Aaaaaahhhhhh.

"It'll be okay! My mother had eight."

"I think we're on track for significantly more than that!!!"

"Well, I suppose she might have had more since."

"Why would God care."

"It has to do with what sex is designed for, like, if you have sex without the possibility of a baby then you're doing it wrong."

"How would we know that, did God say? And, like, if you use owls for mail are you doing that wrong since it's not what owls're for, if you use wood to light a fire are you doing it wrong because that's not what wood's for, can things be for different purposes..."

"I think it was a Pope. And it matters more for sex than owls."

"Why?"

"I don't know, I wasn't a real nun."

Sigh. "I love you."

"I love you!"

Aaron starts working full time on his spice trade. Fawley comes over to Miranda's for the last few weeks of the holidays.

September rolls around and Minor and Miranda and Karen go back for their seventh year.

Miranda's mum is a pleasant hostess for Fawley.

The sixth years pick up pet firsties! All the firsties are accounted for, with one sixth year not getting one. Miranda is proud.

The firsties are pleased to be so divvied. Helps with the transition. 

Miranda turns seventeen. Minor borrows from Timothy in having a very dramatic graceful owl swooping in and out of the Great Hall all month, capturing everyone's attention, and on Miranda's birthday he asks her to marry him.

And she kisses him and says yes.

"I love you," he says in Chinese. Seventh year classes are small enough they usually all have them together. Minor spends large shares of them staring adoringly at Miranda and looking very pleased with himself.

This is better for Miranda's ego than for Minor's grades.

Karen pays a lot of attention to her schoolwork.

Her boyfriend doesn't propose yet, though they see each other on weekends. 

It's nice, in its way. They go nice places. It's distracting.

It's really really not a substitute for having someone. As he knows, what with now having someone. But they can go lots of nice places. 

Translvania approves a Statute rollback. Penelope Gamp, who Timothy didn't even know had any liberal sentiments, mentions to him that she thinks Britain should consider moving in accord with 'the rest of the world' on this. 

He can work with that. He works with that. 

Some Swedes meet to discuss the issue, too.

Their entire meeting hall, everyone in it, and several acres of surrounding Swedish countryside disappear. The landscape pinches closed around it; the only trace is some strangely bent trees and some cut-off rocks and a few furrows in the ground where the pinching wrinkled it.

He doesn't go to investigate. He is not particularly advantaged at investigating. 

He does write Elio. "I'm sure you've heard the news; it's frightening. I imagine you've anticipated the potential for violent resistance; do you know what other meeting halls might do to keep themselves a little safer?"

Elio recommends not convening at all, if possible. Disappeared owls are less of a hazard. He has no idea who could have done this or how, but it seems perhaps telling that it didn't happen to anyone in a city and the method doesn't look like it would take well to one.

The Wizengamot will definitely have to convene, but they can avoid having tea breaks to discuss how terrible the Statute is out in the wilderness. He wrangles a copy of the investigation reports and takes them to his father.

        "I don't have any Swedish," his father says.

"I hear it's like Danish."

         He sighs and translates. It's not very informative. The place vanished, no one got off a warning note of any kind first, none of them have been seen since, Vanishing an area that big or that magical really really should not work, no one knows of a spell that would do that.

Timothy writes the students still at Hogwarts.

Well that's terrifying.

Which way had they been likely to vote?

He can't figure it out, what with the language barrier and the probably deadness of everyone involved. 

Does Elio know?

Timothy asks. 

Wasn't a voting meeting at all. Elio's not sure how the affiliations shook out, but there were some foreign visitors there including one of Elio's own assistants.

"Condolences." 

He asks his father to go to Sweden with him.

Most of Sweden is still there. It has enough government to be limping along with after some hasty appointments and elections.

Figuring out who to interrogate about how their dead family members leaned is a little delicate, though. He asks his father to help him pick up Swedish, spends the rest of the year there.

At Christmas he's no closer. 

"What would you do if it looked like it was someone anti-repeal?"

"Find the Swedes who feel the strongest about that, I suppose."

"And if it's a supporter?"

