That Was Part of the Plan

by LysandraLeigh

One year has passed since Lyra (formerly Bellatrix) Black traveled thirty years into an alternate future. Unfortunately, this means she's expected to go back to boring Hogwarts for more boring normal people stuff. Except, there is that Tournament thing. And Angel Black. And her muggleborn girlfriend. And maybe an international incident or two... Never mind, should be fun.

10. Welcome to Hogwarts — Castalia Lovegood

Cassie had, perhaps, underestimated just how complicated this would be.

It had always seemed rather peculiar to her, back when she'd been at Hogwarts, that everyone was expected to perform under the exact same Defence curriculum, regardless of their own inclinations and talents. Leave aside for the moment just how completely terrible and useless the curriculum was in the first place, it was a simple fact that different mages were more attuned to different sorts of magic, so teaching the exact same thing to everyone didn't really work out well. Especially where combat magics was concerned — in the many centuries since the wand had diffused across the world, there had been a sort of arms race accelerating the development of offensive and defensive charms, which had resulted in comparatively demanding power requirements. But, well, obviously, the more power required, the less likely it was someone who wasn't particularly suited to that sort of magic would be able to pull it off very well. So, whoever had formulated the Defence curriculum at Hogwarts had constructed a baseline inventory of spells and methods that people would have the greatest success with on the average, and proclaimed this good enough.

Which was completely fucking absurd. Just because the average of students could perform these spells didn't mean it was the best set to teach each one individually — in fact, since it was an inventory designed with no strengths to play to, it was flawed almost by definition. Cassie herself had been a very good example of this. The OWL and NEWT standards that Hogwarts taught to leaned toward dark hexes and curses, the few elemental spells taught mostly fire — which did make a kind of sense, statistically people attuned to dark and/or fire magics were a plurality, though not a majority — neither of which were magics Cassie was suited to. She wasn't even certain she could cast dark magic...though she'd literally never once tried, so maybe, who knows. So far as light magic on the standard curriculum went? There was one shield charm, a couple healing charms and counter-curses, and the patronus, of course.

That was it. Everything else taught in all seven years was either arithmantically neutral, or just plain dark. There wasn't a single light hex or curse taught, not one — despite there being many options that were more effective than the ones they were taught to deal with dark creatures! Remus, at least, had had the sense to present light alternatives, but he'd actually been going off the book there, it wasn't part of the standard curriculum. Even things so basic as a bloody revulsion jinx had been Remus taking the initiative, which was just insane.

When she'd been at Hogwarts, the density of dark charms in the curriculum, and the refusal to accept light alternatives, had resulted in her barely scraping a pass in the Defence OWL and NEWT. And this was her she was talking about — tell someone Cassie Lovegood had barely passed Defence in school, and they'd probably look at you like you're completely fucking insane, because it was, that was absurd.

(She'd later taken the ICW's Proficiency exam, equivalent to the NEWT, just for kicks, and gotten a literally perfect score, so. Take that for what it was worth.)

And it wasn't just her, either. The standard suite of defensive magics completely failed to take into account the natural diversity in the quality of people's spellcasting abilities. She'd had a few classmates from other light families — magically light, not culturally or politically, important distinctions — who had had serious trouble performing as they were expected in Defence. Not as bad as she had, since most light mages could at least try to cast dark magic (even if they couldn't manage it very well), Cassie's refusal to try was unusual. Even Fionn Ingham after her had put in a token effort, and she was pretty sure he was a literal white mage. But, even if they managed to sort of learn these spells, it was undeniable that not being given a proper education in magics they would actually be good at left them crippled in their ability to defend themselves, far more vulnerable than they truly needed to be.

It had seemed, at the time, that the obvious solution was to divide sections up not by house, but by whether they leaned dark or light, and which sort of elemental magics they were most suited to. It hadn't occurred to her that figuring out the schedule would be fucking tedious.

A couple days into classes, and she'd so far managed to deal with all the first and second years — they were the largest classes by a significant margin, she'd assumed theirs would be the most difficult to figure out their schedules. And she hadn't been wrong, she didn't think. It hadn't been too difficult to split both years into three groups: strong light, strong dark, and those more in the middle — that last group was the largest, enough they'd been divided along elemental affinity where feasible (which it wasn't always, strong elemental affinities were more rare). It had taken quite a long while, over the last two evenings, to find a way to slot these sections into the schedule where nobody anywhere had any conflicts. In the end, she'd had to move some of the more neutral kids into other sections, several had been swapped into other sections for other classes — this year they actually had enough students to have multiple sections for each house in a subject, so that was feasible — and even rearranged the schedule for Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors slightly, but after hours of arguing with the professors for the other core classes, they'd finally managed it.

They'd been up until one in the morning arguing about it. Cassie was already sick of this, and she still had third years and up to do. At least their class sizes were much smaller...

...which meant they hadn't multiple sections in the same house to deal with, so fixing their schedules might be more difficult. Damn it.

Operating on auto-pilot, when Cassie came down to the Great Hall on the third morning — ignoring the silent stares and whispers that followed her as she passed, used to that by now — she nearly collapsed into a seat at the Ravenclaw table before remembering, whoops, it was the 90s and she was a professor now, ha ha. She slunk off for the high table, hoping nobody noticed her little slip.

Severus certainly did, at least, he glanced up from his coffee to give her a narrow smirk as she approached. Though it was a very narrow smirk, Cassie could pick up on it pretty easily when others might not — they had been estranged for a while there, but she'd known him since he'd been twelve, his face was too familiar to her to be fooled easily. Sinking into the empty chair next to him (and one of the Charms apprentices, but she'd forgotten his name), she groaned, "Shut up, Sev."

His eyebrow twitched with barely-concealed annoyance. He probably wasn't used to being called that anymore — it had been Lily's nickname for him, which had quickly been taken up by their friends at Hogwarts, very few of whom he was in contact with anymore (partially due to most of them being dead now). He had tried to get them to stop doing it from the very beginning, but Cassie had always found his efforts more adorable than anything. Even now, she couldn't help smiling a bit at his displeasure.

Sev might be accustomed to cowing little children and the more pathetic of his colleagues with his intimidating dark wizard act, but if he thought he could do it with her he was sadly mistaken. Cassie had stood toe-to-toe with self-styled Dark Lords and laughed in their faces. Sev's impotent frustration with her was honestly just kind of cute.

After a moment of staring at her (which Cassie ignored, scooping herself some beans and mushrooms), he said, "You know, I was going to remind you that we're adults, and should perhaps attempt to act like it, but then I remembered who I was talking to. I suspect anyone who expects you to moderate your behaviour, at all ever, will only be disappointed."

Cassie turned to him with a blinding grin. "It took nearly two decades, but I think you're finally getting it."

Letting out a put-upon sigh, Sev turned back to his (very light) breakfast. "You know, being forced to deal with you for a whole year without Lily to act as a buffer may well drive me completely mad."

"Aww, I love you too, Sev."

He twitched. Tee hee.

While she spooned a bit of her bean-mushroom mixture up onto a piece of toast, Cassie reached for her magic, carefully forming energy into the shape of the proper spell. She set down her spoon, and tapped the table; in a blink, Cassie's empty tea cup was switched with Sev's coffee. He noticed almost right away, hand reaching out to snatch it back, but Cassie was quicker, plucking the steaming cup off the table even as she slapped his hand away. She took a slow, casual sip, then met his steely glare with a soft, absent smile she and Xeno (and Luna, indirectly) had copied from Grandma Rowan. "Thanks for the coffee, you're such a sweetheart."

For a moment, Cassie almost thought he would snap at her in a manner far less dignified than he seemed to prefer these days — he'd had quite a temper when they'd been kids, it was honestly strange seeing him so still and quiet. But he managed to collect himself, a note of heat on his voice but still with that same slow calm he tried to keep up. "You could have gotten your own, you know."

