It didn't take very long after Síomha had left for the lab at the guildhouse before Cassie found herself at a loss, with absolutely no idea what to do with herself.
September had been unexpectedly rough on her so far — though, honestly, she was getting the feeling that the only person surprised by it was Cassie herself. She wasn't obvious about it, perhaps trying to avoid wounding Cassie's pride, but Síomha had seemingly made a point of keeping her company as much as possible over the last week. That was relatively easy to do, since Síomha had moved in, but they did both have responsibilities, which might pull them away now and again. There'd been a Wizengamot session Cassie couldn't miss on Thursday — Síomha could have tagged along, of course, but she could still be very uncomfortable in certain circles, Cassie wasn't about to force her to come — and Síomha sometimes had alchemy work to do. In particular, she'd started getting a fair number of orders for those table tennis sets of hers, already burned through the small stock she'd stashed away before posting the first advertisement. That was what she was doing now, the guildhouse had lab space which could handle batches of much larger volume than what Síomha could finagle at home — Cassie could have set her up somewhere in Ancient House, but she preferred to do it on her own.
She had asked, after Síomha had refused a suggestion to use the Black accounts to purchase certain equipment, and apparently Síomha planned to use the proceeds from the table tennis sets, plus whatever other gold she could scrounge up from one job or another, to pay for her clothes and jewellery and such for the wedding. It had occurred to Cassie to argue — dress appropriate for such a formal event as the marriage of a Lady of the Wizengamot would be trivial for her, but she was certain Síomha had never spent that kind of money even once in her life — but she swallowed the words before she could say something inadvisable. In the circles she'd grown up, it would be inappropriate for a bride's dress to be provided for by the family she was marrying into, humiliating, she assumed the commons must have a similar feeling. She didn't actually know for certain, but how awkward Síomha had seemed about it was a good hint.
Of course, that was supposed to be the responsibility of the bride's family, but Síomha probably had better odds of scraping together the necessary coin than the rest of her family combined. If it looked like she was getting nervous about getting the money in time, Cassie might call in a few favours to land her some expensive contracts — ideally, without Síomha realising she was pulling strings — but it was probably better to hold off on that until and unless it seemed necessary. Cassie suspected that arranging for Síomha to get the money she needed would be almost as embarrassing as just giving it to her.
(Cassie was mostly accustomed to navigating the complicated social politics that came with socialising with commoners, but marrying one was much more delicate, at times.)
So, when Síomha had work to do, Cassie did her best not to get in the way. By the time Síomha had gotten out of bed this morning, she'd already had breakfast ready — she didn't sleep much, hadn't since the 70s at least, she was normally up a couple hours before Síomha. She'd mistakenly made too much the first couple days, accustomed to cooking for three, but she'd adjusted by now. Síomha had lingered over coffee long enough to read some of the paper, but she'd been through the floo well before nine. Leaving Cassie alone at home, with nothing to do.
She'd gotten the very clear feeling that people had been trying to keep her occupied this last week. There was Síomha, of course, but she'd also heard from various old friends and relatives, more frequently than she would ordinarily expect in such a brief span of time. She'd already been goaded into tea with Narcissa once, and they had a second one scheduled for tomorrow — a more private one, with fewer of Cissa's irritating lady friends, Cassie had insisted. (She realised Cissa was unhappy having Draco away at Hogwarts, but Cassie could only tolerate so much catty aristocratic gossipping.) She'd gotten letters from Julie, and Mark, even Rufus had dropped by briefly for drinks once, on Saturday Amy had invited her to lunch in Old Town — they'd ended up eating in Amy's office, when it turned out that she couldn't get properly away — Annie and Pius and Nate and Ceri...
She supposed they thought they were being subtle.
Sorcha had even come through the floo early one afternoon, unannounced. Her unofficial mother-in-law seemingly hadn't had any plans in mind when she'd turned up, an innocent spur-of-the-moment social visit — Cassie didn't buy it, of course, Sorcha was just too tactful to admit she was worried about her. They'd ended up having tea with some of the neighbour women, chatting about whatever, later in the afternoon Aoife and Críostoir joining them for dinner. Síomha had been very bemused to come home to find Cassie and her mother in the kitchen splitting jobs, her younger brother and sister sitting at the counter with glasses of wine trading banter, Aoife had burst into breathless giggles at the look on her face.
