Cassiopeia's Tale

The house was terribly quiet. When Cass opened the door, she heard a shout and a door slam, and then just nothing. She walked into the middle of the entrance hall and stopped, listening to the water dripping from her heavy borrowed cloak onto the threadbare Persian carpet. Then the quietness took on texture, and she could hear people talking in low voices. She turned round and round, staring past the drooping chandelier toward the ceiling from where the voices came, but the argument would take no recognisable form.

"Where in Merlin's name have you been!" a voice yelled suddenly close behind her. Cass swung round to see Sian standing in the door of the kitchen, dressed in a bright pink frilly apron and armed with a spatula and a wooden spoon.

"Wha...? Cass managed, but Sian advanced on her, pointing at her face with the spatula.

"One moment you're nagging me you want to go home, and the next you're gone, leaving nothing but a puff of smoke and a trail of empty wine glasses!"

"Wha...?" Cass asked again, but Sian was not to be deterred.

"If you are hiding a secret from me, I will hit it of you!" she said , waving her kitchen utensils threateningly. "So come on, out with it: who's the unlucky man?"

"I...um..." Cass said without much success. No matter how she tried to put it, it just sounded so stupid in her head, and she couldn't bring herself to say it.

"Where the hell were you!" Sian suddenly screamed, and Cass, without thinking, hastened to answer, lest she gets whacked with a spatula.

"I was at Snape's house," She blurted out, and watched Sian's arms drop to her sides. For a moment they stood staring dumbly at each other, each mind working furiously. Then Sian shrugged.

"Fine, don't tell me," She said angrily, and stomped back into the kitchen.

Cass stood staring after her, her mouth open in silent protest. But then Sian came stomping back out of the kitchen with her hands on her hips, and regarded Cass critically.

"You're telling the truth, aren't you?" she said in barely more than a whisper. "You really went with him?"

Cass nodded and Sian gave the ceiling a suspicious look.

"So Claude wasn't lying when he said he saw you...you know...leave with Snape?"

"Er..."

"And what on earth are you wearing?"

For a moment more they stood staring at each other again, and then Sian started jumping up and down and laughing hysterically.

"Ha! I knew it! I knew it! You're in love, that's why you were so quiet all the time! I knew you had a secret lover! Ooooh! How exciting!"

Cass grabbed Sian by the arm and clamped a hand over her mouth. "Be quiet!" she hissed while Sian sagged to the floor for lack of air, choking with laughter. When it appeared that she had had her laugh, Cass let her go. But Sian grabbed her on both sides of her face and started laughing again.

"You naughty, naughty girl! Who would have known you have such dark taste in men!"

"Shut up!" Cass fumed, grabbing liberal amounts of Sian's hair. "There is no affair. I passed out. He let me sleep there. There's nothing. It's nothing, you hear me? You hear me?"

At this outburst Sian stopped laughing and looked at Cass with big eyes. Then she gingerly removed Cass' hands form her hair.

"All right, all right. Fine. So it's nothing. Although I do think you protest a little too much."

So they sat there on the Persian carpet in the entrance hall. "Nothing. Nothing. Nothing," Cass muttered forlornly, and watched Sian's expression soften.

"Oh. I see..." she said, tugging at a worn tassel on the edge of the carpet. "I see. Why didn't you tell me, though?"

"What? Why didn't I...well look at Claude's reaction! He's probably planning to chase me from the house with a torch and a pitchfork. I knew it would be like this," Cass said, shrugging out of the rain sodden cloak and pushing it away form her. "I should have listened to Mara. This will just end badly."

But Sian snorted. Waving the comment away. "Forget about the likes of Claude. There are people like me with brains. Good creepy Slytherins who think that Severus Snape is as good a man as any."

Cass stared at Sian. But now that she thought about it, it all made perfect sense: the Slytherins obviously didn't hate him as much as the rest of the school.

"This is crazy," Cass smiled. "I forgot that you were in Slytherin."

"Cassie, Cassie, Cassie," Sian sighed, getting up and pulling Cass up after her. "Never be afraid to be yourself and love who you want. It's all you have. It's all they can't take from you."

Sian began walking back to the kitchen, but Cass pulled her back. "Do you think Claude would come round?" she asked, but knew the answer even before she finished asking her question. Sian looked down and shook her head.

"You know, no matter how chaste you claim this night was, Claude saw what he saw and made his own assumptions."

"Which are?" Cass persisted, insisting.

"Well," Sian sighed, "look at it this way: Claude has everything he wants. He is your general storybook hero: smart, handsome and successful. No-one has ever said no to him. No-one but you. You: grumpy, weird little orphan Cass. You rejected him for Severus Snape, an enemy. That's how he sees it, and I'm afraid his ego will never recover."

Cass gaped at this rather brutal account. "That harsh? Why are they enemies?"

Sian barked a laugh. "Claude was in Gryffindor, and I'm afraid that's all it takes to forge a hate that will last a lifetime."

Cass thought a little and then shrugged. "That's pathetic."

Sian smiled. "But you have to give him credit for sticking to his beliefs."

"No, I'm feeling merciless this morning."

Sian laughed and started walking back to the kitchen retrieving her spoon and her spatula that had fallen carelessly on the Persian carpet. For the first time Cass realised how bizarre it was for Sian to be wearing a apron and wielding kitchen utensils.

"Sian," Cass said, cocking her head and regarding her friend suspiciously. "Tell the truth now, I won't be angry. Have you been cooking?"

-oOo-

At night, when she was alone, lying in her bed, Cass had time to remember and to regret. Everything that had happened ran through her mind like an old and rather scratchy film. She could remember Spinner's End as if through a thin mist, and saw there everything that she had said and done... or rather not done. There hadn't been much of anything. They didn't really talk or look each other. It was a short sad tale of avoiding each other.

And on these nights she rewrote the entire movie. Over and over she played out in her head how it should have gone. The million ways in which the night didn't end with her leaving, or at least not leaving without saying more than a dozen words. Other times she imagined waking up in his bed, savouring the thought that he had probably slept there only the night before. Gingerly opening his closet to see if he really was as neat as she imagined him to be. Looking through the books that lined the walls of his sitting room to see if there was anything she might like.

But these thoughts were always tainted by their own non-existence. It was what it was, which is nothing. And nothing she could do could erase her idiotic behaviour and her tied tongue. And now, she wished herself back there, again and again. It was her little secret. It kept her warm. It drove her up the walls.