Yeah, okay, I guess we can have a couple lighter moments. When I look back on that month, it's less a haze of happiness, and more a series of snapshots, an absolutely perfect moment here or there — whether it was just a few seconds skipping down the stairs to the Great Hall without a care in the world, or watching the sunrise hovering over the lake on a crisp, clear morning, every tower and blade of grass frosted and glittering, or an afternoon at Ancient House spent sparring with the younger Death Eaters, or lying beside Evans, feeling her heartbeat against my own chest, listening to the sound of her breathing as she fell asleep in my arms.
There's one night, though, that stands out as especially good in my memories of that month, one night that was absolutely perfect from beginning to end, no luck potions or uppers required, just Magic and Fate and the Universe conspiring to give me what seemed at the time to be perhaps the single best day in the history of ever.
The Saturday after the new moon found Aster down by the lake, sprawled out on a blanket with Evans, letting her practise legilimency, or try to. Aster kept distracting her with light-painting doodles and snippets of poetry and nibbling little kisses and ideas of things they could do which were not sitting around practising mind magic.
If you really want to practise interrogating me, Evans, I think there should be knives involved. Caloris jinxes applied to sensitive spots. Definitely ropes, at least. Making me sit still without tying me up is just cruel, she thought, pushing an image of a much more interesting approach to questioning her about the first time she'd met Maeve into Evans's consciousness.
It was a little weird, Aster thought, how curious Evans was about Aster's life outside of Hogwarts. Not bad weird, but most of the time she'd practised trying to hunt down a specific memory in Aster's mind she'd set targets for herself that were things outside of school. The first time she'd spoken to a normal, muggle Londoner; negotiating with Mister Larson who owned the second-hand shop where she'd acquired all of her muggle clothes to work in the shop for a few weeks the summer after third year to earn them because she didn't have a muggle pound to her name; the first time she'd stubbornly decided that she wasn't going home, she was going to sleep on a bench in a park instead; the biggest fight she'd had with her mother and Arcturus before she'd gone and broken the Covenant, Yule of fourth year, when it had first been suggested that she (Sirius, then) should start considering potential marriage alliances (she'd run away to Ancient House that time — it had been before her relationship with Bella had gotten that bad, and it was a hell of a lot less comfortable sleeping on a bench in January than in July); the time last summer she'd accidentally picked up a shy gay bloke outside of a bar who'd thought she was a prostitute...which she hadn't figured out until after, when he'd awkwardly asked how, er, this worked, like...with the money? (They'd both been very confused. In hindsight, it was hilarious.)
Though in all fairness, Evans had been looking for Aster's first time when she managed to stumble across a snippet of her haughtily informing Potter that she'd only been mistaken for a prostitute once (a few weeks later, after she'd broken the Covenant and run away to the Potters'), and then decided to see if she could figure out if it was true. She hadn't specifically been looking for the last muggle Aster had shagged, or something. That would be much weirder.
At the moment, she was stuck in a loop of sex-related memories. She probably could've escaped, if she'd caught that suggestion about varying her interrogation technique — the idea was fairly closely associated with several memories of Bella teaching Aster and Cissy to resist interrogation, and anything involving Bella was related to about half of her other memories. But she'd started out with the encounter where Aster had wrenched Maeve's arm, manhandling her into a different position, because that was the only image of Maeve she really had to go off of, and Aster didn't like remembering accidentally hurting people she liked. She could've shunted Evans off into fantasies of intentionally hurting people in altogether sexier ways, but that wouldn't really be fair, she'd never find her way back to Maeve if Aster did that. (Fantasies weren't really connected to memories in the same way as other memories.)
Instead she'd led her into a memory of...not the first time she and Maeve had shagged, but maybe the third? fourth? The one where Maeve had suggested cautiously that maybe they could do this thing that upyri sometimes did, and she promised she'd be careful not to cut Sirius too badly, but...maybe? Aster had answered without thinking ("Please, don't."), and Maeve had gotten really adorably shy, trying to backpedal because oh, crap, I just freaked out my human lover, which had led Aster to begin giggling uncontrollably. ("I mean, yes, Maeve, I'd love to play with knives. That sounds really fucking hot. Just— You don't have to be careful. Don't worry about hurting me, is what I meant to say...")
And that had led into a few different memories of people thinking that maybe they'd been too forward with her (mostly fourth- and fifth-years, when she'd been a third-year), and her assuring them in the most direct possible terms that no, they hadn't, she wouldn't be snogging them if she didn't want them to touch her, and if she wanted them to stop, she was bloody well capable of stopping them, but she had no interest in doing so. So, where were we?
From that point, she hadn't really had to try to keep Evans on any particular path, since one memory of a casual encounter in an abandoned classroom led easily to the next...and honestly, she'd probably spent almost as much time in abandoned classrooms as non-abandoned classrooms the past few years. She did make a point of weaving the memory-transitions together based on her position in them — legilimens, especially ones who weren't very good at holding themselves apart from their subject (which Evans wasn't yet, as evidenced by the fact that she found it so ridiculously overwhelming to eavesdrop on Aster), tended to experience memories from a first-person perspective. It would be more difficult for Evans to feel out the transition if Aster was doing more or less the same thing in both of them. Even with her partners changing periodically, it was still less jarring than if she were jumping around from place to place between memories.
Evans withdrew, opening her eyes to glare at Aster. "Damn it! How are you so good at this?"
"Literally years of practice, Evans." Honestly, she didn't remember learning basic occlumency, she'd been that small...
"Not occlumency! Distracting me!"
Aster sniggered. "Same answer," she drawled, letting her expression drift into a smoulder. Though I wasn't actually trying to distract you... I can be much more distracting when I'm actually trying...
Evans gave her an exasperated pout. "Do you even know how many people you've had sex with?"
Aster couldn't quite parse that tone and expression. Somewhere between amused and appalled, maybe? Some lingering muggle sensibilities slightly shocked? "Er...no? I mean, I could probably figure it out, if I went through a couple of yearbooks and my diaries for the last three years or so... Why?"
"Nothing, I'm just completely astounded by how big a slag you are. When do you even find the time...?"
"Oh, well, it helps already knowing everything through OWLs when you start school. Gives you loads of free time to study...other subjects," she said suggestively, leaning in to further distract the other girl, only to be interrupted by the heavy thump of a bookbag beside her.
"I would say get a room, but you do already have one, you know," Snape drawled, flopping down beside it. "You could use it, rather than snogging out in full view of everyone."
"But then we'd never see you," Evans said, accurately. Maybe they should use their room more often... "We've just been discussing the fact that Aster has no idea how many people she's shagged. Care to guess?"
The boy scoffed. "It's got to be in the triple digits. Hogwarts has about five-hundred students, about half of whom are old enough at any given time. About half of those are put off by her sex at any given time, or don't care to shag someone who's shagged about a quarter of the school, or are variously off limits, or not shagging anyone. But then you'd have to add back in all of the people she's managed to screw over holidays, so...maybe a hundred and thirty? a hundred and forty?"
"Sure, sounds reasonable." He'd forgotten to add in another hundred or so potential partners who would've been seventh-years when they were fourth- and fifth-years, and she'd now shagged quite a few people who hadn't been interested in Sirius, so whether they were put off by her sex wasn't as much of an issue, but she was willing to bet he was underestimating the number of people she considered off-limits and/or who weren't interested in her. Out of her former roommates, for example, she'd only ever fucked Leach. Out of her current roommates, there was Evans, obviously, and Marlene and Mary.
She'd also snogged Ellie for experimental purposes, back before she and Erin started going together. Ellie, being muggleborn, had apparently sort of expected to like boys, and not like girls? and had been very confused about her feelings for Erin. Clearly it had been necessary for her to try snogging a boy and see if she found it as much of a turn-on as Erin kissing her. The answer was no, apparently, even when said boy was as pretty as Sirius, so Aster didn't think that counted as anything.
