It was the beginning of June when Ron burst out of the fireplace in the receiving room in Travers Manor, seeming almost giddy with excitement. Harry and Neville were already waiting for him – Ron usually came at least a little late – and now exchanged a look of surprise. Before any of them could say anything, however, Ron grinned at them. "Guess what?" He said.

"No idea," Harry replied.

"My dad got a new job!"

"Really?" Neville asked, even more surprised. "I thoughts your father liked his old one."

"Well, yeah, and he won't leave it either. He got a job in addition to in, in some institute for studying Muggles. He only needs to be there a few hours a week, he said, but it's really well-paid. Ginny listened at the door when they talked about it and she says they said it should be enough to get all of us new stuff for Hogwarts. Isn't that great?"

The boys both agreed it was. "Let's go out," Harry said then. "You can tell us all about it there. When did you find out?"

"Only yesterday, when Dad came home from work," Ron replied as they left the house. "And Ginny only told be how good it was just before I came here." He rolled his eyes. "She made me get her a broom from a shed before she told me. I don't know what she wants to do with it, it's not like she flies. But anyway, just think of the possibilities! Dad starts this month, so it'll only be three months' worth of pay before we go to Hogwarts and it'll still be enough money to get us all new school stuff. Imagine how much he'll have after a year in this job! We can all have new robes, and the house could be repaired, and everything."

"What exactly will your father be doing in his new job?" Neville asked.

"I dunno. Something about Muggles, like I said. Mum said that he might make use of some of the stuff he does in the garage, so I guess maybe some tinkering with Muggle objects? But I really have no clue."

"It was quite a good timing," Harry pointed out as they plopped down to the grass by the garden lake. "I mean, before you went to school and all."

"Yeah, thank Merlin for that. I mean, I guess Mum could have sent us all the new stuff by owl, but still, it'd have been awkward with the wand. I was to get Charlie's old one before this job came around. That'd have been terrible."

Neville shifted a little uncomfortably. "I don't know," he said. "I mean, Gran says I'm to use my Dad's old wand..."

Ron looked immediately embarrassed, and Harry sighed a little. It was still an improvement, he supposed. A few months ago, Neville wouldn't have spoken up. "So do you have any ideas what you'd like to do now, or like next summer, apart from, you know, the house being repaired?" He asked.

It turned out Ron did – in fact, he could discuss little else for the rest of the afternoon, but this time, Harry didn't really blame him. He'd have wanted to talk about big news like this as well. He did, in fact – when Neville and Ron both left, he went to Alduin to tell him all about it.

"...it's really well paid, so Ron's gonna have lots of new things!" He ended his excited narrative.

Mentally frowning about the crass way the boy discussed this with his ward, Alduin said neutrally: "Really?"

"Yeah! Ron's really excited, and I think it will make everything easier with him. It's some Muggle-wizard relationship research group, I think, so exactly in Mr. Weasley's line."

Indeed it was. It took some effort to think of a job offer that would be too tempting for Arthur Weasley to refuse, would not take him from the Ministry, because he would never leave it, and would convincingly pay enough money. In the end he had convinced Anil Patil to officially found the institute – it was not so unlikely that a rich half-blood would want to develop something that would do the job better than the Ministry. And, since he had to fund it, Alduin fully intended to make it do some real job – or at least all the other employees apart from Weasley, since he was notoriously incapable.

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Harry liked going to the Shafiqs. He liked Abdulaziz, his parents were very kind, and the house was spacious and beautiful. It looked different from the other mansions he had visited, too – it had a large central courtyard, and it had only two floors, opting to be wide rather than high. That was especially pleasant now when the summer was starting, and they ate dinner with the door to the central courtyard open, and then, instead of going to a drawing room, the entire family moved to sit there.

"I love this," Harry couldn't help saying when he settled down. "It's so nice."

Mr. Shafiq laughed. "It's not so very comfortable in winter," he said, "but well, what can I do when my great-great-grandfather got it into his head we have to go back to our roots and remade the entire house into what he deemed was an oriental style..."

"You mean it didn't originally look like this?"

"Oh no. Ibn Ismail was a sensible man, and when he decided to settle in Britain, he built a house fit for living in Britain, made to withstand rain and snow and cold. The later expansions and improvements followed in this spirit. But then in mid-nineteenth century, when this glorious kingdom was doing all it could to colonize the entire world, my esteemed ancestor – in a fit of desire to make up for his guilt of living in a country that was doing that, I gathered – decided that living in a British house was disloyal and had it remade in such a way that it requires large amounts of magic to make it easily habitable most of the year."

"My father likes to complain," Mr. Muhammad said with a smile. "In reality, he enjoys the warm summer evenings out here as much as you do, Mr. Potter."

"I never denied it," Mr. Shafiq replied. "It's the winters that bothers me."

"Yet you should see him if someone tried to as much as suggest he remakes the house," Mr. Muhammad stage-whispered.

"I wouldn't want it changed either," Abdulaziz piped in. "I like it this way."

"We can build snowmen in the courtyard, too – not many people can do that!" Gamila added.

"And do you?" Harry asked curiously.

"All the time," Abdulaziz admitted, laughing.

