The Lady of (New) Avalon

Morgen didn't die, not then, though it would be weeks until I learned that for certain, making a quick trip to Starlight after the new moon bearing gifts of meat and wine — fruits of my having been adopted by Bella and regaining a position within the Family which entitled me to withdraw money from our vaults, and the makings of either a celebratory or mourning feast. (Honestly, bringing food to hungry people is hardly ever an inappropriate gift, regardless of the occasion.) And though she managed to pull through without my help, I like to think that making the offer, with every intention of fulfilling it, won me some degree of good will from Constantine — Morgen herself had already known I held nothing but innocent intentions toward her people, though she considered me as much a silly child as anyone.

Constantine, like Fenrir, never had much use for humans. He was always civil enough to me, of course — I had been a guest, after all, on the previous occasions we'd interacted — but if he was willing to admit (even grudgingly) that I was one of the (very few) good ones, well, so much the better. Though it might also have been that my being bitten and not turning convinced him that I wasn't actually human, for all I clearly passed for one. It really could go either way.

I've kept that relatively quiet, over the years. My immunity to the Curse. It's known well enough that I've been bitten, but most people, including myself before Dumbledore enlightened me, simply think animagi immune in their animal forms. Bella hasn't kept it quiet that she's immune, but no one actually thinks Bella's human. (Despite both of us being Blacks and people comparing us more or less constantly, I still am thought of as essentially human, for some odd, inexplicable reason — all the more odd given that I've spent considerably more time actually living with Starlight than she has.) If my immunity were replicable, I would, of course, have publicised it more widely, but if Bella's theory of its origin is correct — and all evidence suggests that it is — any attempt to replicate it is far more likely to result in disaster than any sort of preventative spell to preemptively counter the Curse.

Not that my not being a werewolf holds much import for the story. Nor was it terribly important to me personally, at the time, though it was rather annoying, so many people making a big deal over it...despite the fact that not being a werewolf is rather the expected state of things.

Truth be told, it wasn't even terribly important to me personally, at that point, whether Morgen lived or died. We'd spoken on two earlier occasions — I liked her, respected her, certainly enough to wish her well when I heard she was injured — but she wasn't my adoptive grandmother. My impulsive offer to support her through her healing was based almost entirely on the same desire to help, to stop the Starlighters' lives becoming even worse, as my efforts over the summer. I simply couldn't stand there and look the miserable Constantine in the face and say I'm sorry and walk away, knowing I might be able to help. (And yes, I know that's ridiculous, that there's a hell of a difference between supporting the life of a dying woman at the risk of my own and casting a few waterproofing charms, but that's the Black madness for you — all or nothing, with no hesitation.) If Morgen herself was ready to cross the river, though...well, that really wasn't my business.

Visiting Morgen did put things in a somewhat different perspective for me, though. Reminded me that my feelings toward James Potter and Bella and the Death Eaters and Evans weren't actually a matter of life and death, no matter how much they might seem like it in isolation.

All told, I was in a much better state of mind when I visited Mind-Healer McKinnon the next day than I had been at our previous meeting. Enough to admit aloud what Evans had already come to mean to me — which was significant for me, even if no one was actually surprised. Well, no one except McKinnon.

(For a legilimens, and one who specialises in mind-healing on top of that, John McKinnon is kind of shite at reading people.)

"Dorea? What are you doing here?" Aster asked, despite having a pretty good guess in mind already. It kind of looked like an ambush, especially given that grim little expression on her face when Aster entered the little parlour/annex/waiting area that separated Healer McKinnon's office from the main corridor.

It wasn't a surprise that Zee was here, Aster had asked her to come sit in on her appointment today. Begged, really. She really, really hated legilimency, and especially letting someone legilimise her. The very idea was freaking her out more than usual this week, probably because she was already pretty seriously wounded, physically. Evans had suggested that being psychically vulnerable too was just too much, which...seemed plausible.

Yes, Bella said she could just ask McKinnon to stop, but he would probably ask why, and she didn't think she had a good reason other than if you don't I might stab you, and telling him that would definitely make him think she was unstable. And Aster really needed him to not think that if he was ever going to agree that she didn't actually need to talk to him. So she needed someone there to help her stay calm and not freak out over the fucking mind-healer hovering just inside her awareness and watching and making it impossibly fucking clear that she was completely powerless — not because she literally couldn't do anything to kick him out of her mind, but because there would be consequences if she did— It made her want to scream. She wasn't even in the room yet, and she already wanted to scream.

Anyway, she'd decided that it would be a good idea to ask someone to come with her. Preferably someone who could explain that Aster dragging them in to make sure she didn't lose her shite was actually Aster being very responsible and doing literally everything she could to not fuck up the mind-healing thing, rather than Aster being an irrationally terrified, dangerously unstable child who couldn't be trusted to not stab healers without someone there to mind her.

She would've asked Evans, but Evans had a prefect thing, and Zee had more experience with mind-healers anyway.

It wasn't really surprising, either, that they were chatting amiably, since they were the only two people in the waiting room. Or at least talking. Zee was doing the perfectly poised polite conversation thing, practising the art of saying nothing very elegantly, just hinting and implying and misleading with a particular tone here and a suggestive smile there to make her point — something about her posture gave it away before Aster caught a single word she was saying, just reminded her almost viscerally of Druella. Superficially vapid, but actually aware of every nuance of the conversation and entirely in control of the room. (Auntie Dru, Aster was pretty sure, liked Zee a lot more than she liked Bella.) Dorea, on the other hand, looked rather suspicious and put out with Zee, a certain degree of aggression in the set of her shoulders and the angle of her chin. Looked like she didn't much like the tone of whatever Zee had been implying.

But it was kind of surprising that Dorea had thought it necessary to ambush her at her bloody mind-healing appointment, just to talk to her.

Zee left off immediately, rising to glide over to Aster — definitely doing the Society lady thing, normally she more sort of sashayed — taking up both of her hands and letting her left cheek brush Aster's as she kissed the air beside her ear, then the right. "Asteria! How are you, darling? I was beginning to think I'd misremembered the time!"

"Apologies, Mira," she said, playing along. "I was unavoidably delayed." By a pervasive sense of dread surrounding the idea of coming here, mostly. "Though I think I'm not quite late, yet. Thank you for agreeing to join me today."

"Nonsense, I'm happy to do it. I've been meaning to come congratulate Hannah on attaining her mastery, you know."

She didn't. She had no idea who Hannah was. Nor did she particularly care, honestly. Before she could politely inquire, Dorea interrupted far more bluntly. "So you are here to speak to Aster."

Zee gave a noncommittal hum. Apparently she wasn't confirming or denying anything to do with Aster, which was nice of her, though not really necessary. "I asked her to sit in on my meeting with Healer McKinnon to maybe give a more...objective perspective on certain recent events."

"And which 'recent events' might those be?" Dorea asked pointedly. "I must admit, I'm starting to feel rather left out of the loop. Might they include your apparent decision to embrace the Cause after all and visiting Ancient House multiple times over the past week and a half? Or perhaps the fact that you seem to have decided that your friendship with James is irreparably damaged, that you'd rather cast your lot in with de Mort's necromancer brat? And why are you limping?"

Aster glared at her, flicking off a couple of privacy spells to augment the enchantments already (obviously) worked into the wards of the room (extensions of the office wards which were designed to put patients at ease). "I'm limping because I'm injured, obviously, and your son is both dead to me and a colossal idiot. Whatever he's told you, I'd treat with absolute skepticism — he's been making a habit of leaving out details which might damage others' perception of him lately. I'm not embracing the Cause — I suppose you got that from Dumbledore?" They hadn't actually had that philosophical discussion yet, but she suspected she'd already made him a bit distrustful of her, questioning him and siding with Cissy and Evans in their little chat and so on. "If he manages to convince me he's not just as full of shite as every other bloody politician in the world, I might yet join his Order. Though I suppose I wouldn't be welcome, if this is the reception I'm getting from the woman who's been more a mother to me over the past five years than the woman who bore me. And how would you know I've been to Ancient House?"

"Well, you were hardly discrete, dear. When the Blackheart's favoured baby cousin spends an entire afternoon playing war games with her, there will be speculation. Certain circles are more pleased than you can imagine that you've given up your foolhardy flirtation with the Light." Hardly surprising, but who the hell would be pleased that she was (apparently) coming around and had told Dorea that she'd been over to Ancient House? Especially multiple times? The fucking elves? They wouldn't— Oh, wait, they would spy on her for Walburga. Well, they probably weren't actually spying so much as complaining about Bella taking her back after she struck a blow against the Family Magic itself — the elves were more upset with her breaking the Covenant than any of the human members of the House. They wouldn't be pleased she was 'coming around', but Wally would, and she'd want to rub Dorea's face in the fact that she couldn't handle Aster, either. "And why haven't you had yourself healed? We are in a hospital, surely you encountered several competent healers as you made your way here today."

"None sufficiently competent to heal werewolf bites, unfortunately." She kept speaking over Dorea's horrified gasp. "Your idiot spawn let a certain Furry Little Problem loose on Hogsmeade last weekend, so I had to go do something obnoxiously Gryffindorish."

