Call to Destiny

Chapter 28

Relations

"And you're sure you've contacted every one of them?" Mad Eye Moody asked.

The Weasleys and several Order members were seated around the Burrow's living room in various states of alertness. Dinner and dessert had passed in a festive mood, but these days business didn't stay put off for long. Ginny and Cassie were sitting on the floor by the fire, for once not banished from the gathering, not far from Ron, Harry, and Hermione. The three of them had only recently recovered from the shock of Cassie's appearance, and Hermione had a knowing look in her eye that worried Ginny, but at the moment the redhead's attention was fixed on the conversation before her, soaking up every precious word of the stolen intelligence.

Leona appeared to be grinding her teeth. "No, Mad Eye, I'm just making assumptions. Of course, I have, you old hippogriff."

The room bubbled with laughter.

Mad Eye grimaced. "I'd forgotten that particular endearment."

"You've known Mad Eye a while?" Fred asked with a grin.

Leona rolled her eyes. "Too long."

"She was my student at the Academy before she and everyone else worth teaching dropped out to join the Order full time. Lost half of 'em. Bloody waste of talent," Moody rumbled. "You left with Potter and Black, right?"

"You knew my dad?" Harry asked from her left. His voice held the particular note of hope that always accompanied news of his parents. "And Sirius?"

The smile Leona gave him was a sad one. "We went to school together," she explained with a nod at Lupin, who had has arm around Tonks's shoulders. The sight of them never failed to make Ginny smile. "But I was an icky Slytherin, so we didn't know each other until the Auror Academy."

Lupin opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off.

"Oh, come off it, Remus. You guys thought we were all slimy little Death Eaters in-training."

Ginny cast a glance at her brother and his friends, thinking how well that described the feelings of present day Gryffindors, herself included, up until six months ago. Hermione looked properly shamefaced, but neither Harry nor Ron seemed inclined to question their beliefs. How Gryffindor, Ginny thought wryly.

"We were young and foolish," Lupin said abashedly and Ginny felt a surge of affection for the werewolf. She had a feeling that Lupin would be one of the first to accept Draco, were he to pronounce himself on their side. Not that that was likely to happen, the way things were going.

"Some of our best Aurors were Slytherins turning from Voldemort back then," Moody said.

Leona smiled sweetly at the old Auror. "And here I thought you never liked me, Mad Eye."

Ginny laughed.

"You never told me your mom was a Slytherin," she whispered to Cassie.

"I never knew!" Cassie laughed. "Guess my dad's Gryffindorian tendencies won out in me."

"Gryffindorian?" Ginny giggled and then nearly choked. She felt like a Filibuster firework had just gone off in her head, the puzzle pieces finally snapping into place.

She couldn't believe she hadn't seen it before. How in the name of Merlin's flaming trousers had she missed it? All the signs had been staring her in the face the entire time- literally, too.

"Ginny?" Cassie asked worriedly, eyebrows drawn over the pale blue eyes that had nagged at Ginny since first meeting the girl. Eyes she had seen before, laughing across the dinner table at Grimmauld Place two short years ago. Cassie Jones was the daughter of Sirius Black.

Ginny opened her mouth to answer, whether to accuse or stutter a lie of some sort, she would never find out, because the conversation in the room had just taken a dangerous turn.

"But at this rate, nothing short of the Warriors suddenly appearing will convince the wiccas that it's time to fight."

"Wonderful," Moody growled, his frown making the deeper scars on his face stand out sharply. "The only chance we have of getting the wiccas on our side rests on the appearance of mythical beings."

The Weasley family and Tonks looked completely baffled.

"Sorry," Charlie interrupted. "But the who?"

"Good band," Leona said. "Not the Warriors, obviously, the Who...nevermind. The Warriors are, by wizarding lore, a legend. Wiccas, on the other hand, firmly believe in the existence of ten souls, so to speak, that are part fearsome beastie, part god, who take up residence in ten human hosts for the duration of a War to protect the side of light."

"But it's just that," Hermione said, frowning. "A legend, a myth."

Ginny was frowning for a different reason. Leona's version of the Warriors was one completely new to her. Cassie looked equally bemused.

"I thought it was more like reincarnation," Cassie said.

