"The rest of us need to know how to throw off the Imperius Curse."

"Can't be taught, unfortunately. But yes, we need to be careful of that."

"How exactly is it that it can't be taught."

"I tried teaching Michael and the requisite mental state is, loosely, I want to make this person mine, subsume them, bend them entirely to my will - I can't do it for any of you."

"And how did you learn it, exactly."

"Knew a guy. I - don't think it's a good idea you can ask Miranda -"

"- we have my bracelet, the utility of Imperiusing any of us is much lower with that as a check as long as we're consistent. I do not think we should go to Timothy's erstwhile tutor."

" - okay."

She takes her bracelet back, puts it on Minor just on principle, puts it back on herself.

And Timothy goes off to disable those other contingencies, which is to say to fling himself into Fredrick's arms and mumble the whole story.

Cling. "What's she look like -"

"You know Aquila Black? Hair like that but a lighter shade of brown, sort of a flat nose, very slightly lopsided eyebrows - very unremarkable, preferred talking through Elio - we probably need to go kill her - she believed me but even if I bend Britain around to isolationism as she is under the impression I promised she took out hundreds of people in Sweden with less cause - they're definitely dead as far as she knows, I'd have noticed if - if we knew how she did it I'd propose we just go duel her today, but we don't -"

"And do you expect you'll find out soon -"

"I don't know. I - aaargh - I'm scared and frustrated and not sure how to keep everyone I care about alive let alone get all the things I want - let's have sex -"

"You are ridiculous and I love you," he says, and does not let go of him for a while.

"You writing Karen?"

"It's less likely that she's monitoring my owl than that she's monitoring Timothy's so yeah."

"Okay." Sigh. "I worry about my grandparents but centralizing everybody probably does not help there - and they'd be hard to centralize -"

"Yeah." Miranda attaches a note to Amber's leg. Amber goes.

Karen shows up by Floo later that day.

Timothy's back by then, arranging for the Fidelius. He dropped by the Ministry to apprise his grandfathers; Larkin is obligingly introducing some kind of nonbinding isolationist resolution.

When he gets back he puts on the bracelet. Baby Joanna gets jealous and wants to put on the bracelet too.

Joanna may also try the bracelet.

Briefly.

She can communicate in effortless vague thoughtform to Elio. He has to talk to her to communicate all those frustratingly incommunicable but unerringly precise insights, and that requires elaborate privacy measures, time -

"Way doesn't regard himself as having actually made any promises," Elio tells her.

"Irritating."

"His contingencies will be family more than friends, he makes friends profligately and without much regard to their politics but he cultivates family more closely. If nothing has changed recently all friends close enough to be exceptions are married or marrying into the family."

"Mm."

There are wards on the house. They don't hedge out owls, which go in the same direction for every name she tries giving them.

The Way estate, grounds and all, twists in on itself, dragging the surroundings with it, till there is nothing to show it was ever there but some wrinkled ground and confused trees.