Disclaimer: Harry Potter analysis. Radiation levels: negligible, except for the Rowling Rays.

A/N: Rest in peace, John Nash. I had the pleasure of meeting the man once and hearing about some of his more recent work on game theory. He was a fascinating individual and will be missed. As a tribute, the Second Task (not fully outlined yet) will feature game theory. Suggestions are welcome.

Chapter 72

"Typical Gryffindor stubbornness, that boy. It's a good thing that mudblood of his is good for something after all. I shall have to keep a closer eye on her."

Dear Hermione,

Are you feeling better? We're sorry we didn't get a chance to talk to you after the First Task, but we didn't want to wake you. We were worried about you. You looked so worn out. You told us back in first year to make sure you got enough sleep, and we hope you still are. That was a really brilliant spell, though. We've never seen anything like it. We have no idea how you came up with it, but it was good for Harry that you did. Are you going to help him with the other tasks, too? He probably needs the help, but try not to overwork yourself like that again.

We saw Hagrid and Madame Maxime helping out the dragon handlers together. Do you know anything about that? A lot of people think Hagrid is sweet on Madame Maxime, but we don't know if there's really anything between them.

Lots of love,

Lav and Parv

Hermione didn't get everything in her life back on track until Monday. On Friday, Madame de Cotte pulled her aside and informed her she was receiving a detention. Hermione started to strenuously protest on the grounds that she had taken out her homework in advance and turned it in in a timely fashion, but Madame de Cotte stopped her and informed her that the detention was for punching Malfoy. Hermione was mortified. She'd never got a detention before. She'd ruined her perfect record, and for what? A sleep-deprived fit of anger? She needed to reevaluate a few things. She supposed she should count herself lucky that the penalty wasn't worse. She didn't know what she'd do if Madame Maxime revoked her travel privileges for the task. Even so, after pressing her for details, Madame de Cotte made her promise not to stay awake that long again, something to which she readily agreed.

The reactions from her fellow students at Beauxbatons were mixed after the Task, partly because of the press coverage. The Daily Prophet, which was again delivered to the school, included a glowing piece on the First Task that was mostly about how Harry had beaten his dragon with one powerful spell. Harry had only given Rita Skeeter one word after the Task ("Goodbye"), but she had speculated (correctly) that Hermione the Arithmancer had invented it and wondered what else she was capable of. Le Monde Magique wrote a more balanced piece, lingering on Fleur's exploits. (And single-handedly putting a dragon to sleep was no small achievement.) As a result, some of the French students were mad at Hermione for upstaging Fleur, some had no quarrel with her and flocked to her to get a firsthand account, and more than a few were now afraid of her, which she didn't particularly like.

Monsieur Oppenord, the Arithmancy teacher, asked Hermione if she had really invented the spell Harry had used, and when she said she had, said it was very impressive and asked her to explain it. She only gave him a brief overview, both because it was so complicated and because she really didn't want it to be spread around too widely.

This awkward situation continued all week. She had never felt like she fit in as well at Beauxbatons as Hogwarts, although, with three years of history in Hogwarts, that wasn't surprising. But now, she was decidedly less welcome at the French school, and her year didn't seem to be going much better than the previous one.

On Friday, she received a letter from Harry that increased her worry further.

Dear Hermione,

We've been working together on that treasure map. We tried to measure the distances, but we don't have anything to measure with. It looks like the treasure is going to be at the bottom of the Black Lake, though. There are some runes on the map, too, but Ron's still translating them. Do you have any ideas for how Harry can get a treasure from the bottom of the lake?

How are you doing? I hope you're feeling better. It's usually a bad sign when you fall asleep on your feet.

Your friends,

Harry, Ron, and Ginny

Hermione didn't have any ideas for Harry to get to the bottom of the lake and back offhand. He couldn't very well rig up SCUBA gear with just his wand—at least she didn't think he could. Maybe there was a spell to do it. Or maybe Sirius and Remus could help. Well, at least they had nearly three months to work on it. She mentally added it to her list of projects.

Her project to study the interaction of radioactivity and transfiguration wasn't going well. The problem was getting enough radioactive material together to measure its decay rate. Oddly enough, the government made it rather difficult to get bulk radioactive material on the open market. Go figure. With only a cloud chamber for a radiation detector, none of her samples were strong enough to clearly show their radioactivity.

