"Did you hear that Hermione has finished the new edition of her book?"
Neville looked over at Luna. He ought to be used to her abrupt changes of subject by now, but he wasn't.
"Er, no-I thought she was still working on it," he said.
"Apparently she sent the revisions in a month go. Should be out before next school year." Luna focused her eyes on him. "You should discourage anyone from assigning it."
"Why? Because of the vampire thing? Luna, it's a book about the rights of all non-humans; that was the only way her argument made sense. You weren't ever going to change her mind about including them."
"I would think," she answered in a lilting tone with a touch of annoyance, "that a witch who truly cared about all magical beings would respect the wishes of their community to be left alone."
"Oh, come on."
"Vampires have operated in the Muggle and wizarding worlds just fine for centuries–"
"–by drinking human blood," Neville couldn't resist adding.
"–and they have good reasons to want to avoid being dragged into debates over elves and centaurs," she finished. "And Neville, please, you know their longing for human blood is exaggerated. Sanguini's a perfect gentleman, isn't he?"
"True."
"Besides, that's not why it shouldn't be assigned at Hogwarts."
"Then why?"
"Because Hermione accepts the merpeoples' contention that wizard water use is interfering with their harvesting of gurdyroot without question."
Neville knew that contention was nonsense, but something was wrong here. "But...didn't you just criticize her for not taking what non-human communities say at face value?"
"Yes."
"So what's wrong with her making the merpeoples' claims part of her argument?"
Luna sighed, then smiled. "All non-humans, Neville. Don't you think she should have gotten the gurdyroots' side of the story?"