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“Blessings be on this house," Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
VII:
Burrowing through the espresso machine’s instruction manual, Cassidy braves the high kitchen counters to make her mother coffee. She wears socks that slip against the hardwood floors and rain drums against the windows, veiling the Knightsbridge townhouse from an early Sunday morning. Supervising from one of the kitchen island’s stools, Miranda reads the paper and takes a sip, then makes a face and puts the mug back down on the table.
Crestfallen, Cassidy asks, “Does it taste bad?”
“It tastes fine.” Miranda turns a page, then adds after a moment’s thought. “It’s not hot enough.”
“Oh.” Cassidy frowns at the instruction manual she had followed. It had led her astray. “It said too much heat burns away the flavour.”
“Yes. That’s the point.” Behind her glasses, Miranda’s eyes continue to scan the newspaper. She does not look up as she explains, “Mummy can’t eat or drink when she’s reading, darling. It makes the letters change colour.”
Cocking her head, Cassidy leans over the table to look at the newspaper. Black and white. “What colour?”
Rather than snap at her to get her elbows off the table, Miranda runs an absent-minded hand through Cassidy’s long hair. “I have a condition. It is very pesky.”
Cassidy’s blood runs cold. She’d heard the word condition spoken before, but only in contexts of sterile hospital hallways and foul-tasting potions and long tubes with needles attached. She swallows down a shiver of fear and whispers, “Are you going to die?”
“What?” At that Miranda blinks and looks up from the paper, letting the pages fall limply to the table. “No, no. Don’t be silly. Nothing like that.”
“But you said -?”
Miranda cups Cassidy’s face in her hands, smoothing her thumbs over Cassidy’s cheeks. “I’m fine. It’s nothing you need concern yourself over.”
With the touch comes a swirl of colour, lurid as a sunset and sending a flash of warmth beneath her skin. For a disorienting moment, Cassidy sees herself as more than a reflection in her mother’s square-faced spectacles, as if she’s looking down from a great height and her arm is outstretched to cup her own face. She searches her mother’s eyes for some sign of deception but finding none -- despite all her efforts, she does not understand Miranda at all -- Cassidy says slowly, “So….hotter coffee?”
Her mother stares at her. “Did you just -?” But then she gives an incredulous shake of her head. Swooping forward, Miranda presses a quick kiss to Cassidy’s brow. “Hotter coffee.” Leaning back, she swats not unkindly at Cassidy’s elbows. “Now, off the table.”
VIII:
The hot chocolates Caroline and Cassidy order at Rosa Lee’s come served with chocolate frogs on the side. Miranda eyes the painted paper packaging as she pours herself a cup from the porcelain teapot on their table with a wave of her wand. “That seems a bit redundant,” she mutters to herself.
Before Miranda can spirit them away, Cassidy and her sister rip into the packaging and pounce on the chocolate frogs before they can hop away. Caroline snatches hers up with a smile of gleeful triumph, while Cassidy’s manages to squirm from her grasp and leap to its doom right into her mug of hot chocolate. Caroline lords her victory over her sister as Cassidy’s chocolate frog twitches and melts. In petty retribution, Cassidy steals Caroline’s famous witches and wizards collectible card. Miranda shoots them a warning look over the table. Tense shoulders. Arched eyebrow. The twins stop their squawking and squabbling immediately, though Cassidy doesn’t return the card.
While Caroline sullenly drinks her coco, Cassidy turns the card over beneath the table. She blinks down at her own mother’s face. The picture of Miranda captures the real life haughty sneer with fearful accuracy. With a grumble, Cassidy flicks the picture onto the table towards Caroline. “You can have it back,” she says. “I already have, like, three.”
Caroline makes a face and leaves the card where it sat, an unwanted prize. Meanwhile, Miranda stirs a dollop of milk into her tea, ignoring the card after a disinterested glance in its direction.
One of the servers puts down the needle of the brass-fluted gramophone in the corner. When a song scratches to life, Cassidy shoots a nervous look at her mother, who normally cannot abide an excess of noise. Any time music strikes up in a public space, Miranda would fidget and glower and -- if it were discordant enough -- stand up to haul Caroline and Cassidy elsewhere. Cassidy hasn’t even had a chance to drink her hot chocolate yet, but now however her mother merely sighs into her cup of tea and sinks back into her squashy armchair with an expression content as the sleek tabby that lounged on a sun-bathed shelf in the window of Magical Menagerie.
“It’s a pretty song,” Cassidy mentions hopefully. A woman’s voice croons in a language she doesn’t recognise despite her mother’s insistence on French, Italian and Latin lessons.
Miranda hums in agreement. “Yes. Powdery. Like someone has ground up old sidewalk chalk.”
