CASSANDRA ASTOR-REYES

      “Oh, no, not long at all,” he reassures her, as the waiter hands her a menu of her own and he opens his, glancing at the wine list on the first page. 

It feels like a dozen things have changed, since the last time they did this, a dozen major pieces of his life shifting around, his landscape changing in ways it had gone essentially untouched for forty years, but this, at least, is familiar. Her smile, the fondness in her voice, the way she seems to transform, just a little, given the chance to dress up and indulge in the kind of luxury a restaurant like this affords. Cassandra, bright and bold and daring and determined, this incredible woman he’s watched grow over the years into the remarkable auror she is now. 

Things have changed: everything with Camden, of course. Everything with Baron. Even the tense and silent truce he’d had with Benjamin since they ended up on the same Squad together has been shaken, a little, by their conversation in Scotland, by his own fear when he found out Camden and Benjamin were walking straight into a nest of vampires with one another and there was nothing he could to about it. The world has become an entirely new place, around him—not in a bad way, but just in a way that feels strange for someone whose life has been routine for so many years. 

And the promotion to Lieutenant is a part of that, as well. It isn’t like her promotion, from Office to Corporal, largely a nominal gesture, in which she’ll have more authority and more responsibility but be doing the same kind of work, most of the time, on roughly the same level. There’s something about moving from the desk he’s occupied for so many years into an entirely new office, separate from the rest of the Squad, that makes it feel strange, not to mention it’s a promotion that means he’ll be in the field less, no more small cases that just need a set of hands to check something out or wrap something up. He’d been reluctant to make that move for a long time, but with the way he’s been feeling himself feel older lately, the way he’s felt just a little less sharp, it feels like the right move, to not be taking as many cases, to be doing other sorts of work when it needs to be done instead. 

     “Thank you. I have to say, I can’t decide whether I’m excited to be leaving my old desk behind or if I’m feeling strangely nostalgic for it, now that I’ve packed it all up. What do you think, should we get a bottle of champagne?” 

Coming to places like this is always more than a little strange, but there’s a kind of glee in it that she’s always been able to indulge in when she does it with Becker. This is the kind of place her mother would love, where Cassandra might have been taken by any number of men who were vying for her hand in marriage. And it was somewhere she never would have gone on her own, not dressed up in the way she is now, as if that old life is something she takes part in all the time. Sometimes, here with Becker, it feels almost like a game. But it’s more a special treat than anything else, two people with something to celebrate and enough money to do it well. 

It seems like her world is moving and changing so quickly. Several weeks ago, she was a Corporal and everything seemed steady. There was drama, and all the things she was used to, but she could never have foretold the way her world would have been rocked after the incident in Scotland. Now she had Abel, and she was a Sergeant, and there were suspicions about Becker Savage that kept running around in circles in her head. Sometimes she looked up at him, saw him walking across the room at work, and remembered standing next to Abel and gazing down at a tome that made it clear the world was a horrible place. Sometimes she remembered that, and then recalled her brothers strange obsessions with conquering death, achieving longevity, bringing people back from the brink of non-existence. A horcrux wasn’t quite necromancy, but it made her skin itch in exactly the same way. She really didn’t want to believe that Becker could have been capable of something like that. She didn’t want to believe that Abel’s accusations about this man who she loved like a father could be true.

He was like a father to her. He had done more for her, been kinder to her than her own father ever had. He’d believed in her when no one else did, so she saw it as her duty to believe in him in return. Loyalty, it was a concept that had been drilled in to her for a long time. Loyalty to her family, to their ideals. She had thrown those things away, but she’d given all of her loyalty to the new people in her life, the new people that she loved. Given it to Becker, given it to Athena, and given it to Abel. It was a delicate balancing act, but she hoped she didn’t have to let any of them down.

“You’ll at least get more peace and quiet, without all of us bothering you and filling up the room with noise. Things are so much more lively now that Everhart and McMahon have fallen back in to their double act.” She smiles, softly, and lets out a soft hum as she considers it. “I think we’d better. We’re celebrating, after all. What better excuse is there than that? Plus, I’ve been looking forward to this all day. Good food, good company.” A bright smile, she puts her menu down for a moment. So many good options. “I feel like we haven’t seen very much of each other, lately. Like we’re getting pulled in completely different directions by the universe itself.”

After leaving Lorna behind in the living room, they stick close to Cassandra’s side as they make the slow ascend up the staircase and onto the home’s second floor. Her mumbled words mirror their own, as the pit in their stomach deepens only the further they get into this case. Whatever was happening here, whether it was honestly a changeling or something else all together, it was going to be bad. Cases like this didn’t have pretty outcomes, not after what they just saw on Lorna’s arms only moments before. 

Stepping to the side, they wait quietly as Cassandra knocks on the door, and soon after she introduces herself they can hear a quiet voice call out from the other side of it. 

“Yes,” Christopher replies, not even close to the tone or demeanor of that of a violent ridden child, but much more timid. 

Looking over to Cassandra, they reach their hand out to the doorknob and take a deep breath to ready themself for what would likely be another difficult interview before finally opening the door. When they do, they see Christopher sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back turned to them, as his attention remains on a small television in the room. He’s playing a video game, Abel quickly realizes, something involving an orange animal of some kind, that spins around and breaks wooden crates. Christopher doesn’t pause the game, or even turn around to look at the two aurors as they enter his room, but instead continues to keep his eyes focused on the little screen just in front of him on his dresser. 

“That looks like a fun game,” they offer, figuring it’d be better to work their way into talking about the reason why they were there instead of jumping right into things. 

“Yeah…. I guess so,” Christopher replies, his voice so quiet Abel can barely hear it over the noise of the game. 

Casting Cassandra a cautious glance, they step forward before taking a seat themself on the floor, a couple feet away from the child so that he wouldn’t suddenly feel suffocated by the auror’s presence. The floor doesn’t offer much room, and requires Abel to awkwardly fold one leg underneath them, while the other’s knee rests against their chest, but they manage it without seeming to disturb Christopher. 

“Do you play it a lot? You look pretty good at it.” They add, both as a way to try to further ease into a conversation with the boy, as well as figure out a little more about his daily life in the home. 

Cassandra isn’t sure if its better or worse that even the first sound of Christopher’s voice sounds much more quiet and subdued than one would expect, for a child behaving in the way that his mother described. His voice is a quiet thing as he gives his agreement for them to come inside, almost timid. She glances at Abel, finds them looking at her before they enter the room, obviously as vaguely nervous about this case in its entirety as she was herself. Her and Abel really had to stop getting stuck with the cases that had kids in danger, it did awful things to her, made her want to think of a future where she was able to help her better. 

Abel is as good with Christopher as its possible to be, it seems. The boy is subdued as he plays his video games, and he doesn’t stop playing it to talk to them. She can get that, it seems like an escape. And Abel talks to him so gently, casual little questions to settle them in to the conversation that needs to happen here, the awful questions that they have to ask about what his life is like here, what’s going on with his mother, what his side of the story is. This is such a strange case, Cassandra can’t quite piece it together in her mind, she can’t quite figure out what could be happening here. This wasn’t like the case in Kentucky, when it had been clear what happened even if they weren’t one hundred percent clear on the finer details. 

