Disclaimer: I'm not an entitled multimillionaire who is constitutionally incapable of admitting I've ever made a mistake, so... yeah. I don't own Harry Potter. This is written entirely not for profit for the purposes of fun and spite.

As should always be clear, but I'll note it again - the opinions of characters in the story have no direct connection inherent in terms of my opinions - I don't always think the same way as the characters do. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, sometimes it's complicated.

Cassiopeia

By Kylia

Chapter 6

April 25th, 2003

Parkinson Estate

Cassiopeia was silent for a moment, everyone else was as well, and then she sipped down the rest of her drink. She debated pouring herself more, then decided against it.

Alcohol didn't make pain go away.

"Enough about... that," Cassiopeia said after a long moment. "It's been a few months since you've visited, and there's only so much that goes into a letter. So fill me in on what's going on here. The stuff that doesn't make it into papers." She smirked, looking at Blaise, raising an eyebrow.

"And you're singling me out... why?" Blaise asked, quickly pouring more scotch into his glass.

"Cassiopeia is as curious as the rest of us why you're in a tiff with your mother." Theo pointed out. "Merlin knows I've been burning to pester you about it. Because I can't imagine what it is. You don't exactly do much with your time," he added. "I've got the family business to manage, but you - all you do is lounge around, spend money and go to clubs, muggle and magic."

Cassiopeia blinked, "You go to muggle clubs, Blaise?" She chuckled, trying to imagine her friend in and amongst muggles. The Zabinis were never quite as prejudiced as many other families in Britain, but it wasn't like he had any experience with them. "How did I never hear about this before?"

"It's a new thing," Blaise admitted. "The music's better, and more variety. And the booze -" Blaise laughed. "Muggles take mixed drinks to a whole new level. Tastier, and better at getting you drunk quick, if that's what you want."

Pansy laughed, "That sounds worth looking into. I hear... stories about muggle clubs," she added, smirking suggestively. "How true are they?"

"They don't actually have orgies right there on the dance floor," Blaise told her, grinning, and Pansy mock-pouted. "But in some of them they dance up close enough together they might as well be." Pansy had a thoughtful look on her face, and Cassiopeia wondered just how long it would take Pansy to go to a muggle club. Probably less than a week.

"I'm sure your mother didn't kick you out of the house over your nocturnal activities, or your spending habits." Theo countered.

"She didn't kick me out!" Blaise countered defensively, then went on, "I'm just not interested in dealing with her bending my ear about my unacceptable choices of late," He let out a long, defeated sigh. "She's not happy about who she caught in my bed." He looked down at his glass.

"Called it," Pansy smiled as she leaned forward. "Pay up, Theo," she held out a hand. "I told you he was seeing someone." She ignored Blaise's indigent 'what!?' as she gestured for Theo to hand something over. After a long moment, Theo rolled his eyes and pulled a seemingly small bag out of his pocket, pulling a hundred galleons out quickly, in ten-galleon denomination units, tossing the coins into Pansy's waiting hand lightly, a bit of nonverbal, wandless magic floating them into place.

"What did you think I was fighting with mother about?" Blaise turned to Theo, his expression somewhere between annoyed and amused.

"I figured she was pressuring you to get married and have kids. Merlin knows we're all at the right age for parents to be doing that, under normal circumstances," Theo leaned back into his chair. He at least, was safe from that, since his mother was dead and his father had a life term in Azkaban - and unlike the rest of them, Theo's relationship with his father had been quite simple.

"My mother's been dropping hints," Pansy confirmed, slipping the money into a 'small' bag of her own.

"Last time I checked, your mother has been dropping hints since you were eleven?" Blaise corrected. He looked over at Cassiopeia. "She's going to suggest it to your mom again, once she finds out you're cybelean." An official agreement had been in the works shortly before the battle at the Department of Mysteries, and at that point the Parkinsons had dropped the proposal. Which was the best for all involved - neither Cassiopeia nor Pansy had inclinations of that sort for one another.

Pansy telling her parents she was sapphic had of course ended all chances of such an arrangement when they still thought the Malfoy heir was a boy.

