And the two Ravenclaws in her year both show up to the first meeting, the famous one curious but aloof, the other visibly nervous.

"That's us. I know you room with Alli but that's like the only thing I know about you. I wonder if any of our other friends are going to show up. Suppose Jenny's too Catholic?"

"Possibly too Catholic, possibly just not interested, I don't know whether to expect anybody else in our little assembly."

"I don't know," Vivian says, caught off guard. "I mean, you'd know better than me, I think." She smiles a little. "I help Alli with her Divination homework sometimes? I think she was expecting it to be less work."

"I'm glad I didn't take it. It looks dreadful."

"She thinks Arithmancy looks dreadful."

Confused blink. "Miranda or Alli? Cause from what I can tell, Alli thinks books are dreadful, the lot of them."

"Alli. Miranda likes it okay."

"It's the best of the standard electives, anyway. I'm glad they're being flexible about independent studies."

"Do they have a choice?" Vivian wonders. "I asked Madam Hooch to help with this because I didn't think the others would even have time..."

"They're technically a full faculty and we're a small student body, but I think they're spending a lot of time making themselves available to the upperclassmen who have educational gaps and trauma and trying to keep an eye on our social dynamics to make sure history doesn't repeat itself."

"Cauldrons!" Karen gets one for her and one for Miranda. They munch.

Vivian gets one of her own. She only manages a few bites before deciding that there's no way to do this gracefully and she'd rather not look like an idiot in front of them. "So... can I tell you anything about the group?"

"What is the group going to, like... do?"

"For now, just this sort of thing. Food, someplace to talk. I wanted someone to talk to about... all this... and I didn't know anyone. It's just not talked about. And that seemed wrong, so I thought, maybe other people want someone to talk to too, and maybe I can find them."

"Well, this is probably an effective way of that. I might not come again, though, it's likely to conflict with hours Madam Pomfrey finds it convenient to have me around interning. Luck, though, of course."

"Aw, I thought you were interested."

"Conceptually, yes, time-management wise, not for me. If anybody pesters you I can menacingly exist at them, but until that happens I'll probably be a one-meeting attendee. Sorry, Karen."

Alli, never one to be on time, walks over to join them with a cauldron cake in each hand. "Whoever got these is my new best friend," she announces. "Why are we sorry at Karen? What'd I miss?"

"I'm sorry at Karen because I'm probably not going to come regularly. Your roommate here is your new best friend."

"Cool!" Alli takes a bite of cauldron cake, then smiles at Vivian. "Did you organize this whole thing? I didn't know this was your event."

"It probably wouldn't. Please don't inconvenience your own schedule on my behalf. I don't know that I'll have anything salient to say in the first place."

"But there's cakes!" Alli points out around a mouthful of her second one.

Jenny wanders in, dragging a reluctant Emma. "You'll get your homework done later. We are being good friends, you can come be supportive for ten minutes, Emma, I swear-" but stops short at the sight of Alli. "Alli, is that your second cake? You're supposed to leave some for the rest of us!"

"I left some for the rest of you!" Alli says indignantly. "Just also with two for me. Hush, you, they're delicious." She grins at Vivian. "Besides, housemate power, or something. Vivian's cool with it, right?"

"You're welcome."

"Hi Jenny, hi Emma. It's nice of you to come."

Ack, she is supposed to greet people, she should not be failing at that. "Hi! Thanks for coming," she tells the newcomers, aware she's saying basically the same thing as Karen but not having a better idea. "The cauldron cakes are on the desk if you want one."

"See, Alli? She said one," Jenny says loftily. "Cake thieeeeeef." She walks over and picks two cakes off the table.

"Wha- but-" Alli splutters. "Hey, she also said it was fine! And you just took two too! What gives?!"

Jenny walks back over and hands Emma the second cauldron cake, while giving Alli a Look. It is the Look of Misbehaving Younger Sibling. Fear the Look. Respect the Look.

Emma is too polite to roll her eyes, but she strongly considers it. Whether at her friends or at her mother's voice in her head- Emma, don't talk about people in the third person in front of them, it's terribly rude!- she doesn't know. "She is right here," she says. "Sorry, Vivian." She takes a bite and her eyes light up. "Oh wow, these are good."

Vivian smiles. Even if people just come for the cauldron cakes, at least they're coming. She'll take it. "It's fine. Glad you like them."

"Did you make them yourself?"

Vivian flushes. "Oh, no, they're just from Hogsmeade. I can cook some, I suppose, but I wouldn't even know how to start here. Are we even allowed in the kitchens?"

"If you ask the house elves nicely, you are!"

"I could tell they weren't owl order, anyway."

