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Dear Sansa,

Of course I would be pleased to receive you, or to meet with you elsewhere if you would rather that. Have you spoken yet to your father?

your loving mother,
Catelyn

From:

Dear Mother,

Either would suit me - I should prefer some privacy, so perhaps going to you would be better. At your convenience, my lady.

I have not spoken with Father yet... I have been avoiding bth of you, I think. But I intend to change that - it serves no one if I hide myself down in Slytherin forever, I think.

Your daughter,
Sansa

From:

Dear daughter Sansa,

Your mother and I would be glad to see you once more. The bearer of this letter, my liegeman Silas, will escort you safely to our lodgings (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1470658.html) in Gryffindor House.

There is no need to feel shame.

Your father,
Eddard Stark

From:

Sansa almost frowned, reading her father's letter, but managed not to, in front of Silas. Her father named him liegeman, but Sansa recalled Roose Bolton, recalled the Karstarks, recalled the Freys. 'Liegeman' on its own meant nothing. She should have expected that her parents would share letters, that she would not be able to meet with them separately. And there was no real reason to have desired it in the first place.

She was wearing the dress she'd made for herself (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1496157.html), dark grey and white that (though plain) would likely please well enough that she did not need to change - it was close to Stark colors. At the last moment, she ran back and removed the green and silver ribbons in her hair and at her throat for the sapphire pendant Tyrion had given her the first 'Christmas' she'd been at Hogwarts. After a brief but critical look in a mirror, she smiled at Silas and allowed him to take her to Gryffindor, and her parents.

From:

ghostorangel.livejournal.com

Silas had never met Sansa before. She looked very much as Catelyn must once have looked, he thought, as he led her silently to Gryffindor.

"I have heard a little about you," he said, in his quiet way. "I am here to look after you all--if you require anything of me, ever, let me know." He served all the Starks, after all, not just Ned and Catelyn.

From:

"That is very kind of you," she said politely, but privately resolved to do no such thing. Promises to look after her, well... they never ended well. "My lord father and lady mother appreciate your loyalty, I am sure." That was courteous, was it not? Courteous and noncommittal. I am out of practice.

From:

ghostorangel.livejournal.com

"I appreciate them, too," he said softly, leading her through Gryffindor. "They tell me when things are right or wrong."

They'd come up to the door to what could only be called the Stark compound--a hallway of rooms that had been more or less taken over by Ned and his family. "Here, my lady," he said, bowing her in.

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"Yes. They're good at that." There was no hint of anything in her tone, no grief, no bitterness, no nothing. Her parents had been very good at right and wrong, but not so good at survival. Perhaps that was what Silas was for.

She nodded thanks to him all the same, and walked into the hallway and its attached rooms. Anyone who had last seen her as a girl in King's Landing would recognize her face, but her bearing and the expression in her eyes was completely different. Still, she took great care not to display her nerves at all - if she was going to be a woman and not a child, she would have to exercise firm self-control.

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Catelyn had been worried about Sansa. She'd been worried about both her daughters, but Sansa in particular. Arya was strong in the way Ned was strong--blunt, obvious--but Sansa was different. Sansa was more like she herself, and thus it was sometimes hard to tell if anything was really wrong with her.

It didn't help that now of all times she was self-conscious of scars. Arya had seen her enough that at least they were likely no longer shocking, but she had seen Sansa so rarely that she knew her appearance must be distressing. While she was no longer some sort of monster out of legend, she looked very little like the mother Sansa had once known.

She was still, when Sansa entered the room--still as only the dead can be, and worried though she was she was also proud of how Sansa carried herself. Proud, and pained; her daughter had had to grow up far too soon, and far too violently.

From:

It was Ned who opened the door to their main room -- a dorm room like any other to begin with, it had been converted to a kind of sitting room, the beds removed and replaced with surplus office furniture draped over with old tapestries to resemble something more Westerosi -- and ushered their daughter in. "Sansa. Daughter. We are so glad to hear from you, and to see you." For his part, Ned had felt Sansa must be avoiding them due to their grotesque undead state, and had not wanted to inflict any pain upon her.

