Carpe Diem, the Holiday
They weren't that late. Dumbledore had already made his little speech and the main course was up, though, since it was Samhain, there were loads of candies and desserts and such scattered among the chicken and pork. "Ooh, hey, Pete, pass me a slice of that volcano cake!" she said, poking Remus in the arm until he made space for her on the bench. There wasn't a plate there, but that sounded like Pete's problem to solve.
"Asteria? Where have you— Have you been drinking?" Moony asked, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper-yell halfway through asking where she'd been.
"Mmm, we went to this fancy pizzeria for lunch, I think it might be a front for the Mafia."
"We? Who's we?" Jamie demanded from her other side.
Aster sighed. He was not going to like this answer. But she didn't like to lie to Jamie. "Bella kidnapped Evans and me from town, and then de Mort showed up, and they spent all afternoon being enormous nerds. You, Moony, would have been in nerd-heaven. I, on the other hand, was bored, and there was wine, so yes, I have been drinking."
"You did what? With— Why?"
"I find that most why-questions in life can be answered by embracing the simple fact that Bellatrix is insane. There doesn't need to be a reason for her to kidnap me from Hogsmeade, or burn a hole in my favourite shirt — not that this was my favourite shirt until she went and ruined it, but—"
"Siri– Aster! Focus!"
"Hey, pass this over," Pete said, handing a plate to Remus.
Ooh, cake! It was a sort of chocolaty-caramel flavoured thing, and the lava was...strawberry-orange preserves, of some sort? Sweet but tart, gooey and somehow also crumbly... Fucking delicious.
"Aster!"
"I am focusing," she mumbled, around a bite of the most amazing cake.
"Not on the fucking cake, Sirius!" Jamie snapped. "Are you okay? What did they want with you?"
"Why wouldn't I be? Slightly tipsy. ...Maybe more than slightly." Maybe not quite as much as she was acting, but she didn't actually want to talk about the things she knew James was going to want to talk about, and definitely not in the middle of the Great Hall, and being slightly drunk was a great excuse to be kind of rambly and avoid answering uncomfortable questions. Definitely not enough to forget to cast a few anti-eavesdropping charms, keep Gudgeon and Teague from paying them too much attention. "Unsure whether de Mort tortures people to death while possessing them, or if Bella was just fucking with me. Remind me to put it in my diary that I actually need to apply for an apparation license, would you, Remy? And I'm pretty sure they just wanted to be nerdy in my general vicinity. Probably because they know it annoys me, them being all interesting and shite when they're also still very evil."
"Well, what did you talk about?" Remus asked, in that overly patient tone that hopefully meant, yes, he would remind Aster to get her apparation license, because he was a responsible sort like that.
"Technical difficulties involved in building a floating island, mostly. And a time machine. Also arithmancy. A lot of arithmancy. And if Bella manages to break time she's going after neighboring planes next. Gotta feel a bit sorry for the Abominations, eh?" James and Remus just gave her a look. Pete leaned around Remus so he could do it, too. "I told you, Bellatrix is insane, there really isn't any better explanation than that!" Or at least, not one that was hers to tell. It'd be rude to let out that Evans was de Mort's kid, like, four whole hours before she did it herself. "Oh, also, they may be coming to the Samhain Revel, because no one listens to me when I say this is a terrible idea. Or think it very pointedly in their direction, but everyone knows he's eavesdropping, same difference really. And by may be, I mean definitely are."
"They're what? Why? We have to tell Dumbledore!"
"Coming to the ritual, presumably to catch up with all the people they've killed this year? Or, well, Bella's probably doing that now, actually." True dark was just falling, the last of the indigo fading out of the enchanted ceiling, so it was probably about sunset down at the Keep. Technically it was an all-night thing, appeasing the vengeful Dead, but after the Family actually did the ritual (at sunset) nothing really happened until the murderers went to sleep and let the Dead take their frustrations out on them until dawn. "I don't know, really, the whole situation is bloody odd. And I'm pretty sure the wards will tell Dumbledore, but I guess if you really want to knock yourself out."
"Aster. Focus. You don't think maybe they could be planning something, do you?" Pete asked.
"What, like a raid on the fucking Samhain Revel?"
"Yes, Sirius, something like that!"
"No, pretty sure they didn't plan this at all. De Mort might try to butt in on the ritual, because he's a scene-stealing wanker like that, but he's not stupid. Ruining the Revel would piss off both Evans and Persephone, and they'd probably never speak to him again. Or, well, Persephone might just decide to ruin all of his plans forever. Actually, Evans might decide to do that, too. Whatever, he's not a braindead idiot, he knows better than to deny Death her due."
"Why would Lord Snakefucker care if Evans is talking to him?" Pete asked.
