Twenty
When you think you're all alone, I'll wrap you up and take you home. No matter what you're going through, I will look after you. When you get knocked down and you've had enough, oh I'll be there to dust you off. When you don't know what you're going to do, I will look after you.
- Look after you, Aron Wright
You lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you lied you-
The words thrum through the air around Cass, weaving a web of betrayal and hurt, grieving threads forming a tapestry of a trust that has been broken and a trust that was broken before anyone knew and a trust that was never there. The words thrum through the air around Cass, and although she hates the bitter taste they leave on her tongue (she had been around fae too often to not dislike the sourness of mistruths) she cannot refute the claim.
(She could refute the claim. She lied by omission, and this is not technically a lie. But it is enough of a lie for it to seem unforgiveable in the eyes of her siblings, and so she does not refute the claim.) (And yet, she could.)
"Yes," she says, ancient silver eyes staring at her elder sister with the kind of blankness one might see on a statue. (A defense mechanism, learned under the tutelage of a grandmother who shouted more than she spoke and only ever touched Cass to cause her pain.) "Yes, I did."
It pains Cass, to hear the hurt noise Susan emits due to those words. It is not only Susan who is hurt; Peter stands at his younger sister's side, accusation shining through sun-golden eyes.
But Edmund does not call Cass a liar. (He knows how she despises being labelled thus, no matter how true it may or may not be.) Nor does Lucy, furious little Lucy who bares her teeth at her elder siblings and steps towards Cass, followed by Edmund, the two making their stance on this clear. Peter turns hurt eyes to them, but they do not relent.
(It is not that they want to hurt Susan, far from it. It is that the elder two Pevensies have never known what it is to be judged and betrayed, to feel one wrong move away from shattering into a million pieces. Cass did not tell them about her days in the fall of Narnia, but was that not her choice to make?) (Edmund and Lucy are intimately acquainted with the terror of being cast aside or treated like something that is breakable. This is why they do not begrudge Cass for her lies about the last days of Narnia.) (They ache for her, that is true, but they do not begrudge her this.)
"Perhaps we should take this somewhere rather more private," Edmund proposes, calculating grey eyes sweeping over the Hogwarts population. Susan laughs at the suggestion, high and cold and cruel in a way that all of the Pevensie sometimes are, her fury blinding her. She opens her mouth to deny her younger brother's proposition, but she is not given a chance to do this; Peter recognizes the wisdom in his younger brother's words, and places a hand upon his younger sister's shoulder, stopping her words before they can leave her mouth.
"Perhaps that would be for the best," Peter murmurs, and he does not give Susan a chance to respond before steering her over to one of the yet-unexplored doors that lead to private rooms. Cass-Edmund-Lucy slink after their elder siblings, the middle Pevensie brother pausing at the threshold of the doorway to glance back at the hall.
"Please take this opportunity to have a break," Edmund says to those listening. (It is phrased like a request, but there is no tone of suggestion to the words; this is an order, nothing more and nothing less.) He flashes the hall a glimpse of teeth, and for just a moment, the antlers curling above his head seem to be far more threatening than they were just a few moments before. "I do believe it shall take some time for this matter to be resolved."
The door closes behind him, and when it does Edmund presses a hand to the wood. His power is that of Silence and Noise, the creeping mysteries of the universe, the secrets that the darkness can hide. He channels this power now, allows it to seep into the door guarding the room in which all of his siblings have gathered, asking it to keep their discussion secret from any and all who may try to listen in. The door responds positively, for it is part of Hogwarts and Hogwarts has always liked Cass, and would hate to see her secrets revealed against her will.
His siblings are able to sense when his power has seeped into the door, their senses well attuned to each other's Magick after the years spent together in Narnia. And the moment there is assurance that their discussion will be private, the silence between the Pevensie siblings shatters like it never was.
Susan screams at Cass, naming her liar, naming her false. She scream at her younger sister, because once upon a time in a land that no one else has seen, Susan asked Cass what had happened to her once the Pevensie siblings had been sent-forced-banished back to the world that birthed them but was never their home. Susan had asked Cass what had happened, because Susan is nothing if not knowledgeable and she saw the paintings, she read the stories, she learned the myths of what happened to the Last Queen of Narnia. (Or at least, she thought them to be myths.) Susan had asked Cass what had happened, because she'd been desperate to be told that Cass had been okay.
And Cass had smiled at her, and told her that she'd also returned to her birth-world. Cass had told Susan that she'd been okay, and Susan had believed her because why would Cass ever lie? She trusted her she trusted her SHE TRUSTED-
(Susan screams at Cass, because she loves her sister. Susan screams at Cass, because she is broken at the thought that her younger sister died and never told any of them, never let them comfort her.) (Susan screams at Cass, because she aches at the thought that her sister does not trust her.)
