Quick Author's Note: I'm back! I want to finish this! It's been ten years, sorry! I know this is a lot and I do apologise and I am currently writing a few chapters ahead so I can release stuff semi-regularly. Releasing two chapters here (though one is more plotty than the other, because what I am SUPPOSED to be writing here is a shippy TMR/OC) so I don't disappoint anyone with a lack of the ship you're all reading this for. A shoutout to everyone who has commented and reviewed, you guys are why I keep writing. Hopefully, I've gotten better at it! Please comment and let me know! Link to a more advanced author's note here. (It's not letting me link so please head to my hopefully updated profile for the link). Also, the name of the Sinclaire estate is now Idyll's Aerie, following that English tradition of naming wealthy estates.

HEY, please review if you want me to continue this in any way. I know that sounds obnoxious, but fic writers are only ever compensated via commentary. A story alert is nice and all but a comment let's me know what you liked/if you liked something and what I can add to make the story better. Rereading old comments is what brought me back after a decade long hiatus. If you like stuff and want to continue reading stuff, leave feedback!

I'm so sorry I cant format shit on here I'm used to Ao3 now...

"Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us. It is a gift." ~ Dante Alighieri

Arria tapped her wand against the side of her desk, biting her lip. If she could just figure this out, things would get easier. A better way to write the proposal, a conclusive report…the idea was to ease tensions, to do away with the nonsense of pure blood providence in magical inheritance-

Her office door swung open. She dropped her cup of tea and yelped as hot liquid splattered across her work and dribbled off the wood desk, soaking her legs through her skirt as she swore.

"Arria, darling-oh, oh my goodness I'm so sorry-" Alasdair. Merlin's beard, when is he going to learn to knock? Guiltily, her partner and fellow auror rushed to help, fishing for his wand and shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose furtively.

"No! No, you're alright you're fine I was just…distracted." She pushed herself back from the desk, wincing at the damage done to her workspace. She spun her wand in an elegant gesture and scooped up the tea cup, hissing as hot porcelain scorched her palm. "Ah! Ouch! Purifico Mundi."

Spilled tea evaporated, a timelapse of reversed ruin…at least where the wetness of the tea was involved. But nothing could salvage the running ink, disappearing off the page even as she made an aborted movement to try and stop her spell.

"Arria! Be careful!" Only Alasdair diving to grab her cup saved her from spilling more of it across the rather threadbare carpet.

"Damn it all!" She sighed, collapsing into her chair and burying her head in her hands. The sound of Alasdair making apologetic sounds and sweeping over to the tea tray in the corner of her cramped little office space. The ministry had wanted to give her something bigger of her own, but she'd insisted on staying with Alasdair in something out of the way. The last thing she needed was scrutiny, was Tarquin suspecting her of being something more than a glorified clerk.

"I'm so sorry. I should have knocked. Was it the reports on Borgin's?" Arria winced. The report on Borgin and Burkes, what she was supposed to have been working on. "Milk?"

"What? Oh. Yes, please," She sighed and picked her wand back up, reshuffling her desk to clear it. "And some-"

"Sugar. Three cubes." Alasdair leaned against the desk with one hand in his pocket, offering the tea and saucer to her and smiling warmly. She reached and he moved it back, laughing at her gasp of outrage as she stood and snatched it from him. He winked playfully, glancing at the papers she'd moved with interest.

"Bless you, you absolute hindrance of a man." She beamed at him to soften the blow of her reprimand, taking a sip of her tea. Nothing was better than being here, away from her dour home life and all the fraught interfamily politics. Nothing was better than being here with Alasdair, especially. His brown eyes sparkled with good natured humour as he toyed with her spare quill.

"Is it too much to hope that if you're avoiding the Borgin report, you're drafting a letter to your parents about how you're bringing your fiance to the next Sinclaire family gathering?" Arria felt her mouth go dry at the mere thought of Alistair being anywhere near her family.

"My family doesn't gather, Alasdair."

"The yearly Yule party says differently." She didn't dignify that with the response she wanted to give him, about how all of them being in the same massive ballroom with every other pureblood family of note for a few hours didn't exactly constitute a 'gathering'. She took another furtive sip of her tea.

