OKAY! Here it is, after one VERY long wait. Consider it my (Canadian) Thanksgiving gift to you all. I was on holiday for a couple months and when I came back, I had a bad case of writer's block, in addition to inhumane amounts of homework, so the long weekend gave me a chance to pull myself together.
Unfortunately, because it's been so long, I can't promise you guys any quality writing. In fact, I can't even say whether or not this chapter's style will suit the rest of the story - I feel like after such a long break, my style's bound to be a little bit rusty or different.
Anyway, I know this chapter's going to seem like things are all just crammed together (which they are) but whatever, I suppose things needed to be said and done and I didn't want to take another six chapters to do it.
Okay, so here it is.
And THANK YOU SO MUCH to all of you for sticking it out with me; I know how hard it is when the updates don't show up on the regular, and I know I promised a couple of you that I would have chapters up sooner, so I apologize. Your dedication has kept me going and I'm SO grateful to you all. I can't believe I reached a HUNDRED reviews with that last chapter! So I hope the wait was worth it, and that you aren't all hating me too much because I love you all. I know this chapter isn't fantastic, but I'm hoping it'll kickstart a bunch of better ones (once school gets out of the way, dammit). Anyway, I'm already SWIMMING in ideas for a Florrie-Evan full-length story, so I guess that's always a good sign!
So without further ado, here it is.
And PLEASE leave me some critiques and comments, I'm definitely going to need them in order to brush up on my writing after so long!
XOXO
Being broken up with somebody was a strange thing.
Alicia had, in a fit of anxiety, confessed to Carson that things needed to end and as expected, he hadn't taken it well. He'd somehow pried it out of her that she'd been seeing somebody else on the side, and had then stormed out of the empty classroom, hurt and enraged when he realized that she "didn't even have the decency" to tell him who it was.
That had been a week ago, and she'd been on the receiving end of deadly stares and irritating, embarrassing whispers ever since. As a group of fourth year Ravenclaw girls giggled "slut" under their breaths when she passed them by, Alicia reminded herself of precisely why she'd kept her nose out of Hogwarts' dating mill for so long. This was why. She was juicier news than even Harry and Cho Chang, and between the four of them, the Gryffindors definitely were taking a hit to their reputation while the Ravenclaws came out looking like martyred saints.
"I don't understand," said Katie for the sixth time as Angelina rolled her eyes and liberally poured more wine into their glasses in mourning of Alicia's breakup and the disastrous results of their game today against Hufflepuff. "I mean, he's so - so nice!"
Alicia groaned and popped a cigarette into her mouth despite both her friends cringing at the sight. She rolled her eyes and made her way over to the window, where she propped herself up onto the ledge and carefully lit her cigarette, protecting the tip from the howling winds outside.
"What I don't understand," said Angelina, "Is why you let people talk bollocks about you like that. I mean, if I were in your place -
"Yeah!" Katie interrupted angrily, her wine sloshing over her glass. "Oops, evanesco."
"And I can't believe Bishop's nerve! How dare he go around spreading lies about you -
Alicia sighed and turned away, sticking her head back out the window as she exhaled a cloud of smoke into the cold night sky. If only the girls knew... it felt strange having to lie to her friends all the time, even about something that should have been so trivial like a silly teenage breakup.
For the first time since news of the breakup hit the circuit, Katie and Angelina both cocked their heads in Alicia's direction and looked at her curiously.
"I mean," said Angelina slowly.
"...they are lies, aren't they?" Katie finished hesitantly.
Alicia pursed her lips and shrugged unhappily.
"Alicia!" the girls gasped. Then, after a moment of shocked silence, they exclaimed simultaneously, "Who is it!?"
Alicia drained her glass of wine and grimaced at her friends.
"You didn't!"
"Who is it?"
"I can't believe you!"
"Who is it?"
"Oh my god, I don't even know what to say right now!"
"Who is it?"
"Is it Davies? Oh my god, it's Davies isn't it?"
"ARGH!" Alicia snapped. "It isn't Roger bloody Davies. In case you haven't noticed, he isn't exactly on speaking terms with me right now either."