"Siri— Aster, I mean, I'm– I'm so sorry," she stuttered, her attitude making an abrupt about-face, catty to concerned.

"If that's so, you can find some way to make your son recognise the full impact of his actions. I'll be fine, but Moony can never go home now, and the woman he bit is equally fucked, or nearly so."

"You'll be fine? Asteria, it's one thing to change sexes, becoming a werewolf is—"

Aster cut her off with a (painful) snort. "Well, if I'd known that all I had to do to get people to see how trivial the sex-change is was get bitten by a werewolf... Well, no, I wouldn't have done it on purpose — I hate chirurgery, and I've currently got about a hundred sutures holding me together." She'd thought it couldn't get worse than the second-day pain and stiffness, but the stitches were starting to itch, now. And constantly being careful and slow was exhausting. "But it's not that big a deal. I'll be able to heal them on the new moon."

"But, if you were bitten... She's in denial?" she asked Zee. Not an unreasonable concern, probably, given that Constantine hadn't thought it possible for her to not turn, either. (Though he had been somewhat more willing to accept at face value that it wasn't a big deal than Dorea likely would be.)

Zee shrugged, apparently having given up on her Society lady game. "I rather doubt it. I understand Aster has reason to believe she's immune to the Curse — and even were she not, I can think of few people better suited to living with the Wolf." Well, good to know Zee agreed with her on that point, Aster guessed.

"That's not— If there were some way to confer immunity—"

"There's not," Aster cut her off. "I don't know why I'm immune, and I don't want to become a subject down in the Department of Mysteries, so don't go telling people. All I know is I've been bitten before and not caught it, so. Being wounded is slightly miserable, but I'm not really concerned."

"Bella's immune, too," Zee volunteered, in the face of Dorea's disbelief. "I believe she was actually slightly disappointed when she realised she couldn't be Turned. Not that she'd ever admit it, of course."

Aster rolled her eyes. Not that she was surprised, really — she didn't think it sounded that terrible, being a werewolf, and Bella was even less sane than she was. The physical Change would probably be the worst part, she figured, and Bella had already spent years shattering every bone in her body learning to use her runic augmentation thing, she probably didn't find the prospect of being violently transformed into a wolf all that daunting. "Apparently there's a theory that the Blacks aren't properly human?" she offered, half-hoping Dorea would confirm whether that was true. Not whether they were human, but whether people outside the House thought so. She didn't, though, so Aster moved on. "Though it could be just, you know, humans who don't change get written off as dog attacks or something. Not like there are a lot of people around volunteering to be bitten to test it..."

Before they could speculate any further, they were interrupted by Healer McKinnon and a young-ish wizard with apprentice trim on his uniform robes and a slightly troubled expression on his face. He slipped past them with barely a nod, presumably back to work.

"Sorry about that," McKinnon said, looking from one of them to the next, a questioning eyebrow raised, obviously wondering why Dorea and Zee were there. "Lost track of the time, there." So had Aster, though she didn't think his last meeting could possibly have run over that long. "Dorea? Mirabella?"

Dorea answered first, sounding slightly embarrassed, perhaps a bit ashamed of herself. "Hello, John. I was just hoping to catch Asteria alone for a few minutes before her meeting with you."

"Because...?"

Dorea huffed, eyes darting over to Zee. "Family drama, what else? It seemed...advisable to keep any such encounter...discrete."

Zee gave her an exasperated sigh. "I suppose you're concerned about Bella's reaction to your continued presence in Asteria's life?" From the way Dorea hesitated, Aster suspected that was a yes. Zee apparently thought the same. "You needn't be. She is rather disgusted with you, but Aster's hardly a child anymore. She doesn't need to be protected from the meanest contact with individuals Bella finds repulsive. Good afternoon, Professor."

"She threatened to abandon my son in the Shadows if he so much as spoke to Aster again, Miss Zabini! I think my concern is warranted!"

"She hasn't threatened you with a similar fate for approaching Asteria, has she?"

She better not have. Though Aster wasn't really looking forward to whatever discussion Dorea had been intending to hold before they'd gotten side-tracked by the werewolf thing, either. "James is a special case, Dorea. And anyway, that was before he proved that he's the world's biggest idiot. She didn't want him talking to me because he might've dragged me back down. But it's fine now. His opinion of me doesn't matter anymore, I'm over him. I mean, I still don't want to have anything to do with him, I'm totally okay with making him go through Evans to talk to me, but. I have been answering your letters, haven't I?" She had. There had been three in the past week alone.

"You haven't been very forthcoming in answering my letters! I was concerned!"

"Well, that's just because I don't have anything to say that I think you want to hear, and you always think I'm lying when I say I'm fine and you don't need to worry about me."

"I don't think you're lying, I think your perspective is limited. And you can tell me anything, Asteria. You shouldn't— You don't have to hide things from me because you think I don't want to hear them."

"Uh-huh. So you'd take it well, then, if I were to tell you that I've decided to stop feeling guilty about not being a good person, according to the Light? Because, see, James is dead to me, and I was only ever trying to live up to his example, anyway. Not much point hating myself when I don't care what he thinks of me anymore. Also, turns out he's a bloody terrible example — I don't think I'm really cut out for being a feckless, carefree idiot, you see."

Zee gave her a supportive smile. In her response to Aster's letter asking her to come today, she'd said something along the lines that she was glad to see Aster deciding to reject James's example, because people as powerful and potentially dangerous as her didn't have the luxury of acting without thinking. Not if they cared at all about the destruction they could cause and the lives they could ruin by doing so. James might have carelessly ruined Remus's life, and that of the woman he'd bitten, but Aster could easily kill people if she let herself simply react to their idiocy — or worse, decided to act as selfishly as he had with his fucking ward gate. Not that she was terribly inconvenienced by anything it would ruin people's lives to circumvent, but that was kind of the point. The selfish desires she would indulge if she cared so little about the consequences, about the lives and welfare of other people, were much...darker. Doing things just because she wanted to was a terrible idea.

Which, Aster kind of knew that. No one had really said as much before Bella pointed out that she needed limits and structure in her life, but looking at her childhood in hindsight — the explicitly defined expectations and rules for interacting with people; lessons she'd been taught so early she didn't even remember learning them (focusing exercises, occlumency, decision-making priorities); even the rigid schedules for studying and practising magic that Walburga and Dru insisted on — it was pretty clear that learning discipline and self-control was a major underlying theme. That your actions have consequences was also a big one, though mostly with a focus on the consequences for yourself and the House rather than for other people.

It was still reassuring to know that Zee approved, though.

Especially because Dorea's reaction was...pretty much the opposite. "What?! Asteria! You— Are you telling me that you are giving up on the Light? That you want to go back to being as evil as the rest of the House?"

Aster flinched under her heavy disapproval, letting her eyes drop to Dorea's shoes. She might not care quite as much what Dorea thought of her, compared to James — compared to how much she had cared about James, whatever — but it still wasn't nice to hear that her godmother thought she was fucking evil. Especially since she was trying to explain, acting like she was some good little Light witch who naturally knew right from wrong and reasonable from unreasonable, and therefore probably wouldn't fuck anything up too badly by accident if she just went along doing whatever felt right and reasonable, just didn't work for her. Going back to the Dark, to the principles and priorities she knew made sense, rather than trying to follow the Potters' vaguely-defined morality and be a good person, would probably cause less harm in the long run. But this was probably one of those things where the Light would say you had to do the counterproductive thing to make a point, and that was more important than actually doing the thing that maximised what they claimed was 'good' — minimising harm or saving lives or whatever. (Also, trying to be Light made her head hurt.)

Zee clicked her tongue, drawing Dorea's attention back to her. "In case you were wondering, this is why she didn't tell you, Dorea — because she doesn't like being told that she's wrong for simply living according to her nature, rather than twisting herself into painfully unnatural contortions to fit into your neat little picture of what is good and right." Aster didn't think she'd ever heard Zee sound more scornful than she did right there. "Because everything you say to her tells her that she ought to be ashamed of what she is, how she thinks, how she feels. I know you think you've left your life with the Blacks behind entirely, but your attempt to reject them is nearly as superficial as Aster's, and far more childish." She sniffed. "Decrying them as evil as you cruelly attempt to force a dark child to embrace the Light? There's a word for people like you, Bellatrix Dorea: hypocrite."

"I would never—" Dorea began, but Zee cut her off.

"Oh, yes, you have. Sanctimonious self-righteousness is not the measure of a good person, Doe, nor is unrelenting guilt. Simply because—"

McKinnon cut her off in turn, clearing his throat lightly. "Mirabella, please stop. You've lost your objectivity, and you never did explain why you're here. Not, I think, to publically reduce the daughter of one of my oldest friends to tears."

Zee blinked. So did Aster. She'd be willing to bet it wasn't often anyone used that almost parental, disapproving tone on Zee. "My apologies, Professor. You are correct, of course. I couldn't have predicted that Lady Potter would be here today; therefore, fortuitous though it is, I couldn't have come here with the goal of enlightening her to the emotional trauma she's put Asteria through these past several years already in mind."

"Mirabella."