"Yes, but the elves brew this for you special. That shite out on the table is weak and awful."

"You could ask them for some for yourself."

"Or you could just ask for a refill — I'm sure you have the poor little things terrified into compliance by now." She was being sarcastic, of course, Sev had been perfectly decent to the elves when they'd been students, didn't see why that should have changed.

By the snort of laughter from McGee on Sev's other side, she probably thought Cassie was serious. (Not surprised, McGee had always had a very low opinion of Sev...and Cassie too, actually.) In a false-casual tone, she said, "You might want to be careful with the bickering, you two. You wouldn't want to give the students ideas."

"Oh, Sev's not my type, he learned long ago to his great disappointment."

Sev gave her a flatly unimpressed look. "I see your inflated opinion of yourself remains intact."

"So, I take it we're pretending you didn't ask me out in fifth year." Cassie heard multiple professors try to hide their amusement, most of them badly.

"I did not!" he snarled, mortified. Ha, she'd managed to crack his silly cold mask already, that hadn't even been very hard.

He sort of had, though. Granted, only sort of — he hadn't meant it in the way how she'd said it implied, and he hadn't gotten as far as actually asking. In her fifth year (his fourth), he'd been invited to one of those ridiculously fancy functions the nobles held over the holidays, and needed a date for appearances' sake if nothing else, had been laying hints in advance of actually asking her. (Which, in retrospect, was a very strange choice — she was technically a pureblood, and her mother was an Ollivander, a prominent noble family...but Cassie was a bloody Lovegood. No idea what he'd been thinking with that.) But, before he could get that far, she'd headed him off by talking about how she was going to be spending the holidays at the commune, and had also made it very clear that she was very, very gay, in case it wasn't just for appearances' sake.

Which was actually the only reason Sev wasn't her type, if he were a woman she'd be all over that. Dark witches who pretended to be all cold and hard and fuck off were perhaps the most fun to get under their skin — both metaphorically and literally.

But this wasn't the time to go too far to humiliate Sev in front of his colleagues. It was only the first week, after all, she had the rest of the year to take the silly boy's dignified image down a few pegs. "My mistake, must have you mixed up with someone else." There, saving face while also an obvious lie everybody would see through instantly, that would do. Cassie threw back the rest of Sev's coffee, picked up the remains of her breakfast and popped up to her feet. "Now, excuse me, I have to go get ready for the third-years."

Cassie swept away, a few of the nearer staff members twittering in her wake, Sev's glare hot and heavy on the back of her head.

These days, Defence was still taught in the same room it had been in her time, a comparatively small space with an attached office (which opened up on the other side into the hall on the fifth floor most of the staff apartments were on), a short distance off of the Grand Staircase on the third floor. It would be, Cassie already knew, insufficient for her purposes. At the very least, the first- and second-year classes would be too large to fit in one room...though she'd already split those years into smaller sections, which would make sure they would fit, but also made her own schedule more complicated. If she didn't have Stacey around she'd probably be fucked.

It was a boring, standard classroom, rows of simple desks with a few bookshelves and cabinets along the walls but otherwise completely absent any sort of decoration at all whatsoever. Which did make sense — with the constant rotation of staff through the decades, nobody would have stayed long enough to impart much character into the space. The room was perfectly fine, if boring, for standard theory lectures, for practising healing and divination spells and the like, but was woefully inappropriate for the more dramatic offensive and defensive magics, much less actual duelling practice.

Cassie had tracked down the old duelling club chambers, which had looked exactly as she remembered if not in quite the same place. Things in Hogwarts had a tendency to move around a little, especially when not in use — because, the duelling ring wasn't in use, which was stupid, Cassie had been in the duelling club not that long ago but it didn't exist anymore. Which she had already known, since Hogwarts had ceased sending teams to the ICW student tournaments, but it was still very odd.

Apparently, Dumbledore was too busy with his political work to do his bloody job, so he'd passed off a fair number of his duties as headmaster off to McGee...which had then had her overburdened, so she'd delegated some of her responsibilities to Filius, who'd suddenly found himself too busy to keep the club going. She planned to see if she could get it started up again — even if Filius stayed busy once she was gone, there was no reason they couldn't leave most of the management to the students, with a bit of careful organisation.

But anyway, the duelling ring didn't seem quite so abandoned as it was supposed to be, and Stacey agreed it looked like someone had been sneaking in to practise on their own. Which they both heartily approved of, since the official Defence class was fucking useless. Interestingly, McGee hadn't gotten any warning someone had been breaking in, so they must have been circumventing the security on the door with a ward gate of some kind (though they'd cleaned up after themselves before leaving for summer). Cassie suspected Lyra Black was involved somehow.

Ah shite, Black would be with her fourth-years this afternoon. That was going to be uncomfortable.

When she did get up to the theory classroom — which she'd temporarily expanded for this first week, today holding twice the desks it usually did — still some minutes ahead of the third-years, Cassie wasn't surprised to find Stacey already waiting for her, leaning against the teacher's desk. She was made up somewhat more modestly than usual — a full-length dress in golds and leafy greens, complete with long cloth gloves vanishing up her sleeves, wavy black hair poking out from under a dense, heavy scarf a somewhat darker green — which was less out of actual modesty and more for safety concerns. They had warded the windows against certain bands of sunlight (little visible difference, most wouldn't notice) on their first night here, but risking sickness and death when it wasn't necessary would just be silly. If she did end up exposed to direct sunlight, she could pull the scarf over her face and hopefully get to safety before she caught too much. Because, Stacey was a vampire, see.

Cassie had known she would need an assistant to get through her class schedule — she would sometimes have multiple sessions of Defence going on at the same time, so it was necessary — and getting someone who could use dark magics had seemed the obvious thing to do. She'd come up with a list of suitable people who she'd actually trust with the kids, and hadn't outside commitments that would get in the way, and Stacey had been the first on her list.

The rest of the staff knew she'd brought an assistant with her — one who wouldn't need her own room because they were shagging, which surprised no one, she had a reputation by now — but she'd maybe left out the vampire part. She very much doubted Dumbledore would approve, the paranoid, racist old bastard. Instead, she'd claimed Stacey had a metabolic condition that worsened with exposure to sunlight (technically true), which also came with particular dietary restrictions (that one was a lie), and that she wasn't much for small talk (also technically true), so she wouldn't come down for meals and wasn't likely to be seen wandering the castle or the grounds much. The staff had made noises of sympathy and concern, seemingly buying it. Sev had given her a long, suspicious glare, so he might have put together what she was saying-without-saying, but if he had he'd kept his mouth shut about it.

Not that Stacey was any kind of threat to anyone, really. She was actually a sweetie, as hard as that might be for British people to believe, by weight of the opinion they had of her race alone. Baldly lying about her had seemed the thing to do.

(Dumbledore would find out before too long, and he would be very annoyed. They'd deal with that when it happened.)

Stacey, leaning against a corner of the teacher's desk at the back, fixed Cassie a crooked smile, face half-shadowed by her scarf. "That didn't take very long."

"Yes, well." Cassie shrugged. "I'm running late this morning. And got into a little snit with Sev, had to leave while I still had the last word."

"Making friends already, I see."

"We were already friends, much as he might deny it. And hey, I resent the implication I wasn't! I'm very friendly, you know."

"Si dici accussì, amuri."

Cassie didn't actually speak Italian, but she didn't have to to know she was being mocked. Being a very mature adult, her only response was to stick out her tongue.

While waiting for the kids to catch up, Cassie flipped through the papers on her desk, going over what she had on the third-years one last time. Remus actually wasn't a complete waste of space and had written a little bit about each of the kids, what their particular strengths and issues were, preparing for the person who'd inevitably take over after him. It wasn't perfect, Remus had his own biases, but it was better than nothing.

