Miranda has a lovely summer, some of it spent at Karen's and some in Italy and some at home.
She shows up with Karen at the train platform and they look for Minor.
"Yes. My father could teach me everything important and Miranda's brilliant and you're risking her life for no reason, she's not going to be getting into duels, if she does there're people who can stand in for her -"
Twimble sighs and rubs her temple like she has a headache. "Unless Professor MacDougal opts of his own accord to include a broomstick dueling element in the course I will not tell him to assign marks on that basis. If Miss Swan can produce seconds at times when she will otherwise be expected to duel I will encourage him to count that for partial credit, but he may choose to assign none, which he may also do for any duels she sits out of. What I can do is allow her to decide between dueling and sitting out without threat of other disciplinary action."
"We have Charms when she has Defense on Mondays but we can second her on Thursdays."
"And maybe some of the Slytherins would - she hasn't mentioned thinking especially highly of any of them but they're Slytherins, they're bribable practically by definition -"
"Yeah - I don't know what to bribe them with but Timothy would. I think she and Malfoy get on all right..."
"So when she's awake if it sounds good to her we can figure out how to bribe Malfoy."
Miranda is at breakfast the next morning but she flinches at loud noises and keeps rubbing her ear.
He will pout from across the Great Hall and then after breakfast he and Karen can go tell her what Twimble said.
"That's - good - it might also be worth trying to," pause, flinch, head-rub, "duel out of class while sitting down or something with a shorter spell list, see if I can just get good enough at all the not footwork parts."