May 4th
Art,

So I've been thinking about this and the way I see it, there are some options.

1) S is lying, probably for attention or for the mystique or whatever she thought she was achieving with the vague letters last week;

2) S doesn't think she's lying but she's being hyperbolic because she's an emotional teenage girl and she wants me to feel sorry for her;

3) Something happened but rather than tell me what it really was she's decided to say she was tortured and ran away because she doesn't want to tell me the truth;

4) S's father is actually a psychopath and he did really do that.

She asked me not to talk to the Ministry, but I don't even know whether I could if I did want to. It's not as though I'm on great terms with the department of magical law enforcement after last week, and I don't have any proof that anything happened. I've got a maybe-true-maybe-not letter from a probably-hysterical teenager. But on the other hand it's not like I can just wash my hands of all this and call it a day because there's a missing persons investigation open on her. She just told me where she was (sort of; I guess 'Scotland' is better than nothing?) and aren't I sort of obligated to tell someone that she's not dead?

(As a side note I ran in to her sister (previously unknown sister) and may have kind of already told her that S wasn't dead, but it's not like I had the letter I got from her in my back pocket or anything - does that count as telling someone? Probably not, she's another (potentially hysterical) teenage girl so it's hardly as though secondhand information from her counts as evidence)

Anyway it's pretty clear that she at least ran away from home, and it sounds like it was because of something her family did. If she was just running away to go become a muggle potato farmer for the sake of it, or something, I don't think she'd have been that cagey about where she was or how she'd gotten there. Not with me, anyway. I mean, who would I tell?

Ben