"Cassia!" Hermione yelled, as she, Harry and Ron came running up to the girl, who was sitting with Poppy in the courtyard, faces distressed and eyes wild.

"What's going on?" Cassia asked, frowning as they ran right up to her.

"The hearing was today," Harry announced.

"What hearing?" Poppy said. "You're gonna have to explain a bit more than that-"

"The hearing deciding Buckbeak's innocence!" Hermione explained.

"Oh, fuck off, just because it's my so-called family that are going against him, doesn't mean-"

"No, that's not what we're trying to say!" Hermione said frantically. "We just wanted you to know that-"

Harry interrupted harshly, eyes pinned on Cassia. "That yes, it was your dad that demanded it, that convinced the council to make the decision-"

"And probably bribed them, as well, yes, I know-"

"To sentence Buckbeak to death."

That struck Cassia dumb.

She and Poppy stayed still and silent for a minute, before the blonde girl, eyes levelled to the ground, asked. "Wh- what?"

Hermione took a shaky breath. "They're executing him."

What. The. Fuck?

Cassia knew her father was mean, and cruel, and underhand, but she had never thought he would do this.

Buckbeak hadn't hurt Draco for no reason; he was innocent. And now he was going to be killed because of something that her family; her own flesh and blood, were doing.

She looked up at the trio, her eyes glassy.

"I'm sorry," spilled out, as she looked at them, so heartbroken over Hagrid losing something that was so important to him. "I- I'm-"

"You don't need to be sorry," Hermione said, elbowing Ron. "You don't, Cass."

But it didn't feel that way to Cassia.

❦︎❦︎❦︎

It was midnight.

She should've been in bed ages ago.

But she wasn't.

She knew she wouldn't be able to sleep.

So there Cassia was, sitting at a table in the Gryffindor common room, writing a letter she knew she would never send by only the dim glow the fire gave off.

Dear father,

I hate you.

That, said on its own sums up my feelings, but I should try to explain a bit further, for your sake.

You've always had something against me. Draco has always been favoured to me and don't deny it, because you and mother know it's true.

I never understood why you didn't want to love me. You had no problem with Draco. He was your golden child; your pride and joy. I never wanted to muscle in on your 'prefect three person family'. I was afraid of that for years.

Things became a hundred times worse when I got to Hogwarts, and got into Gryffindor. I was actually afraid, and scared when I made it in, because I knew what you were going to say, and your fucking howler the next day only confirmed that. I was so afraid, you know that? I felt so afraid and unloved and I was really disappointed in myself, and ashamed of myself.

Turns out I should've been ashamed of you.

I don't understand why you hate the fact I was put into Gryffindor. I had no choice in the matter. Yes, I wouldn't go back and change it if it happened again, but in that moment, I was willing with everything I had that I could change it. For you.

Now I know better. Now I know what kind of a person you really are.

When you hit me, it was to make me feel smaller than you. It was to belittle me. It was to make me feel weak and hurt and make me shrink into myself, killing myself inside.

I wish I could say that hasn't worked.

We did boggarts in DADA at the beginning of this term. You were mine. Does that make you happy? Do you feel accomplished in some way now, knowing your daughter's worst fear is you?

I hope you do, you know. I hope you fucking do.

I hate you, father

Go to hell

She finished writing angrily, tears running down her face.

Shit. This wasn't meant to make her more angry, it was meant to give her closure, to help her. And she had let it do the opposite.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

She wished she could call Oswald, her lovely owl, and have him take the letter to her father so he could see how terrible he was.

She bit down on her lip, hard, trying to stop crying because she didn't know what she would do if someone found her down here-

"Cassia?"

Oh, shit.

Harry Potter was standing before her, having just peeled the invisibility cloak off him.

Cassia furiously wiped her tears, snatching her letter off the desk and getting up.

"Potter," she managed to get out, walking across to the fire and throwing her letter in, letting it get engulfed by the flames. Her father wasn't reading it. And she didn't want to, ever again.

"Cassia-" Harry began as she turned round.

"Either tell me what you're doing down here or leave, Potter!" Cassia hissed, going back to the table to screw the lid on her inkpot.

It was then that she noticed something in his grip.

The Marauder's Map.

"What are you doing?" Cassia asked.

Harry faltered for a second.

"Well?" Cassia raised her eyebrows.

"I thought- I mean- I saw something on the map," he stuttered out. "Something that shouldn't've been there."

"What was it?" Cassia asked instantly.

