II: Stargirl Revolution

Track Two: Lady Stardust, David Bowie

𝕮IRCE BLACK is completely and utterly convinced that a meteor left it's nondestructive, incandescent, white hot future behind and decided to tear its blaze fervidly through layer upon layer of the atmosphere. Ripping through it with no consequences━ and not being stripped of any of its destructive born nature, as it was supposed to. She imagined it hitting the earth, rippling time, reality and existence itself in tiny little waves like a tide pool made for heroines and gods alike, a melting of the earth and heavens into coexistence. It interrupted earth's plans and for that, Circe Black resented Harry Potter.

He seemed to ruin the idealistic future that Circe strived for with her every move. She was born from tragedy, blood and abandoned battlefields and for that, she wished for nothing more than to drown out her past and replace it with dream-filled hopes of the future.

It always happened like clockwork, at the end of every year. Potter, Granger, and Weasley, always glued to one another's sides, would find themselves in trouble yet again. The Philosopher's Stone. The Chamber of Secrets and the basilisk. And last year, the most personal one to Circe, the escape of her uncle Sirius, who seemed to embody everything she hated about the noble house of Black.

The sun had yet to fully melt and seep over the shallow line separating the oil and canvas, leaving Circe a fair forty-or-so minutes until the darkness would succumb her line of vision down to her hand in front of her. She had been tasked with the duty of following her older cousin due to the fact that Dora had an irritating tendency to get lost. Both cousins were cursed with a horrible sense of direction but Circe tended to keep track of familiar landmarks enough to find her way back. As of right now they were on their way to weed out one of the seven Weasley's and have Charlie accompany them on their journey to find Maeve.

Maeve Scamander had only interned for the Ministry for a little over a year, where she had met Dora on the first day of her internship. Maeve's Grandfather was the well known Magizoologist who had been the Author of the famous (Or infamous to many students who lacked interest or ability in the Care of Magical Creatures course) textbook. Maeve, unfortunately did not inherit any of her Grandfather's talents, despite caring for animals, Maeve could simply just not find any interest in the study. She was much more content with owning an animal or two, instead of chasing down obscure magical creatures down the streets of New York. She had originally applied for an internship in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, the idea of tending to foreign magical affairs and learning about other Wizarding countries intrigued her. But not enough to devote her entire life to the department, the work was overwhelming and left her suffocated while drowning in bills (The internship leaving no time for her part-time job at the Daily Prophet, running errands for the heads of the newspaper and assisting the superiors every need). So, she opted to transfer departments.

Although, at the time of her switch, most other interning positions had been swapped up by fellow newly graduated Hogwarts students looking for jobs to gather working experience, leaving Maeve with no options besides the Spirit Division inside the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical creatures and arguably the most dull division available. She, along with six or so other young witches and wizards were tasked with sorting through filed complaints of people being verbally attacked, stalked and haunted by numerous rowdy ghosts.

During Maeve's transfer, she had been forced to lug her office supplies and inventory across the atrium and through almost every single department until she reached her dusty corner in the Spirit Division. Luckily, she had help and that help was by none other than Circe's bubblegum haired cousin, Nymphadora. From then on, the two girls had instantly become the best of friends, practically attached at the hip since their first meeting.

"Dora! Hey slow down, I'm trying to catch up but you're going too fast!" Circe yelled, out of breath from dodging between witches, wizards and house elves that were easy to stumble over. Tonks didn't seem to hear her, as she kept speed-walking as fast as humanly possible. Circe bent over, resting her palms atop her kneecaps while breathing heavily in an attempt to catch her breath. Circe was not short, but not necessarily tall either which made catching up to her 5'10, long limbed cousin, very challenging.

Suddenly, a thought struck her and her face morphed into a smirk, bunched up like a bow at the corner of her mouth and she cupped her hands as she leaned forward.

"NYMPHADORA!"

She smirked wider as she saw surrounding wizards and witches looking at her half insane before they decided to continue on their way. But just as Circe turned to do the same, Dora got to her first and tackled Circe to the ground out of nowhere, erupting into peals of laughter. Circe playfully smacked her and rolled out from under her only to stand and brush herself off.

Her once new pair of jeans were now caked with mud, turning the blue denim into a slab of fabric covered completely in the damp earth from bottom to top. Circe decided asking Tonks to use magic to help clean them would be a lost cause considering the stunt she pulled only moments beforehand. Her cousin's hatred of her name amused her and gave her unlimited ammunition to use when annoying her, relishing in the flash of annoyance that crossed over her cousin's face. She would never use it out of malice, the Tonks family considered practical jokes and pranks as the sixth love language, so it never severely bothered Dora.

The two Tonks's had decided to peacefully continue their walk to the Weasley Tent, instructed by Charlie in letter form to "Keep an eye out for redheads, gnomes and a painfully boring beige tent". The two girls mused over what the "gnome" could mean but based on the times Circe had flooed to the burrow with her cousin, she inferred that one of their biting garden gnomes decided to hitch a ride on the tent.