(Personally, she'd decided to simply feel relieved that a fair fraction of Síomha's family liked her, and had turned out generally supportive, but she understood how coming home to that might be very odd for Síomha.)
But, as much as people were seemingly trying to keep her occupied, there couldn't be people around to distract her all the time. And Cassie had taken over as Lady of the Family long enough ago that she'd already finished setting things up to run day to day without much work from her — which required three separate secretaries to manage different aspects of the House's interests (only one retained from Archie's time), but still. There was some reading she could do for an upcoming Wizengamot session, she guessed, but she couldn't find the motivation to deal with that tedious shite at the moment.
So instead she sat at the kitchen counter, her hands idly fidgeting with pages of the morning paper. Not truly taking anything in, staring blankly at the words, but neither with any better idea of what to do with herself, at a loss.
She hadn't truly realised how much of her day-to-day revolved around Violet until, suddenly, she wasn't here.
As much as she could be a bit oblivious sometimes, she wasn't a complete idiot — she'd seen enough of her cousins and friends turn peculiarly melancholy at their children leaving for academy, or marrying and leaving the household, to recognise it when it happened to her. It didn't even surprise her that much, she probably should have expected it would...be an adjustment. After all, she'd been on the cusp of giving up and moving on when Violet had pulled her back and anchored her here, in this life. She'd fully expected she was done with Cassiopeia Black, there'd been nothing left here for her, she...
To be honest, she wasn't entirely certain who Cassie, the person she was now, she didn't know what that looked like without Violet around. It'd only been a few years, this still felt sort of new to her, something she was actively feeling out — new enough she still took herself by surprise now and then, like when she'd impulsively asked Síomha to stay. And she'd never been this new person without needing to, well, do mum stuff. Without that demand on her attention and on her time, well, it was really no surprise that she was a little out of sorts.
...
She might go back to study for a Mastery. She'd never bothered as Cassiopeia — she went straight into the Aurors after academy, and in the decades since she'd never been particularly interested. But it had occurred to her now and then, niggling at the back of her mind, over the last several years. (Since Síomha had started her own Mastery study, more or less.) She was less confident about what she'd want to go into, though. A few times, she'd thought it might be interesting to study Transfiguration, if only to learn how to better articulate why everyone else was wrong, but she doubted she'd be able to sustain herself through a Mastery out of spite alone — especially as frustrating as she remembered Transfiguration as normal people understood it to be. History, perhaps? The Mastery programme at an Ollscoil did have History classes, but to be recognised as a Master only required publishing original work that reached a certain level of respectability, which was both simple and complicated, in a way...
Hell, she might think about going into muggle university, that might be interesting. She'd need to fake the qualifications necessary, of course, but as long as she went into a field that didn't take too much previous knowledge from their equivalent of academy, that should be fine...
Yeah. Yeah, she'd think about it.
Where would she even go to get the appropriate paperwork for that? Would that be Education or International Cooperation? It was normally the Office of Muggle Affairs in the DIC that arranged identification and relevant qualifications and the like for mages who wished to interact with the muggle world...but these would be specifically educational qualifications, which might be handled by the DE instead. Though, she would have to redo her muggle identification regardless — she did have documentation around, somewhere, but muggles would think she seemed far too young for that identity. She'd likely have to ask Amy, or perhaps Mark's cousin Laura, wasn't she in DIC these days...?
Lost in her thoughts, her wandering eyes found their way to the opinion section. Cassie lurched into movement, tipping off her stool and walking over to poke through the cabinets — it wasn't as though she had any particular plans, but anything was better than working herself up over the trash printed in today's Prophet.
Some time later — she wasn't exactly keeping an eye on the clock, but Síomha must have been gone for hours by now — the back door clicked open. "Hello, Cassie. Taking visitors today?"
"Oh sure, come on in. Go ahead and grab yourself a stool if you like, I'm kind of in the middle of this..."
"I can see that." Róisín left the door open behind her (it was a relatively nice sunny day), wide eyes tracking over the kitchen counters. "Have a party coming up I don't know about?"
Cassie gave her a somewhat sheepish shrug. "I figured baking was a more productive use of my time than plotting a method to burn down the offices of the Daily Prophet without getting caught."