She watches as Abel sits on the floor a few feet away from the boy, watches as they interact with him. Cassandra takes a seat on the edge of the bed, instead of adding to the growing crowd on the floor in front of the TV. She’s just off to the side of them, far enough  to give him room to breathe with these two strangers in his room.

“It’s not that hard,” He says, voice still quiet as he answers Abel’s question. “but I guess so.” 

Cassandra flicks her eyes up to look at Abel over the kids shoulder, arching an eyebrow just slightly. Not the most talkative kid, but that’s as understandable as everything else. She’s considering the next question, what she can say to ease them in to this further, but on the screen the little orange character dies, little wings carrying him up to heaven, and though Christopher doesn’t look away his attention seems to be on them.

“You’re here about my mom.” He says, timid and soft. “Because she hates me now.” 

It breaks Cassandra’s heart a little bit, and she can’t believe that they’re here. This doesn’t seem like a violent kid. Lorna had said he would try to trick them, but Cassandra didn’t exactly get the idea that this was some kind of grand subterfuge. “I don’t think she hates you, Christopher. I think she’s confused. And we just want to help clear things up, fix things.” 

He restarts the game, back to the start of the level he had been at when they first came through the door. “The other aurors said she was probably just crazy. I heard them before they left.”

Port Steward, Le Plateau D'or, March 30, @astor-reyes

It has been quite a busy few weeks, to say the least—weeks in which, somehow, everything in his life has changed. The days have gotten away from him, somehow, like time moves faster now that he is splitting so much of it between the office and Baron, like it has picked up a rapid kind of pace he is unused to keeping up with. 

He had meant to take Cassandra out for a congratulatory dinner as soon as they wrapped their case, as soon as the caught the Tarot Card Killer, but they had both been hit with a wall of red tape getting the paperwork for it wrapped up, and it seemed like a week had gone by in the blink of an eye somehow, and so he’d gone ahead and scheduled it for the both of them, fearing that if he didn’t the chance would slip away from him altogether. They had her promotion to celebrate, after all, their chance to do so cut short by everything that had happened with Scotland, and the chaos of the beginning of the impeachment trial. And now, it seemed, they’d have two promotions to celebrate between the two of them. All the more reason for celebration. 

They’ve come here a few times before, to celebrate exceptional cases, to celebrate her promotions. It’s a little tradition, for them, really, when they have cause for celebration. A lovely dinner, a chance to catch up outside the chaos of the office. To hear how she’s really holding up, how she’s doing, without the professional veneer of the office standing between them. And he’s looking forward to it, to have a chance to talk to her without the stress of cases hanging over their heads for an evening. 

      “Cassandra,” he greets, smiling, voice warm, as she appears at the table, led over by a waiter, and is seated across from him. “You look lovely, as always. I’m glad you could make it, I’m sorry we didn’t do this a week and a half ago like I’d planned, but better late than never, I suppose.” 

To say that the last few weeks of her life had been calm or pleasant would be a laughable mistake. It seemed like the world was determined to make things as complicated and overwhelming as possible. From Scotland to Serial Killers, it had been eventful and full of stress even before Abel had clued her in on their theories surrounding Becker Savage. Becker, a bright light in her life, a compass pointing her down the right path at every turn. She’d always been faithful to him, always looked up to him. Over the years, she had grown to think of him as almost a father to her -- god knows that he had done more for her, cared more for her, than her own father had. 

They had made these plans before Abel talked to Cassandra. It was a little tradition of theirs, a warm and happy little plan they always fell back on. They’d caught a serial killer together, Cassandra had gained her promotion, the thing she had been working for for what felt like an eternity at that point. Those combined events made this dinner inevitable, meant that they would have ended up here eventually. Becker’s own promotion had made it unavoidable. 

Any other day, she would have felt beaming and proud of the both of them. She still did, in her own way, in the parts of her mind that still refused to believe that anything could be wrong. Cassandra is being rather stubborn about it all, clinging on to the desperate hope that Abel can work with her and eventually, they’ll see that nothing was ever wrong at all, that Becker is nothing but the good man she always knew him to be. Still, a different part of her almost wanted to cancel this dinner. A part of her couldn’t stop thinking about Abel and their theory, and what it would mean if the pieces came together and proved them to be right. 

But she doesn’t cancel, and she tries to lock away those doubts for the time being, because the bigger part of her just wants to enjoy an evening with this man who practically raised her in tothe woman that she is today. She wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have her new rank, if it wasn’t for him. So she arrives at  Le Plateau D'or only a few minutes later than she planned to, all dressed up as she usually is for evenings like this, and smiles when the waiter leads her over to the table and pulls out her chair for her. “Why, thank you, Becker. You look very dashing yourself.” She says, forcing herself into the teasing tone she would normally adopt at meetings like this. “I hope you haven’t been here long. I would hate to have kept you waiting on such a special occasion.” And it is special, she realizes. This is important, because Becker Savage is someone she loves, and seeing him reminds her of why she trusts him so much. She settles in and grins at him. “It’s better that we got caught up in other things and had to delay. Now we can celebrate you as well,  Lieutenant Savage. Has a nice ring to it, I think.”

The feeling of unease that’d settled into Abel’s bones only increases as they listen to the mother talk. They don’t like how easily it seemed she adopted this “changeling” theory, that whatever is going on with her son isn’t some of issue of his own, but rather something else has taken his place. It could be true that something has happened to her son to bring about this behavior in her, but they still didn’t feel willing to adopt the idea it’s because her son isn’t her son anymore. 

“You said he was violent,” they begin, and immediately she starts tugging at her sleeves again, as she looks up to them, “could you tell us a little more about what kind of violent behavior he’s been displaying? Such as to what degree, and if it seems focused on any one individual?” 

“He only does it to me,” she replies quietly, no longer meeting their gaze, “I talked to his teachers at school. They said he’s more quiet and withdrawn than usual, but not violent. He’s tricking them, just like he’ll trick you too if you let him.”  Before Abel can ask her again about the degree of violence, she begins pulling up her sleeves to reveal a series of both dark and yellowed bruises that litter her arms. 

They do look like defensive wounds, Abel thinks hollowly as they notice the bruises are located on the outside of her arm, as if she sustained them after using her arms to block an attack. Looking over towards Cassandra, they try to gauge if she too sees them as defensive wounds rather than something Lorna would have done herself. No matter what she thought though, they were going to have to talk to Christopher next, if anything just to get a better idea of what all is going on here, before they make their next call on what to do next. 

After giving Cassandra the chance to ask any other questions she may have, they turn back to Lorna. “We’ll go up and talk to Christopher now,” they tell her, because they don’t feel it’d be appropriate to phrase it as a question at this point. 

“Okay,” she nods, as she pulls her sleeves back down, “but be careful.” 

Things have been a little chilling and uncomfortable ever since they saw Lorna for the first time, ever since she started talking to them and telling them her story. Cassandra knew that look in her eyes, and she could tell that it was genuine. Whatever fear and grief this woman felt was real, it was powerful, and it wouldn’t go away just because people told her it wasn’t true. There was something wrong here, they just needed to figure out what it was, and they needed to give this family all the help that they could offer. 

