"Sit with your cousins," said his mother, and "you don't have cousins," said his father, and "the train's a great place to meet new people; Tad and Zach'll probably be very reassured to think there'll be a couple friendly faces in their year, but if they have any sense at all they won't want to hole up with people they already know," said Timothy, who was wearing a prefect badge and seemed to think it made him as good as a parent.

He is doing what Father said, of course. He doesn't have any cousins and he is sitting alone and has pulled out his wand and is swishing it around trying things because most people aren't very creative at eleven and perhaps there are ways to usefully harness impulse magic beyond learning it in class (and he knows he'll excel at that, so he doesn't exactly need to start studying.)

The door opens. The person who opened it observes its low occupancy. "Hullo," she says, "may I sit here?"

She's definitely not a not-cousin, so "you may," he says importantly, and waves his wand around - everyone gets sparks or lights or something the first time, why not every time...

She carefully tucks her trunk under the seat and puts her owl on the bench next to her, opposite him. "What are you trying to cast?"

"So the dominant theory of how accidental or impulse magic happens is that kids are - don't know, brimming with magic, and since they aren't using it it builds up and then when they're emotional they spontaneously do magic, and the spontaneous magic stops when you start doing trained magic because you're using your reserves instead of letting them spill over. But that's stupid, doesn't make any sense, because grownups who are in prison or pretending to be Muggles or something don't do magic for a long time and I've never heard of accidental magic happening to them, so I have this theory that instead there are different ways of doing magic and once you start doing one you unlearn the others and impulse magic's one of the others and no one's ever noticed because you start learning properly at eleven and most people are stupid at eleven and wouldn't think to try."

"Isn't potions a different way of doing magic? And people do that and the kind with wands."

"Yeah so that's evidence there are at least two. Sooooo maybe there's more."

"But it means you don't automatically unlearn one by learning another."

He actually looks at her for the first time. "Huh, fair enough." And then more formally, "it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am Minor Finis Way."

"Likewise! I'm Miranda Swan."

"Maybe you don't automatically unlearn it, but you lose it over time - that would suggest that someone who didn't start potions at the same time as they started wandwork would find it harder to do, or vice versa, are there societies that do one but not the other and were surprised when contact was made that both were possible? Was there ever a year of students who missed potions for six months because of some dungeons disaster, were they slower to learn - no, that's hopelessly confounded..."

"Maybe there's a fourth thing. Apparition doesn't need a wand, or Animagery. And people pick those up - more the first than the second and pretty much always later."

"Could be. Has anyone tried relearning impulse magic - yeah, I'm sure someone has, somewhere..."

"I'd be really surprised if nobody had. But I've never been able to get it to do anything specific on purpose, have you?"

"No. Aaron - that's my next-older brother - said he sometimes did - he loses his temper way more than me, he did a lot more impulse magic in general - but I don't know if he was directing or predicting, know what I mean?"

"Yeah, and if you have to lose your temper to do it that might make it harder to systematically notice that you can do specific things than it actually is to do the specific things..."

"You shouldn't have to, even if it's emotion-powered strong emotions don't all have to be 'losing your temper'-flavored. But yeah, makes it harder to study usefully."

"I didn't do very much impulse magic at all actually, Mum thinks it's because I intellectualize things."

"I think I could also be characterized as intellectualizing things and I still did a fair bit? Maybe different kinds of intellectualizing things."

"Maybe. What's your kind, mine is writing things down a lot."

"Coming up with theories about how everything works and then getting distracted by them - they tend to sort of branch and have a lot of implications and be more interesting than whatever I was doing -"

"Were you distracted from something with the impulse magic thing?"

"...from being sad or homesick or stressed about my parents fighting? I guess?"

"...oh." Pause. "I don't think I'm going to be homesick, I'm not sure that's a thing I do."

"My dad is the only person I've ever met who thinks like I do, I'm going to miss him a lot. I'm really excited and really proud and I'm going to do amazing things but I'm definitely going to be homesick."

"If you need to borrow an owl I don't expect to have mine sending letters all the time."

"We've got a couple family ones, but thank you. I'll probably write every day, might wear ours out."

"Yeah, might. What House do you want?"

"Ravenclaw was that not immediately obvious?"

"Some people are surprising! Mum was in Ravenclaw."

"It's the best house. Knowledge is the future - did you know that my dad built this train -"

"Yes, actually. Well, I didn't know which branch of the family you were but I know who built it."

"He's brilliant," he says proudly.

"It is a very impressive engineering project."

"He's done cooler stuff. And is working on even cooler stuff, there's lots of places you can go with integrating magic and technology - and he told me when he was my age he wanted to remake the Philosopher's Stone and I said 'wait, why don't you anymore' and he said 'who says I don't still?' and I think he might be able to do it -"

"That would be way better than the train."