His reports on Luna and the Weasley girl were just kind of funny.

Eventually, the third-years started trickling in, a steady stream mostly heading straight here from breakfast, stragglers wandering in a few minutes behind the bulk of the class, until forty-odd kids were crammed into the one room. (These kids would have been born in the last year of the war, if it weren't for immigrants and a few muggleborns that'd slipped through the cracks there'd barely be thirty of them.) Cassie waited until the official start of class, and then a couple minutes more, just in case anyone had fallen behind.

She yanked the door closed with an open hand — the little wandless trick had the class instantly falling silent. "Right, then," she said, propping herself up against the front of her desk, "we might as well get this disaster started. You all remember the Headmaster's reluctant introduction a few days ago, but I'm Cassie Lovegood. In case you're wondering, yes, that Cassie Lovegood — champion at the Geneva Open four times running now, sixth-highest lifetime ranking with the International Competitive Duelists' Association, and also there were a few so-called Dark Lords I've offed, I've honestly forgotten most of their names. None of them were as bad as Voldemort—" She restrained the urge to roll her eyes at the way the kids jumped or gasped or squealed. "—or whatever you want to call the melodramatic arse, but not exactly pushovers, any of them. Well, except Kulushan, he was a bloody lightweight, so far out of his league it wasn't even funny.

"Anyway, you'll be stuck with me this year for Defence." By the looks on most of the kids' faces, they didn't really think it was an imposition. Which, not surprised, they'd hardly had very impressive professors lately. "Note I say Defence, not Defence Against the Dark Arts — that name is very, very silly. For one thing, most of what's taught in the standard curriculum has nothing to do with the Dark Arts, mostly basic self-defence. And exactly what qualifies as a 'Dark Art'," she said, with finger-quotes, "varies country to country, but knowledge of them is, by definition, restricted. So, as you would expect, the people who know much about them are going to be relatively few — should you have to defend yourself, chances are the person looking to hurt you is going to be an ordinary witch or wizard using standard, mundane magics. Even the bloody Death Eaters, very few of them actively practised any of the Dark Arts, the rank and file were mostly ordinary mages. Generally speaking, the only people who have to worry about facing actual Dark Arts are Aurors, or crazies like me.

"Did you have a question, Mister...?"

The squirrelly little boy unsubtly flapping his hand in the air dropped it. "Creevey, ma'am. What are the Dark Arts, exactly? Nobody ever says, they just say they're bad."

"That's actually a very good question, Mister Creevey." The boy beamed at her, a handful of others in the room darkly glaring at the back of his head. (Which was silly, it was a good question.) "Unfortunately, there isn't a quick and easy answer to that. To put it as briefly as possible, the term 'Dark Arts' refers to any kind of magic the use of which is either restricted or forbidden under the law. Other than that, they hold very little in common. Some of these magics are harmful, yes, some of them morally reprehensible. But some of them aren't. Some of them are completely harmless, banned for reasons economic or superstitious, and some of them are actually beneficial — blood magic, for example, can be used maliciously, but is also one of the fundamental skillsets any capable Healer will learn, and a very powerful one. The best healing magics, in fact, are blood magics. This is why blood magics are restricted in Britain, but not banned outright.

"Okay," she said, clapping her hands, "we should get moving along before I get too far off track. That might happen sometimes, fair warning, I've never actually taught before. Never even held a steady job, to be honest, should be fun. Standing next to me is Anastasia di Missina — or 'Miss Stacey', if you like — who will be assisting me in classes." Stacey gave the kids a cheerful little wave. "Since I'm so heavily attuned to light magic I won't be able to even demonstrate any dark spells, Stacey will be taking over there.

"Most of what we're doing this year can be divided into three categories. One, theory of Dark Arts — not enough to actually perform any of them, just enough to recognise the more dangerous ones in use. If you do see anyone using any of these," Cassie said, leaning forward a little, "you run. Do not try to stop them, do not try to fight, you run. I simply can't teach you enough to counter any of these rarer magics, but I can teach you enough to know when it's time to get the fuck away.

"The other two will mostly be practical exercises. One of them involves magics not directly useful in combat — healing, some simple divination, detecting harmful poisons and enchantments, that sort of thing. Yes, Miss...?"

"Abbott. What does divination have to do with self-defence? There is a Divination class..."

"And there's a Charms class, and yet you learn plenty of charms in Defence." Cassie shrugged. "There are a few simple divinations that can be very useful. There are some divining spells that will help you find your way if you're lost, or will identify harmful objects or substances, or will tell you if you're moving toward danger. With practice, you'll know if someone is lying or if they have harmful intent, just by feeling them out — it does take some effort to learn to do that all the time without the aid of a focus of some kind, but it's not particularly difficult. Those of you who have particular talent will find you can divine in the middle of a duel, to give you a little bit of a warning if you're going to dodge the wrong way, if the spell you're thinking of using will be counterproductive. There are all kinds of advantages to working on your sensitivity, often unpredictable. Those of you in the Divination class will have a little bit of an advantage here — from what I can tell, Shirazi actually knows what she's talking about — but it's still a basic skill to protect yourself, I think.

"Right, and the third category, combat magic. This means, both offensive and defensive magics — hexes and curses and their counters, shield spells, nuisance charms, everything. Not just the casting of them, but we'll also be practising the use of them. On the ground floor there's an old arena, used by the dueling club back in my time, I'll be showing you where it is next week. Around half of our classes will be practical, on those days we'll meet down there instead." Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the class looked excited at the prospect of so many practical lessons — no thirteen-year-old liked being shut up in a classroom, firing hexes at each other was much more fun. And also good practice, too many people ended up in situations they needed to defend themselves in with solely theoretical knowledge, fucking stupid.

A handful of students, mostly Ravenclaws and Slytherins, had their hands raised. "The days of practical lessons will be posted on the boards in all your common rooms, and you'll be reminded here the day before." All the hands went down. "All right, then.

"Now, in this third category, you have your basic charms, which can be either arithmantically neutral, light, or dark. These are your bread and butter, can be whipped out quickly and easily, most spells you use in a fight will be one of these. Generally speaking, though this is not always true, a light or dark spell beats a neutral one — the emotional component gives it added power, as well as qualities that make them harder to shield or counter. For this reason most of the spells we'll be working on will be light or dark. Especially with your particular age group, it helps, since it's easier to get out spells that are more useful, shields that are harder to crack, hexes that are harder to block. The advantage is less important with adults, but when you're younger it just might give you that edge you need to get out of trouble.

"We'll also be working on some elemental magics. These have a lot of uses, far too many for me to list here. In a fight, these are your heavy-hitters — they take more time to prepare, usually, but are more powerful to match it, and much more difficult to deal with, tend to completely ignore the standard shield charms. An effective strategy should you need to defend yourself is to harry whoever it is with a bevy of quick hexes and such — if you're lucky, you might get a good binding hex in, giving you time to get away — but the goal is to distract them long enough to make a window to get out a very distracting elemental spell, which they'll have to deal with, giving you cover to escape. This will be helpful not only against older students who might be bullying you, but adult mages with whatever nefarious intentions they might have — even people like were at that riot lately, or Death Eaters, if they make trouble again — and this is even good against most dangerous creatures. Hell, I met a wizard who did something similar to take down a dragon, it's a very effective basic strategy.

"But, to do this well, we'll need to split you up by your personal magical affinities. Everyone stand up."

This was the third time Cassie had done this, but the previous two had been with larger groups of students. While that did mean it wouldn't take nearly as long to divine the talents of each of the kids one by one, it also meant they probably didn't have enough to justify more than two sessions — which made her schedule easier, she guessed, but it also meant the sessions would be less specialised, so her attention would be divided. Eh, nothing to be done about it. Cassie cast an illusion, a single glowing line, splitting the room in half, then the privacy charms to isolate her and whatever kid she was examining from the rest of the class. These things could be very personal sometimes, it would be potentially cruel to air it out in front of their peers, and unnecessarily so.