"Ugh, don't remind me," Pansy made a gagging sound. "But if you want to get technical, I'm sure she started planning my wedding the moment she knew she was having a girl," She looked back at Blaise. "But no more changing the subject - who on Earth are you seeing that's got your mother this upset? She wouldn't be lecturing you over a one night stand, and the fact that you keep trying to avoid telling us..."

"It's not Weasley, is it?" Cassiopeia grimaced even at the thought, but who else would Blaise be this cagey about.

"Of course not... I mean, I'll grant he's a lot less gangly these days, and looks pretty fit in his Auror's robes..." Blaise started. Cassiopeia put her hands over her ears. Even Pansy didn't seem entirely thrilled to hear about Weasley's 'fitness'

"Don't even -" she started, then cut herself off at the way Blaise was grinning. "You're having me on,"

"Well, not completely, but a little." Blaise waved a hand dismissively. "No, it's not Weasley. Though..." Blaise downed the contents of his glass in one quick go, letting out a long breath. "It's Longbottom-"

Pansy interrupted, "No, no, Longbottom's seeing Lovegood. The two are practically joined at the hip. It's almost enough to make my teeth hurt just to see them with their public displays of how in love they are."

"-and Lovegood," Blaise finished, glaring pointedly at Pansy.

Cassiopeia coughed, and had she had anything in her mouth at the time, she might have spit it out. Theo sounded like he was about to hack up a lung, the way he was coughing and clearing his throat.

"I want to make sure I heard you right. Your mother found you in bed with Longbottom and Lovegood?" Cassiopeia blinked and started at her friend. Blaise was the only one of the four of them to have engaged in a Ménage à trois at all, but those had all been one-night flings, or maybe weekend long affairs in some cases.

I would never have thought Longbottom the type. What little Cassiopeia actually knew about the fairly free-spirited Luna Lovegood left him not particularly surprised, but...

Still.

"Yes," Blaise nodded, voice quiet. He let out another long sigh and poured himself yet another drink. "I hadn't exactly been expecting her to arrive home that morning, let alone barge into my room while we were asleep, but... she found us. And-"

"You told her it was serious," Theo surmised. "Like Pansy said, your mother wouldn't get worked up over a fling."

"I told her it could be serious," Blaise corrected. "In so many words. Mother didn't approve."

Cassiopeia was silent as she looked at her friend, trying to process that information. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to her, on several levels, but she wasn't going to argue with Blaise over something like that. He knew himself and his own feelings.

"How though?" Pansy was the first one to speak. "I mean... are you dating them both? And they're both dating you?" She shook her head. "I don't... how exactly does that work?"

"How does seeing anyone work?" Blaise shrugged. "Don't ask me how it happened, I didn't expect it. It did start as a one night thing - apparently Luna convinced Neville the idea was a good one in the first place." He smirked a little now. "They're both really good with their tongues," he added, eyebrows waggling a little.

Then he let out a breath. "But... well, it didn't stop after that night. I won't say I'm in love with them - It's only been a month, for Salazar's sake - but I like them. Neville's grown up a lot since school, and he can be pretty charming. And hold his own in a conversation. And Luna... well..." he smiled softly. "She looks at the world in an interesting way, and she's unpredictable - in a good way." He quickly clarified.

He's got it hard for them. It was probably in part just that 'new relationship smell' - Cassiopeia had picked up the phrase some some of the witches and wizards he'd been friendly with in America - but it did seem Blaise felt more than just casual affection for them, from the way he spoke about them - and especially the expression on his face, his softened tone.

Cassiopeia was curious about the logistics of such a relationship, how dating two people at the same time actually worked, but...

"Your mother should be happy you're happy." Cassiopeia concluded. Yes, being in a relationship like that was... well, it was the sort of thing that made gossipmongers and scandal rags thrilled to have such a thing to write about. She vaguely recalled hearing about a scandal involving cousin of Mrs. Greengrass and two half-bloods when she'd been eleven... or twelve. Cassiopeia's parents had been just about as scandalized by the triad nature of the relationship as by the fact that the woman had been in a relationship with half-bloods.