"We're awfully far away from anything to order food by owl. I don't like stale cauldron cakes that much."

"The packaged ones survive the trip okay," says Miranda. "But Hogsmeade makes more sense."

"And hey, it's probably cheaper, too. Geez, owl delivery all the way here is expensive!"

"Only sometimes," Emma adds, somewhat defensively.

"I'll lend you Amber whenever you want, you know."

"Awww, thanks! I mean, I don't really shop for stuff, but I appreciate the thought anyway."

Emma looks at Alli questioningly.

"I just came cause I was curious," Alli shrugs, "but if you guys would be there and there's cake? I'm there."

Vivian huffs a laugh. "There won't always be cakes. But as much as I can."

"I'm coming back, even if Miranda doesn't."

"Sounds good to me. I'll miss you, Silverlight, but maybe not your fan club. They do seem to pop out of bloody nowhere sometimes."

Jenny giggles. "The life of a celebrity. The Great Tragedy Of It All."

"They're... mostly okay. I'm just hoping they don't start self-injuring to hang around me while I'm in the infirmary helping Madam Pomfrey."

"People would do that? But... that would hurt!"

"Well, yes, temporarily. Madam Pomfrey would put them right, but it still wouldn't be fun in the meanwhile, and it would also clog the schedule."

"Still though." Vivian shakes her head. "People are odd."

"Um. Miranda kills Dementors for fun."

"Well but that's not more true in the infirmary. Unless you kill Dementors there? I thought you were traveling when you did that."

"Yes, but they're not hoping to watch me do it, by and large, they just want to watch me exist, and if I can most reliably be found existing in a location they can't get access to unless they're hexed or have a broken leg..."

"Do you spend a lot of time in the infirmary, then? What do you do there? I haven't been much, just for scratches and things like that."

"I'm not doing anything really interesting yet, mostly just freeing up Madam Pomfrey's time from having to do little tasks, but she's teaching me. I have a solid Episkey now, I've been allowed to heal some things myself, although I guess not while you were in."

"It was mostly from flying lessons. I don't think you were there yet."

"Well, if anyone was going to be a healing prodigy at age eleven..."

"I think I'm learning healing at a perfectly ordinary rate for a person of my age who is interested in the subject and has access to a healer."

"Yeah, but do you remember the part about how you kill Dementors, ordinary is not your best quality."

"I didn't say it was."

Karen goes and writes her name.

"Well, you don't hear it as much, but widdershins technically only means witches who just like witches, or wizards who just like wizards, not people who like both or any of the peculiar gender things - apparently Miranda's mum has interesting friends. So it's not wrong. Just obscure."

"Oh..." Vivian looks at Karen anxiously. "Do you think widdershins is better? I mean, I wanted everyone to feel comfortable, not just- widdershins, right?- and putting 'straight' seemed like it might convince people who were hesitant? In a 'we can just say we came to be supportive' way? I want this to be inclusive!"

"It's fine, it just isn't as instantly recognizable as 'widdershins'? I mean, to wizardborns, anyway, it might be really obvious for Muggleborns. And for 'straight' it'd usually be 'deosil' but that's just to match with widdershins, it wouldn't make sense next to 'queer'."

"Thank you," Vivian tells her. "I don't- have a lot of background on this, really. That's one of the reasons I started the group."

"Are you Muggleborn altogether or did you just grow up with a Muggle parent or something? It's fine, it's only, Slytherin."

"Muggleborn," she admits (quietly). "But I wouldn't say, and I guess the Asian community keeps itself pretty separate? So none of the older students were sure."

"Yeah - my family knows a family that's got a Korean Muggle who married in, in it, but that's all off the top of my head. I won't tell anyone if you don't want."

"Thanks," Vivian says with a smile. "I'm going to tell eventually, I like being Muggleborn! And I am not inferior, whatever they say. I just didn't want to bring up old war stuff? I don't really get it, I didn't want to make it worse for anyone."

"I really don't know enough about your house politics to say whether it would bring up anything," blinks Karen, "but it's all up to you."

"Well, I don't really know enough about the war, so call it even?"

"Nobody in our year knows that much unless we have older siblings."

There's a happier topic! "Well, it's just me, so I guess I'm doomed either way. What about you? Any siblings?"

"Nope, just cousins. Although my parents are thinking of having another kid or two soon, since everything's calmed down and I'm out of the house most of the year."

Ask how she feels about that? No, probably too personal. "I only have the one cousin. Lots of single children in my family. Do you see yours much? What's growing up with wizards like?"

"I see my cousins pretty often - mostly during holidays, none of them are in Hogwarts right now. I really don't know how to describe what it's like? They... use... magic for things? And send letters with owls instead of stamps."