She sighed. "I'm here because Aster asked me to sit in on her session. My impression was that she wants someone who actually understands her in the room to prevent any...miscommunications." Nice way to put so she doesn't stab you. "I presume you have no problem with such an arrangement?"

"That's ridiculous!" Dorea blustered, as McKinnon considered. "Asteria! The whole point of talking to a mind-healer is that there can be no miscommunication!"

"Are you blind, Dorea? Aster is clearly uncomfortable with the very idea of speaking to a mind-healer. If she wants someone she trusts in the room with her to ensure that she doesn't do or say something which might be interpreted poorly, that's her business."

"That's— But, surely there has to be some more appropriate—"

"If you're on the cusp of volunteering yourself, I suggest you not," Zee said sharply. "If Aster wanted you there, she would have invited you. Suggesting that you are a more appropriate candidate than myself implies that you do not trust Aster's judgment, and thus stands as proof of the point that you are, in fact, less appropriate. Never mind that someone who actively attempts to degrade and demoralise a child she professes to care about—"

"Mirabella."

Zee pouted at the Healer, taking a more childish tone to match his parental disapproval. "I can't help it! I don't like her, and she makes it too easy!"

"Nevertheless, my policy on reducing people to tears in my presence remains unchanged since you were thirteen."

Wait, what? Maybe it made sense, Aster guessed, that the Chief Mind-Healer would know Zee, if she'd been seeing mind-healers here when she was a kid, but she guessed she hadn't expected her to know McKinnon personally. She hadn't mentioned that "the Professor" had been her mind-healer when Aster asked her to sit in.

Zee smirked at him, raising an eyebrow in mock surprise. "Oh! I understood that to be a policy against making your subordinates cry for simply attempting to do their jobs. Though I still think they ought to have been able to resist my manipulations, no matter how green they were. My mistake."

"Newly qualified healers have a tendency toward overconfidence," McKinnon admitted, with a slightly rueful smile which Aster fancied implied he'd made all the baby healers try to take Zee's case just to cure them of that tendency. Amusement twitched at her lips in spite of herself. "Especially young mind-healers."

"Well, that sounds like a failure of the educational establishment to me," she needled him, smirking slightly. "Still, I'm sure most of them got over it. And the emotional trauma of being suddenly disillusioned about their actual degree of competence by a smart-mouthed teenager. Eventually." She shrugged, making it very clear she didn't care if they had or not. "So, am I staying, or am I taking Aster home?"

McKinnon gave her an evaluating sort of look, though Aster couldn't guess what he was evaluating. "Yes, you may stay. Dorea, please excuse us." He stepped out of the way, gesturing for them to go into his office.

Aster let herself be shuffled off without offering Dorea a proper farewell, mostly because, well...Zee wasn't wrong, about her kind of making Aster feel bad about being a bad person. Not really shite, hating herself bad, but she would definitely hesitate to say certain things in front of Dorea, if only because she'd be incredibly tedious about them. If she wanted to invite her to tea or something, Aster would probably go, and they'd have a really bloody awkward conversation about the fact that Aster just wasn't cut out for being Light, but at the moment she was kind of envying Evans's sharp break with her parents, and the fact that she never had to talk to them again.

"So," McKinnon said, settling into a chair — not the one behind his desk, but one of the little cluster of armchairs and settees arranged for "informal" conversation on the other side of the room — a thin file and notepad propped on one knee. He settled into place in her mind as well, establishing just enough contact to make it obvious he was watching, as always. She cringed, but concealed her discomfort almost instinctively, refusing to allow it anywhere near the obvious extension of his awareness, and he didn't seem to notice. "Was there some topic in particular that you wanted to discuss today which requires a witness?"

Aster hesitated, taking her time choosing a seat herself — normally she would pace, but she still wasn't entirely comfortable walking, what with the bite on her leg, yet another thing making this meeting even more awful — trying to decide whether to start with the topic of I'm fine, I don't need to talk to you anymore or get out of my fucking head before I stab you. (She wouldn't actually stab him, she hadn't brought a knife, she just wanted to. Hexing him was definitely on the table, though, and that would also be bad.) "The only thing I want to discuss is me not having to come back here again," she said firmly. If she could convince him of that, then the second point was a non-issue — and if she led with her irrational hatred of legilimency, it would probably make it look like she did need to keep coming here. "No offence, but I don't need to be here, it's a waste of time. Especially dancing around like you did all last week, trying to convince me I have fucking issues, as though that's not the most obvious thing in the fucking world."

He gave her a small, encouraging smile. "So, you believe you have 'issues', but that our meetings are a waste of time?"

Hadn't she just said that? "Yes? I know I'm fucked in the head, okay, that's fucking obvious. I don't need you to tell me that. But I'm pretty sure you can't actually fix me being insane — I'm pretty sure someone would've mentioned it if there were a cure for the Black Madness, you know — and all I actually want is for you to sign off on me being sane enough I'm not a danger to myself or others. So what do I need to do to get you to do that?"

"I'm sorry, Asteria, but there's hardly a list of specific things one can do to prove one is of sound mind." Asteria glared at him. "This is quite a shift from your attitude last week, you realise."

"Yeah, well, a lot has happened in the past week."

She'd met with him on Thursday, so he'd let her skip last Saturday, which meant she'd still been in her post- Revelation That James Potter Has No Honour funk, stiff and preoccupied by the welts from her lashing that she hadn't wanted Evans to heal, rather than by her new and altogether more painful werewolf bites. She hadn't yet spent the rest of that afternoon playing war games with Bella and remembering that it wasn't actually so bad, hanging out with the baby Death Eaters — that she kind of actually found a lot of them entertaining, and had a lot in common with them — and started thinking about why she'd started hating them (and herself) so much, and why she'd thought James Potter was worth following in the first place, let alone decided that she'd made a mistake, and that was fine, she'd been a stupid, rebellious eleven-year-old, but she was going to be more mature now, and not stick to a path she obviously wasn't suited for just because she didn't want to admit she'd made said mistake, and Potter never had been a good role model.

(Yes, Bella had told her that at Yule all the way back in first year, but sometimes Aster had to work things out for herself to actually understand them. She could be slow like that, sometimes.)

She hadn't yet watched Evans burn down her relationship with her parents, admitting that she was an evil, manipulative bitch, but still trying to be a good, thoughtful person while she did it, assuring them that they didn't need to worry about her and all, or talked to Remus and Annie, owning up to being a complete monster, and the fact that she...didn't actually feel bad about that, so much as she felt like she ought to feel bad that she didn't feel bad. And that was just habit, really. Five years trying to pass for acceptable with James and Marley and the rest of their class. She hadn't admitted to herself, yet, that she wasn't actually obligated to feel bad about any of that, if she didn't want to. Which, it would be kind of fucked up if she did want to. But she didn't.

She hadn't gone to deliver bad news to Morgen and been forcibly reminded that other people had problems that weren't mostly in their heads, and realised maybe Evans had had a point, out in that cave, about her actually being in a much better position with her old life in ashes, even if it hadn't much felt like it last time she was here.

"Such as?"

"Such as Bella told me you have a bug up your arse about getting me to admit that engineering a moment of catharsis—" The mind-healer threw a look at Zee as though he knew she'd been the one to come up with that phrase. She just shrugged, smirking. "—to get over the immediate shock of Potter betraying me was a bad thing — which it wasn't — because you think I hate myself, so I should stop doing that if I ever want to get out of these fucking meetings. And also that I need to learn to slow down and explain why I do things so I don't look even more insane than I actually am, like letting Bella adopt me back into the House or running off to deal with a werewolf loose in Hogsmeade, though I think that one should be obvious — there wasn't time to sit around dithering about it, there was a werewolf loose in Hogsmeade! And anyone else would've killed him, and that wouldn't have fixed anything."

McKinnon held up a finger in a silent request to speak. "We'll get to the werewolf issue later," he declared, making a note. Aster doubted they actually would. He had to have about thirty 'come back to this later' notes by now, every topic they discussed bringing up at least three other issues he thought they needed to discuss. "For now, let's go back a moment. You said Bella told you to stop hating yourself?"

"Yes. And now that I have, I would like to be excused from all further mind-healing sessions. I'm sure you're a fine bloke, if you wanted to talk about literature or magic theory, or pretty much anything else, that'd be fine, we could get coffee—" Zee cleared her throat, preventing Aster adding something like maybe go back to your place, because hitting on your mind-healer even as a joke just wasn't on. (McKinnon wasn't a bad-looking man for pushing eighty, but the constantly lurking in her head thing had put him firmly on the never going to shag list, in case he was wondering.) "—but I would literally prefer to make small talk with Walburga for an hour every Saturday than sit here and try to talk about my feelings while you lurk in my head like a fucking creep."

His moustache twitched as though he knew exactly where that sentence had been going before Zee redirected it, or maybe as though he'd actually caught that thought about him being un-shaggable, but that was fine, fuck if Aster cared. "This may be one of those instances where it's necessary to slow down and explain your reasoning, I think." When she just gave him a confused frown — she thought the implication that talking to Wally was terrible was pretty clear — he added, "You simply...decided to stop hating yourself?"

"...Yes?"

"How, exactly?"

