And their first week of classes concludes and it's the weekend! Which they are expected to spend diligently doing their homework, that's how to make a hardworking witch or wizard.

Miranda is innocently doing her homework in the common room when Hester Gaunt says, "Your father's a Mudblood, I bet."

Miranda looks up and raises an eyebrow. "You bet? How much gold do you owe me now, then?"

"Don't be dense."

"I'll take that advice in striving to be as little like you as I can -"

"Why, you little -"

And here Miranda switches to Igbo, raises her voice, goes on a tirade and barrels right over Gaunt's attempts to say anything.

He listens, entertained. Once this is starting to distract other students, "Gaunt, don't suggest someone's father is a Mudblood, that's appalling and makes it look like you don't know there are wizards outside England. Swan, either challenge her to a duel outside or be quiet."

Miranda has yet to invent the aerial duel. She subsides.

Gaunt huffs and swirls out of the room.

And he goes back to writing an essay.

Miranda glares around the room a little and returns to her homework.

He ends up ordering her some of his favorite books for a birthday present.

Books is also what every other person who gets her birthday presents got her. She has quite the stack of books when the owls come in at breakfast on her birthday. Timothy receives a prompt thank-you.

The house-elves also got back to him with their questions from the discussion of ending the human slave trade; he hands her their letter as soon as he gets it.

Ooh, what's it say?

Yes, they can be attached to an institution larger than Hogwarts, but Hogwarts is very old and starting a new one and getting even as many elves as Hogwarts has for it would be hard, and it might be sort of upsetting if there was no one to appreciate their service. If it was a noble place to work with lots of work for house-elves to do they'd probably have lots of children, yes.

"Interesting."

"Think we can get anywhere with that?"

"Maybe. Might depend on what 'noble' means and who has to appreciate their service... I don't think most people spend a lot of time actively appreciating the Hogwarts elves, do they?"

"I don't think so. Maybe the school itself does."

"It can do that?"

"I have no idea and no idea how to check."

"Well, if the elves can tell if they're appreciated maybe they'd know, but I don't know if it would bother the castle elves to be asked."

"Seems like there ought to be a sufficiently sensitive wording..."

"Maybe. I'd probably have to know the elf I was talking to pretty well to come up with one specific to that elf though."

"I know a couple of the Hogwarts elves well! I'll think about how to approach it."

"Cool. Thanks."

On the weekends he goes and hangs out with Theodore, who adores Care of Magical Creatures and has, apparently, found a third thing to be good at alongside flying and Herbology. 'animals' isn't a very useful thing to be good at but Theodore's blissfully happy so Minor doesn't say that. 

Theodore gets along fine with Fredrick the not-a-cousin in Gryffindor and in his year. Minor shoots Fredrick double the scathing glares to make up for it. 

The letters he writes his father are really really long. His father does not think Hogwarts provides a remotely satisfactory education, and actually considered not sending Timothy, but Timothy begged and pleaded and wheedled and was Timothy and so of course got exactly what he wanted, which was Hogwarts and then an endless flood of letters constituting what their father considered a real magical education. He writes back answers that are just as long, and he makes sure he's not cheating by having big loopy handwriting. Pages and pages of tiny writing, and the return letters come as fast as the owls fly, which means his father must be dropping everything to answer them, which makes him feel warm and joyous and glowy inside. 

Quidditch teams start training for the season. Michael likes a girl on the Slytherin Quidditch team and therefore goes to all their practices and leans against the stands and sings. Michael has a fairly miraculous voice and starts regularly attracting a sort of crowd. Minor goes, sometimes, because Michael singing has the same air about him as Father inventing, the air of a person so thoroughly in their element that the world cannot move them at all.

Miranda goes sometimes too. She can't spend all her time reading, it would get stifling.

"He's kind of amazing, isn't he? Like a veela- are there even boy veela -"