They would never have gotten involved, of course.Astra and Stella were just girls, growing up at the

They would never have gotten involved, of course.Astra and Stella were just girls, growing up at the Institute – no need to ask which, for these were Virginia-born Blacks, for all they had grown up in Texas, great-grandchildren of a Georgian-era runaway. Their branch of the family had arrived on the westward side of the Atlantic with none of the pecuniary advantages some of their cousins enjoyed, but they had made good.Black roses are hardy, and tough to root out.Their mother had been a queen in crinolines, the beauty of her age, and she taught them pride when she gave them her name. Her husband was wealthy, a dragon blood baron, but there was little virtue in his name, plucked from nowhere, and it was already borne by five sons. On this point, Alya had been implacable: the girls were hers.And she taught them pride.Astra and Stella had the second-best room in the Upper House of the Institute the year their mother died, with the war already longer in the tooth than its Muggle counterpart. Wizards are stubborn, and perhaps American wizards more than most. Continuing to fight seemed an easier matter than hammering out peace. The war never touched RPI directly, but it brushed by, close enough to smell.From their window, they watched. From their window, they listened. From their window, they gathered information.Who would suspect the Black twins of passing information across borders? Who would suspect such sweet faces of treachery? Such delicate hands of penning such damning letters?It was even easier at home, where their father never paid them much mind, and even less now that the South-Central region had divided amongst itself. Never enough to notice the owls that stopped by their bedroom before his study. Never enough to notice when they slipped out at night.But not to get involved, heavens no. Not like cousin Auriga, fighting for the  Southern Alliance of American Sorcery. And they would never do anything so common as sell their information. How undignified. But they saw what they saw, heard what they heard, and knew what they knew – and sometimes, when the circumstances seemed right, they would pass that knowledge on to those who were involved in the unpleasantness.Let us not mistake their contributions for altruism. If Astra and Stella had any particular moral motivations, the historical record has not made note of it.What history does know is that, between 1869 and 1875, two brothers were apprehended by the North-Eastern Aurors. One was killed, taken in an ambush in Tennessee. One found himself heavily indebted to North-Western merchants and in imminent need of emigration to Mexico. One was suspected, of all things, of spying, and summarily executed.Proud, the girls were, and patient.In 1875, when hostilities ended, the newly-reconstituted Aurors’ Board in Quantico received a hoard of information from an anonymous source, all of it well-documented and fit to condemn a Texas dragon blood baron for war crimes. He fled, rather than face trial, and with no other relatives left alive and untainted, the AWC saw fit to bestow his estate on his two daughters, though they did not even bear his name. His wealth, his goods, his pegasi, the mansion on the Gulf Coast, even the little property in Virginia no one knew about, except the mistress he had kept there. Every scrap of it went to Astra and Stella, as good as orphaned, alone in the world.Pride, their mother had taught them, and how to make good.—[Enjoy this? Tip the author! patreon.com/CassRMorris] -- source link

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