Custosae de Lux Lucis
Chapter Two
Disclaimer: I'm not making any money...I don't own Harry Potter. I wish I did...
1:34 P.M.
Dursley Residence
Number 4 Privet Drive
Surrey, England
July 18, 1995
"Boy! This is Cassidy Storm and she'll be staying the basement with you on the other side. I figure you can use your freakishness to make room for her," Petunia cackled with laughter, knowing fully well he couldn't use magic. "We want dinner in an hour so hurry up and get her all sorted out." His unnaturally skinny aunt grabbed her shopping bags and skipped up the stairs. "And when Melony gets back, if she comes back, tell her she needs to move to the basement as well! We decided her escapade yesterday was unforgivable!"
Dudley laughed as well and moved his fat butt up the stairs, eagerly heading for his TV in his room. The fat pig was a complete jerk that used drugs, bullied everyone he could, beat up each little kid he saw, raped and abused girls…he was a complete jackass and Harry knew it. On more than one occasion, he had come to blows with his cousin this summer and had almost pulled his wand out to show him the exact kind of pain he showed his victims with one of the new dark curses he'd learned.
Melony was the other new addition to the Dursley household. Vernon's sister, Fiona, had died in a car crash at the end of May and Melony had been quite unhappily adopted into the family. However, Melony was treated as much more of an equal than Harry…until they found out she was magical. She'd apparently been keeping that secret from them until yesterday. Melony was a sweet girl and Harry was ecstatic to find that he had another cousin who wasn't a complete jerk.
Warily, but feeling a strong but unexpected urge to trust Cassidy, Harry led her down the stairs and pointed to the left side of the room before pointing his wand at her warily.
"Harry, put the wand down. If I had foul intentions, I wouldn't be able to get through the wards. As it is, I ran away from evil. I don't want to get cursed into being captured again."
"Really? You're on my side? You do realize that I just witnessed Riddle's return and a good friend of mine die? You do realize that I dream about his pleasure in causing people pain? You do realize that a Death Eater impersonated my Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher all last year and I might be less than inclined to trust anyone who comes into my house without me knowing who they are!"
"I'm Cassie Storm, fifteen year old witch with a severe attitude problem. I've been trained in everything from the Dark Arts to Parselmagic to Elemental Magic. I'm a soldier and a fighter, but weaker than anyone I know at the same time…too weak to defend myself against him. I was stolen from my parents before I could talk. I don't know anything to do with normal teenage life. Does that answer your question?" Cassie questioned calmly before throwing her backpack and messenger bag down on the grey floor and somehow creating a bed out of thin air.
"Where's your wand? The Ministry is going to kill me for doing magic 'cause they won't know it's you," Harry grumbled.
"It's called wandless magic, mister golden boy," she snapped. "And as for the Ministry picking up any all magic and blaming it on you, that isn't normal. If you get in trouble for any amount of magic created in your household, you've got issues because you have two other magical people in this house and one low-level squib that I'm guessing is Petunia. So if you get in trouble for any and all magic produced here, you've got issues and you need to talk to the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Her name's Amelia Bones and her niece is Susan Bones, who's in your year but a Hufflepuff."
"How do you know so much and you've never gone to Hogwarts?" questioned Harry.
"I have my sources and a close circle of friends," Cassie said stiffly and fiddled with a charm on her bracelet before placing it on the floor. Seconds later, a large cherry school trunk appeared with the initials CAS. However, there was a magical scar that showed it had once said CBR and had been angrily changed many years ago.
Harry's jaw clenched but he retreated back to his corner, pulling out the textbook to finish off the third year charms. He wished desperately that he could use his wand.
Cassie watched out of the corner of her eye as she opened her Blood Magic book and began reading. After thirty minutes of annoyance, she'd had enough. "That's it! Sometime within the next week, we're going to get you an untraceable wand! And I'm going to teach you wandless magic! This is ridiculous!"
"Wandless magic?" Harry asked dubiously. "Not even Dumbledore can perform wandless magic…"
"You make it sound like Dumbles is the be all, end all," Cassie laughed. "I can assure you he's not."
"Oh really? And who is? Voldemort?"
Cassie's eyes went cold. "Never, ever suggest that I will ever be a follower of that bastard on my own accord. Never."
Harry's eyebrow raised and he shook his head at her. "What's your issue with Moldywart? Mine's public, yours on the other hand…"
"It's none of your concern, golden boy, so just let it be."
And so it went on for the next week. Cassie did end up escaping to Diagon Alley with Harry and getting him six untraceable wands, a good trunk with multiple compartments (including an indoor mansion, which Cassie said would be very useful if you ever needed to hide), an entirely new wardrobe, potions ingredients, practically an entirely new library, etc. On the third day, she also demanded that she start teaching him more magic than the codswallop Dumbledore was allowing him to learn. On the fifth day, Harry began joining Cassie in her daily runs and exercise. He started practically Quidditch on the field in his trunk as well, fighting against Cassie for the snitch and then being Keeper against her Chaser. It was the one time Harry believed she actually acted like her age.
Cassie Storm was an enigma to Harry. Despite how many times the Dursley family insulted or abused her, Cassie did not show any emotion. After one week, the only evidence he saw that they affected her at all was the slight hardening of her eyes. She refused to show any emotion at all when it came to the Dursleys. She simply ignored him and Harry wished to God he knew how she did it. She performed all her chores wordlessly and perfectly, without any complaints at all, and even handled the physical abuse Vernon and Dudley did to her without saying a word. However, after the first time Dudley had tried to sexually assault her, he never tried again. Harry had no idea what she'd done, but it was enough to make Dudley cower in fear any time he ever considered the new girl that way.