"Alasdair-"

"I know; I shouldn't have brought it up. But I feel like if you just gave me a chance to meet them, I could charm them. Even if I am a lowly muggleborn from Hufflepuff house." Guilt, heavy and heady and cloying, hit her like a bludger to the throat. Alasdair knew everything; about her family's prejudices and their shortcomings and yet he still wanted to meet them. She set her teacup down and took his face in her hands, gently tilting his face to hers.

"Alasdair. There is nothing lowly about being a muggleborn. Or about being a Hufflepuff; that's ludicrous." She stroked his cheek with her thumb, leaned in to give him a brief kiss. He returned it, but she could see the resolve in his gaze as she stepped back and picked up her tea again.

"Maybe. But I hate the sneaking, Arria." He followed her across to the window, speaking over her groan. "We're a loyal and honest bunch, us former Hufflepuffs. Having to dodge Tarquin and jump every time that door opens isn't something either of us should have to endure. Besides, didn't your sister bring her 'friend' to -"

"Maeve doesn't have the same expectations placed on her." But she will once I ruin it for her, once I take off with you and disappoint everyone. Arria didn't like Riddle, but she didn't have to. She'd never seen Maeve so happy, so filled with purpose and hope. How would things go with the Rosier's when she finally pulled the rug out from under everyone's hopes and dreams? What reparations would they demand? Megaera would see one option available to her, one thing that might salvage her pureblood reputation when her favoured daughter betrayed her-

"You're doing it again."

"What?"

"The spiraling while you try to solve everyone else's problems. You also try to predict everything-" Predict? Predict. Why was that important? It was jogging a memory, what was she forgetting to-

"Cassandra!" Alasdair stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment before his winsome expression resolved into something partway to pity.

"Wha…your aunt? I've already met-"

"No. No, it's her birthday. Oh Merlin, I completely forgot." Cassandra Sinclaire didn't get many visitors, if her nurse's at St. Mungo's could be believed. Mostly, it was just Arria. Forever arriving with a bouquet of flowers that felt sepulchral and insufficient in the face of a lifetime of benevolent incarceration. The dubious 'gift' of lucid prophecy had taken everything from Cassandra: friends, family and freedom. Alasdair clears his throat delicately and Arria glances up from her desk to find him still watching her, his expression solemn.

"Arria…I know that you feel obligated to see her. But maybe you should skip it this year. The last time-" The last time didn't bear repeating, honestly. Cassandra's prophecies had taken most of what was left of her mind. Worst still, Cassandra had let them. She'd come to trust what she'd seen; enough to almost end Maeve's life over it.

If Arria hadn't seen her aunt pour the tea that day Maeve might be dead. But maybe, Cassandra wouldn't be stuck in a secure ward in St. Mungo's. How horrible was it that Arria couldn't determine which one of those options was the better one? No good choices…

"I cant skip a year. I'm the only one who ever comes to see her." She's already stuffing work into her bag, locking up her desk with a quick sweep of her wand. Alasdair watches her, something so worried and defeated in his gaze that she pauses in the act of reaching for her coat. "What?"

"Just…promise me that we're going to tell your parents soon?"

"I promise." She lied with all the gravity of a truth, her heart thumping traitorously in her chest. Alasdair, so lacking guile, softened immediately to this and nodded.

"Do you want me to come with you?" He asked the floor, trying unsuccessfully to hide his grimace. She did, very much so. But last time had made him so uncomfortable she grit her teeth and gave a small shake of her head.

"No. I'll just be brief, anyway. I'll see you tonight?" She crossed to him and leaned in, giving him a quick peck on the lips. He caught her around the waist, lingered to give the peck the full weight of a proper goodbye kiss. When he stepped back, she felt a little breathless. She would never marry who her parents wanted her to, not when this; a life with Alasdair and fre eof their expectations, was her alternative.

"I love you," He murmured into the space between them, the pad of his thumb soft against her bottom lip. "I'll see you tonight back at the house."

