Exile
Since they never had gotten fed at the Evanses' house, and Aster was in far too much pain to drag Evans and Snape on a celebratory trawl of her favourite muggle record shop (which she otherwise certainly would have done, she'd briefly considered it before she remembered her left leg existed), they just grabbed some sort of Indian takeaway Aster didn't recognise from the restaurant which was "the only redeeming feature of the pestilent boil which is Cokeworth" and brought it back to school to eat by the lake.
Last night's storm had blown over, leaving the skies clear and the air crisp. An imperviused blanket turned the soft, muddy shore into a reasonably comfortable resting spot, and much as she would deny it if anyone were to accuse her of enjoying Snape's company, there were far worse ways to spend an afternoon than lounging around, ignoring the fact that they still had mundane, non-life-or-death concerns like homework to worry about.
They were lying flat on their backs, staring up at the endless expanse of blue and floating ideas for potential responses to Reggie's florid, overly-done apology letter (and trying not to laugh, because ow), when James found them.
"Where is he?" he demanded, before making any sort of attempt at a greeting.
Aster ignored him.
"Sirius," he said firmly, bending over her to block her view of the sky. "Where is Remus?! I know you—"
"She's not talking to you, Potter," Evans interrupted.
"I wasn't talking to you, Evans, and that's funny, she had plenty to say last night! What did you do with him, Sirius? People've been asking questions all day, and—"
"Evans, please explain that I only spoke to Potter last night because it was an emergency, and he was monopolising the Headmaster."
"That is such a load of hippogriff dung! Are you really going to— How immature are you?! Just because Cousin Bella says you're not allowed to talk to me—"
"Bella didn't say she's not allowed to talk to you, she said you're not allowed to talk to Aster," Evans reminded him. "On which topic, piss off."
"Why don't you piss off, Evans, seeing as this is nothing to do with you?"
Evans rolled to her feet to invade his space and jab him in the chest. The scene was kind of reminiscent of this morning with Greyback (though obviously with less sausage). James was definitely more intimidated than Greyback, though, taking a step back under the furious glare of the redheaded witch, her eyes flashing killing-curse green for the first time Aster had noticed since...Samhain? It'd been a while, anyway.
Aster struggled to sit up, to better appreciate the fear and uncertainty on James's face. And also so she could hex him more easily, if he decided that forcing Evans to shut up and get out of the way sounded like a good idea. (He wouldn't have two weeks ago, no matter how she'd provoked him or how much of a pain in his arse she was being, but now she was a scary evil necromancer, so who knew what he thought was reasonable "self defence"?)
"You need to get this through your thick fucking skull right now, Potter — Aster is mine. Anything to do with her is to do with me! You hurt her! You broke her trust and threw her away! I don't want you anywhere near her!"
Aster flinched. It was true, but it still hurt to hear. Even if Evans did understand her better and accept her more fully than James ever had, anyway, and was only saying it to defend her.
"I did not!"
"Yes. You. Did." Poke. Poke. Poke. He was going to have a bruise in the middle of his chest, Aster thought, vaguely amused. "Do you understand what it means, breaking your word to your own family? She's your cousin, you incomparable buffoon, your sister in all but blood! And she looked up to you! She thought the world of you! And you in your infinite idiocy, did the one thing you could possibly have done to prove to her, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that you have no respect for her, you don't care about her, you consider her utterly unworthy of any regard, whatsoever!"
"What?! No, I— You've lost the bloody plot, Evans! Sirius, I know you're listening to me! Would you just—"
"I have not lost the plot, you sanctimonious, self-righteous bastard! She forgave you for not hearing her out about me and our little tryst in the Common Room back in September. She forgave you for letting everyone think that she tried to deliberately murder Sev, when we all know it was your— I don't even have a word strong enough—"
"Reckless, irresponsible ineptitude?" Snape suggested.
"Yes, thank you, Sev. It was your reckless, irresponsible ineptitude and your gross disregard for the protections Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey determined were necessary to ensure Remus's safety that was responsible for both last month's near disaster, and this month's even worse catastrophe! She forgave you for your refusal to accept her sex change as the complete non-issue that it is — yes, she's kind of bad at acting like a girl, but Sirius was always bad at acting like a boy, too — and for begging McGonagall to force her out of your dorm room and for your constant implications that she's soft in the head for believing in the Powers." That actually didn't bother Aster nearly as much as it bothered Evans. She'd grown up knowing that atheists existed and there was no way to prove to them that they were completely wrong about everything ever. "She even managed to convince herself that it didn't matter that you rejected her love and her loyalty on Samhain, that it was all a big misunderstanding, that you didn't mean it when you called her disturbing!"
"I didn't!"
(He had.)
"But there's really no way she could convince herself that you didn't understand what breaking that promise meant. Leaving aside the fact that, if Dumbledore had actually believed you, I could be dead by now, Aster had just explained how fundamentally important it is to keep your bloody word! To follow through on your promises! Fulfilling your obligations comes right after ensuring your fucking survival in order of priority, Potter!"
"It wasn't even a promise, Evans! She was being crazy! I just said it so she'd let me go!"
And therein lay the problem.
She'd accepted when Bella and Zee had explained that he had a different definition of promise than she did, it was stupid as fuck, but she could see how there might have been a misunderstanding, there. Despite her having just explained that promises were important, if he hadn't thought he made a promise, then maybe she could convince herself he held anything other than complete disdain for her.
The problem was that he was afraid of her. That he one-thousand per cent had meant it when he'd said she was disturbing. That he couldn't handle her being completely fucking insane. That he couldn't even tell when she wasn't in her right mind. He hadn't thought there was really anything wrong with her for the entire month of September, and when the dung-bomb had gone off last month, she'd...spooked him. Now he was seeing Madness where there was just Aster being Aster. And he really wasn't handling it well. It'd be one thing if he were just overly cautious and kept tipping off Dorea or Narcissa when she was perfectly fine, but panicking and lying and running away from her was just...
She knew it, had known it, already, that he was scared of her, it just...hadn't clicked, she guessed. Not until this very second.
He was afraid of her, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to fix that. And even if she could, the fact that she had to– to coddle him, to assure him that she wasn't a threat to him—
It felt almost like a physical thing, the last vestiges of her respect for him vanishing.