Cassidy isn’t bothered by the odd analogy. Her mother speaks in atmospheres, in ambience-capturing twists of phrase; she turns impressions of a specific moment in time over in her hands as though they were real and solid, as though she could press them into a great big book for preservation. Sometimes when Cassidy looks at her, she can almost feel the sensations herself -- her mouth fills with chalk, with fine rose-coloured powder, like dipping her fingers into a pail of dusty flour.
Ever the opportunist, Caroline sees a chink in Miranda’s proverbial armour and asks, “Can we get wands? Your shop is just down the street.”
At that Miranda frowns and the warm fuzzy feeling lingering at the tips of Cassidy’s fingers fades. Cassidy kicks her sister under the table. Seeing their ensuing antics, Miranda answers, “You’re too young for wands.”
“We’re eight!” Caroline whines, then snaps at Cassidy under her breath, “Stop it!”
“You stop it!” Cassidy hisses back. A prickle of irritation that doesn’t entirely belong to her flares in her chest like a scratched matchstick.
“Both of you stop it,” Miranda growls and all at once her brief spate of relaxation vanishes. Caroline abandons the press of her luck and buries her nose in the mug of hot chocolate while Cassidy glares at her.
“Way to go,” Cassidy mutters, but bites back any other comment when Miranda gives her a look that doesn’t need interpreting.
Setting her tea atop its saucer with a faint clink of gold-rimmed porcelain, Miranda sighs before she straightens in her seat. “Girls, you remember Stephen, don’t you?”
“The one with the ears?” Caroline swallows a gulp of her hot chocolate.
Miranda cocks her head in confusion. “The -? Well, he does have ears, yes.”
“The big ones,” Cassidy clarifies for her sister. She doesn’t drink her own hot chocolate. A chill has settled in her stomach and she pushes the mug round and round by its handle.
Her mother sniffs. “There’s nothing wrong with his ears.” Then her mouth turns down to a sour tilt at sinking to the level of arguing with her daughters about something so trivial. “I didn’t bring him up to disparage his -” She clears her throat. “Anyway. You may have noticed him around the house more often?” When both of the twins just blink in confirmation, Miranda announces blandly, “We’re getting married.”
Cassidy stares, meeting her mother’s gaze, which flickers with something on the edge of anticipation, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Oh,” Cassidy breathes eventually.
Caroline on the other hand just shrugs. “Can we still visit dad?”
Their lack of either anger or enthusiasm has left Miranda reeling, for she stutters in that way she does when she’s caught off guard, when they confound her utterly with an expression she cannot read, “Y-Yes. Of course.”
“Ok.”
Miranda turns her gaze back to Cassidy, who shies from meeting her eye. Her stomach plummets to a space beneath her armchair and she tastes the echo of bitter disappointment. Cassidy reaches for her hot chocolate and finally takes a sip. It’s gone cold.
IX:
Caroline lies on the couch in their mother’s home office and throws a Quaffle into the air repeatedly over her head, catching it on the way down. Cassidy is perched on the arm of the couch wielding a nail polish brush with all the bumbling expertise of a nine year old. She paints her sisters toes. When Caroline’s foot jerks as she reaches for a bad throw, Cassidy’s hand slips and paints a stripe across Caroline’s skin that flashes four different colours -- red, gold, black and silver.
“Hey!” Cassidy scolds her.
Catching the Quaffle with her fingertips, Caroline peers down at her sister’s handiwork. “Hey, yourself! You got it all over me!”
“That’s your own fault!”
On the other side of the room, Miranda stops her pacing and the quick-notes quill scrawling away at The Book halts its scratching as well. “Girls, can you take this somewhere else?”
Cassidy uses the back of her hand to wipe Caroline’s foot before she can ruin the nice couch. “The lounge and dining room are filled with Stephen’s guests.”
Her mother blinks, aiming a startled look at the shut office door. “Was that tonight?”
“They’ve been here for over an hour, Mum,” Caroline sighs.
“Well.” Miranda strikes up her pacing once more, stalking around The Book on its handsome lectern with a tread light, intense and wholly consumed with her present task. “Yes. I knew that. Of course, I knew that.”
Painting the last of Caroline’s nails, Cassidy taps her sister’s ankles. “Done.”
Caroline sits up and swings her legs over the side of the couch to admire the job. “Nice. Hey, Mum! You should let Cassidy paint your nails, too!”
“Hmm?” Miranda’s steps slow but she does not look up. She continues to tap away at her chin with thoughtful fingers, frowning down at The Book. “Yes, alright,” she hums in a tone faint and distracted.
Caroline shoots Cassidy a mischievous look and immediately Cassidy hands her a spare bottle of nailpolish. Together they cross the room and each grab one of Miranda’s arms. They urge her to stand still while she works and while they fuss over her hands, besieging her fingernails with variegated paint before she can complain. The quill scrawls away. Every so often Miranda mumbles some jumbled phrase under her breath and Cassidy can’t parse the language -- something old and dust-laden, no doubt. The Book emits a continuous stream of glowing glyphs that rotate above the pages, all of which Cassidy ignores with a sense of bored familiarity. It’s always doing that.
