Evening, after this thread.


Time healed all wounds. But for Aileen Reid, it had the opposite effect.

From the moment she stepped out of the Astronomy tower, stopped by her office to collect her things, and dropped Kneph at home with her sister, the relaxed mood she'd had with Tapendra slowly dissipated, leaving behind one unfortunate emotion.

Anger - so unlike her mother's anger. It stiffened her steps as she walked through the front courtyard of her parent's home. It curled her fingers into one neat fist as she knocked. And as she waited, it smoothed any emotion from her face, save for the hard glint in her eyes.

The door opened to reveal the ancient house elf, sticking his nose up at her. His nostrils flared in unhappy shock. No, she hadn't owled ahead.

"If my mother isn't too busy shrieking her fury to the heavens," Aileen swept past the creature to stand in the foyer. "Would you please fetch her? It's urgent."

Urgent. A curious word choice. Yet by Aileen's logic, if Cullodena could ruin her mornings, afternoons, and evenings with an ill-timed owl, then she could very well scurry to meet her eldest daughter's wrath.

Aileen raised an eyebrow at the elf, expecting him to hop to it. "I will be in the sitting room," she swept past him once more, ignoring his sputtering as she moved down the hall.

With a wave of her wand, the lights filled the stately room, banishing shadows and stretching up to illuminate the frowning faces of the portraits. Aileen had become used to Hogwarts with its dim, winding corridors and darkened doorways. The castle housed so many young voices and running feet during the day, snores and whispers at night. Here, in this too-large house, the lights shone as beacons where voices had to echo against the walls to meet one another.

Aileen let out a soft sigh, smoothing her dress and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She perched on the edge of the same curved couch she'd sat on when visiting for Christmas. Her shoulders slumped for a moment, until the clock tolled the hour.

As soon as the Reid matron appeared, Aileen stood, holding up a hand to ward off any questions.

"Mother. So good to see you," she greeted her in a tone that could frost glass. Remaining where she was, Aileen plucked a shred of scarlet from her pocket. As she held it in the air, a wispy thread of smoke wavered between mother and daughter.

"We really need to discuss your preferred method of communication."

The corners of Aileen's mouth curved up, sharp as the jagged edge of evidence she held.

Cullodena swept into the room, her full skirt brushing against the furniture, her blonde hair done up beneath one of her more subdued hats. The birds on the hat wavered as she moved into the room, and she stopped directly in front of Aileen.

She did not sit.

She turned her nose up at the fragment of a Howler, and focused upon her daughter a most disapproving frown. "You have gotten the letters. And yet you still refuse to write. I was beside myself when I heard of this ridiculous internship you've inflicted upon Abigail!"

One hand went to her forehead and she fell back into a chair with the ease of someone who had done so far too many times before. "You know she's far too delicate for such work. Let alone considering what dreadful influences you've exposed her to. What if she picks up something from all these Muggles she might encounter?"

That the shrillness of her voice did not break glass was simply because there was little glass about to break.

When her mother bustled and rustled into the room, looking most displeased, Aileen merely raised her eyebrows a fraction of an inch. But that hat. That hat said it all. Struck dead by the sound of Cullodena's voice, the little birds must have fallen from the treetops outside and into the hat's netting, now doomed to bob agreeably at her mother's every squawk.

The professor, who had survived cursed tombs and murderous cults, could think of no worse a fate.

Though Cullodena’s confusion about which Howler might have been darkly funny any other time, Aileen resisted the urge to snap back. If she started arguing with her about Abby, she'd be here for months.

"Delicate?” Aileen remained standing, unmoved by her mother's fluttering fall to the chair. “No," she waved her hand.

“Do you happen to remember how many Howlers you sent today? Do you keep a schedule? A list, perhaps?” Her words sounded crisp, each one a tiny island in a sea of disdain.

Turning away, Aileen spoke faster as she paced. “The second Friday of every month,” she ticked off a finger, “Beleaguered daughters first, then cousins, then wives of cousins? Hm? Is that how it works? Am I missing anyone?”