Her basic idea was to use potassium, which was one of the few elements that naturally occurred in a mix of stable and unstable elements. She wanted it to be in the natural mixture because she assumed that was what transfiguration replicated. She had a three and one-eighth ounce can of potassium chloride. Of that three and one-eighth ounces, one and two-thirds ounces was potassium, and of that, 99.988% was stable potassium-39 and potassium-41. Only 0.012% of it was radioactive potassium-40, and potassium-40 had a half-life of one and a quarter billion years. Do the maths, and that meant that the whole can underwent 1,462 radioactive decays per second, with a standard deviation of 38. If the sixth exception to Gamp's Law was correct, then transfigured potassium chloride should contain no potassium-40 at all and should not register in the cloud chamber. The trouble was that 1,462 decays per second were too few to pick it out from the background radiation.

According to her nuclear physics textbook, background radiation came from potassium-40 in the human body (Hermione herself contained more potassium-40 than the salt can); uranium, thorium, and their decay products in rocks, plus radon in the air; and from cosmic rays. Ordinary nuclear radiation wasn't a problem. Her cloud chamber couldn't detect gamma rays, and alpha and beta particles could be blocked by thin sheet metal. (By the same token, she would practically have to put the potassium chloride inside the cloud chamber to see the signal.) Cosmic rays, on the other hand, were another story. The only way to get away from those was to go deep underground, with many metres (she was in France, after all) of rock between oneself and the surface. The dungeons alone weren't enough. However, Monsieur Oppenord, when told of the importance of the project, agreed to give her supervised access to the drainage tunnels under the castle.

Now, he americium source from the smoke detector her parents had sent her was a tiny americium-plated button rated at one microcurie, or 37,000 decays per second. She could pick that out in the cloud chamber if she was underground. But americium would be ambiguous in terms of her project. If the sixth exception to Gamp's law was correct, then it shouldn't be possible to transfigure americium at all, and indeed Hermione couldn't. But that might have been because of the alchemical challenge of transfiguring pure substances. Or maybe it was because americium was purely synthetic, and transfiguration had to be of naturally occurring materials. She really wished she had that uranium she wanted. That would be a lot easier than the potassium.

Say, how much uranium is there in soil? she wondered. I've heard of filtering heavy metals from seawater. Maybe…

Fortunately, her nuclear physics book had a table of elemental abundances in the back. She checked as saw that uranium occurred at an average of about two parts per million in Earth's crust.

Well, that could work. If I adapt my spell to filter out magnesium to work on uranium, I good get three or four grams out of a cubic meter of soil. That would be plenty. Heck, I could probably even refine it if I wanted to—

She stopped cold, then slammed the book shut and backed away. Okay, I'm going to pretend I didn't think that—ever—before MI6 comes and gets me.

…Although…given the critical mass of uranium-235, I'd need to filter through three point six million tons of soil to get enough weapons-grade material to make a bomb, so I don't think I'll be a nuclear proliferation hazard anytime soon.

She relaxed at that and opened the book again. Interestingly, the table showed that every naturally-occurring element was present in rock, and therefore in soil, at least at the part per billion level, and most at the part per million level. There were also a handful of other elements besides potassium that were made of a mix of both stable and long-lived, but unstable isotopes. Perhaps one of those would work better than potassium.

Suddenly, she was in motion, flipping between pages, looking at tables of elemental abundances, isotopic abundances, and half-lives to work out decay rates and radioactivity per unit weight of soil so she could calculate how much work it would take to isolate a detectable amount.

Rubidium? Very feasible, but the stuff burst into flames on contact with air, so that didn't sound like a good idea.

Samarium? Just barely feasible, but it was an alpha emitter, so it would absorb most of its own radiation.

Rhenium? Far too rare. Completely infeasible.

Lutetium? Just barely feasible, and a beta emitter, but not a significant advantage over potassium, and it would take a lot of work.

So the potassium would have to do. And she would need to make some kind of metal shielding for her cloud chamber to block out the background radiation. She considered writing her parents for some sheet aluminium, but she'd already asked for so many supplies for this project that she would rather not bother them again. And she remembered that she had a ready source of pure (and thus guaranteed non-radioactive) magnesium.

Except that the magnesium was in powder form. She would have to melt it to make sheets, and magnesium melted at 650 degrees Celsius, but violently burst into flames at 473 degrees Celsius.

