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)

11. Violet Black — I

May 1988

---

Violet was a little startled when Susan said hi, somewhere behind her — she didn't know she was coming. Not that that was a big surprise, Susan came over without warning sometimes, just coming through the floo when she was bored to hang out.

When she showed up, Violet was in the garden, partway through thinning the carrot seedlings. They only started doing stuff with the garden back in March, when it started (slowly) warming back up again, but it already looked very different than when they got the house. The front garden was all grass before, a couple sad-looking bushes against the waist-high brick barrier wall. In March, Violet got a book about gardening stuff — she just did what Petunia told her before, having a book to tell her how to do things seemed like a good idea — they went around and marked stuff off with little wooden stakes, planning it out.

When she had the idea to do stuff with their garden, Violet was thinking just, like, flowers? You know, pretty stuff, just for some colour. But Mum started mentioning vegetables, that they might grow stuff they could eat. Violet hadn't thought of that — Petunia didn't grow any food stuff, just flowers — but that was a cool idea, actually! Like, their garden wasn't that big, it'd just be some stuff for fun, but that was still neat, getting to eat the things you were working on the whole time. So, Violet had her little gardening area marked off, but they could get other stuff put in here, like, Violet was thinking rose bushes or something, but Mum was talking about kinds of berries, along the walls here, and against the walls of the house to either side of the door, an apple tree in this corner right here might be nice...

Mum paid some people to come in and take care of that for them, since those plants took a long time to grow from seeds (and they didn't always work out), back in the first week of April — they also ripped up the grass in Violet's gardening space while they were at it. They had an apple tree now, in the northeast corner, so it wouldn't shade the whole garden all the time — they got so little sun here anyway, really bad to block too much of it — and they had several currant bushes! blackcurrants and whitecurrants! and some blackberries! They were all small right now, the blackberries just tiny little green sprouts with a few leaves, the currants about knee-high on Violet, the apple tree pretty close to her height. The currants and the apple started as just bare twigs, cuttings from grown-up plants in a greenhouse somewhere, but a month later they had leaves all over, new segments growing green at the ends. The people from the greenhouse said they won't get berries until next year, and apples maybe the year after that, more likely the year after that. But still, that was so cool!

Mum also bought some strawberry plants, but they weren't in the ground, in an elevated bed that sat waist-high on Violet. Strawberries were little groundcover sort of things, and would spread everywhere if they were planted in the ground, but up like this they'd see all the runners and could easily snip them off before they escaped. They would be getting strawberries this year, they grew fast, the little sprouts they'd started with already shooting up big bunches of leaves, which was so cool!

For her garden patch, she'd looked through her book, talked with Mum about what they might use for cooking, got some advice from a couple neighbours and the greenhouse people. Violet was a little picky when it came to vegetables — like, she didn't like beets, or tomatoes (which didn't grow nice in Ireland anyway), or really lettuce and cabbage and stuff — but there were some she liked just fine. Carrots and parsnips and stuff were fine...as long as they were cooked, she didn't like them raw. Peas, she liked peas. Cucumbers were good, if the skins weren't too tough (or if you just peeled the skins off first). She didn't like onions so much — they were fine if they were cooked really well, but they were gross when they were still crunchy — but she guessed garlic was okay...

After talking about it, Mum made a wood fence across the back of Violet's space — she did it herself, bought some flat lengths of wood and used her wand to put nails through them, making a crosshatch pattern sort of thing — the peas were gonna crawl up that, because peas liked to climb things, they went in the back. At one end was a little mound, a round fence looped around it, that was gonna be cucumbers. In rows all through her rectangle she was putting carrots and parsley and chives, and also patches of garlic and parsnip, and a little bit of basil and oregano just because — parsley always between the carrots and parsnips, so they didn't cross-pollinate each other. There were also a couple spots of rhubarb, which Violet put in just because Mum mentioned she liked rhubarb. Violet wasn't even sure what rhubarb was, honestly, didn't think she ever had it before...

She did all her planting in chunks, through April — not all at once, because that would be a lot of work to do in one day, just, this row one day, this row another day, this corner here, a couple feet of the peas at a time, now let's do the cucumber hill, bit by bit at the time. Most of it was pretty easy, just stick the seeds in, as far apart and as deep as her book said. The cucumber was a little weird, but just because she tucked a little magic disc into the middle of the hill — it was a little too cold this time of year for cucumber to be happy, but with the disc it should sprout just fine.

It was May now, and she had sprouts all over! Little things, mostly, some were bigger than others. But, sometimes all the seeds didn't sprout the way you wanted, so you were supposed to put down more seeds than you wanted plants, and closer together than they were happy growing, so once you knew which ones were growing you had to go back and get rid of some of them. Which was kind of sad, killing plants when they were still just babies, but that was just how it worked. And there were weeds too, of course. Violet had her book out, there were pictures of what the little sprouts were supposed to look like, so she knew what were weeds and what were the things she wanted to grow here, carefully going through sprout by sprout to make sure she had the right ones.

The plan, once her plants started to grow a bit, was to toss down a bunch of thyme and clover seeds, which would grow under her stuff, so it wasn't just big patches of dirt between the vegetables and herbs and stuff. Which, that meant next year she'd have to dig past all that to plant her new stuff, but the clover and thyme would come back on its own, so it didn't matter if she killed a bunch putting new things down. And they would help keep weeds out, and would look a lot better than just empty dirt, and clover made little flowers and thyme smelled nice, worth it.

So, when Susan walked out into the garden, and said, "Wow, this is coming along, isn't it?" Violet couldn't help smiling to herself a little.

(Their garden was going to be way nicer than Petunia's — you couldn't even eat anything in Petunia's.)

Susan had been over since the people came by to put in the big plants and Violet had done most of the planting, but those were mostly rainy days, they didn't go out much. So Violet took a break to show her around, point out the apple tree and the berry bushes and all her little sprouts. It took longer to get through it all than it really had to — Violet was maybe weirdly excited about the garden, and being excited made her stammering worse. She tried to slow down, pay attention to each word — Shannon said that helped with her stammer (but didn't really make it go all the way away) — but it was hard, the words wanted to come tumbling out of her and slowing down just felt wrong. Susan was used to Violet by now, at least, so she didn't look annoyed about it.

"Do you want some help?"

"Oh, um." Violet blinked at Susan for a second, looked back down at her patch. She was close to done with what she meant to do today...but if both of them worked at it for a little bit, she'd be done with all of the thinning and weeding. This round of it, anyway, the weeds would come back. So, yeah, sure, might as well. "If you want?"

With a little shrug, Susan said, "Sure. I look around on the commune sometimes, but they never let me touch anything." The people living on the Bones's land, she meant, she always called their villages "the commune" — Violet thought Vernon would say that was a commie thing, but she didn't know what it meant. Since Susan's family owned the land they lived in, Violet thought Susan was sort of like their princess or something? And Violet thought princesses weren't supposed to work in the fields, so. "Can I borrow a pair of shorts?"

Right, Susan was in a skirt, she should change — Violet liked skirts and dresses and things, but wearing those when trying to do garden work stuff was awkward. Susan wasn't quite as small for their age as Violet was, but she could wear Violet's things sort of comfortably, if they were careful. Even if a girl borrowing her clothes felt kind of weird, but that wasn't a big deal.

(Partly just because they were girl clothes, and part of Violet still wasn't fully used to the being a girl now thing, and also she just wasn't used to having things for people to borrow...)

Susan came back in a couple minutes in Violet's pair of green cotton shorts and a normal person tee shirt Cassie got her one day — Violet thought she was just borrowing shorts, but okay — they got a second set of tools out of the gardening bag, and they got started. Violet laid out the book on the dirt, pointed out the different rows of things, where the pictures in the book were. There weren't little tags or anything in the dirt to mark what the rows were, they were just in Violet's head — if Susan forgot which plant a spot was supposed to be she could just ask. The first couple plants, Susan asked if a thing was right, or if she was thinning something how much she should be taking out, but she got the hang of it pretty quick. Not as easy as Violet, but she had more practice.

While they were working, Susan asked what Violet had been up to since last time she was over. Susan didn't have any news, she didn't get out much. She had a Gaelic tutor who was coming over a couple times a week now, so she could take classes at school in Gaelic starting at the end of August — an Ollscoil had a programme in English, but everyone said the Gaelic one was better — but that was really it. Mum was also thinking Violet might be able to take the classes in Gaelic, but she didn't have a special tutor or anything, just hanging around the neighbours and reading lots of Gaelic kids' books — sometimes Mum or Síomha read them out for her, because Gaelic spelling was stupid.

Violet didn't think she was learning Gaelic that fast, she still felt stupid trying to follow what people were saying, and talking was really hard. (Her stammering was extra bad in Gaelic, for some reason.) Maybe she picked stuff up faster than Susan had, but Susan wasn't around people talking in Gaelic all the time — most of the neighbours didn't speak English very well at all, so if she wanted to talk to them it was Gaelic or nothing. Also, Gaelic was Susan's third language, after Cambrian (which Violet thought was Welsh?) and English, which, wow, Susan was smart.

Anyway, no, nothing that new. Mum was going down to a duelling gym somewhere in the town now and then, to talk to duelling people about...stuff. (Violet didn't know what, really.) She did a match now and then, which... Mum did explain, but it was kind of complicated, and Violet didn't really get it? Like, apparently everyone in the League had a score, going up and down as you won and lost fights, and, the idea was for them to follow tournaments and stuff around the world, to visit other countries for fun, but they didn't let people with too low a score get into them. So, Mum had to do more casual fights with people in the League to get her score up, so they could go. There was a tournament in August, which had pretty low requirements, Mum was hoping they could go to that one — and doing well there meant she could then get into lots of other events, so they could start following them around wherever. Violet didn't watch any of those little fights, just, something she knew was happening.

Just a couple days ago, she had a long day with Lord Arcturus. (She was supposed to use the "Lord" with his name, for fancy rich people politeness reasons.) There were a lot of things that she was supposed to know, to be in the House of Black, old traditions and stories and family law and stuff — and she was the heir to the title (after Cassie), and there was extra stuff the future lord or lady of the family was supposed to know. It would take years to get through it all, she was told, but they were starting now.

Yes, it was a little awkward that Lord Arcturus didn't know she was...well, what her real name was. Violet was uncomfortable about it, felt like lying — though her funny fairy magic didn't go off, so it must not count proper — but Mum said she was almost a real Black, since her grandma was one, and Mum was a Black, and also her godfather was a Black (he was in magic gaol), which, even if Mum hadn't taken her she might have inherited their stuff anyway. So, she was Black enough, so it was fine she was learning family stuff. Not super happy about it, but she was trying not to feel guilty.

Her talk with Lord Arcturus was mostly just creepy? They went over to Castle White, in France (though on the magic side it was still Britain), Violet had been there a few times before, they stopped there on the way to see Chloé every time. The Great Hall was a floo hub now, but the Ministry only had permission to use the Great Hall, the rest of the castle was still the Blacks'. Nobody lived there, it was all shut up, and they didn't go in the castle, but under it. It was right on the shore, there were cliffs, and in the cliffs were caves, and in the caves — tunnelled out a bit, even going all the up into the basement of the castle — were a bunch of catacombs, which the Blacks had been using forever.

Like, really, a stupid long time, way before the Romans got that far north. Though they weren't a family all that time. A long, long, long time ago, the caves were a holy site for, like, druids and stuff, and at some point they started using the caves as a safe place to hide from raiders, and the high priest slowly became a kind of local king — but with some weird religious stuff attached to it still, it was complicated. The king was picked by the people living there, at first, but over time it started passing down in a family, and that family in time made a deal with the Romans when they showed up, the Romans leaving them alone and the family keeping most of their stuff in trade for paying taxes and following Roman laws or whatever. And that family lived on, surviving the fall of Rome, and the end of one kingdom after another after another, until they were the House of Black that existed today.

The caves were all dark and echoey, trapped underground, and there were dead people down there — a "catacomb" was a place they used to bury people underground, turned out. Bones, lots and lots of bones, a bunch of them her many-times-great-grandparents. It was super creepy.

Susan winced, agreed it was super creepy. The House of Bones wasn't called that for no reason, they had more than one big ossuary on their land. Violet didn't know that word, Susan said it was an above-ground place where they "buried" people, kept their bones and stuff. They even used bones as decoration, which was super super weird. Susan said there was special magic her family used to do, where, if you had someone's bones you could talk to their spirit, which was why they used to keep them — they didn't do that magic anymore (the books that told them how were lost in a war), but it was just tradition now. They even had a really old holiday ritual thing, on Hallowe'en, with a lot of prayers and stuff, and as part of it Susan (and Amy) kissed the skulls of certain special ancestors, which was just super creepy.

