Rome, Borgia Apartments; 1492.

Horatia's P.O.V

This was Rome. A place where rambling stretches of rural stains still washed the shores of the city walls, the church at the very centre like the large bobbled head of a sunflower. In curves and bands, beasts still outstripped the residents. Goats, sheep and swine foraging in the relics of the Roman empire, bleating between decapitated marble statues of Venus and Ares, shitting on the steps of history. This Rome was a gulf of poverty and struggle, where the rift between the rich and poor pulled many a man apart. A city of orphans and vagabonds, saints and sinners, choruses and mutes. This Rome was the cradle of poison, blood feuds and vendettas.

Yet, Horatia's Rome, one of magnificent beauty, innovation, and art, where geniuses such as Da Vinci, Raphael, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo, sprouted from this vile bed of weeds, where they first picked up their brush, chisel or quill, lay slumbering right below the surface. There was a hope that skittered through the dirt streets, a sniff of fresh potential, regeneration, thawing the air about them. The dawn of a new age was breaking on the horizon.

It was strange, so very strange, to be in this alien place, a Rome lost to antiquity, and yet still see in the smooth stone, the rope of scaffolding, the murmuring of crowds, the Rome that was to come lurching just out of sight. It felt as if Horatia Borgia was standing on the head of a pin, the precipice where future crashed with past into one dizzying point of time.

Or maybe Horatia was confusing Rome with that baffling being known as self.

Horatia Borgia and Horatia Potter in one body. New Rome sleeping under old Rome. Over the last few days, despite never being one for prose, she had begun to write things out in a slight, leather bound book. Thoughts, random, sporadic. Memories, good and bad. Anything and everything that needed to get out the crushed space of her mind.

The lyrics of Hey Jude by the Beatles. Hey Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better.

A sprawling passage about a Weasley Sunday lunch. Molly's exasperated smile as the twins stole off with the glazed pork. Ron stuffing his face until his cheeks bulged. Hermione with a scroll in her hands, grinning over the parchment. Arthur with a rubber duck held aloft, turning it this way and that, fascinated by the squeak. The pleasant sound of laughter.

The smell of Petunia's perfume. Sweet pea, rose and something sleek and slick, like jade.

A sketch, drawing had been one of the few talents Horatia could say she genuinely had, of Hogwarts standing proud on the rolling hills of Scotland. A fat, pregnant moon. The black lake glittering underneath a blanket of stars. Turrets and towers proud and imposing. Fire-light flickering from narrow windows. The dip of a valley winding.

Names, dates, muddled and swirling into the middle of the page like a whirlpool of frantic thought. Martin Luther? War of the Roses? The Hundred Years War? Has the printing press been invented yet? Guns? Are Guns a threat yet? Protestant Reformation? Where are you Horatia? Where are you? Fuck sake, where are you in time? What's coming? What's gone? Where. Are. You.

Horatia had never paid much attention in history class. She had saw no point. What use was history for those battling for a future? Now she was sinking in that irony. She was suffocating in many things, in truth. She missed music, and modern underwear, and T.V, and chocolate and peppermint. She missed coffee shops and trains, and being able to find out what the weather would be by a simple change of the channel…

"Ow! Shit! Fuck!"

The quill in Horatia's hand slipped, vaulting off the page, stabbing her other hand. She winced, wrenched the quill back, sniffing at the bleeding scratch darting across knuckle, glanced down to the book in her lap, her little book of madness, and stared down hard at the face that, seemingly, had miraculously appeared from nothing.

Cesare gazed back from the sheen of wet ink.

A drop of blood seeped from the tip of her quill.

It caught on his smiling lips, rinsing them red.

Horatia swiftly slammed her book shut and doggedly threw it away from her on the little patch of grass she was sitting on. It ricocheted off the pillar of the palazzo of the Borgia apartments and, as luck would have it, very nearly rebounded off the head of the man who came strolling around the corner. The very same man that had graced the pages of her little book more often than not lately. Cesare. Adorned in his violet and black clerical dress and velvet hat, Cesare sidestepped just in time to miss the bouncing book that would have clobbered the hat right off his head.

"I dearly hope that was not directed at me, little sister? I would hate to see what you would do to someone who merited such hostility."

