CASS57- A DAMN PEN!

That evening, Cassian was summoned.

Dumbledore hadn't written a time. Just a note, charmed to hover ominously above his teacup like a judgmental halo. "Headmaster's Office. This evening." No signature. No smiley face. No warning.

He found them already waiting by the time he arrived, Dumbledore behind the desk, McGonagall in her usual place by the hearth, and Snape standing like someone had tried to rearrange his spine with a stick.

No tea in sight. Bad sign.

"Professor Cassian," Dumbledore said, smiling as always. "Thank you for coming."

"Summoned by three professors and no biscuits? You wound me."

Snape's lip twitched like it wanted to become a snarl but hadn't yet gotten the Ministry paperwork approved.

"You performed a voice-snaring charm on a student," Snape said.

"Ah." Cassian tilted his head. "So that is what this is about."

Dumbledore folded his hands on the desk. "It was brought to our attention that Mr Malfoy..."

"Couldn't speak," Snape snapped. "Nor could several of his classmates. During one of your… classes. In front of both houses. Do you consider that appropriate classroom conduct?"

Cassian dropped into the chair. "I find screaming less educational than silence. Especially when the screaming is about bloodlines and parental income."

McGonagall's eyebrow rose. It wasn't approval. But it wasn't not.

Snape stepped forward. "You are not a disciplinary figure."

"I wasn't punishing them. I was giving them a chance to shut up and think." Cassian glanced at Dumbledore. "And for the record, the spell was temporary. They were perfectly unharmed. In fact, I would say they were in better shape than usual. No hex marks. No singed eyebrows. Malfoy got through a whole class without insulting someone. Call it a miracle."

Snape's eyes narrowed.

Dumbledore raised a hand. "I am less concerned about the spell itself than I am about the... context." His eyes slid sideways to McGonagall. "Minerva?"

She adjusted her collar. "It was brought to our attention by several parents," she said, voice serious as funeral, "that your first-year class included demonstrations that, while unorthodox, appear to contradict basic wizarding educational standards."

Cassian's eyebrows made the sort of slow ascent usually reserved for hot-air balloons. "You mean the pen."

"That, and your advocacy of Muggle methodology," she said. "Your... tone was also flagged."

He blinked. "Tone?"

Snape snorted sharply through his nose. "You encouraged students to reject foundational magical authority. You spoke against Hogwarts' own historical canon. And apparently claimed that Salazar Slytherin once hexed a badger."

"I said he tried," Cassian corrected. "The badger won."

Dumbledore didn't smile. That alone told him this wasn't one of those quiet chats about 'maybe tone it down a notch'. No biscuits, no chuckle, no vague "we all remember our first term" anecdote.

McGonagall looked over her glasses. "You were hired to teach magical history. Not rewrite it with a Muggle pen and call it innovation."

Cassian shrugged. "You didn't hire me to teach the history in the books. I am not teaching anything wrong."

"That depends on your definition of wrong," Snape cut in. "Telling first-years that Hogwarts: A History is 'bollocks with footnotes' hardly qualifies as academic rigour."

Cassian leaned back in the chair. "I said parts of it were edited by people with a nostalgia problem. It is not my fault if students assume everything in hardback is gospel."

McGonagall's lips thinned. "That is not the main issue, Professor Rosier. Quills are a crucial part of Magical Education. And the tool-"

"It is a pen," he said, as if that explained everything. "Ink goes in. Words come out. Nobody bursts into flames unless they cock up the spelling."

"It is a statement," she said. "You use it to provoke."

"Of course I provoke," Cassian said. "It is called teaching. If they are not rattled, they are not learning."

Dumbledore hadn't spoken in a while. Not unusual. He was watching. That particular kind of quiet that didn't feel passive, like he was folding Cassian into a riddle.

"You think it appropriate," McGonagall pressed, "to undermine magical norms to this degree?"

"No," Cassian said, "I think it is necessary."

Snape scoffed. "Necessary to lecture children on the failures of magical society? To claim that Muggles are more advanced in certain areas? What, exactly, is the goal of your class?"

Cassian glared at Snape. "If I remember right, Severus, you were a half-blood, weren't you? You should know exactly where Muggles outpace us."

Snape's shoulders stiffened. "Are you insulting me?"

Cassian blinked, then tilted his head like he'd just been asked if water was dry. "What the hell are you talking about? Since when is having a Muggle parent an insult?"

Snape's glare sharpened. Even McGonagall froze, mouth half-open.

