AN: Sorry for being a little late with this, I got behind with my other story and couldn't manage two different chapters from two different fandoms in one day.

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Harry next met Draco at a garden party at the Crouches. The guest list there was very similar to the one at the Burkes – something to be expected, Harry supposed, with two Ravenclaw families – and so he soon found himself sitting with the Malfoy boy again, grateful that Zach and Pansy took their argument about something or other elsewhere.

"I noticed Mrs. Longbottom is here," Harry said, "but she didn't take Neville with her. I wonder why that is? Everyone else's children are here..."

Draco shrugged. "He never comes. They say he is a little...you know...slow in the head."

Harry sat up, offended. "Hey! Neville is my friend."

"Really?" Draco looked at him in curiosity. "What is he like? He's probably the only Noble and Most Ancient family heir I've never met..."

"Certainly not slow in the head," Harry said tartly. "He's kinda shy, though. But still, I don't get why his grandmother won't take him here."

"Well," Draco said slowly, "the other rumour I heard was that he was a Squib, so..."

Harry remembered the story Neville had told him, about his family fearing the same and performing all kinds of stupid experiments on him. It didn't seem right to share it with Draco, so he only told him the final bit: "He totally isn't, because he told me about his accidental magic when he fell out of a window and bounced all the way across the street."

Draco laughed. "That's kinda cool. Okay, no Squib then either. In that case, I really have no idea why he isn't here." He paused. "What was your accidental magic?"

"I've done quite a lot of it, actually – jumping on the top of a building, shrinking a sweater I didn't like, growing my hair overnight..."

"Impressive."

"What was yours?" Harry was curious what people who weren't bullied either at home or at school did.

Draco smirked in memory. "Most often, I summoned stuff I wanted to me, like brooms and toys and the like. Sometimes I blasted people who irritated me away, too."

"Like who? Strangers, or family, or…?"

"More often strangers, but sometimes family too. Like my mother, once, when I was six and she insisted it was bedtime already," Draco admitted, and Harry laughed.

"Father was furious with me," the blond boy added. "It was the only time I've seen him truly angry. At me, I mean, he gets angry at other people plenty."

Harry nodded in understanding. "It's really memorable, isn't it? I mean, I've made my cousin angry at me for the first time recently and it's really something that sticks with you..."

"What did you do?"

Harry blushed.

"Come on, Harry, you can't let me tell you and then refuse to reciprocate." Draco poked him in the shoulder. "Out with it."

Harry slapped his hand away and muttered: "Well, my cousin had visitors over and I was really curious what were they talking about...so I...snuck down and listened at the door."

Draco stared at him. "But why?" He asked.

Harry had a distinct feeling that that was something he should not tell Draco, given that all that information about prophecies and him was not exactly public knowledge, so he just said: "Like I said, I got curious."

"I can't imagine being that curious about what the adults were discussing. What kind of visitors was it?"

"My cousin's Ravenclaw friends, the ones that have the same bookish interests."

Draco looked ever more astonished now. "And you said you're not interested in being in Ravenclaw? But you risk listening at the door to hear this crowd talk?"

Harry was sorry he had said anything. "Well, they talked about prophecies," he admitted in the end. "It seemed like a really cool topic."

Draco gave him a very sharp look. "Ah," he said only, but then mercifully changed the topic and their attention shifted to the garden party that was to take place at the Malfoys in two weeks, and who was going to be there.

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Alduin was walking with Harry in the direction of the Tower when the boy asked: "How come you know how to move around Muggle London so well? From what I could gather from Neville, he's never been out here...he was really shocked when I told him about this trip, or the one to Warwick, too."

"Neville is hardly your go-to example, given that his grandmother hardly lets him out of the house," Alduin replied, "but you are right that my Muggle-worlds orientation skills are probably above average. The Shacklebolts are as good as I am at it, though, and so were my parents, and Neville's, and your own father and his parents. Can you guess what is it that ties this group of people together?"

Harry thought about it. There was only one thing that occurred to him, so even though he didn't understand the connection, he said: "The war?"

"Yes. Those who participated actively in the last war learned to find their way around the Muggle world. We took any advantage we could get, and this was one of them. I had my Muggle-Born classmates from Hogwarts teach me everything hey could about blending in. Of course, they got to me in the end anyway – to most of us – but we did last longer, I believe, than had we not known how to go about this."

Despite the seriousness of the topic, Harry sniggered. "So you had, what, being-a-Muggle classes? What did they teach you? I mean except not going out in robes."

Alduin rolled his eyes at this. "Many things. Muggle money. Using the public transport. Orientating yourself in supermarkets. All those tiny little differences between the worlds." It had not exactly endeared the Muggle world to him, either. It was useful knowing how to move around there, yes, but it all seemed so crass and vulgar...he much preferred keeping to his manor, even though he did realize, of course, that part of the problem was that the parts of Muggle world that were useful to him were precisely the crass and vulgar ones, the ones full of people, the popular ones. He would likely like the aristocratic world much better, but what use was that to him?

Harry seemed to want to ask something else, but then they turned the corner and he saw one of the guards for the first time. "Wow," he said. "They're...cool."

"I do agree. Come, the line is terribly long, as always, you can admire them from it."

Harry did, to his heart's desire. "Why are there so many people here?"

"You can see the Crown Jewels inside. That's enough of an attraction."