“This,” she stopped in front of her, giving the scrap of Howler a little shake. "Blew up a certain professor's desk an hour ago. Shards of wood everywhere. You'll be pleased to know you nearly impaled us both."

Aileen threw up her hands, letting the howler drift from her grasp. "Which is nothing compared to what you said. Your ridiculous, offensive accusations! Taking advantage? What do you think happened in that box, mother?" She glared. "Have the birds pecked at your brain?”

"My memory is adequate, Aileen. I do not require lists." The sheer thought. She wouldn't have to keep writing Howlers if her relatives did not insist on continuing their errant, dangerous ways. Without considering how disruptive they were to their family, even!

Cullodena sighed at just how truly put upon she was, ignoring half of Aileen's rant as her daughter went on. Would she never learn? "I would not have to resort to such measures if you replied to my letters! What would you have me do, ignore the well-being of my children entirely?"

That she'd never manage. Who else did she have? Even if her daughters were so terribly thoughtless when it came to matters of society. "You sit it a box with a man of such questionable status and do not even consider how it impacts your own? Would you have no prospects at all?"

There was a soft noise as the pearls on her cloak's pin knocked against each other, disturbed by the force of her sentiments.

"No. I didn't sit with a man of such questionable status,” she said coolly, ignoring her mother's jab about her prospects. “I invited that man of such questionable status to accompany me."

She paused to let that sink in.

“Why, you might ask? To vex you? Wrong again. Professor Trishna happens to be a colleague I've come to respect, and trust me, I only wish I could say the same for every professor in that castle.” Only the birds would take that statement at face value, but she could try.

“Amazingly enough,” her tone turned dryly mocking. “he-of-tainted-blood resisted the urge to cavort with me in full view of the other patrons, and again while the corpses were dangling on stage,” Aileen crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Or did you forget about that? The corpses and the mass panic, mother?”

For once in her somewhat long life, Cullodena Walercia Reid was silent. Her mouth opened and closed like the beak of some bird trying desperately to swallow a fish that would never fit.

Her hands were clenched about each other, skin red and white and pulled tightly over her bones. "You...you...."

Of all the things she had encountered, it was this that was inconceivable. Did all her children have to fail so spectacularly? "You are only interested in inappropriate men?"

Merlin, but Douglas' heart would give out at this. If hers didn't first.

Aileen stared at her, stifling a strange, almost hysterical laugh that bubbled forth. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Mock her mother sarcastically, and she’d take every word to heart.

“Rest assured that I find inappropriate men rather repulsive.” Derisiveness still laced her tone as she pushed Oz’s porch-lurking tendencies to the back of her mind. “Though somehow I suspect you have a different definition of the word than I do.”

Though she also suspected this would end poorly, Cullodena's stunned silence spurred Aileen on.

“I want you to leave Professor Trishna alone. Stop sending him Howlers. He doesn’t deserve your condemnation. His classes are none of your business. And please, don’t ever scream at someone and pretend it’s on my behalf. I’m far past the age where I need my mother to define who is appropriate for me.” Her eyes flashed. “Friend or otherwise.”

Friend, clearly! But perhaps not so clear to Cullodena...

Oh, but this was why her eldest daughter had no husband, and possibly no future. Completely dreadful. Cullodena clutched at the armrests of her chair, her nails leaving scratches in the finely carved wood. "The character and teaching of someone who will be instructing my granddaughter within a few months are none of my concern?"

Her voice rose again, but there was a certain hurt to it as much as shrillness. "Have you completely forgotten about your niece, or did you merely never consider her? The poor girl's had enough stress, she doesn't need to manage ridiculous ideas as well." A glass of water had appeared on the small table next to her, no doubt the result of an understandably cowed House Elf, and Cullodena took a long drink from it before she continued.

"And if you had any understanding of what was appropriate, you would be married to a Wizengamot member. Or did you intend to forget about that as well?" She'd gone to so much effort on Aileen's behalf, just to see it all thrown away.

Aileen shut her eyes for just a moment, but her mother's shrill voice still rang in her head.

"I'd prefer to forget it, if only I could," she met her gaze with a look that could crack the glass in her hand.

