Children of the Gods

by inwardtransience

When the message came, there was little left of Cassiopeia Black in her — soon she would move on, shed her face and her name for another. But, at the last possible moment, she found a reason to carry on, the smouldering embers of her identity sparking to new life. Unfortunately, adopting the Boy Who Lived came with complications. (metamorphs, fairies, AU and very weird)

3. Foundling — III

The bad thing about house-shopping was that it took a lot of apparating. Violet did not like apparating.

This time, the clothes-shopping part went smooth and normal, or what it assumed was normal — Violet still thought undressing and having the store person poke at it, and then trying things on while being poked at some more, it thought all that was weird, but it seemed like it was normal stuff to magical people. As uncomfortable as it was, it was also kind of neat. The store person (Violet had been told her name, but had forgotten by now) would "transfigure" the thing it was trying on to fit right, so then the weavers could use this store copy to make a new one just right. They then put "enchantments" in it, weaving tiny super-thin threads of gold and copper into the shape of special symbols, which when done right made magic happen — the clothes were magic!

Violet hadn't been paying too much attention at the first clothes store, but it asked questions about it this time, and it all sounded very neat. Magic-made clothes, when the magic part was done right, didn't tear or fray, the colours didn't fade. There were cooling and warming magics in it to make sure the person was always comfy. They did something to people's sweat and stuff so they didn't get smelly, and adjusted to them, so even stealing really expensive clothes didn't work so well, because the magic bits wouldn't work for anyone else but the first person to wear them (which was why they didn't sell anything off the rack). That wasn't as much of a problem for cheap stuff, but still, very neat.

The clothes they got were a mix of normal stuff Violet had seen before, and also weird different magic-person stuff. The "robes" just seemed a lot like dresses? (Violet actually had two dresses now, so it knew that for a fact.) They were cut different, yeah, and didn't sit on it in exactly the same way, but they seemed pretty much the same. On the way in the door, Cassie admitted this place was kind of "eccentric", which was a word Violet knew from Vernon's rants sometimes but not really what it meant, but maybe it had something to do with how very colourful everything was, some of them with neat designs on them, very detailed and lots of colours. (Maybe that was it, they didn't seem like the kind of thing Vernon would approve of.) At the end of their time there, Cassie put in an order for a lot of stuff — plus a real pair of sandals and some boots from next door (magic people wore boots instead of trainers) — way more clothes than Violet had ever had before. It didn't know how much it all cost, magic people used different money, but it had to be, like, hundreds of pounds. The thought made Violet really uncomfortable when it noticed.

But maybe it shouldn't? Cassie told the ladies at the store that "Violet Black" was a distant cousin, who was also a "metamorph" (the magic-person word for the kind of freak Harry/Violet was), so her guardians had asked Cassie to take care of her, make sure she could be a magic shape-changing person right. She said that, the way mages gossipped all the time, everyone who knew anybody would have heard of "Violet Black" by the end of the week. And, Cassie said earlier that magic people thought "metamorphs" were really special, which probably meant treating them well, like, feeding them proper and giving them nice clothes and stuff? (Sort of like Dudley, maybe?) If Cassie didn't do those things, people would notice, and talk about Cassie over it, and Harry knew that was the kind of thing adults worried about. So, it wasn't really about Violet, but just because it was the thing to do, and Cassie didn't want to be seen not doing it.

(Something about that didn't seem quite right, but it made Violet feel less awkward, so it was running with it.)

Their visit to the clothing store was kind of rushed — or Cassie said it was, it sure seemed like they were there a long time to Violet. Those papers Cassie had were fliers for houses and flats and stuff Nola had popped over with while Violet was changing in the bathroom, and Cassie wanted to find a new place to stay today if they could. Apparently, people wouldn't be doing any of this stuff the whole week after Hallowe'en — it was an important holiday on the magic side (though it was called something different), and Cassie said there were silly superstitions about it. Cassie didn't think they'd be able to move in tonight, but she still wanted to find a place.

So Cassie popped them somewhere again. It was just as awful as last time...or almost as awful, at least. Violet stayed on its feet (though Cassie did hold on to its shoulder to steady it), and it didn't feel quite so much like it was going to be sick. It was still awful though, it took Violet a long moment to feel better. Then Cassie was walking into an office sort of place, it guessed, talking to the man there, and then they were off, Cassie again popping it along — doing it twice so close together was not fun.

The first place they went to had a bunch of little detached houses, kind of like their part of Little Whinging, but not really the same. The streets were in blocks instead of curving around all over the place, and the pavement was set away from the street, separated by a line of trees. The houses looked older than the ones on Privet Drive, all made of brick, and had sort of the same shape, mostly square, two floors with peaked roofs, with a little bit on one side sort of curving out, with a lot of windows in it — it must get really sunny in those rooms. It was actually really pretty, Violet thought, looked nice.

Cassie ruled it out almost right away — she hadn't known it was in a normal person neighbourhood. The man showing them around said "wards" could take care of that problem, make the "muggles" not notice, but Cassie said they would notice if the little girl living nextdoor looked different all of a sudden. "Metamorphs" and normal people didn't mix. Violet was a little annoyed, it'd gotten by around normal people without anyone noticing for years, but if Cassie said it wouldn't work Violet wasn't going to argue. Besides, it didn't think it was that pretty, it didn't care enough to make a thing of it.

(Especially when it already felt weird about Cassie buying a house because of it, but it was trying not to.)

The next place they went was in a city somewhere. (London, maybe?) After stopping by one of the rooms in the ground floor to get a key from the landlord, the man brought them up to a flat. It was kind of similar to Cassie's, sort of? The combined living-and-dining-room was pretty close to the same, and all the weird-looking stuff in Cassie's kitchen was here too, if a little smaller. The bathroom also had weird magic stuff, but it was smaller, and less nice-looking — maybe older, Violet didn't know. There were three bedrooms, the biggest with another toilet attached (but no bath). Cassie was fine with the place, asked Violet what it thought.

The bedrooms had no windows, none of them. And the smaller ones, Violet assumed one of those would be for it, they were kind of small. Not really little, but... With a bed and drawers and stuff, it would feel kind of cramped, and it was dark, and Violet was worried it'd be reminded of the cupboard. It had left, it was with Cassie now, it was never going back to Privet Drive, and it didn't want to sleep somewhere that reminded it of the cupboard.

So Violet, feet shifting against the carpet a little, said it didn't like it. It was kind of worried Cassie would ask why, or would be annoyed with it for being picky, but she just nodded, and they left.

They went to a couple more flats, only one of them with this man before switching to someone new, but one of the two of them didn't like all of them, for one reason or another. Each time they said no on a new place, Violet got a little nervous, but Cassie didn't seem to be getting annoyed at all, so.

The next place they went was in a magic village — it was very old-fashioned looking, like something on one of those tele programmes or films happening hundreds of years ago, little wooden cottages with slate tile roofs along twisting dirt streets. Except more colourful than those things tended to be, the walls painted bright or curtains in windows, all kinds of things. Cassie said this was Hogsmeade, the biggest all-magic town on the island.

They didn't like the house, though. It was really old, the stone in places chipped and the wood creaking and kind of small. (The bedrooms had windows at least, but still.) Cassie didn't like the living room, and she hated the bathroom — she said so, right in the face of the lady showing them around. Violet thought it even smelled funny, but it didn't say that out loud. So, no, they weren't staying here.

Before leaving, Cassie took Violet down a street to the edge of the village, to point out something in the distance. It was dark now, the sun set over an hour ago, so the mountain valley — were they in the Highlands? — was all in shadow, but Violet could still see what Cassie was pointing out. It was a bunch of lights, sitting over a lake, a lopsided...thing, Violet couldn't tell what shape it was supposed to be. After staring for a while, it decided the big building was just very uneven, with a lot of towers and halls sticking out in random directions.

That was Hogwarts, Cassie said. It was the magic school she'd gone to when she was growing up, where Violet's parents had gone (like fifty years after Cassie). It was the same magic school Violet would go to, in a few years.

...Huh.

They checked out a couple houses after that, but Violet didn't really remember them. They were all bad for one reason or another, and they never stayed for long, Cassie rushing to make sure they found a place before they ran out of time. Violet was starting to get tired — it'd been a long day, and it wasn't even over yet — and popping around all the time was starting to make it feel kind of awful.

But then they found the house.

