Cassian sat with Bathsheda in her room, one arm around her waist. She was sideways on his lap, playing absently with his beard, thumb brushing along his jaw every few seconds.
"I missed you," she said.
He leaned in and kissed her forehead.
Before he could say anything Ash burst out with a soft whimper, claws scrabbling onto her sleeve before flopping its head onto her shoulder like it'd run a mile to get there.
Bathsheda sighed and stroked its snout. "Missed you too, Ash. There, there."
The dragon's tail thumped against her back, wings fluttering before it curled up like a sulky cat.
Cassian raised an eyebrow. "You get that dramatic flair from me?"
Ash huffed. Then buried its nose in Bathsheda's shoulder.
She kept petting it. "You were gone three months. She earned the attitude."
"Fair."
She let her head rest against his. "You look thinner."
"I blame the hiking."
Ash let out a low chuff and stretched across both of them.
Bathsheda chuckled under her breath.
He leaned back slightly, dragging her with him.
She just curled her hand under his shirt and rested her cheek against his.
Cassian closed his eyes.
Ash started snoring.
"That ring," Bathsheda said, her hand drifting towards his.
Cassian caught her wrist before she could touch it. "Mostly cleaned," he said. "But just in case."
She hummed, thumb brushing the side of his hand instead. "Anything special about it?"
He looked down at it, brow pulling.
"Don't know, but it feels like it."
She didn't push. Her eyes closed again, head against his shoulder, fingers curling into his shirt.
***
Cassian pushed the door open with his shoulder, dragging in something bulky under one arm. Looked like a metal box had crashed into a lamp and then been given wheels out of pity. His other hand gripped the staff. The limp in his left leg had vanished, but he was still leaning onto it.
Neville, Theo, Harry and Draco got to their feet as soon as they saw him.
Two sides stared at each other.
Then, without a word, Theo and Neville walked forward from opposite ends. They each took one side of the device. Harry and Draco sat back down like nothing happened.
Cassian grinned. "Teamwork. Hogwarts miracle."
He reached the front and thudded his staff against the desk. "Right then. As our lovely first lesson of the year, I thought I'd start soft. Something gentle. Lighthearted. Sentimental even."
He walked over to the blackboard, grabbed a bit of chalk, and wrote out the day's subject.
A few students sighed without meaning to.
No wand, no spell, no flick of light. Just chalk and muscle.
"Lovebird-to-Love-Note Transfiguration."
The room cracked up.
"Half of you still haven't cleaned glitter off your robes from last year," he added. "And I know at least three people used that spell for actual confession notes."
Tracey raised a hand. "It worked, too."
"I'm sure it did. Half the staff is still traumatized."
Cassian looked around, scanning the seats.
"Who here's the most athletic?"
Everyone looked at Harry. Then at Draco.
Harry hesitated.
Cassian raised an eyebrow.
Harry sighed and put his hand up.
"Brilliant," Cassian said. "Come on, then."
Harry dragged himself up with the enthusiasm of someone walking to a dentist appointment. Cassian pointed to his desk.
"Sit."
Harry glanced at the others watching him. Then at Cassian.
"Seriously?"
"No, this is History not Defence. Sit."
Harry dropped into it, stiff as a board. Sitting up front, facing everyone, felt like a punishment. The desk wasn't much help either, there were pedals underneath.
He nudged one with his foot, frowning.
Cassian watched Neville and Theo had lug it in, gave it a once-over, then nodded, "Thanks, boys."
"This," he said after they settled back, "is an Overhead Projector. Anyone here knows what it is?"
Hermione's hand was already half-raised before he'd finished the sentence. A few other Muggle-borns and half-bloods joined in.
Cassian gave them a quick nod. "Good. You lot can explain it later when it inevitably jams."
He walked around the side, prodding a few buttons. Nothing happened. He adjusted something at the back with a screwdriver that definitely hadn't come from any wizarding shop.
"It's a Muggle teaching device," he said. "Slides in the top here..." he slid a rune-inscribed sheet into a tray "light comes through from underneath, reflects up onto that mirror, then blasts the image onto the wall."
He gave the class a look.
"Muggles made this work without magic. Imagine the sheer desperation."
Laughter broke out. Harry gave the pedals another poke. The mirror twitched.
Cassian stood up straighter, clapped his hands. "Now, as this castle is very good at murdering anything remotely electric, your lovely Rune professor and I tweaked the guts. Removed anything too sensitive, replaced most of it with mechanical bits, runes, and a few small cogs."
He gave Harry a cheery pat on the shoulder. "Go on then. Pedal. Get to work."
Harry blinked at him. "What?"
