Order Only: Private Message to Moony and Dora

[alt_sirius]

Well?

You wanted to see it.

Let's have it. I mean, I see I've been a right git, as she says (well, from her side) but what now?

Is it good or bad that no matter what she quotes (and Dora, that's Uriah Heap, that last bit), all I can hear whenever she starts on lyrics is 'Go Ask Alice' - and no, not just because Allie's usually my first line of defence when it comes to girls. Because I wish it had been on one of the albums she'd nicked. Perhaps I'll send her a copy of Lewis Carroll, as well.

Comments

[alt_nymphadora]

Let her feel part of your pack, Sirius. She wants to belong somewhere.

That's the biggest part of what I get from her letter. She wants you to acknowledge she's one of yours.

[alt_sirius]

One of my what?

It's not as if I've never answered or acknowledged her already.

[alt_nymphadora]

But it is, from her place, especially since you write to other people she knows.

Look, yes. You've sent her messages, but she wanted answers to her questions. Not just a tip of the hat in public.

This is what I see: she's read your Grim Truths and from the beginning she's understood what you were saying. Enough to write you follow up questions. Could you ask for a better reader? Has anyone else been that responsive to them? Has Harry? Not that it's a competition, but she's understood the things you're hoping he'll see that are nonsensical and wrong about the Protectorate. And she's asking you to explain how that can be.

She's asking you to explain because she needs help sorting between what she's been taught and what she sees: she was brought up to have none of those questions. She got the full indoctrination into all the DEs' lies, and she can see that it's all wrong (thanks to you and to her friends), but she needs you to answer her, and I'm going to say it again, I think she needs you to accept her as one of yours. A kindred spirit.

[alt_lupin]

You've never sent her a letter, though. You answer her, but impersonally, in cryptic references in the journals.

Whereas Harry gets real mail. It's not surprising she's a bit put out.

[alt_sirius]

Harry's my godson.

I don't know if I trust her. I don't know if I trust myself to write her. Besides -

No. Nevermind. If I start down that path I'll sound as lugubrious as they always got.

[alt_lupin]

Would it be better if she were taking these questions to HER godfather?

[alt_nymphadora]

There. See? Exactly.

[alt_nymphadora]

And she's Lucius Malfoy's goddaughter (or something very near it if it's not officially so). Wouldn't you like to win her away from him?

You have more than a chance. Honestly, from where I sit, it looks as if she's begging you to please make the play for her. She's yours for the asking.

[alt_sirius]

I don't want Reg's seconds, thanks.

Sorry.

Fine. I'll do it. No, I don't want her running back to him with the tale of a prodigal daughter.

Private message to Padfoot

[alt_lupin]

Regulus had a really ... strange relationship with Pansy.

I don't think she expects you to have that sort of relationship with her, at all.

Re: Private message to Padfoot

[alt_sirius]

Regulus had a Reg relationship with her.

He did what he does. Did. Whatever. You know what I mean. He always had a knack for making himself pathetic. And she's the same.

And look. I know she's not to blame. I know that. And I know that she blamed herself, her 'wrong-headedness,' for the way Voldemort twisted him and forced him further into his own madness. And no, I didn't want to let that stand.

But the truth is she made it worse. She gave him an outlet to indulge all his poetical, Proustian petulance and sink deeper and deeper into self-pity. So much so that he gave up.

Circe. She's a kid. And at the same time she connected to him in a way that - that I couldn't do, Moony. Because I just couldn't stand the self-indulgence. Merlin, I'm getting fed up with myself now for letting myself wallow.

I dunno. I'm not angry with her. I'm just

I don't know.

I'm utter bollocks at this stuff.