An Owl from Bel Pierce
December 11, 2019 9:51 AM
[The Day After the Feast] A Letter for the HoH by An Owl from Bel Pierce
Bel had debated for weeks whether she should say anything. Should she let Mab make her own first impressions, or provide one herself by sending a letter indicating some of her concerns? She didn’t think one would be particularly better or worse than the other, but did she have the right to take away Mab’s chance to set her own tone for her school year? If she was anything like Bel (and in some ways she was, and in other ways she wasn’t at all) she was going to get a letter sooner or later (probably sooner) that Mab had hit someone or Mab had stolen something, and she’d have to admit she knew that was likely to happen and hadn’t warned anyone.Some of it could probably be extrapolated. Copies of her court papers granting her custody had been required to prove she actually had legal guardianship and was allowed to act as Mab’s primary caregiver. So they knew Mab had a foster mother, one who had been appointed only a few months ago, which hardly implied a settled home life and a well-adjusted child, but neither did it necessarily mean they had . . . someone like Mab.
She had improved, Bel would give her that. She wasn’t as feral now as she had been at the beginning of the summer. She hadn’t growled at Bel in weeks, but then, Bel hadn’t startled her in weeks either, and Sonora was going to have a lot of new experiences that Mab couldn’t be properly prepared for, despite Bel’s best efforts.
So she wrote the letter. Not immediately. She gave Mab her first night on her own merits. But Bel was responsible for Mab and Mab . . . well, Mab was a force of chaos. It was only fair to warn the girl’s Head of House, especially since Mab’s first letter to her reported a roommate.
To Isis Carter-Xavier, Head of Pecari House,
My name is Belinda Pierce, a senior officer in the Boston Auror force. I am the guardian of one of your new first years, Mallory Beales aka Mab. She came into my care only three months ago. She is muggleborn and learned of the wizarding world over the summer, but I believe she developed some rudimentary control over her magic several years ago. As she’s underage and I am not a certified magical instructor, I could not delve into this in any practical sense, but she reports being able to ‘wish’ things into happening.
Unfortunately, she came to my attention in the first place for ‘wishing’ other people’s wallets into her own hands. When we tried to locate her parents, we discovered she was a runaway from muggle foster care. There were three months between the date of her running away from her foster placement and being arrested for underage magic use and theft. I can only imagine how she survived during that time, but when I took her in she was defensive, violent, and hoarded things. These behaviors lessened drastically as she began to trust me, but she is still prone to lashing out when frightened and I am not under the impression that ‘stealing is wrong’ was ever a value her actual mother ever enforced in any meaningful fashion. I tried to explain this to her, but she may need reminders if items turn up missing from the common room or her roommate’s belongings.
I hope she adjusts well and this letter was unnecessary, but I want you to understand where she is coming from if she doesn’t.
Thank you,
Bel Pierce
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An Owl from Bel Pierce
[The Day After the Feast] A Letter for the HoH
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An Owl from Bel Pierce
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