Snape snorted. "In what universe is a sixteen-year-old having shagged well over a hundred people reasonable?"
"I'm seventeen now, and assuming you're counting oral and finger-banging back in third year — which I would, if you think half the school is old enough to be interested — that's three whole years, so what, less than one person a week, right? On average, I mean." There were obviously weeks where she didn't shag anyone at all, like when she'd been so down over Potter, in September, and weeks where she ended up at an orgy down in Hufflepuff or something, but. "That's not so many..."
"One new person every week. In addition to repeat performances." Well, obviously, but the question wasn't how many times she'd ever had sex... "You're still a slag, Black."
"Well, yes. No one's debating that. Jealous?"
"Of course not!" Pink didn't really go well with sallow.
Aster smirked broadly. "Want to make it a hundred and forty-one?" she asked, turning the smoulder on him instead.
"No," he lied (poorly).
"If you want to, I swear I won't be jealous," Evans said, which only made the poor boy go redder.
"Evans can watch, if you like." Was it possible to actually die from embarrassment? Because if so, Snape looked like he was well on his way...
"No, Aster, Sev's always been a very private person, I'm sure he doesn't want me there. I can occupy myself elsewhere, just know you have my blessing."
Snape let out a rather strangled noise, followed by, "LILY!"
"Did I just miss something? I hate being the only non-mind-reader in the room..." Not-room, whatever.
"That memory I just saw of you and B.J. a couple of summers ago." From Sirius's perspective, obviously, which meant Snape had just gotten a fully-immersive peek at one of the best blowjobs Sirius had ever gotten. Evans gave her a positively evil grin.
"Okay, wait, do you actually want me to deflower Snape? Because I was mostly teasing. I will, if you want me to," she added, turning to the Slytherin, who looked to be on the verge of having a stroke or something. Which, seriously, she'd mostly been joking about him dying of embarrassment, too. It wouldn't be nearly as funny if he actually did... "And honestly, if I were you I'd consider it, for the sake of your future partners if nothing else. It's a bit like learning to dance. You know, you want to get all the awkward, stepping-on-toes parts sorted before doing it with someone you actually want to impress."
"Sev doesn't know how to dance, either."
"Neither do you!" Snape managed to croak out. He seemed to be having trouble breathing now.
"Circe's tits, Snape, calm down before you pass out or some shite. Wait. How do neither of you know how to dance?"
"Well, when would we have needed to learn? We didn't grow up going to balls and shite like you..." Evans answered, which was reasonable, Aster guessed, just... She didn't know anyone who didn't know how to dance.
"Don't girls teach each other things like dancing just because? Ellie taught me how to salsa in third year." In exchange, Aster (Sirius) had taught Ellie to do hair-care and cosmetic charms, which was one of the more seriously un-bloke-like things she'd done relatively early on — Potter and Pete had taken her aside and explained that it was just not on for blokes to know that sort of girlie shite, even if they had grown up with Narcissa.
"Maybe, but the girls don't like me, remember?"
"Oh. Right. I should probably teach you before Bella finds out..."
"Why?"
"Because Lily Evans, muggleborn, may not have to go to balls and shite, but Asphodel de Mort, adopted daughter of Lady Black, definitely will. You have to know how to dance. And I'm a much better teacher than she is. You too, Snape. Learning to shag before you have to do it in public — or, you know, not for practice — is optional. Learning to dance isn't."
Snape tried and failed to say something, cleared his throat with a hoarse little cough, and tried again. "What if I did want to?"
"What, learn to dance?"
"No," he said, unusually subdued. Not even a you deliberately obtuse idiot tacked on the end.
Aster smirked at him. "Then I drag you back inside and we find an empty classroom, and I spend a few hours showing you what all the fuss is about."
"A few hours? You've never spent hours showing me what all the fuss is about," Evans said, all false offence.
"Well, for one thing, that is decidedly untrue, time just flies when you're having orgasms. And for another, I wasn't your first." Aster didn't really know who had been, but she also didn't really care. Probably John or Octavian or one of the other Hufflepuff blokes in the year above them. "Zee insists that if you're going to deflower a virgin, you have to do it thoroughly and skillfully, taking your time so they'll be a credit to your teaching. You can't just go around turning them into sloppy fucks with no appreciation for the art of sex, or worse, letting them think that sex really isn't all it's cracked up to be, instead of blowing their minds and setting the bar stupidly high for the next person to come along."
"Mira wasn't your first, was she?" Evans asked, apparently still annoyed she hadn't been able to figure that one out.
Aster snorted. "I wish. But no, thirteen's a bit young for her. I went to Walpurgis at the end of second year. Cissy told Bella that I was shagging anyone who would have me at some point in third, so Bella had a talk with me about sex the summer after third year, and then when Zee found out that Bella had given me a talking-to about sex she decided that she should probably give me a talking-to as well, because Bella's idea of a sex-talk includes a lot of information about interesting ways to incorporate pain into foreplay and what to do with the corpses if you have too much fun with someone, and not nearly enough about the importance of contraception and infection-prevention charms."
That startled a laugh out of Evans. "That's horrible, Aster."
Aster raised an eyebrow at her. Don't be naïve, Evans, you know exactly what kind of people Bella and de Mort are... "Also, sex is an art to Zee, like fighting is to Bella, and Bella really can't do credit to explaining the act of sex as a spiritual communion between individuals, or the importance of respecting yourself and your partners and their emotional investment in the intimacy you share, and that it's basically a sacred duty to ensure your partners are satisfied, rather than just taking your own pleasure at their expense."
That was, Aster knew, one of the things Zee really didn't like about de Mort — perhaps even the thing she disliked most about him. If sex was her art and violence was Bella's, de Mort's would be violation, or maybe degradation. Consent and his partners' satisfaction definitely weren't what one might call priorities. One might even say they detracted from de Mort's satisfaction. Bella wasn't actually an ideal partner for him despite her absolute willingness to do anything he wanted because it was practically impossible to make her uncomfortable.
"Really," Snape said, in an approximation of his usual sarcastic tone. Apparently he was more comfortable talking about sex in the abstract. (Which she kind of already knew, but.) "So it's a religious obligation to shag as many people as possible, is it?"
Aster grinned. "Well, not for me, I'm just a debauched little hedonist like that. For Zee...kind of? Though obligation suggests it's some sort of formal thing — it's not — and it's more about the quality of the sex than the quantity. You know how in low ritual, there's an exchange underlying the effect on some level?" Both Evans and Snape nodded. "Sex, according to Zee, is kind of like that. Using the mutual exchange of pleasure and satisfaction to build a connection between yourself and your partners — physical or emotional or whatever. The better and more fulfilling the sex is, the stronger and more powerful that connection is. Even if an encounter is just about the sex and you're not planning on using your partner for anything beyond sex, she still considers it a point of pride to make it good for everyone involved, and even if you don't much care about your partners, deliberately having empty, selfish, unfulfilling sex is kind of disrespectful to the act itself."
"That seems...lighter, somehow, than I would've expected from her," Evans noted.
Aster shrugged. "Yeah, well, then she turns around and leverages that connection for social influence and favours, or flat out uses blood magic to physically enthrall people or manipulate their priorities so...not exactly." And that was on top of her being unfairly good at people. Aster would be willing to bet she very rarely needed to use blood magic to get anyone to do whatever she wanted. "Anyway, my point was, Zee is pretty much the coolest person on the face of the planet, and live as art is one of the few principles she really holds to—"
"Live as art?" her sister interrupted.