"Ah..." Róisín eyed the paper spread out over the kitchen island, half-hidden under a variety of mixing bowls and packages and jars of ingredients and trays of moulded dough or finished products. "I don't read the Prophet, but I think I can guess what set you off." That wasn't really a surprise, practically nobody around here read the Prophet — they didn't put out a Gaelic edition, and were focussed on segments of society Gaelic commoners didn't tend to have much to do with. "I take it some people have had some unkind words for our darling Willow?"
"Mm, you could say that." It'd been a bit over a week since the truth of Violet's identity had been revealed in Witch Weekly, and Cassie would say the response so far had been...mixed. The reception here at home had been pretty positive, thankfully. After Violet had told a few of her friends, it'd already spread to most of the square by the time the news had come out, but they'd been tactful enough to not talk about it openly until it was public knowledge — or, the day after, when an announcement about it had been in the Gaelic edition of the Herald. Her feeling was that some people were somewhat uncomfortable with the gender angle, but generally, Cassie hadn't really heard much negative about it, some even seeming a bit tickled to learn that they'd had the 'Boy' Who Lived's as a neighbour all this time.
Violet's popularity with other children could often be somewhat spotty, thanks to some of her peculiarities, but Cassie had noticed that she tended to be far more consistently well-liked by adults. Part of it, she thought, was that Violet was unfailingly polite — children could be such little bastards sometimes — but it certainly didn't hurt that she was such a sweet adorable little thing. These were just initial thoughts, but the impression she had was that people who'd already known Violet were more likely to be charitable about them having hidden her identity for so long, the adults more than the children, some of the more stubbornly immature of whom decided to take being lied to personally.
(Though the jealousy from other children was actually less than Cassie had expected. It probably helped that it was something of a lateral move — Harry Potter might be wealthy and famous, but Violet Black was also wealthy and famous, if the latter somewhat less so, and even fortunate enough to be born a metamorph, so it truly didn't make that much difference.)
The reception from people who hadn't already known Violet, from the public at large, was far more ambiguous. Cassie had immediately gotten a flurry of letters or unannounced visits through the floo from various friends or associates, with a mix of questions or accusations — more suspicious of Cassie than Violet, to be fair, so she guessed that was something. As she might have expected, several of them from Light families were a bit hung up on Violet choosing to be a girl, she'd been accused by multiple people of trying to force it on her, for some unfathomable reason. Well, no, not entirely unfathomable — she could see how it might be politically advantageous to someone particularly ruthless for the final remaining heir to a House as wealthy as the Potters to be female — but it'd still been very confusing and frustrating.
If someone was blaming her for something, she'd prefer to at least understand what she was being accused of, thanks ever so.
Both Black and Potter elves had reported — Nola passing along the message from Menae, and Cediny telling her directly — that they'd both seen a sharp uptick of post being caught by their filtering wards. That didn't necessarily mean anything in Violet's case, since Cassie had continued Albus's tactic of redirecting anyone who hadn't been given prior approval to write her, but Cassie's wards should only catch anything that was hexed or poisoned...though the box letters from unknown senders were sent to was far more full of hate-mail than usual. (There'd been a fair amount ever since the announcement of the betrothal, on top of the steady trickle dating back to the war, she'd already been in the habit of ignoring it.) She'd flipped through them out of curiosity, hadn't bothered reading the vast majority — some of hers had some pretty serious curses on them, but Violet's were far milder, mostly nuisance jinxes, contact potions that might make the victim quite ill, but not permanently damaging. It seemed that even the people motivated enough to send trapped letters to a small child over the crime of not turning out how they'd imagined weren't quite deranged enough to wish to murder her.
She'd intended to only check over the hexes and poisons used, to get a feeling for the degree of threat Violet was under — Cassie herself wasn't actually threatened, of course, regardless of the lethality of the traps on her letters — but she hadn't been able to help herself, had ended up reading through some of them. Sometimes she forgot how vicious people could be. She couldn't imagine summoning this sort of vitriol for an eleven-year-old girl, and over something so superficial as choosing not to be a boy any longer, or cooperating with the use of the name Black...
