Oh great, just what Violet needed was to get Aria annoyed with her (though the image that suddenly sprang into her mind of Mack and the younger girl locked in combat over a bauble nearly made her laugh). "Oh no, he's not vicious or anything, he's just curious and...likes shiny things. Magpies are like that, you know--there's even a Muggle musician who wrote a piece named "The Thieving Magpie." And he's good company--useful, he sometimes will deliver messages if I don't have an owl. And loyal..." Violet thought of how Mack had escaped the Neo-Alliance and flown off to try to warn Miss Howard; definitely very loyal.

Oh, dear. How to explain that, without telling too much. Because there's no good way to tell a new acquaintance that your father is a con artist. Especially when you've just told him you have a thieving bird--he might think it was a pattern. But as Violet hesitated, Caes suddenly started opening up, telling her all about his own background, really personal things, so that she felt she could do no less than be equally open (or mostly).

"Yes, well, it's a long story. Well--it's funny, I didn't really know my family for a long time, either, or at least not my parents. My mother's family is an old Pureblood house, and she ran off and married a Muggle, and at some point, when I was just a little girl, I was sent home to live with my grandfather and uncles. They apparently didn't like or approve of my father and would never talk about him or even my mother. I thought it was because they didn't like Muggles and that they therefore must not really like me much. I had a governess, though--Jane Howard--who'd gone to school with Mother and she told me a lot of things about her. Anyway, not knowing anything about my father made me want that much more to meet him. Then he started writing me secretly and the summer after my first year at Hogwarts he persuaded me to run away with him to America. And then..." Violet paused again--she still wasn't quite ready to tell Caes everything about her father... "Then I found out that it wasn't because he was a Muggle that my family disapproved of him, it was because he--well, he really wasn't a very nice man, and I don't know if he even really loves me, he just seemed to want to use my magic. Which is a laugh, because how much magic does anyone know after only one year at school? And Mother wasn't with him anymore and he didn't seem to know where she was, so I still don't know what's happened to her." Violet couldn't talk about this anymore, because she was sure her mother was probably dead, or she would have come back home to be with her daughter.

"Anyway, I was lucky--Miss Howard tracked me down and took me out of there and brought me back home. And it worked out well with my family, because now I realize that they do love me and don't care that I'm a Half-Blood, they just didn't like my father. Things could have turned out a lot worse, running off like that when you're only twelve." Yes, that had been really stupid, but Violet had learned a lot about Muggles and she had also learned a lot about life.

She suddenly blushed a little, and then laughed. "So now it's me who is talking too much. But I think you'll like Hogwarts, even if you're not into school. It's really kind of like being in a large family, especially the people in your House, and it has all these quirky customs. Anyway, I hope you like it here." Violet smiled again, and it suddenly struck her that this was why Aria seemed so strangely possessive of her brother--if he hadn't grown up with them, then she must not have had a chance to spend much time with him. No wonder she kind of wanted him to herself for a while.