Maybe I need to start with something simpler, she thought. Teaching myself metallurgy sounds like something to be very careful about. Once again, maybe some other metal would work better. She considered the possibilities: it would need to be common, have a low melting point, be nonreactive, and be relatively non-toxic. Of course, I need to work with tin.

Dear Hermione,

Rita Skeeter interviewed Hagrid today in Care of Magical Creatures. She asked a lot of funny questions about the Blast-Ended Skrewts. I don't know what she's up to, but I have a bad feeling about it. You know she's going to twist everything he said. Do you think Hagrid could get in trouble over them?

Harry

Hagrid, she suspected, would be fine if he hadn't actually done anything illegal. Unfortunately, he was known to do that from time to time.

In the meantime, once she had worked out a spell to isolate one substance from soil, it was easy to modify it to work on others. Even her kludge to convert the magnesium ions back to their metallic form carried over, since few metals were found in their native form in nature. According to her chemistry textbook, only gold, silver, copper, and the platinum group metals could be mined in their pure form in commercially important quantities, and that certainly wouldn't apply to filtering tiny amounts from soil. Within a few days, she had figured out a spell for isolating tin.

Granted, it wasn't quite a substitution she could do in her head. She had to redo several blocks of calculations for the new spell, and those changes could propagate through the process to the wand movements, and of course, she needed to write a new incantation for each one, which was a complicated linguistic endeavour. The "magical name", for lack of a better term, for tin was the Latin stannum, so the incantation she wrote was just Percolare Stannum.

For her first try, she collected the powdered tin an evaporating dish from her potions kit. Tin had about the same concentration in soil as uranium, so she would need to "strip-mining" hundred tons of soil just to get a few ounces, so she decided to split that work up over several days. Eventually she got enough to experiment on. Tin melted at just 450 degrees Fahrenheit, so she was able to use her wand to melt the powder—and cool it, for that matter. That quickly got her a lump of solid tin, for all the good it did her. The question was, could she shape into sheets usefully? Or mold it?

Hmm, a physical mold would be easy, but time consuming, she mused. There might be a way to form a mold with magical fields using runes, which might be quicker for simple sheet metal. I'll have to look it up…if I ever have the time. I don't know about other spells, though. In fact, she could only think of two ways to shape objects with magic that she might be able to pull off—either a very complex shaping charm, like a modified Levitation Charm to make the liquid metal levitate into a certain shape, or a stripped-down Transfiguration spell to change the shape, but not the substance. However, that second one might not fix it in form; it might be vulnerable to untransfiguation.

"And that's another project for the list," she said to herself. She was certainly developing enough ideas for a long research career.

In the end, she went for a quick stopgap solution. She poured the molten tin into a beaker from her potions kit to shape it into a disk for easy storage. Then, for good measure, she used a Gouging Spell to carve a large Sn symbol into it. That was a good start.

Hermione,

Professor McGonagall announced the Yule Ball today. You mentioned you wanted to know when she did.

Ginny

Dear Professor McGonagall,

I just found out about the Yule Ball, and I was wondering a few things. Suppose a former student was home for the holidays and happened to be in the neighbourhood and happened to arrive at the gates of Hogwarts. Would she perhaps be allowed to stay a few days as a guest of the school, attend the Ball, and then maybe leave on Boxing Day? I'd like to be able to come, and I'd really appreciate having that kind of flexibility.

Sincerely,

Hermione Granger

Dear Miss Granger,

Hogwarts rarely entertains guests, but we do have provisions for it. If you are home for the holidays and thus not under the care of Beauxbatons, then you will be free to come and go at Headmaster Dumbledore's discretion so long as you have permission from your parents.

As for the Yule Ball itself, if we are to be technical about it, you would need accompanied by an authorised partner to attend, that is, a Hogwarts student of fourth year or higher or one of our official Beauxbatons or Durmstrang guests. If you arrive a few days before Christmas, I anticipate you will not have great difficulty finding an acceptable date.

Best regards,

Minerva McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress

Emma Granger sighed when she saw Hermione's latest letter. She was proud of her daughter's achievements, but it was so exhausting lately. She didn't begrudge her frequent questions and requests for supplies as she rushed into uncharted areas of magic, but she did worry about Hermione's well-being—her safety with all the danger she got into, her emotional health when she was forced to go to a new school, and the constant fear that she was overworking herself in her frantic enthusiasm for her assorted projects.