When they finish, Caroline and Cassidy twist the brushes back into their bottles and step away. Miranda glances down, then does a double take. Her fingernails shift in eight different glaring colours, and her grimace of disgust sends the twins into a fit of triumphant giggles.
She leaves it on all night for their amusement, none of them venturing out into Stephen’s party, but the nail polish is gone in the morning when she heads into work.
X:
At the jeweller’s shop next to Borgin and Burkes, Stephen buys a diamond bracelet. As the shop owner wraps the silky-linked chain in chiffon, Caroline clutches her book to her chest and jabs her finger against the glass case, pointing at a pair of square-cut emerald earrings. “You should buy those instead.”
Stephen spares her selection only a cursory glance. “This will go with that goblin-forged choker of hers.”
“She never wears that. She thinks diamonds make her too pale.” Cassidy doesn’t mention that Miranda thinks the goblin-forged choker is too nice for herself to wear, or that it’s an inheritance Miranda received after her mother died, the pureblood witch Cassidy and Caroline were never allowed to meet. Grandparents were something other children had. “You should get the emerald earrings.”
Stephen takes the packaged diamond bracelet from the shop keeper and pockets it. “She’ll like this. Besides, it cost me a small fortune.” Grabbing Cassidy’s free hand, Stephen urges her towards the shop’s fireplace. “Come on. The Quidditch match is about to start.”
Before she can object, Stephen has thrust a pot of floo powder at her. Sulky, she grabs a fistful of the stuff and flings it at her feet. Miles away, the Quidditch stadium bustles with people. Cassidy slaps at her robes and ash floats from her in filmy clouds. Stephen emerges behind her a moment later, apparating so as not to sully his impeccable outfit. Hand on Cassidy’s shoulder, he steers them towards their box seats.
On the pitch below, two teams Cassidy does not care to recognise shoulder their broomsticks. She thumbs open her book to its marker and begins to read. Beside her, Stephen nudges her shoulder and gives her a pointed look.
Turning to another page, Cassidy says, “I don’t like Quidditch.”
“Sure, you do,” he replies absentmindedly as he buys a packet of black liquorice wands from a passing vendor. “I always see you playing with that Quaffle of yours.”
“That’s Caroline.”
When he pushes the liquorice wands into her hands, Cassidy curls her lip at the offering. He stares at her. “Fucking hell, you look just like Miranda when you do that,” he mutters.
“Liquorice is gross,” she grumbles, picking up her book and burying her nose in its pages.
“Alright, you know what?” Stephen reaches over and takes her book despite her cry of outraged protest. Jabbing a finger towards the Quidditch pitch, he growls, “Enjoy the game! I paid a lot for these tickets!”
“You paid a lot for those diamonds, too, but nobody’s going to like them!” Cassidy spits back.
For a moment he glares at her so fiercely Cassidy’s own indignant fury begins to quail. The remainder of the match passes in absolute silence between them. Later that evening, Cassidy watches with grim satisfaction when Miranda comes home and grimaces at the gift Stephen has bought for her and left out on the kitchen island with a flowery note. Miranda nudges the bracelet primly back into its chiffon-lined box with a bit of rolled up newspaper.
From where she reads upon the stool across from her mother, Cassidy points out, “I told him you wouldn’t like it.”
“And he didn’t listen?”
Cassidy shakes her head.
Rather than cast shade on their latest father-figure, Miranda twists her mouth to one side and hums a curious note. She taps the rolled up Prophet against the marble countertop. Then she sets it down and asks, “And what would you have gotten me instead?”
Cassidy thinks back to the jeweler’s shop. “There were these earrings -” she starts, continuing when her mother raises her eyebrows as indication for her to do so. “Green like your brooch, but square. I think you would’ve liked them.”
The corner of Miranda’s mouth twitches for a brief moment before vanishing without a trace. Very solemnly, she rounds the kitchen island and kisses the top of Cassidy’s head, announcing, “I think you’re right.”
The moment Miranda touches her, Cassidy feels more than sees a burst of warm colour -- a hot vibrant blue. At once her mother jerks back with an inhalation so sharp it comes out as a hiss. Expecting a sharp admonishment, Cassidy winces and wilts, but her mother only looks down at her with a softening expression. “I’d wondered if -” Then Miranda’s eyes go hard as glass. She taps Cassidy on the nose. “You’re a natural Legilimens.”
“O-Ok.”
“Don’t do that without permission,” Miranda says sternly.
Mouth going dry, Cassidy glances up into her mother’s face. “How do I -? I don’t know what -?”