They were in a magical town again, or maybe just somewhere old: the street wasn't one big flat thing, but a bunch of little bricks, the corners rounded off by wear, making the street just a little uneven under its feet. The lady leading them around now (the third person showing them places) came up to a row of terraced houses. They looked to all be three levels tall, made out of red and white brick, the slate of the peaked roofs looking kind of greenish-grey. They weren't all quite the same, the windows in different places and shapes, the frames around them and the doors a little different — and there were a lot of windows.

Each had a garden in front, all of them made up different (though most plants were dead for winter already), and longer than it thought most were for these things, as deep as they were wide, which was actually kind of a lot of space. The gardens were split off with walls, but they weren't very tall, Violet could climb over them easy, they didn't really hide anything. And, Violet had seen terraced houses before, but these didn't seem cramped at all, enough for a few big rooms inside. More like the nicer ones in the fancy parts of London than the sad-looking ones in the parts of the city Petunia didn't like driving through.

The front door went into a little entryway space, with closets for shoes and jackets and stuff. Straight ahead were stairs up, a handrail with twisting, polished posts on both sides, looking down on rooms left and right. The lady brought them to the right, and Violet was very confused: this room had a couple big windows looking out onto the street...on the right side of the house. Shouldn't that be a wall shared with the neighbours?

The room was nice, a sort of living-room-and-library thing — the sofas and bookshelves and stuff belonged to the last owners, they'd be moving everything out in a couple days — all in shiny polished redwood, the floors hidden with fuzzy rugs made with swirling shapes in all kinds of colours. It was even bigger than the Dursleys', like twice the size, maybe. But Violet didn't notice much, too distracted by the windows where the next house in the row should be.

Eventually, it worked up the nerve to ask. (Aunt Petunia didn't like it when it asked questions, but Aunt Cassie didn't mind, it tried to remember that.) This was a thing magic people could do, mix up the space inside places. There wasn't a window in the middle of the room, because that's really where the front door was — this room was in the front of the house, kind of, but going through the door teleported people over to one side instead. Kind of? It was confusing, but Violet thought that's what was going on. Which was weird, but also kind of neat? They could make things bigger on the inside too, which made sense, it also seemed like this room shouldn't fit where it was, even without the switching stuff around.

Confusing, yes, but magic was really very neat sometimes. They got to make their nice living room with the big windows without having their front door open right into it. And Violet guessed the bedrooms weren't going to be too little either.

After that there was a dining room, which Violet didn't really think they needed — the Dursleys' was only for special dinners with, like, work people? Violet didn't think they'd use it. Or...what did Cassie do for work? It hadn't asked, but also Cassie was old (supposedly), and she'd said she was super rich, so maybe she just didn't...

(Violet thought the Durlseys would think Cassie was one of those lazy worthless layabouts Uncle Vernon always complained about, but also she was a freak anyway, so Violet didn't think it made any difference.)

And after that was the kitchen. The floor was stone tile now — not the fake plastic-y stuff like the Dursleys', real stone, polished shiny and smooth — and also the counters too it thought, and the place was also pretty big, with lots of counter space and cabinets, and that was a stove. There wasn't a fridge or anything, but, maybe magic people did things different? Violet guessed it would ask later, before it had to cook anything.

Also, Violet was confused again, because the back door was right there — Violet was pretty sure this should be the left side of the house, the door across from the dining room even went back to the entryway? But, that was a door, leading outside. Okay. Between this row of houses and the next one was a big open space, the ground covered in grass (right now also covered with fallen leaves), and there were a lot of bushes and trees and stuff, and...Violet thought that was a goal, like for football? It didn't look quite right, the posts at the corners sticking out, but it didn't know what else that could be. There were also chairs and little tables and stuff here and there, just a big space for people living here to hang out. Which was kind of neat, it guessed, but it never really got on with other people...

The bath was below ground, another door out of the kitchen going to stairs down. There was a toilet here, but it wasn't really what the place was for, instead a big open bath set in the floor — like in Cassie's flat, but bigger. It was all made in shiny tile in green and black and white and gold — apparently they were in Ireland, Violet didn't know that until Cassie made a joke about the colours — and the bath was even bigger than Cassie's, enough to hold a bunch of people at once, like a hot tub or a very little swimming pool. (Violet thought maybe the big open bath was a magic person thing, it was very weird.) Cassie said this one spot over here, set into the wall, was a shower, but it didn't really look like it? Violet couldn't see where the water came out from...

The bedrooms were upstairs. (There were also a couple toilets, but no showers or anything, just the toilet and a sink.) They weren't all quite the same. On the front side of the house — Violet only knew from seeing the street out the windows, things moved around in here, confusing — were a pair of rooms, one bigger than the other, with doors into the hall and also a door connecting them. The smaller one was set up like an office right now, with a desk and bookshelves and stuff, and the lady showing them around joked that it could also be a nursery, if there were more children in Cassie's future. (More, because she was including Violet.) Cassie just laughed her off.

On the back side were two more bedrooms, Violet guessed one would be its own if they stayed here. (Still a weird thought, never had a bedroom before...) They weren't huge, but there was still plenty of room to move around in, and it could tell for sure, there were still beds and drawers and desks from the last people to live here. And the windows, looking out over the open space in the back, were big, wider than the ones on the other side, and tall, put together taking up, like, half the whole wall, maybe? It was a lot. There were a bunch of curtains covering up half of the windows right now, but.

Violet liked it. It thought it liked it a lot. This, yes, but also the whole house was nice. The bathroom was still weird, but, it thought that was just a magic person thing, they'd all be like that...

There was also a loft at the top, but Violet didn't bother following up after them — it didn't sound like there was a whole lot of room anyway. Cassie said it could be a good place to put her dark magic stuff, she could ward it off from the rest of the house so it didn't leak out and bother Violet. So it probably wouldn't go up there at all, then.

Cassie came back down, looked around a little more, going downstairs to poke around the kitchen. It turned out, magic people didn't have refrigerators, instead some of the cabinets in the kitchen were magicked to be cold on the inside — that was so cool, magic was neat. Then Cassie nodded to herself, turned to ask Violet what she thought of this one, darling.

She called Violet that more often than its (new) name, it was kind of weird. Not going to complain about it, it didn't bother Violet, it was just saying, weird.

Anyway, it actually thought this place was really nice. Nothing jumped out at it as bad, and it was pretty, both inside and with the garden out front — Violet was so putting all the flowers out there, it would ask Cassie about it when spring came around again — and the big open space in back, and it still thought the baths magic people used were kind of weird, but, it wasn't so bad. And Cassie had said they couldn't stay in a normal neighbourhood, so it would have to put up with that either way. So, Violet liked it, it thought it kind of liked it a lot.

It didn't really say that, though. It was, just... It wasn't used to grown-ups asking it what it thought about things and really listening, it couldn't help the niggling thought in the back of its head that it wasn't to complain about things, and also it was a freak and couldn't expect to get the things it wanted anyway... But Cassie had asked, and Violet also wasn't supposed to lie to her family, so...

A little numb, slow, Violet said it thought this place was okay — that was as good as it could do right now, too nervous to be too...it didn't know. Anyway, Cassie seemed to know what it meant anyway, giving Violet a big warm smile. Then she straightened and turned to the lady, and told her they'd take it.

The lady took out some paperwork from somewhere, and she and Cassie stood around the island in the middle of the kitchen, talking about grown-up stuff that went right over Violet's head. It poked around the kitchen while it waited — there was some stuff in the cupboards (though all the fresh food was gone, so it didn't spoil), but Violet didn't know any of the packaging, must be magic brands. It knew magic brands had to be a thing, because the little cake and the fizzy pop the Ministry bloke had brought it had logos on them and they'd been new to Harry.

After some minutes, Cassie and the lady were still talking, so Violet went to the back door again. It glanced back to make sure it was all right ("If you wander off too far I'll leave you here, see if I won't!"), but Cassie just met its eyes and nodded, turning right back to the papers. Okay, then.

The back area had been mostly empty when they'd looked before, just a few people around, but this time there were more people. A few adults were sitting at the little chairs around, chatting, a couple kids climbing one of the trees, a few more kicking a football around, pushing at each other and giggling. There were a handful of older kids — too old to be in primary, but not by that much — over by the goal thing, but they didn't have a football. Instead they had these odd sticks and a little ball, bouncing it on the flat blade at the end of their sticks, passing it back and forth. Must be a game of some kind, Violet didn't know. They didn't seem to actually be playing, just passing the ball around and trying to push past each other, shoving and jostling — it guessed the real game required more space and a second goal, and probably more players.

