I shouldn't have been jealous of her and her French accent and kind smile, but there I was, and she wasn't even the woman that directly resulted in me accepting my fate with Draco. To be fair to both women, that year – and particularly that winter – had been a very emotional time for me. All of it had been building up since I first took the name Penelope Clearwater and got myself into this mess, and while it wasn't a complete surprise that the dam had burst, I still didn't expect it to break the way it did.