Cassandra was on the verge of falling asleep, her head resting comfortably against Sally's neck, her body warm under the snallygaster's wing. She could feel the up and down of the beast's chest as it breathed in and out, and smell the earthy scent of its feathers. Those sensations were comforting to her. She was abruptly jarred to alertness by the sound of a branch snapping, and the feeling of Sally tensing up around her. Cassandra looked around, but couldn't see far beyond the trees around her in the darkness of the new moon night.

But the sound didn't lie. There was something approaching. Now that she was paying attention, she thought she could hear the crunching of leaves on the trail that led to Sally's nest, at the heart of the grove that surrounded Lestrange Manor. Coming closer. It could be an animal, but not many creatures, magical or not, would risk intruding upon a snallygaster's nest. With its serrated steel fangs, the part-bird, part-lizard, dragon-like creature that could stand twice as tall as a full-grown man, was an apex predator.

With the tactical drills from the past weeks too fresh on her mind for her to dismiss the signs of a possible attack, Cassandra drew out her wand and whispered, "Homenum Revelio." A shining, translucent arrow-like shape shot out in the direction she'd heard the noises coming from, and stopped about fifteen meters south from her position, confirming the presence of another person. Who? When she'd stormed out of the house after her altercation with her grandfather, the only people there had been the wizard himself, who knew better than to roam the woods at night, and Mr. Ivanovich, who had retreated into the guest wing after dinner, most likely to knock himself into a firewhisky-induced sleep not even a banshee could rouse him from.

Cassandra considered the slim odds of someone trespassing on Lestrange property with good intentions, and quietly slipped off her heels. The better choice would've been to transfigure them into running boots, but transfiguration was her weak point, and she wouldn't chance taking her focus away from the possible attacker to perform a non-offensive spell. Besides, she didn't plan on running. If someone wanted a fight, she had a lot of anger to burn through.

"I know you're out there," she called out in a sing-song voice, quietly crouching up behind Sally. It was a good cover, she thought. The magical creature's bulletproof hide would protect her against weaker spells, and she'd be able to see what was coming. "Unless you want to be eaten by a beast with very sharp fangs, you should stop right where you are, and announce yourself."

"It's me," a familiar male voice answered.

"Cedric?" Cassandra asked dubiously. Hearing an affirmative response, she cast a wand-lightning charm in order to confirm she was indeed talking to her boyfriend. Once she saw him, she stood up and put her shoes back on. "What on earth are you doing here?" He was wearing different clothes from the dress robes he'd worn for dinner, but thankfully didn't look as if he'd run into any trouble in the woods. Swooping down from the treetops, Klaus landed on her shoulder, and she realized why. "Did Klaus show you the way? I was wondering where he was. I was about to hex the life out of you."

"I'm glad you didn't," Cedric said, eyeing Sally carefully. It eyed him back curiously, interested in the stranger whom Cassandra was so familiar with. "What is that?" He asked.

"You really should be taking Care of Magical Creatures instead of Muggle Studies," Cassandra replied. "It's a snallygaster. Her name's Sally."

"Is it actually dangerous?" Cedric asked.

"Yes. But not to me. Come here," Cassandra said. He faltered, and she laughed.

"It's got metal fangs," Cedric said with an exasperated expression.

"And I have a wand. Come on. She can tell that I like you, she won't attack. Isn't that right, Sally?" Cassandra said, petting the creature's chest. It butted its head against Cassandra's middle, enjoying the attention.

Cedric approached them slowly, then put his hand on top of Sally's head. He petted the creature with hesitancy, relaxing when it didn't show displeasure at the contact.

"Not that I'm complaining," Cassandra said after a while, "but what are you doing here? You left what, an hour ago?"

"Your grandfather floo called," Cedric said. "He convinced my parents to let me spend the rest of the summer at your house, starting tonight. Something about not limiting my learning opportunities to a few hours with Mr. Ivanovich a day. He offered to tutor me in Potions himself, I thought my dad was going to have an apoplexy. I figured the hurry wasn't for my benefit when I got here and he told me to come look for you in the woods."

"You're his apology," Cassandra said. Cedric eyed her questioningly, and she sighed. "We should go somewhere else to talk. If I get upset and Sally thinks it's because of you, she might hurt you."

With Klaus flying above them, they walked side-by-side until they reached a small clearing. Cassandra conjured a blanket for them to sit on, then cast a jet of Bluebell Flames, which she contained in a conjured glass ball that she charmed to hover above them, illuminating and warming the area. Cedric watched her spellwork with contemplative consideration. She raised an eyebrow, and he shook his head, smiling.

"You're amazing," he said, answering her unspoken question.

She closed her eyes and hugged him, burrowing her face into the crook of his neck. "I missed you. Even during dinner, with you sitting right in front of me, I missed you." She felt him wrapping his arms around her, holding her tight, and her body melted against his.