Violet must be making a funny face, because Susan gave her an awkward shrug. It was just what their family did, she grew up with it, she never really thought about it that hard. Besides, it wasn't like they were gross — the skulls were hundreds (some of them even thousands) of years old, all the icky squishy parts were long gone. And, there was special magic to keep them preserved, they were very clean. Just kind of felt like a funny rock, really. Still super creepy, but Violet guessed Susan couldn't help her family's (super creepy) religion, and it's not like they were hurting anyone...

Okay, Violet wasn't complaining about her creepy meeting with Lord Arcturus anymore — now that Susan said a little bit about her family's stuff, she thought she got off easy.

It was getting a little late in the afternoon, Violet had been working in the garden for a while now — a little sweaty, and dirt all over her hands and knees and stuff, she needed a bath. More work than she was really supposed to put in the garden in a day, but with Susan's help they were almost done, and then Violet could take off...however long it took for weeds to start coming in again. There were only a couple little bits left, Violet gently levering the dirt open, pulling the roots of weeds or extra plants out, careful not to disturb the ones she wanted to keep, and another, and another, almost at the end of the row, just a little more. She was quicker at it than Susan, but she had more practice, and Susan was speeding up too as she got used to it, the motion almost automatic, chattering on about weird family history stuff — the Boneses' representative at the first meeting of the Wizengamot was the Merlin mages always talked about, apparently (though Susan said it like "mer-thin") — they'd have a bath and then have tea once they were done, just a little—

"Ah!" Violet froze, turned to Susan — she was leaned back on her heels, hugging her hands against her stomach, her face screwed up. "Ow ow ow, stupid..."

"What happened?" If Susan got hurt it was Violet's fault, she was helping with its chores, it—

"I'm fine, just— Augh..." She loosened her grip on her hands for a second, looking down, winced. "Wasn't paying attention, stabbed the thing down, nicked my finger. Bleeding a little. It's not that bad, I'll be fine."

...Violet didn't quite believe that. There were tears in the corners of Susan's eyes, and, Violet nicked herself with knives before, little cuts didn't hurt that bad. "Let me see." She carefully crawled over a row, kneeling across a row of baby plants from Susan.

Susan gave her a little huff, looking up at the sky for a second, but she held her hand out for Violet. She winced a little when Violet carefully took her wrist, biting her lip — it did look like it hurt, but maybe not that bad? Violet turned her wrist a little, so she could get a better look, and...

There was a jagged slash on one side of her pointer finger, right next to a knuckle. It was a pretty bad cut, a big blob of deep red blood oozing out, mixing with the dirt on her skin, turning muddy. It was smeared around a little when Susan was hugging it to herself, but now it was dribbling down to her fingertip, building a dangling drop...

Violet's first thought was that it did look like it hurt, a little, the cut looking torn on the edge, deep enough to bleed kind of a lot. It wasn't really bad, but not nice, yeah.

Its second thought was that it was going to be in so much trouble — it always got in trouble when Dudley got hurt, even when it was all Dudley's fault.

She wasn't sure which thought did it, but one of the two (or maybe both) made her stomach twist, throat and chest getting all tight and hot. Her fingers tightened on Susan's hand and wrist, Susan winced again, it was hard to breathe all of a sudden, thick, like she was already too full of something else that she couldn't get the air in. All she could see was the cut on Susan's finger, the blood almost seeming to glow, everything else falling away, the world squeezing in, her chest hurt, a hot-cold tingly prickle ran over her skin, and—

Violet sighed, the funny tingling jumped up her throat and out — and, in a blink, Violet felt empty, and cold, and tired.

"Oh, wow!" Susan pulled her hand back, Violet's limp fingers letting her go, rubbed the dirt off her finger. Her skin was still stained red, muddy blood still clinging to her — but the cut was gone, like it was never there. "It's all—" Susan flinched, ducking her head and blinking her eyes closed, like a really bright light got in her eyes. "How did you do that?"

Violet blinked, her eyelids feeling really heavy all of a sudden. Rubbing at her cheek with one hand — getting dirt all over her face, whoops — she shook her head. "Dunno. I d-didn't mean to. Feel better?"

"Yeah, it doesn't hurt at all anymore." Susan paused to take a slow breath in and out, shuffling a little, uncomfortable. "That's really— Healing is rare accidental magic, you know. Or, healing yourself happens all the time, but someone else is— Ugh..." Pushing herself back from the row she was working on, Susan straightened, leaning back, a funny look on her face, like— Like she was feeling sick, trying not to squeeze her stomach, blinking, one hand coming up to rub at the side of her head...

"...Are you okay?" Because she didn't look okay. In fact, second by second, she seemed to be getting worse, going all pale, sweat beading on her forehead, her fingers shaking a little, frowning and lips twisting, breath turning harsh enough Violet could hear it...

"No, I— Don't you feel that?"

"Feel what?"

"I don't know, I think it's a magic thing, it—" Susan broke off with a long aarrggh! her back arching at a funny angle, like she was trying to twist away from something hurting her, from behind and to her right. She let out a half-choked sob, tears feeling her eyes. "Wha– What's happening?"

"...I don't know. Um, m-m-maybe we should g-g-g—" Well, she was going to say go inside, but the letter G hated her. Violet climbed over the row, careful not to squish anything, started reaching for Susan's arm to help her up.

But before she could touch her Susan let out a sudden, loud shout, Violet jumped, and she lurched away from something Violet couldn't see, scared and in pain. She tipped over and flopped down onto her side, Violet was leaning over her in a blink, and she was crying now, her whole body shaking, trying to cover her face with her arms, terrified little moans leaking through with each breath. Violet didn't know what to do, and maybe it was better not to touch her, but it did without thinking, hand on Susan's shoulder — and Susan twitched away at first, but then she flipped back and grabbed at Violet's shirt, climbed halfway into its lap, her face pressed against its leg, shivering and crying and—

"Susan, what's wrong? I d-d-don't know what..." It was its fault, it must be, that bloke at the hospital in Toulouse had said the fairies did something to Violet's magic, and it had to be careful with magic or it might hurt other people, and Violet hadn't meant to, it didn't even try to heal the cut, and it must have broken something else, it didn't—

"They're dying," Susan hissed between sobs and moans, voice thin and shaky. "Everyone, I can— It hurts, I, I can't..."

...What?

But, okay, not important, it could ask what it did to her later, right now she needed help. "C-c-c-can you move, we nnnneed to g-g-guh-g—" No, it had a better idea, actually. "Nola?"

There were only a couple seconds, and then the little elf appeared a couple feet away with a pop! "Yes, Miss Violet, is— Is Miss Susan being hurt?"

"I d-don't know, bring Mum, please!"

Nola didn't stick around to ask any more questions, just nodded at Violet before going away with another pop. This time it took a little longer — Susan still crying and moaning, shaking like she was really really cold, now and then jumping or flinching away from something, climbing even more into Violet's lap, but it let her, hugging her closer, it seemed to make her feel better and if Violet could help at all that was good (it broke Susan somehow, it was so sorry, it didn't know what to do) — but then there was another, louder pop! and Nola came back, bringing Mum along this time. "What happened?"

"We were g-g-g-g— She hurt her finger, and I d-did m-m-mmmaagic to fix it, but, but, but, but I think I d-did something wrong, she, she—"

Mum came closer, her hand coming down. Violet flinched, ducking its head and tensing up — it hurt Susan, really bad, and, it never got in trouble with Cassie yet, it didn't know what to expect, and Cassie could be scary when she wanted (it was so sorry, it didn't mean to) — but Mum's hand was light and gentle, running down her hair, Violet let out a shivery breath. "It's all right, darling, you didn't mean to. Let me see it."

"I d-d-don't know what— She's just..."

"Here, let me..." Mum sat down next to them, her legs folded, her wand out and ready. Her left hand reaching for Susan's shoulder, she said, "Susan, I'm just going to take a look. Let go of Violet so I can—" The second Mum's hand touched Susan's shoulder, she screamed. Susan flopped over onto her back, tipping out of Violet's lap, her hands flailing wildly in the air, as though trying to slap something away, kicking blindly at Mum. "Hey hey, hey now!" Mum moved to kneel next to her, trying to catch Susan's hands, but she just kept flailing and hitting, slowly squirming away across the ground, trying to get away—

"Stop it, you're hurting her!"

"You're right." Mum had actually stopped before Violet finished the sentence, sitting back on her heels, her hands held up empty at her sides. If she was freaking out, it wasn't showing on her face at all, but she was sitting really really tense, her eyes focussed on Susan. "Okay. Susan, can you tell me what you're feeling? Can you hear me, Susan?" she asked, raising her voice a little over the crying.

Her voice thick and choked, forced out word by word between gasps and sobs, Susan did speak...but it wasn't in English. Cassie understood it, though, by the sound of it asked a question, Susan saying something back.

Cassie's eyes widened, leaning back a little. "Oh, fuck."

...Bad words couldn't be a good sign. "What is it?"

Mum twitched, turned to blink at her — Violet almost thought Mum forgot it was here. "She'll be okay, just..." Mum bit out a sharp sigh. "Nola?" Pop! "I need a full-strength class-three grounding potion, immediately. Half the dose for an adult, she's so small."

His head tilting a little, making his big ears flop, Nola thought for a moment. "I can get one from the priests, on the hill. They will maybe be wanting a favour for it."

"That'll do. Go."

"Yes, Miss Cassie."

Once Nola was gone again, Cassie gave her wand a swirly flick, cast the pretty silvery bird she used sometimes to send messages — Violet forgot what it was called. The magic also felt really really good, all warm and soft and nice, Violet felt herself relax a little, some of the worry brushed away, the magic making her feel all comfortable and safe. (Mum would fix it, whatever Violet did on accident, Susan was going to be fine, it was okay.)

(Violet wasn't going to be locked in the cupboard, Mum had set it on fire.)

"Amy. Don't panic, it's not that kind of emergency, but you need to come home soon. Little Susan inherited the old family talent, and it just triggered. I'm giving her a grounding potion and putting her in bed, so don't drop anything important, but this is a family matter." Mum hesitated for a second, as though she wasn't sure she should say more, before sending the bird away with a swish.

"The family talent?" Susan hissed before Violet found her voice.

"Yeah, kid, you're a Prophet. Congratulations, and I'm sorry."

...Violet had no idea what that meant.

They waited a couple minutes for Nola to come back with the potion, Susan still curled up on the ground, shivering and crying, letting out little noises now and then, sounding scared or in pain — Mum just kneeled on the ground watching her, her face blank and stiff, fingers tapping, doing nothing. This was stupid, there had to be something they could do until Nola came back! Violet remembered, Susan had flailed away from Mum, screaming — like touching her hurt — but she hadn't done that with Violet. She kind of tried to climb all over Violet, clinging at her, so...

Slowly, Violet shuffled closer, and — cautiously, in case something changed and it was bad now — set her hand on Susan's shoulder. She twitched, tensing for a second, before letting out a shaky sigh, one hand coming up to grab at Violet's. After a little bit, Susan rolled over, and ended up kind of crawling into Violet's lap again, her head pressed against Violet's stomach and her arms wrapped around her waist — Violet wasn't really sure what to do with her hands, just set one on Susan's back, the other running over Susan's hair. Violet did like Susan's hair, the funny mix of auburn-red-pink, pulled into a long plait, little fuzzy bits escaped while they were working...

"I'm sorry," Violet whispered.

"Not your fault." The crying had quieted down some, but Susan was still shivering, sometimes flinching like she was being hit from different directions. Her voice came out thick and harsh, rough from the crying. "Family thing, born with it."

...It sure didn't seem like that — Susan started freaking out right after Violet did magic on her without meaning to. If some weird magic thing she was born with happened to turn on at the same time, that would be a big coincidence.

It was maybe only a couple minutes before Nola came back, a little bottle of orange-yellow potion in his hand. "Thank you, Nola," Mum said, taking the bottle. "All right, kid, this is a grounding potion. Do you know what those are?"

Stiff and unsteady, Susan nodded against Violet's stomach. "For Seers."

"Exactly. Now, this is a class-three potion, which are for emergencies only — I suspect it'll knock you right out. There will be side-effects when you wake up, but it won't do anything too bad. Okay?"

"Just do it," Susan hissed. "It hurts."