"There are different versions of the story," Lupin explained, frowning. "But you don't honestly believe the Warriors exists, Leo, do you?"

"I don't know," Leona conceded. "But I do think a lot of our problems would be solved if they did."

"What do you mean they protect the Light?" Tonks frowned. "Who's the Light?"

"We are," Lupin explained with a small smile. Tonks'es eyebrows lifted towards her hairline, a festive green today.

"It sounds silly," Cassie's mother said. "But anyone fighting dark forces is technically one of the Light. The Old Language isn't big on synonyms."

"Or euphemisms," Cassie muttered darkly, getting a few chuckles from the assembled.

Leona grinned. "That, too. According to the myth, the Warriors' primary job is to fight the demons and other hellish creatures so that the Light can vanquish the evil. Basically, to keep the Light alive for as long as possible."

Familiar guilt and panic rushed over Ginny at those words. The need to do something, to help the war effort, to fight, had returned, and with it, the desperate feeling of being at a complete loss of where to start.

"It's a story," Hermione said slowly. "Like...a fairy tale. A legend."

The trio traded a significant look that everyone noticed and pretended to not have. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had been clear that their mission from Dumbledore was a secret. The words bubbled unbidden from Ginny's lips.

"So was the Chamber of Secrets."

Everyone turned to look at her. Her brothers looked surprised, her parents worried, and Lupin, Leona, and Hermione, curious.

"That's true," Bill said, and a thoughtful silence fell over the group.

"So where do we find these Warriors?" Harry asked, frowning.

"We don't," Cassie answered him sagely. "They come to us."

Ginny felt ill.

~

The fire crackled weakly in the hearth as Draco studied it through the glass of amber liquid. It turned the yellows and oranges of the fire to varied shades of copper, which did nothing to improve his mood.

The Manor was quiet around him, not that silence in Malfoy Manor was abnormal. But this winter night's silence went deeper than the simple absence of noise. Instead of bespeaking emptiness, the quite seemed to fill the rooms of the home, a silence so dense it muffled speech, thought, and action. To Draco, it was a blessed silence. The Dark Lord's presence in his home had paralyzed him, keeping him in a hopelessness and despair no amount of dementors could ever replicate. Everything he had planned prior to leaving Hogwarts had frozen into a thin sheet of ice, which crumbled after one meeting with the Dark Lord.

Although, to be honest, for being as Slytherin as they come, his cunning plan had stunk. He had gotten as far as "Take Father's Place in Inner Circle of Death Eaters" before he ran out of ideas, and the first one had been a given anyway. Draco snorted to himself. Alright, so there never had been a cunning plan in the first place. He hadn't lied to Ginny, per say. He had just let her believe he knew more than he did. In fact, he let her believe a lot more about him than was strictly true.

For instance, she believed he knew what he was doing. In reality, he hadn't a clue.

She believed he wanted to fight in the war, while he was actually doing everything he could to stall that inevitable moment.

She believed he believed in a cause. He only believed in getting her, himself, and his mother out of the war alive, none of which looked likely to happen.

Draco frowned. It had been this exact train of thought that he led him to his grandfather's study in search of some form of alcohol. Abraxas Malfoy had hidden whiskey, wine, vodka, and various other alcoholic substances in every conceivable nook and cranny of the Manor. Grandmother Malfoy had not been a fan of drinking. Thankfully, however, Abraxas had done such a good job of hiding his liquor that he never managed to find more than a third of it. Draco had spent his early adolescence unearthing the rest.

"Father would have been proud," he muttered, smiling bitterly. He downed what little Ogden's remained in the glass, letting the alcohol burn a fiery trail to his stomach. For the shortest moment, it gave him the illusion of courage. He wondered what Ginny would do, if she saw him right then. Would she flush red and knock the glass from his hand, cursing him from there to eternity about wasting time while precious lives were being lost? Maybe she would sink into the chair beside him, smooth his hair away from his face, kiss him, and say that it didn't matter, that they could hide and wait for the war to be over. Or maybe she would stand in the doorway, half-hidden in shadow, with her arms crossed over her chest and her mouth pressed in a firm line, saying nothing, before turning and walking away, leaving him and his cowardice behind.

