Chapter Three: What Comes of an Adoption

Cass Black had always known that she wasn't Sirius Black's daughter, any more than she was really related to Uncle Moony or Harry. Still, he had raised her, and so, for all practical intents and purposes, she was his little girl, and had been for as long as she could remember.

Tucked in small wooden box that she took everywhere, she even had the papers to prove it, unequivocally and legally. Nine and a half years ago, one Sirius Orion Black had adopted his godson, Harry James Potter, following the tragic demise of the boy's parents, Lily and James Potter, Sirius's best friends.

He had done it as an extra safeguard on his right to keep the small boy when the wizarding public started to call for Harry's removal to a 'safer' home, a number of which had been offered up by the wealthiest and oldest families in the wizarding world. Sirius had never intended to officially become a father to his best friend's son, but the situation had demanded it. All Sirius could really do was vow that Harry would know his first father well, even though Harry was really too young to ever remember James Potter on his own.

On the same day that Harry gained a father, so did a nameless orphan girl, scarcely six months old at the time. Sirius Black officially adopted Baby Girl of Unknown Parentage after waiting the requisite three weeks for someone to claim the child as their own. Once she was his, he had given her a name (or perhaps more accurately, a whole string of names) that would later make the girl wish he'd stuck with Baby Girl of Unknown Parentage. As soon as she was old enough to insist, Baby Girl had required her family address her only as Cass Black. They had all, thankfully, respected that wish, and never looked back, which was rather remarkable, given the amount of looking back they tended to do.

Padfoot and Moony were very concerned about the pair forgetting their first parents and what they had sacrificed for their children. They told both children endless stories about Harry's parents, and Padfoot had shared as much as he knew about Cass's mum. That wasn't much more than the fact that her eyes had been brown, her hair blonde and that the young woman had died in an attempt to save her daughter. So Harry and Cass had always known the truth and spoken of it openly and yet, in reality, it was irrelevant. Their family was a bit unusual, but they were all fiercely dedicated to each other.

Often, Cass thought, a little guiltily, that she was glad to be living with Padfoot and Harry and Moony, wherever they happened to be living opposed to being the daughter of a young, unknown witch who had a job at the Ministry, or at least a reason to have been there one day nearly a decade ago. She wouldn't say that she was glad her mother had been killed, but she really couldn't imagine loving some strange woman more than her adoptive family. Couldn't imagine living with anyone who wasn't Padfoot or Uncle Moony or Harry… and she really couldn't imagine never knowing them.

Of course, there were some advantages to living with your birth parents that Cass did sort of regret not having in a vague kind of way. She didn't look like anyone she knew, what with the red hair and freckles that made her stand out against the brown and black haired males in her family, and marked her as distinctly different. She didn't have anything that could be considered a family heirloom, or even a family history. And they had spent a lot of time drifting around the world, but they never really made many friends because Padfoot and Moony were so concerned with keeping Harry's identity and location a secret.

That was lonely, sometimes, especially when their little family split up in order to be less conspicuous. She missed her family members desperately when Harry was with Uncle Moony and she was with Padfoot or the other way around, or when they were both with one of their two parental figures and the other one was somewhere else.

But on the plus side, Cass rather liked the excuse to always be trying something new with her long hair that was red when she let it alone, but generally several rainbow hues away from that. Harry's hair was always long, so that it covered the distinctive scar on his forehead, but the colour changed almost as often as Cass's. The girl doubted very much that regular parents would be okay with that sort of thing, judging by the weary acceptance Moony tolerated it with.

Uncle Moony was her barometer of normalcy. He was really her only window into the world of regular people, because Padfoot was so unusual and she knew few others. It wasn't like Uncle Moony tried to put normal limits on their roving lives, but more that he noticed when their lives weren't normal. Sometimes he winced; sometimes he just shook his head ruefully. Either way, Cass liked to know which parts of their lifestyle were unusual by non-Padfoot standards, since her adoptive father's concept of reality tended to fall precisely in line with his ideas on how things would be if left up to him. Bedtimes were rarely mentioned, let alone enforced. They had to eat out in order to get anything resembling a home-cooked meal. Teasing someone was an acceptable way of expressing a wealth of other emotions for them. Schooling was piece-meal and largely based on whatever Harry or Cass happened to be curious about at a given moment. Schedules didn't really exist. Boundaries were never discussed, and therefore never crossed. Cass hadn't even had a real, fixed birthday for many years.

From the moment she started living with Padfoot until about five years previously, they had had a party for her approximately once a year, which involved cake and presents and the changing of their estimate of her age. However, because they generally just chose to have the party when one of them got up and decided that it would be a good day for it, Cass remembered one year when they had celebrated her birthday three times within six months. Even she, at about six, knew that that was too much, and had been eager to find a fixed day that belonged exclusively to her. Harry had actually been the one who had suggested that Cass needed a birthday of her own, and Padfoot and Moony had agreed that the two children should pick out a day.