Apparently, some felt that 'Harry' shouldn't have 'betrayed' 'his' parents by letting 'himself' be taken in by the Blacks. Cassie wasn't sure how these people expected a seven-year-old child to exercise that much control over their own life, or how living with the Blacks was any kind of betrayal, exactly. Honestly now, the piece in Witch Weekly had mentioned that Violet's grandmother had been Cassie's baby sister — if one excluded the Delacours, which these Light types almost certainly would, she was the closest living magical relative Violet had — and that she'd fought with the Order back in the war. Very silly.
Some of the more threatening-sounding letters had been forwarded on to the DLE. Not that Amy could actually do anything about them in the short term, but they could be held to be used as evidence to help track down the sender should something actually dangerous be sent to Violet in future. There were probably more she would have forwarded, but Síomha had dragged her away from the pile eventually, before she got angry enough to decide to do something inadvisable.
She'd been keeping an eye on the opinion pages in the Prophet and the Herald (in all languages) — they weren't the best gauge of public opinion, since the writers tended to come from only very particular cross-sections of society, varying somewhat by paper and language, but it was better than nothing. And it was very mixed. There had been some largely positive pieces, spinning off of one part or another of the Witch Weekly feature, some comparing the image of the 'Boy' Who Lived which had developed in the popular consciousness with the actual person and coming to the opinion that they preferred the reality. The character of 'Harry Potter' sometimes came off as something of a silly storybook hero for children, but the Witch Weekly feature had communicated a far more life-like impression, and appropriately childish in a way the idea of 'him' didn't tend to be.
Two pieces in particular she'd rather appreciated. One, written by a Rosier man Cassie wasn't familiar with, had only been tangentially related to the revelations — he'd written of the history of marriage laws where couples of the same gender were concerned, and the implications they had for metamorphs or those who wished to permanently switch sex, or the rare case where someone was born with ambiguous physical traits. He'd pointed out that Violet was legally male, which may lead to issues when she was old enough, and discussed several other personal stories he was familiar with (including a passing mention of Cassie and Síomha), building up to the suggestion that certain laws were overdue for reform, perhaps along the lines of the family codes of Sicily or Bohemia. (It might have been more politic to mention less communalist-friendly governments, but oh well, Rosier's heart was in the right place.) A second — she hadn't recognised the name of the author, but she claimed to be a school friend of Lily's — had written of how relieved she was that Cassie seemingly hadn't been giving Violet special training, as rumours had often suggested Albus was, but had instead allowed Violet to have a relatively normal childhood. She thought that Lily and James, after going straight out of academy into a war which had ultimately taken their lives, would certainly not have wanted their only child to be raised a little soldier — she'd been relieved to tears when she'd read of the cheerful, artistic, silly child Violet had turned out to be, the only "training" she was getting under a master painter, now that was far better, she was certain Lily and James would have been satisfied with this.
That one had come in just yesterday, she'd clipped it out and sent it along to Violet — given how disappointed Cissa suspected some of the other children were over the 'Boy' Who Lived story turning out to be a myth, she had a feeling Violet might like to see it.
There were, of course, negative reactions, more often than not directed more at Cassie than Violet herself. This wasn't really a surprise, when it came down to it — it didn't escape her notice that the ones more focussed on her were largely written by members of Noble Houses (or close associates) which happened to be part of opposing political factions, the Light or Ars Brittania. Given the cultural background involved, directly targeting Violet might not be advantageous, but they were still trying to wring a scandal out of the revelation to strip away some of Ars Publica's political capital. And they weren't being subtle about it at times either, some of the pieces were very transparent, almost with an aura of desperation about them.
The Light had been in a dominant position ever since the aftermath of the Revolution, but the margin by which they controlled the Wizengamot had slowly slipped ever since, holding onto a shaky majority in coalition with the more light-leaning members of Ars Publica and Common Fate, by the tips of their fingers. The cultural weight of a figure such as the 'Boy' Who Lived, who many had anticipated would belong to the Light, well, losing something like that was no small matter. Violet 'switching sides' could very easily restore the legitimacy the Dark had lost earlier this century, could put the final nails in the coffin of Light rule — the incident where Violet had switched proxies and left the Light for Common Fate was enough of a hit to begin with, but for her to be so closely associated with the Dark proper? No, that was an even greater threat, and must be addressed immediately.
