Thursday this year had turned out to be one of Liz's favourite class days. It started off on a pretty iffy note, since Liz really did dislike Transfiguration — though, if she was being honest, she didn't despise the class quite as much as she used to. There was something about McGonagall's sharp, stern manner, the way she stared, that always left Liz feeling uncomfortably exposed, like... Well, more than anything it reminded her of Petunia looking over some cleaning job she'd done, looking for the slightest thing out of place, Liz certain she was about to be in trouble. She never actually was, of course — the only thing McGonagall would do was feel vaguely disappointed in her presence. Liz's parents had both been excellent in Transfiguration, among McGonagall's favourite students, she'd never entirely stopped expecting Liz to be less shite at it than she was.
Transfiguration with Carpenter was better. He supposedly followed McGonagall's lesson plans precisely, so Liz didn't get any better help figuring out what the fuck she was doing wrong, but his bedside manner (so to speak) was much easier than McGonagall's, so. And Transfiguration this year wasn't that much harder than last year, honestly. They'd continued with animate transfigurations, while getting more into inanimate compound transfigurations — transfiguring materials made of multiple materials or with multiple separate parts, as well as more complex materials like fabrics — and this spring they'd be starting in on vanishing proper. That is, not charms that integrated a vanishing element, like some cleaning charms, but just straight free vanishing, which was a rather more complicated topic.
Vanishing was easy enough, she was actually ahead on that one — she'd gone from casting integrated charms, to silently casting integrated charms, and from there straight to free vanishing without really thinking about it — and she didn't find the more advanced transfigurations they were doing this year any more difficult than the supposedly simpler ones they'd done last year. Like, they were still hard, she still lagged toward the slower end of the class in practical lessons, but it wasn't hard-er. Maybe this was a mind mage thing, but she didn't find the more complicated visualisation necessary any harder to do, and the somewhat more fiddly spell-shaping wasn't a big deal. She just had problems getting the spell to resolve correctly (apparently a common problem for mind mages, which continued to be annoying), but that problem wasn't any worse with more complex spells. And, it was kind of nice, because her reading on mind mages and a couple experiments with vanishing and alchemy suggested conjuration would be much easier for her than transfiguration — class would almost entirely be focussed on vanishing and conjuration starting next year, so she only had a few more months of this shite to go and she was done forever. That thought was good for her mood, if nothing else.
After lunch they had Potions, which was one of her favourite classes, she almost never skipped it. Vitale was fine, even if she was still a little disappointed she didn't have Severus this year, and Liz generally found the actual process of brewing quite relaxing. Though, there was rather less straight brewing in Potions than usual — after the first couple of months easing into it, many lessons started with their pairs being handed a small bottle of potion, and being told to design an antidote and/or determine what it does. (It wasn't actually necessary to know what a potion did to formulate an antidote, so the latter was a more difficult question.) Making an antidote was, technically, brewing their own original potions from scratch, if with a very simple, limited scope, just seeing what was in the potion they were given and doing it inside-out, like. At least, "inside-out" was how Liz thought of it, that didn't always make sense to her partner — sometimes Sally-Anne, sometimes Susan, sometimes someone in their study group who was having trouble, they rotated around.
Formulating a potion with the guardrails of countering an existing potion was relatively simple (even if Liz had trouble explaining her thinking sometimes), but it was only giving her new appreciation for how fucking complicated potions theory was. Which wasn't a surprise, really, ritual magic was often considered an art more than a science for a good reason, just, the more practice she got at it the more impressed she was with people actually figuring out how to make things do what they wanted them to, that was all.
And after that was Arithmancy, which wasn't Liz's favourite this year, honestly — Vector had an energy about her that had a way of making literally everything she said interesting to listen to, a talent Mr Dáithí simply didn't have. They were wrapping up the theory necessary to start designing original spell-effects — the final project for this year would actually be to present an original charm — but that was very maths-heavy, and...
Well, Liz wasn't super great at Arithmancy, honestly. She could follow along fine, for the most part, her marks were pretty good, how exactly the mathematical descriptions of spell forms translated into something castable just didn't quite...click, for her. Hermione was unsurprisingly great at it, and so was Padma, and Lily and Draco were pretty good too (they were a little bit of a surprise), but it just wasn't Liz's thing. She suspected figuring out a spell form simple enough she could reify into something she could actually cast was going to be difficult, but she guessed she had a few months left to figure it out...
She was great with Runes, though, understanding and designing enchantments was intuitive to her in a way Arithmancy simply wasn't. Granted, most of the enchanting she'd done was stuff she got out of a book, or that Lily had left behind for her, the only original enchanting the little projects they were doing in class this year, but still. They'd been working with Egyptian this year, which was a little more difficult than the runic script they'd learned last year — the 'Norse' enchanting script reflected the formal academic description of enchantments, so were much easier to translate to effects, while Egyptian glyphs were used observing the actual language's own grammar, sometimes even using symbols phonetically, the meaning of the text often far more poetical. Though, while more thought had to go into the language of the enchantment, Liz almost found it easier? She meant, instead of designing the spell you wanted to happen, theoretically, you basically just said what you wanted the thing to do, which was really much simpler, when you thought about it.
Also, Severus had guessed right, a year and a half ago now, when he'd suggested Liz would like Babbling — she was very blunt sometimes, and could not give less of a fuck about the proper etiquette of the British nobility, or even of a classroom setting for that matter, it was very entertaining. It helped that, while she didn't exactly approve of Liz playing around with enchanting on her own time, she also didn't try to convince her not to. Suggest Liz bring a script to her before actually carving it, sure, but she was very much aware of the fact that there was no way to stop teenagers from doing stupid shite, so she tried to present herself as a resource to be tapped instead of an authority to be avoided. Fewer students hurt themselves in stupid accidents that way.
...Kind of similar to Severus's approach with her in some ways, when she thought about it. But she guessed they were friends, so.
And then after dinner she had evening Divination class. Evening classes were often rather slow and loose and casual, that feeling only intensified when it was a class led by Miss Eva. Divination taught by Miss Eva was pretty chill just in general, which did make sense — like potions, divination was more an art than a science, but unlike potions you weren't going to accidentally kill the person standing next to you if you fucked it up badly enough. The impressions you got divining could also be rather fuzzy and vague, so it wasn't unusual for class discussions to involve talking about one feeling or another someone had gotten, the class trying to help them suss out what the fuck it meant. (There were plenty of techniques that worked for non-Seers, but apparently their brains were just worse at instinctively interpreting what they picked up. Unless they had magesight, supposedly.) Their afternoon session, on Monday, was usually rather more theory-heavy, but Thursday's evening session involved a lot more lounging around — in one of the sitting rooms scattered around the school instead of the classroom proper — tinkering about with scrying aides, discussing what they saw over cups of tea.
Miss Eva had actually recommended that she peek at people's memories of what they were trying to describe, since she was a Seer too and might be able to help them figure out what it meant. (It only sometimes worked — they weren't Seers, so their magical senses were flawed to begin with, their memory lacking some of the information Liz would have gotten in their place.) Also, the other students attempting to feel her presence and interact with her looking at the memories was good mind magic practice. She didn't order them to let Liz in her minds, just suggested it might be a good idea. Liz avoided the people who were most obviously uncomfortable with it (like Dorea), but she let herself be a bit more openly creepy in Divination class than most other times. Her classmates definitely noticed — the Patils even mentioned that she sometimes reminded them of one of their aunts back in India, who happened to be an Oracle, which Liz thought was supposed to be a compliment?
Also, Liz thought Miss Eva was very pretty, in an odd, spacey, serene sort of way — also, she never wore shoes, funny details like that would stick out at her — but Liz tried not to notice that too much.
Though, when she thought about it, the spaciness was probably a side-effect of whatever grounding potion she was on...
Liz skipped class more than was probably necessary, thanks to the dual excuses of her mental health Seer -related problems and preparing for the Tournament, but she mostly went to all of her classes on Thursday. (Unless she was actually having a bad mental health day or had something else she had to do, anyway.) And, it'd been long enough since the Fourth Task that people had mostly calmed down from Tournament gossip, far more concerned with Valentine's Day coming up next week.
Honestly, Liz was still kind of bemused that Valentine's Day was actually a thing in the magical world — she'd thought it was a far more modern thing than that? She was half-right, turned out. The more traditional Gaelic and Cambrian people didn't observe it at all — they were just getting off of one of their most important holidays on the calendar at the beginning of the month — but the silly not-Roman thing did...but it was different, all about healing and purification ahead of the growing season, a quieter more contemplative day. (Mos maiorum people marked the beginning of spring in mid-March, a month and a half later than the traditional Celtic types, which was very confusing.) They tended to find the silly romantic culture around Valentine's Day rather crass, she was learning now, but that happened a lot with various holidays, there was an absurd amount of disagreement in this country about what was proper to do on which day, it was very silly.
