The Lady of (New) Avalon

What the hell, Evans! First off, you said you weren't interested in helping with the Chronicle, and secondly, piss off, we both know this is about you just being nosey. And you're just as unreliable a narrator as I am. Oh, poor Evans, little baby sociopath all confused about her feelings...

(Give me a fucking break. We both know you haven't got any.)

And I'm not saying you were responsible for everything that led up to the founding of the city, just the bad, painful parts of those few months of my life. Because you were. Because you're an evil, selfish bitch like that.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a history to write.

Which is not a memoir, kindly go fuck yourself.

"That's the impression Sev's gotten, at least."

Yeah, well, Snivels had probably gotten that impression from the people trying to recruit him — of course they'd try to make themselves seem more influential than they actually were. "All the Dark houses are letting or even encouraging one or two of their more hot-headed kids to join up because they're hedging their bets. You know, just in case Bella and de Mort get tired of playing games and just fucking take over Britain. Most of the Dark houses support some sort of Dark Revolution, and there are a few fringe Houses that support de Mort's talking points, or I guess what we're told are their talking points — I didn't even know there was a Manifesto — but none of them want de Mort to blatantly flout the Wizengamot's authority — and worse, do so successfully. Kind of undermines their power, you know? But they, the Dark houses, don't really have anyone to rally around to make a concerted effort to dismantle the organisation. Arcturus would be the natural choice, he used to be a powerful warrior and he's fought Dark Lords before, except he's completely useless these days, and Bella would slaughter him."

Obviously there were so many problems with Dumbledore as a rallying figure that they wouldn't even consider building a circle around him — even if he was the only private citizen attempting to organise a resistance group, he was even more useless than Arcturus. And he'd probably shit himself if the Dark houses decided they were going to take over his Order of the Phoenix and turn them into an effective fighting force.

"And, well, as far as civil wars go, this one isn't really that disruptive. Most of the commoners aren't involved at all, really, so the more populist Houses don't really give a shite. I mean, yeah, there are commoners in the Death Eaters and the Aurory, but they're not killing each other in the streets like they would be if it were the Gaels trying to withdraw from the Wizengamot."

"Yeah, but if they don't stop the Death Eaters escaping their influence, wouldn't that encourage the Gaels to follow suit?"

"I...guess it's possible. But not likely. They have a couple of decent sorcerers, but there aren't really enough of them to field any sort of military resistance to the Aurors and Hit Wizards. And they wouldn't want to ally with the Death Eaters and end up subject to de Mort rather than Britain. They at least have some representation in the Wizengamot." Not much, they only had a dozen or so Noble Houses, and half of them were practically British by now, but it was only a matter of time until the populists finally got their House of Commons equivalent, so.

"I don't know, it kind of seemed like there was a lot of emphasis on freedom and self-governance and hints of anti-statutarianism that would appeal to them. I wouldn't really expect vampires or werewolves or selkies to ally with him either, but he managed to get them on board somehow."

Mostly because they didn't have any representation in Britain as it was now. "How do you even know that?"

Evans smirked. "I talk to people, Black. And I listen."

Yeah, okay, but who the fuck was talking to Lily fucking Evans about creature groups allying with the Dark Lord? That wasn't even a recruitment point, she'd be shocked if Evans had heard it here at school. She sighed, trying to think how to explain that whole sequence of events as succinctly as possible.

"Mostly it all comes back to the Ministry being completely stupid over the past few years. Before Crouch took over as Head of the D.L.E., there weren't really any large-scale battles at all. The Death Eaters raided the Ministry Yule party the year before we started school, and the Ministry retaliated with an ‘unauthorised' Auror raid on the Bacchanalia a few months later, those were probably the biggest conflicts up to that point. Crouch thought he'd get this endemic Death Eater problem under control — they'd been around for about ten years already by then — by sneaking a bunch of mercenaries and human supremacist type groups into the Festa Morgana in Seventy-Three to provoke them, and arrest anyone who took the bait — all completely deniable, of course, total Black Cloak shite — but it turned into a full-on riot because it was hardly just the Death Eaters who violently objected to their party being ruined by fucking mercs, and the Death Eaters actually won.

"There were dozens of non-combatants and I think five Aurors killed in the crossfire — Bella and de Mort came out of it looking like fucking heroes, defending bystanders and organising their people to suppress the thing. Taking decisive action in the midst of the chaos, I think, was the phrase the Prophet used. They personally took out a team of American vigilantes who apparently had been going around murdering even law-abiding non-human beings for years."

De Mort had kept all eight of them busy while Bella executed them like a vampire assassin, stepping out of their shadows and slitting their throats — mostly for irony's sake, Aster suspected, to amuse the dozen or so humans who would get the joke (and every vampire in the entire bloody country). Seriously, how Dorea could not realise that they were purposefully drawing out the war, Aster couldn't imagine. When they stopped fucking around, they were just brutally efficient.

"Not that that got them many points with the Light, but it did with the vampires, and the werewolves, and the bloody veela — even some of the fucking goblins were on-board with the Revolution for a few years there — and someone in the D.L.E. leaked that the Aurors were behind the whole thing, so a lot of people who support the Wizengamot but not the Ministry ended up being swayed toward the Cause, having a little more sympathy for Death Eaters making raids on high-level targets linked to the Ministry in revenge, kind of ramped up the whole thing.

"Oh, and Bella recruited Crouch's son just to make it personal."

Aster actually liked Barty Junior. He'd been in last year's seventh-year class, one of the very few Slytherins who could actually take a joke — like, hey, B.J., do they call you that because you're particularly good at them, or something? which was probably the most throw-away line she'd ever used (but as it turned out, he actually was) — and he'd been just starting to come to baby Death Eater dueling contests and things the summer Aster was fourteen. For a brief few weeks toward the end of that summer, he'd actually managed to sway her toward thinking maybe the rest of them weren't so bad, because BJ's main reason for joining up was that the Death Eaters actually appreciated him, and accepted that he'd rather be an actor or a professor than a bureaucrat like his father. (The blowjobs had nothing to do with it! Really! No matter what Narcissa might say! BJ was just a very convincing, sympathetic sort of person!)

Thankfully, they'd come back to school in time for Jamie to remind her that the Death Eaters were fucking evil before she said something she couldn't take back — like, yeah, sure, maybe I do kind of agree with a lot of the Cause, and the people who're suffering aren't anyone I care about, and Bella is the only person who really gives a shite about me, and they don't force people to do dark magic, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad, becoming a Death Eater. (BJ had a knack for runes that meant he was almost certainly going to be trained as a cursebreaker, but Aster gave it a year or two at most before he earned enough trust to be moved to Recruitment, or maybe even what passed for their Diplomatic Corp, trying to legitimise their movement outside of Britain.)