Damn you, perceptive little rodent!
Because they're basically the same fucking person, it's creepy as hell?
No, that wouldn't do.
Because he's decided he likes the idea of having a kid, since they're basically the same fucking person?
...Also no.
Because, sorry to tell you, Jamie, you may have some competition for the hand of your fair Lily-flower?
"Pass the potatoes, Jamie? And the gravy, please."
"Sir– Aster! Why would de Mort care if—"
"See, Pete, when you know I heard you, and I don't answer the question, it's probably because I don't have a good answer to the question."
"Yeah, but if you didn't know, you'd say fuck if I know, Petey, so you do know, so why would—"
Aster scowled at him, because he was absolutely right. "I can know the answer and not have a good way to say it. But fine. They hit it off, him and Evans. She mentioned they're doing something different tonight, and invited him to come see. He's a high magic swot, among his other swotty and/or evil interests, so obviously he said yes, despite my very pointed thinking that this is a terrible idea." There, that was fine. An explanation that was true and was even vaguely accurate, and didn't involve Lily Evans really being Asphodel de Mort.
"I don't believe you."
Aster pouted at him. "You never believe me when I tell you anything about Evans. When you finally get it, I'm going to owe you like two-thousand 'I told you so's, but I'm such a nice person I'll probably stop at a hundred or so."
"She...does know he's the Dark Lord, right?" Remus asked, conflicted and troubled. Good man. Smarter than the rest of them put together.
"Of course she does. He's an evil git. But he's also a charming fucking bastard. I brought up fucking Kensington, and it took him all of thirty seconds to spin the conversation back to political philosophy and the idea of nation-building, and how all they're really doing is holding Britain and the people it's committed to protect from magic, i.e. muggles, hostage until Dumbledore caves and comes to the fucking table to negotiate a peace. Or, alternatively, until he calls in the I.C.W. and Bella gets to fight a real war, and they end up taking over all of Europe when they really only want the Isle of Man, and everything falls apart after six months, because at a certain point you can't administrate a whole bloody nation like a single House, and proper governing is boring anyway. There's paperwork."
"And...she believed him?"
Aster leaned around Remy to look at Pete as she answered him. "Of course she believed him! I believe him, and I know he's an evil, snake-faced git who could lie to the bloody Morrigan and get away with it."
"You believed him," Jamie repeated, sounding completely dumbfounded. When Aster turned back to him, he was giving her that same who even are you? look he'd worn that night they'd almost killed Snape.
It was really fucking annoying.
"I did, yeah," Aster said defiantly. "I don't think he's got the right idea about how to get there, and he'll probably still torture and kill people in his spare time if he gets it, but yes, I think he would stop if Britain gave him his autonomy. Mostly because, if he wanted an empire he'd already have Britain in his pocket. And I believe Bella when she says trying to stop them by force is a lost cause at this point. And I'll definitely join the Aurors and fight them anyway, but I'll just be helping to delay the inevitable."
"It's not just about stopping de Mort, Siri. It's about stopping his ideology. We can't let the Dark get that kind of permanent foot-hold in Britain, because even if de Mort stops with Mann, which I'm not convinced he would, he'd still be making a base for evil to spread from, like his own fucking Miskatonic right in the middle of our bloody country! Besides, I'm sure if it were a lost cause, Dumbledore would stop wasting people's lives fighting them."
Aster could almost hear Evans's voice asking what's so bad about that, then? at the back of her head. She didn't ask, she knew Jamie would just remind her that they'd be practising dangerous, illegal magics and endangering the Statute and following the Dark Powers and de Mort would be allowed to torture and kill people in his spare time if he wanted, instead of (theoretically) being held accountable to the law or literally anyone. And she knew Bella would tell her that the really bad thing about allowing the Dark any degree of legitimacy was that people might like it better than the Light. "Would he, though?"
She knew it was a bad question to ask, that she shouldn't be doubting him, but it was hard, after spending the day with Bella and de Mort, not to think that they had at least some things the right way around. If nothing else, Bella was hardly the sort to overestimate her position. If she said they were going to win in the end, they were going to win — barring divine intervention, Aster guessed, but. It was hard to believe Dumbledore didn't know that too, that he wouldn't have already cut his losses if he was going to. Crouch had been trying to bring them down for years now.
"Of course he would! We're not the Dark, Sirius! Bella and de Mort might not care about the people who fight for them, but Dumbledore does!"