"I'm not really sure. Talk to Elio. Unless it seemed like it was him. I don't think it was him. He's vaguely uncanny but he's not lying to me, I'd notice, and he's not a murderer."

"What does uncanny even mean."

" - I don't really know. I might be being unfair because I'm jealous. Like - imagine the difference in Slytherinness between me and the average person, and then take that difference again, and you get Elio, except utterly gifted at a very Slytherin skillset -"

"...so he's good at Slytherin stuff but not for Slytherin reasons?"

"Not for any reasons! But particularly not for Slytherin reasons!"

"Not for any reasons doesn't make sense."

"I know."

"Who were the foreigners there?"

"Elio's assistant, couple observers from France - from France's conservatives - couple from China whose internal politics I don't think I know how to categorize - fellow from Persia with a Swedish wife, she was maybe tentatively in favor but I don't know anything about him - and some Russians. Anti."

"Huh. How does Elio and his office get around all the language barriers -"

"Has a pretty big staff and hires for it specifically, I think. And Italian will get you reasonably far - at least on this continent -"

"How does he pay all these people, does he take donations or something -"

"I think so. And has moneyed friends."

"Huh."

"Giving him money might be valuable. Though - not if this happens again -"

"- that having what effect on his budget -"

"Sweden is pretty relaxed. There are lots of countries that would have devolved into a war over something smaller than an entire governing session getting untraceably eaten."

"With who? And it's already an issue, now, if Elio's entire office were defunded or for that matter also eaten how would that help anything -"

"Internally. And if it happens again then we need to reprioritize on stopping it, a Statute repeal isn't the sort of thing we can hope to push through a world dealing with multiple civil wars and an unknown politician vanishing problem."

"Are we sure it was even about the Statute and not just a collective assassination."

"No. But if it happened again then we could probably be pretty sure."

"Yeah."

"Sweden's community's even smaller than ours, everyone knows at least three dead people. If you had the means to carry out an assassination -"

"Oh, it'd be a lousy method."

Sigh. 

They can return their attention to happier and more Christmasy topics, that one seeming to be a dead end.

Yep! Though it sort of comes up in the exchange of presents. Michael's tinkered his little Protean-charm voiceboxes into small ones you can wear discreetly and which record the things you hear - "presumably to a dictation quill in your attic, otherwise there are privacy issues -"

Theodore gets them all fingernail polish that detects poison.

Aaron gets everybody money.

Miranda gets Aaron money!

Karen gets him money too!

He appreciates it so much and with total sincerity! He is cornering a couple of industries (he got them quite a lot of money) and would be happy to give Elio money too and wishes them both well at finishing up school.

It's so exciting!

Minor gets Cricket an array of exotic kinds of fish that are recommended as cat foods - "and a couple that aren't, in case it turns out by 'recommended as cat foods' they meant 'cheaper or less tasty', if you like the human ones better that's fine -" and Miranda a pair of stunning mahogany bookshelves that fill the whole room, shrink down to the size of a book themselves, and allow you to use Timothy's searching and indexing spells on all the books on the shelves at once.  

Cricket does not get anybody any things unless a pinprick of a scratch to Timothy's ankle and lots of purring for Minor count.

Miranda loves her bookshelves. She has made Minor a magic multilingual dictionary - he will have to fill it in himself past what she's done of English and Igbo but it will when filled in do etymology webs and a thesaurus function and multiple suggested translations of words and transliteration for things with sufficiently regular spelling and multilingual homophones and homonyms and similar fun stuff.

Minor loves it. He bounces. He kisses her. He kisses her again. And he squirrels up in the corner to spend the rest of Christmas filling it out.

Timothy got Karen lots of expensive jewelry and some rare wand materials. 

These are nice things! The Demiguise sinew will be perfect for this one order!

Oh good! He glances over at Minor kissing Miranda and suggests they go for a walk. 

Yeah sure. She gets her cloak.

It's chilly out! "- sorry, I didn't actually have anything to say, I just didn't want to conspicuously not kiss. How've you been?"

"I've been all right. Studying a lot. I helped Miranda with Minor's dictionary some. You?"