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Sansa had little difficulty with the grotesque, these days. Poor Ser Dontos had been slightly grotesque, the Hound had been more so, and her own lord husband more than both combined. All three had been kind to her (in interestingly equal to their grotesquerie), so she had learned to ignore it.

So there was no visible reaction to her parents' altered state, though it was borne in upon her again that they were dead in truth even if not in animation. She curtsied. "I am very sorry that it has taken me so long. I have no excuse." None, that was, apart from simply not wishing to deal with the trouble.

From:

"Do not apologize, Sansa," Catelyn said, as softly as her ruined voice would allow. "You have nothing to apologize for. We are simply pleased to see you."

She noticed her daughter's lack of outward reaction, and again there was that flickering combination of pride and pain--pride that Sansa could do it, and pain that she should have to.

From:

"That we are," Ned agreed. Decapitation had not affected his own voice much, strange to say; some enchantment had allowed him to speak normally even with his head severed from his body, and now that the head had been stuck back on, that enchantment still held, much to his relief. He was no maester. He could not say whether it would have been possible for him to speak at all, were it not for that magic.

He was not lying. He was truly pleased to see his daughter. He would have been more pleased had she yielded to reason and given up her sham of a marriage to the Imp, but he could not force her to do as he thought best, and he had not been alive to prevent the marriage from occurring in the first place. His foolishness had left him dead and his family without his protection. Therefore he could not find it within his heart to reproach Sansa.

"Come and sit with us a while," he invited her. He could be courteous, plainspoken though he was.

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Sansa might have attempted to explain her reasoning, but for the fact that she had attempted to explain, at least in part, to Jon Snow some months back and had been met with the equivalent of a brick wall. Surely there would be no point in attempting to explain to her lord father. The two were much alike, after all. Catelyn, perhaps, might have understood, but there were things Sansa would feel free to say to her mother that she would never say before her father.

She walked over and took a seat, willing herself to relax, to put off some of her armor. It even worked, a little. "How have you been finding Hogwarts?" It was an inane, stupid question, but it opened some kind of conversation at least.

From:

That was a question that Catelyn could answer honestly, at least. "Now that I have much of my family here, I am...as close to happy as I may be." She still worried for Bran and Rickon, despite what Samwell Tarley had told her. They had been alive when last he saw them, but they were also out beyond the Wall, now. But the rest of them--none of them were as they once were, herself and Ned especially, but they were together. Cersei was popcorn, out of reach of revenge, so Catelyn had forced herself not to think of her. Jaime was around somewhere, but she had not seen him--nor had she seen nor heard of the Imp in quite some time. "Are you well, daughter?"

She knew Sansa would likely not answer honestly, but she had to ask. She might be able to judge better by how Sansa answered than by what she answered.

From:

Ned would have nodded, had his head not been stuck onto his neck so inflexibly. Catelyn's words held as true for him as for herself: I am as close to happy as I may be. For Ned, that was not within a stone's throw of happy. It was, however, the best that could be hoped, and better than he felt he deserved.

He sat on a low draped couch opposite his daughter, and looked up for Cat to join him (an awkward motion of the stuck-on head). His eyes then moved to Sansa, awaiting his daughter's answer to her mother's question. Was she well?

If she wasn't, he'd have the Imp's guts for garters. Oh, would that he could.

From:

Sansa smiled what she thought of as her empty smile - it was bland, courteous, and betrayed absolutely nothing of her true thoughts, whatever they were. "Quite well." It wasn't precisely a lie - she was physically comfortable and healthy, she hadn't felt like she would be killed suddenly and for ridiculous reasons in months. "I could stay here for... quite a long time, I think, if I had the chance. It's very interesting here, and peaceful in its way. Better to be here than... other places, I think." King's Landing. The Eyrie. Even Winterfell might be unbearable in its way, however much she missed it.

She'd said nothing about her happiness and didn't intend to. She was better than she had been - close to content, even - and it was enough, but she didn't want to try and explain acceptance of perpetual unhappinesses to her dead parents.

From:

Catelyn sat beside Ned, still watching Sansa. The girl was right; Catelyn could divine nothing through that smile. Her daughter didn't seem to be actively miserable, at least, though that was a small enough mercy; the fact that neither she nor Arya were in immediate physical danger here was something Catelyn counted as a much larger mercy.

