Part 12 - Dropping by For Lunch

- Hogwarts - Great Hall : Lunchtime - Saturday -

Taking a moment to steady myself after having landed somewhat crooked, I conclude that horizontal maneuvering is still not my friend. I think I may have only just barely avoided twisting my ankle with that last stumble. That'd have been irritating. Straightening up, and doing my best to smooth now my now disheveled robes, I tap Hermione on the shoulder. "Er… Miss Granger, if I may? I'm afraid this whole situation may indeed be my fault."

Hermione, hands remaining firmly planted on her hips, swings around to look at me. Despite her angry expression, I sense more hurt and feelings of abandonment than anything else as she stares back at me. A point seemingly lost on my brother and his pet Weasley as they sag in relief the moment they're freed from her gaze attack. With her focus on me now, I make a show of struggling with my tie- it having managed to free itself to assault my face during the descent -and am rewarded for my theatrics with a slight frown.

Meanwhile, my brother at least seems to recognize that my having joined them from above is unusual; he keeps glancing upwards with a puzzled expression as he nudges Ron with his elbow; another cause as lost as my tie, given that Ron has made eye contact with food. Ignoring them for now, and giving up on my tie as well, I put my hands up placatingly and address Hermione, fortunately now more confused than angry. "My cousin," I gesture at Harry, "who I don't doubt you've noticed is rather well known for a great many things… None of which, you'll note, are an interest in any purely academic pursuits." I nod my head in consoling agreement with her thoughts on this being a tragic state of affairs. "He felt that he... " I trail off and tilt my head to look at Harry around her head. "What was that rather quaint way you put it? That you would be 'utter pants' at explaining even half of what Miss Bishop said?"

I wait for Harry to nod, and for Hermione to give me a half smile of acknowledgement, before continuing. "Right. So, in the midst of offering to help recount the tale, I may have accidentally suggested to him that the only way he'd escape explaining anything at all would be to avoid seeing you prior to my joining you all for lunch. I didn't expect him to actually attempt it." I was, however, curious if he would. Barely a week in and it would seem that he already takes my advice to heart. I'm not sure I can adequately describe how that makes me feel. "Let alone manage to do it. Honestly, I expected that at most he'd try to go with plan C where he was supposed to fling your internship papers at you as a distraction and then run away. Er… He didn't actually… oh my..."

I tilt my head to the side and watch as an oddly confused look that I can't explain flickers crosses Hermione's face. "Internship papers?" She asks, her voice taking on an odd sort of lilt by the end as she turns to stare at Harry and Ron. It's a pity that she's the hardest to read of the three of them, harder even than Mr. Davies. Come to think of it though, I'd wager that says more about Mr. Davies than it does Hermione.

Not impossible though. Hmmm… I'm fairly confident she knows what an internship is. I managed to catch the flicker of recognition before she turned away from me. But there was also anger and… water..? bundled up with it. I'm not really sure what to make of that, so I just keep my smile fixed firmly on my face and plow forward. "Harry and I thought, after seeing the place and realizing how much Miss Bishop struck each of us as a sort of grown up version of you, that you might have an interest in seeing what they do from the inside so to speak."

Not being able to see her eyes, I don't really have anything to go off of when she doesn't visibly react and instead just stares at my brother.

I glance over at him, hoping for a clue, but instead see him starting to look increasingly nervous again. "Uhh… Did I miss something?"

Hermione produces a wadded up ball of soggy paper from her bag and thrusts it in the boys' general direction. "You-" her rant gets a bit inarticulate in the middle here, but I'm fairly certain the last words were, "Internship Papers!?"

Judging from the glare now being swung 'round my way, I rather doubt bursting into uncontrolled laughter was the response she was going for with her little tirade. I hold up a finger as I try to stop myself. "I- You thought- They-" Giving it up as a lost cause, I wave myself off and just reach into my bookbag, producing a fresh copy of said internship paperwork and handing it over. "Here you go." It's another moment yet before I can manage further complete sentences to answer her unspoken but obvious question. "I Gemino'd a spare just in case."

