The soft summer breeze deposited her on the hilltop as gently as it was able, a few light skips bleeding off the rest of her momentum. She sang a quick thanks to the wind, marvelling in its beauty and its grace and its power — nature magic could be a fickle thing, after all, she wouldn't want it to decide they weren't friends anymore next time she needed to fly over a continent. Then, turning toward the familiar path, Castalia Lovegood started off for her brother's house.
She'd hardly gone three steps when she felt it. Magic, belonging to a person, bright and hot, yet feeling somehow distant, calm and smooth, inhumanly temperate. As peculiar and contradictory as it was, she'd been in contact with this particular soul more than enough to recognise it.
So she wasn't at all surprised, on reaching the path curving between the low hills of the Devon countryside, to find her niece sitting on the fence, idly kicking her feet, waiting. "Luna. Here I thought I'd actually catch you two out for once."
"Hello, Auntie." Luna didn't sound at all surprised to see her, appearing within a short walk of her home unannounced. (But then, Luna was hardly ever surprised by anything.) She hopped off her perch, her diaphanous white dress trailing a second behind her, started skipping along to Cassie's side. "I didn't tell Daddy you're coming. He'll be happy to see you. He's been very busy lately — we've been trying to confirm the rumors that Saoirse Ghaelach are going to replace the Man Behind the Curtain with Fionnabhair at the World Cup. Of course, they don't know that he's already been replaced by the Rotfang Conspiracy. Or possibly tempted into doing their bidding for gold. There's niffler blood in the House of Fudge, you know. Anyway, Daddy says it shouldn't make much difference, Saoirse will replace him either way, if he can confirm the rumors. So of course it's a great deal of pressure. A distraction will be good for him."
"Right." The girl's soft, absent voice was already putting her off, Cassie tried to suppress her discomfort, and probably didn't do very well. Certainly not well enough.
Despite her best efforts, she never had managed to come to like Luna — she did feel quite terrible about it, sometimes, but she just couldn't help it. She was an adorable little thing, the soft, light colours and rounded, dramatic features of Cassie's family paired with her mother's ethereal grace. But she'd also managed to inherit both Lovegood legacies — she was obviously an empath, and while Cassie had never gotten explicit confirmation she was a Seer too it wasn't much of a leap — while also being saddled with her mother's...commitments. Any one of those gifts in isolation would perhaps be a blessing, but all three...
Cassie couldn't imagine being an empathic Seer and a servant of Innocence at the same time was at all pleasant.
The point was, the girl was damn unnerving, always had been. Cassie wanted to like her, she did, but...she just made it so bloody difficult. It wasn't Luna's fault, of course — she couldn't help what she was, not really. It wasn't even entirely about her, sometimes. Sometimes, she just reminded Cassie too much of her mother, and that...
Cassie would never forgive Pandora for sacrificing her niece to Gelach. She understood why she'd done it, even respected it in a way, knew she hadn't truly had much of a choice. But feelings were often irrational like that.
The girl was giving her a wide, unblinking stare, somehow all too knowing — but then, she probably knew exactly what was going through Cassie's head at the moment, or at least the general feeling of it. So Cassie pushed her unease and old grudges aside as best she could, tried to smile. "So, I haven't been in Britain for a while. What have I missed?"
Cassie couldn't quite hold in a chuckle at the exasperated, almost harried look crossing Luna's face.
By the time they made it up to the Rookery, Luna had rambled on a good few minutes, mostly about what had been going on with her at Hogwarts. (Cassie did keep up with the Quibbler and the Herald, there was no need to fill her in on things that had made the papers.) Most of it was, of course, inconsequential — the lives of teenagers did tend to be, no matter how it might seem at the time — though a couple things did jump out at her. It was bloody obvious that Luna was having serious troubles, especially surrounding her Patron, which was as interesting as it was concerning. She meant, it had taken a literal war to get Pandora to drift from Innocence, that Luna was starting to so early, she really must not be suited to Gelach. Not that Cassie hadn't already known that.
Also, Luna didn't go into very much detail, and likely didn't know enough to recognise it for what it was in any case, but that diary she described that had been possessing the little Weasley girl the year before sounded an awful lot like a horcrux. Cassie had some experience with the vile things herself, and... Well, Dumbledore was bloody lucky no one had died, Ginevra was lucky to have gotten out the other side with her sanity...mostly intact, anyway. And that wasn't even getting into the implications to Voldemort having made a horcrux such as that. She'd already known he was still around, of course — the last few years she'd caught wind of some very peculiar rumours — but the particulars of this case, this diary sounded oddly...expendable. Which suggested he'd made multiple of the things.