"Sure. It's not just about sex, sex just happens to be Zee's art, and I respect her enough to treat it as such. It's this thing Auntie Dru was big on when we were kids — probably still is, I mean, we just never see her anymore, by the grace of the Dark — making every aspect of your life, every action, every choice, every movement and word, beautiful. Deliberate. Meaningful. Turning your life into a work of art. Even if you're just walking across a room or teaching French to the children of the half-witted barbarians your family sold you off to — Dru really doesn't like the House of Black—" That was one of the very few things they had in common. "—or getting dressed in the morning, you do it with grace and intent. You don't walk, you glide, every motion smooth and choreographed, no hesitation unless it's for emphasis. You choose your words so the cadence of your speech is something like poetry, and modulate your voice so that even deriding your students' efforts to conjugate verbs is pleasant to listen to." She smirked at Evans. "You don't just get ready for bed, you make it a performance, a dance, every pause a pose." Evans went adorably pink, recalling how very distracting Aster could be even doing something so simple as taking off her robes and un-plaiting her hair. "You take pride in whatever it is that you do, and you do it to the best of your ability, always. You don't just go shagging a virgin for your own gratification or half-arse it, you take your fucking time and make sure you teach them how to do it right.
"Besides, it's not like it's much of an imposition, making sure people enjoy themselves with me." Well, it was, kind of, insofar as she really, really wanted to find someone she could shag violently without worrying about really hurting them (or someone who was totally into her hurting them, that would be even better...), but there wasn't that much difference between holding herself back to avoid hurting people and thoroughly satisfying them. "Mutually advantageous, I believe, is the phrase."
Snape cleared his throat before trying to speak, this time. "I'll think about it."
Aster was sure he would. "In the meanwhile, though, I really should teach you how to dance. Both of you."
"I still haven't figured out how you met Maeve, though."
"We can do both. Or, well, I can do both. I suppose you can't really do either, so probably shouldn't try to do them simultaneously." ("Thank you for that vote of confidence, Aster," Evans inserted.) "I can teach Snape, though, and trap you in memories at the same time." She bounced to her feet even as she made the suggestion. "Come on, virgin-boy. Get up."
Snape scowled at her. "I have no interest whatsoever in learning how to dance, Black. I came out here to read without suffering constant interruptions from favour-seeking arses."
Aster sniggered. "You didn't actually think it would be more fun being on good terms with the baby Death Eaters, did you? And you've really picked a shite day to read anywhere near me without suffering constant interruptions, regardless of the fact that you have nothing I want." The boy groaned. "I'm bored. You're both being boring. We should do something!" she demanded, frowning down at them.
Evans gave her a lazy grin, something about her — possibly the faint mental contact she was still maintaining — suggesting that she was having Aster on when she said, "But we are doing something. I'm trying to figure out how you met Maeve, remember?"
"Evans, hiding a single specific memory from a baby legilimens isn't doing something. It's actually not doing something, specifically thinking of a particular event, and also not interesting. I met Maeve last summer while I was hanging out with the Starlighters, making amulets for some of the werewolves, you know, to hide the scars, make it easier to find work—"
"You can do that?"
Aster gave Evans a bemused frown. "Yes?"
"Why didn't Remus, then?"
"Er. Because Remy doesn't think he has a right to vanity? I don't know, I've never asked. I mean, it's not like he'd need me to do it for him, so it's none of my business, really. Anyway, I'd been hanging out for a few days, crashing with some of the wilderfolk, but some dickhead ratted me out to Arcturus and he demanded I show my face at the Keep so he could chew me out for embarrassing the House of Black by associating with the poors, even though I wasn't, actually, because no one else associates with them to notice me associating with them. He only knew because Reggie is, as we all know, a dickhead. But I was still trying to stay on speaking terms with them, so I got myself all cleaned up and took my licks and then went straight back to Starlight, still looking like a poncy arse, wearing robes that cost more than their collective rent for a year. Maeve was the first person to accuse me of just being there because it was edgy to go slumming, basically."
Honestly, Aster probably wouldn't have noticed Maeve if she hadn't started that fight. She was a plain girl — average in pretty much every way except for her eyes. She had lovely, golden eyes, which was actually pretty common for upyri, their eyes tended to be shades of brown ranging from nearly black to a bright, avian yellow. Maeve's were especially pretty, and always framed by long, darkened lashes and muggle khol to make them seem extra bright — most of the Starlighters dressed muggle, and Maeve was no exception — but she didn't draw attention from a distance with her looks. Average meant she was taller and curvier than Aster, of course, but her hair was a lank, dull brown, and her face was always pinched and tired, like so many of the Starlighters'. She even wore a troubled frown in her sleep sometimes. She was almost as wary of humans as the cats, confrontational but defensive — she'd kept her distance until Aster had 'confirmed' her suspicions that she was basically a fucking tourist, but then done her best to drive the intruder away, make it clear Aster wasn't welcome there. (Her attitude, more than anything, was what made her attractive.)
"And you went from being a poncy arse to shagging her?" Snape said, as though he couldn't believe that that was essentially exactly what she'd done.
"Not immediately. First we got into an argument about whether slumming it could be considered edgy when no one who matters knows I'm slumming. I...might have been somewhat of an arse about it because, well, I'd just gotten done making the same argument to Arcturus for about four hours — it can't be embarrassing to the Blacks that I'm slumming if no one else knows I'm there either, you know? And you know how I tend to let people slap me if I might actually deserve it?" Evans nodded. "Well, I figured implying that the Starlighters didn't matter probably qualified as deserving of a smack.
"Upyri are a lot stronger than humans, though, and she was really angry, and kind of knocked me on my arse and broke my nose. Which isn't a big deal, really. Looks terrible, with the blood and the tearing up and instant black eyes, but I don't even know how many times I've been hurt worse for talking back or refusing to do a dark spell or some shite, not important.
"And Maeve is really not good with violence. She was kind of horrified with what she'd just done, so we went from shouting at each other to me, with my clearly broken nose, trying to assure her that I was fine, in the space of about two minutes. It was completely ridiculous, I couldn't keep a straight face. She was still freaking out and trying to apologise after I healed it and changed into something less bloody and also less poncy and we ended up sitting and talking for about half the night, until it came up that I had let her hit me, no, I wasn't kidding, yes, I'm quick enough I could've blocked her, and you can have another go if you want me to prove it.
"Obviously she didn't take another swing at me, we played one of those clapping games, picking up the pace until she stopped looking all sorry and upset, and admitted that yes, I could have blocked, or at least dodged, and therefore the whole incident was my fault. So I kissed her and asked her to accept my apology for being an arse, and I'd make it up to her if she'd let me."
"And that actually worked."
Aster snorted. "Of course it worked, Evans. I'd say you can ask Maeve if— Wait, no! That's a great idea! We should go visit the Starlighters!"
"We should— Are you completely mad, Black?"
She had to think about that one for a moment. "Maybe a little. But, no, this will be fun! Well, it might end up being horribly awkward, because I don't actually know if Morgen made it to the new moon — she's like the wolves' collective grandmum, she got torn up by a new turn last moon, it was kind of iffy if she'd make it— I offered to sustain her spark until she could be healed, but—"
Evans glared at her. "Seriously, Aster? You offered to put your life on the line for this woman, and you don't even— Why didn't you tell one of them to let you know if she pulled through?!"
"You may have noticed, Evans, I have a tendency to do stupid, impulsive shite on occasion, even for people I don't actually care about. And I wouldn't have been risking my life keeping one little old lady alive for a few weeks. Anyway, she turned me down. Gave us some shite about if her number was up, she was ready to cross the river, and I mean, I'm not going to force anyone to live if they don't want to. Especially if their life is as hard and painful as Morgen's. Dunno if you know, being a werewolf doesn't get easier when you start getting old and frail.
"Oh! We should bring food!"