"Are they very impressive?"

"They are, rather. A fitting symbol for the monarchy, in any case."

"Does the Queen know about..." Harry looked around and lowered his voice. "About us?"

"This is not the time and place for this conversation," Alduin replied, "but yes, of course she does. Who do you think asks the Minister to lead the Ministry? She is the Queen of the whole country. All ministers are her ministers, technically speaking. It's her government."

Harry seemed to be bursting with questions, but he wisely kept his mouth shut, and Alduin passed the time in the queue by looking around, at the guards and the ravens. It had been a long time since he had been here, but the Tower stood quietly unchanging, the buzz of tourists no more to it than a swarm of irritating flies to a rock. Alduin looked in the direction of the execution site. "Did you know," he asked Harry, "that Ann Boleyn was accused of, among other things, being a witch?"

"Really?" Harry lowered his voice again. "And was she?"

Alduin laughed a little incredulously at that. "No, of course not. Do you think that if she was, she would have simply let herself be executed?" He asked in a light tone that would make anyone listening in on their conversation think he was playing along with Harry's fantasy. The people behind them in the line were French and the ones before were speaking some Slavic language, but with English, unfortunately, one could never be sure how many spoke it.

"Well, if they took her wand..."

"You think witches can only cast spells with their wands, do you? Don't you think that the moment her life was in danger, she would have found some...other means of saving herself?"

Harry nodded thoughtfully, clearly thinking of his own desperate accidental magic. "It was Anne of Cleves who was the witch," Alduin added quietly, and saw Harry's eyes go as wide as saucers.

"But I thought she...why did she not...could she not make the king stay with her, then?"

"What you're suggesting is extremely immoral and, in fact, illegal, and the fear of this is one of the main reasons witches were persecuted in the first place," Alduin replied. They were finally at the ticket office, and after making the purchase, Alduin took Harry aside and added: "Besides, you're assuming Anne wanted to be with the king. But she was far from stupid, as much as she might have played herself to be sometimes. She knew what happened to Ann Boleyn, and she knew the dangers. She didn't like Henry, and with a combination of some repulsing spells used on herself and some Confundus used on the king, managed to prevent the consummation of marriage, and later ensure annulment, and a prosperous future for herself."

"Were many members of the royal family witches or wizards?" Harry asked curiously.

"Not many, no. And Anne was Muggle-Born, so she came from a Muggle aristocratic family. It just so happened that she was magical, and had a sensible witch to teach her back in Germany." He paused. "At the risk of repeating myself, there are many books you can read about this. Now come, let's look at the Jewels."

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"...and the diamond in the sceptre is huge," Harry was saying to Neville, sitting in his room. The weather had turned terrible again, and it was cold and raining outside. The garden party at the Shafiqs, which was to come next week, was going to be unpleasant unless something changed.

"It must be awesome," Neville said, a little sadly. "Did your cousin take you anywhere else in London?"

"Yeah...he said that we should take things in by areas, so he showed me the London Bridge and St. Paul's, and St. Mungo's, too."

Neville gave Harry a quick look. "You were at the hospital?"

"Yeah." Harry looked down, cursing himself for mentioning it. "We didn't go to see your parents, though," he muttered. "I mean, I wasn't sure if you'd have wanted me to…"

"It doesn't matter," Neville said. "I mean...maybe I'd like to go there with you one day, to introduce you to them, you know? So that they know you're my friend. But you going there alone...there'd be no point." He fell silent for a moment, then added: "They don't really recognize me, they'd have no idea what to do with you."

"I'm sorry, Neville," Harry said miserably.

"It's not your fault, is it? And it's not like you're...anyway." The 'it's not like you're any better off' hung in the air, unsaid.

There was an uncomfortable silence, then Neville muttered. "The hospital is really kind of impressive, though, isn't it? Even I can see it, in spite of...everything."

"Yeah," Harry replied, still not looking at Neville. "It's huge, and it all seems so complicated...so many different sections and wards…"

"Which ones did you see?"

"We had tea in the tearoom, and then we went to Spell Damage and Creature-Induced Injuries. I think my cousin wanted it to be a cautionary tale to me, to be careful at Hogwarts." He grimaced. "It worked. I mean, they didn't let me in the rooms or anything, but you meet people in the corridors..." Then he realized what he was saying, and whom he was saying it to, and blushed deeply, apologizing again.

Neville seemed determined not to let the awkwardness return. "So you didn't go to Potions and Plants? I've always wanted to see that one. Of course, when we're there, we never go anywhere but the Closed Ward, but..."

"Hey," Harry said, desperately trying to make up for his blunders. "Maybe when we go to see your parents together one day, we can stop by on that floor."

Neville gave him a soft, grateful smile.

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AN: It's never been a question to me, about the Queen knowing. Of course she does. I also like to imagine that while the Minister for Magic doesn't go to cabinet meetings – obviously – he is, formally speaking, part of Her Majesty's government. Simply responsible for one of the sections, you know? (The Prince of Wales would totally know, too. Not sure about the Duke of Cambridge. It would probably depend on how trustworthy the Queen thought he was.)

And I really like the idea of St. Mungo's being close to St. Bart's. To my mind, they were originally one hospital, and then in the 1600s, as the Statute loomed near, Mungo Bonham started an independent magical wing, which turned into a separate hospital entirely as the Statute was ratified.