"My parents wanna go to the French Alps to ski so I'll probably be inside a cabin reading while they do that."

"You don't like skiing?"

She puts a foot on the chair then draws her robes up to show her knees, or rather the knee protectors she's wearing. "I would probably end up getting buried in snow in the kiddies' lane. Actually has happened once."

"Do you just wear those all the time? I never noticed."

"Yeah, under my robes. Otherwise I’d get scraped knees and elbows all the time. Look,” she says, and shows the palms of her hands, where there are some healing scrapes.

"Are you clumsier than me or just more careless?"

"More careless. I only trip on stuff that actually exists," she giggles.

"Anyway, I'm just going home for the hols. I will probably receive books."

"I will also probably receive books! While at home. For the hols."

"I live in Nottingham."

"Maybe on Christmas Eve?"

"That's far!" he complains at Karen. "And yes, Christmas Eve sounds good to me!"

"Do you not have Floo hooked up at your house?"

"It's worth getting if you have a fireplace," Miranda says. "Anyway, I'll owl you to let you know when to be over on Christmas Eve."

"I don't have a fireplace," he says. "It barely has enough space for humans there as is."

"Oh well."

He shrugs. "Public transportation's pretty good."

"Where do you live?"

"London! In a teeny tiny apartment in Walthamstow."

"Oh, so it'll at least be easy for you to visit Miranda. What about you, Willow?"

"We live in Oxford, mum teaches there."

"Sadde, if you want to come over and use our Floo to get wherever else, Renée won't mind."

"I don't have anywhere else in mind, other than probably visiting Karen. Although we could all spend Christmas Eve together! Except for Willow who'll be being bored out of her mind in France."

She sticks her tongue out at him.

"We do family stuff Christmas Eve, I can't come."

"Maybe! Um, Boxing Day?"

"Oh, I won't be there that day."

"I pretty much have no plans at all, usually mum and I just exchange small gifts and such but that's mostly 'cause muggles don't typically want to befriend me."

"And you haven't turned any of them into your project like the Slytherins are?"

"I never stayed long enough in any given school for that to be feasible due to Hulk incidents."

"Remind me what Hulk is."

"Hulk is a character from a comic book, and a Hulk incident is what I named all incidents where accidental metamorphmagic was bad enough that I had to leave school."

"...What's a comic book?"

"Okay I feel like this was a personal oversight," Willow says. "It's like a book, except instead of words describing actions and locations there are drawings, so each page of a comic book has a few panels that depict a character or a scene or a character in a scene with speech bubbles shaped like so," and she draws one in the air, "indicating what a character's saying."

"...That's weird."

"Nuh uh, it's super fun! And there is a particular genre, superhero comics, that's pretty big amongst comics in general because it's so much harder to write books about superhero action. The Incredible Hulk is from one of those! It's this scientist who's nice and polite but when he gets angry he becomes this big muscled green person who smashes things up!"

"That sounds really inconvenient!"

"It is! But there's a whole lot of story there and he's actually a pretty deep and interesting character."

"And that's the inspiration of the name 'Hulk incidents.'"

"Did you smash things?"

"...I smashed a boy? Does that count?"

"I guess."

"It wasn't one of my best moments, no."

"Were you green?"

"Red."

"Well, that's not very Hulkish at all."

"It's the losing-control-and-smashing-things part that's hulkish! Well, also the turning-into-a-monster part."

Miranda gets the door. "Hi! Happy Christmas! How are you?"

"Happy Christmas!" Laura and Sadde say. The former has brought pie! "I can't believe I'm saying this but I kinda miss school?"

"I think that's half the reason they don't let us use our wands at home."

"Well it's a very effective reason! ...hey, you told me once that children can be homeschooled, how do they do that if they can't do magic?"

"Doing good! What kind of pie is that?"

"Mince pie!"

She does indeed watch those things!

It makes everything go a lot faster. In particular, the magical potato peeler is a huge timesaver.

Oooh, both Laura and Sadde are very impressed by that one.

However, things as large as a roast beef need to spend an ordinary amount of time actually exposed to fire, so that's not going to be ready until six. They have time to sit around. Renée and Miranda have a tree up, with ornaments, some enchanted, and presents underneath.

"Ssssso," Sadde starts, as Laura talks to Renée about stuff.