Aster smirked at the irony there. No, Bella and de Mort didn't care about their people as people, but they knew their value, they wouldn't waste them fighting a war they were definitely going to lose. She'd been exaggerating a bit, earlier, when she'd said Bella would fight to the last man — she might refuse to surrender, but she'd let the Death Eaters go, probably with the mission to eventually rebuild and carry on the Cause while she covered their retreat. It was much more likely de Mort would order her to knock it off, and she'd set fiendfire loose in Muggle London before leading their forces to Greenland or Miskatonic or wherever, Aster was sure they had some kind of back-up plan in mind. Or, well, they might just take Mann, they could probably hold it pretty indefinitely, but whatever, not the point. Dumbledore, on the other hand, had principles. And Aster wasn't at all sure that he valued his people's lives more than the Greater Good — which was a Grindelwald slogan, but Aster was pretty sure Dumbledore had his own idea of the Greater Good as well. That he cared about them meant he'd feel bad about ordering them to their deaths for a lost cause, not that he wouldn't do it.
"Does he care about us more than he cares about making sure that the Dark doesn't get a permanent toe-hold in Britain?"
Not that that was what it was actually about, anyway. At least, not the way Aster saw it. The whole point was that they wouldn't be Britain anymore. They would've proven that they could defy the Wizengamot and the Ministry with impunity, which, that would give people bad ideas. If the Dark Houses gained more power in the Wizengamot, Dumbledore himself might lose power, but if the Death Eaters — who weren't really the Dark, or if they were they were only the Underground, illegitimate part of it (the Dark Houses were just as firmly established as the Light Houses and their philosophy was already securely embedded in Britain, historically and now) — were to gain power, enough power to break off from Magical Britain, and the Noble Houses didn't take some collective military action to stop them — which they couldn't, really, like she'd just told Evans, they'd let Bella get too far in recruiting and training her own army — that undermined everything Britain was as an institution.
It showed people they could refuse to cooperate with the Wizengamot, in a way they hadn't really been challenged since they first managed to pacify and unify the country — the Wizengamot had been much more representative when it was founded, with each family powerful enough to demand a seat at the table sending someone to argue on their own behalf in decisions that involved them all and organise against collective threats, but it had never represented everyone. Which hadn't really been a problem until the Statute. There'd been small families who weren't included, and a few now-long-dead Noble and Most Ancient Houses that had flatly refused to cooperate with some decision or other that was otherwise unanimous, and essentially got themselves killed for their trouble, trying to start a feud with literally every other House with any power to speak of, at the same time. Not to mention cults, non-human enclaves, and even whole kingdoms in some cases, who refused to participate from the beginning when they could have demanded a seat just like the rest of them. (Which was why they'd had seventeen wars with the goblins before reaching the current state of affairs.)
What de Mort was doing was basically that — not trying to overthrow the Wizengamot (which a few Dark Lords had tried and failed over the centuries) but explicitly withdrawing his consent to be governed by them. And since their power was based mostly on banding together to take collective action against any threat — but so many of the Noble Houses had gone soft in the centuries since the Statute was imposed, letting the Ministry enforce laws instead — they really didn't have any way to stop him. (Traditionally, all noble children, or at least those with an aptitude for it, were trained in military strategy and battlemagic, much like the Blacks, but hardly any of them bothered anymore.) And the Ministry didn't have a standing army. There was a small corp of proper battlemages who were expected to enlist in the Aurors (most of whom were elite fighters) and the Hit Wizards (who were pretty good at dealing with civilian disturbances, riots and shite like that) if they needed to deal with a goblin uprising or nascent dark lord or something, but the Aurors and Hit Wizards overwhelmingly dealt with civilians, not military organisations trained to their own standards or better (not that Aster thought they really understood how well the Death Eaters were trained), and they did have their own jobs to do. Since they weren't in a state of open war, the Ministry couldn't really justify re-tasking every single one of them to (try to) deal with the Death Eaters.
So, basically, they were fucked.
It was one thing to tell everyone humans won the last goblin war, that they serve humans by running the Bank and if they decide to deny humans access to their vaults the Ministry can just create a fiat currency, it's fine — while everyone with half a brain knew that they definitely hadn't won that war, and it had clearly been a bloody stupid idea to start using the London tunnels captured in the Eighth Goblin War as a bloody bank in the first place, but they had, and when the goblins finally took them back they took all the money and books and artefacts too, and the current treaty was the best the Wizengamot could do under the circumstances, especially since the Ministry supported it, expressly because it limited the nobility's power, and the Ministry controlled the Hit Wizards. They were fucking goblins, they weren't about to start involving themselves in human politics and debate the point. It was a very different thing to tell everyone you won a war when there was suddenly a new bloody country in the Irish Sea, and it was run by charismatic human leaders, including the most prominent member of a Noble and Most Ancient House, their disdain for the current system all the more striking because Bellatrix, at least, had every opportunity to take power through the Wizengamot rather than in opposition to it.