Miranda sighs. She brushes her hands along Cassidy’s shoulders before stepping away. “I’m not the right person to ask. I’ll have to get you a special tutor, I suppose. And around me it will be more difficult to hold back.” With a grimace, Miranda rubs her hands as if trying to rid them of paint chips. “Occlumency was always particularly difficult for me.”
When Cassidy simply swallows down the tremble that works its way up her throat and the burning that clouds her vision with tears, her mother reaches out to cup Cassidy’s cheek. “It’ll be alright,” Miranda murmurs. “You’ll get better at this and it’ll be alright.”
XI:
The new second assistant smiles too much, which Caroline distrusts. “She wants something,” Caroline insists.
“You think everyone wants something,” Cassidy replies. They whisper to one another through the gap in the balustrades of the second floor landing. “Maybe Andy is just nice.”
Andy is nice. Cassidy had sensed it the moment she first saw her three weeks ago. The hook-nosed wizard her mother had employed to reign in Cassidy’s Legilimency had encouraged her to sense but not to pry -- like testing the surface tension of water without plunging her hands into the tumult.
Caroline shoots her a disgusted look, as if she can’t believe they are, in fact, related. “Everyone does want something! And how do you know her name all of a sudden?”
Bristling, Cassidy grumbles, “Not everyone is like you and Mum.”
“She is.” Caroline says and they can hear a key slipping into the lock of the front door. “This one is.”
“Do you want to test that theory?” Cassidy pulls out her wand, the wand her mother had chosen for her the moment Cassidy had received her owl from Hogwarts. Miranda had plucked the wand from the air and Cassidy had been so sure it wouldn’t suit her at all, that there was no possible way her mother could know her so well as to match her with a wand on the first try.
With a grin, Caroline fumbles in her pocket for her own wand and just as the front door opens, they point at the table on the floor below, making it vanish with a hushed whisper of a spell they’d read in their school books. Waiting with baited breath, biting their lower lips to stifle their giggles, the twins watch. The clack of shoes in the foyer echoes with this new girl’s hesitation and they can see her fumble with The Book, her hands sheathed in white gloves.
“Psst!” Caroline hisses to catch her attention.
A dark head peeks up at them from beneath the railing. The complete and utter lack of guile in the new assistant’s -- Andy’s -- thoughts almost makes Cassidy feel bad about sending her to meet her doom on the third floor, where Stephen and Miranda fight in an eerie silence that fills the house with resounding emptiness.
Almost.
XII:
Cassidy jerks herself awake. It's three in the morning and her heart races in her chest, a furious wingbeat against the cage of her ribs. It’s Caroline’s nightmare next door -- falling from a broomstick to the sickening crack of her arm -- but Cassidy experiences it all the same. Stumbling out of bed, she doesn't bother knocking on the door to the master bedroom -- only Stephen sleeps there -- and continues down the hall to descend the staircases. Her bare feet shuffle against the kitchen floor as she makes her way to the sliver of pale golden light unraveling from the door, left ajar.
Pushing open the door and stepping inside, Cassidy rubs at her eyes and says in a soft inquisitive voice, “Mum?”
Her mother looms behind her desk. Her back faces the door. She is wreathed in light from the glowing coals of the fireplace, cast in a faint fiery glow that gilds the lines of her cheek and shoulder in severe amber. On its lectern, The Book’s pages shuffle restlessly as if in a great gust. Her hand moves -- the sleight of wrist, the curve of fingers -- suspending a dark mass in midair that drips with something thick as oxblood.
“Mum,” Cassidy repeats with more insistence, more volume. She moves forward further into the room, tentatively crossing to the desk and standing beside it.
The mass revolves above her mother’s hand; it trembles and turns. Miranda is so engrossed, she doesn’t register Cassidy’s presence. Cassidy reaches out to touch her, but stops when she grazes the heavy cloth of her mother’s robes. The mass beats, audible as a heart and Cassidy forgets to breathe. When at last Miranda drags her attention away and looks down at Cassidy over her shoulder, her eyes shine with an oddly glassy quality -- as if peering through a telescope at something very far away -- and for a moment Cassidy can see it as well.
Plucking the strings from a heart like a harp. Her fingers drip with colour and sound. A dark wood would suit it, with densely bound grain carved back at the handle.
“Cassidy?” Blinking the light from her eyes, Miranda waves her hand and the mass vanishes. “What is it, darling?”
With a thick swallow against the dryness of her throat, Cassidy’s voice still comes out scratchy. “I couldn't sleep.”
Miranda glances at the clock and then does a double take. “You should go to bed,” she admonishes, her tone growing firm.
“So should you,” Cassidy whines.
Miranda opens her mouth to retort, but then shrugs. “Well, yes. I suppose you're right.” With a hand on Cassidy's shoulder, she turns Cassidy around and nudges her towards the spiral staircase. “Go on. Sleep up in my bed. I'll join you shortly.”
She doesn't.
