As Hannah thought about it again, the trip was somewhat bittersweet.

Her mother had readily agreed when some friends of hers offered to take her to the country on an educational trip, since she had never been on one before, which was good since she had no leads on how to break the curse apart from Ron's mysterious brother. Without knowing her reason for wanting to go, her mother wrote that it would be good for her to see the sights, or that was what Percy told her when he read the letter that arrived in the post office at the embassy. Having not received a letter since the one she got for Hogwarts, it was a unique experience, especially since it was one of the Weasleys reading it for her, including the embarrassing terms of endearment Verna Abbot reserved for her. I suppose that might have been embarrassing, but at least Percy had to read them. I bet he regrets volunteering for the task.

For the remainder of the week, Fred and George recycled the terms, using them on him.

The height of the experience was hard to pinpoint; though reason said it should really be the time her sight was restored, there was something distinctly magical about arriving there the first time, taking in the sounds and smells as she landed with the family in a marketplace in the wizarding part of Cairo. As she expected would be the case with any crowded city, it was impossible for a blind girl to get around by hearing, but Percy had been kind enough to extend an elbow for her, coughing expectantly for her to take it until Ron grabbed her hand and put it there. Being led around, she was free to use her remaining senses to explore, constructing a version of the city in her mind as she went. The streets were clean, the people were nice to each other, and the smell that had her convinced there was a corpse in an alley was really just her imagination again.

Suffice to say there were better and worse parts to getting her sight back.

As all things must, the trip came to an end and she found herself in Sheffield again, as Arthur Weasley was skilled enough at making portkeys, though he never talked about it, since it did not interest him at all. Instead it felt like once every twenty minutes she was explaining what a magnet was and how guns worked, which she admitted was a fuzzy concept, but she could reliably make up enough terms to keep him entertained. Every so often she would be explaining things with hand gestures and either the twins would snicker or Percy would cough, and she would realize she was facing the wrong way.

As she jumped to get a duster off the top of the icebox, she might have bemoaned the illegality of magic, but she knew why the rule was in effect and if nothing else, every time she did something the normal way, she got a nice mental image of Ron's father muttering 'fascinating' as he stood off to the side. He's a regular David Attenborough.

In fairness he was pleasant enough and perfectly generous to help her out of the bind in which she had found herself, and she would go so far as to say she could detect a bit of him in each of his sons. His eldest, Bill, seemed something other than a perfect gentleman, but she found him caring and interesting, even beside his career.

"See, the thing about curse-breaking is each one will eventually break if you know what you're doing and you work at it long enough." he explained. "Tuthmosis III secured his tomb with several thousand locust swarm curses, and it took us years just to figure out the first one, since the literature on the magic is so limited, but once we got the first few of them, the rest went down in a matter of hours. The muggles estimate they've found around a third of the tombs, but it's really only about a tenth. We keep them out of the rest so they don't run into any of the curses, though a handful of them have gotten past us."

Hannah remembered nodding, having heard of the mummy's curse in popular culture. She guessed there was either very little the wizarding world could do about rumors when they reached critical mass, or very little cause to be worried about something most people considered idle superstition.

Back in the normal world as she was, she considered asking people around her if they believed magic existed, but she had a good idea of the answer and that had to be a violation of magical law in some way. She had also never looked up the legalities of heaving Malfoy off the Astronomy tower, but she had little hope of a convenient exception being written in.

There was a tapping at the window, interrupting her thoughts.

The young witch let the owl in peaceably, a single feather from its mostly white plumage stuck to the letter it bore. Opening it as she fished around in the kitchen for an owl snack, not knowing what it would like, Hannah was supremely grateful it was ten in the morning and her mother was not at home.

Dear Hannah,

I heard about your trip to Egypt and I hope this letter reaches you after you get back, when you can see again. If that is not the case, I would ask whoever is reading this letter to please burn it.

There was a long empty space on the page. Hannah looked over to see the owl was picking at a mouse in a mouse trap. That's convenient.

I know things have been difficult for you. I know things are getting mad at school, so I want to see you, just so we can do something as friends again. Please send this owl back and let me know if it's okay for us to come so we can talk in person.

Love, Susan

It was a short missive, but the reason was perfectly apparent. Susan was probably somewhere close, so the owl would get back soon, Hannah reasoned as she scrawled an even shorter response on the back, scratching it out to write it again with better script.

