Who Miranda is certainly very interested to meet and receive her wand from.

"It is! Thank you." Miranda retrieves her wand and sticks it back in her hair crossed with the other where it belongs. She is too eleven to be charmed very much by his smile, but returning her wand counts for lots of points.

"So precocious, with that Silverlight spell! You remind me of myself as a boy," Lockhart says nostalgically. (Whether this is intentional self-delusion or a lingering effect of the Memory Charm he's barely recovered from is unclear.) "How is fame treating you, then? It's not all it's cracked up to be, you know, celebrity is as celebrity does. I'm sure you know of my own exploits," he beams proudly at this, "and I'd be happy to assist you with your own new-found celebrity! Book signings? Publicity photos? I'm the expert!"

"I haven't written any books to sign," Miranda points out. "I think I would like being famous more if I were not eleven and if it hadn't turned out that nobody else seems to be able to do my kind of Patronus."

"Being eleven is no obstacle! Why, just look at Harry Potter. He was in my class, you know, when I taught Defense Against the Dark Arts here- learned most of what he knows from me, said it was the best class he ever took," Lockhart brags. "I heard about that issue at the Ministry. It's a shame, really it is. If you can't teach anyone- do you know what you're doing next?"

"Well, I wanted an Auror to tote me around and make sure I can kill Dementors that aren't - giant, and to help me find them in the first place, so I can kill them, but I'm not sure if they'll want any Aurors near me after I wrecked their Patronuses. I'm not sure if they have spare Aurors with any Patronuses at all left."

"That could work! Professor McGonagall would have to allow it if it's during school time though. Do you know a good way to find wild Dementors?"

"Oh, that's no trouble at all," Lockhart assures her grandly. (It is in fact no trouble, because the Ministry has already pinpointed a few spots with Dementors, noted as rural, low risk- to be handled, low priority. Lockhart feels no need to explain this.) "I'll make all the arrangements, of course. Talk to McGonagall- arrange for the photos- a press release, we'll need a press release," he murmurs distractedly. "Being famous is such a slog sometimes, you know. But ah, to be on the road again! Two weeks from now? Would that do?"

"I don't see why not. Why the press release?"

"Oh, to reassure people, you know. Lockhart and Silverlight are on the job! That sort of thing. Can't say too much, of course- overexposure, it's a problem, you never think about it until it's too late. But such a panic there was over your wand! It will do people good," he says sagely.

"Okay. Why is your name first?"

"Age before beauty," he jokes, then laughs. "I was quite famous in my day, you know! Order of Merlin, third class, and an honorary member of the Dark Force Defense League, no less. I have a world wide reputation for taking care of Dark creatures." He leaves unspoken not just one Dark creature, once. "Don't worry," he says kindly, "you'll get there! Being seen with me will only help, of course."

"Okay, but we're going Dementor-killing, not - random other Dark creature hunting. Right?"

"Of course, of course. I did say so, after all." He smiles winningly at her.

"And you can't kill a Dementor, can you? I can't even try to teach you how because it might wreck your Patronus. So my name should be first or else it should be something like Lockhart escorts Silverlight."

Lockhart raises his eyebrows. Stubborn thing, isn't she? Ah well. He'll worry about it later. "Very true, I can't," he agrees easily. "Escorts it is."

"Okay. Two weeks?"

This does not go unnoticed. "I think you'd read that while walking if it wasn't likely to kill you," Alli observes. "More Dementor stuff?"

"It doesn't look like homework," Emma contributes, curious. "Is that from the Ravenclaw library too?"

"It's not homework and it's not Dementors and some of it's from the regular library or Hermione. It's something called Occlumency," says Miranda. "It's a defense against mind magic, but I can't actually know if it's working until I let somebody try something and I'm putting that off until there's nothing else I can do."

"Mind magic?" Jenny asks. "What kind of mind magic, what's it do?"

"Well, mostly Legilimency, but if you're good enough at it, supposedly it will do Veritaserum and Obliviation and so on. When I need to test it I'm going to ask Hermione to try to Confund me just a little bit because that's pretty safe if it's a small casting and it eventually wears off, and it'd be easier than getting ahold of Veritaserum."

"You're practicing defenses against the Confundus Charm...? From who?"