Abel ask the right question, and Cassandra feels another chill go down her spine when she sees the bruises on Lorna’s arms. They don’t look like she could have done them to herself. It was clear that something or someone had hit her, had attacked her in ways it was hard to imagine a child doing. But something had happened, and they had to entertain the possibility that this child really would be violent. She glances at Abel, and sees them looking at her. They’re having the same thought, their ideas meshed well together as they always did. They were usually on the same page, usually, and it was true today it seemed that they were keeping pace with each other well. Cassandra swallows, and looks at Lorna.

“Does anything seem to trigger these outbursts in particular, anything you can pinpoint that would set him off?” She asks, wondering if there may be some reason for the way this kid is apparently behaving.

Lorna shakes her head, a slow and shakey motion, not quite meeting their eyes any more since Abel first asked her the question. “It just happens.” She says, “When we’re alone, when I talk to it.” 

Cassandra sighs very quietly and nods her head, and when Abel mentions going to talk to the kid now, Cassandra supposes that there’s nothing else to do, Nowhere to go but up. “We’ll be very careful.” She promises Lorna. “We’re well trained for things like this.” 

She stands and she leads them up to the stairs, watching carefully as Lorna lowers her head into her hands as they leave, seeming to shake a little. They climb the stairs slowly, taking their time. “Whatever is going on here, I think it’s bad.” She says, more to herself than really to Abel. She doesn’t want this to be as bad as it might be, she wants there to be a solution where this mom and the kid end up safe and happy. 

He feels better about searching the house, now, with the man cuffed and stunned and with Cassandra within eyesight. Feels more at ease, knowing they’ve got an eye on one another in case anything else unexpected happened. It wouldn’t have been bad, for him, if the man had shot him, not really—even a shot to the heart could only do so much when you couldn’t actually be killed. But he still worries, as to what might have happened if their roles had been reversed. If she had been the one with the gun pointed at her, if he hadn’t quite been fast enough to stop it. 

At the very least, the evidence in the bedroom upstairs is illuminating—and damning. Once they’ve determined the rest of the house is empty, whoever actually lives here clearly out of town and their killer squatting here alone while tracking the couple who would have been his next targets, he feels at ease enough to take his time with it. Collecting the photos, the film, the camera, all for evidence, the sketches. Flipping through a few more pages of the man’s notebook after Cassandra reads one small passage aloud, there’s simply no question about it. 

But there is a chill, in his chest, at the words, the divine fervor behind them. He shuts the book quickly, tucks it away. 

Her touch is a grounding thing, and they grasp hold of her hand as soon as it slips into their own. There was no telling just how all of this was going to end up, but they were slowly beginning to feel more and more confident that no matter what happened, that this bond between them wasn’t fragile enough to be broken by it. 

Following her back out of the library, they’re just about to lead her in the direction of the front door when suddenly she pauses. The offer is a sweet one, and maybe if this home and its surrounding garden held happier memories for her, they’d take her up on the offer. Instead its her latter offer that sounds the most promising. 

“I think so too,” they smile, before stepping forward and pulling her into a hug simply for the fact they could use one in that moment. Holding her tightly for a moment, they let out a small steady breath before planting a kiss on top of her head. 

He makes eye contact the moment before Cassandra fires a spell in his direction, and for just a breath he thinks she’s firing a stunning spell at him, and he isn’t quite quick enough to put together some semblance of a reason for that, just a momentary flash of panic. The only thing stopping him from throwing up a shield to block her spell is the fact that it’s Cassandra, and that he trusts her, and that he knows if she’s doing something she has a good reason to be doing it—and she does, he realizes, as he hears the man he didn’t realize was just behind him hit the ground, hears the gun go off firing into the wall a few feet behind either of them, towards the front of the house.

He whirls around, trying to make quick sense of it, and does: one of the rooms off this hall was deeper than it appeared, a strange corner by the doorway making the shape of it deceptive where it wrapped around what must have been stairs to a basement, and he hadn’t seen the man there as he passed, as he checked each room. The man had stepped out behind him, with a gun, and Cassandra had seen him just in time. 

Oh, and what a marvelous witch she is. 

He takes just a moment to catch his breath, then crouches down beside the man, checks to make sure he’s adequately stunned, though he’s sure he will be thanks to Cassandra’s handiwork, and then pats him down, looking for a wand. He finds a second clip for the gun, in one pocket, a half-complete deck of tarot cards in the other, but no wand, so he takes the two and passes them to Cassandra.

     “I think it must be. We should sweep the rest of the house, just in case. Make sure he’s alone. Try to find his wand and whatever he used to kill them.” 

He pushes himself up off the ground, then, one hand braced on the wall to help himself up. His leg has been worse, the past few days. Since Scotland. Since he’d given Camden the ring back—or, no, maybe since he’d taken it off at all, like maybe Hadrian giving it back to him was the only thing that had carried him home without it aching, like maybe Baron’s distraction after he left in in the drawer in his study was the only thing that meant he failed to notice it until later. But Camden had taken it back, put it somewhere else, though Becker wasn’t sure where, as he hadn’t been wearing it. It takes him a second longer than he’d like to get back to his feet, an unfortunate sign of his age.

     “I’m okay,” he reassures her. “Are you?”

Cassandra feels almost breathless, as the moment move onwards. Becker checks the man –– out cold, for the moment, and removes another clip of bullets and the famous tarot cards. They match the ones that they have back in the station, a damning peice of evidence. She scans through them quickly. All the ones that are missing match up to the victims that they’ve already found, and despite knowing that the next victims are definitely safe and alive in their home, Cassandra breathes a sigh of relief when she sees The Lovers card tucked safe among the rest. She puts the objects away safely, tucked away to take to evidence as soon as they get back to headquarters. 

She sighs out a breath, finds her handcuffs and moves to put them around the mans wrists, securing them before he can stand the chance to wake up. “I’m okay.” She says, even though it must be obvious. She knows that just the reassurance of the words is a powerful thing. She glances over at Becker again, and then around the room. “I found rat poison in the kitchen. Pink stuff. No sigh of any potions being brewed, and I think...well thats my theory, as far as the murder weapon goes. I guess we’ll see when we check out the rest of the house.” She nods. And after making sure that the man is secure, with wards up around him so that he can’t slip away if he does wake up, they move to sweep the rest of the house. 

It all looks so ordinary, so completely mundane. It’s clearly a no-maj home, with all the appliances and none of the signs of magic you would expect in a place occupied by wixes. The rest of the bottom floor is empty, so they take the stairs up. There are family pictures on the way, something picture perfect and frozen in time, a family that the man down there clearly doesn’t belong to. Most of the rooms are normal, empty, but the master bedroom looks like something right out of a no-maj horror movie. It’s dark, and it looks like the attatched bathroom has been turned into some kind of dark room. There’s a camera on the night stand, and pictures hung up. Pictures of their last victim, of Cain, clearly taken before he died. Cassandra sucks in a breath, as they look around the room. 