"Yes, it would. But the train's useful, the proof-of-concept's useful, rails might be more efficient for infrastructure than Portkeying things, someday..."

"...hmm?"

"Well, the train's lovely but it would have been better if it didn't use a Muggle train station."

"Better how?"

"They had to work through and around the Muggles a lot to put in the platform, and now every year hundreds of witches and wizards are going to have to come through King's Cross."

"Okay." He shrugs. "That's logistics; Dad didn't do that part."

"Yeah, that's fair."

"We could have a rail network that didn't go near the Muggle ones. Or we could just lift the statute and work with 'em or something."

"Yeah, that'd work."

"Aaron's big on that."

"Which, not going near Muggles or working with them?"

"Lifting the statute. Gains from trade and everything. You don't have to think people are your equals to have positive-sum interactions with them."

"That makes sense."

"Course it does. My brothers are smart. So which house do you want to be in -"

"Ravenclaw like Mum would be nice but I think I'm probably going to wind up in Slytherin. I'd be really surprised at either of the others."

"Aaron's in Ravenclaw and Theodore's in Gryffindor but my oldest two brothers are both Slytherins."

"Do they like it there?"

"Yeah, they're the type." 

"I do think that's kind of the idea."

"Sometimes in pureblood families you just sort of end up there if you're not an obvious fit for anywhere else. But Timothy's the Slytheriniest Slytherin who ever Slytherined and Michael would be too if he had a more respectable hobby."

"What's his hobby?"

"Singing! And playing instruments, too. He's great at it but it's not very - you know, dignified and guardian-of-an-ancient-noble-heritage and all the things we're supposed to be..."

"Well, it sounds like there are enough of you that at least some of you can have other interests."

"There are seven of us."

"What's that like? I'm an only child."

"Nice. It's great to have a lot of people you can just trust no matter what. And it's less pressure, like you said, to do everything right..."

"Mum's pretty laid back, I'm not sure how I could be under less pressure actually."

"Well. You're not from a good family."

"I'm not from a good English family."

"My apologies."

"Apologies accepted."

"English important families mostly have more than one kid, I don't know if it's because we're a lot of pressure or just because lots of kids means a stable line and so more power." Shrug. "My grandfather should have stopped at one but I'm not sure everyone should."

"Why should he have stopped at one?"

"Do you not know the story?"

"I knew about the train, I don't know everything about your family."

"I wasn't sure. People gossip a lot. So my grandmother Muriel nearly died giving birth to my father and she had a slow recovery afterwards and she couldn't have any more children. And my grandfather was really sad about that, and he was also upset because she was sick and taking so long to get better, so he left her for someone who could give him more children and she died alone shortly after and he remarried three months after she died."

"...oh."

"Shoulda just stopped at one."

"Or at least waited."

"Well, but if he'd waited she'd have gotten better and it's not as acceptable to leave your wife for not being able to have kids as it is to remarry if you're widowed."

"...did she somehow die of being left, I didn't think that usually killed people."

"My dad thinks she'd have made it if she'd had support instead of a husband who was angry she wouldn't get out of bed."

"Oh."

"He could be wrong, he was just a little kid - and they did have elves to take care of things for her and all the healing money could buy - but when he left and took their son she just stopped trying..."

Nod.

"Anyway."

"Anyway. What subject are you most excited about, I'm excited about Charms."

"Transfiguration! And Arithmancy and Ancient Runes but that's not until third year..."

"I'm not totally clear on what Runes is for."

"I just really love languages, I'm not going to study it for the practical applications or anything."

"Oh, that makes sense. Do you already know other languages?"

"Written Greek, Latin, some French. My dad speaks ten."

"Wow! I only know English and Igbo."

"Oooh, wanna teach me? I'd love to know Igbo!"

"I've never tried to teach it to somebody before."

"I'm a fast learner!"

"And it doesn't actually have an alphabet either."

"Wait, really? You should invent one and get everyone to adopt it, then you could make sure it has good clear spelling and pronunciation rules and everything..."

"...I just write it in English letters."

"I guess that works too."

"The thing is I write stuff in Igbo when I want it to be really private and I'm used to that keeping out everyone except Mum all by itself."

"I mean, if you don't wanna, fine."

"Maybe once I know you better? Sorry."

"It's okay. I probably shouldn't start a language first week of school anyway, I'll skip all my lessons practicing because languages are more interesting."

"Well, you wouldn't have anyone but me to practice with so you'd have some time left over, I want to learn magic."