"What do you mean how?" Aster asked, slightly tetchily, maybe, but that was a stupid fucking question. "I figured out why I thought I should hate myself, decided the whole underlying reason was stupid, and...stopped hating myself."

"Mmm, I see," McKinnon said, in a tone which suggested he certainly did not "see".

"I really only hated myself before because I thought I should, because you're supposed to hate evil and the Dark if you're a good person, and I was trying to be a good person despite actually being kind of terrible, by the standards of the Light. I was trying really hard. So I didn't feel bad about doing bad things, but I felt like I should, and I felt bad about not feeling bad — or again, like I should — so I felt bad about not being a good person, even if I didn't really feel bad about things like, I don't know, enjoying hanging out with Bella. Afterward, yeah, I can remember I'm supposed to hate her on principle, and I don't, and I hated myself for...not being the sort of person who's repulsed by her killing people when she really doesn't need to, or whatever."

She was pretty sure he still didn't get it. Sure enough, he flipped back a couple of pages in his notes. "Last time you were here, you said you deserved to suffer because you were a failure. Because you'd fucked up everything, betrayed everyone who mattered. Because you trusted James when you shouldn't have, and willfully deluded yourself into believing you meant something to him, when you clearly didn't," he read dispassionately. "That doesn't sound like the sort of academic, distant, principled hatred one can simply walk away from when one's principles change. Though it is also rather unusual to so thoroughly alter one's principles so quickly, we can come back to that later as well." He made another note, presumably to that effect.

Aster stiffened unconsciously, only aware of it because her shift in posture tugged at her stitches. "I was in a bad place last time I was here. Not the lowest I've ever been, but— I don't normally feel like that, okay? I don't— James betraying me, making it clear I didn't matter to him, that he had no honour and wasn't worthy of my respect, kind of...shattered me. But he's dead to me now, he doesn't matter. And Bella still loves me— Or, well, Bella doesn't love people, but I'm still her favourite, I'm still her Family, even if the adults — my parents and Arcturus, I mean—" She was actually an adult, now, when had that happened? "—don't care if I die in a fire. And I've accepted that I'm a child of the Dark, I'm never going to be a good person by the standards of the Light. I can act good, but I won't be good. Which is fine, I don't need to actually be good to not hurt people if I don't want to and that's the important thing."

Evans took a much more reasonable line on the whole good person thing than James, even though her parents, or her mum at least (Aster hadn't really talked to her dad nearly as long, that first time they'd visited), was a lot like the Potters, insofar as her definition of good and evil went. Evans didn't necessarily think she was a good person (Prefect Evans was a good person), but she considered herself 'decent enough' — meaning she generally acted as normal and Light as she could, and tried to be thoughtful enough to avoid hurting people unintentionally. (Which seemed like a much more achievable goal than actually being good — not wanting to do evil things, and not enjoying them when she did.) Probably came of being an evil, manipulative bitch, but since Aster was also kind of evil (albeit less manipulative), that still made her a better example to try to follow.

"Let's talk about your relationship with James a bit more."

Aster scowled at his calm note-making. "Let's not. There's nothing to talk about. He's dead to me."

McKinnon made yet another note, probably something to throw in her face next week, since she didn't seem to be getting anywhere with her plan to get out of these stupid meetings. "You keep saying that, that he's dead to you. What does that mean?"

...That he's dead to me, obviously. How the hell was she supposed to explain— "If you're not even going to look and see for yourself what I mean, what the fuck is the point of you being in my head, exactly?"

McKinnon once again ignored the not-so-subtle get the fuck out hint. "The question isn't whether I know what you mean, Asteria. It's whether you know what you mean."

"That's fucking moronic, of course I know what I mean!"

"It might still be too soon to ask Aster to examine her feelings surrounding the Potter boy in more detail, Professor," Zee suggested.

Aster glared at her. "No, it's fine. I said I'm over him and I meant it. I just don't understand the question."

Zee raised an eyebrow at her tone, which had, perhaps, been slightly defensive. "Articulate your feelings regarding James more precisely, dissecting exactly what the phrase dead to me means in terms of your emotional reaction to the thought of James, memories of him, seeing him in person and speaking to him, and so on."

Oh. Maybe she wasn't ready to be comfortable answering that question. But when had her comfort been a consideration, ever? "The James Potter I thought I knew, the one I loved, never existed," she explained, as coldly and dispassionately as she could. "I thought he was...honourable. That he cared for me, if not in the same way or to the same degree that I cared for him. That he respected me and held me in some esteem. Breaking that illusion was like killing the James I thought I knew, watching him murdered at the hand of the real James Potter." Not entirely unlike she imagined the Evanses were going to mourn the loss of their good, innocent, imaginary "Lily" version of Evans. "That James, the man I deluded myself into seeing in him...he was the centre of my life. He was everything. And he's gone, he never existed.

"And I can't even hold it against the real James — it's not his fault I saw him for what I wanted him to be rather than what he was. It's almost ironic, really, he's been doing the same thing with Evans for years. The real James...is a stupid, entitled, thoughtless, self-centred child. And he's afraid of me. He means nothing to me. I don't care about him. The James I cared about is dead. The boy walking around looking like him and sounding like a petulant twat every time he opens his mouth reminds me of the fact that I was a deluded fucking idiot, believing him to be anything else, and that hurts, but if Evans actually kills him, or Bella drags him off and leaves him in the Shadows..." She shrugged. "I already mourned my James. I suppose I'd probably come to his funeral, for Dorea's sake, but I'd be hard-pressed to actually cry."

McKinnon's eyes narrowed. "I'm sure there's a part of you that actually believes that, I can feel that much, but we both know you're keeping me at arm's length. You aren't going to be able to come to terms with the loss of 'your James' if you refuse to be honest with yourself, Asteria."

Aster clenched her jaw to keep herself from letting out an inarticulate scream of frustration. That presumptive, paternalistic, patronising jackass! This wasn't the first time he'd implied — or outright said — that she was lying to him when she wasn't, but it only became more infuriating every time, especially when he dared say she was still lying to herself about James, when she'd spent the entire week coming to terms with the fact that she had been lying to herself about him for years and deliberately disillusioning herself about him, when he'd just demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was fucking brain-dead, was just— McKinnon wasn't listening to her, he couldn't be, if he thought she was being even the least bit charitable to James, and she wasn't hiding some lingering secret soft spot for him, either! Hadn't she just said he was practically a fucking stranger to her, now?!

She couldn't do it. Couldn't keep her mouth shut, keep her temper — she could barely see straight she was so furious. "I am being honest with myself, old man! I'm even being honest with you — I want you to agree that I'm fine, and I don't have to come back here ever again! I'm not lying — I would if I had any idea what I'm supposed to say, but I have no idea what normal is, so I can't — all I can do is cooperate, because I know noncompliance is a red mark, at least, so I'm trying, and I'm not— Stop trying to tell me I don't feel exactly what I'm telling you I feel! I'm literally doing everything I can to play along with this stupid mind-healing dragonshite — you have no idea how hard it is to just sit here — you know I hate legilimency, I haven't kept that from you, but the fact that you're still sitting there calmly when you aren't far enough into my head to incapacitate me with mind magic and your wand's on your desk says you have no idea how close I am to losing my composure entirely!"

The fact that she was currently screaming at him should really, really tell him that he needed to back the fuck off — she'd honestly already started losing her composure, if he didn't stop pushing her this situation was going to go downhill fast, and she wasn't going to be able to control it — wasn't going to be able to control herself.

His face took on a more nervous cast, but he didn't withdraw contact, probably hoping that he'd have enough of a hint if Aster did lash out at him, he'd be able to do something. What, she wasn't sure, since he didn't even try to press a calming compulsion on her as he said, "Asteria, I really think you need to take a deep breath, here..."

"No! Fuck you!" She hadn't meant to say that, but she wasn't sorry that she had. "I will not calm down, not when you're still in. my. fucking. head!" She seized onto the probe he'd extended into her mind, drawing him further in with teeth and claws, bombarding him with fear and pain and memories of fighting Moony and Cissy, biting and stabbing and tearing and burning, of the sickening soul-pain of the Dark rewriting her identity and the night she'd fled into the forest attempting to escape the reality that James wasn't the man she needed him to be and the anxiety of just sitting here, deliberately not defending herself. He tried to pull back then, but it was too late, he'd kept her on edge for weeks, now, he could damn well suffer with her until he made her let him go, she—

Zee smacked her.

Really fucking hard, with the stones on her rings turned in to draw blood, Aster realised, as the hot lines they'd left began to distinguish themselves from the general warm tingling of her entire left cheek. Her eyes snapped open, concentration broken. McKinnon fled back to his own mind, a hand to his forehead like she'd given him a migraine — good!

But then Zee wrenched her chin around to look at her instead of him, her other hand wrapping tightly around Aster's right wrist, keeping her wand pointed firmly at the ground. "Asteria, can you hear me?"

"Yes," she snapped, jerking her chin free. Zee caught it again immediately, not letting her look at the mind-healer, which was not helping, knowing there was a threat over there somewhere, and not being able to track it was not doing anything good for her current state of mind.

