In all fairness, the only family Sophia still accounted for besides her children included her sister and her father. And father still lived in St. Petersburg at the moment. Her sister though, she could hide nothing from. A biological impossibility, perhaps, having been born from the same womb. Sophia’s grave error was her foul mood after departing Oz’s company, a vested interest in a ballroom dance that Sophia never normally possessed. From then it didn’t matter how much she insisted to Lydia that this was nothing— nothing at all, a good conversationalist at most! Lydia didn’t breathe a word to her on the carriage ride home, only to round on her at the staircase upon arrival and issue her condemnation wrapped in acid. This road can only ever lead to bad outcomes the longer you walk it, Phia— do you really think a rake like this would lift so much as a finger to help you the moment you create any inconvenience for him? And who do you think will be left to pick up the pieces!

Sophia didn’t know. Though didn’t agree that it would be Ozymandias’s sole responsibility to dig her out of… poor choices, she hoped he would not strand her entirely. A rake he may be, but she never considered him cruel. That was until she heard him degrading his wife in public… Now, Sophia felt like she knew less than when she started. The best outcome: things would never get to that point. Something they both seemed to agree on.

Perhaps he had more to say; she could see the way his lips turned down with her line of questioning. But at least he finally gave her an answer now, and it struck her as honest. This was all quite normal for him, the same song and dance.

“I see,” the woman relented, fingertips idly strumming along the wine glass. It made Sophia look more thoughtful than satisfied to know to answer, and only made her wonder more. A slippery slope of how often he did this, how long she might suit him, but above it all, why? It was easier for Sophia to feel at ease when The Wife was a faceless and nameless entity. She could suppose the woman was horrifically disfigured from disease, or ugly and dowdy after producing endless children, but she was none of those things.

“I recognized her,” Sophia finally offered, because it seemed like the right thing to admit. It was hard for Soph to place it at the ball, though the answer revealed itself in her row with her sister. “We were at Hogwarts together. Hardly the same social circles, and I left after my fifth year. But I’m certain of it… same year, if not one above. Thomasina, and the Pomfrey family of healers.” Sophia regarded Ozymandias unflinchingly, fingertips folded around the glass. It was curious, wasn’t it? For an gentleman of leisure to pursue someone with such work ethic? It made Sophia suppose that there was love of some kind there, at least once. “My sister Lydia may have been a colleague, at least in the periphery. She worked at Hogsmeade Hospital for some time before having children.”

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