There’s a notebook on the bed, left open, and Cassandra bends to get a look at it, sucks in a breath and lets it out again. Flipping back a few pages, she feels sick. There are sketches of the street outside, the house that they had been protecting and even the people inside. Further back, some of Cain, and writings. She reads some of it aloud to Becker, voice shaking only slightly as she does.“God came to me again last night and showed me the Devil. Just like the other times, my mission is clear. He will taste death by my hand and the world will be purified, made clean of one more monster. I will go to him in the place that was revealed to me, where he practiced his dark arts, and snuff him out. His card will mark him in death and all will know of his wrongdoings.” 

They remain quiet as Cassandra introduces the two of them, it’s only seconds into meeting the young mother, but already they can see how much of an uphill battle this was going to be. If Lorna was already this dead-set on her child being a changeling, they wondered just what possibly Christopher could have done to make her believe so inherently that he wasn’t her own. 

When Cassandra answers her question, Lorna’s eyes narrow as she looks between the two of them, clearly trying to see if she should trust them or not. Fortunately Cassandra’s words do seem to be enough for the woman, as she eventually nods her head, before opening the door further to allow the two aurors inside. 

Once they do get inside, Christopher isn’t any where to be seen, but evidence lays all around the house of his presence. Toys are strewn about the living room, and there are a couple pairs of child sized shoes sitting just against the wall next to the door. 

“Is Christopher here?” They ask, turning back to the woman. 

“He’s upstairs in his room, I can get him if you need to see him yourself,” she offers, but as she glances up to the top of the stairs just ahead, Abel can see she’s anxious, like she’d much rather not go and fetch the child. 

“No, that’s alright,” they reply, “we can go and talk to him ourselves later, if that’s okay with you.” 

“Yes, yes, that’s fine. Then you’ll be able to see for yourself that that thing- whatever it is, isn’t my son.” 

Following Lorna into her living room, she motions for the two aurors to sit on the couch, as she takes a seat in a nearby arm-chair. “So where do you want to start?” She asks, and again she seems anxious, Abel thinks to themself, as they watch her fold her arms over her chest, her fingers digging into her sweater’s sleeves so that they don’t roll up above her wrists. 

“How about the day you believe this all happened,” they offer, “such as, when you think he was switched, and what did he do to make you think he had been.” 

.

Cassandra isn’t comforted much when they get inside the house, nothing sets her at ease in regards to this mother’s opinion of her child. There are toys everywhere, so Christopher has clearly been around, clearly been playing. But she’s still convinced it isn’t really him, that it’s not her real son. And who knows what kind of damage that could do if it kept going for much longer. Who knew what this kid must be thinking now, when his mother was probably treating him differently than before. Her heart ached, and she wished that cases didn’t have to involve children, that no one ever had to face problems like this within their families. Life should be easier for the people who need it the most. 

She hopes that the boy is okay, when they talk to him. And she’s curious to see how he’ll behave, if he could possibly be as stange and wrong as Lorna says he is, if something could be wrong with him. She hopes that whatever it is, they can fix this. Because up until now, it’s seemed like this was a happy family. Mother and son, together. 

She settels down on the couch when Lorna prompts them to, perched on it carefully, not too comfortable. Part of her prefers to stand at times like this, but it’s good to be on the same level as the person you’re talking to. She doesn’t want this to feel like an interrogation, to make Lorna feel like they’re attacking here here. 

“What didn’t he do?” Lorna says, and she sounds so overwhelmed that it aches. “He’s wrong. He’s just wrong. He’s not my son.” She shakes her head, and it looks like she’s already ready to cry about it all. She leans forward just a little bit, and she doesn’t quite look at them, more hunched in on herself than anything else. “I took him hiking, to get him out in nature more? You know, kids spend way too much time in their rooms, they should be outside, and he loves to go for walks. But i lost track of him. Just for a little while. Just for twenty minutes. But when he came back... he wasn’t the same. He’s been acting differently ever since then.” 

“Different in what ways, exactly?” Cassandra asks, gently. 

They’re grateful that for now, she chooses not to mention the page they’d been reading only moments before. They know it’s not a subject they’ll be able to avoid- or should avoid for that matter, but would prefer to have a little bit more time to process seeing what their curse in one of Cassandra’s father’s own books. It won’t get them any closer to breaking their curse, the one they had was embedded in their blood, and they knew that no amount of tampering with it could ever truly make it go away, but they do like the idea of hanging on to the book for now, if only to better understand what the curse was intended to do to them. 

Remaining by her side, they look down at the book again, now in her hands as she finds the page they’d suggested she turn to. The passage in the books doesn’t tell them much more than what they already knew about horcruxes, but it is somewhat comforting to have an actual text in hand, especially if all of this goes in the direction they were hoping it wouldn’t- that Becker Savage did indeed create a horcrux and they were going to have to figure out what to do about it. 

“That’s a good idea,” they nod their head, and when their gaze meets her’s they shoot her a small smile of reassurance. They don’t want her to think their brief lapse in composure had anything to do with her. She may have been a product of this environment, true, but they didn’t think she believed the teachings of the book in her hands any more than they did. 

“We know Becker would have had to have done this some time after Camden was turned in 1954. I guess we can start by looking into cases he would have worked on in the Eastern Squad following that and go from there.” And by go from there they meant look to see if anyone in those case files or Becker’s life at the time had somehow gone missing or died due to mysterious circumstances, but they didn’t feel compelled to voice such thoughts, not now when both of them were currently fighting off old ghosts. 

“Is there anything else you wanted to do here before we go?” They ask, uncertain how much more time she wanted to spend in her old childhood home. 

Abel smiles at her, just a small little thing, and it makes her relax just a little bit. It’s not like she thinks that they would hate her just for something they saw in a book no one has touched in decades, but it’s still a grusome reminder of how Cassandra was raised, of the kind of things her family believed. She came from a line of people who would have relished in what happened to Abel, who would have attacked them if they had the chance to, even if it might have been less brutal than that curse. They were the kind of people who believed that people like Abel shouldn’t exist at all.

It still aches to think about doubting Becker like this. She doesn’t want to do it. She wants to believe in him as entirely as she ahd before, she wants to be determined in her faith that Becker Savage was a good person, the kind of soul who woul dnever do anything like this. He was never supposed to be like her father, he was never supposed to be like her brother, obsessed with life. How to get more of it. How to bring it back from the dead. She didn’t want to look through all those files and find something that didn’t add up. But she couldn’t let Abel do this on their own, she had to trust them as well, enough to work through it beside them, even if she hoped that she could prove them wrong. That was how her and Abel did things best, in the past. Trying to prove each other wrong, working so damn hard to get to the answers. 

“We’ll start soon,” She says, taking their hand in hers. “We’ll go through every file. We’ll figure out the answers.” And she lets herself smile, because she’s sure that she’s going to be the one who is right here. She always wins, after all. “Never met a puzzle we couldn’t solve.” 

She considers it for a moment, what she might be able to do here, what she could possibly wnat to do in this house. All of these walls full of dark memories. Her mother haunting a different wing of the house. She lets out a soft sigh when she considers it, holding the book close to her chest. 