Violet winced at the pleading tone to Susan's voice, her hands tightening without thinking; Mum just nodded, something about her face looking grim. She thought they might need to turn Susan over so she could take the potion, but Mum just swirled her wand at the bottle, and then made a sharp swish toward Susan — suddenly, the bottle was empty. Susan immediately let out a high groan, the shivering not stopping right away but bit by bit over the next few seconds, her grip around Violet weakening. The stiffness going out of her, settling limp into Violet's lap, Susan let out a quiet sigh, muffled against Violet's shirt.

After maybe five seconds, Susan was already asleep.

"All right, let's get her in bed." Mum shuffled closer, started to reach for Susan — then she froze, her hands hanging a foot away, frowning down at the back of Susan's head. "Nola?"

Nola was still here, he hadn't left yet, standing a bit to Mum's side. "Yes, Miss Cassie?"

"Could you move Susan up to Violet's bed, please? It may be better to put her in bed clothes while you're at it. She's a death-aligned Seer — linen and silk will be fine, I think, but we should try to avoid wool and muggle-raised cotton until we better know what her sensitivities are like."

His eyes somehow seeming even bigger and wider than usual, he nodded his head, big ears flopping. "Yes, Miss Cassie. Am I to be calling anyone?"

"No, I already took care of that. Just put the poor girl in bed, please."

Nola nodded. He snapped his fingers, and Susan's weight lifted off of Violet's legs, her sleeping body gently floated up off the ground. A second snap of Nola's fingers, and they both disappeared, they were gone.

...Okay, then.

Mum let out a long sigh, her head tipped back, Violet couldn't see her face at all. She sat there silently for a bit, Violet fidgeting. There were words bubbling at the back of her throat, she— She didn't know what just happened, she couldn't help like feeling it was her fault — Susan had freaked out right after Violet accidentally fixed her finger — but, she didn't know how to ask. And Mum also looked like she was taking whatever this was kind of hard, Violet didn't want to bother her...

"All right." Mum waved her hand, Violet's gardening bag and all the tools and stuff floated over toward her. While she wiped the dirt off the tools one by one with flicks of her fingers, tucking them into the bag, she said, "I think the rest of the gardening can wait until later — you were out here for quite a long time."

Violet shrugged, glancing away. They had agreed that Violet wouldn't spend too long gardening, but, "We were almost done."

"Still." The last tool put away, Mum cinched the bag closed, letting out another sigh. "What happened out here, anyway?"

"...Susan c-c-c-cut her fih-finger." Her heart was pounding in her throat, her fingers twitching, nervous, she forced in and out a long, slow breath. It was okay, even if she was in trouble, she didn't think it would be that bad, and, Mum had told Susan's mum that it wasn't such a bad emergency she had to get here right away, it would be fine. "Um. I fixed it? I d-didn't mean to, it, j-j-j-j—" Violet scoffed. "—happened."

When she looked back up at Mum, one of her eyebrows had curled up her forehead, giving Violet a thoughtful sort of look. "Healing magic. Interesting. Using accidental magic to heal another person is quite unusual. Children healing themselves when they get hurt is common enough, but healing someone else is... Well, it's not unheard of, but it's very rare."

"Yeah, Susan said so too." Violet didn't really think much of that, since she was a metamorph so already had weird special magic. Not to mention the fairy thing... "Um. I think m-mmy fairy thing b-b-broke her."

"Broke her?" Mum said with a frown — rearing back a little, surprised. "No, that's not— Come here, darling." It was a little awkward, since they were on the ground, but after a bit of shuffling around they were both up on their knees, Violet's fists bunched up in Mum's dress (she didn't know why that always felt like the thing to do), one of Mum's arms around her back and the other hand in her hair.

Mum's hugs always felt nice, warm and soft and tingly, and— Her chest suddenly feeling too full, like it was being stuffed with something thick and fuzzy, Violet bit her lip, tried to blink the tears down. She wasn't in trouble, Susan was going to be okay, it was fine.

Whispering near her ear, breath in her hair, "You didn't break her, darling. It's not your fault, I promise. It's..." Mum tipped back a little, not letting go of Violet, just enough so she could meet her eyes. She was frowning, but not an angry frown, thinking. "Do you remember, your first appointment with Chloé that other man said something about your identity being made self-reinforcing?"

"...N-no, sorry. Too many big words, I d-d-didn't understand a lot." Violet didn't even know what that meant, of course she didn't remember it — it was hard to remember things that made no sense.

"Right. Well. This is something that runs in Susan's family — it used to be common, but it's been much more rare the last couple centuries. She was born with it, but it was sleeping. Metamorphs like us, our special magic is always there, but for some other things, it needs to be turned on when the person is older. I think, when you healed her finger, a little bit of your magic got into Susan's magic, and— The fairies made it so your magic is always fixing itself, making sure you stay what you're supposed to be. I think that part of your magic got into Susan's magic, just for a second, and that turned on her Sight. It was always there, you didn't break anything, you just turned it on. Like flipping a light switch."

"Okay." That...sort of made sense. Maybe. "So, this was ah-ah-always going to happen?"

Mum shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Just because someone has the potential for special magic, doesn't mean it will turn on. Maybe she was always meant to be a Prophet, and it would have woken up naturally sometime in the future, and maybe it would have stayed sleeping without you. It's impossible to say."

"But, what is it, though? You never said." Violet remembered the word prophet from, like, church things, but she kind of doubted Mum meant it the same way.

"Do you know what a Seer is?"

"...Not really," she admitted, trying not to feel stupid. She knew it'd come up before, it sounded familiar, but she couldn't think of anything. "Um, someone who can see the future?"

"Yes and no. Come on." A tingly wave of magic ran over Violet's skin, and Mum stood up, holding Violet against her with one arm looped under her thighs. Violet felt herself make a little surprised noise, clinging at Mum's shoulders — she moved fast, Violet hadn't seen it coming. A wave of her free hand floating Violet's gardening bag over to her, Mum started walking toward the front door. "How about I explain all of it over lunch? It is a long story, and it's starting to get late."

Violet wasn't sure if Mum was pausing to wait for an answer, or if she was just distracted getting through the door and hanging up the gardening bag, but she went ahead and said, "Okay," just in case.

"You should have a bath first, though — you're all dirty." Smiling at Violet from only a couple inches away, her free hand came up, one knuckle brushing at Violet's dirty cheek. (Violet was pretty sure she was blushing, she tried to ignore it.) Mum walked into the kitchen, toward the stairs down to the bath, but paused for a moment, her eyes flicked to the side for a second. And then she looked back to Violet, lips curling into a crooked, unhappy smile. "Susan's going to need our help from now on. The Sight is special, like metamorphy, a lot of people deeply respect Seers. But it can be difficult to be a Seer, they have a hard time. So, Susan's going to need us to be there for her, as much as we can. And it may not always make sense to you when something's bothering her, things won't affect you the same way, but you're just going to have to trust her that it does. Can you do that?"

"Yes, Mum," Violet promised, nodding. She wasn't sure if that counted as a magic promise or not, but it didn't really matter — Mum was just telling her to try to be a good friend, and she was going to do that anyway. "What is a Seer, though? Why's it hard?"

Mum smiled a little warmer, bent over to set Violet back down on the floor. Oh, um, Violet meant to wipe off her feet before coming back inside, and getting dirt on the tile, but Mum could just clean it with a spell, she guessed. "Go down and have your bath, I'll explain everything when you get back."

...Fine, she guessed she could wait like ten minutes...

፠

Cassie noticed Violet was fidgeting, her fingers idly playing the hem of her jumper, subtly swaying in place. Reaching to card fingers through her hair — long and blonde and curly, in imitation of Cassie's — she said, "It's all right, darling. I'm sure Susan isn't angry with you."

Violet glanced up at Cassie, just for a second, before her eyes were inexorably drawn back to the hearth. She nodded, but Cassie didn't think she really believed her — the subtle signs of nervousness remained, bobbing on the balls of her feet and fussing at her clothes.

Not that Cassie was too surprised Violet was so anxious. It'd been a tense few days at the house, since their accident. Cassie had tried to explained that Susan's Sight triggering wasn't her fault, but she'd gotten the very clear sense that Violet didn't believe her — that she blamed herself for Susan's predicament, stubbornly so. She suspected Violet would continue to blame herself, would not be talked out of the belief that Susan hated her now, until Susan herself told her they were okay, in person. As worried as Violet was about Susan, nervous as she was about maybe having ruined one of her first ever friendships, she'd hardly spoken a word since Amy had come by to bring Susan home. She'd stayed up in her room playing with her puzzles or drawing the whole time, turned away a couple of the neighbour girls when they came by asking if she wanted to do whatever, failed to express any opinion at all when mealtimes came around — which was a step backward, Violet had been helping Cassie come up with food plans for months now.

This wasn't new behaviour, of course, Cassie had noticed before that Violet sometimes seemed to entirely lose all power of speech when she was especially worried about something. She'd discussed the matter with Shannon — who had noticed the same thing, when their meetings were cut off short Violet going quiet was often the reason why — but the muggle expert had told Cassie that, so long as these episodes remained brief, it wasn't worth worrying about too much, recommended she not try to pressure Violet to talk when she was like this. It was related somehow to her treatment by the Dursleys (though Cassie hadn't quite followed the logic), pushing her would probably only make it worse. Which, fine, Cassie could talk enough for the both of them if necessary, she just didn't know what to do to make Violet feel better. Besides leave her be to play with her puzzles, and make her favourite foods available, and generally just try to be gentle and understanding about it. But that didn't really feel like enough, somehow.

(Cassie's parents had been largely fine, but she hadn't had the most nurturing childhood imaginable — no serious complaints, honestly, the Noble Houses could simply be rather more strict and formal than she suspected was entirely healthy for a child — she couldn't help feeling she was terrible at this. Amy, Síomha, and Julie all tried to reassure her that she was doing fine, but it was hard to believe it, was all. It was too important.)

Of course, Susan had been friends with Violet for going on half a year now, so she knew her well enough to guess that Violet would be blaming herself — Amy claimed concern for Violet was a significant part of why Susan wanted to visit as soon as her Sight was even minimally manageable. Amy was sceptical this was a good idea, so soon, but Susan had insisted, and Amy hadn't had the heart to argue with her. Or so the (uninformatively brief) letter Cassie had received late last night implied, anyway, she suspected there was more to the story.

Honestly, that Susan was going through a fundamentally life-changing experience, struggling to learn how to keep herself from being overwhelmed, and her most pressing thought was somehow concern for Violet was, just, that girl was going to be in Hufflepuff, that was all — they were still years away from Hogwarts, but Cassie would put money on it now. Which she guessed was convenient, because she thought Violet was going to end up in Hufflepuff too. Maybe Ravenclaw, not entirely certain yet.

Definitely not Slytherin, though — she was physically incapable of telling even the smallest, polite white lie, and she was so adorably earnest at times. Cassie had made a mental note to make sure, when the time got nearer, that Violet knew she didn't give a damn if she didn't end up in Cassie's old house, just in case.

Cassie had known that Violet would spend the entire morning worrying herself into a rut, so she'd schemed to keep the girl distracted. They'd spent most of it in the kitchen, the new turntable playing randomly-selected records — the majority of the collection borrowed from Julie, some of them ancient, a lot of jazz and blues and the like Julie was turned on to by a muggleborn she'd known back in school. (The muggle-manufactured discs were the same ones she'd acquired as a teenager, pressed in the 30s and 40s and tingling with preservation spells.) Maybe it might be nice to whip up some biscuits and the like she and Susan could have while she was over, but they couldn't make normal biscuits, because sometimes Seers were sensitive to things. Because Cassie was a schemer, she'd asked around ahead of time, so she was prepared: this hazelnut oil was because they couldn't use butter, and they'd need to use honey instead of sugar — Cassie didn't know for certain whether Susan was actually sensitive to animal or historically sensitive food products, but it paid to be cautious — but they had a bit of a different taste to them than plain butter and sugar. They would have to work around that, what do you think they should try (with spices and add-ins pre-arranged on the counter so she could grab or point at things if she didn't feel like talking), mm, yes, cinnamon was a good idea, what do you think about oatmeal, or peanut butter...

She didn't know if she'd helped get Violet's mind off her worries at all, but at least Cassie had managed to keep her occupied.

As the scheduled time of the Boneses' arrival approached, Violet had been very visibly distracted, so Cassie had called an end to the baking session, let Violet go get ready while she cleaned up. She hadn't been entirely surprised, upon leaving the kitchen some minutes later, to find Violet standing in the living room, watching the hearth, waiting.

