It wasn't long before all Sirius wanted to know about was Violet.
There was a lot to catch him up on, having been out of the loop for nearly a decade, and a lot to do. Cassie had been home rather less than usual, spending far too much time in the Ministry, speaking with this or that person in the Department or Albus's office, occasionally getting wrangled into a meeting with people from Fudge's office, or Adjustment, or WAS, or even the health and commerce Departments for some unfathomable reason, dragged out to tea with this or that Lord or Lady. It'd been a few days, and there'd been a lot of meetings, but they'd mostly managed to keep the news quiet, so far — Cassie was certain it'd begun to leak by now, but it hadn't made it to the papers, at least.
Sirius's release from Azkaban wasn't even public knowledge yet, but Cassie could already see the cracks begin to show. Someone working for Amy had done some quick digging, trying to unearth the paper trail from the time, but that project was rather more daunting than it might sound on the surface — the Ministry went through a mountain of paper, and in the shake-up after the war a lot of the documentation from around that time had been misplaced, meddled with, or outright destroyed. The investigation into what had happened with Sirius would be used as an excuse to examine a wide range of the Ministry's actions in those days, and Amy and Fudge were both scrambling to get ahead of it, to hopefully direct the Wizengamot's attention in a way that would leave their interests mostly unscathed. That shouldn't be too difficult for Amy — she hadn't been in a position of influence then, at the time had essentially been working as Bagnold's right hand to try to clean up the Ministry — but Fudge was maybe in more trouble.
That quick digging Amy's people had done had immediately discovered that the senior officer from Adjustment at the scene in Edinburgh, whose name was on the report where they'd presented their conclusions about what had happened and how it'd be covered up to preserve Secrecy, just so happened to be Cornelius Fudge. Honestly, Cassie had forgotten Fudge had been in Adjustment at all, Aurors didn't interact with their office very often. After a quick conversation with Amy, they'd decided this would go more smoothly if they weren't working at cross purposes — so Cassie had quick gotten a hold of Lucy and they'd all gone to the Minister's office together to bring him in.
They hadn't needed to explain what was going on to Lucy by then, Cassie had immediately gone about informing their family the morning after she'd gotten Sirius out, while he'd still been in bed. Some of them had even visited, including both Andi and Cissa — Pollus was planning to come all the way from Greece to see his grandson over the weekend, which was good of him, she hadn't expected it. (Her single living sibling was thoroughly done with Britain, which was understandable.) Lucy was hardly thrilled about Sirius being released — they had something of a history, she understood — but Cissa's loyalty to the Family was a force to be reckoned with, and no good husband wished to anger his wife if it could be avoided. Besides, there was going to be significant political upheaval in the coming months, and if getting in at the beginning could help to turn it in a direction that wouldn't be harmful to himself, his family, and their interests, that was obviously the intelligent thing to do.
Fudge might not have listened to Cassie and Amy alone — they weren't the closest of allies, to put it mildly — but with Lucy in the room they'd been able to get him to sit down and listen. It'd been clear that the news had already made its way to the Minister somehow, he'd been on the edge of a panic, worried he was going to get eaten alive in the scandal. They'd gone over his Edinburgh report, asked him about anything he remembered about the people and events surrounding it that hadn't gotten into the report itself, if he had any notes still sitting around — luckily for him, they'd eventually determined that Fudge himself hadn't done anything wrong. His team had analysed the scene, packed up any relevant evidence for the Aurors, and fashioned it up as a freak gas explosion (with subtle hints that it might be related to the unrest on Ireland at the time), editing the memories of muggles as appropriate to back the story. Sirius had been sent to Azkaban on his orders, yes, but it wasn't his fault the DLE had never taken up their end and properly dealt with his case, Fudge had simply done his job.
The storm to come was going to focus on him for a time, though — with his name in such a place of prominence in events, there was simply no way to avoid that. But, if he helped them identify the people who were actually responsible, both for Sirius's inappropriate detention and various other missteps by the Ministry at the time, then they would do their best to cover him in turn. He could come out of it well, since most of this stuff was from before he was Minister anyway, but it could get messy, they'd see. If he did end up being sacked, the Blacks and Malfoys would make sure he and his family fell on their feet, somewhere. A promise from two of the wealthiest and most well-connected people in the country that he'd be taken care of suddenly found him much more cooperative, he'd given them promises to dig up as many old documents and rumours from the time as he could — and to run it by Amy, Lucy, and Cassie before doing anything reckless with what he might find.
(Amy had scowled a little bit through making the deal, unhappy with this sort of politics, but she hadn't protested aloud.)
They were starting to turn up leads, but it was a slow process so far. One of Amy's people had confirmed that the clerks at the DLE had sent a request to WAS to schedule a time for Sirius's treason trial...but it'd never appeared on the schedule, or even on the queue tables. Either someone at WAS had intentionally buried the request, or it had simply been lost in the chaos of those weeks and months immediately after the Dark Lord's defeat, they had no idea which it was yet. Amy suspected the former, and Cassie agreed — it was unlikely such a request would have been lost between the DLE and WAS, if the clerks had done their job it should have shown up on the queue tables, at least. They had people investigating, but quietly, hoping to avoid tipping off the culprit (or culprits) for as long as possible.
Of course, while digging up Fudge's report and the request from the DLE to schedule a trial, they'd already managed to identify several other similar cases that hadn't been properly dealt with. Some of them, they thought, had been intentionally buried by the Director at the time — Selwyn, taking over after Crouch had been forced to resign, had later been identified as a Death Eater sympathiser. There was no telling how much damage he'd done to the legal process and the records left behind in even his short tenure. The juiciest ones they'd found that Cassie was aware of were a witness interview that implicated Corban Yaxley as a Death Eater — his brother Robin was Marked and in Azkaban, but Corban had never been suspected — and a report from a skirmish with Night Briar elements that mentioned documents naming Augustus Travers as an important contact. (The documents themselves had disappeared from evidence, unfortunately.) Either one of those could explode into a massive scandal all by themselves, and Cassie only expected more to come out over the next days and weeks.