He questioned with a pop to his highbrow, grinning. Smirking Cesare, snickering Lucrezia and sauntering Juan. Those was her siblings. The hiss of a nest of vipers. And where did Horatia fit? On this morning, soaked in the hot Italian sun, in one of the most beautiful gardens she had ever seen, Horatia thought she might be feeling a little bit surly.

"And if it was?"

Cesare leant a broad shoulder against the pillar, the ruffle in his skirts telling Horatia he had carelessly kicked one leg over the other as he regarded her with that keen smile. There was no bite to her voice, no malice or anger, not below her own dimpled grin.

"Then I would beg forgiveness for sins I could not name, on knee if it pleased your highness."

She pretended to contemplate it for a moment, just a flash of time, a roll of a cloud, with a little hum that bobbed in her throat, letting the heat of the morning lap about them languidly. Then she dramatically shoved her nose high into the air, drawing forth her best impression of Draco Malfoy.

"I suppose, seen as you are my dear brother, a simple bow would suffice. But, please, do not hold out on the begging."

Cesare's head sank back as he laughed. Rich. Rough. A sound that came from the very core of his chest. It made something, something Horatia could not name, spark deep-rooted within her own, a candle blinking in a cavern. Warm. Sizzling. Blazing. She liked hearing and seeing Cesare laugh. She, woefully, didn't think he got to very often.

"I thought you would be with your tutor?"

He questioned as he kicked away from the wall, in the silence of his dying laughter. Horatia shook her head.

"No. Master Giuliano doesn't like teaching me and Lucrezia together. He says we're unruly. Lucrezia has mornings, I have evenings now."

Cesare snorted, holding back another laugh. For a strange moment, for this day seemed to be filled with oddity, Horatia almost felt robbed. Thieved. As if Cesare's laughter wasn't really his own, but hers, and he had no right to hold it back from her. It was a greedy thought, a dragon hoarding the gold it could not and would not spend, only nap upon. Avaricious and bizarre. Horatia couldn't make sense of it, not really, almost like it was some other persons thought and feeling creeping itself inside her. She ardently elbowed that thought away, blaming the sleepless night of writing in that damned book for the peculiarity her mind was becoming.

"Unruly? Never. Not my sisters who, only two morns passed, cut up and set fire to our mother's favourite tapestry."

Now it was Horatia's turn to snort.

"That was not my fault. Lucrezia's the one who knocked the candle over."

The cross of arms over chest, another cocked brow, another smile ghosting lips, had Horatia's gaze fleeing from Cesare to the blue sky hanging above them.

"And who is the one who swore they could throw a kitchen knife and pierce the apple across the room while blindfolded?"

Horatia shrugged her thin shoulders, her renowned Gryffindor pride barging to the forefront.

"Given, my aim was a little off, I only got the orange before I nearly, and I can't stress that word enough, skewered Master Giuliano. But if Lucrezia didn't wobble the chair as I climbed, I'm still sure I would have hit the target and-"

Cesare was chuckling, and there it was again, that heat to her chest, that confusing burn. It wasn't painful, per say. Not like the many other burns Horatia had endured in her harrowing life. It felt… good. A good type of pain. Now, wasn't that a paradox? How could pain feel good? Yet, it does, and there is no answer, not one Horatia can find. She'd rode a dragon, defeated the darkest wizard of her time, slain a basilisk and fallen through time, and yet… Yet she couldn't even name her own fucking emotions? She thought, perhaps, there might be a sick joke hidden in all that.

Still, she did see something. A bruise, lilac, underneath Cesare's eyes. A type of gloom of insomnia that only fellow victims can spot in the other.

"You look tired, Cesare."

Now it was Cesare's time to shrug, and Horatia thought a mirror, unseen, might be dividing them across the palazzo. She acted, then he copied, he performed, then she duplicated. Ebbing and flowing. Did he feel the good pain too? Could he, unlike her, name it? It was important to name things, Horatia thought. If you could name it, you knew what it was, you knew what you were fighting, and if you knew what you were fighting, you could win. You couldn't prevail against something unfamiliar. And, here, in the crux of the good pain, there was just enough unease and discomfort to alert Horatia to the fact that, maybe, just maybe, this 'good pain', no matter how good it felt, perhaps shouldn't be felt at all.

Not with Cesare.

"That is because I am tired. Building father's path to the papal throne is exhausting work."

