"More magic monsters," Karen tells Jenny. "I think we're safe at Hogwarts, but apparently Miranda's really especially freaked out by Dementors instead of being scared of Acromantulas or something like a normal person? So she's reading all about them to see if there's anything she can do - maybe with her overpowered wand - to get them if they try to get her. Here or wherever, I guess, there's holidays."

"More death creatures," Jenny says with a sigh. "So? What's it look like? Can we 'get them', is that a thing?"

"There's spells," Emma murmurs. "I just- I guess I didn't think about it. They were always in Azkaban."

"But now they're not. She found a spell called the Patronus Charm but it's supposed to be advanced, but she's going to try it if she can't find anything else. And they look like giant zombie things in black cloaks."

"I think I've heard of that?" Emma says, thinking. "It's supposed to be really hard, though. Do you know what the incantation is?"

"Cloaked zombies," Jenny says sadly. "Magic is a roller coaster of super awesomeness and murder-death, really it is."

"It's expecto patronum, Miranda said, but it's supposed to be hard magically, not - pronunciation-wise."

"Hard magically? That's- actually. You said overpowered wand. That might help. But I don't- is that the weird one? What happened?"

"She lodged her feather into the ceiling in Charms," says Karen. "With the one that the shopkeeper said was cored with chimaera, the hazel one. I still don't know if it's chimaera hair, but it's something for sure."

Jenny stares. "That sounds so neat, can you do it again? I want to see! Pretty please?" she begs.

"Not in the library, Pince would curse us," says Miranda, consulting her book's index. "I'll show you outside sometime maybe."

"Deal!" Jenny says promptly.

"You're only saying that because now you get to see the feather and you don't get cursed."

"Which is obviously the best!"

"Seems sensible to me."

"Have you actually tried the spell yet?"

"No. Not in the library. I'll see if I can maybe do it despite being not even quite eleven yet after I'm done with this book."

"Uh, you're not? But letters go out on your eleventh birthday?"

"Hogwarts letters do but the Owly has a different cutoff date, and I told Renée that I would go to Hogwarts if I could go this year but otherwise I'd just as soon go to the Owly whether we lived in Britain or not, and she wrote Professor McGonagall and she made an exception. Since my birthday is on the thirteenth of September, not in spring or something."

"We are officially way less cool than you," Emma informs her. "You got into Hogwarts at ten, that's insane."

"I don't think it's because I'm cool. I think it's because they're low on students," says Miranda. "When Renée was in school there were twenty Ravenclaws counting her in her year. This year there are eight. Me and Karen are the only girl Ravenclaw first years."

"My dad hasn't mentioned," Emma says thoughtfully, "but I think my mom said hers was bigger too. I... guess the war..."

"There's probably a lot of families who left, and didn't come back like I did," says Miranda. "Plus everyone who just died and didn't have any children."

"So... as the confused Muggle." She looks at Karen. "Muggleborn. This means what? If anything?"

"There aren't as many witches and wizards in Britain as there used to be, especially young ones," says Miranda. "They're overseas or dead instead."