Cassian gestured vaguely toward the office walls. "Look, if your entire sense of worth relies on which half of your blood can do laundry easier, then I really don't know what to tell you."

Dumbledore's fingers drummed once against his desk. "Enough."

Cassian didn't flinch. He sat back, still watching Snape like he was waiting to see if the man would combust or sulk.

"You asked the goal of my class," Cassian said, finally dragging his eyes back to Dumbledore. "It is to teach history. All of it. Not just the bits the Ministry stamped and bound into overpriced textbooks. Not just the pompous monologues written by people trying to scrape their name into a tapestry."

Snape's voice cut in, sharper than before. "That doesn't explain the ideology you insist upon."

Cassian glanced down at his coat pocket. "It is a damn pen."

"It is a symbol," Snape shot back.

"Well spotted," he said. "So are wands. So are house colours. So is every statue in this castle. I am just the first one who decided maybe, just maybe, our tools could be practical instead of performative."

Snape moved to the edge of the desk. "You encourage disrespect. Undermining magical authority. You speak like someone who holds no reverence for our traditions."

Cassian raised a brow. "No, I hold no reverence for bad traditions."

Snape's lip curled.

"I am not here to turn students into rebels," Cassian went on. "But if you want them to understand magic, really understand it, they need to see where it fits in the wider world. Not just in this bubble of enchanted corridors and Latin phrases."

"You mean the Muggle world," Snape said with a laugh.

"I mean reality." Cassian leaned forward. "Your students aren't going to live in a bubble forever. You want them to know how to handle a cursed goblet, great. But what happens when they are thirty and can't read a bank form because no one taught them how to operate a pen?"

McGonagall's eyes narrowed. "You are a History professor, not a Muggle Studies liaison."

Cassian tapped the armrest. "History is not made in isolation. Every war, every movement, every spell written into the annals of 'Great Wizarding Achievements." All of it exists in the same world as Muggle revolutions, plagues, literature, and tea kettles."

"Are you suggesting we let Muggle culture into our curriculum?" Snape asked, scorn curling behind every word.

"I am suggesting," Cassian said, "that it is already here. You are just pretending not to see it."

Snape smirked. "You are a fool. You have no idea what you are talking about."

Cassian chuckled. "Really? You think Muggle science has nothing to do with our magic? Send an owl to Nicholas Flamel, ask if alchemy is somehow not chemistry wearing a fancier robe. Go ask Madam Hooch if she doesn't factor in gravity every time she tosses a Quaffle. Or better yet, Severus, ask yourself, when you boil water for your potions, don't you measure it? Or do you still go by 'a splash' and 'three pinches and a prayer'?"

Snape's mouth opened, but Cassian wasn't finished.

"Oh, I forgot," he went on, pacing now, hands in his coat pockets. "You are so bleeding traditional, you probably still measure by cups instead of units. Next you will be telling me the moon is made of spell dust and unicorn farts."

Snape's expression dropped a few degrees colder. "You reduce magic to arithmetic and gadgets. That is the very limit of your understanding."

Cassian stopped in front of the window. The castle below was quiet. Hazy with dusk. "No. I understand magic just fine. I also understand that pretending Muggles have nothing to offer is like living in a library and refusing to read half the books because they are the wrong colour."

McGonagall crossed her arms. "No one is saying Muggles don't offer insight-"

"Actually," Cassian said, jerking a thumb at Snape, "he very nearly did."

Snape sneered. "Muggles cannot perform magic."

"No, they can't," Cassian said. "But they can build flying machines that cross oceans. They can split atoms, Severus. Do you even know what that means? They learned to do that without wands. Without charms. They broke reality using rocks and maths."

Dumbledore's gaze drifted from Cassian to the fireplace, unreadable as ever.

Cassian moved again. He hated standing still. "Meanwhile, half our magical defences are 'make it hiss and glow ominously'. No backup plans. No understanding of what makes the magic work, just incantations barked out like recipes in a dying language."

"You speak of recklessness," Snape snapped. "You parade half-truths before children."

"I teach them to question things," Cassian said. "Big difference."

Dumbledore finally decided to join the conversation. "And yet, many of your students are now citing Muggle advancements as superior to wizarding traditions."

"That's not on me," Cassian said, turning. "That is on the people who keep telling them wizardkind is flawless and ancient and eternally wise. They come into class thinking witches popped out of the earth fully formed, robes already pressed. All I do is show them the cracks."

McGonagall's voice was flat. "What cracks?"