Thankfully, Cassie had managed to keep Violet distracted for almost long enough — they were only standing in the living room in tense, uncomfortable silence for a couple minutes at most before the hearth flared green. Little Susan came through first, swiftly followed by Amy a few seconds later. Amy was in plain trousers and tunic, simple work clothes as was typical for her on a day off — Cassie honestly couldn't remember the last time she'd seen Amy in a skirt, she would have been still a child — but Susan was in full robes, baggy and draping, done in multiple layers of heavy linen dyed a blue so deep it wasn't quite black. (It looked like they'd avoided cotton and animal products, substituting out the butter and sugar might have been a good bet.) The robes had an attached hood lined with curling embroidery in white, currently folded back out of the way, her feet and hands both covered — again avoiding animal products, the gloves some kind of cloth, the shoes linen with a sole of woven straw, like the peasants off the beaten path on the Bones land wore. Probably grown on the commune and put together by hand by one of the locals, Cassie would guess.

And Susan looked tired, her face drawn and noticeable bags under her eyes. Cassie would guess the poor thing hadn't been getting much sleep the last few days — according to the stories, the dreams death-aligned Seers got could be... Well, they took some getting used to.

Violet had twitched when Susan showed up, wavered forward and then back, like she'd almost started moving closer before stopping herself. And she waited, silently watching, tense and pale, as Amy came through and... Unnaturally pale, in fact — the effect even extended past her skin, some of the colour starting to leech out of her hair at the roots — which, as deeply distressed as Violet seemed to be, Cassie couldn't help feeling was, counterintuitively, a good sign. Violet was so unnaturally constant for such a young metamorph, if she was growing comfortable enough with herself to unthinkingly change and not immediately go into a panic about it, that seemed like progress to Cassie.

Of course, since Violet was obviously in distress, Cassie reached to stroke her hair again, standing close, trying to... She didn't know, just be a comforting presence, she guessed. No idea if she was helping even slightly. Shooting Amy and little Susan a smile, Cassie said, "Hello, you two. And how are we this morning?"

"Aunt Cassie." Amy sounded as tired as Susan looked. They walked closer, Susan's eyes fixed on Violet, who was practically vibrating with tension at this point. "We've had a long couple days, as you might guess. I was hoping we—"

"Wait," Susan said, "I want to check first." Pulling at the fingers of the glove on her right hand, Susan took a couple steps closer to Violet, standing within arm's reach. Violet swallowed, her mouth opened and closed a couple times, but no sound came out — Cassie was pretty sure she was trying to say something, her voice just wasn't cooperating at the moment. Her right glove removed, Susan held her hand out, her fingers just noticeably quivering. "Your hand, please," she said when Violet didn't immediately move to take it.

Violet was clearly confused, but she obeyed anyway. As their hands touched, Susan tensed, as though expecting a blow — but then a second later she relaxed, her breath gusting out of her in a sigh. Her lips twisted into a shaky smile, she almost laughed...but her eyes were already welling up, her nose wrinkling.

And then she was yanking Violet forward into a hug, quick enough Violet let out a little squeak of surprise, arms wrapped tight around her. It took a second before Violet twitched into motion, arms tentatively coming up around Susan's back. "What...?"

"I can touch you," Susan hissed.

Cassie grimaced — fuck, poor kid. Just to be sure, she turned to Amy to ask, "Contact echoes?" A grim set to her jaw, Amy nodded.

Violet looked up at her, and it took effort for Cassie to not burst into laughter at the look of absolute befuddlement on her face. "What... What is that?"

"Seer thing." Susan pulled back a bit, ending the hug, wiping at her eyes with her gloved hand — her bare hand had snatched onto Violet's again, their fingers tightly laced together. "When people touch me I feel them die. But not you, yours is too far away."

Well, that was good news Cassie hadn't expected to get today, or really ever. Metamorphs were theoretically immortal, in the sense that they didn't age like normal humans, but they could still lose their lives to violence or accidents the same as anyone else. Accidents were always a danger — more than they were for ordinary children, given how peculiarly they reacted to some otherwise harmless magics — but at the back of her mind Cassie had been worrying that the Boy Who Lived nonsense would come back around and get Violet killed one day. Especially since the Dark Lord was still out there, somewhere, not to mention an unknown number of his followers. But, that a death-aligned Seer couldn't feel Violet's fate at all would suggest that she had a very high chance of surviving — and not just for the natural span of the average human lifetime, but probably at least several times longer than that, depending on how sensitive the Seer in question was. So, good, that was good.

Very good, actually, Cassie felt herself smiling despite how miserable this all must be for Susan. At least now she had pretty good reason to believe she wasn't going to completely fuck up this mum thing...

Violet, amusingly, had absolutely no idea how to respond to that, just blankly staring back at Susan.

After a couple seconds, and another pass at her eyes, Susan said, "Come on, let's go do something."

"...What?"

"I don't know, whatever, upstairs. Our mums have to talk about grown-up things."

Violet glanced up at Cassie, still looking adorably dumbfounded. But, since it turned out Susan wasn't angry with her, she clearly decided to not question her good fortune — the girls set off past Cassie and up the stairs, still joined by the hand.

Watching them go, Amy let out a sigh. "That went well, at least. I suppose that's something."

Cassie hummed. She hadn't expected Susan to be angry with Violet, but that her Sight wouldn't make their friendship too stressful for her was good news, yes. "Come on, I'll put on some coffee. Tea?"

"Coffee. You might have guessed that I haven't been sleeping much."

"Nightmares?" Cassie asked over her shoulder, turning toward the kitchen.

"Not quite the correct word, perhaps, but getting her to sleep for more than an hour at a stretch has been a trial. The Sanctuary has seen too many ghosts."

Well, that was one way to put it, she guessed...

Within a minute or two, Cassie had the coffee brewing — heating the water to a boil with a charm quickened the process dramatically — turned around to lean her hips against the cupboards. Amy had sat on one of the stools, leaning her elbows on the counter. Her head was bowed low, both hands rubbing at the back of her neck. "You look like shite, kid."

Amy snorted. "Thanks, Auntie. Always such a charmer."

"So say my many, many lovers." Even though Amy's head was still down, Cassie could practically feel her rolling her eyes. She remembered, when she'd been a little kid and into her teenage years, Amy had seemed rather baffled by sex and relationships and the like, Cassie couldn't recall her ever even going on a date — they'd never explicitly discussed it, but Cassie suspected she was completely asexual. Though it'd been a long time since she'd acted like Cassie being very much not was at all unexpected, she couldn't remember when... "So, really. How have you been? I hear spontaneous awakenings can be a trial to manage."

"It has been, yes." Amy let out a long sigh, head continuing to hang silently for another moment. Then she looked up to meet Cassie's gaze, arms folding on the counter in front of her. "Susan is still adjusting. There are... It isn't always easy to anticipate what she'll be sensitive to. We had to replace her bedsheets, the rugs in the bedroom — the wood of the floor was..."

Frowning, Cassie asked, "The wood? Why the wood? Trees aren't intelligent enough to experience their own deaths, they shouldn't be a problem."

Amy sighed again. "The trees themselves, no. But every living thing crystallises within itself traces of the environment in which it was grown, hold an echo of every hand that touched it. For the average Seer, perhaps it will go without notice, but for one of our Prophets... Our home was remodelled, in my grandfather's time — I don't know where the floorboards were sourced from, but it must have been a land that saw terrible violence, not so long ago."

"...Right." Cassie would never have thought of that. "You can cover it with rugs, then. Linen, from the Sanctuary?"

"The rugs are enough," Amy said, nodding, "contact echoes require direct skin contact. And it's Egyptian linen, actually, one of the enclaves that have been isolated from the outside world for going on seven or eight centuries now — their textiles are known to be exceptionally friendly to Seers. Covering her rooms and the halls was quite expensive, but." She shrugged.

She meant the Boneses were filthy rich, and no cost was too great for your child's well-being. Cassie understood completely.

"We have tried local linen from Mistwalker communes, for clothing, and that's worked out so far. The shoes were made at the Sanctuary, the robe and the gloves are from the Greenwood."

"Oh, Greenwood products are fine? I thought Susan would feel the sacrifice." The Greenwood Commune possessed some of the most productive farmland in all of Britain, but that fertility was not natural — and it was a secret they shared, performing their rituals on other people's lands for a fee. Cassie had witnessed such a ritual on a handful of occasions, so she was well aware that they involved the (rather gruesome) sacrifice of an animal, usually a cow.

Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, Amy said, "Honestly, I thought she would too, I can't explain it any better than you can. Food grown on the Greenwood is fine, if unappetising at times, but that first morning our breakfast was all sourced from the Sanctuary, and she just couldn't stomach it. I have no idea why."

"That is odd. Oh! I should— We have some biscuits and the like, but... I was trying to accommodate a Seer's sensitivities, avoiding animal products, but now I'm not sure it will have worked." It hadn't occurred to her that even basic plant-based foodstuffs would be a problem, that was just absurd. "I can set those out, but as long I'm standing here, if there's anything else you want..."

Amy's lips twitched into a weak smile. "I don't suppose you have leavings for a hash fry."

"Ah..." They didn't tend to have leftovers at all. Cassie was used to cooking just for herself, and sometimes a lover she had over (and now also Violet) — she knew exactly how many people she was cooking for and exactly how many servings she would need. Sometimes she went over on purpose, but it was always planned, with a specific use in mind, she didn't tend to make anything she didn't use. But, just because she didn't have leftovers sitting around didn't mean there weren't any available ingredients she couldn't throw together anyway. "How about potatoes, eggs, mushrooms, carrots— Oh, cabbage, we have a lot of cabbage — I picked up three heads before I realised Violet doesn't care for cabbage. And extra bacon, of course, and I can quick whip up a cream sauce with green onions and parsley and nutmeg. That sounds good. Thoughts?"

"No, that sounds excellent. Thank you, Auntie."

"My pleasure, kid. Let's see now..."

It didn't take long for Cassie to get Amy's lunch well along. The ingredients were all scattered here and there across the kitchen, and preparing them was a snap with a couple charms — a potato and a carrot and some mushrooms and a hunk of cabbage collapsing into shreds seemingly of their own accord, bacon shredded into bits before dropping into the pan, the shell of an egg simply vanished. In a matter of a couple minutes, the first round of coffee was poured out, the hash sizzling and popping away, green onions and herbs simmering in some butter in advance of being transformed into a proper béchemel sauce. Cassie had popped up to sit on the counter, coffee in one hand and her wand in the other, occasionally turning the hash or tossing the butter around with a flick, the kitchen already filled with the scents of coffee and butter and frying bacon.

Hugging her coffee mug, Amy asked, "I've been wondering, when did you learn how to cook? You didn't when I was child."

"I would have started learning when you were pretty young, I think. I was seeing a muggleborn woman at the time and, well, she got rather embarrassed by me calling Nola to get us some food when we were less than fully presentable." Amy rolled her eyes, Cassie smirked back at her. "I picked up a little from her, but I didn't start really playing around with it until after I retired from the Aurors. Something to do with my time when I'm shut up at home alone, you know how it is." Cassie suspected the person she'd started becoming was rather...domestic. Which was unexpected, but fascinating, her own personality shift seemed rather extreme even to herself. She was just along for the ride at this point.

By the look on her face, Amy very much did not know how it was. Which was fair enough, she guessed — the House of Bones had long had more elves than humans, and Amy was hardly ever not terribly busy. "I'm surprised Nola lets you get away with doing the cooking, with Violet around."

"Oh, he helps. I learned a lot of what I know from him in the first place, you know. Where else is a woman of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black going to learn this sort of thing? If I asked some commoner to teach me, they'd probably assume I was mocking them." The sauce was coming along, Cassie went ahead and dusted some flour over it, transfiguring it evenly through the butter with a quick tap of her wand on the edge of the pan, another flick turned the hash over. "I am glad I learned — Violet's a somewhat picky eater, since I'm doing the cooking myself I can work around it better."

"Mm. Susan may have to learn to prepare her food herself, just to be certain she can tolerate it."

"Perhaps." It was pretty common for Seers to manage their own food, when possible...though they normally preferred to raise their own food as well, since it was the easiest way to remove any risk of offensive traces working their way in. Susan was less likely to be able to manage that, but she could just trade for ingredients from the Greenwood... "And how is Susan taking it? Learning to manage her Sight will take some doing, I know, but how's she feeling about it?"

Amy let out a harsh sigh, shaking her head. It was hard to read her expression, exactly — concerned? exasperated? confused? "She's been... I don't know if 'thrilled' is the right word?"

Cassie twitched, blinking — wouldn't have seen that coming...