"Language is pretty magical. You can just move your tongue and make anyone in the area aware of really complicated thoughts, or you can represent them on parchment and achieve the same thing - did you know for a long time after the invention of writing people only read aloud, reading silently didn't become common until a thousand years later..."

"I didn't know that, that's weird!"

"There's a biography of this ancient Greek guy that says 'and he read without sound and without even his tongue moving, it really creeped everyone out!'"

"Were they just sounding things out - what about in, in China -"

"I don't know about in China! And they must have been! For a thousand years!"

"But you can't sound things out in Chinese! I think."

"You can't?"

"I might be remembering wrong but I think they have symbols for words not sounds?"

"Huh! They probably didn't have that problem then - though sounds is obviously the superior way to do written language -"

"They must have some reason to do it that way, but I don't see what it would be."

"Could just be - people keep things the way they always were, even if they weren't that way for a good reason."

"It had to start somehow though."

"I mean, if you were a sort of small thinker, and trying to invent writing, you might just think 'oh, this symbol will mean this word I need, and this symbol this word...', you might not think about what if people tried using it for the whole language, what if the language changed, how long does it take to learn..."

"I guess that could be it."

"Still silly. You should invent an alphabet for Igbo so no one else does and messes it up."

"A lot of languages share English letters and that's been working fine for me. Besides, I'm not sure anyone would pay attention if I invented an alphabet."

"You might have to throw a lot of gold around, get all the signs done in your alphabet, get things transcribed and printed..."

"I do not have a lot of gold to throw around and have only been to Africa one time."

"Strict parents? They'll loosen up about money if you're responsible with it."

"...not everybody's family has a lot of gold to throw around either."

"Well, no, but you corrected me about yours being important."

"I don't know about you but when I think 'Igboland' I don't think 'that's where rich people live'."

"So then you might not have to throw that much gold around, even."

"We're not rich here either."

"I'll ask Aaron how to do it, he'll probably have ideas."

"Okay."

And there is a food cart! And he was going to be restrained because she just said she didn't have much money but there are a bunch of things he hasn't had before so of course he has to try them and he ends up spending kind of a lot.

"Want to share?"

Miranda does have enough pocket money for some chocolates. "Okay."

And they nibble and trade stories they've heard about the teachers and the classes. He has four older brothers and so a lot of stories.

Her stories are all from her mum but suffice to make the conversation not completely one-sided.

"D'you know what you want to do when you grow up?"

"I'm not sure yet! I have time to pick something based on what I'm best at and what I learn at school."

"I'm going to invent stuff."

"What kinda stuff?"

"Dunno yet, whatever I'm good at. New forms of magic. Translation magic. Philosopher's stone or something like that or something better."

"Oooh, translation magic sounds so hard but really useful."

"Wouldn't it be?? Countries would be on much better terms if everyone understood each other."

"Well, maybe. We speak English just the same as Muggles around here do and aren't on terms with them at all. But it'd help."

"Might be even worse with Muggles if we didn't. Though I guess there'd be less people marrying them. Anyway, the hard bit about a translation spell is that there's nothing much like it you could tweak or expand on, and there's no good ways to cheat at development from scratch. I betcha I could do it but I don't see a way to do it cleverly. Maybe when I'm older."

"I wonder if you could make the spell kind of - read books, and figure it out that way. It'd only work if there were books in the language though."

"Well, every language should have books! But it's hard to learn a language just from a book, without starting out knowing anything. Hard for people, dunno if it'd be hard for magic."

"Yeah, different things are hard for magic but I don't know if that's one of them."

"Divination magic's the worst but I don't know if magic that learns things has to be divination magic."

"Is the spell for telling which direction north or whatever is technically a divination?"

"Dunno -" he stands on his seat to reach his trunk - "it's in my books somewhere, I bet -"

"You have a divination book already? I was just going to write the question down and then go look in the library later."

"I bought all the books for all seven years because I figured I was going to have to buy them eventually and this way I could study ahead."

"Oh, that makes sense."

"Well, the booklists might change. But still." Tug. He barely manages not to knock the trunk down onto both of them. "Divination, divination, can't wait until I can cast the Summoning Spell - Timothy does it all the time -"

"Mum does too! She loses things."

"Timothy just likes showing off. He'll have friends over and they'll be debating something and some papers that I don't even know how he got will come zooming in to answer whatever the question."

"...well, that does actually sound fun."

"Timothy's fun. I love my brothers."

"They sound great!"

"Unless you are a Hufflepuff you will definitely meet some!"

"I really don't think I'm a Hufflepuff."

"You don't seem very Hufflepuffy to me."

"Can you usually tell right away?"