He was lying to her. He was leading her on, letting her believe he was someone else, someone good, but he couldn't bring himself to tell her, to let her see him fleeing from the battle, so he had walked stupidly into the thick of it. Draco snorted bitterly. Never let it be said that Slytherins never do anything brave. They simply aren't known for it because unlike Gryffindors, they don't seek an intimate acquaintance with Imminent Death.

Draco sighed heavily and slouched further into the armchair. He was a failure and he was perfectly fine with admitting it. He had failed to kill Dumbledore, so he had run the first chance he had gotten, and he had ran straight to San Francisco's Save the Light convention, and unfortunately they weren't discussing Muggle elekticitry. For some incomprehensible reason, he had been named head eWarrior, and therefore supreme protector of the Light. Well, bugger. At that point, he hadn't yet decided if the Light or the Dark was less likely to kill him. Then, of course, there was the Weaslette with her big brown eyes, telling him that the Light needed him. It must be said that the witch's powers were formidable. Draco hadn't stood a chance.

Then for two weeks he had been dunked into the heart of Darkness. Aunt Bella was frequently at the Manor, alternating between heated discussions with his father and hushed conversations behind closed doors with his mother. It had disquieted Draco how close his mother and Aunt Bella appeared to be.

Now, however, since Bellatrix had let slip her advance knowledge of Lucius's "suicide mission," Narcissa refused to acknowledge her sister, and Bellatrix had, true to form, turned vindictive. Draco found he preferred the sisterly affection, after all.

When he had returned to Hogwarts, surrounded by his childhood friends who saw him as something of a leader. He was the one who was supposed to take charge, rally the other Slytherins, and lead them to the Dark Lord as willing servants. Instead of continuing his relentless, childish taunts towards Harry Potter, he had withdrawn, which somehow seemed to make him even more important in the eyes of the foolish younger students. Everyone believed he had another secret mission from the Dark Lord. Only Blaise and Pansy hadn't succumbed to the ridiculous notion. Pansy was tired of her father's fanaticism and Blaise preferred strict, noncommittal neutrality.

And so, for a wonderful, tortured month, he had hidden. He had hidden from his father, he had hidden from the Dark Lord, and most importantly he had hidden from Ginny. He couldn't bear to face her enthusiasm, her fire. And then he received word from his father: there was to be an attack on Brighton, the Dark Lord's first strike with demonic forces. It would be a milestone victory.

He knew he should have told Ginny, knew she would convince him that they should do their Warrior duty and fight, knew that neither of them would make it out alive. So he had stayed hidden until she finally tracked him down.

Seeing her, being as close to her as he had not been for weeks caused him to snap. He raved on about being watched, which was partly true, and then he'd kissed her. And that was all it took. From that moment, he had known he could never hide from her again.

He was a coward by nature, but the terror of not being with her far surpassed any fear the Dark Lord may have once inspired. He looked down at his arm where the Dark Mark contrasted sharply with his pale skin.

In turning towards the Light, he had to submerge himself in Dark.

"Draco?"

His mother's voice broke through his thoughts.

"In here, Mother."

Narcissa's light footsteps brought her to the small sofa opposite him. She sat down, staring into the fire. Draco procured another tumbler from the cabinet beside the mantle and poured his mother some of the whiskey. She took it with a nod and returned her gaze to the fire. Draco settled into his armchair again and did the same. The small fire did little to warm the room. The clock on the mantle chimed midnight.

"Happy New Year, Draco."

"Happy New Year, Mother."

~

The firework shot skyward with an earsplitting whistle.

BANG!

Sparks in every color of the rainbow filled the night sky, then formed into a lion and set to chasing Ginny and Cassie around the Burrow's snowy backyard. The two girls squealed and ran through the snow, running into each other and tripping. Ginny heard a squeak and turned just in time to see Cassie teeter and fall face first in the snow, only a few feet away from everyone. Her brothers roared with laughter and Ginny couldn't help joining them.

"She gets her grace from my side of the family," Leona explained to Tonks, who appeared to be getting more pregnant by the day.

Tonks grimaced. "I know how she feels."