As it watched, one of the kids bopped the ball up a little higher, winding his stick back, and whapped at the thing with a little dull popping noise, sending it sailing over to the goal. One of the other kids jumped, tried to knock the ball out of the air with his stick, but missed, it flew past him and through the goal. It didn't have a net in it, instead the ball went another couple feet before suddenly stopping in mid air, pressing against a spot of faint blue light that hadn't been there a second ago before falling to the ground. Like there was a wall there, but an invisible one, the blue light went out right away.

Huh. Violet guessed it was like football, but they used the stick thing instead of their feet. Weird, but okay.

"Hóigh, a chailín thall ann!"

Violet jumped at the voice, coming from not so far away. It looked around, saw that the kids playing with the football had drifted this way a little. A couple of them were waving at it, one started skipping over toward Violet — a girl right around its age, maybe only a little older, with long curly black hair, wearing trousers and a thick, colourful jumper. (It was getting cold out.) Violet froze, not really sure what to do. It wasn't great with other kids most of the time, and it was being a girl right now...but these kids didn't know it wasn't usually a girl...

The girl stopped a few steps away, grinning at Violet. "Is mise Lasairín, a's maith liom do léine! An bhfuil do theaghlach chun a chónaí ansin?" she finished, pointing at the house behind Violet's back.

Um...was this girl asking if Violet was moving in here? maybe? "I'm sorry, er, do you speak English?" Violet didn't know what language that even was. They were in Ireland, so, Irish maybe? Didn't the Irish all speak English now?

The girl pouted. "Cén fáth a labhraíonn tú Béarla? Tá 'n Béarla deacair a's dúr." Before Violet could ask what any of that meant, the girl turned to shout over her shoulder. "Hé! An bhfuil Béarla ag éinne? An cailín seo, níl Gaeilge aici."

"Um..." That really was a weird-sounding language — Violet didn't think it was, like, French or Spanish or German or anything. Must be Irish, then...but really, it thought they spoke English in Ireland...?

There was some more shouting back and forth in the funny language, the adults in the chairs over there calling over. Violet understood none of it, and she was about to escape back through the door when Cassie walked out. "We're done in here, darling, I just need to run by— Oh, hello. And who's this?"

"Um." Violet glanced back and forth between Cassie and the girl, a couple other of the kids now coming closer. "I don't know? She doesn't speak English, I don't think..."

"Ah, of course. Tráthnóna mhaith, a chailín ghleoitche, cad is ainm duit?" The girl grinned, and started babbling back at her in nonsense.

Violet just stared up at Cassie. It didn't know why it was surprised Cassie figured that out right away, it was kind of annoying.

After a little bit more nonsense, Cassie said, "Ah, Lasairín here was asking if we're moving in, and she was going to invite you to play with them. We really should be going though, darling, you can come say hello some other time."

"I can't say hello at all, I don't even know what language that is."

Cassie's lips twitched. "It's Gaelic. Irish."

Frowning, trying not to whine, Violet said, "I thought they spoke English over there." Well, here, it guessed, it was kind of odd that they weren't even in Britain right now...

"Most of the muggles do, but the mages still speak Gaelic." ...Oh. That was dumb. "Here, try to say this." Cassie leaned in a little closer to mutter over its ear, Violet's neck tingling a little. "Tráthnóna mhaith, is mise Sailí."

"Um. And what does that mean?"

"Good evening, my name is Violet. Or not really — the word for violets, like the flower, is actually sailchuach, but I thought you might have trouble saying that." No kidding, Violet wasn't sure what that noise was... "Sailí is a willow, like the tree, which I thought would do instead."

...So, Violet got two new names today. Okay, then. Cassie whispered it again, and Violet did its best to repeated it. It thought that was mostly right? It didn't know, Irish was weird. The girl — um, Lasairín, was it? — grinned back at her and then babbled some more.

"Ah, her family lives in the house right next to us there—" The girl had pointed to the one on the right, or the left from the front. "—and she hopes you two will be good friends. I take it the people who lived here before us had older children who didn't like to play with the little ones."

...Oh. Er.

"But we really should be going now — it's getting late, and we should get dinner before it's time to get to bed. Goodbye is slán agat."

"Oh! Um...slán agat?" it said, glancing between Cassie and the girl — that one wasn't so hard, Violet was pretty sure it said it right...

Lasairín nodded, chirped, "Slán libh." She turned around, started running back to the kids with the football. Glancing back over her shoulder, waving, "Bye!" What, was that the only word she knew in English?

Some more shouted goodbyes from the other people standing around, and Cassie tugged Violet back toward the door into the kitchen. It looked back over its shoulder after only a few steps, watching Lasairín and the other kids, playing and giggling.

It didn't think anyone had ever wanted to be friends with it before.

It didn't sound like any of them spoke English though. But that was okay, Violet could just learn Irish instead. It couldn't be that hard, could it?

---

November 1987

---

They moved into the house three days later.

Since they couldn't go back to Cassie's flat, and they couldn't move in to the new house for a couple days, they ended up staying in a hotel. Violet had never stayed in a hotel before, or anything like that — when the Dursleys went places, they stuck it with Mrs Figg, it'd never slept anywhere besides its cupboard or Mrs Figg's sofa-bed.

It was a normal person hotel in...Dublin, it thought? Violet didn't know very much about Ireland, but it saw the name a few places, and it was pretty sure Dublin was on the sea. The room was nice, it guessed, very clean and soft and comfy. It didn't like the bathroom much, but that might just be because there wasn't a lock on the door. And the bed wasn't great either. The sheets were weird, stiff and almost...plastic-y? Violet didn't know how that happened, it was weird. Not so much it was too uncomfortable, but.

Also, there was only one big bed in the room — they were to share. That was just...kind of uncomfortable? Violet had never slept with someone else in the same bed before, unless Mrs Figg's cats crawling all over the place when it was staying over there counted, and it didn't think they did. Cassie shrank herself down to a little kid again, so there was plenty of room, but still, just kind of distracting with her over there, made it hard to sleep.

Cassie was a little kid kind of a lot of the time. Whenever they were just in the hotel room, sitting around talking or playing games with the telly going on in the background. (Cassie just "conjured" a checkerboard with all the pieces and a deck of cards, which was very neat.) They never talked about anything important, a lot of silly little things, a lot of questions about what Violet liked to eat or do for fun. Those weren't very easy to answer, because Violet hadn't tried a lot of things, it just ate what it was given, and also it didn't really do anything for fun. It liked climbing trees, it guessed. Reading was fine? It didn't know.

It could tell Cassie really wasn't happy with its answers, but she didn't do anything about it, Violet probably wasn't getting in trouble saying the wrong thing.

They were in the room a lot, but they did go outside sometimes. For meals they went out to, like, restaurants and stuff — Violet was allowed to get whatever it wanted, never done that before, Cassie would sometimes even get them an ice cream to split. (One had a brownie underneath, and that was really good.) Sometimes they just went walking around in market streets. One had, like, a whole bunch of fruit and vegetables in stalls out on the street, in the middle of the city, which Violet thought was pretty neat. On one of the other streets with stores and stuff all along, Cassie bought a bunch of bracelets and necklaces and stuff, colourful strings of beads in all kinds of colours. She gave most of them to Violet.

Violet had been really quiet after that for an hour or two — it could tell Cassie was worried, but she didn't ask what was wrong. Good, because Violet didn't think it would be able to tell her, it wouldn't know what to say.

(Nobody had ever given it nice things before.)

They even went to the cinema once. Violet didn't like it, it was very loud and the film was kind of scary. They didn't even stay for the whole thing, Cassie pulled them out, apologising — she hadn't known it was going to be that scary, apparently.

Early on the second day of November, Violet was startled by a sharp clicking against the window. Cassie walked up and tapped her wand (what the magic sticks were called) against the window, and the glass kind of melted out of the way, letting the owl step inside. It had some papers bundled to its leg — magic people had owls carry their post, wild. Cassie flipped through the papers for a bit before saying that was it, they could go move in now.

While Cassie was checking out, one of the ladies offered Violet a lolly out of the dish on the counter. It was so surprised it almost dropped the thing — nobody ever just gave it candy.

(Maybe people just liked Violet better than Harry, for some reason...)

Cassie led Violet down the street and into an alley, checked to make sure no normal people could see them, and popped them away. After a second in the cold squishing blackness in the middle, they stepped out into fresh air again. It seemed a little warmer in Dublin (she thought) than Little Whinging, but now it felt colder again. Not really cold, but like Violet could actually believe it was November. Violet hadn't seen the house in the daytime yet, but it didn't look that different — it was more obvious that the bricks it'd thought might be white were grey, the red not a dull brown-ish rusty red but very red. The slate on the roofs still looked greenish-black, but there were also bits that sparkled in the sun, like the little crystals in granite. Not that there was much sunlight, it was November...

