The birthday party had not only gone off without several incidences but even better than expected. Everyone there had all treated Philippa like their own friend and not the friend of a friend that she actually was to most of them. And while Dorcas did have some reservations once the event was underway, she realized she had had nothing to worry about at all and that Philippa would have fit right in, and did, muggle or not. The morning of their sort of, almost annual birthday party found Philippa more used to the little puffs of odorless smoke popping up from what looked like a little volcano. She was less afraid of the fusfium now and a good thing, since when the party was underway, with all the wizards and witches in attendance, it could no longer chug away in regular intervals and just streamed a thin line of what looked like steam. It made her less nervous now even as she thought she shouldn't get too comfortable with the small device. So far it had only meant new friends and loved ones were near. That a good time was soon approaching or that she would learn something exciting and wild and different.

She was not a jealous person but this was as close to jealousy as she would ever get. She thought with great reverence of all things things Dorcas could do but at the party she had learned more and seen more than ever. A comfort and fluency with magic like it was the plainest thing in the world (and according to Lydia, drunk and getting steadily grumpier over time, magic really was ordinary if you could do it).

Philippa had been to a fair once and had seen a magician. Even as she learned he might have been an actual wizard, what he had done had been total nonsense. In fact, she was certain he hadn't been a real wizard at all. She was certain that Dorcas could move the entire house if she wanted to, just lift it in the air and set it in one quiet piece in a field somewhere or maybe the bottom of the ocean. So far she had made pots and pans fly mostly for Philippa's pure astonishment. For her wide-eyed disbelief. Philippa still waved her hands under floating objects expecting to feel a string or something to hold the object up. She reached out her hand to touch what she once believed were common objects as if to touch a wild but gentle animal. Now a wisp of cloud, now floating in mid air. Did Lupin say that some could be turned into animals? Philippa had declined the demonstration. No, no she didn't want a dish spoon with a tail to squirm away from them to be found slinking in the dark months later and yet…

"A bird? From what?!" She looked around, it seemed they were always in the kitchen then months before everything happened at once, the table covered in notes and books and according to everyone who saw her sitting there while they read, violating every law across the two communities.

"What happens if you violate the statute of secrecy?" She asked Lupin.

"Why are you whispering?" Dorcas retorted who made no effort to conceal her laughter at Philippa's sincerity and fear.

But Dorcas didn't seem to care nor did Lupin, apparently, who brought her all the books he could find or, what did he say? Spirit away. After a time she didn't care either and built up a nerve and curiosity to actually see the magic itself. She could read it, imagine it but here were two capable wizards, why not? What was the harm, really? Surely between them and Fabian they could find a fork-cat wherever it squeezed itself into hiding.

"Throw it into the air," Philippa dared him.

The bowl, before her very eyes, turned into a bird as it fell through the air. Righting itself before it hit the ground and lifting its plain, regular, grey, bird wings.

The bird sat on the edge of the table and turned back into its blue bowl self with hardly a twist of Lupin's wrist.

"Unreal," she whispered to herself.

Lupin enjoyed this more than wandering wherever it was he liked to wander. Well, not more more. He enjoyed that he could do this, impress someone. Especially since the person he most wanted to move and shock was so cavalier about so many things. Philippa and her endless, observant questions that turned into insights she gleaned from her study. He liked testing her ideas. Could that happen? Why hadn't he thought of that? And Dorcas correcting some of his technique. He had never wanted to be an Auror but he appreciated that he could learn something too. Mostly though, he love that the Groves's felt like a proper home. He enjoyed being in a warm house where no one asked him about moon cycles and questioned his bottomless hunger. Philippa really could cook and plied him with dishes and showed that she appreciated him being able to find so many exotic ingredients and they had reached an understanding between them a combination of learning and cooking and him reading to Grandpa Groves from the newspaper and having a backyard to sleep in. Philippa chalked up this behavior to some wizard behavior or convention that she was sure he would explain in time as she gazed out of the window for the upteenth time after she saw a single puff of smoke emanating from fusfium and a tap, tap, tapping on the window signaling that Lupin was making himself comfortable in the yard. She explained that it would be no problem for him to sleep in Dorcas's bed or on the couch but he insisted. She didn't press the point. Frankly she had seen stranger things and some part of her just believed that her desire to be around magic must be matched by his apparent need to live like a muggle hobo. She shrugged going through the house and went to sit in the living room to play piano for Grandpa before bed.

On days when Lupin did stay in the house and they made something of a family, he could show Philippa magic and sensed the unfairness of it, that she gave more than he could give her. After months of studying, Philippa's command of the language and theory of magic increased exponentially. There was a time when he could bring a book and it took her time to understand what the words and ideas in those books meant and at the height of this study, she could polish off several books in a matter of weeks. The line of questions became more obscure, the theory more difficult so that he deferred to Dorcas who later had to defer to Alastor or Kingsley and it went in a massive circle and star all of them collecting information on magic they had never heard of, that they had never thought of doing because they didn't even know if it was possible. She could not do the magic that she dreamt up, magic that she knew so well but, even still he noticed, that the small feats never tired. It was especially this little magic that amused and shocked Philippa the most. The little ceramic chimney did not impress her, the tales of werewolves, Dorcas noticed Lupin developed a coughing fit upon Philippa asking details of magical creatures, were worth only passing commentary.

"Indeed," Dorcas said moving in and out of the kitchen taking care of grandpa. "Water, Remus?"

Philippa yawned through tales of great duels.

"I'm sure it was beautiful in person," interested but unmoved.

It was this, young magic, magic that even little kids could do that made her eyes sparkle. Dorcas for her part was impressed to find that Philippa was the same as she had always been with her nose literally so far in a book that Dorcas convinced herself that Philippa was exaggerating that she couldn't see the words an-

"Glasses! Thats why you've always read like that!" Dorcas exclaimed one day.
"Why didn't you just say something."

Dorcas drew circles around her friends eyes and said something. What had she said? Philippa felt her eyes squidge in her head and enormous pressure baring down on her forehead and almost on the brink of closing her eyes, the pressure vanished.

"There! I'm not a ward sister but I think that should do it. Is it better?"

And Philippa for the first time in a long time could make out the drawn expression on Dorcas's face.

"Well?", Dorcas pursed her lips and Philippa could see, from where she sat that Dorcas hoped she accomplished the thing she had. She could see the print on the blouse her shirt was held up and rotated her hand and saw the shape of her own fingernails at reasonable fingernail size which is to say at arms length and just unbelievable. She could have cried but was too shocked. She could see Dorcas smile at her and exaggerated nod and then draw her hand across her forehead wiping mock sweat off of her brow.

"Whew! Not to bad for intention, investment, intonation," Dorcas said.

Philippa's eyesight improved at the same time that their knowledge of magic was really taking off. She read about much more in those books and faster. Bones turned to jelly and elongated and frozen at a greater length, A series of incantations to set ceilings on fire from the inside, to block out this, to keep this in and dragons? Real ones?

"Of course," said Dorcas.