"I've never seen football or rugby! There are other alleys in London, and there's little wizard neighborhoods, Hogsmeade is the only entire village that's all magic but I live in Nottingham and there's a couple blocks of magic housing. I... don't actually know about what happens to rubbish. I can ask my mum if you want. I want to be a wandmaker but there's all kinds of jobs."

"I'd love a frog. I'll tell you whatever you'd like but I don't know where to start, you know? Jenny's mostly interested in how unicorns and fairies and so on are real."

"I don't know where to start asking!" Vivian laughs. "I guess I know basic stuff. I mean, I couldn't have gotten this far without understanding things like money. I don't know, what kind of stuff do wix find confusing about Muggles? I almost took Muggle Studies to find out, but that seemed like such a waste."

"I might be fresh out of questions like that, I got in the habit of just asking Jenny. Or Miranda, she knows stuff too. And I didn't take note of what the questions were!"

"Well, what did you do for fun? I've seen Quidditch and chess and... that was it?"

"There's more games! I don't like Exploding Snap myself but it's popular. There's always the wireless and, uh, books - I might be too Ravenclaw to have a really good answer to this besides 'books'? - why, what seems obviously missing?"

"I didn't do much, I did a lot of reading too. But do people play cards? Or instruments? Or do silly little acting groups as a kid? Go to dances? I guess you wouldn't have a telly, that seems to be a Muggle thing, but we could watch shows on it. My parents let me go to the cinema for parties sometimes. There was a park where kids could swim or use the swings or play tag. Diagon Alley seemed to be mostly shops?"

"Exploding Snap is cards. You mean, like, generic cards? Sometimes but not that often. Instruments - I guess, I don't think it's that common, do a lot of Muggles pick it up? I did an acting bit in a regular theater production once when I was six, but that doesn't sound like what you mean. Sometimes somebody will throw a cotillion. We don't have telly or cinema. I know how to swim but we don't go to the seaside all that often. I'm not sure what swings are and tag would be more fun on brooms... Diagon Alley's mostly shopping, yeah, but there's other alleys with residences."

"Well, I think there's lots of kinds of cards. But yeah, wix just seem so... scattered? Unless there's places the size of London that are just wizards, but it doesn't seem like it."

"Well, there aren't that many of us compared to Muggles. You might've heard people talking about it, especially after the war, a lot of people died in that."

"Things are still - weird. I don't know, I was pretty insulated from a lot of it. My family didn't really get hit. I remember things being different before but that might have been because I was little."

"Well, it's good you made it out okay, at least," Vivian says tentatively. (What do you say in a conversation like this? She has no idea what happened, really.) "What was it like when you were little? How'd you wind up in an acting bit, anyway, that sounds utterly adorable."

"Oh, my dad's friend from Hogwarts has a little theater in wizarding London and needed a girl about my age for a part. I barely remember it."

"Oh well, there goes my image of tiny you in your witch hat very seriously reciting Shakespeare."

"Pff. I don't think it was a Muggle play."

"Well, I don't know any wix plays! He was the only one I could think of who might be famous enough to have crossed over."

"I've heard of him but I'm not sure if I had done before Miranda said where her name is from."

"Her name's from Shakespeare?" Vivian asks, distracted.

"Yeah. I forget the name of the play."

"I left Muggle school at eleven, I am not going to be much help. That's cool though! I'm named after an American actress, I think. What about you?"

"Baby name book. Ultra-boring."

"But pretty!"

"What, 'Karen'? My middle name's Calliope, that's at least a little interesting."

"My flat growing up was near mostly Chinese families," Vivian says with a shrug. "Karen's not boring when your friends are named Wei or Li. Everyone here has interesting names, to me. And I like yours. Both of them."

"Thanks."

The silence goes on just long enough to fluster Vivian, so she grasps at her easy excuse. "I should say hello to the newcomers," she tells Karen, waving at the table with the frogs; there are indeed a few newcomers. "Say hi, see what people think of the events, the usual. Any thoughts on the subject yourself?" She pauses for a second. "And... You're in my Runes class, right? Do you already have a study group...?"

"I've just been studying on my own. I'm... not really chock full of thoughts on. The subject. Unless there was a formal discussion topic posted somewhere and I missed it?"

"I love chocolate, though. Yes to Runes, why not."

Karen is sitting across from Miranda, who has a book on healing spells open and is intently writing an essay in ballpoint pen on a long roll of parchment. Karen has her Runes book and packet out and waves at Vivian.

"I looked it over! Five is a quintaped and eight is an acromantula, but yeah, it's not really at-a-glance obvious. I'm having handwriting trouble, mostly, she wants them all filled in and if I do that for inches and inches of parchment my hand cramps."

