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chapter nine,
penpals
When Beatrice Salvatore woke up the next morning at the late hour of nine o'clock, she noticed something exciting sitting upon her vanity: what appeared to be a letter.
December 26th, 1971
Dear Beatrice Salvatore,
I am writing to tell you that I had a wonderful time at the Salvatore Ball last night.
Thank you for being such an incredible hostess, I am looking forward to seeing you at Hogwarts next year.
Yours cordially,
Regulus Arcturus Black
P.S. Do you think that you could ask Fuffy for the raspberry souffle recipe? I would like to ask my house-elf Kreacher to make it again.
Beatrice smiled to herself. The letter was short, but sweet. She put on her dressing gown and rushed downstairs to ask Fuffy for the recipe so that she could write back to Regulus as soon as possible.
Fuffy was rather suspicious, as she had noticed that the raspberry soufflé had gone missing from the kitchens last night, but wearily dictated the recipe to Beatrice regardless.
Beatrice completed the letter, and sent it off with Feathers (his first delivery!) with a smile on her face. When Theodora kindly asked Beatrice why she was so happy, Beatrice simply said "I was writing to a friend", and that was that.
☾
Although Beatrice should have been sadder than ever when she returned to Hogwarts (what with her conflict with Bellatrix causing her to drift away from her cousin's friends), she was actually over the moon. School didn't seem quite so bad when her constant back and forth correspondences with her new friend gave her something to look forwards to, and quickly became a part of her daily routine. At breakfast she would read whatever letter Regulus had sent her that morning (apparently he was an early bird), and she would write a response during lunch (Beatrice liked that everybody at the Gryffindor table could see she was owling someone). Sometimes Regulus would send her a second letter which would arrive at around dinner time, and she would occasionally write to him before bed too, but they would usually only do this if something particularly interesting had happened which simply couldn't wait until the next day (like the time that Victoria Parkinson blew off her eyebrows in Potions).