The matter to do with Sirius's exoneration was likely to be far simpler. They would have to wait for the phase of the investigation directly related to his imprisonment to conclude, but Amy didn't see any reason why they couldn't simply have a brief hearing in front of a Ministry tribunal and be done with it. She was having an assistant check a few things first, to make certain there wouldn't be any additional difficulties — along that thinking, she'd told Cassie to tell Sirius to specifically avoid telling anyone that he was an unregistered animagus, if only to prevent further complications. While Sirius had gotten through the interview at Azkaban without mentioning it, it would come up if and when they caught Pettigrew, but it would be better to avoid it until then if it could be helped. Amy intended to read Sirius in on their progress later today, hopefully she'd have good news.
While Cassie had been dealing with all of that nonsense, she'd also been doing whatever she could to speed along Sirius's recovery. Through a friend at the Greenwood, she'd managed to get in touch with a decent Healer who was willing to overlook that his patient was infamous traitor and mass-murderer Sirius Black, and wouldn't go blabbing about it either. (It helped that he was another Mistwalker, from the Lovegood commune.) Sirius's health was, not unexpectedly, quite dire — Felician had even suggested he be relocated to one of several sanctuaries throughout the Isles, where the character of the local magics would help to bolster his health, but unfortunately that wasn't possible so long as he was still in provisionary custody. The insufficient prison diet and the terrible conditions had resulted in some significant damage to practically every organ and tissue Sirius had, and his miserable state meant Felician couldn't simply give him the potions to quickly fix all that either.
After twelve hours or so working at the problem, Felician had returned with a calendar — the dietary restrictions Sirius was to be put on would gradually be lifted as he was trained to accept proper food again, the potions necessary to reverse the organ damage trickled in as his system recovered enough to tolerate them. The restrictions on his physical activity would also be gradually reduced — Felician didn't even want him standing for longer than a half hour a day right now, his limbs and spine simply too weak — as Sirius progressed his way through the gradually intensifying schedule of exercises to rebuild the strength he'd lost. Felician had some rough estimates of the health indicators he wanted Sirius to meet at each stage, he'd adjust the schedule as they went if Sirius was recovering more slowly or more quickly than anticipated.
Sirius had whined about the schedule at first — more for the sake of having something to complain about than any true unwillingness to follow the Healer's recommendations, Cassie thought — but he'd abruptly stopped even putting up a show about it when the person Felician had tapped to help him with the physical exercises arrived at Ancient House yesterday afternoon. She turned out to be a pretty young blonde woman, very sweet, also from the Lovegood commune. Cassie fully expected Sirius to attempt to seduce her over the course of his recovery, but that was fine — Evdokía struck Cassie as responsible enough to put him off until Sirius could safely engage in that sort of exercise, at which point it wasn't really her business.
Felician's calendar had also given her plenty of work to do as well: she would be responsible for making sure Sirius got the particular food that he needed, and that he was staying somewhere with an environment suited to the restrictions on his physical activity, and that there was someone available in case of emergency. Thankfully, she didn't have to do that all on her own, since the elves were eager to help. The dietary restrictions fell somewhat outside the bounds of what they were comfortable with — they would want to improvise to make it more appealing, and in so doing might step outside of the restrictions without thinking about it — but at the least she had plenty of hands available to make sure Sirius's rooms were set up comfortably for him, and that he was never left entirely alone. Sirius had never had a great relationship with the elves, wasn't personally close with any of them, but as close as the Family had gotten to extinction, they were still enthusiastic about having another Black in the house — Cassie fully expected that someone would manage to charm him thoroughly enough to get past his peculiar coldness toward them, it was just a matter of time.
(Watching Sirius interact with the elves was odd. There was definitely some history there, but she had absolutely no idea what it was.)
When Sirius was awake and capable of summoning the energy for a serious conversation, he had endless questions — which was only to be expected, given that he'd missed an entire decade. Some of them concerned the end of the war, most of which he'd missed. The months after that Samhain had been chaos, there'd been a couple small battles, dozens of deaths during arrests of fugitive Death Eaters that'd gotten out of control, a string of assassinations of figures on both sides. Sirius had already had a pretty good idea about what had happened to the Longbottoms — Bellatrix and the Lestranges had been imprisoned near him, it'd come up — but there were still a list of people injured or killed he hadn't heard about. And there was the politics of the years following, Amy and Bagnold on a tear through the Ministry, Selwyn being identified as a traitor, the revelation that he'd used his position as Deputy Director to have officers and Aurors sent to their deaths...
There was a lot, it took some time to get through it all. Some discussions were less grim, catching up on the lives of family and friends — in person with the ones who could be trusted with the news of his release — developments in professional quidditch and duelling, even a surprisingly in-depth conversation about the state of the ICW Senate and international commodity markets one evening. (Cassie hadn't realised he was that well-informed on the topic.) One day, she brought over a stack of muggle records from the late 70s through the 80s, the elves said Sirius had them running pretty much constantly now...
Today, Sirius wanted to talk about Violet, and practically nothing else. It was Samhain, and perhaps the anniversary was what had drawn his attention back to her, or maybe his curiosity about other subjects had simply been exhausted. He'd come to breakfast with a litany of questions for her — it'd been a difficult conversation, because Cassie had finally been forced to admit that she hadn't been there for Violet the whole time, and the sorry state she'd found her in. Somewhat to her surprise, Sirius wasn't angry with her for intervening so late, any more than he was angry with her for taking a decade to get to him. He was furious with Albus, yes — he'd already been angry with him for failing to protect the Potters, to the point that he'd refused to speak with him yet, and it was only worse now — but...well, his opinion on the matter was little different than Síomha's, when it came down to it. Once she'd realised there was a problem, she'd fixed it — though Sirius did say she should have killed the Dursley woman while she'd had the chance, that wasn't really...
Violet and Sirius might not blame her for coming too late, but Cassie still did.
