The Estate, After Lunch, (Morning Fandom Time)

When Mallory had been asked by Queen Ilyse and Prince Audric to come tutor their young daughter, he had been honored and delighted. Several months later, the shiny had been rubbed off both the honor and delight, but he had become fond of enough Karla to continue to teach her for years, up until the tragic accident that had claimed her parents' lives and gotten her shipped off to live with the local Hourglass coven her aunt Kay had been a part of. When Hobart had announced Karla's 'death,' Mallory had spent a week mourning the spoiled, yes, but also sweet, imaginative, and precocious child he had taught.

In the years she'd been gone, time and nostalgia had blunted the worst of her childhood antics, helping him forget that classes were just as often characterized by biting, kicking, crying, and arguing as they were learning, studying, and behaving (Darkness bless behaving.) All that had come rushing back to him over the past four days, dealing with her much-younger self--and her much-younger friends. Even being the Steward to the headstrong and still impetuous Queen and her entire Court was easier than this.

Mallory couldn't help but reflect on these facts as he pulled Karla down the hall by her ear. He'd caught her in his office a few moments earlier "playing" some kind of game that had involved a jam sandwich and a great deal of ink all over his desk, his chair, and the floor. Coincidentally enough, those were the same places he could see much of his paperwork, also under the ink. Any last ideals he'd had about respecting the Queenly dignity she was due as an adult when flying out the window (possibly with more of his papers) as he'd grabbed her ear and began dragging Karla towards her room, a bath, and the tender mercies of anyone who was not him.

What neither of them had been expecting, however, was for the filthy, shrieking child was to suddenly return to being an equally-filthy-but-less-inclined-to-shriek adult halfway towards their destination. It was Mallory who ended up yelping when the ear he was pinching shot up two feet in the air.

"Karla!" he said, half-surprised and half-thrilled. "You're back!" Before she could respond, however, he was grasping her shoulders with a hissed, "Don't you move or I will throttle you," and running off to find Julian, Morton, and anyone else he could find. Their Queen was an adult again. They were going to get this bloody coronation over with before something else could happen, come Hell or high water.

[NFB, open for folks what are here, SP is gonna be a thing, pls to be waiting for OCD]