Circe felt every brush, push or shove from the surrounding packs of Wizards and Witches and she felt as though she was trapped in a room with the walls collapsing like a lung, slowly suffocating her until all the air was stripped from her. Her cousin seemed to sense her discomfort with the large crowd and suggested taking an alternate route past the tents and through the forest to find Maeve with the promise that she and Charlie would meet up there. Circe nodded, thankful for the suggestion and silently hoped that her Cousin wouldn't get lost as she had numerous times before.

She walked hurriedly through the bustling crowds with people moving like a herd of animals, different smells colorfully floating through her senses as she passed tents from foreign countries. She was around over half a mile away from their campsite at this point but trusted her senses enough to know she wasn't lost.

The minutes blurred before her eyes as she silently crunched the dying leaves from rotted trees beneath her feet and was accompanied with only the sounds of her shallow, winded breath from the hurried pace she was moving at. She could see the outlines of tents and people, preparing for the Cup and painting themselves with memorabilia of the teams they supported.  It was comforting, the humidity encasing her and the setting sky blocked by the cover of trees.

✸✸✸

𝕮irce entered back into the crowds and began scouring the tents for any sign of Maeve Scamander. Her aura was unforgettable and Circe knew she would recognize her tent if she was to pass by it. Flicking through the tents row by row like pages in a book proved exhausting, time consuming and seemingly fruitless. She was ready to retreat back to her tent but decided to scan a few more rows. Circe tended to give up easily, which was a trait she was most certainly not proud of, but she liked to think that if it doesn't work the first three times, then what are the chances of it working the fourth? Or fifth, or sixth & so on and so forth. Maybe occasionally things would turn out differently but Circe would never stick it out long enough to see it through.

She was about to turn around to meet at the tent with Emrys, before she noticed a brown tent with a beige opening billowing in the wind, and a little outdoor rack hanging a kettle, daintily crafted plates along with cups & saucers. Circe immediately spun on her heel and approached the tent, hoping it belonged to the owner she assumed it did. She took back the curtain only to be greeted with her cousin's rambunctious laughter reverberating through the canvas and landing on her ears. Circe let a wide smile spread across her face as she flung the curtain open and scanned her eyes across the room. Dora, Charlie, Maeve and a black haired girl with heavy eyeliner and tattoos littered all up her right arm sat in a loose circle of sorts, surrounding a board of Wizarding Chess and half full bottles of Butterbeer.

Maeve engulfed her in a hug and kindly offered her a snack, Circe accepted, not because she was hungry but because it would be a good thing to distract herself with while her cousin would undoubtedly interrogate her whereabouts for the last half hour. She took a spot in between Charlie and her cousin, but not before Dora could begin her slurred interrogation of her little cousin "Circe! I missed you, where did you wander off to? I was beginning to think I would have to tell mom that her niece was eaten by a troll— never to return!"

Circe snickered and playfully kicked her under the table, reaching her hand across the Knight and Queen to reach the crisp bowl. Circe leaned next to her cousin and whispered lightly into her ear "Who are they— the person sitting next to Charlie" she nodded slightly in the direction of them "I mean, I haven't seen her before" .

Nymphadora looked at her best friend and Elliott, the former wrapping his arm around the latter. Circe looked around silently to see if anyone noticed her and Dora's whispering; they hadn't, all preoccupied with watching Maeve's bunny jump around through magically conjured obstacles while reaching for a carrot (Drunk Charlie & Maeve both tended to be easily entertained). Before Circe turned back to continue the ongoing conversation, Mulberry bit Maeve's finger, causing a chain of reactions: Elliott and Charlie erupting into roars of laughter, holding onto each other for support, Maeve cursing wildly and tripping while attempting to bandage her finger, causing the whole tent to reverberate laughter across the campgrounds. It was a perfect distraction for Circe and Dora's undercover conversation to continue.

Nymphadora carefully thought out her response and inhaled before spewing a tediously crafted answer before Circe "I don't know too much about her, really only what went on through our Hogwarts years, but it's obvious she has changed a lot so it wouldn't be fair for me to tell you about her in the past, and for you to judge her for it, don't you think?" Nymphadora knew how easily grudges and strong opinions about people formed in her little cousin's mind, and she felt as though Elliott had grown into a completely different person than she once knew and didn't intend on having Circe scorn Elliott for the rest of her existence on this planet.

Circe held a puzzled expression at her Cousins' vague and mysterious response "Are we speaking in philosophical riddles? What's with the vague response Nymphadora?"

Circe added in the last bit with a joking tone as she cracked a smile, in hopes of loosening her cousin's tongue to leave enough room for some answers to slip through the cracks. Her tactics must've failed because upon speaking the name her cousin so contemptuously regarded, she searched Dora's face for the slightest sarcastic scowl or light-hearted frown. Instead, she found Tonks's mind elsewhere and eyes flitting over the surface of the table stood up in front of her.