"In Sweden, and I'll probably go back after break. Perhaps this is unrelated and I'm wasting my time, but -"

"What do you even concretely do, in Sweden -"

"Now that I'm passingly mediocre at the language, lots of clerical and administrative work that got handed to people unqualified for it when half their family died - not that I'm qualified, but I'll do it, and then I can listen to things, try to get a feel for who might have been a target and why."

"That sounds really rough."

"Only the language bit, otherwise I'd like it. People are interesting."

"Is clerical work interesting?"

"Sometimes! You notice things. I wouldn't say it's how I want to spend my life but it's not just a way of buying favors, some of it's informative in its own right."

"...what do you notice doing clerical work?"

"What sort of things are regarded as worth keeping and copying, which people are meticulous and which are sloppy, which are usually meticulous and then unaccountably sloppy on one thing or another, what people write by hand and what they dictate and whether they say what they mean -"

"Huh."

"The grating bit is more how it's low status than the actual work, I think. At least for me."

"Are people jerks about it, or..."

"No? But it requires a kind of deftness that I'm not very accustomed to - I think I'd have made a very bad Muggleborn, I like being taken seriously by default -"

"Yeah, they have it really hard."

"Might get better if we get the Statute lifted."

"How do Muggleborn kids' families usually feel about wizards..."

"I mean, it's sprung on them, right? They have some vague religious teachings, maybe, or nothing at all, or superstitions about fairies, and that's it. If we were known then it'd be less of a leap, at least."

"Yeah, but they could also worry about it in advance, maybe..."

"I think most people'd be delighted but maybe depends how well we achieve the rollout."

"Yeah. Is that even being debated yet or is it all about whether, not how -"

"I've talked about it with a few people but it's not being seriously discussed yet. Elio says he doesn't think it'll happen in his lifetime."

"Aww, poor Elio."

"He's not that old. I think he's more pessimistic than I am. Though he has more experience, so..."

"He's not lying about how optimistic he is for political reasons, is he?" Karen wonders facetiously.

"Technically possible, I suppose! Reassure the older wizards that you're not so much of a radical as to dream of succeeding at your own ambitions! If so he was lying very well."

"Does nobody ever get by you?"

"I'm sure people get small things by me. Important ones never that I've known of but I might not have known. Michael thinks he could probably lie to me once. I don't know if he has a specific strategy in mind or is just assuming that since I haven't seen him lie he might get away with it the first time."

"Is that how it works, needing an example?"

"Not usually. Usually when I meet someone I just get a very strong sense of what they want and then I run from that. But examples help."

"The only person where I feel like I have a sense of that is Aaron and that is because he complains if anybody gives him any other things."

"Not, like, for Christmas. Like, are they nervous, do they care what I think of them, are they just hoping the interaction goes smoothly, do they want to feel successful and important, do they want to have skipped the awkwardness and reached a point where they can trust me, is there something they're burning to talk about..."

"Wow. ...can I have examples?"

"We could go out people-watching. Do you care to?"

"Sure, that sounds fun, but I meant more what do you think people I already know want."

"I've known them for longer and they mostly don't want secret things, there's not much to show off there... Miranda likes that Minor has a bit of a beard now? Michael is very vaguely melancholy because as usual they wrote Rebecca's parents with an update on the children and as usual they didn't hear back and he wants them to come beg their daughter for forgiveness and they're not really the type. Catherine wants another cupcake, my mother wants us all to stay well away from mysterious disappearing assemblies..."

"I do not really understand the appeal of beards but possibly that is for reasons."

"I think it's for reasons. Good beards play up the jawline, and people who have their wires that-and-such like jawlines. Minor doesn't even realize it's the beard, I wonder if she'll think to tell him."

"He doesn't realize it's the beard - he noticed something though?"

"I think he feels vaguely warm and fuzzy about the way she's been looking at him and would maybe have gotten somewhere with introspection if she hadn't dangled a language in front of him and distracted him thoroughly."

"Aww."

"As it stands he won't surface for a week which is possibly for the best, they're not married yet. I think Aaron missed seeing you all and will miss you again when you head off; Ravenclaw was good for him. He is good for the trade of international shipping but it's not at all obvious it's good for him. Theodore feels at loose ends at these kind of things and has not-very-seriously contemplated visiting nunnaries."

