Seven
I didn't choose this town, I dream of getting out. There's just one who could make me stay.
- You're on your own kid, Taylor Swift
When the train pulls into Hogsmeade Station, Cassiopeia is the first one off, slipping into the shadows at the edge of the platform so as to avoid the throng of people who pour off the train a little after her escape from the machine. They cascade out the doors, a wave of black robes and fluttering hands and sparkling magic that is so bright it nearly blinds Cassiopeia. They cascade out of the train, and she steps back, drawing further into the shadows as she examines the children she will be going to school with.
(She has never gone to school before, not really. Her grandmother raised her in the Ancestral Black Home, never allowing her to step foot outside, never allowing her the freedom all other children took for granted, never allowing her the time to become close to anyone her own age. And she had lived in a forest, once she'd left her grandmother - she studied from Harry's schoolbooks, that was true, but she never went to school.)
(The trees were her teachers, and the river was her mentor. She learned from the wolves and the birds, studied the trails of the rabbits and listened to the plants. Her schooling was wild.) (How different will Hogwarts be?)
They are young, and although that is not the only thing she notices, it is the most striking. They are young, these children, these wixen, but they are not innocent in the way so many children are. They are children of blood and division, children born in a war and raised in the tenuous tension existing after a fight that never quite ended. They armour themselves with smiles or frowns, and they eye each other up as though waiting for a fight that may never happen. Even the first years, young though they are, don the masks they have crafted since birth.
In the end, it is only the ones who are new to this world, the ones untouched by this hatred and violence, who retain some of the innocence children are known for. It is the ones who are new to this world who smile genuinely, and laugh loudly and keep their wands in their bags instead of in their pockets.
Lucius Malfoy sneers at the scene. It is easy for the Malfoy patriarch to see who is a proper wixen and who is not; sneakers and toothy smiles and wonder are all marks of those who are new to the Wixen world. He sneers at them, at these people infiltrating the world he was born into, and does not realize how many people see him. (He would not care, if he did see them, and if the Pevensies had not promised his death already, it would be this carelessness that would be his undoing.)
(He has forgotten, you see. He has forgotten who makes the clothing that he wears, who crafts the jewels he buys, who watches him from behind the counters of the shops that he visits. He has forgotten that there are far less purebloods than there are newbloods.) (It is dangerous to forget such things.)
Amelia Bones smiles at the screen, a wistful expression on her face that no one except Susan has ever seen before. She remembers when she was young; she was innocent, and so was her brother. (They were innocent. These children are not. It is her generation that has caused this loss. It is another casualty of the war. A casualty no one names. A casualty barely anyone remembers.)
She remembers laughing with her brother, with Edgar. She remembers teasing him for sticking his wand into his pocket and forgetting it was there. She remembers hearing everyone around her gasp in awe as they saw Hogwarts. She remembers feeling immortal.
(She remembers blood on her hands on her face on her soul. She remembers cold eyes, dead eyes, eyes that would never wink at her again. She remembers screaming and sobbing and why did he have to die, why was she not there, whywhyWHY-)
(She is not innocent anymore.)
Narcissa Malfoy looks at her son, and she mourns for the innocence that these children never knew. She mourns for what the war has taken from them before they were even born. (Being war children was never going to be easy.) She had done her best to keep her Draco innocent to the cruelty of the world, but with a father like Lucius Malfoy innocence was never an option.
(She is so sorry she could not protect him.)
She mourns for Draco, for the child he could have been if he had had a different father, a stronger mother. She mourns for Cass, who had never had anyone try to protect her, who grew thorns and sharpened her jagged edges because if she didn't protect herself then no one would.
She mourns for the children, and what they have lost, and what they will lose.
(Even they are not innocent. Cassiopeia has grown knowing both the mundane and the wixen world - she knows the masks that purebloods wear, and she knows the shiftiness of muggles who are expecting to be robbed at any moment.) (She grieves that these children are not as innocent as they deserve to be.)