Given it was a holiday, the business Cassie had needed to deal with today had been relatively light — she'd still been dragged to multiple meetings, but it was a light schedule compared to the past few days, anyway. She'd been saving articles in the newspapers or Witch Weekly to do with the Family ever since she'd taken in Violet, thinking she might want them for something someday, before leaving on her business for the day she'd retrieved the box and left it with Sirius. It wasn't all about Violet — there would be articles concerning Archie's death and Cassie's ascension to Lady Black, a few political stories since, some gossipy shite around her and Síomha — but of course there were still plenty, even going long before the reveal of her legal name. She suspected Sirius would especially appreciate the 'scandal' around the time they'd switched out her proxy, that letter she'd written into the Prophet would be in there.
Sirius had been asleep by the time she'd gotten home, thankfully. Felician said he'd need plenty of sleep during his recovery — his schedule included two naps during the day, on top of the nightly two blocks of sleep divided by a midnight snack and potion dose — but that was one part of the Healer's orders that Sirius had had difficulty meeting so far. His sleep had been shallow and fragmentary, partly due to nightmares, partly due to soreness keeping him awake, partly due to seemingly inexplicable insomnia. Or, not so inexplicable: dementors had a sedative effect on people in their presence, so it wasn't unexpected that Sirius might have trouble sleeping without it —Felician had said to give him a week or so to adjust before beginning to worry. According to the note Síomha had left for her, Sirius had surrendered to bed before the end of the brief window of time she'd found to check in, meaning he'd been asleep for almost two hours by the time Cassie checked on him. Two uninterrupted hours of sleep wasn't a unique event since he'd left Azkaban, but it was still good that he'd managed to steal that much in the middle of the afternoon.
Before too much longer, an elf altered her that Sirius had woken up — by the time he was settled in his favourite chair in his sunroom, the record player filling the air with the sound of drums and electric guitars, Cassie was arriving with afternoon tea. Or, not tea literally, Felician didn't want Sirius having much caffeine yet, but a small meal with a hot drink, anyway. She'd made minor adjustments to improve the taste of her medicinal tisane (which the Healer had signed off on), and while Sirius still didn't like it, he did tolerate it without too many complaints. It probably helped that he really liked the fried cheese and almond pudding he was getting at the same time.
Cassie had delayed her return to Ancient House packing up as much of Violet's artwork as she could find, very little of which had ever found its way here. There were a few items at Ravenhome, and of course there were plenty at home, either in Violet's room or on shelves or hung up on the walls, but most of it was stored away at Rock-on-Clyde. Cassie had saved almost everything, even the silly little childish drawings she'd started with years ago. Originally she'd been keeping them in a specially-enchanted box up in the loft, but as Violet had produced more and more and more that simply hadn't been practical anymore. After speaking about it with her, Cediny had set aside a section of the wine cellar and an unused alchemy storeroom. Loose drawings and sketchbooks and the like were boxed up and kept in the cellar, where the low temperature and humidity, set to store wine and cider, would keep them well-preserved; the paintings — whether on paper or parchment or canvas, or done in pastels or ink or paint proper — were kept hung on racks in the alchemy storeroom, where the pre-existing stasis enchantments would keep them safe practically indefinitely. The elves kept everything well-organised, sorted chronologically, Cediny had even floated the idea of working up a reference book where different subjects and even individual paintings could be looked up — thinking of the future, when Violet would be making more professional-quality work, and might want to quickly find something to pull out for whatever reason. It would take quite a lot of work to go through it all, and would perhaps best be done with Violet's participation, so they hadn't gotten started on that project yet.
Despite the sheer amount of artwork Violet had produced over the last few years, relocating it all had actually been quite simple. She could simply pick up and move the boxes of drawings, and the paintings were either on frames or rolled up like oversized scrolls of parchment, which could easily be floated into a few resizable boxes. (The artwork itself shouldn't be directly shrunk, but if she moved it all into a properly-isolated box and shrunk the box, that worked just fine.) Over their afternoon tea, Sirius had once again wanted to talk about Violet, unsurprisingly, and Cassie had told him about what she'd brought with her — wait until after tea, though, he didn't want to ruin anything by spilling on them, or smudging them with grease from the fried cheese.
Sirius wanted to go through all of it, chronologically. The drawings and the paintings were sorted separately, so going in strict chronological order wouldn't be possible, he decided to do the drawings first and then the paintings. That was going to take ages, but Cassie didn't really mind — it'd been a while since she'd seen a lot of this herself. Some of the early drawings were really taking her back...she thought Violet had come out of a meeting with Shannon with this one, almost hard to believe that'd only been a few years ago...
Eventually, they got to Violet's most recent sketchbook. This one had been new when she'd left for school, the pages completely blank, but a couple weeks ago now Violet had asked for a replacement, Dora stepping out of the wards to apparate home and drop off the old one. It was amazing how quickly Violet burned through these things, though Cassie supposed it shouldn't be. The quality paper was thick and heavy enough that the books only had sixty pages in them, and Walter had asked Violet to at least draw a little bit every day — she'd averaged a little more than a page and a half a day, which seemed about right. They'd been at it long enough that Cassie had gone to get a second round of coffee (hot chocolate for Sirius), sitting curled up together on an armchair she'd transfigured wider to fit them, slowly flipping through the sketchbook spread across their laps.
A lot of the drawings in this one were identifiable — architectural elements that were recognisable as parts of Hogwarts Castle, locations showing the familiar contours of the Black Lake and Hogsmeade Valley. Those weren't uncommon subjects for Violet, truly — she had a persistent fascination with mosaic and stained glass, had done countless drawings of the architecture they'd come across them while travelling and would imitate the style in decoration for things, and Walter had been having her refine her skills with landscapes for some time now — though she guessed there wouldn't be that much else for her to find around there. There were several of the greenhouses and this one corridor...oh, Cassie couldn't remember where that was. She did recognise it, though, a solarium the length and width of any of the main corridors in the Castle, the Valley laid out below...