The ones directing their vitriol at Cassie, she didn't particularly mind those. She'd been frustrating and offending her 'peers' since at least the age of fourteen, she was entirely numbed to it by now — and besides, none of the insults were even really personal, she'd had worse. The somewhat rarer attacks on Violet, those bothered her more. Even if it was hidden in the form of an attack on Cassie.
One of the pieces printed today had been especially bad: Edward Ainsley seemed to believe that 'Harry' being so "disturbed" as to present 'himself' as 'he' did was obvious proof that 'he' was being terribly mistreated, and must be removed to a suitable, respectable (read: Light) family as soon as possible, for 'his' own good. Going black with rage, she'd been up with her wand in hand, a few steps away from the counter before Síomha had caught her arm, and reminded her that murdering the cousin of a Lord of the Wizengamot was probably a bad idea. It'd taken her a good ten minutes to calm down enough to go back to reading the paper, but by that time she truly hadn't the stomach for it anymore, the text half-hidden by a mental image of the Prophet offices in Charing on fire.
Síomha wasn't here to stop her from doing something stupid anymore — hence, baking.
Róisín went poking over the papers, but gave up quickly, she didn't speak English very well anyway. "I hope Willow doesn't pay too much mind to this sort of thing."
"She doesn't read the papers." Witch Weekly, sometimes, and she did listen to the radio, but mostly fictional programmes. Cassie had tried to get Violet at least minimally interested in public affairs, as she was a Lady of the Wizengamot herself and couldn't remain childishly ignorant forever, but she hadn't pushed when it'd become clear Violet found it all very tedious. She'd never felt more relieved to have failed at something than she did now.
"That is something, at least. Ah, I meant to ask, Lasairín was wondering if she can write to Willow at school. That is, if there is anything out of the ordinary she need do? And I guess letters sent to Willow by this name will still find her."
"They should." Owls instinctively divined the location of the recipient, using the sender's impression of them as a focus — one could correspond through a pseudonym without any difficulty, there shouldn't be any issue addressing a letter to Violet with Sailí. Of course, Cassie was pretty sure Lasairín had done that before, when they'd been overseas, but she supposed she couldn't necessarily expect the girl or her mother to understand the mechanics well enough to know that nothing relevant had changed. "Ask your girl to remind mine to write me, if you would. I was expecting a letter yesterday, but it never came."
"I imagine the first week at a new school can be quite exciting, it must have slipped her mind. I'm sure she'll get around to it."
"Oh, I'm not worried, just, you know." She shrugged.
Róisín gave her a crooked sort of smile, made a little wavering hum. "Anyway, we were sitting down to tea, I came to ask if you wanted to join us. But I see you're busy here..."
She let out a long, breathy sigh, her eyes tipping up to the ceiling for the second. "No, I could probably use the distraction — besides, I've got snacks to contribute now, don't I?"
"That you do! Handy, that."
"Mm. Go ahead and look over all this, pick whatever — I'm not really saving any of it for anything. Just let me get this under stasis quick..."
Cassie must have been occupying herself in the kitchen for quite some time, a few hours at least — the younger children were out for their post-lunch playtime, to burn off some of their energy before attempting to get them down for a nap. Carrying a couple trays of sweetbread and biscuits, she and Róisín joined a few of the square's mothers sitting at a table out on the grass. In addition to Róisín, today there were Ómra (little Síomha's mother) and Máighréad (Róisín's husband's brother's wife and Éimhín's mother) and Éimhear (Damhnait's stepmother), and then Sadhbh and Caoilinn, who had little ones around but who Cassie didn't know as well. Caoilinn and her husband had actually moved in after she and Violet had, swapped with an older couple of the same family — not unusual, Cassie understood this sort of living arrangement was considered ideal for couples with young children, people rotated in and out of the houses now and then.
If nothing else, the constant stream of gossip, interrupted now and then by one of the children running over for whatever reason, worked as a good distraction from her thoughts.
They'd finished their tea, the children having torn through an extra tray of biscuits Cassie had dipped back to get for them — she was well aware that the younger children mostly thought of her as the one who would randomly give them sweets, which was a reputation she was perfectly happy with — had been hanging around chatting for maybe an hour before an owl came swooping down into the courtyard. She was a little surprised when it flew right over to land on the back of her chair, she'd assumed it was for someone else. She didn't recognise the bird, a perfectly ordinary-looking light barn owl, but for a letter to come straight to her it must be someone who had an exception in her redirection wards, and there really weren't very many of those.
