Tove found Cassandra in the library, where she was working on Professor Lasses' end-of-year project. Other students, nearly all of them fifth-years, sat at lamp-lit tables nearby, nose close to books, quills scratching feverishly, while the sky outside the mullioned windows remained steadily dark. The only other sound was the soft footsteps of the librarian's shoes as she prowled the aisles quietly, retrieving books that students had left out of place.
"What are you doing?" Tove asked, sitting down opposite Cassandra. Cassandra, Tove and Fidele had been back at school for a couple of weeks, without Galena, and were still learning how to navigate their new three-person dynamic. One of the resulting changes was that Cassandra and Tove were spending much more time together than they used to.
"Runic Studies project," said Cassandra.
"Is it interesting?"
She put her quill away and looked up at Tove, who was taking books one by one out of her schoolbag and piling them up on the desk. "It is. We have to propose an innovative application for runes that's complex, executable and impactful. It's worth our entire grade for the year."
Tove snorted. "Does Lasses hate you or what? That sounds impossible. Do you know what our project for Wizarding Customs is? Researching our ancestry back seven generations. I was done in a week."
"It's not impossible, just very, very hard. This way she eliminates everyone who doesn't have sufficient Runecasting skills from her U.Z.T. classes, without having to argue with the swots who think theoretical knowledge should be enough to get them through. It's smart."
"Still, handing out an assignment like that during our G.M.A. year? I'm glad I didn't pick her subject as an elective. What's your project about?" said Tove.
The librarian made a shushing gesture as she swept past their table, and Cassandra gave her an apologetic nod.
"Have you ever heard of Rowle's Progeny Ritual?" whispered Cassandra.
Tove shook her head.
"The Rowles are a very old British pure-blood family and one of the few that have managed to cling to that status to this day. They had a Minister in their line, Damocles Rowle. He was anti-Muggle, sadistic, a nightmare of a wizard by all accounts. As the tale goes, Damocles' oldest daughter, Iphigenia, rebelled against the family and ran away to marry a Prussian Muggle she'd fallen in love with. The Muggle, who was a nobleman in King Frederick II's court, was able to pay wizards handsomely to cast enchantments that protected him and Iphigenia from detection by her parents through the usual spells. Determined to find their daughter, Damocles and his wife created a locating ritual using rune tiles made from their own flesh to search out their missing progeny, Iphigenia — the flesh of their flesh."
"That's gross," Tove whispered, and then, looking curious. "Did it work?"
"It did. They found Iphigenia and killed her for dishonouring the family. The specifics of the ritual were shared with the Rowles' close acquaintances and it became infamous among a sect of pure-blood families in Britain as a last resort to hunt down runaway heirs."
"Now, what's fascinating about Rowle's Progeny Ritual is that despite there only being a handful of accounts of its usage, there's been significant speculation about the potential for modifying it to achieve different outcomes. My paternal grandfather Lautaro wrote in one of his journals that he and a friend had once theorised that with a few changes in the runic arrangements, a wizard could perform the ritual to locate his parents, rather than the other way around. This would be useful in the case of a magical child who was abducted by Muggles as an infant, for example."
"Is that what you're doing?"
"That would hardly be original. No, I'm thinking even further outside of the box. I've worked the runes extensively, and I think I might be able to use the ritual on werewolves."
"To search for their children?" said Tove, her eyebrows knitting together.
Cassandra leaned forward to answer. "To locate their progeny. Every single werewolf that they've bitten and turned."
Tove stared at her. "You're kidding."
"I'm not."
"Cass, if you can pull this off… It could completely change how governments deal with werewolves. We'd have a foolproof way to identify which of them pose a threat to society."
"Don't be so coy, Tove. Just because one of them hasn't turned someone, it doesn't mean they won't. They're mindless, soulless evil. But if I can make the ritual work the way I intend it to, we'll be able to locate and wipe out entire colonies at a time. With aggressive and concentrated effort, we could eliminate the threat of lycanthropy within a generation or two."
Cassandra blew out a breath and smiled. She'd once told Severus Snape that sometimes, she wished the werewolves that murdered her family were still alive. That was doubly true now. She wanted to look them in their faces and let them know she'd be the one to bring about the extinction of their entire race.