They walked through the garden, Violet kind of feeling weird and tingly, glancing around the garden, staring up at the house. It was kind of hard to believe that Cassie had, just, bought this place for them to live in, just because the weird magic in her flat made Violet feel cold. Just to make Violet more comfortable, she'd bought a house! That was crazy. It hadn't really thought it was going to happen, but here they were, and...

Cassie was saying something about showing Violet around the town later, but it wasn't really listening.

They came up to the door, and Cassie pulled out one of the papers she'd got from the owl. She pulled a key out of the paper somehow, holy crap, and unlocked the door — it wasn't a normal lock, Violet felt a weird crackling tingle, like static in its hair. Then she was pushing open the door and they walked inside.

Cassie said the special turn the lights on word. They stood there for a little, but the lights didn't come on, just the sun coming through the door behind them, the windows to the right and left. (Violet tried not to think about the windows to the right being on the same side of the house as the door.) Cassie's foot tapped against the floor a couple times. "...Adhnadh?" The magic answered, filling the entryway with soft yellow light. "Ah, okay, the enchantment keys are in Gaelic. The word to turn the lights on is adhnadh, and off is múchadh."

Oh, jeez. The first one wasn't so bad — it just sounded like eye-nut (sort of) — but the second was bad. Kind of like moo-hut, but it was one of those weird hard grinding H-sounds, like in some foreign languages, or when someone was trying to sound really Scottish. It took a couple tries before Violet could kind of get it — Cassie said it was close enough, which it guessed meant the light-magic would pick it up.

Really, having the lights answer to Latin had been kind of silly, but at least those words hadn't had any really weird sounds in them. But Violet guessed it already decided it was going to learn Irish anyway...

The people who lived here before took their things with them. The bench in the entryway against the wall, to sit on while putting on shoes, that was gone. The living room, when Cassie walked in there, was very, very empty — shiny clean, and the wood panels the walls and floor were made of were a pretty reddish-brown colour, but empty. "Right," Cassie chirped, looking around the room with her hands planted on her hips. "Nola?"

The little house-elf person came over with a sharp pop!, just a few steps away. "Yes, Mistress Cassie?"

"This is the new house. It's a part of a row, there are separate houses to the left and right — can you feel the dividing walls there?"

Nola's head tilted, as though listening for something, his ears flopping a little. "Yes, they are being warded. They aren't enough to keep me out, but I feel them."

"Good. It'll be a week at least before I can get proper wards, so I'll need you to put some palings up, if you can manage that."

"That is no problem, Mistress Cassie. Which palings?"

"Oh, an alarm with an intent-based trigger should be fine — if something trips it just tell me and we'll evacuate."

"Yes, Mistress." Nola closed his big yellow eyes and went very still, like he wasn't even breathing. A couple seconds passed, and then Nola lifted a hand and snapped his too-long fingers. Violet twitched — it didn't know what that was, but it had felt something, like a really loud lightning strike making the whole house rattle, but without the noise part. His eyes popping open again, Nola said, "It is done, Mistress, Nola will come if anyone trips the paling. Are you needing anything else?"

"Well, we will be needing to furnish the place," Cassie said, sounding a little amused. "Pull everything in my flat and bring it here — the drawing room furniture should go in here, along with the bookshelves from the bedroom, the dining set just in there," she said, pointing at the door to the dining room, "and the rest of the things in my bedroom in the larger of the two rooms on this side one floor above us. Violet here is sensitive to dark magic, so you'll need to neutralise everything before bringing it here, and anything with dark enchantments will need to be stored in Ancient House for now — I think my old rooms there never were used by anyone, just stick them in there and I'll figure out what to do with them later. And we'll need to find things for Violet's room, there's plenty of unused furniture at Ancient House, I'm sure Arcturus won't miss any of it. Did you catch all that?"

Nola nodded, fast enough his ears wiggled. "Yes, Mistress Cassie."

"Right. If you need help with any of that, feel free to recruit some of the other elves. There's no rush, but with the neutralisation that is a lot of work for one elf to do, I don't want you to hurt yourself."

The little elf beamed up at Cassie. Violet got that, it really did — the Dursleys never cared if Violet hurt itself doing chores. "Yes, Mistress. I'm to go now?"

"Yes, Nola, go ahead. No wait," Cassie blurted out, one hand coming up as though to grab onto Nola before he could pop away, "I almost forgot. Put a trace on Violet, just in case. It's nothing that'll hurt you or anything," Cassie said, turning to Violet. "It's just so you can call him if you need help."

"Um." Like, so if Violet called for him, he'd pop out of nowhere like he did when Cassie did it? Was that what she meant?

Before she could figure out what she wanted to say, Nola asked, "Violet was being Harry Potter before?"

"Yes," Cassie said, "she's a metamorph. She was born Harry Potter but she's being Violet Black right now."

Nola gave another ear-flopping nod. "Okay, I understand." The little elf turned toward Violet, eyes half-closing in thought, one hand coming up to snap — oh, so he didn't need Violet to do anything for this, okay. But before he did his magic thing he paused, his head tilting to the side again. "Miss Violet is already being traced?" It sounded like a question.

"What do you mean?" Cassie's voice had dropped lower, suddenly going sharp and cold. Like when she'd been talking to Petunia.

(Remembering Petunia screaming, Violet shivered a little — Cassie was nice, but she was also very scary.)

"There's being a trace, in her blood. One, two...three? I'm seeing three."

Um, was that bad? Violet had the feeling that was probably bad, if some strange magic person it didn't know was tracking it somehow...

"What kind of trackers? Were they all cast by the same person?"

Nola was quiet for a few seconds, squinting at Violet, thinking. "They are too old to be seeing who cast them. One is telling where, one is feeling if Violet is well or hurt or ill, and one is...feeling for magic cast on her, I'm thinking."

Cassie let out a long, angry hiss, her fists clenched at her sides, glaring at the wall. "Are you telling me Albus had monitoring charms on her, and he never came to get her out?"

At the anger on her voice, thick and crackling, the air in the room seeming to shiver with it, Violet could only feel glad that it wasn't this Albus person — just standing in the same room was scary enough, it did not want that pointed at it.

"Ah, er, I'm not knowing about any of that, but that is a monitoring spell, like one of the old magics for young children or the infirm..."

"Oh, that foolish, short-sighted man, I should..." Cassie pushed out a long, thick sigh, her eyes falling closed for a second. "Right. Can you break the trackers?"

"I'm sorry, Mistress Cassie, it's blood magic, and—"

"Right, yes, of course." Cassie walked a little closer to Violet, which just made the sharp coldness even worse, it held itself still against a shiver. It was trying to hold it in, but apparently Cassie noticed — her face flickered, her eyes closed, and she drew in and out a few slow breaths, the air warming a bit with each one until it went away. "Sorry, darling. Someone put tracking spells on you. They're not hurting you, but you should never let someone you don't know use blood magic on you. I'm going to get rid of them. Okay?"

"Um." Violet wondered if it should apologise for letting someone do blood magic on it — it didn't remember anything, it must have been really little. But it didn't sound like Cassie was angry...or not with Violet, anyway. "Who did it? I mean, it sounded like you know them..."

"Oh, I do. Albus was one of my favourite professors when I was in school, we've been friends for a long time now." Wow, if this Albus person had taught Cassie, he'd have to be, like, over a hundred years old. "I don't think he'll try to hurt you, but I don't like him knowing where and how you are at all times. Especially since these trackers should have told him the Dursleys weren't treating you right, and he did nothing about it — I am not happy with him right now, to put it mildly."

...Oh. He must not like freaks either then...but Cassie said they were friends... "Okay."

"Now, these trackers are in your blood, so I have to do blood magic to get rid of them. It won't hurt, but it will feel a little weird. And I'll need to draw some of your blood to do it."

"Okay." It guessed 'blood magic' did sound kind of scary, like bad evil magic people shouldn't be doing, but Violet didn't really think Cassie would hurt it on purpose.

"Okay, darling. Give me your hand," she said while sinking to her knees on the floor. She took Violet's wrist with one hand, turning its hand palm-up, her wand in her other hand. "I'm going to numb your hand first, you won't feel a thing. Ready?"

