Children of the Gods

by inwardtransience

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

8. Visitors — IV

Checking through her bag one last time, Cassie asked, "Are you all ready to go?"

"I think so." Violet was dressed and had their necklace to cover their scar and the bracelet Cassie made with protective spells and stuff on mixed in with the others, so they had all the things they needed to go out. They didn't know if they really felt ready.

It didn't help that Violet wasn't really sure what they were doing? There were some friends of Cassie's she wanted to introduce Violet to, but she hadn't explained much — just said it was okay to stare a little, and they could ask people any questions they had, as long as they weren't really rude about it, but she didn't explain why Violet might want to stare or ask questions. There would be kids there, Violet wouldn't just be surrounded by adults being boring. But other than that, she didn't say much. Not knowing what they were doing was kind of making Violet nervous. Not really nervous, they didn't think Cassie would make them do anything bad, but it was, just— Violet didn't think they liked surprises much.

Some of the things she did say were really weird. Like, it was already late, well after sundown, they'd had dinner a couple hours ago already. Cassie said a lot of the people they were seeing slept during the day, but she didn't say why. To prepare, Violet had stayed up extra late last night, and then had a nap after lunch, so they could still be awake for however long they were staying there (Cassie didn't say). Cassie also said it might be cold, so Violet had leggings on under their dress and a jumper over top, and also one of the scarves they'd gotten for Christmas, the fuzzy one. Standing in the house, they were actually a little too warm, so it'd be nice if they got going soon just for that reason.

"Okay." Shrugging her bag higher up her shoulder, Cassie smiled down at Violet. "If you get tired, or you're not having fun and want to leave, come get me and we'll go home. Okay?" She waited for Violet to nod. "Good. Let's go, then." She held out a hand, turned palm mostly down so they could easily walk holding hands. Violet took a breath, and took it.

A second later, the entryway of their house vanished, there was a moment of crushing blackness, and then they were somewhere else. Violet didn't take in anything right away, because they were busy squeezing their eyes shut, taking deep breaths, waiting for their head to stop spinning and to stop feeling sick. (They were getting used to apparation, it wasn't as bad as it was at first, but it still wasn't fun.) When they opened their eyes, they saw...

Well, it wasn't a nice part of town. They didn't recognise it, didn't know where they were — England, probably, one of the big cities. The street was narrow, barely enough room for two cars to slip through side-by-side, on both sides little packed-together row houses. Not like the nice ones, like they lived in, but the tiny old ones, from like the pictures Violet saw in history books back in normal primary school, for the workers in the factories in the Industrial Revolution, like. Little two-storey brick buildings, crammed tight together, they didn't look like they were falling apart or anything, the people living there taking care of them, but they didn't look very nice.

Since Cassie was a fancy rich person and everything, it was kind of hard for Violet to imagine that she knew anyone who lived here.

After making sure they were back to normal, Cassie started walking, leading the way to one of the rows. The bricks were a rusty red, the glass clean enough to reflect some from the streetlamps. There were lights on in some of the windows, but Violet was too short to see inside most of them — some of the curtains looked nice, colourful patterns knit into them. She noticed some of the windows had thick shutters covering them, almost like they were boarded up, which was weird. Extra weird, one of those with the shutters was open, the shutters sticking out from the wall a little, and Violet thought even the window was open. Wouldn't that be really cold? It was almost January...

They stepped onto the pavement in front, and Violet stiffened, froze long enough that Cassie's hand tugging on theirs a little reminded them to keep walking. They felt a tingle stepping onto the pavement, like static on the air: magic. There must be wards here. Violet didn't feel the unpleasant inside cold of dark magic, or really anything at all once they were past the edge, so not a big deal. Just meant they were at the right place.

Instead of leading Violet to one of the doors, Cassie led them to a narrow little archway in the middle — there was a hole between the houses to either side here, but it didn't go all the way up, probably room for a couple little closets overhead. There was an old iron gate across the opening, closing it off, the metal plain but clean, no rust that Violet could see. Cassie walked right up to it, her wand appeared in her hand and she gave the gate a tap. There was a ringing clink, much louder than it should be, and it seemed to hang in the air too long, almost echoing.

Violet couldn't really see anything under the arch — they thought maybe that was magic, for privacy — but they thought there was someone moving in there. After a moment there was a clank of the latch being opened, the door starting to swing outward, and suddenly they could see inside. The door was being opened by a woman, very pale, with bright curly blonde hair, wearing a plain blue dress with a thin but soft-looking cardigan, bare feet looking very white against the dark paving stones. Also, Violet was pretty sure she was pregnant, she didn't look nearly fat enough for her belly to be bulging out that much.

Cassie gasped. "Mother Mercy, Denise! I had no idea!"

The woman, Denise, grinned back at her. "Hello again, Cassie. It's been a while."

"Oh, congratulations! Come here..." Cassie's hand loosened around Violet's, they let go so Cassie could hug Denise. After a couple seconds she pulled back, there was some cheek kissing, like they were old people or French. (Violet guessed Cassie was old people...) "That's wonderful, I know how— Well. I hope things are going well, I don't imagine you've been able to get to a healer..."

"I have, a couple times — I have a cousin who knows someone with the Lovegoods."

"Good, good. If you need anything please owl me. I know I've been out of touch for a while, with the war and my family and all, I— Well, I'm back in it now, I'm just a letter away. Who's the father, Constance?"

Denise gave Cassie an odd look. "No, his name's Martin. Constance, honestly Cassie, I haven't been with Constance in maybe fifteen years now?"

"Shite, I'm sorry, been out of contact too long. Martin, have I met him?"

"I don't think so, he didn't live with us in the old commune. He won't be back until late, this one will probably need to be in bed before then," Denise said, smiling down at Violet.

"Oh, of course, where are my manners? Denise, this is Violet Black — a great-niece of some order or another, I only learned she existed quite recently, took her in the same day. Violet, darling, this is Denise, an old friend of mine — we met back in... I was still in school, I think. The summer of Twenty-Two, maybe?"

"I know it was shortly after the Great War, so likely some time around then, yes."

Violet tried not to stare — that was sixty-five years ago. Denise did not look that old. They were trying to be good, but they couldn't help asking, "Are you a metamorph too?" Violet thought Cassie said they were rare, but there was Dora and now...

"No, no." Denise hunched down a little, her arms crossed on top her knees — which was probably a bit uncomfortable, being pregnant and all. "I'm not a metamorph, but I'm not a normal human either. I'm a vampire. Do you know what that is?"

"Um. N-no?" They knew about, like, the monsters in normal people stories, but Denise really didn't look like one of those. Also, Violet hadn't known vampires were real.

"It means my magic is different from yours. It makes me stronger and faster, and stops me from ageing. But that takes a lot of magic to do, and my body can't make all of it on its own, so I need magic from other people, to make it work right. Because of the way my magic works, blood is the best way to get it."

...That kind of sounded like the monster vampires, actually. "So you d-d-do drink b-b-buh-b—" Violet broke off with a huff, glaring at the wall behind Denise, stupid stammer...

Denise's eyes went to Cassie, a look on her face Violet didn't know how to read. "She has a stammer," Cassie said. "This is a normal amount of nervous, not a the scary vampire is about to eat me nervous."

"Oh! No I'm n-n-n— T-talking is hard, that's all." The thought that maybe Violet should be scared hadn't come up at all. Even if Denise really was one of the scary vampires from the stories, Violet wouldn't be worried — they were pretty sure Cassie was even scarier.

"Ah, I see. And no, we don't drink blood — you have to do something special to get magic out of something by drinking it, like making it into a potion. There's a ritual we do, it's very private. And we don't hurt people to do it, we only need a little. There are bad vampires out there, but most of us have never hurt anyone. Most people I know ask a friend to help."

"...Oh." That didn't sound so bad, Violet thought. Cassie said they weren't supposed to let anyone get their blood, because bad people could do bad things with it, but if they knew exactly what it was going to it was probably fine. Kind of like Cassie doing that ritual the day they moved into the house, but instead of stopping people from tracking them it kept their friends healthy, like. And, Denise had said this was just what her magic was like, it wasn't like she could help it... "Okay."

Denise smiled. "Okay? That's it?"

Violet shrugged — was there something else they were supposed to say?

It didn't look like it, it seemed like Denise and Cassie thought that was just kind of funny. "Well then, nice to meet you, Violet dear. Come on in..." Denise stood up, smooth and steady but a little slowly, one hand propped on her hip. "...the children are in the courtyard."

At the other end of the little tunnel through the row of houses was an open space, more or less a rectangle paved in stone. It wasn't very big, feeling a little cramped with the walls on all sides, but it was clean and there was some colour here and there, some of the walls painted or curtains hanging out of the windows, chalk or something on the paving stones. And there were people in here, mostly kids — some sketching with chalk on the floor or the blank parts of the walls, a few sitting in a clump with a grown-up...doing something with beads, it looked like, some others kicking a football back and forth, a little slow, careful not to send it flying at anyone. There were also a lot of cats around, curled up in shadowy corners or on top of little boxy rooms set against the back wall (Violet didn't know what those were) or in the laps of the people with the beads, one sleeping underneath one of the chairs by a door into one of the houses, a couple of grown-ups talking and sipping tea, the cats in a variety of colours, some patchy and others with stripes down their backs, big ones and tiny kittens. That seemed like too many cats, there must be a reason for that.

When Violet noticed something, they stared, their mouth maybe even hanging open a little bit — one of the kids drawing with chalk was blue.

Some of the kids noticed the new people by the door, looking over wide-eyed and curious, but none came over and Violet didn't move right away. Instead, Cassie said they should get some questions out of the way right away. The people here were special, none of them were normal human people. Some of them were vampires — those would be the really pale ones, Violet thought that was maybe most of them — and some were werewolves. People weren't born werewolves (but they could be born vampires), had to be bit to become one, so if they saw kids who were having trouble moving so easily or had scars that's what that was — being bitten by a werewolf was really scary, so they shouldn't ask about it. Though, there were a couple normal kids here, Denise said, just their parents were werewolves, because werewolves had normal kids. It sounded like it wasn't something a person was, and more like an illness people could catch, and a really scary-sounding one.

(Not that Violet should worry about that, though, Cassie said — werewolves were only contagious when they changed during the full moon. They were safe to be around right now.)

The people who were funny colours — there was the blue one, but Violet also saw a couple with odd greenish-brown skin, their hair bright white — were nymphs, who were another special kind of people. They were almost always really nice, didn't like fighting and stuff — the way Cassie talked about them kind of sounded like how Vernon talked about hippies, all wanting everything to be nice and peaceful and big into nature and whatever, but Cassie didn't say it like it was a bad thing. Cassie said it was a little weird the blue kid was here — parents who had green kids wouldn't also have a blue one, and the blue meant he was a river nymph, they didn't like being too far from the water — Denise said something about him being adopted by the family of nymphs here, apparently it was a whole thing.

Also, the cats weren't just cats: they were a special kind of magic people too. There was a magic thing where a person could learn how to turn into an animal — it was hard to learn, and your magic needed a certain special thing to do it right (kind of like Violet's being light, but a different kind), so it wasn't very common. Cassie and Violet would never be able to do it, because you couldn't have the special magic thing and be a metamorph at the same time, for some reason. These people could turn into only one animal, and they didn't choose which one they got. It had to be an animal they'd seen in real life before, and one they had deep feelings about.

Cassie tried to explain what she meant by the feelings bit, but it sounded like mostly just really liking that animal, especially if you knew one. Like, if someone had a pet when they were a kid that they really liked, they most often became that kind of animal — so animals people had as pets were really common, like cats and dogs and things. Also farm animals, like horses and goats and ducks and chickens or whatever (though mostly only people who lived on farms got those ones), or animals that were raised for other reasons, like ferrets or owls (because mages used owls to carry letters), or ones that had important cultural associations, like deer and birds and wolves and snakes and bears. (Cassie said snakes were good animals to mages, a lot of old healing magic was invented by special people who could talk to snakes, because that was a thing people could do.) You get some weird ones sometimes, but those kinds of animals were most of them.

Sometimes, these people who could turn into animals did sex with the animals they could turn into, and because magic did funny things sometimes, these kids got a bit of the person's magic — like these special people were humans who could turn into animals, these kids were animals who could turn into humans. "Wilderfolk," as they were called, were just as smart as normal people, but they were still a lot like the animal side, and most of them didn't really like doing human things. Cassie said a lot of special magical animals were probably actually wilderfolk, but they never changed into their human self so nobody could tell. It was really common with stray cats in magical towns and post owls, it was a whole thing.