For ages Cassidy listens to the faint sounds of her mother's footsteps pacing the office floor below until her eyes grow heavy. Sometime during the ungodly hours of the morning, she barely registers a soft brief dip in the mattress beside her. She falls asleep tangled in bedsheets that smell like her mother, and when she wakes up to sunlight streaming through the tall windows, Miranda is already gone.
XIII:
The air is filled with the scent of cinnamon and cloves. The House Elves have bedecked the townhouse with enough Christmas fanfare that the living room itself looks like the North Pole took up residence there. Swaddled in warm pyjamas, Cassidy nurses a steaming cup of hot peppermint cocoa. Caroline, seated next to her on the couch in front of the crackling fireplace, is itching to open her presents -- she’s eyeing up the nearest box at the base of the tree and trying to discern if it could hold the latest Firebolt model.
Cassidy sips at her hot chocolate and doesn’t tell her sister that Miranda had instead opted to buy her a new set of Chaser gear.
Draped in scarlet robes -- as festive as their mother got, to be honest -- Miranda reaches beneath the tree for the next present. “Ah. This one’s for me. From -?” She holds the package further away, squinting without her glasses. “-Cassidy.”
Delicately, Miranda opens the gift, cutting through tape with the edge of her fingernail rather than tearing into the wrapping like Caroline would. When she sees what’s nestled inside, she cocks her head. “You got me socks.”
Her mother sounds less than thrilled, but Cassidy cradles her mug between her hands and says, “Touch them.”
Miranda arches a dubious eyebrow at her daughter, but then picks up one of the socks. She blinks. Her eyes hone to fine steely points and she pulls the socks into her lap to better feel them between her fingers. She rubs the thick plush fabric, looking windswept, her face alight.
“I took off the tags already. Also they’re reversible,” Cassidy adds with a sense of triumph.
“Oh,” Miranda breathes, peeling back one of the socks to check. “Oh, that’s lovely, darling. That’s -” Her pale eyes bright and shining, she continues petting the material, carding it through her hands as if she can’t get enough of the feeling. “That’s really very lovely. Thank you.”
Already Miranda is pulling the socks onto her feet then tucking them beneath her legs, perching herself atop the couch like a cat. It’s the first Christmas since Stephen left and Cassidy has never seen her mother look so relaxed.
Diving for the nearest and largest gift, Caroline announces, “My turn!”
XIV:
One day without ceremony Andy is simply living in the townhouse. Cassidy experiences the transition seamlessly during a visit with her sister from Hogwarts after the holidays. They step from the fireplace to find that the office is strewn with little signs of Andy all about -- a dog-eared book on an armchair, a cold cup of tea on the table, a pair of pyjama bottoms dangling from the banister -- and that the kitchen just outside the office is abustle with bright sounds and the smell of burning. Puzzled, the two of them exchange looks before venturing forth.
In the kitchen, their mother is perched on a stool at the island, watching Andy fret over a tray of blackened biscuits at the oven. Her face remains smooth and fathomless, but her pale eyes sparkle with a wicked sense of schadenfreude. Miranda glances over at the darkened doorway of the office and her eyebrows rise in greeting. “Welcome home.”
She turns her head to gamely accept Cassidy’s kiss to her cheek. “Hey,” Cassidy says to the room at large, crossing over to inspect Andy’s misfortune up close. “Was charcoal your goal, or -?”
“Et tu, Brute?” Andy sighs and scrapes the ruined biscuits into the rubbish bin under the sink.
“Actually -” Cassidy explains, “Caesar was bilingual. According to Suetonius, his last words were καὶ σὺ, τέκνον, which is Greek for -”
“Oh, my God. Nobody cares, Miss Ravenclaw,” Caroline groans before her sister can finish and Cassidy’s cheeks flush with heat.
“Caroline,” Miranda says in that dangerous way of hers that doesn’t require raised voices to carry an implicit threat.
Nudging Cassidy with her elbow, Andy winks at her. “I thought it was interesting.” She begins pulling out ingredients from the pantry: flour and sugar and chocolate. “How about you put that big brain of yours to work and teach me how to bake properly?”
Somewhat mollified, Cassidy smiles as she crosses over to the fridge to take out some eggs and butter. “I think you might be a lost cause.”
“Ouch!” Andy gasps, feigning a fatal blow to the chest. “After I defended you and everything!”
As Andy and Cassidy start their preparations on the marble-slabbed island countertop, Caroline approaches Miranda and hugs her from behind. Immediately, Miranda stiffens as though she’d been hit with a Full Body-Bind Curse. “What are you doing?”
Caroline doesn’t release her. If anything, her arms tighten around Miranda’s shoulders. “Training you to like hugs.”
Frowning, Miranda twists around somewhat to fix her daughter with an incredulous look. “Caroline, that will never -” she begins, but cuts herself off when Caroline presses a kiss to the side of her head.
