Beloved Sister Philomenia,

It is with a sullen heart that I bid you this letter, dear sister. A tragedie has befallen our family and I have scarcely ceased my anguished cries since the event was made known to me. My cherished, and esteemed son, and your adoring nephew, Walter, is no longer with us.

Words cannot abridge my bereft feelings, nor the disconsolate state of his father. As the event was told us, it occured at Hogwarts. The safe and solid school of our youth. My beloved Walter had been the target of a truly insideously natured and malicious prank, the details of which, I say you, dear sister, I can hardly begin to account. Lest, I be made a forlorn woman again incapable of continuing this letter. Although, my state doth vary little from that of forlorn woman. All I can say was that it was because of Walter's house, my house, our house that he is no more. And it is the work of others who do not understand or are against the warm and communical values of the House of Helga Hufflepuff.

Though, I write to you today, heartbroken and beseiged by grief, and I am filled with sorrow, there remains a still small place in me that I say is not filled with sorrow, but mistrust. Mistrust of those houses who would do this to my Walter, when has wrought them no wrong. Yet, through my spurned feelings, I cannot help but spare a thought that people are not always as cruel as they feign to be.

Please do me this favor, and give on our behalf, your good thoughts and prayers of strength and guidance. Our need for them is dire in this hour.

Your Sister,

Mary Hallett