(They will lose more of their innocence, they will lose whatever innocence they had left. But she doesn't know that yet. She doesn't know to mourn that yet.)
They have lost their innocence now, Cass knows. They lost their innocence the moment Harry appeared outside of the third Triwizard Tournament task, clutching the comatose body of Cedric Diggory and crying that Voldemort was back. They lost their innocence with the Triwizard Tournament, and they lost their hope when the first attack was reported that very summer, and they lost their faith when Umbridge came to the school and no one did anything to stop her.
(One person did their best to stop her. One person tried to protect the students, in a way that they had never been protected. The children did not lost their faith, although Cass does not know this yet; they simply became faithful towards the only one who had tried to save them.)
(Hogwarts has a new god, Dumbledore.)
Hagrid calls all of the first years over to where he towers over the students, and Cassiopeia slips through the crowd. She sees the distinctive blue-green magic of Draco, and she smiles at the sight, but does not approach him. (There will be time for that later.) Her eyes catch on red hair, and moments later on too-green eyes standing next to the red-haired figure, and she allows herself to relax slightly upon seeing that Harry is okay.
The first years all follow Hagrid when he turns to leave, and Cassiopeia trails after them, a star cloaking itself in darkness so as not to blind everyone with its light. She climbs into the last boat, alone, unnoticed by everyone. (She will not be unnoticed for much longer.) She climbs into the boat, and it starts to move, and she smiles as she leans over the side of the boat, trailing her hand through the dark, icy water of the lake they are gliding across. Something wraps around her wrist, a tentacle belonging to the creature watching her curiously from the depths of the water, and she laughs, a sound that does not go unheard amidst the chatter of the other first years. They glance over at her, this lone girl playing with something in the water, and there is something so strange about this image, something that leaves them feeling as though they have seen something that was never meant to be seen.
(They do not know it, but they have seen a wielder of the Olde Magick coming into her power, a queen coming into her titles.)
"Olde Magick is gone!" The words echo through the hall, whispers that no one cares enough to listen to. (Olde Magick is here, the echoes whisper. See these queens and kings, see how their teeth gleam and their eyes glitter. See the strength of their backs and the blood on their hands. How can you not see? They are Olde Magick.) "Old Magick is gone!" Dumbledore yells again, and now he is standing, glaring at the four siblings sitting at the front of the hall. "It is gone and forbidden! How dare you bring this idea into my halls!"
The Pevensies look at the man, smiling strange smiles that no one can interpret. It is Lucy who stands up after a moment, followed by Cass, the two girls standing there hand in hand. (Cass would never let Lucy face something on her own. None of them will ever be alone again. She swears it.)
"How arrogant you are, to think that you could destroy Olde Magick," Lucy says, and there is a snarl hidden underneath her words that has the hall shuddering, although they cannot quite tell what it making them so fearful. Surely not this slip of a girl, with her petite figure and large hazel eyes? (Forgive them for seeing just your beauty, dear Lucy, forgive them. They have not learned to hear the snarl of your words, to see the fangs in your smile and the claws on your hands.) "Olde Magick began before you, and it will never be gone. It is in the air, in the ground, in the ley lines that you worship. It is the wind in your hair, the warmth of your friend's hands. It is everything. And you truly thought you could destroy it?"
Cass smiles, and there is a resemblance to her young sister when she speaks, a snarl no one can hear but which still sends shivers down their spines. (They all know Cass is beautiful, but do they know that she is beautiful in the way broken glass is beautiful? Beautiful in ways that will hurt you when you come too close, beautiful in ways that will leave you cut open and bleeding even as you praise her beauty.) "And you say that you are on the Light side," Cass shakes her head, still smiling at the headmaster, a fanged smile. "You wish to destroy Olde Magick - you may as well say that you wish to be the reason the world ends. You cannot do that and still claim you are a hero, Dumbledore."