"I'm given to understand nunneries are usually a long shot."

"I'd suggest alternatives but I don't actually know if it's a good idea for him to be picking up Muggles."

"Aaron says he'll probably marry a Muggle, is there a critical mass at which point the Muggle-marrying really has to stop or is the damage mostly done?"

"I guess James and Samuel might have no chance with a really conservative family instead of a rather slim one." Sigh. 

"Does that bother them?"

"Not yet. Might if they meet somebody, I suppose."

"I don't see a lot of James but Samuel doesn't seem inclined yet."

"Fifth year I certainly wasn't thinking about that kind of thing yet." He makes a bit of a face.

"I was still wondering why liking boys was taking so long."

"I wasn't sure anyone actually liked girls - thought maybe they just married them to have children -"

"That doesn't really explain Michael at all and he was already making scenes when you were fifth year."

"Yes but most people weren't like Michael, I don't think most people even want to be, so..."

"I kept thinking I would eventually like boys right up until the moment Miranda turned Minor down and then all at once I had this crazy mental image - what if it's a thing, what if it's a thing that doesn't go away, I am hopelessly confused but Miranda wouldn't be and why else -"

Hug.

Hug. "It's okay, it took a while but I'm fine."

"I wonder if there were a way to have people - know it exists - sooner so they're less confused."

"I'm not sure if being confused is worse than being... it's not like it'd be talked about very nicely."

"Not really. But - my first exposure was someone suggesting one use Muggles for that and potions for marriage, that can't be the best introduction either."

"...oh."

"He wasn't doing that, I checked. But some people probably are."

"Probably. Random ones or are they easier to find somehow -"

"It's not acceptable with Muggles either but maybe they're findable somehow, I don't know."

Sigh.

Aaron gave him quite a lot of money for Christmas. Aaron in fact seems to have quietly deducted a penalty for the externalities of Michael's irresponsible shenanigans but it is still quite a lot of money. 

"We could probably start planning the house now. It'll still be years to design it and build it and ward it and all, but we'll be able to afford it. Where do you want to live -"

"Oh gosh - uh, odds of Beth and the others being able to sneak visits go up if we're close to Birmingham but I don't know if they'd really be allowed -"

"We could tell the portraits to hold still, I don't know if there are rules about Muggle visitors if they don't notice anything strange - lots of people do really broad anti-Muggle wards but it's just easier, not required -"

"So near there, then. I like all the space there is here for the kids to run around..."

"Yes, nice and big. We can have a little orchard, girl I know from school is selling these mango trees enchanted so they can grow in Britain -"

"Oh wow."

"It'll be lovely! Perhaps I should see if we can get any architects to talk to us."

"How do wizards build houses, I bet not with hammers."

"What's a hammer?"

"You wouldn't be having fun with me asking that, now would you?"

"I promise you I sincerely haven't the faintest idea."

Giggle. "It's a thing for pounding nails into wood. Do you have nails -"

"I don't really know. I don't think so - you can just make two pieces of wood into a seamless one -"

"Wow. I love magic, have I mentioned today -"

"Yes, when we were opening presents." Kiss. 

Kiss! "And I love you!"

"I love you so much and I am so delighted I met you and I love our children and we'll have such a lovely house - such a lovely life -"

Giggly kisses.

And there is the annual obligatory flying snowball fight, for which Minor can even be dragged from his dictionary-in-progress, and then the whole family dries off around the fireplace and takes turn making the flames into abstract art. 

"Do a cloud that looks like a bird," challenges Rebecca.

"Do triangle!" says Catherine, who is learning shapes.

Bird! Flying bird. Triangle. Triangle that bends and twists in three dimensions.

Catherine is delighted.

And eventually holidays end and Hogwarts attendees return to school.

Miranda sets up a time to quiz Karen on some things for NEWTs but then hits a rough patch in an essay she wants to have perfect and asks Stoller if she'll go do it instead - "you don't have to know the material, just read off the questions from her notes in a random order, it helps her if there's a person -"

"Yeah, sure!" She goes off to find Karen.

