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FIVE | THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
THANKFULLY, ASTORIA WAS BLESSED WITH A SPEEDY RECOVERY AND WAS ALLOWED BACK IN THE DORMS AFTER ANOTHER DAY. Madam Pomfrey had given her strict instructions to avoid any strenuous activities and Nicolette had made it her personal mission to prevent her from needing to. Seline assumed it was guilt.
About two days post 'the incident', the owl Seline's parents had hesitantly rented halfway through her first-year dropped a letter down on her lap. Seline's perfectly sculpted eyebrows turned downwards as it stole a grape off her plate before flying away. Her mother's handwriting was indistinguishable and this only depended her frown.
"Seline", her mother wrote, the 's' being written very sophisticatedly. Seline had always thought her mother's handwriting was really unnecessary and straight-up annoying. (Though, she'd never dare vocalise this opinion to her face.)
"I've been in correspondence with your sister," (Seline also hated the way her mother spoke. Would it kill her to talk normally?) "She's informed me that you've managed to get detention on the second night for bunking off lessons and staying out past curfew! That is not how I remember raising my daughter to behave.
I was willing to let the detention slide until I heard about what happened in the dining hall. Apparently you and some of those no-good kids in your house were fighting with magic? Denika says someone—that Greengrass girl, I believe—ended up in the hospital wing! Appalling, really.
Seline, this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated by me or your father. If you step out of line one more time, I'll have no choice but to pull you out of that school and send you to that finishing school as I'd originally planned. Sending you both to that school was a massive risk and so far, you haven't proved that the risk was worth it.
I know you love it there so do not give me a reason to make you say goodbye to magic altogether. You know I will do it, Seline—don't give me another reason to."