And all of the cats here were wilderfolk, so they were cats but they were also people. Denise said a couple of the person-shaped kids were wilderfolk too — Cassie pointed out how some of them had funny hair, not colours normal people got and some with patches of different colours, the same colours as their fur when they were a cat — but most of them preferred to be cats all the time. They would understand Violet if they talked at them, since they'd been around people a lot, but they weren't likely to talk back, at least not in English. Just don't be mean to them, and it was fine — Violet wouldn't be mean to a normal cat either, but they'd seen Dudley and his friends try to kick stray cats before, so, they did kind of get why Denise thought it was important to say.

That was kind of weird, wasn't it? People doing sex with animals, they meant — or, since they were also animals at the time, did that make it okay? Violet didn't really get the sex thing to begin with, so maybe, they didn't know. Also, vampires and werewolves and nymphs, Violet didn't know any of these existed before, and... Well, that was just kind of interesting, they thought. They guessed there were all kinds of magic people out there, since magic and dragons and stuff were real they shouldn't be surprised. Kind of neat, Violet was really curious, but it'd probably be rude to ask too many nosey questions.

Their visit ended up being very normal, which was kind of funny, considering absolutely everyone here were freaks. A little nervous, didn't know what to do with themself, Violet walked over to the kids drawing with the chalk — trying not to stare at the blue boy, didn't want to be rude. It was a little awkward, at first. The kids were giving them funny looks, didn't know what that was about. Violet thought they didn't get new people here very often? But it wasn't so bad, Violet grabbed a green piece of chalk to help fill in the grass in the picture a few of them were drawing, and everyone just went with it.

Violet noticed one of the girls moved awkward, limping a little — remembering what Cassie said, she must be a werewolf — and Violet was trying not to stare at the blue boy, and maybe not doing a very good job. They thought his arms and legs were a little bit too long, compared to the rest of him, and he moved kind of funny, smooth and drifting and... It wasn't bad, Violet thought he was kind of pretty, if a little odd. But, they talked while drawing together, and the vampires and the werewolves and the nymph just seemed like normal kids to Violet. The limping girl was quiet, didn't smile at all (Cassie had said getting bitten was scary, she probably wasn't better yet), and the vampire kids were very pale, like they'd never gone outside once in their lives, and the blue boy seemed a little spacey, but other than that, normal.

It turned out the vampire kids hadn't ever been outside during the day — like in the stories, sunlight hurt them. It came up talking about their drawing of a sunny flowery hillside somewhere, one of the vampire kids saying she didn't know what daytime really looked like for sure, only seen it in pictures and stuff. (Which was kind of sad, but the girl didn't sound sad saying it, just normal to her.) Vampires didn't burn in the sun or anything like that, but it made them terribly ill, and a magical kind of ill, they would fall asleep in less than ten minutes and be dead before an hour. Their parents were very very strict about maybe even catching a little bit of sun by accident, it was really bad for them. Which was why some of the windows had big thick shutters on them, those were the houses the vampires lived in, Violet was wondering about that...

That was also why the people living here were usually up in the night, because it was the only time their vampire neighbours could go outside. The wilderfolk also liked being up in the night (though they did nap a lot, they were cats), and someone said the werewolf grown-ups also were awake in the night, because the jobs they could get were mostly night shifts. It turned out werewolves had a lot of trouble getting and keeping work, because they always needed the full moon off, which could be hard to explain sometimes, and they were sore and ill a lot, and also a lot of people didn't like werewolves, so wouldn't hire them for mean reasons. Vampires had the same problem, but it was kind of even worse for them, since there was a whole half of the day they couldn't be out of the house or they would die.

One of the kids, a couple years older than Violet, said it was even against the law for a magical person to give a vampire or a nymph a job — werewolves could get a non-magical job, but it was really hard for vampires to do that, and obviously nymphs couldn't at all. Well, it was mostly against the law, a lot of nymphs worked on farms and stuff, because they were big with nature and everything...except, that didn't sound like having a job, that sounded like slavery, a lot like the old plantations in the Americas. Violet had had no idea that magic people had slavery, hadn't come up yet. And that was really what it sounded like, the blue boy had even run away from the farm he'd been born on, just, wow...

It was starting to sink in that the people here were really, really poor. Violet had guessed they were poor, since this place wasn't very nice, but they hadn't realised how bad it was. There were even way too many people living here for how big it was, the houses were tiny but they still had more than one family living in some of them, all the kids had to share a bed with at least one other person. They were able to eat okay, at least — not great, but they weren't starving — but...

Violet didn't know how to feel about that.

Before too long, they had enough of drawing with chalk — they didn't like getting dust on their hands, blech, kept clapping their hands to get it off. One of the kids pointed them to the boxy things against the back wall, which, oh, those were the toilets, they didn't have them in their houses apparently. Violet picked one, nervously pushing the door open, but it was nice and clean in here, it was fine. Once they'd washed up, they looked around for a bit, not sure where to go. They didn't want to accidentally kick the football at someone, so, after a little thinking they went and sat with the group with the beads.

Apparently they were making bracelets and necklaces and things, some of the older kids sewing beads into their clothes to pretty them up a little. Violet almost right away had the idea to make something for Cassie — she was always doing stuff for them, and Violet never did much really... — but they didn't know if they wanted to take some of their beads, especially now that they'd put together how poor the people here were. But, the grown-up sitting with them (wilderfolk?) saw right through Violet, said most of this all had been a gift from the Hartwrights, they could go ahead, it was fine. Violet would kind of need help, though, they never did this sort of thing before...

They'd been here for a little bit, Violet halfway done with a necklace — the beads were dyed glass, the colours not the same all the way through but in swirls and bands, very pretty, they thought Cassie liked green and orange, and a bit of blue maybe... — when people started to talk about having lunch. It had to be nearly midnight, but Violet guessed that was lunchtime for them. Violet thought they would go, since they didn't know if the people here had food for them (and also probably no room at tables), but Cassie suggested she go and get everyone take-out. Some of the adults gave her funny looks, Violet didn't know what those were, but after a little bit of talking they decided sure, and the magical pizza place they got stuff from all the time was open until really, really late — they stayed open so people out late at pubs and stuff could get pizza if they wanted. It took a bit, Cassie taking notes on a conjured piece of paper, to get everyone. There were so many people here, that was going to be so much pizza, how was she going to carry it— Oh, magic, duh.

There were a couple funny things that came up. Apparently the nymphs didn't eat meat or cheese, so they had to have something else. Some of the cats changed into humans to say what they wanted, which was kind of neat — there was a shimmer and then just poof, there was a person where a cat had been a second ago — but also kind of awkward, because they were naked. Cats didn't wear clothes, obviously, Violet didn't know what else they expected to happen, they guessed they just hadn't thought about it. Nobody really reacted at all to naked people appearing and talking about lunch orders all casual, but cats sometimes turning into naked people must be something they were used to here.

Not long after Cassie left to go get food — Violet felt a little nervous being left alone, but it was fine, everyone here was being so nice, and she would be right back (with magic pizza) — it started to rain. Slowly at first, Violet wasn't even sure it was happening, but the cats started zipping through doors inside, the few grown-ups calling the kids to collect their things and get out of the rain. Some of them were whining a little bit — not at being told to do something, but because the rain would wash off their chalk drawings so soon after making them. Violet helped pack up the beads and stuff, the grown-up watching them gave Violet a little plastic baggie to put in some beads to finish their necklace later. Which, that was nice of her, Violet scooped some in, but they didn't want to take too many...

Denise was waving at them, so Violet followed her into one of the houses. It looked like the bottom floor was just one big room — well, not big, but. There was a table with some chairs, to eat at, and also a few sofas and arm chairs, a turntable and a radio on a bookshelf. It wasn't a bad looking place — fuzzy carpet and the walls painted a warm orange, colourful posters here and there, and everything was clean, at least — but it wasn't very nice either.

There was an old man in here Violet hadn't seen yet — like, grandpa old, grey and wrinkly. He had white scars criss-crossing his face, more marks on his wrist, and there was a cane resting against the side of his arm-chair, Violet guessed he needed it to walk. The scars meant he was probably a werewolf, and apparently the changing could be really rough on people, no wonder he'd just been inside reading while the kids played. One of the wilderfolk kids, maybe about Violet's age or a little younger — she'd been person-shaped the whole time Violet was here, dressed normal and everything, but her hair was patchy black and white, obviously not normal — brought him a cup of tea, walking slowly with her eyes on the cup, careful not to spill.

Violet wavered for a little, not sure what to do, ended up picking a spot on one of the sofas and pulling out their beads. There were some kids nearby, sitting on the furniture or sprawled on the floor, and they talked to Violet a little but they'd never been great at talking to other kids anyway — and the stammering didn't make it any easier. A little was plenty for them, and having the necklace to distract themself with helped them not be so awkward about it.

A bit later, Violet didn't know exactly (there was no clock in here), a cat jumped up onto the sofa nearby — black on top and brown in the middle, the line between them not straight but zig-zagging up and down to make stripes, its belly soft white. It watched Violet put one bead onto the necklace, and then another — they had a kind of pattern they were doing, but not thinking about it that hard, just making sure they never put two beads of the same colour next to each other — and then Violet twitched when the cat put one paw onto their lap and—

"Hey!" Violet snatched up their bag of beads, just in time, because the cat just crawled right onto their lap, would have walked over the beads if Violet hadn't moved them. It shifted around bit — Violet winced a little at the claws poking through their skirt — and then, just, sat down on them, heavy and warm. Violet was little enough and the cat big enough that it was covering a lot of their legs, its tail by their waist and its paws tucked in near the hem of their skirt a bit below their knees. (The sofa was deep enough that only Violet's ankles hung over the edge, their stockinged toes pointing up to the ceiling.) One of the vampire kids giggled at them, and Violet just pouted down at the cat — they weren't going to shove it off, didn't want to hurt it or something, but really, it could have asked first...

Violet blinked, putting together that a person was sitting in their lap right now — a cat-shaped person, but still. That was kind of weird.

Setting the bag of beads down on the armrest, Violet got back to stringing them onto the necklace, working a bit slower now with the cat in the way. This was kind of awkward, didn't know what else to do. The cat would shift in place every once in a while, which, it did look kind of uncomfortable, Violet thought their knee was sticking against it weird, but it didn't seem to mind. Between beads once, Violet gave the cat a pet, which, didn't really do that on purpose, it just kind of happened, and wow, that was soft. Violet twisted the ends of the wire together a couple times, sealed the baggie up, and set them aside to focus on petting the cat with both hands instead.

Violet had never... Well, they had pet a cat a few times, some of Mrs Figg's, but only a few times — most of Mrs Figg's cats didn't like to be petted by anybody but Mrs Figg. Maybe her cats were just different, because they didn't remember them being this soft, it was actually really nice. They didn't really know what they were doing, hopefully this wasn't really uncomfortable, just petting down its back, but it started purring a little bit, a low rumble Violet could feel in their legs, so it couldn't be too bad.

Their hands pausing for a second, Violet again remembered that this wasn't just a cat, it was also a person. Was this weird? Violet thought maybe this was weird. They didn't think they cared though — it was really, really soft, and warm, it felt nice.

It was a while later — the cat hadn't moved in a long time, Violet thought it'd maybe fallen asleep, but it was still purring — when Cassie came back. It took a little while to split the pizzas up and get them to the right houses, some people even needed to move around, 'cause they weren't all in the same house as the people they were splitting a pizza with, Violet mostly ignored all that business and just kept petting the cat. Most of the kids around them had gotten up to go get pizza, coming back bit by bit with a slice or two on a plate, but Violet didn't want to move the cat.

Cassie came to Violet instead, setting a plate on the armrest next to her — steak and mushrooms again, neat. "I see you've made a friend." Violet didn't know what to say to that, but luckily they didn't have to, Cassie plucking up the partially-finished necklace, the beads glittering in the light. "This is pretty."

"Oh, um." Violet didn't want to say it was supposed to be for Cassie, they wanted to finish it first. Not looking up at her, looking down at the cat instead (which they were still petting), they muttered, "It's not d-done yet."

"Still." She set the necklace back down. "That's not just a cat, you know."

"...I know." It was a little weird, Violet was trying not to think about that. "But he's so—" Claws poked into their legs, Violet cut off with a wince. "Um, sorry, she?" The claws loosened, the cat just kept purring, like nothing had happened. "She's so soft, though, it's nice. Um, am I n-n-nnot supposed to..."

"No, if both of you are happy with it that's okay, I just wanted to make sure you knew. I brought some of that soda you like too, but I thought you might be worried you'd spill it."

"Oh, yeah, not a g-guh-g— Mm. I'll g-g-g— Ugh, I hate...that sound." They'd been paying attention, and talking about it with Shannon, and they were slowly figuring out some sounds were harder than others, and that was one of the bad ones. Saying the letter G used a different sound, but Violet wasn't great with that one either. "I'll have some l-later."

"All right, darling." With an odd little smile Violet didn't know how to read, Cassie ran a couple fingers through Violet's hair, pushing a little bit of it out of their face. "I'll be over there talking with Denise if you need anything. Okay?"