She opened her mouth to say something, words lost as Cesare bent down, plucked up her book and shook the pages out, wiping the dust on the back of his skirts, and just as he began to open her book to take a peek, Horatia was in movement. Scrambling up, she tried to dash for him, her skirts twisted about her legs, nearly made her tumble, nearly fall, but she was a nimble thing, even in the, what felt like, sixty layers of crushed velvet and satin, and got to him just as he began reciting a wrinkled page.

"Malfoy. Longbottom. Weasley. Abbot. Lockwood. Harding. Krum. Brodeur. Schneider. Orsini… Orsini?"

In a huff and a puff and a flurry of silk lines, Horatia made it to her brother and promptly snatched the book from his hands. He let it go easily enough, his attention now exclusively fixed on her. She shuffled underneath the dense and tight gaze. Horatia had never seen eyes like Cesare's before.

They were dark, you see. Not black, or blue, or brown, or green. Just… Dark. Shifting, swelling darkness. There was a beauty to be found in that dusk, Horatia would admit. A splendour only night knew intimately. Where light reflected in a burst of tiny stars. It shouldn't be possible. It shouldn't be right. To have such dark eyes with so much light in them. She shoved that thought away too. She was getting good at that now. Too good. Instead she thumbed the spine of her book and chewed on her lip.

"Old families that were active-… Here, alive, now. Families that have wi-… People like me in them."

Cesare's smile fell like glass on stone dropped from a great height, and with it, it took that flame in her chest. She should be glad it was gone. She wasn't. When had Horatia done anything she should have? Not before. Not today. Perhaps never.

"And Orsini? You are confident they belong on this page?"

Horatia frowned as she saw severity chase away his smile to somewhere far away. To where even she couldn't reach. Anew, she was a dragon, looking for gold, snuffling for bullion. She chose her words meticulously, searching for ways he would understand.

"Yes. I-… Paolo Orsini created-… He will create skele-grow-… He becomes a highly regarded healer to people like me. Giovanni Battista Orsini creates a rather nasty flaying hex. It isn't pleasant. There are likely others lost to… Ones I can't remember. Cesare… What's wrong?"

She watched as a muscle contorted in his jaw, a jump of tendon shrinking stiff, like he was gnawing gristle off a bone.

"Have you notified father of this?"

His hand came up to her bicep, his fingers encircled, and though the grip was not tight, not at all, she felt the significance concealed between the gloved digits. Horatia shook her head, a rather tenacious curl tumbled free from her emerald hairnet, and, without thought or trigger, Cesare was pushing it back behind her ear tenderly.

"No. Not yet. I was trying to remember more when I lost concentration and-"

And I accidentally began drawing you without thinking. Yet, she didn't say that. She suddenly found she couldn't, even if she wanted to. It got wedged in her throat, lodged itself a bumpy home, embedded, and refused to move. She didn't know why. A drawing was just a drawing, was it not? Like words were just words, and songs were just songs, and everything was nothing without context or meaning. What was the importance of her drawing, then, to justify such hesitation?

Horatia didn't know, and it pissed her right off. It seemed backwards here. A river running uphill. The longer she stayed, the more perplexed by everything she got, particularly Juan and Cesare, and surely, certainly, it should be opposite? Familiarity was the antithesis of confusion, wasn't it? The more familiar something was, the more you were around it, knew it, knew its ticks like Horatia knew the certain downward twist of Cesare's mouth that hinted at anger, or the specific crease Juan got around his eye when he was feeling upset or hurt, was meant to get rid of puzzlement. Knowledge was meant to vanquish confusion, in a world where rivers ran down and not up.

So why, in all the fucking holy books in the world, did the more she grew to know her brothers, the more they fucking confused the shit out of her?

She wasn't used to confusion, not of this sort. She wasn't used to feeling things she could not name and could not control. She wasn't used to tender touches, or starlight eyes, or easy words, or family and love and, shit, an actual home, to having food every single day, or a bed of her own, in her own room, or a father who kissed her forehead every morn before he left, or a mother who sang her to sleep, or a sister who was just as ready to get into mischief as she, or good pain, or-

"When I lost my temper, and my book took flight. Cesare, for the love of Merlin, tell me what is wrong."

