Sera was not sure he was right; it seemed so risky to send a child to Hogwarts under the imperius curse, and she suspected that maybe Robin and Philip just didn't get along. But it wasn't worth arguing when they would discover it eventually, and once Philip was at her level, Sera felt soothed — it was a reminder that she was not the only person struggling with this, or alone in this room.

She could have sat there looking like an asylum patient for the rest of the afternoon, letting the waves of distress wash over her until they figured more of this out, but there was something like a question lodged in her throat. She was sure she would figure it out eventually, but it was hard to know how to operate without finding the root of this feeling — even in all the rush of every other feeling she had not had for years. And eventually, she was going to have to go back home. (Was that place her home? It was, it had to be, the staff had been talking to her — but she did not feel connected to any place right now. Everything that had ever been home had too many markers of her father.)

It was also hard to imagine herself as having a husband. Finding a husband was the culmination of achievement as a debutante — and his face was blurry to her memory, and she did not know anything about him except that she had not been particularly impressed by any of the decoration in their shared sitting room. But she did not know who he was, really — she had vague memories of a dance with him before she was Under the curse, and knew that she'd considered him horrendously boring at the time. But what would Philip know of his wife?

"Maybe he'll die," Seraphina said, quiet, and sounding younger than she was. 1893 was still an impossible year. "Wouldn't it be easy, if the stroke just killed him?"

If it did, they would never again figure it out how to speak to their father.