"Come on, Potter, it's not cursed. Well, probably not. Bit temperamental. Likes a steady rhythm. Pretend it's Quidditch training."
Harry set his feet on the pedals and started to cycle slowly. The projector whirred to life with a rusty hum, light flicking on, faint but clear enough to throw the rune sheet's glowing image onto the empty wall.
Cassian grinned. "There we go. Behold, visual aids."
A few students clapped. Hermione looked like she wanted to take notes on the whole setup.
Cassian walked around the front, one hand still resting on the desk. "Sadly, as some of you noticed, I've lost my magic. Bit of a long story. Involves ancient cups, heroic self-sacrifice, and poor life choices."
Tracey snorted.
"So," he said, gesturing at the image on the board, "no more flashy light shows or sound illusions. In their place, this monstrosity. Which, and I say this with full sincerity, is a pain in the back."
He started flipping through a folder of rune sheets. "I have to carve every symbol manually, copy them onto transparencies, sync them with the right lighting spells, and beg my beloved girlfriend to help draw the ones I can't finish at two in the morning."
He held up one sheet with exaggerated flair. "Do you realise the level of devotion this requires? I am entirely whipped. Domesticated."
Groans rippled through the room.
"Tragic," Cassian said, dramatically wiping a fake tear. "But that's the kind of dedicated teaching you get here."
Dean leaned over to Ron. "Think he's alright?"
"Nope," Ron muttered. "Not at all."
Cassian slid the next rune sheet into the tray. The image shifted with a faint mechanical click. The room dimmed just a bit as the runes glowed on the wall.
"Right then," he said. "You lot remember Lovebird-to-Love-Note from last year? If not, you're about to."
The projector hummed louder.
The first image hit the wall with a hard burst of colour, smeared soil, torn sky, and a hillside scattered with smoke and splinters... A battlefield.
Harry nearly stopped pedalling.
Cassian didn't look away from the projection. "Keep going, Potter. If you stall it, the whole thing resets."
Harry muttered something under his breath and kept cycling.
Cassian stepped forward. "Right. I know. Half of you were probably expecting two birds passing poetry between tower windows. Maybe with hearts. Sorry to disappoint."
He pointed at the wall. "This is where it started."
The battlefield shifted slightly. Wind moved across the scorched grass. The shadows of soldiers flickered through smoke.
"Lovebird-to-Love-Note," he said, "was a war spell. Romantic title, sure. The reality? Code delivery. Battlefield to command post. Enemy lines to fort walls. Owls means visibility. Magic means spell signatures. Traceable ink."
The class had gone quiet.
"Came out of the Karelian Enclaves," he went on. "Around the year 1030. Northeast territories. Cold, vicious borderlands. Still cursed in places."
Hermione leaned forward in her seat. "I've read about that. The twin city-states-"
"-who hated each other's guts but still managed to cooperate when a third army threatened both their necks," Cassian finished. "Yes. That's them."
He tapped the edge of the projector tray. "They needed fast messages. But every spell they had was being intercepted. Scrying, mirror-hexing, birds torn from the sky. So what do they do?"
The slide shifted again. The smoky field gave way to a grainy illustration... a bird, small and round, landing on a soldier's shoulder. The man leaned to it, as the bird delivered the message, then vanished in a blur of Disillusionment.
Cassian gestured. "This. Transfiguration used as a cipher. Lovebirds were native. Familiar. Nobody stopped to check if the one on the fencepost was spying. Spell wraps around a folded note. Transfigures it into a bird. Small and fast. Sometimes carries a message in its flight path. Sometimes it delivers the paper directly. Sometimes paper is fake while the bird carries the real message."
Seamus frowned. "That's mental."
"Correct."
Cassian flicked the projector again. The image zoomed in, focusing on the runes wrapping the paper before the transfiguration started.
A soft voice played through the room, one of the rune-etched recordings whirled into life. A woman's voice, speaking Karelian.
"This spell," Cassian said, "was created to protect secrets. The message must arrive. That is all."
Tracey looked up from her notes. "Why lovebirds, then? Why not ravens or something actually terrifying?"
Cassian scratched his jaw. "Symbolism, mostly. They flocked to the walls. Pair-bonded. Stayed loyal even when everything else fell apart. Also abundant in the area."
He glanced at the image again. "And they weren't magical. You kill an owl mid-flight and something might try to track it. You kill a lovebird, no one cares. Harsh, but true."
Parvati raised a hand. "So... when did it turn into a romance spell?"
Cassian gave a dry look. "About three centuries later. Some idiot poet in West Cornwall got his hands on a watered-down version and used it to send a sonnet to a duchess."
He gestured loosely. "She married him. Then stabbed him. It was a whole thing."
