CASS103- Star!

The hall erupted with chatter and a few stifled snickers after the Howler congratulated Ginny on being sorted in Gryffindor and went quiet.

Fred clapped Ron on the back. “Not bad for your first week back.”

Ron groaned, burying his face in his hands.

Cassian sipped his tea, unbothered. “Well, at least now the whole school knows you are creative. Flying cars, exploding letters... what is next? Dragon racing?”

“Don’t give them ideas,” Bathsheda muttered darkly.

Cassian smirked and snatched up the Prophet, flicking it open. “We chose to sit at the wrong table, I wasn’t hoping to get a Howler detonated in my ear before tea.”

Bathsheda sipped her tea, unruffled. “Should’ve covered yourself.”

Cassian’s eyes narrowed slightly as he caught a faint shimmer over her shoulders...  a fading, but unmistakable bubble.

“Betrayal!” he barked, stabbing a finger in her direction. “I trusted you.”

“Your mistake,” she said smoothly, not bothering to look contrite.

Cassian let the paper sag in his hand, his eyes flicking over the headline again: “Flying Ford Anglia Seen Over London... Ministry Launches Investigation.”

***

After breakfast, classes kicked off properly. Cassian’s first lot of the day were the fresh-faced Gryffindor and Ravenclaw first-years, half of them wide-eyed, the other half barely keeping their heads above their oversized robes. 

He strolled into the classroom with coat swinging lightly as he dropped it over the back of his chair. The room calmed almost immediately, quills freezing mid-fidget, parchment rustling as a few stragglers tried to look as if they hadn’t just been poking each other with them seconds ago.

“Morning, children,” Cassian said. “Welcome to History. Or, if you prefer, ‘Why Wizards Keep Blowing Themselves Up by Repeating Old Mistakes.’”

A few nervous giggles rippled through the rows. Colin Creevey had perched so far forward on his seat Cassian half expected him to pitch clean off it.

Cassian picked up a chalk and scribbled a single word across the board, Origin.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” he said, turning back to face them. “This isn’t a theory class. I couldn’t care less how many dates you memorise if you don’t understand what caused them. Same goes for spells. If you want to throw sparks and hope for the best, that is Flitwick’s problem. Reluctantly, I must add.”

He tapped the chalk against his palm. “Here? We do things differently. Here, we learn causes. What they were for before someone polished them into the neat little charms you use now.”

Ginny Weasley shifted in her seat. Luna Lovegood was staring vaguely at the ceiling, her pale eyes following something that clearly wasn’t there.

Cassian didn’t miss it. He pointed at her. “You. Miss...?”

“Lovegood,” she said softly.

“Lovegood. Excellent. Tell me... why do you think wizards started casting Lumos?”

She blinked at him, then said, “So they wouldn’t walk into walls in the dark?”

A couple of Ravenclaws snickered. Cassian raised a hand to quiet them, a faint smirk tugging at his mouth.

“Correct. No trick question. Sometimes magic isn’t about grand heroics. It is about not cracking your skull open on the bannister.”

He leaned against the desk. “But what is more interesting is what came before Lumos. Wizards didn’t invent light charms out of thin air. They stole the idea from fires. Which they stole from sun rituals. And that is just another star, really.”

“What?” a Ravenclaw boy blurted, sounding scandalised. Definitely a pure-blood. He had the stiff-backed look of someone who thought Pureblood pedigree should protect him from such blasphemy.

Cassian raised a brow at him, unbothered. “What part shocked you? The stealing? Or the star?”

“The sun is not a star,” the boy said.

“It is. You are just standing too close to notice,” Cassian said, matter-of-fact. When the boy’s frown deepened, he sighed and pulled his wand from his coat pocket.

With a flick, the torches along the walls snuffed out. A ripple of surprise swept through the class as the room fell into darkness, then the air above them shimmered and bloomed into life.

An illusion spread wide in the air. Hogwarts appeared first, perched on its cliff edge, then the view began to pull away. Slowly, the castle shrank, the lake surrounding it flattening to a dark disc. The Scottish Highlands unfurled beneath, patchwork greens and greys giving way to clouds as the perspective shot higher still.

“This,” Cassian said, smiling, “is Earth.”

The planet spun lazily in the void as the view drew back further. Continents blurred, oceans gleamed, until Earth itself was no more than a pale blue dot in the black.

The first-years craned their necks, mouths slightly agape.

The scene zoomed out again. The moon slid past, then the sun blazed into view... dwarfing everything before it. It wasn’t the soft golden disc they’d known but a roaring, searing orb.

“Congratulations. That is your star,” Cassian said lightly, tapping the air with his wand. The perspective drew back further. Other stars popped into view, glimmering like grains of sand. “You lot think it is massive because you are sitting right on top of it. Step back far enough, and it is barely a spark in the dark.”