In truth, Tonks had heard her cousin but was too busy searching her own mind for a sealed away pocket of forgiveness or pity for Elliott. She found none. In truth, Tonks had heard her cousin, but was too busy searching her own mind for a sealed away pocket of forgiveness or pity for Elliott. She found none. Back before Elliott and Charlies' days in Hogwarts, her and Charlie had been best friends. Sneaking into the hayloft of an abandoned barn, throwing hay at each other and giggling in an intangible dead language of childhood innocence that Charlie had wanted to relearn for as long as he could recall. Fate had taken its time to bring them back together, but in the end, Dora was glad it did. Because Charlie finally looked happy, at peace, as if he had been reverted back to the blitheness of childhood, with nothing but whimsically built imagination—before it had been ruined by the turbulent friendship he and Elliott had endured in their later years. There was time in between, of course, that had to be re-accounted for to make the story whole. Still, Nymphadora shoved the memories of the seven years she had known Elliott Blair from her psyche at full force, disinclined to dwelling on unpleasant topics whilst in the presence of her friends (or Elliott for that matter).

In the present, Nymphadora should've known that no matter how easily discouraged Circe could appear from certain tasks, her curiosity always lurked about, and Circe intended on getting answers (trivial or not). She gave her elder cousin a pointed look, as if to inform her that further interrogation was to be expected back at their tent, and headed towards the entryway. Circe peered out of the beige canvas, glancing upwards to view the sky as the plum color began its shift into the later hours of twilight. The girl excused herself, hoping to return to her tent before complete darkness hit. Her elder cousin and friends intended on arriving at the game in an hour or so, and she hoped she still had time before her aunt and uncle were to leave as well

Waving her goodbyes, Circe had accidentally stumbled into the opening while attempting to exit whilst look at the group, causing her to trip and leave flushed and palms seeping with sweat from her embarrassment. She wiped them on her patchwork jacket and fiddled with one of her golden coiled rings, twisting it up and down on her finger as she moved through the sea of people in front of her (all heading to the game which of course, happened to be in the opposite direction she was going, which made it impossibly hard not to get swept up into the crowd and pushed into the other direction). She spotted the Weasley tent to her right and threaded her eyes through the surrounding area, looking to catch a glimpse of a familiar face. She caught eyes with one of the two non-redhead's in the group and casted a weak smile and wave to Hermione Granger, the girl who was still a bit sour from the previous years Transfiguration Exam. Hermione shot a forced smile and curt nod back at Circe before she turned on her heel and pushed open the tent curtain, disappearing from sight.

Circe's feet were aching and her chest was already beginning to cramp from the mile or two she had walked since leaving Maeve's tent. She trudged up another muddy path and moved some of her weight to the balls of her feet─ hoping to alleviate some of the pain. She balanced there for a moment, while her eyes nimbly moved through each of the passing tents and praying one of them were her family's. Thankfully, she spotted the familiar muted mahogany of her family's tent and let out a sigh of relief. Her face was set alight with a burning smile as caught her fingers through the opening, smirking and swinging herself around the corner.

Emrys, who had been attempting to nap on the couch, caught sight of Circe but before he was able to speak, Circe launched into an excited recount of her World Cup adventures, which mostly consisted of various complaints about the distance and wear on her feet. And upon the completion of her drawn out rant, Emrys stood up with a sigh and quirked lip while creasing and folding the book he was previously reading into a curled up cylinder. Much to his dismay, Circe seemed to be taking in a deep inhale, getting ready to begin her dramatic monologuing again. But before she could begin again she rightfully received a harsh knock on the head from "The Picture of Dorian Gray". She looked up in mock shock, un-tucking her gangly legs which were messily strewn beneath the coffee table and stretched to meet Emrys's hand, yanking the book from their hands.

From the outside of the tent, muffled shouts and childlike laughter and a "Circe, wait stop — watch out!" followed by a "What did you say, I can't hear over your record!" and the crashing of a certain numb skulled witch into a cabinet could be heard. Unfortunately the said cabinet was holding fragile drinking glasses and a vase & needless to say, the following hours of the quidditch world cup were spent using the broom as a karaoke microphone (a muggle invention which Circe had learned about on a trip to london, where she and her cousin had accidentally stumbled into a muggle karaoke bar rather than the leaky cauldron) and the dust-pan as a drum against the floor. By the time the last shard of glass was discarded, both teenagers were exhausted from all of the excitement.

And within the hour, Circe was draped over her bunk in an almost comical manner, limbs sprawled out and folded like origami in every direction with a patterned blanket recklessly thrown atop of her. Her mouth posed slightly agape with a serene expression laying atop her golden skin like a love letter to the sun, her face still slightly wrinkled from the ghost of a smile on her face that she had fallen asleep with. & With the shutter of an eye, the girl kissed by midas was at peace.

Authors Note ✍︎

Edited by Salem as always, go check out their fics!!!
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