Magic pizza was great, as always. Violet fed a few pieces of steak to the cat, and apparently she thought it was great too.

After a while, Violet's pizza was gone, there was a high mewing sound from nearby — Violet leaned forward, there was a little kitten down there, its fur all soft-looking and floofy, green eyes really big in its head. The cat in their lap stood up, hopped down to the floor (catching Violet with her claws a little, they winced again), and with a shimmer suddenly there was a naked woman standing in front of Violet, long curly hair the same black and brown as the cat. She hunched over to pick up the kitten, cradling it one arm, then reached over to ruffle Violet's hair — which was a little awkward, she was completely naked — before walking off, whispering down at the kitten in her arms.

One of the nearby kids said her baby brother probably wanted to go home to nap, but it was still raining outside, but their mum could magic the water off...which meant the cat that'd been sitting purring in Violet's lap for however long was that girl's mum, weird...

They stayed for a bit longer, Violet didn't know how long. Some of the grown-ups started to trickle back home — the werewolves mostly had jobs, at non-magical places, and they didn't normally work all the way through the night. It had to be well after midnight by now, some of the younger kids starting to be put to bed — though mostly for naps, 'cause they wouldn't go to sleep proper until the morning — and Violet was pretty tired too. They had tried to move their sleep around a bit, weren't nocturnal (good word), and they'd been up for a while, maybe it would be good to go home...

Cassie came to them before Violet was tired enough to make a point about it, suggested it was time to go. Goodbyes went around for a little bit, which, Violet didn't really know what to say, and it was a little awkward at points — it didn't help that some of the wilderfolk kids they'd been talking to for a while were...weirdly huggy. Awkward hugs too, rubbing their faces against Violet's jumper or their hair, like... Maybe that was just a cat thing? Normal cats did kind of do that, they guessed, it was just weird when they were human-shaped...

Once they were outside of the row's wards, Cassie popped them away with another uncomfortable black crunching, and then they were back home, in the sitting room. She said the special word to turn the lights on, then, "I imagine you want to go straight to bed."

"Yeah." Their sleep was probably going to be all over the place after this, though... "Are we g-going to visit them more?" After all, if they were going to be up at night a lot, there wasn't much point to Violet trying to get their sleep back to normal.

"I guess that depends. Did you have a good time?"

Violet finally let go of Cassie's dress. They always felt dizzy and a little sick to their stomach after apparating — not nearly as bad as it used to be, but it still wasn't fun. "Um, sure. Stacey and Tom were nice. And it was kind of fun to— Oh!" Violet pulled the finished necklace out of their pocket, the colourful glass beads glittering orange and green and blue. They started trying to say this is for you, but immediately locked up on the first sound, the air just refusing to move, their chest feeling all tight and bleh, they felt their face warming. "Um. Yours."

"You made that for me?" Cassie took it, the beads clinking a little as they moved — the beads weighed enough that they bent the wire they were around pretty easy. Humming a little, Cassie turned it in her hand. She undid the hook Violet had finished off the ends with, but instead of putting it around her neck she wrapped it twice around her wrist, but—

Oh, now that Violet was standing right here looking, the wire was too short for a necklace for Cassie. It was long enough to get around her neck, but it wouldn't dangle much. It might fit Violet fine, but not Cassie. Violet had told the lady helping the kids with stuff that they wanted to make a necklace...but they hadn't said who it was for, she probably thought Violet meant themself. Oops?

It did fit fine wrapped twice around Cassie wrist, at least, she fiddled with it a little, bending the wire to get it to sit just so. "It's very pretty, I like the colours. Thank you, darling."

Violet felt themself blush harder, though they didn't really know why. "I kn-know it's not... You're always buying me things, and I..." Cassie was kind of doing a lot for Violet, all the time, and they still weren't used to it, and, they didn't know how they were supposed to... One little necklace (or bracelet) didn't seem like nearly enough, and they did help cooking, but they didn't know what else they could do.

"Oh, you don't need to feel guilty about that, darling — I volunteered to take you in, after all. Buying their kids things is part of the job of parenting, especially when you had so little to start with."

...They guessed "parenting" was the right word, though it sounded kind of odd to hear it.

"You don't have to do anything to, what, pay me back or the like, and even so, this is a very sweet gesture." Cassie paused a moment, her eyes flicking up to the ceiling. "Maybe you haven't thought of this, but I grew up very, very wealthy, and so were all the other kids I knew. Very rarely was there a time any of us didn't get something we wanted — things we wanted to do, or places we wanted to go, sometimes we didn't get that, but things? That was never a problem, our parents could always afford pretty much anything.

"For the people I grew up with, buying someone something wasn't a big deal — we all had money, we could buy anything we wanted. Making someone something with your own two hands, though, that was a much more meaningful gesture. So, I'm not just being nice, I really am touched. Thank you, darling, truly."

...Violet didn't know how to feel about that. They did believe her, they guessed, but. "You're welcome." That was what you were supposed to say, but it kind of didn't seem like enough, but Violet couldn't think of anything else. "Um. I'm going to g-gah-g—" Violet huffed, frustrated, their face getting even warmer. They got the first G sound just fine, why couldn't they get the second one too?! Stammering was stupid... "Sleep."

Cassie was all smiling warm and soft, which wasn't making Violet feel less, they didn't know exactly... "I was going to have a bath first, but I'll be going to bed soon myself. I'll wake you for lunch if you're not up by then, okay?"

After a muttered good night, Cassie stroking their hair once quick, Violet turned and headed straight for the stairs. They should maybe have a bath too, but it was late and they were tired, it could wait until next...well, not morning, probably afternoon. And besides, they already felt kind of weird, all flushed and shifty — not that they knew why, feelings were weird and hard — having a bath with Cassie right now would probably make it worse, and it wasn't like they were especially dirty or anything, it was fine.

(Partway up the stairs, they heard Cassie moving, glanced back — Cassie was walking into the kitchen, toward the bath, her eyes on her wrist as it turned, colourful glass twinkling in the light.)

---

January 1988

---

After a few seconds with their feet on the ground, Violet relaxed, their grip on Cassie's dress loosening. But they didn't let go all the way — the wind was cold, and Cassie was warm.

"You all right, darling?"

"Yeah." Violet reluctantly pulled away, hugging their cloak around themself. Mages didn't wear coats, for some silly stupid reason, and cloaks weren't as nice. As terrible as the floo was, Violet was kind of wishing they'd agreed to floo to Hogwarts instead of apparating there — they might have been sick and miserable, but at least they'd be warm.

They were standing on a dirt road, dotted with hoof prints and wheel tracks filled with little puddles of ice, to both sides of the road thick white snow. Not as deep as around the Tonkses', but this was natural snow, and Violet didn't think it snowed very much anywhere in Britain. In front of them was a big iron gate, maybe three metres high, instead of normal bars the metal twisted into carvings of vines, little flowers dotted here and there, very pretty. A greyish brick wall started to either side, on top the square pillars just next to the gate a pair of big statues...pigs with wings? No, boars, they had tusks sticking out of their mouths. Weird. Were winged boars a real thing?

Maybe pigs could fly, Violet thought, making themself giggle a little.

On the other side of the gate, the road and the snow went on, and on, forest to either side, maybe that was a lake down there, and up a hill, going on until the road reached a big castle-looking thing. Violet didn't think it was actually a castle, since they knew from books castles were supposed to be for defence, with walls and stuff, this just kind of looked like one, big stone blocks and pointy towers and everything. It was shaped kind of funny, like someone had took a few different-sized blocks and smooshed them together, towers poking up out of random places. Sprawling across the cliff over the lake (definitely a lake), it was kind of pretty though, even if it wasn't a real castle.

"Let's get going, then." Leading Violet by the hand, Cassie walked up to the gate. She pulled on a latch, the thing looking really small set into the huge gate, easily pulled it open a foot or two with a low groaning creak, then pulled it closed behind them with another creak and a clanking. And then they started walking up to the castle.

The land around the not-castle was bigger than it seemed at first. Snow covered up the shape of the ground beneath it, and it was a bit cloudy but enough sun got through to make it all glow a little, too bright to look at very closely. The two of them walked on and on, the wind tugging at Violet's cloak and hair, and the not-castle didn't seem to be getting closer as fast as it should, walking and walking on and on. Eventually, Violet started feeling them walk up hill, and the not-castle loomed bigger and bigger overhead, but it took a long time, they had to be walking ten, fifteen minutes before they reached the door.

(The floo was terrible, but Violet was definitely going to say they should take it back home anyway.)

The main entrance was a big wooden double-door, even taller than the gate (which seemed a little silly), with carvings in it all over, clumps of little people doing stuff, but Violet didn't have time to sit there and look over it, Cassie leading them through the crack in the doors. Despite the doors standing open, it was much warmer inside, Violet stopped hugging their cloak so tight around themself. The room they walked into was huge, the floor and walls white stone polished to a shine (Violet remembered washing the tile floors in the kitchen back with the Dursleys, winced), the ceiling way way way up arched and carved with swirling little patterns, all of it made out of gold, glinting and glittering in the light. In front of them was a big staircase, made out of the same white stone, splitting to curve up overhead to both sides — not reaching high enough to get over this room, Violet didn't think, but to a floor partway up around it, because this room was just too tall. The place was pretty, bright and shiny, but it seemed like a little too much to Violet.

And this was a school? Weird...

Cassie paused at the door to magic their shoes clean before continuing on, which was good — it couldn't be easy to make the floor so smooth and shiny like this, Violet didn't want to make more work for whoever had to do that. They started walking across the too-big room, their footsteps echoing just a little bit, which was very silly. It was a long walk to the stairs, along the way Violet saw these big hourglasses set into the wall, each filled to different levels with big, fist-sized gemstones, green and yellow and red and blue. Those must be fake, made with magic, because rubies and emeralds and stuff were really expensive, they didn't think anyone could afford so many that big. "What are those for?" they asked, pointing.

"Those are to keep track of how many points each house has — if you get closer, you'll see there's a sign underneath with a count. It seems Slytherin is winning, good show."

Slytherin must be the green one, that hourglass was filled rather higher than the others. "What do you mean, points and houses?"

"Ah, see, the students at Hogwarts are split into four houses, and when students do something well or break a rule they win or lose their house points. Whichever house has the most points at the end of the year wins a prize — nothing big, though, it's all very silly, some people take it much more seriously than others. I was in Slytherin when I was here. Your parents were... They were both in Gryffindor, I think — that's the red one." The red hourglass was the emptiest, they were definitely losing this year. "Amy was in Ravenclaw, the blue one, and the yellow is for Hufflepuff."

Cassie was right, that did sound very silly. Even the names were silly — Hufflepuff, now really...

They started walking up the stairs, but there was a turn off not very far past where they started curving to the sides, they went that way instead. There was another staircase over here, going back the other way, leading up to a wide stone hallway, wooden doors spaced here and there and the walls covered in colourful paintings, which...was maybe supposed to be on top of that big room at the entrance, but...

Violet looked back, measuring the stairs they'd just climbed with their eyes. Nope, this hallway and way up in that first big room should be in the same space. They must have done funny things with the inside of the not-castle, like how all the rooms in their house were shuffled around a quarter turn. Magic was neat like that.

Anyway, taking a corner and the staircase kept going up, and up, back and forth one floor after another after another. It was a lot of stairs, Violet was getting out of breath and their legs burning. Cassie paused on a landing in the middle to let them take a break, said they were almost done, only another floor and a half. It was kind of weird, there was a bit of open space around the stairs — the ones they were on kind of went straight up, zigzagging back and forth to stay in more or less the same place, but there were other stairs around going from one floor to another, stitching across the open tower kind of thing. It was a weird-looking place, and seemed, just, like it was way more work than necessary, couldn't they have just stuck with one normal staircase?

Violet tipped up onto their toes to peek over the railing, and then went right back down, grabbing onto Cassie's hand and shivering. They could see all the way down to the spot where that first staircase curved to the sides, nope nope nope.

After way too many stairs, Cassie led Violet off into a hallway — though the stairs went up another couple floors, so many stairs. The stone was a bit greyer here, less shiny and sparkly than in the entryway, but the walls were really busy, almost all covered by other things. There were these, like, big curtain things, Violet didn't know what they were called, heavy-looking cloth with complicated patterns or pictures stitched on them. And then there were paintings, lots of paintings — some of places, a forest here, a river here, a little old-fashioned village (like, from a long time ago, no power lines or cars or anything), but also lots of people. All kinds of people, in weird colourful clothes, robes like the mages wore and fancy dresses and, like, doublets and stuff, all kinds of things. Some of them had pretty hats, big things with floofy colourful feathers in them.

Because magic, the paintings all moved. The ones of places, yes, but also the people, shifting around, moving from one frame to another, muttering to each other, watching Cassie and Violet walk past. It was kind of creepy. "Um, are they real? I mean, are they alive in there?"

