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". . . Rian?" Cassiopeia bit her lip. Harry had gone still the moment she had taken out the letter the Professor had given her when he had visited last week. She had expected some reaction out of Harry after she told him she was a witch, not before. Heck, even Cassiopeia had taken a bit of time to be reassured that the tiny Professor wasn't pulling a trick on her. But it had given her answers, like what her force was. Except, it also opened a hundred more questions.

There was a wizarding world.

A. Wizarding. World.

One connected right to theirs! She couldn't wait to learn more about it, was it similar to their world? Were there differences? Did they have the same customs?

"Rian?" Cassiopeia hesitated, then decided to go for it.

It was his fault anyway.

She poked his eye.

"Ow! Fuck," Harry cried out instantly, recoiling as he took his glasses off to hold his palm against his right eye. "Cassiopeia!"

"What?," she shrugged, completely unbothered at the sight of the older boy trying to subside his pain. "You zoned out."

"When did you get a Hogwarts letter?"

"Last week, on my birth -" Cassiopeia's eyes narrowed into slits. "How did you know it was a Hogwarts letter?"

Harry's eyes widened, making him wince slightly, while he hurried to place his hands up in a defensive maneuver. Cassiopeia was sweet, until you pissed her off. Then she became a cold, little bitch and Harry had no problems calling it as he saw it. He was also not afraid to admit that she scared him when mad.

"My boarding school, it's Hogwarts." Harry told her, sighing in relief when Cassiopeia's eyes lit up at the information.

"Really?! That's why you haven't told me any specifics, is it?! The Professor who gave me my letter said I had to keep quiet, but well," Cassiopeia looked at him sheepishly. "I had to tell you."

And Harry was truly and absolutely fucked. How could he not when Cassiopeia was staring at him with, well, love and trust in her eyes. Love - something Harry had never felt for another person nor received before the tiny raven-haired girl appeared in his life. He felt like an idiot for not telling Cassiopeia about the Wizarding World sooner.

Pulling the girl into a hug, Harry rested his chin on her head. "You should be careful Peia. If I was a muggle, you could've gotten into a lot of trouble." He scolded her.

Cassiopeia pulled away from him, "what's a muggle?" she tilted her head to the side, completely ignoring the rest of what he said. Of course, he rolled his eyes.

"A non-magical person. We're wiccans, I'm a halfblood and you're a muggleborn."

"Halfblood? Muggleborn?"

"There are three types of people in the Wizarding World," Harry shifted slightly, dislodging Cassiopeia from his lap and having the girl sit in front of him so he could begin his explanation.

"First there are Purebloods. Their families have a long line of wiccans. To be considered a Pureblood you have to have at least three generations of wiccans on each familial side.

Halfbloods are not as simple to explain. See, there are different ways for someone to be considered a halfblood. My dad was a Pureblood and my mum was a muggleborn."

Cassiopeia pursed her lips, "So to be a halfblood at least one parent has to be a Pureblood?"

Harry smiled at her, shaking his head. "Not entirely. You can also be a halfblood if a Pureblood and another halfblood got together. Or if two halfbloods were together."

"That's a lot of classifications," Cassiopeia blinked, processing the information. Harry could see the gears turning in her head. "Does that really matter, if you're wiccan then you're wiccan, right?"

"Unfortunately not, lots of olde Pureblood families dislike muggleborns. Blood status is pretty important in the Wizarding World." Harry informed her, smiling bitterly.

"So muggleborns?" Cassiopeia prompted. "They have muggle parents, but somehow have magic, right?"

"Correct my little Ravenclaw," Harry beamed at her.

Harry was happy he could share this with Cassiopeia. He had worried about having to hide half of his life from the girl he considered to be his little sister. His magic seemed calmer as well around her, feeling comfortable and a sense of familiarity. It seemed appropriate, that it was he who would be explaining this world to her. Their world.

"What's a Ravenclaw?"

"It's one of the Hogwarts houses," Harry furrowed his eyebrows. "Didn't the professor who brought your letter explain the houses to you? Who did bring you your letter anyways?"

"Professor Flitwick, he's soooo little Rian! He's my size," Cassiopeia exclaimed, throwing her hands out. Harry snorted, that would be the only time Cassiopeia ever admits she's tiny. "He told me a little about them, but I was more interested in asking him what we'd be learning at Hogwarts. Did you know they used to have a spell-casting class? It sounds fascinating! I wish it was still there," Cassiopeia pouted at the thought.

Harry stuck his tongue out slightly, furrowing his eyebrows. He hadn't known that. He didn't even know Hogwarts had once had more classes than their current curriculum. And spell-casting did sound interesting. Huh.

Pushing those thoughts aside to be dwelled on later, Harry began to tell Cassiopeia about Hogwarts. He described the castle to her, the portraits and ghosts. He explained that each house was like a family, aside from Gryffindor's, he bitterly thought of the cold-shoulder and bullying he endured last year after the Dragon incident with Hagrid.

"Hufflepuff values students who are hardworking, patient, and above all, loyal. Many people think it's a "left-over house" but don't judge them. They take care of their own.

Ravenclaw values intelligence and quick wit. I don't think they're all about studying all the time despite most appearances, it's a House that you should be wary of," Harry explained based on his observations of the houses.