"Oh, I liked him. He's the only person I've ever met who was raised completely in Magical Britain and had actually heard of the Pythons."

Yeah, well, Aster had never heard of them, either. "Is that a band?"

"A comedy troupe. They have a television series, it's bloody hilarious. Surreal, absurdist shite, you'd love it."

"I've never really watched a television programme." Honestly, she'd barely ever seen a television turned on. Once or twice, playing adverts in store-fronts in Muggle London, but they'd always seemed a bit...lame. Like photos that had sound, or portraits that couldn't really interact with you.

Evans gasped, her eyes going very wide. "What are you doing tomorrow?"

She hesitated, suddenly unaccountably wary. She had been thinking of sneaking out to the Three Broomsticks and flooing down to London to buy jeans that actually fit her recently re-shaped arse, but she hesitated to admit such a thing to Evans. No matter how insane Evans might be — admitting that magic talks to me in my dreams and that she'd seriously consider becoming a Death Eater if she couldn't run away to the Americas — or how much incentive she might have to help Aster win Jamie's affections, it still might not be a good idea to let a fucking prefect know in advance you were going to be out of bounds at a certain time. After all, they did have a truce, neither of them was going to out the other for practicing high ritual. It was entirely possible, however, that Evans would still give Aster detention if she was blatantly breaking the school rules.

"You're coming to my parents' house to watch telly!"

"What?" No, seriously, what the fuck?! Even leaving aside the whole issue of Evans apparently being willing to play hooky herself, "We're not friends, Evans!"

"No, we're nemeses who have a truce, which is kind of like friends, but less fake. We already covered this. Like, three hours ago."

"It has not been—" Aster began, even as she cast a tempus charm. "How the fuck has it been— Did we miss dinner?" She was supposed to be trying not to do that, damn it!

"Um...yes. But not curfew, I'm sure the elves will give us some leftovers if you're hungry."

"I'm not, actually, but I've been informed I have to eat anyway." Or else become a lot better at subsumation so she could just subsist on light and magic without wasting away to skin and bones. Aster honestly wasn't certain whether Bella was joking about that — she'd barely eaten anything at lunch, so it didn't seem entirely impossible she'd thought learning to not need to eat sounded like a good idea at some point in her life.

"Oh, good! I was worried maybe I shouldn't say anything, you know, some girls get even more self-conscious and neurotic about their weight if you tell them they look like they're starving to death, but if someone's already pointed it out... Come on, now you've mentioned food, I'm starving." She popped to her feet to wait expectantly by the door.

"Seriously," Aster complained, dragging herself to her feet to join her. "How the hell have we been sitting here talking for three hours? I don't even like you!"

"Don't be ridiculous, Black, of course you like me. In an I want to slap you half the time and snog you the other half sort of way."

"I do not!" Aster objected, jumping slightly as her voice went shriller than she'd known it could. She sounded like Walburga, what the fuck!

Evans just laughed, leading the way out of the dorm. Aster followed because...well, she did need to eat.

She had no such good excuse for following Evans into a dark dungeon corridor about twelve hours later, joining a yawning, disgruntled Snivels for an adventure to Muggleland.

"Why is Black here?" he asked snidely, blinking at her in the dim light.

"She followed me home, so I decided to keep her."

"She tried to kill me, two weeks ago!"

"She wasn't trying to kill you, she was trying to get you expelled. And we have a truce now. Though, Aster, this may also be a good time to apologise to Sev."

Both Aster and Snivels glared at the cheerfully (and falsely) oblivious smile Evans had apparently stolen from Cassie. Silence stretched between the three of them as she waited patiently for Aster to cave.

"Ugh, fine! I'm sorry I tried to get you expelled, and in so doing accidentally placed you in a position to be mauled or killed by a werewolf. I promise, it won't happen again, if only because I've been reminded that if he'd killed you or even just turned you, even if it was your fault — or mine and Jamie's, but definitely not his — Moony would still have been executed."

"...And?" Evans prompted her.

"And?" Aster repeated innocently.

"Isn't there supposed to be an offer of something to make it up to the person you wronged?"

There was, yes, but she'd be damned if she was going to do a favour for Snivels. "If you want to try to trick me into mortal peril as revenge, I won't consider it to be breaking our truce, how's that?" she offered — incredibly magnanimously, in her opinion.

"I have a better idea, Black: you stop calling me Snivels."

That was all he wanted? Really? ...Fine. "I'll try. Snape."

Evans clapped — Sni– Snape flinched at the sound in the confined space of the corridor — giving them a beatific smile. "It's so lovely to see us all putting aside our differences, and—"

Sni– Snape glowered at her. "Piss off, Lily. It's too early for that shite."

"You're no fun, Sev. Also..." She flipped a sickle at Sn-ape, who fumbled and dropped it, because had she really expected him to catch it? Snape was about as athletic as any other slimy potions nerd — i.e. not. He summoned the coin to his hand with a freeform effect rather than bend over and scrabble at the floor to pick it up, which was both obnoxious and slightly impressive. Evans ignored this and the silent glare he fixed on her. "...you were half right. It is 'Bellatrix', but de Mort named her, not the Blackheart."

"What, you were betting on my name?"

"Obviously. What has de Mort got to do with anything?"

"Ah, well, I was right about that one. High ritual, not low. Either she just naturally looks that much like Trixie, or the gods thought it was funny to make them pretty much identical. Either way, this body's not actually modeled on Bellatrix."

"I'm standing right here!" Aster snapped, almost as annoyed about Evans implying yesterday that she didn't know what Bella looked like and herself for being taken in as she was with the two of them for ignoring her. "And we're not identical. Bella's eyes are starry, not silver." Which Aster was slightly jealous of — she'd always thought that so blue they're practically black colour, seeming all the darker for the occasional silver-blue fleck here or there, was pretty.

Snivels flipped the sickle back to Evans, who caught it, held it up, and blew on it, dissolving it into a shower of blue sparks. "Ah, so Black is here so you have someone to show off for."

"No, she's here because she's never heard of Monty Python."

"Why would she have? All her friends are purebloods or bloody Lupin, and he wouldn't know what to do with sketch comedy if it was happening right in front of him."

"You mean, every single day at the Gryffindor table?"

"Yes. I, however, have seen every episode of the Flying Circus, so why am I here?"

Evans grinned. "So I have someone to show off with."

Sn-ape — fuck, this was harder than she'd expected it to be! — glowered at her. "Did you at least bring coffee?" Evans hesitated, prompting the Slytherin to brush past her, back out into the main corridor and off toward the kitchens, bitching all the while. "It's eight A.M., Lily! Eight! On a Saturday! You can't expect a bloke to deal with your parents — and worse, your sister — at eight in the morning, on a Saturday, without coffee!"

