Children of the Gods

by inwardtransience

When the message came, there was little left of Cassiopeia Black in her — soon she would move on, shed her face and her name for another. But, at the last possible moment, she found a reason to carry on, the smouldering embers of her identity sparking to new life. Unfortunately, adopting the Boy Who Lived came with complications. (metamorphs, fairies, AU and very weird)

5. Visitors — I

It was early in the afternoon when a magic deer suddenly flew through the wall.

Violet already had a kind of weird day — not bad, just a little weird. After breakfast, Cassie said they should go get some books. The Blacks had a bunch of books — apparently they had libraries, as in more than one whole library — but not many of them were meant for kids. The ones that were were, like, homeschooling things, and Violet should think about school things eventually, but also they were old, Cassie said she'd get newer books for school things. But it was cold and rainy out a lot these days, and it was something for Violet to do with its time, and there were all kinds of kids' stories mages had it never heard of before, so why not?

It was kind of weird. It'd been a few weeks now, but Violet still wasn't used to Cassie, just, buying things for it, letting it pick whatever it wanted. It always got kind of nervous, worrying Cassie was going to flip all of a sudden and start yelling at the ungrateful freak asking for things it didn't deserve — by this point, Violet knew Cassie wasn't going to do that, but it kept happening anyway.

There happened to be a bookstore in walking distance from the house — a little further than the school back in Little Whinging, but not by much. The neighbourhood they were in mostly had big row houses like theirs, all around a little green space for the people living there to share. There were stores and things here and there, on the way Cassie pointed out the grocer's and a clinic — if Violet was hurt or something and Cassie wasn't around it could just walk right in, there were healers there who would help (Cassie said it was run by "the priests", but she moved on too quickly for Violet to ask what that was about) — and a big open space, mostly covered in grass and trees, but there were also gardens in there that people living around here kept up, Cassie said to stay on the grass and not mess with any of the other plants.

The bookstore was in another block of houses — Violet thought it actually was a house, two of them smooshed together, the walls on the ground floor all knocked out to make room for the shelves. Maybe people still lived here, one floor up, the people who ran it and their family and stuff. It wasn't the first thing like it, Cassie had pointed out restaurants and tea shops and things that also used to be (still were?) houses, looked like that was just a thing people here did. The bookstore was run by an old man — not old old, he was still all there and everything, but he was old enough to be someone's grandpa — who was all nice showing them around what they were looking for, and thankfully spoke English.

Which did make sense, Violet guessed, since a lot of the books were in English. It ended up picking up a few magical kids' books, mostly stories, things the man said a lot of kids its age would know about, but also a couple not. One was about the different magical people in Britain (apparently it wasn't just the English and the Irish), and another was a history book — still meant for kids, a little above its age, but they didn't look too hard. It also found a couple really basic picture books in Irish, which were maybe a good idea.

When Cassie saw that, she looked around for a little bit and found a really neat book. It was an Irish dictionary, with drawings to help figure out what the words meant for people who didn't know Irish very well (some of them moved), plus, like, tables with all the ways the word changed (though Violet didn't know how to tell which form to use when, so that didn't help much). And, it was a magic dictionary — it turned out Irish was spelled really stupid, but if Violet put its finger on a word and told the book to read it (using a special word, like turning the lights on and off), it would say the word out loud. Also, if it knew how to say a word but not how to spell it, Violet could hold the book closed spine-down on its lap, say a different magic word and then the word it wanted to know and let the book fall open, and whichever page it ended up on would have the word — Violet still had to find the word from there, but with all the pictures and stuff there weren't that many on a page, so it still helped a lot. It was very neat, magic was so cool.

Dudley wouldn't think so, since it was a book, but Violet still thought it was cool.

By the time they left the store, it was raining. It was November, and apparently Irish weather wasn't so different from English weather — it rained a lot here, maybe even more than back in Little Whinging. Mostly not very hard, just a long slow drizzle...though they got heavy rains too sometimes. This was a heavier one, the water in the air so thick Violet couldn't see more than a block or two away, puddles forming on the brick streets. They didn't have umbrellas, and Violet thought maybe there was a spell Cassie had to keep the rain off.

Instead, Cassie grinned at it, and started running around like a little kid, splashing in puddles and dragging Violet along with her and... It was kind of fun, actually. A little cold, and it was really silly, but...

They were cold and wet and filthy when they got back, Cassie worse than Violet — she was wearing sandals in November, like a weirdo, she had mud almost up to her knees. They had a bath to clean up, which, Cassie had to show Violet how that worked. It was a little gross, Violet knew, it'd been a couple weeks and it hadn't had a bath or shower or anything, but it didn't know how that stuff worked, and it thought Cassie maybe assumed it did and just didn't think of it? Maybe Violet should have said something, but there was a lot going on...

Though, since mages had to be weird about everything, even baths were weird. Violet noticed before that the thing was all big and open, more like a swimming pool than a bathtub, and there was a reason for that: mages normally bathed together. Families especially, that was a thing it was expected everyone did all the time, but even perfect strangers sometimes — a lot of houses (for poorer people) didn't have baths in them, they went to a public bath instead. There was one of those not far from here, Cassie said, though most of the people in the blocks they were on had their own baths (or one shared between just a few houses or sometimes a whole square), so it was mostly for the people another neighbourhood over. (She didn't come out and say so, but Violet understood they were in a somewhat nice neighbourhood, like a magical Little Whinging.) Cassie said even Hogwarts hadn't any private baths when she went there — they did now, added soon after she left, by the time her sister went (Violet's grandmother) they had both private ones and more open ones, people could use whichever.

And that was...weird, right? Violet thought that was weird. It never heard of people doing that before. Cassie said it used to be really common for normal people too, until everywhere started having indoor plumbing...which did make sense, when Violet thought about it. It used to be normal for everyone, the mages just hadn't stopped doing it. (Apparently magic people had only hid away a few hundred years ago, Violet didn't know when exactly.) Violet hadn't put together Cassie meant to have their bath together until she popped down into the bathroom, carrying a change of clothes for both of them, completely naked — and a little kid again, that part wasn't a surprise, she almost always did that when they were alone. Acting normal, not embarrassed at all, and...

Violet couldn't remember the last time it saw another person without clothes on. It would have been Dudley, it thought — they used to be given baths together, but that was a long time ago, they would have been really little — but it didn't really remember. Someone else had seen it without clothes on way more recently than that — if Violet took too long in the shower, sometimes Petunia would come in and drag it out (because it had chores to do, and it shouldn't waste water). If she was really angry, she sometimes dragged Violet all the way from the shower down to the cupboard, without giving it a chance to dress first, but that didn't happen very often.

It was weird, Violet had been really uncomfortable with the idea, but...well, if this was normal for magic people, it should get used to it, right? And this was the only bath they had. Cassie said she'd go away if Violet wanted, but...

In the end, it wasn't so bad. Weird, but it was fine, Violet got through it okay. The hardest part was taking its clothes off at the beginning — it was all hot and tight and twitchy, which was stupid, it wasn't going to get in trouble, it was doing what it was supposed to. (It was a girl at the time, but Violet was supposed to be a girl, so it wasn't going to get in trouble for that either.) Once it had a couple seconds of nothing bad happening, and getting distracted by the controls for the bath and the shower — you're supposed to shower before getting in the bath, apparently mages didn't have to worry about using too much water — which was really cool, and the water in the bath even smelled nice! It must be some kind of spell, just spun a dial by the spout to make it happen, and Cassie said it would never run out of...scent stuff, which meant it must be a spell, like Casssie's spell to hide its scar, just making the water seem like it smelled like something else? It didn't know, but it was very cool.

But anyway, once Violet was distracted with neat magic, it kind of stopped noticing that they were naked, and it was fine. Still weird, but fine.

It was a bit later, and they were sitting quietly in the living room, reading, Violet poking at its new history book (but not really getting very far), Cassie with some novel. Violet kept glancing at her, feeling really... It didn't know. Uncomfortable, but not really bad uncomfortable, it didn't think? Just weird. These last couple weeks had been a lot, was all, and it sometimes felt kind of...off.

(It was waiting for the other shoe to drop, but nothing happened yet.)

Violet was watching Cassie, looking for hints of...something, when the magic deer flew through the wall. Or, deer-like thing, anyway, it didn't quite look like a normal deer — but also it was kind of hard to tell. It wasn't a solid thing, but made out of light, kind of like the shapes Cassie drew when doing special spells sometimes, a soft pale blueish-white. Since it was just made of light, it was hard to quite tell for sure what its shape was, so the best Violet could do was deer-like. It was pretty, though.

And it also felt really nice — at least, Violet thought this thing was what was doing that? As soon as it appeared, it felt... Like a cool breeze on a warm day, or like chocolate, cool and smooth and, just, nice. It was a little startling, a magic deer just flying into the room all of a sudden, but it didn't feel like bad magic, so it was probably fine.

Cassie did twitch, surprised, but didn't seem scared, so. And then Violet twitched too, because the deer spoke — it sounded like a person, a woman maybe, but its voice was kind of...weird and echo-y. "I know about Potter. Contact me immediately, or I'll be forced to go through official channels." There was a short silence, and then the deer was gone, just poofed away, leaving Cassie frowning through the air it'd been in a second ago.

"What was that?" Violet bit its lip — it wasn't supposed to ask questions — but no, that was fine, Cassie was a very different kind of aunt, it wasn't going to get in trouble for that either.