"So then who is it?" Katie asked for the fourth time.
Alicia took a last drag from her cigarette, crushed the glowing tip against the windowsill and hurled the butt out the window.
"It isn't anybody," she lied. "Just somebody from home. You know. Over the holidays. But I, er, haven't really told him that... so, er, he probably thinks it was someone from school."
The girls fell silent and looked at her uncertainly, as though they could tell there was more to the story but didn't want to pry.
"Listen," said Alicia, hopping off the windowsill, "I think I'm going to go to bed. I'm not feeling great right now."
"Always knew Spinnet was a slag," a couple of sixth year Slytherins sniggered when they rammed past Alicia as students poured out of their respective classrooms and into the halls.
"I heard she got gangbanged by half those Beauxbatons blokes last year during Yule."
"Nah, mate, you heard it wrong, it was Durmstrang. You know whatshisname, Hummels - Peter Hummels, I swear he told me he got right up -
Alicia gritted her teeth as she shoved her way through the crowd, for the first time feeling truly sorry for herself. Her heart pounded against her chest and blood rushed against her ears as she blinked back furious tears, refusing to let herself cry in a corridor full of wankers. She took a deep breath. She just had to make it to Gryffindor tower. When did this damned corridor get so bloody long? She felt strangely claustrophobic, and for a second a wave of paranoia washed over her as she got the distinct impression that everybody was staring at her. She searched for a friendly face in the crowd, but the only person who she could possibly talk to was the only person she could never openly approach. The rest of the corridor was filled with the hostile faces of sixth and seventh year Ravenclaws and Slytherins from History of Magic or Charms.
A sudden commotion tore Alicia away from her self-pity, and she like everybody else in the corridor glanced around wildly to see what all the yelling was about. One of the sixth years who'd been talking about her was now writhing on the floor, shrieking in pain as boils appeared on his body. Alicia recognized the hex. It was one of her favourites. It'd also been the one she'd used on Adrian Pucey in the previous semester. Cassius met her gaze through the crowd and she bit back a smile. He kept on walking as though he'd never seen her.
By dinnertime, Alicia was old news, trivial news, as students took up the newest topic of the week - Harry's interview in the Quibbler. Harry had received a ridiculous amount of mail earlier that morning, and by noon Umbridge had posted another Education Decree forbidding subscriptions to the Quibbler. Of course, by six o'clock, anybody who could consider themselves literate found themselves in possession of an illicit copy of said magazine, and the newest topic of discussion was whether or not Harry was telling the truth.
At the Slytherin table, dinner was a tense affair. Potter had publicly exposed the names of a handful of well-known 'former' Death Eaters who he claimed to have seen at the time of Cedric Diggory's death, which included the fathers of Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle and Nott. Though neither Cassius nor Montague had immediate family members with any direct involvement in the affair, they too felt the pressure of war hitting too close to home, for Flint had sent them both emergency owls preparing them for Umbridge's upcoming "club". He also stressed the importance of being able to identify what could amount to suspicious behaviour before anything like the Quibbler incident could happen again. Cassius glanced over at the Gryffindor table where Potter seemed to be holding court with his close friends, which apparently today included Alicia. Whatever she was up to with Potter, it was apparently going to happen again.
They hadn't talked about It since, silently agreeing that it was best if they kept their "war" business to themselves. It was not an ideal solution, but the fact was they were standing on opposite sides of a fence that didn't seem like it was going to fall over any time soon. The most he'd gotten out of her had been that one time when she'd admitted It had something to do with defence. But the truth was, he really didn't want to know. He had a bad feeling that he was going to find out more about it sooner or later anyway - things that involved Potter generally had a bad habit of blowing up in everybody's faces. It was only a matter of time. And in that time, he was going to have to try as damned hard as possible to not find out anything about whatever it was that Alicia was up to. He shivered inwardly as he scanned a copy of the Quibbler one last time, his face settling on Diggory's smiling headshot... it could be a matter of life and death.
