She hoped, someday, Feliks would come to understand just how many people cared about him at this point of his life. Raine didn't know what it was like to grow up believing you were an orphan but she  thought it must be something special for her and Abby to sit here in their narrow little kitchen, chatting about a boy they hardly knew.

            "The Almasys send their squibs to Siberia?"

Coming from her flatmate, it sounded a lot worse than when her Ira had so casually told her last year. Raine bit off half of her macaron to avoid looking too guilty, nudging back with her foot. It really didn't pay to be an Almasy.

            "...it's only faceless snowmen for you!"

"I don't think they're destitute," she clarified with a laugh that echoed Abby's own discordant one. "It's more that... from what I know, it's this big house where they get sent to learn how to be like muggles? Ira said that sometimes the families visit." Raine looked down with a scowl, disapproving.

It made her so mad to think of squibs torn away from the wizarding siblings, only being able to see them a couple of times a year. "They aren't nice people," she sighed heavily and offered Abby a dry smile. "I learned a lot about them in the last year and I almost wish I hadn't. You're infinitely better company."

Abby could tell from the look on Raine's face that she didn't approve of the arrangement, and that was enough for Abby. She'd come home bearing macarons to cheer her up about the Almasy family, not make her feel worse. Merlin knew the Reids could not be called progressive, either. Instead of sending her away, they'd kept her from muggle culture and the opportunities she'd discovered for herself later on in life.

Though Abby doubted she was good company these days, her expression softened at her kindness.

"I won't argue with you there," Abby tilted her head in mock flirtation, then sighed. "Don't we always get the lessons we never asked for?"

Some of the hardest lessons were seeing people and situations for what they were.

"You see it all clearly though, or you try to," Abby looked in the bakery box for another macaron. This was not dinner, Raine had announced, no matter how Abby had presented it.

"You keep trying," she glanced up with an approving look, the cream macaron in her hand. She'd left her aunt, hadn't she? "Even when it's not easy, you care about what's true, and who's getting hurt."

If that wasn't an Auror trait, or an Almasy trait, then it must be an entirely Raine trait. Abby took a bite of her cake flavored macaron, and nodded.

            "Don't we always get the lessons we never asked for?"

And then some! Raine nodded grimly but she was smiling, ever surprised by her flatmate's capacity to accept what they could not change with a positive can-do attitude. What was in a surname anyway? Only whatever you wanted to keep of it, and neither of them were going to let a thing like that keep them from being better people.

"Thanks. I... I think I needed to hear that." Raine admitted and slipped off the counter with a heavy sigh, as if though she'd dislodged the weight of her day in that one swift movement. "The sugar rush helped, too," she added with an amused snort.

Her tongue was all sour-sweet raspberry and her head a complete sugar high. It was worse than gillyweed. All that did was make you feel very very relaxed and giggly and at peace with the world. This made her jittery and full of enough energy to play a round of Quidditch! She glanced at their kitchen clock.

"Do you want to grab dinner at Rachawadee downstairs?" the witch wrinkled her nose, considering it. "Or we can go into Soho and mingle with the muggles?" Always an option, especially with Abby, who was happy to embrace those parts of non-magical lifestyles.

Wizarding society was wonderful and secret but nothing could beat getting lost in London when you should really be at home in bed.

Abby smiled back, glad she hadn't gotten too soppy, and that Raine seemed to be handling things well. In a way, Feliks had lucked out, won a lottery he hadn't known he'd entered by gaining Balfour Spectre as a father and Raine Almasy as his cousin. She didn't dare tell Raine that she'd called her a darling to a Department Head they had to see around the Ministry, but she was a darling, to Abby.

"Option awesome: mingling with muggles," Abby set her drinks down with extra pep. "You change out of your absolutely adorable slippers that I might accidentally on purpose borrow someday, and I will freshen up."

Sometimes, glimmers of the carefree girl she'd been before peeked through. On her way to her bedroom, she glanced back at Raine and flashed a playful grin.

"Fresh up touch up ee-oh," Abby announced in her best I'm-casting-a-spell voice, lifting her hand to make a random gesture in the air. Her arm went numb, then her hand fell in a precise swish and flick. She paused. As she regained feeling in her fingers, a little laugh sounded in her mind.

Sometimes, glimmers of the girl who'd lived before peeked through, too.