Letting out a little sigh, her eyes tipping up to the ceiling for a second, Cassie said, "That was a patronus. It's a defensive spell, mostly used to repel demons and vampires, but it has other uses too." Wait, demons and vampires? Demons and vampire were real? Holy crap... "It's one of the more common bits of light magic out there, but not very many people know how to send a message with one — that's much more difficult, and most people don't have a good reason to practise it enough to learn how."

"Was that why it felt so nice? because my magic is light too?"

"Possibly, but it should have felt good even if you weren't attuned to the light — it's a protection spell, they tend to make people feel good just on their own. Unless you're attuned to the dark, they actually make me a little uncomfortable. Hold on a second, I'm going to send a message back." Cassie's wand appeared out of nowhere, so Violet held still, as quiet as it could — it thought this was like making a phone call, and Petunia got angry if Violet made too much noise when she was on the phone. Cassie swished her wand, more pretty light coming out of the end — Violet smiled as the cool breeze brushed over it again, so nice it kind of tingled a little — pressing together until it made a little bird, fluttered over to sit on Cassie's hand.

She stared down at it for a second, frowning a little, before saying, "Amy. I'm at home with the kid. I'd rather not come in just now, but I can arrange for one of the neighbours to keep an eye out tomorrow. If you'd like to interrogate me then." Cassie flicked her fingers, and the bird started flying away, flapping a few times before disappearing in a blink.

Once the glowy bird was gone, Violet asked, "Who's Amy?"

"A niece, sort of. She's the Director of Law Enforcement these days — Albus was uncomfortable with nobody knowing you were moved, last I heard he was going to tell a handful of trusted people at the Ministry. Amy was one of them."

"Director of..."

"Law Enforcement. She's..." Cassie frowned for a second, thinking. "She's in charge of all the magic police, basically."

...Oh. That sounded...maybe not good, if she was sending messages to Cassie, and Violet was pretty sure interrogate was a police thing...

But before Violet could ask, the magic deer flew in through the wall again. "There's no reason to be quite so dramatic, Auntie. I understand why you and Dumbledore decided to handle Potter's custody off the books, but I'm not going to let this slip by without certain assurances." Poof.

Cassie snorted. "Albus is lucky Amy wasn't in charge when he sent you off with those muggles in the first place — if she's kicking up a fuss over this, she definitely wouldn't have let him get away with it." ...Violet didn't know what to say to that, but thankfully Cassie didn't wait for it to come up with something, making another glowing bird right away. "Fair enough. Since you can't get an Auror to do a home visit, how about you and Dilwyn's girl come over, and we'll do dinner. We'll satisfy your concern while the gi– kids get acquainted."

Once the bird was gone again, Violet asked, "Are we in trouble?"

"No, no, Amy just wants to make sure everything's okay." Cassie pulled her feet up onto her chair, started tugging at her socks. It took a little bit, because they were really really long socks.

When they got out of the bath, Cassie put on a pair of cotton shorts — with no pants underneath, which was weird, Violet was pretty sure magic people wore underpants — and a big fuzzy jumper, so big it completely covered her shorts when standing up, and the longest socks Violet had ever seen, well above Cassie's knees, covered most of her legs. Which was a kind of weird outfit, but Cassie was kind of weird. She was a freak too, so Violet guessed it just made sense she was weird sometimes.

"Moving a kid from one home to another can be a pretty big deal, usually the Ministry likes to make sure nobody is doing anything to hurt the kid. Well, if the kid is being moved from one household to another inside the same family the Ministry can't do anything about it, but if the kid is being moved outside of the family, they look into it make sure the kid will be okay. People will probably put together you were moved eventually, and I'm guessing Amy wants to be able to say when that happens that she looked into it at the time. You know, so she doesn't get in trouble."

"Oh. Okay." Violet didn't really get it, but it sounded like it was probably confusing grown-up stuff. "So, this is okay?"

"Yes, it's okay. I meant to talk to Amy anyway, but I've been—" Cassie cut off, turning to watch the magic deer flying through the wall again.

"Agreed. I already took the afternoon off — Susan needs to get dressed, but we can be there in maybe fifteen minutes. What's your floo address? Also, did you know your voice sounds funny?"

Cassie rolled her eyes, made another bird. "I haven't connected the house to the floo yet. I'll have to side-along you both in, I think I should still be keyed into the wards at the old house. And I look like I'm maybe eight at the moment, it'd be funnier if I sounded like an adult." A flick, and the bird flew off again. "Did you need to change?" she asked, popping up to her feet, starting to head toward the stairs.

"Um, no?" Cassie had brought Violet a perfectly normal skirt, shirt, and jumper instead of anything weird (and also underpants, obviously), so it thought it was fine. Still a little confused, it followed Cassie up the stairs. "Do you think I should?"

"No no, that's fine."

The magic deer appeared again, said, "You're weird, Auntie, you know that?" and then disappeared. Cassie snorted, and kept going.

At the top of the stairs, Cassie turned toward her room, already pulling her arms out of the sleeves of her jumper. "I think we'll probably end up going out for dinner, as long as you're comfortable in that it's fine." Cassie whipped her jumper over her head, curly blonde hair floofing around, a flick of her fingers and her shorts disappeared, and she was standing in the middle of her room completely naked.

Its stomach shifting with awkwardness, Violet turned half away, looking down the hall instead of into the room. It knew Cassie didn't care if it saw her naked, but Violet still thought this was weird.

"Amy isn't really my niece, we're technically not related. Well, I suppose we are if you go back far enough, but not very closely. My godfather was called Cynaddar Bones, a friend of my father's from school. I saw a lot of him when I was little, and I was an auror for a long time, when I started he was the Director." Violet didn't know what an auror was, but it did get that Cassie worked for him on top of being her goddaughter. Cassie wasn't just changing clothes, but also must be changing what she looked like, there was a little break between sentences and suddenly Cassie's voice was different, sounded like a grown-up now. "Cynaddar had a son, and three grandchildren; Amy is the only one still alive, most of the family died in the war."

Violet frowned — this was not the first time Cassie mentioned a war, but Violet didn't know what she meant. It should maybe ask at some point...

"Before he died, Dilwyn had a daughter, named... Ah, shite. Susan, that was it! She just said it a minute ago, honestly... Anyway, Susan's about your age — I think you two might be in the same year at Hogwarts, in fact. Amy's been looking after Susan since her parents died, but I've never met her. I've been...out of contact, for a while, before Amy called me about the incident at your primary school."

"You were there because of her?"

"Yep. The people who came to cover up the magic wanted an expert to decide what to do about you being a metamorph, so Amy called me."

Huh. They never would have met if this Amy person didn't call Cassie to help. That was...a thing to know, it guessed.

Cassie came out into the hall again, looking like an adult now, but still like the same person, with the curly blonde hair and all, just older. She was in a green dress, but a much lighter green than Violet's jumper, with little bits of yellow in it like leaves in the sun. "I'm afraid you might be stuck with Susan while Amy and I are talking. Sorry to spring this on you, but there's not really anything I can do about it."

"That's okay." It wasn't like this was Cassie's idea, so. Violet didn't really know what they were supposed to do while they waited — what did normal kids do with each other, anyway?

Making for the stairs, Cassie paused in mid-step for a second. "Actually, let's not split up at all — anything Amy has to say to me can be said in front of you and Susan. Maybe I'll conjure a deck of cards or something to keep us occupied, we'll see."

Cassie wasn't looking, but she probably heard Violet's sigh of relief anyway.

They barely got down to the ground floor when Cassie told it she'd be back in a couple minutes, and then popped away. Violet stared at the spot she had been for a second — why did she come down here? Violet was pretty sure she could pop away from anywhere... — before drifting into the living room and plopping down on the sofa, not knowing what to do with itself. It poked at one of its new books, but didn't really read any, too distracted.

Violet never really got on with other kids well. At least, it didn't back at Little Whinging? It was...mostly fine here, so far. It was a little awkward, since Violet didn't speak Irish and they didn't speak English, but Lasairín was trying really hard to be friends (which was kind of silly), and Rónán and Damhnait and Síomha and Caoilfhionn and Éimhín were all nice. Was going better than it ever had at Little Whinging, really, and it didn't know why. Maybe people just liked Violet better than Harry? But that didn't make sense, it was still the same person, and obviously it was just as much of a freak when being Violet as Harry. (More, really.) Or, it guessed it didn't look as weird, since it had new clothes that fit right, and Dudley wasn't going around telling stories to people about it, or hitting people who tried to be nice to it. Maybe people would have liked Harry more, without Dudley making sure they didn't.

...That was a weird thought. It was giving Violet a funny feeling, almost dizzy, stomach-swoopy and neck-tingly, but it didn't know what that was about.

But anyway, things weren't so bad now, but Violet was still kind of... Not scared, exactly, it didn't think? It didn't know, meeting new people always went badly. Except for recently, and that was still kind of weird, it didn't know how to handle... It didn't know, it was just weird. It was kind of scary that this Amy person was in charge of all the magic police, but apparently Cassie was her aunt too, and she said it would be fine? that they weren't in trouble. Cassie knew magic things better than Violet, so she probably knew what she was talking about.

Violet was honestly more nervous about meeting the kid, Susan. It didn't do well with other kids, and this almost seemed like it was...kind of important, somehow. It didn't want to screw it up.

(And it always screwed everything up — it was a freak, and freaks ruined everything.)

Thankfully, it didn't have to sit alone with its thoughts for very long before there was a pop! back toward the front door, though not really a normal one. Usually Cassie popped really quiet, but this one was a lot louder and also like it wasn't quite all at once — like more than one pop, but very close together, couldn't quite pick out the spaces between them, just seemed to last longer somehow. Violet jumped to its feet right away.