The headmaster does not want to sit down, he wants to keep arguing, but he finds himself sitting down anyway, sitting down in silence. He tries to open his mouth, to protest, to protect his reputation from the words of these girls, but his lips will not part. (The third Pevensie sister is looking at him, he cannot help but notice. She is looking at him, and there is a finger raised to her lips in a motion reminiscent of reminding a small child to keep quiet. But it is just a coincidence. He is too powerful to be silenced by some young woman.)
Draco Malfoy opens his mouth to ask his cousin what it means, that she is coming into her titles as a queen, but he closes his mouth after another moment of thought. He can see his friends doing the same; across the hall, Ginny and Luna are whispering to each other whilst darting glances towards Cass, and Nevile Longbottom is watching aforementioned girl with a considering eye.
They all want to ask, he can tell. They all want to know why Cass is being called a queen. (Not for the first time; Draco thinks of the times his cousin has been referred to as a queen, the times she has been titled.) But something stops them from asking. A silent promise that their questions will be answered soon.
(It is not the time for those questions. Not yet.)
"Slytherin!" The hat yells, and Cassiopeia beams as Draco saunters towards the table bedecked in green and silver. He glances towards the first years once, as he sits down at the table, and catches Cass' eye; he sees her smiling at him, and he grins back, delighted to see that his new friend has not turned her back on him just because he has gone to a house known as 'evil'.
(How could a house be evil? How could children be evil? You make them that way, all of you with your prejudice and your cruelty. Cruelty begets cruelty.)
"There's not a single Slytherin who hasn't gone bad," Ronald mutters on Harry's other side, and Cassiopeia barely refrains from snarling at the boy. Who is he to judge them, to judge these children? Who is he to call them wicked? Does he not know that 'good' is just a fairy tale?
(That is something Cassiopeia and Harry have long since learned. They know the world to exist in shades of grey; they learned this in between beatings and fear and cruelty and watching doting parents become monsters.)
Although he wishes that these children (these children he once swore to protect, these children he failed to keep safe) had not lived the lives that they have lived, Sirius Black cannot help but be grateful that they learned of the grey in the world. He had learned that lesson, too, when he was young, in between his mother cursing him for a lapse in manners and his father slipping him a pain potion when Walburga was not looking.
(He forgot that lesson, once he got to Hogwarts, once he met James Potter. So desperate to fit into the house of the bold and brave, that he willingly forgot the grey of the world, and taught himself to see only in black and white. It allowed him to fit into Gryffindor, but it cost him his brother.) (He hopes that they are better than him, these children. He hopes they do not forget the grey.) (He knows that Harry will repeat his mistakes.)
Cass glances to the side, and smiles when she catches the eyes Ginny and Luna and Neville and Draco. They look back at her, and there is understanding within their eyes. (They, too, only ever see shades of grey. They have long since learned that black and white are impossible colours.)
"Now, don't be so harsh, my girl," Albus Dumbledore smiles, eyes twinkling as he stares at Cass, pretending he is kind, pretending he is as pure as everyone believes he is. (People do not believe he is pure, not anymore, not after what Lucy and Cass said about Olde Magick.) (And besides, pure people don't win wars, and he has won two. What does that say about him?) "Sometimes people are simply good, while others are just evil."
Cass laughs at him, and it is not a kind sound. But it is Draco who speaks, Draco who stares Albus Dumbledore down with icy eyes as words spill out of him like a winter blizzard. "And am I one of the purely evil people? Is Cass? Are all the Slytherins? What about your once-lover, headmaster? Is he good, or is he evil? And what does it say about you, that you still visit him, that you still use his saying to rally people to your cause?"
Albus Dumbledore pales, and goes silent. And Cass continues to laugh, now joined by her siblings, and her worshippers friends.