"You'd think, but well, clearly not," Blaise commented, voice bitter. "Every chance she got, she was scolding me about what could happen if word got out. The scandal - as if having seven husbands dying one after another isn't scandal enough to make the Zabini name practically immune to the gossip rags."

Not that Blaise's mother had actually killed all seven of her wealthy husbands. Blaise had told them all he was reasonably confident she'd killed husband number three, and possibly number 5, but apart from Blaise's father - the first and longest lasting husband - the rest had just been old, sick or otherwise in poor health and condition before their marriage to the infamous Zabini widow.

"Well, she can sod off then," Pansy rolled her eyes. She shrugged, "Seems a bit weird, but it's your business having a relationship that will probably explode in jealous acrimony," there was no bite to her words, and Blaise put a hand to his heart.

"I'm touched, Pansy, absolutely touched," he said, then laughed a moment. "So, that's my deep, dark secret."

"Not sure why you didn't just tell us sooner, but I'm with Cassiopeia and Pansy - as long as you're fine with it, I've got no issue," Theo confirmed. Blaise shrugged in regards to the question of why he hadn't said anything sooner. "Just make sure your boyfriend and girlfriend know that if they hurt you-"

"I'm not going to threaten then," Blaise interrupted. "You three can handle that yourselves, I'm sure - but make sure you don't scare them off." He glared rather pointedly at Pansy.

"Moi?" Now it was Pansy's turn to put a hand to her heart, in mock dismay.

"Yes, you," Blaise confirmed. "Out of the four of us, you're the most terrifying when you want to be." Cassiopeia joined Theo in making noises of agreement. Pansy tossed a flashy but harmless sparkle of red light at Blaise with her wand, and then the four friends continued to talk for the next few hours, catching up, chatting, debating a few things, and in general, giving Cassiopeia the perfect distraction.

Merlin, I missed this. Her friends had visited her many times when she'd lived in America, but it was still infrequent, and rarely did she get to see all three at once and just be in a situation where they could sit and chat and truly and completely relax around one another.

April 25th, 2003

Malfoy Manor

It was that evening that Cassiopeia was back home, and without really planning to, had found herself in her father's study again.

Her study now, she supposed.

I'll have to familiarize myself with all of Father's business efforts, his plans to rebuild the Malfoy Fortune and help improve the family name after... everything he did. Much as some people mighty resent the Malfoys for their wealth, and the way that her father had used his wealth and connections to escape legal punishment after the first war, the fact remained - money talked.

And a lot of money said a lot.

Charitable donations made a significant outlay of the Malfoy family's funds, and Cassiopeia would have to be the one to start fielding requests for donations, at least some of them. Her mother would be no doubt happy to - for the moment - continue managing the charity galas, the fundraisers and the like, but it wouldn be irresponsible of Cassiopeia to surrender all management of it to her mother.

"And it will take a lot of it to make up for everything," Cassiopeia muttered to herself, walking to her father's desk. She looked at the chair, remembering all the times she'd seen her father sitting in it, while growing up, or when coming back from school for Christmas break, or for summer, and filling him in on everything that had happened to her in the preceding months.

She couldn't imagine herself sitting in it... it was his chair, and she was certainly not ready to fill his place.

In order to keep making donations, they'd have to keep making profitable investments and profitable deals, and if Cassiopeia was going to reclaim her family's rightful spot as the most wealthy family in Wizarding Britain...

Well, she'd have a lot of work cut out for her.

"Mippy!" She called out, and the house elf in question appeared before her.

"Yes, Mistress Cassiopeia?"

"Have this chair taken to storage and bring another one to replace. I don't especially care what," She gestured to the chair in question, and Mippy nodded.

"Of course. Anything else?" He asked.

"Yes... bring me a bottle of wine, and a glass." If she was going to start digging into her father's work, she'd need something to fortify her.

"Which wine would mistress like?"

Cassiopeia frowned, debating for a moment, "Cabarnet Sauvignon," she decided. Mippy nodded and disappeared with another popping sound after touching the chair, taking it with him. Cassiopeia started to look around the study, examining the books and some of the statuettes and small sculptures on the shelves. She ran her finger down a few of the spines, some of the books ones she'd always wanted to read, but hadn't gotten around to. Still...