He kissed her on the crown of her head, her hair, her ear. "Tell me you're alright. Tell me what I can do to help. Please."

She didn't want to revisit the awful feelings she'd run away from, but to forget them. She pulled back from him just enough to bring their mouths together. "What about this?" She whispered against his lips, and then Cedric kissed her, hard and deep. She kissed him back just as hungrily, intoxicated by the feeling of his his lips, his teeth, his tongue. For a while, there was nothing else.

"As much as I enjoy this," he said eventually, laying soft kisses on the corner of her mouth, "and I do, so much, I don't think it's going to solve anything."

"Why can't you take advantage of my disturbed emotional state to have your wicked way with me, like a regular guy?" Cassandra groaned.

Cedric laughed, and kissed her forehead. "I'm a Hufflepuff, remember?"

"Only too often," she said, laying her head on his chest.

"Tell me why you're hiding in the woods in the middle of the night," he said.

"Grandfather and I were arguing and I had a bout of accidental magic. Then I stormed out so he wouldn't see me crying." Cassandra answered.

Cedric didn't respond, waiting for her to continue.

"I don't want to die. I don't want to kill anyone. And I don't want us to get engaged just because the alternative is me being forced to marry a Death Eater when the war breaks out," Cassandra said wearily. "When I was old enough to understand the magnitude of what my family had done, why people look at me the way they do, I realized happiness probably wasn't in the cards for me. I mean, I get it. Maybe I even deserve it, for what they-"

"You don't-" Cedric protested.

"Just let me finish, all right?" Cassandra pleaded, taking a step back from the wizard. "I was fine with that, with not being happy. Not many purebloods are, anyway. But I figured with my parents in Azkaban, at least I would be free, and that almost sounded better than being happy. I wouldn't have to grow up with the weight of my family's expectations on me, always having to toe the line not to get disinherited. I'd be free to make up my own mind, and live my life however I wanted to. And now I no longer have that freedom, and I don't know how to deal with it."

"But you are free," Cedric said.

"No I'm not. The prophecy-"

"Fuck the prophecy," Cedric said firmly. Cassandra stared into his eyes, and saw just how fervently he meant those words. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

"That's not how prophecies work," she replied stubbornly.

"No one knows how prophecies work. Do you think I've been reading about anything else since you told me yours? Prophecies might be fulfilled and they might not, and trying to make one happen or keep it from happening only ends in disaster," Cedric said. "Your future's not set in stone. You lost your family once, and you didn't kill anyone."

"I was five."

"Still. You could've grown up to be a pureblood supremacist, and you didn't. You're not evil. You're not a killer. I'll repeat that as many times as I have to. If someone does kill your family, you can choose to let the Aurors handle it. That's their job. If you find yourself in the middle of some battle, you can choose to only fight to defend yourself. If a war does break out, we can choose to run away. We'll live like muggles if we have to, somewhere nowhere can find us," he replied.

"You'd do that?" Cassandra asked. She didn't particularly want to live as a muggle, but it touched her that he would offer to.

"I'd do anything for you, Cassandra." Cedric said. "If you wanted to go along with your grandfather's plan and get married, I'd do it."

"I refuse to let my life become a poorly written Witch Weekly story," she scowled. "I'm not some helpless witch, and you're not the martyring wizard who's going to marry me out of some misguided sense of obligation to save me from a terrible fate."

"You know what I got out of that?" Cedric said after a moment.

"What?" Cassandra asked.

"That you read Witch Weekly," Cedric replied, and laughed when she punched his arm. "It's going to be okay, babe. I'm with you, every step of the way. And if I get the inkling you're becoming a crazed killer, I'll lock you in a room without your wand and vanish the key."

"Stop trying to make me laugh," she said half-heartedly, wanting anything but that.

"I don't think I will," he said. "And by the way, the whole thing about happiness not being in the cards for you? You're wrong. You are going to be happy."

"How do you know that?" Cassandra asked.

"I'll make you happy," Cedric said simply.

And for the rest of the summer, he did.

They attended lessons with Mr. Ivanovich, trained and studied together; on the afternoons Cedric spent with her grandfather, being tutored on the finer points of potion-making Professor Snape didn't bother teaching students below N.E.W.T. level, Cassandra worked quietly from the back of the laboratory, brewing advanced potions from a list her grandfather had produced, and sneaking looks at her boyfriend.

She acquainted Cedric with the various magical creatures that inhabited the property, as well as many of the plants and fungi that Professor Sprout talked about with wonder, but couldn't grow at Hogwarts for lack of funding or difficulty in procuring rare seedlings. In return, he introduced her to Muggle literature, a passion of his half-blood mother that had been passed down to him.