"It doesn't matter," Harry said. "I just need to go and check it out."

Cassia scoffed. "Yeah right, Potter. I'm coming."

"No Cassia, leave me alone!" He hissed, throwing the cloak back over himself.

Cassia raised her voice slightly. "Unless you want me to wake every single person in this damn tower, I'm coming with you."

She heard Harry sigh and then suddenly he reappeared, rolling his eyes and saying. "Come on, then."

Cassia braced herself.

She hoped she wasn't going to regret this.

❦︎❦︎❦︎

"Right, let's take the cloak off now, we're close," Harry whispered to her as they walked along the corridor.

"Close to what, Potter? You still haven't told me what we're looking for-"

"I'm not telling you unless we find him!"

"Oh, so it's a him?" Cassia raised her eyebrows. "Who's this mystery man, then, Potter? Your boyfriend?"

Harry ignored her.

"Put that light out!" A portrait on the wall complained loudly.

"Sorry," Harry said hurriedly, looking down at the map and then up at the corridor.

"What is-" Cassia looked at the map and this time, Harry forgot to pull it away from her gaze.

Then she saw it.

The dots named Harry Potter and Cassia Malfoy were close together in the corridor, but about twenty paces ahead of them, was another dot.

One labelled Peter Pettigrew.

"Who the fuck is Peter-?"

"Shhh! He's just about to come out!" Harry hissed.

"Lumos," Cassia said, lighting her own wand and holding it in front of her, seeing nothing except a void of darkness.

She looked back at the map.

They were about fifteen paces apart now.

Back up at the corridor, back down at the map.

Ten paces.

Corridor, map.

Five paces.

Harry and Cassia's breathing was hitched, both of them confused and slightly afraid as they looked all around.

On the map, Pettigrew passed them-

But nothing was there.

Cassia shone her wand all around, looking for something, anything, that could be Pettigrew.

She found no such things.

And on the map, Pettigrew was already out of sight, round the corner and away.

She locked eyes with Harry, both confused.

"Nothing was there," she said. "So what-"

"Shhh!" Harry yelled, pointing wordlessly at the map, letting Cassia see it.

Severus Snape was walking along the corridor.

Oh fucking hell-

"Mischief managed," Cassia tapped the map. "Nox," she added, to extinguish her wand.

"Nox," Harry echoed, putting out his own.

But there wasn't enough time to put on the cloak, because five seconds later, the corridor was lit again. This time by Snape's wand.

"Potter, Malfoy," he almost spat. "What are you two doing wandering the corridors at night?"

"Getting a snack," Cassia answered instinctively.

"A... snack?" Snape repeated venemously.

Harry shrugged. "We were hungry."

"How extraordinary like your father you are, Potter," Snape drawled. "He, too, was exceedingly arrogant, struttng about the castle.'

"My dad didn't strut," Harry snapped. "And nor do I."

Bit of a stretch, Potter.

Snape looked between them for a second before saying. "Turn out your pockets."

Cassia confidently turned hers, knowing she had nothing in them and nothing to hide.

Harry, meanwhile, had the map.

Shit.

Snape frowned. "What's this?"

"Spare bit of parchment," Harry shrugged.

"Really?" Snape's eyebrows shot up. "Open it."

Harry did, and of course, nothing was revealed.

But then Snape tapped it with his own wand and said. "Reveal your secret."

We're screwed, Cassia thought, as ink started to appear.

But no, actually. They weren't. Because the ink on the parchment didn't say what it normally did. In fact, it said something very different.

"Read it," Snape told Harry.

Harry looked down at the table the back up at Snape, then read. " 'Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs offer their compliments to Professor Snape, a-and'-"

"Yes?" Snape drawled.

" 'And ask him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business'."

Cassia snorted but disguised it as a cough.

Snape, however, did not find it funny. "Why you insolent little-"

"Professor!"

Snape spun at that voice, his wand light landing on Lupin, who was behind him.

"Well well, Lupin," Snape said, his voice a mix of anger and smugness. "Out for a little walk... in the moonlight?"

Lupin looked past him and said. "Harry, Cassia, are you alright?"

They nodded.

"That remains to be seen," Snape said cuttingly, snatching the map out of Harry's hands and turning to Lupin. "I have just confiscated a rather curious artifact from Mr Potter. Take a look, Lupin. Supposed to be your area of expertise. Clearly, it's full of dark magic."

"I seriously doubt it, Severus," Lupin said, looking at the parchment. "Looks to me as a parchment that insults anyone who reads it. I suspect it's a Zonko's product."