Cassius glanced over at the other end of the table where Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle and Nott were sitting stiffly together, conferencing over untouched (in the case of Malfoy and Nott) plates of beef and yorkshire puddings. Malfoy's usual pale face looked a tinge more wan than usual, Crabbe and Goyle had the same stupid blank looks plastered on as usual, while Nott stared blankly at his surroundings, nodding stiffly every now and then whenever Malfoy seemed to finish whatever tirade was coming out of his mouth a mile a minute.
Cassius examined Theodore Nott carefully out of the corner of his eye. The younger boy was an oddball, that was for sure. Rare for a mixed blooded near-bastard (Nott Sr. had married Theodore's pregnant mother after divorcing his barren first wife upon learning of the arrival of a male heir), he hadn't been shunned from Slytherin's inner circles; rather, he often seemed to have chosen to stand outside of it, silently watching the house intrigues with a casual air of nonchalance. Everybody knew the story about his mother of course (or rather the rumours, for they had never been confirmed as far as anybody was aware), which was a much more sordid affair than even that of his friend Blaise Zabini's (whose mother had mysteriously gone through several husbands as twice as many fortunes - fact). It was even stranger that his father was so deep within the Dark Lord's inner circle. The man had kept a half-blood mistress who'd given birth to his only heir, and yet he went about killing and torturing mudbloods and halfbloods alike as though these were normal courses of action. Cassius sighed in irritation. Maybe that was the only way... you had to kill a bunch of people in order to have such indiscretions brushed under the rug. Nott looked up at him suddenly, as though sensing his gaze, and Cassius stared evenly back at the younger boy who merely tilted his head a fraction of an inch before turning back to face his other companions (if you could call them that). Yes. Theodore Nott was strange, there was no doubt about that. But he'd made it this far in Slytherin with his background. Maybe there was hope after all...
Cassius scoffed under his breath. Hope. He was an idiot. As if Alicia would stand for popping out a couple of Slytherin brats. Cassius shuddered at the dark turn his thoughts had taken. He was eighteen, he reminded himself sternly. Children were not to be anywhere near his conscious thoughts for at least another decade.
It occurred to him then that his uncle would have been a father at twenty-one had he survived the war, and he wondered why it shocked him so. His own mother had been what, nineteen when he was born? Cassius tried to picture himself a year from then, no longer sitting inside of Hogwarts at his usual spot at the Slytherin table, no longer surrounded by the gentle roar of a thousand teenagers packed into one room, but instead - instead what?
A year from now, he could be sitting in a jail cell for all he knew.
A year from now, he could be dead.
A year from now, he could have lost an arm and a leg.
A year from now, he could be shipping off his infant bastard to some Brazilian orphanage like so many others before him.
A year from now, Alicia could be dead.
And that... well, now that just wouldn't do - because for the first time in his life, Cassius felt a deep-rooted fear sprout from deep within his chest, a proper sort of fear that made him go cold, almost as bad as when dementors had boarded the Hogwarts Express a few years back; life without Alicia would not be any sort of life at all. A year from now, Alicia could be dead, and he could be a lunatic, a true soulless lunatic with nothing left to lose because he already would have lost the one thing that now, at this very moment, kept his heart beating.
"Cassius," Alicia asked one rare evening when the two of them had managed to find the perfect time slot to get together without arousing suspicion, "What does - that is, I mean - how do you know Florrie?"
Cassius blinked and glanced casually at her to assess whatever it was she seemed to know - or did not know - and was relieved to see that she merely looked confused.
"I met her at the bar," he said slowly, exhaling a stream of smoke into the air. God, he could get used to this, he thought absentmindedly despite the dangerous nature of Alicia's questioning. Nothing was more satisfying than a post-sex spliff.
"No," said Alicia.
"No?" Cassius repeated with a frown.
"No, you're lying to me," she said in a deceptively careless voice. "She keeps asking me about you. Like how you're doing, who your friends are - and at first I thought maybe she was spying on me for my mum or something because she doesn't normally write me nearly so many letters, but then she asked me to ask you if you by any chance remembered Skylar from school - which is a strange question, don't you think? I mean, she's a Ravenclaw and two years younger than us and why would she even care if you remembered Skylar or not?"