"Oh, you know," Cassian said, raising fingers. "Blood supremacy. War crimes. Keeping elves in pillowcases. The casual child endangerment system we call education. The fact that the most brilliant minds of our world decided an exploding spell was less dangerous than a comprehensive sex-ed class."

Snape let out a growl. "You mock everything."

"No, Severus," Cassian said. "I mock stupid things. But I can see why you are confused."

Dumbledore tapped his desk again. "We are not here to debate the ethics of magical education."

Cassian raised an eyebrow. "Aren't we?"

McGonagall pinched the bridge of her nose. "Cassian, your methods are too... unconventional."

"That is the point," he said. "Convention gave us Grindelwald. Convention gave us a society that won't let a Muggleborn sit on the Wizengamot. Convention put students in a house system based on personality traits and then acted shocked when they started stabbing each other over dinner."

Snape's eyes darkened. "And your solution is what, exactly? Throw out everything and let them play with Muggle toys?"

"No," Cassian said, stepping forward again. "My solution is to make them think. Not parrot. Not kneel. Think. Let them see the full picture. The good, the bad, the bits covered in Ministry stamps and the parts they shoved in the attic."

Dumbledore sighed, leaning back, meaning the verdict was given. "You are aware that several parents have written in."

Cassian didn't flinch. "Of course they have."

"One mentioned," Dumbledore continued, "that your lectures may encourage a 'radical deconstruction of magical heritage.'"

Cassian shrugged. "Good. Someone ought to."

He reached into his coat and pulled out two pens, plain, cheap plastic ones. Placed them gently across the desk. One landed neatly in front of McGonagall. The other hit a paperweight and spun to a halt near Dumbledore's teacup.

"Do you know what these are? I mean really know? Not just 'a Muggle writing thing'. How they were built? How they were designed?" He exhaled some of the heat from his chest. "Despite looking like a joke next to a wand, those things are tiny marvels of engineering. You ever try making something that small not leak, clog, or explode under pressure? It is a miracle, honestly."

McGonagall didn't touch the pen. Dumbledore gave it a cursory glance, then folded his hands again.

"They are designed for mass production," Cassian went on. "No magic. No core. Just ink, pressure, gravity, and clever problem-solving. Do you have any idea how many people had to screw up for those to exist?"

Snape muttered, "This is hardly relevant."

Cassian didn't even blink. "It is the most relevant thing in the room." He nodded at the pens. "You want to talk about heritage? There is a story behind those. Every part of them."

"They can write upside down. Slanted. In water. In bloody space. They don't drop ink, don't need a blotting cloth, don't leave your hand looking like a banshee's been at it with a fountain." Cassian laughed. "A quill will slit your fingers open if you so much as breathe wrong. You got to perch just so at a sloped desk or it scratches the parchment to death or splashes your sleeve like it got a vendetta. It is a nightmare to write anything longer than a shopping list."

"I taught them that. Told them straight, if the thing you are scribbling doesn't need magical conductivity, a quill is the worst option. Worse than a bloody stick and hope. I showed them the difference. That is it. How is that wrong?"

Dumbledore raised a hand before the other two could say anything.

"Professor Rosier, we ask you to be mindful. You are employed here not just to teach, but to represent Hogwarts. What you say in that classroom shapes how our students understand the world."

"And gods forbid they understand it correctly," Cassian said. "Wouldn't want them wandering around thinking for themselves."

McGonagall took off her glasses, cleaned them. A move that usually meant she was fighting the urge to hex someone and didn't want smudges in her line of sight. "You are here as part of a faculty, not a revolution."

"I noticed. It is very... unified," Cassian said, waving a hand. "So far today I've been accused of radicalising children with office supplies and questioning the orthodoxy of a badger fight."

Snape stiffened. "You are not taking this seriously."

"I am taking the students seriously. Which, judging by this meeting, might be the actual problem."

Dumbledore's voice came quieter this time. "That may be precisely it, Cassian. You care. I do not question that. But you have a tendency to treat your classroom like a stage."

Cassian blinked, then gave the kind of grin that looked more like a warning label. "You want me to be boring."

"I want you to be careful." Dumbledore sat back. "We are not asking for silence. But perhaps a touch of... restraint. You may challenge. But don't mock."

He tucked the chair back. "I will rein it in. No pens near the altar. I will try not to provoke any sacred cows unless they moo first."

Snape muttered something under his breath.

As he turned for the door, Dumbledore's voice caught him again.

"Professor Rosier."

He paused.

"We hired you for a reason."

Cassian didn't look back. "Yeah. I am starting to wonder what it was."

Then he left.