Cassie waited for it to nod. She tapped its hand with the wand, and it went dead, like it'd fallen asleep, Violet couldn't feel it at all. Then she drew a little line across its palm, and a deep cut appeared, after a couple seconds hidden by the puddle of blood filling its palm. That was...weird. Violet knew this should hurt, but it didn't feel a thing...though watching was kind of making it a little sick. Cassie dabbed her fingers in the blood, then turned to the side, started drawing on the floor. It looked like it might be writing, but more like Chinese or something, symbols instead of letters. She drew four...maybe five, tracing over them two or three times with more blood, darkening all the lines.

"There we are." A couple flicks of the wand, and its hand was all cleaned up, not even the tiniest scar left behind. And Violet could feel its hand again, it rubbed against the skin but it didn't feel a mark, not even a hint of pain. "Blood magic is very, very dangerous," Cassie was saying. She was drawing on the floor some more, in a circle around Violet's blood, but this time with blue and green light, like back at the teashop that first day. "There are awful curses people can put on you if they get some of your blood. If you're hurt bad enough to bleed, it's very important that all the blood is cleaned up, either by you or a grown-up you trust.

"This spell I'm doing now destroys any blood outside of your body, so people can't use it to hurt you. Albus's trackers will have a drop of blood in them, this will make them stop working. If you have reason to think someone might have gotten some of your blood, I want you to tell me, so we can do this spell again. This is very important, darling — even if you think it's just possible a stranger got some of your blood, I want you to tell me, just in case. Do you understand?"

So, blood magic was bad evil stuff people shouldn't be doing, then. Got it. "Yes, Aunt Cassie."

"Good." Done with her drawing, sitting back on her knees, Cassie looked over the symbols for a little bit. "Right, that'll do. This is going to feel funny, but it won't hurt you." Cassie leaned forward, placing her hand in the middle of the circle of symbols, right on the ones in Violet's blood. Its blood started glowing, a too-bright white, it blinked and looked away—

It jumped — that would be the funny feeling. It kind of tickled, but not a normal tickle, like it was on the inside, crawling around everywhere head to toe. Violet shivered, wrapping its arms around itself, but it was only a couple seconds before it was gone.

"Shite." Cassie didn't sound worried, just kind of annoyed, so Violet looked to see what that was about. The glowing symbols were gone but the blood ones were still there, and— Oh wait, no, that wasn't Violet's blood, but burn marks, darker than the wood, black with little flecks of grey. "I forgot it would do that. Oh well. Not really worth replacing the whole floor for this one spot — just make sure this gets covered up with a rug, okay, Nola?"

"Yes, Mistress. I get started now?"

"Set the trace first."

"Oh! Yes, I'm being sorry, I do that now." Nola's big round eyes narrowed a little, and then he snapped his fingers again. Violet felt something, a hard squeezing, like Vernon's hand around its shoulder but around its chest instead, and its breath caught and— And then it was over, its breath whooshing out in a sigh. "It's done. Oh, and the other traces are all gone, the annihilation got them."

"Thanks for telling me, I would have worried about that later — it was possible Albus could have had his anchors under wards that could block it, didn't think of that." Nola nodded up at Cassie, practically bouncing on his toes. "And I changed my mind, don't bother to look for bedroom furnishings for Violet. We'll go to Brynmor's workshop in Edinburgh and she can pick new things." Oh no, more shopping... "We might have to wait for them to finish something, though, so I might ask you later to get a bed for her — don't bother finding and neutralising one ahead of time, if it becomes an issue I'll call you again.

"Right, so, empty my flat, neutralise everything, drawing room furniture and bookshelves here, my bedroom things in the larger of the rooms right overhead..."

"Dining set through there," Nola said, pointing at the door into the empty room, "and anything with dark enchantments are to be kept in your old room at Ancient House."

Cassie snapped her fingers. "There it is, that was it. Also, when you have a moment, some drinks and snacks and things in the kitchen over there," pointing at the wall opposite the windows. "No rush on the food, we'll be out shopping for a little bit — also, I suspect we'll be having take-out for lunch, and the neighbours will probably be feeding us tonight. Go ahead and get started. Remember not to strain yourselves on the neutralisations, pop in if you have any questions."

"Yes, Mistress Cassie." Nola snapped his fingers again, and with a little cracking noise he was gone.

"Right," Cassie chirped, smiling down at Violet. "We should get going, at least so we're not standing here in their way. Let's go peek at your room quick." Feeling a little dazed — it felt like a lot had happened in that talk with Nola, and now Cassie was going to be buying more things, a bed and stuff for Violet's room — Violet followed Cassie back toward the stairs. "Of course," she said on the way up the stairs, glancing past her elbow toward Violet, "we'll want to fill this place out a bit, with bric-a-brac and pictures for the walls and whatnot, but we'll have time for that later, and I figure it'll take your input. Can't just put my stuff all over the place, it's your house too."

Um, Violet didn't know what to do for that kind of stuff, it really didn't even get what the point was. All it knew was that Petunia's little figurines and whatever were easy to break and hard to dust proper...

"Okay, go ahead and pick a room to sleep in."

"Oh, um." Violet glanced between the doors in the hallway, leading to the bedrooms on the back side of the house. They were both open at the moment, glowing with sunlight coming through the windows, the insides big and empty. "Aren't they both the same?"

"I haven't measured them, but I suspect they are. It doesn't matter so much, but I figured we'd look around and figure out what kind of things we want to buy."

That did make sense, it guessed. It didn't think it really mattered which one it slept in, since they were the same, so Violet just walked in the closer door. Without the curtains that had been there before the room was very bright, the big windows filling the room with sunlight, Violet had to blink the spots out of its eyes. Also, it hadn't noticed there was a closet in here, it assumed that was what the space past that folded up sliding door on the left side was.

Distracted looking around, Violet was a little startled when Cassie started talking. "So, you'll need a bed, of course, and a dresser for things you won't be hanging up in the closet, socks and leggings and pants and the like. A desk and a chair, probably a lamp too — maybe a second lamp by your bed, if you want, I like to read in bed at night. A couple bookshelves. Anything else you can think of you need?"

"Um." How was Violet supposed to know? It'd never had its own room before... "Um. I don't think so?"

"Okay. Where do you want to put the bed? Against the back wall here, maybe, and then the desk would go by the window..."

"Oh, er..." Violet already felt its voice sinking away, it didn't know how well this was going to work. But Cassie was looking down at it and waiting for an answer — not in a mean way, like Petunia all glaring and impatient, instead smiling all nice, but she still wanted Violet to say something. So it just had to... It walked further into the room, pointed along one of the corners, against a wall and part of the window. "Maybe here?"

Cassie was quiet a second. Violet couldn't see the look on her face, it was too busy awkwardly staring at the floor. "You want your bed right against the window?"

"Mm-hmm." Violet fidgeted a little, playing with the hem of its jumper. Even staying in the hotel, once it'd woken up and thought it was in the cupboard again. It'd remembered right away, with Cassie there it'd be hard not to, but it still hadn't liked it. But it didn't know if it could tell Cassie that. "I, er, want to look out the window."

There was an odd flicker of something on the air, like static. Her voice gone softer than before, she said, "If that's what you want, darling, of course we can do that. Take a couple steps my way quick." Violet obeyed, and with a flick of Cassie's wand a bed appeared in the corner, long enough half of it was against the window — really against the window, since the bottom of the frame was so low the top of the bed was a few inches higher. It wasn't a real bed, it didn't look quite right, the colours kinda smeared and washed out, like a drawing of one maybe? Except it was right there in the real world, which was really cool, magic was neat. "We'll get you a full-size bed, so you can still use it when you're grown up. Though when you're older we might want to replace it with a double-wide one."

Violet blinked. "Why?"

Cassie's lips twitched, pulling into a crooked smile. "Oh, who knows, you might want to invite a friend to stay over." Right, that made sense, Violet had just never had friends to invite over before.

...Was it normal for kids having sleepovers to sleep in the same bed? Violet didn't actually know...

"And we'll put a little bedside table right here, the lamp goes on top of that." More flicks of her wand, fake-looking things appeared as Cassie talked about them. Violet was pretty sure the bedside table was supposed to go on the side her head was, Cassie put it by the wall and Violet wanted to put her head on the window side, but it didn't really matter right now. "And maybe the desk on the back wall," Cassie said, a picture of a desk and a poofy chair appearing across from the window, "the bookshelves over here in the corner. Mm, the dresser can go by the wall next to the bedside table, plenty of room there, and in the corner we didn't get to, maybe something like this." A couple last flicks of her wand, and there was a little round table toward the other end of the window, three spindly little chairs around it.

Which was kind of weird, Violet thought. "What's that for?"