"What is it, Emma?" Dan asked.

"Apparently, there's a ball at Hogwarts on Christmas."

"Oh? For the Tournament?"

"Yes. That, and I think the stress is getting to Hermione."

Dan frowned: "More than usual?"

"She doesn't come out and say it, but if you read between the lines, you can tell how much everything's weighing on her. Here, look."

Dear Mum and Dad,

Hogwarts is holding a Yule Ball on Christmas Day as part of the Tournament. I know you wouldn't want me to be at Hogwarts all the way through the holidays, but I wrote to Professor McGonagall, and she said that if I'm home for the holidays, I could come and go anytime as a guest of Hogwarts, and I could attend the Ball if I have a date who's a Hogwarts student. And I know I missed Christmas with you last year, but I'd really like to go. This is probably the only school dance I'll ever have at the rate things are going, and I can still come home on Boxing Day.

I'd really like to spend the week before Christmas at Hogwarts, starting on Sunday, the 18th. I can probably convince Headmaster Dumbledore to let me go in and out multiple times, but it would be a lot easier if I could spend a week there, and it would be good to be able to spend time with my friends over the holidays.

I'm sorry to be asking for so much this year. I know you wanted to get me away from Hogwarts, and I know you have safety concerns with some of my research. And you're right; Hogwarts has been very dangerous, and some of my research is a little hazardous and certainly expensive. I think it's safe to say that nothing about my situation is normal, so I'm going to ask for some strange things from time to time. As for Hogwarts, well, I think we've been over that ad nauseum. I really appreciate that you've supported me in staying connected and involved to help Harry, and I've done my best to respect your wishes to keep out of trouble. It feels like I keep asking to spend more time there. Personally, I think the whole Tournament is unbalanced (to say nothing of being insanely dangerous). It only involves a small number of students from the guest schools and only one Champion from each school actually competes. It's really unfair, but there's nothing I can do about that. Anyway, in a perfect—well, more perfect—world, I would be at Hogwarts to be able to go to the ball, and I really don't want to miss out, so I hope you'll be willing to accept this compromise.

Love from,

Hermione

"Goodness," Dan said. "I hope she doesn't think she's becoming a burden or getting too demanding."

"I think that's part of it," Emma replied. "Hermione's basically been forced to become more self-sufficient the past three years. It's got to be hard to admit she needs help. But I really, I think it's the stress of being pulled in all different directions—needing to respect our wishes while trying to stay close to her friends and then working on her own research, and it's too much to deal with. It's the same problem she's always had in a different form—not being able to spare the effort to take care of herself properly."

"Plus, now, she doesn't have the support network she's built up over the past three years," Dan said.

Emma raised an eyebrow in surprise: "Yes, I suppose there's that, too…And you know, I think she's scared. She knows she was pushing her luck for so long to stay at Hogwarts, she's scared of pushing too hard and crossing that line again."

"Especially when it isn't a life-or-death thing this time," Dan observed. "Not as important, you know."

"Yes, could be…" Emma said, seemingly lost in thought. "Do you think it would be too much trouble to let her spend a week at Hogwarts?"

Dan smiled weakly. "I'd rather she didn't, but I think I can accept it. And if she's right about the arrangements, we can go and get her if there's any trouble. I don't want her thinking she can't trust us or something."

"I know. We've all worked so hard to hold together as a family through all this, I don't want to lose that." Emma smiled back: "And besides, I think our little girl deserves to have some fun."

Dear Hermione,

To be honest, your last letter worried us a little. We absolutely don't want you to feel like you can't come to us when there's something you want or need. If it worries you, we don't think you're being too demanding about your research projects. We're a bit concerned about how you're going about it, but we trust you to be responsible, and if it yields as many new results as you think it will, all of the books and equipment we've sent will be a worthwhile investment in your future.

We're perfectly happy to let you go to the Yule Ball. Don't worry about Christmas. We can put off our celebration for a day. You're right that we would have rathered you not spend any time at Hogwarts this year, but we can certainly compromise for your peace of mind about Harry, especially considering how much you've helped him, and we can do the same for such a rare opportunity as a ball. Magical schools do seem to suffer from an alarming lack of social activities, don't they?