Arria held the armful of flowers as she followed the mediwitch down the narrow hallway, the still dew damp blooms soaking through the crepe paper wrapping and chilling her sweaty palms. Aunt Cassandra didn't have much of a presence of mind left, but she loved flowers, loved her. So why did these visits seem to get harder and harder to make?

The sweet scents of pink cyclamen blossoms and licorice and mint tang of purple hyssop barely made up for the distant, medicinal scent of the potions brewed under the auspices of keeping those who occupied the psychiatric wing of St. Mungo's comfortable. Arria's heart pounded a dissonant drum beat, a counterpoint to the mediwtich's clicking heels across stone.

"Here you are, love. I'll just unlock the door and if you need something, I'll be right outside." The mediwitch looked mildly nervous, her smile thin and wavering. No one wanted a repeat of Arria's last visit, apparently. "She's been relatively quiet, lately. The potions your father prescribed seem to be helping keep her calm and she's been very good about drinking them. One vanished goblet every morning and evening, we've been counting."

"Thank you." Arria tried not to think too hard about what 'lately' might mean and ducked inside the room.

Cassandra Pythia Sinclaire was kept in a secure ward with a room all to herself. There were few appointments like this and if there was anything Tarquinus could be said to be good for, it was making sure his sister and the true owner of Idyll's Aerie was kept in comfortable seclusion. Arria wanted to believe that Cassandra was content here, receiving the best care the Thickney ward could offer. If only believing in something made it true.

Untouched bookshelves lined one wall, a simple bed pushed into one corner of the room and covered in a thick duvet. Potted plants spilled from their pots over several small tables, leaves and stems striving for the sunlight. Thick, sumptuous purple curtains frame the windows, some ornate rugs recognizable from the hazy memories of Arria's childhood sprawl across the floor.

Mercifully, there's no evidence of what happened when she last visited; no blood, no broken spined books with pages torn out by the fistful, no snakes and skulls emblazoned in streaming scarlet. No stench of vomit and copper, no contorted face and echoing, gasping hollow and half-formed prophecies screaming from a bloody mouth…Cassandra is just a dissipated figure with her back to Arria, stick-thin and hunched, quiescent in a rocking chair before an elegantly arched window.

"Aunt Cass? It's me, Arria." Cassandra turned her head listlessly, dark hair unbound and stringy across the back of her white night-gown. She was like a phantom of a woman; a once refined beauty that had withered to inferius-like frailty. A dreamy, sad smile spread across her cracked lips. She looks drowsy, careless and unaffected in the worst way possible. Silently, she raises one long fingered hand and waves Arria to an armchair beside her own.

"I…um, I brought you some flowers for your birthday. They're your favourites. Asphodel, some hyssop…they even had some purple hyacinth. A little rue, too, for a pop of colour." Arria sets down the bouquet and conjures a vase and some water for them, trying to steady her shaking hands.

"I didn't bring Alasdair with me this time, I'm afraid. But he misses you." Talking to herself during these visits is part of what makes them so hard. Arria swallows down her discomfort as best she can, trying as she always does to not compare the Cassandra of her memories to the one propped in the armchair like a discarded doll. There's a dripping sound coming from somewhere, maybe just a failed oversight of the enchantment on the windows.

"Ambrose is still waiting on his Hogwarts letter but Maeve just started her seventh year. Did I tell you she's actually got a sweetheart? He's…well, he's good looking, at least. Bit of an arsehole if I'm being honest but then, Maeve is difficult in her own way. They suit each other." She fusses with the flowers, rearranging them in the vase. Cassandra watches her through glazed hazel eyes with a kind of detached placidity. No reaction to Maeve's name…that was good.

The illusory view was one of the grounds of the Aerie in spring, Cassandra's old garden bathed in sunlight and close enough to touch. It's a similar charm to the false windows at the Ministry, a cunningly crafted spell that only needs to be touched or passed through to see what's really on the other side. Arria loves the view, since this is the only place it still exists. A memory of a garden that died out years ago with no one to tend it.

