A Most Noble Cautionary Tale
He did not speak her name for months.
Not to colleagues. Not to old friends. Not even in the quiet of his own mind.
To name her would be to summon what he had banished. So Augustus Prince buried himself in theory. In perfect, sterile numbers. In the cool, clear world of Arithmantic structure where no child could disappear, no daughter could falter, no love could undo itself in the dark.
But even perfection has margins.
And grief…
...has a way of seeping in through the seams.
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It was her old bedroom that undid him.
He went in to retrieve a book. Nothing more. Habit.
He should have sent a house-elf.
But the scent was still there—old parchment and elderflower. The chair was still tucked beneath the desk. Potion vials, labelled in her delicate hand, still glinting on the shelf. And the photograph— Elspeth holding a six-year-old Eileen beneath a winter tree, both laughing.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
It took hours before he could stand again.
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That night, he wrote the letter.
Not with the elegance he was known for. But with hands that trembled slightly, and ink that smudged.
Eileen,
I was wrong.
I was afraid, and I let that fear take hold of me. I judged you when I should have held you.
You are my daughter. My only child. There is nothing you can ever do that will make me turn away from you. That I did—even for a moment—is a failure I will spend
the rest of my life atoning for.
But while I do, if there is a way back—any way—for us to be a family again, show it to me.
Please. Let me see you again.
Father
He sealed it. Addressed it.
Summoned the owl.
It flew into the night.
It never reached his daughter.
Callista intercepted it—just like all the others.
She opened it. Read it once. Then, with her usual care, resealed it.
Returned it to sender—with the fold-line torn just enough to suggest it had been opened.
And read.
And discarded.
It was the last Callista ever thought of Eileen.
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Augustus never wrote again.
He assumed—correctly, he thought—that Eileen wanted nothing more to do with him.
That his mistake had cost him his daughter.
He closed her door to her rooms, unchanged since that day. And never reopened it.
He was honoured with medals in the following decades. His work in precision theory redefined three branches of European spell craft. His name soared.
But he could never bear to hear hers spoken.
And in the stillness of his study, long after midnight, he would sit alone and wonder if stars could ever forgive.
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It became the scandal of the century.
The girl who had it all.
Lineage. Brilliance. Poise.
The sole heir of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Prince.
A name once uttered in the same breath as Black. As Malfoy. The cream of Wizarding Britain.
A future guaranteed—courted by fine young men, praised by professors, destined for mastery.
And yet—she vanished.
Gone was the prodigy.
Gone was the legacy.
Gone was the manor that once lit its halls with intellect and wine, its rooms filled with the finest minds in Britain.
The House of Prince shuttered its doors.
Augustus—once so revered—withdrew entirely. Refused all social correspondence. Declined every invitation.
He never remarried. Never adopted.
All knew a great line would die with him.
All because of a daughter who, as the whispers went, chose ruin.
They said she married a Muggle. That she had a child in obscurity. That she gave birth in a coal-dust town and never came back.
And for pureblood society, it was the perfect cautionary tale. A most noble one.
A fall from grace—swift and absolute.
Proof that blood could be wasted.
That brilliance was no guard against disgrace.
That wild fancies—especially from daughters—had consequences beyond imagination.
They used her name as a warning:
“Do not be an Eileen.”
“Even the brightest can fall to obscurity.”
She became a fable of failed promise.
They told it with sympathy, of course. With sighs. With mourning. But never with forgiveness.
Because Eileen Prince did not just vanish.
She dismantled something great.
She left a hole where an ancient and noble house once stood.
And in a society that measured worth by name, inheritance, and legacy—she proved how fast it could all be lost.
It was a story of horror.
And it would not be forgotten anytime soon.