"What?"

She reaches inside a purse-ish thing she had been carrying with her and draws a book that shouldn't fit inside it. It's all wrapped up. "Mum gave me this for Christmas, and this is for you. You can open it now if you don't want to wait."

"Awesome," says Miranda when she reads the title. "I'll get yours now, it'll be less back and forth for Amber." She goes and gets a package which also looks suspiciously book shaped.

"Okay! Thanks!" She opens it as well.

It is a book. The title is just Snakes, but it has a comically long subtitle (A History of Slytherins And Persons Who Had They Attended Hogwarts Would In My Personal Opinion Likely Have Been Slytherins, the Accomplishments of Same, and the Psychological Traits of the House).

She beams at Miranda. "That's so great! Thank you!"

"You're welcome!"

"Best of luck to our respective endeavours, I guess," she says, feeding her book into the purse thing.

"Mm-hm." Miranda goes and puts her new book in her trunk.

"Where?"

"At the point where you trust me enough."

"I'm sorry."

"I... can't actually tell if you're mad at me or not."

"Oh, no, not at all," she says, turning to look at Miranda. "I yield. I have been defeated. You bested me. You have won. That was the single best prank ever oh my god how did I not see that one coming!"

Miranda giggles.

She throws her hands up in the air. "Seriously! It has been eating away at me for months!"

"I would probably have fessed up sooner if I'd known you were going to get all serious about how much I trusted you."

"Well I'm a Slytherin of course I'm all serious about how much people trust me!"

"I didn't know that was a thing."

"It's a thing! You know, network of contacts, bonds of mutual trust, rankings of what I can trust each person with, et cetera."

"Wow, generations of Slytherins have been crippled by You-Know-Who in a key asset, then."

"Most Slytherins have a very us vs. them thing, their 'network of contacts' is really only other Slytherins and to get even to the lowest rank of trust you have to also be a Slytherin. They do not know how to use their assets."

"It seems like when they had a functional reputation they must have at least occasionally noticed that there are seventy-five percent of people in other Houses, and no Slytherins at all outside the country..."

"If this book's any indication, yes!"

"You have your work cut out for you."

She shakes her head. "Seriously. My conspiracy of firsties will go through its opposition like a hot knife through butter!"

"I wonder if any of the other houses are missing key aspects of their repertoire."

"Hmm... well, you're a Ravenclaw, do you think eagles are missing anything?"

"...Practicality. I mean, not all of us, but some of 'em. It's okay to have a few head-in-the-clouds scholars but not quite that many, I think."

She nods. "I could see myself falling under that category. In. Very different circumstances." Nodnod.

"Really?"

"Yeah! I mean, I'm super duper curious, right, I just wanna know stuff, even stuff that's not directly actionable, or even actionable at all. If there wasn't Slytherin to fix, and maybe if everyone was already immortal, that might be me!"

"I think a hypothetical which requires everyone to already be immortal while you attend an otherwise unchanged Hogwarts is a little far out."

She shrugs. "Well one where I didn't care that everyone's not already immortal is even farther out."

"I think this adds up to 'you cannot realistically have this particular Ravenclaw problem'."

"...yeah, I guess so." Shrug. "Do you know many Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs? I think the Hufflepuffs are lacking a bit in the 'hard work' department, but most Gryffindors still don't quite trust me so I can't tell."

"I haven't talked to any of them all that much, but I think Gryffindors might have too good a reputation and coast on that."

"Hmm, yeah, I can see that. ...I kinda find it a little bit weird, as a House. I mean, wit, cunning, hard work, and courage. One of these is not like the others."

"It doesn't stand out that too much to me. And less if you make it wit, ambition, loyalty, and courage."

"Hmmm, I guess." She shrugs. "I dunno, I guess I'm just too un-Gryffindor. Figures."

"I think both loyalty and courage kind of seem like... wrong answers. Like... any situations where loyalty comes up it seems like other things should be coming up more than that. Any situation where courage comes up it seems like you might have already made a mistake to even be there and dealing with that would have been a better use of your time than cultivating your bravery."

"Hmm, I dunno, I guess I can see a sort of bravery that's not like that. I mean, technically looking at a task like 'create glory for Slytherin' or 'cure death' and not just having your knees buckle under you does take a lot of courage."