Ever chivalrous, Harry reached out a hand to help Cassie up. The brunette smiled wickedly and poor Harry was in the snow before he realized what had happened. Ginny giggled, packed a quick snowball and pelted it at Ron, who chose that particular moment to lean down and give Hermione a peck on the cheek. Hermione turned pink, much to Ginny's amusement, just as the snowball connected with a sheet of long, blond hair. Everyone froze.

Fleur turned around slowly, her expression stony.

"So, zat is 'ow it is? Alright zen."

And with that, she crouched down and lobbed a snowball that caught Ginny on the ear. In a matter of seconds, flying globs of snow filled the air, as even Lupin retaliated to a particularly large snowball Harry had sent his way.

When they all finally trudged back into the House, Ginny had snow in places she hadn't realized snow could go. Ron kept shivering spasmodically as the snow Ginny had stuffed down the back of his sweater melted. She smirked delightedly.

"Oh dear," Molly muttered and turned to the youngest girls. "Would you two be dears and hop out and get the last of the fairy lights?"

The two girls agreed readily and after a drying and a warming charm, went back out into the frosted landscape. They walked in companionable silence for a few minutes, until they reached the periphery of the Weasley property.

"Cassie?"

"Yeah?"

"What's your full name?"

Cassie stopped in her tracks, a look of mingled confusion and caution on her features.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Ginny turned towards her friend, the wind blowing tendrils of hair into her face. She batted them away irritably. It was now or never.

"I mean what's your full name?" she repeated, trying to keep the tone of her voice light.

Cassie's eyes flicked from her own boots to Ginny's face, some internal battle clearly taking place. Finally, she sighed, deflating like a punctured balloon. There was a bench behind her and she sank onto it heavily, elbows on her knees, head in her hands.

"What do you think, Ginny?" Her voice was strangely harsh.

Ginny sat down beside her friend, stretching her legs out in front of her, and playfully bumped Cassie with her shoulder. The Wicca looked up and Ginny smiled, trying to let her know that everything was okay.

"Well, I don't think your last name is Jones, for one thing."

Cassie gave a short laugh. "And how do you figure that one out?"

"You don't look like a Jones."

"Yeah," Cassie said with a fabulous snort. "I do, however, bear an unfortunate resemblance to one Bellatrix Lestrange."

Ginny blinked in surprise at the bitterness of Cassie's words.

"Wow. Now that you mention it, you do."

The look Cassie shot her told her that had not been the right thing to say.

"Er, I mean, Ron looks a bit like Aunt Muriel. It's not a big deal."

Cassie laughed without humor, staring at the forest in the distance. "Nice. I'll be sure to tell him that later."

"He's come to terms with it," Ginny shrugged. "But, really, it's not a big deal, Cassie."

"It is when you look like the woman who murdered your father."

Cassie met Ginny's eyes briefly. "My full name is Cassiopeia Leona Black. Sirius Black was my father. He...my mom never got to tell him. She...she was pregnant when she left him, but she didn't know it. She was really mad at him, so by the time she was ready to tell him, he was in Azkaban. She didn't talk about him much after that. I mean, I always knew who my father was. She didn't keep it from me. And then in second year, when he escaped...my mom was a nervous wreck.

"A year later, she got a letter from Dumbledore, telling her that Sirius was innocent and that the Order was reforming. I watched her burn the letter. I knew she was scared, but I didn't really understand why. I didn't really spend a lot of time thinking about it, or him, really. I didn't want to. He didn't know anything about me, and in this stupid, vindictive way I didn't want to know anything about him.

"Then two summers ago, I got home after going to the movies with my friends in town one night, and she was sitting at the kitchen table. She told me that he was dead, that his cousin had killed him in a battle. I've never seen my mom so...defeated. But, it didn't really mean anything to me.

"When I got home from school last year, she asked me if I'd mind moving to England. Said it was her turn to fight. Apparently, she'd been corresponding with Dumbledore for the past year. I couldn't exactly say no."

Throughout her narrative, Cassie had kept her eyes focused on the mound on snow she was creating with her feet. Now, she cast a tentative look at Ginny, signaling that the redhead ought to say something.

"That's...that's...wow," she breathed. She'd been right about Cassie's parentage, but there was far more to the story than she'd been expecting.