"You are a brilliant, batshit crazy, murderous witch," said Tove.
"I am."
"I'm glad we're friends."
Cassandra laughed, charmed. "Me too. Speaking of friends, I've been meaning to ask Fidele for her Arithmancy notes. Have you seen her anywhere?"
Tove shook her head. "Not since lunch. The past few weeks, she's been…"
"Yeah. She misses Galena."
"Do you think…" said Tove, her voice lowering to a whisper once again.
"Do I think what?"
"Forget it. I'm not gonna be the one to say it."
"To say what?" said Cassandra rather impatiently.
Tove mimicked locking her mouth and throwing away the key.
"Fine, you can keep your secrets. I have to go anyway. I need to talk to Professor Lasses about hunting werewolves."
Cassandra left the library for the Runic Studies classroom. Professor Lasses held office hours there on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from six forty-five to eight-thirty in the evening. It was dark and empty when she arrived, but she lit the lamps and had only waited five minutes when Professor Lasses turned up.
"Good evening, Professor."
"Good evening," said Lasses, stripping off her ratty cloak and tossing it onto her desk. "You wanted to talk about your project."
"Yes," she said, trying not to sound overeager. "I've done the theoretical work and formed a testable idea, but I need your assistance to move forward to the testing stage."
"I have only so much time to dedicate to any given student's project, Lestrange. Out of all my students, I expected you to be the one to need the least hand-holding."
"I understand." Cassandra took her notes out of her bag and placed them in front of Lasses. "But what I'm trying to achieve is highly advanced magic, Professor — well beyond Ordinary Magical Training. Look for yourself."
Professor Lasses questioned her for an hour about all the intricate details of the runic configurations and the other elements of the ritual Cassandra had devised. She answered freely and left nothing out. Cassandra wanted Lasses' help and to get that, she had to impress her.
She told her everything about the original ritual and how she'd come to learn of it. She gave her the reason behind every modification she'd made and drew a large diagram of the proposed runic arrangement.
"So what's the next step?"
"I need to test the ritual on a werewolf with known victims, so I can verify that it'll lead us to them."
"And what do you need me to do?"
"I'm hoping you can reach out to local Magical Law Enforcement and ask if they have a werewolf serving a sentence for spreading lycanthropy that we can subject to testing. I've tried, but my last name doesn't carry a lot of weight on the continent. I didn't even get a response."
"Why werewolves?"
"What do you mean?"
"You showed exceptional instinct when identifying the potential in Rowle's Progeny Ritual. But you could've taken it in several directions. So why werewolves?"
There was a long silence. Cassandra unbuttoned the high-collared crimson jacket and white shirt of her uniform and pulled them down, exposing her scars. They ran from the slope of her right shoulder to the top of her breast in four thick and jagged parallel lines. How she loathed them.
Professor Lasses looked at her in expressionless silence for such a long time that Cassandra began to grow impatient. She was wondering whether she'd chosen the wrong approach when Lasses at last nodded her head.
"I'll get you the werewolf you need."
"You will?"
"I have my own set of principles. One of them is that a predator is always a predator, and if I can hurt a predator by doing my job, then he deserved it."
Cassandra took that in, feeling a sense of camaraderie.
It felt as though things were back on track. Galena corresponded with her and their friends almost daily; Fidele's sulky moods were fewer and further between and Professor Lasses helpfully kept Cassandra updated on the search for test subjects. Even Viktor Krum had been acting less unpleasantly during his remedial Sunday sessions, probably because he'd finally figured out that Cassandra, Tove, Fidele and Galena could hardly have gotten Merga Bien pregnant. Cassandra's greatest source of annoyance these days was, surprisingly, Professor Krauja.
A few of the teachers had taken it upon themselves to hold counselling sessions with the students who they believed were the most impacted by what had occurred to Merga and her child. Since they had been the ones to find their bodies, Cassandra, Fidele and Tove could not escape them. As a result, every Monday afternoon, Cassandra sat across from Professor Krauja while he asked her about her feelings and did her best to redirect the conversation to some Dark Arts topic she was studying.
