"Getting stuff from the ground, that's how muggles get metals like iron and gold and such."

"Oh, they don't have wands, right."

"Nope, they have to make all sorts of complicated things to do what wizards can often do with a spell."

"Sounds boring."

"That's why being magical is much better," says Pansy.

"Magic is pretty cool. I think the muggles have done some pretty impressive things though."

"Like what?" sneers Pansy.

"They've made things that let them talk to people on the other side of the world. They've sent people to the moon. They've made airplanes that let them fly over oceans."

"...you can't go to the Moon."

"The Americans did. They sent twelve people and then brought them back safely."

"How do you even do that?" asks Pansy, awed in spite of herself.

"It was really expensive but they built these metal things called rocketships which use special fuel to fly really really high, and if you fly high enough you can eventually reach the moon. Going to The Moon means travelling as far as if you've gone around the world ten times."

"But how does it fly?"

"Have you ever sat in a chair with wheels? Or on some sort of small boat and thrown something? When you do that you go in the other direction. Rockets work by throwing their fuel really fast in the other direction."

"...huh," says Pansy. Millicent is still slack-jawed.

"Yeah, it's pretty amazing."

"...what's the Moon like?" Millicent asks.

"It doesn't have air on it so the astronauts, the people who went to the Moon, had to wear these weird suits so they could breath. And gravity isn't as strong there so they could jump a lot higher than you can on Earth. There's a lot of craters from asteroids hitting."

"How big is it?"

"It's about a quarter of the size of the Earth."

They stare.

"Do wizards and witches not know about the solar system? How the Earth goes around the Sun and the Moon around the Earth?"

"We do have astronomy classes," says Millicent. "We just haven't been to them yet."

"Oh, did you not go to school before Hogwarts?"

"No, did you?"

"I was living as a muggle and they start school at five."