Sera pressed her free hand over her mouth as Philip told his story. "I remember," she said through her fingers. She had been a child, had not even gone to Hogwarts yet. But she remembered hearing the story — Philip had hexed Robin and left him half deaf, wasn't that funny? Didn't that remind them of how he'd gotten the nickname Flip in the first place? But it had always struck her as odd, that story. Because Philip had never showed a temper. If anything he'd been docile, and thoughtful, and gentle. Not the sort to throw hexes, or to flip a table. Seraphina had thought he was boring.

She moved her hand to wrap it around her throat. She knew she had to look crazy; with her hair half undone and her hand on her throat. But it was as if she had been shoved back into her body after years, and was regaining control for the first time. "Philip, you — you haven't talked about Quidditch in years." He'd never talked about it when she was in Hogwarts, at least — Sera still found the time since she was a debutante to be blurry. There were children. There was a husband. She could not remember either of her names.

But she could remember other pieces. Seraphina drummed her fingers against her throat. "Mama's friend told me I was too flirtatious with her son," she admitted. Her voice was shrill. This was an impossible level of betrayal. It was impossible. "And Mama told me to be more — chaste." It was an embarrassing conversation at the time. Sera remembered promising to be more careful. She remembered insisting to her mother that she would never make a mistake that would damage the family; (although privately Seraphina had thought flirting to be an important part of finding a husband, and that her mother's friend was a prude. Still, it was embarrassing — so she'd wanted to be more careful.)

She crumpled Robin's note in her hand. "And the next day father called me into his office," she said, more firm this time. "And I suppose that he made me pay, too."

A thought struck her, selfish: she had not even done anything.