A giant star drifted into focus, vast enough to swallow their sun whole. Then another, even larger, burning in violent shades of blue and white.

“Now,” Cassian continued, letting the images turn slowly overhead, “our ancestors didn’t understand half of this. But they looked up. They saw fire in the sky and thought, ‘that must be power.’ And so... the first fire spells.”

He flicked his wand again, and a series of ghostly figures appeared in a ring around the classroom. Shamans chanting to the rising sun, druids holding blazing torches, ancient witches marking symbols into the dirt with glowing embers.

“They didn’t conjure it to read bedtime stories. They did it because the dark felt like death. Fire kept the monsters away. When the first wand-lighters came along, they weren’t thinking about your essay grades... they were trying not to kiss mountain walls as Miss Lovegood put it.”

He cast Lumos, a small white glow sparked to life at the tip of his finger. On his wand, a flick, and a flame curled upwards, flickering warm orange. Two lights. Two spells. Cassian held them side by side, letting the first-years see the contrast.

“The difference between these two,” he said, rolling the wand in his palm so the fire danced, “is we think the sun is hot because it is special. It isn’t. All stars are hot. You just can’t feel it because... well as I said, distance.”

In the dim classroom, the cold white light on his finger looked like another star in the vast illusion of space still hanging over their heads.

“Lumos was an imitation of the stars,” Cassian went on. “Cold light. No heat. Because, believe it or not, our ancestors weren’t worried about monsters in the dark nearly as much as they were about burning their own trousers off with poorly controlled fire spells.”

A ripple of laughter broke out near the front.

“Practical fear, that one,” he added with a shrug. “If you’ve ever seen early fire charms, you would understand. Half of them were closer to Molotov cocktails than candles.” He raised a hand, “Molotov is a Muggle fire spell.”

Above them, the sun swelled massive in the illusion, its burning surface writhing and spitting arcs of fire so bright the students squinted.

“Now,” Cassian said, pacing slowly at the front of the room, “I am explaining all this because I want you to remember something very simple but very important, spells aren’t just words and a swish of the wrist.” He flicked his fingers for emphasis, and the tiny white glow of Lumos danced there. “Notice anything?”

The same Ravenclaw leaned forward so far he nearly toppled off his bench. “You didn’t say the spell!”

“Didn’t even use a wand,” Ginny murmured under her breath.

Cassian smirked faintly. “Gold star for observation. That is because I don’t need either.”

He let the glow hover for a second, then pinched it out between thumb and forefinger like a candle. The room dimmed.

“Why?” he said, as the torches came back to life. “Because the magic isn’t in the stick, and it sure as hell isn’t in the Latin. You are all here thinking if you memorise enough syllables and flicks, you will be second Merlin. That is how you set your bed on fire.”

A few chairs creaked as students leaned back.

“Magic,” he said, tapping the side of his head, “starts here. It always has. The words and wand are training wheels. Our ancestors didn’t have fancy hawthorn sticks or Latin textbooks, and yet they pulled fire out of nothing because they understood what they wanted. Magic’s most important component is one word. Who wants to guess? Ten points if you nail it.”

“Courage?” asked a Gryffindor boy near the front, his voice breaking halfway through.

Cassian arched a brow. “Not a bad answer. But no.”

“Knowledge?” said a Ravenclaw girl, sitting straighter like she thought saying it confidently might win her points anyway.

“Close,” Cassian said. “But not quite.”

Luna tilted her head. “Intent.”

He pointed at her. “Bingo. Ten points to Ravenclaw.”

A few Ravenclaws perked up, smirking at Luna.

“Intent,” he said, letting the word hang there. “That is the heart of every spell, every curse, every catastrophic magical accident. You lot can memorise all the Latin in the world, but if you’re thinking about what’s for lunch when you try to levitate a teacup, you will be wearing it instead.”

Cassian paced back to the desk, tapping the board with the end of his wand. The word “Origin” dissolved in a soft hiss. “That will do for today. I will let you off easy since it is your first go.” 

“Foot-long essay on why our very distant ancestors might have needed the Lumos charm. What could their intention be when they tried copying the stars? Off you go.”

Chairs scraped against the floor as the first-years began gathering their things. A few glanced back nervously, as if expecting him to bark another assignment on the way out. Cassian waved a hand towards the door.

“Go on. Before I change my mind and make it two feet.”

Colin Creevey scurried out with his satchel flapping against his side, Ginny following close behind with her books hugged to her chest. Luna lingered near the back, still staring at the illusionary stars that hadn’t quite faded from the ceiling.

“You too, Lovegood,” Cassian called. “You can ponder cosmic truths on your way to Transfiguration.”

She gave a slow blink and drifted out after the others, humming softly to herself.