There were also a few sketches of the kittens, which weren't a surprise either. It seemed Violet had attempted to draw people a handful of times, but even the more complete ones didn't look great, flat and out of proportion in a way her other drawings didn't tend to be anymore. No, she hadn't been doing any living subjects yet — human subjects, she meant. She'd talked to Walter about it, and apparently it was common practice in the guild to delay that sort of thing when working with young students. The process of getting a handle on the human form was normally done with nude models, and a lot of people in this country could be a bit sensitive about that sort of thing. Especially since it was pretty common for prostitutes to model for artists for a bit of extra cash — it didn't often pay much, but it was easier than their usual work — and the guild wanted to be careful about exposing children to such disreputable characters.
The way Walter had spoken of it had made it very clear that he thought that was silly, but the point was to protect themselves from being sued by some oversensitive prude, so he just followed the rules and didn't make a fuss about it. Normally they would wait at least until the student had reached the age of contract, but he didn't think they'd be able to stall that long — Violet had started early enough, and was learning quickly enough, that they'd simply run out of things to do before then. When the time came, probably coming into next summer, Walter would have a contract to allow it for Cassie to sign. Not that he expected any problems — Cassie was hardly the sort to overreact, and she expected Violet would be reasonably mature about it — just covering his arse with the guild.
Anyway, some of the sketches had bits that were expanded out and done in more detail, or some blobs of colour with arrows indicating one section or another, sometimes with comments in Violet's pretty, curly handwriting. As part of her work for Walter, she was supposed to do a proper, full-colour work in some other medium once a week — she would guess these sketches were ones she'd used as a base for those projects. The most extensively marked-up one was of the Castle laid out on the cliff, by the angle seemingly taken from out on the Lake, with details and colour samples and comments from Violet spilling out onto multiple other pages. Cassie knew from Walter that Violet's September painting had been of the Castle at sunset, these must be the prep work for that.
No, she hadn't seen it yet, it wasn't with the ones here. Once it'd finished drying, Violet had carefully boxed it up, and Walter had come by the house in the Hogsmeade to pick it up. There was some kind of alchemical treatment they did to preserve oil paintings. She didn't know what exactly it involved — it was a proprietary process, kept within the guild — but she knew from previous experience that it often took nearly a month for it to finish. That Walter had bothered going through the whole thing meant he thought it was good enough to be worth saving — Cassie knew there was some expense involved, though she wasn't certain exactly how much. (Enough that he didn't do it with all of Violet's work, at least.) His letter on the matter had been very matter-of-fact, but she was used to the way Walter spoke now, she was certain it'd be impressive when she finally saw it.
Violet had nearly finished her October painting too — it might take a few days into November for her to wrap it up, but that was fine, it wasn't like it was strict schedule she was on. She didn't see the sketches for that one in this book though. Most of the trees in the Valley were, of course, pine, but there were also leafy trees, especially near the Lake and around the village. Violet had specifically asked permission (Cassie had gotten letters from both Dora and Pomona double-checking that she'd agreed to it) to go out into the Valley to find a nice spot on the hill where she could get a good angle to catch the village and as much of the autumn colours as she could. In one of her letters, she'd said that she hadn't liked how the first version was coming out, and painting over it would be too unwieldy, so she'd scrapped the whole thing and started over — not unusual, Cassie knew by now, sometimes painters could touch up things they didn't like but that wasn't always possible. Cassie might not see that one until December, but she expected Walter to invite her to the workshop to pick up the September painting any day now.
They were nearing the end of the sketchbook, Cassie trying to surreptitiously evaluate whether Sirius had the energy to continue on into the paintings, when she was startled by a blast of prickly light magic, a familiar patronus appearing in the room. In Amy's voice, the deer said, "I hope I'm not interrupting you this spirit-night, Auntie. I have news for Sirius. I may come in person if you are welcoming guests tonight." The patronus dissolved into wisps and faded away.
Sirius let out a little breath. "That voice was familiar. Who else calls you 'Auntie'?"
"That was Amy Bones."
"Ah! Yes, that would be it — I don't remember her voice sounding that thick, but maybe that's the charm. Getting somewhere with straightening out my legal situation, then?"
"Possibly." Not that his Healer's orders would have Sirius leaving the house any time soon anyway, but it would be nice for him to be able to. Cassie turned it over for a moment, before asking, "How would you like a dinner guest tonight? Síomha won't be back until tomorrow, and I imagine Amy could use the company — you know how the Boneses are about Samhain, and Susan is off at Hogwarts."
"The more the merrier, I say. Keep me from getting too bored while I'm trapped here."
That was the idea, yes. She was concerned about Amy, of course, but there was no reason she couldn't kill two birds with one stone. "All right, let me ask her, quick." She cast the charm in a quick second, yanked the threads around into the proper shape to carry her message in a somewhat longer second, the light magic burning at her the whole time. Once she thought she had it, she said, "Amy. How about you delay your visit a couple hours, and have your talk with Sirius over dinner? Say around seven. When we're done here, I can come sit vigil with you, if you like."
"Sit vigil?" Sirius asked, politely waiting until the patronus had already left.
"Samhain tradition the Boneses have been keeping up for who knows how long now. I'm afraid I'm not supposed to tell you more than that."
"Since when do you know Bones family secrets?"
"Since Cynaddar brought me to one when I was seven."
"Right, old Cynaddar was your godfather, wasn't he, forgot..."
A moment later, Amy's deer reappeared. "That would be lovely, in fact. Thank you, Auntie. Do you remember the rules for spirit-nights?"
She immediately cast another patronus once Amy's vanished. "Amy. Yes, I remember, I can cook a clean dinner. I'll see you at seven." She sent the little bird on with a flick of her fingers. "Come on, kid, let's see if you can get some more rest in before dinner..."
It hadn't been so long ago that the House of Bones had been the priesthood of an old Celtic cult, one of the Mistwalker Clans of Ynys Dywyll. Much of the Bones lands did still host a Mistwalker commune, in fact, though the Boneses themselves had become increasingly isolated from the commoner population over the generations, slowly absorbed into the culture of the nobility. While the day-to-day life the Boneses tended to live was very different from that of the proper Mistwalkers living not so far away from the walls of the manor house, they had retained much of the old religion — and, like the other Mistwalker groups, that often came with certain restrictions on their diet and personal conduct. The Sanctuary was much less strict than certain other cult centres — the Greenwood, for example, was known to be particularly restrictive — enough that it normally didn't make any difference day to day, Amy could observe their religious law mostly without anyone around her even noticing.