"And I only just learned what those are, too," Vivian sighs. "There's so much that's different." But she writes out the quintaped a few times anyway, and makes it extra large so she can circle its legs as a reminder. Then she takes a look at Karen's parchment. "Let me see you write one? Maybe if you write them differently, it'll be easier." She makes a face. "It helped in Chinese school, at least."

"Sure." Karen draws big runes for five and eight.

Vivian has strong opinions on stroke order. She draws the rune for five again, hums thoughtfully at it and Karen's, then makes suggestions. Top to bottom, left to right, longer then shorter- it doesn't work quite as well as it does in Chinese, the language isn't designed for it, but it's not nothing.

"I think that helps, a little," Karen eventually opines.

Vivian beams. Then returns to her homework, because unfortunately being pleased with herself won't make the runes any less untranslated.

Runes! Runes. Ruuuuunes.

"Maybe it gets easier. The professor must have built up a tolerance."

"Magic gloves?" Vivian suggests. "Quills that write whatever you say? Not having to write essays ever?"

"There are actually quills like that but my dad says they're anti-social because they make everyone listen to what you're writing."

"...that's anti-social? Wouldn't that be overly social?" Vivian asks, puzzled. "I think they'd be fun but become annoying later. Can't use them in class, or here-" she waves at the library. "You'd just annoy your housemates a lot."

"It would distract people. Without being actually a conversation."

"It's homework! It's hardly the best for socializing."

"Anyway, he won't get me a dictation quill, and I'm not sure it'd actually help to have to pronounce all these runes anyway."

"I wouldn't mind that as much. At least they don't have tones."

"Are those really hard?"

"I did fine in Mandarin. My parents speak it at home and there's only four tones. Sometimes people say there's five but fifth tone is just 'no tone' and that does not count. But before I got my letter my parents were talking about adding Cantonese, and that's either six or nine tones depending how you count it, and I am really glad I'm learning magic instead."

"And runes. Which are not themselves particularly magic."

Vivian laughs, then glances at her work and sighs. "Which I should probably finish, shouldn't I." Homework. Noticeably less interesting than talking to Karen, but at least noticeably better when being done with Karen.

Runes! Runes runes.

(Miranda switches to Arithmancy.)

(Karen peers at the Arithmancy.)

Vivian's not quite comfortable enough to interrupt, especially in the library, but she will look inquiringly at Karen the next time Karen turns to talk about Runes.

"Hmm?"

"Are you in Arithmancy too? Should I let you two work on that for a bit?"

"I am, but I'm not done with my Runes yet. When I am it's Arithmancy time."

"Oh... sorry, I'll try to go faster."

"I'm not in a huge hurry, don't worry about it. I mean, unless you're in a huge hurry, are you?"

"No! You're just being really nice and letting me join your study group and I didn't want to hold you up."

"It's not like, a formal study group."

Vivian squirms. "Well, it's better than I had before, anyway. Thanks for including me?"

"No problem. Your quintaped there has an extra leg -" Karen points.

Mumbling about overly similar runes and how one of these languages was enough, Vivian fixes it. "Thanks."

"Why'd you take Runes if you didn't want to learn another language?"

"I'm just upset about getting them mixed up. Chinese at least I know how to keep straight. I do enjoy Runes most of the time, but homework is still homework."

"I'm doing an independent study on wandlore, that's probably my favorite new class. Runes is memorizey and Arithmancy's kind of... mechanical at this level."

"That's so cool! I couldn't think of anything to do. Maybe in a couple years. What's wandlore like?"

"It's all about woods and cores and what they mean - there's kind of a lot of statistics. I'm trying to figure out a way to verify for sure if Miranda's second wand is really chimaera hair core because I think that'd be a good final project."

Vivian listens in fascination. "Wands mean things? What does yours mean?"

"Walnut is supposed to be for smart people. And it doesn't get picky about what it casts like some wands can - if you get walnut and it likes you it'll do whatever as long as you know what you're doing. And unicorn tail hair bonds to the first user - other wands if you win them or even sometimes inherit them they're pretty friendly but a unicorn hair one won't ever cooperate quite as well with a second owner. And unicorn hair is the hardest of the three typical cores to turn to Dark magic. Not that it can't be done. This is all pretty subtle effects anyway, a good witch or wizard with a wand that likes them can do most anything if they try."

"Wow, I didn't know any of that. How'd you get interested in all this?"

"I got a book about it as a present and it was interesting! What's your wand?"

Vivian pulls hers out. "He said ash and dragon heartstring."