"No, not really. They'll talk back if you talk to them, but they're not truly conscious. The magic in the paintings makes them seem real, but it is only magic."

Oh, okay, good. If they were alive in there that would be really creepy. It was still kind of creepy, but...

After a bit of walking down hallways, they came to a big stone gargoyle in the wall. It was scary-looking, actually, crouching there, spikes on its back and sharp teeth in its mouth, not nice. "Orange drops," Cassie said, which was totally random. (Fruit drops were a kind of candy mages made, Violet knew, the orange ones were pretty good.) Violet twitched — the gargoyle moved!

Their heart jumping into their throat, Violet jerked back a couple steps, but the gargoyle wasn't attacking them, it just shuffled over a couple steps to the side with a harsh grinding noise and then froze again. Violet was startled enough that their heart was still pounding, breathing a little harder than normal, feeling all tense and fizzy, like they might have to run any second.

"Oh, I'm sorry, darling," Cassie said. She reached over, fingers slipping through Violet's hair before her hand settled on their shoulder, hugging them a little closer against her hip. "Did that startle you? I should have said something first..."

Cassie's hand rubbing their shoulder, Violet's fingers found her skirt without really thinking about it, trying to calm down. "Yeah, it's scary-looking. Why is that in here?"

"It's a door guardian — it's an old tradition to have enchanted constructs guarding the doors for important people, though one that went out of fashion centuries ago. Hogwarts is old enough that they made one for the Headmaster, and they never got rid of it. I guess they don't normally have to worry about it frightening small children, no one under the age of eleven is ever here..."

Violet thought that thing would still be plenty scary for eleven-year-olds, it was all spikey with teeth and claws and blech. "Okay. I'm okay, I just d-d-diii'n't see it coming."

"I'm sorry, darling, I should have said something, I'll remember for next time something like this comes up. Anyway, if you're ready to go, we're almost there — Albus's office is just up these stairs."

There were more stairs, but they didn't have to climb them — the stairs moved, going up in a spiral, around and around and around. Kind of like an escalator, except they looked like the same stone everything else was made of, which was pretty cool. Except, if they could do that with these stairs, why couldn't they do that with all of them? They'd had to climb up so many to get here...

At the top of the stairs was a set of wood double doors, the handle shiny bronze. Cassie knocked before opening them and stepping inside, into what Violet thought was probably the busiest room they had ever seen. It was made out of a couple circles, Violet thought. The biggest was the one at the front, where they were, bookshelves going all the way around the round wall, except where there was a fireplace over there, and also a couple cabinets here and there, wood frames with glass doors. There was a sofa and a couple arm chairs, poofy and comfortable-looking and in vivid reds and purples (Violet really liked the purple, it was pretty), and there were a couple tables over toward the walls, with a whole bunch of little things on them. Violet didn't know what they were, little magic gizmos, ticking and clicking as they moved, silvery metal shining in the light, some glowing all kinds of colours — they got a little distracted watching them, one had this little crystal inside that changed colours every couple seconds with a ticking noise, a deep green and then a sky blue and then a pretty gold and then orange and then purple and then warm brown and...

There was another smaller circle a little overlapping with this one, set up a few steps, mostly filled with a big desk, a couple armchairs sitting in front of it. There was a hat stand at one side of the circle, a ratty, patched, old leather hat hanging from it, and a perch for a bird in the open spot on the other side of the desk. There was a bird sitting on the perch, and it was so pretty! It kind of looked like a swan, with the long skinny neck, but it was really big, its head even bigger for its size, and its beak was longer and pointier, and its feathers were all red and orange and gold and... And they kind of shimmered a little as the bird shuffled on the perch, rustling, setting little chinks of light shifting on the walls, the feathers glittering, and, all bright and shiny and pretty, almost like someone had taken fire and frozen it somehow, and then carved it into a bird, but it was also alive, moving around, and it was soooooo pretty!

Violet thought there was maybe another circle behind the desk, but they couldn't see it from here, and there was a little staircase near the desk that went to a circle above, which looked like it was just for more books. Looking up, Violet finally noticed there was a model of the solar system in the big circle overhead. Kind of like Violet's puzzle one, but without all the colours, just balls made out of metal — not solid balls, frames with big gaps in them. Didn't need the colours to tell what they were, the sun would be in the middle, and then Mercury and Venus and Earth and the Moon and Mars and Jupiter — this one didn't have Jupiter's four big moons — and then Saturn with its rings. It stopped there, though, mages ignored Uranus and Neptune for some reason.

And there was a man at the desk — old, with a wrinkly face and white hair and beard. He had pretty gold-rimmed spectacles on his nose — Violet thought the lenses were tinted just a little blueish — and he was wearing the weird baggy robes most mages did, but they were really really colourful. Gold and red and a deep blue in a complicated, zig-zagging pattern, all the colours strong and vibrant, almost glowing in Violet's eyes. The cloth didn't glitter like Violet saw sometimes, which meant they weren't expensive robes, but still, Violet thought it was pretty.

"Ah, yes, come in come in." His voice was low and gravelly like old people got sometimes, but still quick and warm, not so old that he was slow yet. He scribbled at something on the desk for a second — his quill was pretty too, a bright white that turned blue and green and black at the end — before setting it aside into an inkwell, pushing himself up to his feet. He went around his desk and down the steps, starting across the big circle toward them, smiling — or Violet thought so, it was hard to tell with all the beard in the way. "Hello again, Cassie, I hope you're well. And this must be young Violet, then!"

"Albus, hello. And yes, this is Violet. Say hello, darling."

"Um." Violet was kind of nervous to be meeting Albus, if they were being honest. He was a really famous important person for the mages, like the head of their government and everything (they thought it was kind of like meeting the Prime Minister or something), so there was that. Also, he was the one who put them with the Dursleys in the first place. Cassie said he was a good person, that he wouldn't have put Violet there if he knew what would happen, but still, that was, hmm. They took a slow breath to make sure their voice would work, and said, "Hello, sir."

His lips quirking a little, he said, with a kind of teasing feel, "Now, now, none of that 'sir' nonsense! You're not a student here yet, so I'm only an old friend of your aunt's. 'Albus' will do fine for now."

Oh, um. "Okay. Nice to m-m-meet you, —" Violet felt their throat catch — not on the vowel sound itself, but the sort of gulpy noise Cassie said all words that started with a vowel actually started with — tried to push it through but it wasn't working. So they cheated. "hhAlbus." There! Got it. Talking was hard...

Albus took their cloaks one by one and hung them up on a rack nearby, which Violet knew was the polite thing to do, and started leading them across the big circle, toward his desk. (Violet poked the pretty purple chair as they went by, the fabric was really soft.) He was talking to Cassie, a bit of boring business to get out of the way first — to do with Potter stuff, Violet thought, but they weren't really listening. Albus was leading them past his desk, there was another circle on the other side, on the side with the pretty bird. Violet thought it was watching them, its big shiny black eyes on Violet, head turning a little as they moved.

Violet slowed down passing by the bird, without meaning to. "Ah yes," Albus said, backtracking a little. "This is Fawkes — he's been watching over the Valley for...well, nobody knows for certain how long. Hundreds of years, at least."

Violet blinked. "Do magic birds live that long?"

Albus chuckled a little, shaking his head, making all his hair shuffle around a little. "Not normally, no, but Fawkes isn't an ordinary bird. He's a phoenix. Do you know what a phoenix is?"

"Um, I heard the word b-before."

"Wondrous creatures, phoenixes. They have powerful magic — can fly with impossibly heavy loads, and cast fire with a stroke of their wings, and ease one's troubles with but a song. When they grow old, they'll burst into flames, leaving behind ash..." There was a wide bowl attached to the perch, just under Fawkes, Albus ran his hands through it and when he pulled them out again there was a thin layer of greyish stuff stuck to his skin. Violet tipped onto their toes, there was a bunch of ash in there, but not normal-looking ash, it glittered rainbow colours in the light, pretty. "...and a newborn chick will crawl out, and the phoenix starts their life all over. They forget some things, but they'll keep most of their memories, will still know the people they knew before.

"You should always be polite to a phoenix, if you should meet one. They're most all old and wise, and as intelligent as you or I — they can't speak our language, but they do understand what we're saying."

Oh, that meant phoenixes were beings, not creatures — Cassie had told Violet the difference, before visiting the Starlighters. Violet didn't know why Albus got it wrong. If he was a person, they should say hello, then. "Hello, Fawkes, n-nice to meet you. Your feathers are r-r-really pretty."

His wings shuffling, Fawkes let out a twitter, the sound bright and clear and warm...but not just a warm sound on the outside, Violet could feel it, like coming from inside, something nice and soft and thankful and welcoming and— Oh! Fawkes could talk, he just couldn't do it in English. If he was making that feeling on purpose, he was probably saying hello back, and also thank you. (Violet saw Cassie flinch, just a little, he must talk with light magic.) Grinning up at him, Violet chirped back, "You're welcome!"

They thought Albus was maybe a little surprised Violet understood Fawkes just fine — though it was hard to tell, with all the beard in the way — but if he was he didn't say anything. He quick gave Fawkes a couple little scritches on the head, the super pretty bird-person letting out a coo (pleasant tingles running down Violet's back), and then led them back past his desk.

There was another circle down here, a few steps down from the desk level...lower than the big circle, Violet thought. It was smaller, with not so many things in it, looking almost empty compared to the rest — though there were big windows all along one wall, looking outside from way high up, the snowy hill and the forest past that and the mountains past that, the lake over there and a little town just there. (Violet remembered they'd been there once, one of the houses they'd looked at the day they met Cassie was in there somewhere.) There was a little round table with a few chairs in here, a platter with a pot of tea and things already waiting.

Like most of the things Violet had been nervous about lately, this one ended up being mostly boring. There was tea, and little sandwiches and biscuits and stuff, which was all pretty good, Violet wasn't complaining about that any. Sometimes Cassie and Albus would talk about grown-up things, and Violet would try to listen, but most of it was magic world stuff they didn't really know anything about, so it was very boring. The less boring parts were Albus asking Violet about things, like their house, and their neighbours, and Susan when he learned they'd met. When they talked about that, Cassie said she was going to introduce them to more kids in their age group, but as Violet Black, so nobody freaked out about Harry Potter being there or tried to do something bad to them, both so it was less awkward and so Violet was safe — Albus didn't seem totally happy about it, but he did agree that was a good idea, so.

He also said it was going to be awkward when everyone learned that Violet Black was Harry Potter the whole time, but... Honestly, Violet didn't think about that. That seemed like so far away, and maybe things would be different then, it was future-Violet's problem.

Albus also asked about the being a girl now thing, which was awkward. Didn't ask too bad questions about it, like Shannon did sometimes, just if they were happy with it — which, sure? They weren't unhappy with it. They didn't really get the difference between boys and girls, if they were being honest. Like, their bodies were different, obviously, but Violet could be both, so that didn't matter. (Though, they hadn't been a boy at all for like months now, they'd never been a girl this long before — or a boy, even when they were supposed to be a boy all the time they ended up being a girl sometimes anyway, staying a boy was weirdly hard.) Besides that, like, boy and girl things, all the other stuff, they didn't really get that? Like they didn't understand how people decided which were which, and what that meant, really. Or like with Shannon's bracelets, feeling like one or the other, they didn't get that either.

They kind of thought they were more comfy with a girl body, but they couldn't say how or why, or what that meant, really, it was all very squishy and fuzzy and confusing. But yes, what Albus was asking, they were fine being a girl now, that wasn't a problem.

Apparently Albus didn't know about Shannon. Cassie had to explain about therapists, because mages didn't have those, Cassie had told Shannon about magic before Violet met her. (They didn't know that, Shannon never said anything...) Albus seemed a little annoyed with Cassie for that, because...it was against the law? Violet did know that, when they thought about it, it came up a long time ago when they first met Cassie and she was explaining about what was going on, but... Oh well, Shannon wasn't going to tell anyone else, Cassie wasn't going to get in trouble, it was fine.

And yes, Shannon was trying to help them with the stammering, ugh, talking was hard and dumb...

Probably the most awkward part was when Albus asked about the Dursleys and everything, and Violet didn't want to talk about that. Avoiding his eyes, fiddling with their teacup, Violet just said they really didn't want to go back, they wanted to stay with Cassie, and, yes, they really had been keeping Harry in a cupboard (Violet had no idea Albus knew about that), can we talk about something else now? Albus didn't seem super happy about it, Violet couldn't tell if he wasn't happy about not talking about it or about the cupboard thing, but he did change the subject, so they guessed it didn't matter.