"You know you can just steal some from my parents."

"You know your father already hates me. I'd rather not endure however many hours of scorn for having the temerity to bum coffee off your family, as well as the occasional sandwich and bloody oxygen. Besides, the elves have better coffee." The brew the Evanses drank must be bloody terrible, then, Aster thought, because she had honestly never had worse coffee than the Hogwarts elves routinely served. Sni— The dungeon bat tickled the pear, wrenching open the door to the kitchens with far more force than necessary, startling the dozen or so elves standing around waiting to send up replacement platters when the students finally started coming down to breakfast. "Coffee," he said shortly, ignoring their greetings. "Please. The good coffee, not the pathetic excuse for caffeinated water you send up to the students."

"In a thermos, please!" Evans called after the elf who scurried away toward the food preparation area.

"There's good coffee?" Aster said, wondering whether the elf was already too far away to ask it to make that two.

"Not for you, Black. You are the reason students aren't allowed to have good coffee."

"I am not!"

"You kind of are."

"Oh, shut up, Evans, no one asked you!"

"You'll notice, I sometimes volunteer helpful little facts like that — because I'm such a nice person, you see, I just can't help myself."

Aster snorted. "I believe that last part, at least."

Bat-boy glared at them both. "I am, for the record, predicting the impending end of the world."

"Oh, come off it, Sev! Me having a bit of fun with Aster isn't an apocalyptic omen, or something."

"No, you and Black playing off each other is going to somehow be the cause of the apocalypse. Constructive interference multiplying absurdity by insanity and creating some sort of singularity of madness, through which the Old Ones— Oh, gods and Powers, thank you," he cut himself off — to Aster's brief confusion, before she realised the elf with the coffee was approaching from behind herself and Evans.

Aster managed to hold her tongue until they were out of the kitchens, but they hadn't quite reached the secret passage Evans claimed led out beyond the edge of the wards when she had to say, "No degree of mundane insanity can cause a dimensional rift. It's just sometimes it seems like it, because Abominations tend to inspire insanity in nearby humans even before they fully break through into this dimension."

"What, really? Where did you hear that?" Evans asked, even as Bat-boy, in a rare role reversal, gave Aster a condescending sneer, drawling, "Nerd."

She ignored him. "Some diary I found in the library at Ancient House. Belonged to this bloke called Marsh. That was one of the very few things that made any sense at all, the rest of it was just raving. Admittedly I'm not exactly an expert, but it seemed like a credible primary source to me."

Demonic Congress — the art of communicating with and even summoning things from other planes of existence, completely outside mundane understanding — was probably the most fascinating Greater Dark Art. It was possible Aster had spent far more afternoons than she was willing to admit hiding from her mother in the Library reading all sorts of gruesome historical accounts of the consequences of inviting extra-dimensional beings to tea.

Evans grinned. "I don't suppose you still have access to the Black library?"

It didn't really seem worth it to explain that there were significant collections of books at several different properties, some of which she might be able to access — Bella probably wouldn't have a problem with her coming over to Ancient House, and there were half a dozen properties that weren't actually occupied at the moment, she didn't know if they'd updated the wards to keep her out — and some of which she definitely couldn't — she was pretty sure she wasn't welcome at Grimmauld or the Keep, or Moorlands, or pretty much anywhere else. "Ah, no, definitely not."

"Pity, I'd've loved to have had a look around. Anomos says the old families have all the best books hoarded away."

Why was Aster not surprised Evans had apparently been to the Bookshop? Actually, that probably explained where she'd heard about the different non-human groups joining the Cause — Odysseus knew everyone and everything that happened in the international Dark Arts community. Even she'd met him, though she had been about nine at the time, being dragged about on errands.

"The best books are written in Old High Elvish, which is a complete bastard of a language, and there are only a handful of people who can read it even in the Noble Houses." Aster needed three different reference books, a grammar and two different dictionaries, and literally hours to puzzle through even the simplest passages, and she still had to ask Bella whether she'd translated certain things right — it was hard to tell sometimes whether she was getting nonsense because Old High Elvish was completely mad or because the writer had been. "Besides, what makes you think I'd let you have a look around? We're not friends, remember?"

"I'd make it my business to convince you. I can be very persistent." She ducked back into the corridor where they'd met Snivels and, after a quick look around for anyone who might be watching, whispered a password to one of the abstract, snakish motifs carved into the wall. It slithered aside, hiding behind the next iteration of the pattern, and revealing a hidden compartment, which held a heavy-looking silver key. She used this to trace an archway onto the wall beside it, magic shivering to life, creating—

"Is that a bloody portal?"

"Yeah, it leads to an old circle out in the forest, on the other side of the wards. Go on, it only stays open for thirty seconds or so."

Aster might not have if Bat-boy hadn't gone first, hugging his thermos as though coffee was a far greater concern than whatever might lie on the other side of this thing, so it was probably safe enough. She gave him two seconds to get out of the way before she followed him. Evans was right behind her, almost tripping over her as she took stock of the ancient ritual site. It was almost completely overgrown — most of the standing stones had collapsed, the altar cracked by invading roots — but she could still feel the echoes of purpose in the magic around them, heavy and tingling and paying attention. When this place had been used, it had been used a lot.

"How did you even find this place?"

Evans gave her a soft, silly smile. "Magic. Isn't it great?"

"Do you know what it was used for?"

"Of course. I was there," she said absently, gazing into the centre of the circle, as though watching something Aster couldn't see.

She was... Did she mean she'd dreamed of the rituals that used to happen here? Or that she was seeing them now?

"Lily," Dungeon Bat said sharply. "Focus. We were going to your parents' house."

Her eyelids fluttered several times before she seemed to come back to herself, somehow more present than Aster had ever seen her before. "Right, yes." She pulled an adder stone from her pocket, setting it on one piece of the shattered altar, and held out her hands for them to form a circle around it. This meant holding hands with Sni– a slimy Slytherin (ew), but Aster did (after he shoved the thermos into a pocket with a long-suffering sigh). "You have to focus on the hole in the stone."

Aster didn't recognise the language of the incantation that followed — maybe Gaelic, but pronouncing the words the way they were spelled? — but its purpose was clear. The tiny hole in the adder stone seemed to grow larger as her focus narrowed on it, the darkness at its centre overwhelming her, until it felt as though she was about to fall into an abyss, overcome by it. And then she felt as though she did fall into it, or rather through it, the world twisting and flipping around them with stomach-turning suddenness. Like a portkey, if portkeys turned you inside out as you moved from one place to the other. She closed her eyes, holding very tightly to the others' hands, trying to ground herself — gods and Powers that was just—

"Oh, suck it up, Black," Snivels snarked. She could hear him sneering.