When confused, or displaced and disjointed, people often found themselves clinging to things they did know, like lifeboats adrift in the sea, and Horatia was no exception. She may not understand the heat in her chest that came and went when it pleased. She may not understand the glimmer in Cesare's eyes or why exactly it made her want to smile. She may not understand why, sometimes, she thought she missed how Juan smelled, or how she even remembered he smelled like summer berries and mulled wine and something cool and crisp, similar to snowfall in winter, when she couldn't even remember if the Spanish inquisition was around yet or not, but this…

The moment right before the axe fell, when some revelation came hurtling towards you that lead to the big fight, or life changing events, was something Horatia knew intimately. You're a witch, Horatia. I solemnly swear that I am up to no good. To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.

So, really, it was no great surprise what Cesare said next.

"There is a particular Cardinal, a Cardinal Orsini, that will be in conclave with Father in the upcoming weeks when the present Pope passes from our world."

Cesare's hand fell from her arm as Horatia let out a long, whistling breath.

"Well, that's… Problematic."

And, she knew, by Morgana and Merlin Horatia knew, she should not, definitely not, feel a slither of happiness at this shock, yet, again, she did. This… This was something she knew. Something that made sense. She knew what to do when there was a potential opponent to be scouted out. She knew it better than she knew how to be a sister, or a daughter, or, Morgana forbid, a functioning member of 15th century society.

This was something she was good at.

Guilt crashed upon her instantly. She should not feel anything vaguely like joy at the prospect of her father, Rodrigo, being confined in small spaces with, possibly, someone like her. Especially when in competition for the papacy, magic would give Orsini the edge. An advantage her father, decidedly, sealed away from her, would not have. No locked door, high room or walled building would keep her father safe if he, this Cardinal, took to… Nefarious means of winning.

Abruptly, that slight slink of pleasure, at finally having something she understood so close, distorted and deformed itself into fear, like a rose thrown into a raging fire, because she knew what came next. First came the revelation, then came the struggle, then came the loss. Someone always had to pay the pied piper, and more often than not, he liked to be rewarded in blood. Sirius, Lily, James, Dobby, Remus, Mad-eye Moody, Fred… When someone needed to live, another always had to fall. Now, standing with Cesare in an alcove of the Borgia apartments gardens, she thought she might have heard the pied pipers damned flute crooning in the air once more.

And would he stop there, this Orsini? Just at her father? What if he came for her mother? Lucrezia? Juan? Cesare? Fuck… Little Joffre? Would life be so cruel to snatch her family away so soon after she had only just got them back? Yes. Yes it would. If anyone knows this, it is you, Horatia. Suddenly she's angry. Suddenly she's incensed. Suddenly, she's impulsive. Suddenly, she's all so very full of sudden that it feels like she might erupt from her own skin like a too ripe grape.

The pied piper could fuck off.

There was one thing for it, she thought, since there was only one thing these things ever came down to. Umbridge, Bellatrix, Tom Riddle and Fenrir had taught her that. You struck first, you struck swift, and you struck hard before the other could do the very same to you. Horatia had to deal with this Orsini, if he was like her, and against her father, before the Pope died and her father would be locked in close proximity with him.

What exactly that dealing with foretold, Horatia didn't know quite yet. However, she supposed, it decided on how far this Orsini wanted to take it.

She was jumping the gun. He could be muggle, for all she knew. An everyday man just trying to make his way in the world like the rest of them. Yet, there were Orsini wizards to come, her history books told her so, and they had to come from somewhere, didn't they? First, she needed the answer to that question, then she would… She would follow the path wherever it may lead. She wasn't going to let some Italian bastard take her family, Imperio or otherwise abuse them, without a fight.

She had four hundred years' worth of advancement in magic backing her. Clearly, that would count for something if a duel broke out? Nevertheless, regrettably, there could be spells and magics that four hundred years had stripped away from her, lost in time and forgotten from memory, that could be thrown right in her face too.

Standing on the head of a pin, indeed.

"Do you believe he could be like you?"

Horatia's fingers tapped against her book in a bout of seven, her mind scurrying for solutions.

"It depends on how old their magic is at the moment. If it's new, they'll only be a few of them. A random birth here or there of muggleborns-… Ones like me. If it's had time to spread throughout the family and they've become pureblood-…. Yes. Possibly. And if this Orsini is against father, if I've heard your worry correctly… Rodrigo should not be in conclave with him."

Then Cesare was moving, prowling down the veranda to the inner halls of the Borgia apartments, the strips of cloth of the canopy above their heads blinking him in throbs of gold and shade, a rhythm that strangely matched her heartbeat.