Albus also asked about the holidays, and Violet and Cassie talked about going to the Tonkses' a bit — Albus knew the Tonkses, he and Andi were friends and Dora was going to school here — which had been nice, Violet never had a real Christmas— Oh oh oh! Violet had a solar system model thing, like Albus did, but theirs was made of puzzles! Well, they didn't have it up, they hadn't finished it yet, but it was so cool! And space was neat, the booklet had been in French but Cassie had written out a copy in English and—

Did Albus know Saturn's rings were made out of ice? Like, just a bunch of little pieces of ice — kind of like sand, but they clumped up into bigger bits sometimes too — which was why they glowed so bright in the sun, kind of like the snow outside right now, but there were also salts in there — not, like, table salt, a kind of chemical was called salts (table salt was a kind of salt), Violet didn't really get it — that's where all the colours came from, very pretty, and also super neat. There was a lot of ice out there in space, actually, like, like, you know the big moons Jupiter has? Europa and Callisto and Gah-Gammie-Ganymede, that was it (stupid name) — but not Io, Io didn't have any ice, 'cause it was all space volcanoes with space lava — anyway, those three had a ton of ice, you know, it looked like they had ground and everything, craters and stuff — except Europa, Europa didn't have craters or anything — it looked like ground, like it would be rock or something, you know? But it wasn't, those three were all ice, maybe with some space dust that fell on them, but like a big shell of ice and under that big oceans probably, and you know, G-G-Guh— the biggest one, they thought it had so much water that it had more water than there was on Earth, even! Which was just neat, space was cool.

What, Albus didn't know about this? No, they weren't just points of light or whatever, silly! Violet was pretty sure light balls weren't even a thing? Three were ice balls (with rock in the middle) and the other was made of volcanoes, that's— Muggles flew cameras up there, that's how they knew. It was really far away, like, Earth was a hundred fifty million kilometres from the sun? Right around there, it was actually a little less than that, Violet thought, but about. But Jupiter was out five times that, which was, er, twice was three hundred and double that for six and then add another and you had seven hundred fifty million kilometres! which was a lot! But, um, the distance Jupiter was from Earth was going to be its distance from the sun but then the distance from the Earth to the sun one way or the other, so, six hundred to nine hundred million kilometres, because space was really really big.

Yes, muggles could get cameras out that far, put them on big rockets and shot them up like fwoosh! but it still took them a long time to get there. Like...a year and a half, they thought? Something like that. Voyager 2 was gonna reach Neptune late next year, they thought, and it was launched in Nineteen Seventy-Seven, so. Oh, it was still working, they could still tell it to do things and everything. Yeah, they were space robots! It was very cool.

Albus turned to Cassie and said that Violet was certainly a Ravenclaw, but they didn't know what that meant.

Overall, there were some awkward moments, Violet glaring down at their teacup and trying to power through their stupid stammer, but it wasn't so bad. Yet another thing they probably shouldn't have been so nervous about.

They wrapped up eventually, Albus saying he unfortunately couldn't sit around and chat all day, duty calls, blah blah. On the way to the fireplace, he said something about next time, which, they were going to have to do this a next time, apparently. Violet had known that already — Albus was really their legal guardian, but how it worked on the magic side, he could have someone else take care of them, and he was just in charge of legal and money stuff...they thought, they didn't entirely get it, and as part of the deal to let Cassie keep Violet and not make a fuss about her basically kidnapping them, he was going to check in now and then. Which, sure, that wasn't a big deal, especially since this first time ended up being not as bad as Violet thought it might be. They didn't know why Albus hadn't been doing that before — things were fine with Cassie, he didn't really need to check how Violet was doing now — but fine, whatever.

While Violet took a few slow breaths, preparing to go through the floo, Cassie warned Albus not to try to visit them unannounced — he would be able to hear the password, standing just over there, but their wards would bounce him. (They did have proper wards now, not just whatever Nola had been doing, Cassie had put them up a few weeks ago, but Violet couldn't feel them there at all...which made sense, 'cause they were supposed to ignore Violet.) And if the wards did bounce him he'd be chucked back through the floo backward, and wow, that sounded awful. Because the floo was terrible, especially when hopping one island to the other, Cassie asked if Violet wanted her to carry them through it, which...yeah, okay. It was kind of embarrassing, like they were a little baby or something, but Violet always felt like they were going to fall over, usually ended up clinging on to Cassie anyway, so...

Violet's arms around her neck and one of Cassie's arms under their bum, Cassie lifted them up really easy, hardly seemed to try — Violet suspected she was using metamorph stuff to cheat. With a last goodbye to Albus, Cassie pitched the powder into the fire with her free hand, and then they were going.

They weren't looking, their face pressed into Cassie's shoulder, but they could still feel it spinning and thumping around them, ugh, Violet hated the floo.

They thudded to a stop, once the ash settled it smelled like home, but Violet didn't let go right away, flushed and shivering, still feeling a bit sick. Cassie didn't try to get rid of them either, free hand slipping through their hair, from the top of their head back, soft and slow again and again, which was nice, that was helping a little...

Once Violet's stomach had settled down and the weird shivering was gone, they loosened their arms from around Cassie's neck a little and— Oh, Cassie had sat down on the sofa, they hadn't noticed. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah." Their faces were really close to each other, which was awkward, Violet shuffled over to sit down right next to Cassie instead. Her arm was still wrapped around her, Violet smooshed against her side, but that was fine, Cassie was warm. "I don't like the floo."

"It's not the most pleasant thing in the world. It's worth learning to apparate as soon as you can just to not have to do it as much." Of course, you had to be a grown-up to learn to apparate, like sixteen or seventeen, that was the law, but Cassie thought that was stupid, she'd already said she was going to teach Violet a lot younger than that. Probably not until they were twelve or thirteen, but still, Violet was looking forward to it, just because the floo was terrible. "Did you feel the tingle on your neck?"

"Oh, no, nothing." Cassie had been a little worried Albus would try to read their mind, to make sure they weren't lying about anything, which was silly — and also kind of scary, because apparently mages could read minds. Cassie had made something to protect them — there was a plain polished steel ring around Violet's left middle finger, little squiggly lines carved all around the inside (and she had made it herself, because Cassie was good at all kinds of magic) — and had done a spell at Violet to read their mind so they would know what it felt like one someone tried.

Cassie needed a spell to do it, with her wand and saying the spell out loud and everything, but she said there were people who didn't need to do all that. Albus could do it just with eye contact (which was creepy). The spell had felt weird, like cold little electric tingles on the back of Violet's neck, but Cassie said the ring worked, she hadn't seen anything.

And maybe Cassie had been a little paranoid about all that, because Violet hadn't felt it the whole time. "I don't think so, I mean? I was k-kind of nervous at points, and maybe I didn't notice."

Cassie let out a little hum, her fingers lightly brushing Violet's arm through their sleeve — they didn't think Cassie was even meaning to do that, just automatic like. "I'm surprised, I'll admit, Albus leans on that bloody charm more than he should. Of course, it isn't safe to use on young children, so it's possible he was simply being cautious. Or maybe he didn't want to risk it with me in the room. Could be anything, I guess, but regardless, I'm relieved he didn't try it."

"Was that why you didn't want to leave me alone with him?"

"Partially. Also, he can be a bit stubborn at times — I didn't want him to press you on the Dursleys or being a girl or anything like that and make you uncomfortable. If I'm there I can make him stop if it goes too far."

"...Oh." Now that they were thinking about it, when Albus had been asking about the Dursleys, Cassie had jumped in a couple times, even cutting Albus off in the mid-sentence once. Violet hadn't thought about it too hard at the time, they'd just wanted the conversation to be over... "Thank you."

"Of course, darling. Now, what did you want to do with the rest of the day?"

"...Space puzzles." Babbling off about how neat space stuff was had gotten it stuck in their head, there'd been so much going on since Christmas they hadn't finished them yet, they should do that.

Cassie giggled a little. "Of course." Her arm squeezed, hugging Violet closer against her, dropping a quick kiss on the top of their head, before her arm lifted away, letting them go. "I was thinking of calling Síomha, if that's okay with you."

"Sure." Síomha was one of Cassie's sex friends, she'd been over twice so far. She was a bit younger than Julie, Violet thought, though they didn't know by how much, and was an Irish mage, her English wasn't very good, but that was fine, Violet was learning Irish anyway. She was also louder than Julie, and more...bouncy. Violet didn't know how to explain it, exactly, but she was fun sometimes, it was fine. "I'll be in the puzzle room." It was supposed to be a bedroom, the one next to Violet's, but it didn't have a bed in it, and it had all their puzzles, so now it was the puzzle room.

"Okay, have fun."

Well, of course they were going to, they were space puzzles, puzzles were fun and space was cool...

(Violet was starting to think they might be a little weird, but they were already a freak to begin with, so that probably didn't make a difference.)

፠

Upon their second visit to the Starlighter commune, before Violet had even fully recovered from the apparation, Cassie was surprised to spot Denise waiting for them outside the gate, standing fidgeting on the pavement. It was hard to tell from a distance, but she looked nervous, or perhaps excited — it seemed something out of the ordinary was happening tonight.

Denise started moving toward them before Violet's hands loosened from Cassie's dress, so Cassie waited rather than cross the street to meet her. "You doing all right, darling?"

"Yeah." Violet finally let go, leaning back a few inches, blinking at the street around them. "The floo is worse, but I don't like apparation much either."

Yes, Cassie had noticed that. It wasn't unusual for children to have especially pronounced reactions to their first experiences with transportation magics, but it quickly eased with future exposure. Violet's difficulties were lingering long enough Cassie was starting to think she might be sensitive to planar crossings. That could happen, some people simply had magic that interacted with the environment around them such that abruptly tearing them out of it could be disorienting, and it was a fundamental enough of a trait that there really wasn't anything to be done about it besides...try to get used to it. Cassie hadn't even bothered telling Violet her theory, since knowing why it was happening wouldn't help her in the slightest — and if anything would only be discouraging, to know that it might well be something she'd be stuck with her whole life.

There were nature magic alternatives that would be less jarring, if Violet had the talent for them — though Cassie wasn't an expert, she'd have to find a tutor for those — but until she was old enough to learn there was nothing to do but stick it out.

"Hello, Denise," Cassie called as the visibly pregnant vampire stepped up onto the pavement nearby — a little awkwardly, one hand on her hip. (Pregnancy did often seem intolerably uncomfortable.) "I didn't expect you to meet us out here. Is something the matter?"

"We're to have visitors tonight," Denise said, a little breathless...but not from the walk, Cassie thought, a shade of nervous awe. "The healers are coming any minute now."

"...The healers?" Did she mean people from the Lovegoods? Denise had mentioned she was seeing a Lovegood for her prenatal care, but a Mistwalker healer wouldn't inspire such...

"You'll see when they arrive. We're not meeting here, though, there's a country house out— Well. I can bring you there through shadows, but human children often don't take to it well. Perhaps, I'll bring you there, and you'll come back to collect Violet — hello again, Violet dear — it should only take a few seconds..."

Cassie would rather not leave Violet on a London street by herself for any length of time, if she could help it. "How about this: focus on a memory of a time you've been there, I'll copy and subsume the memory, and apparate us both straight there."

Denise blinked. "You can do that? I've never heard of using someone else's memory as a target for...any kind of magic, honestly..."

"Oh, sure. I didn't realise that worked either, but a mind mage friend of mine turned me on to the trick only a couple months ago. If that's all right? I'll be copying the memory, so you'll still have it when I'm done, and I won't look at anything else. And the spell is perfectly safe to cast on pregnant women."

Her head tilting a little, giving Cassie a flat sort of look, Denise had probably already guessed that for herself — some magics didn't interact with pregnancy well, but obviously magics directly interfacing with the woman's mind should be fine. "Like copying a memory to put into a reservoir for scrying?"

"Yes, exactly like that." Denise nodded, closed her eyes, forehead creasing just slightly with a frown. "Ready?" She nodded again, so Cassie drew her wand with a flick of her wrist and lightly touched the tip to Denise's temple. It was a delicate, finicky spell, but Cassie had learned it ages ago for use with the family pensieve — after only a second or two, she was slowly pulling her wand away, a silvery-blue tendril of memory attached to the tip, pulled out of Denise's head inch by inch until it was released, the end dangled twirling in the air.

"Ooh, pretty," Violet cooed, looking up at the magic wide-eyed. "Is that what memories look like?"

"It depends — this is the memory and the spell I'm using to pull it out, the both of them together. Now, give me a second, I need to concentrate." Cassie might have accumulated a bit of experience over the decades, but she wasn't a mind-mage herself, this did take some effort. Tapping her wand against her free hand, she clenched her fist around the memory, pulling it off the tip of her wand and surrounding it. She squeezed her eyes closed, focused on drawing the magic inside herself, picking it apart, integrating the content into—

It was an old muggle farmhouse, out in the country somewhere, once owned by the parents of a muggleborn werewolf and inherited upon their deaths. This particular werewolf had died generations ago, but the property had been held by their descendants ever since. Normally, the werewolves of Starlight would lock themselves up somewhere they wouldn't be able to hurt anyone by accident — which often led to them injuring themselves more badly than they would if they could run free, but that was better than getting executed by the Ministry over a tragic accident — but it was unpleasant, and they especially hated doing it to children. They brought the young ones out to the farm over full moons when they could, with vampires around to watch over them through the night. (Vampires were somewhat more resistant to injury than mages and immune to the Curse, fast and strong enough to protect themselves and make sure the wolf pups stayed on the property.) Denise had gone along to help more times than she could count.