Like making children encounter a boggart for the first time in front of twenty other kids. Seriously, Cassie had been under the impression Remus wasn't a heartless bastard, what the fuck had happened there...

Good thing she did, too. While the point was to determine what elemental affinities the kids might have — she could feel out how far they leaned light or dark just standing near them, she didn't need divining magics for that — she also discovered a latent legilimens and five Seers (counting Luna), which weren't things people normally liked to advertise. And telling people where they stood also led to a couple...uncomfortable conversations.

As with last time, there were a handful of dark mages that were very adamant that they must be light, and vice versa. The worst cases, Morisette seemed on the verge of tears at the suggestion that she was an evil awful dark witch, and the Carrow girls had clearly gotten propaganda growing up that made the idea of light magic somewhat distasteful. Cassie tried not to show her frustration too much — honestly, it was not a big deal, people got far too worked up over these things — managed to get through these talks without too much trouble. She did have practice with the lower years now.

Luna and Weasley's turns were a bit odd, perhaps unsurprisingly. Luna had a strong affinity for storm magics, which Cassie had not seen coming — it just seemed too...wild, for her. Of course, Cassie didn't know how much of her understanding of Luna's character was tainted by Luna trying to make herself align with Gelach, which clearly was not going so well. In fact, there was an odd strain of interference shot through her soul, which could not be comfortable to live with, even just moment to moment. Girl should really get on that rededication thing.

Weasley, on the other hand, was...concerning. Despite the shadow of the shattered horcrux still hanging over her — though much less obvious than it'd been before, mostly subsumed by now — she was so deeply of the light her magic was warm to the touch, perhaps the most strongly attuned in the room (after Luna and Cassie herself, of course). Also with an intense affinity for fire magics, which was also not a surprise. But, Cassie didn't know, she just felt so...raw, wild and desperate, just on the edge of going completely...

Cassie knew, without knowing how — insight from Artemis, perhaps? but that was a white mage thing... — that little Ginevra Weasley needed personal attention. Not like from a mind healer, she wouldn't take well to that and she was clearly dealing with her trauma...but in a way that could lead into unhealthy, self-destructive obsession. One-on-one, more personal training could forge her into the powerful light warrior she had the natural talent and drive to become, while simultaneously giving her focus and attachment that could prevent her from going off the rails entirely. Cassie had seen this sort of mania before, without something to keep her grounded it could go very, very badly...

And Cassie couldn't give it to her. Her schedule was far too full, she simply didn't have the time to give Weasley the attention she needed to not, potentially, lose her bloody mind. Not to mention, Cassie wasn't particularly suited to Weasley's needs. She meant...her problems were mostly emotional problems, which were, to be honest, almost entirely foreign to Cassie. She'd never gone through any kind of trauma, really, or even any significant personal difficulty, it'd never been a struggle for her to be what she was, it had always seemed just...the natural thing to do? She'd seen such things in other people, but...

Fuck. She really needed to do something about this. Maybe Sev would know someone suitable? Hmm.

Anyway, before too long, she had the class divided in half. She explained to one half that they'd all be put into one section — yes, all four houses mixed together, she didn't care — and they would be getting a broader menu of neutral spells, with a few of the milder light or dark spells to augment the standard set, still more than they would have learned with a professor actually following the official curriculum. After experimenting with light and dark magic for a while, they might find that one came to them much easier than the other. If they wanted to, Cassie would help them attune themselves more fully to one or the other, after which they would be moved to the more polarised section.

But, she warned, this was not a decision to be taken lightly — attuning one's magic to one pole or the other did come with significant advantages, but there were also downsides, and the process couldn't be easily reversed. (Well, it could, actually, but that was high magic, and she shouldn't go blabbing about that to thirteen-year-olds.) While mages declared for neither light nor dark did have greater difficulty casting the more powerful spells of either pole, they could still do it, and could cast either without the unpleasant interference that a light mage would experience trying to cast a dark spell, or vice versa — in sacrificing a little bit of power in a single pole, undeclared mages had an advantage in diversity of options. Not to mention there could often be unpredictable psychological and social consequences to attuning oneself to the light or dark, yeah, it was a very big deal, Cassie would only consider helping people go through it who were very, very certain it was what they wanted to do.

Once they all seemed to be on the same page, Cassie told them they'd be getting their adjusted schedule in a day or two, then dismissed them. Then she turned to the other half of the room, and gave them a very similar speech, the larger picture differing only in the details.

There weren't enough people in their year to have separate sections prioritising neutral, light, and dark magics, so those leaning strong enough to either pole had to be put together. They would still be learning some of the standard defence charms — there were a lot of jinxes and hexes and things that were plain useful, though the shields were mostly shitty, and they should still know the common counters even if they didn't need the curses they were for — but most of the spells they were learning would be light or dark.

That is, light or dark — they would need to be able to recognise the spells their opposites were learning, and would probably be the targets of the hexes and things plenty of times in practice, but they would not be expected to cast them. Forcing a light mage to cast dark magic, or vice versa, could be very unpleasant (even painful) and draining, and all too frequently led to frustration and anger, and in the worst cases even serious depression. Cassie wouldn't stop anyone from experimenting with their opposite if they really wanted to, but they weren't expected to do so, and only focusing on one wouldn't be leaving themselves vulnerable, she had taken the time to plan out a full set for both light and dark. Hell, Cassie herself was an excellent example of how you didn't need both to be completely awesome, it was fine.

She included an anecdote about how Lily had used both light and dark magics, eventually attuning herself to both sides simultaneously, though Cassie didn't recommend it. Her dual dedication had had strange effects — her ability to use neutral charms had been seriously crippled, for example, she'd spent weeks re-learning basic first-year charms (right before her OWLs) — and the process itself had been extremely painful and extremely risky, she'd come terrifyingly close to forever damaging her ability to cast magic at all. (In fact, if the Powers hadn't liked her so much she might well have accidentally reduced herself to a squib, but Cassie didn't tell the kids that part.) Take it from someone who'd known her, Lily Evans had been insane, very entertaining and one of Cassie's favourite people she'd ever met, but still completely mad, yeah, maybe not a good idea to try it themselves, just a thought.

There was far too much smug amusement on certain purebloods' faces at Cassie calling the infamous muggleborn ritualist insane, no, that wouldn't do at all. So, she added a quick aside about how back when they'd been students they'd sometimes gone out into the forest to ride unicorns — yes, unicorns would let you ride them, assuming they didn't stab you to death for getting too close, don't try it if you don't want holes poked through you — and at one Samhain Revel she'd personally seen Lily skip up and hug a manifestation of Persephone — Lily had been a bit high on the magic, and probably hadn't realised what she'd been doing in the moment, but still, what the fuck. Yeah, completely insane also meant completely awesome — and she meant in the literal sense, inspiring wonder and/or fear — Cassie simply didn't recommend the Lily Evans method to thirteen-year-olds with any sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

That wiped the smirks off their faces pretty damn well. Tee hee.

Once she had the kids at the appropriate mixture of informed, intimidated, and excited, they were dismissed, free for the rest of the period. Cassie was feeling rather antsy from just standing and talking for so long — especially with the looming prospect of having a real job, she'd be doing this for months on end — so Stacey shadow-walked them down to the dueling ring. (Being dragged through shadows might be uncomfortable for Cassie, though she was getting used to it, but it was far less uncomfortable than it would be for Stacey to get minor sun exposure walking down, even taking the proper precautions.) They played around for over an hour, not really sparring so much as dancing, less aiming to win and more moving and casting magic for the sheer fun of it.