On the one hand, that was just absolutely insane, but on the other, this was Voldemort they were talking about here. She couldn't say she was surprised.
And she was pretty sure Luna had implied at one point that the new Black heiress — the same one who'd invited her to participate in judging this bloody Tournament in the first place — was a black mage. It was possible Cassie was reading too much into it but, well, that wouldn't be particularly surprising either, would it?
The Rookery was much as she remembered it in its structure, but the colouring and the decoration were rather different, especially on the inside. The kitchen had been entirely repainted, the cabinets and the walls and even the ceiling covered in the greens and browns of a forest, spotted with flowers yellow and blue — they were rendered with enough detail and depth it was a little disorienting, Cassie's hip hit the lip of a counter in passing, nearly tripped over one of the chairs. As they made for the stairs up, she spotted a pair of brightly-coloured birds alight on one of the branches, hop about for a moment, before flying off again, disappearing behind one of the windows. It was only then she noticed the entire thing was animated, the branches and leaves subtly swaying, the motion slight enough it hadn't been obvious at first glance.
Was that Luna's work? It didn't seem like the sort of thing Xeno would do — as eccentric as he could be at times, he had a rather ascetic bent when it came to such things, far too practical. (The consequences of an impoverished childhood, she assumed, despite her relative success she was much the same.) Just, it was very well done, especially considering she hadn't even started her third year of schooling yet. Of course, she had already known the girl was talented, she was impressed all the same.
Years ago now, shortly after their parents had moved on and left the house to him, Xeno had knocked out a few walls and converted what had once been the living room and the dining room into what passed for the Quibbler's satellite office and publishing house. (The old site in Charing was still used, of course, Xeno just preferred to work out of here.) Mother's enchanting was obviously still holding up — despite the walls being angled slightly inward, this level was larger than the ground floor — which meant Xeno must have done some work on the place himself, those walls would certainly have been integrated into the ward scheme. In fact, his workspace was larger than it'd been last time Cassie had been here: Xeno and Pandora had been using the bedroom, but it was gone now, the place it'd been taken up with shelves, stacks of references, a worn recliner.
She idly wondered where the hell Xeno slept. When they'd been children, they'd shared the little room on the top floor, but that was Luna's now last she'd checked. As strange as the two of them could be, she somehow doubted they were sharing it. Probably added another floor above or below, she guessed, that shouldn't be particularly difficult for him.
Xeno heard the two of them coming, started talking before they were even all the way up the stairs. "There you are, Moonbeam, I was just thinking of—" Sitting at his distressingly messy desk, he cut off the moment he looked up. "Cassie? What are you doing here?"
Jerking to a halt in the middle of the room, Cassie brought a hand over her heart, forcing out a breathy scoff. "Three years away, and that's what I get? And I thought you loved me, how cruel."
Sarcasm, obviously — he was up and across the room with his arms flung around her seconds later, light laughs ringing through her head. "I just didn't think you'd be in Britain!" He pulled back to arm's length, grinning at her. "Ah! We're getting old, but I'm still not used to you being all grown up." Before letting go, he ruffled her hair, the unbound ear-length strands tossed all over the place, over her eyes.
Cassie straightened it as much as she could without a mirror on hand, pouting up at him. Which only made him grin wider. "Honestly, Xeno, I'm not that much younger than you."
"Still, you must allow me my moments, I'm afraid. What are you doing in Britain, though? Didn't I read you were going to be in the open in Kolamba?"
"Yeah, I withdrew." Which a couple of her sponsors had been less than happy about. Not that it really mattered — she'd pulled out early enough it wouldn't affect her rating, and their irritation with her was pointless, considering they weren't willing to actually drop her. Especially with what she was doing instead.
A rather odd, almost tense look crossed Xeno's habitually cheerful face. "Really?" Couldn't blame him for the surprise, Cassie broke her commitments very rarely. "I wouldn't think there's anyone in Britain, at least none who need killing badly enough for you to break your word."
Luna, she noticed, looked extremely uncomfortable at the reminder of Cassie's more...controversial hobby. But Xeno so off-handedly referring to her history of hunting down the worst criminal dark mages the world over just made Cassie laugh, her voice sounding light and delighted to her own ears. "You might be surprised. But, no, that's not why I'm here. I was invited to be one of the judges for the revival of the Triwizard coming up."