"Food?"
"Yes, Snape. Food. Meat. Bread. Wine. Well, beer, probably. Wine is for poncy arses. And the French. But yes, food. If Morgen died, not having to worry about where dinner's coming from tonight will cheer people up. If she's alive, it's cause for celebration. Either way, food is good. And," she added, as she realised it, "I have money again! That makes this much easier!" Well, it meant she wouldn't have to steal the wallet off some rich muggle arse, which wasn't really difficult, even without magic, it just felt a bit skeezy knowing that the House already had more money than they could possibly spend buried under London. "Come on! We're burning daylight!"
Aster had realised about half-way to the edge of the wards that being a member of the House again, and Bella being the Head now, meant that she could probably actually just ask the elves for food. They did have their own farms and greenhouses that raised nearly everything that made it to the table at Ancient House — a holdover from the days when Auntie Dru had lived there. Yes, they'd always owned farmland, but they hadn't made a point of raising all of their own food before then. Most of it had been devoted to raising crops for trade or sale.
Well, most of it still was, but.
Aster was pretty sure Druella hadn't intended to ensure that Ancient House had the resources on hand to be entirely self-sufficient, but she sort of had, and Bella liked that the estate could theoretically withstand an indefinite siege (not with all the Death Eaters there, obviously, they'd have to have access to the resources at other properties to feed literally a small town worth of people for more than a few days, but the forty or so who were generally staying there at any given time, at least), so she'd kept the 'if we can raise it here, do it' policy even after Dru left.
Which didn't really matter, aside from the fact that it meant Aster could ask the elves for a few goats and enough bread and beer for a couple hundred people on an hour's notice, and the only thing they actually needed to send out for was a couple dozen loaves of bread, because that shite took time to bake. She got them to pack up a few chickens and onions and potatoes and herbs and shite for soup, too, knocking the animals out and shrinking everything to fit in one small trunk.
It also meant she could invite Bella and Remy, though Bella was busy — she just told Evans not to let Aster do anything too stupid — and Remy was not in a party mood, Aster, which was kind of disappointing. She thought it would have been a good opportunity to introduce him to the community before asking them to just take him in, and maybe get a feel for how well he would be able to adjust to their circumstances. But if he was going to be a downer, she wasn't going to insist he come. Especially since they were going to be spending at least a few hours cooking and shite before the actual party started happening.
She was pretty sure Remy would not be amused to be dragged out of his little pit of misery just to stand around making friends with street kids and watching more competent people slaughter and butcher goats and shite that Remy would almost certainly have no idea how to do. Aster wasn't actually certain any of the Starlighters knew how to dress meat, either, but she did — she couldn't really cook, like normally, in a kitchen, but the basic turning-animals-into-food stuff and roasting meat over an open fire like they were tenting or it was the tenth fucking century, she could do — so it will be fine, Evans, I know what I'm doing!
She'd decided that goats would be good because she wasn't really sure how many Starlighters would be around, and she knew they didn't have the resources to keep meat preserved if she brought too much. But goats could eat practically anything, if they didn't want to slaughter them all they'd be able to keep a couple alive for at least a few weeks on the weeds and shite that grew in the dilapidated courtyards and overgrown public gardens within walking distance of the warehouses they used on full moons.
This seemed perfectly reasonable and obvious to Aster, but apparently not to anyone else — though she supposed, to be fair, that most of the Starlighters had lived in cities all their lives (most of them had never left London) and didn't know the first thing about killing for food in human form. (Obviously the cats and werewolves knew how to hunt as cats and wolves.) She was explaining her reasoning for the third time (the first had been to the elves and the second to Evans and Snape) when she was interrupted by Constantine, which was honestly probably a good thing. She knew she tended to get snippy when she had to repeat herself, and the older upyri bloke who had stopped her strolling into the tenement they were currently occupying — demanding to know who she was, who her friends were, and what the fuck was in the trunk — was really getting on her nerves.
"And why, exactly, do you want to know how many of us there are, human?"
"Because I need to know how many goats we're going to need!"
"Goats. You want— Why would we need goats? Why are you including yourself in— What the fuck are you— Thank the gods! Constantine!"
The werewolf, looking as exhausted as ever as he dragged himself into the corridor, frowned at them. "Frank? Black? Who are these two? What's going on?"
"Connie! Hi! This is my sister, Asphodel — de Mort's daughter, Bella just adopted her—"
"Lily is fine. Constantine, was it?" Evans offered him a hand.
He nodded, an expression of irritation and confusion intensifying as he took it. "And...?"
"And this is her pet, Severus."
"Piss off, Black!"
"Evans, Snape, this is Constantine, right hand man to the werewolf doyenne, Morgen. Er. Assuming she made it. Did she?" she asked the werewolf, biting her lip and hoping that the answer would be—
"Yes, Black." He sounded exasperated, but he couldn't seem to keep a relieved little smile to himself. "She's still weak, and the full moon's going to be hard on her, but she's mobile now, and Pulaski thinks she's going to make it."
"Good! Excellent! In that case, we're here to celebrate! We brought food!"
"There are goats in the box," Frank the Truculent Upyri Bloke informed him, sounding rather skeptical about the whole thing.
"Yes, we shrank them. So! One of the warehouses used to be a slaughterhouse, right? We can set up there, get a couple of spit-fires going, and call in everyone, let them know there's a party tonight — how many people do you think will come?"
"Um...for free food? I don't know, everyone?"
"Numbers, Constantine! I need to know how many goats to slaughter! How is this a difficult concept?!"
"How many goats did you bring?" he asked, now eyeing the box with a similar degree of skepticism as Frank the Guard.
"Four. Should be about...two-hundred pounds of meat? -ish? I don't know, I was erring on the side of too much is better than not enough, and they're goats, if we don't need them all tonight, you can save some for later."
"So you just..."
"Brought dinner, yes. How is this—"
"Aster, stop talking."
She glared at Evans. "But—"
"I said stop talking."
"Fine! Then you explain!"
Evans gave her an infuriating smirk before turning to the reception party. "Hi. Constantine, right? And...Frank, was it?" The men nodded dumbly. "I'm Lily, this is Sev. Aster was telling us about her friend Maeve—" Frank rolled his eyes — must be one of the upyri who didn't approve of fraternising with the enemy. "—and having, as I'm sure you know, only a passing familiarity with the concept of sanity, the thought occurred to her that we should come visit and that good guests bring a gift for their hosts, and why not make an event of it on the spur of the moment? This led to the idea of bringing enough food for everyone, and since she didn't know how many people would be here...I think the idea was, if she brought too much, you don't really have refrigerators, so it would be easier, logistically, to just bring living animals?"
"Yes! Exactly!"
"Also," Snape added, "I'm not entirely convinced that Black is capable of distinguishing between modern-day poverty and medieval peasant life, which is basically the Blacks' idea of a rustic holiday. Slaughtering your own meat for the table and holding a communal feast is very much the sort of thing one does in such circumstances."
"Oh, piss off, Snape! I know we're not on holiday!"
Snape sneered at her. "Do you? If I were to ask Reggie, he wouldn't tell me that this is exactly the sort of thing little Blacks do on holiday?"
"No, Reggie's idea of a holiday is a week in Cyprus or some shite. This is the sort of thing we do on survival training exercises, which he hates. Usually with like, rabbits, not goats, but it's basically the same concept. So! How many do you think we'll need, Connie? And where's Lady Em? I want to see her!"
Several hours later, the abandoned slaughterhouse was filled with the scent of roasting meat, half a dozen fascinated kittens taking turns turning the spits. A handful of older upyri women who actually knew how to cook real food had made soup and baked potatoes in the coals at the edges of their improvised fire-pits, and someone had found a drum and a flute and a violin because it wasn't a party without music. The casks had been breached and there were about a hundred people milling around, eating and laughing, relaxing and enjoying themselves for the first time in who knew how long. (Parties were a rare occasion in Starlight.)