"Like you didn't vom all over yourself the first time I pulled you through a fairy stone? Give her a break."

Aster took a deep breath, inhaling the mucky, slightly rotted scent of a dirty river — not really helpful on the not vomiting front — before deciding she felt steady enough to try opening her eyes. "I'm fine. I'm good. Where are we?"

"Welcome to the quaint, lovely little village of Cokeworth," Snivels said drily. "Located on the banks of the beautiful River Trent, the village features such popular tourist attractions as extreme poverty and violent, deadbeat drunks."

"And also Monty Python," Evans added cheerfully. "Come on, my house is this way," she said, leading them off into the trees.

A brisk, five minute walk brought them to a rather weathered-looking street — the houses old, but yards meticulously kept, one of those poor-but-proud neighborhoods. Somehow, it was hard to imagine there were many deadbeats around here, drunk or otherwise. "This doesn't seem so bad," she noted.

"Lily lives in the good part of town." Which implied Bat-boy didn't. Somehow, Aster wasn't surprised.

"Come on, you guys are so slow!" Evans had apparently stopped to look back, and realised she was about two houses ahead of them.

"It's still only eight-thirty!" the Slytherin called back, his pace, if anything, slowing. "Did Lily tell you anything about her family?" he asked, his tone heavily resigned.

"Not a bloody thing. Can't be worse than mine, though."

"Missus Evans is nice. She'll probably want to know all about you and your life and your family, and can you do any neat magic tricks for us. Mister Evans hates the fact that I happen to exist and Lily insists on being friends with me, more than you and Potter do. And Petunia's a complete bitch — like Lily, but jealous and bitter because she can't do magic, so she doesn't get an easy ticket out of this hell-hole. They're all...very muggle. Just, try not to say anything too outlandish? It's harder to make them forget things they find legitimately shocking."

"You...obliviate them? Why?"

"No, obliviating them would be illegal and easily detected. But there are other ways to make an unsuspecting muggle forget that their daughter is a bit..." He trailed off, apparently at a loss to explain Evans's particular brand of insanity in a way that wasn't completely unflattering.

"God-touched," Aster suggested. Usually that was a euphemism for completely out of touch with reality, but it was actually meant to refer to people like Evans, ones whom, for some ineffable reason, magic had taken an especial interest in. (The entire House of Black was, to some degree, favoured by magic, which probably had something to do with the association between being god-touched and being insane.) Even when they were more or less sane they tended to be a bit disturbing, even to people who were familiar with magic — Evans's roommates, for instance. She could easily imagine Evans's parents being terrified or baffled by their daughter, if not both.

Sni– Bat-boy glared at her as though he wasn't aware of the non-derogatory use of the term. Which, come to think of it, he might not be — he had grown up here, after all. Or, well, in a presumably shittier part of town, but. "Yes, that. In all honesty, they don't know enough about magic to understand how disturbing Lily can be, but they're...conservative. Catholics. And...easily shocked by many things you likely consider to be perfectly mundane."

"...I'm going to need examples, here, Sni– Snape." Because Aster didn't know the first fucking thing about Catholics and what they might find shocking. That was one of those Abrahamic religions, right? Most of what she knew about them was based on things Bella had made them all read when Gemma had asked what Magic was like before the Statute.

"Casual shagging. Bisexuality. You changing sexes." Well, yeah, she could have guessed that one, even mages found that weird, and it wasn't exactly polite to go talking about your sex life with people you'd just met, anyway. Did Sniv— Snape! Damn it! — think she'd been raised a complete barbarian? "Polytheism. Atheism. Absolute certainty that your god exists, because you've spoken to it directly." Aster suspected Evans must have tried to talk to her parents about Magic at some point. "You being insane. Lily being insane. Casual violence, any sort of physical violence that requires a healer — muggles have a very different concept of major injuries — cursing people, getting into fights — though, dueling tournaments are okay, they're under the impression it's a bit like a fencing tournament — Death Eaters, the War, our war, pranking people in general — they don't approve of humiliating people for laughs — human/non-human politics, wilderfolk—"

"Are you really doing this, Sev?" Evans interrupted — apparently they'd caught up enough she could overhear.

"Yes, Lily, because I live in hope that one of these days you will decide to give enough fucks to censor yourself, so I don't have to redact ninety per cent of every conversation we have with your parents, and if today happens to be that happy day, I'd prefer Black not ruin it, so."

"Yeah, today is not that day."

"Urgh, why not?! You spent all summer here, not speaking to me, and didn't manage to get kicked out or institutionalised, obviously you can talk to them—"

"I mostly avoided them, actually. But I left my notice-me-not amulet at school because there are three of us. Besides, you know my mum's going to want to know literally everything about my new roommate. Despite having no real concept of what literally everything might mean. Don't worry about freaking them out, Aster, we've been home three times already this term, and they don't remember any of them."

That was...kind of fucked up, really. "Muggle baiting your own parents, Evans?"

She at least had the good grace to look slightly ashamed of herself. "It just seems...kinder, to let them remain blissfully ignorant about certain things."

"Things that would result in Lily being kicked out, because magic is okay — as long as it's vanishing conjured sickles and making pretty light shows, not anything dangerous — but shagging Lovegood isn't."

"And that their entire religion is a sham, and that we might kind of sort of be getting dragged into the middle of a war if we can't get out of it, and how dangerous magic can be... I'm their baby girl, Aster. They want to think the best of me, and it's much harder to charm people who knew me before I was good at charming people. Besides, we're not even supposed to be here."

"So it's totally okay to just go and make them forget you were here? No, it's not — if you can't even manage a civil conversation with your parents, fine, don't talk to them, I'm like the poster girl for walking the fuck out and never speaking to your family again. But to keep coming home and then making them forget you were here? And for something as silly as watching telly? That's just...dirty, okay."

"Well excuse me for not wanting to completely ruin my relationship with my parents!"

Aster hoped her expression was conveying the degree of scorn she held for that protest. "You don't have a relationship with your parents, Evans. Not if you're spending all summer hiding behind an unobtrusive charm, and you have to obliviate them every time you talk to them." At that point, Aster would be hard-pressed to even consider them family anymore.

Evans flinched, crossing her arms defensively, her face twisting into a pained, guilt-ridden pout. "You said you got it, when I told you how shite it is having to fake being someone I'm not all the time."

"She said, faking. You're falling into negative sympathy points here, Evans."

She dropped the act, glaring at Aster. "They knew me until I was eleven, when, as I said, I wasn't nearly as good at this! If I can't fool you, I can't fool them either, and even if I could, I don't want to, they're my family, I shouldn't have to lie to them!"

