A daughter may outgrow your lap, but she will never outgrow your heart. Monty smiled to himself as he read the quotation. Catherine had picked out the Christmas card from them both to Zeta, and had left them hidden in the studio for him to sign.

Quite correct, though with three of you its getting rather crowded Monty penned with his best calligraphy quill in purple ink. Though since you've outgrown your sister this year, this is especially true for you! Ah, soppy love notes, she'd only squirm and make a face being a teenager, if anyone else outside of the family saw this. But he meant it. He wasn't supposed to have favourites, but he'd always felt closest to Zeta, the middle child, the arty one.

Finishing his note, he sealed all three cards, delighting in the fact he could leave a witty comment about Theta and her new boyfriend in the card, with Catherine having signed them already before she'd gone out to work. Muggles! Despite it being Christmas Eve, apparently accountants still needed to be attended to, well, he supposed it was Thursday after all. Monty made a point of never working Christmas Eve, when else would he wrap everyone's presents?

Stepping back into the living room, he could hear Eta upstairs bumbling back from the bathroom to her room, probably wrapped up in trying to master the tarot, trying to work out if the trip to America really had been fate. He popped the envelopes beneath the Christmas tree upon a stack of colourfully wrapped presents, and called out softly to Zeta.

"Fancy a cup of tea?" He asked his second daughter, "Think we can safely break out your mum's Christmas blend, if you fancy it?" He was hopeful. It seemed like the relationship between them had been a bit shaky since she'd returned from holiday. Seeing them come into the living room, bundled with trunks, amongst Theta, Francis and Gabrielle, their cousins with them, it had been a cacophony of noise and pets and surprise. Had he been able to break it another way, he would have, but it was done now.

"Reckon we can re-seal the tape on the Roses[1] tin without her noticing?"

1.	Chocolate assortment popular in the UK (Assortment)

Zeta had been spending the day sprawled out on various sorts of furniture, staring at pads of paper and outlining faces on them in thick black lines.

She managed not to react the first question. It's not real if you don't look. But the second one got her, and she turned to look at her father. Or the man who was very much like him but was still old and little different and going to die soon now, so she just jerked her head back to looking at her drawing. Christmas was  going to be awful. "Christmas Blend's still my favorite." Her voice shook a little. He'd probably forgotten.

It was too quiet. She didn't want to be thinking. Or looking. Even if she really did like the Roses. "Remember last time? She noticed cause all the purple ones were missing."

But she had to look sometime, and so she slowly moved her eyes from the paper towards him. The pencil in her hand cracked a little. "You could color change some of the wrappers, right?"

"Shhh!" Her father hissed, like she'd just uttered something forbidden. "Otherwise your sister might get in on that little secret."

Monty tilted his head and looked upwards towards Eta's bedroom upstairs.
"And she was the chief muncher of the purple ones last year, can't risk that again." He gave Zeta a look that showed this was all a joke between them.

"I'll put the kettle on then. Do me a favour love and clear space on the table. Don't want to get tea on your drawings. I've a whole term's worth of Professors to catch up on, I believe." His voice trailed away a little as he went into the adjacent kitchen and began to put together a tea tray. The strawberry pattern set had been put away for Christmas, replaced with one adorned with holly leaves and berries, with matching cups.

Christmas tea was just a hyped up version of bog standard tea, in Monty's opinion, only a little more spiced. But it was good for a change, and it tasted all the better for being in patterned mugs. Still, it was one step in a long path to regaining Zeta's trust. Whether it was just the whole teenage thing or the change, he wasn't sure. He'd never been fantastic about talking to his daughters about womanly things. Dear Merlin, he wasn't looking forward to the day where Eta caught her sisters up and he was faced with three irritable women...! Thank goodness Theta had moved out... even if he missed her and her ruddy clocks... and the cat.

"Here we go." Monty landed the teatray in the gap on the table, and waggled a hand at Zeta sprawled on the sofa.
"Room on there for a wild hairy one?"

"But being eaten is the fate of sweets." Zeta stuck her tongue out a little at him. Eta was so weird about that! Unfortunately, nothing Zeta had learned in Divination seemed to put her off. It wasn't like there were secret seers hiding everywhere.

She nodded at her father's request, then shoved a pile of papers to the side in a gesture that left the top sheet hanging over the table's edge. The top one showed a very tall man with exaggerated glasses and feet, and the half-visible one beneath it was of a grumpy man looking very, very confused by a severed hand.

Her pencil had left little shards of wood on the couch.

She was just starting to sink back into grumpy thoughts (and into the couch) when she looked up to see the tray of tea. In the Christmas cups. At least something was right with the world. "Maybe!" She scooted over a little, and looked over at him. "But you have to keep your feet on that end." Ewww, old feet.