How had she ever thought that this...this scared, weak idiot could be a leader worth following? How had she ever thought that he could keep her in check when she couldn't control herself, when he went running to Mummy, or his precious Leader of the Light as soon as she made him the least bit nervous? How could she possibly have any respect for him when– when he was such a child?
"Do you really think she would have let you out of that room if she hadn't believed you meant it? As far as I'm concerned, that counts. And even if you didn't, lying to her is almost as bad as breaking a promise, anyway! Putting your fear and your bigotry ahead of keeping your word and keeping your mouth shut says you don't think of Aster as your ally or your friend or family or follower or anything to you, that she doesn't count. That you do not and cannot ever have any degree of trust between you — that she has no honour. That the honour and trust she placed in you are so much worthless rubbish! How can you not know this?!"
(Aster was pretty sure he didn't know that because no one had ever taught him.)
She had actually been thinking about that a lot over the past couple of days — how she'd ever thought it was a good idea to follow James fucking Potter, of all people — because Bella said she should try to stop hating herself if she wanted to get out of her meetings with McKinnon, and a large part of the reason she felt bad about anything ever, including herself, was knowing that James (and Dorea, but mostly James) would be disappointed or disgusted or hate her for doing and thinking the wrong things. She felt bad about hurting him, and about making him hate her, but not about whatever 'bad' thing she happened to have done itself, or anyone else it had hurt, outside the very small circle of people whose wellbeing she actually cared about. (Even as mad as she'd been last month, if she'd realised that Remus would suffer for turning or killing Snape, she wouldn't have considered that a valid solution to the problem of his existence.) Clearly, the easiest way to stop hating herself was convincing herself that she didn't care what James thought about her (a task that had suddenly gotten much easier, almost weirdly so), so she'd been thinking about why she'd ever valued his opinion in the first place.
Looking back on the decision of her eleven-year-old self to latch onto James and his values, that had been mostly based on the fact that he was allowed to act like a feckless idiot, in public, and how badly she'd envied his carefree, childish silliness and hated the constraints of her own family, and Walburga for forcing her to practise dark magic. She'd just been rebelling against them by trying to be a Potter instead (which she was unequivocally shite at), and honestly? She was starting to think maybe Bella had a point about Dorea being a terrible mum, at least from the perspective of teaching her son to, at the very least, not accidentally ruin the lives of people who called him a friend. (Bella generally did have a point.) She'd thought, occasionally over the years, that she would much rather have been Dorea's son than Walburga's, but if she'd been born a Potter, she'd probably have killed someone by now (or be locked up in Janus Thickey, or both), because no one would've taught her that it wasn't okay to be an irresponsible, impulsive little shite.
All of which really only made it clearer that James...was not the sort of person whose example she ought to have been following in the first place, and she wasn't entirely certain when she'd transitioned from following his example to following him, but that was an even worse non-decision. (Bella was definitely going to say I told you so when she finally admitted this revelation.)
James glared at the furious redhead. "Well, excuse me, Miss de Mort! Some of us aren't secretly dark pureblood princesses! I didn't grow up with that– that complete nonsense!"
"Oh, get your head out of your fucking arse, why don't you! I was raised by muggles, Potter! I'm not secretly anything, it's just, unlike some people, I've actually made an effort to get to know people outside my own little ideological bubble over the past five years, and look at how the world is rather than how you want it to be! Aster literally told you all that while she was explaining why Bella might try to kill you and how she was obligated to stop you from doing something that would obligate Bella to kill you! She was trying to help you, and you pissed in her fucking face! Now, bearing in mind we're talking about an emotionally unstable girl who, until that point, put an unhealthy degree of stock in your opinion of her, and now feels an equally unhealthy degree of shame for misjudging you so incredibly spectacularly—" Actually, she thought she might be okay, now... "—do you think it's a good idea for her to talk to you?!"
"Yeah, well, this isn't about her, or me," James blustered. "It's about Remus! He's my friend! I just want to know—"
"You don't deserve to know a damn thing about Remy, you just ruined his life even more comprehensively than you fucked over Aster! He's — they both are — better off without friends like you! So you can just. Piss. Off!"
Evans had been prodding him in the chest periodically, continuing to advance and force him to retreat toward the water, over the course of her (entirely accurate) little tirade. The last emphatic poke was really more of a shove, enough to cause him to lose his footing, falling on his arse in the shallows with a muddy splash.
"Hey!"
"Shut. Up. Potter. Shut up, and for once in your thrice-cursed life, listen. I know Bella told you that if you attempt to force Aster to acknowledge you, if you try to talk to her, there would be consequences. I'm telling you that if you have anything to say to her, you can say it to me, instead. Aster is mine, and my authority in this matter is absolute. You will respect that, or you just might not live long enough to have to worry about whatever consequences Bella had in mind. Do. You. Understand?"
Aster made an entirely unseemly squeak (which Evans thankfully didn't seem to hear, though Snape definitely had, giving her a knowing, sidelong smirk), because that might actually be the hottest thing she'd ever seen, and she might legitimately have difficulty sleeping in the same room as Evans tonight without jumping her bones, regardless of the fact that she was currently having trouble sitting up on her own, let alone doing anything more athletic.
James nodded, scrabbling away down the shore as he attempted to find his feet, obviously terrified. Aster couldn't see Evans's face anymore, but she was willing to bet her eyes would be glowing again. She could feel the energy gathering in the air around her, dark and light and furious, as Evans, who was clearly not accustomed to her newfound strength regardless of how good her control generally was, let it slip, just a bit. (A frisson of excitement shivered down Aster's spine, completely ignoring the inadvisability of moving at the moment. Damn it, Evans, could you stop being sexy when I'm fucking injured, here?!)
"Good." And then, with a hint of amusement Aster was positive James wouldn't have heard, she added, "Do I need to tell you again?!"
He fled.
Evans flopped back down beside Aster and Snape, still glaring at his cowardly, retreating arse. "Well, at least that went well."