"Nah. Timothy's probably as good as the Hat, but I'm not great at people. But all the respectable friends I have are hoping for Hufflepuff and you don't seem much like them."

"All the respect for the virtues of Hufflepuff but even if I squeezed my way in it just wouldn't work very well."

"I like cutting corners wherever I can. I abandon projects halfway though because I thought of something more interesting. I don't want to be respectable and virtuous and known for my reliability, I want everyone to know me by the amazing things I pulled off."

"You will probably have to finish at least some projects for that."

"I will! My dad does!"

"Then you should be all set."

"Yeah," he says happily, and, "ah-hah!" and he flops back into his seat with a divination book and starts scanning it.

...okay, fair enough. Miranda gets a book out too.

And a while later, "nah, north-finding doesn't count, but this book basically takes the stance that if it works it isn't divination."

"What does north-finding count as, then?"

"Charm." 

"See, this is why I'm specially excited about Charms, it seems like most everything really handy and some of the really cool advanced stuff is a Charm if it's not something else, and all the something else seems really specific."

"Yeah, that's reasonable. It's just too mix-and-match for me, I like when there are obvious underlying principles, even if they're specific and restricted..."

"Are there not principles to Charms? I only have the first year books and they've very little theory."

"There's got to be, but it's not like transfiguration, all the laws right up front."

"I guess the nice thing about obvious systems of rules is that you can feel very clever if you learn to cheat."

"Yeah! And I will, too."

"Good luck!"

And now that he has a book in his lap the odds there will be any more conversation are not excellent.

That's okay. Miranda, too, has books, and she also has notes to jot down about the conversation that has already gone by.

Eventually she tells him to shoo so she can change into her uniform.

He will do that.

And then she will return the favor and then books!

And excited glances out the window as they get closer.

The castle is glorious.

The first years are herded over to the boats while everyone else heads for carriages. "Um, can you do me a favor?" Miranda asks Minor.

"Oh?"

"I'm prooooobably going to fall out of these boats at some point. I don't want to dunk my owl, would you carry her?"

"Sure, but why'd'you think you'll fall out of the boats..."

"I trip on things a lot. Being on a boat will not help." She hands over Amber's cage.

"You just have to sit still." He is careful with Amber's cage and gets into a boat.

"I'm mostly worried about getting in and out..." She manages to place her trunk and then wobble into the boat.

And they get a couple of additional boat-companions. Minor knows one and tells the other it is a pleasure to make her acquaintance.

It is a pleasure to make the acquaintance of the boat companions too!

Miranda sits quite still as they boat across the lake. She does stumble enough to nearly drop her trunk and immerse one foot halfway up the calf on her way out of the boat but manages to suffer no worse results, and takes her owl back when they're safely on dry land. She squelches up to the deputy headmistress, Professor Mole, around whom they are assembling, to mention that she goes by her middle name, can that be called instead of her first, please? and Professor Mole says no and Miranda sighs and drops it.

He's at Hogwarts! He gives Miranda back her owl and then bounces up and down excitedly even though it's not very dignified.

"Swan" is earlier in the alphabet than "Way", so Miranda gets sorted before Minor does. The Hat takes about twenty seconds to mull her over, then sends her to Slytherin.

There are three Ways this year - the other two are not his cousins - but 'Minor' comes before "Thaddeus" or "Zachariah".

I want to be in Ravenclaw, he thinks very determinedly at the hat. I'm smart, I'm smart, I want to be in Ravenclaw.

You are smart, says the Hat, and ambitious -

I'd be miserable in Slytherin. I'd be miserable anywhere except in Ravenclaw, I'm smart, I want to be in Ravenclaw -

Yes, you've said, says the Hat, alright, better be - "RAVENCLAW!" and people are watching he really does have to be dignified so he calmly walks over to the Ravenclaw table and doesn't bounce at all and gives Aaron a brotherly hug and not a clingy one and says "I'll have to write Father -"

"As if he was in doubt," Aaron says with a snort.

Thaddeus is a Hufflepuff. Zachariah's a Slytherin. Not that Minor particularly cares; they're not his cousins.

Headmistress Twimble gives a speech about how they are all here to learn, and to exalt the great tradition of Hogwarts, and to enrich Wizarding Britain by their embrace of the fine education Hogwarts will provide, and so on. And then the feast appears!

(He sneaks out some parchment to write a letter to his parents about everything that has happened and Hogwarts is of course exactly as described but he is still very pleased and impressed with it but not overawed or anything he's sure he'll find things he can make better and it was a pretty even sort this year, he knows some of the kids with him in Ravenclaw - see, he didn't lead with the fact HE IS IN RAVENCLAW because that'd suggest it was in doubt - and he almost forgets to eat but the feast drags on long enough he finishes his letter and there's still all this tasty food around.)