Settling her chin onto Miranda’s shoulder, Caroline announces in a brook-no-nonsense tone that resembles her mother all too much, “I like hugs. Deal with it.”
Cassidy’s mouth twitches into a grin at the look of shock on her mother’s face. Both she and Andy stifle their snorts of laughter when Miranda aims a glare at them across the island. They pretend to be wholly engrossed in measuring out cups of flour and folding eggs into a dough.
Miranda doesn't relax, but she doesn't tell Caroline to shove off either. Cassidy doesn’t need Legilimency to know her mother enjoys the attention.
“You like being a hero,” Miranda says dryly to Andy. “So, save me.”
Andy shares a smile with Cassidy over the glass bowl before replying. “I think you're doing just fine.”
XV:
Ever since she was a puppy, Patricia has never been allowed into Miranda's office. Even now she waits at the door, whining and shuffling closer, lying on the floor in such a way that her nose just pokes over the threshold -- the maximum distance she can dare encroach upon Miranda's work space without earning a sharp rebuke. Andy's cat however, honours no such arrangement.
Cassidy pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Brewing a cup of tea and buttering a few slices of toast, Cassidy watches from the kitchen as Bartholomew strolls right past Patricia and into the office, tail cocked at a lazy tilt. Inside, Miranda works while Andy is -- presumably -- still slumbering in the bed upstairs. While Cassidy bites into a bit of toast, she can hear her mother swear profusely as Bartholomew knocks over glasses of water and treads inky footprints from the inkwell on Miranda’s desk all across her papers.
“Your cat is a menace!”
“Just cast a charm to keep him out!”
“I did! Somehow he manages to get in regardless!”
“You must not be doing it right.”
“Not doing it right -!”
From her place in the kitchen, Cassidy hears the clatter of something falling, then the slow glug of liquid spilling onto the plush carpet. A pause from within the office, and then -
“I’m going to kill him.”
“You wouldn't. Miranda, no! Miranda!”
The crashing of books flying across the study and ramming into shelves and walls, followed by the acrid smell of spellcraft firing from a wand. From the commotion, Bartholomew comes racing into the kitchen looking harried. The tip of his tail smoulders. Both Cassidy and Patricia lift their heads to watch the cat slow to a saunter, then lick his tail clean with an affronted sort of air. The squabbling from within the office carries on, but Miranda never casts a charm to silence it, to shield herself from the rest of the house.
Not long later, Caroline drags herself out of bed and stumbles, tousle-haired, into the kitchen. “I heard fighting.” She sounds groggy yet worried, her eyes alert in a way that belies her usual cool façade.
Cassidy pushes a slice of toast towards her sister. “It's nothing like that.”
Immediately the tenseness sloughs from Caroline’s shoulders and she breathes a sigh of relief. Taking the offering of toast, Caroline squints at Bartholomew -- she should really give up and admit she needs glasses just as much as her mother and sister. “The cat again?”
“Mmhmm.” Cassidy prods her own spectacles up her nose with the tips of her fingers, reaching for that morning's Daily Prophet where it's rolled up in twine on the marble-topped island. As she flips the paper open, she asks in an absent-minded tone, “Do you want a cup of tea?”
“Ugh. You look just like Mum when you do that.”
“Caroline, we have the same face.”
“Don't be daft. Everyone knows I'm the prettier twin.”
Glaring over an article on the latest election announcements, Cassidy says, “I’ll take that as a 'no’ for tea, then.”
Caroline sticks her tongue out at her sister just as Miranda walks from the office with Andy in tow.
“Charming,” both Cassidy and Miranda say at the same time, in the same dry tone. They glance at each other in surprise, Miranda with a slow blink, Cassidy with a tense jerk of her head. Cassidy opens her mouth to apologise -- she hadn’t meant to pry, she really hadn’t -- but Miranda simply shrugs and crosses over to the island with Andy, who pulls out her wand to brew two cups of coffee.
“See?” Caroline grins around a mouthful of toast and reaches out to tug the sports section of the newspaper free in order to read up on the Quidditch team selection announcements. “Just like Mum.”
XVI:
It had been Miranda’s idea for Andy to revisit Hogwarts and teach a guest lecture for the sixth years. She’d had to twist Andy’s arm and now Andy smiles tremulously at the twins in the crowd of students that gathered around the Blast-Ended Skrewt enclosure. Cassidy can sense her nerves from here and has to shrug the sudden burst of anxiety from her shoulders. Mist trawls across the grounds, thick and soupy and enshrouding the enclosure so that whatever the fenced-in space held couldn’t be seen.
“Welcome!” Andy rocks forward and backward on the balls of her feet even as she fiddles incessantly with her wand. “I’m - uh - I’m Andrea Sachs, but you can all call me Andy. As a field agent for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, I’ve been invited to teach today’s course.”