"Then don't! Just keep your fucking mouth shut, I'll do the talking, and Sni– Snape won't have to mind-rape your mum for you!" Evans slapped her, hard enough Aster was sure her left cheek would still have a red, hand-shaped mark on it when they got to her parents' house, they had to be pretty close by now. She snagged the bitch's wrist, jerking her closer when she tried to pull away — Aster might be shorter than Evans now, and a good stone lighter, but Evans didn't know the first fucking thing about grappling, her stance was all wrong. "Careful now, Evans. Wouldn't want to start something if you can't follow through."

For a long two seconds, they stood there, glaring at each other, noses six inches from touching — Aster honestly wasn't certain whether Evans was going to try to kiss her or belt her in the stomach, and she honestly wasn't certain she cared — and then...

"Oh, for fuck's sake, you woke me up and dragged me back to Cokeworth for this?"

Evans's eyes flicked over to Bat-boy, breaking the tension between them. Aster let her go. "No. You know exactly why I dragged you along."

"Yes, and I can't believe I'm saying this — this actually might be a sign of impending doom on a global scale — but I agree with Black: we shouldn't keep doing this to Mary. Me making her forget every time you slip up is really just you lying to her by omission, by proxy."

"But...you've never said anything — I thought you didn't mind..."

"I don't. You're the one who said you don't want to lie to them, and shouldn't have to. If you meant it, and you did, then don't. And if you are going to lie to them, you could at least do them the courtesy of lying to their faces, rather than using magic to steal the truth back after the fact."

"But Sev..."

"We both know you're still putting on an act anyway, Lily." Wait, was that implying that she was always putting on an act? Even now? "So which is it? Pretending to be their little Lily-flower, just pretending not to be the frigid, manipulative bitch you really are, or avoiding the whole issue by sneaking into the cinema instead?"

Evans pouted for another long moment before suggesting, grudgingly, "If Black wants to do the talking, let her. But I'm warning you, it's not nearly as easy as you think, keeping them from flipping out, even when you do lie. And then when she fucks up, you can steal their memories and we'll leave, and when I come home for Christmas we can get in a fight about religion and I'll get myself kicked out, and we just won't come back, okay? I mean, it's not like they wouldn't have had a problem with me moving to the Americas after leaving school. I was just hoping we could put that off until...well, forever. If possible. Is making them just forget I ever existed an option?"

"Certainly not a human option."

A considering look stole over Evans's face. "Noted."

Aster gave them her best impression of Auntie Dru's exasperated, could you please stop being such children now expression. "Or, crazy thought, you could pretend to be a normal person — normal-ish, at least — on the rare occasion you're actually required to interact with them, and tell them Miskatonic's reputation is really more like Liberty Salem's, or something, and you're only going there because it's the best school for whatever, not because no one would expect you not to be insane. It's not like they know anything to call you out on it."

"So, your solution to my not wanting to lie to my parents is...lying to my parents?"

"There are lies, Evans, and then there are lies."

"You realise that makes no sense."

Really? It made perfect sense to Aster. Maybe because she'd actually been taught how to use the truth to imply a lie, but it wasn't all that different to use lies to imply something true. "Sure it does. You want them to have some idea what magic is capable of, some idea of what magic is, and what you are, but still think you're their good little girl? That's not even hard."

"You haven't met my parents, Black! You have no idea how easy it is to offend them!"

Yeah, well, as she'd just told Snape, there was no way in any of the nine hells that Evans's "conservative" muggle parents were anywhere near as bad as the Blacks, or even the Noble Houses in general. It didn't hurt that she had the advantage of the Evanses not having known her since she was tiny, and being unapologetically magically-raised meant she wasn't expected to be perfectly normal by muggle standards. Plus, guests always had more leeway to express unacceptable opinions than children of the House, Aster was pretty sure that was universal. If there was one thing growing up as a dissenter in the House of Black had taught her, it was how to skirt around uncomfortable topics (even if that was almost all of them)...or else just bowl right over them without giving anyone time to be offended or air their objections. And she could practise a normal, more feminine persona to use as the basis of her totally not Prefect Evans personality shift, too. (She'd decided to shoot for something vaguely Marley-esque, but with more spine — Marley and Jamie had known each other forever, she was probably the girl he knew best, ergo she was probably a good example of what he expected girls to act like.) "You underestimate me, Evans. Watch and learn. Which house is it?"

"That one." She nodded at a small, grey-sided house. It was plain and simple, and, like all of the other houses on the street, looked a bit careworn. It could use a fresh coat of paint, and the shutters were missing a few slats. The awning over the front steps sagged a bit, and the tiny white pickets lining the edges of the flower-beds in the front garden were slightly uneven. But there wasn't a single weed or bit of rubbish to be seen among the flowers (most neatly dead-headed for the autumn, seed-pods no doubt squirrelled away until spring), and there were bright curtains in the windows — orange with brilliant green spots — suggesting the inside of the house wasn't nearly as boring as the outside. "Three-fifteen. Looks like Daddy's out."

Aster had no idea what about the appearance of the house suggested that, but she didn't care enough to ask. "Lovely, let's go," she said, skipping up the front walk.

"Er...you know there's still, um...your face..."

Yes, her left cheek did still feel unusually warm. Not that it mattered. She doubted Mrs. Evans would say anything, politeness tended to preclude that sort of observation. "My face is gorgeous, Evans. Come on, you're going to have to at least introduce me." She knocked on the door before either of the others could offer another objection, however, and Mrs. Evans managed to get to the door before Evans quite caught up.

"Oh, hello." The lady of the house was about an inch shorter than her daughter, face creased with laugh lines, hair strawberry-blonde. Strands here and there had gone silver, giving her neat bob a slightly frosted look. "Can I help you with something, Miss...?"

"Black. Aster. And you must be Missus Evans, sorry, I seem to have gotten a little ahead — sometimes I get a bit excitable, you see—"

"Hi, Mum," Evans said, joining her on the doorstep finally.

"Lily! Come here, love, give me a hug!" she demanded, opening the door further to match action to words. "You, too, Severus, goodness, you're getting so tall! But, what are you doing home in the middle of term?"

"We're playing hooky," Aster said, a hint of a grin teasing at her lips. "That is what you call it, right, when you sneak out of school for the day?"

"Well, yes, but— Come in, come in." She waved them into the house, which was every bit as brightly decorated as Aster had expected. The front door opened directly into a parlour, with the kitchen on the other side of what seemed to be a bar — transplanted from a pastel-pink pub, perhaps — off to their right. The carpet was the same green as the spots on the curtains, and long enough it almost looked like grass, white sofas and chairs patterned with pink and orange and brown paisley arranged to visit or to watch the wood-paneled television box opposite the kitchen. There was a cross on the wall behind it, suggesting Catholicism was one of the Christian religions — a cult based around a Light Lord who'd lived a couple millennia ago, she was mostly familiar with it because Charlus Potter was a fan of his philosophy. The furniture matched Mrs. Evans's dress, simple and short-sleeved with a flaring, orange and white skirt that came to just below her knees, a wide belt doing a corset's job of defining her waist, and looking much more comfortable. Far too short for daywear in the magical world, but hardly daring for a muggle, Aster thought, comparing it to the sort of things she'd seen around Muggle London last summer. "I'm sorry, who are you, exactly?" she asked, offering them a seat with another gesture.