And if the government of Magical Britain couldn't do the one thing they were expressly created to do — i.e., to arbitrate and enforce the collective decisions of the Wizengamot on any member House or citizen who dissented — what the hell was it good for?
That was, Aster was pretty sure, what Dumbledore was really fighting for: the good of everyone who would suffer if Magical Britain completely fell apart.
Damn it! She should have made that point when Evans was being all de Mort-ish earlier in the stairwell! If the Death Eaters succeeded, they would throw the entire country into turmoil because they wouldn't overthrow and replace the current government, they'd just undermine it so it would completely collapse, and then everyone would be fucked!
"Could anyone pass me some real food?" she asked the boys, while Jamie worked through her last question. "Since Jamie apparently doesn't care if I starve to death in this potatoless desert. Doesn't matter what."
"What? Sorry, here," he said, finally handing the platter over. "I...think he'd say, Dumbledore, that letting the Dark establish itself, you know, legitimately, is a threat to everyone, so it's not— If a few more people die in the war, and save a load of people from the Dark later down the line, that's... Well, not good, but, you know, one of those hard choices that generals have to make in a war."
Yeah, he probably would, but... "Would it be saving a load of people, though? I was just telling Evans about the starlighters, you know, and they'd definitely be better off with the Dark running things."
The Death Eaters would probably do better than the actual Dark, really. Bella and de Mort obviously couldn't give a shite about species, they were barely human themselves. And on the other hand, there were enough human supremacists in Britain that even if the Dark Houses in the Wizengamot, the ones who actually prioritised magic above species, did end up in power somehow (which didn't really seem likely) they'd still have to compromise and fight pretty fucking hard to get any rights for non-humans at all.
Jamie made a face at her, changing the subject. "I still can't believe you spent a whole month hanging out with vampires and bloody wilderfolk. You could've just come to ours off the train, you know!"
"And werewolves," she reminded him, Remus stiffening on her other side. She and Jamie had never agreed on non-human rights. Jamie followed Dumbledore in accepting werewolves, but only because—
"Yeah, but werewolves are human except, you know, that time of the month!" —that. He could be shockingly prejudiced about the rest of them. "Wilderfolk are creepy, and vampires eat people."
"Upyri don't." Though she had run into a few vampire vampires over the summer as well, lurking on the outskirts of society. They hadn't exactly been friendly, but they hadn't tried to lure her into a dark alley and bleed her or some shite. Well, they'd already been in dark alleys at the time, but— Whatever. "And I like wilderfolk. You probably would too, if you spent any time around them as Prongs." They were just...refreshingly uncomplicated. Granted, most of the ones in the City were cats, and Aster wasn't really a cat person, but they weren't that weird.
"What difference does that make? They're still— You know where they come from! It's just..."
Ah, right, so...probably shouldn't admit that Paddy had gotten a leg over more than once down in Hogsmeade. Speaking of which, she should probably ask Bella if that curse carried over into her animagus form, because there was no way in hell she was getting herself knocked up as a dog. "Um...everything's simpler and more immediate as Padfoot? Plus, you know, instincts? Makes it easier to read the wilderfolk. And yes, I know where they come from. That's not their fault."
"I...don't think you did that ritual right, S– Aster," Pete said, as James just gave her a completely baffled look. "Everything's still exactly the same for me, you know, when we change. Just bigger."
"Me, too," James agreed. "Just...pretty much the same size." Well obviously, Prongs's head was about the same height as Jamie's.
"Um, I don't think you two did it right, then, because—" She cut herself off before she could point out that she had a lot more experience with subsumation than they did. If anyone had done it right out of the three of them, it would be her. But that was hardly something to admit in the middle of the Great Hall, privacy charms or no. "—reasons. The whole point was to take on the animal's instincts."
"I thought the point was so we didn't keep tripping over our own feet and getting stuck in trees."
Aster sniggered. She'd forgotten Prongs kept getting his prongs caught in the brush at first. "Well that's part of it. But I don't think you went as far as you could've done." A strangled, half-choked snort came from her other side, Moony clearly trying not to laugh. "What?"
"Nothing, just, that's where wilderfolk come from, right? Following your instincts and going as far as you can?"
Well that was just shockingly dirty for Remus — more the sort of thing she'd expect Pete to say. She grinned. "Moony! I am shocked you would imply such a thing! A lady doesn't kiss and tell!"
He rolled his eyes, as Pete behind him went beet-red. Again, weird. Well, weird for Pete, Remus probably didn't believe she really had. Or else the Wolf made it less weird to just follow your instincts. "You're pissed, you know that, right? I should take points for that."
