Getting ready for school Sylvia pouted and glared at the back of Simon’s head as he leant over, packing his trunk. It wasn’t fair. Simon got everything because he was older. He was the heir, and even if he hadn’t been older, he still would have been heir because he was a boy. And he got to go to school first, and to meet people and make connections (which was the most important thing in life), and did he even seem happy about it? No. The way Simon looked as he packed up his textbooks was like he was being sent to his death. If he didn’t think he could do it, then Sylvia would be perfectly happy to do it for him, only no one would let her because she was only seven and a girl.
She dispensed with the frown as Simon straightened up. Diplomacy had only been minimally touched on in her etiquette lessons so far but even she knew that it was silly to frown at someone when you wanted them to like you. And she did want that, not that she thought Simon needed to be worked on much but because she had decided that he was good practice for other people, and Sylvia wanted everyone to like her.
“Looks like you’re almost ready to go,” she said, pouting her lower lip out slightly and staring at him with big puppy dog eyes, so that it might seem like she was sad rather than annoyed. “Will I still be your exploding snap buddy even if you make lots of new friends?” she asked.
Simon had thought he was alone with his books and private dreads, so every muscle in him tensed up when he realized he was not even though he quickly realized the intruder was only his sister. He bit his lip at her expression, hoping very much that Sylvia wasn’t going to start crying.
“I – guess so,” he said awkwardly, gesturing to the neatly-folded stack of green robes and the books he had just tucked into their places on the other side of the trunk. It had all been packed up, but Simon had taken his books out again to look over them, thinking this might give him some hope of not making a fool out of himself on the first day of classes. Father would never forgive him if one of the Muggleborns – and there would be some, he knew, if in a very academic way he hadn’t quite accepted as real yet; Sonora had a reputation for attracting the right sort of student, but every school supposedly had…others, too – out-performed him in class at all, but it would be even worse if it happened on the first day. “Just a few more things and I can lock it up.”
He smiled at her question, not so much because it amused him as because it was something he could answer in a way he thought would reduce the likelihood of crying. Sylvia crying was, he had gathered within a remarkably short time of realizing there was something alive inside the bundle of blankets his mother had taken to making such a fuss over some years ago, in all ways undesirable and to be avoided as much as possible. “Of course,” he said at once. “And you can practice by trouncing our cousins while I’m gone and maybe be better than me by the time I get back.”
Sylvia's face broke into a big smile, not only because she knew that was the response Simon would want to his reassurance and his kindness but also because it had worked.