Morgen, frail and exhausted, and clearly still hurting, sat wrapped in blankets in an armchair brought from one of their flats, smiling to see her adopted children and grandchildren safe and happy, at least for tonight.
The only person Aster had expected to see but hadn't yet was—
"I hear we have your poncy tourist arse to thank for all this," a low, laughing voice said, the speaker leaning down to kiss Aster's cheek over her shoulder.
Aster was still quicker than she was. She turned her head to catch her lips instead. She still tasted like summer — cinnamon chewing gum and cheap cigarettes. "Maeve! Hi!"
"Still weird you're a girl, now," the vampire informed her, pulling up a makeshift seat in the form of an overturned bucket.
"Is it?"
"Bit, yeah."
"I'm told I look exactly the same."
"Not exactly. And you smell different as a girl. Just a little, but it's noticeable."
"Huh. Yeah, okay, that is weird. Anyway, no, you don't have to thank me. I wanted to do something fun. I was telling Evans about how we met—" She looked around, but her sister was nowhere to be seen. Snape was missing, too. "I have a sister now, you'll know her if you see her, she's the only other human girl around here. Bella adopted both of us because that's apparently a thing she does, now. Did I tell you Bella adopted me? So I'm part of the Family again, which isn't as bad as it sounds, since she's our Head of House now, too."
"Hey, kid, slow down."
"I'm not a kid," Aster said, pouting at the upyri, who was only a few years older than her. "I'm seventeen, now. My birthday was the week before last."
"You're still eight years younger than I am—" Okay, more than a few, but upyri developed slower than humans. They tended to reach sexual maturity around the age of twenty, and not really considered adult adults until they were like thirty or had kids of their own. Twenty-five for an upyri was like fifteen or sixteen for a human — technically, Aster thought she might be older, if they were going off their own species' aging curves, even if she'd technically been around fewer years. Maeve didn't let her say that, though. "—and no, you didn't tell me you'd been adopted. You didn't tell me you were ever not part of the Family. Last time you were here, you were all girl on a mission looking for Morgen, and before that you said you were going home for Lammas, and fucking disappeared!"
"Er...right. Quick-quotes version?"
"Sure. Thrill me with tales of your adventures out in the Daylight World."
Was that sarcasm? Whatever, Aster didn't care, she had no intention of lingering on any one point long enough for it to count as a thrilling tale, or any sort of tale at all, really. If she did, they'd never get to Aster asking Maeve what was new with her, which she was actually much more interested in than her own life — dramatic as her life did tend to be, she did already know what had happened in that story, so.
"Okay. So, Lammas. I went home and told them I had no intention whatsoever of renewing my loyalty to the House again, but they threatened to completely disown me if I didn't do it, and I realised that we'd reached a point where it was sort of inevitable that I was going to get kicked out of the House if I didn't disown myself, and there was nothing left for me there — I thought Bella hated me, which it turns out she doesn't, but I didn't know that at the time, and she was the only person in the House I actually liked anyway, so I was just completely done with all of them — so I decided if they wanted to make me participate, fine, I'd do it. But forcing someone to make a vow isn't really the same as someone choosing to make a vow, and it would serve them all fucking right if I did it and then immediately betrayed them and everything the House stood for, so I did another ritual the next morning and sort of...majorly undermined our Family Magic, fully expecting to be disowned, and Walburga used the fucking Cruciatus on me, and I ran away to the Potters, because Dorea's always told me that if I need somewhere to go, I should come to her, and I didn't make it back to London before I had to go back to school.
"Sorry for disappearing on you like a flakey arse. In my defence, I suspect you already knew I was a flaky arse."
"Poncy tourist," she corrected her, a tiny, half-amused smirk warring with a distinctly horrified expression. There may not be many mages among the Starlighters, but Maeve at least knew what the Cruciatus was, and that it was pretty much a declaration of war to attack the Family Magic like she had.
"Well, I would have run away here and tried not being a tourist for a few weeks, but it's not far enough away they wouldn't be able to find me, and I didn't want to bring down the wrath of the House of Black on you all if Arcturus decided that disowning me wasn't enough for a despicable blood traitor like myself and sent people to drag me back to be tortured or something. Lady Potter, on the other hand, can tell him and any goons he might have hired — he didn't, he didn't even disown me, just disinherited me so I was still a Black but didn't have access to any of the resources of the House, which was actually the worst possible outcome, and one I hadn't considered, but I thought it was a reasonable concern at the time — to fuck off, and he can't really do anything to her."
"Uh-huh. This is the short version of this story?"
"Yes, actually. And the more you interrupt, the longer it will take — not that I mind spending all night with you, especially since Evans has apparently disappeared on me, but I'm sure there are more interesting things I could be doing with my mouth than talking, if we're spending the night together."
Maeve laughed. Good. Mood successfully lightened. "You're such a dog, Black."
"Yes, and?"
"Sorry, Raoul and I are sort of a thing, now. And you were sexier as a boy."
Aster would say that was ridiculous, because she looked exactly the same and it was hardly as though she was incapable of conjuring a dildo — toys could be more versatile than dicks, if one was creative with them — but Maeve had said she smelled different, and she knew that was an important component of attractiveness for upyri. (Honestly, Aster totally got that. Scent could make or break it for Padfoot, too.) Fine, whatever, she didn't care. "Weren't you already shagging Raoul over the summer?" Aster had only met the upyri twice. He was definitely a few years older than Maeve — old enough the other upyri treated him like an adult — and a bit on the boring side, but he'd seemed nice enough.
"We're sort of an exclusive thing, now," Maeve admitted, a silly little smile creeping onto her face despite her obvious effort to suppress it.
Aster didn't really know why she'd bother. She didn't bother trying to hide her grin. "Good for you! You deserve to be happy, Maeve."
"Thanks, Black." Then she changed the subject. "So, what's your excuse for not stopping by after you went back to your fancy, poncy boarding school?"
"Er...I was in Scotland?"
Maeve shoved her, tipping her to one side a bit. "Like you can't just pop down whenever you want? You're here now, aren't you?"
"Well, yes. The truth is, I let Evans fuck me at a party the first night back, and Potter — James, my former best mate, I think I mentioned him at some point last summer—" She was sure she had, actually. "—had this massive hard-on for her, so that drove a major wedge between us, which was exactly what she wanted — have I mentioned Evans is a bitch?"
The upyri laughed again. "Go on..."
"Yeah, so, I fell into a major funk—"
"You flaked out on us because you were in a funk?" Maeve said, in a way that implied she had no idea what Aster meant when she said funk.
"Not funk like when I was being a moody bastard over the summer, funk like I couldn't drag myself out of bed and literally didn't eat for a week. I spent three days just staring at the curtains re-living everything I'd done wrong, and yes, before you say it, I know some people have real problems, but I'm a poncy, self-obsessed arse, and sometimes...lose any sense of perspective whatsoever and think the world is ending because I betrayed my best mate and couldn't make him see how sorry I was."
Maeve still looked like she might not quite get it, but that was fine. Being down literally only made sense when Aster was down. Right now, she was looking back on it and sort of wondering what the fuck had been going on in her head and how it was even possible to feel that way, too.
"Point is, I'd've been shite company even if I had had the energy to drag myself down here — and then sort of got obsessed with getting Snape expelled because, well, long story, but it made sense at the time, but then he actually almost got killed, and everyone sort of freaked out because they thought I'd gone off the deep end. Which, admittedly, I was definitely mad, but not homicidally so. But anyway, Potter still wouldn't talk to me and Dorea dragged me back to theirs so she could make me see a mind-healer, and the thought occurred to me that I'd be better off if I'd been born a girl, so being in an exceptionally stable and rational state of mind, I decided to do that. Become a girl."