Names are called, and Cassiopeia battles down her fury at this boy's insensitive words, because he is Harry's friend and she cannot be the reason Harry loses his second friend. (But Ronald will be the reason Harry loses his first friend.) She watches as students are sorted into their houses, and she smiles slightly every time. (She will never alienate people based on something so small as the colour of their robes.)
Eventually, Harry's name is called, and Cassiopeia cheers for him, although she is the only one to do so, everyone else too busy whispering his name to each other, passing his title through the hall until the very rafters echo the words. They look at her then, these prejudiced children, wondering who she is, wondering how she knows Harry Potter. She gazes back at them, smiling, and they shiver, gazes darting away from her. (They feel as though they are being hunted, but they do not know by what.)
Harry remembers when Cass looked after him. He remembers how fiercely she defended him when no one else did, how she always believed him. When did that change? (You know when it changed, Harry.) Has anyone ever protected him as fiercely as his first friend once did? (No, and no one ever will. You made your bed, Harry Potter. You chose them over her. Now accept the consequences.)
"Look at that," Ronald sneers at the scene, seeing how everyone flinches from Cass, although he is not sure why they all look away from the eleven-year-old girl. "Evil, just like her cousin. The entire Black family is evil, and she's no exception."
Harry bristles at that, although he is not sure whether he is angry on his once-friend's behalf, or on behalf of his godfather. In the end, he decides to be angry for Sirius. (He has always chosen someone else before choosing Cass.) "And what about Sirius?" Harry snaps in an angry whisper, only loud enough for Ronald and Hermione to hear. "He's a Black, too."
"Yeah, but they disowned him, didn't they? So he isn't really a Black."
(Cass disowned herself too, Ronald Weasley, or have you already forgotten this? She is a Pevensie, not a Black. You will learn this lesson, sooner or later, one way or another.)
"Gryffindor!" The hat announces to the hall after what feels an age of waiting, and Cassiopeia startles slightly. It is not so unexpected that Harry would be a Gryffindor, but there is something about this that leaves her on edge. After all, it is Harry who has come with many of the plans they use to steal essentials from the stores. It is Harry who has talked his way out of trouble more than once, Harry who taught her how to use her childish adorableness against others. (She did not grow up knowing how to be cute, because she did not grow up with anyone who tolerated that sort of behaviour. Harry taught her how to make her eyes bigger, how to cry on command. It has saved her from trouble more than once.) Surely, there is more Slytherin than Gryffindor in him?
Once upon a time, there was more Slytherin than Gryffindor in him. Harry knows it is not true now, so many years later. (In embracing the house he was sorted into, he has discarded the house he could have gone to. He has discarded the person he could have been.)
"Nah, you could never be a Slytherin," Ronald laughs boisterously, slinging an arm around Harry's shoulders. (Not noticing the glares sent his way, not noticing how green-clad students bare their teeth in snarls and curl their hands into fists, not noticing how they are backed by the cool gazes and stern frowns of the students dressed in blue.) (Ronald Weasley, you have alienated yourself from your school. What will you do when you are called to atone for your mistakes?)
"Right," Harry laughs. (A hollow laugh, but even he cannot tell the difference between a hollow laugh and a real laugh anymore.) "Of course I couldn't be a snake."
(Liar, liar. Pants on fire.)
She cheers, anyway, as he heads to the red and gold table, where he sits down and smiles at her as he keeps the space next to him empty. He expects her to join him, she knows. She is not so sure that she will. (In her heart, she knows she belongs elsewhere. She is brave, but that is not her defining trait.)
Then the red-haired boy called Ronald Weasley goes up to the stool (he is in Gryffindor, just like Harry is) and a boy with the smile of a pixie gets put into Slytherin. (Blaise Zabini, that is the name of the pixie boy, and Cassiopeia smiles as he sits down next to Draco. Something tells her that they will be good friends.)
And then, Cassiopeia is alone. Alone in front of a hall full of people who are staring at her curiously, alone in a place she never wanted to in, alone in a way Harry promised her she would never be.
