The door to her father's study has never felt so imposing.
When she heard from Primm that he was breaking his fast in his study—in itself a rare occurence, as she can count on one hand the number of times that her father is still in the house this late in the early morning—she found herself before that ornate door, her body moving faster than her mind for once in her life.
For one brief moment, Rosamund was rooted at the spot, her body posing to knock on the door and her mind urging her not to disturb the busy man.
"Enter," her father's voice called from inside the study, breaking the stalemate in front of his door. She gingerly opened it and found him sitting by his desk reading through some correspondence, a quill held loosely on one hand as if he's forgotten that he's holding one, parchments spread in overlapping drifts.
Rosamund cleared her throat.
"Father."
At that, he looked up and there was half a second of eternity where she can see her father's brain blanking out like he's parsing through the reality of her standing in his doorway. Then, it cleared and something in his face subtly softened as it always did when he actually looked at her properly.
"Rosamund," he said as he set his quill down.
"Come in then. Don't hover in doorways like a ghost."
She entered and stood by the desk close enough to see some parchments that were covered in a cramped, urgent hand that wasn't his. Figures, mostly, and a name she didn't recognize crossed out twice. A small silver locket she didn't recognize either sat on one pile like a paper weight, its chain coiled loosely as if its been examined and set down in a hurry, the tag looping through its clasp read as such:
Family provenance—Ophelia Rosier, 1897
The ink of the name 'Rosier' looked darker than the rest as if it's written more recently than the date beside it. She didn't know enough to wonder why, and she didn't ask. She had learned not to ask about the papers.
"I'm to leave for Hogwarts soon," she said instead.
"In a few weeks."
"Are you," he said in a way he said most things to her; not disbelieving, just arriving at the fact a full beat behind where he should've been, as though her whole childhood had been happening slightly out of his line of sight and he was only now catching the tail end of this particular piece of it. Then, quieter, he said,
"Already. That's—" and stopped, seeming to actually do the arithmetic of it in his head, how many years had passed without him quite noticing.
"That's very soon."
"Yes."
He looked at her for a moment in a way that felt, briefly, like being looked at by someone who wanted to say something larger than the room had time for.
"You'll do well. You've your mother's composure and—" a small, private almost-smile, there and gone,
"enough of me that you won't let composure be the whole of it. That's a good combination."
It was, she would think much later, one of the truest things anyone said to her that entire summer, and she didn't understand it at all at the time.
"I—" and the words were caught in her mouth before they were uttered,
I wanted to tell you the date this early so that you can come see me off. But she was interrupted by one of her father's clerks barging in suddenly.
"Sir, the Ellis account. They've withdrawn," the clerk urgently told her father, his thin, harried frame hovering halfway through the doorway, a parchment held in one hand. He didn't even register Rosamund's presence in the room.
Her father was on his feet before Rosamund could even utter a single word, the private almost-smile gone, completely replaced by something she recognized as the efficient urgency he wore whenever the business intruded rare moments with his family like this.
"Withdrawn entirely or renegotiating?" He was already moving around the desk and halfway across the room from her.
"Tell them I'll want the ledger before I answer anything."
He paused at the door and looked back at her, guilt and the whisper of apology in his eyes,
"We'll talk more tonight. Or soon. Tell your mother I said so."
He didn't ask the date. She didn't manage to tell him. And by the time she thought to write it down and leave it for him to find, three other things had already happened that felt, at the time, more urgent than a piece of paper he'd surely ask for again.
He didn't.