"So what are you trying to say?" Cassius asked.
"I dunno!" Alicia exclaimed, frustration suddenly creeping into her voice. "I just want to know what's going on. I mean, God, I can't believe I'm actually saying this but -
She sat up suddenly and looked down at him, crossing her arms over her naked chest in slight embarrassment. "Are you - I mean - are you and her -
Cassius burst out laughing.
He couldn't help himself, and it felt good to laugh, to truly laugh for the first time in so long. He sat up, sniggering still despite Alicia's frosty glare, and shook his head wildly, a grin spread across his face.
"Go on then," he said, "Ask me."
"No," she snapped sourly. "Obviously I'm wrong -
"Of course you're wrong," Cassius laughed. "What did you think was going on? That we're having some sort of... of long-distance... illicit relationship by post?"
"Well why would she care if you knew her daughter or not then? And why would she keep asking me so many weird questions? I mean, she wanted me to bloody ask you what your blood-type is! Like I know the answer to that!" She paused to take a breath, then looked at him suspiciously. "... why would she be asking me all these questions about you?" she asked quietly, taking the joint from him and inhaling sharply.
Florrie was smart enough not to send him owls directly... although why she wanted to know his blood-type was beyond him. Did this mean she didn't care that Alicia was in on the secret? Circe, it wasn't like everybody wasn't going to find out in half a year's time anyway... But how would Alicia react? It occurred to him that she probably wouldn't be so upset about the secret itself (alright, maybe just a little bit - for her friend's sake) - but she was definitely going to be pissed off about the fact that was a secret. Or maybe this was a good thing. Maybe now she's have somebody to talk to besides him... he had to admit, he was lucky in a fucked up way that Montague knew all about - well, almost everything. He knew Alicia had been suffering, not being able to talk to her friends, having to go behind everybody's backs, taking all the stupid comments about her being a slag with her head held high... He gritted his teeth at the thought of Bishop. Stupid prat hadn't even had the balls to keep things to himself... of course he had to go prattle on to everybody within earshot about how he'd been wronged.
Alright, so he had been. But big fucking deal... worse things happened in life than a high school breakup.
Oh yeah? Tell that to yourself.
Fuck off!
"Cassius."
Why don't you just break it off with her then?
Fuck. Off.
"Cassius!"
"What?"
Alicia rolled her eyes, by now used to Cassius' tendency to disappear into space.
"I think you ought to cut back on the grass," she said only half-jokingly. "So are you going to tell me what's going on or am I going to have to go prying through your stuff to find out?"
"You'd have to break through a bunch of cypher charms before you could read a word," said Cassius absentmindedly.
"Is that a challenge?"
"No," he replied curtly. "Don't try. Unless you want webbed hands for a week."
"Alright, alright, then just bloody tell me!"
"It actually isn't any of your business," he said seriously.
"Of course it's my business," she said irritably. "If I'm going to be some sort of - of messenger or whatever, then I have a right to know. Or you can just answer all her questions yourself."
"What's she been asking you?"
"Stupid things," Alicia replied dismissively. "But - like, weird questions. I don't bloody know! Like, do you sleep walk? Er... do you have a split personality? Which, by the way, you do. Er... do you... oh, do you slag around -
"Is that the one that made you think we were sleeping together?" Cassius asked wryly.
"Oh shut up," Alicia said, swatting him on the chest. She shrieked when he grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her on top of him before rolling over so that she was caged between the floor and his body.
"You're naked and sweaty," she said, wrinkling her nose in mock disgust.
"So are you."
"I want to know what's going on."
"And I'll tell you... you just have to promise you won't blow up on me."
"I thought you said you weren't sleeping with her."
"I'm not sleeping with her. And even if I was, it'd be within my right - you've been fucking Bishop -
"I thought we weren't going to talk about that," Alicia said quietly.
Cassius sighed and rolled onto his back.
"You said we weren't going to talk about that," Alicia repeated, voice quavering slightly.
"Okay, fine. You weren't fucking him -
"You're a dick," Alicia snapped.
"So I've been told," Cassius retorted dryly.
