The Pureblood Princess | Sirius Black

|109| Leave Well Enough Alone

It had been raining for the past week.

Which was really annoying.

Even if Adelaide was brave enough to venture into the garden with all the thunder (which she wasn't because thunder was scary) the half-finished greenhouse was submerged in at least two inches of rainwater. As much as she wanted to provide a snug safe home for her singing tulips and Danish dancing daisies, construction charms were tricky in the best of circumstances. They were downright foolish to try during a rainstorm. The last thing anyone needed was for her to permanently stick raindrops to the wood (oh, the rot!).

So, as much as Adelaide detested it, she was stuck indoors until the weather decided to stop being so damn bothersome...

But it wasn't all bad... She could order new seeds via owl post (Berwin wasn't happy about flying in the rain, but she'd bribed him well), and she could still mirror Sirius (although it was more difficult indoors as she never knew when her father would be lurking about)... and then there was still Grumpy Roesia Fawley's intriguing poetry to keep her mind entertained until the dreaded internship started.

That particular Sunday morning, thunder rolled and rain pattered against the tall library windows, dripping down the stain-glass horse mural and the emerald forest in which it was galloping— but inside, all was dry and warm. The firewood crackled and popped as it burned, echoing against the marble library walls. It's light cast orangey glow upon the messy array of parchments scattered upon the old coffee table.

With one last gulp of her black tea, Adelaide tied her long blonde hair into a ponytail with ink-stained fingers, readjusted her favorite red jumper, then scowled down at the scrawled gibberish before her.

When the rains had begun and she had to switch gears from greenhouse building to middle-english translations, Adelaide didn't know how long it would take to copy down the silly poem from grumpy Roesia's painting... She might have guessed a day? Maybe two? After all, copying gibberish down was the easy part—translating the gibberish was the tricky bit. Right?

Turned out that it took exactly one week. One, painstaking week of transcribing word for word... letter by excruciating letter.

But why so long?

Well, for one, some of the letters were different from the normal alphabet which was a challenge in and of itself. But then there was the issue of Roesia Fawley—Aka the sassiest, most unhelpful portrait to exist since the fat lady.

It took a good three days just to convince her to use hand gestures for the weird alphabet letters so that Adelaide could copy them correctly—then, once she had been convinced, she was constantly confusing Adelaide by throwing in the rude hand gestures just for kicks.

Had Adelaide known how difficult it would be she might have left well enough alone... but she was highly invested at this point... and her curiosity for what the silly words could mean had been piqued and she was more determined than ever to riddle out the big 'secret'.

Anyways, after seven days, three head aches, and countless flipped birds... Adelaide had finally copied the weird gibberish poem in its entirety.

Acursien a-bouten ecret ich sely for-hilen.
Deeþ a-bouten fallynge tho bayard.
Cleuering hand ealde fayerye bi-fieten.
Dissevere space creat bereth on hand arewe.
Al-only assemblen bale discomfiten.
Cavell, Dæð, dare dominionem bannen.

Now came the fun part... hopefully.

She nodded to herself, tidied up the coffee table, making sure her blue quill, purple ink, and various notes parchments were all within arms reach, then carefully opened Manasés Ethelwyn Digby's Middle English Dictionary.