After they'd been at it for a while — her blood rushing, giggling like a silly schoolgirl — Cassie had to remind herself that students had apparently been using this room on their own time. Jumping Stacey and fucking right here and now would probably be a bad idea.

She did manage to control herself, but she was still far too keyed up to deal with adults, and small-talk. But that was fine, she just popped down to the kitchens with Stacey for lunch instead.

They got back up to the classroom ahead of the students, long enough for Cassie to skip back up to her office to swap Remus's notes on the third-years for the fourth-years. (This time, his thoughts on Black, Zabini, and Granger were bloody hilarious.) She flipped through the files one last time, preparing herself for giving the same lecture for the fourth time — Cassie did not like routine, it made her itch.

And, of course, this class had two black mages in it, according to Luna. The fourth-years certainly wouldn't be boring, at least, she could be grateful for that much.

The class tromped in before too long, arriving far more clumped together than the morning class. (Which made sense, they'd all be coming straight up from lunch.) Cassie watched, silently waiting for the last few stragglers. Usually, the four houses would split themselves up — the competition between the houses the school's culture engendered quickly led to hard divides in the student body, friendships that formed between houses were actually somewhat rare. The problem was less pronounced in earlier years, but by third and fourth the split was always obvious. But, curiously, Cassie noticed a clump of mixed-house students sitting and chatting together. Mostly Gryffindors and Slytherins, but there was a Ravenclaw and a few Hufflepuffs hanging about too.

Among them, Cassie recognised Lyra Black from her glimpse at the riot — though it'd taken her a moment to be sure, without the blood and ash on her face — a girl who was practically a clone of Ailbhe at that age — that would be little Daphne, presumably, last time Cassie had seen her she'd been four — and a smirking dark-skinned boy she assumed must be Zabini. And Harry Potter, of course, she wasn't about to miss him, the way his picture got bloody everywhere.

Hmm. That was interesting.

Anyway, she slammed the door closed with the quick flick of a freeform charm, started in on her introduction once again. There were rather more interruptions than there had been this morning — especially from Granger, but Remus's notes had primed Cassie to expect endless questions from this one — but that was fine, she didn't actually need the whole double period to get through it all. Besides, they were good questions, it was fine.

Though, Black had to make a bloody nuisance of herself when Cassie introduced Stacey. Not that Cassie could really judge about making a nuisance of herself, not with what she'd been like at that age (and still was now), but it was still irritating. Cassie had briefly explained who Stacey was and why she was here, same as always, but before she could move on, Black blurted out, "Does Dumbledore know you brought a vampire into his little fiefdom?"

The effect that announcement had on the rest of the class was predictable — in that they clearly didn't know whether they should believe Black, but still decided it was worth it to shoot Stacey a panoply of suspicious, fearful looks. Cassie sighed. "No, I didn't tell Dumbledore. Obviously, he's an idiot about these things. But you don't have to worry about Stacey, it's fine."

"Oh, I wasn't worried, I just—"

But Black didn't finish whatever she was saying, drowned out by the shouting of the rest of the class over the realisation they were in the same room with a deadly vampire. Rolling her eyes, Cassie threw a pacification charm over the room — a few of the dark-leaning kids flinched away from the light magic, but everyone obediently fell silent anyway, even the ones who resisted it. "I understand your education in this subject has been patchy and inconsistent, and Stacey's people haven't the greatest reputation in Britain — and much of the rest of Europe, honestly — but there's no good reason to lose your heads over this. Does anyone here know the difference between the two different classes of vampires? Yes, Miss Granger."

"Er..." Granger hesitated for a moment, biting at her lip, glancing between Cassie and Stacey. Probably something she wasn't certain of, then. "There was some...disagreement, between different sources I found on the subject, but I think the main difference is there are some who were simply born the way they are, and the others used ritual blood magic to change themselves."

"My people," Stacey said, still sweetly smiling despite the turn in the conversation, "call the latter kind abominations. They are not like us, in many important ways. They literally drink blood, for one thing."

"And you don't?"

"Of course not." Stacey sounded mildly disgusted at the thought. "No, we burn it."

"Er..."

The kids didn't quite seem to know what to think about this — at least the mood in the room seemed to have lessened from frightened to confused, Cassie could work with that. "Stacey's people are, like veela and lilin, the descendants of people who fundamentally altered themselves through ritual magic thousands of years ago. She was born the way she is, to parents who were also born the way they are, who had her the same way humans do. Stacey's people are sensitive to sunlight — the windows in here are warded — and they're naturally talented with shadow magic, in much the same way as the other kind, but they eat normal food like anyone else. They don't drink blood, but burn it and inhale the fumes, in a ritual that only works for them — high magic of some kind, I assume — the only real result of which is to halt aging. Well, it also does weird things to their magic, I guess, but still.

"The human-born vampires you've heard about use a ritual that was inspired by what they knew of Stacey's people, but got a few things wrong. They tend not to be very nice. Stacey's people, yes, there have been a few less than pleasant individuals over the centuries, but they're just people like everyone else. You wouldn't condemn the entirety of humanity just because Voldemort was a gigantic arsehole, would you?"

Of course, she was underselling the differences between vampires like Stacey and ordinary humans. Much like the so-called 'abominations', they moved unnaturally quickly — though they didn't get the unnerving stillness, since they were still physically normal in most ways — and were rather tougher, if not so much as their quasi-undead imitators. And there were psychological and cultural differences, mostly involving what the average person would consider a peculiar fixation on blood. It was common in symbols and idioms they used, no matter where they lived or what language they spoke, a lot of formal agreements and relationships involved mixing their blood in this interesting low ritual they'd been practising for millennia. Some of their traditions were rather messy, but Cassie honestly thought it was fascinating.

And, well, Stacey wasn't being entirely honest when she said her people didn't drink blood at all ever, it simply wasn't appropriate to go telling fourteen-year-olds about their sexual habits. Every single vampire Cassie had ever met who had been willing to talk about it (which may or may not be representative) had been into bloodplay to greater or lesser degrees — it was hard to tell how common it was exactly, but certainly out of proportion with ordinary humans. But it was just a little bit, for fun, definitely not what most people assumed.

Thankfully, the class seemed mostly mollified by that — still somewhat suspicious, uncertain, but at least not terrified of even the idea of Stacey anymore, which was good enough to be getting on with. Cassie considered asking them to keep this to themselves, but ended up just moving on. Having a vampire assisting in Defence was the sort of thing kids were going to talk about, she couldn't stop them. Stacey had known from the beginning it would inevitably get out, she'd decided to take the risk of coming to Britain anyway.

It could have gone a lot worse. Frankly, Cassie was just relieved none of the kids had run out screaming.

That minor diversion aside, feeling out the class and splitting them up into two sections was when things got really complicated. This was the most interesting class she'd gone through so far, no doubt about that.

Black, despite obviously being a black mage — Luna had been right about this one, at least — had been relatively simple to deal with, if...unnerving. She'd apparently made herself shadowkin at some point which, okay, that was a bit insane, but high magic did insane things sometimes, whatever. And, there was a depth to her magic that was simply not normal, even in black or white mages, something seeming to stretch far past herself, out and...

No. Was Lyra Black an Avatar? Cassie had only met one before, but she kind of felt... Huh.

Anyway, as strange as Black was, their little talk actually went very smoothly. She was obviously dark, though perhaps not so immutably as Cassie would expect of a black mage (but, Avatar, so that made sense), so they didn't have to linger on that. Black seemed surprised at the revelation that she had an affinity for storm magics, but had easily accepted it, flounced off for the proper half of the room without argument.

The first real difficulty was with the Bones girl, who had a strong untapped talent for divination — specifically, necromancy. Which wasn't a surprise, exactly, the Boneses had once been known for their ability to speak with the dead. (Amelia had it too, but less so.) The difficulty was that Bones was very strongly suited to spiritual necromancy — she was aligned closely enough with Death Cassie was certain she'd start hearing whispers before too long, and without any conscious decision to embrace the talent on her part — but, from the way Bones reacted when Cassie told her as much, she'd had absolutely no idea. That...was going to be a problem.