"So you'll be in the country all year, then?"
"Looks like it. You wouldn't happen to have a sofa or something for me to crash on?"
Xeno chuckled, taking her up in another tight hug instead of answering.
Within a few minutes, Xeno, happily chattering on about current events in Britain and how exactly he'd been twisting it all into satirical code fit to print, was leading her back down into the kitchen — he had been thinking about getting lunch already, apparently. (Which was sort of odd, given it was nearly three in the afternoon, but Xeno had been forgetting to properly manage himself for longer than Cassie could remember.) He'd had tea going for a little bit — not tea tea, one of those odd, flowery tisanes Dad had introduced them too, she honestly didn't even know what was in it — pasties on a warming plate just starting to steam, when he moved way from the political and back into the personal. "By the way, have you dropped in on Mother yet?"
Cassie scowled at Xeno's back; tending to the tea, he didn't see it. Luna definitely did though, gazing steadily at her, absent yet somehow disapproving. "No, and I wasn't planning on it."
"She has been asking after you, you know."
"I'm sure she has, and yet I fail to care."
"Cassie, I really think you should—"
"And I think you should really shut up right now."
"Honestly, I don't see why the both of you have to be so stubborn about this. It's been, what, fifteen years now? Can't we just—"
Cassie was rescued from having to suffer this conversation once again by the door outside slamming open, hard enough it struck the opposite wall, rattling for a moment. "I'm sorry, Xeno, you mind if I stay—" Their guest — a girl about Luna's age, though rather taller and fitter, with a freckled face and bright red-orange hair — cut off the instant she spotted Cassie. "Oh, er... If this is a bad time, I can..."
"Nonsense!" The note of exasperated disappointment had vanished from Xeno's voice, and he turned a brilliant grin on the girl. "The more the merrier, I always say. Luna darling, put another pie on for Ginny."
"Oh, no, I er..." But her half-hearted protest was too late, Luna had already gotten out another pasty, a warming charm speeding it along. The girl huffed, rolling her eyes. "You do know it's the middle of the afternoon, right? I have already eaten. Like, two hours ago."
"Is it?" Xeno glanced around the room, as though looking for a clock on the walls — there wasn't, of course, why would there be? With a shrug, he dismissed the subject, turned back to the tea.
Luna was now staring at Ginny, somehow seeming more focused than normal, an almost uncharacteristic sharpness to her eyes. She glanced back at Cassie quick, then back, her head tilting slightly. "This isn't a bad time, Ginevra. My aunt Cassie just dropped by, is all." There was a forced casual tone to her voice — a patently false one, Luna was perhaps the worst actor Cassie had ever met. (Gelach's influence, she assumed, Innocence wasn't given toward deception as a rule.)
The girl jumped, turned to stare at Cassie, eyes almost comically wide. "You... You're Castalia Lovegood."
"Yup." Cassie wiggled her fingers, smirking. "Nice to finally meet you, I've heard nice things, et cetera and so forth."
Ginny just kept staring, face blank with...shock? wonder? Couldn't tell for sure, not that the distinction particularly mattered — the girl clearly didn't know what to do with this in either case. Not that Cassie was entirely sure what to do with Ginny either. As soon as she stepped further into the kitchen, enticed toward the table with smiles and biscuits, it became all the more clear there was something...weird, about her magic. It was dark, but...not, not really. Both dark and light, but not inherently, like Lily's had been toward the end of their schooling, but... Like a dark shadow thrown over a light core, pulling and dragging at it, but unsuccessfully, the light fighting back, sharp and hot and furious. It'd clearly been at it for a while, the shadow losing but not yet obliterated completely, still a frozen weight upon her soul.
It took a long moment, picking at the edges of her mind (lightly enough most occlumens shouldn't even notice), for Cassie to come up with a guess. An insane guess. Luna had said the horcrux had been possessing Ginny...but if it'd been possessing her when it was destroyed...
That might be a new one on Cassie. She wasn't certain she'd ever heard of someone subsuming a horcrux before. Well, someone else's horcrux. Instinctively, of course, she doubted Ginny had actually studied Subsumation, but still. She had no idea what that might do to a person. Theoretically, it wasn't impossible the horcrux could have taken Ginny over completely, but it was clear that wasn't happening, Ginny's stubborn assertion of her own identity powerful enough to overwhelm the vile thing. But she would certainly be changed by the process, making her harder, sharper.