Miranda does not forget to eat, but she introduces herself to the people around her, she prefers Miranda, thank you, the headmistress can't pronounce her first name anyway...

And eventually the feast is over, even the desserts. He is bouncing. Just a little. He stops because it isn't dignified.

And somebody's going to show them to their dorms, right?

Yes, the Slytherin prefects! "I'm Timothy Way, this is Euphemia Prewett, welcome to the House of Salazar Slytherin! You're going to follow us downstairs." He gives Zachariah a hug. He points them down the stairs.

Down into the dungeons the Slytherins go.

And here they are. There is a passphrase, it is 'astra inclinant', don't share it but there are also other protections against students entering the wrong common rooms. There is a common room. It is lovely and spacious and ancient but not quite crumbling. 

"Alright," Euphemia says, "now you can introduce yourselves properly - who you are, who your parents are -"

"What you see yourself doing in ten years, and in a hundred," he adds -

And when the round of introductions gets to Miranda she says, "I'm Miranda Swan - Miranda is my middle name, please don't even try to pronounce my first name - and my mum's name is Nnenne and she teaches primary school in London. I'm looking forward to Charms and interested in politics but I'm not sure yet what the next century will wind up presenting as the best opportunities to use that."

"What about your dad?" asks the Malfoy girl next to her.

"My parents are divorced," says Miranda firmly.

And when all of the children have participated Euphemia Prewett confirms that she is the daughter of Delphia Gamp and Edson Prewett and the granddaughter of Erasmus Prewett and she plans to own a Quidditch team and expand her family estate -

"And my father is Finis Way and my mother is Nell Avery, Larkin Avery's daughter, and I should like to be Minister of Magic and then of the whole world but I can't guess whether I'll be able to do it inside a century. Welcome to Slytherin! You are probably simultaneously exhausted and bursting with questions; let's answer a few and then save the rest for tomorrow."

Miranda does not have any questions that seem pressing to address right now (she's assuming it will be fairly obvious, or told as a matter of course, where they're sleeping). The Gamp girl wants to know if they get assigned their own house-elves or if they're communal and if the latter are they on a neither-seen-nor-heard protocol? A boy wants to know what time breakfast is and where they get their class schedules.

They get their schedules tomorrow morning at breakfast, which is at eight, the prefects will be here to escort them to breakfast if needed; the house-elves are communal and on a neither-seen-nor-heard protocol but if she requires something of them she can have a message sent. Rooms are down this hallway for the girls and this hallway for the boys, don't try to enter the other one.

The Malfoy girl wants to know what happens if somebody tries.

She will find that the door opens on somewhere else in the castle, where seems to be random but possibly gets more and more inconvenient if you try it a lot. 

Miranda giggles. Oh, she does have a question after all, how can she find the Owlery to put her owl away tomorrow morning?

"Tomorrow's a Monday so probably leave the Great Hall through the leftmost door, go up every flight of stairs you see for a while, then when you're on a floor that has faded wood flooring - should be five flights of stairs but could easily be seven - head north."

...Miranda writes that down.

And bedtime!

Bedtime! Miranda gets the bed second farthest from the door, between Madeline Malfoy and Hester Gaunt. Philomena Prewett and Rhea Gamp fill out the room.

In the morning she gets up promptly and goes to put Amber in the Owlery and then makes her way down to breakfast. She has to ask directions from a portrait on her way back but she makes it in plenty of time to eat.

And they get class schedules! First thing Monday mornings is Charms with the Ravenclaws.

Yay Charms! ...Where's Charms?

Charms is hard to find, even with prefects and portraits. There is a hallway here, see, and the first time you reach it you should go straight, and then soon you'll find yourself there again and this time you should go left, and then there might be a staircase but if it's hiding you can usually draw it out by oinking like a pig and at the top of the stairs turn around and go back down them and you'll be at Charms.

.......okay. Fifteen minutes between classes is looking kind of optimistic here. But to Charms she goes. She sits next to a Ravenclaw girl who has gotten there early.

He doesn't get there early, because he's convinced several of his new classmates to help him determine what happens if for one person it's their first time down the hallway and for another person it's their second time down the hallway.

He does get there pretty much on time, despite the fact that the answer is 'it takes you off some third place'.

"Hi Way," says his housemate over her shoulder.

"Dwimmer! Wonder what counts as having gone through it twice," he says, "in the last few minutes? The last day? Does it count if you don't remember it? Is there some place at Hogwarts that is amazing but that you can only go to once because it's through some hallway that ever after sends you elsewhere?

Swan," he adds as an afterthought, recognizing Miranda.