Behind Cassidy, two boys from Slytherin mutter to one another while Andy speaks. “I heard she killed a basilisk with her bare hands,” one of them whispers.
Clutching her quill and notes, Cassidy frowns. She keeps from prying into their thoughts for names; even skimming over their minds makes her feel oily.
“Bollocks!” the other scoffs. “Look at her! She’s a Hufflepuff if ever I saw one!”
At the head of the class, Andy’s smile falters somewhat and she clears her throat. “Today we’re going to be dealing with quite dangerous creatures, particularly if -- Is anyone here under the age of fifteen?” She looks across the group of students congregated before her. “No? Ok, good. Anyway -”
“What d’you think it’s going to be?” one of the Slytherin boys asks his friend.
“I hope it’s a manticore.”
Trying to take notes, Cassidy aims a glare at them over her shoulder, but they pay her no heed. One of them flips her off and she rolls her eyes at him. Real mature.
Up ahead Andy is still babbling on, ignoring the interruptions and gesturing with her wand as she spoke. “The German Ministry of Magic cracked down about twenty years ago, and we don’t see many attacks these days, but that doesn’t mean you should be complacent around these creatures. They can be very nasty if not handled properly.” Her gaze flickers to the Slytherin boys as they continue talking through her speech, and she points towards the fence. “If everyone could line up at the fence? Uh - please? And don’t stick your hand through it. I’ve enchanted the perimeter. As long as it’s not broken, the Erklings can’t get out. So, don’t worry if they rush at you or anything.”
As the class approaches the fence, dark figures take shape in the fog. Small and hunched, they creep forward and when Cassidy catches clear sight of them she has to keep from taking a step back. The Erklings resemble House Elves even while looking nothing at all like House Elves. Their eyes protrude from their narrow skulls, bulging and milky white, and their long pointed noses do nothing to hide the needle-like teeth bared in feral grins. They sing through the mist, crooning sweetly discordant songs in an ancient germanic tongue.
“So much for a manticore,” one of the Slytherin boys sighs in disappointment.
“Creepy though, ain’t they?” The other shoots a sly look at a girl wrapped in a Hufflepuff scarf beside him and he nudges his friend before sneaking up behind her. “They’re gonna eat you, Mathilda.”
The girl shivers. “Shut up,” she mumbles, rubbing at her arms and pulling her scarf around her neck tighter, hiding her pale trembling cheeks. Cassidy tries to block out their voices in order to better hear Andy.
The Erklings slink ever closer towards the fence, peering up at the students while Andy delivers her lecture. The gate rattles as one of the Erklings shakes it with enough force to rip any other door from its hinges. Everyone near the gate jumps except for Andy, who doesn’t stop her lecture and doesn’t even glance over as she points her wand at the creature and repels it with a jet of green flames.
“Oh, they broke the gate, Mathilda.” The Slytherin boy points at the hinges, lowering his voice to an ominous hiss.
“N-No they didn’t!”
The gate rattles again, but no Erklings are near enough to have done it. Puzzled, Cassidy pauses in scrawling down the lecture and peers around. Behind her one of the Slytherin boys continues to harass Mathilda, while the other stifles a snicker behind his hand and points his wand at the gate, which clatters against the latch again.
Eyes widening, Cassidy nudges her sister with her elbow. “What?” Caroline grouses, not bothering to take notes while Andy talks.
“Look!” Cassidy snaps and gestures with her quill towards the Slytherins and the gate.
The latch begins to pry itself precariously away from the fencing post and a gap of shimmering magic appears like a knifepoint parting through a veil of sparks. The Erklings eye the widening rift with hungry gazes. All at once, they leap forward, spitting and hissing through their long sharp teeth, clawing at the gap in the perimeter. Before they can fit even one taloned hand through the rift, Andy appears before the gate. With a sharp gesture of her wand, the Erklings fly backwards as if cast aside by a gust of great wind that roars with thunder. Several of them burn up to a crisp, leaving behind piles of smouldering bone and ash, while the others scamper away in squealing terror.
A hush falls over the field. Slowly the wind fades and the mist curls around the hems of Andy’s robes. When she turns around, her expression makes the breath still in Cassidy’s lungs. “Fifty points from Slytherin.”
“What?!” the two boys cry in outrage.
“Each.” The air around Andy seems to darken, but her eyes glint with something dangerous. Wand clenched in her fist, she looms and when she speaks, sparks flare at her fingertips. “And if I ever catch you endangering others again, you’ll have a lot more to fear than a manticore.”
XVII:
Cassidy had been nine when she first accidentally walked in on her mother having sex. A great scrambling beneath the covers of the stale master bedroom had followed, accompanied by a great deal of grumbled swearing from Stephen -- ‘The only fucking time in six months and of course this fucking happens.’ -- which Miranda had silenced with a foul look in his direction. Cassidy hadn’t stayed for an encore. The door had shut behind her and she’d shuffled off to the kitchen in search of a glass of water on her own.