"Just like that? You just...decided you wanted to be a girl? Why?"
"Er...yes? Honestly, I'm still not sure it makes all that much of a difference, but it seemed like a good idea at the time because I'm a crazy person, and Potter doesn't fancy blokes, and since I hadn't yet realised that he's a fucking child and I kind of scare him, I was still in love with him — plus I kind of destroyed my life over the course of September, and I didn't want to be Sirius Black anymore. I mean, I hadn't wanted to be Sirius Black for years, but there are bad nights when just lying in bed until I die sounds like a good idea, and bad nights when I have to do something because the world as it is is intolerable and if I don't change something, I'm going to have to kill myself, because I can't live like this, you know?"
"...No, I really don't."
She also really didn't seem comfortable with this topic, her posture all stiff and wary, so Aster changed it with a light shrug. "Most people don't. It doesn't matter. The important thing is, I completely lost my mind and got fixed on the idea that becoming a girl would somehow let me escape my life. So I went to Bella's friend Zee to see if she could give me the name of a bioalchemist who could do it, and she dragged me to Bella, who saw no problem with turning me into a girl and also, as it turns out, doesn't hate me, so de Mort did this ritual and the Dark re-wrote my identity because It wanted me to suffer for rejecting It over the summer, and I remembered that Bella is actually my favourite cousin for a reason, and you'd think that would be all good, we could move on, but no. Apparently it's not normal or acceptable to not care if you're turned into a girl, or to still consider people family when they murder people for fun, even if they give really good advice on how to be a functional crazy person.
"Potter, shockingly, didn't take me turning into a girl well at all, and then after a couple of weeks they made me move into the girls' dormitory, with Evans, who I still hated at the time, and she decided she wanted a truce because of Baby Death Eater politics that don't even matter anymore, and because she's a cheating mind-mage who cheats without even knowing she's doing it, I agreed, and we ended up going to her parents' house to watch telly — which we never did get to do, by the way — and found out that she was adopted by her muggle aunt, and I realised that it's fucking obvious that de Mort's her sire, I don't know how I didn't see it before, and they get on like a house on fire, and of course any child of de Mort's is a child of Bella's, so she decided to adopt her and make it official. And me, while she was at it, because why the hell not.
"Arctutus, being the enormous fucking arse that he is, said no, so Bella, being the stubborn fucking bitch that she is, took the decision away from him by usurping the House, and did it anyway. So now she's Lady Black, and I'm part of the House again, so if I want to do something nice for people, I can. Not that Bella's really inclined to be randomly nice to people any more than Arcturus was, but she won't stop me doing things like throwing a party to celebrate Morgen still being alive and shite."
"If she doesn't do nice things, what do you call the clinic?" interrupted a male voice, hovering somewhere above Aster. She knew he was there, of course, she could feel him magically as well as just the heat of his body this close, she just hadn't particularly minded him listening in. It was hardly as though the events of the past couple of months were a secret.
"Hi, Connie," she said, tipping her head far enough back to see him looming. "Sit down, you tall bloody bastard!" Though seeing him reminded her, "Also, last full moon, Potter let my friend Remy, who's a werewolf, out of his containment wards and he bit a witch in Hogsmeade and I tried to fight him as a human to distract him until Cissy could get there and Imperius him for me, which was a bad idea, because I'm not Bella — even though I'm apparently also immune to the Curse, so take that for what you will. He tore me up and had to go on the lam, which is why I was here...last time I was here, looking for Morgen to warn her that R and C might show up looking for him. Have they, by the way?"
Constantine sighed, pulling up another bucket. "Not yet, but it has only been a few weeks, and a friend of a friend says rumour has it those cocksuckers think it was Greyback who broke him out, and now he's on the run with them."
So Dumbledore's story had taken off, then. Good. At least he was useful for something. She scowled at the absent old sorcerer, though in answer to the vampire's questioning eh? she said, "Don't call those goons cocksuckers. It's an insult to those of us who take pride in our skills in the ancient art of sucking cock," because she didn't want to talk about Albus fucking Dumbledore tonight, that would definitely ruin the mood. She'd much rather talk about Bella, so she decided to answer Connie's neglected question. "The clinic isn't Bella being nice, it's Bella recognising that you're her people."
Maeve and Constantine exchanged a confused look. "But...she's not our Lady," Connie pointed out.
"Yeah. She's the Lady of the Underground, not Starlight. We don't follow her, or anything."
Aster shrugged, trying to think how to put this. How had she explained it to Evans? "Not her people like you follow her, her people like she belongs with you. More than she belongs out in the Daylight, at least. You know no one really thinks of her as a human. If she weren't Lady Blackheart, she'd probably be one of you. So obviously sharing whatever resources she can with you is just...sort of expected. I mean, if one of you made it good, like if Connie started taking enchanting commissions and eventually set up a shop in Knockturn, or whatever—" The werewolf clearly caught himself staring off into space, imagining a future like that, shook his head as though to banish the thought. Aster smirked. "—he'd still be expected to help out, right? It's kind of like that.
"It's complicated, though, because you're not actually her House, and she's not your Lady. Bella Black, who is much more comfortable in Starlight than the Daylight World, might feel personally obligated to share what she can with you, and she might also be Lady Black and Lady Blackheart, but those roles come with other obligations which mean she can't just go sharing the resources of the Blacks or the Death Eaters with a group that's explicitly not affiliated with them. Not without some kind of justification, at least. They're not hers personally to share. But the Daylighters treat you like shite and lump you in with the Underground and the Death Eaters, even though you have nothing to do with their crimes, and if the Ministry is going to be coming down harder on you because of the shite she's doing, she, as the Death Eaters' Lady and the person most directly responsible for that, sort of owes it to you to give you something in return.
"I'm pretty sure that's her excuse for the clinic. Plus it gives their trainee healers experience with non-battlefield healing, which is a decent justification for the Death Eater factions who don't think they owe you anything for inadvertently making your lives harder. If they actually get their fucking island out of the Wizengamot and found their New Avalon, they're going to need healers who can deal with civilian issues, too."
Constantine snorted. "That's their end-game? A fucking island for themselves?"
"Well, I'm sure you'd be welcome to go, too. A real nation, even one as tiny as New Avalon probably will be, does sort of need more people than just the army and mad academics," Aster said, quite reasonably in her own opinion.
Constantine apparently didn't think so, though. "Uh-huh. Well, if we're just building cloud-castles we're never going to have, I don't need an island. I'd settle for just a safe place to sleep where we can't be evicted."
Aster laughed. She couldn't help it — it was just...such a small thing to dream of having. So...mundane, and more importantly, completely obtainable. And he really thought it was as much a cloud-castle dream as Bella and de Mort founding a new country for themselves? The werewolf glared at her. "A, I think they're actually in a relatively good negotiating position — I've been trying to convince Dumbledore of as much, though apparently I'm just a schoolgirl, so what could I possibly know, aside from the fact that he is in no way, shape, or form actually a general. It'll probably be at least a few more months before he caves and comes to the table, and then he'll probably refuse their demands at first, and they'll call off negotiations and ramp up the attacks until he's more willing to compromise, so it'll probably be spring at the earliest before they start getting anywhere, but it's not that far-fetched. And B, I can do that."
"You can do what?" Maeve asked warily.
"A safe place to sleep, where you can't be evicted? Just buy a muggle apartment building. If you own it, it's not like anyone can just come along and throw you out on the street for renting from muggles, or whatever. Problem solved."
"Except for the part where property costs money, Black," Constantine pointed out.
"Yes, I'm aware of that. But Bella's Lady Black, now, and she owes me a birthday gift."
