October 1st, 1893

T

I am sorry that it's taken me a while to say so — (I shall have to blame the election, but) — I am so very sorry about your family. Your father was a good man.

Your Friend,
A

@"Topaz Urquart"

  

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set by MJ!

October 1st, 1893

A,

Thank you. He was a good man. My sister was a good person, too. The funeral already happened.

Everyone is talking about what will be done with us. The ones who are left. My sister Delight is technically of age — well, technically we all are, but of course no one has entertained the idea that I can live on my own, and my younger brother is still in his last year of school. My aunt intends to take us all in, I think. She still feels responsible for what happened — I was walking home from her house when I was attacked. But that was five years ago; I think she ought to have finished off her penance by now, with how guilty she always looks any time I'm around.

I don't like being surrounded by other people's guilt. I suppose that's selfish of me. They're only trying to help.

T.

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   Evelyn McGonagall

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pinned my hopes to the summit of someday

Magnolia

November 28th, 1893

T

I heard that you've left. I'm happy for you, but I suppose that you may never receive this letter. If you do receive it — please let me know if there is, ever, anything you need. I know that you do not like being surrounded by other people's guilt, but I have a great deal of guilt about you — you have had to be the public recipient of everyone's malice towards werewolves while people like me are able to hide in the shadows. I owe you I wish

I wish you every happiness. May freedom bring you peace.

Your Friend,
A

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   Magnolia Addams

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set by MJ!

She could not write him back — obviously — but she held his letter in her hands for a long time and wished she could.

She had gotten other letters, since she ran away. Every time the owl found her she sighed and packed up her trunk and started legging it through the woods, in case it was a trap. In case someone from the Ministry had been sitting by her family member's side when they'd sent the letter and were following the owl with a spell and would swoop down a moment later. She would walk with her shrunken trunk in her pocket, being careful where she stepped so that she didn't leave any tracks that were easy to follow. She would walk until her legs began to ache, and then she would find someplace nearby with enough cover to hide her and get the trunk out and climb inside, and only then would she unfold the letter and read it. She had gotten letters from her aunt, from Delight, from Bash, from old Hogwarts friends she had kept in touch with over the years, from some old Hogwarts friends she hadn't who had been roused from inactivity by the news of her disappearance. None of these letters were the same as A's letter. None of them understood. They all wanted her to come back — even the ones that did not explicitly ask her to come back made self-piteous comments about how worried they were or how they wish she had confided in them, all things that were veiled ways of saying they wished she would come back. Because they felt guilty that she was gone, she understood. She was always surrounded by guilt, everywhere she went. It was thick in the air in every conversation; it was oppressive, the guilt of others, and it bled through the paper even more than the ink did.

A did not want her to come back.

She wished she could write him, because even though she had not been gone long she was already terribly lonely. She did not regret running away, but she felt the weight of what she had done in her whole body every minute. She felt the weight of her separation from everyone who had ever cared for her. The dragon attacks had taken her father and her twin sister, but she had taken everyone else out of her life, and now that was a choice she would have to live with. She did not regret it, but she felt it.

Eventually she turned the piece of paper over and wrote out a reply. She wouldn't send it — she couldn't take any risks, even calculated ones — but she felt that for her own sake she needed to respond, or else this would be one more thing to weigh on her. Thank you for being my friend, she scrawled. She could have written more — told him, maybe, that she had made sure his letters were destroyed before she left, and her old diary was up in flames, and the only person she had ever told about him was dead now, so he didn't have to worry about the fallout from her disappearance. She could have wished him well, wished him luck. She could have said anything, really, since she wasn't going to send this — but in the end those six words were enough, she felt. She folded the paper into a tight square and tucked it away.

  

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pinned my hopes to the summit of someday

Magnolia