School was less than a week away and Sybille was excited. Finally she wouldn’t be the one left behind, the smallest and youngest of them. She wasn’t that anymore anyway, but still, she felt this was a rite of passage. Even bigger than getting her wand. All summer her siblings had groaned at her questions but she still had so many. Once she would have asked mama, who wouldn’t have minded the endless parade of questions but would have humored each and everyone for Sybille. But mama wasn’t an option and Sybille didn’t really like thinking of her anyway. So she looked for her oldest brother, Ace, who was the only one who still answered her questions.

By now one would have thought she would be out of questions, that she would have asked them all. But one still lingered. The biggest one, the one that worried her the most. If she didn’t ask it she was scared she never would, but was it one that she really wanted the answer to?

She had spent most of the morning in the kitchen making a new type of cookie and now that they were finished she had made a plate for her brother. He always looked worried these days, and besides, she’d found that they all tolerated her questions more when she brought treats. So she went searching for Ace a plate of cookies in her hand until she found him in the study. Sybille knocked on the door, peering in as she might have with papa, “Ace? I brought cookies.” She held them out to him as she stepped into the study.