"If you decide you want to take tea or breakfast or whatever in your room, you need somewhere to sit with it without making a mess. And I thought, if you have friends over sometime you might not want the old person hovering," with a kind of teasing bounce to her voice, "you can bring them in here instead of staying down in the kitchen. We could put this stuff in the other room, but I thought you might want to leave that empty for now, in case you decide you want to use it for something else."

It guessed that did kind of make sense. Not something Violet thought of because, again, it'd never had friends before, but. It nearly forgot all that at the last bit, though. "The other room? You mean the one right over there," it said, pointing at the wall in the way, "is mine too?"

One of Cassie's eyebrows twitched up. "Of course. Who else would it belong to? We're the only people who live here."

That was... No, Violet didn't know what to think about that. Dudley had two bedrooms, it couldn't... "Um, I thought... If you want to use it for something..."

"I have another room on my side too. And I'll have the attic, and my own whole flat, and rooms at Ancient House I've used since I was younger than you. Not to mention whatever other Black properties I can take over if the whim strikes me — the family owns far more homes than there are Blacks, several are just sitting empty at the moment, more space available to me than I could possibly ever use. I think I'll be okay letting you have these two rooms."

...Nope. Violet had no idea what to say to that. It didn't really say anything at all, just stared at the fake little table and chairs. It probably couldn't say a word right now if it wanted to, its chest all tight and hot and... It was kind of dizzy, but that didn't make any sense, it ate this morning...

And now they had to do more shopping. Ugh...

፠

Violet twitched at the thunk, nearly tipping over its drink. Scrambling to catch the bottle before it could fall, it took it a moment to figure out someone was knocking on the back door.

The furniture shopping hadn't taken very long, though it had been really awkward. Violet had never really...had things before? Not new things, anyway, and definitely not things it could pick. Like, the bed and the drawers in the cupboard had been old and kind of not in good shape and they'd been there for as long as Violet could remember — the bed had even been kind of too big for it at first, it'd been really little then. So it didn't even know what to get, really? If Cassie hadn't made a list she would have been really lost, but even then, picking which thing she'd wanted for each kind of thing had been hard.

And, then saying so was even harder. It was silly, it knew it was silly, but Violet kept thinking Cassie was...it didn't know, trapping it somehow? That, Violet would say it wanted this bed or whatever thing, and then Cassie would be like, ungrateful freak, how dare you, and then she would pop Violet back to Privet Drive and it'd be shoved back in the cupboard, and these weird, confusing last few days would be over, and...

Violet knew that was silly, but it couldn't help it. It'd been so bad the fear had stolen its voice away, tightening up so bad it couldn't speak, it'd had to point at things instead of talking. Luckily, nobody had said anything, Cassie or the man at the store, just went along with it.

All the stuff they got had been shrunk down and put in a little box — magic was so cool — and they'd gotten take-out, since there wasn't any food in the house yet. There was this magic pizza place, and it was really good, and Cassie had let it get its own pizza with whatever it wanted on it (a little one, but still), and more fizzy-pop, fizzy-pop was great.

It would have been sad if it spilled its fizzy-pop, but Violet managed to catch it.

"Ah, that would be the welcome committee," Cassie said, standing up from her stool at the island in the middle of the kitchen. (There had already been stools in here when they'd come back, Nola and his friends must have put them here while Cassie and Violet were shopping.) "I was wondering how long it'd take them." Cassie started walking toward the door, carrying her own bottle — some kind of juice or something, she said she didn't like fizzy-pop — tugging at her dress a little with her free hand.

"Um, the welcome committee?"

"It's expected for people in a community, especially in a square like this one, to welcome someone just moving in, often bringing gifts, food and herbs and the like. There will probably be a big meal with everyone, but I doubt that will happen until this evening, when everyone's home from work." Cassie paused at the door, turning to give Violet a look. "If all the people are too much for you, and it's making you uncomfortable, you can go hide in your room. You won't offend anyone."

...She meant kind of like when Petunia brought bakes to people moving in as an excuse to snoop on them? That was a real thing? "Okay." It didn't know what it would do hiding in its room, but Violet was used to that.

"Okay," Cassie repeated, nodding, and then opened the door. She said something in another language, getting an answer from more than one person outside.

Oh, crap, everybody was going to be speaking Irish at this thing, weren't they? This was going to be confusing...

A few people walked in the door, all old people — like grandparents old, with grey hair and wrinkly faces. They weren't really old, though, still moving easy and talking quick and bright, one carrying a glass jug filled with something, looked pretty heavy. There was a little bit of talking, Violet thought maybe giving names, the only part it understood was Cassie Black. At her name all the old people twitched, eyes going wide, surprised, one of them said something that made Cassie giggle, waving her hand and shaking her head as she replied. The old people looked a little awkward, but they agreed with whatever she was saying, passed over the jug.

Setting the thing down on the counter near the stove, Cassie gave Violet a crooked little smirk. "They're not used to seeing nobility around here." Um, that must have had something to do with that little bit that just happened, but Cassie didn't explain, turned back to the old people and babbled away in Irish some more. Violet didn't have to understand to know she was introducing it.

And then the old people kind of turned to it, all nice and smiling, and one said something, all soft and warm and nice...but Violet had no idea what she said. "Um." It just stared up at them for a second before turning back to Cassie. "I don't know how to say hello."

Cassie's lips twitched. "'Nice to meet you' is tá áthas bualadh libh."

Oh, that was kind of long but it wasn't hard. Violet repeated it, and then added its name — "Is mise Cailí," which it remembered! Maybe, it thought. Irish was weird and hard.

The old people tittered for a little, one of them saying something to it (still all nice and smiling) which of course Violet still didn't understand. Cassie translated, "She said your dress is cute."

...Oh. Um. It kind of didn't know how it felt about that, really — that it was actually wearing girl clothes right now was...still kind of weird, if it thought about it. It was trying not to. Trying not to look too awkward, it muttered, "Thanks?"

"Tapa leat."

Oh, good, that one was really easy, it should be able to remember that...

Cassie talked to the old people for a little bit, but it was all in Irish, Violet didn't understand any of it. Not long later, more people showed up, and then more people, and more. (A couple of them spoke English, but not very well, slow and awkward and with very thick accents.) There were getting to be too many people to fit in the kitchen pretty quick, so Cassie shuffled everyone outside. It was kind of cold out here — not really cold, but it was November — and did her drawing-magic-symbols-with-magic-light thing, but in mid-air, the shape just floating there, which was so cool. There was a whoosh of wind, warm and tingly and then it was nice out — still a bit cool, it wasn't like it was suddenly summer or anything, but still, very neat.

Around then, another family turned up, a couple with two kids — one was a girl about Violet's age, but the other one was little, too young for primary. While the parents were saying hello to Cassie, the girl skipped over to Violet, grinning. "Sailí! Fáilte abhaile!"

More Irish, ugh. The girl was obviously saying hi or something, but it didn't— "Oh! Lasairín?" This was that girl from a couple days ago, right? Violet only saw her for a couple minutes, but it thought so... "Um, hi."

The girl grinned back at it, so it must have the name right.

As more and more people showed up, there were more kids too, clumping around Violet and Lasairín. There weren't a lot, there were way more kids at school, but still enough Violet was starting to feel a little surrounded. Before too long they decided sitting around while the grown-ups talked was boring — even more for Violet, who couldn't understand a word they were saying — so they slipped away, going further out into the grassy square, Lasairín tugging on its sleeve a little to pull it with. Violet glanced back at Cassie quick, but she just smiled and nodded at it, so it went.

The younger kids — it was hard to tell, but Violet guessed they were all between five and ten — stood around in a clump, passing a football back and forth. They weren't really playing, exactly, just having something else to do while talking, it thought. Violet didn't understand any of the talking, but Lasairín and a couple of the others were trying to help with that. None of them spoke much English — one boy, Rónán, knew a little, he was learning it in school. (He couldn't think of the word for "learn", and he said "school" funny, but Violet still guessed what he meant.) But they didn't really need to speak English to point at things and say what they were called, or correct it when it said something wrong.

Irish, Violet quickly decided, was very weird. Or, it'd never learned another language before, so maybe learning a new one was always like this? It didn't know for sure, but it had the feeling Irish was especially weird. One of the weirder things Violet figured out right away was that they said words in the wrong order. Is and tá were obviously the same thing as, like, "is" or "am" or "are" or whatever, but they always said those first, before anything else. Like, when people said their names, they were saying am I (their name), and everything went like that, that was just the order things were put in. Which was weird, but once Violet figured it out it just went with it.