"Because a House that has resources and the knowledge to use them is dangerous," Cassiopeia agreed.

"I'm a Gryffindor, although I was almost placed in Slytherin. I begged the hat not to put me there," Harry continued.

"Hat? And what's wrong with Slytherin?" Cassiopeia tilted her head, staring wide-eyed at the older raven-head.

"You'll learn about the hat soon enough," Harry chuckled at the scowl Cassiopeia shot him. "And, well, Gryffindor is the House of the brave and chivalrous. Slytherins value cunningness and ambition. They say every soul placed in Slytherin has gone to the dark side. Slytherin's are sneaky and only look out for themselves. You can't trust them. They're all evil and - why, why are you looking at me like that?"

Throughout his explanation, Cassiopeia's expression just grew sadder and sadder, until a frown seemed permanently etched on her face. Her grey eyes, usually sparkling, were dim and her head was tilted to the side as if analyzing Harry.

"Peia?" Harry questioned her, unsure of what he had said.

"Who told you that?"

"What?" Harry was bewildered.

"Who told you that stuff about Slytherins?"

Harry paused. Did it matter? All he had heard since entering the Wizarding World was how horrible the House was. Hagrid's first words to him about the Hogwarts House was that all evil wizards went to Slytherin. And then Harry had met Draco Malfoy who had been a stuck-up little prick and he was sorted to Slytherin. Harry didn't want to spend seven years living together with the pampered blonde boy who boasted about his family, when every summer he was forced to return to Privet Drive and act as a slave, beaten, by his aunt and uncle.

"Well, everyone," Harry shrugged, not seeing Cassiopeia's point.

"Then what's your observation?" She wouldn't let this go. It wasn't fair.

"What do you mean?"

"You told me your observations on the other three houses," Cassiopeia explained. "Even with pre-existing notions about the Houses, you told me your take on them. To not underestimate them. So why won't you give the same courtesy to Slytherin instead of what other people have told you," Cassiopeia's tone of disgust was evident when she spoke of the people who had told Harry about the houses.

Part of Harry wanted to defend his friends, Hagrid, Ron, and tell Cassiopeia that it wasn't just he who thought that way but the whole school. Another part of him though, thought about what she had said. And Harry realized that he didn't actually observe the Slytherin's like he did with the rest of the school. He had already formed an opinion based on what he was told repeatedly.

Cassiopeia must've read the expression on his face because she didn't ask him again. Instead, she proceeded to tear his black and white worldview apart. And she did so viciously.

"Cunning, ambition, and sneakiness," Cassiopeia began, ticking each one off on her fingers. "Isn't that how we survive? If we aren't sneaky you'd have starved to death by now. And Dudley or you Uncle would've gotten to beat you more times than they have. And isn't it your cunningness and quick wit that allows you to insult Dudley more times than he understands? Wasn't that how you fooled all the teachers in primary and made Dudley and his gang take the blame even for the things you did do? Aren't we ambitious in our ideas of how we'd get rid of the matrons and the Dursley's? Of traveling the world?"

Cassiopeia knew which points to hit, what punches to pull. And she knew what hurt. Harry had spent the school year ignoring the glaring truth, of putting the Dursley's out of his mind.

And Cassiopeia callously dropped him into the deep end of what he didn't want to acknowledge.

Because acknowledging it would be real, and making it real would mean Harry didn't have that mask to hide behind anymore. If Harry acknowledged that he was a snake in lions' fur then he wouldn't be the Gryffindor Golden Boy, the Wizarding World's Savior. No, he knows he'd be branded the next Dark Lord, he'd be suspected and vilified. Harry doesn't have the support, nor the resources, to afford such scrutiny. It's easier to wear the mask and pretend to be the air headed boy-who-lived, naïve to the world.

"Dark doesn't mean evil and you know that Hadrian," Cassiopeia spoke softly, ignoring his flinch at his full name. She wasn't upset, far from it, but she knows how it feels to be misjudged and she won't stand for an entire house to be spoken badly about just because of the few bigoted individuals her brother encountered.

Besides, after his explanation of houses Cassiopeia is sure she'll be a Slytherin. She uses her House traits the same way Harry does after all. And there is no way her big brother is going to hate her because of the color of her tie. How did you tie a tie anyways? She wondered briefly.

"If the entire school is against you the minute you're sorted, why would they trust anyone not in their House," Cassiopeia continued. "Besides, people can't honestly think eleven year olds are evil, can they? They're eleven." The following snort and roll of her eyes told Harry exactly what she thought of that idea. And even he couldn't deny the ridiculousness of it despite acting that way for the whole of last year.

"And, if everyone in school treats them like they're the bad guys, who else would they go to? They'd accept those who accept them, not the ones that paint them in a black and white picture and say they are evil.

That's like saying all muggles are bad just because the ones you and I live with would rather see us dead than alive. We wouldn't judge the entire population because there are a few horrible people."

And there, Harry's world was torn apart. Because it was true. He had blindly followed, and sure, he didn't bully any of the Slytherins but he hadn't stopped it either. He had stood to the side, like the kids in primary did when Dudley would play Harry Hunting.

Well, fuck, Harry thought. Now he needed to sort through his emotions, his memories. He needed to see the Wizarding World for himself, without the input of the other's he had met.

Fuck.