She wasn't super expecting to be on a lots-of-nice-presents basis with Timothy still. Maybe the Ways just have so much money they can do that? But no, Gaunt has a September birthday too and gets a card and a pinch of potion-grade saffron, thoughtful but not as elaborate.

His birthday's in October.

She gets Nnenne to send her a French translation of The Prince and brings it to his room and knocks.

He opens the door.

"Happy birthday." Book.

"Thank you!" He turns to put it on his shelf. "You can come in."

She steps in. "I would've got you the Italian but Minor says he doesn't have any Italian and I assume you couldn't hide literacy in Italian from him."

"Maybe if the fate of the world were at stake. No - maybe if the fate of the world were at stake and I promised to still teach him by Christmas. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"I am very sorry I scared you."

"I accept your apology."

He tucks the book away. "Enjoying your classes?"

"Yeah they're good except we're doing dueling."

"I heard. Hopefully you won't need it."

"Hopefully I won't break my neck."

"That too."

"I don't want to be a nuisance."

"I - recognize the difficulty of designing heuristics that would catch if I was evil but don't position you as arbiter of as many deeply personal details as you require to decide if you approve of me."

"I - that's a separate thing, if I ever couldn't take my bracelet off on demand I would want somebody to find out what was wrong and fix me -"

"You'd told people about the Imperius because something seemed shady about the potions weeks before that came up."

"Just Minor. Not even Karen. And, yeah, I was sort of creeped out about the potions and wanted to know what the deal was but I wasn't terrified till you wouldn't take the bracelet and drew your wand on me and then I wanted to figure out how to help you, for all I knew you could've given me the bracelet as long-shot insurance against something happening to you -"

"I know, I'd do the same."

"I'm sorry how it turned out though."

"I'm not angry with you. I am vaguely worried this will keep on happening, I'm involved in trading lots of favors and none are unethical but plenty sound suspect."

"I don't really think you're evil."

"Oh, good."

"Is it likely I'll run into more weird stuff - it's already been a lot of coincidence -"