"My feet?" Monty asked, confused, but went to sit down in the space made available, but paused one moment to remove a slipper and wiggle his foot in a tartan sock towards his daughter for just a moment before chuckling at her disgust and complying.

"Ah, just be teasing you." He assured her and set about stirring the tea, his eyes becoming busy looking at the drawings spread around her.
"I see you've changed the way you do the eyes." He remarked, popping the lid back onto the teapot and pouring two cups. "There's more expression in them now, fantastic. Eyes are important."

Her father glanced towards the living room door and lowered his voice mysteriously, mimicking Eta,
"They are the windows of the soul...!"

He hadn't forgotten how his daughter liked tea. At least he hoped not.
"I'll leave it on the tray a bit, let it cool. Where are those Roses...?" It didn't take long to find the big blue tin which had been stowed beside the sofa, and a few neat movements of his wand had the lid off in such a way that they could safely seal it again later without Catherine ever knowing.

"So come on then, give me a run down of the weird and wonderful at Hogwarts, and leave a few purple ones, right?" Father rattled the tin of chocolates affectionately under daughter's nose, trying desperately to restore normality between them. To make her smile, and feel able to sit up beside him. But she was a teenager. Small steps.

"Aaaah, feet!" Zeta jerked back from them and squealed.  He was teasing. She'd missed teasing. "And the mouth is the window of the...stomach!"

At least the tea seemed right.

She looked down at the tin of candy, suspiciously. It would take more than chocolate...but chocolate was a pretty good start. Pushed herself up to sitting and grabbed at it. "But you'll eat all the purple ones left!" She gave her father a very disapproving look, then cracked a little bit of a smile.

"Hmm...one of the Professors was a horse, and there's the Tournament. The Durmstrang people seem very serious. And McGonagall is the Headmistress again." Another piercing look at the candy. "And I didn't have a date for the Yule Ball. Ambrose did, though! Maybe I should have looked more."

"Psh," Monty replied to Zeta's comment about the ball. "The boys should have looked harder. None of them are good enough for my Zeta." He raised an eyebrow and shook his head. "Don't you worry about what Ambrose does or doesn't do, either. You're not him." Thank goodness, Monty added quietly. Much as he loved Ambrose, the boy was a pickle.

He unwrapped one of the chocolates and popped it into his mouth, his moustache twitching as he chewed a moment. His fingers smoothed out the wrapping, contemplating what to turn it into.

"Hang on, your professor was a horse? What have they got the centaurs teaching again?" He asked, confused, "Come on, show me, paint me a picture of Hogwarts this term, Eta's just been spouting nonsense about omens."

He dropped the wrapper from his fingertips, moving his wand in quick tight circles, watching it curl around into a butterfly which fluttered and then promptly plopped into his tea, one pink wing still partially visible.
"I'm destined to drown an innocent insect, clearly," He muttered, pretending to be worried.

Zeta blushed fiercely, and wiggled a little closer to her father on the couch. "But what if they're always like that? What do I do then? What if I get taller than most of them?" She was already taller than her sister. Though Theta wasn't that tall.

She gobbled down one piece of chocolate, than snatched for another. He was being silly again! "No! Professor Trishna got turned into a horse. He had wings and everything. And one of the Gryffindor prefects turned into a cat. They talked about it on the Wireless."

A sigh and she thought a little. There had been so many things, which one to pick? "Hogwarts feels really full. There's all these new students and teachers and they don't all get along and sometimes I run into them because there's so many people in the halls when I'm drawing." She started folding a chocolate wrapper up into a flower while watching the butterfly her dad had made.

"People were scared that Salem had dragon pox, but they didn't!" That had been a mess. "I like the Salem students, though. They seem interesting, but most of them are older." She tried not to frown. Older students didn't want to talk to fourth years, usually. Though she'd tried to draw some of them.

"But what if they're always like that? What do I do then? What if I get taller than most of them?"

Monty shook his head.
"Don't worry yourself my love, us boys grow after you girls. You'll see, I reckon Ambrose will grow half a dozen inches before you know it. Then again, you could take after me..." he gestured to the fact he was the tallest in the household, "but boys love girls whatever height they are, trust me." He tapped his nose and listened intently, after fishing out the sweet wrapper butterfly.

"People were scared that Salem had dragon pox, but they didn't! I like the Salem students, though. They seem interesting, but most of them are older."

"Yes, Theta said about the pox, she'd been in a flap back here that your or your sister would have come down with it while we were away. Glad you hadn't though, its nasty stuff." He raised his eyebrows and stroked his beard. "No older Salem boy take your eye? You can always tell them I make flying cars over there, that seems to get their attention... just saying."

Father smiled at daughter, daring to mention the twenty missing years.

"Let's see the sketches then, sweetheart."

"I heard boys don't like tall girls." Zeta wiggled in even closer, watching the fluttering of the wrapper butterfly and her dad's gestures. "But they do like cars!" She would have to remember that.