Dear Susan,

Thank you for writing me with all that's going on-

Hannah stopped dead.

How do I know this is really Susan?

She remembered the code words that Hermione had established with Ron and Neville, though she had never taken part in all that. If I killed the owl, they wouldn't know whether or not it reached me- Looking over at the bird, there was serious doubt she could accomplish it without magic. A body-bind and a wringing would do the trick, but she would only be trading one wrong sort of attention for another. Keeping her wits about her, she had some idea the owl belonged to Susan, but even if it were her owl it might have been someone else who wrote the letter. Even if I got her to write something she remembered, she could have a wand to the back of her head or something.

Hannah thought about sending a letter straight to Susan's house, but even that would not guarantee she was talking with her friend and not whoever was controlling her. She doesn't normally send letters to me directly- owls really aren't supposed to be flying all over normal people's neighborhoods carrying letters. The previous summer she had not received so much as one letter, but she had spent a lot of time reading and writing, and she had a stupid fight with her friend before that. I don't remember what it was, but it shouldn't have been enough to stop being friends. I suppose I should be glad we were back at it when we went back to school.

Deciding to assume the best and send the letter back, the blonde witch wrote that she really would like to see her friend again, and would be available at the earliest convenience. Even if she's been kidnapped, they already know where I live. Sending the letter back won't tell them anything. Well, it'll tell them I'm home, but they had to at least suspect that.

The owl flew out the window from whence it came.

Hannah put her books back upstairs where she could reliably hide them in the event her mother had any guests over, uncertain of what the future had in store. Well, really I never quite know what's going to happen. There are just too many things that are possible, and I never know which it is. Most of the time I can't even think of all of them.

It was not ten minutes before there was a tentative knocking at the door.

"Susan?" she asked, hand on her wand.

"Hannah? Is there anyone with you?" I suppose it really doesn't make a difference if I tell her my mother's not home.

"That's just the phone." she replied, pretending the other girl had heard something. If they think someone's on the line, maybe they won't do anything. That's if they know what a phone is. "Do you know what a phone is? Sorry, I just don't know. I met-"

"Arthur Weasley, I know. My aunt is always on about him." Susan said with an audible annoyance as Hannah opened the door. "Did you know he actually looks for muggle artefacts just to enchant them? He likes to experiment with that sort of thing, though there's always a convenient loophole in the law." It seemed her friend from Hogwarts was with her aunt and uncle, as perhaps she should have expected. The pair of them were well-dressed by applicable standards, since most wizards seemed to have no idea how normal people dressed. The father's three piece was brown, black, and white, while the mother wore a winter ball gown, which looked especially odd, given an unmistakable hardness she seemed to possess. At least people are more inclined to take them for eccentrics than cross-dressers. She imagined the pair of them on a fashion runway and refrained from giggling.

"You are Hannah, then? We have heard about you." the grown wizard explained. "Ah, but you don't want to meet us. Come, let us Apparate to London."

It was decided that he would take his niece, while his wife would take the guest. Naturally.

In moments they were off, and it seemed Susan was more accustomed to the process than she. Her eyes were still swimming and she was unsure of how to breathe as she missed the grown witch's first sentence or so.

"-dearest, not at all. Everyone gets like this the first time through."

Hannah managed to keep from retching, but nothing else in the way of a response. Susan patted her on the back, though had she the voice to speak, it was not the expression of sympathy she would have requested.

"Ah, well, there's nothing for it." Mr. Bones decided. "There's a first time for everything and it'll be better the next time. See, look at Susan." he offered. "If you're still feeling ill in an hour, lie down a bit."

The girls nodded and thanked the pair of them as they set about their business, stepping away from what looked to be an Apparation point with reasonable haste. Hannah could imagine what might happen if someone landed right where someone else was, but her stomach suggested she refrain.

"It really does get better the second or third time." the other girl explained.

"Where did your aunt and uncle go?" she asked, refraining from asking about her parents. It was something of a sore spot.

"Back to work, I think. They're both busy people."

"My mother is working as well." Hannah provided, uncertain as to whether or not Susan was wondering. "Where do you want to go?"

"I think we could go to Madam Malkin's. Does your uniform still fit you?"