"Can you still take points if you're resigning? Actually, is there even a rule against being pissed? I mean, bringing booze back to the Tower yeah, but if I get pissed at some Mafia pizzeria, I don't think that's actually against the rules." Not that she (and everyone else) didn't bring booze back to the Tower all the time too, and Moony never enforced that rule, but that wasn't the point.
"You're underage. Being pissed means you've obviously been breaking the law drinking, regardless of where, which is against the rules. Or alternatively, Professor McGonagall would flip, so you're clearly breaking the No Ruining Minnie's Chill rule."
Well, that wasn't fair at all. No Ruining Minnie's Chill wasn't even a real rule. It was one Aster had made up as a joke to summarise all the other rules. "Only if she catches me. And if we actually care about laws now, Bella was there, you're allowed to drink if you're accompanied by an adult-ly, parental sort of person, right?" Honestly, Aster wasn't really familiar with the drinking age statute, it was one of those ones she filed under doesn't matter if you don't get caught and worst you'll get is a fine, so fuck it. Which was kind of redundant because the House of Black generally took the view that laws are for other people anyway. (That was one of the few things she actually liked about the Family, and would probably keep doing despite having semi-exiled herself over the summer.)
"Bellatrix isn't your mother," James said, sounding...unwontedly angry about...something?
"No, but I doubt anyone would question her if—" She was going to say, if Bella claimed she was acting in loco parentis, but Jamie cut her off.
"How do you think Mum would feel, hearing you say some shite like that?"
Er... What? "What does Dorea have to do with anything?"
"Bellatrix isn't the witch who took you in when you ran away from your family, she's the witch you ran away from! And you know Mum doesn't want you hanging around with her! She's a bad influence — the worst influence! You were only with her for a couple of hours, and she already has you questioning if we should be fighting them — if the Light should be leading Britain at all?!"
"Bloody hell, take a fucking chill pill, Jamie! I know she's evil, I know she and de Mort are trying to undermine the very fabric of society as we know it, or well, I'm pretty sure that's kind of just a consequence of refusing to go along with it — the status quo, I mean — but she's still my cousin. I'm still allowed to spend an afternoon with her if I want to — not that I really had much of a choice, she just kind of apparated us away with no warning."
"Don't give me that I was kidnapped dragonshite, Sirius! You didn't have to stay, you could have left. But no, you decided to let them talk you around, let them start working on convincing Lily that they're not really so bad, they care so much about the poor, oppressed dark creatures, see, so that makes it okay they just murder muggleborns, and she's not your cousin, you ran away!"
"She is my cousin, James. Yule was almost a whole year ago, that's fucking forever, and there were extenuating circumstances, and I broke the Family Magic this summer — if anything, she should be refusing to speak to me! And you're being all sarcastic, but the non-human beings — not creatures! — really are poor and oppressed, you have no idea, and Evans— Oh, Evans doesn't fucking need convincing! She's been on board with the Dark talking points since we were twelve!"
"You take that back!"
"No, it's true! And don't you dare say you don't believe me—"
Jamie shoved her into Remus, apparently out of actual arguments, which was a shame, because Aster really wanted to be convinced that the Light had all the answers. She really, really did. She shoved him back. He, somehow, managed to lose his balance — maybe he just wasn't expecting it? — and proceeded to fall off the bench, grabbing her possibly in an effort to save himself, but she was much smaller than he was now, and Remus, not realising what was happening, elbowed her in the kidney trying to get her off of him, so she managed to fall off the bench on top of James.
Who apparently thought this was intentional, flipping them over to fucking sit on her, and continue his absurd objection to her completely accurate portrayal of Evans as a bloody Dark witch!
Obviously she wasn't going to just lie there and take it.
Jamie might be bigger than her now — which, he had been before she'd become a girl too, but by a much smaller margin — but he still didn't know the first thing about using his size and weight to his advantage. She often found it just stunning how incompetent everyone else was at fighting. Even knowing that none of them had been properly trained, they were just so slow, and so completely oblivious — Aster wasn't even that good! Or at least, she didn't think she was. Narcissa beat her three times out of four the last time they sparred, and she'd never beaten Cassie. But compared to everyone else in her own year, she was practically Bella.
She bucked her hips to throw him off-balance, grabbed his shoulders when he leaned forward, pulled and twisted, dragging him down and flipping them back over in one smooth movement.
Which was right around the time a familiar, authoritative voice called from behind her, "Mister Potter! Mist– Miss Black! What in Merlin's name are you doing?! Get up! Get up right now!"
Aster didn't get up, though she did roll off Jamie (who scrambled to his feet at once, going very red in the face) and pull herself into a cross-legged seat, grinning up at her Head of House — because, well, if she was going to Ruin Minnie's Chill, she might as well have fun with it. "Minnie! Greetings and salutations! How are you this fine evening?"