"Just tell me what's going on so I can leave," she said angrily, sitting up again.
Cassius sighed and rolled his eyes inwardly. Women, he thought irritably.
"Alright, alright, I'm sorry," he said, not feeling at all sorry.
"No you're not," she muttered.
"Okay, fine! I'm not sorry," Cassius exclaimed.
"I knew it!"
"Are you trying to pick a fight with me? I just apologized to you -
"But you didn't mean it."
"Of course I didn't fucking mean it! You slept with him! You slept with the fucking prick, and you just expect me to be okay with that?"
"As if you've been bloody celibate this entire time!"
"That's not the same thing -
"Ha! If you think for one second I'm going to take you're stupid double-standard arguments -
"I wasn't seeing anybody else -
"Oh, excuse me," Alicia sneered sarcastically, "You were just fucking them -
"And I stopped!" Cassius snarled.
"Well aren't you a damn saint."
"I stopped," Cassius growled, "Because I fucking love you, so if you could stop being a fucking bitch for a second, maybe I can tell you what's actually going on so you'll get off my goddamn case about it."
"Aren't you romantic," Alicia muttered after a moment of tense silence, feeling a strange sense of deja-vu.
"I never said I was," Cassius shot back.
"Alright then. Go on. I promise I won't 'blow up' on you. Dick."
"Bitch."
"Lying fuckhead."
Cassius snorted.
"Did you just call me a fuckhead? And what exactly is a fuckhead?"
"Oh shut up and just tell me what's going on."
"Only if you'll blow me."
"You're disgusting."
"That's not what you were saying earlier..."
"Cassius! Now! I want to know now!"
"What are we, five?"
"CASSIUS!"
"Alright, alright. Silencio. Florrie was shagging my uncle Evan who was a Death Eater but he died only he knocked her up before he got killed and Skylar's his daughter, which makes her my cousin, which also makes her the last direct heir to the Rosier estate, which also means that my mother's only been holding the properties as a sort of temporary guardian until Skylar comes of age, which is why I've been doing all this research because I need to figure out a way to make sure everything gets transferred smoothly or else my mother will probably lose it and try to kill both of them, and before you ask, I'm only doing it because nothing anybody does or says short of killing Skylar is going to be able to change any of this so it's just best if it all gets sorted out as soon as possible, and also because I think - I mean, I know Evan cast some fucked up blood spells on Florrie that got passed down to Skylar and, well, that part I'm just researching on my own because it's really interesting, and also because I sort of don't want my parents to end up clawing their own eyes out after attempting to murder them, and I'm going to remove the silencio now but you have to promise me you won't start screaming at me otherwise I'm just going to cast it all over again, although I suppose since you aren't strangling me right now you're kind of okay with what I'm telling you right now. Okay. Great, good chatting with you. Finite."
"Cassius. I'm going to fucking kill you."
"...so I don't understand."
"Which part," Cassius sighed, glancing at his watch as he yawned.
"All of it," Alicia muttered. "No, the - er, okay, I don't even know where to begin."
"The blood magic? The property transfer laws? The incubism?"
"Okay, there. Let's start with that. What the fuck is an incubus? I mean, I get it, but what the hell does 'splitting' mean?"
"You're probably better off asking Florrie," Cassius replied. "There really isn't much out there about them, and my mother never said anything to me about it. But I think - I mean, this is just a hunch, but I think they would get around in their incubus form by - I suppose by splitting their souls from their bodies."
"... so what, they were going around like - like ghosts?"
Cassius shook his head.
"No... more like - like poltergeists. Think of Peeves. He can go through walls, but he can also -
"Pick things up and pull your hair... yeah, alright, that makes sense. So they'd split off from their bodies and go around shagging sleeping women. Lovely bit of family history right there. So what happened to the bodies without their souls?"
"I think that was the weakness. I think you'd have to start off somewhere hidden so that nobody could find the body and think they were dead or whatever. I would imagine the body would go into a sort of sleep-mode."
"Huh. Okay, no wonder she was asking me if you liked to sleep a lot. And if you shag a lot."