Empty classroom near the library. Pacing.

"Hey! Swan's worried about her essay so I'm supposed to help you - are you okay -"

"I'm fine, just getting in my exam worrying in advance. Thank you - review notes're over there -"

She'll read it off to her! 

Karen gets all the questions right, though not without considerable brow-furrowing and muttering in a few places.

"Excited to graduate?"

"Little frightening, to be honest, I like the structure."

"I think I'll miss Hogwarts but I thought maybe by seventh year one gets sick of it." She starts reassembling Miranda's scattered notes. "Like how one apparently starts to want to get married."

"People feel different ways about that, I think."

"Well, I'm a Muggleborn, I can be as scandalous as I please and my parents won't even know to be disappointed in me. But most people seem in a right hurry."

"Not everybody, the ones who haven't found someone yet are just less conspicuous. Plenty of people get married when they're twenty-five."

"That'd be better. A little time to - figure yourself out -"

"Meet a wider variety of people, that sort of thing, yeah."

"What're you going to do once you graduate? - there's a spell for reorganizing these, isn't there, and I've been doing it all by hand -"

"I wouldn't've let you do that, there's actually not a good one unless the paper's pre-enchanted and this isn't. You don't have to though, I can do it if you'd rather - anyway make wands probably, live with my parents till I get married and help with my little brother. It'd be fun to have a spinster place in London with Miranda for a couple years in between but she's probably going to marry Minor the day after graduation - maybe plus long enough for wedding planning -"

" - oh, but that would be fun -"

"Yeah - I could do it on my own, Timothy's not in a hurry, but that's not as interesting and the wands don't bring in so much money that I want to fling it around for no reason."

"On your own would be lonely. With another girl'd be fun."

"Well, as far as I know nothing's stopping you."

"I'd have to meet someone. But maybe."

"D'you get on with Miranda's other pet underclassman? Fawley? I dunno."

"She's a little kid. I suppose by the time we graduate she won't be."

"I guess you wouldn't graduate at the same time."

"Tess Abbott's pretty and my year and not presently rushing headfirst at an engagement but I don't know her well enough to suggest anything."

"- ah -"

" - isn't she, though? Not the way you are, she's, hmm, fluffier? But I still like looking at her in class. There, that's all the notes in order - I should bring Swan a biscuit, too, she looked like she was tearing her hair out over that essay."

"- I don't know that I'd be able to identify Abbott on sight, um. Thank you."

"Yeah, sure!" Off she goes.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Timothy gets a password-protected letter which if tapped with his wand and told "palladium" will reveal a note.

I have no idea if I have just been flirted with but supposing I had been what do I need to do to be circumspect about the boyfriend I have???

Awwww. He doesn't mind, and you can leave it at that until you're really sure of them?

You're sure that's good enough?

Are you worried that not being clearer would sabotage a potential relationship? I'm assuming if people are flirting with attached classmates they probably wouldn't regard it as a dealbreaker if you were in fact attached. 

Okay that is probably true. She probably wasn't even flirting with me.

Can't help there. Unless you want to manufacture an excuse for us to meet, I suppose, then I totally could.

It's Stoller, I have no idea why you'd be meeting Stoller.

Maybe Miranda can invite her to her wedding.

Okay, yeah, she will probably do that.

There you go. Good luck with N.E.W.T.s.

Thanks!

It gets warmer again eventually. On a nice warm day it seems like the time to go out and dry out a patch of grass-thatched mud to lounge on. And then kiss there.

It is a great time for that. 

Kissing kissing kissing abruptly rolling off of him onto the grass and saying "ugh".

Unhappy startled 'mmmr' and then - "you okay -"

"I'm fine this is just difficult and stupid."

"Isn't it though.

We don't have to follow stupid rules."

"I trust you it's just I'm sure lots of people think they have very good reasons to be exceptions -"

" - I mean, yes, but you're smarter than all of them."

"Thank you, but that's sort of - not relevant to the heuristic I'm using -"

Snuggle. "I don't mind waiting but I don't think I know the heuristic you're using. Mine is generally 'is a rule probably in place because most people are stupid? if so, ignore it except to the extent you'll get in trouble'."