"She understands it's going to make her life much more difficult in some ways, she grew up with the old stories of Prophets, naturally, but it..." Amy trailed off, her fingernails tapping at her coffee cup. While she was thinking, Cassie added the milk to the sauce, kept the contents at a steady churn with an idle swirl of her wand. "We discussed it, what it meant, and I... I think, she never truly felt connected to the Family. As long as she can remember, there has only been her, and myself. And I am away, often, much of her childhood with her mother's relatives and the Abbotts... She knows the stories, of course, but that is of the past, not of the now — as though we are not part of the Family, but simply live atop their bones."

"Literally." Now that Amy had spelled it out for her, that actually made sense. An extremely depressing kind of sense, but, maybe she should have expected Susan to be pleased with the development...

Giving her a flat, unamused look, Amy shrugged in agreement anyway. "She knew the stories of Prophets, but now she is one. And that is...different, that's real. She... She said, it feels right, somehow, that the last child of the Family should have the gift that we were once so famous for — and I have to admit, there is a certain poetry to it. It's been a hard few days, yes, but she seems...strangely optimistic. Tired, and strained, but." She shrugged again, helplessly.

"You're concerned."

Amy shot her a quick glare. "Of fucking course I'm concerned, Cassie. Do you know how— She's hardly sleeping, and I can't even properly comfort her when it gets too much, because she hurts when I touch her. I can't even so much as hug my own daughter anymore!"

Fighting a grimace, Cassie muttered, "Amy..."

"Forget it," Amy hissed, brushing her off with one hand and rubbing at her forehead with the other. "I know you didn't mean— It's fine. It's just a lot to... I'm still adjusting."

Well, couldn't blame her for that. Cassie felt like she was kind of needed over there, on the other side of the island, but she didn't want to scorch the sauce, awful bloody timing... "I'm sorry, I didn't..." Right, this was done enough, she thought. Still idly turning the sauce, summoning a plate to herself with a crook of a finger, Cassie sighed. "I'm here, kid. I know I wasn't— I'm not going anywhere, this time. Whatever you need. Not just with Susan, but..." The sauce poured over top, she slid the plate across the counter toward Amy, the oil so soon off the heat it was still lightly sizzling, just at the edge of hearing. Shooting her a crooked smile, Cassie said, "Turns out I'm surprisingly good with children."

Amy snorted. "You always were."

...Just playing around for an hour or two here and there, sure — she'd had no problem being the fun aunt. She'd never actually been responsible for a child before Violet. It was different.

"But thank you, Auntie, I don't know what..." She cut herself off with a sigh, her eyes on her plate, fitfully mixing the contents around to properly spread out the sauce. While she was busy with that, Cassie grabbed a couple of the biscuits she and Violet had made this morning. Might as well get a second cup of coffee while she was at it, she suspected this was going to be an emotionally draining day... "I considered resigning, at first, Susan told me not to. But the usual people who watch her, her mother's relatives, they... They're not equipped to care for a Seer. Unfortunately, they... The Abbotts came by last night, and Susan about had a fit when Hannah hugged her. That's going to be a problem — Hannah is a very enthusiastic, affectionate little girl."

Cassie grimaced. "Yeah. I imagine it's not fun to suddenly be slapped in the face with your best friend's death."

Chewing on a bit of potato, Amy nodded, slow and morose. "No, it's not. She won't... Susan may need to spend much more time with you and Violet. If that's all right."

"Of course, kid, you two are welcome here any time. I can move my desk upstairs, convert the office into a guest bedroom, in case she needs to stay over for whatever reason." The spare bedroom on the other side was being used for puzzles and drawing and the like, and it wasn't like Cassie needed an office in the house that badly anyway.

"Thank you. I'm considering not sending her to an Ollscoil, but she was so looking forward to it..."

"No, let her go." Amy twitched a little at the edge on Cassie's voice, glanced up from her food. "Don't take this the wrong way, Amy, but the poor girl already seems so terribly lonely sometimes. She'll be crushed if you pull her out, and it... You know as well as I how badly social isolation can go for Seers, and as much of a trial as adjusting to her Sight will be, no, further isolating her is not the answer. Being shut up in the house and not even allowed to go to school is only going to make her miserable. Give her these few months before the start of classes to adapt as well as she can, develop strategies to avoid her particular sensitivities, and send her to school like you promised. Who knows, maybe the staff will bring in a priest who may have good advice."

Amy just watched Cassie through her speech, so still she hardly seemed to be breathe, something hot and intense in her eyes Cassie didn't know how to read. Finally, she nodded, turning back down to her plate. "You're right, of course. You're right. I was going to say, if she does go, if it sometimes seems more convenient for her to stay here overnight, and walk with Violet in the morning..."

Cassie nodded. "Of course. I'll see about buying food from the Greenwood, so she can eat here. Anything else I should keep in mind?"

"Don't touch her."

"I figured that one out for myself," Cassie drawled, trying not to roll her eyes. "Though it might not be so bad for me — it's possible my death is as far off as Violet's."

Morosely shaking her head, Amy muttered, "When I touch her, she feels my death, yes, but not only mine. She also feels those who died by my hand. And you have killed more than I."

...Oh. Yeah, that would be a problem. There were very few acts of violence Cassie had committed that she didn't think had been justified, even in retrospect, but she doubted that made much difference to a death-aligned Seer. "Noted. How far off is that, by the way? Your death. Did she say?"

"It seems my fate is undecided. I'm certain you're aware the Dark Lord is still out there, and there can come a confluence of events such that the details..."

Lowering her voice to a gruff growl, "Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."

Amy frowned, confused — Cassie assumed she must have never seen Star Wars. "Yes, I suppose. What she has felt is mixed. It could be within the decade, it could be yet many years away. She's not sure. She's far more certain about her own death but, as morbid as it is, that was one bit of good news in this mess, at least."

"Oh? Long way off, then?"

"Well over a century, she believes. By the sound of it, drifting off in her sleep — in bed surrounded by many grandchildren, if the gods have any mercy."

Yes, Cassie understood how that might be good news. Personally, she'd rather face death fully awake and aware, on her own two feet with her wand in hand, but she realised she wasn't most people. "You know that isn't... Conceiving and bearing a child can often be...difficult, for death-aligned Seers. There's a very real possibility that her line will end with her."

Amy grimaced. "I know. Keep that thought to yourself, please — I don't think it's occurred to Susan yet."

"Sure. She can always adopt, if it comes to it." There was no reason the House as an institution must end with her, even if she couldn't endure having any biological children. It wouldn't even be the first time the title was passed through an adoptee.

"I know." Amy didn't spell out that it wasn't the same, but Cassie caught it anyway. Not that she entirely understood, honestly — if Violet ended up inheriting the House, passing it down through one of her children, Cassie would be fine with that, despite the fact that she hadn't been born a Black. Though, to be fair, she'd always thought the urge other people had to have children at all was incomprehensible to begin with, so, this was just one of those things she wasn't going to understand.

She'll admit, she was enjoying her time with Violet far more than she would have expected, but she still couldn't imagine having children of her own was in the cards. She'd changed a lot, from when she'd been the old Cassiopeia Black, but she hadn't changed that much.

A couple minutes later, Cassie and Amy talking about what they might need to change in the house to make Susan as comfortable as possible here, Cassie heard padding of feet and muttering of soft childish voices, glanced over her shoulder. Violet and Susan were coming back down, chatting about Susan being a Prophet — specifically, whether Susan would be able to speak with their parents. Cassie grimaced at the thought, but...she didn't see why not. Susan should familiarise herself with the old rituals first, but yes, that should be possible. Or, contacting the spirit of Susan's father would be easy — his bones should be at the Sanctuary — and Cassie could have Jamie and Lily exhumed and prepared if Violet wanted. Susan's mother, though, Elizabeth's body had never been recovered — maybe they could find something else of hers they could use as a focus, but it would be more difficult.

Cassie bit back her reaction to the thought of the girls contacting their dead parents as well as she could, forced a smile on her face. "Hello up there. Did you two need something?"

"Violet's hungry," Susan said. Cassie was sure the poor kid must be hungry herself, the way Amy told it she hadn't eaten much the last few days, she probably just assumed there wouldn't be anything here that'd be palatable to her. At some point, Susan had removed her robe, leaving her in linen trousers and a somewhat old-fashioned tunic, the baggy sleeves cutting off at her elbows. She draped her robe over the end of the handrail, her shoes dropped against the floor with a snap. Pointing down at her feet, "The floors are fine, I don't need the shoes here."

"That's good." Cassie popped out of her stool, circled back around the island to put the kettle back on for Violet. She cast a quick scent-neutralising charm while she was at it — she had no idea whether Susan was sensitive enough to be bothered by aerosolised particles from cooking food, but it did smell like bacon in here, the precaution was worth taking. "How about the chairs?"

Frowning, Susan walked further into the kitchen, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the row of stools — Violet close behind her, looking much more at ease than before the Boneses had arrived. Susan reached out with a hand, hesitantly, touched the back of the chair...and then she let out a puff of a sigh, her shoulders relaxing. "Yeah, these are fine." She started pulling the chair out, making to sit down, Violet slipping up to sit next to her.

"Go ahead and try one of those biscuits," Cassie suggested, nodding at the plate. "Can you tell if something will bother you just touching it?"

"Most of the time." Susan picked up one of the biscuits, and immediately grimaced, sharply shaking her head. "No, sorry. Here..." She handed the biscuit to Violet, probably thought it better not to return it to the plate after touching it.

"Oh, well. I was going to start buying our food from the Greenwood whenever possible, so you can eat when you're here. Violet and I will try again when we have cleaner supplies."

Her biscuit held carefully in both hands and already missing a couple bites off of it, Violet nodded. "I want to help. With m-m-mmmaking things, I mean."

Susan was sagging into her seat a little, some kind of expression passing over her face — too thin with exhaustion for Cassie to read it very well, but she didn't miss the faint glimmer of tears in the girl's eyes. "Thank you, Aunt Cassie."

"Of course. Speaking of, let's see... Nola?" He appeared at her hip after hardly a second, must have already been listening in. "Can you hop over to the Greenwood for me quick? They should be having lunch over there right about now — there's this mushroom and bean soup they have sometimes, but I suppose anything reasonably filling with beans or nuts in it will be acceptable." Susan would have to be going on an entirely vegetarian diet, they needed to mind her intake of protein and certain vitamins, just to be safe. "Oh, and bread, of course, with the hazelnut butter they make, and whatever tisane they have available."

By this point, Susan's face was going very red. "Oh you, um, you don't have to go through so much trouble for me..."

"It is not being trouble, Lady Susan," Nola said, turning an earnest but slightly exasperated look up at the girl. "Seers need to eat too. After I will go back to talk to them about the kitchen. They will be wanting a favour."

"That's all right, I'll go by and work out something with the Greengrasses when I have an afternoon. Was there anything else you wanted, Susan?"

"Well, no..."

"Mm. Get some candy too, if they have any — those honey drops they have, you know what I mean." Nola popped away, Cassie straightened to throw the girls a grin. "Right, while we're waiting for him to come back, tea for Violet, more coffee, Amy?

"And I was thinking, as long as we have both of you here, we might walk up to the Hill and ask for some advice. It's been so long since there's been a Prophet in the House of Bones, the continuity of the tradition has been broken, but maybe the priests here will have some advice that'll help you get situated..."

---

August 1988

---

The duelling tournament was being done in a theatre — like, a theatre theatre, a place where they had plays and stuff. Violet knew magic people had plays, but, besides people just putting on funny stories for little kids at holidays, she'd never seen one before. Plays in theatres were mostly grown-up things, Mum thought Violet would be bored.

Not that Violet really liked the idea of watching Mum fight people. These were really just for fun, like putting on a show, were even safer than that fight at the Malfoys' — Violet was told there were special wards that kind of freeze someone if they were hurt badly so healers had time to get to them. Nobody would really be trying to hurt each other, so nothing should be too bad, and even if people did get hurt, if there was blood and stuff, Cassie said just to think of it like it was a film or something, it wasn't serious and everyone would be okay.

Violet still didn't like it. Following duelling events all over the world just because sounded really cool, but she thought she might not like watching the duelling itself so much? It was just a little scary, she thought.

This was the first time they were actually travelling though! Mum had been doing little fights and stuff, to get her score up so she could do better things, and they were actually going somewhere this time, and they hadn't done that before! Except to see Chloé, that didn't count, it was very cool. After they had their bags packed up in the morning — they were only going for a few days, so it was super easy — Síomha came over with her bag, and Mum apparated all three of them to a place called Old Town, a magical neighbourhood in London. They took some stairs under the street to get to the keyport, which was where things like portkeys went out from, which Violet thought was very silly.

She didn't like portkeys much. They were...spinny. She needed a few minutes after just to stand up on her own again.

