Private message to Barty

[alt_antonin]

For some reason, tonight I am thinking about when you were young, and when we first met -- how torn you were between not wanting to intrude on my tutoring sessions with Regulus, knowing how little time we were able to carve from Hogsmeade weekends, and yet being drawn so inexorably to what you could overhear of what I was teaching.

I have ever been glad that you allowed curiosity and the lure of the forbidden to overrule the manners you had been taught, you know. I am certain we would have found each other anyway, in time, but I would have hated to miss the honour of having been your first tutor in the Arts.

You will roll your eyes at me for the sentimentality, but I do not say it often enough: I love you, my son, and I am so tremendously proud of the man you have made yourself. The most joyous day of my life was the day upon which I was able to welcome you into the family in the presence of all our honoured dead.

Comments

[alt_crouch_jr]

Batya.

You know, I never envied Reg so much as I did for his lessons with you. Nor resented so much how little he cared for what he had. When I saw what I was missing, I was sick for it. And, of course, he wasn't at all fussed to share you because he didn't care especially for the Arts beyond seeing them as a mark of purity, which he did value.

I was never my own father's son. Might as well not have been. But I was yours from the first minute. I am now and ever shall be. Yours.

[alt_antonin]

Some of us are fortunate enough to belong to the families to which we were born; others of us must find our families as we go. I am fortunate enough to have had both. I often wonder if the fates arranged things so Orion engaged me to tutor Regulus for the sole purpose of placing you into my orbit.

I do wish you could have known Kolya before he was killed, or that my mother had not succumbed to her illness and grief so soon after. Mother would have loved you as much as I.

[alt_crouch_jr]

Admired your work today.

No one wears a pilfered snapdragon as stylishly, or places a token as slyly as you. Your skills are tragically wasted on head mastering.

[alt_antonin]

I had hoped the widow Weasley would find my offering before the guests departed so she could make her scene -- the family was not, after all, the ones who needed the reminder that those who betray us and ours will inevitably have the debt called in -- but ah, well; I ought to have predicted she'd be getting through the day with the assistance of enough potions to drown a kelpie. Will have to think of the best way to convey the message to those who need to hear it.

And headmastering certainly does require quite a bit of sleight of hand, as I am discovering. Or at the least, a predilection for juggling.