"Hermione says that Lockhart was in the hospital because he was trying to cast a Memory Charm on someone and it backfired. She doesn't know if he's different now after being in the hospital for so long and probably not remembering what he used to do, but I don't want to go anywhere with him until I'm pretty sure he can't Memory Charm me. It's just the Confundus is a safer test."

"...Wait, why would you go anywhere with him at all?"

"I'd take an Auror if somebody offered me one, but they haven't - or wait till summer if Mum could take me, but she can't - and he's offered. I just want to make sure I'm safe from wildlife and my escort at the same time."

"Ooookay, creepy. Also- cramming Occlumency and hoping it works on Memory Charms is better than waiting a couple months and getting an escort who's not a skeezebag?"

"I don't know if it'd be a couple months. I think the Aurors are annoyed with me. And Hermione's going to be too busy even after school's out to cart me around herself, even though she's totally qualified."

"I guess you did kinda trash their Patronuses," Emma concedes. "Aurors are supposed to be the good guys, though, they shouldn't care."

"They might not think somebody who trashes their Patronuses is such a good guy," Miranda points out.

"But - but you didn't mean to. And you're eleven!"

"Yeah, but that's four people who are kind of out of luck if they meet a Dementor, now."

Alli shrugs. "They got it to work once, I'm sure they can do it again."

"I'm not so sure."

"At least you get to kill Dementors," Jenny points out. She feels bad for thinking it, Miranda is clearly freaked out by the Memory Charm thing, but- she wants Dementors to die. All of them.

"Yeah. That's basically the most important thing. If I get them all it won't be nearly as important if some people don't have Patronuses. I think they're also useful for Lethifolds, though."

"So how long do you have to practice this stuff before you can go, do you think?"

"I'm going to read all the books and do the exercises in them until I feel like I'm done or stuck, whichever, and then ask Hermione, and - well, it'll depend on whether the charm works or not."

"The last time you were this intense about something, the result was Silverlight," Alli laughs. "You're good."

"I'm good at at least one thing."

"You're good at lots of things. I bet you'll be great at this," encourages Karen.

"You're good at other stuff!" Jenny agrees. "You're way ahead of me and Emma in class, and you're good at flying."

"All right, I'm interestingly exceptional at at least one thing, but Occlumency is supposed to take years."

"Interestingly exceptional in Occlumency is like... being a natural one," Emma points out. "There's only been a couple of those ever. Picking it up quickly would be just... normal-exceptional. And waaaaaaay too much studying," she adds with a grin.

"Yeah. Well, even if I didn't maybe need Lockhart's help now that I know it's a thing I'd want to do it anyway."

"Yeah, see, I am now actually afraid of what you're going to have done by the time we graduate," Alli says airily. "Miranda Silverlight, World Ruler."

"Didn't I say I don't even have an angle on taking over the world?"

"You have Gilderoy Lockhart taking you Dementor-hunting," Emma points out. "You didn't have an angle on that either, but then suddenly- famous celebrity!"

"...wizard celebrity?"

"Oh, yeah, um-" Emma digs around through a pile of things, and finds a copy of the Prophet article about Miranda's wand. (She keeps the ones about Miranda clipped out; she thinks they're cool.) Since Lockhart was the one who found the wand, there's a picture of him standing with it proudly next to the article, smiling his usual smile and posing for the camera. "That guy. He used to write books about his trips, before he was in the hospital, he goes and kills Dark creatures all over the world."

"He's pretty!" Jenny remarks without thinking.

"What, really? He looks like a doofus, come on, that hair."

"He got my wand back, and before I talked to Hermione about him I would've said that's the important thing. But the memory charm habit is seriously bad."

"What's he even casting them for, do you know? I mean, you cast it so someone forgets something, he must have had a goal." She smirks. "Forgetting the bad haircut?"

"Hermione didn't go into a lot of detail, she kept saying she's not sure if he's even effectively the same person after being so very obliviated and hospitalized and that it was years ago."

"Yeah, okay," Alli concedes. "Well, as long as he behaves himself. Otherwise- grrr!" She bares her teeth in a comically ineffective snarl.

"You'll bite Lockhart."

"If I must. If he misbehaves," Alli says loftily.

Emma is on her way back from the Owlery, having sent her parents their usual weekly update. She spots Miranda in the hall and waves. "Hey, what's up?"