"And what did you tell her?" Cassius asked with a smirk. Alicia flushed and rolled away from Cassius before he could paw at her chest.
"Circe, you're such a pig, Cassius."
"Is that what you told her?"
"No! Obviously I skipped the question... I mean, it's kind of weird, yeah, coming from someone old enough to be my mum!"
"Alright, alright. Well... there you go. She was probably trying to find out if I'm like one of them."
"But you're not?" Alicia asked dubiously.
Cassius shook his head.
"My mum, being a woman, can't inherit it. She can only possess certain characteristics of incubi, which, I suppose sort of got passed down to me in a diluted form." Cassius smirked again. "Hypersexuality being one of them."
"Huh. No wonder Skylar likes to slag around so much. Alright, well tell me about - about the blood magic then. What the hell is that all about?"
Cassius shrugged.
"That, I can't really say. I haven't discussed anything with Florrie since the holidays for obvious reasons, so all I know is some basic information. Anyway, if Evan used Hogwarts books for references, he definitely didn't check any of them out through Pince. She still has records dating back to '69, which I guess is when she started here. It only says that he dropped by the reference section a couple times with permission from some professor Slugsomething-or-other in November '76 I think, which would have been his seventh year. My guess is he might have used books from home. The Roiser estates have more dark magical artifacts than Snape's bedroom drawers."
Alicia burst out laughing and shook her head in disbelief.
"I can't believe you can even be joking about this."
"I can't believe how well you're taking this," Cassius replied.
"I think I'm just in shock. And high. And speaking of the Rosier estates, so if I get this straight, Syklar inherits all of it? Like all those houses you were telling me about? And you don't even care that you just lost half your inheritance?"
"You don't get it, it wasn't mine to begin with. From the day Skylar was born, it was all hers because there was nobody else. Even as a - as a bastard. The rule always is that the oldest legitimate male heir is first in line to inherit everything. Obviously there are individual differences within families, but generally the oldest male gets everything. It keeps estates together. If he wants to let other family members live on the other properties, he can or has to depending on the individual family wills and conditions of the property deeds. But he can also tell them to hit the curb if a will doesn't stipulate otherwise. Same thing with allowances. Which has caused lawsuits in the past, which is what my father's firm deals a lot with, but I'm not even going to get into that right now. Only in our case - I mean, in my family's case - there was nobody else. No other direct male heirs. The only relatives were all females, which in this case included at the time a bunch of distant relatives... I think we're related to the Flints and to the Blacks through some crazy distant great-great-aunt or whatever. Anyway, basically there was a bunch of very distant female relatives, and my mother, by the time all my uncles were dead. And Skylar."
"Except she was - is a bastard and nobody knows about her."
"Right. So in the case where there are only - well, okay, let's start off like this. Say there are only legitimate female heirs and illegitimate male heirs. It's unfair, but the oldest pureblood male gets legitimized. Say there are no purebloods. Then it doesn't matter. Desperate times call for desperate measures - the oldest male gets legitimized. Also, another cause for lawsuits because legitimate pureblood female relatives generally don't like when that happens for obvious reasons. Well let's take another case. You've got only females left. In that case, the married ones are ruled out. The oldest single female then gets to inherit everything under the condition that one of her sons takes on the family name, thereby continuing the line. Again, another cause for lawsuits because a lot of husbands don't want their heirs or their spares to not take on their name.
Next case - you've only got female heirs. All married. Then same thing. Somehow they have to decide amongst themselves which of their sons gets to take on the family name and the estate. Again, cause for lawsuits.
Another case - you've only got female heirs. And they haven't got any sons, legitimate or illegitimate. In this case, they choose amongst themselves one of their daughters who will take on the family name and same thing, will pass on the property and name to one of her sons. And if she doesn't have sons, then it goes on to another relative, obviously keeping everything as direct to the original bloodline as possible until there's a male heir."
"Well all that's just stupid! What's even the point after all of that? And what if there are no more potential heirs?"