The rules got somewhat more strict on spirit-nights, though. Basically just what some more conservative communities called holidays (an archaic Cambrian term that had mostly fallen out of use elsewhere), spirit-nights were times when the Boneses believed the realm of the dead approached most closely to that of the living, allowing some spillover between the two — primarily, Samhain, the winter solstice, and Cyntefin. On those days, they avoided any kind of meat, as well as a list of things that had certain positive associations in their tradition. It might seem a little backward to avoid positive things, but sometimes on spirit-nights things sort of took on their own inverse, a blessing flipped to a curse; and, with the crossing-over going on, nobody wanted to offend a faerie that'd slipped to this world by taking, say, the hazelnuts they believed to be theirs. There were also some rules where preparation was concerned that could become quite onerous, but those generally wouldn't apply in an environment like Ancient House.
The major exception to the rules were Death Prophets — Susan was allowed to eat pretty much whatever her sensitivities would allow her, no matter the day. People like her were believed to already be in a sort in-between place, neither of this world or the other, so sort of existed outside of the rules, if that made sense. Though, there might be a theological argument to it, but Cassie honestly suspected that the people who'd made the rules simply didn't want to risk depriving Seers of what limited things they could eat in the first place.
Regardless, it wasn't difficult for Cassie to accommodate Amy, especially after the practice she'd gotten cooking for Susan. A creamy potato mushroom soup would do nicely. Root vegetables were generally forbidden on spirit-nights — as was anything that grew underground, with few exceptions — but at the time the rules had been written they hadn't known of the existence of potatoes, so they'd ended up becoming one of those exceptions. Normally she'd use bone broth as a base, but she'd already gotten into the habit of substituting that to avoid Susan's sensitivities. Seasoning the thing was somewhat more difficult, since she couldn't use onions, or garlic, or several different kinds of herbs — she could use parsley and various Eastern spices, though. It took a little bit of playing around, tweaking it bit by bit through the process, but she eventually ended up with something that was... Well, it was maybe a little peculiar, especially to the British palate, but it tasted good to her, anyway.
Bread was simple enough, she went with a pan-fried flatbread — leaven bread should be fine, since the rules around preparation that would disqualify it shouldn't apply here, but she decided to avoid it just to be safe — and for dessert she worked up a vanilla mousse with pear compôte. She'd nearly slipped and made applesauce — both apples and honey were against the rules for tonight. The mousse was a little shaky, since she couldn't use eggs, but she could get it to firm up and hold its shape just by setting a cooling charm in it; despite how similar they were to apples, pears were acceptable, and cane sugar could be substituted for honey. Seasoning it correctly would be a problem again, but she did have spices she could use...and maybe a sweet white wine, there was an idea...
By comparison, Sirius's dinner was much easier to work up, she'd already had that planned out ahead of time.
She was almost finished with everything when she felt a presence cross the wards, coming out of the floo way over in the reception hall — quick reaching through the wards, and yes, that was Amy. "Ah...Lucsi."
A brief pause, and then then there was a pop of house-elf displacement a couple steps behind her. "Is Lady Cassie needing something?" The high, soft, feminine voice sounded surprised, which was fair enough — Cassie honestly wasn't certain she'd ever called for Lucsi before.
"Amy just arrived in the reception hall. Could you show her to Sirius's sunroom, please? Also, I guess someone should probably check if he's awake..."
"Yes, Lady Cassie." Lucsi waited for a couple seconds, before her departure was signaled with another sharp pop.
"I'm thinking you surprised her," Nola said, sounding a little amused. He was standing on a stool at a hob a short distance away, finishing up on on Sirius's bean crisps — a neat idea she'd had and that Felician had signed off on, though getting the things to stick together through frying took cheating with an alchemical binding agent. She'd double-checked with Síomha that it wasn't toxic to eat, so.
"I'm thinking so too. She's a sweet girl, I was hoping she'd chatter at Amy on the way over, maybe keep her company for a bit until I catch up."
"You didn't tell her to stay."
"If I had ordered her to, that wouldn't feel very natural, would it?"
Nola let out a little huff, but didn't argue the point.
She ended up with quite a spread of dishes to bring over to the sunroom, but it was simple enough to levitate them all. After quick double-checking that she had everything, along with the utensils necessarily to eat it all, Cassie swept out of the kitchen with the cloud of dishes and mugs bobbing along around her, Nola remaining behind. Not like there was much clean-up to be done, between Nola and herself charming everything away, but... Was he starting apple biscuits? Those were to send to Violet, weren't they? That old sweetheart, honestly...
By the time Cassie got to Sirius's sunroom, they were both already here, Sirius once again bundled up in his blankets — as terribly thin as he was, he got cold easily — Amy still in the nice trousers and button-up blouse she would have worn to the Ministry. (Her jacket was missing, presumably Lucsi would have hung it up for her somewhere.) Cassie wasn't at all surprised that they were talking about Susan, she would guess Sirius had asked what'd gone on in the House of Bones over the last decade. Not that there was much to tell, Amy and Susan were the only members of the family left alive. Also, Cassie had already filled him in about it herself. He'd remembered the attack on the family, late in December of '79 — a nearly successful attempt to wipe out the entire House lead by the Dark Lord himself, taking the lives of Justin, Edgar and Aneira, and Dilwyn, the only survivors Amy and Liz (pregnant with Susan at the time) — but he hadn't remembered Liz's abduction and murder the next year.
As soon as Cassie reminded him, the memory had come rushing back. Liz happened to be Alice's elder sister, and she'd taken it hard — Sirius had been worried about Alice, isolated under the Fidelius by then, so he'd schemed to get as many of their friends together for an evening as he could. A good two-thirds of the attendees of that quiet, intimate little party were all dead now, or else suffering from such serious curse damage they might as well be.
