Cassandra Black observed three things when she came down the stairs the morning of August 3rd. The first was that her family — Andromeda, Ted, and Nymph — were all quiet, and Nymph had not seemed to have knocked anything off the table yet. She was the clumsiest person Cassandra had ever met, including Tracey Davis, so this was immmediately worrying. The second observation, when she reached the kitchen door, was that breakfast was already made, pancakes with sugar and maple syrup and honey and lemon. They were her favourite breakfast dish, and Andromeda only made them on special occasions. Or, if there was bad news, like Ted's mum passing away last year. Her stomach turned nervously.
And then, approaching her usual seat nearest the window, she made her third and most important observation.
The Daily Prophet newspaper, with the picture of a screaming man, and the name above it: Sirius Black.
"What happened?" she asked, staring at the words 'escaped' and 'Azkaban' and 'manhunt'. "Andromeda? Nymph?" Nymphadora — Tonks to most people, Dora to family, Nymph to Cassandra who hadn't been able to pronounce her r's right when she was little and thought her adoptive sister's love of blue hair was very nymphlike — looked up, grimacing.
"Sit down," Nymph told her and Cassie did, feeling numb. "It happened last night. They don't know how, but he — Sirius Black—" Everyone grimaced, wincing unexpectedly. They never referred to him as Cassie's dad. Mostly they tried not to talk about him at all. "—He escaped from Azkaban. I've got to go into the Ministry soon, emergency Auror meeting, but I wanted to help break the news. I'm sorry, Cassie." She put a pale hand on Cassie's shoulder. "No one knows where he is. If he's alive or dead."
Cassie hoped he was dead, but she didn't say so. She sat, tight lipped, staring at the picture.
He looked mad, which made sense. Apparently he'd been mad even before he went into Azkaban, not that she could remember. She hadn't even seen pictures of him, not enough to know his face, but she could see their similarities. It was the eyes, mostly, the same shade of silver, though his were duller. Still, there was the long nose, the sharp eyebrows, Cassie's high cheekbones and black, curly hair, which she imagined his would have been like, if it had a comb taken to it.
"Cassie?" Nymph said. She slid a plate of pancakes over to her. "Eat."
"It'll be alright, dear," Andromeda told her. Like Cassie believed that.
"D'you think he'll come find me?" she asked, and they all looked at each other.
Ted said, "You'll be fine," and no one else said anything.
Cassie sighed loudly, trying to dramatise it so that she could ignore the fear inside of her. She felt sick. Pancakes, once so appetising, made her nauseous just by looking at them. "If he's escaped, he might. He might want somewhere to go and then he might find me because he's crazy and thinks I'd want to see him and then he'll realise I won't help him because he's, like, an actual murderer and then — what if he kills me?"
"I'm sure it won't come to that," Ted said quickly.
"The Ministry'll find him soon," Nymph said, "the top Aurors are already on it. You're not in any danger."
"If he's escaped once he could do it again and he — he's clearly brighter than the Ministry! If he can escape..." She put her head in her hands, nearly sticking her elbow in the stack of pancakes.
"Cassie," Andromeda said softly, "I promise you're not going to be in danger. You'll be safe, and once you get to Hogwarts they'll have enough precautions that he'll never get the chance to get anywhere near the castle."
"Yeah," Nymph nodded. "They'll probably put some Aurors on duty at the castle, cause there's so many kids about, and it'll be a risk. Not," she added when her parents glared at her, "that you're actually at risk, you know? Just. Hypothetically."
"Hypothetically I might get murdered," Cassie said, scraping her chair back, sure she was going to hurl. "And oh God, everyone knows me! Everyone's gonna know!"