Making her burn all the brighter.
Drawing a fair bit of power, but not forming it into any particular spell, she let it just float out into the air around her, slowly filling the room with light magic, thick and warm and soft. The girl immediately reacted, some of the stiffness going out of her shoulders, her own magic rising to meet that on the air, like seeking like, but with a hint of...not desperation, exactly, but a furious drive all the same, unrelenting.
Cassie smiled. She couldn't help it — it wasn't every day she got to meet a future warrior for the Light.
"You know, I always did like it out here."
It took some effort for Cassie to force her eyes open, made all too comfortable by softening and warming charms, fading afterglow pulling her into sleep. "Hmm?"
"There aren't many places like this in the muggle world anymore, you know. There are a few old growth forests here and there, but the one I've been to in Britain felt..." Lily had sat up, gazing out into the woods around them, a soft smile on her face. "They're managed, you know, they're not let to grow naturally anymore. This just feels...different."
Wilder, she meant. Cassie wasn't surprised it would pull at Lily like this — Artemis did like her too, after all. "Yeah. I do like it out here. Sometimes, I just have to..."
Lily smiled. "Get away?" From civilization, she meant, from the person she had to be back at Hogwarts.
There wasn't really anything to say to that, so Cassie just hummed in agreement. She looked up, searching out the sky between the cover of greens and browns — it was changing colour already, starting to tinge yellow and orange with approaching sunset. Maybe it was better Lily had kept her from drifting off. Cassie had brought her out here to introduce her to the wilderfolk, but her usual friends hadn't shown up at their meeting spot. Too wary with a stranger about, she assumed, she should have warned them ahead of time. While waiting, they'd gotten into a meandering discussion about high magic, as often happened when they had nothing better to do. Which had eventually progressed into snogging, and then shagging, as usually happened when they had nothing better to do.
The point was, Cassie had lost track of time. "We should think about getting back up to the castle." Not that the forest at night would be dangerous for them, they could take care of themselves, but they would certainly be missed. Lectures and detentions were so tedious.
"That's not really what you want." Lily turned, moving to straddle Cassie's hips, leaning over her, until deep red hair cut off the forest around them, all Cassie could see the brilliant smirk on her lips, the eager light in her eyes. "We could stay here, you know. Leave everything behind, and just stay, just the forest and Magic and the two of us. Forever."
Cassie smiled, and— She stopped. "I'm dreaming." She might have gone on for a while without noticing, but she remembered, this wasn't what had happened that night. (Lily had sighed and agreed, they'd spent the next few minutes trying to track down their clothes — she was pretty sure they never had found Lily's knickers, she'd been a bit annoyed about that.) But, despite the fact that she somehow hadn't remembered until just now that Lily had been dead for nearly thirteen years, she felt all too...awake for this to be a normal dream.
Oh, she knew what was happening. She smirked. "We must stop meeting like this, Artemis."
Not-Lily's face scrunched into an all-too-adorable pout. "Oh, poo." She sat back again, her arms crossing over her chest. "How do you always figure it out so quickly?"
"The escape-your-responsibilities-into-the-wilds thing is sort of a dead giveaway." Cassie propped herself up on her elbows, careful to not jostle her too much. With a conscious effort to ignore the sight of a very naked teenage Lily sitting on her, Cassie ticked up an eyebrow. "If you're trying to fool me, maybe don't pick someone who's been dead for over a decade."
Artemis pouted again.
"Though, I'm still not sure what the point would be. Are you trying to get in my pants?" Artemis did pop into her dreams on occasion, more often than not as one former lover or another, which was just sort of...weird. In fact, Cassie was pretty sure she had shagged the goddess at some point, she didn't always remember her Artemis dreams very well.
With a coy sort of smile, Artemis purred, "What, don't you like me?"
Cassie had to laugh at that — Artemis had been her first friend, she'd been around longer than Cassie could remember. (She distinctly recalled that her mother had thought Artemis was just an imaginary friend she'd made up, she couldn't have been older than five or so for that conversation.) She didn't know why she'd attracted Artemis's attention so early, nor did she really care. It was just part of who she was, as far as she concerned, there really wasn't much point in thinking about it too much.
