raghnailt is a healer at the sanctuary on the Hill." Right, Liz thought she remembered something about that. "I've encountered other Ailbhes before as well, now and then over the years. It's a large family."
Liz was under the impression that most Gaelic families were large. The Cambrian concept of the family had modernised somewhat ages ago now, the old Celtic clans splitting up into the smaller Houses that existed today — the nobility were an exception, for the most part, since a household splitting off would mean giving up legal privileges, but generally. But the Gaels had mostly kept the old clans as they'd fossilised by the time of the 15th or 16th Century or so, not dividing as their numbers increased as the other half of the country had. So, there were fewer different Gaelic families, but they were huge, there were whole villages and shite all held by the same family, it was a whole thing. Which kind of came back and bit them in the arse, since it was illegal to marry anyone in your own House no matter how distantly related you actually were, so a lot of Gaels couldn't legally marry literally anyone in their home town, but whatever, she was sure they figured it out.
But anyway, she didn't entirely get the point. "Okay? Isn't that normal?"
"She meant formally," Severus said, as though that actually explained why he was being weird about it.
"Yeah...? I mean, I kind of assumed when you said she wanted you and her family to meet you meant, like, visiting officially as her boyfriend or whatever. Like, Hey everyone, this is the bloke I'm shagging, say hello." There was a sharp lurch in his head, Severus shot her a look. "What? I'm fourteen, I don't know how this shite works." She had met Daphne's parents, but never while they were actually dating, funnily enough. "I just mean, that's normal, right? I think I've even teased you about it before and everything. I'm not sure why you're being all weird and thoughtful about it."
Severus rolled his eyes — which was always vaguely funny, seemed too undignified for him — gaze again falling back to his glass. He was quiet another moment, a simmering of something dark and warm and uncomfortable at the edge of his mind, just out of sight. "I never have."
"What?"
"I've never been introduced to a woman's family before." It was worded rather vaguely and generally, a woman, but Liz still got what he meant.
"...Oh." Well, she guessed she could see how that'd be a little awkward then. "Everyone already knows who you are, because of the stuff around the war...and also me, I guess. So they probably expect you to be you about it, pretty sure you can't fuck it up too bad."
He shot her a flat, unamused look. "Thank you, Elizabeth, your support is touching."
"Shut up, I'm just saying. And, you know, I don't think Gaels care about the war stuff as much anyway — in Muirgheal's head, you were Síomha Ní Ailbhe's boyfriend before anything else."
There was a bright flash in his head, his lips twitching — apparently Severus found that as funny as Liz did. "That is not the problem."
"Then what is?" That he'd been a fascist terrorist once upon a time sure seemed like the sort of thing that would make meeting his girlfriend's family super awkward...
Severus didn't answer right away, his thoughts ticking away dark and cold, and, something. When she drifted too close, curious — which she knew she shouldn't do, but she couldn't help herself sometimes — his mind firmed up, blocking her off, obviously not wanting her to see whatever he was thinking. And it didn't seem like he was about to say anything either, sitting relaxed back in his chair, staring at his drink all dark and brooding. Honestly, Liz thought Severus must have been practising that kind of look since he was her age, he had it down pretty well by now.
(Liz was aware some of the Slytherin girls found Severus in his quiet, brooding moods to be fascinating in a sexy kind of way, which she personally found completely incomprehensible — she was already dark and broody enough for two all by herself, she didn't find it appealing in someone else the slightest bit whatsoever. Also, you know, men, not her thing.)
"...You know, I'm still very certain you and Síomha are getting married. I even have a pretty good feeling on when."
He grimaced, an odd hot flinch going through his head, took a slow sip of his drink. "That thought is still indescribably surreal."
"Yeah, well, I still think this—" She paused a second to gesture vaguely between the two of them. "—is extremely fucking weird, you get used to not over-thinking it too much. I don't even think it's that out there, really, just, I guess life happens when you're not low-key convinced you're inevitably going to get killed spying on a Dark Lord." As far as Liz knew, which wasn't necessarily very far — not like Severus told her everything that went on in his head, after all — that was the only real difference between his thing with Síomha now and the other women he's dated before. Well, Síomha was also a scary dark sorceress who could definitely murder people who annoyed her if she felt like it, she guessed it might help that they had that in common...
There was a brief pause, before Severus admitted, "I suppose. It is getting late, and I expect your preparations for the holiday will take some time."
Uh-huh, yeah, she definitely believed that was why he'd abruptly changed the subject. "You know, if you don't want to talk to me about your hang-ups with relationships and stuff, you can just say so."
Severus arced up a single suggestive eyebrow at her. "I believe I just did."
...Fair enough.
He did kind of have a point about her having things to do tonight, so she quick finished off her drink. She hadn't put her boots back on yet, stepped into them and retied them with a swish of her wand, one at a time, slung her bag back over her shoulder, and...she didn't think she was forgetting anything. Had she taken anything out of her bag since she got here? She didn't think so, and she didn't see anything of hers sitting out...
While she was dealing with that, Severus had gotten up and moved to the hearth — expanding it a little to make it more comfortable to go through. Liz was bloody short enough that it wasn't that big of a deal, but having to stoop through the thing didn't help her balance, yeah. He stood to the side of the hearth, waiting to shrink it back down once she was through, the flames playing off the glass in his hand, flickering orange and gold. There was still dark, moody lurching going on in his head, still brooding over whatever the hell was bothering him in there. Liz remembered Severus had been blindsided by his relationship with Síomha from the beginning — though she still wasn't sure how you could not know something was a date until halfway through — and it was obvious that something bothered him about how it was going, she got the feeling he still didn't entirely believe her cheating Seer insight and—
Oh no, wait, that was super obvious when she thought about it.