"I need to see father."

Horatia jogged after him, needing to pull up her skirts so she did not trip. Her bare feet made no sound on the balmy tile.

"I'll come too and we can-"

"No. I'll speak to father. Alone."

No. He was not doing this. Reaching out, she snatched at his shoulder, caught a slip of shawl between her fingers, fingernails biting into gilded thread, yanked, and forced Cesare to a stop, to face her, eye to eye, dusk to green, fire to ignition.

"Alone? What do you mean alone? Cesare, You don't understand what you or father will be walking into if Orsini is like me. If I visit him first and-"

He wrestled his shoulder free, and the loss of contact almost stung. If it weren't for the rapid ire licking in her veins from Cesare's resolute scowl. It was the first time she had ever seen him angry. It only fed into her own, and hers back into his. A loop. A tide. Receding and gushing.

"No, you don't understand how dangerous this city is yet, Horatia. Rome is no Eden, and the Roman families are no angels. It is too soon and It is too dangerous to venture out. If you can see him for what he is, he can see you for what you are, and that is a risk I am not willing to take. You stay here. Father and I will-"

"Don't be ridiculous, Cesare. You have no idea what signs to look for. You wouldn't even know where to begin. If he is like me, I can catch his slip, for he will slip, and then we will know and-"

He lurched forward, toward her. She met him step for step.

"I said no, Horatia!"

They were close now. So close their noses nearly brushed. So close they shared the same breath. Steam. Hot and hazy and heady like smoke. There was a hammering in her ear, a pounding of a drum, and she wasn't quite sure whether it was Cesare's heart or her own that was beating in the slip of space between them. That strange heat flared back to searing life underneath her ribs, simmering in the pit of her stomach. She told herself it was anger, frustration, because she didn't know what else it could possibly be.

"And I say yes! I told you once, Cesare, I am not a child. I can look after myself."

"But you do not have to any longer! When will you realize you are no longer alone? When will you see we are here for you? I am here for you?!"

There was a spur, an energy, teeming about them. A thousand nerves set aflame. Open and raw and weeping soul. Her anger was Cesare's. Cesare's laughter was hers. Their breath was one, and their hearts matched and, perhaps, like her drawing, that was the implication. It was both everything and nothing and not either or.

"Why do you think I'm doing this! If this Orsini is like me, and he realizes what you and father are looking for, he will become aggressive and you won't be able to stop him. I can't have him hurting you or father because I decided to sit back and enjoy the sunshine! All I need to do is find him, and-"

"Why must you be so belligerent?!"

"Me?! You're the cantankerous one!"

"I'm only trying to protect you! I don't need protection! Stop doing that! Stop it!"

They both come to a panting halt as they mutually began to say the same things at the same time. It felt like that moment in the day, just before twilight dropped, that special instant where the moon and the sun both colonized the wide sky and plucked it taut. Where two spheres, two kingdoms, for only one glint, became single instead of dual.

"You can't keep me buried away forever, Cesare."

He laughed at her, actually laughed at her, full of teeth and mirth and husk.

"I can certainly try."

Her hands clenched at her side with the effort not to throw a fist, or do something, anything, her fingers felt itchy, flexing, as if they wanted to grab something, and the cool wood of her wand pressing into the soft skin of her forearm tingled with barely suppressed magic.

"You-… You-… You fucking donkey!"

She swore as she spun around, storming down the way they had come thundering up.

"Where are you going?! Horatia!"

She didn't look back.

"To find someone who actually listens to me!"

Who could Horatia possibly be running too?

A.N: So, long time no see! Sorry for that. I've been busy with uni work and inspiration for this fic sort of puttered out. Nevertheless, I'm back, and I really hope this chapter makes up for at least half the wait I made you guys go through. Hopefully, there won't be a long time before next update. As always, if you have a prompt, please send it in, it feeds the muses.

THANK YOU for all the wonderful reviews. They really kept me trailing back to this fic and not just throwing in the towel when inspiration ran dry. Thank you for the follows and favourites too, and I really do hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and are looking forward to what is to come. If you have a spare moment, please drop a review, and I will see you guys soon!

NOTE: This chapter had no beta reader, and I am dyslexic, so there might be a few spelling and grammar mistakes littered throughout. I tried by best to polish it up, but, well, I fear a few might have slipped in. Hopefully I will have another Beta-reader before next chapter.