Things came to a head in mid-February when Cassandra eventually lost her patience.
"Have you been having any negative fee—"
"No, I haven't been having any negative feelings or thoughts about what happened," Cassandra told Krauja the eighth time he asked this question. "I haven't been thinking about it at all. Most of my negative feelings these days are about these sessions."
Krauja was taken aback. "Frau Lestrange, I'm not trying to make things worse for you."
"Then what are you trying to do?"
"We're trying to help."
Cassandra scoffed. "Help whom? Certainly not me. Because if you wanted to help me, you would stop badgering me. I'm fine."
"The experiences that you and your friends had to endure — discovering Frau Bien's body, the haunting, helping locate the body of her child — were undoubtedly traumatic. Avoidance, unfortunately, is not the healthiest solution in this situation."
"Do you think that stumbling upon a couple of corpses was a traumatic experience for me? My parents being sent away to Azkaban when I was four years old was traumatic. A year ago, my grandfather sacrificed himself for me and I watched the house-elf that raised me being torn to pieces. I fended off a pack of werewolves to save my own life. Those experiences were traumatic. Finding Merga was just a bad Tuesday."
"Do you feel the same about her child?" insisted Krauja.
"You were there too. How do you feel about it?"
"I feel sorrow. I also feel a staggering amount of responsibility. I've fantasised about scenarios where my actions may have allowed a different fate for Frau Bien, one in which she never conceived that poor infant in the first place. Does any of that resonate with you?"
Cassandra crossed her arms and looked away from Krauja. "No. I know from experience not to indulge in that kind of fantasy. There's no unlived life or alternate reality where you save everyone. There's only here and now, and what you can do with it. And no one can do anything about Merga Bien. No one can do anything to her or for her ever again."
"We could find her killer and bring them to justice."
She laughed incredulously. "Good luck with that."
"You don't believe that's a possibility?"
"I don't believe anyone really wants to. I figured that out when we had a "moment of silence" for her at dinner, right after Karkaroff told the school she was a suicidal slag. Seriously? I kept expecting Ivanovich, Vulchanova, you, or anyone to say something. But of course you sat there and didn't say a word."
"Frau Lestrange—"
"No. You wanted me to talk about my feelings, didn't you? I'm talking."
Professor Krauja opened and closed his mouth, then nodded in an accepting manner.
"Do you know what's going on?" said Cassandra. "I know you do. You must. But everybody is pretending they don't. The staff, the other students, they're all pretending it could've been a Muggle. Pretending she was in that cave of her own volition, that she committed suicide. But it's just that, pretend. Everybody sees the truth and then they hide from it. They just… bow down to it."
"And what do you think is the truth?"
"The truth is that a wizard took her. Someone who's in this school right now. He kept her in that cave for months, impregnated her and then killed her and their baby. And then, as if this wasn't enough, he discarded her body like it was… a thing. Like it'd never been a witch in the first place.
"There are all these girls here who are afraid and freaked out because the cave is so close to the castle. Like the fucking cave did it. I want to tell them to shut up and stop being afraid. Fear makes you run in circles.
"Thatis why I've put this whole thing off my mind, professor. Because I'm not cowed by fear. I haven't been in a while. I'd rather hunt the beast that wants to kill me. And if I let myself think about what's going on in this school, if I really let myself think about it, then I'm going to have to confront the fact that because I wasn't born a wizard, because I live in this female body, there's someone in this school that might want to capture, rape, and then kill me. And that's hardly something a rational person can accept."
It didn't take much needling after that to free herself from further counselling sessions — Professor Krauja was a wizard of integrity and scrupulous ethics and had been troubled by the notion that their conversations had the potential to cause more harm than good. It was the right decision. Cassandra had opted to leave the mystery of Merga's death be, but like the coiled snake that she was, it wouldn't take much to make her strike.
February faded into March, and the bitterly cold weather finally relented. Late winter also brought a positive response from the Norwegian Ministry of Magic regarding the werewolf matter.
