Arcturus is fourteen now, at an age when courtship becomes important, expected. He is taken to every ball and gala held all summer long, where his family show him off like the Quidditch Cup and Father and Grandfather force him to dance with every young lady around his age, none of whom are at all interesting to him. They are all pretty enough, and intelligent, but he feels no desire to court them or get any closer than a strained waltz hold permits. He wonders if that is not quite right; when he breaks away to talk to his friends, Avery and Parkinson and Nott all go on about their partners, everything from their faces to breasts to legs, and Arcturus feels nothing, just makes himself laugh along and make comments that feel hollow once they reach the air.
At the end of August, he is called into Grandfather's study. "You must not tell anybody," he is told, "though I am sure word will get out soon. I thought you ought to be the first to know. Your cousins are coming to Hogwarts."
He blinks, confused, stares, then manages to ask, "Which cousins?"
"Your uncle Phineas' daughters. The situation in France is too perilous and the French Ministry are afraid that the fighting may affect the area in which Beauxbatons lies. The school will be safe; the muggles will conveniently decide that it's a terrible place to build a trench. But there are concerns about safety across France, especially if the German Ministry does decide to intervene, and so I have offered Cassandra and Calliope a place at Hogwarts."
Not Cora. Arcturus does not say her name.
"They will bear the surname Black, I will acknowledge them, but their father's disownment will continue."
"But you don't want them to die."
"They are of pure blood. My blood. What sort of man would I be if I let them stay in such danger when I can keep them safe in my own care, in my own school?"
But there is no mention of the safety of Cora, or the girls' parents. Arcturus is afraid to be the one to bring them up. It is not the time, and there is nothing he could do about it. He oughtn't care about them anyway.
"I would advise against speaking with them, or being clearly associated. But it would be out of the ordinary if you did not acknowledge them, and so I leave it to you to decide your relationship."
A choice. Arcturus feels he has so few of them sometimes, when it comes to family matters. "Thank you for telling me, Grandfather. I suppose if they are in Slytherin, there will be no avoiding them, will there?"
"Perhaps not. But they are both fifth years, you shall not have much occasion to see them outwith the common room. However." He knew there would be a job for him. "I would like to know what they do, while they are here. I do not fully trust their father's intentions. The girls are still so young, and so malleable. They might not know what is right and wrong."
Their father had led them astray. Had taken them away from their rightful family( the family Arcturus must one day preside over, and keep them all in line with.
"I will keep an eye on them, Grandfather," he promises. His lord smiles.
"I know, Arcturus. You are such a good grandson."
He is proud of himself for that. That is all he has ever wanted; to be good, and good enough for his family. He must make them proud, and he must keep them safe.
But just before Grandfather dismisses him, Arcturus makes himself ask, "What about the other sister? Cora?"
His grandfather sneers. It is an ugly look which he is seeing more and more of nowadays. "Alive," he says coldly. "With her parents. Now, leave me — I have much work to do ahead of the Assembly's next meeting."
-*
The next day, Arcturus watches Lycoris being sorted into Slytherin, just after seeing two familiar girls slip into seats at the end of the table, heads down, the scowls they direct at the High Table only just noticeable to him. There are not many watching; they came in conveniently through a back door, while everyone else was distracted by the procession of tiny first years.
Lycoris bounds over to Arcturus as soon as she is sorted, beaming, and he makes the boys around him part for her. He still has that power; any of them will do anything he says. He is fairly certain he could tell Audrin Thorel to walk off the Astronomy Tower, and he would do it. Especially if he was told it would benefit his family.
"I told you I'd be Slytherin," Lycoris says haughtily, flicking her hair over her shoulder. "You told me I wouldn't!"
"I was only teasing," Arcturus sighs. "You knew that. Grandfather would never let you be anything but. Now hush, and watch the rest. Take note of your peers and their names and houses."
Lycoris shuts up and they watch in respectful silence, as a slew of new purebloods join their table. The names he recognises, he claps for. The names he doesn't, he watches warily, and wonders if any of them have fathers and brothers at war.