Zee smiled. Calm. Reassuring. Lying. "Breathe, Aster. You're safe."

She wasn't, she'd firmed up the boundaries between herself and the rest of the world, she'd know if he tried to get in again — she'd at least know, but—

"I'm here, Aster. I'm not going to let John hurt you. I'm not going to let you hurt John." A chill ran down her spine, bringing her back to herself a bit as she realised what she'd just done, snapping and attacking her bloody healer. "You're safe. Breathe."

"Is he okay?" she asked, now trying to look around for a very different reason. "I didn't—"

Zee didn't let go of her face. "He's fine, love."

"Did I hex him?" Please tell me I didn't hex him...

She smiled again. "No. You just surprised him a bit. He's fine. You're fine. Breathe." Aster did. She'd say Zee didn't need to remind her to breathe, but her heart was racing, pounding so hard she could practically feel it in the air around her, and there didn't seem to be enough oxygen in the room, so maybe she did. "Close your eyes, love. Center yourself. Breathe. And out. Relax. That's it, good girl." She pulled her closer, squishing herself into the armchair with Aster instead of crouching in front of her as she let the tension sink out of herself and pulled her magic back in — letting Aster lean on her, her head tucked under Zee's chin. "I'm here. You're safe. Breathe with me."

She did. After a minute or two, her heartbeat slowed to match Zee's, too, though anxiety still clawed at her throat. "I fucked up," she whispered into the older witch's neck.

"No, John fucked up," Zee said firmly. "He's been a mind-healer longer than I've been alive. He should know better than to provoke you like that. It's one thing to get to know me by watching me terrorise his junior staff. It's a very different thing to push you until you snap to assess your self-control."

"Mirabella is correct," McKinnon said, sounding tired and somewhat strained himself.

Aster flinched. She'd almost forgotten he was there. By which she meant she had entirely forgotten, focusing on her focusing exercise and Zee being all warm and lavender-smelling and safe and breathing with her, and their hearts beating together, and—

"Okay, darling, I think you're calm enough now, time to come back up."

"Huh?" Aster said intelligently.

Zee sketched something on her forehead, maybe some kind of symbol for clarity or alertness. A wave of cool energy flooded through her, like diving into a tepidarium, or maybe breaking the surface, coming out of one. She sat up, taking a deep, gasping breath (ow) and blinking several times in rapid succession as the trance she seemed to have fallen into faded away. "What the hell was that?"

"I believe Professor McKinnon owes you an explanation," she said. The pointed comment was obviously not directed at Aster, nor did it answer her question.

"An explanation of hypnosis?" Well, that did answer Aster's question, but probably wasn't what Zee had meant. Though now she was wondering exactly how the hell Zee had managed to fascinate her, given that she didn't have a pendulum or something to get her to focus on, lose herself in the rhythm.

"And perhaps an apology," she added, even more pointedly.

McKinnon sighed. "Yes, I'm sorry, Asteria. I should have recognised the fragility of your state of mind — if not when you asked Mirabella to join us today, then when you warned me that I should have my wand to hand."

A jolt of panic stabbed her in the heart as Aster realised she didn't have her own wand in her hand anymore. Where had— Oh. Zee had slipped it back into its holster. She took another deep breath, making a conscious effort to relax.

"And I should have withdrawn accordingly, rather than force you to react. That was...a miscalculation, on my part."

"Wait, you mean...you knew that I was going to— Why would you—?" Why would you do that to me? I thought you were a fucking healer... He'd known all along how much that constant, silent lurking was freaking her out, and he'd kept doing it anyway? What the fuck?!

"Because you, like Mirabella and a handful of my other patients and students over the years, are far too mistrustful of mind magic to allow anyone to access your mind freely. This necessitates a different, more personalised approach to assessing your limits and coping mechanisms for dealing with various stresses," McKinnon explained, so calmly and reasonably that it actually did sound kind of reasonable. Sure, it was a sneaky, underhanded sort of reasonable, but.

Zee apparently disagreed, though not, Aster noted, enough that she'd interrupted before the test was over. (It was over, she was pretty sure. Maybe.) "By which he means an approach which is no longer considered appropriate by the vast majority of mind-healers, given their inability to distinguish between useful diagnostic and therapeutic applications of 'stress' and psychological torture. Also," she added, giving Aster a few seconds to consider this revelation, "I resent the implication that I don't trust you to legilimise me, Professor. I'd never dream of trying to stop you."

That actually made McKinnon look rather uncomfortable — presumably he hadn't liked legilimising Zee. Which was kind of surprising, Aster doubted that there was anything in Zee's mind that was that bad. Certainly not worse than anything in her mind, and the healer had implied that he would legilimise her if she'd let him. Which, he probably could have done. She probably wouldn't have been able to stop herself from fighting back, but she almost certainly wouldn't have been able to stop him. "Mistrustful of mind magic, or with whom establishing mental contact presents a serious risk to both healer and patient," he corrected himself.

Which was...interesting, but not really why they were here, or what Aster was focused on at the moment. "So you've been torturing me as some sort of sick test to see what I'd do when I couldn't take it anymore?"

"...Yes," the mind-healer admitted, sounding oddly cautious about it.

Aster blinked at him for a long moment, waiting for him to elaborate. When he didn't, she prompted him. "Well, did I pass?"

Zee snorted, whether at the question or the stunned look on McKinnon's face, Aster wasn't sure. Apparently that wasn't what she was expected to say, though she had no idea what he had been expecting. It wasn't as though she hadn't spent most of her life learning painful lessons and being pushed well beyond any reasonable expectations to reach what she now knew were ridiculously exacting standards, and challenged to test her abilities at every turn. Honestly, the fact that he'd gone and pulled something like that on her kind of went a long way toward explaining Bella's obvious approval of him — he's good at what he does, indeed!

"Yes, Asteria. You passed," Zee said, all fond exasperation, ruffling her hair like of course you passed, you adorable, silly little thing, you.

That McKinnon elaborated on, throwing a disapproving glare at Zee. "It's not that sort of test, Asteria. The question wasn't whether you would react, or how long it would take, but how you would react. There is no right or wrong response. Your reaction simply gives me some indication of how you think and feel and respond to difficult situations."

Zee apparently disagreed with that, too. "She continued to attend these sessions despite her obvious discomfort, tolerating a degree of anxiety well beyond anything she's likely to experience in everyday life, even while you did your best to find and trigger her psychological weak spots; she warned you multiple times that you were treading on thin ice; she even went out of her way to find someone to help keep herself under control when she recognised that she was entering into a situation which was likely to be more difficult than usual. That speaks to a degree of self-awareness, caution, and self-control which I would argue are more than sufficient to cope with any situation she's likely to encounter at school. She passes," she said firmly, glaring at McKinnon. "Which in this case means that if she wants to end her course of treatment today, you will write a recommendation endorsing her as stable and not a danger to herself or others, assuming she is not provoked well beyond the bounds of socially acceptable interaction."

...Right. Somehow, Aster was starting to suspect that that sort of shite wasn't just not considered appropriate. It almost sounded like Zee was implying that there was an or else there, related to the situation as a whole. And McKinnon's response didn't imply that there wasn't.

He sighed, nodded. "You held out far longer than I expected, Asteria. And your eventual reaction, while unexpected, was not inappropriate. Mirabella's assessment is...accurate. If you wish today to be our last meeting, I'll write your letter. Though I do think you could still benefit from continuing our discussions with...shall we say a less intrusive approach?"

"Does that mean not using legilimency to lurk on the edges of my mind like a fucking creep?" she asked suspiciously. Because that was really the part of this whole mind-healing thing she absolutely couldn't stand. If he stayed out of her head (or if he was more subtle about it, or even if he'd just talk to her instead of being the legilimens equivalent of a creepy bloke sitting in the corner staring at her) she wouldn't hate talking about all the shite that was going on with herself and Evans and Bella and life in general. Remus. She could definitely use someone to talk to about Remy and Starlight and all that.

"Yes, that is what that means," McKinnon confirmed, moustache twitching. "I am sorry, truly. If I had realised how stubbornly you would resist such a subtle pressure, I would have used some other method to stress you to the breaking point."

Zee's lips twitched at that. "Ironically, I suspect that lurking was a far more effective approach than any other. A more direct threat could almost certainly have been more directly opposed — a state of affairs Asteria would have been far more comfortable with." McKinnon raised an eyebrow at that. "Why do you think she accepted that your sadistic so-called diagnostic process was a test without question? The House of Black takes a fundamentally antagonistic approach to childrearing. Living in a constant state of external conflict is positively comfortable for them."

"Yeah, well." Aster just shrugged. She didn't know what she thought ought to be said, here. Zee wasn't wrong. And she got that McKinnon had wanted to know what she was likely to do if someone else were to push all of her buttons and try to set her off, but... "You could've just asked, you know. I don't like legilimency, but if you'd given me a choice between letting you hunt through my mind to figure out how likely I am to snap and try to kill Potter or myself or whatever, and four weeks of this lurking, trying to drive me mad shite, I would've let you legilimise me."

McKinnon, weirdly, seemed surprised about that. "Would you have? I had the distinct impression that you would have fought tooth and nail to keep me out."

