"That's terrible. Anyway yeah I'll teach you now if you promise you'll never ever read my notes that I'm not purposely showing you, yourself or for anyone else either."

"I promise."

"Okay good. How do you want to start?"

"Can you give me simple sentences? This is your alphabet, this is an Igbo alphabet, this is a table, this is my table, that is your table..."

"Okay -" And she translates the sentences, pointing at things as she declares them hers or Minor's.

And he echoes her delightedly, changing words around for the possessives - "plate? food? brother?"

"I actually have some funny vocabulary gaps because the only person I ever speak it with is Mum," Miranda mentions, "and neither of us have any brothers, I think I remember it from a story but I'm not actually sure - but it's really compound-words-friendly so you can just make stuff up -" And she translates more words.

"This is my brother, this is my plate, this is my brother's plate? This is your plate, there is my other brother..."

She continues translating. She has to pause to explain a ways in that Igbo almost completely doesn't do adjectives - there are literally eight of them and you are not supposed to make up new ones, it would be a Mistake - instead you do this or that to do the things English speakers do with adjectives.

"Cool." And he keeps it up with the questions.

Eventually they will have to relocate from the Great Hall and she will try to do bits of homework in between translating things, while he's practicing pronunciation or writing out her new alphabet.

Right, homework. He'll still have that when he's twelve.

And eventually she has to escape to her House to go to bed.

"Thank you!" he calls after her.

"You're welcome!"

Dear Father, 

I can speak Igbo! My notes are a little sloppy because I was in a terrible hurry and I had to promise not to read Swan's notes so you should promise that too, but here it is - Swan invented an alphabet, I'm using that one ...

...my Charms essay only got an excellent but that's okay, it wasn't a topic with much in the way of theoretical applications and I can't think how a better understanding of the fundamental principles relevant here would have contributed to a better essay. I realize that this speaks rather poorly of the teacher and of the way assignments become part of the Hogwarts curriculum, but I have already expressed my opinions on that subject...

...Swan invented an alphabet and it's an excellent alphabet and she built the battery correctly. Is this how one identifies a person to marry? If so, should I say anything about it?

Your loving son,

Minor Finis Way

Miranda continues willing to teach him Igbo.

Karen feels kind of left out but can't hardly keep up with Minor.

He'd be happy to try teaching her in the evenings after they have to go back to their respective common rooms; teaching something makes you learn it faster.

Well, she'll try as best she can. She's pretty good with rote memorization! Her phonemes and sentence structures just turn out - clunky. The grammar doesn't come naturally at all.

Maybe she's already twelve. He doesn't ask; that'd be rubbing it in.

Well, her explanation seems to be that she's "a bit rubbish at languages I suppose".

"I'm sorry," he says sincerely.

"It was like this when my dad tried to teach me Latin too. Why don't foreign languages have nice simple grammar ever?"

"It's just not the same grammar as you're used to, it's hardly more complicated -" and he tries to explain.