"The kind of suspicious you deliberately court because it's useful, or -"

"No. The kind of suspicious where they'd try to follow me, or at least check how I accounted for my time. We could maybe get away with it once, twice."

"I can do Polyjuice."

"Thanks. There'll be people in and out, I'm going to be working for Grandfather, I'll find someone who could be in and out more often without raising any questions."

Kiss. "See you soon."

And Leander Lymball, who'll be a Slytherin fifth-year in the fall, comes by with a question from his aunt and even mentions that she might send him again, she seems to delight in assigning him errands the elves can do.

"Or maybe she doesn't think the elves could do it," he says. 

Shrug. "Maybe. See you, Way."

Timothy suggests a different errand-boy to the aunt and sends Fredrick hair and they meet once a week. 

Miranda spends the summer at home, reading and practicing and visiting Karen and writing to Minor.

Minor thinks he's getting somewhere on the wards (he wasn't allowed to take the O.W.L. in Runes this year, but he'd completed the coursework and was permitted to sit it for practice; he got an E) and the bulk of his letters is excited explanations about that, but he does find space on the occasional piece of parchment to update her on how the rest of the family is doing and to idly speculate about how Timothy's miscellaneous activities for his grandfather get the Statute repealed - I don't know if it's just a matter of corralling votes or if he's planning something to bring it to vote in the first place - Lymball's been coming over weekly, and I thought his family was very conservative, do you know if he's any better?

Lymball doesn't hate Muggles but I think he'd rather nobody ever had to look at them without planning to, wouldn't peg him as anti-Statute unless it was some kind of compromise solution where wizards can go mess with Muggles but Muggles aren't allowed any wizarding places.

So it's definitely the lightning ward, and the problem is that it's regulating current in this way which rules the piles out, he writes back, and then six pages about that.

Hee hee.

Miranda goes to meet Karen's baby brother Benjamin when he is a few weeks old. He is mildly interesting.

School shopping she encounters Lymball in the potions ingredient shop and asks what he was doing over at the Ways so often.

"...huh? I've only been there once."

"Oh - must've misread - anyway what for?"

"My aunt had me running errands. Thought I'd be perfect since I knew Timothy."

"Huh. Well, see you at school."

"Yeah." He pays for his books, leaves.

She has a standing invitation from Minor. She reads through all the pages of wards stuff carefully to have an excuse and borrows a broom and flies up.

Minor is delighted to see her! They can talk wards all day.

Lymball stops by mid-afternoon.

She watches him.

Goes up to talk to Timothy, leaves around three hours later.

Miranda nips up to Timothy's room the next time after that Minor is in the bathroom.

"Miranda! Hi! I didn't realize you were here today."

"Spur of the moment decision after I ran into Lymball at the ingredients shop fill in the blank what is going on."

The door closes. 

"I don't suppose I can just observe that it's not really any of your business?"

"You've probably earned one of those if you really want."