it came to me

[alt_hydra]

Last night I caught Cressida looking through my things.
Not just looking for a piece of parchment on my desk but trying to open the trunk in my wardrobe.
So I hexed her and now her fingers are swollen up like sausages and she was crying in the night because it hurt.
She couldn't even hold her wand to hex me back, and I think she wanted Norma to do it but Norma wouldn't.
She gave Cressida a salve, instead.
I don't know that it worked that well because at breakfast just now Cressida kept dropping her fork.
Maybe she didn't think I knew that she was the one who stole Tex so long ago.
But I knew and I didn't forget, and I don't want her stealing anything of mine ever again.
Maybe it was a little bit mean to hex her, but Mummy would have done it and so would probably a long time ago, too.
And then I got a parcel from Daddy this morning, so I think it will be a very good day!

Comments

[alt_rodolphus]

Purchases of a different kind, I imagine, or else your figure would suffer as mine has of late. I fear Hydra's taste for sweets was inherited from me, seeing as Bella has no use for them whatsoever. Let us hope she doesn't get my penchant for whiskey and cigars, too.

[alt_narcissa]

Oh, not for myself - at least, not of the sweet variety. Though I will admit I do like seasonal treats for the table, but not of the pudding variety.

Somehow, I cannot imagine Hydra puffing one of those great belvederes of yours, nor tipping back firewhiskey by the shot. I'm sure you're safe from worry on that account.

[alt_bellatrix]

What an unpleasant picture, Cissy. And as much as he likes his little indulgences, you know my husband is just as apt to forget himself for hours at a time over some cursed trinket, then come gasping up the stairs, parched and ravenous. It's good, then, that I left all the elves with specific instructions to attend to his feeding times.

I do hope that you restrained yourself from sending Hydra a hamper as well, or else she'll come home swimming in the stench of sweets.

[alt_narcissa]

No fear, Bella, I knew Rodolphus would see to it that Hydra is well-provided-for now that the floodgates have reopened.

As for your husband, you know I worry about him shutting himself in his workroom even more obsessively when he has no prospect of seeing you at day's end, but you make it sound like he and Rigel both must be tended to in the same manner. I would much rather you leave him and your elves reminders that he ought to increase his visits to the Manor, if he is liable to starve himself otherwise.

(Hydra, we shall have to arrange a portrait of you with one of your Father's cigars, just for the humour in it. What do you think? Perhaps the next time one of your friends hosts a masque?)

[alt_bellatrix]

Husbands and infants can at times be alarmingly alike, Cissy, though I'm sure you will deny it. But you are right that it would be good for him to get out and see family more - especially now, when there is really no way of knowing where the investigation will take me next. Or for how long. I can only praise our Lord that my family yields in understanding and accepts that my absence is necessary at a time when the woefully misguided are out there, threatening our hard-fought way of life.

[alt_narcissa]

Yours, perhaps. Mine, bless him, is generally highly self-sufficient. Infancy is not the age that comes to mind, however, when I think of Lucius in his more fractious moods. But if I am to enjoy any peace I had best leave it there, except to say that I have been extraordinarily lucky that such moods are few and far between.

Rodolphus is welcome as often and for as long as he likes. I'm sure he'll miss you terribly, as shall we all, but it will be worth the sacrifice in the end.

[alt_rodolphus]

You're my family, now. Rabastan's more like the hired entertainment. Who shows up late.

But of course I accept your absence; I only pray that the turning of the tides (a turning which is, of course, inevitable) will bring you back soon.