"It was the middle of August . . . it must have been the nineteenth, I remember because Professor Lockhart was doing that book signing."

"Speaking of him, where's he gotten to, I still have his wand but if he could swipe one or something..."

"You have--of course you do. He's probably trying to figure out how to get it back without losing face." She doesn't look amused, nope, definitely not.

"Why do you have his wand? And why do you have wings?"

"I have his wand because he Memory Charmed your brother Ron and I have wings because I wanted to be able to fly."

"Um. Okay. Is Ron alright? Is everyone else alright, I don't know what the--you know about the basilisk, right?"

"Yes, we do, and it's no longer a problem. Mister Swan here dispatched it."

"Wow."

"How are you holding up, you looked pretty badly off..."

"I'm--not hurt or anything? I just--Merlin, I was so stupid, I thought Tom was my friend!" She pulls her knees up to her chest and plonks her forehead on them. "He was so nice at first," she mumbles into her robes.

"What is even the motive to make an evil diary that possesses schoolgirls," wonders Cam.

"Perhaps Dumbledore will know when he returns. Can you tell us more about Tom, Miss Weasley?"

"He--he said he was Tom Riddle, and it was his diary from when he was at Hogwarts. He wanted to know all about what it's like here now, and about--about Harry Potter."

"...was Harry Potter somehow known when he was at Hogwarts, because I have met Harry Potter and he is not very advanced in his educational career at this time. How old a diary is this?"

"Fifty years. He didn't know about Harry before I told him, and then he wanted to hear all about how he defeated You-Know-Who. I didn't know how, of course, nobody does, that's just what he asked me about the most."

"Huh. Well, I can go attempt amateur forensics on whence it came. Do you want, like, ice cream or something."

She looks at him like this is probably a trick question, but says, "Ice cream . . . would be . . . nice?"

He gives her a little bowl of chocolate ice cream with caramel sauce.

She takes it, peers at it, and eventually deems it probably non-hazardous enough to eat a spoonful, and then another. That might be a hint of smile.

"Thank you."

This appears to have earned him some more metaphorical points with McGonagall. "Do you have enough to work with from here?"

"Think so. Obviously I won't recognize any bad actors who turn up so I'll need someone to identify them from models."

"Of course. Would you prefer to work in our library, or an empty classroom? I can't leave you in here unsupervised and I need to take Miss Weasley to the hospital wing and then deal with the probably former Defense Professor. Oh, and I'll need his wand back."

"Classroom is fine. What's going to become of his wand?"

"I'm going to return it to him, probably right before evicting him from the castle. Only extremely serious crimes would justify keeping it from him."

"...he erased a child's memory. With the wand, I'm not suggesting it as a punitive, it's a preventative. Is this like suggesting taking somebody's hand off in wizard culture or something?"