Cassie rubbed her eyes for a moment, before promising the poor kid she'd track down someone she could talk to, and shuffled her off to the unaligned side of the room.

Things went mostly smoothly from that point, save for Cornfoot being displeased with the suggestion he was an evil dark wizard, until Cassie got up to Granger, who she found herself hesitating on. She did have a significant natural affinity for dark magic, but her aura was weirdly neutral — she'd never actually used it, and had never declared one way or the other. Which was...sort of odd. She meant, it wasn't at all strange for a muggleborn to not have any affinity one way or the other, but Granger did have one, just an untapped one, which was very strange. Maybe...something heritable from a squib line, but...had never been properly primed, since she hadn't grown up around magic? Hmm.

Cassie would normally have put her in the unaligned section without another thought — in fact, she nearly did before she was suddenly struck with doubt. It seemed the right thing to do, but... Well, Granger might not have developed the talent at all, but it was there, and what was the point of this but to develop the kids' talents? She was unaligned at the moment, but it felt proper to give her the tools to start down the path.

Besides, it was obvious Granger and Black were close, they'd probably be happier in a class together anyway.

Things got a little weird again when she got to Longbottom — the boy was obviously an earth-speaker but, like Bones, had absolutely no idea. Whether his situation was worse than Bones's or not was sort of a tossup. Longbottom's was rather less unnerving, since it wasn't like he was going to get dead people randomly whispering into his subconscious or showing up in his dreams or anything, but Bones had at least heard of her family's old talent. It didn't seem like Longbottom had any idea what his was.

But, thankfully, Cassie could come up with a few earth-speakers off the top of her head, she sent Longbottom off to the unaligned side of the room with a promise she'd get him someone he could talk with when it came to feeling the land and getting plants to do things just by singing at them. (The boy had seemed fascinated with it once he knew what the ability actually was, so, hadn't gone too poorly, just frustrating.)

When she got to Nott, Cassie felt confident she'd spotted Luna's second black mage — not that he truly was, or at least not yet. His magic did have the intense, playful feel of someone who'd spent enough time around high magic, so it was a good bet this was the boy attached to Mystery Luna had told her about. The difficulty dealing with Nott was that the boy seemed almost terrified of her. He was concealing it well — she assumed he had practice at it, which was an unsettling thought — but, empath, couldn't hide these things from Lovegoods. If she had to guess, Nott was in the process of becoming a black mage (hence Luna's suggestion), and had perhaps gotten some peculiar ideas about what Cassie herself would think about that.

Cassie was aware that among certain subsets of dark mages she had an absolutely atrocious reputation — she wouldn't be surprised if Nott was under the impression Cassie would messily murder him just for being what he was. So, since they were under privacy spells anyway, Cassie went ahead and told him that she did not care about his relationship with the Dark, and she liked Mystery, actually, so if he could stop being so silly and get over to his side of the room, that'd be great.

The dumbfounded look on the boy's face was priceless.

And not long later she came to Potter, who was apparently very much his mother's son. Not personality-wise, of course, and he was clearly quite powerful for his age — as talented as she'd been, Lily had always been rather on the weak end — and he'd picked up the Black self-transfigurative ability from his father, and was even a legilimens, which... Actually, he might have gotten that from Lily — thinking back on it, it was very possible Lily had been a latent mind mage who simply hadn't the power necessary to fuel the talent, Cassie hadn't known to recognise such things at the time. Like much of the rest of the class, Potter didn't lean significantly toward the dark or light, but unlike everyone else...

Was Lily's dual dedication heritable? Potter didn't have the strong alignment toward both poles that his mother had, but the potential was there, a peculiar ambivalent feel to his magic — Cassie knew, instinctively, that he could exploit both light and dark without needing the ritual Lily had designed, it was inborn, which was just...

And here Lily was impressing Cassie from beyond the grave. That just wasn't bloody fair, that girl, honestly...

It took a little longer than necessary to explain to Potter that he'd be going into the polarised class but, unlike the rest of his peers, would be learning both light and dark. She'd gotten somewhat off-track explaining what Lily had done, that she'd somehow passed on her insane (but awesome) magical ambivalence on to him, which had seemed to help somewhat. It hadn't helped when she accidentally let slip that she knew so much about what Lily had done because they'd been lovers at the time — he asked if they were dating, which was adorable — and the realisation that he was talking to someone who used to have sex with his mother on a regular basis had apparently made him very uncomfortable, he'd fled in short order after that.

Cassie couldn't quite hold in a giggle. Silly boy, to get so awkward over that — did he have any idea how much Lily had screwed around? Probably not, come to think of it, who would have told him?

No, Cassie, do not pester the poor boy with completely inappropriate stories about his parents, bad girl...

The next odd one was the very last. Zabini was clearly a legilimens — and an empath, which was just overkill — and there was an odd tang about him that felt rather like shadow magic, except... Oh, he was part-demon, okay — one of the ones tuned to sexuality, she thought, couldn't tell exactly which for sure. Part-demons were bloody rare, enough most people thought them impossible, Cassie could count the ones she'd met on the fingers of one hand. She couldn't help wondering how the hell his mother had...

Whatever, didn't really matter. Not to mention, standing in front of a room full of fourteen-year-olds was not the optimal time to imagine (a very naked) Mirabella Zabini conducting a (weirdly erotic) blood ritual of some kind with a sex demon...

You're into some kinky shite, Professor Lovegood.

Cassie bit her lip to keep herself from laughing. And you're very rude, Mister Zabini.

Hey, you started it. With these intrusive analysis charms you're doing, it'd be harder for me to not end up slipping into your head a bit.

Not charms, technically, divining magics were in a different class, but he did have a point. And I'm sure you gave it your best effort.

Yes, ma'am, he lied.

Cassie tried to give a disdainful sniff, but she wasn't quite managing to hold in a smile. Get over there, then.

Zabini blinked, glanced over his shoulder toward one half of the room — the polarised half, which was the wrong half. Cassie might have imagined his focus being on Potter and Black. Are you sure?

Yes.

But I'm literally part-demon.

Yes, you are, but that's a mostly physical trait. Your magic isn't given much toward one side or the other.

He paused, fixing her with a narrow-eyed look. You're sure?

Yes, Zabini, I'm sure. Move it already.

With an odd expression on his face Cassie couldn't quite read, he obeyed. And that was all of them, finally. One last speech to each half of the class, somewhat quicker and smoother than with the third-years — some of the things she said here had migrated into her introductory lecture, would just be repeating herself — and they were dismissed, with a whole hour left in the period. There wasn't quite the surprise there had been before at being let out early, must have heard as much from the lower years. Breaking into high, excited chattering, the kids filled out of the room, leaving Cassie and Stacey alone.

Except not — one of the kids had lingered toward the rear of the pack, closing the door in front of her instead of leaving. "Did you need something, Miss Black?"

The baby black mage lightly skipped back up toward the two of them, looking for all the world like a carefree little girl — younger than her actual age, if Cassie didn't know she was fourteen she'd guess twelve, purebloods were tiny sometimes — her appearance clashing somewhat against the intense miasma of dark magic welling up from her, flowing out into her surroundings. It was worse than it'd been before, even, Cassie assumed Black had released her careful hold on her magic now that they were alone, her peers not around to be all fae-struck and googly-eyed, just leaking all over the place as untrained sorceresses were like to do.

In fact, the waves of dark magic crashing over her were starting to get annoying already. Cassie reached out, pinched the air in front of her, forming a miniature vortex in the flow of ambient magic through the room, the power emanating from Black bent away.

