May 16th, 1888 - Ari's House

She'd been ignoring the problem for so long that now she might actually have a problem. For days, now, Zelda had waffled - she didn't know what to do or who to talk to. Mr. Darrow was not an option, or he was, but she did not know what to say. The list of people who could help her was short. The list of people who could help her and be guaranteed not to tell her father was, well, non-existent.

She missed Mom.

It was easy enough to break into Ari's house. For one thing, she had spent so much of her Hogwarts summers harassing him and Julian that she had methods. For another, now she could just apparate in. She was sitting on Ari's couch when he got home from work, with one of his books open in front of her, although mostly she had just been rereading the same paragraph for the past ten minutes.

She had some whole nonchalant entrance in her head: Ari was going to walk in, and she was going to shrug her shoulders and hassle him about his workday until she finally broke into her problem. That wasn't what happened. Instead, Ari walked in and Zelda closed the book too fast, dropping it onto his sitting room floor with a clatter.

"Evening Ari," she said, "So - erm - how was work? I want to hear all about how work was."

It was neither cool nor collected; her tone was nothing if not nervous.

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