"There's an old rhyme that says 'ash is stubborn'. But not, like, cocky. Ash is sort of like unicorn hair in that you don't get great results with a secondhand one but dragon heartstring doesn't have that trait. Dragon heartstring's strongest in raw power of the traditional three Ollivander cores."

"I don't know why I'd need lots of raw power, but I'll admit to the stubbornness."

"I mean, it's a wand, not a seer. Maybe you won't ever need the oomph. There's only three choices if you went to Ollivander's anyway, for cores."

"What else is there? You said Miranda's wand had something else, right?"

"One of my wands is just pine and phoenix feather, but Ollivander wouldn't sell me a backup, so I went to a secondhand shop and they sold me this hazel one, which reportedly has chimaera hair but they weren't sure. It's sure unusual, though, I get very high-power spells out of it."

"Wouldn't sell you another one? Why not? I mean, why would he care?"

"It seemed like a really bad business practice to me, I can't explain it."

"Me neither!" Then, to Karen, she asks, "Do you have two wands too?"

"No, just the one. I've thought about getting a second but it feels sort of like thinking about getting another eye, right in the middle of my forehead, no matter how useful either thing would be."

Vivian can't help but laugh at the image. "Does that make Miranda a..." she stops, confused. "Cyclops isn't right. Is there a name for that?"

"Triclops, I guess?"

Vivian hides her face in her hands. "That was obvious, wasn't it," she sighs into her palms. "It was obvious, I am officially bad at words."

"They're not real, so that seems like it might make it harder to think of them."

"Three years ago dragons and unicorns weren't real either! Now look at me, doing magic homework with a wand in my robe."

"They didn't suddenly come real when you learned about magic. Think how confusing that would be for the poor dragons and unicorns."

Vivian's eyes dance. "Just think. I'd have to stop learning immediately! Who knows what I could do by finding out more things? Next thing we know, dinosaurs are back."

"...Whats?"

"...you don't know about dinosaurs...? They're- wingless dragons from millions of years ago? Museums have their skeletons sometimes?"

"...Are you making that up. Miranda is she making that up."

"Technically they're not dragons, but she's not making it up."

Vivian shrugs, embarrassed. "Seemed easier to picture than 'really large lizards', I don't know." She frowns. "I know wix use magic instead of science, but that's history too? And it's not like you don't know Muggles are there, you're not accidentally ignoring everything we know." She looks at Miranda questioningly. "You... seem to know both wix and Muggle stuff? Help?"

"Wixen children go to primary school until age eleven and learn sums and how to read and write and some folklore, some very wix-focused history and government and so on, bits of music and art in some schools. They're not being prepared for their A-levels, they're getting the basics handled so they can go to Hogwarts - and you know how much science we cover here. I don't know how good the Muggle Studies program is but they don't have very much time to cover dinosaurs when they need to cover dishwashers and stamps and why there's such an awkward relationship between the Ministry and the American wizarding government."

"But...but..." Vivian splutters. "Don't wix know how the world started? Don't they wonder? It's not like they're 'choosing wix history over Muggle history' during the dinosaurs, there weren't wix then either!"

"I know about dinosaurs, but I think the usual idea is that science is that thing that Muggles have instead of magic, and dinosaurs are a Science Thing, so they must only concern Muggles, like dishwashers," shrugs Miranda. "Please don't ask me questions like you think I'm responsible for primary wixen education in Britain. I'm really not."

"Sorry!" Vivian says instantly, looking down. "I don't think you're responsible at all, I swear! It just- seems all backwards, and I don't know who is responsible, so I just rant." She shuffles her feet. "So. Sorry."

"Mum teaches little little wixen, like five year olds, but she's mostly just teaching them to behave in a classroom setting and read," says Miranda. "She doesn't have a chance to go over dinosaurs, generally, and if she did most of the kids would figure they were made up if they ever thought about them again - little wixen like made-up stuff as much as Muggles do, only different stuff counts."

"I don't think I could even say when I learned about dinosaurs?" Vivian says helplessly. "It's just- something people know. I thought. I guess wix probably learn about dragons the same way."

"Dragons, and how to fly a broom, and all about Merlin," nods Miranda.

"Miranda, did you actually go to Muggle primary school to learn about dinosaurs?"

"I had a really mixed-up education. I did go to a little bit of Muggle school but I don't think that's how I learned dinosaurs were a thing."

"There's toys, and children's books, and films-" they went over films with Karen, right? She vaguely remembers they did. "-and things like that. It's not something you have to learn about in a class, always, not like... I don't know. Weirder science."

"...Wizards mostly don't do public libraries," Miranda mentions. "There are books, but if you're going to read them you basically have to buy them or get them at Hogwarts. That may be a factor, that and not having television."