"Mmm, yes," Snape drawled. "You made your mother cry, Potter definitely thinks you're capital-E Evil, the D.L.E. are still investigating my father's mysterious death, Lupin can never show his face in upstanding society again, and Black is nursing multiple werewolf bites, but your plan to seduce her again might actually be ahead of schedule."
Aster felt herself go pink. "Shut up, Snape."
"It's hard to say whether Potter or Black is wetter, at the moment," he observed, which was pretty much the exact opposite of shutting up.
Evans let go of her glare to give him a wry smirk, ignoring Aster entirely. "Oh, no, I'd say we're right on schedule. See, now she's injured, I have an excuse to invite her to share my bed instead of trying to climb into hers, and—"
And now she was just being mean.
"Tease. You know she can't do anything at the moment, she's all broken and pathetic."
"Oh, fuck you, Bat-boy!"
"Sorry, Black, you're not my type."
Aster scoffed at him. "That's a dirty lie." She might not be the sort of girl he'd like to court, but she was very much the sort of girl he'd like to lose his virginity to. (I.E., someone who reminded him of Evans, but in a less sisterly, more I fantasise about stabbing you way.) "And if you think I can't do anything at the moment, it's no wonder you never get laid." He raised an eyebrow at her, all Slytherin and skeptical. "I'll give you a hint — there's nothing wrong with my tongue." Though getting into a position to use it might, admittedly, be unpleasant.
Snape considered this for a moment, but apparently couldn't think of a single way to turn that to a disparaging comment. Or potentially was just distracted by the mental image the suggestion conjured. "I stand corrected."
"Damn right, you do. Though now it's been brought up, I probably should go see how Remus is settling in." It'd been what? Five hours? Six? "Six hours should be long enough for the shock to have worn off, right?"
Evans and Snape exchanged a somewhat amused, somewhat exasperated look. "Yes, Black, I'm sure Lupin has entirely reconciled himself to his new circumstances. I can't imagine he won't welcome your obnoxiously enthusiastic company."
"Well, if it's a choice between hanging out with me or Greyback's Pack or Bella or...I actually don't know who else might be over there regularly anymore, but probably just Death Eaters. Maybe de Mort? I'm pretty sure he'd pick me. Or maybe de Mort, since he wouldn't recognise him. I'd pick me."
Snape snorted. "That would be because you're insane, Black."
"He...might just want some time alone with his thoughts, you know?"
"Um, no. I realise you and Remy were close back before he joined the Marauders. Well, before we kind of press-ganged him into the Marauders. Whatever. But he's almost as prone to brooding as I am these past couple of years. And brooding isn't nearly as good a look on him. He doesn't have the hair for it."
"You realise that makes no sense," Snape informed her, which was ridiculous, of course it did. Brooding was an aesthetic, which called for moody glowering and dishevelled curls and an appropriately melancholic novel or collection of poetry and maybe a couple of fags. Firewhisky, if they were being sophisticated about it, and/or couldn't smoke without turning into a coughing, wheezing, watery-eyed mess.
Which would probably have been a better reason for Moony not to brood, but whatever.
"Of course it does. Help me up."
"Hey, Remus," Aster said, knocking lightly on the cracked door of the room one of the werewolves had said he was staying in. It swung fully open easily, revealing that he already had company — the same older woman who had taken him under her wing at breakfast.
There were noticeable streaks of grey in her light brown hair and fine lines around the corners of her eyes and mouth, though that wasn't as telling of her age as the fact that Aster didn't recognise her. Werewolves tended to age faster than normal people, even the ones who embraced the Curse, the monthly transformation taking a heavy toll on their bodies, physically. If she was a muggle-wolf, she could be as young as thirty. (It was actually kind of weird Greyback was in as good of shape as he was, considering he was almost forty and had been a werewolf for half of his life.) But if she was a witch, and especially if she was relatively recently-turned, she could be in her eighties. The fact that Aster didn't recognise her suggested she was at the older end of that range, though, turned too late to learn to be a very effective fighter. (Aster would have noticed an old lady practising sling-casting with everyone else the other day, and if she were a pacifist, she wouldn't be here, she'd be in Starlight.) She dressed magical, in the same sort of robes Walburga might wear around the house, nothing fancy, but very proper, which also argued she was a witch.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, eyeing the morose boy with a very Dorea-like look of concern. Remus himself was pressed into the corner, much as he had been when they'd been startled awake by Evans this morning, except now, instead of trying to hide behind a sheet, embarrassed to be seen naked (even just from the waist up), he was hiding behind his knees, pulled up to his chest to rest his forehead on them, arms wrapped around them to keep him curled into his Ball of Misery.
"Oh, sorry, didn't realise you had company. Hi, I'm Aster. I don't think we've met?"
"Annie," the old woman (definitely old, she sounded old) said. "And I do recognise you from breakfast. You're Bellatrix's cousin, yes?"
"About half of the Death Eaters are Bella's cousins to one degree or another, you know. But yes. I am, in fact, the most dashing and charming of all Bella's cousins, or at least the most entertaining, and therefore the best of the lot. I was just coming to check on Remus, but if you're in the middle of something, I can piss off."
"Please, come in. I don't mind. Young Remus and I have just been discussing the nature of a pack."
"Hmm, what about it?" she asked, lowering herself to the edge of an armchair (careful not to sit back and sink into it, because that would be almost as hard to get up from as lying on the ground). "Just like, how the other boys are likely to treat him—" The majority of the pack, or at least the wolves Aster had noticed at breakfast, were men in their early to mid-twenties. "—or why he should join you in supporting the Death Eaters, or...? You know this is only temporary, right? Remy's the epitome of soft, the rest of the Pack would use him as a bloody chew toy making him earn his place if they thought he was planning on sticking around." And he'd let them, because his picture was right next to the definition of pushover in the dictionary.
"Not this pack, specifically," Annie said, giving her a soft smile. "The idea of packhood in general. Family, if in a rather more House of Black sense than that most humans apply to the concept. It is, undeniably, a curse to bear the Wolf in one's soul, but it is almost a greater curse to do so in isolation, as this poor boy has been forced to do. Wolves are pack creatures, as are humans. We are not meant to lock ourselves up to suffer alone."