"Hi. You were playing with the trick hallway? What'd you find?"

"I was curious what happened if two people walked through it together and for one it was their first time walking through it and for the other it was their second."

"And what happened?"

"Takes you to the Astronomy tower."

"See, I can't do experiments like that because I can't take stairs very quickly."

"Why not?"

"I fall! Like remember how I asked you to hold Amber on the boat."

"There really ought to be a spell or magic shoes or something for that but I can't think of any."

"I could probably invent one. When I'm older. Doesn't help Swan experiment now, though."

"Well, don't hoard your results and maybe you'll find useful shortcuts I can take instead of trying to run."

"Maybe I was planning to sell them and fund pushing adoption of an Igbo alphabet!"

"You can still sell them to people other than me if you like," she says generously.

"What I actually want to do is put together a complete theory of -"

"Way!" says the professor. 

"Yes, sir?"

"You were late already and have since exacerbated that disrespect by chattering."

"No disrespect intended, sir."

Miranda is promptly quiet and attentive.

He has enough brothers who have vivid and probably-exaggerated stories of horrible beatings for lateness, and even Timothy who does not exaggerate and does not tend to get into trouble with authority has come home for breaks with evenly spaced bruises. He will also be quiet and attentive. 

They are supposed to float things!

C'mon, things: float.

His pronunciation is very precise and the things should float on the first try but they don't.

Hers don't either. Nobody's do actually.

Karen manages it on the second though!

Swish and flick swish and flick what's the theory here about what the wand movement is actually doing, what's the relevant level of precision, is it the same for everybody, are people who do this with staffs or other substitutes doing something analogous, have variants on this been tested, what do they do...

"I've heard it can matter what your wand's made of, the precision thing."

(Miranda finally gets her thing to float.)

"That would be interesting; if not all wands are maximally precise is that just because affinity matters more or is precision a tradeoff with power or flexibility or -"

(He is told to practice getting the thing to float.)

(He does that.)

It's really unfortunate that the Charms professor prefers to suppress classroom discussion like this. Miranda supposes they can talk about it and look things up in the library later. Float float float thing.

Karen tries variants. Slower gestures, quicker words, smaller gestures, quieter words.

His thing floats! Look at it, it's floating, bounce-bounce-Zachariah's-judging-him-bouncing-isn't-dignified - he glares Zachariah down and starts trying variants too.

Miranda floats her thing with somewhat less of her attention and writes down what happens when Karen tries variations (usually the thing just floats normally; smaller gestures make it float lower and twitch less, though.) When Karen has run out of experiments Miranda works on getting her thing to follow her wand once it's been floated.

Then she sticks her wand back in her hair and tries her other wand.

Her thing shoots up to the ceiling and lodges there.

"...um."

"How'd you do that?"

"With my other wand." She puts it back in her hair and gets out her normal wand and tries to coax her thing back down.

"You have a wand that overcasts everything?"

"I don't really know how it works yet." She manages to levitate her thing in a downwards direction out of the ceiling.

"Cool. I want one, where'd you get it?"

"Secondhand shop, Madam Ollivander wouldn't sell me a backup."

"Awww, then they probably don't know how to make wands like that in general."

"The man said it was chimaera hair core but I don't know if I should believe him. It liked me though." Gentle non-overpowered bobbing of thing in the air.

"I'm gonna write home and ask my dad to find me one."

Miranda is quietly skeptical.

Well, Miranda doesn't know his dad.

By the end of Charms almost everyone has feathers bobbing in the air. The Ravenclaws have History next.

Karen and Miranda make plans to mess with the spell out of doors later (Karen is curious about how high the weird wand can make things go) and then off to potions with her!

Potions is in a courtyard so the fumes don't get to the students too much.

Seems reasonable! Miranda knows how to make a couple things but only via haphazard instruction from her mum.

They are starting very simple; upper-level potions can be unexpectedly or undetectably dangerous if you screw up.

This is reasonable. As long as the work is simple Miranda can take the time to develop good habits about mincing things finely and stuff.

Mincing things finely is very important. Exact direction-following is very important, they don't know enough theory yet to guess which deviations will be safe.

This also seems reasonable.

Then at the end of two hours she should have a potion with effects vaguely like coffee.

Cool. Do they get to keep them? What's the shelf life?

They do not get to keep them, in case they did something subtly wrong. They can request some from the kitchens if they want some. Properly made it'll be safe for a year.

Well if they don't get to keep them the shelf life is a much less interesting question, although Miranda doesn't tell the professor this.

Lunchtime!

And then transfiguration time!

Where they are changing the color of parchment scraps. Miranda aims for a nice robin's-egg blue.

He aims for green, the house colors of his new house!

