The Lady of (New) Avalon

But then what am I supposed to do?!

She had no idea. What she did do was just stand there, frozen indecisively, watching him walk away, shaking his head, all tense and angry, leaving her behind, her entire world collapsing as its foundations crumbled.

It was worse, the tiny, distant part of her thought, than when she'd screwed Evans, because that was a thing she had done, a mistake. This... This was Jamie rejecting her. Not just punishing her for doing something wrong, but telling her in so many words that she was wrong. That her trying to be what Jamie wanted her to be was actually the opposite of what he wanted from her. But by that logic, he shouldn't want her to not try to be what he wanted, because that would be trying to be what he wanted, and that made her head hurt and she felt physically ill, watching him walk away — and worse, he—

He found her deeply, deeply disturbing.

Don't cry, Aster! Do not start snivelling like a little bitch! I said no!

It didn't matter, she couldn't help it, she didn't know what to do, it felt like getting stabbed in the heart, cut to the quick by his fear and disgust and— And popping into Padfoot's form and running away from the emotional turmoil seemed like a really good idea, actually. Even before the thought was fully formed, she'd done it.

It didn't really hurt less, being rejected as a dog. Knowing that she was a bad dog, that her Jamie didn't want her. It was much clearer, though, what was to be done about the situation. He'd told her not to follow him, to go to her room, so she would do that. She would find a dark, quiet place and curl up and lick her wounds — under the bed would be good — and wait for him to forgive her, or until the pain faded enough to try again, to beg him to understand...

She had to turn back into a human to give the Fat Lady the password — grindylow, this year's theme was magical creatures, apparently — but the Common Room was deserted with everyone at the Feast, so she popped back as soon as she'd clambered through the doorway. Not that she could really bring herself to care at the moment whether anyone found out about her illegally becoming an animagus. She still had a few more weeks before she came of age and was supposed to register anyway, and even if she hadn't getting sentenced to a few months in Azkaban couldn't possibly be worse than James...completely rejecting her. Trying to drive her away. For...he probably had a reason, but she couldn't imagine why.

She really wasn't expecting Evans to be in their room when she nosed the door-flap open. It sealed behind her, of course, locking out the rest of the world. If she wanted to get out she'd have to become human again, because it only opened in. And Evans was sitting on the bed, so that ruled out hiding there. Bugger.

"Aster?" Padfoot didn't answer, slinking over to her desk and nudging the chair aside enough to curl up in the foot cubby. "Aster, I know that's you, no one else can get in here, regardless of whether they're a dog. Why are you a dog?" Padfoot still didn't answer, wishing she'd shut up and leave her alone, but not enough to become human again just to say so. What was she even doing up here? She'd definitely gone down to the feast with Aster. She'd kind of been ignoring her because she was annoyed, but she'd thought Evans was off making boring small talk with the other girls or something. "Bark once if you need me to transfigure you back or something." When Padfoot didn't, she went back to her book...for about thirty seconds. "Why are you hiding under your desk? Was Potter being an arse?"

She resumed her human form long enough to snap, "Shut up, Evans," before popping back immediately. That earned her another thirty seconds of silence — tense, uncomfortable silence, because she knew it couldn't last.

"You know, you being a dog animagus kind of explains a lot." There was a soft pressure at the very edges of her mind. As a human she might not have noticed at all, but dogs weren't really complex thinkers, habitual occlumency was kind of impossible to maintain as Padfoot. A growl trickled out of her throat. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you may be overreacting."

Well, how the hell was she supposed to react to being fucking legilimised?!

"Not to me — though I had no idea talking to animals was mind magic until literally today — but whatever Potter did."

No, she definitely, definitely wasn't. She'd fucked up, she knew she had, and she didn't think she'd be able to fix it, and she wished Evans would just leave her alone because she couldn't pretend she wasn't dying at the moment, and she was so painfully alone, and she couldn't deal with Evans being all reasonable and cold and Evans-ish on top of being fucking exiled—

Just go away, she thought, willing the bitch to get it, to realise that she was miserable, and didn't — couldn't — deal with her at the moment, flooding the space around herself with agony and angst.

Evans gasped as though she'd just been punched in the gut. "Fuck, do you feel shite like that all the time? Fine, I won't talk. Just, stop hiding under the desk being miserable. Come here."

What? She whined. She didn't understand.

"Come on," Evans said, patting the bed beside herself.

Seriously, what?

"I know I'm not him, but I know you," she said, all coaxing and patronising.

No.

"You don't want to be lying all alone down there on the cold, hard stone, you're only doing that to punish yourself. And you don't deserve it."