Cass looks at Susan who is screaming, and she thinks of her grandmother, although she immediately feels awful for comparing her sister to that maniac. She does not scream back at Susan, because Cass will yell and shriek and curse at everyone except those she clams as her family. She simply stands there as Susan screams, because there is a lot that she can say but the truth of the matter is this: she did not lie, not directly, but she did obfuscate. And is omission not another form of lying?
(Omission is not lying, but it is when it is an omission to one's family.)
The truth of the matter is this: Cass did not lie, but she did not tell the truth either. And she understands Susan's hurt. But Cass is also hurt; how could she not be?
She tells her siblings as much, when her eldest sister has screamed herself into silence, when all of them turn to Cass for her side of this story, for an explanation of her actions. She gives her siblings the truth that they are looking for, knowing that they will regret asking but unable unwilling to hide the pain that has been clawing at her insides for years.
"I was alone," is how Cass starts, and this is already enough to have Peter and Susan recoiling, guilt laying heavy upon the shoulders of the eldest siblings. Lucy and Edmund feel the guilt, too, but they do not recoil; they cling to Cass' sides, as if attempting to make up for the time that they were not standing besides her. Edmund's arm wraps around her shoulders, and Lucy's hand creeps into hers, and Cass chokes on a sob. "I was alone," she repeats, and that's as far as she gets before she breaks down into tears.
Once upon a time, Cass' siblings were not there when she needed them. They cannot go back and change the past (if they could, they would in a heartbeat, damn the consequences) but Cass needs them now and her siblings will not leave her to face this grief alone again, not when they are right there.
All slights are forgotten, all accusations of lying and falsehoods falling to the wayside as the middle Pevensie siblings collapses to the ground in a mess of tears and sobs and age-old pain. Edmund and Lucy cling to Cass' sides, and Susan sinks to her knees to throw her arms around her younger sister's shoulders, and Peter wraps his arms around all of them.
Cass sobs out the pain of her siblings leaving and she sobs out the pain of needing to rule a country alone that she had only ever ruled with her siblings and she sobs out the pain of dying in an attempt to save an empire that fell anyway. Cass breaks for all the grief she has endured, breaks because she has refused to allow herself to crack, and her siblings hold her whilst she cries.
(Edmund-Lucy-Peter-Susan weep with their sister. They weep because they were torn from her when she needed them most. They weep because of what she went through when they were no longer at her sides. They weep for their sister, who died far too young.) (Regardless that she was remade, a death is a death and it is tragic no matter how it is looked at.)
Time passes, and the tears of the Pevensie siblings dry, but their embrace does not once hesitate. Edmund-Lucy-Susan-Peter surround their middle sister, clinging to her with all the desperation of those who refuse to be separated from each other for another second more. Cass clings to her siblings just as much as they cling to her, making up for the past hours of separation. (A separation born of fear, born of the terror that they would hear what happened to her and they would find her broken.) (She knows that they would never do such a thing, but fear is not logical. This is a fear born of a childhood spent never being good enough; it is a terror that will never quite be soothed.)
Slowly, with much gentle encouragement from her twin and little sister, the full story drips from Cass' mouth, details emerging that could not be gleaned from the wall, little parts of the story that no one but Cass would ever know. Details that Edmund-Peter-Susan-Lucy are not sure they want to hear but that they choose to listen to regardless.
They know she spent four days mourning them, but now she tells them of how she screamed and raged and tore apart the rooms that so many peaceful days and nights had been spent in. (Her siblings can picture it, their rooms destroyed by the whirlwind that is Cass' fury, smoldering handprints and blistering brightness annihilating the memories of the times when their family was whole.) She whispers of how it felt, to be burned up from the inside out, how when the magic surged through her she felt like she was dying but also like she could do anything she wished to. ("I knew what freedom tasted like, in that moment," she whispers, and her siblings wonder if she ever misses that feeling, if she still knows the taste intimately.)
Cass does not tell them that at the end, she wanted to die. But her siblings know their middle sister, they know how her brain works. (Or rather, they know her as well as anyone can know another person.) And so although Cass does not tell them of her wish to die, Edmund-Susan-Peter-Lucy know her well enough to guess that she ached for the peace of death.
And they mourn for that, too. They mourn for their bright sister, bold and vivacious and furious in every aspect of her life. They mourn for the star of their family, their sister who burned so brightly until she eventually burned out without her siblings there to stoke the flames of her fury and passion.
They mourn for their sister, who without them was so lost that she chose to die rather than survive in an empire where her siblings no longer were.