"It isn't about the property at that point, it's about the name. I mean, the property's important, but you know how it is with names. Which brings us to where my family stands now. The only female descendent is a married woman - my mother. Technically, she should have inherited everything because there's nobody else close enough to the direct line, and even if I didn't take on the Rosier name, being my father's only son, I still would have inherited, provided that if I ever have a 'spare', that he or she would take on the name until - well yeah, you get the picture."
"What happens if there are no more heirs? What if there aren't even any distant relatives?"
"The property gets pieced off and sold."
"Well that's just sad."
"And that's life. But anyway, all that is what technically should have happened."
"Except for Skylar."
"Except for Skylar. So in this case, Skylar being a bastard, doesn't find out about anything until her birthday because generally the way it works is that if at any point in time a male heir is born, legitimate or illegitimate, then he moves into the place of heir apparent."
"Well what about after her birthday? What if hypothetically there was a younger illegitimate male heir floating around who comes of age after Skylar?"
"Same thing."
"So she gets shafted."
"Exactly. But we know that isn't the case here because Evan was the last of my uncles to die. Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that my mother and I were never technically the heirs except for the nine month period between Evan's death and Skylar's birth. As soon as she was born, being the most direct blood relation and being unmarried put her above my mother, who is legitimate and a pureblood, but married without - without a spare, let's say. So this entire time, Skylar's been the heir apparent, provided that when she turns eighteen -
"She'll agree to take on the Rosier name and name all her children Rosier if ever she has any. So what happens if she refuses?"
"Refuses what?"
"To take on the name."
Cassius blinked.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, what if she doesn't want to have anything to do with it? The money, the property, the name -
"That's never happened before."
"How has that never happened before?"
"Nobody says no to that kind of money."
"I thought your posh sorts didn't talk about money."
"It's more than money. It's property. It's the heritage. And nobody says no to that kind of - of wealth."
"You obviously don't know Skylar," Alicia muttered under her breath.
"Well then if she says no, I suppose it'll all come back to my mother and I."
"Until one day there are no more heirs and everything gets sold off to the highest bidder."
"Exactly."
"Well. That's just - that's just misogynistic and fucked up."
"We're aristocracy," said Cassius dryly. "That about sums it up."
"...so... who's going to be the lucky person who gets to tell Skylar about all of this?"
"That would be her father."
Alicia blinked and stared at Cassius as though he were insane.
"You just said -
"Let me correct myself. That would be the self-portrait of her father which I actually haven't told Florrie about yet because - well, to be honest, I only spoke to her that one time so I have no idea how she would react if she were to see him... it. Whatever."
"A self-portrait? You mean, it's basically - it's basically him in there?"
Cassius nodded.
"Obviously it's not exactly him, but - well, yeah, you remember what Binns was saying when we were covering art history -
Alicia stared at him against as though he'd just sprouted a second head.
"Did you just ask me if I remembered what Binns was saying in class like a year ago? Now I know you're crazy -
"Yeah, yeah," said Cassius. "You know what I mean."
"Okay, so it's as close to his original state as you could get without resurrecting him. Which, I suppose, is impossible. So this is as close to the real deal as we're going to get. And you're going to just let this portrait of Skylar's dead Death Eater father explain to her - basically everything you just told me - and you expect it to go well? Are you insane?"
"Well I'm not going to be the one to do it. They're going to have to - to meet eventually -
"It's a portrait!"
"You know it's not just a portrait. It'd be different if somebody else painted it, but it's a self-portrait. And he finished it right before he died. Circe, Alicia, you realize it's basically a preservation of who he was up until practically the day he died."
"Advocating for a family reunion... merlin, Cassius, I didn't realize you were such a humanitarian!"
"I'm not," he snapped. "I'm just saying, I don't want to be the one to explain any of this, and Florrie's a mud - a muggleborn. She wouldn't even know where to begin. I'm just being practical. Now can we stop talking about this and get back to shagging? My buzz is wearing off and it's curfew in an hour."
"I've said it once and I'll say it again," Alicia sighed sarcastically, "You, Cassius Warrington, are one romantic twat."
Alright, how is it? It's been a long time so be honest with your critiques and comments - it can only help make the story better!
XOXO