But she wasn't going to think about why he had cars. Just more candy. Assuming her dad didn't eat all of it.

She snatched up the sketches when he asked, and handed them to him. "Don't get chocolate on them! I made even more this year." If she could have managed a stern look,  she'd have sent it in his direction. But stern looks were one thing she was terrible at.

"I need new quills. Mine drip funny some times, and then I have to redraw all of it." Her lips wiggled as she thought, and she stuffed another bit of chocolate into her mouth, leaving a little bit of it melted on her face.

"Rubbish!" Monty scoffed at the claim that boys didn't like tall girls. At her age, he didn't want to go into details of why, well not for a few more years!

At her protests about chocolate he held up two clean hands and scooped her drawings together, settling back on the sofa to examine each in turn, grinning, his moustache curling.

"I need new quills. Mine drip funny some times, and then I have to redraw all of it." Zeta remarked, and Monty looked up in surprise.
"Hope you mentioned that to Father Christmas." He said, though his eyes slid to the presents under the tree. He was pretty sure he'd bought some of those self-inking quills with the high quality ink, the dearer ones that he used to use for the odd bit of calligraphy on Christmas cards when the children were younger. Sometimes they'd even sent those ones to Catherine's relatives who knew he was an artist.

"Here," He produced a white handkerchief from his pocket - bit of dried paint on one corner but otherwise clean and wiped at her face with the chocolate smeared on it. "And you tell me off for getting chocolate on things!" He shook his head and chuckled at her.

"Who's this then?" He pointed at a drawing of a man with long hair and an eyepatch. "You got a pirate teaching you this year?"

"I sent him a letter. I don't know if he got it." Zeta tipped her head, looking at the wrapped presents and then at her dad as if he might give something away. Just because she only had to wait one day more to open them didn't mean she was good at waiting.

She pouted a little at the handkerchief. "Hey! I was going to lick that off." Her tongue ran its way across her lips and frowned. Wasn't going to lick it off that.

"You got a pirate teaching you this year?"

Shook her head. "No, that's Professor Kesali. He's weird." From the tone of her voice, it wasn't necessarily the good sort of weird. There were lots of sorts of weird.

Her father gave nothing away about the tree, he knew that look - he'd seen it on her face since she was old enough to understand what Christmas was.

"I think it was returned to sender..." He teased her and chuckled and shook his head to indicate he was joking.

"Weird eh? What sort of weird? Weird as in has weird habits, weird as in looks weird, weird as in does weird things or weird as in different to your normal professor?" Monty asked his daughter earnestly. "Hang about, you don't have normal professors do you? Its Hogwarts after all." He raised the drawing up and tilted his head, approving of the lines. Hard without a subject to see how best she had emphasized the quirks, but he could see the man's long hair, the eyepatch...

"What does he teach then? Looks fluffy, can't be history or defences, though actually, could be with the eye patch - bit of trouble in the past?" Monty thought for a moment. "Name's familiar, can't quite place it."

"You're mean. You read all my letters, every one of them." Zeta pouted again, teasingly. "Even the stained ones that smelled as if I spilled something on them."

She leaned her head against her father's chest and looked at the drawing. There were little lines and smudges that on it and she should have done better. "He teaches charms. Sometimes he'll wear earring to class and things." She sort of shrugged, not seeming bothered by that at all.

"But he said he might expel Winnie, and he tried to get Ambrose to drink Fire Whiskey and threatened to break people's noses!"  She'd said she wasn't going to tell anyone else at school about it, but he knew he told her Dad everything. Or almost everything. It didn't seem like her Dad had changed at all anymore.

"I know I know," Monty replied gently, "I just like to hear you tell me about them too." He didn't want to point out that he had to re-read her letters in the first few days of them all being home because he'd not seen them in twenty years.

But it seemed to be enough, his dear daughter who had seemed so apart from him since she had got back and had the shock, laid her head on him and he smiled, putting an arm round her so they could settle together closely.

"But he said he might expel Winnie, and he tried to get Ambrose to drink Fire Whiskey and threatened to break people's noses!"

"Really? From what I remember of Winnie its not much surprise with her and Ambrose about. Did he now, well, it'll put hairs on Ambrose's chest if he does, and what are a few broken noses in a charms class? Kesali sounds like a good sort of weird if you ask me, pirate patch and earring included." He chuckled, "These are good, but proportion is a little off there, hmm, not sure, artistic license for you darling."

He turned over the parchment to find another wizard, who he recognised this time.
"Ahh our friend Mr Morgan, yes?" He asked his daughter, "You've got rather good at drawing him indeed, does this mean your time in the library is going to good use sweetheart?" Monty suspected that Mr Morgan's longer presence at Hogwarts in recent years had allowed Zeta to capture him very well by serial illustration. The man had a rather thin face, like he was bad tempered all the time.