Initially, the Avdelingen for magisk justis had maintained that any experiments on convicted criminals must be carried out at Galdurskjold, the prison that served the magical communities of Scandinavia. Professor Lasses reasoned that Cassandra was still an underage witch and therefore should not be required to expose herself to the hostile environment of a prison. The Ministry and Lasses then engaged in a lengthy discussion regarding security measures, which Cassandra resolved by offering to cover all the costs associated with the operation, including the extra hours Aurors would work transporting and guarding the prisoner.
On the morning of the Ostara Cassandra bathed in thyme and mare's milk to cleanse and fortify herself for the ritual. She'd chosen the date intentionally — Ostara celebrated fertility and growth, and it was an auspicious time for the practice of magic that dealt with lineage. She, Tove and Fidele arrived at breakfast just in time for the arrival of the post owls. Mystic was there with a letter from Adrian, and Tove had to wrestle a box of sweets from the beak of Galena's gigantic buff-brown Eagle-owl as they sat down.
"I hate that demon bird," said Tove, eagerly tearing open the box and pulling out a spiced honey biscuit. "Why anyone should need an owl the size of a toddler is beyond me." She placed a few more sweets on her plate with a pleased expression spread across her plate.
"You smell different," Fidele said to Cassandra, delicately sniffing the air around her. "Pass me a baklava."
"I was soaking in horse milk."
"That's disgusting."
Cassandra shrugged, washing a bite of syrupy semolina cake down with coffee.
"You're sure you don't want us to participate?" asked Tove. "I don't feel great about the idea of you being locked in a cell with a werewolf by yourself."
"That's sweet, but you don't have to worry. It'll be shackled, and Lasses is going to be there alongside two Aurors. I'll be just fine."
"Good," said Fidele. "Because if you die, I'll kill you."
"I'll never die," Cassandra exclaimed as she left the table and hurried out of the Great Hall, ignoring the curious looks she was getting from other students. "I'm invincible!"
She strutted alone to the castle's dungeon. Professor Lasses was waiting for her a little to the side of the stairs, her short and asymmetrical hair spikier than usual.
"Hi," said Cassandra excitedly.
"This had better work, Lestrange," said Lasses. "You made me politick, and I hate politicking."
"You're not very good at it," Cassandra said breezily as they walked down the steep and narrow stairs. "You didn't even think of offering them money. Nothing cuts through bureaucracy like gold."
Lasses snorted ungracefully. "It's so bizarre teaching you patrician pure-bloods. You gave away half my year's salary like it was nothing. You have no idea what it's like having to earn a living."
"I mean this as a compliment, but you get paid way too little," said Cassandra. "And you're right, I have no clue what it's like to work for my money. Hopefully, I never will."
As they descended, the sounds of the castle above grew fainter, replaced by the sound of dripping water and the occasional rat scurrying through the shadows.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped onto the stone floor of the dungeon. The air was thick with the scent of damp stone and rotting wood. A voice called out to them from the end of the row of iron cells.
"Hello? Hello!"
Cassandra looked at the scruffy wizard who was walking in their direction, from his shaggy, sunstreaked brown hair to his beaten leather boots.
"You're not an Auror," Lasses said in place of a greeting.
"No, those would be my two colleagues back there," said the wizard, turning his animated gaze to the pair of much-better-groomed wizards standing guard in front of the last cell in the corridor. "I'm Lars Hansen, Fangst av varulver." He pulled out a business card from his pocket and handed it to Lasses, who read it and passed it along to Cassandra.
"Werewolf Capture Unit?" said Cassandra. "We were told a representative of the Ministry would be present for the ritual, but they didn't specify from which department."
"Oh, I begged to be here once we were told about what you're doing. Exciting stuff. Anyway, I'm very pleased to meet you."
"Are you familiar with ritual magic?" Lasses asked flatly.
"No."
"Do you have a thorough understanding of runes?"
"Not at all."
"Then they should've sent somebody else."
"I'm sorry I'm not what you expected," he said, blushing under his tan, "but I promise, when it comes to finding and capturing werewolves, I'm the man you want. And that's what this is about, right?"
"Not exactly, but it doesn't matter," said Lasses. "As long as you can write a competent report of what happens here today, it should be fine."
"Is it already in there?" Cassandra asked, craning her neck to get a glimpse into the last cell.