There was also an old-fashioned take on the romantic angle, which Liz would have assumed was a modern muggle import — turned out, the association of the day with romance was older than that. Though, for a lot of people, it was a much more old-fashioned kind of romance, the whole culture around courtship and everything. It was pretty common for people doing the courting thing to make big gestures or opening moves on Valentine's Day, a fair fraction of the upper years at Hogwarts would even be gone for the day for that reason. Presumably aware of the fact that so many people would have familial obligations on the 14th, Gamp had actually cancelled class for the day, which she guessed was thoughtful of him. Everyone left behind was going to be stupid about the holiday, but Liz could just hide in her room, she guessed.
The cards and the chocolates and things were a muggle import though, she was right about that part. According to Tracey, that part of the holiday was only common in Hogwarts and a few other locales closely associated with the culture of the school or that had a high fraction of muggleborns. And even at Hogwarts, the more muggleish aspects of the holiday hadn't begun to be encouraged until Dumbledore's tenure. The school hadn't marked the day at all previously, considering it a private affair, but Dumbledore personally enjoyed the aesthetics of the muggle holiday — displaying some minor decoration and making supplies available for students to get silly with cards and gifts and stuff had been done on his sole initiative, supposedly even funded with his own money until the Board had been convinced to subsidise it a few years later. Liz would never have guessed that Dumbledore liked Valentine's Day so much...not that it didn't make sense once she'd been told, he did seem like the type, but.
A couple days ago now, Liz had been asked out for Valentine's Day by Shannon Murphy, a fifth-year Ravenclaw she'd only ever seen in passing — Liz had had to ask Padma what the hell her first name even was after the fact, because she hadn't known it at the time. And she had to ask after the fact, because Liz had been so taken aback she'd just bluntly refused and walked away. Liz had actually felt a little bad about it in retrospect — according to her Ravenclaw friends, Murphy was shy and bookish, didn't talk to anyone much, and she was muggleborn, so working up the nerve to ask Liz out probably hadn't been very easy — so she'd written Murphy a letter explaining she'd been, just, completely blindsided, and really wasn't looking to date anyone at the moment, because she was super fucked up and everything and still needed to work out some shite (implying but not saying that it was related to abused kid stuff, which everyone knew about but were polite enough not to mention most of the time), nothing personal. Just, so fucking awkward...
But, the point was, everyone was more concerned with the holiday coming up and their own romantic preoccupations that people were making less of a point of paying attention to Liz. Which meant there was every chance that she would have an ordinary, pleasant day, with few irritating interruptions.
She should know by this point that it rarely worked out that easily...but at least today's drama had nothing to do with her directly.
Liz walked up to the Great Hall with Daphne, Tracey, Millie, and Dorea — a little tense, because Liz still wasn't really speaking to Dorea or Daphne, for very different reasons, but she was pretty good at ignoring people when she wanted to (even if she couldn't help feeling Daphne watch her) — arriving late enough that the Hall was somewhat crowded, but early enough that the post hadn't arrived yet. Sitting through breakfast with Daphne and Dorea would be awkward, so she split off when she saw Susan, Chelsea, Sally-Anne, and...er, one of the Muircheartaigh triplets anyway — Seléne was supposed to be the one in Hufflepuff, but Artaimís was the one in the duelling team, and she was sitting with Susan and Chelsea, and also Oz. Not that it mattered, they all shared the same mind anyway.
There were open spots near them, so Liz turned off to slip through the rows, stepped over the bench to plop down next to Sally-Anne. "Hey, girls." Switching to Gaelic, "Should I be calling you Seléne or Artaimís at the moment?"
The sharp-eyed, red-haired girl grinned at her, delighted — she'd been very pleased when Liz abruptly started speaking Gaelic (she wasn't perfectly comfortable with English still), and she appreciated how very matter-of-fact Liz was about her technically being three people at the same time. "This one," pointing at Sally-Anne, "thinks I'm Seléne, but Chelsea still gets a little creeped out whenever she's reminded that we're not different people."
"That sounds like her problem." Chelsea could be very muggleborn sometimes, she was still getting used to some of the weirder things about the magical world.
In perfectly competent Gaelic — she'd attended the craft school programme at Caoimhe's Academy — Susan said, "Yeah, at this point she should just accept that you are creepy."
"Could you girls not speak Irish right in front of me?" Chelsea said, sounding slightly annoyed. She wasn't keeping Liz out, so she could see Chelsea had caught her own name — she knew they were talking about her, but she had no idea what they were saying. "That is Irish again, right?"
Seléne rolled her eyes. "Yes, that was Irish," with an edge of sarcasm on the term...even though it was technically correct? They did all speak Irish dialects of Gaelic — the formal, academic language of the Academy and the guilds and priesthoods in Liz and Susan's case, the triplets' speech with a somewhat more rural edge to it her instincts borrowed from Muirgheal marked as particular to Cúige Mumhan — so calling it that wasn't wrong, even if the term wasn't usually used in Gaelic itself, but whatever. "So Liz, looking forward to everyone showing off for you this weekend?"
"Ugh, don't remind me." The duelling teams had final say about who would be participating in the Fifth Task, had the responsibility of submitting the final list of duellists to the judges — the same authority was in the hands of the Headmasters for the other schools — and Gladwin had had the 'brilliant' idea of announcing long ahead of time that they were intending for Liz to be the captain of the junior team next year. So, people weren't just competing for a spot in the Task, but also auditioning to get on the team, making a point of showing off to her in particular. It was very irritating. "Anyway, Sally-Anne, was I with you in Potions today? Was there something I was supposed to be bringing for that? I didn't copy down this month's schedule, like an idiot..."
Liz had just barely gotten breakfast on her plate — her nutrient potion appeared next to her cup, she downed and quickly chased it with a gulp of water — before there was a low rustle of feathers, dozens of owls sweeping in through the gaps under the roof. That still seemed super unsanitary to her, but as far as she knew there weren't actually any cases of people catching parasites or whatever from post owls, so it was probably fine. Liz was still under a total post redirection ward, set a year ago now as a precaution against cursed letters and the like, so she never got anything, but Susan got a letter, quickly followed by today's issue of the Herald — Liz knew Susan mostly didn't read the Prophet, but Chelsea did, picked up at some point to help keep up with her classmates' gossip, so their little group ended up with an issue of both major newspapers.
Idly, Liz wondered how post owls dealt with the triplets.
Susan openly scowled at her letter — something to do with courtship stuff, apparently. Since her arrangement with Tony had fallen apart, she actually had to do that now, but she was putting off starting the meetings and stuff until after the tournament in the summer. Supposedly, her aunt was practically getting buried in constant correspondence about it. Becoming the Lord of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Bones would be a hell of a coup for a boy(/man) who didn't expect to inherit his own family's shite, after all — female heirs of noble houses tended to get disproportionate attention for that reason.
Feeling the simmering irritation from Susan's head, Liz had never felt more relieved that Severus had offered to just tell everyone to piss off for her.
The papers had quickly been split apart, the sections divided between the people around them at the table, but Liz didn't reach for any of them herself. They were mostly filled with pointless gossipy nonsense anyway — the Herald somewhat less than the Prophet, to be fair — and if it was anything important someone would talk to her about it. Rita would have told her if there was anything about her coming up in the Prophet, Sylvia kept her informed on any significant political developments, Tamsyn would mention anything she found interesting, and if it was something especially irritating Hermione would definitely go on a rant about it at some point, so, she had all her angles covered without actually having to read the frustrating bloody things herself.
There must be something going on today, though. The wards around the tables mostly cut off her sense of the room, so she heard it more than felt it, low hissing whispery chatter, people lowering their voices the way they did when gossipping about something particularly scandalous. Starting quiet, just a few people, Liz hadn't noticed at first, spreading more and more as people found whatever it was — the overall volume in the Hall actually decreasing, people either reading or muttering to each other in hushed voices.
Eventually, she heard Oz — sitting a couple seats away to Chelsea's other side, he'd ended up with a section of their papers — snapped, "Oh, for fuck's sake." Liz turned his way, frowning at the storm of anger and disgust and disdain churning in his head. After a short moment reading further, he added, "Really? Selfish bitch, piss off..."
"What? What's happening?"
Oz glanced up at her, she could feel him flinch, drawing a hissing breath through his teeth. "Um, I'm not sure you want to know."
"I don't want to know a lot of things, but they end up being my problem anyway. What is it?"
"I'm serious, you really don't want to read this."
"Is it about me?"
"Well, no, but—"
Liz cut him off with a sigh, rolling her eyes. Holding her hand across the table, she demanded, "Just give me the bloody paper, Oz." A little sheepishly, he shrugged. He passed the section to Chelsea, who passed it to Sally-Anne, made room to spread it out on the table between them. She was a little surprised to find it wasn't the society section — it would be a little odd for Oz to be reading that shite anyway, since his family were commoners and not-so-subtly communalist, but it was generally where one expected to find the scandalous nosey nonsense. But this was actually the section for financial and legal news which, yes, tended to end up with a lot of gossipy stuff in it — arrangements between houses were all done in legal contracts, often with economic interests involved, so when something blew up due to some kind of interpersonal conflict it also ended up being financial news — which made more sense when it came to figuring out why Oz was reading it in the first place. She wasn't really sure what everyone were being silly about, though...
