May 12th, 1894 — Philip Rowle Household, Mayfair

Sundays were annoying. Her husband was home all day, there were rarely events, she was starting to get tired of spending so much time in the club. She did not know how to fill her days; there were books and there was the garden and there was keeping house, but none of those felt like enough for her. Maybe if she had not spent so much time trudging through the imperius curse, she would have a better sense of how to fill her weekends.

If anyone else was bored, and would have sympathy on how to fill boredom, it would be Philip. She flooed to his house without announcing herself, and announced to the staff that she was inviting herself to her brother's office.

Sera stepped into Flip's quarters of the house and held up a bottle of Henry's white wine as an invitation. "Have some time for me?" she asked.

Philip Rowle Elias Grimstone

  

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“I think you’ll find that I’m a very busy man,” Philip drawled – and although it was largely true these days, his tone was weighted down with sarcasm. Still, to answer in the affirmative, he kicked out the leg of a chair for her and reached a hand out, brusquely, for the bottle.

He leant forwards, elbows on some paperwork. “Just bought a new house,” he explained. Well, technically – it was an old country house, not newly built. Also he had finalised the purchase a few weeks ago, and Alexandra was already busy arranging to decamp the family there for the summer. (It wasn’t a secret, but Philip also wasn’t going out of his way to tell his siblings anything anymore.)

“Why, what do you want?”

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   Seraphina Bythesea

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She handed over the bottle. A new house. There was a pang of something like jealous in Sera's gut — after a second, she identified it solidly as jealousy. A new house, one their father had never touched, never decorated.

"Am I not allowed to want a relationship with my most interesting sibling?" Sera complained. Philip got to be a man; he had money and could buy a Quidditch team, he could ignore his wife, he could buy a new house. Sera's husband started to look at her strange if she went for too long without seeing their father.

  

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Philip conjured a pair of glasses for them and poured the wine, generously. As he did, he cocked his head sideways to consider her. Most interesting – blatant flattery. But also a sign that she was still largely herself, and not the old shell of Seraphina Bythesea née puppet of Algernon Rowle.

He set her wine in front of her and kept up his look of scrutiny, because she, like the rest, was still an accessory to Robert’s plan, so she could not wheedle her way into his confidences again, no matter how much he would have liked her to be there. The more lively their father got, the more dangerous it was. “Depends,” he said, partly taunting. “Are you working for the enemy?”

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Philip's morality in regards to their father were what Seraphina wished she had — the freedom to avoid her father.

Sera smiled. "I'm observing the enemy," she said — she hoped Flip had seen her update in the journal a few weeks before. "As he has been remarkably resistant to dying. I'm not working for him." She wished, sometimes, that they'd put a pillow over Algernon Rowle's head back in September.

  

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Resistant to dying would not have been the case if anyone had supported him in murder, but Philip did not trust Seraphina enough at the moment to elucidate the thought verbally, even to say I told you so.

But where observing was getting her, he wasn’t sure. So she thought she was clever enough to play at being Under, intercede before their father made a move – Philip was of the opinion that Sera was only making herself a canary in the coal mine. One day she would come back from a visit a true turncoat, her mind not her own. And it would serve her right.

“Make sure you congratulate him on his first steps for me,” he said acidly, between sips of wine. “Can he string a sentence together yet?”

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Philip's tone was acid-sour, and Sera took a sip of her wine before she replied. "Simple ones," she said, "The nurse appears to be rather competent." Sera wished that they had invested in an idiot, but that would have been too much to ask for — and may have made them suspicious.

But what did it matter if they looked suspicious when people had surely noticed by now that she had redeveloped a personality?

  

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Philip frowned. So if they did turn around and ask him to addle the old man, there would be questions – unless they accounted for the nurse too. Robin’s plans never would be as tidy as he wanted. They were fools to try.

And Seraphina wasn’t as good an actress as she might have thought she was. “Go on,” he prompted, scrutinising her face. “What do you tell him, then?” He put on a voice; “I’m well, my husband’s well, everyone’s perfectly dead inside, –” and then raised his eyebrows. “And what do you do all day, anyway?” Sit at home and play nice with her husband, he imagined, as their father would have made her? How could she be satisfied in that?

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"Get out and try to scrape together a life," Sera said, irritation leaking into her voice. "Then come home and try to keep my husband from looking at me." They could kill their father and she would still be shackled to Henry, a man who had never done anything rebellious in his life, who ought to have known that something was not right with his wife.

"I don't own anything, Flip. Henry says I should visit our father and then I go and I tell him dull facts about the children and hope he doesn't look at me, either." 

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   Philip Rowle

He shut his mouth before he spoke, caught off guard by that. Philip had never been much good at putting himself in other people’s shoes, so he had not thought much about Sera’s life from this perspective. He had never been remotely scared of Alexandra, though he’d hardly known her; he didn’t think he had even hated her. That was a small mercy – but an unexpected mercy, nonetheless.

He tipped the half-full wine bottle onto one edge of its base to twirl it on the desk, suddenly thoughtful. “Maybe you should put laudanum in his wine,” he suggested offhand: this was an attempt at showing sympathy. That was what Henry suspected what his wife’s vice was, wasn’t it? (Philip may have had much less patience for his brother-in-law since becoming himself again, but he had still heard a few things through the grapevine.)

Maybe what he ought to ask Sera, really, was what she would want to do with herself if she were actually free.

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   Seraphina Bythesea

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Seraphina was nearly embarrassed by her outburst — it went about the instincts that had been ingrained in her when she was Under. But now she was awake, and she was angry — and there was vindication in her chest that Philip saw her anger, and did not look away. Maybe that was why she enjoyed visiting him; Robin and Edwin were not nearly angry enough.

"Oh, but then he'd be even more dull," Seraphina jested. "And whatever will I do then?"

  

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“Duller, maybe,” Philip agreed jovially, “but if you drug him enough he might at least be blind to your antics.” He was being partially flippant here, although he liked the idea of it – because no matter how drugged-up and stupid her husband was, other people were not, and would surely find talk to stir up about Sera.

Unlike their father – obviously – Philip had never been able to bring himself to care about where he stood in other people’s opinions. Maybe it was different for women and wives, he didn’t know. Smirking, he added: “My wife would give anything to have a dull husband.” To have her dull husband back, he might’ve said – only Philip didn’t think she had liked him much before, either.

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Sera quirked a half smile. She was not sure that she would drug Henry — it was an option, but a risky one. She sometimes suspected that her husband was sharper than she gave him credit for — mentally, and in terms of personality.

"I realize I was Under for most of my time knowing her," Sera said, "But I do think that Alexandra and I are rather different."

She just could not bring herself to trust her in-laws.

  

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“Mm, I’m sure,” Philip agreed for Sera’s benefit, although in truth his wife had surprised him. She possessed more of a temper than he had thought. (Perhaps more than Algernon Rowle had thought, too; she just hadn’t had the opportunity to display it until now.)

“I’d wager you managed to make more friends while you were Under than she has her whole life.” He grinned at her; this was needlessly cruel to Alexandra, but firstly he didn’t care, and secondly he was – he supposed – trying to cheer Sera up about the evidently pathetic state of her affairs.

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   Alexandra Rowle

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Sera grinned back at Flip; she was not sure if he was being honest, or if he was just trying to make her feel better, but either way she was pleased. "Well," she said, "We'll see how I do now."

  

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