Of course, Amy was terribly busy, so she couldn't spend as much time with Susan as she might otherwise like, but like practically any other parent she could go on at quite some length if she got in the mood. When Cassie showed up, she was talking about a time Susan had come down to breakfast carrying the text of some old Cambrian play — she'd asked Amy what a passage meant, and she'd been forced to admit that she had absolutely no idea. (Amy was brilliant, but she wasn't much for poetry.) Cassie announced her presence with, "A big reader, that one. It probably helps that she hardly has the energy to run around with the other children half of the time, but I swear I see a book of Cambrian or Gaelic poetry in her hand more often than anything else. Hello, Amy."
"Auntie. And yes, I've been thinking of suggesting she try her hand at writing, but I wanted to wait until she's of an age she might find it less intimidating. Not every child can go into a serious apprenticeship at the age of eight or nine, however old Violet was."
"True, true." Also, poets didn't have a guild, so there simply was no such thing as an apprenticeship for that. "Anyway, let's see, this one's for Sirius, and these our ours, Sirius again, ours..."
While she was sorting that out, Sirius asked, "What do you mean, doesn't have the energy for it? Is Susan unwell?"
"Did Amy or I never mention Susan's a Death Prophet?"
"Oh, no, didn't come up. Is that what it sounds like?"
"If you're thinking a death-aligned empathic Seer, then yes, it's exactly what it sounds like."
"Yeesh, poor kid... Ooh, the crisps again, these are actually good..."
They settled into dinner, Amy explaining a little bit about what exactly a Death Prophet was — they were particular to the Sanctuary, a relic of rituals performed by the old priesthood, though one would crop up among relatives outside of the cult now and then. Sirius was vaguely familiar with the Boneses' history as death cultists, and had heard the rumours floating around that they'd kept up certain necromantic practices — true rumours, as it happens, though rather less dramatic than is commonly assumed by outsiders — but he didn't have a whole lot of experience with Seers, and especially not the exact kind Susan was. Amy explained some of the history and old traditions behind it, including some of the rituals the priests used to do — which, being a Death Prophet herself, Susan was theoretically capable of.
When Amy explained that Susan could eventually learn to evoke a spirit through herself, essentially allowing a dead person to possess her (if only briefly), he got a very odd look on his face. Cassie would have to remind him later that it would be extremely inappropriate to suggest Susan pick up the skill specifically so he could talk to his old friends again.
(Besides, it wasn't as though he needed to — Cassie expected Susan to start learning necromancy of her own volition once she felt she was ready. She had mixed feelings about the prospect.)
Amy took a first taste of her soup, and immediately froze. "I'm sorry, Auntie, but is there fish sauce in this?"
"No no, that's shrimp paste. Something I was turned onto during one of our swings through Asia. I know fish are forbidden, but I think shrimp and prawn are fine — or did I remember that wrong?"
"That's correct, I was only checking. Thank you."
"Of course." Turning back to Sirius, she said, "Try to be sensitive about bringing up Susan's Sight around Violet. We think she might have somehow triggered it in an accidental magic outburst, some peculiar expression of whatever the Avalonians did to her magic — she still feels guilty over the difficulty it causes Susan sometimes."
Sirius was using his crisps to scoop up bites of soup (his didn't have potatoes), managing not to make too much of a mess, but at the mention of the Avalonians he twitched, a couple little dribbles escaping to spatter onto his blankets. "Oops, ugh..." He ran a thumb over the side of the bowl, collecting a bit of spilled soup, stuck his thumb in his mouth — his eyes flicking over to Amy, a little wary. Once he was done licking his thumb clean, he said, "I thought Violet's faerie shite was a family secret."
"The Boneses are family — Amy and Susan know. It only seemed fair, since Violet seems to be responsible for Susan's Sight triggering."
"For which we blame her not at all," Amy said, slightly muffled through a bite of bread. Cassie got the impression she must have skipped lunch, and possibly breakfast, because she'd attacked her dinner quite eagerly. Guessed the somewhat peculiar seasoning profile hadn't put her off, good.
"I know, I'm only saying. Andi and Ted know, but Cissa and Lucy don't — I didn't want to risk knowledge of Violet's gift spreading to Lucy's old friends." Sirius scowled at the reference to the Death Eaters, but didn't interrupt. "I suspect Dora is aware there is something going on with Violet's magic, but I'm not certain how much she knows. Lise and Chloé know. I told Albus before she started at Hogwarts, and he informed Poppy, the Healer there. Violet has since told Minerva and Filius, since they will need to know to manage her participation in class. That's everyone, unless I've forgotten someone."
"You know, if there are professors who are aware, it isn't going to remain a secret for very long — Hogwarts is a fucking gossip engine."
"It couldn't be helped. The longer it stays secret, the better, but it simply can't be kept forever." As much as Cassie rather wished it could. Honestly, she was dreading the day Violet's magical abilities became public knowledge — there was no telling how people would react, but it was going to be big.
They went somewhat quiet for a short time, focussed on eating, the occasional comment mostly about Susan or Violet. Sirius brought up Violet's artistic talents, which was honestly kind of adorable — he hadn't even met the girl yet, and he was already bragging about her. Amy wouldn't be able to stay to look over the paintings (sounding a little amused about the offer), she was to go sit vigil tonight; and Cassie was coming with her, so, Sirius should call an elf to help him handle them, after they left. A few updates they'd gotten from Violet and Susan since they left for academy, some gossip that had made its way to them through one source or another, little things.
No, Cassie hadn't told Violet yet. Things were still sensitive, it could blow up badly if the wrong person found out in the wrong way — not to mention make the digging Amy's people were doing rather more difficult — and Hogwarts was hardly the most secure place in the world. She trusted Violet to keep a secret...if it was important enough, anyway...but there was no telling who might end up seeing a letter. Besides, she wanted to wait until she had a better idea of what the process was going to look like, what they could expect to happen — the fewer questions Violet was left with when she was eventually told, the better.
(Sirius was hardly happy about not getting to at least write to Violet right away, but he'd agreed to cooperate when Cassie had explained why not.)