The specific memory she'd given Cassie was of holding a young boy around Violet's age after changing back on his first full moon. He was a muggle, had known nothing of magic or anything before being bitten, and the transformation was agonising, he'd been shaking from fear and pain and confusion, bawling for his mother. (Cassie knew, knowledge attached to the memory, that the DCMC had immediately placed him in one of the Ministry's group homes and told the parents that he'd died; the Starlighters had rescued the boy from the group home — they were awful places, the Starlighters got children out of there whenever they could — and later tracked the parents down and told them the truth, enabling a tearful reunion, but they hadn't found them yet by the time of the memory.) Denise was sitting out on the grass, rocking him gently back and forth, stroking his messy (slightly bloody) hair, crooning with a...well, that part of the memory wasn't clear, a lullaby of some kind. Her skin was already starting to prickle from the approaching sunrise (faint sunlight reflected down by the sky far overhead, unpleasant but not dangerous), eyes occasionally flicking to the lightening horizon, but they had plenty of time still, this boy needed her more than she needed to get inside...

(The memory came intact with Denise's heartbreak for the boy, but also a deep, smouldering desire she was trying not to think about — Denise had desperately wanted children of her own for longer than Cassie had known her. It could be very difficult for vampires to conceive, and they too often didn't make it to term, she'd been trying for a long time now. As unpleasant as pregnancy seemed from the outside, that hadn't been a performance when Cassie had found out, she was legitimately very happy for her.)

There was more periphery information wrapped up with the single memory Denise had given her than she'd expected, but it wasn't difficult to sift through it to get an impression of the farm itself. "Right, I have it," Cassie said, opening her eyes again. "See you there in a second?" Denise nodded, and vanished into nothing without a sound.

"She didn't pop! What was that?"

"That was shadow-walking — humans can learn it too, but vampires have a natural talent for it. It is rather less jarring than apparation, but unfortunately I can't do it myself." Not that Cassie thought Violet would find it any less unpleasant than apparation: most people didn't enjoy being subjected to almost total sensory deprivation, even if it only lasted a handful of seconds. "Are you ready to go?"

Violet pouted up at her — Cassie doubted the girl realised how adorable she was when she did things like that — clearly not happy with having to do another apparation, but she nodded.

A second later, and they were standing on the very spot Denise had once comforted a distraught muggle wolf, decades ago. Around the modest, old-fashioned farm house was an array of fields, a muggle street (complete with the occasional lamppost) in the near distance but otherwise seemingly isolated. There was a lot of grass, a few strands of trees here and there, but there were also fields lying fallow, dark in the cloud-strained moonlight — she guessed they probably still grew crops here, to help feed the too often cash-poor Starlighters.

There was a crowd here, much larger than Cassie had expected, werewolves and vampires and wilderfolk and nymphs... Dozens and dozens and dozens of them, all gathered out on the grass and lowly chatting, anticipation thick on the air. Whoever "the healers" were, it looked like all of Starlight had come out to meet them. Curious. Denise led them over to the group, and introductions went around — there were multiple Starlight communes across the Isles, and while the ones they'd visited a week ago were here there were many more besides. Violet looked a little nervous at first, more people than she'd expected, but a girl (wilderfolk) skipped up and hugged her, rubbing her cheek against Violet's hair. Normally, Cassie might expect a child unused to the Starlighters, especially one as jumpy as Violet, to be uncomfortable with that kind of welcome, and was honestly a little surprised when Violet relaxed, after a couple seconds looking up to Cassie for permission to go off with the children. Of course, darling, come back for a warming charm if you're getting cold (there was a bit of a breeze here, out in the open), have fun...

Cassie had no idea whether getting to know non-human children was getting across the message Shannon wanted it to, but it didn't seem to be doing any harm, at least. And she had noticed that Violet seemed far more comfortable with hugging and the like these days, that could only be a good thing.

Cassie was drawn into one conversation and then another, passed along to— Was that Audrey? Mother Mercy, she'd gotten old — her hair gone grey, a little stooped from age and accumulated injuries (such was lycanthropy), wrinkles sketched across her face... Cassie knew the werewolf was a muggle, but it was honestly a shock to see such clear evidence of how much time had passed. They'd been lovers for a time back when Cassie had been in her thirties, while the muggles had all been fighting each other (again), and that was over forty years ago now, which was a long time for muggles, but... Cassie could almost feel the years hanging over her head, the mortality of the people around her like a physical thing on the air, didn't expect to be kicked in the stomach with that just now.

She greeted Audrey as normal, complete with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, trying not to give away how unsettled she felt. Audrey seemed nearly as taken aback, might not even notice if Cassie were covering it badly.

(Such was immortality, it'd just snuck up on her this time.)

Cassie and Violet had been at the farm for maybe only ten minutes when the healers arrived. And Cassie suddenly understood the anticipatory awe in the air: the healers were, in fact, visitors from Avalon.

Cassie had seen a true fairy with her own eyes only once in her life. Unless one counted house-elves and goblins, anyway — they originated from the same other world as the Avalonians and their peers, and shared certain traits in common, but were often considered a kind apart. The other sort, the great fairies, had once colonised this world in significant numbers, but had gradually retreated over the course of centuries. As Cassie understood it, the reasons for that were complex. There had been (and perhaps still were) political conflicts in their own world that monopolised their attention; this world was rather more hostile to them than they'd originally realised, certain metals and industrial pollutants found to be toxic; modern industry developed by the muggles over the last centuries made that second problem much worse, supposedly true fairies became ill simply going near major cities or industrial centres.

While a few of the less powerful varieties had remained behind, such as house-elves and goblins, all the great ones had left. But while none lived on Earth permanently anymore, a small number did still visit on the rare occasion — they preferred not to attract attention from magical authorities (certain governing bodies were known to be rather nervous about their powerlessness to hold the great fairies to the Statute), so sightings were often dismissed as superstitious rumour. The official position was that none of the great ones had stepped foot on Earth in at least two hundred years.

Cassie knew for a fact that wasn't true: she'd briefly met a visitor from Avalon, once before. Cassie had been visiting a friend at the Greenwood when she'd seen him, passing through on whatever business he was on. The Avalonians were one of the more familiar varieties in Britain, and that wasn't a coincidence, as locations in the other world corresponded to single locations on Earth, and the Gates on the Isles mostly all led to Avalon. There'd been small communities of Avalonians on the Isles once upon a time, and visitors had turned up now and then throughout British history — most famously, an Avalonian princess referred to as Morgen had been influential in the founding of the Wizengamot and the decades immediately afterward. If there were to be great fairies spotted in Britain, they were most likely to be Avalonians.

Though, while there was a kingdom referred to as Avalon, the Avalonians were also a race, and Cassie honestly had no idea whether the two directly corresponded or not — most literature didn't bother distinguishing them. Avalonians were tall and graceful, more or less human-shaped save for their unusually long, sombre, big-eyed faces and the extra joint in each finger (like house-elves). They were pale-skinned, but not in the way humans could be pale-skinned, a soft white faintly tinted with blue or violet, gradually darkening with age. (Though all of the great ones had no natural maximum lifespan — Avalonians died only from disease or violence — so their colour could give one a vague impression of how long they'd been around and nothing else.) Their hair was generally dark, black or deep red or purple, but they often altered it to take a variety of other colours, whatever struck their fancy.

And they were intensely powerful — the great ones lived and breathed magic in a way no human did, their presence colouring the air all around them. Which could be terrifying, yes, especially if the fairy in question were angry, but... Well, it was no great secret that magical power could be attractive, especially when one was powerful enough it could be felt simply standing nearby. The one time Cassie had seen an Avalonian in real life, she'd thought he was incredibly sexy — embarrassingly so, especially considering she'd been in the middle of a conversation at the time — though he'd passed through too quickly for Cassie to even attempt to throw herself at him.

(Some of the old poetry centred on Morgen had seemed exaggerated and silly when first she'd read it, but once Cassie had been in the presence of an Avalonian herself, if only for a brief moment, she'd come to understand perfectly.)

The pair were wearing plain, modest robes in gold and white, faint hints of jewellery glinting in their ears, around their wrists. Those must be glass — with the notable exception of goblins, fairies didn't wear metal. One had skin a pale lavender, the other a deeper purplish colour, the younger's night-black hair potioned a snowy white at the tips. The elder, Cassie couldn't make out his hair, his hood was up. The air around them seemed to glow, magic so intensely powerful it was faintly visible, a tingle of lightning about to strike detectable even from this distance.

Well. This certainly wasn't something Cassie'd expected to see today...

A hush fell over the crowd, everyone going still, staring wide-eyed and silent at the visitors. The fairies had appeared some metres away from the crowd, they approached a little closer before they paused, the bag slung over the younger's shoulder falling to the ground. While the elder started pulling things out of the bag — the inside must be expanded, posts far too long for the size of the bag, and soon he was assembling a tent of some kind — the younger took a couple steps closer to the crowd. He dipped in a graceful bow of some kind, his hair following after the movement a little slower than it should, as though underwater.

His voice high and smooth and clear, ringing bright along the winter breeze, the healer greeted "the people of the night." As soon as "the Master" had the tent up, they could come forward one at a time, and the two of them would look them over. As usual (apparently this wasn't the first time they'd visited the Starlighters), they would accept no payment for their services, though they wouldn't refuse gifts if people feel moved to do something. Please remove any unbound iron or nickel on their person — especially nickel — before entering the tent. Let's get going, then, the longer they delay the less people they'd be able to see.

The tent was clearly enchanted for ease of use — even by the end of such a short speech it was already standing, the elder disappeared inside. The younger glanced over his shoulder before waving them forward, first up, please. A handful of Starlighters moved immediately, a few of them visibly limping, leaning on canes or half-carried by companions. Werewolves, Cassie assumed, the full moon had been just a couple days ago — and while wounds from werewolf claws or teeth were difficult for human magic to heal, fairies didn't have the same limitations. There was much bowing and scraping, the group seeming half-overcome — it wasn't every day one received free treatment from an Avalonian healer — but the fairy hardly even seemed to respond to it, waving on the most injured of the lot, a young man who couldn't even walk on his own, an arm over the shoulders of a pair of helpers, dragged on through the door into the...

Wait a second. Fairy magic didn't have the same limitations mortal magic did — curse damage, for example, wasn't nearly the impediment to them it was for human mages. As profound as their connection to Magic was, they were also far more skilled at directly manipulating the energies of a person's being, could perform delicate alterations with much lesser risk.

Using ordinary methods, it might well be impossible to heal the scar Violet had received that Samhain night. Avalonian healing, on the other hand...

But Cassie didn't move immediately, not wanting to push ahead of injured or ill Starlighters. There were desperately poor in a way that was honestly alien to Cassie, this might well be the only opportunity they'd have to see a healer any time soon, and she didn't know how long the Avalonians would be here — Cassie didn't want to deprive any of them of needed treatment. She continued to consider it while they waited, lightly chatting with a handful of adults, occasionally glancing toward where Violet was playing with the children.

It wasn't necessary. As far as she could tell, the cursed scar didn't trouble Violet at all. She had said something about not liking it, now that she knew she'd gotten it from the same person who'd murdered her parents, but it wasn't hurting her. There was a peculiar mix of magics bound to the tissues there that both Cassie and Albus couldn't identify, but that didn't seem to be hurting her either. That might change as she aged...but then it might not. The scar was unsightly, yes, and due to its deeply cursed nature couldn't simply be transfigured away, but when it came down to it, that's all having it removed would be — cosmetic. The necklace Cassie had enchanted for her already covered it well enough for most purposes. Cassie didn't want to possibly prevent a poor Starlighter from getting necessary care over what was, truly, a minor disfigurement.

No matter how viscerally unpleasant Cassie found the thought of being unable to change any part of her body if she wished to. Violet was far more static in her appearance than Cassie had been at that age, or even was now, and if it didn't bother her... Well, it wasn't Cassie's place to enforce her personal preferences on her child. She should ask — not right now, she would wait for the severely injured (along with several pregnant women in addition to Denise) to be seen by the healers first — but that decision should be left up to Violet.

In the end, the decision wasn't up to Violet — it was made for the both of them.