She didn't think she needed some of these books in the study. Most of them could go back to the Manor's library, though she wasn't going to sort through them right now and figure out what could stay and what couldn't.

Slowly, she approached the desk, and opened one of the drawers, pulling out several sheafs of parchment and setting them on the desk. She was about to open another when Mippy reappeared with a chair floating in front of him, which he set where the previous chair had been. In design, it was much like the last one, but the back was a slightly rounder shape, and the fabric of the cushing on the seat and the back was grey rather than dark green.

With Mippy was Nipsy, who floated a wine glass and a bottle of Cabarnet Sauvingnon onto the desk.

"Thank you," she nodded to the house elves, who bowed back and vanished from the room after Cassiopeia gestured that they were dismissed. Popping the cork with a wave of her want, Cassiopeia poured herself a glass of the wine and brought it up to her nose as she sat down in the chair.

She took a sip of the wine, letting the flavors wash over and then rest on her tongue, savoring, before finishing the sip and setting the glass down.

Picking the first pile of papers, Cassiopeia found that it was financial information on many of the properties the Malfoy family already owned - rental income, assessed value, other means of income. Cassiopeia went over them, familiarizing herself with parts of the family's financial portfolio she'd never really bothered with.

She sipped at her wine again, and moved onto the next sheaf, looking over what turned out to be charitable donation records for recent efforts over the last few years, either directed by Cassiopeia's father or - before he came out of Azkaban - her mother.

But amongst those were also a number of letters outright rejecting the offer of the Malfoy's money. Some were polite, and regretful, but a few were much more direct, with statements like 'how dare your family try to wash away their past crimes with their money?' and 'your sentence in Azkaban was not long enough' jumping off the page as if glowing. Even one letter suggested that 'people like you are exactly why the Ministry started using the Dementor's Kiss!'

Cassiopeia swallowed and set the letters aside. Her father had written notes in the margins of the letters, noting that the organizations and charities in question were to be added to lists of organizations to never be donated to, or supported even indirectly.

"Merlin, Father, you screwed things up so bad people were actually rejecting free money." Some of the vicious ones... they hadn't been put in with the hate mail that had been given over to Granger, but perhaps they should as well. "On the other hand," she mused, "you pissed off so many people I can't imagine it would really add anyone else to the list." People on the side of 'light' hated Lucius Malfoy for fighting for Voldemort not once, but twice, and then managing to turn state's evidence against many others and getting a reduced sentence, while his wife and child got off without any sentence at all.

Those few who had fought openly for You-Know-Who that were free right now were mostly those who had done very little actual crimes on the Dark Lord's behalf, or who had, like Cassiopeia's father, turned against their own at court. But there were plenty who had sympathized with Voldemort and his cause, but hadn't fought openly.

Like Parkinson's father. Not that Cassiopia expected Earl Parkinson to actually be the killer. The man didn't have it in him - he was, at best, too self-interested to do something like that. At worst, he was a slimy coward.

I suppose in some ways, he was a better Slytherin than father.

Cassiopeia stopped as that thought passed through her brain, a sheet of parchment in her hand, halfway off the desk. She turned her head to the side, thinking those word over, and realized...

They were true.

Cassiopeia barked a humorless laugh, scoffing afterwards. She set the parchment down and sipped from her wine again, holding the glass in her hand as she settled into the back of the chair.

"He really was. Merlin help me, Parkinson - slimy, cowardly, weasel-like Parkinson was a better Slytherin. Sure, he had to pay some fines for supporting Voldemort financially, but he didn't suffer anything like we did. He didn't go to prison. And the Parkinsons are still openly beloved by polite pureblood society." She shook her head in wonderment. Pansy would always have done great things for the Parkinson family once she took over, but the late Lucius Malfoy had possibly done more than any other single witch or wizard had to raise the standing of the Parkinson family thus far.

"The late, unlamented Lucius Malfoy, in the eyes of most people in the world, I'm sure," Cassiopeia murmured sourerly.

