Note: I'm a Slytherin in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments), and this was written for Assignment #1, Mythology: Egyptian Mythology, Task #4 (Set): "Write about a tumultuous relationship between siblings."
Applicable Prompts:
Writing Club, Count Your Buttons, Words - 1. Young
Writing Club, Lyric Alley - 18. I'm dying inside, as you wine and dine
Emy's Emporium, Spain, The tapas - 1. (event) Family dinner (or dinner with close friends)
Writing Club, Lo's Lowdown, Les Mis, Overarching Prompts - 1. (theme) Rebellion
Seasonal Summer Challenges, Days of the Year, Hug Your Cat Day - Write about someone bonding with their cat
Seasonal Summer Challenges, Summer Prompts - (word) Stifling
Seasonal Summer Challenges, Flowers, Cosmos - (title) Feel No More (Feel No Less)
Seasonal Summer Challenges Fire Element, Fire Prompts - (word) Blaze
Seasonal Summer Challenges, Shay's Musical Challenge, Dear Evan Hansen - 1. Write about covering up your true self.
Insane House Challenge - 380. (word) Dulcet
365 Day Challenge - 111. (emotion) Anger
It was noted that it might be helpful to indicate the familial relationships, so quick note of that:
Pollux is Sirius and Reg's maternal grandfather (their mother Walburga's father). Cassiopeia is one of Pollux's younger sisters.
feel no more (feel no less)
Rebellion pooled thick in the throat of a contrary Black, one could say—thick enough to choke. More often than not, that bile was spewed in the end, an acidic burn that could eat away at any witch or wizard's place in the Noble and Most Ancient House, accompanied by the wildfire of their betrayals as it left scorches across the tapestry.
Behind her teeth and her insincere tongue, Cassiopeia's throat burned every day. To breathe in was to suffocate on one's own sickness; to breathe out was to corrode the world around her. Sometimes she wanted to burn it all to the ground, but mostly, she tried not to breathe at all.
"Cass! Stick that flea sack in a room and come downstairs." Her brother Pollux was older than her, hair streaked with silver that might look distinguished on someone else but looked more like a foreboding (or at least horrifically grumpy) raincloud to her. "Better yet, shove it in one of the cabinets," he said, patting a hand on the glass door of the cabinet.
A chill crept beneath her skin, and with each rising hair, an accompanied clamour banged against her skull. Behind those doors were a variety of dark objects unsuitable for a human's touch, much less a defenseless animal, and she had found over the years that the matter-of-factness in her brother's expression was far more harrowing than the days of his self-aware smirks had been. Cassiopeia did not look at him, despite his provoking stare, instead scooping the sleek black cat in her lap up into a nuzzle at the neck. She pointedly stared at the wall in that way he hated - said it made her look like-
"You look like some empty-eyed, empty-headed inferius when you do that. Might as well be, for all that's between your ears," he said, and she thought again that he was probably trying to provoke her. He was rarely successful, but one had to grant him his persistence, with all the decades behind them.
More than likely, Pollux was unhappy that she had pointed out what a dangerous and dreary place this House of Their Fathers could be when Orion and Walburga's youngest was asking about the contents of one of their cabinets; the boy lived here, but it seemed his parents had not detailed their knickknacks. Immediately, Pollux had insisted to their small crowd - comprising of Cygnus's girl Andromeda, as well as young Sirius and Regulus - that magical children could survive just fine, and those who didn't had no place in the house (or the House). She had felt the bile build then, hot in her throat, but it was only in her imagination that she breathed out justice for the memory of their little brother lost.
Pollux had never believed in justice for small squib brothers, and he was unlikely to start caring now.
"Cass, are you listening? Supper is prepared," he nagged, or at least it was beginning to feel like nagging. The barrage felt more stifling than usual, but perhaps it was just her own sour mood. "The elf has already set the table, and Sirius has a difficult enough time sitting still when you aren't dallying."
Rubbing at her cat's ears, soft under her palm, Cassiopeia sighed. "Time is so arbitrary, Mars," she murmured to the cat. "Everyone is always in a rush, rush, rush."
"There is nothing arbitrary about it," Pollux retorted, though she had clearly not been talking to him. "It is actually rather consistent. Time happens the same way, every day."
Pollux started to reach for the cat, but Cassiopeia smacked his hand away, meeting his eyes for the first time that night with a stormy scowl. Scratching at the scruff of Mars's neck, she stood up and walked out of the drawing room, slamming the door behind herself.
Her brother huffed a muffled objection from within the room. "I'm coming out too!" More quietly: "Insufferable bat."
Mars was sniffing the inside of her ear with a murmuring purr, so it was easy enough to ignore Pollux; her own attitude did not have to be quite so bad as all that, she knew, not if she could just let the past go - but even when she tried, it clung to the back of her mind like something sour and sticky. She saw it in the glass reflections of the cabinets. She saw it in the robes they had all once tried, far too oversized for a gaggle of children. She saw it in the black smudge next to her name on the tapestry. Better a bat than the alternative.
Walking past the spare bedrooms and down the stairs, she let Mars climb up onto her shoulders, and though she knew Pollux was likely to have a conniption, there were more who ignored it as an eccentricity than there were those who complained about phantom cat hair in their soups, despite being on the opposite side of the table.
By the time she reached the dining room, most of the family had gathered, just as her brother had indicated. The little ones were already lined next to their mother: Regulus primly, and Sirius holding his stomach with more mischief than discomfort. When Cassiopeia sat down next to her grandneice, Andromeda soon offered up her a smile, holding it fast like a marble statue as her eyes flicked over to Walburga (and to her mother Druella, down the line).
