You smother a grin at this latest pandemonium you've incited.
It's never your intention to get the family all lathered up, but it always seems to be an entertaining consequence. Your pronouncements have a way of making holidays truly memorable. Your Uncle Clement wants to know why you always make a scene at these dinners, but you're too busy listening to your mother and father argue to answer him.
"Well if that's what he wants to do, Miranda," your father tells your mother. You can't help feeling a surge of affection for the old man, trying to reason with a headstrong Chamberlain woman. "I don't see the sense in trying to talk him out of it."
"Don't see the sense?" Clement laughs mirthlessly, no longer interested in your sense of theatrics. "He wants to piddle away an entire year, Cornelius! With Muggles!" He looks back at you and throws his hands up. "Madness!"
"Summer before seventh year," your mother begins, and you recognize the opening to her litany of your wilder aspirations, "you wanted to be a Basilisk hunter."
"If you would've let me go with Scamander's expedition that July," you insist, "I would have been on the cover of the Daily Prophet with a 57-foot King Serpent."
"Nine members of that team died on Hedgehope Hill," your father reminds you.
"Two years later," your mother continues unabated, "you swore you were going to find Excalibur."
"Ah, right," you nod, your sarcasm masked as agreement. "Because all I managed to find instead was Hrunting," you tell her. "As I recall, the Ministry paid over a quarter-million Galleons for that treasured artefact."
"That was pretty cool," your cousin agrees from across the table, earning a sly wink from your father.
"Don't encourage him, Rufus," Clement scowls at his son, then turns back to you. "And don't you encourage him, Horatio."
"And last year," your mother rounds out her list, "you were adamant that you could develop a way to give Squibs back their magic."
"Preposterous!" Clement barks, oblivious to the curiosity on his wife's face. Aunt Violet has never told him about her brother the architect, and you can't really fault her for that. Your uncle has never been shy in his opinions on the magically-occluded, and his distaste for those who coddle them.
So you meet your mother's eyes, which is no easy task when she's sure she's right, but it's more to Violet that you say, "I'm still working on that, and I've made progress."
"Progress!" Clement scoffs, and you're tempted to throw a hex at him under the table. Instead, you reach for the coronation chicken without looking at him.
"Progress," you say firmly. "And I'll continue my research in Ontario." You spear a piece of chicken and deliver it to your mouth. "The paperwork's already been filed with the Canadian Wizarding Parliament. I'll be living among the Muggles in Toronto, and writing up my findings." You grin; "I might even write a Muggle Studies textbook."
Clements roars with laughter: "Hopeless!"