Actually, Cassie had nearly dedicated herself to Artemis, a long time ago. She'd considered it very seriously for a time, from the ages of nine to twelve or so, and the idle thought still cropped up time to time even now. She didn't think she ever would, if only because, honestly, formally committing herself would change very, very little. She couldn't imagine how she could live a more...Artemis-ish life than she did already, so it hardly mattered.
"Mm." Not-Lily smiled at her for a moment, the expression warm and tolerant. "But no, Lily's just been on my mind lately. I did like her, you know."
She did. She'd introduced them, in fact, the Imbolc of her third year at school — Cassie had played a large part in sparking Lily's interest in high magic in the first place. She was never certain whether she should feel guilty for that or not. Lily had mostly targeted people who deserved it, but she'd been growing increasingly...problematic, toward the end. (Artemis hadn't stopped liking her, so Cassie was probably just thinking about it too hard.) "Why? She's been dead for ages now."
"In your world, maybe — there are more than a few where she's still around. But even here..." Artemis smiled. "...people aren't always as far away as they might seem."
Did... Did Artemis mean that metaphorically, or...? She meant, Cassie was pretty sure that if Lily had insured herself against death somehow she would have heard of it by now. Lily was certainly capable of doing something like that, but... "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Now now, love, you know better than that — that would be telling." The teasing smirk faded away after a moment, replaced with something more solemn. "But I did actually have a reason for coming to you tonight."
That's funny, so far as she could tell Artemis never had a reason for dropping by. Unless there was a particularly awful person she wanted her to assassinate, anyway. "Oh? Who am I killing this time?"
"Oh, no one. It's about your sweet little niece."
Cassie couldn't quite keep in a scowl. As wildly different as they might seem, Artemis and Gelach were technically Aspects of the same Power — Youth, Innocence, Truth, whatever, theirs was particularly hard to define. There was no way Artemis wanting to speak to her about Luna could end well.
Not that she was concerned Artemis would want her to, she didn't know, do anything bad to Luna. Artemis was one of the more violent of her kind among the Light, but it was violence with a very particular purpose. She was an odd, contradictory goddess in some ways, many people she'd spoken to had difficulty wrapping their head around it all. She was Innocence, but not the gentle, wholesome sort of Innocence people usually thought of — hers was wild and unrestrained, primal, the "innocence" of untouched wilderness, the "innocence" of humanity uncorrupted by social conditioning and expectations. (She also had a soft spot for children more generally, but that was harder to fit into the narrative.) Unlike many other Aspects, who demanded their dedicants exemplify the shade of the human experience they represented, Artemis instead called her servants to preserve it. To defend it against those who threatened it, by means of violence if necessary.
Artemis was peculiar among the other Aspects of Innocence in that her dedicants, more often than not, were motivated into her service due to a loss of innocence. To a degree, anyway — Cassie had no doubt that, had she submitted to the commitments and routines of ordinary society, Artemis would have lost much of her interest in her.
She'd approved of Cassie's ardent refusal to bow to her mother's expectations for her, her refusal to marry, no matter the conflict it'd caused within her own family. She approved of her nomadic life, flitting from one city to another, one country to another, her only commitment to make enough appearances at dueling tournaments and the like to keep her sponsors happy, so she could support herself, despite the worldliness, the disillusionment it'd left her with. She approved of the personal relationships she had kept, intense and wild but fleeting, fluttering in and out of their lives like a bird uncaged, despite, you know, all the sex. She approved of her hobby, no matter how thoroughly she'd washed her hands in blood.
Cassie might seek out conflict, might murder on the regular, but so long as doing so shielded others from the horrors of the world Artemis would always approve.
No, she didn't fear Artemis would want her to harm Luna, she'd never ask Cassie to harm a child. But she didn't doubt for a second that Artemis would ask Cassie to kill for her, if she thought it necessary. And Cassie didn't doubt for a second she would do it, if she thought it necessary, she wouldn't even hesitate — no matter how much her brother and Luna would both fear and despise her for it.
"What about Luna?"
"You don't need to look quite so anxious, love. It's nothing bad. Our little Moonchild is going to come wake you up in a moment here. She needs your advice, you see, desperately. And you're going to give it to her, as best and honestly you can." Artemis said it casually enough, but Cassie recognised the subtle tone of command on her voice.
A completely unnecessary command — when had she ever refused to do whatever Artemis asked her to? — but all right then. "Okay, but, why are you bothering to tell me this? Just doesn't seem like your business, is all..." Not to mention Cassie wasn't exactly likely to turn Luna away...