"Well, yeah, but only with mind magic. I wouldn't have hexed you or anything. And you're a master legilimens, right? I'm pretty sure you would've gotten everything you wanted to know even if I were to try to resist."

The mind-healer frowned at her. "It goes against every ethical principle for a mind-healer to force himself on a patient who is actively resisting mental intrusion."

And it doesn't go against every ethical principle to intentionally try to drive me mad? "Yeah, well, knowing you're there and having to hold myself back from resisting is much worse than just resisting and losing. Or if you just didn't let me know you were doing it at all. I know that's also kind of ethically bad, or like, rude or something, but I know you're a legilimens, I don't really expect to have any privacy in my own mind if I'm in the same room as you. That doesn't bother me as much as you being obvious about being there, and expecting me not to try to do anything about it."

"Oh? Dorea mentioned that one of the reasons you were reluctant to speak to a mind-healer was that you didn't want anyone to know certain things about you."

Aster scowled. Again with the throwing shite back in her face... "That was over a month ago! That's practically forever! I didn't know that you couldn't tell anyone what you got out of my head when I said that. And I don't care whether the Light thinks I'm completely fucked in the head anymore, remember? If I come back, you have to at least try to keep up! Even if you could tell Dorea I get off on some awfully fucked up shite, who gives a fuck? I'm not trying to be good anymore, so I don't have to feel guilty and embarrassed about getting sex and violence all mixed up, or pretend that Evans claiming that I'm hers and declaring that she has absolute authority over who I so much as talk to isn't really fucking hot."

"When did this happen?" Zee interrupted. "Last I heard, you hadn't formalised your relationship."

"We still haven't—" Aster hadn't found what felt like a good moment yet. Yes, she might think it was perfectly reasonable to declare undying loyalty to someone in the library during their afternoon break in classes, but Evans was a ritualist. Aster suspected that she would appreciate it if there was a little more ceremony to the thing. "—but last week. And I'm injured and can't do anything about it until next week, and I'm dying, Zee, you have no idea! I am so fucking bad at waiting..."

Zee laughed at her. "Oh, you poor thing!"

"I mean it! I'm going crazy here, and Evans keeps teasing me, but she won't do anything because I said it'd be fine, I could be careful, but she knows me well enough to know I wouldn't be, because I really don't care that I would probably seriously injure myself, I need her, and— It's just maddening, is what it is! Absolutely maddening! Moony had better be grateful he's alive, because I have never been this frustrated in my entire bloody life!"

"Moony?" McKinnon asked, changing the subject, which was really just as well.

"Yes, Moony. He's a werewolf and one of my best mates. I let Evans heal me after— Well, okay, last time I was here, I was still feeling kind of shite about myself, right, and didn't want her to heal the wounds from that whole moment of catharsis thing, but then I spent a few hours training with Bella, and adrenaline is a hell of a drug, and I was feeling more normal after, and decided, yes, I was being silly and let Evans heal me. I'm currently injured because, I think I mentioned earlier, someone let Moony loose in Hogsmeade last weekend, and in the course of saving his arse from Regulation and Control and incidentally getting between him and his prey and vexing him just a tad, he bit me. Twice. Stupid wolf... It's not really a big deal," she said quickly, heading off McKinnon's obviously concerned response. Somewhat surprisingly, he actually resisted saying anything. "I'm pretty sure I'm immune. It's annoying as hell, though, and not just because I can't seduce Evans if I can't move. I hate chirurgery almost as much as I hate legilimency and sutures itch. I think Bella might've put in extra just for the excuse to stab me a few dozen more times. New moon cannot come soon enough!"

Zee gave her an exasperated snort. "She probably put in extra because it's harder to tear them out when there are more of them, and you're about as likely to sit around and convalesce properly as she is."

That was an excellent point, actually. Aster ignored it entirely, as McKinnon asked, "Why were you dealing with a rogue werewolf?" at the same time.

"Did you miss the part where he's one of my best mates? What was I supposed to do, just let him run around Hogsmeade turning people until Regulation and Control showed up and murdered him?"

"No, of course not. I'm not criticising the decision, especially if you have reason to— How could you possibly be immune to being turned yourself?" he demanded, apparently unable to stop himself.

Aster gave him a tired, one-shouldered shrug, really not in the mood to re-hash that conversation. "Fuck if I know. It's probably a Black thing. Like I said, not a big deal, move on."

"Seconded," Zee agreed, when McKinnon opened his mouth like he definitely wasn't going to just move on. "She really isn't concerned, and trying to convince her that she ought to be will only annoy her."

The mind-healer hesitated, but apparently decided it wasn't worth trying to argue with both of them over this. "...Right." He shook his head. "When I asked why you were dealing with the problem, I was attempting to ascertain how the situation came about."

Ergh, so much for not repeating shite. Though, she realised, she could explain what had happened and why she was completely done with James at the same time. So she started with, "Oh, well, in that case, there was a situation in the first place because James Potter is the world's biggest, most entitled fucking idiot," and ended with Evans shoving the Royal Toerag into the lake, because that was fucking hilarious.

"I'm not actually concerned about talking to him again now, though," she assured her audience of perpetually concerned-looking mind-healer and giggling Zee. "See the aforementioned fact that he's dead to me, and I belong to Evans now, anyway."

"You...belong to Evans," McKinnon repeated, making a note. "Would you care to elaborate on that statement?"

"...Not really?" Honestly, she wasn't really sure how she would. "I mean, I just... She claimed me, see? I mean, she said as much, but it's not just that, words, it's...taking care of me. Standing up for me. Earning my loyalty, I guess, kind of. But also, just... I belong to her. Like swearing fealty belong. Like Family belong. She's my sister, now, you know. Practically, anyway. So I'm supposed to take care of her, too, but it's more than that. I'm hers. I just— I don't know how else to say it. Zee?" She gave the older witch, still wedged into the chair with her, her best begging puppy eyes. "Explain?"

"It really isn't fair of you to look so much like Bella, you know."

The idea of Bella giving Zee puppy-dog eyes was kind of hilarious, but Aster managed to beat down her amusement. "Please?"

She raised an eyebrow at McKinnon in silent question.

He sighed. "Oh, go on, then. I welcome your perspective on the matter."

He probably really did. Aster was well aware that he didn't get the House of Black. And also that it was probably a lot easier to understand her if someone understood the House, where she was coming from. She knew that, she'd tried to explain it... She just didn't think she'd managed to explain very well. She hadn't really been trying to be evasive in their earlier meetings, but it was hard to concentrate and focus when she was distracted by his fucking legilimency stress-test (and her own self-loathing), she was sure she hadn't done a very good job explaining shite like how belonging and fealty and love and respect and power and attraction were all kind of tied up together — not just for Aster, but for all of them — and why it mattered so much that James had rejected her. Zee had been observing the House almost as long as Aster had been alive, she probably understood them better than any other outsider (except de Mort, but legilimency was cheating).

"Oh, well, it's quite simple, really. Aster's in love." Aster felt her face grow warm. She...wouldn't say that...maybe. "Perhaps not as most people would recognise it, but in a very characteristically House of Black way. Asphodel has usurped James Potter's place as the lady to Asteria's knight, in both the dark and the light sense — the lord to whom she has given her loyalty and her honour, whom she follows, trusting their judgment above her own, and also the object of absolute, nigh-worshipful devotion."

Aster snorted, trying not to laugh because ow. Just imagining James's reaction if someone were to refer to him as Asteria's (Sirius's) lady to his face — he'd be very offended, even if it was kind of accurate in the way she'd put him on a pedestal and done everything she possibly could to win his love without actually admitting that was what she was doing. Or really realising that that was what she had been doing for years. In the archetypes of the Light, with their weird romanticised courtly, chivalric dragonshite, James was definitely more a lady than a lord. (Though she had treated him as her lord as well.) Zee raised an eyebrow at her. "No, you're right. It's just, Lady James Potter. I'm fine. Go on."

McKinnon interrupted before she could. "Is this what you meant when you said you loved your image of James Potter, Asteria?"

"...Yes? Pretty much. Maybe... Well, I wouldn't have said that I was treating James like my lady, and there was kind of more...camaraderie between us than lady implies, I think? At least to the Light." It wouldn't be all that strange for the Dark, the idea of one's leader being the first among equals — still followed and obeyed, especially in battle, but without the strict distance implied by the idea of lordship for the Light. (And obviously the Light didn't use lord and lady interchangeably for leader.) "But I had clearly built up an ideal of him which had almost nothing to do with reality, so yeah. Basically."

"Forgive me for saying as much, but I feel the need to reiterate, as I did last time we met, that that is not the sort of relationship one overcomes easily," McKinnon said, all hesitant and leading and entirely incomprehensible.

Aster let her head tip to one side in obvious confusion. She hadn't overcome him easily. That really should be evident given her state last time she'd been here. "Yes, and?"

"It's only been two weeks since Samhain," Zee reminded her.

"Still not getting it."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Zee muttered, before shifting to the arm of the chair so Aster could see her completely condescending expression and explaining, almost sarcastically slowly, "The Professor thinks that two weeks — one week, really — is not enough time to have come to terms with the destruction of such an important relationship. Certainly not enough time to be emotionally prepared to embark on a new relationship of similar depth and scale."