Maeve gave her a derisive snort. "Rich people go around buying entire apartment buildings for each other's birthdays?"
Aster rolled her eyes. "That was a joke, Maeve." Honestly, they didn't normally celebrate birthdays much at all. They might be an excuse to have a party, do some networking with their peers, but only a few (three, seven, thirteen, fifteen, and seventeen) had any real significance. And even for those, gifts weren't really expected, just some recognition that the child in question now had more rights and responsibilities than before. "I'm part of the Family. She doesn't need an excuse to buy me things. Or, well, to sign off on me buying things. If I ask her to authorise a transaction for an apartment building officially so I can play around with muggle property-trading as a hobby but unofficially because I'm planning on losing it to Connie in a game of three card monte, or whatever — we can figure out the details when we get there — she can just do it. And if I choose to turn around and give it to you, that's between us and has nothing to do with her. No one could possibly construe it as the House of Black engaging in charity — have I mentioned I hate Arcturus? — when it's just one obviously insane Black doing something stupid because consequences? what consequences?
"Bella gives me a slap on the wrist for being profligate with House resources, losing my brand new muggle property — shame on me, betting House property without permission from Lady Black, just because the deed has my name on it doesn't mean it's mine, see if she ever buys me another muggle building! but also, good job Aster, have a biscuit — honour is satisfied all around, and you have a place to sleep where you can't be evicted. Simple."
She grinned, incredibly pleased with this plan. It was simple and elegant, and didn't require more than a few hours of planning to execute, or at least not on her part — finding an apartment building to buy would probably take a while, but Constantine could to do that, and she would probably have to learn a bit about muggle banking and open an account or something, but that shouldn't take too long — so it was probably exactly as good an idea as it seemed.
Constantine gave her a very peculiar look. "You do realise how much an apartment building costs?"
Aster grinned. "Oh, no, I have no idea. But it really doesn't matter."
"We're talking potentially hundreds of thousands of galleons, here, Black."
Well that wasn't very specific... Not that it mattered, anyway, really. She wasn't sure exactly how much gold the Blacks had squirrelled away, but she was fairly certain it was on the order of tens of millions, so. She shrugged. "What's the point of money if you don't spend it? Granted, I know absolutely nothing about muggle real-estate, and how one might go about purchasing a muggle property — and we would have to go through the muggles, I legally can't own anything personally on our side of things — but I'll start looking into it. I'll have time to go bother the goblins and set up whatever I need to with the muggle bankers over Yule. In the meanwhile, you should start looking for a building — preferably a new one, because having to evict people to give you a place where you won't be evicted seems like a shite thing to do, and—" Maeve, who had been staring at Aster with an increasingly annoyed expression — for what reason she could not possibly guess — stood abruptly, and walked away without a word, heading for the door. "Where's she going?"
"At a guess? Anywhere she doesn't have to listen to you dangling hope right in front of us like it means nothing to you, like it's the easiest thing in the world to just decide to buy a building and give it to people you barely know, because getting our hopes up is cruel, especially since you have a habit of swooping in and doing nice things or making outlandish offers, and then bloody well disappearing and taking your weatherproofing charms and glamoury amulets with you, or offering to help Morgen, and then not even writing to ask if she made it, or bringing us food for a night or two because you want people to be grateful to you, or whatever—"
"I don't!" Aster objected. "I just thought it would be fun to—"
"That's the point, Black! This isn't fun, this is our bloody lives. Sure, you brought us a windfall tonight, and don't get me wrong, we are grateful for that, but that doesn't mean we know where dinner is coming from tomorrow or next week. The occasional gesture of generosity whenever you think it would be fun to throw a party on a fucking whim, is nice and all, but you're not reliable, Black. Even if you did have the money to just buy us an apartment building, I wouldn't trust you to see it through until I had the deed in my hand, and then I'd be wondering what the fuck you were going to want in return, because you can't just give people apartment buildings, with no expectation of any kind of repayment — people don't do that!"
Aster gave the werewolf the most serious expression she could muster. "Constantine, I give you my word that I have every intention of finding a way to give you an apartment building, with no expectation of repayment, no strings attached. I don't even want your gratitude — as far as I'm concerned, making sure people have somewhere to fucking live is the bare minimum the nobility of this country, myself included, owe to its common people. Which includes Starlight, because you are people, and you live within our borders, you're subject to our laws, not citizens of another recognised nation or power with whom we have a treaty— There's no justification for refusing to recognise you as our citizens and treat you accordingly. Anyone who says otherwise is a hypocritical fucking bigot, even by the standards of the Light."
Connie seemed somewhat taken aback by her vehemence, but it was true. It was the one thing she absolutely could not reconscile with the rhetoric the Potters and Dumbledore liked to throw around, the fact that they had no plan or intention to deal with Starlight. Going around insisting that muggleborns deserved the same rights as everyone because they were people, but upyri didn't because they weren't human, or that veela were maybe okay, but lilin (who were the same bloody species as veela) definitely weren't, or that animagi were cool, but wilderfolk were gross, was just complete fucking dragonshite.
Well, that and the fact that Dumbledore wouldn't even consider ending the war and kept up his sanctimonious insistence that life was fucking sacred and causing suffering immoral.
It was possible she'd strayed into the political philosophy weeds a bit, reading de Mort's manifesto and preparing her arguments for her meeting with Dumbledore (none of which she'd actually gotten to use), but she was pretty sure that if causing suffering was really immoral, the Light should be endorsing a dramatic redistribution of wealth throughout their society. And they definitely, definitely weren't. There were just as many Light nobles who didn't want a damn thing to change as Dark.
"If you want me to be brutally honest, the House of Black won't even notice the loss of a few hundred thousand galleons, and it's fucking obscene that we have that kind of money and you have to live like this. And yes, it's completely fucked up that I can swoop in and do shite like this on a whim, but that's the world we live in. Completely fucked up. And I'm not a politician or a social reformer or some shite, I don't know the right things to do or say or the right laws to pass to generally un-fuck it, and probably wouldn't be able to do them if I did. I'm not capable of making long-term plans and shite — I only ever get anything done on a whim! I'm not even capable of consistently being a functional person most of the time, let alone being reliably helpful to anyone else.
"But I keep my word, and I'm giving it to you now. If I don't come through on this, it's because I'm dead or someone locked me up in Janus Thickey or something, not just because I'm the world's biggest flake. Now, if you'll excuse me, I seem to have offended Maeve, and I should probably go explain that I'm not trying to be an arse here, I just exist in a general state of wealthy ignorance, which she would be entirely right to disabuse me of, it's not going to change my mind about the apartment building thing, that's definitely happening."
She stalked away to do exactly that before the shocked werewolf could come up with a response, which would probably just have been a scoff and a yeah, right, I'll believe it when I see it or something, anyway — there was an old goblin saying about words being nothing but air, talk is cheap, etc., which definitely applied here. (And she couldn't really blame him for not wanting to get his hopes up when she'd be the first to admit she didn't have a great track record for reliability.)
Also, to find Evans and Snape and tell them that they were buying the Starlighters a bloody apartment building, because as important as it very clearly was, she knew she had a tendency to get distracted and she really should get someone to remind her to— Shite!
She'd forgotten to apply for her apparation license!
Remy was supposed to remind her to put it in her diary, and then Samhain had happened and she'd never gotten around to it, and damn it! She had to do that, otherwise Bella was going to say I told you so...
It was cold out here. Cold enough to deaden the stench of automobile fumes and rubbish and piss that was so quintessentially Muggle London (at least around here — there were areas that didn't smell like rubbish and piss, but the auto fumes were everywhere), and enough to be incredibly refreshing — an invigorating, wake you up sort of cold, like a glass of water thrown in her face. Cold enough to see her breath crystalise when she exhaled.