Aster perched herself eagerly on the edge of the sofa, right in the middle, leaving Evans and Bat-boy to hover awkwardly by the door, or else (if they weren't bloody idiots) follow her lead. "Oh! I'm Aster, Lily's new roommate."

"New roommate? Lily didn't mention— I thought you said you would be staying with the same girls until you left school, dear?"

Her daughter, still in the process of slowly drifting toward a chair, apparently in the midst of a whispered conversation with her pet bat, didn't quite manage to answer (or possibly was sticking to her plan of letting Aster do the talking). "Um, what? Sorry, Mum, I didn't catch that...?"

That was fine. Aster grinned. "Oh, well, that's kind of a long story, Missus Evans, but the short version is, there was a bit of an accident — I was... Well, I was being a bit daft, really, experimenting with an old spell I found in my family's library over the summer. I thought it was supposed to help me understand what it was like to be a girl, just to, you know, figure out what they like in a chap, and so on — what's gentlemanly, and what's patronising, or hopelessly foppish — but, well, it's possible I had the translation wrong, somehow, or— I don't know, my Head of House wasn't very pleased with me, I can tell you, fooling around with something so dangerous, he read me the riot act, but, well, it didn't seem quite safe trying to change me back until we figure out how, exactly, the spell went wrong in the first place, or— The healers said it's possible it will wear off by itself, but in the meanwhile, they've switched me to the girls' dorm — it simply wouldn't be decent, you see, me sharing a room with the lads anymore, as things currently stand, so—"

"I– I'm sorry, are you saying you used to be a boy?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And... And you've somehow...turned yourself into a girl."

"Accidentally, yes. I know it must seem strange, but magic can be unpredictable sometimes."

"I...see." Mrs. Evans hesitated for a long moment before she apparently felt compelled to say, "Forgive me, er...Miss Black, but...doesn't the whole situation strike you as a bit...unnatural?"

"Oddly, no. And I do mean that, oddly, you'd expect it would, wouldn't you?" Everyone else certainly seemed to. "But, well, the spell was meant to help me understand what it's like to be a girl, so maybe that's a part of it. I mean, I don't suppose most girls are horribly uncomfortable simply because they're female, so that would probably take away from the whole experience, don't you think? Or...did you mean magic being able to do something like this in the first place?"

"Er...well, yes."

"Oh! Sorry, I wasn't being deliberately obtuse, it's just, I grew up around magic, with the understanding that it is part of the natural world, even if it does result in events that are highly improbable or even impossible considering only mundane physics and biology. There are mages who can turn into animals at will, you know — our Transfiguration professor can become a cat whenever she wants. Metamorphs can do something similar, changing their physical bodies however they like — sex, age, if they want to live for centuries they can — even the basic structures of the body, if they know enough about biology, I met a metamorph with wings, once. And potions and transfiguration can do a lot of the same things for normal humans, temporarily at least.

"I've met vampires and werewolves, goblins, elves, and centaurs, seen real, live dragons and ridden winged horses — all of them, their existence is far more impossible than me turning into a girl. They shouldn't be able to survive, in some cases would never have existed at all without magic. And yet, they do exist. I know a man who used alchemy to make himself look like he's half snake, and one of my cousins uses runes to be able to move like a vampire — stronger and faster and more graceful than humans. We can jump from place to place in the mundane world by taking short-cuts through other dimensions, or travel through fire, or shadows. There are plants that will let you breathe underwater, and spells to exempt you from gravity. Broomsticks and carpets can be enchanted to fly. Even the simplest illusions are ‘unnatural' insofar as they defy mundane expectations for the way light and sound behave." She shrugged, judging that quite enough to be getting on with. "Honestly, I didn't expect to actually become a girl, physically, but I can't say I'm really surprised, even.

"You learn to expect the unexpected, when it comes to magic. Sometimes it's overly literal, or you get more than you asked for, or you made a wish without understanding the potential consequences, but, well... One of my cousins likes to say that scars are reminders of mistakes that we're not going to make again. I really think that's the best way to look at this whole situation — as a learning experience, and an object lesson in exercising caution when dealing with new spells. Or old ones, as the case may be."

She paused to see whether Mrs. Evans had anything to say, but it seemed she didn't. Good. That suggested she wasn't still stuck on Aster having recently been a boy, but slightly overwhelmed by the concept of magic being so utterly impossible. Couldn't let her have too much time to focus on that, either, though — thinking through some of those examples would inevitably lead to uncomfortable implications and topics best left untouched, for the moment. Not forever, she would eventually process the idea that magic could be used in all sorts of terrifying ways, and would probably have a lot of questions for Evans, which, if she wasn't a complete idiot, she would answer, and field any objections about her not telling her mother about all of this years ago with something along the lines of I just didn't want to worry you, I mean, I was just a little girl, most of that didn't occur to me for years, and then, how do you just go telling your mum— blah, blah, blah.

"Anyway, Professor McGonagall asked Lily to help me get...accustomed, I suppose would be the word, to living with the girls, because she's our prefect, you see, and, well, it's possible I'm a bad influence, but I might have convinced her that we needed to go shopping for something a bit less...formal, than this." She was wearing overly-full dueling trousers and a tight-sleeved silk blouse, both an almost brassy gold, with a knee-length scarlet dueling robe over it, rather than a cloak. It didn't quite look muggle, the robes were split up to the waist for the sake of freedom of movement — when she spun around, the panels flared out about three feet around her — but from a distance, she figured it would pass for a long skirt and coat. "I borrowed these from my cousin Narcissa, but, well, they're not really my style." That was a flat lie. They were actually Bella's style, just toned down enough to wear around school, and in brighter colours. Which didn't suit Narcissa at all, but that was hardly the point. Aster did actually like things like this, if she couldn't wear muggle jeans and tee-shirts. Which, given that she had no jeans that actually fit, at the moment she couldn't. "I do like your dress, though. Would you be willing to share the name of your tailor?"

Mrs. Evans went pink. "Oh, this? Honey, I made this myself! I'm sure I still have the pattern somewhere, but..."