She was an extremely talented and intelligent witch, more so than anyone else Harry had ever met. Cassie was also extraordinarily powerful and knew more magic than Dumbledore himself. She could recommend any book on any subject in a heartbeat and he'd know it would be perfect for his purposes. Cassie ran nearly ten miles a day without any issues and dueled so much Harry believed her had would be permanently cramped from holding her wand. She was drop dead gorgeous and extremely graceful when she fought, Harry also noted, after dueling her on the sixth day and feeling the pain of the duel throughout his body. She dueled with both magical weapons and muggle weapons, from everything to a gun to a sword to a knife to a bow and arrow. What Cassie had told him on the first day was true: she was an excellent soldier and one wisely trained in the aspects and evils of reality.
Yet Cassie also refused to share any of her past and history with Harry. He'd seen the bruises, cuts, lashes, and scars that marked her entire body and she hadn't said a word when he'd subtly asked her about them, merely stating that her "past history hadn't been rainbows and daises." Harry had questioned her on numerous occasions as to where she'd come from and how she had learned so much magic and fighting techniques. She still refused to breathe a word. The only answer he'd gotten out of her was that it had something to do with Voldemort and she didn't want to talk about it yet.
Yet. That one word gave Harry a little bit of hope, at least. Cassie intrigued him in a way that was completely unfamiliar to him. Well not totally unfamiliar…after all he was a teenage boy with eyes and he had noticed Cho Chang last year, but he was still to naïve to understand exactly what his feelings meant. And in all reality, he wasn't even sure if those were his feelings about her…
It was eighth day before he got any sort of lead on her past.
Cassie was sitting down in the corner, head resting against her cherry trunk, emerald blanket pulled across her lap, covering her bare lower thighs and her shins peeking out from underneath the cotton. There was a book on the research behind the Wolfsbane Potion open on her lap and Harry recalled her passionate speech about the fact that werewolves were seriously misunderstood creatures and how desperately she wanted to find a cure. Cassie maintained that they were much less monstrous than Voldemort and Harry simply nodded and said, "I have a good friend who's a werewolf. I completely agree. There's no need to tell me."
"Girl! Get up here now! Move all our suitcases to the door! I want everything to be perfect for our vacation! And no funny stuff! I'm warning you that if anything weird happens, it's on your head!"
Cassie kicked the blanket off her lap, pulled on loose grey sweatpants over her boy shorts, and placed the book down on her trunk. As she ran past him, Harry saw it once again…that slight hardening of her beautiful blue eyes.
Beautiful? Harry questioned himself. Where the hell did that come from? I wonder what that piece of paper is in her book…
Harry crept toward the book warily and carefully pulled out the folded piece of paper she was using as a bookmark. Carefully, he unfolded the ivory parchment and let his eyes fly across the paper in shock.
It was a poem…the most depressing poem Harry had probably ever read, not that he'd read many poems in the first place:
Prison bars and walls of steel
Bloodstained hands that rip and peel
Your crumpled body on the ground
Tears stain your face, as you make no sound
You pray to God that you'll be spared
Or a quick death would be just as fair
The ones held close stand wide-eyed with fear
As your father stumbles oh so near
You cry and sob, as the beats grow hard
Skin splits open and muscles get jarred
You lie in a heap, as the door slams closed
At last some peace as your body grows cold
The youngest walks over and pats sister's head
A child so young who sees thing so sad
What will they do, how will they survive?
When the public ignores all these cries
What we must do and what we must say
Is that none of this is ok
Society often turns a blind eye
As children get beat and then they die
Please speak out for those who are lost
We must help them at all costs
Let them know to not be afraid
And that in the end, they'll be ok
By Cassandra Riddle
Cassandra Riddle! Voldemort's daughter! She's been lying to me the whole time! Wait…why would she be writing this? Voldemort couldn't do this to his own daughter, could he? Harry's thoughts raced at a hundred miles a minute.
"Put the poem back in the book, Harry," Cassie said calmly from the other side of the room, looking at him warily from the floor beneath the window. Her head was in her hands and she had tears in her eyes.
"Why? So you can go talk to your father and master again and tell him that you've been found out?"
Cassie was in front of him in a second and slapped him right across the face. "How dare you! I told you to never, ever insinuate that I would voluntarily serve that bastard ever again! I ran away! And it wasn't even my choice to serve him in the first place!" Cassie shouted before falling to the ground, back against the wall once more. "It was never my choice…"
Harry was at a loss as to what to do. He'd never dealt with crying girls before, except for Hermione. But Hermione already knew that he wasn't the greatest with emotions. Most of the time, he liked to lock them up and let the stew and then pop the top off at the most inconvenient time.
However, he couldn't stand to see Cassie so miserable so he went over and wrapped his arm around her and she turned her face into his shoulder and tried hard not to soak his shirt.
Roughly two minutes later, Harry heard the Dursleys drive away for their vacation and Cassie's sobs began to quiet. Harry whispered softly to the girl, "How about we go upstairs and I'll get you a drink of water?"
Cassie nodded slightly and followed Harry uncertainly, grabbing her blanket since she was wearing only her light blue camisole and dark blue boy shorts with gray sweatpants over top.
Harry led her to the couch they weren't usually allowed to sit on and walked to the kitchen, poured her a glass of water, and came back, setting it on the coffee table.
"Talk," he ordered, extremely wary of the girl in front of him.
Thank you to the author of the poem. I don't know who wrote it but I found it on fanfiction somewhere and I saved it for this story. I lost the author. I apologize...
Review, review, review, please!
Athena