"I don't feel like I'm using courage to care about curing death. I think I'm doing some other thing. Maybe some people need courage."

"Well, I think most people are terrified out of their minds of death."

"I'm not sure I'd characterize it that way."

"How would you characterise it?"

"They... ignore it and come up with ways to use it anyway. Like gravity. Nobody except physicists thinks about it very much, but we have stairs."

"I'm not so sure. I mean, personally I have thought about death way more than about gravity, but even in general, I don't know if people would be so... fixated on stuff like religion and the afterlife if death didn't scare them at least a little."

"Even people who aren't religious are like that though."

"Right! I mean, I suppose when it comes to you ending death isn't much about courage, maybe. I don't know if I'm scared of death but I think if I'm not it has something to do with being eleven. It feels like it makes sense to be afraid of death."

"It's not particularly un-Christmasy to us," Sadde comments, accepting the mug, and Laura nods in agreement. "And I see what you mean," she tells Miranda.

"Good, because I didn't have a better way to explain it handy."

"Analogies and comparisons are good! I like them, you can use them to explain things."

"Good."

She looks between the both of them. "Er?"

She blinks slowly. "I had kind of assumed he was just not very present because of... reasons," she says, eloquently.

"I didn't know, and I wanted to know before it got rumored around the entire school the way things sometimes are. And I know at least a couple people have been assuming my dad is a dead wizard."

Sadde looks between them again. She's not sure whether she should say anything so better not. Probably.

"For what it's worth, I understand what she's saying," Sadde tells Renée tentatively.

"You went to school years before we did," Miranda adds to Renée. "And you noticed things were bad in regular wix society but you went to school the first year after Harry Potter was born and that was years ago and it's different and I'm not being horrible just for the sake of it."

She nods.

Sip.

"I apologize for that," Renée tells Laura.

"No need to apologise," she says. She looks pretty serene and unconcerned, but then again, she always does.

Willow is doing her homework as well.

"Hi, Sadde."

"What's up?"

"Charms. And Miranda's reading something she got for Christmas."

"Oh, it's that," Miranda mutters.

He looks up at her. "Is the history of magical justice particularly upsetting? I mean, compared to baseline magical society upsettingness?"

"I mean," says Miranda, "it is, but I was expecting a lot of it at least in a general sense."

"And the parts you weren't expecting? You can tell me to shut up and go find a copy of the book if you want."

Sigh. "I knew they used to use Dementors at Azkaban. I knew they stopped. I didn't know they had no good way to contain the Dementors or destroy them or anything and so they're just running wild."

"And Dementors are...?"

"Soul-eating misery monsters."

"...that sounds like the kind of thing I should probably go get a book on before doing any thinking about."

"This isn't the book for it. Try The Dementors and their Kiss for an overview."

The book, as promised, describes Dementors.

"There were some wild ones even before, the ones who didn't work at Azkaban, but I didn't know they just let them all go when they stopped using them as prison guards."

"And muggles can't see them and our only defence is a spell that's typically not taught until we're much older." Still deadpan.

"I'm going to ask Professor Spukhafte about it, but yeah."

"We'd have to get near them for that. But yes. It can."

"Okay, then step two of that goal is getting a team of wixen who can cast the Patronus on board with the project."

"I'm not sure herding the Dementors will actually be a viable plan... I guess if they really can't be destroyed it might be the best we can do."

"Well this book seems pretty adamant on the indestructible aspect, but I guess since we're already planning to eliminate death and disease killing an unlikable monster isn't all that different. Actually there surely have been attempts if they're so sure it won't work, maybe we should research that. Actually yeah we totally should, this is a thing we can actually do in the present, as opposed to most of our other plans."

"Sounds like something to do, yeah."

He resumes his reading, this time paying more attention and not just grabbing a more detailed description of what Dementors are.

The book continues to be about Dementors. It has an aside about the Patronus Charm and how it is done.

Good! More detail is good. Herding Dementors doesn't look impossible but the Charm is less useful than the quick blurb in the introduction chapter led him to believe.

"I read somewhere," says Karen, "that your Patronus and your Animagus form if you learn both are usually the same."

"Yeah, it says so here," he says, showing her the appropriate part of the book. "I wonder why we can't just choose our animagus form. It's really weird to me not being able to choose what I'm shaped like."