Oh. Well, Aster couldn't say she disagreed with that. "Well, yeah, obviously. I mean, Moony's been much calmer, since we — our former friends and I — became animagi to keep him company on the moon. Well, last night notwithstanding."
"I bit her," Remus volunteered, speaking into his knees, sounding utterly miserable about it. "I've probably ruined her life, too."
"Remy, mate? My life was already pretty thoroughly fucked. Not sure you can take credit for that, even if it turns out I am a wolf, now. And if I am, so what? I already spend full moons running around with you as a dog. Not much difference, so far as I'm concerned," she said lightly, successfully baiting him into looking at her, if only to give her an absolutely filthy glare.
"It's a huge difference, Sir— Aster! Huge! Do you even— It's like being in a bloody nightmare that you can't wake up from! The Wolf, it wants to bite people, wants to turn them! You can't control it, you can't reason with it, you can't even try to focus on something else! You're still you when you're Padfoot, no matter how deep you let yourself fall into the dog's instincts, you can still think! And you remember everything, not just horrible, black-out flashes here and there, and feeling sick horror, and the Wolf's rage and frustration, and—" He paused, breathing hard.
Aster bit her tongue to avoid pointing out that she was quite familiar with the urge to hurt people just because she liked to (almost needed to, sometimes), and rage and frustration when faced with the soul-crushing realities of living in a world that valued peace and civility over violent, chaotic freedom, and that perhaps it was better to be horrified of that part of yourself, rather than longing to embrace it. She was still herself when she was Padfoot, yes, but she was also still herself when she woke up hating the world and wanting to pick fights with people just because they were there, and their very existence offended her, when she was so very tempted to say fuck it and just punch whoever was annoying her in the face or attempt to stab them to make a point, but couldn't, because most people weren't Bella or Cissy and wouldn't be able to stop her actually hurting them. Perhaps it would be easier to have no control over the Wolf, rather than struggle with not wanting to control herself — had he ever thought of that?
This isn't about you, Aster, you self-centered arse...
"I would kill to be an animagus instead of a werewolf. Literally. Deliberately. It wouldn't be nearly as bad to be a murderer just once as it is to never know if you're going to hurt someone, or kill them, or turn them. I was safe in the Shack until—" His voice cracked, cutting him off. He buried his face in his knees again. "I never wanted to hurt anyone, Siri. And– and..."
Aster sighed. (Ow.) "Yeah, I know, Remy. And I know you know it's not your fault, and I know you don't care, you still feel responsible, because you're nearly as fucked in the head about this shite as I am just in general. Which probably means my opinion doesn't count as much as I think it should, but, hey, Evans agrees with me. She just shoved Potter in the lake and threatened to kill him for asking about you." She paused, then decided, fuck it. "Hottest fucking thing I've ever seen."
Remus was apparently absolutely desperate to change the subject, even if it probably wouldn't last, seeing as complaining, "You're a girl, now, Aster. How can you still always think with your dick?" didn't really change the fact that he would still be a werewolf when the tangent was exhausted.
"Ah, well, clearly thinking with your dick is a state of mind. No actual dick required." Remy snorted, obviously amused in spite of himself. "Convenient, really, I can just spend all my time perving on everyone now, and my trousers don't give me away." That managed to draw another amused snort from Remus, and a very confused look from the older werewolf. "I used to be a boy. Hey! Remy! It's my one-month birthday! We should celebrate!"
"'M not in the mood for celebrating, Sir— Aster."
"Are you sure? I know where they keep the good brandy." His poison of choice.
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"Well, fine." Aster pouted at the top of his head, despite not being in any shape to get fucked up herself.
"Forgive me, but...how did you...become a girl? And why?" Annie asked, in the conversational lull which followed.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time, and also because the Dark wanted to see me suffer, and Zee — Mirabella, I mean — thought it was better to just let me become a girl than tell me no and force me to run off and do something stupider with more consequences, like become a Parisian streetwalker to get the money to get a blood alchemist to do it properly, and probably get distracted and end up running a brothel or dead of a viv overdose. It really could go either way."
"I...see. I also see why Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum have been referring to you as Little Bella."
"Is that Hati and Skoll?" Annie nodded. Wankers. She might actually prefer Trixie over Little Bella. She was her own person, damn it! (Even if it was kind of flattering to be compared to Bella, most of the time.) "It's honestly probably more the war game we were playing on Sunday than my vivacious personality. I mean, I think Bella's funny, but she's not exactly the friendly and outgoing type. Also, if Bella wanted to get high on magic, she and Lord Sparklebum would probably just sacrifice someone. Which means she would definitely end up running the brothel. And probably half of Europe, too, but that would be incidental. On the other hand, it's kind of hard to not act like her on a battlefield when she's the one who taught me to fight."
Granted, she'd taught everyone else there how to fight as well. The really obvious similarity was in how shamelessly Aster enjoyed fighting, even when she was losing. It wasn't just Auntie Dru who thought fighting was unrefined and uncivilised, and the sort of serious business one did because it was necessary, not fun, and if you thought it was fun, there might be something wrong with you, or at the very least, you should be ashamed of your barbarian tendencies. That was definitely a Society-wide thing.
"Lord Sparklebum?" the woman repeated, sounding both amused and scandalised.
"Have you ever seen him in the sun?" Probably not, Aster was betting. "He sort of...shimmers."
"Sirius has been coming up with irreverent nicknames for Monsieur Voleur for years," Remus informed the older werewolf. "The more important question is, why were you playing war games with Bella?"
"Because I was having a shite day, obviously."
"Uh-huh."
"I was. My mind healer was being all judgy about my perfectly reasonable reaction to Potter being a lying, oath-breaking sack of shite who doesn't give a bloody owl-pellet about me, kept trying to make me admit I'm not actually as okay as I think I am. And I couldn't stab him, because that would totally prove his point, and I couldn't even let him know I was thinking about it because that would probably also prove his point and that just makes talking to him even more stressful and have I mentioned lately that I hate mind-healers? And I was all set to just never go back, but then Evans pointed out I had to if I wanted to go to school, and Bella pointed out that if I drop out of school, I'll have even fewer opportunities to try to convince Dumbledore to come to the table and negotiate instead of getting all our friends killed fighting a losing war. So obviously I do have to go back, and that sucks balls. I think I might actually be actively dreading sitting around for another hour trying not to flip out over him just lurking in my fucking head and watching me think. Which, yes, I know that's his job, but deliberately forcing myself not to react, just sitting there all open and vulnerable, freaks me out. Majorly so." She was really hoping that Bella was right about the bastard just wanting her to stop hating herself, and then she could stop seeing him. "It wouldn't be nearly as bad if I didn't know he was there, but I do and I hate it and I hate him and having to talk to him and the fact that I'm a crazy person in the first place, and the fact that normal people continue to expect me to not act like a crazy person, while treating me like a crazy person, and everything was just shite, okay?