"I said get up, Mist– Miss Black!"
"Hey, Remus, is there a rule against sitting on the floor?"
"Er...no?" Moony admitted, earning himself a thin-lipped glare. "There is a rule against ignoring our Head of House, though," he added quickly. "Insubordination. It's grounds for detention."
"Really? Huh. You'd think I'd've gotten one before now if that's actually a thing."
"You are disrupting the Feast with your unbecoming tomfoolery! Get up, sit back on your bench, and behave, or you'll be serving detention every night for the next week!"
"An entire week of evenings spent in your gracious company? Well now I can't get up!"
"With Professor Slughorn!"
Oh. Ew. No. Slughorn was kind of... Well, he never did anything inappropriate, but there was just something kind of inherently skeezy, she thought, trying to cultivate influence with bloody schoolchildren. He always tried to talk to her about the Blacks, inviting her to parties full of people she fucking hated, and it wasn't nearly as much fun taking the piss with him as it was with Minnie. She popped back to her feet and plopped onto the bench, giving her Head of House an overly-exaggerated pout. "Yes, Your Honor. I can be good, Your Honor." She tried to stop herself, but she was kind of drunk, and it was too funny not to add, "I can be very, very good, Your Honor."
"Sirius!" Jamie hissed, sounding absolutely appalled, as though she hadn't said something like that to Minnie about once every other week since they were second-years.
Minnie went even redder than Jamie. She, like Walters, seemed to find Aster's flirting to be more discomfiting than Sirius's, which was both inexplicable and hilarious, especially since she'd kind of gotten used to Sirius's over-the-top flirting. "Out!"
"...What?"
"I am not going to deal with your- your positively disgraceful behaviour this evening, Mist- Miss Black. Get. Out."
"But...I just got Jamie to pass the potatoes."
"Now!"
"Oh, come on, Professor," Jamie said, sounding just as shocked as Aster felt. "You can't—"
"Oh can't I? You are also excused, Mister Potter! Remove yourselves from this Hall at once!"
"The hell...?" Seriously, what the hell? Yeah, Aster did go out of her way now and again to get a rise out of their Head of House, but she never got one like this, not over a single suggestive comment.
"I will not have you interrupting what should be a solemn occasion with your juvenile antics!"
For once in her life, Aster was actually speechless. McG wasn't wrong, per se. Samhain was supposed to be kind of a solemn thing. But this was Hogwarts. They weren't here to celebrate Samhain, they were celebrating Hallowe'en, which was all sugar and silliness and embracing the fun in life in spite of the reality of death — Carpe Diem, the Holiday. She and Jamie might've been the most noticeable disturbance, falling off their bench as they had, but they were hardly the loudest or least reverent people around. No one else was even paying them any attention. She could see a couple of first-years getting into a slap-fight from here (one of them had whipped cream smeared on his nose, presumably that had something to do with it) and a bunch of Hufflepuffs who'd apparently decided to celebrate the muggle way, dressed up as though they were going to a masque. "Are you okay, Minnie? I mean..."
"Be reasonable, Professor! It's just Sirius! You know how ...she is."
"Detention, both of you, tomorrow evening! If you aren't halfway to the doorway in ten seconds, it will be a week!"
"Fine, fine, whatever." Aster pushed herself away from the table again, snagging her recently-filled plate as she did — the Hogwarts elves made the best mashed potatoes, it would be a travesty to let them go to waste. Besides, she really was quite hungry. For spending the better part of the day in a restaurant they'd hardly eaten anything.
McGonagall glared at her. "Leave the potatoes!"
"I'm afraid I can't. These potatoes are my Peak Cavern. I shall not yield!" A hint of confusion seeped into Minerva's glare. Apparently she wasn't familiar with the primary battleground of the Second Goblin Rebellion (which was actually the Tenth Goblin War, they hadn't really been considered conquered until the Eighth). Clan Quicksilver had made their final stand in a cave system in the Midlands, holed up there for months before they were finally rooted out with great effort and loss of life on both sides. Hardly her fault, really, Binns taught the third and fourth-year history classes (including the Goblin Wars) and he was incredibly boring. Granted, Minnie had probably had him before he'd died, but Aster doubted he'd been any more interesting then. Well, either that or her Gobbledygook just wasn't that good. Honestly, she had no idea whether the McGonagalls taught their kids the language of their ancestral enemies. (Not that the Blacks weren't historically enemies with practically everyone at one point or another, but not the point.) In any case, Aster swept past her (still carrying the plate) before McG could come up with a response. "Come on, Jamie, we're obviously not wanted here. Boys," she added, nodding vaguely toward Remus and Pete in farewell.