"I think that's for you," Caoilinn said, unnecessarily.
"It must be," Cassie agreed, frowning over her shoulder at the bird. "I don't recognise it, though, I can't imagine who it's from."
Róisín said, "Maybe Willow? You did say you were expecting a letter yesterday, maybe she was delayed."
"Oh! You're right, it must be a Hogwarts owl." Twisting around at a somewhat awkward angle — the thing could have picked a better place to land than the back of her chair — Cassie managed to detach the letter from its leg. It was fluttering off a moment later, apparently not hungry or thirsty enough to try to wheedle something out of her. "This is Willow's handwriting," she said with a flap of the envelope, made from a carefully-folded piece of paper, "I'd prefer to read it right away. If you'll excuse me." There were some chirps and coos of agreement from the other women, before they went back to gossipping, Cassie tuned them out so she could focus on the letter.
It'd obviously been written in multiple sessions — the handwriting through the first few paragraphs was rather plain and blocky, the text feeling almost terse by Violet's standards, but then it abruptly switched to a far more curly, flowing hand, the letter's phrasing more energetic and with more asides. (Violet truly had very fine handwriting for an eleven-year-old, but she supposed that was to be expected.) She would have been able to figure it out on her own, but the silly girl actually said as much. A single line at the end of the blocky introduction stated only that she was sleepy and was going to bed now, the next paragraph opening with I'm back, good morning! which was, just, painfully adorable, this girl sometimes...
...This wasn't so bad, then. Reading between the lines, Cassie got the impression that the reception at Hogwarts had also been mixed...though it was honestly hard to tell whether Violet was consciously aware of any hostility toward her. There was a mention, for example, of a time Fay Dunbar intervened when another girl was being "weird and mean," but there was no explanation of what was meant by "weird and mean," or even the name of the "weird and mean" girl in question. She also mentioned that Draco had been glaring at her — Cassie got the impression Violet was feeling guilty over her little prank, which, maybe she should have suggested she think that through more... — and that her shiny new cousin Ron — Cedrella's grandson by his father and Lucretia's by his mother, if Cassie remembered correctly, Violet and Ronald should be double-third cousins — suddenly didn't want to be friends anymore. There were a couple references to people being "awkward" about her not being a boy, but it wasn't lingered on, passed over.
Any hints of the negative reception were honestly very subtle, its existence more hinted at by how Violet spoke of the positive reception. See Fay Dunbar's intervention with the nameless girl, or most of her old friends and her new roommates hardly seeming to give a second thought to or quickly getting over the gender question — presented in comparison to nothing, but framed such to imply there was something there, unmentioned. It was hard to say whether Violet herself hardly noticed any hostility, or was tactically failing to mention it so as to not worry Cassie and Síomha.
Or, she supposed, any negative reaction Violet was faced with simply didn't stick, failing to sour her mood badly enough to bother writing about it at the end of the week. That sounded quite like Violet, in fact. She did have her melancholy moods, now and then, but when she wasn't on a downswing, as resolutely sweet and sunny as that girl could be, Cassie wouldn't be surprised if any negativity simply didn't bother her that much.
Her uncertainty over exactly which possibility this was did leave Cassie feeling somewhat unsettled. She was tentatively relieved...but it was still early, anything could happen in the weeks and months to come.
Though that was a very small part of the letter, truly — most of it was Violet babbling off about her friends, old and new, and about the Castle and the professors and classes. It did sound as though Violet might be academically overprepared, due to her lessons at craft school and with Cassie, but that was for the best. She might be somewhat bored in class, but Cassie would rather she have the extra energy to spare for her art and for socialising. And Violet did have her bad moods, of course, it was better she be ahead in case she came to have difficulty at some point in the future.
It did seem she was well, the letter generally reassuring. Cassie had maybe been somewhat unnecessarily paranoid — not being able to be there, just in case, was...uncomfortable.