"Also, Zee informed me that hitting on McGee is actually disturbing now that I'm a girl, because apparently girls aren't supposed to talk about liking sex. Which is bloody moronic. Sex is great."
Remus, who was well accustomed to her occasional ranting by this point, refused to be distracted by any part of said rant, despite not really having heard her side of why she and James were no longer friends, which was almost impressive, in a way. (Annie, who was not, just kind of gaped at her.) "...So you decided to let Bellatrix kick you around a training field for a few hours?"
"Yes? I mean, it sounds like a terrible idea when you put it like that—" and even worse taking into account she'd already been injured, "—but I like war games, and I never get to play anymore." One of the worst parts of trying to hate Bella on principle was that she couldn't go over to Ancient House to blow off steam on the training field when she was having a particularly bad day. "And I actually managed to tag Bella once with this firestorm spell Cassie taught me!" Remus gave her a seriously unimpressed stare. "You don't understand, Remy, I actually scored a point on Bella in a one-on-one fight! That never happens. I ended up with half a dozen recruits under my command for the last round, and two of the actually qualified Death Eaters, and we couldn't touch her together."
That, if anything, made him look even more unimpressed. (How was that even possible? Was there no end to the depth of disapproval he could convey in a simple frown?) "So you're...hanging out with the Junior Death Eaters now? Voluntarily?"
Oh.
That was so incredibly not the point. Aster shrugged uncomfortably.
It wasn't as though she was planning on hanging out with the Slytherins from now on or some shite (well, yes, okay, Evans was basically a Slytherin, that wasn't the point either), but she had grown up with most of the baby Death Eaters, and they weren't all complete shites like Ian and Jules. Most of them were actually perfectly tolerable company, assuming they completely avoided discussing politics. This year's recruits were only a couple of years older than she was, they'd already been in training (unofficially) back when she was still hanging around in the summers after third and fourth years. They'd been the cool older kids she'd wanted to impress when she was about six. (And given that she'd been Sirius fucking Black, and had actually been able to keep up most of the time, they'd actually been willing to include her in their pick-up quidditch matches and dueling contests and such.) Obviously some of the shine had worn off after she started school, but she still knew them.
It was kind of weird, seeing them all again, fighting with them again. Easy to fall back into old habits and camaraderie, remembering how they used to work together. She'd been pleasantly surprised that BJ had actually gotten halfway decent at runic casting in the last two years (he really wasn't much of a fighter, honestly), and Cousin Liam was fucking scary with battlefield transfiguration now, when had that happened? And it was even weirder that they were all so willing to follow her command. It wasn't as though she'd led a side often, even when she'd been training with them more regularly. (She'd still been the youngest, and kind of an impulsive little shite.) Malfoy had shown up about halfway through the afternoon and tried to take over her team (probably to try to impress Bella, everyone knew she didn't think he was worthy of Cissy), but Doug and Caspian (who were a couple of years older than Malfoy, the two properly qualified Death Eaters she'd mentioned), had basically told him that if he was leading their side, they had better things to do. They weren't recruits, they didn't have to be there, they'd just jumped in to help Aster for fun. Aster had told him to try to flank Bella on her right, provide a distraction for those of them who could actually hit a moving target at twenty yards, and then hexed him in the face when he refused to do it. (Bat-Bogeys, classic.)
"They're not all that bad," she admitted, very grudgingly. Honestly, if she hadn't met James on the train before their Sorting, or if the Hat had decided to be stubborn and put her in Slytherin anyway, she'd probably be just as devoted to the Cause as any of them. She'd already hated her parents when she was eleven, yeah, but she would have followed Bella into the Death Eaters just as blindly as Reggie. Even with the Gryffindors' influence on her driving her away from them and making her face how horrible de Mort's tactics (Bella's tactics, a stubborn little James-sounding voice at the back of her mind reminded her) really were, she still had a lot more in common with the baby Death Eaters than she did with the Light, if she was being honest. (Which she was trying to be, in the interests of not hating herself, and therefore not needing to talk to McKinnon every fucking week until she left school.) And she understood them better, even if she didn't actually like them much.
"I wouldn't want to just hang out with them, but..." She gave him another uncomfortable shrug, before she came up with a perfect example of what she was trying to say. "I wouldn't want to hang out with that prick Carson, either." The Gryffindor Quidditch Team's keeper was just as big a prat as most of the baby Death Eaters (if somewhat less likely to hex muggleborns for existing). "Being on a team together is different."
"That's not what you've been saying for the past two, three years, you know. That they're not that bad."
Aster glowered at his concerned reproachfulness. "Well, fine, they are that bad — scheming, manipulative arseholes with the morals and sympathies of especially condescending pirates, more money than sense, and more ego than money. But they tend to be reasonably witty conversationalists and they don't expect anyone to play nice, and I know for a fact that none of them could see thestrals or learned their Unforgivables before they started school, and most of them are less inclined to entertain themselves by hurting other people than I am, so when I'm willing to admit to myself that I'm just as bad as they are in a lot of ways, and worse in others, they're reasonably good company." And she refused to feel like shite about that, just because James would be horrified by such an admission, because James was a fucking moron and had just ruined Remus's life being an idiot, and as Evans had kind of pointed out with her parents earlier, just because you didn't admit something didn't mean it wasn't true. "Especially if we're just running around a training field trying to curse Bella together. Not like there's a hell of a lot of talking about moral philosophy in that context. I don't like them — I don't like that I was raised as one of them, but..." She shrugged yet again. She'd been trying to deny being anything like them — anything like Bella — for years, but there hardly seemed to be much point, given the circumstances.