No, she did. She really, really did. This was all her fault, and—

"Aster! Come!" Evans snapped, as though she were an actual dog, which on the one hand was even more patronising, but on the other hand it was really, really tempting to just do as she was told.

She certainly didn't know what she should be doing.

Fine. She crawled out of the foot space and onto the bed beside Evans.

"Good girl. Can I pet you?"

Would you? She leaned into the girl's side. Evans propped her book up on one knee so she could let one hand skim softly over Padfoot's head and ears. She felt herself relax involuntarily, focusing on the physical contact rather than the complete trainwreck that was her life.

No one ever...

Weird as it was to realise, no one ever really touched her. Not like that. Sure, there were plenty of people she could drag off into a store-room or something for a quick fuck, but that was about fun, not...comfort. Honestly, she could probably count on one hand the number of people who had ever been...gentle to her. (The House of Black wasn't exactly renowned for its careful, empathic approach to childrearing.)

De Mort, tucking her into bed a couple of weeks ago (unless she'd completely hallucinated that, which might make more sense).

Bella that one time when she'd saved Aster's life, back when she was seven. She'd let Aster fall asleep on her lap afterward, completely exhausted and burnt out.

Dorea, when Aster had shown up on her doorstep shaking from the Cruciatus for the second time in six months, had just held her until the tremors stopped.

She would say all of the Potters, there had been lots of hugging in the midst of the debacle with Snape, but that hadn't exactly been... It had been an imposition, forcing their pity on her, or at least that was what it had felt like at the time — a soft sort of torture she couldn't object to without hurting them.

Marley had kind of been big on snuggling, but Aster really wasn't, generally speaking. That was actually one of the things Aster had really disliked about their relationship, the way she was physically clingy on top of wanting to spend all of their free time together.

She did casually touch other people kind of a lot — mostly the Marauders — but they weren't really very physical themselves, mostly just shrugged her off or called her a girl for draping herself all over them (or both). If it weren't for the fact that she'd done that forever she'd say it was an effect of becoming an animagus, because it definitely hadn't escaped her attention that the wilderfolk she'd met over the summer were much more her sort of people, communicating with touch more than words, even when they were human-shaped. And even they didn't tend to touch her just to be nice, make her feel better about her entire life being shite.

After a while — probably not as long as it felt, time was weird as a dog — Aster decided she was (probably) calm enough to shift back without turning into a weepy mess. She was still using Evans's stomach as a pillow, fully expected to be shoved off, but Evans, engrossed in her book, hardly seemed to notice, just kept playing with Aster's hair. Which was...fine? Weird, but not bad. (And Aster really, really had no room to judge anyone else being weird.)

"What're you reading?" she mumbled, trying to act as though this was any other day, and she wasn't barely holding herself together at the moment, practically lying in the lap of a girl she would have said she hated two weeks ago.

"Meditations on the Void." Huh. Aster wondered where she'd gotten that. It wasn't restricted, really, just kind of rare, a collection of essays about the nature of Magic from before the whole system of the Powers was really codified. Not the sort of thing the Hogwarts library kept out on the shelves, for sure. "Anomos recommended it. It's sort of...trippy."

Oh, so she wasn't very far into it, then. They were mostly in chronological order, and some of those earlier philosophers were kind of weird. "Not all of it. Anaximenes might sound like he's three kinds of high, but after you get to Xenophanes they start to make a lot more sense." Evans's fingers paused. "What?"

A tiny huff of almost-laughter escaped her. Aster, with her head still lying on the other girl, more felt it than heard it. "Nothing, just. Whenever I think I've got you all figured out, you continue to surprise me, Asteria Black."

"Just because I'd rather get fucked up myself than read fucked up philosophy doesn't mean I didn't have a proper, Classical education. Why aren't you down at the Feast with everyone else?"

"Oh. Well, I think the Feast is probably over by now. It's almost nine. But...I don't know. I don't like Hallowe'en as much as I used to anymore. Or, well, I like it differently. The whole Feast thing seems kind of...gauche. And fake. And cowardly, kind of. Like, let's all pretend there's no such thing as Death, just distract ourselves with candy and silly costumes and pranks, even with the chill of the Void seeping across the Veil. Willing self-delusion. Just...kind of rubs me the wrong way."

"Mmm." Yes, good, think about Death, not him... "They can't feel it, you know. The Veil growing thin. Or, well, they do feel it, but they don't understand it. You know that instinct to grab onto life when you get too close to death?"

"Er...no?"

Of course she didn't. "Well, normal people — non-necromancer people — tend to be kind of afraid of Death."

"You don't say?" Amused sarcasm.

Aster glared at her. "Shut up, my point is they're not deluding themselves, Samhain just makes them remember that life is short and they should live it to its fullest. Honestly, before I came here I'd never heard of Hallowe'en, but I really like it."

