In the Melancholy Moonlight, Part 5: Dark Matter

Chapter 274: Make Everything Alright (March 1975)

A/N: Hi everybody! Just a quick little content warning for gender dysphoria in this chapter! I intentionally tried to avoid making it triggering by trying to stick to the language these teenagers would have been able to understand in the 1970s wizarding world, but if you're at all sensitive to that, please skim any sections where Cass references her Animagus form. OH, and a huge thank you to the lovely Sam (@yllwjckts) for letting me use her pretty princess Lux Erzsebet, from her fic Wild & Wicked, in this chapter! Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this chapter! It's over 47,000 words, which is why I'm posting early this week. I poured my heart and soul into this chapter, which I think is honestly the happiest Cass chapter, so I really hope this chapter means something to someone. It certainly means a lot to me. Which any further ado, I present the longest chapter of Moonlight to date! Alternatively titled, Who Let Me Try to Make This Many Metaphors About Being Non-Binary in Just One Chapter?

🩵💛❤️💜🩷

CASS:

The first of March dawned crisp and clear.

There was nothing quite like early mornings just before spring burst forth, I decided as I crested the hill that kept my secret little brook hidden just for me. I knew better than to assume the brook was solely mine, surely someone in the centuries prior to the twentieth had climbed that same hill and found the same little stream of water tumbling over stones once sharp but smoothed by the gentle current of time, but I let myself imagine it was only for me anyway.

The most recent dusting of February snow had melted, washed away by the rain, but no flowers had yet made their appearance. That was just as well, really, because the uniformity of the green grass interrupted only by the water slipping and bubbling over the pebbles of the brook was beautiful in its simplicity.

And I yearned for simplicity those days, hence my sunrise trek to my favorite spot on the grounds. When I was there, the rest of the world couldn't touch me. I could just exist alongside the untroubled water, finding solace in the tranquil moments afforded to me by the ever-present melody of the water.

Every time I thought my life was finally starting to make sense and fall into a predictable rhythm, something new would come along to disrupt it all and send me into a tailspin again.

Life had been alright as of late, truthfully, but it was the morning of the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match, and I wasn't playing. Again. So old wounds had resurfaced and old scars had started to ache, the ones I'd tried to ignore for the better part of a year and a half that had yet to fade entirely.

Pat Rakepick had become Quidditch Captain our third year, after Frank graduated, and she insisted upon hosting try-outs again. We all agreed that was fair, so I happily tried out with James and Marlene again, the three of us rather optimistic about our chances of being chosen. They were. I wasn't. Pat chose her classmate Christopher Macmillan as the third Chaser. According to Sirius, who was watching try-outs from the stands and stormed down onto the grass when I wasn't chosen and thus overheard everything that I missed when I dragged my broom up to the castle in search of Carter, when James and Marlene protested, saying the three of us worked best when we played together, Pat cited my lack of goals scored the year before as the reason for choosing Christopher, a sixth-year pure-blood who scored the most individual goals during try-outs. James and Marlene tried to argue our case — reminding Pat that the two of them had intentionally scored most of the goals to protect me, and that it had worked brilliantly, we hadn't been hurt in any of the matches and we'd nearly won the Quidditch Cup for Merlin's sake — but Pat remained firm in her decision. James and Marlene offered to quit the team in protest that night, when all of my fellow Gryffindor third-years congregated in the boys' dormitory to comfort me, but I insisted that they should play without me. They agreed, reluctantly, after a drawn-out argument where all three of us cried, and they only relented when Sirius pointed out that if they kept playing, either James or Marlene would become Quidditch Captain once Pat, Christopher, and Susan — the new Keeper — graduated. The new Seeker, Yoon Kim, was a year younger than us, so the role of Quidditch Captain would go to either James or Marlene once we were in our fifth year, and they could restore my spot on the team then. My two years of sitting on the bench were almost over, but the humiliation of not being chosen for the team as a third-year after making such a statement when Frank chose me for the team as a second-year was agonizing. I hadn't even tried out for the team my fourth year, not wanting to heap even more hot coals of humiliation onto my already-scorched head.