After going through customs — which was super quick, just making sure they weren't bringing in anything illegal — they then took the floo (bleh) to a town called Landek, which was super pretty! They were in Austria, in a valley way up in the Alps along a narrow little river. Most of the town was packed together tight against the river in the flat bottom of the valley, but there were bunches of buildings here and there on the sides of the mountains all around, spread out. But they weren't spread out that far, because the mountains were really really big and steep, and, it didn't take very long before they started getting all jagged and rocky, too much to really build stuff on them. Mum said the bottom of the valley was nearly as high above sea level as the highest point in all of Ireland, which was just silly.

There were spots Violet could see way up on the mountains where there were little patches of snow — it was summer.

There wasn't one magical spot in the town, instead a few different ones, one in the town centre and a few others dotted around the valley. After Violet promised to try not to change anything, they walked through the town and up the side of a hill until they got to the spot their hotel was at, the valley all spread out around them, filled with trees trees trees everywhere, buildings in tight rows painted white with roofs red and black and blue and grey and green, and the mountains all around, making the town look very small, Violet trying to look everywhere at once as they went, very pretty. Violet was a little light-headed at the end — Mum said the air was thinner up here, if she needed to slow down a minute and catch her breath every once in a while that was fine. Mum didn't seem any different, but Síomha looked a little out of breath, so Violet tried not to feel like a wimp about it.

It wasn't a normal hotel they stayed at (like the one in Dublin what felt like forever ago now), but like a big house someone fixed up a bunch of guest rooms in, on the ground floor a couple walls knocked out to make a big kitchen and dining room for everyone. They had lunch there — a little early for them, time was funny — with some of the other guests, the dining room maybe a quarter full. Violet didn't understand what anyone was saying, nobody spoke English — just the German people who lived here spoke, and also French. That first afternoon they just wandered around, walking along this street here or checking out the shops there, on both magic and normal sides of the town, the only difference Mum reminding Violet when she wasn't supposed to be changing anything.

Well, she did see people on the non-magic side giving Cassie and Síomha funny looks now and then — Violet knew from the Dursleys that normal people were stupid about queers, that must be what that was. They were being kind of couple-y, people could maybe guess. It might be easier if they tried to hide it, but they must know that, and decided not to, so.

Eventually it started getting all shadowy — it wasn't that late, but the mountains got in the way — and they found a normal person restaurant down on the river for dinner. The menu was in German, but their waitress spoke English, which was convenient. There was a kids' menu but instead of everyone getting their own thing Mum just ordered a couple things and they all shared. (Síomha never travelled either, she didn't know what most of the things on the menu were anyway.) There was pizza, but apparently proper Italian pizza, because Italy was just over those mountains there, with salami and garlic and capers (Violet flicked hers off, didn't like the squish, but the flavour they left behind was fine) and shredded chicken and spinach and prosciutto (which was like a special Italian ham), which seemed like kind of a lot of things for one pizza to her but it was good anyway, and the other thing was some kind of meat thing which was breaded and then stuffed with cheese and fried, which was apparently what schnitzel was? She heard the word before but never seen it. That plate came with some salad (which she didn't touch) and some chips (which were good), and also some mushroom-garlic gravy stuff, which Violet really liked — she even drizzled some on her pizza, which Mum and Síomha thought was weird but it was good to her...she needed to eat it with a fork, but she didn't like getting grease on her fingers anyway...

Violet maybe ate a little too much, felt kind of sick after. Oops?

They were there late, Mum and Síomha drinking more wine and talking and giggling — by the time they left it was dark out and Violet was very sleepy. Mum ended up carrying her back, she didn't remember half of the walk. When Violet woke up the next morning, Mum was already gone. She had qualifying stuff for the tournament all day, Violet spent the day with Síomha instead. They had breakfast at the hotel, the dining room much more full this time, before going out again. Síomha asked some locals while Violet was still in bed, she had a plan, but if she wasn't having fun just say so and they'd do something else, okay?

Saying that first was kind of silly, Violet thought. She did have bad days sometimes, but she was still kind of excited about being somewhere new, and it was pretty here, so she was in a good mood today, she was sure whatever Síomha came up with would be fine...

For most of the day, they just wandered around, popping in one shop or another. After lunch, they went through the floo and came out wwaaaaayyy at the top of a mountain — it was super super pretty, just, the valley laid out below them, the tiny ribbon of the river sparkling in the sun, buildings bunched up here and there tiny in the distance, the sides of the mountains all covered with trees, the tops sharp jagged spikes of rock crumbling away, dark grey rock with dusty patches of snow, she could see for miles and miles, until it was blocked by mountains or faded into grey, wind whipping along, tugging at her hair and her skirt, smelling clean and clear and bright...

It was cold up here — there were wards that kept out the worst of it, and it was still cold, but it was August — but it was still very pretty. Violet kinda wanted to draw it, but she didn't think she was good enough.

And there was a magic castle on the top of the mountain — old, from before magic was secret, to watch for armies coming through the valleys all around. It wasn't really a normal castle (because it was a magic castle), it was built more to hold out mages attacking it than people with swords and stuff. Because, you know, normal people couldn't get here, kind of hard to attack a castle you can't even reach. No layers of walls and arrow-slits and stuff, just, a squat round tower, thick with protective spells. When it was used, there were only five to twenty people here (depending on when you were talking about), whose job was to pop back to tell someone about an enemy attack coming, or pop down into the valleys to slow them down with traps and stuff until the army proper caught up. It was left empty when mages went into hiding, but then later on people got interested in history and stuff, so it was fixed up and turned into a museum.

It was surprisingly pretty inside. Violet saw, like, bits of old films or kids' picture books and the like, and the insides of castles and stuff always seemed pretty grey and boring in those? But this was super colourful, with a lot of rugs and tapestries woven in pretty patterns, in some places people just painted on the walls or on furniture and stuff. The bedrooms were a little cramped, but they looked nice enough to Violet. She thought it would be pretty lonely up here with only a few other people for however long, but it wasn't so bad.

She was kind of thinking that all the pretty colourful stuff was just because it was a magic castle, but the bloke showing them around — speaking in French, Síomha translated for her — said that was normal. In real life, a proper castle might have been a little dirtier, especially if it wasn't a magic castle so they didn't have cleaning charms, and smell worse, since they didn't do flush toilets and things got gross...or, for this place, they kept animals here, those got smelly. But, like, the rugs and the tapestries and the paint was normal. Someone else asked the question, so Violet didn't have to, and, all the colourful cloth and furniture and stuff was made of things that would rot away kind of quick, only leaving the stone behind — so, hundreds and hundreds of years later, people just saw the plain grey stone, and thought that's what it was always like. For most things, the pretty stuff didn't last very long, and the skeleton was all that was left. Magic buildings had spells on them, though, this was actually pretty close to what it had looked like.

Síomha said that all the old Greek and Roman buildings and statues and things used to be painted all kinds of colours too — that was so cool, Violet didn't know that! Why did they always make everything all boring and plain white, then?

Oh, right the paint wore off over hundreds and hundreds of years, just leaving the stone behind (the pretty stuff didn't last very long, the skeleton all that was left), it'd been totally forgotten before archaeologists got science good enough to start finding tiny invisible bits of paint left on things. That was kind of sad...

As kind of neat as the tower was, and how many things it gave her to think about, and how very pretty it was up here, Violet didn't like the visit to the magic castle so much. There were ghosts in it — like, actual dead people, all not really there and... It wasn't scary or anything, the ghosts were joking and playing around all nice (not in English, she didn't follow it), but it was just kind of creepy? Ghosts made Violet uncomfortable. She was a little relieved when Síomha asked if she was done looking around and they could leave.

They were walking around and doing stuff for the whole day, and Violet was tired, so they went back to the hotel so she could take a nap. Mum got back pretty soon after she woke up. After catching up in the dining room over tea for a bit, they left again, wandering around the town some more, and ended up having dinner somewhere again — this time a magical restaurant, way up high on the side of a mountain. They got a table out on the balcony — the spells keeping it warm were nicer than at the castle, just a little wind leaking through — looking over the valley, and it was super pretty...though Violet was too nervous to look very closely. She could see the mountains around just fine, but if she wanted to see the valley, she had to walk right up to the railing, they were over a steep drop, down down down...

Violet shivered, went back to the table and plopped down into her chair. No thanks.

Though, that wasn't the same valley down there, the place was recommended to Mum by one of the other people fighting, they were further away than Violet thought — on the south side of the row of mountains, meaning they were in Italy now. Or it was Italy on the non-magic side, anyway, it was still Austria on the magic side. (Mum said normal people split the County of Tyrol in half after the First World War, for some reason, but both halves were still part of Austria on the magic side. The borders being different on the magic side was really more confusing than it needed to be, and Violet had never heard of the County of Tyrol before anyway.) Even though they were in Italy now (sort of), the food was more German-ish, since the mages did things different. There was what she thought was sort of pasta, little round buttons of noodle called spätzli, topped with a thick sauce with beans and sausage, a thin soup with dumplings stuffed with cheese and ham (called knödel, which was a funny word, knödel), which were good! Like, Violet didn't normally like dumplings, they got too slimy, but these the cheese kind of hid the sliminess — it came out a cheesy slimy instead of a gross slimy — and there was some extra flavour to the ham she couldn't figure out (kind of pine-y?), and the broth was way more flavourful than it looked, really herb-y, she was surprised.

Violet maybe ate a little too much again, she kept doing that...

They stayed at the restaurant pretty late, until it was dark, the valley below hidden except for little specks of light here and there, and there were so many stars — they were far enough away from big towns that the lights didn't hide the sky, it was pretty. Mum and Síomha were drinking wine, getting silly and giggly again, snuggling up together on the other side of the table, and Violet got some too, but Mum did magic to take out most of the alcohol again, so it was just funny grape juice. Grape juice had a kind of bleh feeling to it, she didn't know what, she thought she liked the de-alcohol-ised wine better. They were there long enough they got dessert a couple times, but they were both apple things? Maybe they had a lot of apples around here. One was a flakey rolled-up pastry thing filled with layers of apple-cinnamon stuff — Violet knew this one! this was called strudel, ha, she knew like one German thing, so there — and the second time there was a plate that had a little tower of apple rings — like, skin it, take out the core, and then slice it up, so you have a circle with a hole in the middle, like people did with pineapples sometimes — that were in some kind of cream sauce, and when it was brought to their table the waiter drizzled some stuff over the tower and set it on fire.

That was brandy, she was told, alcohol burned, Violet didn't know why they did that. It was good, they cut the apple rings up after it burned down, smooshing them around in the cream sauce — the edges were kind of caramel-y, she guessed? She thought maybe they were coated in something, and the brandy and the fire... Whatever, it seemed a silly thing to do to her, but they were good, so she wasn't complaining that much.

By the time they were leaving to go back to the hotel, it was really late again, and Violet was sleepy, but they could just apparate straight there. She did get a nap in earlier, but it was very late by that point — they didn't have to be at the theatre super early the next morning, but she went pretty much straight to bed anyway.

(After Violet was in bed, not quite asleep, she thought Mum and Cassie did sex together in the bath. She guessed it was hard to get alone time when they were at a hotel in another country with her.)

Mum was gone again by the time Violet woke up. Having breakfast in the dining room of the hotel, Síomha explained how the duelling thing worked: it was a normal tournament with sixteen players. They would start with eight matches, the eight winners fighting each other in four more matches, the four winners fighting each other in the semifinals, and then the two winners finishing off in the final, for a total of fifteen fights. The first match started at ten in the morning, and the first round should be done before noon. Síomha thought they would go out to get a quick lunch then, and get back in time for the second round at about one in the afternoon, the third round right after. There was another brief break then before the final, they would decide what to do then depending on whether Mum was still in it or not.

Having to watch fifteen matches seemed like kind of a lot to Violet — she didn't even think she liked watching duelling much. But that was fine, she guessed, however the plan worked out was fine.

(She didn't know why Síomha was asking Violet what she thought about it, Síomha was the adult here...)

Violet didn't want to take the floo again if they didn't have to, so they walked to the theatre, again going back and forth between the magical and non-magical areas of the town. It was funny they were spread out like this, Violet guessed because the ground was shaped funny? and as one side grew the other side got surrounded, so they had to make a new bit somewhere else, and then the other side caught up again, jumping all over the valley... Whatever, made sense to her. It wasn't too far of a walk, they got there with plenty of time still.