Wait, never mind, she found it. "Is this one it, you think?" she asked Sally-Anne, pointing at an article — Scrimgeour and MacCormac to Break Marriage Arrangements, a subtitle beneath it reading Stryke to Press for Breach of Contract. It might not have jumped out at Liz if not for the pictures, most of the articles in this section didn't have any at all, but this one had two. Both were portraits of a pair of teenagers in formal dress, one boy and one girl. She didn't know either of the boys, she was only mostly sure one of the girls was Emily Scrimgeour — she was less recognisable in black and white, without the brilliant orange of her hair — but the other girl was definitely Deirdre. The two of them must have finally decided to cancel the arranged marriages they'd agreed to years ago...before they started dating, Liz was pretty sure? She didn't know what the timeline was, exactly. But it was about fucking time, honestly — Emily's wedding, at least, had supposedly been planned for the winter of '92, shortly after she'd left Hogwarts, and when Deirdre wasn't doing her dorm supervisor job at Hogwarts she was openly living with Emily, so. Liz remembered the Chief Auror, Emily's uncle, had been complaining about them not just making up their minds already way back when the Chamber of Secrets thing happened, nearly two years ago now...
"Um, why? Doesn't that just happen sometimes?"
...Right, Sally-Anne didn't have the context. "Emily Scrimgeour and Deirde Nic Cormaic," tapping the girls in the photos as she said their names, "are together, have been for ages now. They share a flat and everything."
"Oh!" Sally-Anne gasped, leaning a little closer over the paper. "I didn't know that. Wasn't Scrimgeour Head Girl in our first year?"
Liz nodded. "And Deirdre was the seventh-year prefect that year. It's not really a secret they were sharing a bedroom for most of our first year. Or, it wasn't inside Slytherin, anyway." Sally-Anne did pick up a lot of the gossip floating around the school, but what happens in Slytherin stays in Slytherin, it's possible she'd never heard about it. "She's one of the dorm supervisors now. Deirdre, I mean."
For a second, Sally-Anne was surprised that the Board — or Severus or whoever was in charge of the decision — was okay with an open lesbian having that job, before immediately recognising that thought as homophobic and checking herself. (Sally-Anne was far better about gay stuff than she was at first, was pretty much over it, but she still had moments — which was fair enough, honestly Liz sometimes still did too.) Mages felt differently about this stuff, and the, you know, homosexuals are all secretly paedophiles thing simply didn't exist on this side, so. But since it wasn't really a big deal, "Why was Oz annoyed about it, then?"
"Dunno, gonna read it."
At first glance, nothing about the article immediately jumped out at Liz as particularly offensive. The Noble Houses of Scrimgeour and MacCormac had made a joint announcement that they would be unilaterally voiding the contracts — that is, without submitting to arbitration to potentially ameliorate the dispute — between Aemilia Scrimgeour and Gawain Slughorn and Deidre MacCormac (the paper misspelt Deirdre, and didn't properly gender the surname as in Gaelic) and Giles Stryke. When asked for comment, Lady Slughorn had told the paper that her House accepted the decision, no hard feelings, but Lord Stryke had already begun a claim against the MacCormacs, they were expected to enter into preliminary arbitration in the next couple weeks.
After getting the basics out of the way, the article skipped back to talk about the people involved and the betrothal arrangements themselves. Gawain Slughorn had been a Ravenclaw prefect at Hogwarts, class of '91, was currently in a dual potions/alchemy apprenticeship under some Smethwyck, a Healer at blah blah blah; Aemilia Scrimgeour, a great-granddaughter of the new Chief Warlock Erin Scrimgeour, had been a Slytherin prefect and Head Girl at Hogwarts, class of '92, was studying at the Mastery programme in enchanting and artifice at Caoimhe's Academy. (It'd slipped Liz's mind that Erin Scrimgeour was Emily's great-grandmother, she guessed that might be part of why this was considered newsworthy.) Their arrangement had been made in the spring of '89, and their marriage had originally been scheduled for December of '92, but it'd been delayed as they both pursued Mastery study. Giles Stryke had attended Durmstrang, and was actually a painter, already having taken various commissions, which was a little odd (mages considered that a very working-class profession); "Deidre MacCormac" had been a Slytherin prefect, class of '92, and had briefly studied for a Charms Mastery before quitting, and then studied music at Beauxbatons for about a year before quitting that as well to take a position as a dorm supervisor for Slytherin. Their arrangement had been made in the summer of '89, and the contract hadn't included any details about when the marriage should take place, neither Giles nor Deirdre had seemed to have any particular urgency to get on with it but everyone had assumed they'd get around to it in due time.
Liz hadn't known any of that. About Deirdre, she meant — she'd been aware Emily was in some kind of apprenticeship or something to do with enchanting, but Deirdre's post-Hogwarts life made her sound rather...flighty.
Signs that there were issues with the arrangement had started becoming clear relatively early on, when nosey bastards had noticed way back in the autumn of '92 that the Slughorns and Scrimgeours weren't making preparations for the wedding — at the time, the two houses had simply said it was delayed so the pair could focus on Mastery study, which everyone had accepted for the time being. (Occasional delays for that sort of thing weren't uncommon, apparently.) At least, they had, until the summer of '93, when the Strykes started openly complaining about the fact that Deirdre was sharing a flat in muggle Cambridge with Emily. The paper didn't explicitly say that Emily and Deirdre were together, but the implication was obvious.
Actually, skimming through the article, at no point did it actually say that Emily and Deirdre were a lesbian couple. It was implied, definitely, but it looked like that was it. The more Liz looked at it, she picked up on the disapproving, disdainful tone of the article, making a point of repeatedly bringing up the two of them living together (that it was a flat in a muggle neighbourhood was also mentioned more than necessary), how Deirdre had bounced between interests since leaving Hogwarts, getting statements from multiple people about them breaking their word, and their choices — someone who didn't know what they were looking for might miss it, think it was just about breaking their betrothal agreements, but it was definitely there for those who already knew. If Liz had to guess, the Prophet was treading the line of what they could get away with, to avoid the risk of being sued by their families (especially since the Scrimgeours were very politically powerful at the moment). Unless Emily and Deirdre came out themselves and made it very very clear they were super gay and that was why they'd broken their contracts, it might not be acceptable to openly speculate about it, but the Prophet could still make their opinion known to those who were in the loop enough to know what they were getting at.
Liz got what Oz had been so annoyed about now — it was subtle, but the article was very judgemental about it. Emily and Deirdre were generally well-liked at Hogwarts, and the more communalist-leaning people tended to consider the more radical Ars Publica families to be at least tentative allies, so, yeah, not a sur—
Hold up a second, Liz saw Narcissa's name. That the writer had asked Narcissa for a statement was maybe kind of pointed — it wasn't really a secret that she was a lesbian, though she'd actually gone through with the whole proper courtship and arranged marriage thing. Liz didn't really know enough about society to recognise most of the other people mentioned, she wondered if there was shite going on there she didn't know about...
"The contract is the fibre from which the fabric of our entire society is woven. [...] I bid Miss Scrimgeour and Miss Deirdre consider deeply the implications of what actions they take at such a critical period of their lives — especially so in this contentious time we find ourselves in, a witch is only as good as her word."
...
For long moments, Liz could just sat there, glaring at the words on the cheap mass-produced paper, floating meaninglessly in front of her eyes — her throat turning tight and hot, her heart pounding. She could hardly think, the words blaring in her head, feeling tense and hot and...
Narcissa hadn't come out and said it either, but it was very clear what she meant.
When she'd been put on the spot, she'd decided to kick Deirdre and Emily under the lorry.
Her fork suddenly in her hand, Liz slammed down on the offending sentence as hard as she could — wrenching with the impact, the fork was torn out of her grip, sudden sharp-dull pain spanging up her arm. Liz cringed, pulled in, hugged her throbbing hand against her stomach. Ow, ow, ow, fuck, that was stupid...
She could feel the surprise and worry simmering in minds around her, someone was asking if she was all right. Or, multiple people, maybe, Sally-Anne was the only one she heard clearly. "I'm fine, just, hurt my hand — stupid..."
"Do you need to go to the Hospital Wing?"
Fuck, she certainly hoped she didn't need to go to the fucking Hospital Wing — that'd be a hell of a way to ruin the rest of her day. Grimacing against the dull hot pain, Liz extended her hand, bending her fingers and rolling her wrist. "No, doesn't feel like I broke anything, just bruised." Looking past her hand, she immediately caught sight of the paper, the tense heat clawing at her throat flaring hotter and sharper. She grabbed the paper and crumpled it up into a ball with both hands, the thin material scrunching and crackling, and threw it across the table toward Oz.
