"On our own, of course."

"Okay, we can go fetch them now if you like."

"Thanks so much."

Blues look suspicious. Kan looks relaxed and slightly smug, which does not mean that's how he feels about this.

Miranda takes Kan back to the house so he can collect coparents and children.

"Sorry. I don't like it but - it's actually a reasonable concern and it's worth clearing it up, and I don't think they're planning anything with wizards. - they're plausibly planning something, but on their own, and it'd astound me if they were willing to do anything Aitim can reasonably take issue with."

"Yeah, it's fine, I'll just wait for you till they're satisfied we're not threatening you."

"Thanks." He bundles up the kids to head out.

And Miranda drops them off.

Kan brings his children in and introduces them at length to everybody and lets the people he likes hold the babies for a few seconds.

They want to know if he wants to leave.

"Not really. There are wizards back in Amenta too, now. We're allied with these ones."

"Why these ones?" wonders someone.

"Aitim met some wizards and decided these ones would do. I've never been able to size someone up better than him, so I hardly expect I could do so here, but they've been civil hosts. We have servants. Aitim's been able to do his job. Did he know you were, ah, verifying that tonight?"

"It wasn't scheduled in advance. Obvious reasons," says the blue.

"Mmmhmm. Everyone satisfied?"

"Wait, was that obvious? How would the wizards have known we scheduled it?" asks a different blue. "I see why once it's come up you don't want to put it off, but if we just hadn't brought it up until -"

"If you can't figure it out I'm not going to do it for you," says the first blue.

"I assumed he thought Aitim would tip off our supposed captors rather than endanger us by startling them." Frowning. "Which is quite a thing to imply."

"Well, you know," says the first blue.

"Aitim doesn't even permaspring here, he wouldn't get sentimental like that just because of the babies," opines the second.

"Is something wrong with you?" Nanha asks the first one. "You're not usually quite so... vague."

He steps back. Steps between them and the children, actually. 

"- magic can do that -"

"It can make people vague?" says Nanha, at the same time as Sinkali shouts, "MIRANDA!"

Miranda, several rooms down the hall in the floor of this government building they clear for these meetings, cannot run. She approaches, and the vague blue darts out the door of the conference room.

- Kan looks around for things he can hide the children behind.

There's conference room furniture. Chairs, table. Sinkali has already pulled Nanha and Alatana under the table, getting Malo as a consequence since Nanha was holding him.

Miranda gets the blue with a spell before he can open the stairwell, but it opens anyway and out comes a wizard. He blocks Miranda's next shot and sweeps into the conference room and blasts the table to smithereens.

Miranda's compensating reasonably enough for her lack of footwork - she's still uninjured, unhexed, and casting - but she has to spend a lot of time blocking that he can spend ducking and weaving and aiming stunners - hopefully they're stunners - at the conferencegoers. Nanha's got a giant splinter of wood wedged through her thigh from the table explosion, though all the other injuries sustained are minor. And Nanha, like the rest of her family, is unconscious and therefore not suffering much from the wound at the moment. The other attendees ducked into the closet as soon as magic started flying and one is recording the events on his everything through the slats on the door.

The wizard doesn't seem to see this fight ending well for him; he Apparates away after feinting so Miranda would block rather than take advantage of his concentration on his destination. He's gone with a crack and Miranda rushes as much as she can rush into the room, does a quick triage, aims her wand at Nanha.

The blue from the closet who was recording charges out and tackles her, and gets the wand in her hand and the one in her hair, and sits on her while the other one calls security. Miranda's face is mushed into the carpet and she can't protest this effectively.

By the time he wakes up it's to a very confusing and very confused account of events in which Miranda sent people to spy on them in order to keep her hostages under control and then - no one's actually quite sure what then but Miranda definitely assaulted a lot of people.

The footage doesn't show the hallway, only the conference room, with anonymous spellfire exploding the furniture and stunning everyone in sight, but Miranda sure is shown to be marching in and pointing her wand at an unconscious injured woman.

And maybe it will all be easily cleared up but it's not done soon enough for Miranda to help Pelape with the administration of a drop of Veritaserum to test her progress at Occlumency.

Karen helps instead - this is Aitim's job, nothing they can do right now, might as well - and Karen shows her the potion closet in the lab she's borrowing from her dad to work on weasels (he's safely out to lunch). Karen eyedroppers a bit for Pelape to taste, Pelape tells her that she owns thirty snakes and rides a unicycle.

Pelape asks about the Felix Felicis; it's a pretty potion, in one of the fancier vials, and Karen reiterates what Pelape has already been told. Addictive if you take more than so much at a time, the comedown's horrible, but one can have one really lucky day, or dole it out in smaller amounts -

Pelape nods, and Karen nips out to address an urgent weasel problem.

Pelape writes five sentences on a sheet of parchment intended for potion label making, and takes the Felix, and downs the whole thing.

Before Karen can spare any attention from the weasels, Pelape has poured the correct magical acid on the lock to get into the back room, taken and pocketed the other six phials of golden luck Karen's dad has on hand, stolen Karen's hooded cloak, convinced Karen's neighbor to Apparate her to Spain, and gotten ahold of another four days' worth.

And, luckily for Pelape, Karen figures she just nipped out and caught one of those city buses rather than wait for Karen to abandon the weasels and escort her home.