"Everyone, this is Cassiopeia Adhara Black." The old man sitting in the centre of the High Table stands, and Cassiopeia's eyes narrows. Why has he singled her out like this? What does he stand to gain from everyone knowing who she is? (Why is he calling her that name, that dead name, the name that she buried so long ago, the name that is rotting under an oak tree like the person her Grandmother wanted her to be?) "She is a year younger than you, but has been let into Hogwarts due to special circumstances. I expect all of you to welcome her as you would any other student."
"You singled her out," Amelia Bones frowns, glaring at Dumbledore with the disapproval of a mother who has seen children being treated unjustly. She glares, but Dumbledore does not quail, not until she is joined by Narcissa Malfoy, whose eyes are colder than ice as she stares down the headmaster. "You singled her out," Amelia Bones repeats. "The students had no need to know any of that information, and yet you told them anyway."
"What were you hoping for?" Narcissa Malfoy asks, her words icy and controlled and calm in a way that has her son edging away from her. (His mother's anger is hot, but her fury is cold, and it is the cold that is truly dangerous.) "Did you want them to treat her differently, knowing that she is younger than them? Were you trying to make her a pariah, Dumbledore? Were you hoping to create an outsider?"
"Of course not!" Albus Dumbledore blusters, but his words are empty and there are more than a few people now looking at him with suspicion. He looks at Minerva, expecting her to back him up, but she looks away. He looks at Severus, and the man stands up and walks to another empty seat, further away from Dumbledore and closer to Narcissa Malfoy. (They are all disgusted by this man. How could they not have seen this before?) "The students have a right to know if there is someone with special circumstances in their midst," the headmaster now appeals to the students, trying to save his image of a grandfatherly like figure. "And I was trying to make sure that Miss Black would not be bullied or outcast because she is younger than them."
Peter growls, and the entire hall stiffens at the sound. (Is it just a trick of the light, or is that fur creeping up his hands? Have his nails truly shifted to claws? Surely not, such a thing would be impossible.) "Her name is Cassiopeia Adhara Pevensie," the eldest Pevensie brother snarls. "Use her dead name one more time and you will be left bleeding to death in front of the people you desire to lead."
No one says anything more, but Amelia Bones and Narcissa Malfoy are still glaring at Albus Dumbledore, and the professors of the school do not deign to look at the man who is supposed to be their leader.
There are whispers now, her name (her dead name) being passed from mouth to mouth, an echo that builds in volume until it seems to be the only thing she can hear. Cassiopeia grits her teeth, and now there is that familiar fury sparking through her veins. "That is not my name," she snaps, and abruptly everyone falls silent as though cursed. She meets the old man's eyes, and sees his minute recoil at the fury scrawled across her face. "I am Cassiopeia Adhara," she says to the hall, not once looking away from the old man. "I buried the name Black, and I will never reclaim it."
Remus closes his eyes at his daughter's words. He has cried more in this one day than he has in months, but he still cannot stop the tears from trailing down his cheeks. He did this, he knows. He broke this bond that could have been so beautiful.
Paddy whimpers from where he lies at Remus' feet, and tucks his head beneath his paws. He cannot bear to see the rest of the hall, cannot bear to see where his daughter sits, so close and yet out of reach. He did this. He left, left her and left his husband and left his godson. He broke this family. (And to think, he'd always sworn to be nothing like his parents. But as it turns out, he is just the same - he broke his own family just like his parents broke their family, but this time he can only blame himself.)
There is a stillness in the air then, a hush of shock emanating from every person in the hall. Cassiopeia does not acknowledge it; she walks toward the stool holding the hat that has sorted everyone else and she sits down, dropping the hat onto her own head and relaxing slightly when it droops over her eyes, cutting off her view of the rest of the hall.