He saw it coming, getting a hand up in time to almost catch it, the blob of newsprint plopping onto his plate. "Told you you would hate it."
"Oh, piss off." Telling her she would hate it hadn't really convinced her she didn't need to see it, so pointing it out was pretty useless. "Where the hell did my fork go?"
It turned out, her fork was actually broken: she'd stabbed it into the table hard enough that the tines had noticeably bent, making it unusable. She hadn't realised these things were that soft. Sighing in frustration, she set it aside — the elves would be able to repair it — and picked up a fresh one.
...No, she wasn't hungry anymore. Hot something clawing at her throat, her eyes stinging, feeling all tight and strained and bleh, the thought of eating anything at the moment was actively unpleasant. She wasn't sure what she was feeling, exactly, because she continued to be terrible with feelings, but whatever it was had basically ruined her breakfast.
In fact, tense and jittery, she didn't even feel like sitting here anymore, she was leaving. Setting her fork aside, Liz bit out a thick sigh. "Fuck this, I'm going back to my room." Stiffly pushing herself up to her feet, slinging her bag over her shoulder, she turned back down to Sally-Anne. "I'm skipping Transfiguration, but I should calm down in time for Potions."
Sally-Anne hesitated — she could tell Liz was really upset by something in the article, but she didn't know why, which made it really hard to figure out what to say — so Susan got there first. "Did you want us to tell someone?"
Severus, she meant. "No, don't bother anyone with it, I just need to be alone for a little while. I'll see you in Potions." Before anyone could say anything else, Liz turned around and started walking. It only took a step before she crossed out of the wards shielding the tables — Liz grimaced against the weight of the minds in the Hall, muffled and lensing into chaotic nonsense from the wards and all the other magic around, but she just pulled in as well as she could and kept walking.
The whole while down to Slytherin, the anger burned away in her chest, turning her breath thick and hot.
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Liz wasn't entirely surprised when she ended up spending a significant fraction of the morning crying — she had noticed her eyes stinging at the breakfast table, and this shit hadn't fucking stopped happening far too easily.
She'd recognised the hot-tight-sharp clawing in her chest as anger easily enough, of course, but the crying had sprung on her suddenly with very little warning. When Liz had gotten down to her room, she'd initially pulled out her Competency Transfiguration work — if she was going to be missing class, she might as well get something done — but she'd quickly given that up as a bad job. She was just too jittery, difficult to even sit still at her desk, her thoughts kept jumping back to the article and Narcissa, it was fucking impossible. Since she wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything else anyway, she'd ended up pacing her room tapping her pen against her hip, a sheet of paper suspended in the air with her reading charm, writing letters to Narcissa. (Letters plural, she scrapped it and started over multiple times.) Nothing she actually intended to send, just trying to work through what the hell was going on in here.
Liz was trying to get better at figuring out her own feelings shite, and Tamsyn's advice to have difficult conversations through letters whenever possible had been a good one. Slowing down, trying to write whatever it was out, was much more helpful when it came to trying to sort out what the fuck she was thinking than talking in person. Even if it wasn't something she planned to send to anyone, it was still helpful — over the last month or so she'd taken to writing letters explaining herself addressed to Daphne, Severus, Dorea, even her younger self a couple times, none of which she'd actually sent, just, trying to feel shite out.
The inspiration to try it had been Dorea finally apologising, and at least part of Liz's feelings about their friendship falling apart finally consciously clicking, but then immediately giving up talking to Dorea about it when it didn't feel like it was coming out right. (Also, she really hadn't wanted to cry in front of her.) Those letters had turned out very incoherent, and angry, and honestly just kind of pathetic, she definitely wouldn't have ever sent them, but trying to write them had been kind of...cathartic, she guessed. Tamsyn had agreed that writing letters for herself sounded like a good strategy to help work shite out, so, that was what she did now. Still a new thing, how she went about it a work in progress, but.
(She'd saved one of the ones she'd written to Severus, she kind of wanted to so send it, but she'd never quite worked up the nerve yet.)
It'd taken her multiple attempts to figure out what about this was bothering her so fucking badly. She was angry, yes, but she couldn't put her finger on why she was angry. Emily and Deirdre were nothing to Narcissa, she wasn't even certain they'd met. She did know Narcissa knew they existed, they'd come up in one of their conversations ages ago now, but it wasn't like Narcissa owed them anything. Narcissa might be openly, publicly kicking them under the lorry, but it wasn't like they had any kind of relationship to speak of (so far as Liz knew), so it couldn't be a betrayal.
The use of that word, while acknowledging it wasn't one, had tipped Liz off, she'd scrapped that letter and started over, picking away at that thought. Because it wasn't about Deirdre and Emily — Liz didn't really have a relationship with them either, after all. She'd barely ever even spoken to Emily, and she was familiar with Deirdre, since she was around Slytherin all the time these days, but they were hardly close, not enough to take this personally. It wasn't about Narcissa and Deirdre and Emily, it was about Narcissa and Liz.
Poking at that thought, Liz had realised it wasn't just that she was angry — she was, definitely, but it wasn't just anger. She was hurt. She might not even have been able to recognise the feeling two months ago, but she knew this know. She just didn't know why.
She kept flashing back to that uncomfortable conversation back in Malfoy Manor a year ago now, back when she'd still been being an idiot about the whole gay thing, and getting ready for the Yule Ball, seeing her at that silly mos maiorum holiday over the summer...
The contract is the fibre from which the fabric of our entire society is woven.
She hadn't been referring to the idea of contract law, in general. That was what she'd said, of course, but the entire article had been beating around the bush, nobody had been coming out and saying what they meant. Liz suspected Narcissa had been referring to marriage, specifically.
At that realisation, Liz had frozen in place, staring at the partially-completed letter, cut off in mid-sentence. She knew they'd spoken about it once, in the Malfoy library on New Year's, that Liz didn't intend to marry, but she didn't remember what Narcissa had said about it. Liz hadn't been watching her mind too closely, aware that Narcissa should have excellent occlumency and that it would probably be considered rude...
So Liz checked the memory in her pensieve. Narcissa claiming that nobody would care what her preferences were, though, since she was the last living member of a Noble House, the pressure to marry would be intense. Said cautiously, gently — aware that Liz was defensive and emotionally fragile, and not wanting to make it worse. It was a little embarrassing, in retrospect, that Narcissa had felt the need to be quite so delicate with her, but oh well. Liz had explained that she planned to adopt, so they could take care of the business of carrying on the family and leave her out of it. There'd been a flare of feeling, Liz hadn't known what it was at the time — and Liz could read her past-self's mind from here, so she could confirm that for certain — but Liz didn't have to worry about Narcissa detecting her through the pensieve and from over a year in the future, her entire mind open to her...
There was an edge of jealousy, that that option hadn't been available to Narcissa when she was her age. But also pity, certain that it wouldn't be that simple, but not wanting to press Liz too hard by making a point of it right this second. But also disappointment, disdain, a very clear, sharp tone of disapproval and distaste, but buried quickly, aware that Liz was a mind mage — there was no point in addressing any of that now, because Liz was only thirteen, she'd almost certainly change her mind anyway.
Liz had just gaped at the illusory reproduction of Narcissa, her throat burning and her stomach churning, until the memory ran out and she found herself in her dorm room again. She'd stood in front of the letter, glaring, her thoughts racing.
Narcissa hadn't just been kicking Deirdre and Emily under the lorry. She'd been kicking everyone like them. Including Liz.
The only reason she wasn't already judging Liz for not wanting children was because she was certain Liz would change her mind when she grew up.
Being gay was fine, but you had to marry a bloke and have kids like everyone else. If you refused, you were a bad person.
She remembered before the Yule Ball, Narcissa washing her hair, all dressed up standing in front of the mirror, Narcissa standing behind her, hands light on her arms, smiling at her through the mirror, Liz floating on a combination of marijuana and delight with how she'd turned out, liking how she looked for once, unexpectedly happy — that was when Liz finally burst into tears, completely blindsiding herself.
Not that she could put into words what the hell she was even crying about — she hadn't managed to work it out that far, that'd probably take a few more times playing around with letters. She just knew it fucking hurt.
By the time she finally wrung herself out — it felt like fucking forever, but it couldn't have been longer than fifteen minutes — Liz was tired, and stiff, and headachey, and sore, her throat burning and her sides stabbing. She still hadn't gotten any better at not hurting herself when she cried, because apparently being bad at crying was a thing a person could be. After a few minutes miserably lying there and glaring at the walls, she'd psyched herself up to leave her dorm room so she could clean up in the shower — everyone should still be in class or lunch or something anyway, so it's not like there'd be anyone here to see her being pathetic.