"You know me, Remus. You know I don't get how to be a good person. It doesn't come naturally to me, and no one taught me when I was little. Five years of trying to figure out how not to be an evil git, and I'm still as dark and fucked in the head as any other Black, just a little better at knowing when I should feel bad about not feeling bad. I really don't have any room to judge the baby Death Eaters." If it wouldn't have hurt like hell, she'd've had a dramatic sigh to go along with that admission.
"You shouldn't talk about yourself like that," Remus muttered into his knees, because he was the world's biggest pushover, feeling sorry for Aster, when it was his life that was in shambles, here.
"I've participated in cannibalistic subsumation rituals every year since I was seven, Remy," she said flatly. Remus's head snapped up to gape at her so quickly she'd be surprised if he hadn't hurt himself. "I've been telling you the Blacks are evil since we were firsties. And I've never exempted myself from that. This isn't me being down on myself, or whatever, I don't actually feel bad about it or about not feeling bad about it, I'm just saying, I know I should. According to people who have no idea how fucking good it feels to eat someone's soul."
"You what?!"
Aster rolled her eyes. "You heard me." She raised a hand between them and pointed a finger dramatically at her own face— "Evil." —and then Remus in his Ball of Misery. "Not evil. Also, comparatively speaking, the baby Death Eaters. They're mostly just selfish arseholes who haven't really thought about what war actually means, in terms of death and suffering. Not evil gits who've been watching Bella murder people to feed the Family Magic since they were little kids."
"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear any of that," Annie said, giving a delicate little old lady shudder. Probably good, Aster shouldn't have said it in the first place, though neither werewolf was really in a position to go turning them in to the authorities, and she really was sick of Remus acting like she wasn't exactly as horrible a person as she thought she was. Probably not something she'd need to worry about from now on, given that he was just kind of staring at her in silent horror, now. "I prefer not to dwell on your family's penchant for obscene sacrificial rituals."
"Is it true Greyback made Bella eat a human eyeball to prove she's a hard bitch before he would follow her orders?" Speaking of obscene sacrifices, and all.
Remy's eyes grew even wider. That actually looked a bit painful... "She really did that?"
"Well, I wouldn't have asked if I knew, would I? Wouldn't be surprised, though. She said she did, but sometimes she says things just to fuck with me." She raised an eyebrow at the older werewolf in silent question.
"That would be before my time," Annie said, with a superior stop trying to bait me sniff. (But that wasn't a no.) "And even had he done so, your own experience should serve as an example of the fact that no person or group of people is completely free of redeeming qualities."
Translation: Even if Greyback did challenge Bella to eat an eyeball, that didn't mean he was all bad. Or maybe didn't mean Bella was all bad. The first option made more sense in context, though.
Remus groaned.
"Before you arrived, I was attempting to convince your friend that he should come meet the rest of us, let us help him through this difficult time, rather than attempt to bear his guilt alone. That the Wolf is a monster, but we — young Remus included — are not," the woman explained.
"She's got a point, Remy. Monsters don't feel bad about acting like monsters." I should know... "But I've been telling him that for years," she told Annie. "Doesn't seem to make much difference. And Moony hadn't even ever hurt anyone before last night."
"That's not true. I've been hurting my parents every moon since I was turned. Every time we had to move, every—"
"Remy? Shut up. It's not your fault you're a werewolf, and it's definitely not your fault your father is so ashamed of that fact he's always been more concerned with hiding the Wolf and trying to kill it than he has been with helping his son learn to live with it."
"My mother—"
"Your mother's an even bigger pushover than you, letting you grow up thinking any of this is your fault."
"Shut up, Sir— Aster. You don't know what you're talking about."
Aster gave him a wry smirk. "Yeah, well, that's why you talking to other werewolves is a brilliant idea, isn't it. You're lucky I'm injured, or I'd come over there and physically drag you out of this room to meet them."
That was a wrong thing to say — Remus groaned again. (Oops.) "How badly did I hurt you, exactly? And don't lie just to spare my feelings."
She rolled her eyes. She actually didn't lie about things very often. And never because she was trying to be nice. Well, she might if she thought to, but she often just...didn't realise it would spare someone's feelings, not knowing things like whether or how badly they'd hurt someone. That was why she'd just out and confirmed that he'd bitten someone when he woke up this morning. "Moderately serious bite on my side and one on my calf. Bruises from a few others through my armour. Oh, and a few little scratches and punctures around my scruff. Only one of them was bad enough for stitches." It ran up the back of her left trapezius, twinged every time she moved her arm or neck, and she'd had to glamour it for the funeral earlier, but compared to her side and her calf, she'd barely noticed it.
"Jesus, Aster, I'm so sorry," her idiot friend groaned, as though his feelings were as injured as her body, and the latter state of affairs wasn't entirely her fault. She could've at least let Moony bite the man, too, before trying to lure him out of town. He probably wouldn't have been nearly as angry with her interrupting him if she had.
"Don't worry about it. The bruises healed up just fine—" Even if she had had to do it herself this morning, because bruises weren't life-threatening, and Bella had considered putting several dozen sutures in her to be more than enough medical care. "—and last time the magic faded enough to heal the nips and scratches on the new moon, like it does for you." It was a narrow window, and the magic in the cursed wounds wouldn't be gone, and using magic to heal a wound that had already partially healed on its own always left scars, anyway, but it had worked. "I can suffer through a couple weeks of taking it easy. Which I will. No matter how boring it is. Have you ever torn stitches out? Hurts more than getting bitten in the first place."
"When've you had stitches before?" Remus asked, in another obvious bid to change the subject.
Aster made a face at him. "Cissy and I were playing with Bella's throwing knives the summer I was ten — goblin steel impregnated with some kind of alchemical poison that makes the wounds impossible to heal with magic and slow to heal without magic, and that doesn't wane with the moon. Not that we knew that. We just thought they were pretty. I told Cissy she couldn't hit the broad side of a bloody nundu if it were standing right in front of her, skipped over and stood in front of the target like a bloody idiot making faces at her, and she managed to slice through one of the runes on the protective tattoo over my heart. Lucky throw, hit me edge-on. If she'd actually managed to stick me, I'd've been in real trouble. As it was, we just kind of freaked out because I was bleeding kind of badly and our healing charms wouldn't take, and Bella bitched us out for being stupid little shites for like twenty minutes straight."