"I am not talking about Oz," she turned her face away, as if that would shield her from Cullodena's hurt and disappointment.

"Or Sulwen, for that matter," Aileen glanced back. "She hasn't even set foot in Astronomy yet, and you think it necessary to attack him. Don't pretend that you act this way out of concern," she continued bitingly. "It is only to justify your own prejudices. And to make me utterly miserable!"

Emotion sunk into that last word, despite her best efforts to stifle it.

Cullodena felt a vague twinge of fear that she couldn't quite dismiss. There was something new in Aileen's defensiveness, in the fact that she'd come all the way over here to defend Professor Trishna.

Were all of her children going to...no, that didn't bear thinking about. Cullodena just slumped back into her chair, and fixed her piercing gaze onto Aileen. "Merlin forbid that I be concerned about your well-being when you and Abigail are the only children I have left!"

It sounded far worse when she said it like that.

Concern. Aileen still didn't think that word meant what Cullodena thought it meant. 

"Yes, your perfect child is in Azkaban!" Aileen shot back. "I suppose you're stuck with two wayward, modern, disappointing daughters!"

She didn't even mention Simon... Simon had always disappointed.

"If you're so concerned about our well-being, shouldn't it matter to you that he helped me find Abby during the opera?" She threw her hands in the air. Of course, Tapendra's main worry had probably been Sasha, but she appreciated it all the same. And of course, she doubted it made any difference to her mother.

"Two daughters with no concern for their future, who throw aside my every effort to aid them!" Cullodena rose from her seat, the shrillness in her voice making way for a deeper anger. She'd spent so much of her life on ensuring her children's status and then they went and....

She glared down at Aileen, stretching to her full height and squaring her shoulders. "Your brother is in Azkaban and will be there for years, leaving his family abandoned! And yet all you can think of is to snipe at-" Her voice broke and she fell back into her chair.

It was a fact she'd been denying for a year now. Cullodena had lost both her sons, and now it seemed she might lose her daughters as well. After everything. She held her face with her hands, attempting to find any thought besides those. "He did what for Abigail?" At least rage was better than...this.

As Cullodena rose, the extra inches of her hat topping Aileen's height, Aileen kept her back straight even as she wondered in some distant corner of her mind if the birds would detach and fly at her hair.

But then her mother deflated, her voice cracking, and Aileen had to push back a twinge of guilt. She would take her shrieking over the threat of tears any day.

Face stony, Aileen sat across from her. She watched her, uncertain whether the question was a trap.

“He helped me find her at the opera, after Tarron and Aisling had safely escorted her out,” she repeated in a slower, stiffly quiet tone. “And he ensured Dolly and I got out safely. I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't been there."

The adults, at least, had all been looking out for each other, but her mother was from an older time, and Aileen hoped she would appreciate a man going out of his way to protect her daughters. Manipulative? Noooo.

Aileen seemed calmer, perhaps this wasn't ruined yet. Perhaps Cullodena hadn't lost everyone. Her hands left pale spots on her cheeks when she pulled them away.

She tried to lift her eyes to meet Aileen's, pulled them away, then looked back again. Merlin, but Aileen was supposed to be doing this by now, to have her own sons and daughters to worry over. "I am grateful he aided you." The words were slow, as if every one had to be tugged from her mouth, from her pride.

And she had no shortage of pride. "Perhaps my estimation of him was...hasty." She coughed sharply for a moment on the words. "I will trust your judgment on him for the moment." And if that was misplaced, she'd never let Aileen forget it.

Aileen had been all set to list the several other times Tapendra had been there for her, but she never got the chance. She blinked at her mother, certain for a moment that she’d mistaken ‘hasty’ for a cough and ‘trust’ for something else entirely. The words hung there, unchanging. Cullodena’s expression remained begrudgingly open.

“What? You’re serious?” Aileen questioned, stunned.

Perhaps she meant to lull her into a false sense of security.

“Truly?” She searched her face. “No more Howlers?”

What day was this and why did she feel like the earth had just slid out from under her?