She looked at Ned. "It is peaceful, in a way," she said. Were Cersei still around, that would be another story, but as she wasn't, peace was more or less enforced. Part of her wanted to ask after the Imp (if only so she could satisfy herself he wasn't abusing her daughter), but Sansa would never tell her if he was, and in any case it was bound to be an awkward question. Had it just been herself and Sansa, she might have done so, but she felt certain Sansa would give no real answer at all with her father present. "I am glad you find it so, too. Glad for both you and Arya." Arya, who was so unlike her sister; they couldn't be more different if they tried. But they were both here now, and safe, and that counted for a very great deal.

From:

Ned had felt it proper -- indeed, obligatory -- to be present to welcome his daughter into the family fold, even if only for an afternoon. Having done his duty as paterfamilias, he could then retire and let the women discuss womanly things. If Sansa needed to discuss ... married life ... she would likely require privacy.

Also, Ned didn't think he could endure the thought of his daughter in the Imp's nuptial bed.

"It is indeed peaceful in its own way. I count myself beyond blessed to see my children again." He rose to go. "I can only hope that Bran and Rickon will be restored to us as well. For now, I must see what your eldest brother is about." Checking on wolf-headed Robb made a good excuse to be away. "Sansa, sweetling, I hope you will stay for dinner," he said, with awkward and heartfelt affection, before he bent -- at the waist -- to kiss his wife's scarred cheek in leavetaking.

There was a quiet defiance in the gesture. He might have a hard time aligning his face with hers, she might have hideous scars, but they were still a family, Catelyn was still his lady, and Ned would not let zombiehood stand in their way. It was a family in which Sansa would always be welcome, Imp notwithstanding. (Being married to Tyrion was as much a handicap as being a zombie or having a wolf head, in its way, as far as Ned was concerned.)

He and Silas left quietly and swiftly. Ned did not imagine Silas would want to overhear Womanly Conversation any more than Ned himself did.

From:

"Of course, Father," Sansa murmured. It wouldn't be a family dinner like it had once been, but it would still be a family dinner. Happier times could be remembered, at least. "Please give my regards to Robb when you see him."

Once her father had left the room, she returned her attention to her mother, scars and all. "I'm sure Bran and Rickon will find their way here, if... you and Robb and Father could."

From:

"I hope," Catelyn said. "I hope." She hoped they would come as Arya and Sansa had--alive, whole, as close to the way they had once been as possible. But then, she thought, Bran would never be whole again...she could not be certain which Lannister was behind that, but it was one of them, and that was enough for her. "You and Arya are safe here--it helps me much, knowing that you, at least, need fear no danger in this place. What happened to us will never happen to you."

The words were more than an empty statement--they were an assurance. Catelyn wasn't about to let anything happen to her children, even if one of them was married to the Imp of Lannister.

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"Not here, at any rate." Sansa held no illusions about her status if... when she returned to Westeros. Her dead parents couldn't help her there. "Fortunately, I am in no real hurry to leave."

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"I am not certain your father nor I--nor Robb, for that matter--could leave even if we wished to." Would Ned and Robb die again, if they left the grounds? Catelyn didn't know, and it was not a question she cared to test. She herself would live--after a fashion--but there was no place for her there now, especially not with most of the Lannisters at Hogwarts. "Even if we could, there is nothing for us to return to." Winterfell was burned, Westeros was in shambles, and she was hardly going to leave her husband and son if it turned out they had to stay on the grounds or die again.

From:

Sansa nodded. She'd have to leave eventually - she had responsibilities, after all. But it would be best for her dead family to stay where they weren't quite dead. "I expect I would return to the Eyrie if I went back. I came here from there, after all."

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"Did you?" Catelyn knew very, very little of what had happened to either of her daughters at King's Landing, or after, and she had not wished to ask. They would tell her, when and if they wished; there was a very good chance they would never wish. "How did you come to be there?" Had Lysa actually hidden Sansa from the Lannisters? Catelyn wasn't sure she could credit it, but it was certainly possible.

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