Fear in a handful of dust.

Cousin, I couldn't help but notice that you've just expanded your plans for your holiday entertaining. I wonder if you could use help with any of the preparations. I seem to be less in demand at the moment, so I'd be glad if there were something I could do for you.

I had a bit of a surprise yesterday. I stopped into one of the little shops down my street for sticking plasters and several other things, and while they couldn't supply the plasters--can you imagine: they stock wound cream but not plasters and then were out of washing up liquid?--Sorry. The point is, who should be there behind the counter but our cousin Nymphadora? Says she took the job to supplement what she's earning at the Ministry. I hadn't realised she was working there, either, though I guess I wouldn't have done. If I hadn't just seen her at the funeral, I doubt I'd have recognised her at all; before we were all together that day it had been ages since I'd laid eyes on her.

She's just as I remember, though: well, I can't say whether the hair was purple back then (and, obviously it wasn't at the funeral), but it was always one sort of odd or another, and there's always been that same inability to pick up one thing without knocking something else over. Merlin's tiny pants, that girl was always hopelessly clumsy, wasn't she? Well she's just as awkward now. Fortunately, it was the tin of biscuits and not the bottle of lamp oil that she knocked off the counter and then stepped on. I thought she was going to overturn a whole table of fruitcakes when she bent to pick it up.

I wonder how long she'll keep the job, honestly. I'd think she might break more than she sells. On the other hand, she did persuade me to buy a quantity of cinnamon and several other things that were nowhere on my list. She plied me with spiced cider and a sample tray of cinnamon biscuits that tasted just like the ones Kreacher made when we were children.

I asked her about that, why even when you can get the ingredients, nothing tastes as good now as then, and do you know what she told me? She says you can't buy proper cinnamon these days. I had no idea! Says it's not really cinnamon at all that they're selling in the shops, but cassia, instead. I suppose it's to do with import restrictions and pricing issues, but the point of it all is that her shop's got the goods. They've got a supplier for true cinnamon--the packet says it's from Sri Lanka--and they've got marvellous-smelling, fresh cloves and nutmeg and candied ginger. And now I have, as well.

I couldn't wait for Fifi to come round on Monday, so I summoned Kreacher last night and set him to baking. My flat smells a treat, I can tell you!

I suppose that was entirely more than you wanted to know, wasn't it, cousin?

Clearly, I need something more to occupy myself with than writing things in this book. Do, please, tell me you have some task I could do for you. Or at least agree to have tea with me some afternoon this week. Otherwise I may go mad and begin putting up fairy lights and pine boughs and baking mince pies. It won't be pretty, I can assure you.

It is a strange and distracting thing, the giving and taking of life. Almost to an annoying degree, one could propose. I dare say it distracted me for eleven years, and even more acutely these last few weeks when the life in question was my own.

It probably shouldn't concern us living as much as it does, considering the universe is more than a little flip about the whole ordeal.

But He is never flip. His methods are never random. It took a rather sharp reminder for me to realise, finally, that life is the Lord's to give and to take away. The weak may question it, even run from it, but our doubt will never change it. Our doubt or our actions.

I see clearly now. His mercies fall where He wills them to fall. And tonight they have fallen on me.

Most of me, anyway.


Narcissa, would you be a dear and visit me at my mother's? She is still screaming, but I expect the tone to take an affectionate turn within the hour. Followed shortly by at least a week of injured silence. Any time will be fine.