From Mum: Woman to woman, I think you left out the most important part of why you want to go. After all the hard work you've been doing for your friends and for your academic work, this is something you want to do just for you. You know how you get when you're overworked, and I don't think you can deny that you've been working harder than you really should this year—and you don't have your old friends around to keep you grounded. After everything you've been through, you deserve a chance to kick back and have some fun. So go ahead, dress up (we'll even buy you a dress the night you get back), dance, have fun, and maybe even kiss a boy. Just try not to worry about anything at all for just one night.

Mind you, we'll want you to come home if there's any trouble during that week. Also, if you have anyone at all you feel you can confide in at Beauxbatons, especially your roommates, we think you should talk to them about your problems and ask them to help make sure you get enough sleep and don't overwork yourself.

We miss you every day, and we can't wait to see you. Even if we only get one week this year, we'll be thrilled to have you at home. Remember that you'll always be our little girl, and we'll always worry about you, but we can also see that you've become a brilliant and beautiful young woman who is learning to be her own person and can already do things we never dreamt of. We're so glad that you've made the effort to stay close to us, and the least we can do is to support you in any reasonable thing you want to do. Please don't hesitate to write us again if there's anything else you need.

Love from,

Mum and Dad

Hermione was in tears as she read her parents' letter. It was amazing to her. They were always so supportive in almost everything she did. She was well aware that she had pushed probably well beyond the bounds of sanity to stay at Hogwarts for three years, and she couldn't thank them enough for letting her keep visiting this year. It made her feel guilty again that she was abusing their trust to get that extra few days before each of the tasks. She considered asking them outright and putting it on the level after this letter, but she found she couldn't quite make that leap. She set that aside for now—or that's what she told herself—to write the other letters that she needed to write. She had to write Professor McGonagall, of course, as well as several of her Hogwarts friends to give them a heads-up. She was so happy that she barely knew where to start. Without really thinking about it, her first letter came out:

Dear Cedric,

Great news! I wrote to Professor McGonagall and my mum and dad, and we arranged it so that I can spend a week at Hogwarts after the end of term, and I'll be able to go to the Yule Ball. I'm really excited to see you and everybody else at Hogwarts. I know it'll be a lot of fun being back there when classes aren't in session, and I know the ball will be really great, too.

I hope everything is going well with you. I know you must be busy with the Tournament. Have you figured out the clue for the next task yet? I'm sure you can get it with arithmancy, but if you're having any trouble, just ask any of the muggle-borns. They can tell you more about it.

Love from,

Hermione

There was one very big problem with Hermione's transfiguration project: she had very little idea of how to transfigure potassium chloride—certainly not enough to be sure she had exhausted all the possibilities with regard to radioactivity. Reading up on a theoretical level showed that any route to try it would blur the lines between transfiguration and alchemy, and alchemy was an advanced-level class. If she could overcome that hurdle, she thought she good get even data from analysing the magical fields to prove arithmantically that it was impossible to transfigure the radioactive potassium-40, leaving the stable potassium-39 and -41. (Not wanting to touch isotopic separation, she could probably figure out the isotopic ratio by carefully measuring the density.) However, she would need someone who was very familiar with both the theory and practice of transfiguration to get to that point, and she doubted Professor McGonagall would have the time. She'd have to ask Septima for advice when she got back to Hogwarts.

Of course, even that wasn't the full story. Her nuclear physics book said that practically all heavy metals were theoretically unstable to spontaneous fission, even if no decays had ever been experimentally observed, so it couldn't be a simple matter of stable versus unstable energy states. But that was a matter for later.

On the bright side, she had managed to beat her samples of tin crudely into shape—literally. She simply heated the metal until it was soft, but not melted, and beat it with a hammer. It didn't look very good, but she made it into a box that could contain the cloud chamber and potassium chloride. Pretty good for a complete novice tinsmith, she thought.

"So I can see the beta radiation from the potassium chloride by putting it in a layer under cloud chamber. I just don't know how to replicate it with transfiguration," she explained to her roommates over breakfast just before the end of term.

Adèle and Hildegard nodded patronisingly. "Well, it sounds like that's a start, at least," Hildegard said. Hermione knew she might as well have been speaking English for all they understood her, but she appreciated their patience in letting her bounce ideas off them.

"Oh, Hermione, I think you got a package,"Adèle interrupted.

