InsaneJournal

Cass is fun-loving, adventurous and a bit restless (though a lot better than when he was young). He can't be still for too long or he'll grow bored and he has an uncanny ability to read and walk at the same time without crashing into something – at least when doing it in places he knows fairly well. His very friendly and honest but doesn’t trust very easily, a side effect of growing up learning to lie and trust no one (see history). When he was younger he was quite the seducer, but fatherhood calmed down those sides of him even if he still enjoys sex. In general he has a small number of very close intimate friends who he has sex with on a regular basis, though on occasion he still falls back to his old ways.

He’s quite intelligent, but can also be reckless and act before thinking things through – or, more often, think things through to the point where he overcomplicate them and end up doing the wrong thing anyway. In spite of being able to lie without anyone telling, he cannot balance half truths very well. It’s usually all or nothing with Cass. Even if he can lie with a straight face, he rarely, if ever, does. He grew up having to lie, and so he hates lying and tells the truth whenever he can.

Cass' mother was a Muggle woman named Linda Scawton, his father Marcus Vaisey, a member of one of the truly wealthy influential pureblood wizarding families – with all that entails of blood-prejudice and Dark Art connections.

Marcus and Linda fell in love after a chance encounter, but what should have been a happy occasion was shadowed by the fact that Marcus’s family were Death Eater supporters and would never accept a Muggle as a Vaisey-wife. Knowing this, Marcus kept his relationship with Linda a secret and when she became pregnant with his one and only son, he went to great lengths to protect his son and lover, faking records of Cass' birth, showing him as the child of a rich Italian pureblood woman named Emilia Romagna. As a close friend of Marcus', with no children of her own (or any desire to ever have any) Emilia agreed to play along and through pretending she was raising Cass in Italy, Marcus and Linda could raise their son together in relative peace.

It was a home with a lot of love, but even so Cass was taught to lie about who he was early on. Already at nine years old he was told that if he wanted to keep himself – and his mother – alive, he'd better never break out of character around his father's family (especially his grandfather) or indeed any wizards or witches. All through Hogwarts, Cass lived a lie, never letting anyone get close enough that he might give up his secret. Still to this day, he carries sobering potions in his pockets, from a time when he couldn’t afford to get drunk in other people’s company least he’d slip up.

Towards the end of the war, when Cass had barely started Auror training, everything changed as the Death Eaters gained control of the Ministry and Hogwarts and found out his mother’s true identity. His father, who had balanced on the edge of the Death Eaters, barely managing to stay off their radar was killed for his betrayal, but not until Cass' mother was kidnapped, tortured and used against him. Shipping off his son to hiding, Marcus went to beg for her life, doing everything the DEs wanted him to, only to see Linda killed before his own life was ended. There wasn’t even a funeral held, not that Cass could have attended even if there had been one.

Cass spent the last month of the war hiding from his family, and returned only to the final battle. The month less of training, coupled with two weeks in the hospital following the battle, meant that he barely managed to pass the Auror exams that year, but he did pass and was allowed to continue. If he’d been determined before, he was even more so now, and for the first time in his life he found himself needing the job. His grandfather had blocked all his funds, disinherited him and locked him out of the manor. When he died the money and manor went to Cass’ uncle. To Cass it was a big adjustment learning to cope without money, but what was always worse for him was the loss of friends. Some couldn’t live with his bloodstatus, and more couldn’t live with the fact that he’d lied to them for so many years. A few remained, and those Cass keeps very close to his heart.

After the war, Cass eventually got into a routine of his own. He worked, had sex, worried about spending more money than he had and had some more sex. Until June 18, 2015, that was his life and he was fairly content with it. That day though, everything changed as he got a letter informing him that he had an 11 year old son, and that that son was now his responsibility. Over the years he’s tried his best to adapt to the role as a father, but to be honest even he can see that he has flaws. He’s not his own father, as much as he tries to be, he knows he does things wrong. It’s the one relationship in his life he desperately wished worked, but that he has no clue how to make work. He cannot flirt his way into his son’s life, and cannot change the fact that he knew nothing about him for the first eleven years of Dylan’s life.