"Woah, that was smooth. You're really good at that." That was a kid's voice, a little quiet, something about it almost sounding shy.

"I should hope so," Cassie drawled — her voice changed all the time, but Violet could still tell it was Cassie, somehow. "I've only been practising for seventy years, it'd be kind of sad if I weren't good at it by now."

When Violet turned around, there were three people standing at the bottom of the stairs. One was Cassie, looking just how she'd left. There was another grown-up woman, just a little taller than Cassie, wearing magic-person robes in blue and grey. She looked kind of thick and blocky but not in a fat way, more a muscely way — not super-obviously, but enough for Violet to guess she was really fit — her hair cut really short, an odd pale blonde that looked halfway between an ashy grey and a proper yellow blonde. The girl was also wearing robes, hers mostly a deep rusty red, but her hair was really neat. It was kind of like the blonde that was more than one colour, lighter in some places and darker almost brown in others, but it was red. So it was, like, that kind of hair like some people had where it was brown with just a bit of red in it here, but then a really red red over here, and a lighter almost pinkish colour here, all mixed up, it was neat.

Was that a thing normal people hair could do? Or was this girl a freak too? Cassie hadn't said anything...

The woman gave Cassie a look. "Auntie, seventy years ago you were twelve."

"Something like that, yeah."

"You can't get an apparation licence until you're fifteen, at the very earliest."

"Since when do you need a licence to apparate?"

"Eighteen Seventy-Three."

"Oh. Well, don't go telling Transportation, because I'm pretty sure I never got one."

The girl giggled, the woman letting out a little sigh.

"Anyway, come on, then," Cassie said, waving Violet closer. "I told you about Amy earlier — it's Amelia, actually, Amelia Bones, family call her Amy. And this is who you think she is. She's going by Violet at the moment, it's this thing we're trying."

Amelia blinked, a little taken aback — Violet was suddenly very sure that Cassie hadn't warned them about it before bringing them here. The girl, who Violet thought was named Susan, made it really obvious, gaping at Violet for a second before saying, "Wait, I thought you were Harry Potter."

...There was something weird about how she said that, the name. Violet was getting the feeling that Susan knew it, knew who Violet was, but it was very sure they never met before. Distracted by that thought, frowning at the other girl, it forgot to feel uncomfortable. "I am." Was? Violet didn't know how this worked...

"She's a metamorph," Cassie said, then to Amelia, "I thought Albus would have told you."

"He did, but I didn't realise... I don't mean anything by it, Violet, I'm simply surprised."

Violet shrugged. It knew this stuff was weird to normal people (Violet still thought it was weird), it didn't expect people to get it right away. They didn't seem to be reacting too badly, anyway, so.

In fact, Susan's eyes widened at the word metamorph, looking up to watch the adults talk for a second. "Ooohhhh, I get it. You're being a girl now, then?"

"Um, yes?"

"Right, got it. I'm Susan, hi," she finished with a wave of her hand, looking kind of awkward all of a sudden.

...Okay, then.

There was a little bit of talking then, Violet didn't follow all of it. It spent most of it glancing back and forth between Amelia and Susan, feeling kind of... They knew about Harry, that Violet was supposed to be a boy, but they'd barely reacted to it being a girl now. Didn't even seem to care, like at all. That was...weird. That seemed weird, to Violet. But then, they were magic, so maybe they just didn't mind freaks so much? Magic was kind of freakish to begin with, so...

Anyway, it was decided that they were gonna just hang out talking for a while, playing cards — that was going to be awkward, Violet didn't know very many card games — Susan was going with Cassie to set out snacks and stuff. Leaving Violet with Amelia. Because Amelia wanted to talk to it about things, but Violet didn't really know what. While Cassie led Susan off into the kitchen, Amelia smiled down at it, said, "Okay, Violet. Why don't you show me to your room?"

Violet had an instant no bad feeling, nervous tingles over its skin, but forced itself to relax. People weren't supposed to know about the cupboard, but Violet wasn't living there anymore, it was fine if people saw its bedroom — Lasairín and Damhnait had even been in there before. Not quite trusting itself to talk right, Violet nodded, turned around and started climbing the stairs.

Crap, it should have brought its new books, as long as it was going up here. Oh well...

Once they got up there, Violet just stood a couple steps inside, trying not to fidget, as Amelia looked around. Not that there was much to see. Violet kept everything very clean, because...well, because. There was nothing sitting out, all its clothes put away, the bracelets it wasn't wearing all looped around a candlestick on top of the dresser — magic people liked candles, even though they had magic lights, Violet didn't know why — which was maybe not where they were supposed to go, but Violet thought it was kind of pretty like that. (The little glass bits glittered when the sun hit them through the window.) Sitting on its desk was a pack of paper and coloured pencils (gotten when they were in Dublin — Cassie had almost gotten pastels, but those were...waxy, and sometimes had big blobs that made it hard to colour evenly), but the paper was neatly stacked, the pencils in their box. There weren't any shavings, Cassie had magicked the sharpener somehow to make the bits just disappear (which was very neat). It was cloudy out, still raining, so it was kind of dark in here, but not so dark that it was hard to see, the colours just a little blander than normal.

Violet didn't know what Amelia was looking at. She just kind of poked around for a little bit, checking over the desk, looping around by the dresser, peeking in the closet. "This is different," she said, tapping the end of the bed. "Did you arrange all this?"

Decide what it wanted and where to put everything, it meant? "Yes."

"It's just curious, is all. You don't often see beds right next to the window like this."

...Violet didn't know if it wanted to tell her that. But, the whole point of this was so Amelia would know Violet was okay here, that nothing bad was happening, right? It definitely didn't want to be sent back, so, the more convinced Amelia was it was okay the better. Tugging at the hems of its sleeves, looking down at the carpet, it muttered, "I didn't have a window, before. I have nightmares, sometimes, the window reminds me."

Amelia was quiet for a few seconds. "You mean the window reminds you you're not still with your relatives."

"Yes."

She let out a little sigh. There were a few more seconds of quiet, before Amelia took a few steps, pulled one of the chairs out from the little table, and sat down — which looked kind of funny, because the chairs were the right size for little kids, Amelia was way too big for it. "Now. I don't know if anybody ever explained it to you, but... There's a way these things are supposed to work. It wasn't done that way, in your case, and I do understand why it wasn't, but, well."

"Is Cassie in trouble?" She said they would be okay, but...

"No no, Cassie's not in trouble. But if someone finds out what happened with you, she could be. Now, I don't want Cassie to get in trouble either, so I want to talk to you for a little bit. So if someone does find out what happened, and wants to do something about it, I can tell them I looked into it at the time and make it go away."

...So Amelia was trying to help them, then. That's what it sounded like. "I don't want to go back."

"That's good." Amelia didn't sound happy about it, exactly, but at least she didn't want to send Violet back. "Cassie shouldn't have taken you without asking, but that you don't want to go back does make this much easier."

Violet frowned. "She didn't, though."

"I'm sorry?"

"After looking around the house, she told me she's my aunt, and asked if I wanted to leave with her. She didn't take me without asking."

"Oh!" Amelia said, surprised. "Oh, I didn't know that. When Dumbledore told me about it, he made it sound like— Well, Aunt Cassie and Albus Dumbledore are old friends, but they have their disagreements. I did assume he was leaving something out, he always does, but that's a very big detail to get wrong. Of course, even if you wanted to go with her, Cassie wasn't allowed to take you anyway, that is still illegal. It's kidnapping, if we're being particular about it."

Violet nodded — they'd talked about that in school, it was kidnapping even if the kid went with the person. And Cassie kind of admitted it too, but Violet didn't care. Cassie was very weird and confusing sometimes, but living with her was much better than back at the Dursleys.

Amelia had a few questions after that, which was kind of weird, but nothing bad. Just, what did they do all day, what did they do for food, that kind of thing. Making sure Violet wasn't being treated badly, it thought. It didn't know why anyone would care — nobody had cared that Harry was being treated badly — but none of it was too bad to talk about, so Violet just answered.

It did get a little uncomfortable. "I have one last thing we need to talk about quick," Amelia said, "and this one might be awkward. Don't worry about saying something wrong — you're not going to get in trouble, and neither is Cassie. But I was wondering, how did Violet happen?"

Violet blinked. "What?"

"Cassie said this is a thing you're trying, being a girl. How did that happen?"

...It didn't want to talk about this. Trying not to fidget again, staring down at the floor, Violet muttered, "I know I'm supposed to be a boy..."

"Oh, this isn't about that, Violet." Amelia put a little extra strength on its name, as though trying to say something, but Violet didn't really get what. "You're allowed to be whatever you want to be, and I won't get in the way. Metamorphs are like that sometimes, everybody knows this. I just want to know how the decision to try was made."

At least she didn't care that Violet was a freak, it guessed, but it still didn't want to talk about it. "I don't know... We were getting clothes, and she noticed I was a girl, and then we talked about it."

"I'm sorry, you could be both already? How did you learn to do that?"

Violet shrugged. "I dunno, I always could. Cassie thinks I was born a girl, and my dad gave me a potion when I was really little."

"...I see." There was something different about Amelia's voice, hard and almost cold. Violet glanced up, and Amelia was frowning, staring off to the side. Angry, but not at Violet, it didn't think. "If you've been able to be a boy and a girl for as long as you remember, that would make sense. Normally metamorphs have to learn how to do that, when they're older."

"That's what Cassie said, yeah."