The hat muses over her for a long time. It tries to place her in the house of green and silver, tries to tempt her into the house of the eagles, but Cassiopeia curls her hands into fists and refuses. She has to protect Harry. She grew up in this world, even if she escaped it the moment she could. She knows what to expect, how to act, what to do. Her friend does not, and Cassiopeia cannot, will not, leave him to flounder alone in this new world.
There is pain in Harry's heart, but he ignores it. He has felt enough sorrow over the past. He is tired of regretting his actions. (He is lying to himself. He will always regret the past. But it is easier to be angry, easier to think he was in the right. And he has always chosen the easy path.) Instead, Harry chooses to be angry.
He didn't need the help! He managed just fine before Cass, and he has managed perfectly without her. How dare she make him out to be some sort of helpless boy! How dare she insinuate he could not (can not) handle himself in the Wixen world!
(But you can't help yourself, can you, Harry? You still don't know about your lordships, about your vault, about the feud you started by rejecting Draco Malfoy's offer of friendship. Stubborn boy, naive boy - you could have had everything you wished for, but you rejected your once-friend when she tried to teach you what she knew.)
(She wants to, though. Oh, how desperate she is to accept her placing, to go to the green and silver table, or to slip into the ranks of blue and bronze. Would she belong there? Would she be an outsider? She does not know, and that loss of knowledge aches inside her.)
Eventually, the hat concedes. It makes a bargain with her - two years in the house she does not belong in, the house her friend has been accepted into, and then when the two years are done, she will go to her correct house. (Whichever that may be.) She will go to the place she is meant to be.
Cassiopeia agrees to this deal. Two years are not nearly long enough to teach Harry everything she knows, everything he has to learn to be able to survive in this world, but it is enough. (It will have to be enough.)
Cass sighs, shakes her head. It was not enough time, because she could not make her friend listen to her. She tried to help him, and he turned his back on her. (She never should have taken the hat's deal.) (She could have been happier, if she had just allowed herself to be placed in the house that would accept her the most.) (Not the house where she belonged, because she does not belong in Hogwarts, not truly. She belongs in the wilds of Narnia. She belongs at the side of her siblings as they charge into battle. She does not belong here, in this castle led by a madman and filled with adults that could not protect their students.)
Even with the deal in place, the hat stutters as it calls out her house, stutters as it never has before. It is wrong, to be placing this girl in the house of red and gold, when she should be burying herself in the knowledge of the Ravenclaws or fulfilling her ambitions in the house of the snakes or showing off her loyalty in the house of yellow and black.
"Hu-Sl-Ra-Gryffindor!" The hat cries, the word echoing in the silence of the hall. (No one has ever heard the hat stutter before.) And Cassiopeia stands up and makes her way towards where Harry is beaming at her, although no one else looks nearly as welcoming. And the hat thinks of what it has seen inside of her head, thinks of the potential she is drowning in, thinks of what happens when ambition meets bravery, when loyalty is repaid in kind.
And the hat begins to pray that Hogwarts will survive these next years.
Luna hears how the hat prayed, and she smiles a secretive smile. She has seen what will happen, she knows what is to come. She knows that Cass is the saviour of Hogwarts, not the cause of its destruction.
(How lovely it is, that someone was praying to Cass before anyone else thought of it. Did the hat know what she would become, when it began to pray? Did the hat see what she would be?)
Cassiopeia begins her first year at Hogwarts amidst stares and whispers.
The teachers stare at her when they think she is not looking, stare at her eyes and her skin, whisper about the familiarity of her smile behind her back, when they are certain that she cannot see them speaking of her. ("She looks just like her fathers," they murmur, and Cassiopeia vows to become greater than anyone in her family ever was.)
"And look at what you have become," Edmund whispers into her ear, and Cass smiles at her twin. (They have both become More than they ever thought they could be.) (A broken boy found a broken girl, and they helped each other to rebuild themselves out of all their shattered pieces.) (They would never be broken again.)