"You mean all the time when there's actually enough snow, which isn't all that often," his father pointed out with a smile. "Wrong part of the country for that."

"The last thing I need," Mr. Shafiq muttered, "is having a house like this is Scotland."

"Where are we, actually?" Harry asked. They always flooed to their visits, and so he no clue about geography.

"Oxfordshire," Mr. Muhammad replied. "Not too far from that town, in fact."

Harry giggled. "I should have known there'd be a Ravenclaw family in Oxfordshire," he said. "Is there one in Cambridgeshire as well?"

"Oh yes," Mr. Abdullah replied with a smile. "The Davies live there."

Harry giggled again.

"To divert your attention from our house for a moment," Mrs. Muhammad said after a short pause, "Alexandra, dear, have you seen the new excavations from Tintagel?"

"I haven't had time for more than a cursory perusal," Miss Burke replied, "but they seem most fascinating."

"There was this one runic inscriptions that I found particularly intriguing..."

Mrs. Abdullah gave a quiet sigh. "Any interesting adventures lately?" She asked Harry, adding in an undertone: "I just can't do history..."

"Really? I remember hearing Mrs. Bagshot mention you, so I thought you knew her through history..."

The smile that appeared on Mrs. Abdullah's face appeared a little forced to Harry. "Oh no," she said. "it was through the historical interests of my great-grandfather."

Harry would have liked to smack himself with something heavy. He had been warned by Alduin never to ask Mrs. Abdullah about her blood family. As far as he knew, it was only her brother and father who had been Death Eaters and killed by Aurors, but what did he know? Perhaps there had been some problem with her great-grandfather as well.

He really wanted to change the topic now, but had no idea how. Mrs. Abdullah looked at him for a moment, then smiled a small smile. Don't worry about it, it seemed to say. "But you're right," she said aloud. "She can make history interesting even to me. She's a great teacher. Have you ever heard her tell something? It's an experience. A pity, too, that she never had the opportunity to teach at Hogwarts. Dumbledore keeps that thrice-damned Binns around...well, it's too late for her now, at any rate."

"Is she very ill?" Harry asked, a little alarmed by this.

"Incurably, at any rate. You cannot heal age." Mrs. Abdullah sighed. "But we've picked a glum topic. Let's see what the others are talking about. Hopefully, they've moved behind Runes."

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Harry was curious when they were asked for tea at the Burkes – it had never happened before, it had always been dinners. They weren't exactly his favourite thing either – the Burke children were cute, but too small to be any real fun, and while Harry really liked Mrs. Theodore, the rest of Miss Burke's family, especially her parents, made him uneasy.

However, his worries about this dissipated the moment he saw that someone else had been asked for tea as well – Draco, and his mother.

Harry had seen Mrs. Malfoy before, of course, but it had only been in passing and from a distance, and they had never been introduced. "Mr. Potter," she said now, as she shook his hand. "How nice to meet you. Draco has, of course, told me much about you. I take it you're quite a fan of Shakespeare?"

Harry blushed a little. "I don't know about that," he said. "I've read less than Draco, certainly. But I like it. Draco recommended Midsummer Night's Dream, so I read it and I liked it a lot."

"Was it your favourite?"

"Yes, I think so – that, and Macbeth."

"So you agree with me that Hamlet is boring?" Draco asked impatiently.

"Kinda," Harry admitted, "but don't tell Theodore."

Draco laughed. "Hamlet is Theo's favourite," he explained.

Mrs. Malfoy smiled softly. "That does not surprise me," she said.

Harry and Draco took themselves to the gardens as soon as they finished their tea. "You have done a wonderful job," Harry heard Mrs. Malfoy say after they left the room, but they were too far by the time whoever it had been addressed to replied to hear what they said.

"Have you seen the first match of the season?" Draco asked Harry on their way out.

"Um, no…?" Harry said reluctantly.

"I thought so, and so I brought the displayer with the recording with me. You've got to see it. The Tornadoes played the Canons, and crushed them completely!"

Harry laughed. "Ron's gonna be really upset, then," he said.

Draco sneered. "Weasley?" He asked.

"Yeah. It's his favourite team."

Draco looked like he wanted to say something, but then changed his mind. Taking his expression into account, Harry decided not to pry. "Isn't the game boring, if the Canons were crushed so completely?" He asked instead.

"No, it's fun. They grow more and more flustered, and then start dropping balls and things like that. It's ridiculous."

Harry felt rather sorry for the poor players, even without seeing them. "Are the Magpies going to be playing any time soon?" He asked. If they payed the Tornadoes, well, that would be more interesting.

Draco shrugged. "I don't remember, but check the sports section of the Prophet, it prints matches times in the back. I only know when the Tornadoes play."

They found one of the benches by the side of the house and sat down, and Draco took out the displayer. "The International Quidditch Tournament will start soon enough, too," he said. "Are you planning to go?"

"I'd like to," Harry said. "I'll try to convince my cousin to take me, but I don't know – I mean, he doesn't really care about Quidditch."

"You could go with us," Draco replied. "I'm sure my dad wouldn't mind."

Harry, well aware that his cousin would most certainly not allow that, for political reasons, tried to murmur something noncommittal. Draco's enthusiasm immediately subsided. "Let's just watch," he said curtly.