“You could show them the gardens.” The portrait says, and Cassandra rolls her eyes and shakes her head, glancing back up at the girl in it, who died too young and too tragically. 

“No, I think we’re done here for today.” She says, and reaches down to take Abel’s hand again, to start to lead them out of the room. “Give mother my regards. Tell her to write, if she needs anything.” 

There’s a swell of pride in his chest as she takes her time making the decision, not letting herself leap to conclusions, using every resource she has at her disposal to make the right call. He had known, when he first met Cassandra, at her interview for the Academy, that she would be a great auror someday, but he’s still always a little awed to see it in person, to see how far that determination has carried her, how dedicated she is to getting everything right. When she glances his way, he nods at her orders, fixes her with a certain and approving look at the call.

     “You too,” he says, when she tells him to be careful, but he hardly needs to say it. He knows she will be. Ordinarily, he doesn’t like the idea of splitting up; on more than one occasion, it’s worked out poorly for him in the past. Splitting up is how he lost his leg; splitting up is why he wasn’t fast enough to get to Camden in time. But he can see the plan in Cassandra’s head, and it makes too much sense to fight her on it. They have no way of knowing if their killer knows whether or not they’re coming; if he does, they’ll stand a better chance trying to take him by surprise however they can.

He waits, a moment, as she sets off towards the back of the house, and then he makes his way to the front, casts a quick spell to reveal whatever wards might be in place as he approaches and finds—none. Nothing, at all. No locks on the front door when he gets there, either, except for then no-maj deadbolt, which he unlocks with a tap of his wand on the door handle. And that’s strange. Because from what Eden had told them, the man they were looking for was paranoid, knew someone was after him, but he hadn’t bothered to put up any protections to alert him or to keep them out. Which could mean he wanted them to come in. Or could mean he’d hoped they would think he couldn’t possibly be here unprotected, and try another house… 

There are too many options, there, to detour from the plan, though he wishes Cassandra was here, wonders a little desperately for a second what she’s encountering around the back of the house. 

He steps inside, silently, leaving the door ajar behind him to avoid making noise by closing it. It’s dark, in the house, no lights on, and enough of the blinds are drawn that even then morning light outside leaves it dim. But he can hear something, the quiet sound of what he thinks might be a no-maj radio station, coming from the kitchen, down the hall and around a corner. Another trap? He takes a second to look into the rooms on either side of him, wand at the ready to throw up a shield in an instant if someone is in there, and he begins to move slowly, silently, cautiously in the direction of the noise. 

Cassandra doesn’t have the best feeling, when she rounds the other side of the house to try and get in. There’s a door there, in a room just off the kitchen, a small little space that she can see into from one of the glass frames in the door. She checks for wards, and they aren’t any. This is clearly a no-maj home, and no one has sured it up with any protective spells or wards. Which is strange, which almost makes her decide to change her mind about her decision. But as bad as things feel, she’s also confident in her choices, and she trusts herself that no matter how strange things seem, she’s on the right track here.

She won’t get anywhere in life, if she doesn’t trust her own instincts. 

She charms the lock on the door open and slips inside, quiet, and then opens the door to the kitchen just a crack. There’s a radio playing, someone is home, but she can’t see anyone around. She checks carefully before she moves on, keeping track of everything in the room. She’s about to keep moving forward when she notices something –– a box of rat poison, on the table. She can see in the top, see the pink contents, and something sparks. The pink film around the mouths of the victims. Could that be what it was? She wasn’t sure. She had imagined it would be some kind of potion. She can’t see why a wix would use something as basic as this to kill their victims. It wasn’t nearly as grand as it had all seemed before. It could have been nothing, but Cassandra made a mental note to bring the poison in for testing. If this was where they found their killer, there was a good chance that was the murder weapon. 

She silently starts to move deeper through the house, and when she peeks into the hallway she can see Becker moving towards her. There are a couple of rooms between them branching off, and he hasn’t seen her yet. But he hasn’t seen something else, either. A man creeping out from a corner that neither of them would have noticed before, hidden because he clearly knew they were coming, just as Eden implied he might. Even scarier still, it isn’t a wand he raises at Becker. It’s a gun. A no-maj weapon that makes Cassandra almost wants to freeze in fear. She moves quickly, while she can, and fires off a stunning spell. It whips right over Becker’s shoulder and hits the man square in the chest, sending both him and the gun falling to the floor. The gun goes off when it falls, but lucklily the bullet seems to go in a different direction than toward them.

Their gaze shifts from the house ahead of them to Cassandra’s when she pauses mid-sentence. She didn’t need to finish her thought, having thought it themself the moment they read the case file. Calling your child a changeling did seem like a convenient way to either disown them or worse- especially when looked at in the historical context the majority of stories came from. They themself weren’t exactly on board with thinking this child was some sort of demonic shapeshifter, living this boy’s life, but then that also meant he was likely living in a very dangerous and traumatic environment. No matter what way they looked at this case, the story seemed to only get darker. 

She was right though, there was no use trying to dissect all of what this could mean now, not when there was so many unanswered questions sitting in front of them. The best way they could help this child would be to figure out just what kind of home life he was living and go from there. “Sounds like a plan,” they reply as they look down at her, giving her a soft smile. When their gaze returns to the house though, it’s quickly stolen by something else- or rather someone else in the window of the home next door. 

From the home’s second story window they catch sight of someone peering down at them through a gap in the blinds, before they’re quickly snapped closed again. “That must be Deirdre Rose,” they say as they begin to head up the steps to the Kelly home. “we’ll have to see if we can talk to her later, get an idea of what she might have seen from her vantage point up there.” By the sounds of it from the case file, she’d be a difficult witness to actually talk to, but they’re certain she must have seen something of importance up there, especially if her entire day was spent looking through her little window to the world. 

“Ready when you are,” they tell her as they stand by the door, giving her the go ahead to knock since she was the lead here. 

Cassandra returns Abel’s smile, getting lost in it for a second, the softness of it that still surprises her every day. She’ll make them smile like that more later, when they can go home at the end of this day and get wrapped up in each other again. It might be nice to get a little lost, to just let themselves have a nice night when there’s nothing else that they can do in this day. 

She follows Abel’s line of sight when they get distracted by something, glancing up at the woman in the window of the other house. The house next door, the woman who never seemed to leave it. She could be a valuble witness, that much was true. Who knows what she had seen, what she had heared with everything else going on around her. “Must be,” She agrees, with a nod of her head and a small sigh. “We’ll call by after we talk to the mom and the kid. She might know something that they won’t admit. It’ll be good to cross reference somehow, if she’ll talk to us.” She really hopes that the woman will listen, that she’ll know that Cass and Abel are here to help and they’ll be able to break through to what’s going on around here. 

Cassandra gives Abel another small smile, another warm thing before they move for ward. He defers to her pretty calmly, and she can’t help but think that it all feels different now, a lessened sense of cometition between them either because of their new relationship or the potentially serious nature of this case. She knocks on the door, and they wait for a few long moments before a woman comes to greet them. 

“Hello?” She says, cautious, looking out from the barely opened door. 