Also, it thought this was going to be easy at first, because those words — is and tá — were the same saying I am or you are or anything, they didn't change like it did in English. There were two different ones, and Violet still wasn't sure what the difference was? But they were the same all the time, was the point. Turned out, not all words were like that. Like, the ball was called peil, but when they used it in a sentence it was an pheil..."tree" was crann, but "in the tree" was sa chrann...when someone said its name it was Sailí, but when they were talking to it it was a Shailí, things like that. It was kind of confusing, sometimes Violet thought it was hearing a new word when it was really an old word that sounded different sometimes...but it sounded like it was only the first sound that changed, most of the time? So, that wasn't so bad.

Also, for some reason, it was only "am" and "are" and stuff that didn't change like English did...but it wasn't that bad. Like, kicking the ball back and forth, a pass was called seachadadh, which had one of those stupid throaty sounds in it, but the more Violet tried to say it the easier it got, that wasn't so bad. When someone said, like, "pass it to me", that was seachaid chugam í. Lasairín, trying to help, sometimes said what someone just did, so Violet figured out "I pass" was seachadaim — you could leave out the mé — but for "you" or "she" or "he" it was seachadann — you couldn't leave out the tú or sí or sé. So, that wasn't so bad, it was just the last sound changing a little bit, just like in English. It was a different sound change, not something easy like just sticking an "s" on the end — except "passed", which was seachaid, always the same, some of them even said that last sound like a "d" just like in English (but more often it was a "j") — but it wasn't that hard, Violet could remember that...

...except it wasn't quite that easy. Irish liked to smoosh words together sometimes. Like, see, "I pass it to him" was seachadaim chuige é, but "I pass it to her" was seachadaim chuici é — for some reason, "to him" or "to me" was one word instead of two, but it still changed when it would be a different word in English...and it was kind of hard to guess what it was supposed to be. Like, in most of them it went chug, and the last sound was different for what person it was, sure, that wasn't too hard, but if it was "to her" it was chuici, and that was confusing. They did the same thing with their words for "in" or "at" or "with" and stuff too, it was a whole thing.

Also, the "g" sound in chugam and chuige sounded just a little different, Violet didn't even notice until Lasairín said she was getting it wrong and said the sounds right next to each other. They sounded almost the same, Violet didn't know if it was saying them right, couldn't hear the difference half the time. A little later, she figured out the reason some of them said a "d" like a "j" was because there were also two different "d" sounds, and some people said one of them like a "j", but not everyone...though the people who didn't, Violet really couldn't hear the difference. At least the ones who used a "j" Violet could tell the sounds were supposed to be different, it started using the "j" sound just to keep them straight.

And...Violet didn't think there was a word for "it"? Like, "he" was sé and "she" was sí — which sounded exactly the same as in English, it thought they were just saying the English word at first — but they were used for everything, not just people. The ball was a girl, but the houses, the grass, and the trees were boys. Dresses were boys, and also trousers, but shirts and shoes were girls. The clouds were boys, but the sun and the wind were girls... It all seemed very random.

After a bit, Violet noticed the first sound only changed after "the" (an) if the thing was a girl...or sometimes if it was a boy after other words, but after an it was only girl things. So, it did matter which one a thing was, so it wasn't pointless, just random.

Also, plurals were dumb and hard. Violet missed just being able to stick an "s" sound at the end of everything.

But the point was, this didn't seem too bad? It was weird sometimes, yes, and some of the sounds were hard, but Violet thought it could learn this. Not right away, but it'd been learning English forever, so. It could do this, sure, no problem.

No matter how kind of stupid it felt when it got even really basic words wrong.

They played for a while, Violet wasn't sure how long. Not just standing around with the ball teaching it Irish, they ran around with it too — just, they waited until Violet learned enough to...sometimes understand what was going on. Violet had never really played with other kids before, so it didn't know what it was doing? It kind of, just, followed them around, and tried not to look too awkward, didn't know how good a job it was doing of that...

At some point, getting later into the afternoon, enough the sun was hiding behind the buildings — it wasn't sunset yet, but it couldn't be that far off, Violet didn't think — the adults started putting tables out on the grass, and there was a fire in a big pit over there (that was what that circle of rocks was for). They were making dinner, it looked like, and a lot of it, they had a couple big pots hanging over the fire, bread and plates of stuff (couldn't tell from here) being laid on the tables. There were a bunch of people around, so to feed everyone Violet guessed they would need a lot of stuff.

It still thought it was weird they were doing all this just because Cassie and Violet were moving in, but okay.

Violet happened to be distracted with everything when Cassie's coin purse came shooting out of the house to smack into her hand, just like she'd done at her flat a few days ago. She pulled out a couple coins, and tossed one each to a pair of men — Violet was close enough to spot a sparkle of gold in the air as they flew. The men were so surprised they nearly dropped them, staring at the gold coins with wide eyes. There was a bit of muttering and some questions, but Cassie just laughed whatever it was off, waved them away, grinning, and after a few more seconds the men both disappeared with little pop!s.

They didn't just play with the football the whole time. Some of the kids went running around, chasing each other...kind of like tag? Except it was rougher than that, a lot of grabbing and being knocked over and stuff. That seemed kind of... Violet wasn't sure it wanted people grabbing at it like that, or grabbing at other people either, no thanks. Also, it'd probably get grass stains all over its dress. Violet stuck with Lasairín instead. More talking, with more new Irish words, only some of which Violet was going to remember, and they ended up climbing trees with a few of the other kids.

This was at least something Violet was good at. It didn't remember ever playing around with a football with other kids (unless adults made them, that didn't count), but it climbed trees all the time — they were a good way to stay away from Dudley and his friends. It easily hopped up the first couple branches of the biggest tree in the yard, right next to Lasairín. She pouted at it for a second and then started going up again, and Violet ended up racing her to the top. Violet won, kind of easily. It helped that Violet was smaller than Lasairín, so the top for it was higher than it was for her, Lasairín was too scared to go on the really little branches way high up, so.

They rested up there a bit, a few other kids still more slowly following them up, catching their breath. (They had gone pretty fast, Violet had even scratched itself up a little on the bark.) Looking around through the branches, the wind fluttering its hair, Violet saw the men Cassie sent away before pop! back into the yard. They unshrunk a few little barrels, and then these boxes with glass bottles in them, one and another and another... Cassie must have sent them out to get drinks.

There was a little yelp from below, Violet leaned over to look down — someone had almost fallen out of the tree, but he'd caught himself, his feet swinging around until it found another branch under him. Lasairín, still sounding kind of out of breath, said something up to her, but Violet didn't catch it...

Looking down at Lasairín, a couple other kids under it, Violet's breath froze in its throat, a hard thud of fear dropping into its stomach, cold prickles running over its back. It wasn't thinking, before it climbed up the tree, it was wearing a dress, people under it might be able to see up — Lasairín was right around Violet's ankles, she probably could easy — it hadn't thought about that, they'd be able to see its pants and might notice...

...that it was a girl. But, it wasn't being Harry, it was Violet now, and Violet was supposed to be a girl, so...that was fine. They wouldn't know it was a freak...and magic people actually liked freaks...so it was fine. Violet was fine.

The tension lifting away, its breath came out in a shaky sigh. It probably shouldn't be letting people see its pants anyway, but really, it was just relieved it wasn't going to be getting in trouble.

A couple minutes later, there was a lot of shouting going on, the other kids started going down the tree again. Lasairín tapped its foot to get its attention — yeah, she could probably see its pants from down there — and said something, pointing over toward the tables. Violet didn't understand the words, but it guessed she was saying it was dinner time. Thinking about it, it did smell pretty good out here, the meat and vegetables from the stew, the spices tickling at its nose, just the wind spread it out enough it hadn't really noticed before. Starting down after Lasairín, Violet also noticed all of a sudden that it was kind of hungry — which was weird, because Cassie let it have more food than the Dursleys ever had, but also not, they were probably playing for hours...

Hopping down from the last branch, the sleeve of Violet's jumper got caught, pulling at it, it landed wrong, stumbled a couple steps before falling over sideways. It didn't get its hand down in time, so it fell flat, its head bonking against the ground — it didn't fall hard, it hadn't jumped down from very far, but still, ugh. The grass tickling at its face and its legs, it pushed itself halfway up, but the tickling was getting worse, from the spices in the air, and—

It came on really quick, Violet didn't have any warning at all — it sneezed, loud and hard. And it didn't see it coming, it couldn't control it. As it sneezed, that familiar feeling, water warm and smooth, whooshed through it, all at once head to toe.