The theatre was a pretty normal blocky stone building, a plain off-white like a lot of the buildings around here. Through the doors they came into a long hallway, also pretty plain, shiny polished white stone, a long red carpet down the middle — the prettiest part was probably the magic chandeliers, reminding Violet a lot of the ones deep in Ancient House, floating magical lights with bits of glass bouncing rainbow flecks of colour all over. It was a little crowded in here, but it wasn't too loud, chatter and laughter but nobody yelling too much or anything. There were counters where people in line were paying for something, but Violet and Síomha walked right past them, and so did a lot of other people, did they not need to pay? Violet almost asked, but she stammered on the first word so she changed her mind — it wasn't important anyway.

Unlike the hallway, the inside of the theatre was all wood, gleaming almost gold in the light, the carpet and the seats all in red. The light didn't seem to come from anywhere, but that was magic for you. The theatre wasn't super big, the rows of seats on Violet's left and right could probably fit...she didn't know, a couple hundred people, maybe? (Too many to count easy, with people moving around.) The ceiling was pretty close over her head, she thought there were more seats up there, but she couldn't see from here. Ahead of them and down, instead of a stage there was a dirt floor, looked like a kind of reddish-brown sand. They didn't fight on a stage, it looked like.

They inched down the row pretty slowly, waiting for people ahead of them to slip into seats, but Síomha didn't turn off to sit down, going further and further to the front. There was a section of seats way at the front, a little separated from the rest, a man in trousers and a vest Violet though might be a staff person standing there. When they got to the front, Síomha pulled out a card and showed it to the man — Violet couldn't see what the card was from here — and they were waved through. She did ask this time, and Síomha said everyone in the tournament got to save a few seats for people they invited, that's what this roped-off section was for, okay then.

They couldn't go way in the front, the first couple rows were full already, so Síomha picked seats in the middle instead, waving Violet down to the seat right on the aisle. To make sure Violet could see, she guessed, because she was little. And they were here...and they had like fifteen minutes before it started. Oh well.

Síomha had a little book with stuff about the sixteen people in the tournament, so they flipped through that while they waited. It was pretty simple, just a picture and where they were from and what other events they were at, that sort of thing. The words were in French, which Violet couldn't read, and Síomha only could a little bit, but they didn't have anything better to do. Violet was a little surprised to see the familiar rounder face and green eyes and blonde hair for Mum's picture — for official stuff she normally did the more narrow-faced, black-haired one. Violet thought this made more sense though, because that was how the old Cassie looked, and Mum was kind of different now? So of course she should look like this, but, she guessed she hadn't thought Mum would. Whatever, not important.

The book was enough of a distraction that Violet was kept from getting too bored until the event started. There was a loud voice, with a bit of a sizzle on it that Violet knew meant it was being carried with magic. Mum said other people couldn't feel that sort of thing, or see the glittery bits in Draco's hair — those were illusions, a kind of magic that made things seem different than they really were, and for some reason Violet always knew if something was fake. She couldn't see through illusions — Susan could, Mum said some Seers were like that — but she always knew when they were there. Now that she knew what the funny feeling meant, anyway. When something was transfigured, she could tell that too — she couldn't tell what it was supposed to be, but she could tell it was wrong.

Mum didn't know why that was, but she thought it was a fairy magic thing? Like, it was the same thing as Violet not being able to lie now, sort of. Illusions and transfigurations were, in a way, lying — Mum thought Violet might be pretty bad at those spells because of that, that her funny fairy no-lying thing might not like it, and might even not let her do it at all. Mostly, Violet didn't think about the weird fairy magic stuff much — it wasn't like she went around lying anyway, so it didn't matter — so it was still a little weird when things came up, like the announcer's voice feeling funny.

Violet couldn't understand it anyway, it was in French. Or, Síomha said some of it was German, but Violet didn't speak either, so it was really all the same to her. For reasons, French and not English was the super common language everyone learned in Europe, for international stuff — Mum said it used to be French on the normal side too, but normal people switched to English later and magic people kept French. Which was why she was going to have to learn French after she was caught up with Gaelic, if she wanted to talk to any magic person from another country at all, or if she wanted to go other places, or anything, it was important to know French. Which was annoying, but she guessed languages were kind of neat, and learning Gaelic wasn't so hard, so whatever.

After a bit of talking, two people were walking out onto the dirt, the audience behind her clapping — most people politely, a few people shouted things (other languages), at least one person whistled really high and loud, Violet nearly clapped her hands over her ears before stopping herself. Both of the first pair were men, in really pretty colourful clothes. Violet kind of wished she was even closer, just so she could see them better. She thought they were wearing, just, trousers and jackets and stuff, but they were all colourful, and uneven, and there were shiny bits, one of the jackets had pretty polished buttons and swirly glittery something around the hem. She wondered what that was about. The announcer kept talking, the two men taking spots on the dirt a few metres away from each other. The crowd went quiet, the men bowed to each other, before squaring their feet, wands in their hands. There was a countdown — Violet didn't speak the language, but she picked up that much — and the fight was started with a low deep bong, strong enough it buzzed in Violet's chest.

...

This wasn't so bad, actually. The men tossed spells at each other, lights whizzing and sparking and banging, sometimes conjuring stuff with swirls of their wands, flying through the air to tumble against the ground or be noisily blasted apart with spells. They did shield some spells, catching them on flickery bowls of colour, but most of them they would lean out of the way, or smack the spell aside with their wand, the lights going on past them to reach the wards, where they burst into colourful sizzly sparks. It was fast, spells going zip zip zip bang zip fwoosh zip zip, the men both skipping around and ducking or spinning around spells, and all colourful and bright, the noise of the crowd at her back growing louder as the fight kept going, cheering them on, now and then a louder shout or a low oooo as something extra cool happened — Violet mostly didn't notice, didn't know enough about duelling to tell...

And it was loud, Violet jumped at some of the harder bangs, but it wasn't that bad. She didn't know, maybe the special theatre wards were doing something, or maybe it was just because she was a little further away? Or maybe just because she knew everyone would be fine — she was told that over and over and over, the wards made duelling very safe, it was super super rare for someone to get badly hurt. And it wasn't like that first fight she saw at the Malfoys', where it was personal, this really was just a game. Everyone here did this as a job, or wanted to get far enough so they could do it as a job — making a lot of money duelling was actually kind of hard, Mum just didn't need to — it was kind of like footballers? Like, it was an athletic thing, people did because it was fun to do, and fun to watch. It was just a show, and Violet guessed the colours were pretty, and they moved all quick and smooth, almost like a dance...

Yeah, she thought she kind of got it. Violet wouldn't want to do it herself, it seemed scary, but. She had been worried that watching the duels would be bad — she didn't argue about it, because the travel part sounded like fun, and it was worth doing one to have an excuse to do the other — but if they were all like this, that wouldn't be so bad actually. She thought this was fine.

It was a little scary when one of the men was hit with a spell in the shoulder — there was a flash of yellow and a hard crack of magic, the man wheeling back from the hit, a spray of blood flying out onto the floor. Even with his shoulder all messed up, he tried to keep fighting, but it must hurt, messing with his focus, he was all slow. Only a couple spells later, he was knocked out

Violet hunched forward in her chair, clamping her hands over her ears against the noisy cheering coming up from behind her. The man who won was all waving at the crowd and bowing and stuff, but Violet wasn't looking, watching the loser. A couple people had appeared over him, and he was awake right away — Violet thought that last spell just put him to sleep. There was a little bit of talk, and the man was given a potion, maybe for the pain? The healers (Violet assumed) helped him to his feet, and he walked out a few seconds after the winner, a wave up to them starting some quieter, more polite clapping from the audience.

Yeah, this wasn't so bad. Watching that hit was a little scary, but it was obvious the bloke was fine — his shoulder was messed up, but Violet heard magic healing was really really good, he'd be okay. Violet didn't think duelling would ever be her favourite thing in the world, but it wasn't even as bad as that scary film Mum brought her to once on accident, and it was pretty, it was okay.

A couple minutes later, the next two fighters came out — two blokes again, also in funny colourful clothes. She was still a little sad she couldn't make out their outfits very well from here. This time she asked Síomha, and she said that was a thing, duellists dressing up all cool for events. It was a show, so they didn't want to look too boring, and also duellists were kind of celebrities (like footballers could get sometimes), so there was fashion to it too. And, the ones who weren't stupid rich like Mum, you could make a little extra money by getting someone to pay you to wear their stuff to events, kind of like advertisements? Or how sports people sometimes did sponsorships and stuff. Actually, Síomha said it was exactly like that, sponsorships in duelling were a thing people did — most normal people getting into duelling would try to get sponsorships if they could, so they could afford to travel for events and hopefully make a bit of money on top of that, but Mum didn't bother, because she had more than enough money already. That made sense.

The second fight was a bit shorter, one bloke dodging out of the way of a spell a little bit too slow, knocking him right out. (No blood this time.) Síomha said it was really hard to fight after being hit by something, and you only needed to get one clever trick by, so duels were often very short — unless the two people were very evenly matched, or they were just playing around, like Mum with that bloke at the Malfoys'. Everyone in the League had a running score, going up or down when they won or lost, and at these things they tried to match up people whose scores were close, to better make more interesting fights, but it didn't always work out that way.

The third fight was longer, close to the first one, and the fourth one was really long, going on for... Violet didn't have a watch or anything, maybe as long as ten minutes? The crowd went a little mad just as their names were called, Violet thought these two must be famous — a man and a woman, couldn't make them out very well from here. They were fast, even quicker than the first pair. The spells were mostly the same, though there was more big stuff, bursts of fire and lightning and conjuring shields and flinging stuff at each other, about the same speed as the first fight, but they moved fast. There was a thing, where they kind of blurred, and then went zip across the ground and appeared somewhere else, in a blink. It wasn't apparation, there was a smear of colour as they went from one spot to the other and apparation was invisible, but it was really fast, people couldn't move that fast. She saw it a couple times in earlier fights, but is this one they were doing it all the time, throw a couple spells and zip somewhere else, and again and again and again, moving in little spirals to try to come up behind each other, it was crazy.

That was called quick-step, Síomha said — it was a special thing people could do to move really fast in a straight line. It only worked in a straight line, and you had to see where you were going, so it wasn't useful for travel but it was a neat trick to move around quick in a fight when wards were up that blocked apparating. Like, if you're in a proper battle or something, or in professional duelling, their special wards didn't let you apparate. Mostly only professional duellists learned it, but some people in, like, armies and stuff did too, it was a whole thing. Violet didn't think she'd ever seen Mum do that before, but Síomha said she could — she just hardly ever needed to, because she was super scary in a fight.

The man and the woman in the really long fight both got hit more than once, but somehow kept going, healing themselves up a little quick and limping along. They were slowing down as the fight went on — it looked like all the running around was hard work, and the hits probably still hurt — the crowd getting noisier and more excited as they went on and on, some parts even chanting things in a foreign language. Violet had covered her ears a while ago, it was too loud. Finally, the woman was hit hard with a bit of conjured stuff, stumbling back, her wand tumbling from her hand — it zipped through the air to the man's free hand, he pointed both wands at her. The woman raised her hands, but just for a second before letting herself fall onto her back. The bong marking the end of the match went off and the man fell to his knees, hands dropping limp at his sides.

They both seemed very tired, which Violet thought was fair, this duelling stuff looked hard.

And then it was Mum's turn. She was fighting another woman, with short messy brown hair and sparkly black and orange trousers and shirt, a scarf around her waist flicking behind her, stitched with details too small for Violet to make out. Mum was the one with the long curly blonde hair, she hadn't even tied it back, wearing a pretty white and blue dress, silvery bits sparkling here and there. It was hard to see from here, but Violet thought it even had lace and stuff in it. That seemed too nice and fancy to fight in, but Violet guessed Mum didn't think she was going to get hit with anything.

They went up to the middle of the dirt floor, like all the other pairs had done, they bowed to each other all nice first — well, the other woman bowed, Mum did a proper curtsey, pulling her skirt out and everything. The other woman drew her wand and took a stance, but Mum just stood there, her hands folded behind her back, waiting. While the announcer started the countdown, Violet fidgeted, her feet tapping and her fingers playing with the hem of her skirt. She almost didn't even notice until Síomha took her hand, startling her a little.

She reminded herself that Mum would be fine — Mum was really good at this stuff, and also she'd promised and everything.

She twitched at the bong of the match starting, a spell flying for Mum. Mum still didn't pull out her wand, just stepped and dipped out of the way, dancing around the next spell and the next. When the fourth spell went by, Mum leaned harder into her turn, her hands flying out, her wand raising above her head and jabbing at the ground with a deep fwoosh — Violet could feel a heavy thrum through her chair, and a big poof of dust went flying out in all directions, making little tinkling noises where the little bits hit the wards. There was a big crack, Violet sort of saw the glow of the spell through the dust, and the other woman was in the air, flying back. Cassie made a wide swirly flick of her wand, and a long black rope came flying out of it — it was glowing like a spell, but it was black, it looked really weird — to wrap around the other woman's waist, and a hard pull yanked her back in the other direction, flying right at Mum. She stepped to the side even as the other woman crashed to the ground, rolling over the dirt, Mum sent a spell almost straight down, the red flash hitting the woman just as she rolled past Mum's feet.