"That's horrible!" Annie did indeed look horrified.
Aster snorted, trying not to laugh, because ow. Also, had she actually managed to forget the whole obscene sacrificial rituals thing a minute ago? "That's growing up in the House of Black. I popped the stitches running from Cissy after sneaking into her room to give her a matching scar in the middle of the night. After we established I wasn't going to die, she wouldn't shut up about actually cutting me," she explained in response to Remus's shocked, reproachful expression. "Walburga was not amused."
"I should think not!"
"Really? Have you met Cissy? Try to picture her in a white nightdress, covered in blood, like a thrice-cursed virgin sacrifice in a trashy novella escaped from the altar, tearing through the house in the middle of the night shrieking like a bloody banshee she was going to throttle me. It was fucking hilarious." She was having trouble not smiling thinking about it now. For all she'd hated her childhood, generally speaking, there had still been some genuinely great moments here and there. "Getting Cissy to break character and act like a savage little hellcat always is."
"Now I see why they call you Little Bella," the old wolf corrected herself. "Surely your parents did not condone that sort of behaviour!"
Aster shrugged. "Playing with Bella's weapons? No. Not unsupervised, at least. Unintentionally hurting each other? Eh, shite happens. Badly enough to need a healer? No, the rule was no casting curses we couldn't heal ourselves. Paying Cissy back in kind for bragging about a fucking accident? Not...really? I mean, they didn't want us to actually kill or cripple each other, but we were vicious little animals, and Walburga constantly pitted us against each other, competition spurring us on, you know? And Cissy takes literally everything too seriously and I have a tendency to get carried away on occasion, so by that age, if one of us hadn't nearly killed the other in the past week, it was a slow week. Anyway, that, Remy, is the story of the first time I had stitches. And the second time. And the first time Cissy had stitches, too. I'm pretty sure our healer thought we were both completely mad."
"That would be because you are both completely mad," Remy said drily.
"Well, yes, but he was on retainer with the House of Black, not sure what else he expected. Anyway, Remy, that took months to heal completely, I should be able to fix these bites in a couple of weeks. The thing I'm actually concerned about is, do you think Moony will remember I decided to get between him and his prey last night? Because it's one thing to sit around reading books and shite wounded for a couple of weeks once, but I'm not really cut out for spending two weeks of every month being all boring and academic like you."
Remus actually looked remarkably well. Bella had probably healed the few scratches and slices Aster had gotten on him while she was waiting for Aster to come back from her little chat with the Headmaster. And she didn't think he had any self-inflicted wounds this month. "I...don't know. I don't think he recognised you from last spring...but that might've been because it'd been a few months." He looked to the (presumably) more experienced werewolf.
"The Wolf will remember," she said, "because Remus remembers. But it will not seek vengeance against you if you don't come between it and its goals again. It has one priority, and you are not it. At least, not as a dog. Perhaps also not in this form, if you have been previously bitten and not turned. We thought it was only Bellatrix who is among humans so inexplicably immune to the Curse — an unexpected side-effect of some ritual or other, that she doesn't smell like prey — but perhaps there is something to that claim that there is too much magic in your blood to call you truly human."
"Who says that?" Aster wondered. She knew that people said too much magic in their blood was the source of the Black Madness (though Bella claimed otherwise). She hadn't heard that people thought the whole House was a little fae. God-touched, yes, but not actually preternatural themselves.
"Oh, just common folk of no significant note," the older woman drawled, implying that she was one of them, but if she'd been a commoner before she was turned, Aster was the muggle Queen. Commoners didn't use phrases like it is only Bellatrix who is among humans so inexplicably immune. They simply didn't. And they didn't have that perfect posture, either, or the well-trained grace she'd demonstrated moving to help Remus this morning, showing no hint of the pain she must still have been feeling in the wake of the Change. (Which, now she thought of it, really should've given away that Annie was a witch from the start. Sometimes Aster was just slow like that.)
"Uh-huh. Well, far be it from me to contradict common folk of no significant note, but as far as I know, we're human. Pretty much all descended from a metamorph, and I wouldn't be surprised if blood alchemy was used to make us more powerful at some point, but if there's actual fae or demon blood in the House, no one told me about it."
"Would they have?" Remy asked.
Aster shrugged. "Probably not. Either way, I'm working on the assumption that I'm not going to turn, because even if I am, that's a whole month from now. I'll put a note in my diary to remember to not be around people on the moon, but in the meanwhile, not really a problem. I mean, it's not like I can do anything about it now," she added, as Remus gave her an I can't believe you just said that look. "And I have more important things to worry about, anyway."
"Like what?!"
"Did you miss me mentioning the only reason I'm going back to school is so I can try to convince Dumbledore not to get Marley and Alice and Frankie and everyone killed fighting Bella? I thought I'd start with that. Also, Bella and de Mort have basically given Evans permission to stop even trying to act normal, so trying to keep her from getting herself arrested and executed as a black mage."
"Wait, what? Why would she—?"
"Oh, I figured Potter would've told you, you know, since he didn't hesitate to tell fucking Dumbledore, and all. Evans is a necromancer. Also, de Mort's kid. Bella's adopting her, it's this whole thing."
"Since when?!"
"Samhain? Or, well, I guess she's been a necromancer since she was tiny, her cat is totally undead, but we've known she's de Mort's kid since Samhain, and Bella decided pretty much immediately that she was Family, which is why I told James he couldn't turn Evans in as a black mage, because if Dumbledore believed him and Evans got slapped with a death sentence, Bella would've killed him. And he promised he wouldn't, and then he did anyway, because that cat-bastard has no honour and apparently doesn't consider a promise to me to be binding, because I scare him, so that means it doesn't count, so he's dead to me, now. Extra-dead, since if he hadn't put that stupid ward-gate in, you'd be up at the school, now.
