By mid-morning, the sun had climbed higher in the pale sky, and the snow was melting into thin rivulets that snaked down the windowpanes. Even though Morwenna had eaten a proper breakfast of eggs, toast, and porridge only two hours ago, her stomach was already growling again with a persistent, hollow ache that felt like it belonged to someone else entirely. She ignored it and pushed back from her chair in the library.
She walked toward the kitchen, her feet bare against the biting cold of the floor, following the insistent demand of her hunger.
Tilly was at the counter, his small, nimble hands buried deep in a mound of pale dough. His ears twitched the moment she appeared in the doorway, sensing her presence before she could even speak. "Little miss. You're hungry again?"
Morwenna climbed onto a stool, her red and silver eyes fixed on the prep space. "Noodles. I want noodles."
The elf's ears perked up in genuine interest, and he turned to look at her. "Noodles?"
"Yes. Noodles. The kind with the broth."
Tilly's face lit up at the request, his large eyes crinkling. He wiped his hands on his apron and pulled a heavy pot from the shelf. Soon the stove hissed as the fire caught, and the water began to heat, sending a gentle steam into the air.
Morwenna watched him for a moment before she slid off the stool, her curiosity getting the better of her. "I want to help."
Tilly hesitated, his gaze darting from the flour on the counter to Morwenna's clean jumper and then back to her expectant face. "Tilly will get the little miss an apron," he decided, scurrying toward a drawer.
The apron was far too large for her. It wrapped around her small frame twice and tied in a lumpy knot at her back, while the sleeves of her jumper had to be rolled up to her elbows to keep them out of the mess.
Flour soon dusted her hands, her arms, and even her cheeks as she began to knead. Her small fists pressed into the mass, folding and turning it with a rhythm she found entirely absorbing. She focused on the way the texture changed under her fingers, becoming soft, elastic, and smooth.
Jane found her like that, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed. "Tilly," Jane said, her voice carrying a hint of quiet amusement. "Is she helping?"
Tilly looked up from the steaming pot, his ears turning a soft, bashful pink. "The little miss is making the noodles herself."
Jane's mouth twitched, but she did not interrupt. Morwenna did not even look up as she gave the dough one final punch. "There," she declared, her face smudged with white. "Noodles."
Tilly took the dough and began to roll it out with practiced, quick motions. Morwenna watched, mesmerised, as it stretched thin before being cut into long, elegant strands that fell like silk into the waiting broth.
The kitchen filled with the smell of ginger and scallion. Tilly ladled a bowl and set it before her, and Morwenna ate with a focus that bordered on violence, slurping the noodles without her usual care for manners.
Jane waited until the bowl was empty before she spoke again. "Morwenna. There are letters for you."
Morwenna looked up, her brow furrowing. "Letters?"
"From France. From your friend."
Morwenna frowned, unable to recall having any friends in France at all. She washed her hands at the sink, the cold water turning the flour to a sticky paste on her skin until she managed to scrub it clean. After drying her hands on her oversized apron, she followed Jane into the morning room.
The table was covered in a staggering amount of correspondence, the parchment piled high in neat stacks. Morwenna stopped in the doorway, her eyes widening at the sight of it all. "Why are there so many?"
Jane sat in the chair near the fire and simply looked at her daughter. She did not answer right away. Her gaze was not unkind, but it had a weight to it, as if she were watching something unfold that she had already seen before. Morwenna felt her ears begin to burn. She shifted her weight and twisted the hem of her jumper, looking anywhere but at the table.
When she could not stand the silence any longer, Morwenna crossed the room and climbed into Jane's lap. She wrapped her arms around her mother's neck and pressed her face into her shoulder. "Mom," she whined. "Do not look at me like that. You are making me feel embarrassed."
Jane laughed and held her close. "You do not remember?"
Morwenna shook her head against Jane's shoulder, her voice muffled. "No. There is so much I do not remember." Her mood dipped into something more somber as the gaps in her memory felt like vast, empty canyons. "Is that bad?"
Jane's hand moved in slow, comforting circles on her back. "Maybe," she said softly, her tone honest but gentle. "We do not know what you have forgotten, or which parts are missing. But it is all right. We are here. We will be with you."
She pulled back just enough to look at Morwenna's face, her green eyes serious. "What I do know is that you wrote back to her. Every letter she sent, you answered. Until you stopped."
Morwenna went still. "I stopped?"
"After the ritual. After the coma." Jane's thumb traced her daughter's cheek. "She has been writing for months, Morwenna. She thinks you are angry with her. Or dead. She does not know which is worse."
Morwenna looked over at the twenty or so envelopes. All of them were addressed to Nimue Keith in the same elegant, looping handwriting, written with a delicate precision.
Pour Nimue Keith.
Morwenna turned the topmost envelope over to see the sender's name.
De Fleur Delacour.
Her mind went perfectly still as the name caught in her thoughts, sparking a distant, unreachable recognition. "Wait. Who's Fleur?"
She looked down at the stacks of thick paper and blue ink. The name Fleur Delacour seemed to vibrate on the page. Her thoughts spun as she tried to reconcile the name with a face, but nothing came to the surface.
"Delacour... that Fleur Delacour?" Her fingers tightened on the edge of the letter. "I met her?"
She tried to force the memory to surface, but it remained locked away. She looked back at Jane, her eyes shimmering with sudden frustration. "Mom." She nuzzled into Jane's neck, her voice cracking. "I cannot remember."
Jane stroked her hair gently, smoothing the raven and white strands. "Remember what?"