With a smile touched by a hint of sadness, Artemis said, "You'll see. Here she comes now. Good luck, Cassie." She leaned forward, leaving a light, quick kiss on her lips.
Before Cassie could decide how the fuck she was supposed to respond to a bloody goddess borrowing the form of an old lover randomly kissing her, something crossed the edge of her palings, adrenaline shocking her into wakefulness. In a blink she was sitting up in a shadowy room, after a few seconds recognising it as the new bedroom Xeno had made for himself in the basement. She'd protested, but he'd insisted she take his bed, relegating him to that recliner in his office. (She would have been fine with sharing, but her palings gave him a headache, and she simply couldn't sleep without them anymore, force of habit.)
Luna stood in the doorway, her nightgown almost glowing in the darkness, frozen some steps away, stiff and startled. Staring back at her, eyes wide, almost looking afraid.
Which...might have something to do with how Cassie's wand had sprung into her hand, turned to level on the intruder before she'd even fully woken up. (Force of habit.) "Oh, Luna," she said, dropping her hand back to the bed. "Sorry about that, I'm just a bit jumpy, I guess." She had good reason to be, she couldn't count how many times someone had tried to kill her in her sleep. "Did you need something?"
"Yes." Wavering for a moment, Luna finally stepped further into the room, drifting with that floating gait of hers over to sit on the edge of the bed. "I can't talk to Daddy about this sort of thing. He doesn't understand high magic the way we do."
Oh. Well, that was true — Xeno was far more open to the true nature of Magic than most of the Light in Britain, but it wasn't a particular area of interest of his, and he hadn't much personal experience in it. Just vicariously through Cassie and Pandora, really. "I'm not actually a white mage, you know—" At least, she didn't think she was? Artemis wasn't one for formality, she couldn't be certain. "—but I'll help however I can. Is this about your Patron?"
Honestly, Cassie couldn't decide if that would be a good thing or not. Luna would certainly be happier out from under Gelach, but the only way to do that without causing serious problems would be to transfer Luna to another Aspect of the Light, which would be...complicated. That would require a true ritualist. Cassie had some experience with ritual, of course, but it wasn't her speciality. And she couldn't think of one she knew who might be talented enough to pull it off that she actually trusted with her niece.
"Mm, not directly. There's this boy at school."
...What?
"Can someone be Dark and a good person at the same time?"
"Er..." It took a moment for Cassie to suppress her surprise and confusion — a dedicant of Gelach was pretty much the last person she'd expect to have boy troubles — before she could actually manage a response. "I suppose that depends. In general, though, yes. When it comes down to it, most people aligned with the Dark aren't that different than those with the Light. Our attachments to Magic do influence our personalities to a degree, in different ways, but people are still people. All groups have all sorts.
"Those with the Dark might be more inclined toward selfish or destructive impulses, but exactly what that looks like varies quite a lot. They can still be good people. In fact, some of my best friends have been declared for the Dark." Feeling a suspicious frown on her own face, Cassie said, "Why do you ask?"
"What if they're more than just Dark?" There was an odd tension about Luna, an intensity, making her seem almost fragile, sitting there on the edge of the bed, so young and so vulnerable. It almost hurt to look at her. (Cassie had far too much empathy for suffering children, she entirely blamed Artemis.) "Can you ever trust a black mage?"
"Ah... Well, that depends, doesn't it? Not all black mages are the same, there's plenty of variety there."
"But they're the enemy."
Cassie tried to hold in a sigh, and completely failed — dammit, Pandora, what had she been telling this kid? "No, Luna, they aren't. Portraying all the Dark as fundamentally opposed to all the Light is a massive oversimplification, and a needlessly aggressive one at that."
An unfairly adorable pouty frown twisting her lips, Luna said, "What's aggressive about it?"
"Are you telling me you can't see the inherent violence in a group saying their members are inherently good, and all outsiders are inherently evil? Seems obvious to me." If nothing else, the Twentieth Century had proved an extended lesson in the problems with that sort of thinking. "This Turkish ritualist I know, she says people tend to think of the Light and the Dark as distinct forces in opposition or, somewhat more neutrally, as two sides of a coin. But, she says, the true nature of Magic is more like a rainbow, a spectrum of experience with innumerable shades of expression. The tendency to split it up into pieces is a consequence of the human drive to define and categorise things, not a reflection of reality. Exactly what the Light and the Dark even are can't be unambiguously defined, so, making broad, universal statements of the people aligned with each is...well, impossible. The world simply doesn't work like that."
