Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
A/N: This is for "The Unknown Character Competition" on HPFC. All not-universally-known things about the HP universe or constellations were found on the HP wiki or Wikipedia, respectively.
1921
The book was big and beautiful and Cassiopeia could barely read the long words on its spine. She was so fascinated just by its sheer size that when she pulled it out, she barely noticed that it weighed almost half of what she did. When she laid it on the ground, she realized the book was about stars. Not just stars but also constellations.
She knew the difference. Pollux was named after a star. Cassiopeia was named after a constellation. Her daddy was named after a constellation. But Dorea was named after her great aunt Elladora (which Cassiopeia always thought was strange because you really couldn't get the name Dorea out of Elladora unless you rearranged some of the letters and that just seemed like a lot of work). And mommy was named after a color but that's okay because she wasn't born into the Black family, she was born into another pure-blood family that didn't name a lot of their kids after stars. Marius wasn't named after a star either, but he was named after Mars, which is a planet, and that's pretty close.
When Cassiopeia opened the book, the first thing she noticed was that the print was kind of small. But there were pictures, and Cassiopeia had some picture books so she knew she'd like this book.
The next thing she noticed is that each constellation had its own section and was broken down into the separate stars within the constellation. Better still, the book was in alphabetical order, and Cassiopeia learned her alphabet really well, so she knew exactly how to look up any constellation she wanted.
First, she looked up her daddy, because C comes fairly early in the alphabet (and she wanted to save her own name for last). She didn't have to dig through the section on "Cygnus" far, because "Cygnus" was those whole constellation, not the individual stars.
She was immediately intrigued by the part of the page early on in the section that was labeled "etymology" because it was a big word that Cassiopeia didn't know and Cassiopeia loved learning new things like big words. She began to read the paragraph under the big, underlined word, where there was also a picture of a swan.
"In almost all cases of Greek mythology where the name Cygnus is mentioned, a swan is highly relevant. The swans after which Cygnus is named include the swan into which Zeus transformed himself in order to seduce Leda, who gave birth to the Gemini, Helen of Troy, and Clytemnestra; Orpheus, who transformed into a swan after he was murdered; and King Cycnus."
Cassiopeia didn't really know what "seduce" meant but she guessed that that meant Zeus eventually married Leda which she found really funny because Leda gave birth to the Gemini and Pollux is one of the stars in the constellation Gemini. So it was exactly like her daddy marrying her mommy and having Pollux. Besides the funny similarity, she found it really hard to picture her daddy like a swan. Daddy constantly had a frown on his face and he was usually yelling at someone and it was kind of scary, not like a swan at all. Swans were supposed to be beautiful.
She also found herself liking the name "Clytemnestra" but when she tried to look it up in the big book she was looking at, she couldn't find it, so she decided it probably just wasn't a constellation. After looking at all the pictures of swans and all the other fancy words she didn't know, she got bored and moved on to Pollux.
Cassiopeia realized she was really lucky to know that Pollux was just a star in Gemini because otherwise she probably wouldn't have been able to find it since the book was organized alphabetically by constellation. So she had to go to the G section and then flip through it until she found the individual stars and then found Pollux. There, too, was an "etymology" section. Wondering if it would be as far-fetched as her daddy being like a swan, she began to read.
"Pollux is one of two sons of Leda, the other being Castor. In mythology, Castor was killed, Pollux requested of Zeus that he be able to give half his immortality to his brother, so they could remain together. Thus, they became the Gemini. Pollux and Castor are the 'heavenly twins,' giving Gemini its name. Another translation from the Chinese, is 'The Third Star of the North River.'"
Cassiopeia had two immediate thoughts upon reading that, and the first was how pretty the name "The Third Star of the North River" was. She could only hope that her name had that pretty of a translation in some foreign language. The second was that she couldn't understand at all why her parents would pick such a name for their son considering he wasn't a twin. What was the point of that? If anything, Marius should be named Castor, because then, even though Pollux and Marius aren't twins, her parents at least could claim having made sense in naming their children.
She also found herself wanting to know more about Pollux and Castor as the sons of Leda. Like, why was Castor killed? Did they have children? Cassiopeia wished the book was a book on mythology and stars.
But that didn't really matter. What mattered now – it was the grand finale. Cassiopeia was going to look up her own constellation and read that etymology section. If her daddy was named for a swan and her brother was called "The Third Star of the North River," imagine what her name meant!