How stereotypical.

Once she has her blue she attempts stripes in ecru.

Detailing in silver is hard; he hasn't gotten anywhere by the end of class.

Her stripes weren't really cooperating either and when she switched wands her paper glowed briefly and then caught fire.

"You should be careful with that. Imagine when we're learning dueling or something."

"I really shouldn't learn dueling for unrelated reasons."

"Oh?"

"I'd have trouble with the footwork."

"That's unfortunate."

"Yeah, dueling might be fun otherwise. Maybe I'll be fine on a broom and I can pioneer broom dueling."

"Oooh, I'd like to see that!"

"There'd have to be rules about targeting each other's brooms though."

"Might make it too easy, but might not. Brooms are hard to hit."

"People on them would be too, though."

"They would still be a much bigger target."

"Yeah, that's true, I'm just worried it'd boil down to who can get whose broom to stop holding them up sooner and that's not the part that sounds fun."

"No?"

"Not to me anyway."

"What's the part that sounds fun to you?"

"Flying around hexing people! It's fine if this knocks somebody off their broom, but hexing the broom is different."

"Well, if you invent the sport I guess you get to make the rules."

"Yes I do."

Oh look it's Herbology.

Herbology is not really the most applicable for most people and probably shouldn't be in the standard curriculum. But tradition is tradition.

The singing mustard is cute though! It sings! Miranda identifies seeds of different pitches and drops them into her tin and manages to mostly play "A Rose Tree" by the end of class.

That's kind of clever. 

Will the professor let her keep a leaf as a whistle? The professor will not let her do that. Alas.

And that's all their classes for the day! They have a great deal of homework. Work promotes virtue, and all. They head off in a group to find the library.

Yay library! Miranda sits with Karen. She likes Karen.

He also likes Karen, she did useful experiments in Charms and now there's no one to glare at them for not working productively if they speculate endlessly about the results.

Speculating about results is fun! They will have to be very quiet, though. This is the library.

They can pass speculative notes!

That works! And in between they can do their homework.

And then Karen wants to go outside and watch something levitated by overpowered wand without a ceiling in the way!

Yeah and also outside they can speculate aloud without being slapped with a ruler by the librarians!

Which is an improvement!

Anyway, it turns out that Miranda's wand will levitate a leaf so far they can't see it anymore and can't find it drifting to the ground, and a rock about four stories up.

"Where do you suppose things go if they just go up forever -"

"They become Astronomy subjects."

"We could put some stars in the sky and confuse all our professors!"

"They'd be so alarmed!"

"If you put up a star do you get to name it?"

"I don't know! You should, usually the discoverer does, right, but making it's more impressive than discovering it ... I wonder how bright it'd need to be, and how far up..."

"I don't know what I would name my star. Karen would be a silly name for a star."

"Yeah, you gotta name stars in Latin or something so people take your star seriously."

"You know Latin, right? What would you name a star?"

"My family's house motto is 'per aspera ad astra', means 'through hardship to the stars'. Bit of a silly thing to name a star, though.

Quaesitor, maybe. It means, like, seeker."

"Now I will be less confused if I ever run into a conversation about Quidditch in Latin."

"My family has a rule to only have conversations about Quidditch in Latin!"

"Really?"

"Everyone gets excited about Quidditch, and my father wants us to practice our Latin, so that's the rule!"

"That's funny. I don't think Quidditch is that exciting. Flying is but I don't see the point of adding the game to it."

"Competition makes most things more interesting. And Quidditch is the market for and driver of better broomstick development so if you like flying you should be glad people like Quidditch so much."

"I don't object to other people having fun with it!" says Miranda.

"It's nice to have a sport where the tactical picture keeps changing because of new inventions!"

Miranda giggles. "Earlier I was thinking about inventing aerial dueling. Because I'd be so bad at footwork."

"Oooh. I'd try that. Theo'd be terrifying."

"He a good flier?"

"Yep. And ridiculously good aim." Only thing he's any good at but he's not going to tell someone that.

"I don't honestly expect I'd be particularly good at aerial dueling but I'd be a far sight better at it than the kind on the ground unless it turns out I'm clumsy in the air too."

"Well, we have flying lessons Friday, you'll find out!"

"Mine are Wednesday!"

"Pfft. Slytherin gets all the nice things. It's probably Timothy's fault."

"Does he have influence on class schedules?"

"He has influence on everything, it wouldn't surprise me."

"So far all I have seen is that he seems very nice. Maybe when I've known him longer I will detect omnipotence."

"Not omnipotent, just omninfluential. I sort of expect as soon as he's of age Father'll hand all House politics over to him, Father hates it."