"The werewolf? Oh yes. His name is—"
Cassandra offered him a genteel smile. "Thank you, but that information is unnecessary. Does it speak German?"
Hansen pulled out a thick file from his coat and leafed through it. "No, only Norwegian and some Swedish. He has three known victims from an attack carried out two and a half years ago. One of them died, the other two survived and turned."
"Do you happen to have their current address or general location?"
"We do, they're registered with us. Should I tell you?"
"Yes, but only after I've performed the ritual. I wouldn't want to taint the results."
He nodded. "Anything else?"
"No. Just remember to keep your distance and remain silent. I can answer any questions you have after the ritual is complete, but I can't afford any interruptions."
"You got it. I'll keep my eyes open and my mouth shut. I have to tell you though, the Minister is looking forward to hearing about today's results."
"Is that so?" said Cassandra as she moved past the wizard.
He turned on his heels to follow her. "Yes. I know you Durmstrang folks don't look kindly on Muggle-borns, but he campaigned as being tough on creatures, and he's delivered so far. He takes a personal interest in our department."
"Good for you."
She reached the end of the row, coming face-to-face with the beast she'd taken so long to procure. The werewolf was in its human form, shackled to the ceiling and floor of the cell by its hands and wrists. When the Aurors opened the cell to let her and Professor Lasses in, it looked up at her, its eyes bleary and bloodshot.
The werewolf rasped out a question, but Cassandra waved away Lasses' offer to translate. She pulled out her wand and cast the Oscausi Charm, sealing its mouth shut and rendering it mute for the time being. She didn't fancy being spat on or screamed at while performing highly complex magic.
Cassandra slowly approached the captive werewolf, studying it. She felt calm, observational, analytical. The beast struggled against its chains, retreating from her as much as it could as she circled it. Its alarmed and wide-eyed gaze never left her.
She cast charms to clean and dry the creature, as well as the cell they were in. Next, she reached into her bag and withdrew a series of items. Among them was a large and rectangular piece of parchment, one by one and a half meters in size, which she carefully laid out on the ground.
She placed a ritual basin by the parchment and knelt before it. Moving swiftly, she undid the Freezing Charm she'd placed on a mountain hare Klaus had captured the night before and cut its throat, draining the animal's blood into the container. She then uncorked a vial of ink and poured it into the hare's blood, following it with powdered aconite and crocodile egg yolks. The resulting mixture was a foul-smelling, brownish sludge.
Cassandra put her wand away and got up to her feet, taking the basin with her. She rested it against the werewolf's stomach and flicked open a silver fan knife. The werewolf, who'd been staying mostly still for the past twenty minutes, started thrashing against its manacles again. She put the knife against the beast's throat.
"Stop. Do you understand me? Stop. Or I'll have to immobilize you."
There was no sign that it understood her words, but it stopped moving once she pressed the knife down more firmly. Cassandra held the werewolf's gaze, steady and implacable, until it gave in, hanging its head. She trailed the knife down to the creature's chest, pausing just above its heart.
She resisted the impulse to shove the knife in and made the first cut. In total, she removed eight squares of flesh from the werewolf's torso, etching the runes she had tinkered with for months onto them. In the meantime, blood streamed into the basin positioned against the creature's lower abdomen, giving the mixture in it a fluid consistency.
Once that was done, she leaned in close to the beast and murmured in English into its ear. "You're probably wondering why I'm doing this. I tried to move on, I really did. And then I thought, why should I? What your kind did to me can never be undone. But you can be undone."
Cassandra placed the runes on the parchment, each facing one cardinal direction, and held the basin above it. She closed her eyes and felt for the magic around her, pulling it inside herself and directing it to the runes.
She tipped the basin carefully, letting its contents spill onto the parchment and began to chant, her voice low and steady.
"Sanguis ad sanguinem vocat. Caro ad carnem vocat. Occulta progenies revela."
The werewolf made a pained, guttural noise.
A flurry of vivid images began to unfurl inside Cassandra's mind. She saw an elderly woman clad in furs weaving a fishing net. A heavily scarred man sleeping soundly amidst a herd of sheep. A girl no older than eighteen casting a spell to move a stack of fluffy pancakes from a stove to a dingy kitchen table. Lastly, a rugged and muscular man running bare-chested through a forest of spruce and pine, his feet pounding the ground with unbridled vigour.