Hermione looked up in surprise. She wasn't expecting anything, but a large owl she didn't recognise swooped down to her, dropped off a small box and a large envelope, and snapped up a rasher of bacon before she could stop it. Shaking her head, she looked at the return address.

"Oh, wow, it's from the Creeveys," she said excitedly.

"The ones who outed you as Harry Potter's girlfriend?" Hidegard teased.

"I'm not his girlfriend. And they may be clueless, but they're good photographers, both of them. I asked them to develop some photos I took of the First Task."

That got some attention. Everyone at the table got up and clustered around her. They hadn't seen many really good photos of the task. She opened the envelope, and four glossy photos, a letter, and what looked like a flip-book spilt out. Each photo showed a high-quality recording that looped ten seconds of footage. The first showed a dragon chasing a dog while Cedric grabbed the golden egg, and then it turned and shot flames at him, all as the arena spun around. The second showed a dragon drifting off to sleep while Fleur sneaked up to the nest. Hermione passed that one around. The third showed Krum firing his Conjunctivitis Curse and the blinded dragon stomping on the nest. It was too bad there wasn't a magical RSPCA to send that one to. Maybe she would start one if she was ever not fiendishly busy. And the fourth photo was developed as perfectly as possible, but it still came out a little off. It started the moment Harry banished the cloud of magnesium powder at the Horntail's head. The dragon began to breathe fire, and then there was a flash that turned the entire image blank white. The glare subsided, showing the dragon rearing back, staggering, and falling, rolling to the edge of the spinning arena, but that part was washed out with distorted colours.

"Mon Dieu! You say that was your spell, 'Ermione?" one of the girls said.

"Oui, but Harry overpowered it," she replied. They really were good photos. She let her friends take a closer look while she read the letter.

Dear Hermione,

We figured it out! These are all the photos we extracted from your Omnioculars crystal using the Creevey-Granger Process (patent pending). Sorry it took so long. We wanted to get the patent application in before we revealed it. We asked the Weasley Twins to help us there. You were right. We could turn any ten seconds of the recording into a photo, even if they overlapped. We took the most exciting parts of the task and put them back to back to make a flip-book. That's the closest we could come to a real video.

We sent the crystal back to you in the box so that maybe you could put the Omnioculars back together, but we think the explosion damaged it. Everything after that looks overexposed. You might need a new pair for the next task.

We tried to sell the photos to the Daily Prophet, but they bought the one of Harry for two galleons, and that's it. We sent you half in the box since you took the recording. We can work out business details the next time we see you.

Your friends,

Colin and Dennis Creevey

Hermione looked at the flip-book. It really was almost like a video. She was starting to think she had underestimated the Creeveys. Sure, they could be a little obnoxious, but it looked like they had a head for business. "Creevey-Granger Process (patent pending)"? That sounded more professional than she'd expected. The real question was what kind of volume they could process.

"Wow, this is really good work," Adèle said. "Are you going to be doing more of this?"

Hermione smiled. "I think so," she said. This looked like it would be a very promising partnership.

The train from Beauxbatons to Paris was an hour faster than Hogwarts to London, and Sirius had arranged an International Portkey from the French Ministry to the British Ministry to get her home faster, so Hermione made good time. (Mum and Dad had insisted on paying for that one, since it was for their personal use.) None of the Grangers had had much direct contact with the Ministry, so they all felt a little lost. The arrival room looked a little like how a wizard might design a train platform where there were no trains, and Mum and Dad were standing in a marked off area by the door. Hermione smiled when she saw them and rushed to them, stopping in front of them as they stared at each other awkwardly.

"Oh, come here," Mum said and grabbed her in a hug.

That was enough. Hermione broke down crying, letting go of the tension of the last four months. "Mum, Dad, I—" she started.

"Shh," Mum whispered to her. "It's okay."

"I—Thank you," Hermione sobbed, not entirely sure what she was thanking them for. "Thank you so much."

Dad pulled both of them close. "We meant what we said, Hermione. We want you to be happy, and you deserve a chance to relax and have a good time. And if you have a quick way out, we're okay with you doing that at Hogwarts."

"It's just been so hard this year—" she murmured.

"We know. We wish it didn't have to be this way," Mum said. "Just try not to worry so much about it this week." She held her daughter at arm's length and smiled: "Come on, we have a dress to buy you."

A/N: Percolare Stannum: Latin for "filter tin".