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Her screams alerted no one of the hell that was her mind.
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Cassiopeia Black, born to family of pureblood supremacists. With two brothers on completely different sides of the track, she's still struggling to decide what the best...
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Always pity the thinkers, for they are cursed with their own imagination.
-atticus
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Sometimes Cassiopeia Black wonders how her family would have reacted to her 'death'.
Her parents would have been upset. Not for the daughter they loved but for the opportunities they lost and the money they could have gained.
Regulus... he was there. Regulus watched. She saw his eyes. Those grey eyes that she shared. She imagined him spending his days after her death pretending that all was well (as well as it can be during a war). Cassy wasn't his sister, she was a traitor. But deep inside that tortured heart of his, he would be weeping. Cassy was his sister.
Sirius would have probably found out by a newspaper ('14 YEAR OLD CASSIOPEIA BLACK FOUND TO BE ANOTHER VICTIM OF DEATH EATERS') or overhearing someone talking about it in passing ("Did you hear that Cassiopeia Black, sister of death eater Regulus Black, was killed by some death eaters? Pity really.") Maybe a ministry worker would have told him. But, why would they tell him, he wasn't a part of the black family tree anymore. Or perhaps he never found out, living the rest of his days believing he was fighting on the opposite side of both of his siblings. Either way, Cassy likes to believe that he was sad. They did use to be close once upon a time.
Young Cassy used to love following her oldest brother around and learning how to do things like he did. She would run her hands through her hair until her mother would yell at her for messing it up and Cassy would offer her a 'charming' smile like she had seen Sirius do every single time he was in trouble.
But then Sirius went to Hogwarts and he saw how the outside world was. He grew up. Then Cassiopeia went to Hogwarts, and she grew up too.
Once Zach died, her perspective on death and grieving was lost.
She realised that grief isn't just sadness. It's anger and fear. It's hot and suffocating. It's wanting to do everything but not having the energy to do it. It's sitting on your bed, lost in a sea of 'what ifs' and 'why?'.
It's like drowning. There's pain, but there is disconnection. You swim and you swim up to the surface, but there is this chain clamped around your foot. The longer you stay under, the more it burns. You fight. Your hands claw through the water, they try ripping away the chains. But, the more you fight it and the more you try to get to the surface, the harder it does getting there. Sometimes it's better to just take it all in.
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Cassy stared at the equations in front of her. History, she could do. Chemistry was similar enough to potions that she could just about grasp onto it. She already knew some French and English was also simple enough for her to get the hang of and pass. But math. Now Cassy really wishes she took Arithmancy in Hogwarts (curse the cute animals for making her choose Care of Magical Creatures instead). Because, staring at the distortion of letters and numbers in front of her, Cassy did not understand anything.