"What happened then?"

It shrugged again. "Cassie said I can be whatever, she doesn't care, and I asked if it was okay if I keep being a girl, just to try. We went back to buy girl clothes instead. The neighbours don't even know I'm supposed to be a boy."

"Ah... So they don't know you're Harry Potter, then. That's probably for the best."

...That was a really weird thing to say.

"And there's no supposed to be, Violet. If you want to be a girl, then you can be. Or a boy, or both or neither, whatever you are is what you are." Amelia paused, just for a second. "In the eyes of the law, you'll always be a boy, unfortunately there's no way to change that just yet, but for everything else most people won't care so much."

"Really? I thought this was all..." Cassie didn't like it when Violet said freak. "...weird. I mean, boys aren't supposed to be girls..."

"Oh, you might be surprised how often that happens. Metamorphs are metamorphs, of course, but with normal mages, and sometimes even muggles. Non-magical folk, that is. Sometimes, someone will be born a boy, but decide they'd be more comfortable being a girl. Or the other way around, or maybe they don't feel right being either, or some combination of the two, or something else entirely. People are very complicated, there is no simple either-or, black and white when it comes to people."

"...Really?"

"Yes, really. We have stories about this sort of thing going back hundreds, even thousands of years. I'm certain it isn't fun to experience yourself, but it's a perfectly normal thing to happen."

"...Oh." It didn't know that. Harry had never heard of this sort of thing before. But then Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were very particular about things being a very specific way. Maybe they just didn't like these people. And they didn't like a lot of people — from freaks and commies and queers, to Mr. Jensen nextdoor, who had a very nice car (nicer than Vernon's), to Mrs. Roberts one street over, who had very pretty begonias (nicer than Petunia's), and all kinds of people, really...

Maybe the Dursleys were just wrong. About a lot of things, but about Violet in particular. The thought made it feel funny, but it didn't know how, just...weird.

"Did Cassie not explain any of this to you?"

"Well, she did, but I thought...she's one too, you know. A metamorph," Violet said slowly, making sure to get each part of the new word right. "I didn't think normal people did it too."

"Sometimes, yes. It's not very common, but it happens often enough that some people are annoyed about the way the law works now."

Huh. Violet didn't know how it felt about that.

(Weird, it felt weird. Not bad, just weird.)

From there, Amelia was done pretty quickly. A few more little things, and then they were heading downstairs again. Cassie and Susan were in the dining room, sitting at the table — wood, dark brown with just a little red where the light hit it, the edges and chairs carved with complicated curving shapes, very fancy. (Apparently they got it from Brynmor's family, the same people they got Violet's things from, but ages ago, the table and chairs were made by Brynmor's grandfather, before he even started the workshop.) There were bowls with snacks in them, like little pretzels and chocolates and things, bottles of drinks, a platter of those cakes with the marmalade in them Cassie made a few days ago (which were very good).

Susan was flipping through a deck of cards, a little bigger than normal playing cards, looking kind of confused. When they walked in, she turned in her seat, held one out to Amelia. "Hey Mum, are these real?"

Violet blinked — she thought Amelia was Susan's aunt? But maybe not, because Amelia wasn't surprised, just took the card. There was a really complicated, fancy drawing on it, Violet couldn't make it out very well from here. Maybe like that really weird deck of cards Cassie had made one time before figuring out Violet didn't know what they were and making a normal one instead. "No, this is conjured," Amelia said, frowning a little at the card.

"She said she conjured them, but— You can't do that! Can you do that?" she asked, turning back toward Cassie.

Cracking open a bottle of fizzy pop with a flick of her finger, Cassie grinned across the table at the girl. "Sure you can. Conjuration is a trick of visualisation, it's not difficult." She slid the bottle across the table toward Susan, which made sense, Cassie didn't like fizzy pop.

"It certainly is not a trick of visualisation," Amelia insisted, handing back the card. "It's impossible for anyone to imagine all the detail they would need to conjure every card in the deck — one at a time, yes, but not all at once." Really? Cassie did that kind of thing all the time, it'd seen her conjure decks of cards a few times...

"See, that's what I thought! I thought she was just messing with me, but they're really conjured?"

"Yes." Amelia started going around the table, moving to sit next to Cassie; Violet, a little reluctantly, made for the chair next to Susan. "Metamorphs have an intuitive gift for transfiguration. Maybe it's not difficult for Cassie—" She ruffled Cassie's hair as she went past, Cassie shoving her hand away, yelling Hey! all angry-sounding, but grinning anyway. "—but I'm not sure anyone who's not a metamorph would be able to do it — I certainly couldn't."

Cassie shot her a smirk. "Then you're doing transfiguration wrong. You don't picture the image on every single card separately, but the deck as a whole."

"It doesn't work like that, Auntie."

"Given I did manage to pull it off, I think it's pretty obvious which one of us is right." Amelia rolled her eyes, but Cassie ignored her, smiling over at Violet instead. "Want me to pop open a bottle for you, darling?"

"Oh, um, strawberry please..."

They all got settled in, grabbing drinks and stuff. Amelia was surprised that Cassie made the cakes, apparently she didn't know she could cook. Soon Cassie had the deck of cards again, shuffling as she looked around the table. "I figured we'd just play tarot while we talk, how does that sound?"

Amelia let out another sigh, eyes going up to the ceiling for a second. "Honestly, Auntie — Violet, dear, do you know jeu de tarot?"

...Was that even English? "No? What's that?"

"That was French," Cassie said. "You will need to learn French eventually, it's really important on the magical side, but it can wait until after you're done learning Gaelic."

Violet should maybe be annoyed at being given even more things to learn, but it actually thought learning Gaelic was kind of fun. Languages were just neat, it thought. Maybe French would be the same, so.

Before it could say anything, Susan said, "Oh, you're learning Gaelic?" Not missing a beat, she switched to Irish. It was sudden, Violet might have missed something, but it thought she said, "I'm learning Irish, but I only know a little. I want to go to the school next year." Unfortunately, that didn't make a lot of sense.

Cassie and Amelia muttering to each other didn't help — it was hard to listen to two languages at once, it made Violet confused. They were going to play by kids' rules, apparently, but Cassie didn't know those, Amelia was going through the deck and taking cards out. Anyway, Susan, right. "Um, I only know a little too, I start..." It didn't know how to say recently. Oh well. "When I come here." Back in English, "I've heard people say an ollscoil before, what is that? I know an scoil is a school, but..."

"An Ollscoil Choiteann Caoimhe Ní Bhláithín. I think I said that right?"

"Er..."

"It's the school the neighbour kids go to, darling," Cassie said, "the one nearby here. The name means the great...the great public school, maybe, of Caoimhe Ní Bhláithín. Caoimhe was a famous witch who lived a long time ago — she started the school, and this whole town is named after her.

"Anyway, let's have Amelia explain the rules. I don't know this variant either."

Violet never played this game before, but it wasn't that hard. The deck was dealt out to them, each "trick" everyone put down a card, and whoever had the best card took them, again and again until they were out of cards. Before the first one, they all bet how many tricks they would win — in the normal game it was points, the cards all worth different amounts, but they did it by tricks instead so it was easier to keep track of — and the highest bet got to use the cards that didn't split even between them (though they had to start with the same number, putting the extra back down), and could pick which suit was "trump", which beat even higher cards of other suits, but there were rules about when you could do it. If they made their bet, they got points, but if they didn't get their bet they lost points instead — if you didn't win the bet, you still got points if you took tricks, but you couldn't lose points, but also didn't get to pick the trump suit. There was also a special card, the Fool, which was kind of a special trump card? It was a little complicated, but it wasn't that bad, Violet got the hang of it pretty quick.

They played for what had to be a couple hours, talking the whole time, Violet didn't remember most of it. A lot of it was Cassie and Amelia catching up — it didn't know for sure, but Violet thought they hadn't seen each other for a long time. There was also some talking about the house and their neighbours and what they did here and everything. Susan was maybe a little jealous about there being kids nextdoor. The Boneses lived in a big old house, but it was only them (and Amelia was at work a lot), so there weren't a lot of people around for Susan to play with. Most days, this girl named Hannah and her mum would come over while Amelia was gone — Amelia was really busy, so Hannah's mum had almost half-raised Susan — and there were cousins and things she saw sometimes, but...

Well, the feeling Violet got was that Susan was bored a lot, and lonely. She didn't come out and say that, but Violet thought so.

Apparently Susan had never really been here before, in town, but she was going to the school here next year, so she was curious. Violet wondered if it should ask about that. It meant, kids were supposed to go to school, right? It didn't sound like Susan was right now, but she said she was going to next year, and... Maybe Cassie's plan was to send Violet there next year too. They didn't talk about those things, so. Violet should maybe ask.

The Boneses stayed so long it was starting to get late — there wasn't a clock, but the grey and rainy sky outside had gotten a darker grey. Also, Violet was a little hungry. It didn't used to notice so much if it didn't eat, but now that it had proper meals every day it noticed it got hungry easier, which was weird, shouldn't it be the other way around? They didn't get a lot of snacks out, and they were gone now, so. Dinner, maybe?

Since Susan was curious about the town, she wanted to go out to someplace here, even though it was still rainy and there wasn't much to see. There was magic to keep the rain off, Cassie just didn't bother earlier today, so they could do that. But Cassie wasn't sure, she wanted to talk to Violet alone first. Okay, then...

Cassie didn't bother going all the way up to its room, instead stopping in the living room, casting a spell with a flick of her wand. "That's a privacy paling," Cassie said, "they won't be able to hear anything we say."