"What is that doing in here?" Walburga clipped, her eyes as stormy as her father's had been just a moment before.
"Mars is family," Cassiopeia responded vaguely.
Walburga's face tightened, and Cassiopeia thought the younger woman's head might burst for all the steam inside it; yet Cassiopeia was not so angry with Walburga as she was with Pollux, so she lifted the cat from her shoulder to place it in her lap. (Until-) "It is an animal."
'- a squib - no better than an animal-'
Walburga's face looked so much like her father's had when he'd said as much about their little brother, though even Pollux had only been a child at the time. Decades had since passed, yet still her chest seized, as if animal weren't such a common word, and as if the look of sour smells was not even more common on the faces around her. Marius would not shake from her mind, but he rarely did, at functions such as this. Everyone had forgotten him so thoroughly, she found she could hardly stop remembering him.
A follow up comment seemed to be forming on Walburga's lips when a croak bubbled up from young Sirius's shirt, where it appeared he was birthing a toad from his stomach. Before Cassiopeia could fully process the absurdity of it, the boy's toad had sprung up onto the table, splashing into her soup, as if it was a tiny red pond.
"AND WHAT IS-" Walburga bellowed in a blaze. Positively dulcet, as ever.
"-It's a toad," Sirius answered over her, though 'speaking over her' might not be the right phrase for it when she was shouting far louder than he was.
"I realise it's a toad!" his mother said with a scowl.
"Then why did you ask?" The boy looked genuinely puzzled for a moment, and though it sounded incredibly cheeky, Cassiopeia had to admit he had a point. "Aunt Cass gets to have a cat!"
That did little to improve Walburga's mood, nor did Pollux's entrance just a beat later, because he wasted no time joining in the barrage.
"Are we running some sort of farm in here?" Pollux griped, though he couldn't seem to decide whether he was leveling his scowl at Cassiopeia herself or at Sirius. Within a few seconds, he had settled on addressing her, first. "If I have to tell you again to dump that cat somewhere else, it will be part of the next course," Pollux lorded. She thought he was probably bluffing, considering none of them were likely to stoop so low as to eat cat meat, but his expression was enough like their late father's that she swept Mars into her arms again. As she heard him issuing the same threat to young Sirius and the toad (only Merlin knew where the child had found it), she had nearly passed through the doorway, though it seemed the boy had more complaints to issue on the matter.
Dinner as it followed was exceptionally uncomfortable, but impressively enough, Pollux managed to hold any further urge to boss her about like a child. In the end, she supposed it was because he had gotten want he wanted. The table's occupants had look much better put together the second time, aligned in their places, seated without blemish or poor manner. It was Sirius who bore the majority of the family's distaste that evening, perhaps because his companion had hopped its germs all over the table and into more than one soup. The house-elf had replaced Cassiopeia own contaminated soup by the time she had returned - or at least Andromeda had said as much. Had it come from someone else, it might have been a lie, but Andromeda was a good girl.
Mars was still meowing at the door of the nearest spare bedroom when she went to retrieve him again, and immediately he climbed onto her shoulders. He did not seem to like this house much at all, and with all its foul memories, Cassiopeia did not much like it either.
"Will you ever at least try to act like a civilised member of this family? Bringing a cat to the table? You are lucky my daughter even allows you to bring it in this house."
There it was. Pollux, once again.
"We are in our fifties, Cass, far past the age of even pretending like that is reasonable behaviour. At least Sirius is a child."
"Sirius is not the only child," Cassiopeia said to her nuzzling cat. "My brother will probably want to turn that comment on me, Mars, but we know I'm not the one I'm talking about, hm?"
"Can you stop talking to that stupid cat as if it can understand you?" Pollux snipped, moving his body so he was standing in what ought to be Cassiopeia's line of vision, but she was making a little puckered face at Mars, who lightly touched his teeth to her nose then licked the spot. "We have tolerated it for long enough, but it has no place here."
"Does anyone truly deserve a place here, in your eyes, Pollux?" she asked without looking at him.
"Your beast is not an 'anyone,' but those who can abide by simple manners and expectations have their place," he said stiffly.
"Marius abided," she countered, her voice quiet but firm as she scratched under the cat's chin.
"Do not SAY THAT NAME!"
Though she refused to look at her brother, she could feel the bellow echoing in her skull. Stirred on by the beat thumping in her mind, she continued, "You did not care at all. He was well-mannered, considering his age. He did everything he could to meet the expectations."
"He did not meet them," Pollux said more coldly, and Cassiopeia felt her blood bubble hotly in her veins. "A blemish better left forgotten - and that, you would do well to remember."
The threat hung heavy in the air, but Cassiopeia knew it was not intended to be subtle. For all the Slytherins in this house, they had little in the way of subtlety, sometimes. "I remember more than you do."
"That is your problem. Attachment to beasts that are below your affections," he said with a downward curl at the corner of his mouth, reaching towards Mars, but Cassiopeia took a step backwards, shifting out of the arch of the grasp.
She could feel the anger again; it was abrasive in her throat, threatening to burn a hole right through the skin that was the only means to escape, but all she had to do was hold her breath. Hold it now, hold it always, hold it until her head would expand and float her home where everything was bright colors and nonjudgmental, furry companions.
Without another word, she cuddled Mars against her nose, held him close like the tiniest child, and float, float, floated away.