"I...don't understand. Emotionally prepared? What does that even mean? Also, if a week isn't long enough, how long are you supposed to wait? And why didn't anyone ever tell me there's an official relationship mourning period?" Really, that seemed like the sort of thing Walburga would've mentioned at some point. At least if she was supposed to be visibly signalling that she was in mourning for said relationship. "I'm not supposed to be wearing black ribbons in my hair or something, am I?"

McKinnon's moustache twitched, as though she wasn't entirely serious about that. Granted, she'd never noticed anyone at Hogwarts doing something specific to announce that they'd just gotten dumped — Marlene certainly hadn't, when she and Sirius had broken up — but she could be kind of obtuse about these things, sometimes. "No, Asteria, there is no official relationship mourning period. It's simply a matter of giving oneself time to re-adjust and acquaint oneself with oneself, independent of the influence of that relationship."

Well, that was the stupidest bloody thing Aster had heard since the last time McKinnon had said the stupidest bloody thing she'd ever heard. "But a week isn't enough time, so how long is an acceptable period to 'reacquaint oneself with oneself'? For normal people, I mean. Because I'm pretty sure I'm entirely familiar with myself, thanks very much."

Zee chuckled. "Emotionally prepared means that you're entering into a similar relationship with someone new on their own merits, rather than simply to replace the connection you lost, as a reaction to that loss. And the answer you're looking for is about a third of the time-span of the relationship, up to perhaps half a year."

Aster gaped at her. Seriously? "Circe's tits! That's ridiculous!" She couldn't even imagine spending six months trying to — what? realise that it's fucking over with someone, they don't matter to you anymore?

"Mirabella," the mind-healer said, all disapproving. "Everyone processes emotional turmoil at different rates, providing a definite timeline for healing is invariably counterproductive."

"But one week certainly isn't enough?" Zee shot back, raising an eyebrow at the inherent hypocrisy, there. "Asphodel has laid claim to Asteria's loyalty — with witnesses, on multiple occasions — and has demonstrated that she is worthy of it in ways the Potter boy was not, undermining their relationship and winning Aster's respect and loyalty away from him. Seeing her make such a decisive stand on Aster's behalf as she's just described, humiliating Potter so thoroughly and exposing him for the weak-willed coward that he is, I'm not the least bit surprised to hear that Aster is entirely 'over him', at least in terms of having lost all respect for him, and consequently re-evaluating the principles she held because she did."

"How am I supposed to respect someone who's obviously afraid of me, Zee?"

"I didn't say you should — I would never expect anyone raised in the House of Black to hold any legitimate respect for someone they perceive as weak." Implying that there were people who did respect people who were scared of them? Maybe she and Zee had a different definition of respect... "On which note, Asteria embracing Asphodel as her lady is also, in some ways, a return to the House, in much the same way her initial investment in James Potter was an overt rejection of the Blacks and their values. Based on her inarticulate attempt to explain what it means to belong a moment ago, I would say this is also a significant influence on her feelings about Asphodel."

"Oh, come on, Zee! Just because she's going to be adopted— I already decided that I'd let Bella put me back on the family tree, whether Evans is a Black too doesn't really matter."

Zee raised an eyebrow at her. "You were the one who brought up that she's your sister, and that matters. Did you want to take over? This is still your session, you know."

"I—" Okay, fine, maybe it did matter. And she absolutely did not want to talk about herself if Zee doing it and Aster just kind of nodding along was an option. "No, never mind, I'll shut up."

"If you have something to add, Asteria, you should by all means speak up," McKinnon assured her.

"I will. But it's really better if Zee does the explaining the House part. I tried to, remember, a couple of weeks ago? And it's just— It's complicated, okay?" And also approximately the simplest thing ever, which made it infuriatingly difficult and confusing to talk about.

"It's not, really. But I'll get there, if you like. Aster and Asphodel's respective relationships with Bellatrix and to a lesser degree Thom place them in a poorly defined space of kinship. Thom, for all she would deny it, occupies a rather avuncular position in Asteria's mind, making his daughter at the very least somewhat of a cousin. That's not nearly as important, however, as the fact that Bella has declared them to be sisters, which has stronger connotations of mutual support in the House of Black than outside of it, connotations which echo those of a properly reciprocal vassalage relationship, but with more flexibility in the sense of hierarchy — neither of them is expected to take the lead in every situation. It also has connotations of closeness which differ somewhat from those outside the House. Siblings share everything. They're natural allies against the adults of the House and the world at large, confidants and comrades in arms."

"Or rivals," Aster volunteered, thinking of Cissy as much as the past five years with Evans.

"Yes, in some circumstances. But don't pretend you wouldn't back Narcissa if she were seriously under attack by anyone other than you."

"Maybe." If she were up in front of the Wizengamot for something, Aster might actually testify against her just to make her squirm, but yes, she would probably help Bella break her out of Azkaban if Cissy couldn't talk her way out of the charges. And yes, if she were actually being attacked, like...if the Prewett twins had cornered her and were giving her shite about Bella, or something (which had actually happened when Aster was a second-year) and it actually escalated to throwing hexes (which it hadn't, Fabian and Gideon could be dicks, but Molly, their older sister, would murder them if it got back to her that her seventeen-year-old brothers were picking on third-year girls...even if it was just Cissy), Aster probably would have helped her mix it up with them. And she couldn't really deny that they'd closed ranks pretty fucking quickly, talking to Dumbledore the other day. "Okay, yes, probably."

"Yes, that's what I thought." Zee gave her a crooked smirk before turning back to McKinnon. "The closest relationship any of the Blacks have tends to be with their siblings, or cousins raised in the same household like Asteria and Narcissa. I would personally say that the dynamic between Asteria and Asphodel is more sororal than feudal, if only because Asphodel is so relatively inexperienced in navigating our world. I expect their relationship will drift in a more feudal direction over time."

The mind-healer nodded slowly, once again making notes. (When wasn't he making notes?) "I was under the impression that your relationship with Miss Evans is more romantic in tone than sororal," he said to Aster, clearly making an effort to not-ask whether her previously-stated desire to fuck Evans regardless of whether she was physically fit to do so wasn't weirdly incestuous as tactfully as possible.

"I was under the impression that literally everyone knows the House of Black is one big incest joke," she quipped. "Seriously, though, I'm not really sure what the difference is?"

That, apparently, wasn't a question McKinnon was prepared to answer. He opened his mouth as though he were about to, then closed it, looking rather flummoxed. Zee laughed at him. "As a rule, the Blacks have trouble distinguishing between familial and romantic affection, devotion to one's family or lord and romantic devotion, and platonic and sexual attraction."

McKinnon shot her a look, presumably asking whether she agreed with that assessment. Aster took a moment to consider and decided that, no, she really didn't understand what those differences were supposed to be. She nodded, giving him a one-shouldered shrug. There was also the fact that most people just couldn't keep up when the Blacks in question were a little mad, but that wasn't really relevant.

Zee smirked at his poorly concealed discomfort. "It's not necessarily assumed that siblings or pseudo-siblings have a sexual relationship, especially if there's a significant age difference between them, but it's not implied that they shouldn't, either. Bella would call me her sister in the same way Asteria and Asphodel are sisters." And Zee and Bella had been screwing since they were about fourteen — sleeping together much longer, Zee had complained about Bella being completely oblivious to her advances for years on more than one occasion. Bella maintained that Zee should've just come out and asked if Bella would fuck her if she wanted to that badly. It wasn't as though she hadn't been familiar with the concept when they were firsties. "Aster being a debauched little nymphomaniac isn't really relevant here, though."

"Oh, like you're one to talk! When was the last time you were celibate for a whole week?" Aster had actually been celibate for longer than this when she was moping over James's first rejection of her, after the Gryffindor House Back to School Party. But she'd been too down to function or care, didn't count.

"Er...Nineteen Sixty...Three? Maybe Sixty-Four." She gave a light shrug. "I'm not judging you, just saying, the fact that you want Asphodel isn't really significant to your relationship, given that you'd probably shag Horace Slughorn if he'd have you."

"Hey! I have some standards!" Not very high ones, but slimy, skeezy creeps who went around making political connections by trying to flatter fucking third-years definitely didn't make the cut. And what was if he'd have you supposed to mean? If she wanted to pull Horace Slughorn, she was absolutely certain he'd have her! "Just because you—"

McKinnon cleared his throat very pointedly, cutting off what would have been a dig about Zee probably trying to seduce all of her professors at one point or another. "You were saying, Mirabella?"

"Oh, well. The Blacks are, as a rule, rather bad at independence. Solitude. Not just Bella and Aster, but all of them. Rather ironic, perhaps, given the antisocial tendencies of the Family as a whole, but they're raised in a very insular, isolated environment as part of the larger organism that is the House. Almost literally, in some ways — their Family Magic might actually be sentient."