Cassie didn't go on right away, so Violet said, "Okay?"

"I just wanted to ask you before I agreed to anything. I know we've had sort of a long day already, and having to deal with strangers can be tiring. If you're not up to going out to dinner, we don't have to, I can make our excuses."

...It was nice of Cassie to ask, Violet guessed. And going off alone, too, probably thought if Violet wanted to say no it wouldn't with Susan and Amelia there. Nice of her, but not really necessary. "No, that's okay. That school, um, an Ollscoil, am I going to go there?"

Cassie blinked at the change of subject, Violet guessed that had kind of been out of nowhere. "You can, if you want. Before figuring out anything like that, I was going to give you some time to get used to our world, and get comfortable here at home, decide if you want to go as Violet, all that stuff. And learn some Gaelic too — an Ollscoil has some classes in English, but it's mostly Gaelic. Their childrens' pre-academy programme runs for three years, so if you start next autumn you'll finish the spring before starting at Hogwarts, so I thought that would work nicely."

"Oh. Okay." That did make sense — Violet did have a lot of things to learn about magical people and everything, and also Irish. And if it started next year, it'd be going at the same time as Lasairín and now Susan, and that sounded...good? Like the thing to do, so. "And I was thinking, do magic people have, like, busses or trains or something? How do people get places?"

"There is a train, but its use is rather limited, only going back and forth between a few specific places. For international travel, portkeys are most common. Inside the country there's the Floo Network — fireplaces are connected with enchantments, and by using this special powder people can pop straight from one to the other. It can also be used like a telephone, but I find that really uncomfortable, I'd rather just go in person." Cassie paused, giving Violet a flat sort of look. "Are you asking because you want Susan to be able to visit?"

Violet shrugged. "If she wants to. I thought, she can't go places if there aren't grown-ups around, and there are always a few here, watching the kids. If she's lonely, you know."

There was a smile on Cassie's face, but a small one, and twitchy, like she was trying to hide it. "The real reason Susan is always supposed to have adults around when not at home is because Amy's important in government — she's worried someone will try to kidnap Susan to use against her."

"...Oh." Violet hadn't thought of that, with how mages could pop around they could probably kidnap kids really easy, that was scary. "Um. Why didn't she say that?"

"Maybe Amy didn't tell her why the rules are what they are, simply that they're the rules. It's also possible Susan didn't want to scare you with that kind of thing. That doesn't mean Susan can't visit, we'll just have to take safety precautions. As long as you don't leave the square it should be fine — the land we're standing on is owned by the Caoimhes, nobody would make an enemy of the Caoimhes if they know what's good for them — and maybe we shouldn't let anyone know Susan's last name. While we're at it, we should make sure Susan knows not to tell anyone your legal name — under the circumstances anonymity is the best defence, you're safest if no one knows who you are."

That wasn't the first time Cassie had said something like that, like Violet was famous, or there were people out there who might want to hurt Violet if they could find it, but this didn't seem like the time to ask. "Okay."

"Okay," Cassie said, smiling. "I haven't gotten the Floo hooked up yet, but I can look into getting that done. In the meantime, I can apparate you over to the Boneses' whenever you like."

Violet didn't know if it was going to want to do that. It didn't really know Susan, so it might be awkward, and her house sounded like it was big and empty and... And since this Floo thing wasn't hooked up, it wouldn't be able to go home on its own either, so if it couldn't find Cassie it'd be trapped. But it didn't want to explain all that, so it just nodded.

Cassie nodded back at it. "All right. Dinner, then?" A flick of her fingers, Cassie must be doing a spell, but Violet didn't notice anything, probably just taking down the...privacy thing. "Did you have any ideas about where you wanted to go?"

"I don't know." The only thing Violet could think of was magic pizza, but Susan wanted to go somewhere in town here (the magic pizza place they went to was in London), and also they shouldn't do that all the time. "What all is there here?"

"Oh, all kinds — most of them are rather similar, though there is some variety. Come on, let's go talk with Amy and Susan about it, we'll figure something out..."

፠

Cassie didn't really go out into the muggle world much. When she'd been a child, it simply hadn't been possible — she hadn't had the self-control to keep herself from changing something, and muggles weren't likely to just brush it off if they saw. By the time she'd been able to suppress minor shifting with her mood, or at least well enough a dose of Riemann's Draught or a similar enchantment could make up the difference, she hadn't been interested enough to make the effort. There was nothing in particular the muggles had that she wanted to see or do, and all her family and friends were on this side, more than enough to occupy herself with, so why bother?

The first time she'd ever stepped foot into the muggle world was November of 1924, when she'd been nineteen. She'd been in Auror training then, and there was always the possibility they'd have to deal with muggles or navigate their world at some point, so there was some muggle-related stuff they'd needed to learn. Cassie hadn't wanted the very first time she ever saw muggle shite or talked to a muggle in person to be in training with the others, if only to not embarrass herself, so she'd flooed over to Grimmauld Place and stepped out into Islington. Out of a lack of any better ideas of what to do with herself, she'd wandered around for a bit, lingered in a cafe she'd stumbled across. Nothing special, really, it hadn't seemed that different from Charing, just with different clothing and accents, and these strange horseless carriages, smelly buggers...

Beyond training, and a few occasions when a case had led them outside, Cassie never really made a habit of visiting the muggle world. It was just too much effort for too little benefit. Every time she went out, there were precautions she'd had to take to prevent accidentally blowing the Statute wide open, restraining herself with potions or enchantments, which really was very uncomfortable — slipping in public wasn't nearly as much a danger now as it'd been when she'd been in her twenties and thirties, she'd had to be careful back then. And by the time she didn't have to worry about it, it was just...habit. And in time she got fewer and fewer muggle-related cases, often considered lower-priority or highly annoying, due to seniority — the little time she'd spent in the muggle world declined significantly in the 40s.

Back in the war, there'd been a few times she'd walked around a muggle neighbourhood, warding a safehouse and searching for signs of observation, casting palings and alarms, but that was really it. She didn't think that counted, since it'd mostly been in the middle of the night and she hadn't needed to interact with anyone. She did keep up, reading books and newspapers and even watching muggle films on occasion, so she wouldn't be totally lost — if she hadn't, she probably wouldn't have recognised Violet's old primary school for what it was — but she hadn't actually gone out into the muggle world much at all since...maybe the early 50s, at the latest. And even that hadn't been often, most of her exposure had been in the 20s and 30s.

Needless to say, the muggle world had changed somewhat since then. It was honestly a shock that the handful of days she and Violet had spent in Dublin had gone nearly so well as they had.

Cassie apparated into an out of the way spot, the reversion leaving odd little tingles to crawl across her skin — she hadn't splinched herself, but the magic hadn't held together quite as well as usual. She glanced around, finding herself on the roof of a building, as expected. The landscape around her — the brown of denuded trees and brush and the deep green of stubborn grass, red brick and grey concrete and shining glass — was completely unfamiliar to her. Not only because she'd never been here before, but also just because modern muggle towns were bloody weird — their vehicles looked very different now, and the electric lamps and road signs and traffic signals and who knew what else, and the materials they made their buildings out of were synthetic and alien, architecture rigid and blocky and plain. So she could only assume she'd gotten to the right place.

Which was rather fascinating: Severus had sent her a little phial filled with the blue-ish silver mist of a copied memory, and told her to use it as her apparation point. She hadn't been entirely certain that would work, yet here she was. She wondered, one of the more irritating restrictions on scrying was that one needed to have seen (or heard or smelled or whatever) the thing being scryed before, but could copied memories from someone else work as a loophole? Hmm.

Not that she cared, she wasn't great with Divination herself, but it was an interesting theoretical question. But she hadn't come here to ponder directionlessly on the roof of some random muggle building, of course, she turned off and made for the only door she could see, in the face of a tiny little box of a room sticking out of the roof. It was locked, but a tap of her finger and a wandless charm took care of that.

What was the point of a lock on a door on the roof? It wasn't like muggles could fly...

Anyway, the building was an aggressively modern office block — not truly that different from the public office space available in Charing, save for being organised somewhat differently, and the overabundance of synthetics. The walls alternated plasterboard and rusty reddish brick, the floors carpeted a bland inoffensive tannish-brown (the fibres looked off, but she didn't know what they were), the ceilings these weird flimsy-looking panels. No fucking clue what those were — they definitely weren't stone or wood, an exotic muggle plastic didn't look likely, maybe plaster, but looking...oddly porous? what? The place was generally very bland, the colours mild browns and tans and off-whites, the occasional thing posted onto the walls to mix it up a little, paintings (mostly landscapes) and what looked very much like drawings done by children.

The childlike drawings were more common in the hallway where she found what she was looking for, a chunk of the drywall replaced with glass, looking into a waiting room on the other side, the name of the practice printed on the door. Stepping through, the inside was somewhat more colourful than the rest of the building, but still bland, all in blues and greens, a couple short rows of skeletal armchairs that, where they weren't upholstered in muted blues, were made out of a smooth black material that didn't quite look like metal. They must be plastic — where they making furniture out of plastic now? Muggles used far too much of that shite...

Anyway, the receptionist at the counter, after asking a few questions, handed her a clipboard with some paperwork to fill out, along with one of those odd muggle pens (plastic, of course) to do the filling with — not a surprise, Cassie had been warned to show up early. She picked one of the strange little chairs at random. Most of them were empty, they had far more seating in here than they'd likely ever need. There were a few adult women sitting here and there, reading from garish glossy magazines — was the paper made of plastic? the hell... — one had a couple boys with her, one curled up in a chair reading a thin children's book and the other kneeling at the table in the middle, the surface scattered with these...little coloured block things (more plastic), with these little notches, so they could be stuck onto each other and build things with, like? Cassie had never seen the like before, must be some kind of new muggle toy.

