Order Only: Private Message to Moony and Dora

[alt_sirius]

We may be a little delayed coming home.

Everything's fine. Just the Swelling Solution the kids were working on went a bit haywire. I had a Deflating Draught all prepared, just in case, you know, and when I went to give it to Misses Saint and Smith, it wasn't there. So I used an anti-tumescent cantrip and that sorted them. Of course, I still didn't know quite what had happened to the vial I'd brought from home.

Would you care to take a guess?

Your daughter nicked it and dribbled it out on just about everything she could find. The vegetable patch. The hatchet Danny uses to chop wood. A goat. I've no idea how she gave Jacinda the slip but she made her way - as near as we can tell - to the kitchens and left a trail of mayhem in her wake. Victor finally caught her in the pantry. She'd gone and put a bit of the draught on about six of the jars of preserves. They shrank and shrank until the contents couldn't stay, er, contained. He heard the breaking of glass.

She had a few cuts, easily healed, and she's now fine, aside from the lingering certainty that the world is a cruel, unjust place for blaming her when she's misbehaved. We've righted all the shrunken items, except of course the preserves, there was no saving them. (You should have heard Victor about that: Naturally, she chose the strawberry and now there's only six jars of it left until next season. Plus, of course, they won't be able to use the jars for more canning, either.)

At any rate, you can imagine that we've had a bit of repair to do, particularly making sure that she's remembered everything she 'deflated' and we haven't missed anything. And then there's the lesson, which got disrupted and had to be restarted before the ingredients went to waste. (We can't afford to discard ingredients, not without any more shipments from Aleks.)

So, they've got another hour or so of brewing and there's the testing and everything. During which, young miss is in a 'time out' according to Jacinda.

Anyway. We'll be home soon.

Comments

[alt_lupin]

Enid was telling me the other day that children get much more difficult when they turn three.

I think she's pulling my leg. Or Bea's precocious.

[alt_sirius]

Her point - if I understood her - was that she was just 'exploring' and 'testing' the potion. Though she could not supply an adequate explanation when I asked her why she kept 'testing' it after having seen what it did to the first couple of things she used for her experiment.

I suppose at that age, cause and effect haven't quite reached the level of a universal constant.

[alt_lupin]

Well, I suppose she wanted to know what would happen with jars.

Multiple jars.

I don't suppose we have any strawberry jam we can send over as an apology?

[alt_sirius]

Ellie or Dora might know.

Or maybe Jeremy might be able to cadge some from his parents' stock.

Not that I'd recommend we start carrying it, mind.

[alt_lupin]

Oh, let's ask Jeremy. I've heard rumours of a 'bad jam' cupboard that actually contains perfectly nice jam they're not planning to sell; maybe he could find us something. I hate to think that our difficult toddler has denied all the Moddey kids jam because she wanted to experiment with potions.

[alt_nymphadora]

Oh, for goodness sake.

How is the goat?