"And meanwhile, you, Father, were busy tying our fate to a deranged self-obsessed maniac who cared for nothing short of his own power. A man who, for all that he shouted about pureblood supremacy, wasn't even a pureblood himself. And you do this a second time after spending the first 14 years of my life telling me that Malfoys bow to no one!" Cassiopeia was nearly shouting now, her complicated feelings about her father boiling over into all the things she'd never really gotten to truly have out with him.

And since she didn't even have a portrait to talk to because her arrogant father hadn't even thought to get one made since coming back from Azkaban, she'd never get any closure on this.

"But bowing to him was okay? Serving that monster was a good idea? Mass murder seemed like such a rational solution to the 'mudblood problem', didn't it? It must have, because you served him. You created a situation where I had to get this fucking mark on my arm and practically sell him my soul to keep Mother from being tortured and killed!" Cassiopeia sipped at her wine again, the motion jerky, stilted and angry.

"And the best part, the best part is that Tom Marvollo Riddle, Lord fucking Voldemort himself," she was too heated not to stop herself from saying his name, the words rising all but unbidden from her lips,"was a shit Slytherin, even worse than you, Father!"

"Because that's just it. Malfoys are always Slytherins. That's what you told me before I went to Hogwarts that first year. Every Lord and Lady Malfoy, a Slytherin. The Slytherin values of cunning and ambition, the values of the Malfoy family. Always loyal to our own. Subtly accumulating power, operating behind the scenes. You could have been Minister of Magic, instead of that idiot Fudge, but you knew that the real power to power was from behind the scenes." Cassiopeia stood, facing the unlit fireplace and the mantelpiece above it.

"Which makes it all the more hilarious that Riddle, your precious Dark Lord, the man who you thought deserved your loyalty and who returned exactly none of it, was, his vaunted heritage aside, a damned Gryffindor!" As she shouted those words, she threw the glass of wine, still half full, at the mantelpiece, watching the glass shatter and the red wine trail down the black marble and onto the base of the fireplace.

"What was it all for, Father?" She asked, her voice shaking, quiet now. She fell back into the chair, staring blankly ahead. "What was so important you thought you had to follow him to do it?"

"What was it all for?" She asked again. "Whatever you hoped to accomplish... you didn't. You just... ruined... so much. And now..."

She choked up and fought back tears.

"And now you're dead, and I'm left trying to run things and -" She cut herself off and covered her eyes a moment, wiping the few bits of water that formed in the corners away before they could slide down her face.

"This isn't how it was supposed to go," she whispered. She was supposed to come visit her parents some time, and then... after dancing around the topic with him, she and her father would have it out, once and for all, and she'd get the closest to an apology she could get from him, and then by the time he eventually died or stepped down from running the family's finances, she'd have learned all the ins and outs from him. She'd already be familiar with the family's financial portfolio.

She sat there, breathing heavily for a minute, then looked to the bottle of wine.

"Nipsy!" Cassiopeia called out. When the House Elf appeared,she spoke again, voice thick. "Another glass... and..." she gestured towards the glass and wine all over the mantelpiece and fireplace. "Clean that up."

"Of course Mistress Cassiopeia," Nipsy nodded. She cleaned up the mess with a silent wave of her hands, and then vanished and reappeared with another glass, which Cassiopeia accepted before silently dismissing her again. She poured more wine into the new glass, and sipped, ignoring the unsorted parchements on her desk and opening another drawer.

The drawer contained more paperwork, which made sense, but... something seemed off about it. It took her a moment to realize that the reason it felt off was because it had been charmed with an undetectable extension charm. She pushed her hand further into the back. It wasn't like her father at all to do something like that to his desk, charms like that could play merry hell with more conventional wards. Finally, she lighted on a sealed envelope, the Malfoy Crest pressed into the wax. But of course, the wax wasn't what was really sealing it. She recognized the runes etched around the wax, completing the magical side of the seal.

Only a Malfoy by blood could open it, and even then, only when they spoke the password while doing so. It was a spell passed down within the family, generation to generation, one of the most powerful wards you could put on something.

But sealing it required spilling one's own blood, and it was quite draining to cast. Her father had always told her only to use it on things that truly had to be kept absolutely secret from people outside the family.

"What was so important, Father?" She asked again, a hit of wonder in her voice now. "What were you hiding?"