That pout was only getting stronger. "But, you're an acolyte of Innocence."
Cassie smiled. "I like to think that, without the corruptive influence of certain irredeemable individuals, we can all learn to coexist. When you think about it, that is sort of naïve too, don't you think? I just come at it from a different angle than Pandora. She saw conflict as an inevitable consequence of the fundamental structure of reality — black and white, simple. I see it as the result of individual choice and circumstance — shades of grey, but more optimistic, I would argue. We can never be rid of the Dark, and we shouldn't want to, but we can learn to get along, I think."
"What if they say they're trying to help you?" Luna had blurted it out, seemingly without thinking, cringing a little the next instant, looking away and shrinking in on herself a bit. "If they say they can..."
"Luna, what the hell is going on?"
The girl glanced at her quick, a twinkle of tears flickering in the darkness, before turning away again. "I don't... There's this boy at school, he... He said he can help me. Get away from Gelach." She sounded like a frightened child saying it, whispering something forbidden.
So, this was about rededicating herself, then. Roundabout way to get there, but okay. "You asked about black mages because he is one, then."
"Not yet. He said he's drawn to Mystery, but he hasn't committed himself yet."
"Oh, Mystery? Mystery is fine."
Luna started, turning a wide-eyed, surprised stare on her. "What?"
"Mystery is fine," Cassie repeated, shrugging. "Servants of Mystery are generally unconcerned with earthly matters — it's very likely that, if he's offering to help you with a rededication, the only thing he wants out of it is the experience of the magic itself. I wouldn't be surprised if some Aspect of Chaos put him up to it, Mystery's people often deal with other Powers on the regular, but that needn't be nefarious either. Chaos tends not to approve of the way some Aspects, like Gelach, just take dedicants—" Luna flinched. "—so the only interest Chaos would have would be in giving you a choice in the matter. Righting a wrong, as they see it. Well, certain Aspects might get a kick out of starting a feud between the gods, but they're generally wise enough to not actually do it, and targeting so...passive a goddess as Gelach wouldn't do much to that end anyway.
"So, I guess what I'm saying is, if this Mystery boy is offering to help you, it's very possible the offer is genuine. And he might even have the knowledge and skill to pull it off. Again, people are people — if you think you can trust him personally, you should do it."
All through her little speech, Luna had been watching her, a frown slowly growing as she went. "You sound like...you like Mystery and Chaos."
Cassie almost laughed. "Luna, sweetie, you just said I'm an acolyte of Artemis. Artemis is one of the three faces of Hecate. Youth, Wisdom, Mystery, and Death are more closely linked than you might think."
Her face twisting with a remarkably unpleasant scowl, given that this was Luna, she muttered, "You and Lyra Bellatrix say the same thing. It's...lies told to children." Cassie wasn't entirely sure what she meant by that, but it probably didn't matter so much, given she changed the subject immediately.
The next couple minutes were much lighter, just a little bit more about how the Light–Dark divide wasn't nearly as much of a rift as it's usually depicted. More from a theory angle than a personal one, less immediate. Finally, with an airy thanks and an apology for bothering her, Luna stood up again, drifted her way out of the room, disappearing into the night.
Cassie flopped onto her back, letting out a long sigh. That had been... It could have gone worse, much worse, but she still...
Just, she needed somewhere else to stay. Less than twenty-four hours at her brother's house, and she was already so bloody tired.
Saoirse Ghaelach — The Gaelic (Irish/Scottish) nationalist movement in magical Britain. The name is a reference to the real-life (but defunct) far-left Irish Republican group Saor Éire. The comparison isn't meaningful, just needed a name.
Fionnabhair — Quibbler codename for Síomha Ní Ailbhe, one of the younger members of the leadership of Saoirse Ghaelach, and a recurring OC of mine. —Lysandra
(You would not believe how much time we spend trying to come up with Quibbler Names. And Quibbler BS in general. It's kind of ridiculous. —Leigha)
Kolamba — Colomba, the city in Sri Lanka
So, yeah, that random manic episode over Easter is actually gonna have long-term consequences. Who knew? Exactly what happened will be explained more in a later scene, but it's not super important at the moment.
What is important is how awesome Cassie Lovegood is, I mean come on. —Lysandra