Curiously, there was a folded-up slip of paper included with the letter, for Síomha's eyes alone (no peeking!). She was curious what that was about, but she obeyed the request not to look, when she was done reading the letter tucked the note back into the envelope with the rest.
"So how is Willow doing up north?" Éimhear asked, once Cassie had finished reading.
"She's all right." Leaning back limp in her chair, she let her eyes fall closed, breathed out a long, heavy sigh. "Her usual cheerful silly self, you know how she is."
"Colourful little ball of sunshine, that one."
"Mm. It doesn't sound like anyone's giving her too hard of a time over the reveal, so."
"But still you worry," Máighréad said, a little bit of a teasing lilt on her voice.
Cassie scoffed, rolling her (still closed) eyes. "Obviously. I might find an excuse to pop up to take her out to ice cream or something, next weekend or the one after..."
There was a little bit of good-natured ribbing at Cassie being, well, just a bit pathetic over Violet not being around — which she played along with, despite it being somewhat embarrassing. She was aware that these women almost certainly wouldn't speak to Lady Black this way, so she'd rather not draw their attention to it. (Sometimes, she liked being just Cassie.) Not that she had to tolerate it for long, they transitioned back to random chatter about whatever came to mind after a few minutes.
Before too much longer, it was time for the little ones to be put down for a nap. Cassie gathered up the emptied trays, set to levitate over her shoulder, with a few quick goodbyes and even a couple hugs — unexpected, she must be coming off even more pathetic than she'd realised — she slipped back into the kitchen. She spotted the paper still on the counter, half-hidden by bowls and pans and whatever else. A quick tap of her wand on the counter, everything lifting an inch off the surface, she whipped the newsprint out from under everything all at once, and then incinerated it with a flick of her wand — the neighbours and Violet's letter had managed to lift her into a less awful mood, she didn't want the Prophet to ruin it for her.
She'd hardly even finished wiping off and putting away the trays that'd been emptied over tea when the wards pinged, the floo roaring to life a second later. The wards didn't alert her to the person stepping through, which meant there was only one person it could be — Síomha stepped around the stairs a moment later, and then hitched to a stop, staring wide-eyed around the kitchen. "Choich... What happened in here?"
Cassie shrugged. "I may have gotten a little carried away. Did something come up?" Síomha seemed slightly flushed, pink at her cheeks and her throat, maybe a little out of breath.
"Oh, well." Her shoulders lifted in a little shrug, a sheepish smile on her lips. "I meant to hop back for lunch, but I...lost track of time."
If that was supposed to be subtle, Síomha wasn't doing a good job of it. "I'm not that delicate, you know — you can leave me alone for a few hours at a time."
"I'm sorry, delicate? I was just hoping you'd feed me. I mean, there is a sandwich shop right next door, but would you go to a place like that when you have you at home?"
"Sure," Cassie grumbled, rolling her eyes. "I'll get coffee started, then. I'm certain we can put together something from all this nervous baking I did..."
With the garlic bread she'd made — really just getting ahead on her baking for next week, it was normal to have a loaf of the stuff sitting around — it was pretty simple to get out the mushroom sauce and quick fry up some bacon for some pretty decent sandwiches. Not that Cassie really needed much, having already been grazing on pastries for the past couple hours — she made a few open-faced sandwiches, she only planned on having one, any that Síomha didn't polish off could be put under stasis and stored for whenever. While she was frying the bacon and brewing the coffee, Síomha read through the letter from Violet, commenting now and then.
Or, more often, asking questions — she hadn't gone to Hogwarts, so she wasn't certain how much of what Violet said about the school was normal. Cassie hadn't been paying that aspect of the letter much mind, but now that Síomha was drawing her attention to it, it did seem...off. Some of the things Dora had said about her time at academy had given her a feeling, but, well. She'd attended decades...fuck, going on seventy years ago, it wasn't unreasonable to expect that the school might have changed in that time. But she hadn't noticed how...potentially concerning some things were until Síomha pointed them out.
There were too few professors, for one. She hadn't really noticed until Síomha pointed out that Violet was referring to her teachers as the professor of whatever subject, and, when Cassie thought about it, the staff was smaller than she'd realised. It might be theoretically possible for a single professor to manage the entire class schedule, but they would be extremely busy, certainly didn't have any time outside of classes for their students. It did sound like the children were under less supervision than was entirely wise — there'd been more adults around in her time — but it sounded as though Sprout were delegating certain responsibilities to the prefects, which could work out, as long as the they took care with selection. Violet was in Hufflepuff, so this deficit might not affect her, but...
