Originally Posted by MadAlice

"I know, right?!" Violet blurted out, glad to be telling this to someone else who finally seemed to understand the injustice of it all. "And even after she went and found me and brought me back!"It still made Violet mad sometimes. And guilty. "But her new job sounds a lot better, and I guess, now that I'm at Hogwarts, there really wasn't much more for her to do there. And now we're, like friends." Having a grown-up friend made Violet feel very grown-up. Which, since she had just turned seventeen this month, she supposed she was.



Violet tried to take all this in for a minute--in a way, they almost sounded like human House-Elves, but also like friends. They were sort of like Miss Howard had been for her, Violet decided. So--Muggles who were important had bodyguards to protect their children...Violet's grandfather was important, in the Wizarding world, but besides Miss Howard, he did most of the protecting himself, along with her uncles. Since their idea of protecting was to keep Violet around the house as much as possible, Violet thought that bodyguards sounded like a much better option.

But she got the idea that Ashley didn't want to talk about that any further. That was the trouble with trying to get to know someone like Ashley Fox, who didn't like to reveal a lot about herself. Well...maybe instead of personal history, they could talk about some other things Violet had been thinking a lot about over the summer.

"The past few years have been pretty wild, haven't they? I mean, stolen gold and vengeful ghosts and the Neo-Alliance takeover and that so-called Healer Poppy. Do you think there's ever a normal year at this school? It almost seems like that many things couldn't possibly go wrong without someone planning it."