It took James about half a second to catch up with her, heading for the door. She was pretty sure she heard him tendering some vaguely apologetic phrases behind her. "What the hell was that about?"
"Dunno," Aster muttered, stealing an unused fork from the end of the Hufflepuff table on her way past. "I mean, she's not always that tightly wound at Samhain and I never noticed, is she?"
"What? No, I meant you— Propositioning McGee and then turning around and yelling at her in bloody Goblin ten seconds later? What the hell is wrong with you?"
"What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with you? You have met me, haven't you? Neither propositioning Minnie — not that that was a proposition, it was barely an implication — nor dramatically quoting famous last words in defense of potatoes is exactly unusual behaviour, honestly!"
"No, you're being weirder than usual today."
"Don't think I am," she mumbled, refraining from making a positively sexual noise of mashed potato appreciation, because that would be weird.
"You spent the entire afternoon talking to Bellatrix, Sirius! You invited her, and de Mort, to come to the school!" Jamie stopped dead, apparently unwilling to walk and talk (and eat, though he hadn't thought to grab a plate himself, silly boy).
Whatever. Aster hopped up onto the nearest window-ledge as a makeshift bench. "Um, no, Evans did that."
"Don't try to blame this on her!"
"What blame? If there's any blame, it's on Bella for fucking kidnapping us!" Or possibly de Mort for being charming enough to make Evans overlook the fact that he was a murderous, rapist bastard.
"We have to tell someone," James said, very seriously, in his very serious Lord Potter voice.
"...Why?"
"Because the bloody Dark Lord is planning on just dropping by our bloody school in a couple of hours, maybe?!"
Aster sighed. "You do know no one knows de Mort is the Dark Lord, right? Like, no one official, I mean. There's no proof. Most people think the worst thing he's done was seduce Bella when she was, like, eight. Or possibly weaseling his way into Society despite lacking money or a title, or even a bloody name. Kind of a toss-up, really." Because Society and people who gave a shite about it were mostly wankers, and eight-year-old Bella had probably been an unholy terror.
"Dumbledore knows, I'm sure he'd believe us, and he deserves some warning — what if..."
"What if what? Seriously, what's your worst-case scenario, here? Because mine is Bella and de Mort hang out in the Woods with all the Traditionalists for a few hours being inappropriately old party crashers, maybe de Mort convinces the organisers to let him participate at the last minute, Evans does whatever something special she has planned for Persephone, you realise you've been obsessing over a god-touched ritualist who's really nothing like you think she is—" Jamie tried to interrupt, but Aster refused to let him get a word in. "—we Dance, get all up close and personal with Death, with an option on more high magic nerdery post-ritual, depending on how wiped out Evans is after whatever she's planning. Or, you know, Dumbledore comes down, picks a fight with the two of them or tries to shut down the ritual or something, and everything goes to hell, and if Bella doesn't kill him he'll probably choke to death on a lemon drop or something because he inadvertently insulted Death Itself, ruining her party."
Jamie's eyes narrowed. "There's no such thing as Death Itself, Sirius! And I know you think she's the world's biggest fucking badass, but there's no way in hell Bellatrix could kill Dumbledore. He defeated Grindelwald!"
"Yeah, like three decades ago. When was the last time he threw an offensive spell at anyone?" Aster honestly didn't know the last time Dumbledore had been in a fight. He might be obscenely powerful, but he wasn't a battlemage or even a duelist. Maybe he practised with Flitwick or something? But she kind of doubted it. Bella, on the other hand, was fucking terrifying, and spent approximately all of her time practising killing people. Aster had seen her beat the shite out of Greyback unarmed and take on entire cohorts of recruits — two or three dozen mages trained to Hit Wizard standards — at once. The last time she'd seen Bella and de Mort give an exhibition, Bella had been put under the Cruciatus twice and still won, after an hour and a half — most fights didn't last more than a couple of minutes. She'd been throwing around fucking lightning and Aster was pretty sure she'd seen her deflect a fucking Killing Curse, which wasn't supposed to be possible. And that was three years ago, she was probably better by now. "And aren't the Potters related to the Peverells, somehow?" Really, if anyone should believe in Death... "Oh, hey, you should bring the Cloak down and see if Death recognises it!"
James rolled his eyes. He thought the whole artefacts of the Powers thing was just as ridiculous as everything else to do with them. While Aster would admit that it would be ridiculous if they'd been using a Deathly bloody Hallow to sneak around the castle last year, she'd actually seen invisibility cloaks before. Normal ones. She, Reggie, and Narcissa had had one when they were kids. An old one, obviously, the enchantments were failing, made it more like a disillusionment cloak, and if you held it up to the light while you were wearing it you could see the demiguise hairs — translucent, but definitely visible. Jamie's cloak wasn't like that at all. Aster had never seen anything like it. And Charlus claimed he had gotten it from old George when he was a young man. It had to have been around for at least fifty years by now, still worked perfectly, when a normal invisibility cloak started to wear out after ten or so. And the Potters really were related to the Peverells, they had inherited a bunch of positively ancient books on soul magic from them. Really, if it was actually the Invisibility Cloak, the one all other cloaks of invisibility were created to emulate, that would explain a lot.