As she watches, a little black bird flutters to land on the branches of a berry bush. The charm, while convincing, has limitations. The same bird arrives every few hours, sings a few notes of it's liquid chirp and then flies off again and out of sight. But it will be back; a constant visitor who always sings the same song into perpetuity. A bird that never truly leaves…

"I miss you." The words are out before she can rethink them, the stems of the flowers quivering as she shakes. Arria looks back at Cassandra and sets the flowers down for a moment, turning to kneel at her feet. Gently, ever so gently, she takes her hand. Cassandra's gaze shifts to her own, something like recognition sparking.

There's a reflection in Cassandra's glassy eyes; the true reflection not of an illusory garden but a shabby window with a few goblets on it's sill and the gloomy, rainy street beyond. Arria clears her throat and speaks, trying to keep the tears from her voice.

"I know it's been years but I wish…I wish you could come back. I wish the treatments always worked, that you could control the visions. You and Uncle Ap deserve Idyll's Aerie more than anyone…certainly more than Tarquin. When I inherit…"

Things needed to be different, when she inherited. Arria might love Megaera, but she'd led them all down a terrible road. Obsessed with pureblood magic, with the wizarding world's long held policy of isolationism from anything to do with muggles. It wasn't sustainable. But she could fix it, she could do something if only-

"You cannot inherit, Arria." Cassandra's voice is so hoarse from disuse it's like a voice from a grave. Arria is on her feet then, her heart pounding. No, no. It's not possible; Cassandra never spoke during these visits. She shouldn't even have been capable of it, not with the potions. She hadn't spoken since the last time-Arria swallows thickly, hoping she's imagining this.

"What did you say?" Cassandra watches her, something like pity in that suddenly very lucid gaze.

"I'm sorry for the fright, but I don't have much time and you need to listen to me-" Coherent, but with an edge of cautious, desperate mania to her voice. Cassandra's eyes are wide in shadowed sockets, fever bright and gleaming wetly. Arria's heart starts to thud in her chest, in her temple. Aunt Cass' 'lucid' moments never last for long…

"No, no. Cassandra, you're not well. You-" Arria turns back to the window, plunges her hand through the illusion. The goblets, the potions she's supposed to have been taking to suppress her sight, hidden behind the veil of the illusion on the windowsill. Get the nurse, now.

Arria whirls towards the door and feels her wrist seized in a strong grip, sharp nails cutting half moons in her skin as she tries to twist away. Cassandra is no longer still and quiescent, up from her chair and surprisingly stronger than she looks. She makes a violent gesture with her free hand and the latch on the door thunks into place with a horrifying finality. Wandless magic…Oh Merlin. Her gaze is darting, but her voice is clear and unaffected by the dirge of prophecy:

"Stop! I'm trying to help you! You cannot inherit, Arria." The words sting and Arria feels her eyes blur with tears as she tries to detach herself from Cassandra's iron grip.

"Aunt Cassandra, please calm down. You don't know what you're saying. Your visions-"

"This isn't about the visions, it's about the truth! Tarquin and Megaera have lied to you; you're not a Sinclaire. The only magic in your blood is Malfoy, Arria." The words are too much, awaken a horror in her. She wants it to be a lie, the mad rambling of a seeress too far gone to be helped. But she isn't speaking of a prophecy; just a secret. Arria stops trying to pull away from Cassandra, lets her arm go limp in the other woman's grasp.

"What…why are you telling me this?"

"To save your life, Arria. You need to get away from the Aerie, from all of them. Get away from Maeve, especially. Tarquin never understood, he thought it was you but it never was. You cannot save her, you cannot save any of them. I'm sorry to tell you this way, but you don't deserve what's coming, you-" Cassandra sucks in a sharp gasp and drops like a puppet with it's strings cut, eyes rolling back in her head as her fingers go slack and she crumples.

"Nurse! NURSE!" In her scramble to try and catch Cassandra as she falls, Arria knocks over the vase and it's glass shatters across the stone. There's a distant sound of shouting, the door leaping against it's hinges as someone tries to shove it open. The latch…where's my wand?! Arria fumbles at the pockets of her coat, still crouched beside where Cassandra is sprawled across the carpets.