Ha! Brill! She had been intending to distract the woman with flattery over her sense of style, but this was even better. "Oh! You do lovely work. I'm afraid I haven't the least talent when it comes to, well, I would say feminine arts, but really, anything requiring patience and focus. Runes. Potions. Translating crumbling magical texts." She gave Evans's mum a slightly rueful, self-deprecating smile, inviting her to share in the absurdity that was her current situation. "That's pretty much the reason I've never learned to sew — there are charms, of course, but to make them work properly, you have to be pretty good at doing it by hand first. And I don't even know how muggle sewing works. Is there some kind of machine you use to get the two threads to lock together?" She kind of thought there had to be, because her tee-shirts were held together with a completely different kind of stitching than she'd ever seen from an elf or an actual tailor.

"Oh, goodness! Yes, of course, dear. I can't even imagine trying to put together something like this by hand. Sewing machines are much faster, and stitch more evenly than I could ever manage, I'm sure."

"That's fascinating! I would ask how it works, but then I expect we'd be here for hours. I mean, that's kind of the reason we're here in the first place — Lily didn't want you to know she'd snuck out today, she's such a goody-two-shoes!" Aster still had no idea where that phrase came from, just that Ellie used it all the time to describe the brown-nosers who went out of their way to suck up to professors. "But it somehow came up that I'd never actually seen a television programme because, well, I've never been in a non-magical home. Actually, my mother would probably be more disturbed by me being here than she was when she found out I'm a girl at the moment."

"So, your parents don't know where you are?" Mrs. Evans asked, her tone faintly disapproving.

"My parents don't care where I am. But, no, they're, well... We don't get on. At all. I moved out over the summer."

"Oh, dear! Surely it couldn't be that bad!"

"Oh, it was. See..." She cast about for some reasonable comparison, her eyes falling on the cross on the wall. Well, that would work. She'd already managed to hit her sex change and how dangerous magic could be on the list of shite she wasn't supposed to mention, that just left religion and politics, right? "You're Christian, right?" She could practically feel Evans's glare boring into the side of her head.

Mrs. Evans nodded. "Catholic. I take it your family isn't."

"Oh, no. There are mages who follow Abrahamic philosophy, think Jesus had some good ideas about how to be a good person and so on. My godmother's husband's family do. But we tend not to be religious in the same way muggles are. Though, I'm sure everything I've been told about muggle religions is just as biased as everything else I was taught about muggles, so, apologies in advance if I'm terribly off the mark and say something horribly insulting. My understanding is, the Christian god isn't really accessible and active in its followers' lives. That's one of the main problems with monotheism — when your god is everything, it's on both sides of every conflict, so asking it to intervene in mortal affairs is kind of pointless, right? So a lot of modern Abrahamic religions are based around the idea of faith in your god's existence despite a general lack of miracles and answered prayers."

"Aster!" Evans interrupted before her mother could, apparently unable to sit quietly and watch Mrs. Evans go on a furious tirade about her god being real, because, well, that whole faith thing. "I thought we agreed not to talk about religion!"

"I don't recall agreeing to any such thing. Besides, this is important background information. I can't really explain that I was cast out as a heretic if I don't explain what my family believes, and I can't explain that without talking about what religion is. It's not like I'm saying the Christian god doesn't exist, just, we have kind of a different understanding of it."

"Go on," Mrs. Evans said coldly, apparently slightly mollified by that assurance.

"Well, bearing in mind most of what I know about Abrahamic religions is related to the Crusades, and I only have the vaguest idea about the actual god itself, it is supposed to be an omnipresent, omniscient deity, right? The great I am, or something like that?"

"To vastly oversimplify the concept, yes."

"Right, well, we would call that — everything that is, everything within the scope of human perception and outside of it, everything that has been and will be, the fundamental energy of the universe, the consciousness that arises from life — Magic. Capital-M Magic. We don't have to take its existence on faith, we know it's there, even if there are some people who don't believe it's an independently conscious entity, and it's pointless trying to convince them otherwise. So, when I say we know it's there, I mean... Most mages at least understand that magic — lowercase-m magic, that we use in our daily lives — is in everything. We can manipulate that directly, obviously, that's what we're going to school for. But you can also do magic by getting the attention of capital-M Magic, or some small part of it. Going back to the whole monotheism versus polytheism thing, it's a lot easier to call on, say, Saint Jude," whose name Aster only knew because of the Beatles, but he was the first saint who came to mind, "than the Christian god — he has a smaller sphere of influence, fewer conflicts of interest, and a much more narrowly defined mythology," she assumed, "so there's a clearer idea of who you're trying to talk to — and asking it, whatever Aspect of Magic you're talking to, to do something for you. We'd call that high magic, or high ritual.

"Some mages are better at it than others, getting Magic's attention, and asking for favours. Lily, for instance—" Mrs. Evans's eyes flicked over to her daughter, tension rolling off both of them nearly thick enough to cut with a knife, but neither of them interrupted. "—gets a greater degree of attention than most people raised in my world, probably because she already understood the idea of an omnipresent, omniscient consciousness being the underlying foundation of the Universe through your religion." Evans looked a bit startled, that probably wasn't where she'd been expecting Aster to go with that, but her mum didn't look mortally offended or outraged, just slightly taken aback — so, again, if she wasn't a complete idiot, she'd be able to build on that, give at least a vague impression of what being a ritualist meant. You're welcome, Evans. "My family has a patron deity, a face of Magic we've been making offerings to and communing with for about five-hundred years or so. She's basically a goddess of destruction and chaos, which, yes, you can make an argument — and believe me, they do — about destruction and chaos being integral aspects of humanity and the natural world, keeping a degree of equilibrium and allowing for change, so society doesn't stagnate and so on, but she's also definitely on board with bigoted racism and mindless violence and starting wars because all the best games have real consequences if you lose.

"I'm not.

"I did a ritual over the summer that basically amounted to getting her attention, and telling her in no uncertain terms that I'm out. I want to be a good person — a better person than I was raised to be. I have no interest in continuing to follow a goddess who condones the sort of attitudes and behaviours she does, and there are plenty of other gods I could dedicate myself to instead, and, well... I kind of got myself kicked out of the family over it. They still acknowledge my existence, but I'm disinherited, they want nothing to do with me, and I'm definitely not welcome to come home for hols anymore.

"It was definitely worth it, though," she concluded firmly, glaring off into the middle distance at her absent family and the Dark and anyone else who had a problem with her, really. (It was kind of impossible to talk about this without ending up glaring at nothing in particular, she'd found.)

"Oh, you poor thing!" Mrs. Evans exclaimed, dragging Aster's attention back to here and now, sitting in Evans's muggle parlour, talking to her muggle mum about metaphysics.

Her muggle mum whose eyes were unexpectedly full of tears. "Um... Please don't cry, Missus Evans, it's not so bad, really. All my family are terrible people, we haven't got on in years."