"I think you have gotten in trouble doing that once or twice," she points out.

"Sometimes it's worth it!"

"The heuristic is sort of like 'if people who violate this rule do it because they think they'll be okay, and then they're not okay, don't violate the rule, even if I think I'll be okay'."

Nod. Sigh. Snuggle. "Three more months."

Snuggle. "Yeah."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

Stoller sees Karen at a broomstick duel, waves.

Karen is distracted and knocked off her broom into the pile of pillows under the combatants.

"Oh gosh I'm sorry," she says later. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's okay. That's what the pillows are for ever since Prewett broke her arm. Um, hi."

"Hi! What're three safe substitutions in the Wiggenweld potion?" It's one of the questions Karen took a few minutes on when Stoller quizzed her.

"...maple sap for honeywater, lemur spinal fluid for sloth brain mucus, saguaro thorns for the first but not the second addition of lionfish spines."

"You're gonna be all set."

"Thanks."

And she lines up for the next broomstick duel.

Karen stays to watch.

Stoller has an unusual duelling style, probably building off her reputation for that duel first year which wasn't actually her. She is still attached to using Wingardium Leviosa to stick bits of peoples' robes in place.

"Quirky," Karen remarks after she's done.

"For a while it was a fad and Black looked all murderous over it but then thankfully he graduated."

"And now you probably never have to run into him again."

"I haven't the faintest idea what he's doing with his life, but probably not."

"I remember Miranda muttering a lot about what to do about him, before the duel."

"It was kind of unpleasant. It was nice of her to get upset about it."

"Miranda's great."

"She is! Her mentorship thing's going really well, I think the new batches of Slytherin girls are a lot less lonely."

"I thought about trying to get it going in Ravenclaw but I think it wouldn't work as well - lots of introversion and a very strong study group culture that would obviate half the use."

"And it might be a little less hard to not be pureblood anyway."

"Yeah - not that there's not some people but the incentives are different."

"Some people's not a problem, the problem is when no one will talk to you - or when any one person is willing to hurt you for it -"

"The last time Ravenclaw had a physical violence incident over blood purity that I know about was a few years back with Trembley saying purist things and Corner hitting him for it."

"Slytherin hasn't had any Muggleborns recently so it hasn't come up."

"Did the hat say why it put you there?"

"I didn't realize it was so unusual, I didn't kick up much of a fuss. Can one go talk to the hat after being sorted?"

"You'd have to ask Twimble and people don't but I'm not sure that you couldn't in principle."

"Maybe if I don't notice a dramatic ambition in a couple years I will ask the Hat what it was thinking. Though, I mean, Slytherin does mostly suit. If I want something I am much more inclined to figure out who can get it for me than to study hard or charge ahead or - whatever a Hufflepuff would do -"

"...work diligently?"

"That either."

"Sometimes I think Miranda should've been a Ravenclaw. She's a culture fit."

"Why do you think she's a Slytherin?"

"She says the hat considered Ravenclaw but as a core features thing and not a culture thing she's really a Slytherin. She's not a natural to the networky smoothtalking - thing - though."

"I mean, is anybody when they're eleven? You learn."

"Okay, but there's Miranda and then there's, like, Timothy - you don't even know Timothy - when he was, I forget exactly, like five, he heard that most Ministers of Magic were Hufflepuffs, and started pretending to be Hufflepuffy."

"- okay, that's pretty Slytheriny. This is your boyfriend? He wants to be Minister of Magic?"

"Yeah. Or possibly take over the world."

"Is this a selling point or a drawback? On the boyfriend front, I mean."

"- I don't really have a pros and cons list."

"It just seems like it'd be hard to be indifferent about whether your boyfriend conquers the planet!"

"...I don't think he is going to conquer it. I think that would be bad. Right now he's mostly working on limiting the Statute of Secrecy."

"And he wouldn't mind if you and Swan got a flat in London for a couple years?"

"Yeah, like I said Timothy's not in a hurry, but Minor is so Miranda's not gonna be doing that."

"And you wouldn't want to with anyone else?"

Shrug. "Who else?"