Cassie sighed heavily and leaned back into the leafless tree behind them. "I didn't - I didn't want anything to do with him. Sirius, I mean. I always told people who asked that my dad had split when I was a baby, which is true, except it was my mom that split, actually, and I was more of a fetus, and he technically didn't know I existed, but, wow that's a long sentence. Anyway, I never thought of myself as Cassiopeia Black, you know? That's my name on my birth certificate, but I've always introduced myself as Cassie Jones. My friends at Salem just assumed I hated my given name. Well, Cassiopeia is a pretty ridiculous name, but that's not the point.

"That side of my, my family, I guess, has always been something of a myth to me. The crazy Blacks of Wizarding England, who my dad was apparently the only sane member of, but then he landed in Azkaban, so really, who knows? It never seemed real to me until we got here. And then Dumbledore told me that going by Black at Hogwarts would cause, how did he put it? Oh, 'a bit of a stir,' with that look like he was warning me because he had to, but he'd really be more than happy for me to argue because it'd be entertaining as hell. The last thing I wanted to be was gossip, or connected with my dad's family, so I was all for staying Cassie Jones. But, now..."

Cassie sighed again, then laughed hollowly. "I'm sorry, Ginny. You asked me what my name was I started rambling away about my familial issues."

Ginny laughed with her, their combined laughter thin and feeble in the winter air. "Just a bit. I'm just - I can't even imagine."

"It's not that I've always been missing a dad in my life," Cassie said, pushing a hand through he hair. She'd taken off her hat when she'd started talking, twisting it in her hands at times. "Well, yeah, when I was like seven and all the girls were going to the Father Daughter Dance, I wanted a daddy. But, mostly, I didn't care. I have my mom and she's been more than enough. I've just found out so much about him here. I mean, you can't go into any of the Hogwarts stuff from the past thirty years without seeing 'Sirius Black' on every other page."

Ginny smiled, remembering sitting in the kitchen of Grimmauld as Sirius regaled them with stories of the Marauders from Hogwarts, Professor Lupin occasionally interrupting to add some coherence to the tale. With a cold shock, she realized that she knew more about Cassie's father than Cassie did.

"So, he never knew?" Ginny asked tentatively.

Cassie gave her a wry smile. "That I exist? No, he never knew."

"I'm so sorry," Ginny said softly, and Cassie shrugged. "He was...he was a really cool bloke."

"So I hear," the dark haired girl said with a short laugh. She stood up, tripping over her snow mound before she turned to face Ginny. "We should go, they'll probably be wondering where we are."

Ginny slowly got to her feet, nodding. They grabbed the fairy lights and started back toward the house. Cassie stopped just as they entered the yard.

"Ginny?"

"Yeah?"

Both girls started at the echo of their earlier conversation and broke into uneasy laughter.

Cassie shook her head, grinning. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier. I hadn't really come to terms with it myself, really."

"I understand," Ginny said, then amended as Cassie raised her eyebrows disbelievingly. "Well, as much as I can, at least. You know, good Godric, you know everything," she laughed. "I just want you to be able to trust me. Merlin knows, we don't have anyone else."

Cassie grinned. "Not strictly true, you have Drammmph!"

Her words were muffled as Ginny clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. "Sssh!"

Cassie squirmed away from her friend.

"No one's going to here us out here," she hissed, although it was at a much lower volume.

"The twins have extendable ears," Ginny whispered back.

"Oh. Good point."

They stood for another moment in the snow, casting uncertain looks at the kitchen door. Finally, Cassie motioned to the Burrow. "Shall we?"

"After you, Miss Black," Ginny whispered.

Cassie shot the redhead a squinty eyed glare over her shoulder. "I knew I shouldn't have told you anything."

Ginny giggled, catching her friend's arm. "You know you're related to Tonks? Her mum and Sirius were cousins."

"Finally a relation I like," Cassie whispered back.

Ginny laughed, until another realization made her choke. Cassie eyed her growing grin warily. "What?"

"Well, Tonks's mum's sisters are Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy," Ginny explained. Cassie blinked at her. "Tonks and Draco are cousins."

Horrific realization slowly dawned on Cassie's face. "You mean..."

Ginny couldn't contain it any loner and broke into peals of laughter just as they crossed the threshold.