They'd been here at the farmhouse for some time already — a couple hours, perhaps. At some point lunch was provided, like a big picnic held out in the night. Cassie felt faintly guilty for eating their food, though she suspected it was actually being paid for by sympathetic family members of werewolves, and perhaps in part donated by the Greenwood, so she tried not to. (Besides, nobody was making a fuss about feeding her and Violet, and she had bought an entire commune pizza not so long ago, they could call it even.) The kids had gotten a few footballs from somewhere, running around nearby with much shouting and giggling, chairs and tables had been conjured — or transfigured from blades of grass, conjuring furniture was a bit much for the few Starlighters who had wands to begin with — set in little conversation circles, a few card games going on at the tables. Cassie herself was playing tarot with a mix of vampires and werewolves, including Denise and her Martin. (They'd seen the healers already, judging by the smiles it'd been good news.) Since Denise did have the father of her child sitting right next to her, Cassie was trying not to flirt, but was finding it annoyingly difficult — Denise was distractingly lovely when she was happy.

Though, Cassie didn't mind Martin, if the both of them wanted to— No no, bad Cassie, behave.

(Why did this keep happening, she was regularly getting laid already...)

Cassie knew the fairy was approaching without needing to see him. A heavy hush fell over the crowd around her, gradually in a wave, the air turning... Like the wind before a summer thunderstorm, thick with life and lightning, making her a little light-headed. When she looked up her eyes found him instinctively, drifting silently through the crowd, Starlighters parting to let him by — watching him silently, wide-eyed, awe-struck — others reaching out to touch him, seemingly on impulse, fingers brushing lightly over his robes. He didn't seem to mind, hardly reacted to their attention at all, walking placid and imperturbable through the crowd.

...Toward Cassie.

Cassie scrambled up to her feet as he approached, nearly tripping over the leg of her chair. She could hardly breathe, the magic on the air so thick, his eyes gleaming a rich, vivid purple, she stared, dimly aware that she was gaping at him, but she couldn't help it... "You are the mother of the shape-changer child, yes?" His teeth were pointed, like a goblin's.

"Ah..." Her heart pounding in her chest and her fingertips, she cleared her throat. "Yes. Well, her aunt, technically..."

The fairy nodded. "The Master wishes to see them. Her? If you would collect her and bring her to the tent."

"Um, sure. I mean, thank you, of course, I wasn't sure if I should—" She cut herself off, all but biting her tongue. "I'll be there in a minute." He gave her a little, tolerantly amused smile, his head dipping slightly, then turned around, drifting back toward the tent.

Cassie leaned against the table on one hand for a moment, struggling to catch her breath, her knees shaking and her skin crawling — fuck, that'd been intense...

It only took a moment for Cassie to track down Violet — she hadn't been watching constantly, but she had been keeping track of where Violet was in the crowd and what she was up to. Violet seemed a little nervous about the healers wanting to see her, but she didn't protest, silently walking with Cassie toward the tent, her hand small and cool in Cassie's. Someone was in there with the healers at the moment, so they stood among a small clump of people all waiting their turn — nothing serious, by the look of it, probably people with underlying conditions they wanted checked or unidentified difficulties they were curious about.

A few minutes after they arrived, a pair of wilderfolk slipped out through the opening in the tent, feline paws bounding silently across the grass as they weaved between people's legs. A moment after that, the younger fairy reappeared, leaning his head through the gap. "The shape-changer now, please," he said, beckoning them onward with a long-fingered hand, the movement smooth and graceful.

The inside of the tent didn't appear to be inside anything at all. They stepped through the gap in the fabric into a small forest clearing, though an alien one — this must be a scene from that other world. The trunks of the trees were tall and narrow, branches splitting off to droop in arching curves overhead, the bark smooth and black, almost metallic, regular notches a shimmering silver. The leaves were strangely colourful, vibrant blues and violets, flickering gently in a faint breeze. There was brush under the tree cover, showing the same oddly-coloured leaves, blooming with flowers in reds and oranges and whites. The grass underfoot was a lighter colour, a soft lavender, several shades darker than the skin of the younger healer.

The clearing was circular, at the centre a pool of water a few metres wide, lined with smooth, rounded white stones. Furniture was arrayed in a circle around the pool, cabinets here — glass faces, within potions in a variety of colours — chairs here, a table there, a small rack holding a row of devices she couldn't identify. The elder Avalonian was sitting in one of the chairs, his hood pulled back to reveal dark crimson hair, staring off into space seemingly lost in thought, fingertips slowly tapping at his own knuckles. Overhead the sky was clear, twinkling with stars, painted over them gossamer strands of glittering colour, green and blue and red, slowly winding in shifting bands — like aurorae, but not quite the same, too...well, glittery, Cassie didn't know what that was.

They couldn't have stepped through a portal into Avalon — the Gates were stationary, and when functional drew an enormous volume of power, she would have felt it — but the forest and the night sky overhead couldn't be real either. It must be a complex illusion of some kind. Creating such an enchantment with human techniques would be prohibitively difficult, but there was a reason fairy enchanting had once been mistaken for the craftsmanship of gods.

"Excuse me." Cassie dropped down to her knees in front of Violet, whispered, "I'm sorry, darling, I need to take this now." She unhooked the chain holding Violet's glamour amulet, dropped it into her bag, and then Violet's bracelets, while she was at it divested herself of her earrings, the couple rings on her fingers, and the bracelet Violet had made her — she didn't think it mattered, since the healers weren't likely to be touching her anyway, but there was no reason to not be polite. Violet didn't even seem to be paying attention, looking around at the alien forest, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

"Is that silver?" the high, smooth fairy voice said, one overlong finger pointing at the chain of the Black necklace Archie had sent Violet for Christmas.

"Ah... Yes, I think so."

"Remove that too, if you please. Silver as used by humans often contains copper or nickel."

"Oh, of course, yes..." Cassie suspected it was goblin silver, which was alchemically pure and enchanted to hold its shape despite the metal's natural softness, but just to be safe. "I'm sorry, I know you said to remove things before coming in the tent, but we prefer people not see the scar."

"I assumed as much, no harm done. Come, this way..."

The younger fairy led them deeper into the clearing, at his direction Violet climbed up onto a padded stool — it was rather high, but Cassie suspected it was meant to put them at a convenient examination height, and Avalonians were taller than humans. She felt the elder fairy approach before she turned to look, the cloud of magic around him even more intense. Cassie's breath was entirely stolen away, her skin tingling and her knees shaking, she found herself gaping at him, trying to wrest back control of herself but it was difficult, hard to focus on anything besides the purple-skinned being standing an arm's reach away. Cassie wasn't used to being around people more powerful than her anymore — it would honestly be difficult for her to think of any she knew, besides maybe Albus, but he didn't really display it much — and fuck, she'd almost forgotten how overwhelming it could be.

Also, she was trying not to have sexy thoughts, because magical power was sexy (instinctively, she assumed for evolution-related reasons), and was catastrophically failing. The fairy gave her a glance — if he had any talent for mind magic or the Sight at all, he'd probably noticed that — but he clearly didn't care, turning without comment back to Violet...who was also breathlessly staring at him, but Cassie assumed far more innocently. He began to reach for her, but then stopped, eyes flicking to the younger, said something in a lilting, musical language. Too many vowels.

"The Master asks if he may touch the scar."

Still staring up at the elder fairy, Violet slowly blinked, for a moment Cassie wasn't sure whether she'd heard. "Um... Okay?"

He first tipped her face upward with a gentle push from a finger under her chin, and then started prodding along the length of the jagged, inflamed scar, eyes narrowed in concentration — clearly seeing something Cassie couldn't, presumably the magic bound to Violet's forehead. After the first couple pokes he leaned nearer, and then nearer, leaning uncomfortably close over Violet.

Then he abruptly leaned back, shooting a short glance at Cassie — there was some kind of look on his face, Cassie couldn't read it, but it sent a thrill of fear shooting through her anyway, his magic around her harsh and cold. (What was it? What did she do? She hadn't even had Violet that long yet, she couldn't have fucked her up already...) The elder turned toward the nearby table, the rack of tools there, as he walked away again speaking in their language.

"Child, do you remember when you got this scar?"

Violet didn't answer, letting out a long hesitating hum, so Cassie said, "She wouldn't remember, she was only...fifteen months old at the time. Do you know the story of Harry Potter?"

The younger fairy blinked at her. "No. Should I?"

Not really, Cassie doubted Avalon gave a damn about that sort of thing. "Have you heard of the Dark Lord Voldemort?"

"Ah yes, this one I have heard of. I understand he was defeated recently?"

And so Cassie explained about the Dark Lord, and Lily's ritual trap, the Dark Lord killed (though not fully destroyed) and Violet left marked, pausing now and then so the younger could translate for the elder. (Apparently the elder didn't speak English at all.) The sharp, unpleasant feeling from the elder swiftly vanished early in the explanation — in retrospect, she thought he'd assumed Cassie had something to do with Violet's scar, either out of neglect or having cursed her herself, so, fair. The elder returned with an odd little thing, a hand-held device of some kind, a clear reservoir stone grasped on the end with little wiry claws. After a warning (translated through the younger) that Violet might feel a twinge, one hand gently laid on her shoulder, the fairy touched the point of the crystal against her forehead, slowly tracing over the length of the scar.

Violet winced at one point, just a little, but otherwise it didn't seem to be doing anything. As Cassie watched, she noticed that the clear stone was gradually colouring, beginning to shimmer softly blue. The device must be designed to take an image of some kind.

And also, it turned out, project the image. Once he was finished, the elder fairy took a few steps back, fiddled with something on the side of the device for a moment, clicked something into place with his thumb, and an illusion bloomed into existence in front of him. Soft golden light twisting into a complex interwoven web, tracing back on itself to form thicker blobs, far too complex for Cassie to follow one thread all the way through, darker colours showing here and there, streaks of reds and blues and purples. Was that a representation of Violet's soul? Pretty. But, then, it would be, Violet was still an innocent — Cassie wondered what her own would look like...

Some more fiddling with the device, the image scrolled around and— Well, that wasn't so pretty. Attached to the web of Violet's soul was a second, smaller web, shimmering sharp black and white and nauseating green and orange. Just as tangled and complex as Violet's, and their threads were woven into each other — not the same structure, Cassie didn't think, there was a break in the colour scheme if nothing else, but the dense, randomly wandering threads had looped around each other, penetrating into each other, so deeply that Cassie couldn't trace a line between them, just...fading from one to the other, no sharp border but a gradual one, despite her certainty that they were two separate things. Not sure how she knew that, though, maybe simply that it was hard to imagine that something so vile-looking was part of a girl so sweet as Violet...

The Avalonians were discussing something, going back and forth as they pointed at the projection in the air, the elder occasionally fiddling with the device to show a different perspective, the conversation going on for at least a minute or two. (Hard to say, Cassie was still having trouble focusing.) Since the examination was apparently done, Cassie had drifted closer to Violet, wrapping an arm around her, a thumb gently rubbing along her upper arm.

After some moments, Violet turned to look up at her — her eyes pulled away from the fairies with what looked like some significant effort. She whispered, "Is something wrong?"

"I don't know, darling. Maybe they think they can get rid of your scar."

"Oh." Violet blinked. "G-g-good, then." She turned back to watching the healers, her feet wobbling back and forth in the air a little.

A last couple quick exchanges, and the elder switched off the device, the image winking out. The reservoir stone was removed from the end, vanished away with a snap of the elder's fingers. While he went to put the device back where he got it, continuing on to one of the potion cabinets, the younger fairy turned back to them, lips curling in a faint smile. "The good news is," he said, speaking to Violet, "we can heal your scar, and remove the magics bound to it. The bad news is that doing so is not optional — even should your mother refuse, the Master will insist that we truly must do it now."

Violet stared up at the fairy for a long moment. "Um, C-Cassie's my aunt? My m-muh-m-mother's d-dead."

"Regardless." If Cassie had to guess, kinship terms worked slightly differently in his native language, because she knew she'd already told him that. Also, they'd just talked about Lily not that long ago...

"...Okay. Why? I m-mean, I d-d-d-d— Yes, I want it to n-nnot be there, but why so...?"

The fairy hummed, the sound light and wavering. "I don't suppose you're familiar with the idea of a soul anchor?"

Violet began to respond, but before she got more than a couple syllables in, Cassie — hard tension thrumming through her, her arm tightening around Violet, breath turning cold in her chest — blurted out, "That sick son of a bitch made Violet into a horcrux?"

"No no no," the fairy said, lifting both hands in an easing gesture, "he did not— Hmm. To create such a thing requires multiple steps, yes? One must prepare the essence to be bound into resonance with one's own, but one must also enchant the vessel to support that resonance, and bind the parts into a whole. This can be done with a living person, yes, but it requires a deep fundamental alteration of the body to support the magics necessary for a soul anchor to function.