"I'm going to ask Hermione to Confund me, but - in case it works I might want to be walked back to my dorm, and Karen's studying like she thinks the penalty for an Acceptable is being hung by her ankles for a month, so I thought I should probably ask somebody else."

"Yeah, sure, I can do that," Emma says immediately. "When did you want to try...? Now? Later?"

Emma's not quite as hug-prone as Jenny, so she just pats Miranda comfortingly on the shoulder. "You'll do great," she says loyally. "And then you can go save the world from Dementors."

"Yeah, but - the reason I studied Occlumency even though it's obscure and hard is that I think it would be really bad if a mind spell worked on me, and I'm going to go ask a really good witch to cast one on me. I'm nervous."

Emma blinks at her, thrown a bit off-kilter. "Uh. Really bad? I mean, it's just being a little confused. It's not- Unforgivable, or anything."

"Unforgivable is just a word somebody made up for exactly three spells. Lockhart spent years and years in the hospital because he got memory charmed, just the once, a little too hard. People who've been Imperiused or even Cruciated can get up and walk around after a lot of the time."

"Lots of spells are terrifying if you do them wrong," Emma agrees. "It's not really any worse than Apparating, though, is it?"

"Apparating is bad if you mess it up by accident. Memory charms are bad when you do them exactly right. You lose your memory."

Emma thinks about this. All of these spells fall under 'scaryscaryscary', she's never tried to sort them into amounts of 'scaryscaryscary'. "I think I'm still more afraid of Crucio...?" she says, more questioningly than she really intended. "If nothing's messed up, I mean. They're both really scary, though."

"I mean - it depends on what the person doing the memory charm wants to take. If it's only a little thing it's not as bad as if it was - a whole year, or all your memories of your friends, or something. But it's more likely that somebody will want to Obliviate me than that somebody will want to torture me, now that Voldemort is gone, I think. Obliviator is a government job that people can get."

"This way." Miranda leads on. They get there before Hermione does. Miranda sits and takes deep breaths.

Emma sits next to her. Back to comforting shoulder pats. "It's okay. You can do Silverlight! You can do this."

"They're really not the same thing."

"You have been studying lots and lots and you're really good at magic in general. Like how you did Silverlight. You'll be good at this too, I bet."

Emma stares at her briefly- it's Hermione Granger- but remembers her manners and smiles. "Uh. Hi. Nice to meet you too."

Emma locates the closest Miranda hand and holds it. Miranda's not usually touchy-feely (for that matter, neither is Emma), but this seems like exceptional circumstances.

"Seeeeee, Silverlight? Great job!"

"Well... it's probably easier to get Veritaserum than try Imperio? Right?" Emma says questioningly (hopefully). "So, maybe that?"

Emma follows Miranda out, looking somewhat confused. "What was that face you made?" she asks. "When she mentioned her parents?"

"I just finished explaining how I think memory charms are awful - and - she did it to her parents. To get them to leave the country. Instead of - telling them that they better had, or - or anything."

"They left without getting caught with a Memory Charm on them, I don't think it would have been very much harder for them to get on an airplane in on the pretending to be other people plan - and what if Hermione had died in the war, who would have put them right? She - she said they were in Australia then, she'd mentioned that before, like me and Mum, but who would have put them right if Hermione had got herself killed? They'd have forgotten forever. They'd have been dead too basically. They were until she undid what she did to their heads. Made-up people were walking around in Australia in their bodies. And if they'd left knowing why they were going they still wouldn't have known anything about where Harry Potter was! Why would they know anything about that? Why would she tell them? She didn't even care about them knowing who they were, why would she tell them what their daughter was up to!"

"Nobody's perfect," Emma says in a small voice. "She just wanted them safe. No one was really... thinking straight, then. It was a war."

Miranda can't really speed up and storm off through the halls. She stalks, instead, silently.

"I don't need you to agree with me as long as you never try to cast anything bad," says Miranda. "But I don't want to argue about it. It's like trying to argue about whether it's really that bad to - fling primary schoolers out of windows or slip somebody love potions or kidnap people's children so they'll do what you want. Maybe later."

"Okay," Emma says timidly. "Do you, um. Still want me to come with you to Slughorn's...?"

"You can if you want."

There are a number of things running through her head, but they all sound too pathetic to her, so she declines to say any of them. Instead she just goes with, "I do, I mean- I just- I. Um. You're my friend, I want to help."