"I'm fine." she lied. In truth she hardly wore them when not necessary, and she asked an older girl to lengthen her robes once.

"Oh, well mine's getting a bit tight, and I'm looking for something to wear to the next Ministry function. My uncle's making me go." The pair of them set off in the direction of the tailor, though Hannah had shopped around for a less expensive alternative, and as a result had never bought anything there.

"I've lengthened my robes." Hannah explained. "I wouldn't think anything else would be necessary." The streets of magical London were busy enough, though it was clear they were in normal working hours. "I know they really feed us at Hogwarts-"

"My shirts have gotten a bit tight around the chest." her friend clarified, less casually than before. There was a brief silence as Hannah looked the other way, scowling a bit as her retaliatory joke failed to have the intended effect. "Toward the end of the year, I was having to undo the top button."

"I imagine that would be dreadful."

It appeared Susan would refrain from implying that all Hannah could do was imagine, and so she decided to shelve the veiled insult she had prepared, which went to the tune of asking if she needed a bigger hat. I suppose it's fine if she just wanted to brag a bit. She wasn't really saying anything about me.

The inside of the store was an orderly affair, though from wall to wall there was plenty of color. True to the name, the establishment seemed to carry every sort of robe she could imagine, as well as a few that were entirely unknown to her. Hanging from the wall in the back, there appeared to be lengths of hide and silk, and she guessed they came from dragons and acromantulas. The old witch running the place ushered the pair of them up onto stools, despite Hannah's apparently too reserved protests. Susan held her arms out readily; in her case it took a series of taps to the shoulder by Madam Malkin, following another series of taps.

Hannah sighed as she reluctantly agreed to be measured, putting herself on display more than she really wanted. Do I really have the body of a first-year? If, as her mother insisted, not eating would keep her from growing, there was a case for that. Beneath her regular clothes she was skinny, decidedly more so than normal for a girl her age. She never starved herself, and her home was not of so modest means that she was suffering from malnutrition, but some time in first year she decided to eat about as much at school as she ate during the summer. Other kids she knew seemed to believe that food was always a top priority and if you had the funds for accommodations, you already had taken care of your food budget, but the truth was more complicated. There was room to eat more or less without any serious health risks and it was easier to buy more or less food than it was to buy more or less housing.

The elder witch measured both her and Susan, announcing that either of them were perfectly welcome to purchase a new uniform, which seemed to suggest neither of them needed one.

"I'm in the market for some summer dress robes."

"Have a look at the selection of fabrics, dear." Susan nodded happily and Hannah followed her off the pair of stools. It must have occurred to the other girl at some point that she had relatively modest means, so she decided to ask about it in a non-offensive way.

"What's it like to have muggle parents?"

"I don't know, what's it like to have a magical aunt and uncle?" My father was a wizard. Hannah mentally shrugged and decided not to mention it. If she mentioned every thought that ran through her head, she would never stop talking. Additionally, it didn't change the question, not really.

"Fair enough." The brunette witch was between a white and a peach tone, though both of them looked more expensive than anything Hannah dared to touch. Looking back over her shoulder, the shop mistress was squinting in her direction. She returned her gaze to the task at hand and pointed to the white fabric. "What's it like to be blind?" Susan whispered.

"It was pretty bad. I always had to have help with things." The two of them went up to the front, where she supposed Madam Malkin was ringing the order up on the Bones family tab, or possibly writing a letter to Voldemort that she had caught the target where the Death Eaters failed before. Hannah shook her head before continuing. "I think the worst bit was waking up every day. I knew I was awake when I started moving my arms around and hit something."

She noticed they were outside.

"That sounds awful."

"I think regular blind people are better at it. Eventually, you get used to it and just go about your life." Hannah felt Susan's arms around her as she returned the hug. "The whole time I was thinking about how Evan was getting away and I couldn't do anything about it. I don't remember how long I just had to trust that I had done everything I could for Neville."

"Have you spoken to him recently?"

"No. I sent him a short letter and he just wrote back that he forgot to write me and that he'd be busy a while. His grandmother hired a tutor who might have to follow him to school." she sighed.

"That's going to make things hard." Susan offered. It was a guess, but Hannah did not mind. She smiled sadly and the moment passed as the rest of the Bones family appeared.