The Dungeons

Dear Little Brother,

You can call off the search party. Right after our call ended, Blaise came back. From Siberia. Idiot boy. If he ever decides to run way, we know that he favours the polar regions.

Blaise seems to have emerged from this experience relatively unscathed. The only thing wounded is his pride. He is mortified. He is also very upset about his hair. But we fixed that with a hair-growing potion.

Oh, Hyperion, yesterday was so terrible. I am shaking with rage and grief just thinking about it. Even though I know that yesterday was a shared nightmare it has illuminated the possibility of Blaise having the capacity for such monumental ruthlessness, cruelty, coldness and selfishnes. How DARE he. How dare he cast off his kith and kin. How dare he abandon me. I cannot go through this again.

Blaise assured me that eremitical monasticism won't be his fate, that it was just some maudlin fantasy.

Blaise has gone to bed, after I made him drink a sleeping draught. He refused at first, wanting to answer the worried queries that had been pouring in. I was about to yell at him, something I rarely did when he was little, and certainly have never done sometime around his majority. He saw the thundering clouds gathered and swallowed the draught

Perhaps I should take some too. I can't sleep. I can't stop thinking of those Carthusian cemeteries with the unmarked graves and plain white crosses and how, one day, my only son might lie in there.

Something must be done.

I will write more later. There are other worried parties that need to be reassured.

Much love,
Allegra

P.S. I am torn between being moved and being angry that both my son and I shared a single vision of a solitary future for me.

Dear Messrs Weasley,

I thank you for the intriguing glimpse of the future and the opportunity to celebrate your natal day with you.

The cost for the provender for the assembled guests comes to 4,000Gal. I have not included labor, etc, as the Elves despite their despair yesterday consider it all in good fun today. Hogwarts appreciates your timely reimbursement, as we have no more budget from which to purchase said necessities, and the home farm is similarly depleted. I am sure you understand, as we do have to feed the children for three more months and you've quite exhausted our stores of staples as well as luxuries.

Yours sincerely,

Horace Slughorn
Deputy Headmaster
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Don't forget 2pm G20 Min of Mag mtg at No.10. Gringotts briefing on desk. *Read*. Also PM & MoM want you at 3.30, Winfield House for mtg w/ POTUS & Sec of Mag. Picking up yr blck Ozwald Boateng suit frm Lk Cttge, will be back 12.45.

*pacing*

The damage extends 6m to either side of the impact point, but the wards held.

I think I need an elf. 

A more pathetic being of a woman I have never met, let alone been before.

DId I still love him in those fifteen years? Yes. I love him now and I loved him yesterday or (fifteen years from now) Everyone's warnings about his proclivity to not settle down turned out right. For almost fifteen years I was willing to be his for a night but never more than a week. Other men and women came between; I didn't abstain and I know he didn't. Especially the year and a half that I never heard from him, but when he returned, there was the proof upon his body.

But he was always mine for a few hours at a time and really if I think about it, could there be anything better? Free to wander physically. Free to do what I needed to do with the Q; to focus and expand the business. Not only to increase profit, but to give Douglas his own little playground. Though it won't involve perverts.

I could be free of the restraints of an actual commitment (not that I saw him offering one in my future, but that's for the best isn't it?), no marriage, no complications, no ties except a happily married brother.

I could be my own person. It has to be the best possible future, right? And it's not like I didn't have the person I love. I just had to share him with others. He can never get bored of me since there are others that come between.

Best possible scenario. It's the best possible scenario. It is the best possible scenario. Best. Possible. Scenario.