As she came up to the hearth, Severus reached up toward the lintel — to hold down the thing with the floo powder for her — but before he could Liz grabbed his wrist. His mind slammed closer against hers, but he was so smooth and cool, tight and contained, it wasn't really distracting. Staring up at him, meeting his eyes, she said, "You're not going to turn into your father. It'll be okay, trust me."
He lurched back a little (not quite pulling his hand out of her grip), his occlumency cracking around her, little filaments leaking through too mixed up and confused for Liz to really make sense of. His lips had parted a sliver, as though he meant to respond, but it didn't look like anything was coming anytime soon.
Which was fair enough, she had just stabbed him right in a sensitive spot — he'd done that to her more times than she could remember, she was aware how terribly disorienting it could be. She'd make it easy on him and get out of here, just let him sit with that. Letting go of his wrist, she tipped up onto her toes to pluck out a bit of floo powder herself, shot him a grin. "Anyway, bye, see you Friday." The flames flared green, she called out her floo password, and the fire snatched her spinning away.
Of course, Liz was pitched out of the hearth to slam down on her side against the wood floor of the dining room — dammit, she fucking hated the floo. At least her cardigan and shite stopped her from getting friction burns this time. She rolled onto her back, and for a moment she just laid there, staring up at the ceiling overhead, half-hidden and shadowy in the darkness.
It had been a guess. She meant, it'd been a pretty good guess, educated, but she hadn't known for certain Severus was weird about his relationship with Síomha, Liz's prediction that they'd be getting married, because he was at some level convinced that he'd become his father. An abusive bastard, she meant. Liz understood that feeling, she very much didn't want to grow up to become Petunia herself, and some of the shite Severus had said about his family growing up, well, it was extremely fucked up, that was all. That he might worry he was broken and would end up the same seemed reasonable to Liz — he might be very firm about insisting she wasn't whenever Liz referred to herself as broken, but it was obvious to her that he thought the same thing about himself sometimes. Maybe not as explicitly as Liz did, in those words, but that was basically what it was.
And he didn't have to be worried about that, it'd be fine. He wasn't going to turn out like that, he was better than that.
Severus wasn't a good person, necessarily, Liz hadn't forgotten that he was literally a serial killer. (Not to mention the whole joining a fascist militia as a teenager thing.) But sometimes even monsters had standards — Liz was the same way, as much of a creepy devil child as she was (and also literally a murderer), she knew there were lines that she wouldn't cross. Even seemingly minor things, like talking around direct orders with the Potter elves. Liz was well aware she wasn't a good person, and she couldn't imagine she ever would be, but when it came to the very specific things she felt strongly about?
Síomha was going to be safe with him, and he was going to be a good dad. Liz had a pretty good feeling about that.
(And she was the closest thing he had to a kid right now, so she would know.)
Brushing the thought off with a sigh, Liz pushed herself up to sit. "Lucernae." She winced, blinked against the lights — apparently she'd been lying here thinking long enough for her eyes to adjust. "Nilanse?"
There was a brief pause, before the familiar little elf popped into existence within arm's reach to her right. "Hello, Liz! Are we going to start preparing the house for the holiday right now?"
"We don't have to do that until tomorrow, I was thinking we'd get some stuff going first. Or, I don't know, is Imbolc the kind of holiday you give little kids sweets for?"
A funny tinkling ringing from her head, Nilanse's head tilted, vivid red eyes narrowing. "I'm thinking all holidays are being ones young children are given sweets for."
Liz shrugged — she wouldn't know, she'd never gotten shite like that, and Dudley had been a fucking pig every day of the year. "I thought we'd bake some nut bread for when the priests are over, and some biscuits and stuff. And something for breakfast while we're here, I guess. We won't eat all of it, but the orphanages can just take what we don't need again. So we have some stuff going in the oven while we're doing other prep stuff, you know. Oh, do we have apples?"
"Ah, yes, but not here. I can go get some. Almonds and hazelnuts?"
"Sure, whatever works. Meet you in the kitchen?"
"Yes," Nilanse agreed with a nod, her ears flopping. A snap of her fingers and another pop, and she was gone.
Flipping the strap of her bag over her shoulder, Liz left it in the middle of the floor, kicked off her boots before padding into the kitchen. She was about halfway through collecting ingredients when it occurred to her that baking shite for orphans just because she could seemed like a stereotypical good-person thing to do, like, kind of over the top about it, even. All of her friends who knew about it thought it was really sweet and all. But Liz didn't think it should make that much of a difference.
She was pretty sure little dirt-poor orphan kids were just one of her lines — even monsters had standards, after all.
(Plus she just liked cooking, and having kids to hand extra stuff off to was a convenient excuse to do it more, but she felt really girly when she admitted that.)
Nilanse appeared standing on the counter with a pop, dropped a canvas sack Liz knew should be nuts. "The apples are being much lower than I thought, but I can be taking berries from the greenhouses."
"If that's what we have, that's fine. Is there anything that's, like, thematically appropriate for the holiday?"
"The berries are being good for that, I think. There is also a dried fruit pastry, with flakes of a candy made from cream. We make that one sometimes, elves can have and I think it isn't being too sweet for you, I can show you how..."
Wwooooooo...
Okay, this time I plan to write a scene or two for First Contact before continuing with this fic. Bye, now.
