"That would be so much better! I should have taken it off earlier, probably, but I had to wear it to the station and I forgot."

"It's a conversation piece."

"It's hard to miss, if nothing else."

Karen spots it first, too, when she makes her way over to them, but she's tactful enough not to comment on it first thing. "Hi! Did you guys get anything good for Christmas?"

"Some books, they look pretty school-like, and this necklace." She grins wryly. "I don't know that I'd say it was good though. You?"

"Some schoolish stuff and my own wireless and shoes," says Karen. "Miranda?"

"Books and notebooks and candy and scrunchies and a box of Muggle pens."

"Geez, do you think all our mums plotted by owl to buy us books or something?"

"I asked for books!"

"They're better than socks, for sure!"

"They're better than socks," Emma concedes. "And socks are better than ugly necklaces. What books did you ask for? No, no, wait. Dementor books?"

"I asked but Renée didn't think they were very Christmasy."

"Yeah, they're hardly cheery. So what'd you get instead, then?"

"I got a book on the Philosopher's Stone and one on contemporary spell inventions and some fiction, mostly Muggle."

"Fun! Why Muggle fiction? Just stuff your mum liked as a kid?"

"There are a lot more Muggles than wizards," says Miranda. "Which means there are also more Muggle authors, and more good Muggle authors, even if there are more bad ones too - we can just ignore those. If I say I want good books I get Muggle ones - usually old Muggle ones, because the new stuff isn't as easy to tell if it's really good or just new and shiny. Some of it's stuff she liked as a kid but just as often she'll go to Muggle libraries and ask for recommendations."

"Huh. I guess that makes sense. Any suggestions? I haven't read any, Father says shopping in the Muggle world 'isn't worth the trouble'."

"You can borrow mine if you want! Some of them have made-up kinds of magic and magic creatures in, which don't work a bit like real magic, and those are especially fun. But you do have to remember that none of the characters are like real wizards, even if they aren't quite Muggles, for the stories to make sense."

"I've read the Wizard of Oz," says Karen. "But he isn't even -"

"Shh, she might read it, don't ruin the ending."

"There's wizard stuff like that! A little. There's, uh, one of Beedle's stories, I forget. The one with people ripping their hearts out? That's not a thing magic can do. So Muggle stuff would be just- that but more, right?"

"Well, not more, exactly? Like - in Beedle stories the characters are still wixen with wands and cauldrons and so on. There's just also other things, or even if the story is about a Muggle or a Squib it's about a Muggle or a Squib who lives in the same world as wixen. In Muggle fantasy there are no proper wixen with wands and cauldrons, if they have those things they work differently, there's just the other things or the changed versions of things. You could imagine that they're doing all the things they do with regular magic, but that's not how you're supposed to read the story."

"Huuuuh. Okay, I can see that being weird." She smiles. "I can always read those kinds later, though."

"Yeah, there are plenty of not-fantasy stories too."