She had kept a pretty low radar the last couple of years. Being in Slytherin, most of the other houses didn't want to interact with her anyway, and she kept her head down. The only bother she ever had was Professor Snape, who hadn't liked her at first but then for some reason lost interest when she opted to simply not speak in his presence. He picked on Potter and Longbottom more anyway, which was fair because both were annoying and neither were good at Potions. Then there was Draco Malfoy, who happened to be her cousin, and was one of the most annoying people she'd ever met. He liked to point out their relation, and then when she didn't speak back, he'd make fun of her for not being pureblood, something which usually made her want to hex him. But at least he didn't drag her into trouble.
"Well, people might talk," Ted said awkwardly, "but I think it's pretty evident you're not a murderer, so."
"Yeah," Nymph said, "you're a bony little squirt—"
"I'm tall for my age!"
"—you wear beige sweaters, plait your hair every morning, and still dance to Celestine Warbeck in the kitchen when you bake cookies."
"No one else knows that," Cassie said, glaring, "and no one else ever will."
"See," Ted said, grinning, "you're trying to be mad but we can't take you seriously in your fluffy pink dressing gown."
Cassie pouted. "You guys really underestimate how stupid the people in my year are though. Especially the Gryffindors."
Especially Harry Potter and his friends, she thought. She'd never really spoken to them, because simply having to be in their presence was bad enough. They weren't bad people, she supposed, but they were always getting into trouble, always involved in whatever attempt at murder was going down in the School that year, generally loud, and Cassie still was certain they'd intentionally blown up Goyle's cauldron last year, no matter what Tracey and Lily thought they saw.
Also, Harry Potter had whacked a Cornish pixie with a book straight towards her in Gilderoy Lockhart's class last year, and even though she was pretty sure he didn't mean it, due to the fact that he seemed super unobservant of everyone around him and probably didn't know she existed, Cassie still held a grudge. The pixie had spat in her hair, and it was just too gross to forgive.
"It'll be alright," Nymph promised, shaking Cassie's shoulder. "They'll catch him, and everything will be normal. There's still a month before you go back to school. Just try to be relaxed about it, and it'll blow over. We'll catch him, you'll see.
"He's still only one wizard, without a wand, without a means of disguising himself. He won't get far."
Cassie didn't believe her, and once Nymph left she still didn't have much appetite. Her thoughts about her father were simple. She hated him. For murdering thirteen people, and generally subscribing to all the views she despised and sought to expel in the Slytherin common room - which so far was not going well. It was easy to hate someone she didn't remember even if he had, apparently, raised her for the twenty months of her life.
She spent the day in the garden. Andromeda watched her closely, seeming worried. Cassandra wished she would stop. It made her feel under pressure, like she couldn't put a foot too far away, and like Andromeda was expecting her to be attacked.
But nothing happened that day, despite Andromeda worrying. Nymph and Ted were both late home from the Ministry — Nymph was a Trainee Auror, and Ted worked in the Muggle Liaison Office — coming in just after ten o'clock, when Cassandra was sitting reading in the lounge, growing sleepy. Not much was said; the Muggle Liaison Office has been working hard to make sure the right message got out to the Muggle government, seeing as Sirius Black was so dangerous, and especially so to Muggles, while the Aurors had been going over every possible location for Sirius, and Nymph, despite being a trainee, had been unofficially promoted because of the need for more hands on during the crisis.
The fact they hadn't gotten anywhere yet worried Cassandra. She lay tossing and turning all night, thinking.
That man was her father, after all, even if it was only by blood. As far as she was concerned, Ted might as well be her dad and Andromeda might as well be her mum, and Nymph was most definitely her sister. She tried to ignore his existence. If she thought of her birth parents, she only thought of her mum; her name had been Marlene McKinnon, and she had been killed in a house fire when Cassandra was just a year old, since her family had all fought Death Eaters.
But if Sirius Black, her father, was on the loose, she would not be able to forget him. He'd not just be on her mind but on the minds of everyone around her. As soon as people made the connection, and she didn't think it would take long, they would hate her, because hardly anyone knew her well enough to have reason to think otherwise. Plus, she was a Slytherin, and everyone thought the worst of them.
Cassandra just hoped she could somehow keep her head down this year, like normal. But she doubted it.