"It is," Aster volunteered. "It doesn't understand that I attuned myself to the light intentionally, so every time I go over to Ancient House it gets all clingy because it thinks I've been attacked, or something." According to Bella. Aster had expected the Family Magic to be upset with her for undermining it — the elves were upset — but it mostly just seemed to be extra focused on her. In a weirdly external way. She could still feel her connection to it, but with her magic so light now, it felt almost discordant to lean into it. Not painfully so, but enough she couldn't properly communicate with it anymore, and she had to be within the range of its place-bound wards for it to hover all over-protectively.

McKinnon raised an eyebrow at that. Not surprising — most Family Magics, even those of reasonably old Houses like his own, weren't really what one would consider conscious. "That's...rather unusual," he said after a moment.

"Pretty much everything about the House is rather unusual, apparently." As had been pointed out to Aster at what seemed like every available opportunity for the past five years.

Zee shrugged. "Not everything, but most things, yes. And more so for your generation, taking Bella as your behavioural exemplar."

"Why should that be different for us? Bella is literally everything a Black is supposed to be. If she didn't exist, we'd still want to be just like her, because we'd want to be like a character in one of the old family legends, and that's basically what Bella is."

"Yes, and that's of note because, as you may have noticed, no one else so uncompromisingly embodies the ideals set out in such highly romanticised fae tales these days, or even attempts to do so. Normal people, when faced with the realities of the world as it is, grow up and compromise. They admit that the world is more complicated than it seems in children's stories and that the models they've been given for what it means to be a good leader, an honourable person, are ideals to strive for, but no one actually expects anyone to meet them. They realise that it's impossible to live in the world as they believe it ought to be and conform to actual social norms with various degrees of resentment. They don't go on portraying ideals which are wildly unsuited to the world as it is and tell anyone who has a problem with that to go fuck themselves. Certainly not successfully. Would you actually think it possible to live like one of your legendary, semi-historical family heroes in this day and age if you didn't have Bella as an example to prove that it can be done? at your age?"

"I— Maybe..." Probably not. She pouted at Zee's annoyingly condescending tone as much as the fact that she was right.

"Bella was also the one who insisted that you and Narcissa, and your more distant cousins to a lesser extent, should both be taught everything about being the lord and lady of a House. She argued that it was so you would be able to train your own children properly. It had already been decided that neither of you would be marrying another Black — your theoretical wife couldn't be expected to raise a proper daughter of the House, nor could Narcissa's theoretical husband be trusted to raise a son Bella wouldn't be ashamed to claim as a nephew."

"Well, it's a good reason," Aster insisted. Also, gender was a bloody confusing concept, she really didn't see the point.

Zee knew that. She smirked, ruffling Aster's hair again. "The actual reason, though, is that she doesn't understand or care to conform to gender norms herself. She has very little inclination to fulfill any external social obligations which might be expected of her, well beyond the general piss-taking most people expect from your family. I think you're too young to remember the hell she raised when Arcturus decided she'd be getting married, but the fact that she isn't should give you some indication. She would live in a state of perpetual conflict if she could, and is only loosely aware of the concept of fear, which leads her to act as though potential consequences simply don't apply to her to an even greater extent than the average entitled noble in our cohort, or even Danny, Ellie, and Nash," the Black cousins nearest to Zee and Bella in age, "taking risks which seem absolutely insane even when she's not mad. Does any of this sound familiar?"

Aster's pout deepened. "I know what fear is. And I don't want to live in constant conflict, either," she insisted, knowing as she did that it wasn't quite true. She didn't want to live in conflict with everyone, as in all alone, but having an enemy to pit herself against gave her...direction? Kind of? It felt more...stable, having someone or something to specifically oppose, rather than throwing herself headlong into whatever seemed the most interesting at any given moment to no real purpose.

"I've seen you fight, Asteria. I've known you since you were in the nursery, and I've never seen you happier or more comfortable than you are on the training field." Yeah, there was that, too. "Are you really going to try to tell me that you wouldn't spend all your time in battle if you could?" Well, no. She felt her face grow warm under Zee's too-certain stare. "And if you think there's a single other person at Hogwarts who would have run off to attempt to capture a werewolf on the full moon without hesitation, I'd like to know who."

"I didn't run off without hesitation, I had a plan!"

"A plan which involved you fighting a werewolf on foot to distract him until reinforcements arrived?" Okay, yes, it sounded stupid when she put it like that, but Aster was still certain it was the best choice she could have made with the resources she'd had on hand. And it had worked, no one was dead or arrested, so Zee could just piss off. "The House of Black has been breeding rebellious impulsivity, a propensity toward violence, and a general lack of empathy into the House for centuries," she informed McKinnon. "Brilliant warriors and battlefield tacticians they may be, but they also tend to be sadistic, self-destructive, and short-sighted when left to their own devices. In order to ensure the survival of the House in the face of their individual antisocial, uncooperative tendencies, they train their children from the cradle to follow, putting the needs of the House above their own and stifling any sense of personal ambition. They may aspire to be the absolute best at whatever they attempt to do, but I've never met anyone less suited to complete independence than Bella. Asteria's a close second."

"Hey!"

"Oh, hush, you know it's true. You don't know what you want to do with your life because you have no initiative of your own."

Aster wanted to object to that, had her mouth open and everything, but she was currently having difficulties thinking of anything she actually did want to do with her life that wasn't becoming an Auror just because she'd been planning on doing that for years now, and that had actually been James's idea in the first place, so she shut it again.

Zee chuckled, turning back to McKinnon, who was, as always, scribbling notes. One of these days, she was going to steal them, just to see what the fuck he was saying about her. "The process of teaching the children of the House to follow, of shaping them to become tools or weapons to be wielded by the House, is hard and cruel by any standard, especially on those like Aster who are more resistant to the dictates of authority. It is not uncommon, historically, for children to attempt to break with the House and their training, as Aster has done. But that doesn't mean their brainwashing doesn't work. Even children of the House who succeed in breaking away from it to some degree have no idea how to function alone. And they quickly realise that there is nowhere else in the modern world where they actually belong. They may be rather absurdly accomplished and ridiculously competent as a rule, they tend to excel in any environment they're put in, but the world at large is soft and other people far too fragile to ever fully relax around or play with."

That was almost painfully true.

Actually, not almost.

"Finding a cause or a person to follow gives them a sense of direction and purpose in the absence of the guiding structure provided by the House, without which they have a tendency to drift, but vanishingly few outsiders understand what it means to be a child of the Dark, and even fewer accept it. Those Blacks who marry out must either fully embrace their new House's guiding principles with all possible enthusiasm, like Dorea, or spend their lives holding themselves back and pretending to be less than they are, like Cedrella, or attempt to re-make their new House in the image of the Blacks, like Lucretia. Even those who attempt to make a place for themselves at the hardest edge of civilised society tend to find it unbearably restrictive — Cassiopeia left the Aurors because it was either that or be expelled for constantly violating their codes of conduct in apprehending and questioning suspects."

Really? Aster hadn't known that. "How do you know that?" she demanded.

Zee snorted. "Bella might think it's weird that I ask her things like who's your favourite aunt? — she certainly doesn't care who my favourite aunt is—" That wasn't entirely true, because Zee's favourite aunt was an infamous metamorph-legilimens thief and con-woman, and therefore not boring, but Aster took her point. "—but she doesn't mind telling me about herself if I ask. Or anyone or anything else I want to know about, for that matter. And it's possible I find your House slightly fascinating."

Yeah, that wasn't really a secret. "You're practically one of us at this point, you know. The Family Magic likes you and everything."

"Oh, hush, you. I know you're just trying to change the subject." She couldn't quite stop a silly little grin creeping onto her face, though. If Bella was going to go around adopting people now, she really should make Zee her sister in blood, or name her as Evans's godmother, or something. Make it official. She'd suggest it in her next letter, Aster decided. "The fact that Asphodel understands Asteria — which she doesn't entirely, but she's nearly as good at reading people as I am, and they've been nemeses for years, I'd wager she does understand Aster better than anyone who hasn't known her since she was a small child — and the fact that she accepts that Asteria is, as she's so fond of describing herself, a crazy person; that she doesn't expect Aster to be careful around her; that she isn't offended or shocked or scared away by Aster's intensity and ruthlessness and propensity for casual violence; that Asphodel actually reciprocates Aster's appreciation of those qualities — all of this makes it almost impossible for Asteria not to be drawn to her.

"And Asphodel, unlike James Potter, has made a point of learning about the dark half of our society. She not only understands Asteria, but she understands the cultural context in which she was raised, as much as anyone not raised in it truly can. She understands what it means to accept a vow of fealty and knows the duties and responsibilities a lord holds to their vassals. She's honourable, in the dark sense — not necessarily chivalrous, but dependable and trustworthy. She's exactly the sort of person Asteria feels she needs to give her a sense of belonging and direction. Aster belongs with her because she provides her a sense of kinship, without the complications of Aster's relationship with the House. She belongs to her because she sees Asphodel as the dominant personality in their relationship — perhaps not the better suited to lead in every situation, but the more grounded and certain of the two of them. A sort of lodestone or guiding star, giving Aster a reference point to orient herself around, help her find her place in the world."

"And what is that place, exactly?" McKinnon asked.

Zee smirked, but he was looking at Aster, and she was the one who answered, almost without thinking.

"One step behind Evans, and one to her right."

(Obviously.)