"I don't know the girls in your year! I should probably go, this duel looks nearly finished and I'm up next."

"Have fun!"

Timothy has enough Swedish to try to get a feel for their politics. It seems like the conservative wing would have won out. It's not obvious who would have been upset enough to commit a mass homicide over it. 

It's also not obvious who would have been that confident of the outcome.

Nor are other motives presenting themselves. He writes Elio periodically. 

Elio or people in his office write back promptly every time!

And eventually he goes home, not really less ignorant than he started out but with some useful new contacts.

NEWTs roll around.

They're so fucking long. Oh god. So long.

Nastily exhausting, even!

Karen staggers out of the exam room muttering "oh hell somebody carry me to a soft surface".

Minor sleeps for two days.

Miranda sleeps a normal amount but staggers around like a zombie until she's done it twice. Cricket meows before she crashes into any walls.

Karen is actually fine after thirteen hours of soft surface and a lot of scrambled eggs and pain au chocolat.

And then they're done and can spend all their time soaking up sun by the lake and complaining!

"At this point we could also do something productive with our impatience like plan a wedding."

"I am in favor."

"Should I just plan on moving in to your family's place or would we have an interim one or -"

"There's space, if you wanted to, or we could get a flat while we save up and design a house and so on. Probably could not talk the house-elves into doing our cleaning for a place in Muggle London, though."

"I'm not the one who's used to elves, how much of a problem is that..."

"Seems more like, being used to elves, I wouldn't know how much trouble it is to go without them. How do you do laundry? And food?"

"An enchanted basket and we know how to cook."

"Then that's a perfectly good option if you'd want to live in London or not live with soon to be three small children or so on."

"I get on all right with five and six year olds like Mum teaches but I have no idea about toddlers and babies for long periods of time, to be honest -"

"It's a big estate. But I don't mind London."

"Split the difference, live at your family's place until and unless we find a flat we really like and no rush about that?"

"Sounds good! Does your father want to attend the wedding and how do you want to manage that if so -"

"I was thinking turn him invisible."

"That works. Okay. Do you have a date in mind -"

"...autumn...? Maybe after my birthday. Weekend, so Stoller and Fawley can come."

"That's months and months!! Weekend sounds good, James and Samuel'll want to make it too."

"We could do earlier but while Michael's wedding was very nice for less than a week of planning that's a substantial caveat. And I like autumn."

"We had better not get old and die. Luckily my father's working on it." 

"...I agree, but what does that have to do with autumn versus summer."

"Well, see, if we are not going to get old and die, then a few more months doesn't matter. If we've only got a century..."

Snort. "We will probably live more than a century each even assuming no magical revolution."

"Still!"

"You know I'm right here, right, are you really anticipating being a hundred and forty-five going 'gosh, I wish we'd had that extra summer in which to fornicate', I don't think that's a common deathbed complaint."

"I want to marry you. I want to be married to you. And I bet it's a commoner deathbed complaint than you'd think."

"I'll grant that I haven't been to many deathbeds."

"Well, okay, admittedly me neither."

"And if we had it still might be considered indecorous to say."

"Little bit. I'm mostly going off Michael and Rebecca - of course, she doesn't have as long, but -"

"Unless your dad fixes it."

"I have a pretty excellent dad."

"You do!"

And wedding planning ensues.

Small, or as small as is reasonable with the size family Minor has. Tasteful. Blue and green. Outdoors at the estate. No dancing, or at least not centrally-featured dancing. But Michael and Rebecca can do music for it.

They'd be delighted. Rebecca's expecting a baby any day but he suggests to her they start planning nonetheless.

Being extremely pregnant makes it hard to sit at the piano or sing really long phrases but she can write notes just fine!

He can sing and play them for her as she goes!!

"- ow. Okay! Looks like this is a June seventeenth!"

" - gosh. Okay. - please don't die."

"I've done this before!" Kiss. "I'll be fine."

He worries nonetheless! (And puts the girls to bed.)

Aaaaaaaaugh if it would be convenient for Miranda to be available a little closer to the time of the event that would be nice.

She can be written!