"And on that matter," Amy said, leaning forward in her chair to set down her empty soup bowl, "I do have some answers for you. If we are ready to talk business."
In the middle of a bite, Sirius made a circular motion with his hand. "Ah. Yeah, let's get to it. How much of a bloody circus is this going to be?"
"Clearing your name should be very straightforward." Plucking up her mousse and compôte, Amy reclined back into her chair, letting out a heavy sigh. "It is a perverse sort of fortune that there has never been any official hearing of any kind, and that the only order confining you to Azkaban was meant to be a temporary detainment, and not a formal sentence. Of course, had the proper procedures been followed at the time, you should never have spent nearly so long there — but it does make it far simpler for us, now, to rectify the situation. You have not been convicted of anything, only accused. And such accusations can be dismissed without need for a trial."
"So, they can simply be dismissed?" Cassie asked. "My understanding was that we were concerned about the high treason element." The most severe charge to Sirius's name was, in fact, the breach of Secrecy represented by the explosion in Edinburgh. Under present law, such extreme, destructive breaches of Secrecy qualified as treason against the state, and all treason cases must be heard before the Wizengamot — even posthumously, if the person died in the attempt, as peculiar as it was to hold a trial for a dead man.
It took a moment for Amy to answer, in the middle of a bite of her dessert. "Mm. Mmm, there must be a hearing. Given the severity of the charges, I cannot simply dismiss them by the authority of my office alone — however, we may hold a presentation of fact pro populo, which I may then use as cause to refuse prosecution. This is very good, by the way, what is this?"
"Vanilla mousse with pear compôte," Cassie said (in French).
A little bit of a whine on his voice, Sirius muttered, "You come over and she gives you the good stuff. They're hardly letting me have any sugar yet at all..."
"Try the chocolate — it has brandy in it."
"Ooh!" Sirius dipped a finger in the little bowl of chocolate cream, stuck it in his mouth. "Mm... Have I told you lately you're my favourite aunt?"
"A few times. Mostly whenever I feed you."
"Well, it bears repeating. Anyway, what does that mean, exactly?" Sirius asked, turning back to Amy. "The pro populo bit, I mean — assuming you mean like the presentations of fact we have to do to get a writ of detainment."
Amy nodded. "It is a similar process. The presentations of fact you would be familiar with are done pro munere — before the office, that is, someone with the authority to issue a judicial writ — but holding such proceedings in the privacy of the Ministry was not always the accepted procedure. Once upon a time, presentations of fact would be held pro comitiis — before the Wizengamot — or pro populo — before the people. As the institution of the Ministry developed, presentations of fact pro comitiis transitioned into the familiar form pro munere, and the form pro populo gradually declined in frequency. It is still used in contract and family courts, but it is quite rare these days in criminal proceedings — the most recent presentation of fact pro populo I can recall off the top of my head was one concerning the attack on Longbottom Manor back in the Forties. It's a sort of propaganda strategy, in most cases, and there is only rarely a use for it."
"Okay, sure. And what would that look like?" He seemed faintly exasperated with Amy giving him an unnecessary history lesson — Cassie was willing to bet that, during his Auror training, Sirius had completely ignored everything that wasn't immediately relevant to doing his job.
"We would hold the hearing in one of the courtrooms at the Ministry...say, Three, or Five, or Ten or Six, one of the ones with room for spectators. And there would be spectators — a presentation pro populo isn't truly such without people in attendance. A public announcement would need to be made before the event, but not very long before, enough for journalists and some curious onlookers to make their way over. Given the severity of the incident, the bench would need to be composed of the entire leadership of the Department, myself and all the Deputy Directors, and it would be appropriate for Rufus to act as procurator."
"Rufus?" Sirius muttered, scowling a little. "You mean Rufus Scrimgeour?"
"Yes, Rufus Scrimgeour — he is First Auror, a presentation of this gravity would be his responsibility. Is that a problem?"
"I don't know, might be? The humourless old bastard despises me."
...Cassie rather wanted to object to that particular characterisation of Rufus, but she had to remind herself that she and Sirius had very different relationships with him. The argument wasn't worth it. She did point out that, "The politics of it would look good. Nobody could claim that Rufus of all people would cooperate with some scheme to get an actual Death Eater off."
"Well, no, that's true, I guess..."
"He's already been informed," Amy said. "He doesn't like you, but that isn't necessary for him to help right a miscarriage of justice."
"Fine, fine, whatever. You're the boss lady, I guess."
"Yes, I suppose I am. As I was saying, Rufus will act as procurator. He will present what evidence and documentation we've collected by then to the bench, and will depose you and possibly a handful of other witnesses and experts — perhaps with some guarantee of truthfulness from Mysteries, we'll have to negotiate the medium beforehand."
"I didn't think witnesses were interviewed at presentations of fact."
"Pro munere, no, but they commonly are in the form pro populo — the purpose of the exercise is to present information before the public, so obviously that is best done with the witnesses physically present."
"Right, that makes sense." Letting out a somewhat disappointed-sounding sigh, Sirius set his empty dessert bowl down on the table. He sat back in his chair again, readjusted his blankets to better insulate himself, gripping his mug through the material. "That's going to be a bit of a mess, you know, physically bringing me into the Ministry."
Amy grimaced. "I had thought of that, yes. It may be wise to have you brought there the night before, after hours, so you can't be intercepted on the way in. There will be a crowd, it would be best to avoid any...potential attempts at vigilante justice."
"Good thinking. It'd be kind of pathetic to survive a decade in Azkaban only to catch a curse from some poor sod whose cousin got knocked off by some Death Eater bastard."
"Don't worry, Sirius, I'll protect you from the scary mob."
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Thank you, Auntie, feel much better about it now. So. Go in there, Scrimgeour puts on a presentation of fact, I get interviewed, and you dismiss the charges."
"And also issue a writ of detainment against Pettigrew," Amy added. "I do believe this is our best avenue for success, without undue interruption. Though we have only a limited window — if we delay long enough for it to become a major scandal before we can arrange the hearing, it may be taken out of our hands."
