"Might help. What'd he teach you, if you were already a pureblood and could read..."

"He's a people person, he was helpful with that sort of thing. And he was a prefect, it was handy to be friends with one sometimes."

Minor's pocket money turns out not to be infinite and to be insufficient for hiring a dozen experts to ward a patch of ground with revisions he expects'll allow electricity. His father advises him he can save up for it. He turns to Aaron for ideas on how to do this and to Karen to complain about the injustice.

"I'm not sure 'injustice' is the word you want."

"You know what I mean!"

"Yeah, I do, sorry. It's not an emergency, really, is it?"

"I guess not but I've been working on it for years and I don't want years more to pass before I even know if I got it right -"

"Are you definitely out of stuff you can do without all the experts doing things?"

"If that's wrong I need to redo everything and if it's right then there're lots of magic interaction tests to do but none I can do now, because nothing works now."

"...you could figure out how you'd redo everything if you do have to? So you don't, um, break stride if that happens?"

"I guess." He sets to do that in between nodding approvingly at investing schemes of Aaron's.

Karen has now done enough of her wandlore study that she is ready to try making a simple wand that, hopefully, does not bite.

She makes it all right and it's good that she finishes a week early because she's scared to try to do anything with it.

"Do you want someone else to?"

"I don't want it to hurt anybody else either! The one that blew up on me really really hurt!"

Hug. "Could take a painkilling potion first?"

"That's a good idea. Maybe I'll just. Do that."

She has to brew her own because Madam Hirudinea is hoarding them but she gets it done before she has to present her midterm project to the supervising professor. The wand doesn't bite. It also won't cast, but she's not in trouble over that until the end of the year.

Winter hols roll around.

He missed his brothers so so much he wants so many hugs and to do nothing but talk their ears off about the wards thing. They patiently tolerate this - Theodore less patiently.

Is Theodore receptive to a scheme to become Britain's biggest spice importers with flying carpet-aided transportation, though.

Yeah, he'll go for that.

Minor invites Miranda and Karen over for a day to exchange presents.

As usual Miranda is unavailable on both Christmas itself and Boxing Day but can come the twenty-seventh or on Christmas Eve, whichever he prefers.

Christmas Eve, if it works for Karen!

Yup!

Karen gets everybody homebrewed wand polish that she is reasonably sure should actually improve performance at all and not just make wands shiny. Minor also gets aquarium plants to put in with his eels and Miranda also gets enchanted parchment that looks blank to anyone except the writer and will fully blank itself for reuse on command.

Miranda gets everybody books! Timothy gets The Republic and Minor gets a bunch of some Italian student's notes from Alessandro Volta's lectures which she has finally gotten translated for him (the original Italian is also enclosed) and Karen a book on unicorns. Aaron gets An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.