Fear crashing over it all at once, going hard and tense and cold as ice, it could hardly think, it could hardly breathe. It changed something, maybe everything.

And there were people around. People weren't supposed to know it was a freak, and it just changed something, it didn't mean to, it just happened, and it didn't know what so it couldn't fix it, and even if it could Lasairín was right there, and people weren't supposed to know it was a freak, and it was going to be in so much trouble—

(It didn't want to go back to the cupboard, not now that it just got its own bedroom and a proper bed and nice big windows, it didn't—)

There was shouting going on around it, but it couldn't make out the words, just noise, and it couldn't breathe, air like a rock in its throat, its eyes squeezed shut, curled up with its legs hugged to its chest, maybe nobody saw anything, and if they didn't see anything then they wouldn't know it was a freak and it wouldn't be in trouble, and it wouldn't have to—

"Violet? Are you hurt?" Oh no, that was Cassie, and she was right there, she would know, and— "Darling, what's wrong?"

Violet could barely get the words out, it didn't have enough air, it came out thin and hissing, hardly there. "I'm sorry."

"What was that?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, don't send me back to—" Violet cut off, somehow going even stiffer than it was before, as something touched it, Cassie was grabbing it and...

...and...

Violet thought Cassie was going to drag it off, and... It didn't know exactly. Put it in its room, or pop it back to the Dursleys, or...or something. It didn't know what, it'd never gotten in trouble with Cassie yet, it didn't know what was normal, and that was almost scarier than knowing for sure it was getting locked up in the cupboard, it almost didn't want to know, but...

...but...

Cassie was hugging it.

That's what this was, Violet was sure of it. One hand around Violet's back, and the other holding its head, and it could feel skin against its forehead, smooth cloth against its face, one of Cassie's breasts was getting kind of smooshed by Violet's shoulder. The hand on its head wasn't staying still, fingers slipping into its hair, starting near its forehead and brushing back, soft and slow, and...

Violet's throat almost hurt, the air like a rock in its throat growing bigger, it couldn't breathe, and was it cold before? Because it felt very warm all of a sudden...

"It's okay, darling," Cassie muttered, her breath fluttering Violet's hair at the top of its head a little. "You're not in trouble. And even if you were, no matter what happens, I will never send you back there. You hear me?" Cassie's arm tightened around it a little, fingers digging into the back of its head — not hard, it didn't hurt, but... "Never."

It was hard to talk, somehow even more than before. (Uncle Vernon hated it when it cried.) It took a little bit, but Violet pushed it out, said, "But they saw." Its voice was thin and croaky, but it got it out, at least...

"Oh, darling, that's fine! It's okay if they see, that's nothing to worry about. Here, look." Cassie leaned a little away, Violet blinked its eyes open to look up at her — couldn't see well, blurry and some of its hair was in the way, but it was told to look so it looked. Only a few inches away, Cassie smiled at it, blinked her eyes closed, just for a second. An odd ripple crossed over her face, and by the time she opened her eyes again she looked different. Her face was mostly the same — maybe a little bit narrower, her eyes a little bigger, her skin a couple shades paler — but her hair was totally different, and also not hair a normal person could have, red and orange and yellow, bits of it all mixed up, like fire.

Without really thinking about it, Violet reached over to lift a little bit of it away from Cassie's shoulder, watching how the reds and oranges mixed together. This was really pretty, actually, Violet wondered how Cassie did that. (It was really complicated, Violet had to picture something to do it, and it didn't think it could do this.) Also, Cassie's eyes were a deep purple now, and Violet was pretty sure eyes couldn't be purple either.

"See?" Cassie said, smiling. "Nothing to worry about. It's okay if people see you change, Violet. It can be kind of creepy, seeing a metamorph do accidental changes like this, but accidents happen sometimes, it's nothing to be ashamed of. Okay?"

Its eyes dropping down to its knees, Violet nodded, the motion uneven and awkward, still too stiff. "Okay." Really, it should have known Cassie wouldn't get angry about it the same way the Dursleys did — Cassie wasn't going to punish it for being a freak, obviously, she was a freak too...

"Do you want to change back? Do you need a mirror?"

"Yes, please."

Cassie didn't leave to get a mirror, she just leaned back a bit — Violet shivered a little when Cassie let go of it, feeling...it didn't know, exactly, shaky and just weird — and made one with a little flick of her wand. Oh jeez, no wonder Cassie said it could be creepy, Violet's face was crooked, that looked really weird. Violet focused for a second (click), and that was fixed. Its hair had blotches of green and orange in it, like it'd been splashed with paint, and also was all different lengths, short here and long there at random, another second (click) and it fixed that. Its skin had also gone kind of blotchy, but Violet couldn't actually see everywhere to be sure where it was, so it just made everything the same colour...but skin wasn't normally the same colour, so it took another few seconds to add more pinkish and tannish bits here and there, and that looked about right — or not obviously, creepily wrong, at least. (It was probably still the wrong colour in places under its clothes, but it could fix those later.) It checked its hands quick, and oh jeez, its left wrist was the wrong shape, fix that (click)...

Disheveled black hair, check. Intensely green eyes, check. It could never tell if its face was exactly the same as it was before, but it looked familiar, so that would do. It shifted around in place a little, and it felt like everything was working right, so it didn't think it messed anything up. It was fine, it thought.

"There, done." Violet looked down at its knees again, Cassie's eyes too sharp and warm for it to look at too long.

"Okay. Would you like to come sit down and eat? If you want to be alone right now, you can take your dinner up to your room instead."

Violet thought about it for a moment. It was nice that Cassie was giving it a choice — if this were the Dursleys it would have been sent away and definitely wouldn't have gotten food. "Um...I'll stay." It didn't know if it would make any difference, sticking around wouldn't make it feel worse and its windows looked over the yard anyway...

Smiling some more, Cassie muttered, "Okay. Come on, up you get." Cassie took both of its hands, helping Violet stand up.

It stumbled right away, its hands clutching at Cassie's, without them she would have fallen. Oh crap, its legs were different lengths. "Wait, I have to fix..." It only took a second, when it was done Violet shuffled from one foot to the other a couple times, making sure it was fixed — it felt that click of pieces coming together the way they should, the rightness of it nice enough Violet's lips twitched with a smile, but it checked anyway just to be sure. It hated it when it got things like that wrong, it felt really, really weird. "Okay, fixed it. Sorry."

"It's okay." Cassie let go of its hands, one coming up to brush Violet's hair out of its face. (Violet glanced away, Cassie's eyes too sharp and warm for it to look too long.) "Come on, let's get you some food."

Violet followed after her, trying to ignore the concerned and curious looks some of the kids were giving it, trying to act like everything was back to normal. Because everything wasn't back to normal, it still felt...weird. Not bad, it didn't think...maybe? It almost felt like it was shivering, but on the inside like, but not that exactly, it wasn't sure what to call that. And its throat kind of hurt, but it knew what that was (Uncle Vernon hated it when it cried), but it didn't know why, it wasn't like anything that bad happened. Almost, yes, it thought it was going to be in trouble for a minute there, but it was fine, Violet was fine...

(Violet couldn't remember the last time someone hugged it.)

It didn't know what was going on with it, feelings were weird, but it wasn't in a cupboard right now, so it thought it was actually pretty good. Hungry, though, food sounded like a great idea...

---

Some of the Irish might not be perfectly grammatical — especially the enchantment keys, and also Lasairín slurs things a little bit. That is on purpose sometimes, and also I don't speak Irish, so mistakes are definitely possible. I'm not going to be focusing on the Irish much going forward, I just did it here because it's new to Violet.

I've been working on this off and on lately, another of those too many random fic ideas I get. Despite how fucked up Violet still is currently, this is probably going to be one of the most light-hearted fics I've ever written — it's definitely going to be more cheerful than The Good War (not that that's a high bar). There's going to be a lot of weird esoteric magic bullshit involving fairies and seers and ritual magic and stuff, and metamorphs being metamorphs, so some weird gender (and eventually sex) bullshit too. With an absurdly competent ex-Auror metamorph watching over Violet, you can bet the canon plot is DOA, and that's without bringing in any of the weird shit.

I'm trying to be a little less anal about quality on this one — I started it as a thing I'd do when I was too tired to write important things, but The Good War started the same way, so who the fuck knows how that will go — but I have absolutely no idea how obvious that will be to anyone else. The next chapter is already 18k words in (omg so long why) and approaching done, but my writing has been painfully inconsistent the last several months, so I really can't guess when I'll be posting it.

Right, that's enough of my rambling. This should be interesting...