She sighs sadly, "Gemino copies are only temporary."

"I know…" Seriously? What does she take me for? "-that's why I gave those to him and kept the originals just in case."

"Oh." She takes the paperwork from me and sits down primly to start reading through it.

"I take it that in whatever excitement got them soaked, he forgot the part where he was supposed to tell you that I'd be here to explain further?"

The looks of relief on Ron's and Harry's faces when Hermione nods calmly and then smiles at me only lasts about as long as it takes for them to realize that she's studiously ignoring their existence.

By spontaneous mutual agreement, it's decided that this is would be a wonderful time for all of us to shrug and start eating quietly.

It takes a long moment, but Hermione eventually looks up from the paperwork with a puzzled frown. "I'm 13."

I blink, glancing at my brother to make sure he looks as lost as I feel. "...Yes? Folks like Harry and Mr. Longbottom aside, that does tend to happen to most second years eventually."

Setting the paperwork down and turning to face me, Hermione rolls her eyes. "I'm 13. I can't do an internship, I'm not legally allowed to work."

"Oh." I wave my hand dismissively. "It's fine. You'd be filing it with the Ministry of Magic." Now it's her turn to look confused while I roll my eyes. "Okay, I have to ask: What exactly, in the past two years since you've discovered the wizarding world, was it that's given you the impression that they would give a flying- er… That they would care about muggle employment regulations?"

"But that's-"

"THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?"

"Why hello to you too, Diggory. I see you and Mr. Davies managed to catch up."

"You jumped off the fourth floor landing!"

"...Yes? I told you, I-"

"You WHAT!?"

I turn around to glance back at Hermione's now horrified expression. People really need to all stand on one side of me if they're going to accost me like this. "I was running late."

"You're insane!"

"You're not the first to think so, but you two really have no room to talk. You both play Quidditch; zipping about like loons far higher than I was when I jumped."

"On brooms!"

"In what universe is that better!? Brooms fail all the time and then where would you be?" I fight back flashes of my first flying lesson.

"So you decided to cut out the middleman and leap to your- wait. How are you fine?"

I plaster my best 'the fuck is wrong with you' expression onto my face and take a moment to aim it at all of them in turn. "Hold up... are you lot actually trying to tell me that you people fly around like that and you don't know how to catch yourselves if you fall off?" I slump myself forward onto the table and stare grumpily at Harry. "$$You are so not allowed to fly again until we fix that.$$"

I grin at Ron's apparently involuntary shudder before returning my focus to Messrs. Diggory and Davies. They taken a moment to confer with each other, look at me curiously, and then repeat the process a few more times. I can see the gears turning in their minds. It's Hermione, however, that gives voice to what they're both thinking, "...but you can't 'arresto momentum' yourself."

"...Really..? Are you all sure about that?" I grin as everyone's faces get a bit more uncertain, though Ron just shrugs it off and continues eating. He's clearly grown accustomed to the idea of his dining companions being 'mental.' "Also, why am I not surprised you know that spell. I don't suppose you made a point of learning it after a certain someone-" I stare balefully at my near-suicidal brother "-proved prone to falling off his sodding broom?"

I take a moment to commiserate silently with Hermione over the idiocy of Quidditch players everywhere before sighing and letting disappointment creep into my expression and voice as I let myself slump forward. "When did magic stop being magical for you Brits?" Shifting again, I gaze heavenward; My cheek resting on my fist, hamming up for all I'm worth. "Now it's all 'You can't do that.' Or 'that won't work.' Or... my personal favorite; 'that'snot possible.' It's…bloody magic! Doing the impossible is the whole sodding point! Why else would we bother putting up with it, the obnoxiously picky bi- Er, you know what I mean." Hermione clearly does; she whacks me on my shoulder despite my self-censoring. I glare back at her for a split second before carrying on. "Say the right words, wiggle your wand just the right way, and reality bows to your will! If I can lie to a desk so hard that even it starts to think it's a pig, or step backwards in time without the earth vanishing out from beneath my feet, then why shouldn't I be able to arresto my own momentum."