Growing ever more excited, she quickly turned to the C pages, where she was one of the first ones. She quickly located that funny word "etymology" and read very carefully the paragraph underneath.
"In Greek mythology, Cassiopeia was the wife of King Cepheus. She was extremely beautiful but also extremely arrogant. One day, she boasted that she and her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than all the daughters of the sea-god Nereus. As a result, Poseidon decided to flood their kingdom. Upon realizing this was about to happen, Cepheus and Cassiopeia consulted an oracle who told them the only way to save their people was to sacrifice their daughter. But while Andromeda was tied to a rock and awaiting her fate, the hero Perseus came to save her. Deciding that Cassiopeia should not be so lucky, Poseidon placed her in the heavens, tied to a chair, in such a position that she was upside-down half the time."
Next to this paragraph was a haunting picture of the wife of Cepheus tied to a chair, half-naked, smiling, eyes empty. Cassiopeia couldn't help it – she screamed. She threw the book away from her and ran up to her bedroom where baby Dorea was asleep in her crib and she made a decision, right there, right then, at six years old, not knowing that picture and those words would haunt her nightmares for years and years to come.
I will never, ever become like her.
1932
Cassie looked at Callidora. "What do you think?"
Callidora gave her an appraising glance from head to toe, tilting her brunette head slightly to the side as if she was translating some difficult rune. Then she busted out into an enormous grin and just nodded. "You look great, what are you even asking?"
Cassie giggled before turning back to the mirror, determined to only look at herself once more in the mirror before going to the front of the castle. No more than a moment. Never stare in a mirror too long. It actually pained her to know that, despite everything, she still greatly cared about how she looked.
"Just, are you sure you're going to be okay by yourself?" Callidora asked for about the millionth time that morning.
Cassie nodded before finally, finally turning herself away from the mirror. Callidora could never understand why Cassie said no to all of those potential suitors, and neither did any of the other girls in Slytherin.
"It's just a Hogsmeade trip," Cassie pointed out, rolling her eyes.
"But it's Valentine's day!" Callidora whined. "You're not supposed to be by yourself on Valentine's day. You're not even going with friends. Are you sure you don't want to come with Harfang and me?"
"Oh, for the love of Merlin," Cassie huffed playfully, searching around in her trunk for her warmest green-and-silver scarf. "I'm just going for a little while. I want some candy and a Butterbeer and then I'm coming back here to finish my arithmancy. You go with Harfang and have a bloody good time snogging and all that and then you can come back here and tell me all about it." Finally finding the scarf, Cassie draped it around her bare neck and looked up at Callidora. Callidora, resigned but seemingly satisfied, spoke after a moment of pause.
"Will you at least walk up there with me?"
"Of course."
They departed their dungeon dormitory and made their way through the common room, towards the stairs. When they were halfway up the stairs, Callidora spoke up, sounding hesitant. "Cassie?"
"Hmm?"
"Didn't you get a new trunk over the summer?"
"Yes. The old one was so beat up it was practically rubbish."
Callidora nodded. "Okay, but your new trunk. It says 'Cassiopeia' on it."
Cassie didn't respond.
"You haven't gone by Cassiopeia for as long as I can remember."
Cassie still didn't respond.
"Why haven't you told your parents you don't go by that anymore?"
She really didn't know how to explain. What was she supposed to say to her parents? 'Mom, dad, I think you two are insane for naming me after a constellation that represents a woman who got herself killed by bragging about how beautiful she is, proceeding to get herself tied to a chair in the sky so I refuse to go by that name now.' It was a great sign of disrespect in the Black household to not be referred to by your full name – the one your parents gave you. Callidora was a Black – how could she not know that? Cassie's other greatest fear was having her face burned off the tapestry.
But the truth of the matter was that nobody knew about the first secret – about her lifelong goal to not follow in the footsteps of her namesake. Even Callidora, her best friend, couldn't know about it. It was the one thing Cassie had for herself. She only saw her parents three or so months out of the year. If calling her by her full name kept her face on the tapestry, then she could live with it.
Ultimately, she couldn't tell any of that to Callidora. She ended up saying, "I don't really mind. They like the name Cassiopeia. It's not a big deal."
For simple-minded Callidora, this explanation was perfectly satisfactory and the subject was not brought up again.