A few Slytherins snorted.
Cassian shifted the rune paper. The projector gave a grumble and threw a new image across the wall.
A man crouched in the corner of a cell. Thin coat. Blood on his sleeve. Walls made of metal and grey brick. The cot behind him looked like it belonged to a prison, not a wizarding one.
"Now, the important part," Cassian said, stepping away from the light. "Like most spells, this one, it's not fixed into a single shape. Magic's not rigid. Never has been."
The man in the image bit down on his thumb, pressed the blood to paper, then started writing. Each line came out rough, messy, like his hands wouldn't stop shaking. But the runes were right. One by one, they lit faintly, the edge of the page pulsing.
Cassian leaned on the desk, arms crossed.
"Same spell. Different hands. Centuries later, this bloke found himself locked in a Muggle holding cell. Somewhere in Europe, early 1900s."
He glanced at the class. "The uniforms outside the door suggest the locals weren't keen on his accent."
The man on the screen pressed his hand flat against the page.
"Improvisation," Cassian said. "That's the trick. He couldn't use a feathered courier. Would draw too much attention in a grim prison. He needed something small, quiet, and capable of chewing its way through concrete if necessary."
As the last rune flared, the paper jerked, twisted, and turned into a tiny, grey mouse.
It sniffed the air, then bolted straight for the drain under the cot and vanished.
The class gasped.
Cassian walked back toward the projector. "Point being, same framework, different casing. Magic adapts. The intent still held. He needed to get a message out."
He slid the next sheet into place.
"Which is why it matters who's casting. You think this stuff's all theory until the world's falling apart around your ears. Then you're carving messages into your skin and praying the mouse doesn't die halfway to the alley."
Dean muttered, "Hardcore love letter."
Cassian pointed at him without looking. "Put that on your homework and I'll give you a gold star."
A few students laughed again. Some were still staring at the place where the mouse had vanished.
"Right," Cassian said, turning back to the desk. "Break's in five. Before that, I want you to list three reasons why transfiguration-based courier spells eventually replaced enchanted quills, and two reasons why the Ministry banned them for civilian use."
He scratched his chin. "Bonus points if you can explain the 1922 Parliament riot without blaming the birds."
The projector creaked. Harry kept pedalling.
Cassian reached down and slapped the side of the machine.
"That's enough, Potter. Thank you."
Harry groaned and let the pedals slow. The projector sputtered a bit, then went dim.
He stood up, stretching his legs. "No problem, sir."
Cassian waved him off and turned to the class. "Next week it's you, Malfoy. Bring legs."
Draco didn't argue. Just gave a quick nod.
Cassian clapped his hands. "Right. Answers. Give me three reasons. Anyone not Granger wants to start?"
Seamus raised his hand, half-reluctant.
"Go on."
"They were harder to track," he said. "Especially in enemy territory."
"Good," Cassian said. "Not impossible to track, mind you, but a quill writes. A bird moves. Easier to lose sight of something that flies out your window than something scratching at a scroll."
Hermione added, "The spell can be layered with extra protections, runic barriers, timed transformations, even memory encryption if needed."
"Yes," Cassian said, pointing. "Flexible spell structure. You can stack it like a cursed cake. A quill spell does one thing, writes. That's it. Anyone breaks your wards, they get the message."
Neville chimed in, "They could pass through places where magic would usually get blocked."
Cassian smiled. "Exactly. Silent magic. Enchanted quills hum. Trigger wards. You send a bird through a place like the Black Forest, it doesn't light up the whole sky."
He scanned the room. "Anyone else?"
Tracey said, "They don't always look magical. Someone sees a quill writing on its own, they know it's magic. But a bird hopping about?"
Cassian snapped his fingers. "Yes. Camouflage. Most enemy wards in the early wars didn't even bother with common wildlife. Saved power."
A few scribbled that down.
"Alright. Homework," Cassian said, straightening. "Two parts. First, same as I said before, three reasons for the switch, two for the ban. If you forget the Parliament riot, I will know."
He stepped back, hand resting on the projector's edge.
"Second part. Get creative. Pick any mundane object and write how you'd transfigure it into a courier. Use real spells. Real theory. Tell me what it carries, how it hides, and what happens if it gets caught."
Lavender raised a hand. "Are we allowed to pick animals?"
"No. That's cheating. I said objects. If I get ten essays about paper folding into paper cranes, I will set my desk on fire."
A few students laughed.
Cassian nodded toward the door. "Right. Go on, then. Try not to hex each other in the corridor. And someone give Potter a biscuit. He's earned it."
Harry sat back down, still muttering about sore knees. Ron handed him a Chocolate Frog.
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