In their free time they played Quidditch, laid down on the grass outside reading or talking, and looked for private spots where they could kiss and explore each other, like the eager teenagers they were. Despite a promise she made to Cedric late one night while they stared at the stars, to not let the words of the prophecy haunt her thoughts, at times Cassandra would catch herself staring at him, trying to burn in her brain the memories of them just as they were then - happy, together, yet untouched by the tragedy her future held.

"I hate him," Cassandra said with irritation, closing the book in her hands. Klaus croaked from his place atop her left shoulder, echoing the sentiment.

"Who?" Cedric said, raising his eyes from Maxwell Barnett's Guide to Advanced Occlumency to look at her from across the small circular table that separated them. They were sitting on the outside area of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, reading in companionable silence while they waited for Adrian to arrive. They had agreed to do their shopping together the day after receiving their Hogwarts lists, to avoid the crowds that swarmed Diagon Alley as September 1st approached, but Adrian was running late.

"Frankenstein," Cassandra huffed. "What kind of pathetic excuse for a Necromancer runs away from their charge after bringing it to life, without even giving it any instructions? Why create it in the first place, then? He knew what the Monster looked like before he animated it. Coward."

"That's your gripe with him, not that he created a murderous monster, but that he abandoned it?" Cedric asked with amusement.

"I would hardly call the Monster a murderer. The blame for its kills falls entirely on Victor, in my opinion. If I somehow created an entirely new sapient magical creature, and neglected to teach it anything - didn't give it a code of ethics, didn't teach it the laws of civilized society - and then it killed someone, would you blame me for the death, or the creature?" Cassandra challenged him.

Cedric put his book down on the table and pondered the question for a while before answering her. "Both, I think. You're responsible for creating it and not teaching it right from wrong, but if a creature is capable of intelligent thought, then it follows it would also be capable of empathy. Even if I had never been explicitly told that killing is bad, I can't imagine hurting someone and not stopping as soon as I realized they were in pain. Unless the death was an accident, or in self-defense, then the creature does bear responsibility for it, and I would call it a murderer."

"That's not fair. Think abo- Aunt Andromeda!" Cassandra exclaimed with surprise, noticing her aunt looking at her from across the street. Her mother's sister, who'd been disowned by the Black family for marrying a muggleborn, appeared to be shopping with her daughter Nymphadora. The young metamorphmagus seemed to be playing with a cat-kneazle displayed in front of the Magical Menagerie by giving her own face cat-like features.

Cassandra had met her older cousin at Hogwarts, but during the two years they had attended school together before Nymphadora graduated, they had only interacted a handful of times. Their lack of familiarity wasn't due to her cousin's half-blood status, however. Cassandra thought Nymphadora was loud and obnoxious, and the older girl saw her pureblood little cousin as a stuck-up snob. As a result, they had gladly stayed out of each other's way.

Her daughter's poor opinion of her niece notwithstanding, Andromeda had continued writing her and sending her birthday presents, something she was thankful for. She liked her aunt, and enjoyed exchanging letters with her, even if their communication was occasionally made awkward by Andromeda's complete refusal to acknowledge any mention of her father, who played a big part in Cassandra's life as her guardian.

"Tonks is your cousin whose mother got kicked out of the family?" Cedric said with bewilderment as he saw the pair made their way to their table.

"Tonks?" Cassandra asked, her hackles rising. "I hadn't realized you knew her."

"I don't," Cedric said, instantly catching his girlfriend's pointed tone. "I don't think we've ever said a word to each other. Everyone in Hufflepuff knows of her; she almost drove Professor Sprout into an early retirement with her pranks."

Cassandra narrowed her eyes but didn't say anything. She wouldn't be caught dead having an argument with her boyfriend about another witch in public, specially when said witch was rapidly coming within earshot.

"Aunt Andromeda, Nymphadora, it's so good to see you," she said, getting up from her chair to greet them. Andromeda hugged her, while Nymphadora scowled.

"You know I go by Tonks," her cousin said. Cassandra did know that.

"Nymphadora, don't be rude," her aunt chided. "How are you, dear? You look like so grown."

"I'm well, thank you." Cassandra replied. "How about you? Did your neighbor ever figure out the source of the smell in her house?"

"Oh yes, it was coming from a bundimun infestation, of all things. Her husband inherited an antique cabinet from his great-aunt that hadn't been properly scourgified, and put it in the attic without telling her. The colony had dissolved half of their roof framing by the time they found the foul pests. Some people might dismiss household spells, because they aren't flashy and can't be used to duel Dark wizards," Andromeda said, side-eyeing her daughter, "but their house could have collapsed on top of them, all because of a sloppy scourging spell."

"Enough about bundimuns, mum," Nymphadora said. "Aren't you going to introduce us to your friend, little cousin? You two looked quite cozy from over there."

Klaus shrieked menacingly from Cassandra's shoulder at Nymphadora's gibe, causing the metamorphmagus and her mother to startle.