"Maybe you'd get to change your form, because you're a Metamorphmagus? I don't know."

He shrugs. "Maybe, but the only reason I'd really have to do it is to prove I can, and from what I've read it's a lot of work to become one, so meh. Not a priority. If I every find myself with an idle year I might do it."

"I'd only want it if I got a really cool animal, and even then there's probably higher priorities and the Patronus thing isn't perfectly reliable anyhow."

"What do you think you'd be? I read somewhere that it's related to your personality somehow."

"Not a clue. Maybe something that could fly, I don't know."

"I bet I'd be a chameleon."

"I bet you would. Which is cool conceptually but not very practical."

"Yeah. And besides—" Chameleon eyes and tongue. Tongue lick. Skin turns yellow then back. "—I have the coolest aspects already."

"Ew!"

"Ew!" agrees Karen.

Face normal again. "So, yeah, no animagic planned for me at the moment."

"Do you want to come with me to ask Professor Spukhafte about Patronuses?"

"Definitely!"

"Now?"

He closes the book. "Sure! Just need to check this out."

Miranda waits for him.

He promptly checks the book out, puts it in his bag, and leaves with her.

Professor Spukhafte is in her office!

"Professor?"

"Hi. We're interested in the Patronus Charm. Is that something you'd be willing to help us with?"

The Professor blinks and clicks her tongue. "That is a very difficult Charm, one that even, what is the name, N.E.W.T. students are not regularly taught."

"It didn't sound especially difficult in the book. What's so hard about it?"

"Unlike most other Charms, it requires a very specific frame of mind to be attained and maintained, othervise it vinks out. There are also aspects relating to personality and self-confidence that are not yet vell understood."

"...I'd like to try it anyway. Is it safe to practice on our own out of the book?"

"...vell, unless you are a Dark Vix," and she shoots Sadde a meaningful glance, "it should be fine. But you are very unlikely to succeed even vithout a Dementor around, and they make casting the Patronus much more difficult."

"Does something weird happen if dark wixen try to cast Patronuses?"

"Not all people who could be called Dark Vixen suffer this fate, but trying to cast the Patronus Charm has been known to instead produce maggots that eat the vix."

Sadde blinks and shudders. "That's horrifying."

"Well, neither of us are Dark," says Miranda. "But thanks for the warning."

"You are quite velcome. Vas there anything else?"

"Can you cast one, as long as we're here, so we can see it?"

She nods. "Indeed not. However, these cannot be faked and are proof against the Dark Arts, and vill find their intended targets no matter vhere they are, instantaneously."

"Instantaneously?"

"Vell, if the target is far enough avay, they disappear from where they were cast and appear near the target."

"Wow!"

Sadde nods.

The Professor dispels her Patronus.

"Thank you, Professor."

"You are velcome."

And off they go. "That was neat," opines Miranda.

"Yeah. When we learn to do it I'm partially retiring Richard."

"I don't think they're really the same niche as owls."

"Sure, but at least to talk to people who have Patronuses—Patroni?—they're probably useful. Especially if they're tiny and not too obtrusive."

"Except it'll interrupt whatever they're doing and if they weren't listening there isn't a way to hear the message again without casting a separate spell..."

"Yeah, fair enough I guess. Maybe we could invent a wix internet, one that doesn't need dial up and is, like, super fast."

"Ooh!"

"We should probably invent magical computers first. I wonder why regular muggle tech breaks down around magic..."

"I think it's to do with electricity in particular. Other technology works fine."

"Hmm... That sounds like an interesting avenue of research. Maybe there's a fundamental particle for magic? A magical electron?" Pause. "Thaumion. That's totally gonna be its name."

"You're assuming there's only one."

"Magicon? I'm taking away your naming things license!"

"It's Latin!"

"It is not!"

"It is too! Magicae, that's how you say magic in Latin!"

"Magicon isn't! And it sounds dumb in English."

"Ffffiiiine, how would you name one, then?"

"Your other three names are good. And... hm, charm is already a kind of quark... hexon, maybe."

Beat. "Drat. How did I not think of that?"

"You were busy thinking of 'phlogiston', which is great."

He grins. "Well, that name already existed so it wasn't that hard."