"It's possible I should just study up a bit more and do healing housecalls for Muggle loved ones of wizards professionally, fill the St. Mungo's gap - is anybody else already doing it -" remarks Miranda when she arrives.

"Nope, I checked. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Miranda goes and gamely attempts to deliver a baby. She succeeds, in the sense that here is Jeremy Oliver Way and Rebecca is okay!

Oh good! Catherine and Joanna are told they have a baby brother.

Catherine wants to hold him!!!

Catherine: still too little to hold fragile tiny babies! She can pat him.

"He is so small."

"You said that about your sister, too, and look how big she is now! And you were very very small when I first met you, too."

"I was not so small he is so small I want to hold him please please -"

"When he is big enough to hold up his head you may hold him. But right now he is still too small for that!"

"Aaaaaaaah if I don't hold him I will die aaaaaaaah."

"I don't believe you!"

"Ack ack aiee," flomp dramatically into his lap.

"Oh no! Catherine has died of not getting to hold her baby brother! What will her Papa ever tell her mother! Her eyes are so closed. They're not flickering open at all -"

She cracks one open slyly and fights a smile.

"Oh? Oh! Oh! Catherine returns from the dead!!! Hooray!"

"Now that I have been dead I am older," she says, and she holds out her arms for Jeremy.

Kiss. "He's not older enough to hold up his head, though."

"Pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaase!!!!"

"If I said no to things and then let you have them if you asked me ten times that would be very bad incentives."

Blink. "...Please? I will be so careful."

"I know you would. But he's so little it still might not be good for him. He'll know how to hold his head up soon."

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Hug.

"Oh look my head," flop.

"I guess baby Jeremy can't pick you up either, you're too little!"

"He could try," she says, "I don't mind."

"Jeremy, you can try to pick up Catherine!"

Jeremy, being a newborn, does not do this. He looks at Catherine and shrugs dramatically. 

Giggle.

A few days later he says to his wife, "I want to tell Catherine about how she was born and found, I worry if we wait too long it'll seem more like - a terrible secret instead of something that we've always been quite all right with -"

"You think she's old enough to follow it? I don't even remember being her age..."

"She's a bright kid. Maybe not the whole story, but 'Mama had Catherine and then she met Papa and he loved them both and took them home,' yeah, I think she'd follow."

"Yeah, all right."

"When I first met you," he tells Catherine, "you were two months old! Bigger than Jeremy already. You were a very quiet baby."

"Could I hold my head?"

"Mostly. Which was good, I didn't know how to hold a baby."

"Could you not have holded me if I was so small?"

"Maybe not. Maybe your mama could have taught me."

"Teach meeeee I want to holllllld himmmmmmm."

"I was bigger than you! - maybe we can find a doll that is Jeremy-sized for practicing with, how about that?"

"And then I hold him?"

"If you can be safe with the doll."

Nod nod.

He fetches a blanket and transfigures her a tiny baby-Jeremy-sixed blanket with a floppy neck.

Catherine studies her mama's Jeremy-holding carefully and cradles the blanket just so mostly.

He corrects blanket-grip where necessary.

Hold hold hold "now pleaaaaaase?"

"Okay. Veeery careful, right?"

"So, so careful."

With a Cushioning Charm in place Catherine can try holding her tiny baby brother.

She holds him so carefully! And lights up like a little firework!

Awwww.

Awww!

"Jeremy is very lucky to have such a good big sister."

Catherine giggles and plants a messy smooch on Jeremy's head.

And then he can take him back before her arms get tired!

Nearly a dozen European wizarding polities (importantly different in a few cases from Muggle political boundaries), including France, Portugal, and Russia, meet at a summit in Switzerland and all vote not to enforce violations of the Statute of Secrecy unless they are "gratuitous and perverse" (meaning "violating it just to violate it, not incidentally").

Britain is not quite there yet. They send a couple representatives not authorized to vote on things - "lest you get seduced by those mad Italians," Magdalene Malfoy mutters - who come back and propose to the Wizengamot a more limited resolution, affirming that Britain won't interfere in other sovereign countries' Statute enforcement unless violations pose a grievous risk to British secrecy.  

TImothy is pretty sure he can get that approved inside the year.