Mostly because before she came to school, she also didn't realise how...scared normal people — outsiders — were, all the time. Scared of having fun and seizing the moment, living like they might die tomorrow, because oh no, there might be consequences! The House of Black was widely regarded as having no sense of self-preservation whatsoever because they (or the most notorious of them, at least) lived like they might die tomorrow all the time. (She'd thought it was an exaggeration, at first, that reputation, but... Honestly, she didn't know how normal people could live like that!) Having one day where normal, serious people all embraced the fun and silliness of life seemed a lot more appropriate for them in some ways than sitting around and being even more serious than usual, contemplating the end of a life they never truly appreciated.

"Yeah? Then how come you weren't at the Feast?"

"Oh, well, because you ruin everything. Even when you're not there."

Evans snorted, fingers working deeper, kneading into the muscles where Aster's head met her neck, prompting an entirely involuntary, almost sexual moan. That felt nice. "Are you sure you don't mean especially when I'm not there? Because this doesn't exactly scream ruining everything to me."

"Oh, shut up, Evans. Jamie asked where we were all day, so it came up that we'd been with Bella and de Mort, and then we got into an argument about if Dumbledore would watch us all die before he admits he can't beat them, and if Bella's still my cousin, and Jamie blamed me for letting her and de Mort start trying to talk you around to their side and I said that was complete dragonshite because of course Bella's still my cousin, and I've been telling him you're with the Dark since we were twelve, but he's completely irrational about you, so we got in a fight about that, and Minnie kicked us out of the Feast, and then he said we had to tell Dumbles that de Mort's planning on crashing Persephone's party, and I said that seemed completely pointless, but fine whatever, and he said I shouldn't do something I thought was wrong just because he thinks it's right, which doesn't even make any sense, and I tried explaining why, and—" She cut herself off, sniffling. She didn't want to think about the look on his face when he'd called her disturbing, when he'd said don't follow me. "I blame you," she said instead, burrowing her face into Evans's side.

She sighed, obviously at a loss for words, which was funny because she'd had plenty to say earlier, when she'd been ranting about how Jamie treated Aster like shite in the stairwell.

"The phrase you're looking for is I told you so," she muttered.

"Er...what was that?"

"You were right," Aster snapped, pulling back to glare at her (and instantly regretting it, because Evans could no longer reach her head).

"I'm right a lot. Which particular instance are we talking about, here?"

"Jamie doesn't want me to follow him." Of course, when he'd actually said it he'd meant literally, but that was what it meant, wasn't it, when he told her it was wrong to just do what he thought was right?

Evans winced. "Oh. I'm... I'm sorry, Aster."

Aster let herself flop face-first into the mattress before muttering, "It's not really your fault."

"You're talking into a solid object again," Evans pointed out, though she also started playing with Aster's hair again, so she didn't mind as much as she might've done.

She still gave the redhead a furious glare, careful not to pull too far away. "I don't want your apology!"

Evans gave her an exasperated sigh. "I wasn't apologising, it's not my fault you're completely lost and Potter's a weak fucking twat who can't handle just living his life and letting you copy his answers to, you know, morality. Just offering my condolences. If you want to talk about it, we can, but—" She imitated her earlier wince. "I'm sorry, Aster is about the extent of my ability to pretend to care at the moment. Fair warning."

Aster should probably be more upset that Evans was flat admitting she didn't actually care about Aster's suffering, but she kind of appreciated the honesty. "I know you're a heartless bitch, remember? I never believe you when you act like you care. And I know there's no pretense in Death. Even if I wanted pretty lies from you, I wouldn't expect you to be able to pull it off tonight."

Evans gave her an oddly soft, absent smile. "And I love you for that. I really do. Almost makes me regret all those years we spent being enemies instead of friends. But speaking of, we should get ready to head down to the Woods."

"I don't even know if I want to go anymore," Aster groaned. She didn't want to go out and almost certainly run into Jamie, after all the effort she'd gone to to make sure he would be there. She'd much rather just lie here — or in her own bed, despite the undead cat infestation — and feel sorry for herself and try to figure out what to do now, try to reconcile Jamie's impossible demand and the fact that she didn't know how she was supposed to...to do anything, really, without following his example. She knew he didn't want her following Bella's example — she'd been Aster's role model before coming to school — so—

"It really doesn't matter whether you want to, you're still going to," Evans said, rolling to her feet. "Come on, get up! If you don't hurry, we won't have time for a proper bath first."

Aster groaned again, flopping into the warm spot Evans had left behind her. Not only did she have to go, but Evans was going to insist on making a huge fucking production out of it?

Bugger.