Diggory and Davies glance at each other again and promptly claim the seats next to me. "So you found a way to do it?"

"Oh, no. Don't be ridiculous."

"But-"

I hold up a hand to stop him. "Waste of time." I wave dismissively. "Learning to fly under my own power, however badly, seemed like a far more useful skill to work on."

"You can fly!?"

I groan. There's no way that question ends well.

- After Everyone Present Personally Verifies That Flying is Not Something I Can Teach, Particularly While Trying to Eat Lunch -

"Now, in the interest of keeping Miss Granger from becoming the… Hmmm, I believe it would be third girl ever... to spontaneously explode from repressed curiosity-" Said girl cuffs me on the shoulder. "Alright, so they have this theory that… erm… hold on." Looking around, the great hall is hardly full, but it's not nearly as empty as it was when I first got here. Recalling that my first thought upon hearing their idea concerned the sheer number of purebloods that would likely try to arrange accidents for the both of them if word got out; I take the time to put up a muffliato charm before continuing. "They think that it might be possible that muggleborns are all actually the descendants of squibs."

Ron looks at me over his second sandwich, "So?"

"So?" Hermione starts vibrating in her seat again. I remember it being theorized in the memoirs that her hair magically gained volume as she got more angry or excited, but I'm beginning to think it's just a side effect of being shaken so vigorously. "So!? That would mean that Malfoy's vaunted blood purity is nothing but a-"

I clear my throat pointedly. "Actually... I think you're being a bit optimistic there."

"How do you mean?"

"I don't see the folks that coined the phrase 'Better dead than a squib' just suddenly embracing what would be the newly rechristened squib-born."

Harry squints at me, very slowly raising a finger in the universal 'hang on a moment' gesture. "... I don't remember her saying anything about squib-born"

"Well, obviously she didn't call them that, but… and bear with me because I'm not positive I truly grasped all the more nuanced details of the science but, if I got the broad strokes down correctly, I think Miss Bishop was trying to argue that if magic is genetic in the usual muggle sense of the word, then it's also obviously far too complex a mechanism to just spontaneously mutate into existence fully formed. So, it must have come from squibs or… something. I don't know. " I shrug. "Honestly, even The Professor looked lost when she started babbling in on about 'repeating sequences' and… I think she called them expressive promoters..? whatever those are…" I hold my hands up about shoulder's width apart. "So…squibs?" I frown, looking at my hands, and turn them so my palms are facing other and raise an eyebrow. "...or maybe it was aliens?" I shake my head, unable to place where that idea came from. "Though… given that we're talking about a force that's known primarily for bending the normally immutable laws of reality over a table and casually violating them on a whim? I'm not positive I buy it anyway. The point I swear I was trying to make eventually though, is that even if they're right… that doesn't mean that the blood purists will interpret that information the way you seem to hope. Not without a fair bit of percussive maintenance anyway."

"Percussive maintenance?"

"Blunt force trauma applied to the head on an ongoing and as needed basis... " Hermione's exasperated expression aside, Ron and Harry glancing at each other in muted bemusement reminds me that I'm dealing with second years. "Just... I don't know… picture Miss Granger here punching Mr. Malfoy in the face repeatedly while lecturing at him and you'll be on the right track."

Finally getting the appropriate response, I wait for the laughter to subside before pointing out the worst bit.

"And that's all assuming that they don't notice that this could mean they were technically right about wizardkind being truly separate and apart from the muggles. Identifiably so even by the muggles own sciences. It might tamp down on the bits about muggleborn 'stealing' their magic, but they could just as easily take it as a cause to double down on their anti-muggle rhetoric as a whole."

The bells begin to toll again, letting me know my hour is up.

"Well," I start to stand up. "I should probably be going now. Got that remedial defense session to teach and all."

"Oh!" Hermione practically bounces to her feet. "Us too! I mean, we can go with you to the library to study."

I raise an eyebrow at the mutinous looks my brother seems wearing. I glare at Weasley; he's a terrible influence. Honestly, I've met door knockers with more curiosity about the world around them. "Miss Granger... do you know how to cast the mobilicorpus charm?"