Littered With Stars {Book 7 in the Star of Gryffindor Series)

Chapter 45 - In Which I Am This Close to Committing Murder At Least Three Times

~Astra~

It was mid-February. So far, I'd done nearly three dozen broadcasts. I didn't always know where they were going, but I had a flashing light next to my mic that would go out when the radios were inevitably destroyed. It normally took at least five minutes. Five minutes of truth people otherwise wouldn't be able to hear.

One morning, I was eating breakfast with Faith, Charlotte, and a few of her friends from the infirmary when Mr. Longbottom walked up. That in itself was unusual; I only very rarely saw Mr. Longbototm, when I had to go up to the house for something and happened to run into him. It was even weirder to have him come up as if he'd been looking for me in the middle of breakfast. But there he was, smiling at me and Faith. "Astra, when you're done, I'd like a word with you."

I blinked, pushing my plate away as I did. "I can be done now."

"Are you sure?"

I nodded. Curiosity was quickly pushing any hunger away. Surely everything was fine, right? He wouldn't be this calm if something had happened to my family, would he? I pulled my brow into a worried frown. "What's up?"

"Nothing's wrong," he assured me. "We just need to have a chat."

That put me at ease so well. As I followed him out of the dining hall and towards the house, I found my mind racing through every possible worst case scenario. Teddy and Toire had to be safe, because I was their secretkeeper, but what if someone had targeted Aunt Andromeda to find out where they were, or where I was? What if they'd found out more about Albus and Colette, and something horrible had happened to them in the detention center? What if James's cover had been blown, and he and Wren had been arrested?

It didn't make me feel better when Mr. Longbottom cast muffliato on the door of his office after he'd closed it. Whatever this was, it was so bad that no one else could hear?

"Astra, you're close with Cassie Williams, aren't you?"

I felt my heart drop. "What happened to her?"

"Nothing." Mr. Longbottom seemed surprised. "I told you, nothing's wrong." He shook his head. "I just wanted to know if she felt comfortable with you."

Now I had no idea what was going on. I nodded slowly. We'd never actually met in person, of course, but I was pretty sure her comfort with me in the void would translate to real life, too. After all, she's visited me a few weeks ago on her seventh birthday, just to tell me about how Charis got birthday cake in her hair. That seemed pretty comfortable, I thought. "Why?"

He motioned to the chair across from his desk with a smile. "One of our spies on the inside recently confirmed that the children Stillens kidnapped were indeed brainwashed. He thinks he might be able to restore their memories, but it's apparently a very delicate business, especially given how traumatic those memories probably are. We thought that starting with Cassie, who has pretty strong ties with several people in the DA, might be a good start. We're bringing her and Teddy Lupin here today."

I frowned. "Why bring Cassie all the way here when we've got children here already? Don't they have strong ties with their families here? Isn't this way more dangerous?"

Mr. Longbottom pursed his lips, the first sign that everything might not be perfect. "Well... Cassie has strong ties with you, and the Lupins, and we think it'll be important for her to have those ties as she adjusts to the restoration. But... well, apparently she's also very close with our unobliviator. And that might be even more important, especially when we're testing this for the first time."

A vile taste was creeping up the back of my throat. Who was he talking about? Why did it feel like he was edging around that? "Who's the unobliviator?"