The paperwork was reasonably straightforward, but also bloody impossible. The first page was mostly things about where they lived, contact information, basic information about Violet and Cassie's relation to her, and so forth. Of course, they didn't have an address the muggles would recognise, but getting Violet's papers Severus had set up a forwarding address, so that wasn't a problem. A telephone number, well, Cassie didn't think she'd ever even used one of the things before, and they obviously didn't have telephone lines coming into Caoimhe's Refuge — they were just going to have to settle for communicating through the post. So, she had to skip a couple things on the first page, but it wasn't that bad.

The rest was hopeless. One page was for Violet's medical history, which conditions could be found on which side of the family, and there were obvious problems with that. For one, Cassie was completely unfamiliar with her mother's family history, and while she had known the Potters relatively well (her sister had married one), this wasn't the sort of thing people talked about openly, so. Also? She didn't know what most of the conditions listed were. She could guess what they might be about in some cases, based on Latin and Greek roots, but some neologisms were nonsensical, or else she wasn't aware of a condition the word might describe. And some, confusingly, were just basic vocabulary — for example, she knew what the words "depression" and "anxiety" meant, but they were referred to as discrete medical conditions, which was...odd. So, no, she couldn't answer practically any of those questions.

Another had a whole bunch of checkboxes, physical and mental symptoms Violet had experienced in the last few weeks. The problem here was that she wasn't Violet, and hadn't made a point of asking after most of these things. They did know she'd be coming alone, right? She'd been told not to bring Violet the first time, that she'd be meeting with the specialist herself first, but then how the hell was she supposed to fill out this sort of thing?

Oh well. She checked off a couple basic things that she both knew what they were and could guess from observation that Violet had had since they'd met, but she wasn't entirely confident of any of that. It would have to do.

After handing the papers back to the receptionist, she waited another five minutes or so before a woman stepped out of the entrance to a hallway leading deeper into the practice, calling for Missus Black. (She couldn't help a tingle of amusement at that — it'd been common knowledge for a long time that Cassie wasn't exactly the marriage type.) The woman looked to be...maybe sixty to seventy — for a witch, but she was a muggle, so she could easily be as young as thirty (Cassie was shite at judging age on muggles) — dressed relatively conservatively by muggle standards, leggings of some kind under a knit skirt falling a bit below her knees, a long-sleeved cardigan hanging open over a blouse Cassie couldn't make out very well from here, all in gentle, light colours. She had long, curly hair a dark blonde, tumbling in seemingly random bunches over her shoulders, her features average but pleasant, faintly smiling warm and soft.

Cassie could tell she was sharper than she looked, though. As she walked up, the woman gave her a careful head-to-toe examination, a glint of canny perceptiveness in her eyes that didn't show on her still friendly smiling face. "Hello, Missus Black," she said, folding a clipboard under her arm and holding out the other hand to shake — a muggle thing, still slightly odd to Cassie, she had to consciously remind herself to not clasp the woman's arm instead. "I'm Shannon Spencer, pleasure to meet you."

"Under the circumstances, let's hope it is." Of course, if this woman actually could help Violet, then it truly would be a pleasure. But on the other hand, it was very possible Cassie was going to end up erasing Spencer's memory of this conversation anyway. "It's not missus, by the way, I never married. 'Cassie' is fine."

"Oh, of course, I apologise. Come on back to my office and we'll get started."

Spencer's office was down the hall — somewhat plainer than the reception area, an occasional picture or document hanging on the wall but otherwise left unornamented — around a corner and a little further along before Spencer stood just past an open door, waiting for Cassie to go on in ahead. Spencer followed a few steps after, pulling the door closed behind her.

The office was a little larger than she'd expected, less like those at the Ministry or a few professionals she'd dealt with now and again and more like those under the Wizengamot Hall — in size alone, of course, obviously the accoutrements were much different...though that also wasn't much like Cassie had expected. The walls were painted a mild, rusty red, the floors carpeted in a deeper brown speckled here and there with lighter shades, the furniture in a variety of rich browns and reds. It was rather darker than out in the hall, the windows covered with heavy curtains (not that it was particularly sunny out at the moment anyway), the room littered with lamps, the quality of the light warmer than the harsh, sterile white of modern muggle lighting — not quite approaching the softness of true firelight or magical imitations, but still much easier on the eyes — despite their lesser brightness there were enough of them that the room was well-illuminated, but not too glaringly, soft and pleasant. It was rather nice, actually — in her own space, Cassie might have tinted the light a little more orange-ish, and she would have gone with orange or blue instead of red, but still.

Like the Lords' offices under the Wizengamot Hall, there was more going on here than an ordinary work space. There was that, of course — a desk with a few picture frames and little figures she didn't recognise (probably muggle bric-a-brac), a couple books and orderly stacks of paper, three chairs in front of the desk and one behind, shrouded in dark leather and looking comfortable enough, bookshelves against the wall behind — but all that was set to one side of the room. The opposite side looked like a sort of lounge, a sofa and a couple armchairs, thickly upholstered, between them a long, low table, sitting on the surface a couple cardboard boxes, what looked like decks of playing cards. There was a bookshelf on this side of the room, the spines slimmer and more colourful than the more professional-looking ones opposite (clearly childrens' books), but there were other shelves, mostly filled with more cardboard boxes, also surprisingly colourful, many of them with text on the sides — Cassie didn't recognise most of the names, but many appeared to be board games and the like. Walking a little further into the room, she spotted a big plastic tub tucked under the table, barely visible from this angle more of the oddly-shaped little plastic bricks she'd noticed back in the reception area.

Right, didn't know what was going on with all of that. Did Spencer play around with the children while doing...whatever it was these people did? She did know it involved a lot of talking, so she guessed that wasn't a terrible idea, give the kids a distraction to keep them from getting too overwhelmed by whatever they were talking about...

"Go ahead and sit wherever you'd like."

Cassie gave Spencer a glance — she'd said that casually enough, but the acuteness of her attention on Cassie hadn't waned. This muggle's intense observation was making Cassie feel peculiarly exposed. That feeling didn't bother her, really, it wasn't like Spencer was any kind of threat, but she did have to wonder what Spencer thought she was going to get out of Cassie's choice of where to sit. Shrugging her confusion off, Cassie casually sauntered deeper into the room, throwing herself onto the sofa quickly enough her dress swished about her legs. Spencer followed her at a more modest pace, sinking into the nearer armchair.

She set her clipboard on the armrest, glancing over the pages pinned there for a second. "Let's get right into it then, Cassie. If at any point you would like some water or tea or the like..."

"No, I'm good for now."

"Good." Releasing her papers, Spencer folded her hands in her lap. "I've looked over the papers you filled out for us, but I'm afraid I have some questions before we get started. Violet just recently came into your care, yes?"

"Yes, it's been... It was the day before Hallowe'en—" She barely remembered to use the muggle word for the holiday. "—so a little over three weeks." It felt odd that it'd been three weeks, but Cassie couldn't decide whether it seemed like it should have been more or less time than that.

Spencer let out a little hum, making a note on her clipboard. "You decided to get her help immediately, then, that's good." There was a faint hint of suspicion on her voice — Severus had mentioned that he'd pulled strings to get Violet in to see someone as soon as possible, Cassie wasn't certain how long it was supposed to take but she guessed that might be suspicious to someone who knew how these things normally went. "I am a little confused, I haven't been sent any kind of report from the police — I assume this was an emergency replacement, to have you pushed up the queue so quickly, I would have expected to see something. How did this come to be, exactly?"

"Unfortunately, that's rather complicated." But she might as well get it out of the way, there was no reason to draw this out if she was just going to end up obliviating Spencer anyway. Cassie gave her an easy grin — and with a flick of her fingers, she levitated the table a couple inches off the floor.

Spencer twitched, rearing back in her chair, her eyes going wide. "What in the—" With some more flicks of her fingers, Cassie cast illusions — deciding to have fun with it, she went with some butterflies, but made out of condensed spellglow in all colours of the rainbow, delicate and glittering and ethereal, the shades changing as the magic fueling them shifted, very pretty. Spencer had leapt out of her chair at an angle, nearly toppling over the armrest, knocking her clipboard down to the carpet, scrambled a few steps away. "Mary mother of... What is...?"

"Magic," Cassie said, smiling. She tried not to smirk at her — Spencer's reaction really was quite funny, but she didn't want to openly mock the poor woman. "There are people in the world who can perform magic, millions of us. And there are other magical creatures, dragons and unicorns and so on. Anything you've heard of in old stories was inspired by something real, though there are superstitions that get mixed in — like, oh, dragons have no particular interest in our gold, and vampires do cast reflections."

One of the lightly fluttering butterflies neared Spencer, she held a hand out to it. Cassie gave the charm controlling the things a little nudge. The muggle woman still looked a bit numb with shock, but at the glittery, glowing illusion landing on her finger her lips pulled into an absent smile, seemingly delighted despite herself.

Which was surprisingly adorable, honestly, but seducing Spencer would probably be a bad idea. "All of this is secret, of course — I'm breaking our law right now just showing you this, if anyone finds out I could literally be executed for treason." She'd thought it was a possibility an Adjustment team might show up, depending on if the Oracles caught this or not, but Cassie didn't doubt she could incapacitate and obliviate a whole Adjustment team without too much trouble. That the Oracles apparently hadn't caught it suggested either that Spencer wasn't going to remember this conversation, or that she'd keep it to herself.