"How short of a window are we talking? I know you're trying to keep it in a close circle for now, but the Ministry is a bloody sieve, you're not going to be able to keep that up for long."
"Soon. Next week, maybe the one after, but no longer than that."
For a moment, Sirius just blinked over at Amy, his eyes wide, mouth hanging open a crack. "Next week? You think we'll be ready that soon?"
Amy gave him a faintly mocking raised eyebrow. "When you were an Auror, how long did you normally prepare for a presentation of fact?"
"Okay sure, I get that, but— I just thought, Cassie has been telling me about what you lot've got going on over there, and I figured it take longer than that to straighten everything out."
"Sirius," Amy said, her voice thick and heavy, halfway toward a sigh, "it's going to be years before we straighten everything out. I don't think anybody, including myself, had any idea how much of a wreck our records of that time are. The clean-up project Mils and I—" Minister Bagnold, she meant, Millicient. "—attempted stepped on too many toes, we weren't allowed to finish the job — there is too much political business left unaddressed from the end of the war. Simply trying to dig up the documentation we need to address your wrongful imprisonment, we stumbled over several other instances of inappropriate conduct or intentional sabotage, each of which will require further investigation. And there will be more, it's impossible to say how many more. There will be trials, of how many people and on what charges it is too early for me to predict, and scandal after scandal after scandal. Cornelius will be very lucky if the mess doesn't bring down his government — hell, Albus will probably get caught up in it too, and likely a few Directors and Deputy Directors. The storm in the aftermath of the war wasn't ended, nothing was resolved, merely put on hold. And now we're about to pick it back up again.
"We must handle your situation quickly. If we don't, it'll end up being tied into all the other scandals about to break — and if we let that happen, it may be months, even years before the Department can spare the attention to focus on your case. The odds are it would be taken out of our hands, the Wizengamot forcing a trial on the floor, and there is no telling how long that might take to finish. No, we must move now, before the scandal breaks. Unless you would prefer to miss Cassie and Síomha's wedding because you're still under provisionary custody through much of next year."
"Fuck, yeah, that... Good point." Forcing a little smirk, Sirius drawled, "Sorry for blowing up the Ministry on you, Amelia."
"Save your apologies — I would rather see justice be done than avoid the risk of being bleated at by self-important inbred fuckwits." Cassie coughed, nearly inhaling a bit of her compôte, surprised by Amy's invective. Seemed rather out of character but, well, she guessed Amy had had quite a time these last few days. "Besides, if it were up to me we would have had all this out a decade ago. And we would have, if certain Lords hadn't conspired to remove Mils from office prematurely. It will be a headache, but I would rather bear it than leave the failures of that era unaddressed."
Sirius eyed Amy for a moment, before lifting his (too thin) shoulders in a little shrug. "Fair enough. My healer doesn't think I'll be able to stand for very long by then, certainly not enough to get through a whole interview."
"That's all right. The procurator stands, a witness needn't necessarily."
"Good. Let's do it, then."
From there, they discussed some more details, nothing really that significant. Presentations of fact were different from trials — they would be able to plan the subjects they wanted to go over, he and Rufus could even decide on the exact questions ahead of time. He should meet with Rufus in person at some point before the hearing, but Amy recommended he avoid discussing certain topics with him. As much as Rufus was on their side on this matter, he was less likely to overlook things like, for example, Sirius being an unregistered animagus. Him being an animagus wasn't directly relevant to the events in question, so it should be relatively easy to avoid. Speculation about exactly what kind of magic Lily performed both to move the Secret and to blow up the Dark Lord on that Samhain were also best avoided — Lily had practically been elevated into secular sainthood (and sometimes not so secular), the controversy that would be courted by too honest of a discussion of certain rituals simply wasn't worth the bother.
Sirius joked about pressing for restitution for his decade of illegal imprisonment, but Amy just brushed it off, said that wasn't her business. It wasn't truly: such a claim would be handled directly by the Office of the Chief Warlock and/or the Office of the Minister, possibly as well as the Wizengamot, it would have nothing to do with the Department. Amy might end up being indirectly affected, since obviously a significant settlement against the Ministry might have budgetary implications, but their Department was unlikely to be affected. If there were to be cuts to compensate — which wasn't even likely, chances were they'd make up the difference with loans and/or a bump of the land use fee — it would more like come out of Lands and Waters, or Games and Sports, or possibly Health and Family.
The most likely scenario, though, was that any major settlement would be covered by volunteers from among the Lords of the Wizengamot — likely, those who had some history with the Death Eaters, or the Blacks as a House or Cassie or Sirius individually. In these situations, there was often an element of posturing, demonstrating both their loyalty to the country by covering sudden expenses as well as hinting at such great wealth that they could freely throw it around like that, but also to suggest their political loyalties, and as a gesture of good faith to a party they might have bad blood with in the past that they wished to avoid bringing up again. It was obvious to pretty much everyone that the House of Black was on an upswing again, and if they could throw some gold at Sirius to stop the renewed family from holding a grudge over some business from a decade or longer ago, well, that was obviously a good investment.
Sirius was perfectly eager to get some gold off of a few Noble Houses, especially since they were likely to be Death Eaters. Almost perversely eager, if Cassie was being honest — there was something almost sexual about that grin he had while talking about it.
They'd have to figure out something scandalous to do with it. Obviously they didn't need the money, so they should put it to something else, very publicly. That was somewhat insulting to begin with, yes — pressing for damages and then not keeping the money was a slap in the face, if not one people could actually complain about — but it would be especially amusing to give it to something that the Lords who'd provided it would never contemplate funding in their fucking lives. Some kind of charity, maybe improvements to the homes for werewolves, or a fund to cover certain kinds of medical expenses, they'd think about it.
That grin of his turning absolutely lecherous at that suggestion, Sirius said just, "I love you."
Cassie smirked back. "Control yourself, boy — I'm a married woman now, you know."
While Sirius cackled (still thin and hoarse, his voice not fully recovered from a decade of neglect), Amy let out a heavy sigh, shaking her head to herself. Cassie was almost certain she heard her mutter Blacks, spirits save me...