He has not failed to notice that the Muggleborns come to school scrawny, unwell. Some have never eaten meat. This year's intake seem quiet. Names like Brown and Smith and Johnson stare around like they've never seen the insides of a castle before. They're always easy to spot, the Muggleborns. Even the wealthy ones are out of place.
The only other people who look so out of place are Cassandra and Calliope at the bottom of the table, though perhaps he only thinks so because he knows who they are. When the Head of Slytherin, Professor Dagus, greets them in the common room that evening, he welcomes the first years and two new additions to the fifth year cohort, all the way from Beauxbatons in France: Cassandra and Calliope Black.
The collective gaze of the common room swivels from the girls to Arcturus, back again, then to him again. Nott gasps and stares at him, thunderstruck, and Arcturus says boredly, "You all know the Black family has a thousand branches. We can't escape the French."
Cassandra smiles at him, but Calliope glares. Lycoris finds him once the storm settles and demands to know why he didn't tell her and he smirks and says, "Grandfather told me it was privileged information. Heirs only."
His sister glares and storms away to find her new room — Grandfather has already pulled the necessary strings to ensure she has one all her own — and Arcturus laughs and goes to lounge on the sofa with the boys, all of whom are eager to know more.
"They're my Uncle Phineas' daughters," he says, in the sort of tone to indicate that this is common knowledge and boring, at that. "He was disowned of course, I haven't heard of them in years, but my Grandfather thought the girls could be rehabilitated under his eye, and given the situation in France, the family thought it best to keep them safely here. That's all."
"They'll be spreading their propaganda everywhere," Selwyn says with a snarl. "Don't they love muggles in France?"
"Wasn't that what your uncle was disowned for?" Thorel presses, with the eyes of a predator stalking prey. "Muggle-loving?"
"Yes." It is common knowledge, there is no use to hide. "Every family has its shame. Ours was dealt with. But pure blood cannot be spilled for the cause of muggle territory, even if their father has betrayed the meaning of that blood. With any luck, they'll gain a decent enough education here to forget all about such things, and marry to husbands who will teach them the right way of things. Worry not, gentlemen," he says with an indulgent, amused smile, "they shan't tarnish the reputation of any house here."
The girls do not speak to him for a month, but in that time, Arcturus watches over them even more intensely than he does Lycoris. Cassandra is sweet, outgoing, and seems to bound quickly with the other girls in her year. Calliope is a wildcard, seeming only to befriend muggleborns, and she has a new detention every week, usually for arguing with her peers in class. Grandfather knows about that part, surely, but when Arcturus is called to his office at the beginning of October, he is happy to inform on every other detail of their friendships and relationships, they way they conduct themselves and the fact that Calliope's skirt is always above the ankle, and half the common room call her a whore and the other half titter and claim that the Black family cannot dress their own properly.
The next day, Calliope regards him across the hall with fury in her eyes and a skirt that trails on the dusty floor. She confronts him as he is leaving Transfiguration, Cassandra by her side, everybody watching.
"You little sneak," she hisses in his ear, and Arcturus bats her away. "Telling tales on me to Grandfather!"
"You are embarrassing the family," he tells her, and she seethes. "Grandfather knew of your exploits; I merely confirmed that which he was not sure of. Now, kindly stop making a scene."
"You're a little horror, you know that? To think, I thought you were kind when we were little children, but you turned on us like everybody else in the family!"
"Cally," Cassandra says in a warning tone, placing a hand on her sister's shoulder. "This is neither the time or the place. People are beginning to stare." She leans in to whisper something, which has Calliope tightening her jaw and pursing her lips. "Sorry about all this, Arcturus," she addresses him pleasantly. "You know how dear Cally gets."
"Don't you 'dear Cally' me—"
"Is there a problem?" Professor Dumbledore's clear voice cuts through the tension in the air outside the classroom, and the corridor goes silent. "Misses Black... Mister Black."
Calliope steps away as though stung. "No problem, Professor."
Dumbledore's eyes are bright, intrigued. "Then I suggest we all run along to dinner, hm? I have it on good authority that tonight's treacle tart is the best it has ever been, and I would hate for anybody to miss out."
Arcturus merely rolls his eyes and strides away. His classmates follow; Thorel latches onto his arm and hisses, "Your cousin's insane, Black! What was that all about?"