“Lorna Kelly?” Cassandra asks, an inquisitive gaze making its way through. The woman nods, and Cassandra gives her a small and patient smile, pulling out her badge to show it to her, hoping to set her at ease. “Seargent Astor-Reyes, with MACUSA’s Central Squad.” She gestures towards Abel with a brief movement. “And this is my partner today, Corporal Montero. We’re here to talk to you about your son, if you have the time? We’re hoping that we can help you figure this all out.” 

“Christopher? I’ve got it figured out. I know exactly what’s going on, and if you don’t believe me i’m not sure I want to let you in.” She says, defensive, clearly distraught by everything that’s been going on. “But if you’re here to bring me my own son back, that’s a different story, so I guess that’s up to you.” 

They almost think to ask her if she wanted to try to talk to her mother, especially when they hear she’s been completely alone since Cassandra’s grandmother died. They couldn’t imagine being in this large of a home, all alone with no one to talk to but the occasional portrait and house-elf. When they look over to read Cassandra’s reaction to the topic though, they decide against it, seeing it was far from their place to mention such a thing. 

Taking the book she offered them, they shoot her a small smirk at her comment before flipping it open. Scanning its various pages they find all sorts of curses and charms embedded in the dark arts, one page in particular catches their eye, just by how gruesome the illustration was. On it depicted a dark and corrupted form of a diffindo being used for torturing purposes on some poor individual covered in lacerations. But other than a few more grisly charms they found nothing on horcruxes and quickly return the book to its spot on the shelf afterwards. 

Taking a look around Cassandra’s father’s massive collection, they get the feeling this hunt will take much longer than even they had expected, that is until a peculiar voice rings out, nearly making them jump out of their skin when it does so. Turning in its direction, they are quickly met with the mirror image of Cassandra on the portrait above the mantle, although her dress clues them into the fact this clearly was the “Other Cassandra” and not some odd portrait of the witch standing next to them. 

As the two Cassandras begin conversing with one another, they look between the two in mild amusement. Cassandra had been right, they clearly didn’t need to worry about this particular portrait, especially when her eye seems to travel down the length of their form at her mention of them being Cassandra’s “suitor”. Flashing their Cassandra an amused smirk, they turn towards the shelf in question. Cassandra’s father was either taller than them, or likely used a ladder of some kind to reach the top shelf, because as they go to grab it, even they have to do a bit of a reach in order to finally slide it off the shelf. Once they do, a good bit of dust falls from the shelf, leaving them coughing into their arm as they shake off any additional cobwebs that clung to the book. 

“I did tell you it was rather dusty,” the Other Cassandra speaks from her perch above the mantle. 

Once they’ve cleared the dust from their lungs they look down at the books cover to see its title, “The Arcane Legacy: Rituals to Purify a Bloodline”. Leaning against Cassandra’s father’s desk, they open the book so that she could see it. Inside, they find precisely what they’d imagined based on the book’s title, which was a wealth of dark magic to ensure a pureblood’s family’s legacy. Flipping back to the index, they scan through the page’s contents, until their eyes fall on a section labeled “Rituals to Extend a Life: Purifying a Bloodline through Longevity”, which if they were to guess would be precisely where they’d find something on horcruxes- but then something else catches their eye on the next page….. “Rituals to Cleanse Tainted Blood from the Lineage”. 

They know they should forget the second section they see, and instead focus on finding a passage on horcruxes that may fall in the first. That doesn’t stop their fingers though from quickly flipping several pages back until they find the section on blood cleansing. It only takes flipping to the fourth page of the section when their eyes land on a curse that sends a chill up their spine. “Removing Magic from a Half-Breed: A Blood Malediction and Curse to Cleanse a Tainted Lineage” In all their years of researching blood curses, the passage that follows the chilling title comes the closest to what they themself had. As their eyes slowly scan over the passage, taking in everything that they could, they can spot the similarities between the curse they knew to be pumping through their veins and the one detailed on the page in front of them. The only thing that is off is that their curse clearly went wrong somewhere, where the one on the page details a curse strong enough to wipe magic from not only the blood of the victim, but to make any child of their’s destined to carry the same curse. Their eyes stay frozen on the last sentence, because while they knew that having a bloodcurse meant they should never risk having children of their own, it was a whole different matter seeing it typed out so plainly. 

“Here you should take this,” they say after some time, avoiding her gaze as they hand her the book. They’re certain she saw the page they’d been staring at, but don’t comment on it for now. “I think horcruxes should be around page 233.” 

.

It feels a little bit like she’s showing Abel the darkest parts of her soul, here. When it comes down to it, this was the place that had created Cassandra, this was the place that had formed her into the girl she was before she decided to force herself down a different path. They’d trained her into the picture-perfect daughter within this house, the perfect pureblood girl who did perfect pureblood things, and sat with her father in grim rooms like this. She was a girl with power, and she was a girl who wanted this, and one day she had been a girl who read some of these books with a grim kind of interest. She isn’t proud of that, the way she hadn’t known the way the stuff inside the pages could hurt you, the way she hadn’t known so much about the ways the wolrd really worked. 

She has to stop and wonder for a second what Abel will think of her after. She doesn’t want to be the kind of girl who lived here, she doesn’t want them to associate her more heavily with this kind of thing. Shelves and shelves of books on the darkest of magic. These dark halls, these intense things that no one should have grown up knowing. Cassandra doesn’t want to be this person anymore, but she needs to know these things. She needs to know every single thing about what Becker may or may not have done, she needs to know what might have happened so long ago, the things he may have been keeping hidden for as long as they’ve known each other. She needs to know it so that she can tuck it away safely, so that she can prove it wrong someday, so that she can lay out all the facts for Abel and make it clear that it has to be something else, that there has to be a different explanation. 

Because if its true, it might break her heart. 

Her and the portrait share a few more words back and forth as Cassandra watches Abel reach up for the book in question, the one they had been pointed toward by someone who had haunted these walls for a hell of a lot longer than Cassandra herself had. 

“Thank you, Cassandra.” She says, with a nod of her head and a roll of her eyes, moving closer to stand near Abel and watch as they flip through the book, the one with all the potential in the world for them. The titles seem promsing, it seems like exactly the kind of book that would be useful, that would hold all the answers when it came to something as dark as a horcrux. But she freezes up a little bit when she sees the page that Abel flips to in the end, the section on blood curses. Blood curses likely in the style of what happened to them. Her blood feels chilled with it, her hands feel numb. Her family never actually went out and cast curses like that. They were more self serving, they didn’t act like that and cause fear and panic when they could help it, not most of them anyway. But it was the kind of thing her father would have supported, the kind of knowledge her father would have sold. That was the behaviour they would have seen as good and honest in the world.

They would have hoped that someone like Abel had no magic at all.

She holds her breath, and she takes the book when Abel hands it to her. They’re not looking at her, not really. She feels like she’s done something wrong, like she should be saying something to offer comfort to them now. But she doesn’t know what they want to hear, and its something that they can talk about later. She’ll bring it up when the time feels more right, when they’re somewhere softer than here, in this room full of pain. 

