It feels foolish to write to you when I know just where to Apparate and am reasonably certain my company would be welcome, but I cannot get away today and am wanting to speak - or write, at least - to someone who won't return my attempts at civility with scorn or disappointment.
Certainly I should not be surprised at my family's reception of where I spent the greater part of the day when I was with you. Parvati isn't speaking to me and my father appears to be warring with the usual fatherly suspicions where young men are concerned and the particulars of your person - will it be a small comfort to you to know that the fact you are not Indian is just as unsavory as who your father is, or was? It was not to me, either.
I am most unsettled, of course, by my mother, who seems to think my behavior reasonable so long as I intend some sort of reformation of your character. I will only say that for all her talks of reason, she is far from willing to do so herself.
Yet there is sweet with sour. I have not been expressly forbade from visiting you, though I do fear I may not escape such mandates this holiday should they never have the opportunity to determine the honesty and integrity of your person for themselves.
Padma
10 December 1998
Theodore,
It feels foolish to write to you when I know just where to Apparate and am reasonably certain my company would be welcome, but I cannot get away today and am wanting to speak - or write, at least - to someone who won't return my attempts at civility with scorn or disappointment.
Certainly I should not be surprised at my family's reception of where I spent the greater part of the day when I was with you. Parvati isn't speaking to me and my father appears to be warring with the usual fatherly suspicions where young men are concerned and the particulars of your person - will it be a small comfort to you to know that the fact you are not Indian is just as unsavory as who your father is, or was? It was not to me, either.
I am most unsettled, of course, by my mother, who seems to think my behavior reasonable so long as I intend some sort of reformation of your character. I will only say that for all her talks of reason, she is far from willing to do so herself.
Yet there is sweet with sour. I have not been expressly forbade from visiting you, though I do fear I may not escape such mandates this holiday should they never have the opportunity to determine the honesty and integrity of your person for themselves.