1940
Cassie knew she shouldn't have come home for the holidays.
"You're twenty-five years old, Cassiopeia!" her father screamed at her, her mother looking meekly at the two of them from her spot a couple meters behind them, but not taking any actions to aid her daughter. "A woman your age should not be without a man! How can you continue the legacy of the Black name without a husband?"
She should've stayed in her flat in London near the entry to the Ministry of Magic, though they told her they didn't need her services around the holiday time. She came home only under her mother's insistence, and as she expected, she was getting lectured. Rather fervently.
"Father," Cassie said softly, soothingly, "The Black line can and will continue without my help. Pollux's wife is pregnant with a daughter, and Dorea is engaged to a lovely man." She was very, very careful not to mention Marius. When one's face is burnt off the tapestry, they are no longer part of our family. She remembered the words well, and they haunted her every time she considered a risky decision.
Cassie knew she was treading dangerous ground. She had been increasingly displeasing to her father for years now – he was ecstatic that she wanted to work for the Ministry but aghast that she wanted to do something as menial as the Improper Use of Magic Office, and wanting absolutely nothing to do with higher politics, like the Wizengamot or, worse yet, being Minister (and she only chose the IUMO because there was no way in the darkest parts of hell that she could work in the office she really wanted to: the Muggle Liaison Office). Worse yet, she didn't have any outstanding post in her office. She was a very ordinary worker. And this mania about her getting married was brought up infrequently after Pollux got married some years ago, but has become quite a hot topic since Dorea got engaged.
"That's beyond the point," her father snapped. Cassie was tempted to point out that he was the one who brought up the subject of continuing the line. "How will it look to others if I have a daughter running around undisciplined?"
Cassie approached her father and put a hand on his shoulder, still speaking in a calming tone. "I am plenty disciplined, Father. You and Mother kept me very disciplined growing up. I do not need a husband to be well-behaved. I have been well-behaved my entire life and have lived my entire life without the assistance of a man."
She knew her logic was infallible; her father couldn't have any arguments against that. She had never done a thing wrong in her time as a child, as a student, or as an employee. She could see her father deflating, but he had too much pride to give up without the final word.
"It is still uncalled for for a woman to go her whole life unmarried," he said glumly. "It isn't right."
Knowing she had won the battle – at least for today – she gave her father a quick kiss on the cheek and said nothing.
Later that night, as she was turning down the bed in her childhood bedroom and grabbing a book to read until she fell asleep, a knock came at her door.
"Come in."
The door opened slowly and her mother's face peered in through the crack. "Are you busy?" she asked.
"Not at all. Please," she gestured politely to a stool by her bed. She only had stools in her childhood bedroom, a tradition she kept also in her flat in London. Never, ever chairs.
Her mother had aged very well. All through Cassie's days at Hogwarts, her teachers who knew her mother marveled at how much they looked alike. Cassie had inherited her jet black wavy hair from her mother, as she did her blue eyes, porcelain skin, and bone structure. Some even said she looked practically like a carbon copy, just two decades younger. Cassie couldn't stand people talking about how "incredibly beautiful" she was – it wasn't stroking her ego in the least, and it wasn't helping her ultimate goal.
"Cassiopeia," her mother stroked her hair from beside the bed, "that was a very mature way you handled your father this afternoon."
"Thank you." Cassie smiled. "I suppose I'm used to it by now."
Her mother took her hand away and put it in her lap. "Dear, I do respect your wish to remain without a husband, I really do." Cassie was only partially convinced this was true. "But I must say something." Of course you must. "You've told me about boys who have tried to court you in your school days and at work. You're very beautiful." She wondered if her mother could see any irony there. "I know you could find a husband in a heartbeat. I really think you should consider that if you ever change your mind about wanting to get married, you may not have that option in the future." Her mother looked troubled. "Looks fade with time. Beautiful girls grow into old women, and then all the men in the world seem to forget they exist."
Cassie waited for her mother to say more, but that seemed to be the end of that segment of her lecture. "Mother -"
"I just don't want you to be lonely," her mother added quickly.
"Mother," she started again, "I've thought about this since childhood." If only she knew how true that was. "I don't want a husband. I don't want a daughter. I won't be lonely as long as I have friends and my family."