"Her mind is addled from so much time spent with muggles." The words roll so easily off of his tongue. "She has no concept of manners."
"She was greatly embarrassing you all," Nott puts in from his other side. "The other one isn't so bad, though. Dear Parky thinks she's rather alright, don't you, Parky?"
Oliver Parkinson turns to them with a scowl. "I didn't mean — she's a very nice young witch. Lovely... You know."
Arcturus narrows his eyes. "She is my cousin. And I highly doubt her father will want you involved in her life." Then again, he doubts whether Uncle Phineas even has any say, if Grandfather has been the one to take them in again, and embrace them here at Hogwarts.
"The blood traitor?" Oliver smiles, but it veers close to a sneer. "I'm sure I could handle him."
"I'd rather not witness that. He was a formidable duelling opponent, or so my father told me. Still—" he glances over his shoulder, to see Cassandra and Calliope talking to Professor Dumbledore outside the classroom "—he is only a blood traitor."
-*
The girls still do not speak to him, but Arcturus begins to enquire as to his peers' opinions of them. The consensus is that Calliope is a wild blood traitor, bordering on raving lunatic. But Cassandra... Cassandra is called sweet, pretty, intelligent, funny. Charming. She has worked her way into the affections of many of her pureblood classmates, leaving Arcturus to wonder at her intentions.
And so shortly before Christmas, he takes her aside on a night when Calliope is busy playing gobstones, and says, "I was sorry to hear you will not be joining us for Christmas dinner this year."
Cassandra frowns at him, heavy at first, then a delicate thing. It is a practiced expression. "We thought to explore more of Hogwarts, Calliope and I."
"You are not returning to your mother and father?"
"We cannot." She glances away. "Lord Phineas decreed it in their... Arrangement."
"Ah. I see." He presses closer, leaning over with his arm draped on the back of the sofa. "I am sorry that things are so... Difficult."
Cassandra gives a feeble smile in response. "Are your parents safe? And Cora?"
A cold, derisive laugh. "You do not care for my sister, do not pretend."
"I do. We were children together, once. That childhood affection does not fade."
"I think it does," she says, rude and abrupt, looking him up and down. "Forgive me, cousin. I am tired."
"I am sure. But, Cassandra... Things do not need to be as they are. Your father's sins are not your own."
"My father has no sins," she says in return, ice in her eyes. She would not dare speak to anybody else like that, Arcturus knows. But he seems to be an exception. "Did nobody tell you, why we were disowned?"
"Your father supported ideas which were antithetical to the continued existence of our family—"
"Grandfather wanted Cora dead," she says, and Arcturus' heart stutters to a halt for a moment. "Because she's a squib. Or else, to have her memories of our world, our family, taken, and for her to grow up in the Muggle world without a soul to love her. But my father, somehow, has a shred of humanity within him still, and he would not let him. They agreed to take us far away, to have us all disowned so nobody would know the greatest shame. That the Black blood failed."
But they have never had a squib in the family. "It's the muggles," he says, and Cassandra laughs. "Their science, see, it fights—"
"Muggles are not to blame. We are not under attack, Arcturus, no matter what anybody would have you believe to defend their own cruelty. These things happen. It's common, in twins and triplets. But it doesn't matter. My sister is my sister."
"The Black family line is the strongest the Wizarding world has seen—"
"And who told you that?" Cassandra asked, voice easy and lilting. She lays a hand on his arm, with a gentle face. "You have been lied to, Arcturus. It isn't your fault." He doesn't think she means that. "And it isn't anybody's fault that Cora is a squib. Only Fate's. But," she says, standing up, "it is somebody's fault that we had to leave, and go to France, and that we had to leave our family back there to be endangered by the war. That somebody is not my father."
Then she walks away, in a cloud of perfume and disdain, and Arcturus watches her go with a cold, uncertain feeling in his chest.
He knows that having a squib in the family is a great embarrassment. But Cora was — is — his cousin. And he doesn't think she needs to die. Perhaps he is not ruthless enough, as his father says. Perhaps he is too soft. But surely, being a squib is not a sin. And defending one's children is not, either.
But undermining the family is. But that isn't Cora's fault. Is it?