By the time she was feeling mostly functional again, it was well into the lunch hour. There was still time to make it to Potions, but she'd be missing lunch — which was fine, she didn't really feel like eating anything anyway. She did consider skipping it for a moment, but no, she could make it to class. Besides, she'd told Sally-Anne she'd be there, the Hufflepuffs would worry if she didn't go. And when the Hufflepuffs were worried, they got nosey.
Liz did have time to make a detour up to the Owlery, so she could send a letter off to Narcissa. None of the wandering, incoherent ones she'd gotten partway through trying to work shite out, just a simple, single line:
Fuck you, too. Don't talk to me again.
She fully expected some kind of response, since that was extremely rude and she didn't really explain herself — she hadn't even signed her name, Narcissa would recognise her handwriting — but she didn't plan on opening it when it arrived. If she could help it, she didn't plan on speaking to Narcissa ever again.
Of course, she realised she probably couldn't help it — they'd probably bump into each other at some noble thing Liz ended up being dragged to, and she was one of Severus's best friends and all. But she guessed she'd just have to live with that when it happened.
Her afternoon classes were kind of a mess, Liz tired and slow and distractible. She didn't ruin their potion, at least, but she couldn't quite get the right frame of mind to feel shite out like she normally did. Sally-Anne was much better in Potions than she used to be, at least, so she could help pick up on the slack, but they'd failed the assignment — they did turn in an attempt at reproducing their example potion, but Liz knew just from the colour and consistency, the tingle of the glass against her fingers, that it wouldn't work. Vitale gave their phial an eyebrow raise, surprise flickering in her head, but she just nodded them off and didn't say anything about it.
Arithmancy didn't have anything she could ruin by being useless today — she just sat there only half paying attention to the lecture, trying not to think about Narcissa and make herself miserable again — but they were having a practical day in Runes, which was a bad idea. Proper enchanting took a certain sort of focus, almost as deep as a trance the way Liz did it...actually, she suspected it was a trance of some kind, Seer thing. Anyway, if her performance in Potions was any indication, there was no way she could get into the right frame of mind this afternoon, trying to enchant while she was such a mess was just asking for a serious accident.
Thankfully, Babbling could be really understanding about that sort of thing, so Liz just explained she was preoccupied with something, didn't feel safe to enchant today. Because Babbling was also friends with Severus, and was far too clever for Liz's comfort, she immediately guessed it was related to that article in the paper. At least Babbling didn't make a point about it, just suggested she talk to someone if she really needed to — even Babbling herself, if it came to it, Liz knew when her office hours were. (It was weird how many of Severus's friends were lesbians, she wondered if there was a reason for that.) Instead of having her work on the project they were carving today, Babbling gave her their next assignment, Liz spent the class period sketching out the script with her coloured pencils, occasionally flipping through reference books to check something. Which was kind of relaxing, honestly, especially with all the minds in the room drawn in and focussed on their enchanting work, it was nice.
By the time dinner came along, she'd calmed down enough to actually be hungry. Very hungry, honestly — which did make sense, since she hadn't eaten much at breakfast and skipped lunch altogether. She was as bad at telling when she was hungry as when she was cold, at least most of the time, so the sign to her that she'd actually been way more hungry than she'd realised was just how much she felt like eating at dinner. Liz didn't know why she was so bad at this kind of thing. There was a point at which being so obliviously ignorant of her own feelings, both emotional and physical, was just incredibly frustrating.
Liz walked up to Divination with Hermione and Susan and the others — their small group including Dorea, but Liz could get by just fine ignoring her. (Though Dorea staring sometimes didn't make it easy.) Miss Eva was already in their usual sitting room by the time they got there — she could be very sensitive to echoes on food, so she normally didn't show up at mealtimes, living on stuff sent along from home eaten in private — various divination aids scattered around here and there. After focussing on far-seeing for most of the first half of the year, they'd started moving into scrying the past, and even attempting to peek into the future. (The former was much more reliable than the latter.) People who weren't Seers needed some kind of tool or ritual to do that, but they tended to have better or worse luck with different methods — Miss Eva had been teaching them various methods, and using their evening session to just play around, feel them out and see which one they have the most success with.
Not that very many of her classmates were having much success at all. Ritual magic could be very finicky, and the impressions they did get could be so vague and difficult to interpret that they couldn't say anything very precise or meaningful much of the time. Liz could tell it was working for them, though — she could feel the magic in the room bend, just slightly, when someone got the ritual right, ringing with little plinks of raindrops against glass whenever they caught something. In retrospect, she understood why Trelawney could always tell when Liz was picking up something, it was subtle but definitely there.
Liz, of course, didn't need to use these things to pick up stuff, but it could help as a focus to more tightly direct herself to a particular thing and get a more complete picture than just a vague feeling — in fact, she was considering buying a crystal ball of her own for that reason. (Proper ones were alchemical products, quite expensive, and fragile enough they weren't shipped through owl post, so she had to wait until the summer.) In most periods Liz would fiddle around a bit, sure, but would also be available to help people talk out a thing they were picking up — or simply confirm for people that they had caught something and weren't just imagining it (reassurance Hermione needed often) — but this time she told Miss Eva that she had something on her mind, and would rather spend the period borrowing one of the crystal balls. Miss Eva said that was fine, Liz wasn't the professor in the room, she'd be here if Liz needed advice.
Personally, Liz thought Miss Eva was a massive improvement over Trelawney — and she wasn't just saying that because she thought she was pretty. There were a few people in the class who were a bit disappointed that they couldn't just make shite up anymore — Miss Eva could tell if they were bullshitting immediately — and that they were actually required to learn something. Since Trelawney was completely fucking useless, Divination had been considered an easy O class, all you had to do was make up something suitably dramatic and Trelawney would buy it, but Miss Eva expected an actual effort. Not success, necessarily, but they had to know what they were talking about, and they had to actually try. Their classmates who'd only taken Divination to fill a hole in their schedule — like Ronald bloody Weasley — were a little irritated that they actually had to do things, but as it turned out that scrying actually worked, most of that muttering had quieted down.
Of course, Lavender Brown and the inferior Patil were unreasonably loyal to Trelawney, and rather disappointed by how fuzzy and un-dramatic actual divination could be. Lavender more than Parvati, honestly — as Padma had pointed out to Liz before, the Patils were related to actual oracles and diviners and stuff back in India, so to Parvati the stuff that Miss Eva was teaching was, just, normal. (European-flavoured, but the same basic idea.) Lavender was weirdly invested in the whole melodramatic nonsense Trelawney did, though, didn't know what was up with that.
Liz would like Miss Eva over Trelawney just for how they reacted to Liz being a Seer — Trelawney had constantly drawn attention to Liz all the time, seemingly expecting her to be as performative and over-the-top as Trelawney, while Miss Eva was just super matter-of-fact about it, and also very understanding of Liz wanting her own time now and then. (Not to mention needing to miss class now and then, honestly Miss Eva seemed impressed Liz was managing to attend school full-time at all.) So, Liz scooped up one of the crystal balls into her arms — leaving the base behind, she didn't need the additional enchantments in it — and curled up in an armchair in an out-of-the-way corner of the room, where Miss Eva would proceed to just leave her to do her thing alone for the rest of the period.
She'd calmed down, a bit, but she hadn't stopped thinking about the whole deal with Narcissa. She didn't know why she... Well, she didn't get it. Why Narcissa had done it, she meant, what she... Liz didn't know, exactly. It just didn't make a lot of sense, in the context of what they'd talked about before, how super cool Narcissa had been about...
The chance that she'd See something that would help it all make sense were extremely low, but she could at least try.
Her legs folded, the shining translucent ball resting in the bowl formed by her thighs and her shins, Liz sank deeper into the chair, relaxing, her head bowing over the crystal. Letting her magic bubble up, she brushed her fingertips over the smooth, polished surface, spreading her magic over it, the material acting as a reservoir, drinking her magic in, sinking down, down — carrying with it her intent, looking for answers about Narcissa, the crystal beginning to faintly glow as the collected energy grew denser and denser...
There was a lurch, something tugging on her magic, a shiver echoing through her. Her attention held on the crystal ball as though magnetised, tension thick enough she could hardly breathe, her surroundings turned dim and grey, colour bursting up out of the crystal—
Liz was looking into a sitting room, the colours vivid and sharp but seeming to smear with movement, dreamlike — the furnishings rich wood and glimmering brocade, all reds and blacks and silvers, a middle-aged man with hair just beginning to grey at the edges sitting in an armchair near the fire, in a nearby sofa a black-haired teenage girl and an unfamiliar woman with a long, sharp face and dark honey-blonde hair. The girl was Narcissa, she knew, maybe around Liz's age, a little older. (Liz was completely unsurprised that Narcissa had already been distractingly pretty as a teenager.) She was less certain about the others, probably Narcissa's mother and the Lord Black of the time — if she had the timeline right, that should be Orion, Sirius's father. No wait, Sirius's father died in...'76? was this before or after that? She wasn't sure. At a closer look, it was mostly just the frosting of his hair making the man look older. Some people's hair went early, maybe that was all, it was hard to guess exactly how old he was, which made it even harder to guess who he was. Presumably Lord Black, though.