"Anyway," she said quickly, before Remus could get all mopey again, "making sure Evans doesn't out herself or get Snape arrested on suspicion of murdering his father is more important than worrying about whether I'm a werewolf or not. And we should probably try to figure out something to do with you. I mean, I definitely think you'll be more comfortable with the Starlighters, but you're still going to have to stay here until the heat dies down and we can get you set up with a new wand and papers and shite. Might as well go and meet everyone else. It's got to be almost dinner time, right?"
Annie nodded.
"I don't know..."
"You should go," Aster urged the reluctant boy.
"I'm not really in the mood to go make friends, Aster. Actually, I'm really not in the mood. And I'm not at all sure I can eat with the man who ruined my entire life just– just trying to make some kind of sick point. And I don't want to be friends with people who could follow a man like that, anyway," Remy said firmly, glaring at her and Annie in turn, and then adding, when she simply gave him a soft, almost pitying look, not unlike the one Dumbledore had worn when faced with Evans, Cissy, and Aster pointing out that the Powers definitely existed, "Er. No offence."
The old woman sighed. "This is where we were before you arrived, Aster. I was attempting to explain that we all have our own reasons to remain with the Pack, beyond our personal respect for Fenrir. Chief among them that we need each other's support. Very few of us have accepted the Wolf as fully as the remaining members of Loki's pack. I can count on the fingers of one hand those of us who do not share your guilt and shame, at least to some degree, when we pass the Curse to a new victim. Who would refuse a cure if such a thing existed."
Remus had been making a valiant attempt to hold her eye defiantly, but at that, his gaze fell to his knees again. Aster was betting he was thinking that you'd have to be completely mad to turn down a cure, if it existed. He had said earlier that he'd kill for it, if he could, and Remy wasn't the sort of bloke who said things like that casually. Either that, or he was a little ashamed of thinking so poorly of the Pack as to assume they wanted to be werewolves. Aster was sure there were some who did like being wolves. She kind of suspected that she wouldn't mind, honestly. Remy obviously hated not being in control of himself, but Aster liked getting completely fucked up. Even if she did have to deal with the consequences in the morning, having an excuse to not have to control herself for a few hours was worth it. (Starting a brawl or an orgy and generally acting like every weekend was Walpurgis was apparently more acceptable when one had such an excuse, so.)
"Fenrir is not one of them. He hates humans, mages, the way they have treated him since the first day he was bitten, the first day he learned about magic and our world. And he embraces his Wolf, makes it part of his identity and owns that it is and ever will be a part of him, letting it give form to his rage and hatred. But he does not love it. He takes no pleasure in ruining the lives of others like his own life was ruined by Loki. That he does makes him hate himself nearly as much as he hates men like your father, whose fear and disgust have ruined all of our lives as much if not more than the Curse. The current attitudes toward us are too deeply ingrained in this society to change, at least within my lifetime, and probably also within yours. That your own father has continued to spew his hateful rhetoric, continuing to call for stronger punishments for minor crimes and further limiting our rights and opportunities, even now that his laws target his own son as well as the man who turned him, supports that analysis, I think."
Remus glowered at her, but he didn't really have it in him to try to defend his father. Yes, he knew — they all knew — that Mister Lupin didn't mean Remus when he talked about werewolves, he meant Greyback. He still thought he would find some way to cure Remus, or control him and hide him, so the laws he argued for wouldn't affect his son the way they did the monster who'd turned him (and every other werewolf in the country, who hadn't done anything to deserve their fate any more than Remus had). That didn't change the fact that he hadn't, couldn't, and Remus was fucked. Especially now that it was going to come out that he was a werewolf, now that he'd turned someone.
"He was young then, you know. Fenrir. Twenty-three? Twenty-four?" Oh, maybe he wasn't in such great shape, then, if he was only in his early thirties, now, Aster realised. "Young and naïve. He did — and does still — hate your father, of course. But he could not imagine, then, that a man would be so cruel as to sacrifice his own son on the altar of his bigotry. He thought that if Lyall Lupin's son were a werewolf, Lupin would be forced to see the error of his ways, reverse his position and argue for more lenient laws, improving all of our lives. He regretted the necessity of sacrificing your future, even at the time, or so Clarence says, but he regrets it all the more today, knowing that the sacrifice was wasted. I suspect that were you willing to speak to him, he would apologise. He wouldn't ask for your forgiveness, because he does not think he ought to be forgiven and would never expect you to grant it, but he would attempt to explain himself, in hopes that you would understand why he did as he did, and allow him to ameliorate your suffering as best he can. Allow us to help you understand the Wolf and learn to live with it."
"I wouldn't," Remus said coldly.
"You should," Aster found herself saying.
"What?" Remy hissed, turning to glare at her. "How can you—"
"Not let Greyback apologise. Let them try to help you. They aren't all him, and even he didn't want to be cursed." Aster was pretty sure Annie was telling the truth about that, but even if he was fucked up enough to want to be a werewolf, if he had a choice, he literally couldn't have chosen to become one in the first place — he was a muggle, he didn't know about magic at all before he was turned. "But I'm pretty sure he's right about the Curse being a part of you. You can't get rid of it any more than I can get rid of the Madness or the darkness in my soul, so you might as well try to learn how not to hate yourself for shite you can't change, right? Like coping mechanisms and shite."
Remus just glowered at her. "I agree. You talking to a mind healer is a terrible idea."
"No fucking shite? But I've realised Bella was right all along, Potter was always a terrible role-model, and trying to have morals only ever made me miserable, so I've decided to stop worrying about being a good person. Hopefully he'll sign off on me being more or less sane and I can stop talking to him in a couple of weeks."
"I...don't think that's how that works," said the boy who'd never talked to a mind healer in his life.
"Nonsense, Remy, of course it is. So are you going to dinner? Or are you going to pretend you're me and lie in bed wasting away for a few days before you cave and go eat something?"
He groaned, as though making him go talk to people he didn't already know was a terrible imposition, but let the Ball of Misery relax for the first time since Aster had arrived, stretching his legs and scooting to the edge of the bed. "Fine. I'm not going to make friends with them, though."
Aster just gave him a wry smirk. Yeah, and she definitely wanted nothing to do with anyone she'd known before Hogwarts. "Just keep telling yourself that, Remy."