He does not know what to think of anything. More and more, the worldview he had thought certain, seems unsteady. He cannot discuss it with anyone. His friends laugh and joke, about what they'd do to squibs and muggles who got in their way. They make merry over the idea of the muggles destroying themselves in the war, and Arcturus thinks of his aunt and uncle and cousin in France. Cora probably attends school with muggles, is probably friends with them.
He doesn't particularly care if they live or die, but he doesn't feel like celebrating it, either.
Christmas is over quickly and the Muggle war drags on. There is talk of Cornwall being used as a landing port. In the early new year, Arcturus leaves the manor one day for a walk and watches a nearby village, seemingly devoid of young men.
"They're forcing their boys to war," Grandfather says when he is back at school. "It is as if they want their own demise."
But wizards kill each other all the time. In February, there is a sudden rise in reports of dark magic across the country, and Professor Dumbledore leaves for two days, for reasons Grandfather won't even divulge to Arcturus, when he asks.
Muggleborns and squibs are targeted, when the Minister decides to support the British muggles in their fight. If the German Ministry will support theirs, then they must support their own neighbours. Some take well to this, some are nervous about what it means, and the Assembly all but explodes with the fury each side hurls at one another. Grandfather is involved in a duel with Lord Potter. Lord Prewett has his ear hexed off, though according to the Daily Prophet, it has not dulled his fighting spirit.
"We must not let hatred and fear bind us," Lord Abbott is quoted as saying in the Daily Prophet. "We cannot watch people die."
But the British Muggles have killed people for years and years and the Ministry has never said a word. In fact, they have written off wizards in the 'colonies' as wicked for using magic to defend themselves from British bayonets, have said it violates the Statute of Secrecy.
Hypocrisy, Arcturus thinks as he watches both worlds fight with themselves. That is all the world amounts to: hypocrisy and hatred.
But he cannot do anything about it. It is not his place, not yet. He is still only a schoolboy, not yet even an heir, but an heir's heir. He believes his family are better than any other, that Cora's squibness is a tragic twist of fate.
But he doesn't think that his inferiors should die.
It is not, to most decent people, a particularly revolutionary idea. Cassandra reminds him of this, when he speaks to her and lets such uncertainties slip. She is sweet to everyone but him, gently coercing some purebloods to think, maybe I don't need to hex the muggleborn, maybe complete insularity is not a good thing. But with him, things are personal. Arcturus grudgingly respects her for it.
Arcturus is not one for revolution. It is, he feels, simply not in his blood.
But he is ambitious. Surely, someone can reform their policy on interaction with the Muggle world; surely there is a better way, beneficial to them all? Muggles are expendable enough, but they cannot all be written off as useless, and to encourage hatred here is to encourage war, divide their community, in which pure blood is dwindling. They must either kill all the muggles and Muggleborns, or manage a peaceful relationship with them. The latter may not necessarily be easier, he thinks, but it seems like a less enormous task. And perhaps the better one.
"They are people, too," Cassandra reminds him one night. "Not assets — even if you only respect them as such, muggles and Muggleborns and squibs are just as human as you or I."
"They have no magic. How can one be truly alive without magic?"
"By breathing," Cassandra snaps, "by having more of a heart than you do."
"I only meant to say, it is a different kind of life."
"A life without magic is still worth living. And perhaps muggles and squibs would not have to live without magic, if we were a bit less selfish as a community?"
"Selfish — for wanting to protect ourselves from their witch hunts? They have been burning us for millennia."
"Muggles make their own magic. In their words, and they know our ways, too, some of them. They don't all hate us. They never did. And are we any better, anyway? If we hold all muggles accountable for burning our ancestors — when most who burned were Muggleborns, too, or not even witches, just people who they decided they didn't like for something they could not help and did not understand — surely we deserve burning, too, for all the evil we have in our world?"
That makes Arcturus quiet, contemplative. He rises and walks away and ignores Cassandra calling after him. The thoughts in his head grow and twist and tangle together and he thinks maybe, maybe she is right — but she cannot let her be. Yet, still. Arcturus cannot come up with an argument as to why she was wrong.
He screams into his pillow in solitude, and blackens his parchment with erratic, spilled ink.