"It appears that this Dark Lord of yours intended to create a soul anchor in the near future, and had already prepared the essence necessary. When he was struck down by young Lily, the shock to his system tore this fragment loose — and, by a stroke of misfortune, it seemed it was pulled into the magic of the ritual, through which it came to inhabit Violet. The bindings that contain it, prevent it from dispersing or being absorbed into Violet, are long-term effects of this ritual; should all other devices holding this Dark Lord to life be destroyed, this fragment attached to Violet will not prevent him from passing on."

"Oh. I understand, good." Just about gave her a fucking heart attack, there... "But your master still insists we get rid of it."

"Yes, without prevarication." The younger glanced over his shoulder, toward the elder — he was standing over the pool with a few potions charmed to float at his side, pouring them into the pool at the centre of the clearing one by one, gently mixing it with swirling gestures of a hand. "Let me see if I can explain this in a way that will make sense." He turned back to Violet, his voice dropping a little, soft and smooth and gentle. "Imagine the soul is a lake. Things that happen to you, your thoughts and your feelings, are as ripples across the surface. The magic in your scar is as a piece of this Dark Lord, ripples carrying through it from one to the other. It is as though your souls are two lakes very close together, a narrow passage between the two. What is in one may travel through this passage to the other — he may feel the ripples from your side, or reach through this passage into you.

"It is likely that, as things are now, he doesn't realise this passage is there. It is..." He trailed off for a moment, eyes flicking up, head bobbing a little side to side. "Having a body contains the soul somewhat, makes it denser. As he has no body for now, his soul is much more spread out, less focused. This means it is being hit with far more things, making far more ripples, so many that he will not be able to tell which direction they are coming from, cannot feel where his own shore lies. But, should he be returned to a body, he will likely find the passage between you. And if nothing is done, he will be able to harm you through it."

Through the whole explanation, Violet just stared up at him, slowly blinking — if she was all affected by the horrifying picture the fairy was drawing, she didn't look it. "Oh. Okay. What d-d-d—" She took a short breath through her nose. "We're fixing it?"

"Yes," he said, smiling a little wider, "we're fixing it. But there are dangers. We will push magic into your soul, making you burn brighter, so you will push back the outside magic more, and also..." He trailed off for a second, his eyes flicking to Cassie. "Reinforce her intrinsic identity." Ah, yes, that was a difficult concept to explain to a child. "We will then, carefully, cut away the outside magic. But it has been there so long, placed so deeply, that the two of you have grown together. Like two trees planted too close, their roots tangled with each other. We must get all of it, which means we will need to cut out parts of you too. But, you will not be harmed from this — as we will be feeding your soul with our magic at the same time, whatever holes we must cut out will be filled anew."

Cassie gasped as the implications of what he was saying registered: by the end of the procedure, Violet's soul would have been partially reconstructed with fairy magic. That was... She had no idea what effects that might have — she knew more about soul magic than most, but this wasn't the kind of magic humans could even do, and fairy magic could be strange and unpredictable to begin with, to be altered by at it such a fundamental level...

The younger fairy gave her a nod, acknowledging the significance of what they were talking about here, before turning back to Violet. "You will be different after, though without seeing how well your soul pushes back the outside magic I can't say how much. It may be a little, so small a difference to go unnoticed, but the change may be quite greater. You will still be the same person after. You may be more uncomfortable with lies and untruths than you were before. You may find you have insight into the world and people around you. Magic may come easier to you than it did before, and you may find you have new talents to discover. In short, you will be made a little more like us — to a small degree, but there will be a change."

"Oh." Violet blinked up at him for a moment. "It won't hurt me?"

"No, child, it won't hurt you. If the changes are greater, they may be a little unsettling, at first, and they may seem unusual to the people around you. But these changes will not harm you, and will be much safer than leaving things as they are." Leaning a little closer, his musical voice hissing, "Do you know? Fairies can't lie — our own magic doesn't permit it. I promise, whatever changes we must enforce upon you to be rid of this Dark Lord's magic, you will be the better for it."

Violet hesitated, for just a second, and then she nodded. "Okay."

"Okay," the fairy said, straightening again. "You will need to disrobe, and step into the pool." His eyes flicking to Cassie, he added, "It will not interfere in the procedure for you to stand with her and hold her hand through it, if that is your wish, though you will need to disrobe as well — all but certain fabrics will interfere with the potions my Master has already added to the water. Whenever you two are ready." He turned toward the pool and stepped away — a careless flick of a hand conjuring a pair of simple wooden racks for them to hang their clothes on — again speaking to the elder in their language.

Violet immediately hopped off the stool, hunching down to untie her shoes. Crouching down next to her, a hand lightly running along her back, Cassie whispered, "Are you all right, darling?"

"I'm okay." Her fingers pausing on the knots for a second, frowning, she admitted, "It is a l-l-little scary. But I want it g-gone, and he said it's safe. I-I-hhIs it true that fairies can't lie?"

"Yes, that's true. They can't lie, and if they say they're going to do something, their magic makes them do it — the same is true of house-elves." It seemed to be a curious sort of low ritual, in giving any kind of oath their own magic altering their identity such that they were certain to keep it. Supposedly, fairies had a culture of talking around truths they didn't want to admit, and finding ways to avoid making promises such that they didn't bind themselves to anything they didn't truly intend to do, and also tended to be very precise with their language when they were making agreements to be certain any promise they made meant precisely what it was intended to mean, all of which had had some minor effect on the culture of the nobility in Britain due to historical contact. (Though in their case, outright lying was simply seen as inelegant and unbecoming of their station, and giving precise oaths was convenient for legal reasons.) The younger fairy had been very direct about what he expected the results of their healing ritual to be, though, he hadn't left enough wiggle room for him to be less than absolutely certain of success.

"Okay." Violet plopped down onto her bum, so she could more easily pull off her shoes. "It's scary, but I want to do it."

"Good. Do you want me there with you?"

Turning a little shifty, her eyes resolutely fixed on her socks, Violet muttered, "Um, y-y-yyyes, please."

"Of course, darling." Cassie dropped a quick kiss on her head before straightening, began to loosen the straps of her wand holster.

In a minute or two, they were both nude, dresses and jumpers and Cassie's brassiere hanging from the racks, underneath knickers and leggings stuffed into shoes. Cassie shrunk down to Violet's age again, as it seemed the thing to do, they started toward the pool — both of the fairies had stepped into it at some point, submerged up to their navels (or where the navel would be on humans) in the potioned water, now tinted faintly blue. Violet was hugging her arms firmly around herself, but whether that was because she was cold or because she was uncomfortable being seen naked by strangers, Cassie couldn't guess.

As they reached the rim of the pool, the elder fairy looked up, cast a spell of some kind with a snap of his fingers, magic fluttering against Cassie's skin, and then a second. Vanishing away any contaminants, she assumed. They stepped over the ring of stones around the edge, a hand on Violet's arm to make sure she didn't trip. The water was silky smooth, with a noticeable tingle of magic to it, and rather more chilled than Cassie had expected, noticeably colder than the air in here — and while it was warmer in the tent than it was outside, the water was still uncomfortably cold. It deepened quickly, step by step, swiftly crawling over their knees and—

Violet froze as the water lapped gently against their thighs, her shoulders hitching up a little, muscles tense and shaking under Cassie's fingers. "It's cold."

"Yes, child, I'm afraid it must be for now. It will be warmer in time, and you will be asleep soon in any case. Come," the younger fairy said, waving them on, "here, in the middle."

Violet grimaced as the water crossed over their hips — and Cassie sympathised, that wasn't pleasant — was shivering a little by the time it was crawling up their chests. The water in the middle was rather deeper than she'd expected, but it was a bit above waist-depth on the Avalonians, and they were bloody tall. In the middle it even reached Violet's neck, the poor girl's teeth chattering — Cassie wasn't quite that cold yet, but it was certainly uncomfortable. (She'd also made herself a little taller along the way, so she'd be able to stand in the water more comfortably, the elder fairy had glanced at her as she shifted but hadn't commented.) Honestly, Cassie was a little proud of her for sticking it out, the ritual was intimidating to begin with and steadily walking into cold water on top of it, brave kid...

As they neared, Cassie noticed that the fairies' robes still looked dry even where the water had touched them, as though it flowed through the fabric with no effect whatsoever. She wondered how that worked.

Violet was clearly miserable, but she didn't have to tolerate it long — the younger fairy put her to sleep very quickly. It was certainly a spell of some kind, but gentler and less sudden than an ordinary charm, the fairy crooning out a litany, faint magic sparking on the air, after only seconds Violet's eyelids drooping and she began wavering on her feet. Standing on either side of her, Cassie and the younger fairy eased her back, keeping her face above the water level, and soon Violet was floating face-up in the water — more buoyant than she should be, Cassie could feel subtle magic flowing through the water around her hand under Violet's back, supporting her somehow — already sound asleep.

While the younger fairy tossed little pinches of some kind of crystals into the water around them — it looked like salt, but Cassie was pretty sure it wasn't — the elder fairy started pushing these little beads into Violet's skin. Beads of magic something, Cassie had no idea, it was rather odd to watch. They were little things, maybe half a centimetre across and a gleaming blue, looked like glass but they couldn't possibly be. The first one the elder fairy placed low over Violet's hips, below her navel — holding the bead against her skin with a single finger, he whispered some kind of a spell, and the bead just...sank into her, and disappeared. Huh. Another went higher on her stomach, some inches below her sternum, another over her heart, another in her throat. The last went into her forehead, though this time it took rather longer, the elder fairy frowning in concentration, the bead sinking through Violet's skin much more gradually — if Cassie had to guess, making sure whatever magic was contained within went into Violet and not the mess bound to her scar.

Both fairies done with their part of the preparations, the younger retook his place on the opposite side of Violet from Cassie, the elder moving around to her head. By this point, Cassie was starting to get seriously cold, clenching her teeth to stop them from chattering, trying not to squeeze Violet's hand too hard, the other randomly flinching an inch or two this way or that under her back. The elder fairy's hands slipping through Violet's hair, fingers curling around the back of her head, the younger's eyes turned to Cassie. "We are to begin now. Do not cast any magic — the smallest spell will cause interference, and any unfortunate disharmony at the wrong moment could do Violet's essence serious damage."

"I understand. Let's get this over with."

The fairy's lips curled a little, amused.

Cassie couldn't follow the ritual at all — but of course she couldn't, she didn't know a bloody word of Avalonian. Their litany was sung, rising and falling in a methodical, lilting melody, though Master and Apprentice clearly had different parts, sometimes following the same rhythm but singing different notes in harmony, at others out of sync, the parts not quite complimentary to Cassie's ears, wandering and disjointed. It didn't seem quite right, something about it giving Cassie the instinctive feeling that it was incomplete somehow, but presumably the fairy healers knew what they were doing.

As the fairies sang on, ringing soft and wavering and almost eerie in Cassie's ears, inhuman (naturally, of course), the elder bowing his head over Violet's, the younger with one hand lying over Violet's heart and the other on the elder's shoulder, the water began to change, slowly enough she hadn't noticed at first. Sparks dancing against her skin, increasingly jittering and energetic, and Cassie didn't feel so cold anymore. Over the next seconds, steam began to lift from the surface of the water, but that was impossible, it wasn't nearly that warm — but no, that wasn't steam, but fumes, faintly tinted red and violet, magic sharp and electric on her tongue, she could nearly feel the static in her hair.

And then, slowly, the water began to glow. Dimly at first, but the brilliance increased by the second, a silvery colour that immediately reminded Cassie of a patronus, but rather softer and cooler — though perhaps it only seemed so to Cassie, absent the unpleasant burn of light magic. It grew brighter and brighter, Violet a silhouette against the glow, the fairies' voices rising as the magic building around Cassie's head sizzled, and—

Her throat tight with awe, Cassie felt Violet's soul leave her body, drawn out by alien magic, slipping past her fingers like a warm summer rain pattering against her skin.

---

Yeesh, got longer than I meant it to. Unfortunately, there's no great place to split it in the middle, so I'm just leaving it stupid long. Sorry xD

Yes, this sequence of chapters was named "visitors" after the fairy healers the whole time. There was a whole lot of visiting going on, but it's actually a reference to this.

I think there will be one more Visitors chapter, dealing with the immediate aftermath of the super special fairy healing, and then we'll be moving on — and I mean actually moving on, getting into significant time skips. There will still be a few chapters before Hogwarts, as there is a fair amount going on in Violet's life — an important thing with the Boneses, Cassie getting a bloody job, going to magic primary school, introductions to the noble kids in her year, learning metamorph things, getting a pet and a private tutor — but we'll definitely be accelerating the passing of time quite a lot. Really can't predict how many chapters it'll be, as there is quite a bit to get to, we'll get there when we get there.

Anyway, Starlight, fairies, dealing with the pseudo-horcrux as a seven-year-old, woo. Thanks for reading my nonsense, bye now.