"Okay."

Slughorn is currently in his office, making what appears to be snail-speed progress on a large pile of papers sitting on top of his desk, and looking like he dearly wishes he'd stayed retired.

"Professor Slughorn?" says Miranda, knocking on the doorframe.

"Come in, come in," he sighs, putting down his quill.

"Hello. This should be pretty quick. I need a dose my size of Veritaserum to test my Occlumency."

"I'm trusting your measurements. Do I need to not drink pumpkin juice for a week or something like that?"

"Yeah, I'll just sit with my friends until I'm sure I can fight it off or it's out of my system," agrees Miranda. "Thank you, Professor."

"You're most welcome," he beams.

Once they're out of the room, Emma looks at Miranda- and the bottle in her hand- worriedly. "Do you have, um, questions?" she asks. "That we should ask, I mean. I don't know how it works."

"I can write up a list," Miranda suggests. "I'll try to lie, but if I tell the truth it won't be a big deal."

"That sounds good," Emma agrees. "I don't want-" to make you upset again, "-to ask something bad by accident."

"Yeah, it'd be a little risky to just have a normal conversation. Do you think we should bother finding anybody else? Karen's probably still madly studying."

"Hi. Want to ask me prearranged questions while I try to beat Veritaserum?"

"You don't have normal witch problems, you know that?" Alli laughs. "Sure, why not."

"Let's go up in my and Karen's room, she's not there, she's studying in the library."

"I always feel like I'm some sort of Slytherin spy when I'm in Ravenclaw," Alli says to no one in particular. "Probably a good thing I don't like Slytherin enough to care. Let's goooo!"

Alli provides a number of unhelpful suggestions, all with a grin and in air-quotation marks, such as "least favorite Ravenclaw" and "most embarrassing memory." There's a couple more useful ones thrown in, though, like "what was your last dinner over hols," and "did your mum have a pet as a kid."

"Anything about Muggles?" Emma suggests. "I don't know much about them, Alli probably doesn't either-"

"Nope!"

"-so there's got to be stuff like that we could ask."

"And I can lie to you hilariously. Okay, ask me anything about Muggle culture, that's fair game. That should keep you occupied. Are you ready?"

"Yup!"

So Miranda takes a deep breath and drinks the contents of her vial.

Emma's not feeling creative. She picks a previously-approved question at random. "Did your mum have a pet?"

Alli does not feel quite so constrained. "How does Muggle healing work? Oh, ugh, I should pick something... Broken arm, let's say broken arm."

Miranda looks consideringly at them, then says, "She owned a pygmy giraffe for six years until it got run over by a lorry. And Muggles believe that you can fix broken arms by applying tincture of rosemary."

Emma giggles. "What's a lorry?"

"Muggle vehicle for -" She coughs. "I mean, it's a sort of berry."

"Muggle equivalent of Quidditch? ...is there a Muggle equivalent of Quidditch?"

"Muggles are all absolutely mad about full-contact backgammon."

"Where's the Muggle version of the Ministry?"

"They keep it in the Caribbean to misdirect people."

Alli snorts at that. "What's Muggle money like?"

"They trade entirely in bits of string and dead leaves. One dead leaf to twenty bits of string. People who figure out that you can cut bits of string into smaller bits of string are millionaires."

"Name some famous Muggle authors?"

Miranda snickers. "No. And with that I think I can be pretty sure that I am a proper Occlumens."

Alli waves her wand. Tiny fireworks explode everywhere, suspiciously similar to the ones from Miranda's birthday. "HUZZAH!"

Lockhart replies quite promptly. He apologizes that he already has a book signing lined up for this weekend- the demands of fame, you know- but would the following weekend work for her?

That works fine.

As agreed, Lockhart appears the following weekend, and goes to retrieve Miranda.

And she's waiting, wands crossed in her hair, nervously checking them every now and again. "Where are we going?" she inquires.

"Somewhere north of Leeds?" he says, rather dismissively. "Not too far, as the owl flies. We could even fly, if you liked."

"I like flying. It's a lot more comfortable than Apparating, anyway."

And she gets on and floats, ready to be led.

"Okay. And I suppose I had better not cast till we're close or it might notice and escape."

Miranda shrugs and goes first, chimaera wand at the ready.