"Yeah, but it ends in -on and it's got all the right meaning and it's just really good."

"Well thanks! But hexon is really awesome too and sounds all science-fictiony and you made it up, so kudos for you. Would jinxon and curson work, do you think? Curson sounds kinda science-fictiony too."

"Curson does sound science-fictiony. Jinxon is maybe too much consonant in a row but it's okay otherwise. Of course, it'd depend if there were actually special particles that mostly showed up for those kinds of spells."

"There's probably some particle that just kinda exists there, in the background, when a lot of magic is practiced in a place, though, otherwise electricity would only stop working when spells were actually cast."

"Maybe. That's one explanation, anyway."

"Well there's something going on that's making electrons misbehave, right?"

"They can't be generically misbehaving or they'd do more things. And affect lightning."

"Hmm, yeah, so they're like, misbehaving in specific ways." Pause. "I'm not sure if this is evidence for or against the thaumo-particles hypothesis."

"No idea."

"It's also pretty annoying that particle accelerators run on electricity so it's not like it's easy to test anything either way..."

"Yeah, I don't think you can do a steampunk version."

"You will have to work on that yourself."

He thinks about that then shrugs and shakes his head. "I think that's probably lower on my priority list than becoming an animagus."

"Sounds about right."

"If I find any Ravenclaws that look like they'd have grown up to be particle physicists if they were muggles I'll tell them about it."

"What do counterfactual particle physicists look like?"

"I dunno! Maybe they ask these kinds of questions but then go ahead and try to answer them. Maybe it's the people who invent spells."

"So, people advanced in Runes and Arithmancy."

"Yeah, possibly, though maybe there's a way to tell before they can actually take those electives."

"I'm planning on both but I don't think I'd be a particle physicist."

"Really? I was planning on Divination and something else that's definitely not gonna be Magical Creatures."

"Divination is usually considered a soft subject. I'm not sure if it'll live up to your expectations."

"Hmm... maybe I'd better just study it by myself, then. It's just, you know, knowing the future is an instant-victory condition, it sounds very useful to be able to do it."

"Which is how you can tell that nobody's very good at it."

"Nobody's very good at most things, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Weren't we just discussing how to kill unkillable monsters?"

"Yes, but I think more people have been trying for divination."

"More people have been succeeding too, though, even if sporadically. Prophecies are a thing. Although, granted, apparently they're not a thing you can actually learn."

"Which means they don't really support your argument."

"Well, no, you're right." He shrugs. "I guess I just believe less in the general competence of people than you do. What's Arithmancy even about, though?"

"Magic math."

Blink. "Okay, how can maths be magic? I was pretty sure magic just—was."

"I don't know, I haven't taken it yet and Mum never did so she couldn't tell me about it."

"So... why are you gonna take it?"

"To find out what it's about. Besides, I have to take some things, I have explained my Divination opinion and don't have a reason to take Muggle Studies, and that leaves Runes and Arithmancy and maybe Creatures but I'll probably try for an independent study instead."

"Hmm... Well you've convinced me, guess I'll be taking those as well!"

"Maybe we'll be in the same sections."

"Yeah!"

"Two years off, though. We'll see."

"That's a lot of time. Maybe we'll have destroyed all Dementors and cured death and disease and fixed the House Elves problem if it needs fixing and restored Slytherin to its old glory and found everything out about thaumophysics by then."

"When will we sleep?"

"Sleep is for the weak!"

"We'll see how that philosophy works for you, then, and I'll be the control group."

He laughs. "No thanks, I definitely need my sleep."

"Thought so."

"Oh shut up."

"No I didn't mean that I like it when you talk."

She sticks her tongue out at him.

He grins. "Anyway, when do you wanna start practising the Patronus?"

"How about now?"

"That's why I like you!" Pause. "Amongst other things."

Miranda giggles. "Let's go find an empty classroom."

"What's your happy memory?"

"Receiving McGonagall's visit and finally receiving some information about the stuff that went on around me all my life. Yours?"

"Getting my second wand, with the big globe of light. Yours sounds more like 'relief' than 'happiness' to me..."

"Hmm, yeah, I guess, but I don't know if I'd call yours 'happiness' either? It sounds more like... 'wonder'?"

