The weeks went by and Cassiopeia rarely saw Tom at all. When he came to Houlton Manor it was always late at night and he just went to sit in her mother's study for hours. Cassiopeia began to wonder what he was working at. She had only looked at the top layer of papers the night when she had ventured into this room she had originally intended to never set foot in again. Yet, as so many times before, her curiosity had got the better of her, and knowing that Tom was right after all, that it hadn't been the room that had killed her mother, she had decided to have a look at her mother's sanctuary. She had been curious to see what her mother had spent her time experimenting with and so she had sat at her desk and read through the papers. All of the notes had been about curses and rituals that aimed at the prolongation of life, making the caster stop aging and staying young forever. As far as Cassiopeia could tell there had been nothing about time travel among these notes. Clearly, it hadn't been her mother's intention to travel through time. That left her wondering what Tom had found in those yellowed parchments that let him return time and time again, spending hours on hours studying her mother's notes. After all he didn't need to prolong his life with some unreliable and probably insecure curse anymore. He already had his Horcruxes that obviously saved him from aging the normal way, judging from his still so youthful appearance.
Cassiopeia thought about Floris' time turner again. Honestly she had been quite surprised that Tom had not asked for it ever since that evening when he had ordered her to retrieve it from Gringotts as soon as possible. She had expected him to keep reminding her with his so very own charming demeanour until she would finally leave the device in his possession. Yet Tom had not even bothered to say hello whenever he came to her mother's study. She only knew he was there because she had put an alerting enchantment on the room. Cassiopeia sighed. If she had hoped that things would be different after Dumbledore's death, that Tom's behaviour would somehow change after what had happened that day at Hogwarts, she had been wrong. She pursed her lips. Tom might care for her somewhere in the endless darkness of his self but aside from that he remained just as detached and selfish as ever.
Cassiopeia had just gone to bed when she suddenly felt a tingle in her arm, accompanied by the familiar burning sensation. Sleepily she shoved her sleeve away. With a frown she noticed that the mark had been activated. Cassiopeia glanced at it for another moment before she slowly got up again. From the way the mark was burning she could tell that Tom had used one of his Death Eaters to signal the others. The frown on her face intensified. She wondered what made him gather his knights this late at night. He hadn't summoned them at these hours in quite a while after all.
Before the Ministry had fallen under Tom's control, this had used to happen more frequently. With the kind of war that had been raging back then it had been the Death Eaters' way of alerting one another that they needed support in a battle. Back then Tom had always been more than clear on the fact that he didn't want her to comply with the mark's summoning.
Cassiopeia knew that he probably didn't want to see her reacting to the mark's burning this time either but she was desperately curious to know what had happened and decided to find out. She quickly dressed the way the Death Eaters usually dressed, with black robes and a large hood to cover her face. Throwing a glance into the mirror, she noted with some satisfaction that she actually resembled the average Death Eater. She grabbed her wand and apparated to Tom.
Cassiopeia wasn't the first to arrive. She went to wait among the others, carefully trying to blend in, making sure the hood was shielding her face from view. With a quick look around she scanned her surroundings. They were standing outside a large building that seemed to be one of the asylums the government had established to educate Muggle-born witches and wizards.
After Tom had abandoned his initial plan of eliminating all Muggle-born wizardry he had eventually come to realize that he needed to control the magic of Muggle-borns if he didn't want them to turn into a possible danger to his reign. Consequently he had made the Ministry build asylums where Muggle-born children were taken as soon as they showed any signs of magic.
The asylums were mainly run by half-blood wizards and some pure-bloods that didn't cringe at the mere thought of being surrounded by Muggle-borns. The Muggle-borns were taught to control their magic and trained in basic magical skills, conveying just enough magical knowledge to them so that they wouldn't fight against the oppression, and if they would they wouldn't be too hard to defeat.
Occasionally there would be Muggle-borns who were exceptionally talented. If Tom was notified of such an exception by the staff of an asylum he would determine if they were a potential risk to his cause and if not they were given the chance to continue their magical education at the School for Muggle-born Witchcraft and Wizardry. All in all Tom's concept concerning the limitation of Muggle-born magic seemed to be working rather well.
Yet every now and then there would happen to be someone rebelling at one of the asylums. Then Tom would order his knights to take care of them. Even though Cassiopeia had never asked it didn't take much imagination to know what happened to those. After all, none of the Death Eaters gave so much as a damn about yet another life they took in their strive for pureblood domination.