Black started, eyes widening a bit. "Hey! You can do that too?"

"Oh, sure," Cassie said, shrugging. "You need an awareness of magic most people don't have, but it's not difficult. Picked it up from a ritualist in Armenia."

"Huh. I didn't know it was a thing other people did, Dumbledore was trying to be all intimidating and it was giving me a headache, so I just, you know, improvised."

"Yeah, he does that." Of course, it didn't bother Cassie nearly as much as it would Black, since his aura was light enough they hadn't any conflict. (He was powerful, more powerful than her, but she'd fought worse.) But, if Black really was an Avatar, she wasn't surprised she'd figured it out on her own on the spot. But anyway, "Did you have a question or something?"

This wasn't about Cassie (arguably) saving her life at the riot, was it? Normally, it would have been the done thing for the Blacks to contact her to express their gratitude somehow, for rescuing their only heir at great personal risk — theoretically, anyway, Cassie hadn't truly feared for her own life at any point that night — but she hadn't expected anything. Another noble family would have, but the Blacks were the Blacks. And, well, Sirius was Sirius, he was hardly one for the formalities of society, and it likely wouldn't have occurred to him to do anything about it because he fully expected her to help people if she could, especially children (she had a reputation), and they had been fighting on the same side. One didn't need to reward allies, after all — they weren't formal allies, but he probably thought as though they were. She hadn't expected him to do anything, and didn't really want him to either. There wasn't anything she could imagine she would want from the Blacks anyway.

"More an invitation, I guess." Black glanced over at Stacey quick. "How much do you trust her?"

"Enough to put her in charge of classes full of eleven- and twelve-year-old kids I'm partially responsible for."

Black nodded. "You belong to Artemis, right?"

Huh, where would she have heard of that? She meant, her whatever with Artemis wasn't common knowledge, exactly — she didn't really hide it either, in countries where high magic was more widely acceptable, but still. Had Luna told her? Not likely...but she was a black mage (and baby Avatar), maybe her patron had said something. Hmm. "My, my, that's a hell of a question to ask. We are in Britain, at the moment, you know."

The kid smirked at her. "And? You said you trusted her," she said, nodding over at Stacey. "And I'm definitely not going to tell anyone. I serve the Chaotic Power in the Aspect of Eris." That explained a lot, and the way the girl just flatly blurted it out, Cassie had to bite her lip to hold in a shocked laugh — looked like the Black insanity still bred true. In her peripheral vision, Cassie noticed Stacey straighten, surprise colouring the air around her. Had Cassie not mentioned that? Oops.

Black was lucky Cassie had already gotten rid of the listening charms Dumbledore (presumably) had placed in the classroom. She and Stacey were hardly going to kick up a fuss about the silly girl being a black mage, but she somehow doubted Dumbledore would take it nearly as easily.

"Right, yes, I belong to Artemis." Better way to put it than saying she was a white mage, at least — which, she didn't think she was? She'd never properly dedicated herself to Artemis, with the whole ritual thing and the making of vows and all that, but Artemis sure did have an outside influence in her life, so... Whatever. For a second, she considered clarifying that she wasn't certain Cassie's Artemis was the same as Black's Artemis — sort of, she hadn't come to Artemis through the whole Powers framework, the face Artemis wore as an Aspect of the Youthful Power was slightly different — but it didn't really seem important enough to go on a tangent about it. "What does that have to do with anything?"

A smirk pulling at her lips, Black said, "Sometimes when Hogwarts with its classes and people and shite starts getting too tedious — like, I'm about to murder someone and/or claw out my own eyes tedious — I go out into the forest to hunt giant man-eating spiders with the wilderfolk. Wanna come?"

"Fuck yes." The words had burst out of Cassie's lips with no conscious decision to say them — not that she would have said anything else, almost shivering with excitement at the idea. She leaned back against her desk to keep herself from moving too much. But, as the words fully registered, her anticipatory relief quickly vanished, replaced with a creeping chill. "Wait, giant man-eating spiders? Are there acromantulae in the forest?"

Black blinked. "Er...yeah? Weren't there in your time?"

"No! Well, not really — Hagrid had a few he was keeping, but there weren't... How many?"

"A few hundred, I guess. No one's ever really counted them. Fewer than there were last year, probably, but they breed quickly." And Black lifted one shoulder in a light shrug, as though what she was saying weren't completely horrifying.

"But, but this is a school! For children! Acromantulae eat people!" Sure, there were all kinds of things in the Forest that were less than perfectly safe to be around, but none of them actively hunted humans! Hell, as dangerous and alien as centaurs and wilderfolk could be, they go out of their way to protect children who blindly stumble into danger in their lands! What the fuck was Dumbledore thinking, allowing fucking acromantulae exist so close to a school?! The students were told not to go out into the Forest, but they were children, of course they would disobey, it was a bloody fucking miracle nobody had died!

"The wilderfolk and the centaurs have mostly managed to contain them so far. They weren't doing particularly well, they were going to lose eventually — acromantulae multiply much more quickly, they were inevitably going to be overwhelmed by weight of numbers."

After which they would wash over the school unopposed. Gods and Powers, this was terrible.

Or...not really, when she thought about it. Before, yes, acromantulae in the Forest would have ended very, very badly. But now Cassie was here, and she would have needed something to do in her off time. She was not accustomed to keeping a regular schedule, had never held a steady job with actual responsibilities in her entire life — and simply wasn't suited to it, likely due to Artemis's influence (not big on commitment, Artemis) — it was only a matter of time before she started feeling anxious and overwhelmed, and needed to do something mad and wild before she lost her mind entirely. Going out to hunt acromantulae on the weekends seemed like the perfect option to let off some steam.

And it would even be accomplishing something important! The acromantulae could not be tolerated to live in the Forest, especially with all the children here at Hogwarts, that simply was not acceptable. And all the wilderfolk and centaurs, fuck, how much had they been suffering under the burden of dealing with the things these last decades?

If Big Silver had been killed, Cassie could not be held responsible for her actions.

"Right." She took in a long, slow breath through her nose, fighting to hold in the urge to run off to the Forest and start her extermination campaign right now. "Okay. I'm going to be busy with scheduling and staff meetings this weekend, so...next Saturday?"

Breaking into a bright, cheerful grin delightfully at odds with the topic of conversation, Black chirped, "Sure! I'll get a message out to Sylvie to expect a guest, so they don't freak out."

"Sylvie's wilderfolk?"

"Yep. You wouldn't know her, she's only a couple years older than me I think, wouldn't have been around in your time."

That wasn't why Cassie had asked — there'd just been an echo when Black had spoken of her, a very familiar kind of echo. She really hoped that got out somehow, because she could just imagine the absolute shit-show people would make of the only heir to a Noble and Most Ancient House shagging a wilderfolk girl. It would be hilarious. "Tell the elders their favourite moonchild is coming back. They'll know who you're talking about."

Black's grin split wider. "You know, Cassie, I have the feeling this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

She laughed. "Get the hell out of my classroom, kid."

The mad little girl obeyed, firing off a sarcastic salute before skipping away. She only made it halfway across the room before she froze, glanced over her shoulder at them, then vanished into shadows with a smirk — because of course Lyra Black could shadow-walk, Cassie wasn't even surprised.

Stacey, though, was staring at the spot Black had vanished from, the sliver of her face Cassie could see from this angle peculiarly blank. Not too strange, she guessed, vampires did sort of think of shadow magic as their thing. Which was silly, Egyptian mages had been practising shadow magic for millennia — it was actually somewhat common there, though shadow-walking specifically was still unusual — but so far as she knew Stacey had never been to the eastern Mediterannean, so. It was very possible she'd never seen a human shadow-walk before.

Not that Lyra Black was even entirely human anymore, but Stacey didn't know that.