She flips to the page he mentioned, shifts away to lean on the desk herself, holding the book open as she scans over the page, flips to the next. And there it is. Exactly what she had been looking for. She feels sick, as her eyes scan over the page. The tiny details, the way it explains what you have to do. To split your soul, how to do it, what to do afterwards to make sure the whole ritual of it is as neat and sucessful as possible. For longevity and youth, to maintain a steady presence in your bloodline. She stares at it for a long few minutes, and tries not to picture Becker doing all of that. But its not impossible to see, and that’s the hardest part of all. 

“We can take this with us.” She says, quiet. “Look over it more, while we...” She clears her throat. “Look into his past cases, like you said.” 

She knows, without having to say it, that Cassandra knows. That Ignatius must have said something. And she doesn’t mind, not at all, because Cassandra is smiling at her, smiling like she knows and like she agrees, like she thinks it’s great. Ignatius had been so worried, when they’d spoken, about Cassandra, about what his father had tried to make him do, and here was Cassandra caring about him, and smiling about him, and smiling about them, and it makes her feel like she made the right choice.

And it makes her blush, lift a hand to cover her face, laughing lightly as she feels her cheeks heat up with it under Cassandra’s knowing little look.

     “Oh no,” she half groans through the laugh. “He told you everything, didn’t he? Here I am trying to be discreet while I figure all of this out and he’s told you already.” 

It’s clear from her voice, though, that she doesn’t mind at all. It isn’t like she doesn’t know how Ignatius talks, isn’t like she expected him not to tell anyone, and if it had to be anyone she’s glad it was Cassandra. She can almost trace his twirling thought pattern, assuming that if she’d told anyone beside Hades it would have been Cassandra anyway. And she would have, already, if they hadn’t both been so busy until tonight.

She’d thought this would all be strange, that it would be weird adjusting to having something she’d never wanted before with anyone else. And they hadn’t really done anything, yet, haven’t even had their first actual date. But she feels better about it than she thought she would; it feels natural, it feels nice.

    “Did he tell you the part about how I kissed him in a coffee shop? Almost as embarrassing as a barn surrounded by all of my coworkers.”

There’s part of her that wonders if she should have said anything at all, if she should have quietened herself and let Athena spead the information out when she was ready. But she watches as Athena smiles, blushes, laughs, tries to hide her face for a second. It’s endearing, utterly so, in the way that only Athena can really pull off in Cassandra’s eyes. She’s always loved Athena, always thought so highly and so fondly of her, this person who’s been wrapped up in her life for so long now. This person who people pushed at her, not realising that they would become something so much more important than married.

So Cassandra laughs as well, a bright and happy thing, as she watches Athena. She nods her head, pleased and bright with it all, beaming a little bit in Athena’s direction. That’s a look that Athena gets more than anybody else does, probably. She always inspires brightness at the end of the day, she always makes Cassandra feel relaxed and ready to smile. No one can quite win that over in her as easily as Athena does.

Because Athena is special.

Athena has always been special, and Cassandra feels full up with love for her and pride in her, the way she lives her life and the fact that she took the leap to tell Ignatius that she wanted to try this, that she wanted to give the two of them a go together. 

“Oh yeah,” She agrees. “I’m sorry to say it, Athena, but your new boyfriend is a blabber mouth. I gave him one look and he spilled the whole story faster than if I’d dosed him with a truth potion. Which was great for me, honestly, as someone who takes a very large interest in your life. It’s much easier to know what’s going on now that I’ve added a whole new spy to my arsenal.” 

outside the kelly residence in champaign, illinois; morning; @astor-reyes​

It’s a strange but pleasant feeling that morning, to wake up beside Cassandra, then once they were both ready, to then apparate straight to Champaign. Neither of them had a reason to go into the office for anything that morning, other than to meet up with one another, which wasn’t necessary now. If it wasn’t for the grave nature of the case they were on, it’d almost feel like they were playing hooky, but it only takes one look up at the victorian home sitting in front of them to know this day wasn’t going to stay as pleasant as the morning had so far been. 

“One day, you and I won’t get put on a case involving an endangered child,” they say, as they take a sip of their coffee the two of them picked up beforehand. They wanted to be on this case, probably just as much as Cassandra, so that they could help this family through whatever was going on, but that didn’t make it any less heart-wrenching to think about.

“Have you heard about any actual cases of changelings?” They ask as they look over to her. They themself hadn’t outside the occasional fairy tale, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that something they thought once was myth was in actuality based very much in truth. 

.

Sometimes she can’t believe the way the world has changed, the way things have shifted in the grand scheme of things. Cassandra was someone who always woke up alone, even when she didn’t want to. But ever since Abel came into her life in this special way, she’s gotten pretty damn used to them being the first thing that she sees in the morning. It brightens the day up, the fact that the two of them are together, the fact that they can take their time getting ready and head straight out for their case, everything streamlined by the fact that they were already together.

Cassandra is worried about this case. Not because of anythinbg that had happened before, just because it sounds like something that could get intense fast. Another damn kid, another kid in trouble. She lets out a soft hum when Abel makes a comment about it, somehow mirroring her own thoughts within a moment of when she’s had them. They stand there together, looking at the house in front of them, worrying about what this is going to mean for them. 

“Not really, not outside of stories.” She glances over at them. “Isn’t this stuff more common in Europe? I always figured it was just an excuse people used in the olden days, when their kids were like...” She pauses. When their kids were mentally ill, or damaged. “When something was wrong and they didn’t know how to fix it. When pureblood families figured out that one of their kids wasn’t as magical as they would have liked.” 

The Astor-Reyes home is exactly how they had envisioned it, they think to themself as they look up at its imposing structure, very similar in architecture and size to that of the Yaxley Manor. Holding on to her hand firmly, they let her lead them up the long drive and towards the home, which only grew more daunting the closer they neared it. It doesn’t pass them for one second that they are precisely the opposite kind of person Cassandra should be taking home, so much so they can almost hear the dried bones of her ancestors turning in their graves as she leads them inside. 

They know they shouldn’t be expecting someone to greet them when they make it inside, but they hold their breath anyway, and when the foyer is just as empty as it should be, they find themself oddly a little disappointed. Whenever they returned home, it’d always been a thing of celebration, their parents both overjoyed to see them, and making sure the visit would be one they’d look back on fondly. Cassandra’s return home was probably what she hoped for, even though they wished she at least had someone in that big house that missed her. 

Her mention of the portraits doesn’t surprise them, before they got to New York that day, they’d been mentally preparing themself for everything they may find in that house. It was a house built and owned by generations of wixes who’d prefer to see their kind wiped clean from the wixen bloodline, so they don’t expect a friendly welcome in any shape or form. “I won’t,” they assure her, before she leads them to where her father’s library is. On their way, they can’t help but look curiously around the home Cassandra had grew up in. It seemed like such a stark contrast from the bright and brilliant witch they knew. Every corner seemed dark and shadowed, and more than once they’re certain they spot a pair of eyes looking back at them from behind a nearly shut door.