"When we were all introducing ourselves he said he wanted to be Minister of Magic and then the whole rest of the world."

"Yup, that's Timothy!"

"How would you be Minister of the whole world? That's not even a thing."

"I guess you should probably ask him! Being in charge of things doesn't appeal to me much, I'd rather be learning stuff and inventing stuff."

"All of the above," chirps Miranda.

"There's only so much time in the day! Anyway if Timothy's in charge of the world then I can just tell him to do something if I need it for some reason. All the benefits, none of the politics sucking your time down the drain."

"Sure, that works if your brother happens to take over the world. If I want to be in charge of the world I have to do it myself."

"But it sounds like you'll have competition!"

"Nobody's taken over the world before, so I'm betting competition is not the biggest obstacle."

"Trains were just invented. You can't meaningfully control a territory you can't traverse and get information through. But in a hundred years maybe it'll be possible to move people and stuff in large numbers all over the world, and then someone'll be able to rule it."

"Broomsticks are old. And trains need tracks, which brooms don't. I'm not at all sure this is why nobody's taken over the world."

"Broomsticks don't move Muggles. To take over the world you've got to somehow govern the Muggles."

"But do you have to move them? Quickly?"

"Dunno. Seems like a more connected society's more take-over-able, but maybe it's not strictly necessary."

"I haven't begun thinking seriously about how to take over the world but I bet 'hadn't invented trains' is not the only reason nobody's done it yet either."

"Well, ask Timothy, not me, he's the one who's thinking seriously about it." He tries levitating two rocks at once. No go. He tries levitating two leaves that have been tied together. That one works. Tied together loosely enough they'll unravel in midair, and then he can keep them both up separately? No; one falls.

Miranda writes down these results - "What determines which one you're levitating when you're trying to do both and then one falls?"

"Hmm, feels like I picked a place to hook onto and then that's the place where the spell stays? If we knew more magic someone could try crumbling a rock I'm levitating or something..."

"I accidentally set some parchment on fire in Transfiguration when I tried my chimera wand! I might be able to do it so it comes apart in the middle if we used a bit that was shaped right."

"Oooh!" So they try that.

It takes her a few tries to be able to burn through the middle of levitating parchment instead of just crisping it up around the edges, but eventually she manages it. The half with the anchor-y thing he noticed stays up and the other flutters to the ground and Karen has to stomp on it before it sets anything else on fire. Miranda doesn't have enough precision to burn right through an anchory-thing even if he identifies where it is for her.

Still! Not bad, for a day's experimenting! And it's now a little past dinnertime.

Better nip into the castle and get food. Dinner lasts a while, they can still grab something even if they aren't precisely on time.

Yeah. And he and Karen go off to the Ravenclaw table. He tries to ignore Zachariah pointedly but it's hard when Zachariah's also ignoring him.

Miranda winds up across the table from Timothy in a recently vacated spot.

"Miranda! How was your first day? You were looking forward to Charms, right? Did Professor Winkelstern let the Ravenclaws filibuster it, he complains that they are very hard to keep on topic."

"He chided your brother for chatter and things were mostly pretty quiet and topical after that. We did experiments with the levitation charm, me and him and one of his housemates, after classes."

"Oh? Discover anything?"

"Yeah - it anchors onto a small piece of what you're levitating and if the thing comes apart in midair only the piece with the anchor bit will stay up!"

"That's fascinating! Can you choose where you're anchoring?"

"Didn't get that far but I bet it's possible, that would help explain how Professor Winkelstern could get things to turn over."

"Got a lot of homework?"

"Yes, but we got most of that done in the library before we went out to experiment."

"Good for you! I really recommend those savory rolls, they're excellent."

"Thanks!" She yoinks one.

And he asks the Malfoy girl what she thought of potions and Gamp what the Herbology lesson was and then reminisces delightedly over a prank someone - he has no idea who - played with singing mustard a few years ago, he is definitely not mentioning it to give them any ideas and it's funnier the first time anyway but it was the most memorable day of the year...

"Swan wanted a singing mustard leaf," Gamp volunteers.

"They make good whistles," says Miranda.

"What do you need a whistle for?"

"Nothing in particular, it was just cute."

"Small plants are technically allowed in the dorms but I think I'm gonna rule 'no' on singing ones lest Malfoy's father show up in my dorm room for a stern talk about sabotaging his daughter's academic progress."

"I didn't even want an entire potted mustard, just a leaf, it would've wilted anyway."

"There's a potion to make cut plants last like ten times longer, or fifty if you're sure no one's going to try eating them. It used to be a second-year potion but they did a curriculum restructure recently, you might learn it this year."

"Maybe, we didn't get a syllabus in Potions."