When she opened her eyes, she saw the runes gleam and the blood mixture ooze and creep across the parchment like a spider's web. It fanned into every corner of it, settling into valleys, forests and mountains; tracing rivers, shores and roads. It was a map of impressive magnitude and detail. But what truly captured her attention were the four blood-and-ink dots moving around it, each emblazoned with a name.
Cassandra drew a big, chest-expanding breath and then turned, beaming, to look at Professor Lasses. "I did it."
Lasses stepped forward and bent over the map. "You said this werewolf has two known victims?" she asked the scruffy ministry representative, whose head was nearly detaching from his neck in his effort to peer into the cell. "What are their names?"
"Trygve Hagen and Vilde Frang."
Cassandra confirmed them against the map. "It lied. It's got two more."
But that wasn't quite right. In the following week, when the Norwegian Ministry of Magic sought to verify the identity and location of the four names indicated on the map, records were found for one Magnus Ulven — the burly runner Cassandra had seen during the ritual. Ulven had registered himself as a werewolf ten years before their test subject had been turned. The ritual had not only located the werewolf's progeny — it had also located its maker.
*Damocles Rowle was, according to J.K. Rowling, an anti-Muggle Minister for Magic responsible for the creation of Azkaban and for utilising the Dementor colony living on the island as the prison's guards. I thought he'd be just the kind of wizard to create the ritual featured in this chapter.
**I mentioned in this chapter that Lautaro Lestrange (Cassandra's paternal grandfather) and a friend once theorized that the progeny ritual could be used by a young wizard to locate his parents. It's canon that a Lestrange boy was a part of Tom Riddle's posse during his Hogwarts years. And who other than Riddle himself would've had such a burning desire to uncover the identity and location of their parents at that time? Just an interesting little tie-in I decided to add.
***This chapter decidedly marks Cassandra's shift into a morally grey character. She's disgusted by what was done to Merga, a witch. At the same time, she wouldn't blink before committing genocide against an entire population of wizards and witches who also happen to be werewolves, because she believes she's justified in doing so. Her attitude towards them doesn't necessarily come from pure-blood bigotry but it is shaped by it. It was also very compelling to me to have this specific plotline happen in parallel to PoA. If Cassandra's first experience with werewolves had been friendly, downtrodden Remus Lupin, she'd view the species in an entirely different light.
****The main subject I wanted to explore in this part of the story was, what would sexual assault and gendered violence look like in a world where women are just as powerful as men? Magic might be the great equalizer, but human nature being what it is, those issues would inevitably crop up. How would witches deal with them? How would they feel about it?
*****Avdelingen for magisk justis: official Norwegian translation for Department of Magical Law Enforcement
******When naming the Scandinavian magical prison, I joined the words "galdur", which means magic in Icelandic, and "skjold", which means shield in Norwegian. The name Galdurskjold represents the prison's function of protecting society from dangerous magical criminals.
*******Ostara is one of the eight seasonal festivals that make up the Wheel of the Year. It celebrates the spring equinox and is a time of new beginnings and of life emerging further from the grips of winter.
********Thyme and mare's milk are both used in cleansing rituals in different parts of the world. Thyme is said to instil strength and courage and to dispel grief in times of loss, negativity and hopelessness.
*********The Latin incantation used in the ritual means: "Blood calls to blood. Flesh calls to flesh. Reveal the hidden lineage." Cassandra's happy accident (of locating the werewolf's maker alongside his progeny) happened because of a translation mishap. There are a few ways to translate the word progeny into Latin. Had she gone with "proles", which more accurately translates to offspring, she would've gotten the expected result. However, when she chose "progenies", the sentence gained a new, more ambiguous meaning.
Hello! Yes, I'm posting ahead of schedule! Glad to be able to do so. Now that we're ramping up toward the end, I'm very curious to know if any of you have any theories about who Merga's killer is and why they did it. A good friend of mine sparked this curiosity by sharing her theory with me. I wonder if any of you have figured it out. love, b xx