"They could not even dream of becoming like you," Lucy says, holding her sister's hand tightly. (She has always adored Cass, even before they knew they were sisters.) (No one can ever shine as bright as Cass, Lucy knows this, even if Cass does not know the truth of it.)
Susan glances at her younger siblings, and she gifts them a smile filled with warmth. "Of course you are greater than the people who birthed you," Susan murmurs, a promise, a vow. (A prophecy.) (She has always been able to see further than her other siblings; the future opens itself up to her, and she greets it like an old friend. And everyone listens when she speaks, because they know the weight of her words.) "Stars are beyond mortal comprehension. And you, darling sister, have been a star since you were born."
The portraits gaze at her as she slips through the corridors, painted eyes examining the way she walks, the way she talks, the way she laughs. (They examine her, and they compare her to three boys from many years before. "She is less like her fathers than the teachers think," the portraits whisper. "Regulus laughed the same way she does. But no one remembers him.") (Cassiopeia hears them, and remembers her grandmother bemoaning the fate of her youngest son, and she silently swears to remember Regulus Black. She will learn about his fate, and she will not let him become forgotten.)
The students do not stare at Cassiopeia, but rather speak about her as she passes. They speak of how she moves silently through the corridors, as though she is a ghost just haunting the castle. They speak of how she never wears shoes, but rather chooses to wander through the castle with bare feet. They speak of her smile, and her frown, of how she seems entirely distant unless she is with Harry Potter. It is only with Harry Potter that she truly seems to exist - with him, she shows the vibrancy filling her, and it is blinding to see. ("Strange," they call her. "Daughter of a traitor," they title her. Cassiopeia pays them no mind; she has been called worse.)
For the first five days of her first year at Hogwarts, the only person who dares to talk to her is Harry. Even Ronald does not speak to her; he sneers when he sees her, but sometimes she snarls back, and the expression on her face when she does so is enough to keep Ronald Weasley silent. (Draco does not speak to her, either. Cassiopeia tries not to be hurt by this.) (Perhaps she is simply destined to have Harry as her only friend.)
And then, on the first Saturday of the school year, Cassiopeia is approached by Draco Malfoy, who stands from his table and walks over to her as she is finishing her breakfast. There is a letter clutched tightly in his hand. "You are my cousin," he says, and everyone around them falls silent.
Cassiopeia looks at him, a small smile on her face. (There is hope in his eyes, and his magic is sparkling in a way she has never seen it do before. How could she not smile at him, this boy who is clearly delighted by this news?) Ignoring the scowls of Harry and Ronald, she nods, and watches as Draco begins to beam joyously. "I am," she confirms verbally. (There is power in words.) "By blood, if not by name."
Luna smiles, because she is fae, and she knows how powerful words are, how powerful they can be when used by a being of power. Cass has pledged her loyalty to Draco by claiming him as family; it is a bond that no one will be able to break, no matter how hard they try.
(Cass has done the same thing for them, for Luna and Ginny. She has promised her friendship, her protection, knowing the power her words wielded.) (Susan has known the power of words since before she first entered Narnia; of course she would teach her sister of the consequences of promises and vows.)
(They may not have been born fae, they may be More than any other mortal or creature could ever hope to be, but they were raised fae. They will never forget the lessons they learned as children. They will never forget the beings who raised them, who taught them, who loved them.)
That does not matter to Draco. He has been an only child for his entire life; learning he has family, even if she has renounced her name, is a dream he has long since given up on. "I apologise for my distance from you," he murmurs, and there is something tentative in his eyes that has Cassiopeia aching. (Lonely children recognize lonely children; like has always recognized like.) "May we still be friends?"
Cassiopeia is still soft, in many ways, and she is still a lonely child. Of course she accepts this offer of friendship. (It is something she will never regret.)
Cassiopeia and Draco leave the hall, hand in hand, ignoring the stares of the staff and the students, ignoring the glares from the Gryffindors and the considering glances of the Slytherins.
And thus, Cassiopeia claims the first member of her family.