When they finally do reach her father’s library their curiosity only grows as they see the vast collection of books that lined the walls of the room. “Is it just your mother that lives here now?” They ask, as they begin to look over a nearby collection of books. There’s a painting that hangs over a nearby fireplace, they briefly look at too, and find themself hoping that the ‘Other Cassandra’ may show up in it. For as much as they talked, they still felt like they knew so little of this part of Cassandra’s life, even if it was one she’d much rather keep hidden. 

.

Cassandra remembers this room so well. She lives there in her memory sometimes, she can go back there in a moment when she needs to. Her father had let her work there sometimes, sitting at the other side of his desk or in an arm chair. Many of the books had been forbidden, but Cassandra was someone with boundless potential, and he picked out the more tasteful things for her. She scanned over the shelves now, wondering where exactly she had seen the word before –– Horcrux. She had seen it written on a page in one of these tomes. Forbidden knowledge. She hums out a soft sound as she looks, and considers Abel’s question.

“Just my mother.” She says, an agreement. It seems strange to tell Abel more about her family, but they’ve heard the grittiest of the details already. They’ve heard the horror story, the way Cassandra got hurt, the negative consequences of her familys obsessions and beliefs. Her mother didn’t play a large part in the physical damage that Cassandra still suffered from, but she had been lacking in so many other ways. Cold. Distant. Staunch in her beliefs and steadfast in her rules. “I don’t think she really leaves her rooms, too often.” She says, a little softer, yet a little wry as well. “She can’t handle the shame of it all. And there’s no one else to really talk to, since my grandfather died.” 

About two years ago now. And she would feel worse for her mother if she hadn’t tried. Cassadnra spent her whole life trying to get through to that woman, but it never worked. So she was done with it now, so she just didn’t care. She had offered everything, and her mother pushed her away. So Cassandra stayed gone. 

She pulls down a book –– something on ancient rituals in the dark arts, a promising start of nothing else, and hands it off to Abel for them to flip through while she looks for more. She knows there are older, dustier tomes that might hold more for them. “Don’t worry,” She says, absently. “None of them are cursed, as far as I know.” It’s half a joke, a stupid thing, but it feels okay to say it. 

And like clockwork, she hears a voice from behind, coming from the portrait. The same cool and calm and utterly familiar one who had always given her the advice she needed to hear. Cassandra glances up at her as she speaks, the family resemblance is a powerful thing, the two of them looking as alike as Cassandra and her mother did. “Planning a dark ritual of some kind, my dear? How utterly unlike you. Your brother would be jumping up and down with glee, if he were not already in his grave.” 

She rolls her eyes, just the slighest bit, but decides to use this resource while she has it. “We’re looking for something. Do you know where my father might have kept a book on the topic of Horcruxes?” 

This isn’t a place where Cassandra really knows how to exist anymore. Her old family home, with it’s grand gates and grand walls. She leads Abel there by the hand, with the knwoledge that her ancestors would roll in the grave at the thoight of a half-blood stepping foot onto their ancestral grounds. They would never have wanted Cassandra to love someone like Abel. It’s far too soon to say it, but she thinks that she does. She thinks that she loves Abel Montero. She thinks that she loves them, even with everything else that might be going on in both of their lives. Cassandra is fairly sure that she’s loved Abel for a lot longer than she knew. 

So she stands there on the precipice, just before they step over the wards. She stands there, hand in hand with Abel, and reflects in her own mind about the way she feels. The wards will accept her without a moments thought, but she keys them in to the fact that Abel is family too, now. Despite what the ancestors may think. Cassandra is the head of her family, and she says that Abel belongs. 

She takes a deep breath, and she guides them through, up the long drive and into the house –– it’s mor a mansion than anything else. It’s more like Yaxley Manor than any eqivilant that she’s seen. Its grand, and opulent, and full of dark corners that she was never quite able to brighten up, even when the house was hers to do whatever she wanted with.

She glances at Abel, when they stand in the grand entrance hall. Her mother is haunting the east wing, but she’s never stepped out of those halls. Not since the day her brother died. The house is theirs, for all intents and purposes. “Ignore the portraits.” She says, a breathless warning. “Except for... The other Cassandra. My namesake, I suppose. She means well, even if she seems kind of like a bitch,” A breath, almost a laugh. “She’s my great-aunt. Her portrait is in the drawing room, but she does like to move around.” 

She shakes her head, remebering all the advice that the othe Cassandra had given her. Her wand was in Cassandra’s hand now, after all. They matched each other, Cassandra was her spiritual sucessor mroe than anything else. 

Their heart breaks as they hear the small bit of hope rise in her voice. They wished they had a better option than this to give her, that there was some way far less dark that someone could extend their life to the extent Becker Savage has. But no matter how much they try to scour through their own knowledge of things like this, they can’t come up with anything any less as dark as a horcrux. Maybe they’re biased though, between their own past experiences and what Fitz Barnes had said, but the pit in their stomach is telling them otherwise. 

They want to reach out to her, more badly than they think they’ve ever had before as she looks up at them, as she voices her plans. No matter how much they will their hand to do so though, it remains frozen at their side, too scared they’ll only make this worse for her somehow. They still were unsure just what she thought of their own part to play in all of this, did she blame them for bringing all this up? Or was it something more forgiving? They wish they knew, especially as she begins to step away from them, lengthening the distance between them. 

“I’d like to come with you,” they reply, voice quiet as they look over at her through what seemed like such a vast expanse of space, even if it was only a few feet. Part of them feels like they know Cassandra better than themself, that behind the brave face she currently wore she was just as scared and anxious as they were, if not more so considering it was someone she loved behind this all. The other part of them warns it’s that connection between her and this man, that had suddenly made the ground they and her were standing on much more unstable than it had been. 

Going with their gut, they step forward, closing the distance between them. “No matter, what happens, we do this together, okay?” They ask as they hold out their hand for her to take. 

.

She feels more relieved than she really expects when Abel says they’ll go with her. But then that’s strange too, because she doesn’t think she’s ever needed someone as much as she apparently needs Abel. She’s not sure what kind of magic they worked on her when she wasn’t looking that made her want something to hold on to, someone to lean on. Cassandra is fairly sure that she used to be okay on her own, that she used to depend on herself first and foremost. She’d been headstrong and she let very few people in past the walls. Athena and Hades, those were people that she depended on. Becker, as much as it hurt now to think about, was someone that she depended on. And now Abel, who she didn’t want to be without for more than an hour, apparently. 

And thinking about bringing Abel home is strange as well. To a house of ghosts who would have hated them. To a house of memories she’s tried very hard to lock away in a box. But they say they’ll come, and she isn’t going to turn them down if it means that she can keep them with her. 

Her shoulders sag a little bit when they step closer, relieved that her strange reaction hasn’t ruined her in their eyes somehow. “Together,” She agrees, voice soft. Because like before, the idea of together still feels nice, because it still feels like she wants them around for a long time to come. “We do this together.” 

And she takes their hand, reaches out and takes it when its offered. It feels good to have someone to hold on to. She thinks she should get used to it, that she should talk herself into just leaning on people without them having to offer it first. Cassandra thinks maybe Abel wouldn’t mind, maybe they want to be held on to as badly as Cassandra does. Maybe if its them it will all be okay.