(The Pevensie siblings have not know what to think of this showing, unsure whether they can support the exposure of their middle sister's life. But now, they cannot help but be grateful for this, this opportunity to see what old wounds still plague Cass, this chance to view all the things she should have told them but didn't.)
In the main part of the Great Hall, Remus Lupin is crying as well. He sobs into his husband's arms (his husband who is barely refraining from crying as well, holding it together for Remus, because Remus needs him right now), clings to Sirius and sobs like the world is ending. (The world is ending, has ended, ended for their daughter who they loved and left and lost without knowing it.)
Unlike Remus Lupin, Draco-Luna-Neville-Ginny are not crying. They could cry (the tears prickle at their eyes) but they choose not to shed their tears; instead, they choose to be furious. Furious at the lion-god-monster who tore away the people Cass needed most. (And there is no doubt in their mind as to who was responsible for the Pevensie siblings' outcast from Narnia.) They are furious at Susan-Peter, too, for allowing their hurt to cloud their judgement. (Although they understand the eldest Pevensies, as well. They know that kind of hurt.)
They want to say that they are furious at Cass (for not telling anyone, for refusing to talk about what happened, for not trusting people to help her) but the truth is that they are not furious at their friend-leader-god. They are distraught. (Because what if she had died? What if one day, Cassiopeia Adhara Pevensie just disappeared and nowhere knew where she went?) (Neville-Draco-Luna-Ginny do not think they would survive that.)
Harry Potter does not know what to think of what has been revealed. His first instinct is to say that the vision is lying, but he cannot say that because thus far it has been entirely too accurate. His second instinct is to cry out in grief, but he cannot help but wonder whether he is mourning for the girl he once knew or the girl he will never get to know, and by the time he has decided he is mourning for his childhood friend his tears have already died. And so, Harry Potter settles into his third instinct, which is apathy. (He cannot care about Cass, not when there is no chance of reconciliation. It hurts too much to care.)
Hermione looks at her friends, sees Harry's apathy and Ron's barely-hidden snickering. ("Serves her right," Ronald Weasley laughs quietly. He does not know that Hermione hears him. He would not care even if he did know.) Hermione herself has never been friends with Cass (although she wanted to be, once, before suspicion got the best of her) but she still finds herself horrified at the thought of the girl dying such a pain-filled death. A hand flies to cover her mouth, horror curdling in her throat, but then she looks at her friends and she sees their reactions, and now she is horrified for a different reason entirely. (How can they act so apathetic, so gleeful, when faced with the death of a girl without whom they would all likely be dead?) (Hermione Granger, do you not recognize the people you call friends? Do you wonder why you have never seen them like this before?) (There is a reason you have never noticed their flaws before, Hermione Granger.)
Narcissa weeps into her hands, and she thought that she had shed all the tears in her body but somehow finds more. Next to her, she hears Amelia trying to comfort her, but the image of her niece screaming in pain as magic burns up her body from the inside out is branded into Narcissa's mind, and there is nothing anyone can do to remove the sight. And so, with Amelia at her side and Susan Bones rushing to sit at Narcissa's other side, Narcissa Malfoy weeps. (She would give anything to spare her niece from having felt that pain.)
Albus Dumbledore smiles when he sees the death of Cass, but he schools his expression as fast as he can. (Not fast enough; a few notice this glee at the death of a young girl, and they frown.) (Albus Dumbledore, you are being watched.) Albus has a plan, a plan to retrieve his voice, a plan to get back at the siblings who stole the respect that he is owed. He has a few still loyal to him, and they know the plan, they are aware of what they must do to restore the status of Hogwarts' (once) beloved Headmaster.
By the time the Pevensie siblings emerge from the private room, the door rippling as Edmund calls back his Power, over an hour has passed. Draco-Luna-Neville-Ginny's fury has died down into embers, still smoldering but no longer the raging fire it was. Narcissa's tears have dried, a spell having her face looking as though she never shed a tear in the first place. Remus has also stopped crying, but now he and Sirius lie in each other's arms, unresponsive to anything around them. Hermione has shifted away from Ronald and Harry, sitting alone somewhere in between where the Pevensies were sitting and where her friends watch her in confusion.
The siblings cast their gazes around the room, keen eyes taking note of all the things that have changed and all the things that have not. They see Remus' grief, Hermione's distance. They see Draco-Neville-Ginny-Luna's desperate fury, and Dumbledore's almost-hidden glee. They see al that was, and all that is. (Susan catches a glimpse of all that could be, and her head tilts to the side, a sign of curiousity.) (This will be interesting, she thinks. She is correct.)