Spencer blinked, eyes reluctantly drawn away from the illusion and back to Cassie. "Execution?" Her gaze was pulled away from Cassie, flicking now and then to the little butterflies gently fluttering around, so Cassie focused for a second to cast a graduated dispel — it would take effect over the next several seconds, would prevent the table from crashing to the floor. "That seems...risky. Telling me."

"I suppose it is, but Violet needs help. Your profession is...rather less developed on our side of the veil, so if I'm going to get Violet help my options are limited."

The butterflies having dissolved into blurry clouds of spellglow before vanishing entirely, the table settled on the floor again, Spencer fixed her with a look — the same canny, analysing look from before, Cassie noticed. "I can't recommend unlawful acts, of course, but that is commendable."

Cassie would literally kill for her family — and had. Truly, engaging in such a small breach of Secrecy hardly even deserved a second thought. Taking a few precautions to prevent it from blowing up on her, sure, but that she would do it at all hadn't been in question. But Spencer didn't need to know that. "If you say so." She was certain her peers would disagree, after all. "You seem to be taking this well. I've never told someone about the existence of our world before, but..."

"I've been told a great many things I found difficult to believe in this room. This in particular might be..." Having drifted closer, making for her chair again, Spencer paused for a second halfway down to a seat, that blank shock taking over her face again. "...quite a lot more difficult to believe than most but, well. Insisting on remaining sceptical of such things when I've just seen magic with my own two eyes would be quite foolish."

"Good, then." Spencer did seem a good sort, from what little Cassie could tell from first impressions, she would have regretted obliviating her — she would have done it, but she wouldn't have been happy about it. "It should go without saying that anything you learn about magic shouldn't leave this room. If we're found out, I'll be imprisoned or executed at worst—" Assuming the Ministry could catch her, which was doubtful, she'd probably end up running away with Violet to the Americas. "—and at the least you'll have all memory of magic wiped away."

Spencer paled, just a little bit, her eyes widening. "...You can do that?"

"Oh, yes. Magic can do many wondrous things, but the horrors that can be inflicted are limited by the imagination of men alone — as I'm sure you realise, people can imagine some quite awful things. It might interest you to know that certain individuals high up in your government are aware of the existence of magic. We have our own government, but there are treaties that set limits on what mages are permitted to do to our non-magical cousins. Though honestly, properly prosecuting such crimes can be quite difficult, as the perpetrator can simply wipe their victim's memory when they're done — that is a difficult magic to do, granted, but it's a problem both our governments can be frustrated by." Not to mention, many Lords of the Wizengamot just didn't give a damn about muggles, so were unlikely to sentence mages for crimes against muggles, but Spencer didn't need to know that either.

The muggle woman still looked less than pleased by the thought of memory-stealing mages, but Cassie noticed just a little bit of tension lift from her shoulders at the news that her rulers at the very least weren't entirely ignorant of the mages' existence. "A moment ago you said... I'm sorry, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to call you. People who can do magic, I mean."

"Mages. Sometimes you'll hear someone call men 'wizards' and women 'witches', but that's more common with some people than others. There are...cultural divisions among mages, and these terms get too close to one of them. Wizardry and witchcraft are entirely separate modes of performing magic, and some of us feel the implicit suggestion that each sex is predisposed to one over the other is idiotic, asinine, and also mildly insulting." Some of us meaning the Dark, the Light generally didn't perform much witchcraft and often missed the Dark's point entirely. Spencer's eyebrows twitched a little. "What, too much? Sorry, I'm just trying to be clear — like I said, I've never done this before."

Smiling just a little, as though amused, Spencer nodded. "Mages, then. You mentioned a moment ago that psychiatry is less developed among mages."

"That's one way to put it. Another way to put it is that it hardly exists at all — we do have mind healers, but they too often do more harm than good." Hmm, how to explain this? It was sort of important for Spencer to know, she thought, that Cassie wasn't just going out and breaking laws on a whim... "Magic wasn't always secret. I mean, obviously, muggles — ah, non-magical people, that is — muggles do have old stories about magic, so clearly they must have known about it at some point. In fact, it wasn't even that long ago that our worlds split apart. The mages of these islands were motivated to isolate themselves in part due to the Civil War and the rise of the Commonwealth, though the resolution wasn't made internationally until Sixteen Eighty-Nine. It was a large undertaking to hide away our entire society, I don't think Secrecy actually went into force until...Ninety-Seven? Some years later, anyway.

"So, we've been more or less entirely isolated from each other for going on three hundred years now. There is some contact between us — sometimes mages are born to parents without magic themselves, and it's not unusual for mages to shop at muggle grocers at least, food prices can be rather high on our side — but there isn't really enough to keep us the same. An important thing to keep in mind is that any development that happened in your people's history after Sixteen Eighty-Nine likely didn't happen in ours, or at least not in the same way at the same time. So, imagine what could have happened if your profession developed differently starting all the way back in the late Seventeenth Century."

Spencer grimaced. "While I'm certain similar ideas could have developed independently, I'll admit that is...concerning. There were similar approaches dating back much earlier in the Muslim world, but psychotherapy simply didn't exist in western Europe back then."

"Yeah, and it still doesn't in our world now, not really. The general course of treatment mind healers use is to forcefully alter people's minds to try to make them act normal." The absolutely horrified look on Spencer's face was far too funny, Cassie failed to hold in a chuckle. "Yeah, it's pretty bad. It can actually work well with trauma — erasing the memory of an event can prevent issues down the line, so long as you catch it soon enough—" Of course, if it wasn't caught soon enough, people could end up with the long-term emotional effects but with no memory of what happened, so that didn't help. "—but for almost everything else it's worse than useless. There are experimental treatments out there for things like melancholy and neuroses, but they're very hit and miss. Magical medicine is far superior in most areas, but this is one where you have us beat. So maybe you can understand why I've come to you instead."

"Given the alternatives available to you, no, I don't blame you at all." Spencer had picked up her clipboard, setting it down on the arm of her chair again, flipped over to one of the papers toward the back, started to write— "Oh! Excuse me one moment." She stood, walking over toward the bookshelves, pulled off a thin volume — a journal of some kind, it looked like. Returning to her chair, she splayed the book open on her lap, reaching for her pen again. "I'll be taking notes on anything you tell me to do with magic and your people, just so I don't forget anything that might be important in understanding Violet's difficulties, but I'll be keeping these isolated from the rest of my documentation."

Cassie nodded. "Good thinking."

"It's a violation of our ethics guidelines, actually, I could get in serious trouble if anyone learns about it — but if they do, I imagine I'll have more pressing problems."

Not really — she'd probably be obliviated very quickly, so it wouldn't be her problem for very long. It was a good idea anyway, Cassie had no idea who all here would have access to Violet's chart, so...

"Now, I have many, many questions," Spencer said, with a rather more energetic smile than the soft and warm thing before, "about magic and your people, but we're here to talk about Violet."

"Right, yes. You asked about how she ended up with me, but that takes a little bit more explanation. There's this thing called metamorphy..." Cassie launched into an explanation of what metamorphy was, Spencer taking notes the whole while — and obviously the muggle wasn't familiar with terms like formal inertia and fundamental identity, so she ended up explaining those too. Spencer was obviously fascinated by the idea of transfiguration — Cassie transfigured a pillow into a cat and back just to demonstrate — but Cassie couldn't really answer her questions about how it worked on a chemical level. Yes, it was true that a transfigured object truly was the object that it looked like, by which she meant all the little molecules and atoms and things changed to what they were supposed to be, which meant they would behave in chemical reactions the way muggles would expect, but Cassie didn't know how that worked, and she really couldn't predict what would happen when the magic ran out after the transfigured object went through some kind of chemical reaction.

Actually, the spell would probably fail and the object revert as soon as it was altered enough by the reaction that it was no longer recognisable as the object it'd been transfigured into — Cassie could test that herself at some point, but she didn't know for certain off-hand. She was familiar enough with the fundamental mechanics to know the chemical composition of transfigured objects did change, but the deeper implications of that wasn't something she'd studied. Honestly, transfiguration had always been so easy for her she'd found the subject deeply boring, she hadn't been inclined to study it past NEWTs.

Instead of coming out and saying that she was a metamorph herself, she just casually changed her hair colour while she spoke — and then again, and then again, still rambling on as though nothing were happening. Spencer blinked in surprise, but other than that she hardly reacted.

"You said, metamorphs don't age, or at least not past a certain point? I did notice," Spencer said, flipping through the papers on her clipboard quick, "that you left some of your own personal information blank. Your birthdate, for one — which would make sense, with what I know now, if you're trying to avoid raising suspicion. Would I be correct if I assumed you're older than you look?" There was a faint shade of nervousness on Spencer's voice, probably wondering if Cassie was going to claim to be much older than she looked.

"Yes, but not by as much as you might be thinking — and mages live longer than muggles in the first place. The presence of magic has various effects on the human body, which is all very complicated, but one obvious thing it does is slow ageing. It's not unheard of for mages to live to their two-hundredth birthday, though two-fifty would be exceptional. By our standards, right now I look like I could be in my fifties, or maybe sixties."

Spencer gave her a doubtful, narrow-eyed look. "I would have guessed under thirty, maybe mid-twenties."

"Really? Damn. I was trying to shoot for a bit older than that, but, I don't meet many muggles very often, I'm not surprised I got it off. I was actually born in Nineteen Oh Five."