Also cold enough that when Aster finally found Maeve, a few minutes later, sitting on the stoop of a boarded up row-house with her knees pulled up to her chin, curled into something that looked very much like a Ball of Misery, but was probably more like a Ball of Stubborn Resentment, she was shivering.
Aster, having been raised not to be a complete cad, and also still too warm from being inside with all the people and the cook-fires and the alcohol, gave her her cloak, whipping it off her own shoulders and draping it around Maeve in a single motion as she sat — quite possibly the single smoothest move she'd ever made.
That it had worked so well made her grin, even as Maeve glared at her. "I don't want your cloak, Black. I don't want anything from you."
She didn't move to take it off, though, because she clearly was cold, and in much the same way not being hungry mattered more than the Starlighters' pride, being warm mattered more than where that warmth came from. Not one of them would refuse a free meal, even if they did hate that it came courtesy of Aster having a mad whim to celebrate nothing in particular.
"I know. But you need it more than I do, so keep it anyway."
The vampire scoffed. "You're kidding right? You're human and you have less meat on your bones than I do."
Aster shrugged. Yes, upyri did tend to run a bit colder than humans, and yes, Aster was still too thin, though she'd managed to put on a few pounds in the past month, at least. But the Blacks tended to be a bit hardier than most humans, especially when they were a bit mad. If she weren't so up at the moment (and yes, she recognised that she was a bit mad, but not enough she was being completely irrational, the apartment building thing was a great idea, and it was definitely happening) Aster might be cold, but as it was, she barely felt it. "Human is a relative term."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Maeve asked, clearly curious in spite of herself.
"What, that human is a relative term?"
She nodded.
Aster shrugged again. "How many humans have you met who are quicker than you, or have the stamina to go three rounds being bled the whole time, or heal as quickly as I do?"
"How many humans do you think I've ever spoken to, Black, let alone shagged?"
Okay, probably not many, admittedly. "I know you've never seen another human move as smoothly as I do. Well, Bella, I guess. But the wilderfolk consider me one of them, and I'm apparently immune to the Curse, so that's a thing. But mostly... Mostly it just means I think Mira was right when she said there's just no place in their world for people like me," she admitted. "Like the Blacks, I mean. Not like Reggie and Narcissa, like Bella. Those of us with too much magic in our blood." She hesitated, considering whether she actually wanted to admit this out loud, but only for a second. "Wanna know a secret?"
"Sure, Black." Aster could hear her rolling her eyes, even though she was still glaring at her knees. "Tell me your bloody secret."
"I'm glad Bella took me back. I know I've been saying I hate the House as long as you've known me, but I missed it. Not the people, mostly, but the House itself. Having a place to belong."
"Sure, and the money doesn't hurt," she scoffed.
"The money doesn't really matter, honestly."
Maeve elbowed her in the ribs, hard.
"Ow?"
"The only people who think money doesn't matter are people who have money, ponce."
"Oh, right. That's not what I meant. I mean, I wasn't starving or out on the street when I was disinherited. I just mean...there's not all that much difference between having enough money to not worry about food and shelter, and having access to more money than I'll ever need. Not for me, at least. I don't want it. If I could, I'd give it to you. All of you."
"Tch. Yeah, right."
"Really. I meant it about the apartment building, too. I just told Constantine, I don't care if you think I'm an entitled prick and don't know the difference between being on holiday and actually struggling to survive out here in the real world. It doesn't matter if you appreciate it, I don't want your thanks, or for you to owe me a favour, or whatever. I have a duty to you, and even if you don't think I'm one of you, I'm not less one of you than I am one of them, so I'm not going to ignore that duty. I hate that you have to live like this, and I might not be able to fix everything — partly for similar reasons as Bella, partly because I'm sort of a worthless fucking flake of a person who can't do anything consistently and believe me, I know how obnoxious that is, if you think I don't hate myself for being such a self-absorbed shite sometimes, you're wrong, I just don't know how to snap myself out of it when I get down like that — but I can at least do something, now, while I'm not down, so I...sort of have to. Nobility exists to protect and govern the people, not to profit off them and just fucking ignore their basic needs. And I can't just enjoy the benefits of being part of the nobility without doing my part in return."
The other girl, who had just been sort of staring at Aster for a while, now, blinking at her like she'd never thought of it like that, maybe, irises just the thinnest ring of gold around the black of her pupils, reading the earnestness of Aster's expression out here in the dark, gave another harsh scoff. "That is the most naïve fucking thing I've ever heard anyone say, Black. Nobility exists to protect the people? What bloody planet do you live on?"
Aster shrugged. "I'll be the first to admit that the system isn't working like I was taught it should, but since Bella and de Mort don't actually have their own island yet, it's all we've got. And the way I see it, I can either work with what we've got and try to do it better, make it work like I was taught it should, live up to all the lies they tell to children to justify it, you know, or just continue to be part of the problem. And like I was just telling Connie, I don't know how to fix everything, but I can at least work on getting you a safe place to stay."
Just like Constantine, Maeve probably wouldn't have had much confidence in Aster's ability to do that, or even follow through on trying, but if she'd intended to say so, she didn't have a chance.
"There you are, love!" a male voice called out of the dark, the features of the person it belonged to resolving, as he drew nearer, into those of Maeve's newly-exclusive lover. "Stan said you walked out half an hour ago. I started getting worried when you didn't come back..."
Maeve rose to meet him, positively glowing with love and affection. Her irritation with Aster vanished as soon as she laid eyes on him. "I'm fine," she said, beckoning him closer so she could kiss him, still standing on the first step to make it easier.
Aster grinned. She couldn't help it, seeing her friends happy always made her happy, and that was the happiest she'd ever seen Maeve. "Hey, Raoul. I hear you two are an exclusive thing now." Raoul gave Maeve an odd look, as though she shouldn't have told Aster that, which was sort of ridiculous. What else was Maeve supposed to say when Aster offered to eat her out? No, I've decided I don't like orgasms anymore, even when I'm not expected to reciprocate them? "Congratulations!" she said brightly, anyway. "I'm happy you're happy! And," she added as she realised it, "that's sort of like getting married, right?"
It hadn't occurred to her at first, because she usually thought of marriage as a legal partnership between families or establishing a new household, but all the Starlighters already sort of supported each other like one big House — it was the only way they could survive, really, pooling their resources — so seeing them standing there, Maeve with her silly grin and Raoul with his arm wrapped around her shoulders all protectively, looking like Cissy and Reg, so happy to be together, it occurred to her that they didn't actually have legal marriages here, as far as she knew. They just sort of partnered off. Which, in that case, it made sense Maeve had made a point about them being an exclusive thing, if they had some arrangement, now.
She didn't really have anything to give them as a wedding gift, but she could at least offer a benediction. It wasn't really a spell, as such, just superstition, but who knew? On a night like tonight, when the entire universe was on Aster's side, maybe Magic would hear her and decide to favour them. Her grin widened. "May you have more breaths together than there are stars in the sky; may the spark of affection between you kindle a fire to burn through this night, and every night to come; may all the days of the life you share be rich in joy and poor in suffering; may your grandchildren's grandchildren remember your names, and their children carry your song until the magic fades from this world."
The two upyri exchanged a confused glance. "English, Black?" Maeve said, after a moment.
Oh. Right. "Good wishes for you. Joy and love and many fat children — you know the sort of thing. Hey! Look! It's snowing!"
She bounded to her feet and kissed Maeve's brow to seal the benediction, before skipping out into the middle of the street and spinning around, staring up at the heavy clouds, lit by the glow of the city, and laughing as soft clumps of snow landed on her face, reveling in the magic of... Well, just of being, really.
It was a beautiful night to be alive.