Her mother gave her a confused look. "I never said anything about a daughter, honey. No need to get ahead of me," she laughed, and Cassie found herself turning a bright shade of red. "Obviously if you don't want to get married, you don't want children." She sighed. "I just don't want you to make a decision while you're young that you'll regret when you're older."
"I told you. I've been thinking about this for a very long time. I won't regret this." Not when it's my only way to ensure I won't end up like her.
Her mother, resigned, nodded despondently and got up to exit her room.
As she opened the door to leave, she turned back to look at Cassie one more time. Cassie, who had already opened and begun to read her book, was almost started when her mother spoke again. "One more thing."
"Yes?"
"May I ask why?"
Cassie, shocked, opened and closed her mouth once, fish-like, scrambling for an acceptable answer to give her mother. She couldn't tell her mother about her fear, her lifelong goal of not becoming her namesake. She also couldn't tell her she really didn't want to end up like her mother, a housewife to an angry man – like every other woman in the Black family.
But that was only secondary.
Finally, she just smiled and said, "I'm a free spirit, what can I say?"
1979
The war was getting worse every day. In her lonely home on the north side of London, Cassie was listening to the radio, processing the names of the deaths and disappearances of people she knew were dead or missing because of people who shared her blood.
The same blood that she grew up knowing she should be proud of, that she should honor in every way possible.
She had, in fact, managed to stay on the family tapestry, if only by the skin of her teeth. But in her old age, she had to wonder what exactly was so magnificent about having her face on a piece of cloth that also held the faces of so many terrible people – murderers, torturers, negligent parents, unfaithful spouses. Cassie had thought that if she kept loyal to her family then she would never truly be alone. But what she found was that loneliness was actually marginally better than conversing on a regular basis with the others on that tapestry.
Even when she realized that, though, decades ago, the idea of marriage was still a poison dart in her mind. After everything, Cassie still couldn't bear the thought of becoming her namesake, and it showed.
In her north London home, there were no chairs, only stools – a tradition she continued to carry out from her youth. She had no mirrors save a very small hand mirror she kept hidden in the bottom of a drawer, in case it was absolutely necessary to use one. After she found a different picture of Cassiopeia holding a palm leaf with the same shallow eyes, she refused to own plants – fake or real – in her home. She had never known the touch of a man or the loving stare of a child. She always found excuses to stay away from her nieces and nephews and her cousins' children, though she did meet all the children once and quickly left their presence.
The only one she did not meet was Pollux's granddaughter, Andromeda.
In the light of the impending – if not already raging – war, she looked around at her home and felt like a complete imbecile. Cassie had spent her whole life aiming for two things: keeping her face on the Black tapestry, and not ending up like the mythical queen she was named after. Though she had successfully prevented being burnt off a piece of cloth and being tied to a chair and stuck in the heavens, neither of those things were accomplishments. Cassie Black had gone her entire life without achieving anything of note.
She could have done a million things in that time. If she hadn't cared so much about keeping on good terms with her family, she could've gone into the only thing she ever found intriguing and made a name for herself. Or she could have helped the cause – perhaps have contributed to stopping or preventing the war. At least, in the afterlife, she could say that she died trying to save the world instead of merely trying to survive.
And if she hadn't cared so much about not ending up like Cassiopeia, she could have gotten married, known the loving of a man. She could have had children, known the loving of a child. She could have spent her earlier years enjoying the beauty of youthfulness as opposed to constantly making sure she ignored such things. She could have known the younger generations of the Black family and possibly have made an impact on their lives – maybe, if she were lucky, such an impact that they wouldn't turn out to become murderers and followers of the Dark Side.
In a flash of horror, Cassie suddenly realized that over the years, she had fashioned her own chair. She had tied her own hands. She herself had lost all the life in her eyes. And sooner than later she would be up in the heavens not by any fault of some sea god, but by her own accord. While Cassiopeia had at least known some earthly pleasure before she was incarcerated, Cassie had never known any such thing.
She had repeatedly dragged herself around the North Pole in an orbit that would continue much later than her death, but then again, Cassie doubted if she had ever been alive.
A/N: I actually had a crapton of fun with this fic, probably because writing an "unknown character" is almost like writing an OC; anyone would have a helluva time telling you you wrote OOC. Also: the pic for this fic is the same pic that Cassie sees in the beginning of the story, in the book. So, anyway, please review because this was very experimental for me, and I'd love to know how you think I did! Thanks for reading!