"I don't think so? I'd done accidental magic before and seen lots of magic and I'd already gotten my first wand."

"Hmm I guess but then why would that specific event make you particularly happy?"

"It was more dramatic than my first wand's sparks. It felt - good. Powerful, well-fitted." Pause. "Granted, I now don't use it as much because it keeps sending things flying and the first one is more controllable for everyday, but if I ever really needed to blast something it'd be there for me."

"It's uncommon enough that they list examples?"

"Well, it's mostly notable figures, but other than people who have to deal with Dark creatures regularly, yeah, apparently pretty rare."

"Huh. Lucky Professor Spukhafte could do one to show us."

"Yeah. Although I guess being a Hogwarts Professor is bound to attract people who are various levels of impressive, and DADA is a good bet for someone who knows how to cast one."

"I'm not so sure I would have guessed it. I mean, she's German, but before they started hiring abroad they were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for Defence in particular."

"I suppose, but that was because of the supposed jinx, wasn't it?"

"Curse. And they went through a truly staggering number of professors. If Spukhafte lasts she'll be the first in decades. If casting Patronuses is rare I bet there have been teachers who couldn't do one. But if it's mostly listing famous people - is it saying what their animals are? - then maybe it's not that rare and it's just book padding or examples of forms they can take."

"No, I mean, the book actually says it's pretty rare, right before listing the examples." He starts quoting: "The majority of witches and wizards are unable to produce Patronuses and to do so is generally considered a mark of superior magical ability. But yeah, it also says what their animals are, so maybe a bit of both. Harry Potter was apparently one of the youngest people able to cast the Patronus, he learnt how to do it at age 13, and his was a stag."

Miranda looks over his shoulder. "Maybe most people just don't bother trying to learn," she says, pointing at a bit about how Harry Potter's "defense association" included Patronuses in the curriculum and many otherwise run of the mill students managed to produce them.

He nods. "Yeah, probably. They were all older when they tried, though, so I wonder if age is some part of it somehow? Maybe something about being able to control your emotions?"

"Hmm... What's your happiest memory ever ever?"

"I don't usually organize them like that! This time I was trying the first time I flew around on a broomstick."

"I don't either! But it's bound to help. I dunno what mine would be. Probably something involving mum."

"Renée... makes me happy but not in a really specific concentrated way? It would be hard to find an individual memorable thing."

"Maybe that has something to do with it? Maybe we need some kind of concentrated happy to cast it."

"Well, that's what I was assuming, but I haven't got it yet."

"What'd you try that time?"

"Meeting you."

Giggle.

"Although I guess that's more happy-in-retrospect than simply happy, really."

"Well, it doesn't say which it's supposed to be, does it?"

"Not specifically but maybe it's supposed to be a moment that was very happy at the time? I mean, we should try all combinations, given that we've got absolutely zero plus or minus maybe some fog so far."

"Yeah. Although we might also be doing something else wrong so we can't assume it's just the wrong memory if we don't get it..." Miranda pulls out a notebook and writes what they have tried so far.

He flips some pages and sighs. "I wonder if there's a book specifically about this? This one moves on from Patronuses after listing the famous people." Pause. "Isn't Hermione Granger in school? Maybe she could help."

"She is, yeah. I guess we could ask her."

"I wonder if she'd want to help a Slytherin," he asks wryly.

"I can ask her if you're worried."

"Worried is not the right word, more like 'resigned to the fate I've chosen.' Especially because she's a Gryffindor. I don't know her, I don't know how likely she is to deviate from the pattern here."

"I don't know her personally," shrugs Miranda. "But she was a major player in the war. Might have a grudge against the entire House and the color green, might not."

"...now I'm thinking about pranks involving the colour green and Gryffindors."

Sigh.

"Hey, I'm almost reformed!"

"You are?"

"Yeah! I only prank older years!"

"So by 'almost' you mean 'you will be all the way reformed in 2004'."

"It sounds so bad when you put it like that."

"I wonder why."

He clears his throat. "Anyway! Let's get back to the subject."

"Sure, sure." Miranda writes down Gold Coast and casts again. Mist.

Sadde hmms again and casts again and mist! Okay, that's an improvement.

"What was that one?" she asks, pen poised.

"This Christmas."

Scribble scribble. "Get good stuff?"