Meanwhile almost all of the branded Death Eaters had shown up. Cassiopeia watched Tom's gaze sweep over the small crowd and she quickly lowered her head again, disguising her face, hoping he wouldn't bother to count.
"My knights, I've been informed that there are conspiratorial meetings being held at this asylum, organized by some of the staff. We don't know who is taking part and who isn't but since the majority of the inhabitants is at least sympathising with the rebels, we won't bother any further." Tom paused and glanced at his followers, his eyes calm and empty, before he hissed, "Just take everyone at this asylum down. Kill them, no matter who they are."
The Death Eaters nodded unfazed and silently drew their wands. Then the group moved swiftly towards the building. Cassiopeia bit her lip and cursed under her breath. Coming here had been a stupid idea. What on earth had she been thinking? It hadn't been that hard to guess that Tom was up to something bad yet again, after all. Clearly, she should have stayed out of this. Even more clearly, Tom would be beyond furious if he found out she hadn't. So if she didn't want to attract his attention now, she had no choice than to continue pretending she were just another one of his Death Eaters and obey his orders.
Together with the others she walked towards the entrance. With slight surprise she realized that Tom was following them. Mulciber who was walking next to her seemed to be equally surprised. She saw him stealing a glance at Tom and heard him whisper deferentially, "Please excuse my asking, my lord, but are you going to join us?" As if scared by his own courage, he quickly added another "my lord".
In the shadows of her hood Cassiopeia couldn't suppress a smirk. Tom had really frightened them well into complete submission.
Tom snickered lowly. "There hasn't been any opportunity of fighting in combat since we conquered Hogwarts. I wouldn't want to run out of practice, would I?"
Carefully looking sideways, Cassiopeia cast a glance at the wand in his hand. It was Dumbledore's, the Unbeatable Wand. She realized that she hadn't seen Tom's own wand ever since he had acquired the Elder Wand.
Next to her she saw Mulciber tighten his grip around his wand. They had reached the building, the first of their group already being inside. With their routine of countless nightly assaults on unsuspecting victims Tom's Death Eaters blew the inhabitants of the asylum into a nightmare of curses and fire. As they worked their way through the building the number of inhabitants who put up a fight slowly increased, having been alerted to the attack by the noise and chaos from storming the building. Cassiopeia had opted to stay near Mulciber instead of following Tom, being too preoccupied that he might realize who she was. She surely didn't want to face a fit of his anger tonight.
Mulciber had quickly advanced along the ground floor, taking down everyone he saw before they even had a chance to react. Cassiopeia didn't regret that thus, so far, it hadn't been up to her to enact Tom's orders. After Mulciber had cleared the last room along the corridor he quickly went up the stairs, Cassiopeia close on his heels. Already upon rounding the stairs she saw that on the upper floor Rosier was engaged in fierce combat, battling at least five opponents at once. Mulciber immediately joined the fight. Cassiopeia drew a deep breath and grabbed her wand tighter, too. Rosier and Mulciber were doubtlessly better than their opponents but their skill was put somewhat into perspective by the fact that they were severely outnumbered.
Cassiopeia hid behind a shelf in the corridor and aimed her wand at a man who was just about to attack Rosier from behind. Before the guy could harm Rosier, Cassiopeia's curse hit the man in the chest and he fell to the ground. Then she quickly brandished her wand at a young witch who had noticed her and had started attacking her instead of Rosier. The witch tried to deflect Cassiopeia's curse but didn't manage to do so. In the attempt to avoid being hit, the girl threw herself on the floor, the curse soaring over her head. Before the witch could send yet another curse, Mulciber hit her with the Killing Curse. At that moment another wizard attacked Mulciber and Cassiopeia quickly shielded the latter. Rosier had meanwhile succeeded in killing two more of his opponents and moved a little further down the corridor. Mulciber brandished his wand again at the wizard who had tried to attack him and the man fell to the floor. Following Rosier along the hallway, Mulciber rounded the corner.
Cassiopeia was about to do the same when she suddenly realized that the wizard Mulciber had hit wasn't dead yet. With a lot of effort he had raised his hand, pointing his wand at her. Without thinking, Cassiopeia flicked her wand at the man and disarmed him. Intending to stun him, she brandished her wand once again but before the curse could even leave her wand, the hallway was once again illuminated by blinding green light and the man's hand fell lifelessly back to the ground.
Cassiopeia whirled around. Tom was standing a few feet away, the wand in his hand still pointed at the wizard on the floor, his eyes blazing with suppressed emotion.
********
Author's note: Thanks for reading and voting, you really make my day :-) !!!