Everything came to a breaking point in March, not long after Lucy turned twelve. Ignatius came home late on a rainy evening, exhausted and hoping that Audrey had had time to whip up something warm and cozy for dinner. This night was uncharacteristically cold, even for March, and on nights like these Ignatius felt a faint pang of longing for the warmth of the Burrow, with a pot of his mother's beef stew bubbling on the stove. He pushed that longing aside and focused on his own home, where hopefully Audrey would have dinner going and Molly would run up to him telling stories about her school day and Lucy would show him the spells they'd practiced that morning.

Instead, he found the house in disarray. Audrey was stirring a pot of bolognese sauce with her brow furrowed, and the girls were nowhere to be found. "Evening, love." Ignatius pecked Audrey on the cheek and went to hang up his jacket. "Where are the girls?"

Audrey sighed. "Lucy is upstairs in her room. She's very upset. She got a letter from Hannah earlier and she's been crying in her room ever since I got home. Molly's sad by association and is hiding out in her room as well."

"I'll go talk to her." Percy said. He set down his briefcase, went upstairs, and knocked on her door.

"Go away, Mum!"

"It's Dad." Percy said. "Can I come in?" She didn't answer, so he opened the door and peered inside. Lucy was sprawled on her bed, her eyes puffy, cheeks tearstained, the aforementioned letter on the floor. "What's going on?"

"Go away! I hate you!" Lucy shrieked.

"Lucy—"

"I hate you!" Lucy shrieked, louder this time. "I hate you I hate you! You just want me to suffer! You don't care about me at all!"

"Lucy Hope Prewett! That is no way to talk your father!"

"I don't care!" Lucy wailed. "Hannah gets to have all the fun! I get to stay home for no good reason and practice spells by myself, meanwhile she gets to have all the fun! It just isn't fair!"

Ignatius picked up the letter on the floor. Lucy had had multiple outbursts like this before, but this one was by far the worst. He skimmed the letter and saw that Hannah was buzzing about something called the Harry Potter Show-Your-Skills Tournament. "Lucy, what's the Harry Potter Show-Your-Skills Tournament?"

"It's this fun thing that Hannah gets to do and I don't!" Lucy wailed. "She said that this super famous wizard called Harry Potter organizes some event at Hogwarts every year where young wizards get to show off their skills by competing in various challenges. There's an obstacle course this year! Apparently it's a whole big thing and it helps raise money for some sort of magical charity, and it's super cool and I'm the only young witch in Britain who doesn't get to go."

"No, that sounds dangerous." Ignatius shuddered, thinking of the Triwizard Tournament and what a nightmare that was. Hopefully Harry knew what he was doing with this event. "Lucy, it's not the end of the world that you can't do the tournament. I didn't do a fancy tournament to show off my skills when I was your age, and I turned out fine."

"But you got to go to school! You got to go to school because your parents didn't hate you, and you're still alive in one piece! It's perfectly safe for me to go to school, but no, I get to practice spells alone at the kitchen table because my dad hates me!"

"Lucy!" Ignatius spat out her name like it was poison. For one thing, he wasn't alive in one piece. He was severely damaged because of the wizarding world, but he couldn't get into that with Lucy now. He took a deep breath and continued in a calmer tone. "Lucy, do you really think I hate you?" Lucy had turned her back on him, but she nodded. "Lucy. Lucy, please." She didn't move. "Ok. I'll be downstairs if you need me." He placed Hannah's letter on the bed and went downstairs. "She says she hates me."

"Can you blame her?" Audrey turned away from the stove. "She's been getting all these letters from Hannah, about all the new friends Hannah's making and how she's joined the school choir and how she's learning to play the wizard sport—quadditch? Anyway, point is, she's doing all this cool stuff while Lucy stays home and practices spells at the kitchen table with you. It's the same thing I told you at Christmas—this whole homeschooling arrangement just isn't working. It was clear to me then, and it's even clearer to me now."

"Hogwarts is dangerous. We discussed this, Audrey."

"Is it, though? I talked to Louise Brown—Hannah's mum—and she said Hannah was doing great. She and Donald went to parents' night and learned about how things are done at Hogwarts. The whole school's magically guarded with protective enchantments, and inside the school there's a hospital with magical remedies. Louise told me that the nurse can mend bones in seconds! And there's things like that Harry Potter tournament, to make sure that young wizards know how to protect themselves in case something bad happens."

"It's still unsafe."

"This isn't the nineties, 'Natius, and there's no war going on anymore." Audrey said. "Perhaps things have changed."

"Well, it doesn't change the fact that she could still have contact with my family! You know, the ones who wouldn't care if I died!"

"I told you, you're basing things on a pretty big hypothetical. You have no idea if your brother George has school-age children or if he even has any children at all, and you don't know if your extended family is still involved in anything at the school. You've made choices that adversely affect Lucy based on a hypothetical!"

"I'm doing what's best for her!" Percy said.

"No you're not!" Audrey brandished the sauce-covered spoon at him. "You're arguing about this with her every time a letter from Hannah comes, and in the meantime, she's convinced that you hate her! She spends eight hours a day at home practicing spells. That's two hours with you in the morning, two hours with me in the afternoons, and too many hours in between all alone! That's no way for a child to live! Your parenting choices are sucking all the life out of my little girl!"

"Oh, now she's your little girl?"

"You're not acting in her best interests! You're keeping her home alone to study magic by herself, and it's sucking the life out of her. I may not know everything about Hogwarts, but I do know that our current arrangement isn't going to work out."

"I told you, this is what's best for her!"

Audrey sighed heavily. "It's not. And you're so blinded by your own experience with the magical world, that you can't see what your parenting decisions are doing to her. What kind of parent doesn't act in their child's best interest?"

"I told you, I—"

"It's not working!" Audrey said. "Look, I took a backseat on the schooling decision because wizard school wasn't my area of expertise, but I'm not going to take a backseat on this. And frankly, I'm not sure how much more I can take of you ignoring my input as you make all the decisions for this family."

"Audrey." Ignatius stepped backward. "What are you implying?" His eyes widened. "Wait, are you saying you'd end our marriage because of this whole school thing?"

"I don't want it to come to that." There were tears in Audrey's eyes. "I don't, I swear, Ignatius. But the wellbeing of our girls needs to come first. And if you're not committed to that . . ." she didn't finish the sentence.

"Audrey . . ." Ignatius couldn't lose her. He couldn't lose the woman who had accepted him with open arms and embraced all of his odd habits, the woman who had stayed by his side even when she found out he was a wizard, who had supported him when she learned of what his father had done to him, who had borne him two children. He would be lost without her. And so he uttered some words he never thought he could say: "Well, I suppose we could think about enrolling her next year, if that's what she wants."

"Oh, Ignatius." Audrey hugged him. He hugged her too and kissed the top of her head, though his mind was already reeling with the ramifications of that decision.