Sirius Black

So, what are the odds that we'll go more than ten minutes today without Bea reminding us that she's three?

I think the hardest part so far has been keeping her out of the cake. (To say nothing of the incongruity of Kreacher even making a cake. I've checked it for razor blades or rat poison or anything equally malicious.)

When are we expecting the Moddey contingent? I've fielded about a million questions about Kevin, Keisha and Sara already. Who else did Alice plan to bring? (I can't quite explain so she'll believe me that Rory's not really interested in a party for a three-year-old.)

Maureen is coming, isn't she? Because if there are about to be a dozen children under six here we might need to set up a few more safety spells.

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.