summer

[peterxy]

Professor Spukhafte doesn't have any more advice than Hermione does, and is not as willing as the Gryffindor to help them if they're still stuck.

Which they are. Sadde's suggestion that they try focusing on shorter parts of memories for a higher happiness-per-second value helps him but not Miranda, so he ends up with a more solid fog. Still just fog, though. They continue reading books about it, and it seems to just be that idiosyncratic. Interestingly enough, some books written by alchemists also have mentions of Dementors, trying to figure out what their symbolic value is and whether it's possible to integrate it. More advanced books are in the Restricted Section, and they won't have access to it until at least Professor Slughorn gives them the go ahead.

The year passes. Willow is consistently good at the theoretical parts of classes and consistently bad at the practical ones, mostly due to being flustered by failures and not quite being able to get over that fact. Sadde and Miranda are exceptional at Potions, and the only reason Sadde isn't also exceptional at Transfiguration is that he doesn't quite care enough about homework when all that's on the line are his grades. That, plus all the time he spends between reading about Dementors, reading about Alchemy, and trying to undo the damage suffered by Slytherins because of the Dark Lord.

That last goal has the most tangible results, for a certain value of "tangible." Slytherin firsties are divided between liking him (Jacob and two of the girls) and grudgingly tolerating him (the other boy and girl). He has thoroughly dispelled the notion that he's "just another Slytherin" firsties from other Houses (except perhaps Gryffindor) might have, but of course that doesn't make the older years all that happy. Well, not that the older Slytherins actually care that much. But he has helped various of them with various things, mostly by acting like a somewhat willful minion, since there's not much more he can do to help older students beyond that, so he's at least on talking terms with most of them (Cole and Astoria have been quite useful there, as well).

Arens is not one of them, but by now he's mostly just ignoring Sadde and hoping he'll just go away.

Summer arrives.

They return home and spend a while with their respective families, but eventually...

Comments

[mswoods]

"Er, I'm good for now I guess?" she says.

[chanuphis]

...Miranda stands near Karen and tries to look related to her or something. "We're not hungry but thank you."

[msmaxwell]

"Alright, there'll be tea later if you want!"

And Willow promptly ushers them out.

"Sorry, er, I forgot about her!"

[pleating]

"I'm not supposed to meet any Muggles who don't know about wixen things!"

[msmaxwell]

"Sorry! There aren't any more- well except for Mr. Boris who minds the horses but I can get him to go away before we go play with them."

[pleating]

"My mum and dad might ask!"

[chanuphis]

"It's okay," says Miranda. "You didn't say anything to her. Just tell them you didn't talk to any Muggles who weren't in under the Statute."

[mswoods]

"Why is that such a big deal, though?"

[pleating]

"They don't want me to get in trouble."

[mswoods]

"...okay, but why would you get in trouble just by interacting with a muggle?"

[pleating]

"For breaking the Statute of Secrecy. If I said the wrong thing. They said when I'm older I could try going somewhere as long as people who know about Muggle things are with me but for now they don't want to risk it."

[chanuphis]

"They might not be assessing the risk quite right but it would have been pretty easy to ask Ms. Hannah for pumpkin juice, say, and she's probably already wondering why Karen is dressed like that." (Karen lacks Muggle street clothes; what she has on is not a school uniform, but it would barely be in-place at a renaissance faire, let alone out and about in a Muggle town.) "The risk is much worse for Ms. Hannah than for Karen, whyever her parents made the rule, anyway."

[msmaxwell]

"I don't think she's wondering about that, my brother's brought people dressed, erm, differently before, and both mum and dad have varied guests- okay, I'm making up excuses, sorry, I just didn't think of it."

[chanuphis]

"Nothing happened. But maybe Karen shouldn't come over again anytime soon unless Ms. Hannah's having a vacation."

[msmaxwell]

She nods. "Well, erm, want to see the rest of the house? No other muggles here." Pause. "Except for mum and siblings but they know."

[pleating]

"Your family are fine," Karen says. "And yeah let's see the rest of the house."

[msmaxwell]

"Great!" Her usual cheer returns completely unscathed, and the tour continues.

There are at least three rooms that could be reasonably called "living room," and there's the dining room there, and the games room, which has a chess table and a checkers table and a backgammon table and a go table and a few other scattered tables and chairs and a little couch and decks of cards.

"See anything you like here?"

[pleating]

"I don't recognize most of it."

[msmaxwell]

"Hmm, there are some board games in that closet but I guess you probably don't know them either... Are all your games magical?"

[chanuphis]

"Wixen do play chess but with animated pieces. The rules are the same more or less, though."

[mswoods]

"And are all those games completely original to wixen? I guess when you have magic to animate games the possibilities expand a lot, huh."

[chanuphis]

"Well, some of them are probably inspired by Muggle games but chess is the closest match."

[mswoods]

"Hmmm."

[msmaxwell]

Okay! Next up: upstairs.

First is the study it is relatively small, compared to the rest of the house. There are two desks filled with papers and one computer on each, as well as a bookshelf, a couple of chairs, a corner table, two armchairs, and Willow's mum on one of them, reading bunches of papers and writing stuff on them.

She looks up when Willow knocks and opens the door, and smiles at them, standing up to greet them. You can definitely see the family resemblance, there. "Hello! You must be Willow's friends. I'm Catherine."

[chanuphis]

"Hi. I'm Miranda, that's Sadde, and this is Karen."