Private Message to Aurora Sinistra

[alt_pomona]

How are you (and your O.W.L. students) faring this week?

It's quite pleasant, I must admit, to be able to use our little books to chat about ordinary things once again. Though I do feel Minerva's continued absence, and not only because Rolanda and Horace and I have been called upon to take up extra duties.

And it sounds as if you've been plunged from the Umbridgian fires into the much happier (but still wearing) cauldron of wedding preparations--I do hope all continues well in that arena?

Comments

[alt_pomona]

I'll have to think on it. Mr Finch-Fletchley did visit her while she was in the infirmary, and as a newer member of the sett, he sometimes has fresh insights and is less hampered by past history.

I'm inclined to agree with you that it will take more than time away over hols to mend things, though currently everyone seems anxiously determined to behave as if things are normal.

In some ways, Miss Jones' response may be the healthier, despite the brooding and the rather severe robes she's taken to wearing. Whereas, others, like, say, Mr MacMillan, don't seem to acknowledge that anything out of the ordinary happened at all.

[alt_sinistra]

Not that you need me to tell you this, but you taking this much care with it makes me glad all over again I'm of the sett, and not somewhere else.

It's not that I don't understand the temptation to push it all aside. Or have some very good examples of how sometimes that's helpful. But you're right, I'm not sure it's actually for the best, long-term. Or what it will mean next time something else so very difficult happens. (Been asking myself that question a lot recently. I'm still none too happy with some of my own responses to this thing or that.)

And I've had more than a few conversations recently where I wonder if I'm doing anything that helps, or making things worse, or what, and then realising I won't even really know for months, maybe years. (Things no one ever tells you about teaching, really.)

Which does rather bring us around to past history again. There's no escaping it, is there? Do we want to do something next Monday? And might that, actually, be a way to see about reintegrating some of the sett more than they are right now?

[alt_pomona]

Perhaps a quiet candle-lighting at the site of the previous ceremony?

I do hope that it may help heal some of the tension between Miss Jones, Miss Bones, and Miss Midgen especially.

I can tell that they all miss Miss Abbott, though each has dealt with it in her own way.

[alt_sinistra]

Candles, and then - I don't know. Tea and biscuits and cocoa. It seems so absurd, but it does help, I think. The food.

Why don't we both think, and we can talk more Thursday or Friday? Figure out what we need, and how to arrange it.

You're right. Anything that might help, it seems worth doing.

[alt_pomona]

Food does seem to have a soothing effect, especially after having it forbidden so recently.

Let's plan to talk again--I, for one, am for a cup of chamomile and my bed.

It's always a pleasure, my dear.