When using a crystal ball, Liz also sometimes got sound, but it wasn't coming through very well, distorted and echoey. Bad enough she couldn't understand the words, just meaningless warbling — but she did get the general meaning, what they were talking about. Marriage, Narcissa was getting into courtship age, they were having some kind of meeting about that, but Liz couldn't—
There was another disorienting lurch as the magic suddenly cut off, Liz nearly smooshing her nose against the dimming crystal. She frowned at the colourless surface — well, that wasn't very helpful.
Another short moment of concentration, magic poured into the crystal through her fingertips, and it burst into colour. A fancy sitting room again, but a different one — by the whites and the blues, probably somewhere in Malfoy Manor — an adult Narcissa (old enough Draco must have already been born by this point) was having an argument with an unfamiliar orange-haired woman. Their voices fading in and out of hearing, Liz caught a word here and there. They were definitely sleeping together, and they'd gotten into an argument about something — rather suddenly, judging by the glass of wine in Narcissa's hand, the second one abandoned on a side table. Liz wasn't getting enough detail to tell what exactly they were arguing about, but she was pretty sure Narcissa was getting dumped.
After a last bit of shouting, there was a flash of green light as the unknown woman left through the floo, followed a couple seconds later with Narcissa throwing her wine glass after her — a trail of red slashing across the carpet, the glass shattering noisily in the hearth, the remaining liquid popping and snapping in the fire. Narcissa sank to her knees, her skirt pooling around her, and started crying just as the magic lapsed, Liz thunking fully back into the present day.
...Still not helping.
Her third vision was extremely brief and indistinct, Narcissa — tiny, maybe five or six? — in a room with several other small children. Liz knew the noble families sometimes pooled together to homeschool their kids, she assumed that's what this was. She only got a very short glimpse, a woman telling the kids some kind of story, before the magic fell apart again.
Okay, this wasn't getting her anywhere. Maybe, if she thought of why the hell Narcissa was kicking other lesbians under lorries, but specifically to do with the two of them...
This time, Liz saw the same sitting room where she'd had New Years' lunch with the Malfoys a year ago, Severus and Narcissa sitting in the sun at the table looking out into the gardens. They were having tea — coffee for Severus, Narcissa didn't drink coffee (too common), but she was aware Severus preferred it — talking about...Liz, they were talking about Liz.
After listening to the conversation for a bit — coming through somewhat clearer than in previous attempts, Liz caught whole phrases now and then — this was during the summer after second year, when Severus had dragged Liz to his house, and...and they'd started the process of getting Liz out from under Dumbledore. He could already tell then what was going to happen, he hadn't expected he'd be taking responsibility for her this directly, so he was asking Narcissa for advice.
He was nervous about it — that was so bloody weird, Liz hadn't noticed at the time, they hadn't really talked about it. Also, she hadn't realised Narcissa had known about them this early, hadn't she said she...
The vision was skipping around, seemingly at random, but then it zeroed in on a part to do with more long-term issues — they only had a couple years before Liz would be getting into courtship age. Severus scowled at the reminder, insisted that who Liz married was none of his damn business. Perhaps he was uncomfortable with the topic, but if he was to be her guardian people would act as though it was very much his business. He would need to decide how to approach the matter, when he felt his relationship with Liz had developed to the point that she'd be amenable to the conversation. Looking openly irritated with Narcissa, Severus said how they approached the matter would be entirely at Liz's discretion, because who she married was none of his fucking business, and then forcefully changed the subject — Narcissa seemed rather exasperated, but she played along, deciding she would bring it up again when he was more amenable to the conversation.
...Liz really didn't know how to feel about how obviously frustrated with Narcissa Severus had been. She'd already known he wasn't comfortable with the culture mages had around arranged marriages and stuff, and... She didn't know. But, she guessed, there were sometimes things about her friends she found frustrating, must be the same idea.
She tried again, dropping in on a teenage Narcissa stomping down a hallway at Hogwarts, followed by a red-haired girl wh— No, Lily, that was Liz's mother. They were both wearing trousers — by the style Narcissa was in, probably coming out of a duelling team meeting, Lily instead in muggle clothes, her bell-bottom denims, the waistband low enough to show a narrow strip around her middle, looking very dated to Liz's eyes, 60s or 70s — Narcissa looking stiff and uncomfortable, Lily chasing after her with a vicious smirk. And "chasing" did seem appropriate, Liz got the very clear feeling Narcissa was trying to extract herself from the conversation, and Lily was being annoying and not letting her just walk away. Definitely teasing, there must have been an incident of some kind during practice, What are you scared of, Black?
Narcissa snapped to a sudden stop, lurching around to glare at Lily — unexpected enough Lily nearly ran right into her. She certainly wasn't scared of Evans, referencing some previous conversation or something, it wasn't quite clear to Liz. Smirking wider, Lily stuck her thumbs through her belt loops — intentionally drawing attention to her hips as she sauntered a couple steps closer, they both noticed Narcissa's eyes flick downward — they were barely inches apart, Doesn't look like it from where I'm standing. Narcissa scowled, said something Liz didn't quite catch, if she was so not scared than she shouldn't mind if Lily went and told Rowle and Yaxley all about—
There was a smearing, the image stuttering, and Lily's back was pressed up against the wall, one of Narcissa's hands fisted in her shirt and the other holding her wand to Lily's throat, hissing some threat Liz didn't catch, but Lily was just grinning at her, unintimidated and very entertained. Black — if you wanted to get me on my back again... Narcissa flinched back a little at the innuendo, but Lily grabbed on to both shoulders of her tunic, pulled her closer, Narcissa resisted for a second, but then in a blink they were messily snogging, Lily's hands buried in Narcissa's hair or worming under her collar, Narcissa's tight on Lily's hips, her wand clattering to the floor forgotten...
When the crystal went dim again, Liz was left frowning down at it, bemused. She was getting the very clear feeling that her mother had been kind of a massive bitch. Or, she had already known that, she guessed — Sirius had some opinions about her. (He never insulted Lily to Liz's face, or at least not too badly, but his occlumency wasn't always perfect.) She wasn't sure what the hell that had to do with her question, though.
Her next try, the crystal showed her the future.
It took her a few seconds to figure that out, though. Narcissa looked more or less the same age as she was now, she was at some party or something, a lot of fancily-dressed people around — Liz didn't recognise the setting, probably some noble family's ballroom. She was talking to a girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, wearing a tight corset-shaped dress, snowy white glittering with gold, the skirt flaring out a little, the gold stitching deepening toward orange, reaching a deep crimson at the bottom, glittering with more touches of gold and shimmering with beads worked into the lace edging as she moved. Very pretty dress, all sharp and dramatic, Liz loved it. The girl had deep red hair, worked into complicated plaits threaded with colourful beaded ribbons — vivid against the white of the dress, but kind of matching the red at the bottom, probably had something to do with the colour choices — her face was familiar, but Liz couldn't quite place it, green eyes narrowed in—
Oh. Oh, that girl was Liz, after the blood alchemy procedure she was going to do this summer — she hadn't recognised herself at first, her hair being the wrong colour (and not horribly messy) and actually having tits, the corset making it very obvious, had thrown her off. She wasn't...
Future-Liz and Narcissa were arguing about something — Narcissa was trying to be all distant and cool and polite, since they were in public, but Liz was openly glaring at her. (Something about how she was holding herself, shifting from one foot or the other, glancing around the room now and then, told Liz that she was a little high, probably to get through the party.) Liz didn't think they were originally talking about Narcissa being hypocritically shitty about gay people, but future-Liz definitely brought it that way, basically telling Narcissa to piss off and leave her alone until she sorted out her attitude. She had enough shite in her life without making space in it for people who didn't respect her. Narcissa, of course, continued to be full of shite, making some kind of excuse that didn't quite come through—
What are you scared of, Black?
That's what it looks like from where I'm standing.
Narcissa looked very taken aback by the obvious reference to a conversation Liz hadn't even been alive yet for. (Funnily enough, future-Liz must remember it from present-Liz scrying this stuff right now, being a Seer was so weird sometimes.) It probably didn't help that, having just seen them back to back, Liz could tell that future-Liz with her new hair colour looked a lot like Lily — Lily's face had been a bit rounder, and Liz was shorter and slimmer, but very similar. She didn't get to see how the encounter went from there, though, the vision faded out again.
...Was Narcissa afraid of something? What?