Now, eight years later, Cassidy wanders into her mother’s office, her nose buried in a book -- Dominating Dementors: A True History of Azkaban -- and a question on the tip of her tongue. “Mum, do we have any -?”
No more than two steps into the office, Cassidy freezes in her tracks. Miranda and Andy are nowhere to be seen, but a cloak has been discarded along the carpet and a robe hangs haphazardly from the spiral staircase. Upstairs there’s a rustle of bedsheets and a thump of someone falling onto the floor with a startled squeak. Cassidy can feel the impact on her own shoulder, as well as the shock of being discovered sending an electric current through her chest. Her heart races. Her breath catches in her chest. Graphic visions flood her and her eyes widen.
Cheeks burning, Cassidy whirls around and flees, slamming the door shut behind her. As she storms away, Caroline passes by with a curious look. “Did you ask about the -?” but Cassidy pushes past her without a word, already headed for the front door, firmly intending to leave and not return for at least four hours or until she can bear to look her mother and Andy in the eye without wanting to scrub herself down with steel wool. Whichever comes first.
“Ok, rude!” Caroline calls after her. Then Caroline enters the office herself, only for Cassidy to hear her squawk and slam the door shut again. “Thanks for nothing, Cassidy!”
XVIII:
They grow her new organs in a glass jar. The offal tremble and turn beside the Hospital Wing bed, masses of red on black, shot through with purpled veins. Cassidy watches them simmer in a soup of translucent fluid that reeks of pickled specimens.
“Can’t you put her under for this?” Andy is interrogating Madame Pomfrey closely. She wrings her hands and continuously shoots furtive glances to where Cassidy convalesces nearby.
Madame Pomfrey shakes her head, and her white habit brushes against the stark crimson of her Healer’s robes. “Too risky. I assure you, Miss Sachs, we are monitoring her situation very closely.”
“Can she -?”
“You may speak with her, but I must ask that you keep physical contact to an absolute minimum.” Gently, Madame Pomfrey pats Andy’s shoulder before sweeping only far enough away to afford the two of them a brief respite of privacy, leaving Andy to shuffle her feat with unease.
“Hey there, kiddo!” Andy tries on good cheer like an ill-fitting mask -- it shows the edges of her fear beneath. Cautious, she approaches Cassidy’s bed. “How are you feeling?”
Like she’d brushed up against death itself and it had worn a familiar face. Cassidy ignores the question and the unspoken answer. She rasps, “Don’t tell Mum.”
Andy’s pretenses melt away. “She should know, Cass. She would want to know.”
“No.” Cassidy tries to shake her head but the movement sends a lance of pain down her sternum, where her chest gapes to the open air but for the fine film of magic that sparks across the wound. She can see her mother’s panic, her disappointment and her anger, all tethered together like the rods of an axe. Emotion turns the bladed edge of itself inwards until Cassidy drowns in it. “No. No. I don’t want her to know. Please. I don’t want her to -”
“Alright. Shhh. Alright.” Despite Madame Pomfrey's warnings, Andy dares to squeeze Cassidy’s hand, running a soothing thumb across the back of her knuckles. “I won’t.”
Clutching Andy’s hand like a lifeline, Cassidy struggles for breath. “Promise.”
“I promise.”
IXX:
The blue domed ceiling at Wiseacres glitters with stars. Cassidy cranes her neck to count constellations while she waits for Andy to finish her shopping. Upon the second floor, the red-haired woman who works for her mother -- Emily -- thinks very loudly and very sharply about the latest orders of ash. Pock-marked and completely unsuitable for the task. Nigel would have a fit if he could see the state of -
Cassidy breathes deeply and shuts out Emily’s thoughts as she was taught. She scowls in concentration at a glass display case, rooting herself in the here and now, in the gold-inscribed telescope on display that points towards the ceiling, studying her fish-eye reflection in its lens.
Speaking to the owner, Calvin, at the counter, Andy turns suddenly towards Cassidy. “What do you think? Have I made the right choice?”
Cassidy blinks in surprise, tearing her gaze from the telescope. “You’re asking me?”
“Well, yeah!” Andy laughs and gestures for Cassidy to join her at the counter. “This is a birthday present for your mother. Who better to ask than you?”
Approaching with caution, Cassidy peers at the gift Andy has prepared but not yet bought. A block of rare uncarved elderwood is set in a cushion lined with velvet. The grain is marbled with deep reds and pale bone whites; it shines with a lustre rich as the medieval tapestries that line the hallway to the Ravenclaw common room.
Andy watches and waits for Cassidy’s reaction. She searches Cassidy’s face for answers with genuine interest that can’t be feigned, not when Cassidy could pry open her skull and rummage around as if through a picnic basket -- could, but doesn’t.
Instead, Cassidy smiles and answers, “She’ll love it.”