"Many things. I cannot remember many things, but I also remember too many other things." Morwenna's voice trembled as the weight of her dual existence pressed down on her. "Mom. I am scared."
Jane pulled her closer, tucking the child against her chest. "Of what?"
"That I will open these letters and read things I wrote, and I will not recognise the person who wrote them. That she knew me better than I know myself, and I will have to pretend." Morwenna's shoulders shook. "What if I was cruel? What if I was kind and I cannot be kind like that anymore?"
Jane was quiet for a long moment. "Then you tell her the truth," she said finally. "That you were sick. That things are different now. You do not have to be the girl she knew, Morwenna. You only have to be honest about who you are today."
Morwenna's breathing slowed, and she simply held on tighter, overwhelmed by the warmth and the safety of her mother's embrace. Once she had calmed down, she looked back at the letters with renewed curiosity, her fear replaced by a desperate need to know. "Who is Fleur?"
Jane's smile softened as she began to tell the story. She spoke of the Christmas market in Paris, describing a girl with silver-blonde hair and eyes the colour of the sea. She told Morwenna about a four-year-old girl who had walked up to a beautiful stranger and asked if the girl could belong to her, her voice full of a child's innocent conviction.
Morwenna's face went pale. Jane kept talking, describing dinners, walks through the Luxembourg Gardens, and how Morwenna had refused to let go of Fleur's hand for hours. She mentioned the blue ribbon and the crooked bow that Morwenna had insisted on keeping exactly as it was, as if it were a sacred treasure.
By the time Jane finished, Morwenna's face and ears were burning with a fierce heat. She didn't remember any of it, yet her body seemed to react anyway, her stomach flipping and her chest feeling tight with an unearned affection.
Jane laughed at her stunned expression.
"Stop laughing," Morwenna whined, shaking her mother's arm. "Mom. Stop."
Jane could not stop, laughing until her eyes watered as she hugged her daughter tight. "I am sorry. I am sorry. You just look so..." She dissolved into laughter again, unable to finish. Morwenna buried her face in Jane's shoulder, her skin feeling as though it were on fire.
When Jane finally composed herself, she wiped her eyes with tips of her fingers. "Pick the oldest one. Read it."
Morwenna reached for the first letter, dated months ago, before the ritual and the coma. She opened it with trembling fingers, but as she stared at the page, her eyes began to sting. "I can't read it," she whispered, her voice failing her.
The words were French, and she knew she should have been able to understand them. She had spoken it once. She had written back to this girl in this same language, had formed these same looping letters with her own hand. But the meanings slipped away like water through a sieve. She tried another letter with an earlier date, focusing on the precise, small handwriting, but the words swam before her eyes. Her vision blurred completely as the tears finally spilled over.
She could not read French anymore, and the realization was a sharp, painful sting that made her feel as if she had lost a part of herself that she had not even known was there until it was gone.
Jane studied her, noting the tension in her shoulders and the way her eyes shimmered. Over the past few weeks, ever since the breakdown in the conservatory, Morwenna had changed. The quiet, calculating child was gone, replaced by someone louder and more openly emotional. She had become a bit of a handful, a true Keith in her flair for drama.
"Saoirse has definitely rubbed off on her," Jane thought, feeling a mix of fondness and mild exasperation. "The chaos, the drama... all of it is starting to show."
She exhaled softly and reached for the letter. "I'll read it to you. And then we'll start learning French again, all right? It won't take long to get it back."
Morwenna nodded, her cheeks still flushed a deep rose. Jane took the letter and began to read, her voice steady and clear. As the words filled the room, Morwenna's face cycled through confusion, embarrassment, and shock. Fleur wrote about the rain in Paris, her demanding tutors, and her growing worry that Nimue wasn't writing back. She wondered if the younger girl was sick, or simply ignoring her.
"I really planted myself in her head," Morwenna thought, feeling utterly speechless. "I was only four. What on earth did I do to make her care this much?"
Jane read through the pattern of Fleur's daily life, her small worries, and her occasional complaints. Morwenna listened, feeling a strange mix of guilt and a softness she could not quite name. It was clear that she had been very close to this girl, regardless of what her memories told her now.
"There's one more," Jane said, setting the last letter down. "Wait here."
Jane left the room and returned a moment later with a cream-coloured envelope and three photographs. She sat beside Morwenna and set them on the table with a quiet deliberation.
"What are those?"
"A letter from Hermione. You asked me to keep it until after the second bath."
Morwenna's eyes went wide. "Who?"
Jane said the name slowly, enunciating each syllable. "Her-my-oh-nee. She is your age, and you met her in London. You called her Mione."
Morwenna looked at the photographs. The first showed her family on the steps of a house with a green door; she looked so small with her white hair and green eyes, her hand clutching Jane's sleeve with a grip that looked desperate even in stillness.
The second showed both families together, with Hermione standing right beside her, their shoulders pressed together as if they were holding each other up.
The third was just the two of them. Hermione's brown hair was plaited in neat rows, and she was smiling with her whole face. She looked nothing like the actress Morwenna remembered from the films of her other life. This girl had bigger hair, a more earnest expression. This wasn't a movie; it was real life, and it was happening now.
Morwenna's mind went white with the shock of it. She wanted to ask a thousand questions about Hermione and the world they inhabited, but they all jammed in her throat. She simply closed her eyes and leaned into Jane, feeling suddenly and deeply exhausted.
Jane held her in silence, letting the warmth of the room and the weight of their family history hold her up.