After much thought and deliberation, they had settled on August 2nd as Cass's birthday, mostly because the day that she had come to live with them was much too sad a day to celebrate on. They had considered making Harry's birthday hers too, but had concluded that birthdays were for the individual, and really could not be effectively shared. As a sort of compromise, they had chosen a day near Harry's, but with time to recuperate allowed for. For the last four years, they had always held a party on the day in between Harry and Cass's birthdays, and today would make the fifth year in a row, when the four celebrated Harry's eleventh and Cass's tenth birthday.

But just then, that wasn't what Cass was really concerned about. She was sitting frowning into the distance, twining a strand of pink hair around her finger, considering the fact that in one short month she would be losing her best friend to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Cass could barely believe that they soon wouldn't be living entirely inseparable from each other as they always had. In the last two or three years particularly, they had scarcely been apart for more than a week in one stretch. Once Sirius had inherited this carefully hidden island upon his mother's death, they hadn't felt the need to move around so much in the name of security. Cass also thought that maybe Padfoot and Uncle Moony were simply getting a bit less wary as time rolled on and no one seemed to be taking any undue interest in Harry's whereabouts. They'd spent even more time together as a family the closer Harry got to his eleventh birthday; this coming separation was a very scary prospect.

Cass sat staring out the window of the bedroom she and Harry always occupied when they were living on their island. Sure, there had been brief times when she had been with Moony or Padfoot and Harry had been with the other, sometimes for as long as a week, and always separated by thousands of miles. Yet none of that was the same, because Cass had always been able to count on seeing Harry soon. In fact, they had all lived by their whims, even the more serious minded Moony. If they wanted to take a trip to Paris for a while, that was fine because Sirius's family had an old townhouse there, and Harry's had an apartment. If they were getting sick of island life, they could pop over for an extended stay somewhere in England. There was enough money in the Black and Potter families and enough property worldwide that having somewhere to stay was never an issue. Padfoot didn't work, so he was always free to go, and though Moony tried very hard to maintain a steady job, few people wanted to hire a werewolf, so he was often around as well. That was particularly great when Cass felt like skiing for a weekend and Harry wanted to take in a Quidditch match or two.

But now their whole way of life was going to have to change. There could be no more spur of the moment trips or living for a month in some exotic location for Harry when he was expected to be in school ten months of the year, and Cass knew that it wouldn't be the same without him.

Life was going to be lonely with only Padfoot and Moony around, and no one her age to play with. Padfoot was sometimes nearly a kid himself, and had no issue pranking or frolicking like the most juvenile of individuals, but sometimes Cass wished that they did live a more rooted sort of life. It would be easier to make friends if they were in any given place (excluding their private island) for more than a couple of months.

But it wasn't like Cass had ever needed any other friends before now. Harry and Cass had been best friends all their lives, and were closer than even most siblings were. But what if that all changed when Harry didn't have to be friends with her anymore? What if he met people he liked better than her, once there were actually other people his age around to meet? And even if Harry wasn't inclined to be best friends with some new person, wouldn't the fact that he would be spending so much time with other people mean that he would grow closer to them than he was to her?

Cass's head began to spin. It was all just so confusing and complicated, and she just wished that it didn't have to happen so soon.

Just then, Harry came bounding up to Cass, shaking sand out of his shaggy blue hair. "Hey, guess what? I heard Padfoot and Uncle Moony talking about our party, and they said that we're going to have another race!"

"Really? We haven't done that in a while," Cass commented with little enthusiasm.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, giving the girl a strange look.

"It's just… we've only got a month left," she sighed, looking up at Harry with tears in her soft brown eyes.

"A month until what?" asked Harry, though he thought he might know.

"Until you go away and leave me here all alone," Cass accused, wiping her eyes angrily.

"Oh, Cass, don't worry about that," Harry encouraged, "It'll only be a few months."

Cass just glared at him until he was forced to sigh and admit to her, "Okay, so they're going to be very long, lonely months for us both, but when they're over, you'll be at Hogwarts, as well, and things can go back to how they are now!"

"What if you make new friends and forget all about me?" she asked, her voice small.

"That will never happen," Harry assured her solemnly. "I might make new friends at school, but you'll always be special. You'll always be Cass and I'll always be Harry and we'll always belong together, in the end. After all, it's always been you and me when it counts, hasn't it? You won't get rid of me that quickly, you'll see."

And then he grinned and Cass couldn't help but smile back, even though she couldn't quite believe him, even though she somehow knew that his words were not to be.

But for that day, and as they celebrated their birthdays the next, Cass managed to forget that they wouldn't always be able to drop everything so they could create an elaborate scavenger hunt that stretched across the globe, as they were doing in honour of turning another year older. It was impossible to be glum as she and Padfoot toured through Rome, Paris and a dozen other places collecting odd souvenirs, racing to beat Moony and Harry back to the island. In the end, it was a tie, like it most often was, but Cass fell heir to several t-shirts with the names of places splashed across them, so she felt like the winner.