The end of the class period came before Liz could actually figure out any answers to her questions. Trying to look for things that Narcissa was afraid of hadn't helped — she'd seen a man who was probably her father (abusive bastard, Liz assumed), a couple incidents in the war when she'd gotten too close to danger for comfort, walking in on a man Liz suspected was the Dark Lord in a library somewhere, a few things centred on Draco and a girl/woman Liz thought was maybe Bellatrix Lestrange (frightened for them, obviously). She saw a lot of things, only some of them clear what was going on, but none of it was very helpful. Not all of them were even about Narcissa, seemingly random at times, she wasn't getting anywhere.
In stories and stuff, the Seer characters always seemed like they knew everything, but it really didn't work like that. Not for Liz, at least. The world was too complicated, the insight she got too vague and too random, it wasn't actually as helpful as a lot of people assumed. Unfortunately.
Liz came out of another attempt — this time peeking in on a seemingly innocuous tea party between Narcissa and a few other stuck-up noble ladies — to find a mind was suddenly looming over her chair. She twitched, hands reflexively scrabbling at the crystal, sheepishly looked up. "Um, hello, Miss Eva. What is it?"
"I was only waiting for you to come back." Miss Eva indicated the rest of the room behind her with a tilt of her head. "Class is over."
"What?" She leaned in her seat so she could see around Miss Eva — Hermione and Dorea were lingering near the door talking, but other than that everyone else was already gone. "Oh, oops. Sorry, didn't realise it was getting that late."
Miss Eva just shrugged, obviously not bothered. "Find what you were looking for?"
Liz let out a heavy sigh. "No, not really." Carefully cupping the crystal ball with both arms, Liz got up to her feet, Miss Eva backing off to give her room. Liz started toward the side table where the rest of them were, saying, "I think maybe it's the kind of thing that there isn't a clear answer for. Or I was just asking the wrong questions."
"Mm, yes, that can happen. Takes practice, experience. What were you looking for? If it's not too personal."
Gently setting the ball back onto its base, Liz hesitated for a moment. It was probably fine to talk to Miss Eva about it, none of it was really a secret, and she was the expert in the room — Liz was still new at this stuff, it was very possible Miss Eva could tell her what she was doing wrong. "Did you read the Prophet this morning?"
"No. I only read the Herald, yn Gymraeg." The Northern Herald printed English and Cambrian versions — Liz's understanding was that it wasn't a direct translation, the contents of the versions from the same day would often be totally different, and they tended to focus on different topics. The English version had a lot more about national politics, the Cambrian version more with local and guild stuff, especially centred on Edinburgh. The political line was usually pretty similar between the two, both versions had the same editors, just playing to a different cultural base. Miss Eva was a commoner from the Dunbar lands near Edinburgh — like Katie, though Liz didn't think they were related at all — it wasn't really a surprise that she preferred the paper more relevant to the cultural environment she normally lived in.
"Right." Liz bit out a sigh, turned to face Miss Eva — she was standing a short distance away, her arms crossed behind her back, watching Liz calm and curious. "You know the Slytherin dorm supervisor, Deirdre? She'd been dating Emily Scrimgeour for years now, and they just cancelled their betrothal agreements. There was an article about it, they got a quote from Narcissa Malfoy, and she kind of kicked them under the lorry." It occurred to her that Miss Eva might not know what a lorry was. "Er, you know...shoved their heads underwater? Fucked them over, anyway. I was trying to figure out why she did that."
There was a warm bubbling of amusement in Miss Eva's head toward the end there, her lips twitching. "I'm guessing kick under the lorry is a muggle way of saying shove under the carriage?" Oh, okay then, overthinking it apparently. "And, what Lady Malfoy is thinking isn't so difficult to guess, is it? There are expectations for noble women."
"But Narcissa is a lesbian too — it's not a secret."
"I'm guessing that's why she was asked for a quote."
"Well, yeah, probably..."
"The hawk may rule the skies, but she does not call the wind." Liz wasn't sure what Miss Eva was getting at, but she must be making a face, because Miss Eva smiled back at her — still amused, but with a sharp, sad sort of edge to it. "Many muggleborns come to us with funny ideas about peoples who have not been cursed as to be so terribly vulnerable to the wrath of the sun as we. Why is that?"
People cursed to get sunburns was a funny way of saying white people. "I don't know, racism, I guess. But, er, people without our curse don't have those funny ideas too."
Miss Eva's head tilted. "Don't they? Never?"
...Um.
"What did you think when you first learned of your feelings?"
...If Liz remembered correctly, her first thought had been something along the lines of, of course, there was no way in which she wasn't a freak. And she still had the occasional thought about herself that she'd immediately recognise as homophobic coming from someone else, so. "Right. I think I get it. You might have a point — at least a better guess than I came up with after an hour staring into one of these bloody things. Thanks, Miss Eva."
Miss Eva hummed, giving Liz a thin, warm smile, a funny thrum echoing from her mind. "It may be tempting to turn first to the Sight for answers, but some puzzles are more easily solved with reason. The trick is to know which is which."
"Yeah, in future I guess I'll just tell Hermione first, she can sort out the answerable questions for me."
For whatever reason, Miss Eva found that very funny, burst into laughter sudden and loud enough Liz twitched. And after a couple seconds belatedly remembered not to stare — Miss Eva was distracting sometimes, the simple light dresses didn't really help...
(She realised Miss Eva didn't have a lot of choice in the matter — she was especially sensitive to animal products and mined metals, so her clothing options were quite limited — but it'd be a lot easier for Liz to pay attention in class if she hadn't noticed that her young, pretty, sympathetic teacher never wore a bra or bustier of any kind.)
Hermione and Dorea were still at the door by the time Liz got there — Hermione wanted to do something nice for Lily's birthday, and she'd had the idea of having a joint party for Dorea and Lily's birthday with the study group. (They were only like a week apart.) If it was supposed to be a surprise, Liz wondered why she was talking to Dorea about it, but apparently she'd asked Dorea for permission to share her birthday thing with Lily, which she guessed made sense. Yeah, sure, Liz can help pay for stuff, decorations or snacks or whatever the fuck Hermione was thinking, she didn't care. She'd be zero help when it came to planning this sort of thing — she mostly remembered to at least get her friends something for birthdays, but she was so bad at it (thankfully she didn't have to this time, Lily would probably just be embarrassed if she got her anything more after her Yule Ball outfit) — so Hermione should just make up a list and show Liz the order forms, so she can write out the draft notes.
Liz and Dorea were presumably both going to Slytherin, but Liz turned off as soon as possible anyway, so she didn't have to walk with her in stiff, awkward silence.
By the time Liz got back to the dorm, it was rather late. Not so late everyone was in bed already, but the common room was rather empty, quiet and moody — people had mostly retreated to their rooms, or else were in the house library or somewhere. There were a few people sitting around, reading or lowly chatting, but Liz ignored them, started crossing the room toward the stairs to the girls' rooms. She had no idea if she was in front of or behind Dorea, she didn't want to...
Liz's eyes followed her feeling of the familiar mind — Deirdre was here, curled up with a book in an armchair near one of the hearths. Slowly, uncertainly, Liz drifted to a stop.
They weren't friends, exactly. Liz and Deirdre hadn't spoken more than a few times, she could probably count them on her fingers. But she still...
Before she could third-guess herself, Liz lurched into motion, stepping into the warmth given off by Deirdre's fire. "Hey, Deirdre. How are you doing?" she asked, in Gaelic — her accent was pretty subtle, but Liz was aware it was Deirdre's first language.
Deirdre hummed, distracted, glanced up from her book after a couple seconds. (A novel of some kind, Liz was pretty sure.) "Oh, Liz, good evening. I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."
"I was just asking how you're doing," Liz said with a shrug. She unexpectedly felt rather uncomfortable all of a sudden — after all, she and Deirdre weren't friends, she was maybe being kind of nosey. "I saw the article in the Prophet, I thought people might be giving you shite over it."
Grimacing a little, Deirdre muttered, "Ah, that. No, there have been a few comments, but it hasn't been too bad so far. Did you want to talk? Go ahead and take a seat." Liz hesitated for a second — she honestly wasn't even entirely sure what she was doing, sticking her nose in — but then plopped into the armchair across the fire from Deirdre's. It was warmest near the fire, and Liz was still awful at telling when she was cold. "It is still early, it was only in the paper just this morning. There's still time for people to make arses of themselves." Liz snorted a little at the language — Deirdre was usually all soft and nice for the little kids, unexpected. "I doubt people will make nearly so much of a fuss over me and Emily as they have over you — to put it bluntly, people simply don't care about me as much."
...That was true. "Emily's grandmother is the Chief Warlock, though."
"Great-grandmother, but yes. I didn't say people won't make any fuss about it."
"Nosey bastards."
Deirdre smiled. "That they are. Is the article bothering you? It was quite rude."
"...I guess." Liz was aware that a lot of people didn't like queers much, and honestly the article hadn't been nearly as offensive as she expected the equivalent would be in the muggle press. Or the red tops, Jesus... "What Narcissa said has been bothering me all day."
"Narcissa? Do you mean Lady Malfoy?" Deirdre asked, frowning. "What about it?"
