Nod.

Her owl arrives a few days later at breakfast; she gives her roommate the Galleon, sweeps nine forged ones into her bag, and thanks her.

She has questions for Miranda. They're pretty similar to the ones Stoller had.

Miranda answers them. Sometimes Cricket is on her lap and adds commentary which Miranda mostly doesn't translate.

"Can he actually talk or are you - playing off him -"

"Some of both, but -" She gets out Cricket's phrasebook.

Cricket bats words. He can flip pages, since they have little tabs coming off them, and he has quite a vocabulary in here. I did not insult you wait yes I did

"Don't worry," she says bitterly to Cricket, "you have lots and lots of company."

No I am better than everybody

"He's just like that, he hates most everybody." She puts the phrasebook away. "Who's giving you trouble?"

"No one. Why should they? My father's Abraxus Fawley and my mother's Aranea Black and there's nothing at all to give me trouble over but if someone says 'Hogsmeade' and I say 'who's that -'"

"You know what, I think you may be a little deaf in one ear."

"I'm not even good at consistently answering to my name."

"That was very clever, incidentally."

" - that your prejudiced cat couldn't figure out by reading over my shoulder. How -"

"He's technically not prejudiced, he always learns at least one thing about a person before he decides he hates them for it. You memorized your family tree. Also, my mum has disreputable friends. Aranea would've brought you around or mentioned you."

"You can ask her. And I'm not impressed with the cat, hating people's easy."

"I'm not impressed with him either. I didn't actually know for certain till you said, if anybody could misplace a kid for eleven years it'd be Aranea Black."

She giggles. A little. 

"It was clever. It'll probably hold up unless you try to marry someone very uptight, which is unlikely since you're not claiming a classy enough background to get in the door with one of those. You'll catch up."

"Don't have the excuse to run off anymore."

"Studying, find people distracting. Running me errands all the time, ugh, you wish you'd swapped with Abbott. Trick staircase stuck you on the sixth floor for hours. Sending an owl, don't pry. Snuck into Hogsmeade, if they want any sweets they'll ask you questions in a nicer tone. Sat by the forest trying to spot a unicorn."

She smiles. Tentatively. "Also don't have anywhere to go in the summers."

"- anywhere anywhere?"

"My, uh, birth parents were not okay with the magic thing. If they had been I don't think I'd have been able to go through with getting my name legally changed and everything."

"Makes sense. I can owl my mum, or if you've got any French I think there's summer extracurriculars at Beauxbatons and they might take a Hogwarts student."

"I'll look into that. Thank you."