Violet sat staring moment with her mouth slightly agape. She knew Caes was athletic, but had had no idea he was that serious about Quidditch. "Wow, Caes, that's...that's great!" Though--how much did Quidditch teams travel, anyway? She might not be able to have much more contact with Caes than she'd had while he was in school.

Violet flushed guiltily. Oh yes, she'd received his letters all right, but she'd been a slacker about answering them--which was unusual for her. But this past year had been so strange and hectic. "Oh--yes, yes I did. Thank you for writing so often. I'm sorry about being so slow to answer sometimes, it's just...this year has been such a strain." And now Violet felt what might be an actual tear trying to creep into her eye and sternly willed it to just stay where it was. "I don't know if you remember me trying to talk to you at the closing feast the year I left..." was that just one year ago? it seemed longer "...My mother was in hospital a lot of the year and I've been...well, I've been spending a lot of time there with her. I guess I just let everything go, sort of. I haven't even been able to keep up with my writing very well." Well, she'd written a lot, sitting in the hospital, but it was just bits of scenes and character sketches--it was like she couldn't focus on cobbling together any sort of narrative or plot any more.