"Merlin, you lot are making me feel like I grew up in a cave."

Vivian decides that now is perhaps not the time to get into cave people. "Sorry," she says, trying to sound reassuring. "It's- more me being confused by the whole wix world again, I think. I mean, I feel like that all the time here- magic is real? Fairies? Cauldrons and broomsticks and all that stuff?"

"I didn't think it would take that long to get used to."

Vivian thinks about it. "A lot of it they went over with my letter, but I didn't really talk to people much my first two years? So I still get surprised by things sometimes." She shrugs self-deprecatingly. "Like dinosaurs." She smiles tentatively at Karen. "You should try the Muggle world sometime." It comes out as a suggestion, almost a question.

"I don't know what I'd... do? Also apparently being black is like... a thing. That I don't know how to deal with at all."

"It probably won't even come up if you're only going for a walk," Miranda says. "I just said it was like being Muggleborn because I couldn't come up with anything more like it than that."

"Also if I screwed something up and someone had to be Memory Charmed Miranda would probably never speak to me again."

"Oh, I'd speak to you."

"Not after the massive lecture you wouldn't. Anyway, maybe when I'm older? But it makes me really nervous to even think about it right now."

Vivian's eyes dart back and forth between Karen and Miranda awkwardly. She's not sure what they're talking about but they're clearly referencing something and she... will not be asking while Miranda is making that face. "When you know more spells, you mean?" she guesses.

"No, when I know more about... things in general. You can't do spells in front of Muggles anyway."

"Oh, are you in Muggle Studies?"

"Nnnot as such. I don't know."

"I think Karen is slightly overestimating the risk of just going out to lunch in Muggle London or something, but doing it as adults is less risky just because people feel entitled to ask teenagers more questions about what they're doing in public places."

Vivian crinkles her nose. "It's so strange thinking of myself like that. I always forget that if I wasn't here, I'd already be in third form somewhere. It seems so much older in my head."

"Ugh, I know - I mean kind of - I keep expecting to be in the youngest year in the school like I haven't watched the hat sort two whole years of kids after us."

"I like the new students all right, at least," Vivian says. "At last, someone who knows less than me!"

"Imagine when we're in seventh and there is no one who is supposed to know more than us. We'll have the younger kids asking us stuff and expecting us to be able to answer."

"Nooooo," Vivian groans. "Growing up not allowed! Too scary." Then she blinks at Karen and says faintly, "...I feel for whatever poor soul decides to ask Alli."

Karen giggles. "She'd send them on a wild goose chase, probably."

"She should come with a warning sign. Danger: Pranks Ahead."

"She could pin it to her robes and make up hilarious lies about why she's wearing it."

"Birthday present idea?"

"Maybe!"

Vivian beams back at Karen before, suspecting she's about to look rather dopey, she tries to focus on her homework. Dopey face: not allowed.

Homework homework.

There is a shrieking sound from the Restricted Section, followed by an angry shout from Madam Pince. Miranda looks up, and then when she sees Pince dragging a fourth-year Hufflepuff out of the stacks by his ear and the blistered state of the boy's face, she gets up. "I'm going to see him to the hospital wing," she says. "If I'm not back before you're through can you bring my things back to our room, Karen?"

"Yeah, sure."

Vivian watches them go, wincing at the sight of the burns. "That was nice of her."

"I think it's part of her internship, that she's responsible for bustling people to Pomfrey if they need it? Something like that."

"Still." She pauses thoughtfully. Miranda's gone now, the library's mostly empty. "Was there- did something-" she falters. "Do you know what her thing was, earlier? She sounded so mad about the Muggle world idea... I didn't upset her or anything, did I?"

"No, no, she wasn't mad about the idea, she was mad at the possibility that I'd, I don't know, mention unicorns too convincingly in front of somebody, and the obliviators would have to come clean up after me, because she really, really hates memory charms."

Vivian thinks about this, feeling a bit lost. "Does she get like that a lot? Most spells are pretty scary if you think about them..."

"She's mostly like that about mind spells. Memory charms, confundus, stuff like that. She actually learned to throw them off in our first year, Hermione Granger helped her."

Vivian doesn't know much about magic, but she knows enough to honestly say, "Woah. That Hermione? Woah."

"Yeah, she was still here, then, finishing up, she missed her last year because of war stuff."

"I don't think I knew enough back then to realize- that's so cool."

"Yeah! Although Miranda had some philosophical differences with her. About memory charms. I don't think they're still friends."

"What happened?" Vivian asks curiously, without thinking, then flushes. "If you can say, I mean."

"During the war Hermione wanted her parents to evacuate so she memory charmed them into believing they were different people without a daughter who had always wanted to live in Australia, so they went."