He chuckled and Cassia nodded, hoping to play this narrative off.

"However," Lupin declared. "I shall investigate any hidden qualities it may possess. It is, after all, as you say, my area of expertise. Harry, Cassia, would you come with me, please?"

Snape's wand trailed the two as they walked off with Lupin, him saying to the man. "Professor, goodnight."

Oh thank fuck, Cassia said inside her head as they walked through the corridors with Lupin.

However, when they got to their destination and she realised it was Lupin's office, not the common room, she faltered. What was going to happen to them?

"Come in," Lupin told her and Harry, closing the door behind them. "Now, I haven't the faintest idea how this map came to be in your possession-"

"Professor, we never said anything about a-"

"I know it's a map, Cassia," Lupin said simply, looking at the girl. "And I am astounded you didn't hand it in. Did it never occur to you that this in the hands of Sirius Black is a map to you?"

Harry and Cassia looked down before Harry murmured. "No, sir."

Lupin drew closer to them. "Now, your father never set much store by the rules either, Harry, but he and your mother gave their lives to save yours. And this is your way of repaying them?"

Harry had no reply.

Cassia's jaw clenched. Her parents had been a few years above James and Lily Potter in school, meaning Lupin must've heard of them and seen them too. But it didn't mean she wanted to hear anything about them.

"Now, I will not cover up for you again, you two, do you hear me?"

"Yes, sir," they both muttered.

Lupin sighed. "I want you to return to your dormitory and stay there. And do not take any detours. If you do-" he held up the map "-I shall know."

However, as they walked off, Harry turned back round. "Professor, just so you know, I don't think that map always works."

Lupin, who had been walking in the other direction, turned back round.

"Earlier on, it showed someone in the castle," Harry told the man. "Someone I know to be dead."

Lupin stepped forward. "And who... is that?"

"Peter Pettigrew," Harry answered.

Lupin's whole face changed. His eyes widened and his mouth stood slightly agape. He looked almost crazed in the dim classroom light.

"Impossible," he whispered, barely audible to Harry and Cassia.

"It's just what I saw," Harry shrugged, before turning back round.

Cassia, who had a million questions, bit her tongue.

She would get a chance to ask them later.

❦︎❦︎❦︎

As soon as they got into the common room, she rounded on Harry.

"Right, who's Peter Pettigrew? Why did Lupin react that way? Is this to do with Black? What's going o-"

"I'm not telling you!" Harry hissed.

"Oh, you are, Potter, because I will scream my head off right now and wake everyone up-"

"Fine, fine, if you shut up, I'll do it!"

Cassia shut her mouth and Harry sighed, taking a seat on the sofa beside the fire. Cassia joined him, leaving a considerable amount of space between them open.

"Right, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew were both my dad's best friends," Harry started off with. "But the night my parents died, it was..."

He took a deep breath and pain flashed through his eyes.

"What?" Cassia's voice was unusually soft.

"Black betrayed them," Harry said. "He- he told Voldemort where they were, and when- when Peter Pettigrew found out, he confronted him. And Black destroyed him, as well as thirteen muggles."

Cassia's eyes widened. "And that's why he got put into Azkaban," she murmured. "I was- I was never told..."

"What'd you mean?" Harry frowned.

"Black's my uncle," she explained.

"What?!"

"Well- well, not my uncle, he's my mum's cousin," Cassia said. "And we never speak about him, but... I once asked and- and they said it was none of my business."

It had actually been said a lot more aggressively than that, but she wasn't telling Potter that.

"Oh," Harry said, looking at her. "I- I didn't know-"

"Didn't know that you weren't the only one with a connection to him? Yeah, I got that, Potter," Cassia snapped, getting up.

"Yes, but Cassia- he escaped from Azkaban to- to come after me."

Cassia faltered, turning back to him. "Wh- what?"

"That's the reason he escaped, to find me, and... and to-"

"Kill you," Cassia looked at him, straight faced.

Harry looked up at her, nodding softly.

"Well," Cassia said, the mood between them shifting. "Thanks for that, Potter. See you tomorrow, if I'm unlucky."

This time, she didn't turn around.

And as she walked off, Harry was confused.

They, for some reason, were getting closer and closer, and then she kept pulling away by snapping or making some irritable comment.

And Cassia knew she was doing it, as well.

But she couldn't let herself get too close to Harry Potter.

Because her father already had enough reasons to hate her.

And he didn't need another.