"She was quoted in the article. Didn't you read it?"
"Of course, but I'm not sure what was so unusual about what Malfoy said."
Liz frowned at her. "But she's like us."
A warm shivery feeling echoing through her head — some kind of sympathy or pity or something, Liz thought — Deirdre sighed. Forcing a crooked smile, she said, "I'm sorry, Liz, but that's just the thing: Lady Malfoy is not like us. She is and always has been very conservative when it comes to matters of morality and family law."
"...I guess." Liz didn't pay as much attention to politics as she probably should, sometimes, but she was aware of that. It just hadn't registered as important, for whatever reason. But now that was two people who weren't surprised by what Narcissa said, and, as far as she knew, neither of them had ever even met her before — Liz was starting to feel like an idiot, a little bit. "She was so nice to me about it, though."
"I don't doubt she was. But she expects all of us to do as she did — to fulfil our duties to our family and magical society at large, as it were. From what I've heard, Malfoy knew what she was condemning herself to as she agreed to it, just as I did — not all people like us know until later — and perhaps it was easy enough for her to go through with it. But, when it came down to it, I found I couldn't."
"You knew before you signed the contract? I mean, it's not my business, I was just wondering about the timeline, earlier."
Deirdre smiled, mind giving off a smooth pleasant warmth...for some reason. Didn't really know what that feeling was, but she didn't seem annoyed with Liz being too nosey, so. "I knew, Emily didn't. Emily didn't figure it out until she was sixteen — she got very high at our post-OWL party, ended up snogging Maisie Brooks in an armchair by the fire for hours—" Liz didn't know who that was, would have graduated by now, but that was definitely a muggleborn name. "—and that was after she'd already signed her contract with Gawain. But I've known since I was nine."
Liz blinked. "Nine? How? I mean, the necessary hormones wouldn't even have kicked in by then, had they?"
"Necessary hormones," Deirdre repeated, lips curling and mind tinkling with amusement. "You're adorable. And I can't really say why, I just knew. You must have noticed other girls started to be silly about boys long before the 'necessary hormones' had time to 'kick in'."
"Well, yeah, I guess... You know, in retrospect, I probably could have figured it out earlier, if I knew what I was looking for. Dorea got me this duelling book back in first year, has photos of Cassie Lovegood demonstrating things — I spent way more time flipping through it looking at those photos than necessary, thinking about it..."
Deirdre grinned. "I have one from the first run of posters Cassie ever had made, only a few years into her career. Would have been printed in...Eighty-One or Eighty-Two? I think I was seven. I had so many posters on the walls of my bedroom growing up, duellists, quidditch players, musicians, all women — it took me a few years to figure out why I liked them so much, of course. I have several of Cassie, I cycled some of the posters in and out but I never took down that first one. I took it with me when I moved out, still have that thing."
That would have been early enough that Cassie wouldn't have been super famous yet, so it was likely that old poster of Deirdre's had been a rather small batch — it was probably quite valuable now. Duellists and quidditch posters, and Liz remembered that Emily was a duellist too — the Scrimgeours had a pretty big martial tradition, they could all fight, to some degree — and the musicians didn't quite fit, but Deirdre was into music herself, so. "I'm guessing you have a type."
"You're sweet, Liz, but you're too young for me, and I'm already taken."
"Oh piss off," she groaned, rolling her eyes.
Deidre chuckled a little, mind warm and frothing — and then she cooled somewhat, going more serious again. "As I was saying, from what I've heard Malfoy knew what she was getting into, just as I did. But when it came time to..." She glanced away, turning to stare blankly into the fire. Her mind churning away, there were a few dark lurches of feeling, like missing a step going down the stairs. "There comes a time, I think, when you have to decide what you're doing here. Life isn't a game. You only get one shot at it, so you damn well better make that shot count. And the one life I get, I didn't want to spend it...
"It's my life, dammit," Deidre drawled, looking back up to Liz with a smirk. "Could I have done what was expected of me, gone through with the marriage to Giles and everything that comes with it? Yes, I could have, but I would have tolerated that life, at best. I don't know about you, but I don't want to tolerate my life. I want to be happy, and I knew I wouldn't be, that way. My way will be harder, yes, but whatever work or hardship might be ahead is by my choice, for me. When it came time to choose, one way or the other, I chose to do whatever was necessary to make me happy, even if it's more difficult, less certain. And that meant staying with Emily, come what may.
"When Narcissa came to that same moment, she chose her duty. That's the difference."
Right. Right, that made sense. "I..."
You only get the one shot at it...
...chose to do whatever was necessary to make me happy, even if it's more difficult...
"Liz?"
She twitched, shook her head to herself. "Sorry, just, thinking about something. Thanks, Deirdre, I think I needed to hear that."
Frowning at her, Deirdre was very confused, the magic around her tense and twisted with it. Deirdre was pretty sure it wasn't about the topic at hand — with Severus in charge, Liz was safe from being directly pressured into a marriage, at least, because apparently Deirdre actually knew Severus well enough to get that — but she had absolutely no way of guessing what. It didn't seem like Liz was upset, though, so it was probably fine? "My pleasure, Liz. I guess."
"I am fine, just... There's something I've been putting off dealing with, and, I guess I just needed a little kick in the arse, was all. It's been a weird day."
"I can imagine — I heard you and Lady Malfoy are, well, that you had some kind of relationship, in any case. If there's anything you need to—" Deirdre broke off, glancing somewhere to Liz's right; her mind suddenly sparking, she smiled. "Oh, Emily's here."
So she was, dressed in casual tunic and trousers, weaving her way through the maze of furniture filling the common room. By the angle she was approaching from, she must have come through Severus's office — the only reasonable explanation was that Severus had given her permission to come through the floo there, which was unexpected, but not really that much of a surprise, when she thought about it. She knew Severus still talked to some former Slytherins, they were probably friends, and letting her come in to visit Deirdre was a nice thing to do at practically zero cost. There was a bundle of envelopes and papers folded under one arm, they must have started redirecting their post somewhere ahead of the news breaking, in case of trapped or cursed stuff.
Liz was kind of tempted to stick around — it'd been a while since she'd seen Emily, and, er. Emily was just cool, was all, tall and lanky, her hair a really pretty vivid orange, and she was such a cold, flat, snarky bitch sometimes, it was great. In retrospect, Liz suspected she'd kind of had a crush on Emily back in first year, before she'd known enough to realise what was going on. (Which would have been before the necessary hormones kicked in, so, point taken.) But Deirdre and Emily definitely had private stuff to discuss, so, Liz would just get out of the way. "Right, well, it's late, so I'm going to get down to my room." Popping up to her feet, quick yanking her bag back into place onto her shoulder, "See you later, Deirdre."
"You're not subtle, you know," Deirdre said, her mind shivering with silent laughter. "But go on then — good night, Liz."
Liz waved at Emily on her way out, getting a little wiggle of fingers in return, but she didn't stick around, was already starting down the stairs to the girls' rooms by the time Emily reached Deirdre. Putting the older girls out of mind, Liz frowned to herself, picking over the realisation she'd abruptly come to. She knew it was a problem, and that she should probably do something about it eventually, but she just...hadn't really given it much thought since. In her defence, everything around her breakup with Daphne had been emotionally difficult, and Liz was shite at dealing with feelings, so, it was possible she'd kind of been unconsciously avoiding it.
It was very very likely she'd been unconsciously avoiding it, if she was being honest. She didn't like thinking about her issues with her body at all if she could help it, it wasn't really a surprise that she'd been, just...ignoring it, and hoping it went away. And even if she ignored it through her blood alchemy thing, which had been her not-really-a-plan, that was really no guarantee the problem would just go away.
After all, her other Vernon-related problems hadn't magically gone away when she made him stop, or even when she'd moved out, years ago now. Her unexamined expectation that that incident when Daphne had pulled at her knickers wouldn't be repeated once she'd done the blood alchemy thing was really quite silly.
The physical scars would be gone, but that didn't really say anything about the mental ones, did it.
So, yes, she should actually deal with it — the problem was, she had absolutely no fucking idea how to go about doing that. Severus would probably have ideas, even be pleased that she was making an active decision to actually try to work on one of her issues, but she really didn't want to talk about it with him. Just, she didn't know, she never liked talking about...body stuff, and it was too close to sex stuff, and it was Severus, that would just be uncomfortable. Narcissa was off the list now, obviously, Sylvia might or might not know enough about this kind of thing to help, Hermione or maybe Susan would probably be the easiest to talk to about it but were less likely to have any useful advice.
Thankfully, that left one very obvious person to talk to. As soon as Liz reached her room, she tugged the door closed, let her bookbag fall to the floor, and pulled Tamsyn's notebook off the shelf. Tamsyn always had something to tell her, let's see what she came up with for this one...
Poor Liz, feelings are hard.
Mm, I wonder what the next chapter will be about. Impossible to say, I guess you'll just have to wait and see.