"No, it's not that." She sniffed, obviously trying to get a hold of herself before she actually started crying. "It sounds like you did the right thing, dear. It takes a lot of...a lot of courage, to walk away from the life you know for the sake of your conscience. It just— You reminded me of my sister, that's all."

"Mum? Are you talking about Aunt Matilde?"

Mrs. Evans took a deep, shuddering breath. "I suppose... I suppose this is the closest thing I'm ever going to get to a sign that it's the right time to tell you this, Lily love, but... My sister, the reason we weren't close, was that my parents kicked her out when...when they found out she was a witch."

"When they— Aunt Matilde was a witch?"

"Yes, love. She... I—"

"Why didn't you ever tell me?" Evans demanded.

"I— Because you're my daughter, now! It's—"

"WHAT?!" Mrs. Evans flinched away from the girl she'd just so emphatically claimed as her daughter, poorly-concealed fear playing around her tight lips and widening eyes. Aster grabbed the paisley-patterned pillow from the sofa beside herself, and lobbed it at Evans's face too quickly for her to catch it. "What the hell, Black!"

"Temper, Evans. We talked about this."

She went pink, but didn't make any further effort to rein herself in, her eyes still glowing an unnerving shade of green. "Excuse me for being a little bit upset finding out I'm apparently adopted, and— Why would you wait until now to— If Black hadn't brought it up, would you ever have told me?!"

"I– I don't know," Mrs. Evans stuttered, obviously still disturbed by the look on her daughter's face. "I— She brought you to me when you were just three months old, asked me to keep you safe— She was a detective, an Auror, I mean, and she was afraid this man she was hunting, the leader of some radical cult... They'd caught her once already, the year before — I thought she'd died, everyone did, but she was in hospital with no way to contact anyone, recovering, for months. She'd been...beaten, badly, and left for dead in a fire. She couldn't let him go, but she was terrified he would realise she was still alive and take you or kill you. She... They caught her again. There was no proof, no one was ever caught or charged, but they tortured her, Lily. Into catatonia. And things were only getting worse, over there — Jenny, Jenny Carmichael, she was Tilde's best friend, she told me...terrible things, Lily. Just awful. She offered to take you, raise you with magic, but...but you were already mine, and Freddie and Petunia, they—"

"Does Tuney know?!"

"No, no, she doesn't. Your father doesn't either. Tilde did some spell, made them think you were ours, and we moved here, so the neighbors wouldn't notice, and—"

Evans cut her off, throwing the pillow back at Aster (who was quick enough to catch it). "Clearly it's perfectly acceptable to just go around using memory charms on anyone you damn well please!"

Aster didn't think Mrs. Evans caught the implication there. "Lily! It was— There were extenuating circumstances! Fred didn't know about magic, he wasn't allowed to know, and Tuney— Petunia was three, it would have been only too easy for her to say something out of turn. Don't— She would never have — not if it hadn't been absolutely necessary."

"Who's my father, then? My biological father, I mean," Evans demanded, ignoring the completely unnecessary justification.

"I... She never told me. It– It was odd, really. I think she must have done some spell so I wouldn't ask. I assume she was embarrassed about the indiscretion — more so because, well, I never knew her to talk about...men. She was married to her work, of course, but I always did have my suspicions... But then, she showed up with you, and—"

"So, wait. You didn't tell me I was adopted, and you thought my mother was a lesbian, and you still had the nerve to throw a hissy when I told you about Cassie?!"

"Who? What on Earth are you—" She blinked twice, very quickly. "What was I...?"

"You were telling us about Matilde's mysterious paramour," Sni– Creepy Legilimens Junior informed her, glaring at Evans for referencing an argument her mother obviously had no recollection of.

"He was probably a Death Eater," Aster said, even as she realised it. "I mean, if Matilde didn't fancy male company, and the timeline fits, with her being assaulted a year before, and Evans being a few months old..."

"No one said anything about Death Eaters, Black," Snape said, which he had to know was a bloody stupid comment.

"Oh, yes, because there were so many radical cults really taking off right around Nineteen Fifty-Nine."

"No one said she was sexually assaulted, either. Though I do recall Mary saying that she nearly died — even if she was, how likely is it that she would have actually conceived while nearly dying?"

Given that Evans clearly exists, I'm going to say it's a probability of one, Aster thought at him — though he didn't react, so he probably wasn't eavesdropping on her at the moment.

"I don't know how long she was missing before she was presumed dead, so I can't say the timeline does fit," Mrs. Evans added. "I always thought — hoped, I suppose — that he was a doctor, someone she met during her recovery."

Yeah, right. Aster literally bit her tongue to keep from saying something incredibly disparaging about the muggle matron deluding herself. It didn't matter, she was sure she was right. She wasn't really sure why she was so certain, but she definitely was. The idea of an Auror being attacked and left for dead— Actually, she probably had died, at least long enough to trigger some kind of alert, because the Aurors would have tracked her down if they thought there was any hope that she was alive and she was just lying in a muggle hospital. So, an Auror miraculously escapes almost certain death, actually does die (briefly) and gets resuscitated (either by Magic or muggle necromancy), goes on to recover from whatever injuries actually killed her, and develops some kind of romantic relationship with one of her healers while lying in bed delirious on muggle pain potions? And one she wouldn't really find attractive even if she weren't feeling like death warmed over at that. Maybe in one of Marlene's bloody stupid novels, but life wasn't like that.

Evans knew it, too. "Can you do a lineage test, Sev?"

"If you get the ingredients, yes. Though it will take some time. About a month."

"Ugh, never mind. I'll just ask at Samhain."

"Samhain?" Mrs. Evans repeated.

"Festival in honour of the dead," Aster explained briefly, leaving out exactly who Evans would likely be asking. "Next Sunday." Still more than a week away. It would probably be faster to just write Bella and ask who had been involved that early on — there couldn't be that many potential candidates. Maybe one of the Rosiers, or a Stryke? It would help if she knew what Matilde had looked like, but Evans's face was thinner than most of the Nobles', her mouth wider. She didn't really look like any of the families that generally had a lot of redheads, Prewetts and Weasleys and Boneses, but if her hair were darker...

"So you...talk to dead people?"

"Well, no...not exactly." Evans's eyes flashed again, glaring at Aster as though she was the one who'd brought the bloody subject up, which—

Oh.

Oh, fuck...

If her hair were darker and her eyes were blue, that would be fucking uncanny. And de Mort was absolutely the sort of prick who'd rape an Auror and leave her to die in a fire. And if he had, Bella would almost certainly know about it — she would've been nine or so at the time, already apprenticed to him...

It seemed completely absurd, but now that she'd seen it she couldn't un-see it... Bloody hell, she even sounded like him, explaining how Death worked, in the vaguest possible terms.

Yeah, Aster was definitely writing Bella when they got back to the castle.