"Well," Cassie said, the word coming out more sigh than proper speech. She slouched back across her desk, her head limply falling back. "I guess this year won't be quite as tedious as I'd feared it might be, even if I can't be happy about why — acromantulae in the Forest, honestly, what the fuck is Dumbledore thinking?"

It took a moment for Stacey to respond, her voice still slow and distracted when she did. "I'm certain there are few mages in all of Europe who haven't yet asked themselves that very question."

Cassie snorted. She wasn't wrong about that — Dumbledore had a very...complicated reputation in the rest of the world.

"Are you certain this is a good idea?"

Frowning, she yanked her head back level, glanced in Stacey's direction. She was giving her an odd, uncertain kind of look. It only took Cassie a few seconds to figure out what she was talking about. "Honestly, Stacey, I'm not going to shag the girl."

"That's not what I meant."

"It's totally what you meant."

Stacey rolled her eyes. "It doesn't matter. Whether you do or not, what do you expect people to think when you're going out on weekends to cavort naked in the woods with one of your students?"

"That's quite an assumption you're making."

An almost reluctant smile twitching at her lips, Stacey drawled, "Do you expect me to believe you planned to hunt acromantulae with wildfolk fully dressed?"

"Well, no." That would be silly — it wasn't like wilderfolk cared about such proprieties, and acromantula blood was very hard to wash out. She'd rather not get stuck with blue stains all over her clothes, thanks. "Not that I see what difference it makes. If I'm being perfectly honest, I've always found people's preoccupation with modesty and clothing and decorum incomprehensible. I only follow the rules because people will be annoying if I don't."

"You have been talking with Lady Artemis since you were a small child, I'm not surprised."

Yes, good point. In Artemis's appearances in her dreams, she rarely bothered with human inanities like clothing, and even when she did she was hardly what British mages would consider presentable. Proper dress was just too civilised for Artemis, when it came down to it. Since she had been a major influence on Cassie throughout her entire life, it wasn't strange to think she might have absorbed Artemis's opinion on some things.

It was a little weird, now that she thought about it, that Stacey would think that obvious, though. So far as Cassie was aware, Stacey had never met Artemis, and in the various depictions of the goddess Cassie had seen over the years she was...well, not modestly dressed, but not exactly scandalous either. Had Cassie said something about that at some point? Hmm.

But anyway, "Shouldn't they be more concerned about the, you know, acromantulae outside a school? That seems far more important a sticking point than whether the people dealing with them are observing proper decorum or not."

Stacey sighed. "They'll invent a scandal about you if they have to, Cassie. And you know, regardless of the truth, the hacks at the Prophet will turn this into something salacious. Running off with Black like this, you're only giving them material."

"If they're going to make shite up anyway, what does it matter what I do?"

"Cassie, amuri, you—"

"You don't like Black, do you."

At least Stacey had the integrity to not lie about it — her face instantly collapsed into a distant frown, uncertain and unsettled. "There's something not right about that girl."

Her voice turned shaky with half-repressed giggling, Cassie said, "Well, obviously. You're aware she's a blood alchemy clone of the Blackheart, right? I've met the woman all of twice, and..."

"When did you meet the Blackheart?" Stacey asked, eyes suddenly wide.

"Oh, nothing big. My mother dragged me to the Festa Morgana once, in Seventy-Five." At the time, Mother hadn't yet given up on convincing her to be a good little noble girl, accept an advantageous marriage and make good little pureblood babies and do the society wife thing. As though Cassie had ever shown any inclination to do any of that ever. She'd never given up, which was fucking absurd, it was like she didn't know Cassie at all.

Honestly, if Mother had wanted good little noble kids, she shouldn't have married a Lovegood.

"She went most years, seemingly just to start shite for fun. We only bumped into each other, I stayed away from her, I was too sensitive to dark magic to tolerate being too close to her back then. And in Eighty, I..." Cassie hesitated, staring back into the past. This was still one of the most absolute strangest experiences in her life, wasn't certain how to feel about it even now. "Ah, I was back in the country, visiting the family on Imbolc, you know. Black — Lestrange, whatever — she found me somehow, wanted me to help her get to Lily. Not to hurt her," she said to the dumbfounded look on Stacey's face, "she's not an idiot. No, she wanted Lily to fix what she'd done to her precious Dark Lord."

"...What?"

Cassie shrugged. "I don't know, Black didn't explain. Reading between the lines, Lily had cursed him with high magic somehow, and Black couldn't reverse it without her."

Her eyes going even wider, Stacey looked very much impressed, which was only appropriate, Lily had been a very impressive woman. Honestly, Cassie didn't know what she'd done, but it must have been something really bad for Black to consider asking for help from a 'mudblood', and she'd been, what, seventeen or eighteen at the time? Even Cassie wouldn't have had the nerve to get close enough to curse him at that age, and she was well aware she was completely insane. "What happened?"

"I refused, obviously. I'd have to be an idiot to trust the bloody Blackheart, I wouldn't have set Lily up like that, even if she would have listened to me." They'd had a terrible falling out at the end of Cassie's seventh year — Lily had taken Cassie's plans to get the fuck out of Britain very personally, had said some vicious things about her character, leaving the rest of them behind to die. (Lily had sort of had a point, but for fuck's sake, Cassie had been eighteen, dealing with a Dark Lord and his idiot minions had not been her responsibility.) After that, they'd only spoken once, when Cassie had turned up at her fucking disaster of a wedding. They'd...sort of made up, a little bit, but she certainly hadn't been in a position to ask her for favours. Especially when that favour was to agree to a meeting with Bellatrix Lestrange to help her worst enemy.

"And...she just let you go?"

"Oh, she threw a few curses at me in a snit, but her heart wasn't really in it. She popped away before all of them even landed. Damn liver-shredding curse got through, spent hours dealing with that..."

"Uh-huh..." Stacey's expression wasn't clearly readable, but the echo of her mind was far less opaque — wonder, confusion, concern, affection. "And you still think it's a good idea to form any kind of relationship with Lyra Black."

Cassie grinned. "Now, sweetie, that's a silly thing to say. When have I ever cared if something's a good idea or not?"

Stacey let out a long sigh, the magic around her thickly coloured with exasperation. "All right, fine, be that way. If this whole British adventure blows up in your face and you find yourself in serious trouble, don't expect me to help you."

"That's complete shite, and you know it. You love me too much, you wouldn't be able to help yourself."

Stacey shot her a narrow-eyed glare. She hesitated for a moment, clearly attempting to come up with a response that wouldn't be giving up or else a lie — she couldn't get away with lying, Cassie always knew when someone was lying to her. After a few seconds of silence, Stacey grimaced, and disappeared into shadows without a word.

Once she was certain she was alone, Cassie burst into bright giggles. She'd be paying for that later, of course — in a most entertaining way, though Stacey would probably go further than she was entirely comfortable with as punishment — but she really just couldn't help herself sometimes.

Tee hee, I win.

---

Woo, Cassie! Cassie is fun. And also doomed — she's going to hate being stuck at the castle with a steady job for nine months straight so much...

The "Italian" Stacey spoke there is actually Sicilian. Missina (spelled Messina in standard Italian), the city she's from, is in northeast Sicily, just across the straight from Calabria, the southernmost peninsula of mainland Italy. —Lysandra

It really amuses me that Cassie's characterisation of Lily (awesome, literally) and Sirius's characterisation of her are pretty much identical.

Also, Cassie, of course the fact that Lyra's shagging wilderfolk is going to get out. Given that you're dealing with a girl dedicated to chaos it will obviously get out in the most dramatic way possible xD

And for the record, no, Cassie is not going to end up shagging Lyra at any point. Kid looks like she's about twelve, come on! Also, she's not likely to be to happy with Cassie when she realises that Cassie plans to kill all of the spiders, so, there's that. —Leigha