If Hermione did half the things people like to say she did, Vivian supposes her parents would've had to go into hiding. "So they couldn't be- tortured?" she guesses, wincing.

"Yeah, basically."

"That must've been horrible. But- Miranda thought she should've done something else...?"

"Miranda thought she should have told her parents they were in danger and asked them to please go to Australia."

Vivian pictures having this conversation with her own parents and bites back a sigh. "Well, mine would probably have insisted on calling the police, so they'd get Charmed either way. I guess I don't really know anything about Hermione and her family."

"I sort of see Miranda's point but she's very adamant about it, almost scarily."

"She's scary a lot of the time anyway. Some of those articles about her are intense."

"She kills Dementors for fun."

"Okay, so I've been able to tell from context that's a big deal but Professor Reed hasn't really covered them, help?"

"Dementors are soul-eating monsters who suck the happiness out of anyone who gets too close. And until Miranda killed one, they couldn't be destroyed."

"She- how?!"

"They could be repelled, with a spell called the Patronus Charm, which is made of happy memories. Most people's looks like an animal made of silver light. Miranda's looks like a person, and instead of shooing Dementors away it chases them down and kills them. She saved our lives - we were looking for Jenny, me and her and Emma and Professor Fisher - and there was a Dementor that had Jenny cornered, and she'd morphed her mouth away so it couldn't take her soul, but she couldn't run away. Professor Fisher fainted. I couldn't do anything, Emma couldn't, but Miranda knew the spell and she'd never gotten it to work before but that time it worked and the Dementor was gone."

"Yeah. And she keeps doing it! She goes out, summers, to places where there might be dementors, and she camps out and stalks them and kills them. She wants to drive them extinct."

Vivian frowns. "I'm not sure I like the idea of driving anything totally extinct," she admits, "but I am also used to the Muggle world, where all animals are just... animals. And usually necessary to a food chain or something like that. Dark creatures are probably different."

"Well, you'd have to talk to her about keeping one in a menagerie, I guess, because she knocks down a couple dozen every summer. Left wild they do sometimes suck out random people's souls though."

Vivian shrugs. "I don't know anything about them," she reminds Karen. "Sharks kill people sometimes too, but I know they do- something. With fish. And eating fish. Keeping the oceans balanced?" She laughs. "They do something! I'm in magic school, not Muggle school, I missed the lectures on fish."

"I never went to Muggle school at all and I don't know much about fish."

Vivian smiles shyly. "We can be confused about fish together, I guess."

"I guess!"

"You don't... go with her, right?" Vivian has a horrible vision of Karen's soul being sucked out, Karen who doesn't know how to kill a Dementor, and she suspects she's found her nightmare fodder for the next few months.

"Oh no. I'd be completely useless. Gilderoy Lockhart used to escort her but now she has someone from the International Confederation of Wizards, I forget her name, some junior aide who apparates her places and finds more dementors for her to kill."

"Those- Gilderoy Lockhart? International Confederation of Wizards?" Vivian looks sheepish. "I'm sorry, usually I just smile and nod and pretend I know what's happening, but I can actually ask you. I can stop if it's annoying."

"No, it's fine! Gilderoy Lockhart wrote a lot of books about fighting monsters, and he taught Defence one year, and then he had a memory charm accident and was in St. Mungo's for a long time but then he got mostly better, better enough to take Miranda dementor-hunting. Miranda didn't like him very much but no one else would do it at first so she put up with him. And the International Confederation of Wizards is a thing all the magical governments form together, sort of?"

"St. Mungo's is... a lunatic asylum?" Vivian guesses.

"It's a hospital for everything. It has a mental ward."

"It's still weird to me when there's things magic can't just... fix."

"Most of the things magic can't just fix are caused by magic to begin with. If you, I don't know, lose your arm because a rock fell on it, Madam Pomfrey will fix it up. If you have a potions accident she might not be able to. She probably could, mind, but she might not."

"I wonder how many Muggle problems magic could solve but no one's tried?" Vivian sighs. "I don't really understand the hiding, I guess."

"...Muggles did use to set wixen on fire. That was a thing."

"Muggles often misplace their brains," Vivian says. "But they're over that one. And lots of other horrible things we used to do... mostly." She looks at Karen seriously. "Besides. I saw what the school was like when we started. Two of the girls in Slytherin still wake us up every few months screaming with nightmares. One boy breaks down crying every so often and won't say why. Most of the older students are orphans. It's not like wizards don't struggle with this stuff."

"I thought they got over it because we started hiding. And I'm not sure what there having been a war has to do with witch burnings."