"Don't try to change the subject, Sirius! We have to tell someone!"
"But, why, though?" Aster groaned. "Why can't we just eat our potatoes and go back up to the Tower and pretend we don't know anything out of the ordinary is likely to happen, because it's not. Or at least not anything dangerous. They don't torture and kill people all the time — most of the time they're just massive nerds — and they're not going to think it's a good idea to interrupt the ritual any more than I do, okay?"
Jamie was giving her the look again. The one that said who the hell even are you? "No! Not okay! How can you possibly think— We— I'm telling Dumbledore! You can go do whatever the fuck you want, but you'd better not try to stop me—"
"Don't be thick, James. If you want to tell him, I'm not going to stop you, I just think it's completely pointless and maybe is going to make the whole situation worse." She slid back to the floor, regretting the fact that it was so very inappropriate for humans to lick plates clean when it was perfectly acceptable for dogs. Ah, well. Now...would the elves be more annoyed if she just left the plate here, or if she vanished it? Probably the latter. She set it in her recently vacated spot before giving Jamie a bright grin. "So, what's the plan? I mean, we did just get kicked out by the harridan sitting about two feet to Dumbles's left, so..."
If anything, the look intensified. "So you think this is the wrong thing to do, and you're going to do it anyway?!"
She was almost certain that was a trick question of some sort, because with that disapproving tone, how could it not be? "...Yes?"
"No!"
Called it. Aster made an entirely involuntary noise of frustration. "So, you think it's the right thing to tell him and we have to tell him, but you don't want me to tell him?! There's just no fucking winning with you!"
"I don't want you to do things you think are wrong just because I think they're the right thing to do! I want you to want to do the right thing!"
Well, that was just the stupidest fucking thing Jamie had ever said. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of pants at morals, Jamie. If I'm not supposed to take your word for it, then I have no idea what's right or wrong! I want to do what you want me to do — as far as I'm concerned, that is the right thing!" Though that probably was a wrong thing to say, because the look was starting to skew toward shaken and distinctly uncomfortable. Stupid, stupid Aster! You weren't supposed to tell him you're following his lead! But she was just so frustrated, she couldn't seem to stop talking. "I didn't say telling Dumbledore is wrong, I said it's useless and possibly counterproductive. You were the one who just equated pointless with wrong, which is kind of absurd now that I'm thinking about it, because about seventy-five per cent of all the shite people do because it's the right thing to do is actually useless or counterproductive, it's just about sending a fucking message or something, like joining the Aurors even though we're definitely going to lose!"
"Well then, maybe you shouldn't do that, either!" What?! But they'd been talking about joining the Aurors since the end of second year! "You can't just do shite because— Doing things because other people say they're the right thing is wrong, okay? Just doing whatever I want you to do, or whatever you think I want you to do, is wrong and, don't take this the wrong way or anything, but kind of deeply, deeply disturbing!" He sounded almost scared of her.
Is there a right way to take that? a distant, shocked corner of Aster's mind thought. The rest of her was a bit preoccupied with the entire world listing dangerously off-kilter. So, it was wrong to just take Jamie's word for what was right and wrong? But then, should she take his word for that? She kind of thought she had to because, well, wrong or not, she knew he knew these things on an instinctive level she just didn't, but what the hell do you do when the person you're supposed to trust says don't trust me?! (Popping into Padfoot's form and hiding from the problem probably wasn't it, no matter how appealing it sounded.) She bit the inside of her lip hard enough to draw blood, trying to ignore the tears of frustration prickling at her eyes and furious self-loathing rising up in her chest — she shouldn't have said that, she shouldn't have told him, this wouldn't be happening if she'd just kept her fucking mouth shut!
Jamie was still talking, though she was having trouble making out the words through the overwhelming disorientation of Jamie essentially telling her that the only thing she knew was right was actually wrong, and— What was that phrase Gudgeon had, when there was no logic or reason to anything? Does not compute, that was it. "I'm going to tell Dumbledore. You just...stay here, or go back to the Tower, or whatever, I don't care!"
"But, Jamie—" she began, following him as he stalked back toward the Great Hall.
"Don't follow me, Sirius!" he rounded on her, just for a second, before continuing to walk away.
But then what am I supposed to do?!