The Pevensies do not sit down again, for it has been a trying day and they can see that everyone in the hall needs time to process what they have seen. And so Peter claps his hands, drawing attention from the few who were not already looking at him.
"I do believe we have seen quite a lot in the past few hours," the Pevensie states diplomatically, offering the students closest to him a small, understanding smile. (Peter is the only one able to produce this smile; he is the only one of his siblings able to disguise his sharp edges so.) "There should be enough rooms for everyone to sleep in; I propose that we stop here for the day, and continue the viewing in the morning."
As with Edmund, this is not a suggestion, although it is disguised as one.
Slowly, students-teachers-guests begin to trickle into the rooms that have been provided. Minerva, Filius and Pomona disappear into one room, joined shortly after by Severus, who is already conjuring a few bottles of alcohol as he steps through the door. Harry and Ron drag themselves into another room, but are not joined by Hermione, who instead approaches Susan Bones to ask if they might share a room. Sirius and Remus trail into a room together, holding hands tightly; curiously, Amelia and Narcissa follow them into the room, although the door closes before anyone can hear why the women have followed the men.
The Pevensies do not disappear into a room.
They could sleep, but they do not need to. (What need do gods have for rest?) They do not need more time to understand what they have watched. (They have lived through it already.) And so they do not disappear into a room, as so many others do.
(Draco-Neville-Luna-Ginny do not flee to a room either, though they are tired and confused, for they refuse to let Cass out of their sight. She is their friend, their leader, their god. They have failed to be there for her too many times; they will not fail again.) (Dear ones, you have not failed. You could not have helped when she was in a different land different kingdom different world.) (Dear ones, you did all that you could. You did enough.)
The Pevensie siblings remain in the hall long after most of the students-teachers-guests have left for the rooms provided, the five of them sitting together in silence as Luna-Ginny-Neville-Draco watch on cautiously. But even gods cannot be still forever; after some time, Edmund grows weary of sitting in stillness.
This is when the music begins to play.
Ginny-Luna-Draco-Neville do not recognize this music, but something in their soul knows it nonetheless. It is the sound of crashing waves and creaking trees, thunderstorm notes mixing with sunshine bursts of song. It is sung in a language older than time itself; this is the language of Narnia, Ancient and Timeless as only holy things can be.
Lucy leaps to her feet the moment the first note rings through the hall, laughing gaily as she twirls around her siblings, leaving trails of damp footprints behind her as she spins in a riot of red-green-blue-white. Cass follows shortly after, grabbing Lucy's hand and pulling her into a dance that they danced, in a long ago time in a land that is their home. The two queens whirl about the hall, stars and ocean embracing each other as the music swirls around them. (The smell of salt and burning trail in their steps.)
Edmund cannot sit out for much longer, not when his twin is looking at him so eagerly. He unfolds from his seat, taking the hand that Cass stretches out for him and allowing himself to be pulled into the dance. He and Lucy and Cass dart around and past each other with the ease of those who have done this a hundred-thousand-million times before; the two queens avoid his antlers with practiced ease, laughing as they dip around it, and Edmund laughs too. (It is good to see them so carefree.) (Edmund makes a game of it, as he has done since he first Changed; every time he touches his sisters, a new flower blossoms to life in their hair, a symbol of his devotion to them.) (Cass and Lucy adore the buds that adorn their curls.)
Susan and Peter do not sit out of the dance; they have never been able to resist joining their siblings when they are having fun. Susan joins Cass and Lucy effortlessly, her less-than-corporeal form flickering and drifting as she leaps and sways and twists. Peter flashes to Edmund's side with a smile that glows with joy, the brothers exchanging smiles as they stomp and clap and spin around their sisters.
Ginny and Luna approach the siblings at some point, as the dance is evolving into another kind of dancing, the fire-girl and moon-fae smiling wild smiles as they ask whether they might learn the steps of these dances. Not ones to be left out, Draco and Neville join too; when the Pevensies see these four warriors wishing to learn the Narnian dances, they laugh and agree easily. (Draco-Luna-Neville-Ginny are displaced creatures that would be better off in Narnia than this world.) (The Pevensies see this, and vow to right this wrong.)
This is how the night passes: with laughter and dancing and music. When Ginny-Neville-Draco-Luna tire, they curl up on a couch in a pile of limbs, falling asleep to the sight of Cass' eyes glowing as she twists around her siblings. The Pevensies guard the four warrior-students as they would guard any of their family, because Neville-Draco-Luna-Ginny are their family now. (Any family of Cass' is family of the Pevensie siblings.)
This is how the night passes: the stars come out, and the moon crosses the sky, and the Pevensies continue to dance.