Miranda continues not to see what's so hard about Occlumency. She's probably missing something but she has no way to tell what (she tries a couple professors; none of them know anything about it) so she just steadily works her way through the book and then practices a little every day and presumably if her mum can Confund her she's not doing it right but until she can check that she doesn't know what else to do.

And he tries to learn Mermish, and writes detailed letters home on the progress of this endeavor. Sometimes his not-cousins come down to the lake to watch him. He suspects they are making fun of him for sticking his head underwater but he's hardly going to wait to learn the language until he can do advanced charms to let him breathe in the lake. 

Gaunt needles Miranda about her father again, this time in their dormitory instead of the common room. Miranda aims a hair-braiding charm at her head and Gaunt winds up with such ridiculously entangled hair all braided together in front of her face that she can't see or talk for hours until she's unpicked it all.

And apparently tells someone about it, because he asks her, "what is the story with your father?"

"My parents are divorced and I don't talk about him," Miranda says.

"I'm terribly sorry," he says gravely. "That must be very painful."

"They've been divorced since I was a baby, it doesn't trouble me very much except when people won't leave it alone."

"You have my sympathy." Beat. "But he was a pureblood, right?"

"I didn't insult you," Miranda says pointedly.

"I'm not trying to insult you! I wouldn't hold it against you if you got abandoned by a Mudblood father!"

"I did not get abandoned by a Mudblood father and you'll leave it at that if you don't want your own set of plaits like Gamp's!"

"There's no need to get all defensive," he says, and storms off.

Harrumph.

"His mother's French," someone comments scornfully.

"I didn't know that," Miranda says neutrally.

"Yup. Good family, but still."

Nod.

"My mum says you shouldn't marry a Way anyway," someone else pipes up, "they're kind of a dramatic lot."

"Yeah, but so pretty."

"I hadn't even been considering it," Miranda assures them.

Some people present have considered it. The conversation turns to marriageable Ways. Everyone is sure Timothy likes them but no one is sure Timothy like-likes them, and it wouldn't do to get swept off your feet and not end up married which it is widely agreed would be a risk with Timothy.

Miranda is a little too eleven to have strong opinions on this subject but at least nobody is talking about her father anymore.

They are not. They are giggling and lamenting the shortage of girl Ways, it's really kind of extraordinary, maybe Finis invented a potion or something.

This conversation has become rather boring. Miranda slips off to find Karen, who has never been given to this manner of gossip.

The Ravenclaw first years have come up with the idea of mapping the castle! The castle is obviously not mappable in the sense that you can draw a map of it, but it might be mappable in the sense that to get from one point to another you reliably have to pass through a third, in which case you could make a sort of string-and-beads castle map that gets distorted and rotated but remains reliable. Or you might not be able to do that. They're in any event going to check.

That sounds fun, can Miranda come?