The woman went limp, rolling a little more before going still, her wand sliding away across the dirt. There was another low bong marking the end of the match, only a few seconds after the first one.

...Woah.

The room was quiet for a few seconds, everyone maybe just staring at Mum in surprise like Violet was. That had been really really fast, Mum flinging the dust everywhere and blasting the woman into the air and then catching her and pulling her back and knocking her out as she landed all in the space of a breath or two. But then everyone suddenly burst into noise, clapping and shouting and whistling, Violet cringed down into her seat and clapped her hands over her ears again, her skin crawling and her bones grinding.

That had been really cool, but why did everyone have to be so loud about it?

(Síomha promised she'd ask Mum later about a spell for next time to block the noise while still letting Violet hear other stuff, hopefully Mum would know something...)

There were three fights after that, all on the shorter end, none of them super interesting. One bloke did take a really nasty hit, with a lot of blood again, which was freaky-looking — it didn't seem like the healers who ran out to deal with him were worried, though, so Violet tried not to be either. (She didn't like seeing people get hurt.) And that was all until the second round in the afternoon, they had like an hour and a half. Síomha said they should get lunch quick, which...sure, Violet guessed, why not. She wasn't super hungry, but maybe that was just because of feeling all tense from the people all around and nervous about the fights...and also she had a lot for dinner the last couple nights...

Only a short walk from the theatre, in the same little magical patch of the town, was a little market square thing with shops and pubs and stuff around, and that was a church, with the big cross up in the air and everything. Síomha said most people were normal Christians here, it was more popular than in Britain. They were even properly Catholic here, Síomha thought, which made Violet giggle for some reason — she didn't know why, the thought of mages being "proper Catholics" was just silly to her. (Not that Violet could say what the difference between Catholics and Anglicans even was, she just thought it was funny.) It was lunch time, there were kind of a lot of people around, but Síomha found a sandwich shop with an open outside table, which was good, it was pretty crowded inside.

There was a lot of stuff on the menu that Violet didn't really know what it was, and Síomha didn't so much either — Mum knew enough German to tell them what everything was, and the menu was also in French, but Síomha didn't know food names enough. But the kids' menu had what she thought was just a sausage roll? When the waitress lady brought it, Violet saw it was actually a sandwich, which was fine. It made it really easy to pick out the onions they put on it, for some reason — they weren't cooked, still all white and crunchy, ew. Oh no, it was fine! the sauce was some herby butter with something, maybe mustard? it was fine, the waitress lady didn't need to take it back, she'd just give Síomha the onions...

Síomha got the breaded and fried thing that Violet remembered was called schnitzel, and there was also beans and stuff, Violet just tossed her onions into Síomha's beans. They almost belonged there. And, Síomha had gotten another thing to share, which was, like, if someone took a couple crepes and shredded them into pieces, and mixed them with some baked apple stuff, and dusted it all with powdered sugar, which looked good, but...

Violet was starting to get that eating too much just came with the travel holiday thing. She guessed her sandwich wasn't super big or anything, but still...

They would be able to meet the duellist people later, if Violet wanted to get a closer look. Also there were magazines and stuff, which would have pictures — it'd be a while until they had anything from this thing, so it wouldn't be the same people, but there was a whole style to the duelling thing, so it'd still be interesting. They should be able to find one at a newsstand, if Violet wanted to check on their way back.

Yeah, Síomha knew a little bit about professional duelling — she didn't do any duelling herself, but duelling and quidditch were really the only sports magic people had. She used to follow it a bit when she was in academy — not the primary programme Violet was starting at soon, she meant the secondary thing, she'd been a teenager — she'd had a few favourite duellists whose matches she always tried to catch on the radio if she could, would talk about it with some of her friends. They used to argue about who would beat who and stuff and would have listening parties and make bets when their favourite people were playing each other, reminding Violet very much of things she'd heard about people who followed football. She guessed it was sort of the same thing for mages, so that made sense. If Síomha could have travelled around to duelling events and stuff, that was the sort of thing she might have done anyway, she never got to do this sort of thing before. Unless they were in Britain, anyway, and most of the people she liked never came to Britain...

...And they were back at the theatre. The duellists, Violet meant. Síomha said, earlier, that between rounds they would be walking around and hanging out (if they weren't still with the healers), the audience would get to meet them and stuff. Answer questions and give out pictures and signatures, you know, because people got that way about duellists. Violet didn't think anyone here was anyone Síomha followed, she hadn't said anything.

But Síomha couldn't do that stuff, because she had to look after Violet.

Violet felt herself sinking into her chair, picked at the crust of her sandwich bun. Síomha was still talking about duelling stuff, but Violet wasn't really listening, staring down at her plate and trying to stop herself from wiggling. She noticed she did that when she was nervous — or, Mum pointed it out, but. When there was a pause in the talking, she said, "I'm sorry."

She wasn't looking, but she saw Síomha looking at her — she just hunched further in her chair, her chest getting all tight and bluh. "What for?"

It was a little hard to talk, her throat clenching and her neck itching and her breath not cooperating, it took a few seconds to find her voice. "You like d-d-duelling stuff, and you have to w-w-wuh-w—" She cut herself off, pouting down at her plate. Not being able to talk right was still frustrating, she hated it, and ugh, her eyes were stinging now, stupid...

"Oh no, a mhuirneach, I'm not— Here now..." Síomha stared moving, Violet twitched, looked up. She was on her feet, picked up her chair, and she moved it over to Violet's side of the table, setting it down right next to hers. It wasn't a very big table, there probably wouldn't be room for a plate in front of her. One hand came up, Violet ducked down, but Síomha just brushed some of her hair back out of the way, before wrapping one arm around her, Síomha sitting close up against her, all warm and soft.

Violet took a deep breath (smelling a little bit like the flowery stuff Síomha used in her hair), trying to calm down. She didn't know why she went so tense, she... Well, no, at some level, she still thought she was going to be punished for no reason when bad things happened. She felt she was doing a bad thing, by keeping Síomha away from things she might want to do more, so part of her thought she was about to be in trouble, even when it didn't really make sense. Not that she thought Síomha was going to hurt her even if she did do a bad thing, sometimes her brain just did that, Shannon said it might take a long time for it to stop...

"Don't think like that okay. I never get to do stuff like this, if Cassie didn't invite me along I might never have stepped foot in this country even once in my life." Síomha didn't say that she was too poor to travel much, but Violet knew that was what she meant. "And looking after you isn't some horrible chore. I'm having a good time. Aren't you having a good time? We went to a castle on top of a mountain yesterday, wasn't that cool?"

"...That w-w-was pretty cool. Pretty."

"Yeah, we don't have mountains like that in Britain, do we? Certainly not in Ireland." Síomha said in Ireland in Gealic, and kept going, not really seeming to notice that she switched languages — Violet mostly still understood, it was okay. "If I didn't want to come with, I could have said no when your mum asked me. I'm here because I want to be. So don't you go thinking you're keeping me from doing something else I might like to do better, I chose to be here at this table with you. Okay?"

That was a weird thought, honestly, Violet almost wasn't sure at first if she understood the Gaelic right. Didn't seem like the kind of thing a grown-up would do, agree to go babysitting someone else's kid while there was famous person stuff they liked going on not so far away. But then, when Mum had other stuff to do, a lot of times it was Síomha staying home with Violet while she was gone — or Julie, sometimes — and Violet was pretty sure she didn't have to do that. And she was more fun than Julie, when she didn't have homework to do would make a point of messing around and playing games and stuff, or even just sitting up in her room drawing and joking around...

Yeah, Violet didn't really get it, but when she thought about it, she didn't think Síomha was lying just to make her feel better. It made more sense if she was telling the truth.

She would try not to feel bad about it then — no promises, because her brain did stupid things sometimes (and she knew that, so it was a stupid promise to make because of fairy magic), but she would try to remember. For next time. Still staring down at her plate, Síomha's attention feeling too heavy to look up, Violet nodded. "Okay."

"Good. Is this okay?" she asked, the arm around Violet squeezing a little.

She nodded again. "Hugs are nice. I'll say if it's a bad time." That was a thing Shannon was serious about, personal space and stuff — to say if something's bothering her, you know. Which was hard to do, because if Violet was having a bad mood it was also extra hard to talk, so she couldn't tell someone that, but she was trying to remember.

"Okay. I'll tell you a little secret," Síomha muttered, her voice dropping, leaning closer to Violet. (She was very warm, and smelled a little like roses.) She must have noticed she was talking in Gaelic by accident, because she switched back to English again. "I might have bragged to some of my old school friends about this trip. That I'm dating a professional duellist, and I'm going all the way to Austria for a tournament with her and her daughter, just the cutest little girl. They were very jealous. But that wasn't a very classy thing to do, and your mum is too fancy for me, so it'll just be our secret. Okay?"

The stupid urge to cry was gone, and instead Violet felt a giggle bubble at the back of her throat. Sometimes Síomha was very silly. "Okay. I won't tell, I p-promise."

"Good, then. Hold on, let me just..." Síomha drew her wand, her plate and mug of something (beer or cider maybe?) floating across the table where she could reach them. A kind of funny angle, the right half of Síomha's body past the corner, but close enough. "There we go. So, I don't think our portkey out is until next afternoon — was there anything you wanted to check out while we're still here?"

For the rest of the conversation, talking about things in town and duelling and school — Síomha had gone to an Ollscoil through primary and secondary, and her mastery thing was even with them too, so she was kind of still going there, but she didn't have classes there all the time — Síomha didn't move, her chair still stuck close to Violet's and her arm loose and soft around her. But that was fine, Violet didn't mind. Hugs were nice, and Síomha was warm, and also she smelled good, which seemed kind of creepy, but it was fine if Violet didn't say it out loud.

The whole time, she kept sneaking glances up at Síomha's face, glancing back down whenever she was caught, slowly picking away at the apple-crepe-thing. She had the feeling Síomha thought she was acting kind of funny, but she didn't say anything about it, so they could both pretend it was nothing.

(The Dursleys were almost ten months away now, and Violet still almost couldn't believe that she got so lucky. It didn't quite feel real, sometimes.)

(Shannon said that might take a while to stop too — but it wasn't really a bad feeling, so Violet was okay with waiting.)

(She'd wait as long as she had to for this to feel normal.)

፠

Mum ended up winning the tournament, because of course she did, she was super scary when she wanted to be. There was prize money, but Mum was stupid wealthy, Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and all that, so she didn't keep it — she split it in half, dividing one half up between the other people in the tournament, and the other half going to a charity in Austria. Mum actually had Violet pick which one, from a short list of options she came up with. One of them, for complicated reasons Violet didn't understand, magic Austria got a lot of refugees, mostly from northern Italy or Hungary (most were Romanians and Bulgarians, but they got here coming through Hungary), and the government took care of most of the basic stuff for everyone, as much as they could, but extra stuff was more of a problem.

One of the thingies, apprentice seamsters and jewellers and stuff would go to the refugee villages and make some free stuff for people there, so they had better clothes than whatever they brought with them, sometimes doing the same thing for poor neighbourhoods too, which seemed really nice! The work counted for their apprenticeship stuff, but they needed to pay for the supplies on their own, which was what the money was for, and when they had the money for it when they came back with finished stuff they'd kind of have a little block party with food and stuff, yeah, that seemed like a really nice thing to do, that was Violet's favourite.

Violet remembered how the Starlighters could be about Mum just buying them things, so maybe that wasn't the best thing to do, necessarily? But it wasn't like Mum wanted the prize money anyway, so oh well.

They came back a few days after they left, Violet flopping straight into the sofa. Mum sat down with her, and Violet snuggled into her side — tired, but in a comfortable sort of way. Feeling all warm and soft, relaxing a little at the familiar smell of home, Violet fell asleep right there on the sofa. She was pretty sure Mum fell asleep too, she didn't wake Violet up until it was time for dinner. A little early, actually, but they were still on Austria time...what did they have things for that was easy, Violet was feeling lazy...

(The trip to Austria had been fun, but it was still good to be home.)

---

Wooooooo...

This chapter was written pretty much entirely in the middle of the night, so you guys will have to tell me how it turned out. Feels off to me, but what do I know.

Next chapter is first day of school first day of school yaaaay~! I'm sure that'll go fine.