Of course, one of the more glaring issues that Síomha pointed out was actually something that hadn't changed since Cassie's time: Cuthbert Binns had been teaching when she'd been a student as well. There'd been multiple Professors of History back then — or, well, one senior professor, one junior professor, and a rotation of guest lecturers. (Bathilda Bagshot was probably the only notable figure, most of them had been unremarkable authors or researchers.) Binns had been the head of the department at the time, and already old by then, enough that the guest lecturers had been necessary to help him cover his class load. If he hadn't been such a highly-respected historian — Binns's work on human–goblin relations had been authoritative at the time, but had been superceded in the century and change since by more modern scholarship — he likely would have been prodded into retirement not long after Cassie finished academy.
But it turned out that they had the poor bastard still teaching after his death. That was ridiculous, ghosts simply weren't capable of teaching a class, much less in a constantly evolving field such as history. Honestly, Cassie had to wonder whether the Board weren't simply being cheap — after all, the dead couldn't agree to a legal contract, so there wouldn't be any need to pay him.
(She made a mental note to bring this up with someone on the Board later — hell, she could probably just pop down to Wiltshire and talk to Cissa and Lucy about it. Hogwarts keeping a ghost professor was simply unacceptable.)
Síomha had cleared a spot on the counter in front of the stools when she sat down, Cassie moved the sandwiches and the coffee over, swapped around the pans and the like to bring a tray of long, narrow cantuccini into reach. While stirring a bit of honey into her coffee, Síomha held up the slip of paper Violet had meant only for her, pinned between her pointer and middle finger. "Did you see this?"
"I was told no peeking, so, no."
"You're sweet. I think you should read it."
"All right." Cassie took the little slip of paper, once Síomha's hands were free she immediately grabbed one of the sandwiches. Apparently she was hungry — she had skipped lunch, and had probably been at work in that alchemy lab the whole time, so. Crunching on the end of a coffee-dipped cantuccino, Cassie spread the slip out on the table.
I noticed at the train that mum looked really sad, and, I was kind of worrying? Maybe this is bad to say, I wasn't sure if I should, but maybe try to keep an eye on mum, to make sure she doesn't start drinking too much again?
Don't tell her I'm thinking about it, please! I don't want her to be embarrassed.
Cassie let out a sharp huff of a sigh — she folded the slip closed again, running a finger back and forth along the seam a couple times. She really didn't know what to say about that. Finally, she muttered, "I didn't realise Violet knew — I stopped as soon as I took her in. And, she was so young, then..."
"Children can be perceptive," Síomha said, her flat and matter-of-fact tone only partly ruined by speaking around the sizeable bite of sandwich in her mouth.
"Mm." She didn't know how she felt about Violet worrying about her...or really what else to say just now. So she didn't say anything, falling into distracted silence, idly stirring her coffee with her cantuccino.
("Embarrassed" wasn't the word, exactly. Guilty?)
"Hey now," Síomha muttered, twisting in her stool to nudge Cassie's leg with her knee. "You haven't anything to be ashamed of. Violet's clever, it's no great shock she might have put it together — and who knows, she might have overheard something at some point. You've been well for years now, she just wants to make sure you're okay, since she can't see for herself while she's away at Hogwarts. All that note means is that you raised that girl right."
...Fair enough. She didn't know, it'd been pretty common when she was growing up for herself and her agemates to...not have particularly personal relationships with their parents — she honestly didn't know what her mother's personal life had been like, especially when she'd been Violet's age. That could be why this felt...weird, to her, like she'd done something wrong somehow.
Síomha was far more familiar with what healthy mother–child relationships looked like than Cassie was. She was satisfied with taking her word on this one.
Pointing at Síomha with her cantuccino, Cassie drawled, "I believe you mean we raised that girl right — you've been in her life practically as long as I have, and I sure didn't have any bloody clue what I was doing at first."
She grinned back at Cassie...caught in mid-bite again, a bit of bacon poking out between her lips. Cassie had to bite her tongue to avoid laughing at her.