A great, gasping breath like a heaving bellows issues from Cassandra's mouth, her slender frame twitching violently as she straightens. Arria pulls back just in time to avoid the mad swipe of a clawed hand. A scream catches in Arria's throat and she feels the gut wrench of her own terror as she tries to back out of range. The ridge of Cassandra's spine snaps upwards in an arch through the near translucence of her night gown, an aberrant procession of bone down the length of her back. Her head hangs between her narrow shoulders, jutting forward, hair lank around her tortured face. Eyes wreathed in milky film fix ahead like the gaze of death, her mouth a savage snarling rictus of clenched teeth.

Arria scrambles backward, struggling with her wand where it's caught in the pocket of her coat.

"Cassandra, please-"

Arria doesn't even know what she's begging for…mercy? Silence? All she knows is a frantic, trapped terror. Cassandra's stiff posture, pale skin grey in the light from the illusion; the lie of the garden undone by the horrifying vision of her emaciated frame standing before it. Arria's wand is finally free, it's in her hand but she doesn't know what to do. She can't think of the right spell, something to subdue Cassandra without harming her.

"First born of faithless beware, a heart bared shall be thy end! Blood half given is blood only leant, by truths telling is a sister's loyalty bent." Cassandra's words echo, fight from her like she speaks with a thousand voices. A legion, a hellish symphony that cannot be denied. It's jarring, impossible to forget or block out even as Arria clamps her hands over her ears and sobs. "By serpent's venom a bond undone, one forged anew in the wake of kin forsworn. At year's turn, on the eve of the son's birth the father shall be slain! The scion of the House of Gaunt, in denial of death, he shall seek to flee it's grasp. On a bevy of corpses does a Dark Lord rise, borne aloft by Eagle's heir."

The door bursts inward in a hail of splintered wood and Arria flinches, makes herself a tiny ball in the shattered glass. Tarquin stands in the destroyed frame, grey robes edged in silver sweeping about him and a look of horror and resolve on his face as he lifts his wand. Cassandra takes another agonised breath, eyes rolling in her head like a frightened animal's as turns to her brother. Arria can see the hint of an emotion there, something like betrayal.

"You! Sire of the follower, whose love hath bore your own greatest betrayal, the fall of our house-"

"Enough, Cassandra!" A flash of red and Cassandra's words cut off. Arria can't focus on anything but her own heaving sobs. When she finally lifts her head, it's to see her father-no, not my father, Tarquin-lifting his sister's limp form and carrying her to the bed. Arria struggles to get up as a mediwitch approaches her, pale and shaking and looking as terrible as she feels. As the woman opens her mouth to speak a voice issues from the corner, cold as steel.

"Arria. Are you unhurt?"

"I…a few scratches but I'm…fine." There's so much she wants to say, to rail against. But the words are caught up in her throat, snarled and strangling like a bird in a man she'd always assumed was her father is watching her with his typical air of clinical assessment. Does she imagine the flicker of relief in his expression? Is it even for her?

"Good." He turns, expression darkening slightly as the mediwitch beside her stands a little straighter. "Empusa, please escort my daughter to my office to await me there-"

"You can't just order me places, Father-Tarquin." She's still shaking, still scared but her voice comes out with more strength than she feels. Empusa, for her part, wrings her hands in distress.

"I am not ordering, Arria. I am asking." He leans over Cassandra's prone form, her thin wrist pinched between thumb and forefinger as he checks her pulse. "For your sake…and for your aunt's. Please, for once, do as you are bid."

Fists clenched and jaw tight, she wants to argue. For your aunt's sake…Arria swallows her pride and turns on her heel, heading to Tarquin's office.

End Note: Okay, so I have more of this scene I am going to post in a later chapter, but I didn't want the whooooole of this to be on a character you guys have only seen briefly in the narrative before. Especially after ten years of radio silence in which I'm sure you only vaguely remember her and what she's about. I still suck at pacing and I apologise. If you have questions I am trying to make a commitment to answering PM's more (but the ADHD is strong with me and I've got a full time job and other projects so I apologise if it takes me a bit), and this story is still one of my favourites that I've written.