After about ten minutes of wandering, the woods begin to feel noticeably colder. If you look carefully, and don't mind the dark, there is a fluttery shape up ahead.

"I didn't break yours. I didn't tell you the thing that breaks them."

"I saw your Patronus," he points out. "There's a thing I have to be told? You know this? Confirmed it with the Ministry? Tested it out between classes?"

"If I ask Slughorn for another dose of Veritaserum can you say you had one before?"

"It wouldn't do at all for people to know that I- Gilderoy Lockhart- had my Patronus broken," he explains glibly. "That I was rescued by an eleven year old when it failed. Horribly embarrassing, terrible publicity. I'm a famous adventurer, you know!'

"So you were going to have me think I'd seen you cast a Patronus and hold off the second one till I'd finished off the first?" she wonders.

"If we go back with conflicting stories Hermione will believe me, and she's even more famous than you are, now. Do you think we can agree on something, or do you want to find out who's more credible, you or Hermione Granger?"

"I do still need somebody to find Dementors for me to kill and take me to and fro because I'm eleven. I obviously don't actually need anybody protecting me from them, just somebody who's more than seventeen years old. Are you going to keep helping, or are you bored now you know you can't Obliviate me, or do I have to worry about you casting other spells on me, or what?"

"Then maybe we have a deal. How about you encouraged me to try having both Patronuses out just in case that would work, and I tried it before we went into the woods and wouldn't you know it worked fine, and two Dementors weren't a problem and you never had to cast your own to begin with and you're very proud of me."

"Okay. I'm probably going to stick to the literal truth, but I don't have to mention everything or tell it in the right order. And that can be the implication. As long as you don't get on my nerves." Pause. "Memory Charms - on anybody - get on my nerves - and now I know that you're still the sort of person who wants to cast them even after all that time in the hospital. But if you stop -" She shrugs. "Then I have better things to do than try to punish you."

"Okay. Are there any more here or just those two, do you know?"

"There was supposed to be one, you know," he says, sounding aggrieved. "I don't know of more, anyway."

"Okay. We can go back to Hogwarts then. How did you find the place?" she asks, keeping hold of her chimaera wand but starting back towards the broomsticks.

"Through my connections at the Ministry," he says, trying to sound important. He doesn't really succeed. She knows so many of his secrets! It's making him rather irritable.

"Do they know more places or are we going to run out?"

"That makes sense, since that way we could fly. Er - you can actually Apparate? Right?"

"I can Apparate," he sighs. Secrets.

"...Prove it."

He shudders. "It's rather unpleasant, I'd rather not Apparate just because. If we fetch our brooms, I can take us to Hogsmeade."

"I think I want to see you do it before I Side-Along."

She catches up to make sure he hasn't Splinched himself or anything.

He is waiting, arms crossed by the brooms. No parts of him appear to be missing. "Satisfied?" he asks testily.

She nods and picks up her broomstick.

He leads her back to school on the brooms. There's no Award Winning Smile this time; to be quite honest about it, he's currently sulking.

He can sulk if he likes. Miranda doesn't really care unless it turns out he has tricks up his sleeve besides Memory Charms and is inclined to deploy them at her.

Lockhart is, unfortunately (for him), not actually good at anything besides Memory Charms. Miranda's deal is the best he's going to get today.

He musters about three eights of an Award Winning Smile. "I certainly will," he tells her, and- lacking a kinder word for it, promptly flees.

And Miranda goes back indoors with a gait as close to traipsing as she can manage.

"It turns out I can do two Patronuses at the same time, one with each wand, and that the little one can still kill Dementors, which is good because there were two Dementors. And now there are not."

"You did two of them," Emma almost-asks, sounding both shocked and impressed.

Hug! "And Lockhart's going to find where there are more of them and maybe I'll be allowed to do Patronuses over hols so I can keep it up."

Karen applauds.

"Don't you want to see your family over hols though?"

"I will," shrugs Miranda. "Between hunts. It doesn't take that long. Lockhart can Apparate if we need to go someplace too far to fly. And we might run out of places to go."

"Running out would be good," Jenny says firmly. "You should kill them all."

"I'm going to do my very best. Promise."

Alli grins. "Terrible day to be a Dementor. Silverlight is coming for yoooooooooou!"

Miranda giggles.