mail time mail time mail time MAAAAAIL TIIIIIIIIME
Nov 1, 2013 16:37:50 GMT -5
Post by Magda on Nov 1, 2013 16:37:50 GMT -5
The postmen in the area generally left mail at the Snape residence in the mailbox in an unusual hurry, ever since they discovered that Mme. Snape had a tendency to receive it while wearing a black negligee over matching lingerie, if she was awake to answer the door at all. Most of them had seen enough subverted examples of the usual postman-meets-beautiful-housewife setup in the movies to believe that messing around near her for too long wouldn't do any of them any good- especially what with the matter of Mme. Snape being a vampire.
So the mail was stuffed through a slot in the door, and a moment later a very small child- a young child who'd be starting kindergarten in the fall, but was roughly the size of a nine-month-old infant- came padding up to the doormat on a pair of fuzzy bare feet to collect it.
"Mamma!" Leadora called upstairs into the semidarkened house. "The mail's here!"
Leadora hopped up to the lowest step of the stairs and hung onto the banister post for a moment, until she saw her adopted mother emerge from down the hall, in a simple white nightgown this time and her red hair in a disheveled cloud as usual.
"Oof. Good morning," Magda yawned, tramping gracelessly down the stairs, then pausing. "It is morning, isn't it?"
"Yes, Mamma," said Lea. "And I'm hungry."
Magda scratched her hip and blinked.
"Vhen you are starting school, ve'll have to be vorking out different routine, I am thinking," she said. "This morning stuff is not easy on me."
Lea pouted adorably, and Magda sighed and laughed as she bent to scoop her up.
"Ve'll manage, yes?" she said, holding Lea up in the crook of her arm. "Ve can't have Sivaroose taking you to school, after all-"
"Nope!" said Lea, shaking her head fervently but giggling.
She threw her arms around Magda's neck and hugged. Magda laughed and hugged her back warmly. Lea was her very own happy ending. After a decade of losing her better self, and then wondering if there was any way of ever getting it back, she'd finally been rewarded with a child- a child who, for that matter, aged slowly enough herself that the prospect of watching her age and die was at least a century away. She had a family, and a life. A real life, realler than the time she'd spent glorying in blood and the bodies of men she hated and feared even while she caressed them, and in many ways realler than the one she would have had before that, either, scrubbing floors and being clutched at by garlicky peasants.
Magda plopped Lea down in a high chair and casually flicked through the mail while Lea's egg began frying. A few of her weekly magazine subscriptions had come in, an advertisement from a prospective nursery school, the water bill, and then a small, official-looking white envelope with a New York address in the corner and an M-shaped logo, addressed to Severus.
Magda frowned. Severus almost never got mail in the regular post. They had to keep the kitchen window open most mornings to allow any one of a number of disgruntled-looking local owls to fly in and drop a few envelopes on the counter before rushing out again in a foul-smelling flurry of feathers, and he had next to no business in the outside world save the seedy household he'd grown up in in Northern England. They'd been to New York, of course, only some six months ago, but that had been a pleasure trip horrifyingly curtailed by the incident in Times Square, and Magda had little affection for a place that treated her as though she were some kind of plague rat.
She puzzled over the address for a moment, and then it clicked. It was from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
That, however, just raised further questions. What business did an art museum have with Severus?
Magda went to go scoop up Lea's egg when it dawned on her.
"La naiba- Sivaroose! Sivaroose, if you're here, please be coming down-"
So the mail was stuffed through a slot in the door, and a moment later a very small child- a young child who'd be starting kindergarten in the fall, but was roughly the size of a nine-month-old infant- came padding up to the doormat on a pair of fuzzy bare feet to collect it.
"Mamma!" Leadora called upstairs into the semidarkened house. "The mail's here!"
Leadora hopped up to the lowest step of the stairs and hung onto the banister post for a moment, until she saw her adopted mother emerge from down the hall, in a simple white nightgown this time and her red hair in a disheveled cloud as usual.
"Oof. Good morning," Magda yawned, tramping gracelessly down the stairs, then pausing. "It is morning, isn't it?"
"Yes, Mamma," said Lea. "And I'm hungry."
Magda scratched her hip and blinked.
"Vhen you are starting school, ve'll have to be vorking out different routine, I am thinking," she said. "This morning stuff is not easy on me."
Lea pouted adorably, and Magda sighed and laughed as she bent to scoop her up.
"Ve'll manage, yes?" she said, holding Lea up in the crook of her arm. "Ve can't have Sivaroose taking you to school, after all-"
"Nope!" said Lea, shaking her head fervently but giggling.
She threw her arms around Magda's neck and hugged. Magda laughed and hugged her back warmly. Lea was her very own happy ending. After a decade of losing her better self, and then wondering if there was any way of ever getting it back, she'd finally been rewarded with a child- a child who, for that matter, aged slowly enough herself that the prospect of watching her age and die was at least a century away. She had a family, and a life. A real life, realler than the time she'd spent glorying in blood and the bodies of men she hated and feared even while she caressed them, and in many ways realler than the one she would have had before that, either, scrubbing floors and being clutched at by garlicky peasants.
Magda plopped Lea down in a high chair and casually flicked through the mail while Lea's egg began frying. A few of her weekly magazine subscriptions had come in, an advertisement from a prospective nursery school, the water bill, and then a small, official-looking white envelope with a New York address in the corner and an M-shaped logo, addressed to Severus.
Magda frowned. Severus almost never got mail in the regular post. They had to keep the kitchen window open most mornings to allow any one of a number of disgruntled-looking local owls to fly in and drop a few envelopes on the counter before rushing out again in a foul-smelling flurry of feathers, and he had next to no business in the outside world save the seedy household he'd grown up in in Northern England. They'd been to New York, of course, only some six months ago, but that had been a pleasure trip horrifyingly curtailed by the incident in Times Square, and Magda had little affection for a place that treated her as though she were some kind of plague rat.
She puzzled over the address for a moment, and then it clicked. It was from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
That, however, just raised further questions. What business did an art museum have with Severus?
Magda went to go scoop up Lea's egg when it dawned on her.
"La naiba- Sivaroose! Sivaroose, if you're here, please be coming down-"