For a moment, Spencer only stared back at her. "You're...eighty-two years old. Really."

"Yes, really," Cassie said, giggles she was only half-successful at holding down putting a waver on her voice. "I'm the physical age I wish to be. I can even be a small child if I like — in fact, I often am when in private with Violet. Don't think about it too hard, Spencer, I know I don't. Or, Doctor. Is it 'Doctor'?"

Spencer stared at her for another moment before shaking herself out of it, clearing her throat. "Ah. It is, but 'Shannon' is fine."

"Right, then. We're not here to talk about me either, so, back to Violet..." Cassie explained a little bit about how Violet had gotten to the Dursleys in the first place — which mostly came down to Cassie not having been an option because Jamie found her rather creepy (and hadn't told her his kid was a metamorph, like an idiot) and Cassie assuming that, when Dumbledore told her Violet had been put with relatives, he'd meant Charlie's relatives. Most of his relatives were members of other magical noble families, Violet would have been fine with any of them. Cassie had been having her own issues at the time, so she'd just accepted that whichever family Violet had been put with she'd been fine, and moved on.

But no, Albus had put Violet with Lily's relatives, her sister. Lily, of course, had been a muggleborn — which was fine, Cassie didn't have a problem with that. (That aside led to Cassie being forced to explain pureblood supremacy, which was awkward, oops.) The problem was that putting a young metamorph with a muggle family was a terrible idea. It was remarkable Violet had gone undiscovered for so long, but the incident at her primary school Cassie was called in on would not have been the last. Something had needed to be done about it, that was for certain, but at that point Cassie hadn't planned on doing anything unusual, she would make her report to Amy and let it go through the usual channels.

But then she'd noticed how carefully Violet was watching her, how she'd cringe away from sudden movements — as though expecting a blow. And after walking her home, she'd asked Violet where she slept...and she'd showed her a cupboard.

Suffice to say, at that point Cassie hadn't had the patience for official channels — she'd gotten her grand-niece out of there, immediately.

"I see." Shannon watched her for a moment, frowning just a little, her pen tapping at her notebook. "I understand why you did what you did, but...well, there aren't going to be legal consequences, will there? If all this happens only for you to be arrested and Violet removed again..."

"No no, that's not a problem. I had Albus sign custody over to me since, it's fine."

"Oh good. Such a sudden change in a child's home environment can be distressing, even if it's a positive one — being abruptly uprooted twice within a month would do her no good at all." She reached over to her clipboard, flipped pages around for a moment. "So, it's her previous guardians' abuse that brought you here."

"That's part of it, yes. There's something else though, which, I don't know, might be difficult to wrap your head around..." And now Cassie explained some of the effects transfigurative potions could have on metamorphs in their early years, and her suspicion — she had no proof, but there were truly no other reasonable possibilities — that Violet had been given a potion to change her sex as an infant. Cassie's suspicion was that Violet had been born a girl, but the birth certificate had "Harry" down as male, and she'd been raised a boy since...well, probably from the very beginning, Cassie didn't actually know.

Shannon seemed rather taken aback, but to her credit hadn't yet gone on a tirade about it — supposedly muggles could be worse about these things than even the Light were. "Oh, poor dear. That sounds like it would be terribly confusing."

"I'm sure it is, though it's not a problem I had myself. You know I said there are cultural splits among mages? Jamie's family is in a different group than mine — doing this sort of thing would not be acceptable to the people I was raised with. I'm a little over my head, honestly," she admitted, with a sheepish little smile. "I explained all this to Violet the day I picked her up — I realised she was a girl, physically, after only a couple hours, put this together pretty quick — and left the choice of what she wanted to do up to her. She said she wanted to try being a girl, so that's what we've been doing, but I have no idea how...well, if she's going to change her mind or, I don't know. She seems fine, but I really can't say what's going on in her head, you know? I'm not sure she'd tell me if she was growing uncomfortable with it — she doesn't tell me if she's cold or hungry or bored, so that seems a safe bet. Shite, I'm certain she has nightmares, and she won't talk to me about that, either..."

"Yes, I'm afraid that's not uncommon in young children with a history of abuse. They've been taught that adults don't care about their needs, and in some cases might have even punished them for asking they be met. It might take some time before Violet feels it's safe to tell you these things without being directly asked first."

Cassie scowled. "I should go back and skin that woman alive." Shannon gave her a flat, chiding look. "I'm joking." Mostly.

It didn't look like Shannon entirely believed her, but she eventually dropped the look, eyes tipping up with a light sigh. "Unfortunately, I don't have much experience in gender issues myself. Children can often have a...shallow, volatile conception of their own gender, but something like this is... The more I think about it, it might be like difficulties some intersex children can have — sometimes, when they get older intersex children grow uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth. There's actually been some discussion lately about surgical correction of genital abnormalities during infancy, whether they should be performed at all, and that sounds—"

"Wait, hold up a second. 'Intersex' means what I think it means, right? Muggles cut them up as infants?"

Shannon blinked back at her for a second — surprised by her anger, Cassie guessed. "Ah, yes, though it's growing more controversial the more information we get on the possible long-term effects. I'm guessing mages don't do anything like that?"

"No, of course we don't!" Cassie forced herself to take a breath, forcing herself to calm down. There was no point in biting Shannon's head off over it — it wasn't like Shannon was that kind of doctor anyway. "Or at least the Dark doesn't, I guess I don't know what the Light does. There are some old superstitions around this sort of thing, especially in certain more conservative segments of society, but otherwise these kids are just raised like normal. Except they aren't expected to act or dress exactly like a boy or a girl, but the Dark is less particular about gender roles anyway. If, when they're older, they want to have 'corrections'," her fingers making quote marks in the air, "done, they can do that — but it's their decision to make, no one else's. Though, that requires blood alchemy to do properly, and the Light don't approve of blood alchemy, so I suppose they wouldn't do that part..."

"Blood alchemy?"

"That's complicated. To oversimplify, magical genetic engineering. This is one area where we're far more advanced than muggles, but it's very difficult magic — it can only be done by specialists with upwards of a decade of training, and a single procedure can take as long as a whole week — and it's tightly regulated in some areas of the world. Britain happens to be one of them." Which Cassie always thought was silly, but it didn't really matter — the nobility often ignored the ban anyway (it didn't matter if you were inbred if you just cured any defects in infancy), and it was legal just across the Channel, so.

Shannon was making a note about that in her book, gently nodding along. "Alright. But, as I was saying, I have some experience in these kinds of issues, but... Actually, hold on a second." Setting her book aside, Shannon got up to her feet, crossed the office to pick up the phone at her desk. She only pressed a couple buttons before putting the receiver to her ear — which was odd, Cassie had thought phone numbers were longer than that. "Yes, it's Shannon. No no, I'll be in here with Ms. Black for a while longer yet. I need you to set up a phone call with Doctor Bockting at A.M.C. Amsterdam. Antonie. Tell him I'd like some advice concerning a seven-year-old intersex patient. Good, thank you, Sarah.

"Sorry about that," Shannon said, setting the receiver down and starting back across the room. "We'll be here a while longer, I wanted to get that set up right away before it could slip my mind. I won't be giving him any details, or even Violet's name, but he specialises in gender-related issues, his advice might be useful."

With a little joking lilt, "Maybe I should be talking to him instead, then."

"Good luck with that — he doesn't take patients younger than sixteen." Now settled back in her chair, Shannon didn't speak for a moment, glancing over her clipboard and her notebook. "I think I'm getting an idea of what we're dealing with here now. It does seem rather daunting, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, well, you can see why I didn't want to try to help her on my own. I'd probably just fuck her up worse." Hell, Cassie could barely manage her own mental state. At least she wasn't drinking anymore, that seemed like a step in the right direction...

"I'm sure you'll do fine with her, Cassie. Though maybe we could try to redirect the energy going into those threats of violence of yours to something more productive, hmm?"

Amused despite herself, Cassie drawled, "I'm not sure how much more luck you'll have than my mother did, but why not."

"Mm. Now, I have some questions for you — this may take a little while, so if you need to take a break..."

---

Oh my god, this chapter fought me so fucking hard, you have no idea. I went through multiple rewrites, which is something I never do, I have no idea why I was having so much trouble. Cutting the second scene off where I did was a somewhat abrupt decision, there was like 5k words worth of nonsense I cut out, but it wasn't going anywhere — as much as I don't like this ending, it's better than what I was writing.

In case you're wondering, poor Shannon's powering through this meeting on sheer professionalism at this point. She'll go home and have an existential crisis over a bottle of wine later.

Anyhoo, yeah, been a while for this one. This is something I've said elsewhere, but I'll repeat it for people who didn't catch it. My current plan writing-wise is to alternate chapters for By Gods Forsaken and The Good War, writing in prime daylight waking hours; during the night, when I feel like writing but maybe not quite up to my primary fics (or during the day if I had another insomnia spike), I'll be alternating chapters of this and The Long Way Around. The idea is that hopefully I'll keep up a respectable output, prevent myself from getting burned out on a fic by not focusing on a single one too much, and keep myself from going on random distractions by having multiple stories to work on on a schedule. I have no idea how long I'll be able to keep this up, or how frequent updates will end up being, we'll just have to see.

What you might call the second inciting incident of this fic is two or maybe three chapters away, depending on how the scenes between then and now end up going, and that's when some of the fucking weird shit starts getting introduced. But this is a B fic, so who knows when that'll be.

Right, more than enough from me, bye.