"Maybe that one, but we've had wars over similar stuff and we got over those eventually. I think hiding just sped it up." She shrugs awkwardly. "I just meant- people do stupid things, or evil things, or cruel. Hiding doesn't really change that."

"There's so many of them. I really don't know what would happen if we unhid now."

"Me either. I'm not saying they should, even. Just- seemed odd. That it's been this long and they never came back."

"I think now that there are so few wizards in Brtiain they're considering unhiding a little just to make it easier for people to, like, marry Muggles. But that would affect wixen everywhere in the world so they can't just be like 'okay let's do it'."

Vivian frowned. "I've heard 'halfblood' before?" she says questioningly. "Doesn't that mean people already marry Muggles...?"

"Oh, people do it, sure. But you know I'm not entirely sure how? Because you're not allowed to tell them about magic, under the Statute, until you get married, so it seems it'd be hard to discuss your life."

"Maybe it's mostly Muggleborns?" Vivian suggested, then grinned. "I mean, I'd probably have a better shot at convincing someone I'm a Muggle than you would."

"Yeah, that's probably a lot of it. But you couldn't tell them about Hogwarts or anyone from here."

Vivian declines to point out that she hasn't exactly accumulated a lot of friends at Hogwarts. She doesn't want to imply that she's not friends with Karen, because that is the opposite of the idea. "Well, obviously Muggles knowing can work sometimes. My parents are-" politely, quietly, scared of me and in denial, "-adjusting some, but they haven't lit me on fire or anything."

"Yeah. But parents and spouses and siblings are it. Not friends or anything."

Vivian shrugs awkwardly. "I guess it's hard to change with the other countries...? I don't know. I'm not precisely looking for a Muggle girlfriend."

"Me either. Reasons aforementioned."

"There aren't exactly... I'm not sure how adults would do it except by trial and error, word of mouth, that sort of thing. Maybe you can issue everybody club pins and then by the time we're in our twenties some people will have the habit of wearing them when they want to go... looking?"

"That's a good idea!" Vivian says, brain spinning. "Though maybe pins are too obvious. Colours? I think Muggles wear purple? But hm, we have uniforms."

"Is there some reason to be subtle? If we go with 'purple hair accessories' or whatever then there'll be false positives."

"I... don't know. Is there? The Muggle world isn't always... friendly about this. Are wix any better?"

"...Yeah? As far as I know? Have you had some kind of trouble? ...I guess people are fussing about there being enough wixen next generation, so that might be a thing, but like, not that much of a thing."

"I think magic only stopped being illegal once they were convinced it didn't exist to ban, so. Wixen are fine about widdershins folks. I wrote my parents the other week, it's all fine."

"Oh. That's good. I'm glad it went well?"

"Mmhm. But there wasn't much risk really."

"No speeches about magical babies?"

"Mum did tell me that one of her friends is working on a foundation to facilitate early identification and adoption of Muggleborn wixen. But not really a speech. Two lines."

"Who, Mum's friend?" Karen scribbles out a line of runes and starts checking her work. "Miranda thinks demand will outpace supply and they'll start trying to make it look like Muggleborn wixen are orphaned when they're not."

Vivian's mouth twists into a sad half-smile. "There's barely enough wix, let alone wix wanting to adopt, right? Miranda's probably right that they need to be careful but- I think they'll have time."

"Maybe. I think she's worried about international adoption? Like, Miranda's mum was born in Nigeria, they just moved here when she was a few years old. It might be easier to kidnap a Nigerian baby than to Confund a few orphanage workers and fiddle with all their records here. Maybe. I don't know much about the wizarding government in Nigeria or how much they'd object."

"I haven't learned much about them either."

"Yeah, they're not really covered. One of the things Mum finds wanting in the curriculum. She wants me to do an independent study on it but I'm not even sure the library has anything up-to-date."

"Independent study? You mean like the wandlore one?"

"Yeah, like that. I'm not really interested enough to motivate myself through a whole course on it, though, you know?"

"So do something else for part of the course?" Vivian suggests absently, then her eyes light up. "Oh! You could make it on widdershins issues! The adoption for your mom, and- history, or laws, or social norms? Famous Widdershins Wix Throughout the Ages? Oh, that would be such fun."

"I'm not sure 'widdershins issues' so much exists as a topic like that? It would be really hard to find materials specifically about it, I'd wind up reading six times as much stuff."

"...would you be upset if I did it if you don't want to? Now I'm interested!"

"Go ahead," giggles Karen. "I don't even know how long I'll be doing my wandlore thing, depends on some stuff, I don't know when or whether I'll be replacing it with an alternate."

"Well, I can't change my classes now," Vivian says philosophically. "But next year probably, and if you want to join... let me know...?"

"I'll think about it."