"Klaus says hi," Cassandra deadpanned, even though the raven's hostility was plain. "And of course, I apologise for the rudeness. This is my boyfriend, Cedric Diggory," she said, turning to the wizard.

Cedric rose politely from his chair, offering his hand to her aunt first, and then to her cousin. "Very nice to meet you, Mrs. Tonks, Miss Tonks. Cassandra speaks very fondly of you," he said with a warm smile.

"Does she?" Andromeda said with naked surprise on her face. She looked appraisingly between her niece and Cedric, handsome and affable, and her face broke into a pleased smile. "It's very nice to meet you as well, Mr. Diggory."

"Cedric, please. If you call me Mr. Diggory I'll keep looking around expecting to see my father."

"Wait, Cedric Diggory?" Nymphadora interrupted, and it was clear she was working through something in her head. "Aren't you the kid who replaced Merridew as Seeker? You're dating a Hufflepuff!" She said to Cassandra, sounding halfway between accusing and astonished.

"Why is that so surprising?" Cassandra asked, knowing perfectly well the reason why. A relationship with someone outside Slytherin who didn't belong to a pureblood family did not reconcile with her cousin's view of her as a snotty heiress.

"Does your gran- I'm sorry," her aunt said. "I was about to ask a rather impertinent question."

"If that question is whether grandfather knows about us, the answer is yes. He's given us his wholehearted approval."

"That doesn't sound like the Cygnus I remember," Andromeda said, her face twisted in an involuntary grimace.

Cassandra was unsure how to respond, knowing that defending the man who had disowned her aunt for marrying a muggleborn wasn't a good idea.

"He did try to negotiate a betrothal contract with my parents the first time we met, before Cassandra cut him off," Cedric offered, "so maybe he hasn't changed that much."

Andromeda gave him a wry smile, accepting the appeasing words. "Maybe. I do wish the two of you the best, young man." She took a step closer to Cassandra, grabbing her hands. "And you. Don't let anyone's opinions of what you should or should not do get in the way of your happiness."

"I won't, aunt Andromeda," Cassandra said solemnly. "I promise."

Her aunt hugged her again, and they said their goodbyes. Cassandra and Cedric had just sat back down when they saw Adrian running in their direction.

"I'm sorry I'm late," he panted after saying hello and throwing himself on a chair in front of them.

"What happened?" Cassandra asked, taking in her best friend's untidy appearance.

"I was fighting with my dad. About you, actually," Adrian said.

"The usual?" She said. Adrian nodded.

"The man has been hoping for ages that Cassandra will overlook our family's half-blood status and decide to give it a go with me," he said to Cedric. "Every time I mention her, he suggests a different way I can woo my way into becoming a Lestrange. Most of the time I go along with it to get him off my case, but today I accidentally let it slip that you two are together, and he berated me for half an hour for 'missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime'. He had figured if she was going to choose someone else, at least it would be a wizard from an old pureblood line. I was this close to just telling him I'm gay and being done with the whole farce."

"I gather he wouldn't respond well to it," Cedric said.

"That's an understatement," Adrian said, understandably frustrated at his situation.

"Just two more years, Adrian. Two years, and you'll be free," Cassandra said, and her friend took a deep breath in and out, relaxing.

"What's in two years?" Cedric asked. Cassandra noticed he was playing with the ends of her hair, and put her hand on his knee. The physical contact with him was like a balm. He smiled at her touch.

"My seventeenth birthday," she answered. "The day I come into full control of the Lestrange fortune, and Adrian doesn't have to worry about his parents throwing him out when he comes out to them. Grandfather has loosened up a lot since aunt Andromeda's time, but he's not forward thinking enough to take in an underage gay wizard. So we have to wait until I can."

"What's the point of being the richest witch in Britain if you can't financially support your homosexual friends?" Adrian said.

Cassandra laughed. "Yes, that."

"How's your grandfather, by the way?" Adrian asked.

"Worried," she said. "Apparently, word about the Dark Lord being attached to the back of our Defense professor's head last year is spreading among the old guard."

"They must be excited," Adrian said. "Thinking he might come back and all."

"They're scared out of their minds," she replied. Adrian looked confused. Cedric listened to them quietly, already having had this conversation with his girlfriend. "They stayed out of Azkaban by denying to have ever truly supported him, and claiming they were bewitched or coerced into it. And if that wasn't bad enough, now that they know he's not really dead, they have no excuse for not being out there trying their best to find him. My family and Barty Crouch Jr. looked for over a year before they were arrested, while everyone else turned their backs to them. Grandfather is worried one of them might to cause some mayhem in an attempt to prove their loyalty to the cause, as a precaution in case he does come back, and that they might try to rope me in, being the last free Lestrange."

"That's a fucking grim thought," Adrian said after a few moments of heavy silence. "We should have some ice cream."