The cake and piles of presents for the pair of them helped with that, as well. But in the end, it was Harry's present that made Cass think that the future she'd been trying to forget might turn out okay eventually.

"Hey," he said as she was getting ready for bed rather late, even by Padfoot's lax standards. "It's now officially your birthday."

"Yay!" she replied with a grin, "Present time!"

Harry grinned and tossed the girl a small, brightly wrapped box. She tore back the wrapper, and revealed a simple silver ring, made of small star shapes linked together with their names etched on the inside, on a silver chain. She gasped and threw her arms around Harry. "Thanks!" she cried.

"I've got one the same," he told her with a grin, seeming almost shy, and producing his own necklace from beneath his shirt, "Because you and I are a set, we belong with each other, just like the rings."

Cass laughed and hugged him again before punching his arm for being so mushy. That was when Padfoot's godson reappeared and the two got into a furious pillow fight that ended only when Moony stuck his head in to suggest they get at least a little sleep. Reluctantly, the pair fell into their beds, Cass finally reassured that nothing would change between Harry and her, even when he was at school next fall.

ooOoo

On September 1st, Cass was trying desperately to remember how it felt to be sure of her friendship with Harry.

It didn't help that Harry was bouncing around the house like some sort of demented firecracker, chattering about finding more secret passages in the castle then the Marauders ever did, and making a million plans that made Uncle Moony wince as he rushed after the boy, packing the things he'd need at school and trying to keep as much contraband out of the school trunk as possible. All the while, Padfoot kept trying to turn Harry's hair colours with him none the wiser. Cass might have laughed at the spectacle her family made, but her worry over the coming separation gnawed at her stomach.

Finally, as Harry was rushing about, saying goodbye to various features of his most permanent home, Cass couldn't take it anymore. She slipped out the back door and hurried down the path through the trees until she reached the hammock that was stretched in a shady spot in nearly the exact centre of the island. There she lay down and let the tears come. She cried earnestly for nearly ten minutes before a gentle hand came to rest on her shoulder and the hammock swayed as a large body sat beside her. A moment later she had thrown herself in Uncle Moony's arms, and he held her while she cried.

"There, there, darling," he murmured, "He'll miss you, too. He's just excited right now, and like that great idiot Padfoot, he won't realise how lonely he'll be until he's actually lonely."

Cass sniffed, not willing to admit that she was partially comforted by Moony's reminder. "Uncle Moony, it's just so sucky."

"I know, darling, I know," he assured her, "But we'll all three of us get through it together. Are you ready to go back?"

"Yes… but maybe I should wait a minute," Cass replied, scrubbing at her face, "I really don't want to make Harry as sad as I am, not when he's so happy to be going."

"That's my brave girl," Moony said as he gently wiped her tears and then slung an arm around her shoulders as they ambled slowly back towards the house and the two dark haired wizards who were still bouncing off the walls in fits of nervous energy.

ooOoo

A few minutes later, Remus had managed to fight Harry's belongings into a semblance of order and was standing with his family, nearly ready to depart for the train station. But then he looked down at the little girl he loved so much and realised that she wouldn't make it through a long goodbye at the train station. It was going to be hard enough for Sirius and Remus to say goodbye, and they were adults. So he drew a breath and squatted down at Harry's eye level.

"Well, I'm proud of you, Harry, you know that. I know that you'll be a credit to Padfoot and your mother and father and I. Be good," he said, causing Harry to look around at him in surprise, sensing a goodbye coming on sooner than it should have. "I'm afraid Cass and I will have to say our goodbyes right now. We're going to be late for a little trip I'd had planned."

Harry looked a little uneasy. He clearly hadn't been thinking of goodbyes this morning, even though the prospect had been looming over the rest of them. "Oh, alright," he mumbled, "Well… goodbye. I'll see you at Christmas, I guess."

"Yeah, at Christmas," Cass parroted bravely, "I love you, Harry. Be good like Uncle Moony. I don't want everyone catching on to us before I've had a chance to have some fun!"

"Oh, don't worry about it, I'll lay low for the year," Harry vowed with a devious grin. Cass and Moony burst out laughing. "What? Don't think I can do it?"

"No," Cass said bluntly, "You're Harry Potter, remember?"

"Oh… right," Harry said with another frown. Padfoot and Moony had told them he was a very famous wizard, but Harry tended to forget. Before he could get too melancholy, Padfoot joined them, ruffling his godson's hair in an attempt to distract him from the fact that he was turning the raven locks an unnatural yellow shade. "Give it up, Paddy," he said as soon as the older wizard had stepped back from him. Harry dug out the wand that he technically shouldn't have known how to use and turned his hair back to its natural shade. "If it's just me and you at the station, there's no way you'll be able to send me off to school looking like a circus clown."

"Well, it won't be for lack of trying," he promised ominously, kissing Cass on the cheek before stepping back to allow Harry to give her a fierce hug and a murmured goodbye.