036.asc

// 7146
//== Status Differentials

// 7147
//Wrenching disorientation, that was how it felt to walk out of Platform Nine and
//Three-Quarters into the rest of Earth, the world that Harry had once thought
//was the only real world. People dressed in casual shirts and pants, instead of
//the more dignified robes of wizards and witches. Scattered bits of trash here
//and there around the benches. A forgotten smell, the fumes of burned gasoline,
//raw and sharp in the air. The ambiance of the King’s Cross train station, less
//bright and cheerful than Hogwarts or Diagon Alley; the people seemed smaller,
//more afraid, and likely would have eagerly traded their problems for a dark
//wizard to fight. Harry wanted to cast __Scourgify__ for the dirt, and
//__Everto__ for the garbage, and if he’d known the spell, a Bubble-Head
//Charm so he wouldn’t have to breathe the air. But he couldn’t use his wand, in
//this place…

// 7148
//This, Harry realized, must be what it felt like to go from a First World
//country to a Third World country.

// 7149
//Only it was the Zeroth World which Harry had left, the wizarding world, of
//Cleansing Charms and house elves; where, between the healer’s arts and your own
//magic, you could hit one hundred and seventy before old age really started
//catching up with you.

// 7150
//And nonmagical London, Muggle Earth, to which Harry had temporarily returned.
//This was where Mum and Dad would live out the rest of their lives, unless
//technology leapfrogged over wizardry’s quality of life, or something deeper in
//the world changed.

// 7151
//Without even thinking about it, Harry’s head turned and his eyes darted behind
//him to see the wooden trunk that was scurrying after him, unnoticed by any
//Muggles, the clawed tentacles offering quick confirmation that, yes, he hadn’t
//just imagined it all…

// 7152
//And then there was the other reason for the tight feeling in his chest.

// 7153
//His parents didn’t know.

// 7154
//They didn’t know __anything__.

// 7155
//They didn’t know…

// 7156
//“Harry?” called a thin, blonde woman whose perfectly smooth and unblemished
//skin made her look a good deal younger than thirty-three; and Harry realized
//with a start that it __was__ magic, he hadn’t known the signs before but
//he could see them now. And whatever sort of potion lasted that long, it must
//have been terribly dangerous, because most witches didn’t do that to
//themselves, they weren’t that desperate…

// 7157
//There was water gathering in Harry’s eyes.

// 7158
//“__Harry?__” yelled an older-looking man with a paunch gathering about his
//stomach, dressed with ostentatious academic carelessness in a black vest thrown
//over a dark grey-green shirt, someone who would always be a professor anywhere
//he went, who would certainly have been one of the most brilliant wizards of his
//generation, if he’d been born with two copies of that gene, instead of zero…

// 7159
//Harry raised his hand and waved to them. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t speak
//at all.

// 7160
//They came over to him, not running, but at a steady, dignified walk; that was
//how fast Professor Michael Verres-Evans walked, and Mrs. Petunia Evans-Verres
//wasn’t about to walk any faster.

// 7161
//The smile on his father’s face wasn’t very wide, but then his father never was
//given to huge smiles; it was, at least, as wide as Harry had ever seen it,
//wider than when a new grant came in, or when one of his students got a
//position, and you couldn’t ask for a wider smile than that.

// 7162
//Mum was blinking hard, and she was trying to smile but not doing a very good
//job.

// 7163
//“So!” said his father as he came striding up. “Made any revolutionary
//discoveries yet?”

// 7164
//Of course Dad thought he was joking.

// 7165
//It hadn’t hurt quite so much when his parents didn’t believe in him, back when
//no one __else__ had believed in him either, back when Harry hadn’t
//__known__ how it felt to be taken seriously by people like Headmaster
//Dumbledore and Professor Quirrell.

// 7166
//And that was when Harry realized that the Boy-Who-Lived only existed in magical
//Britain, that there wasn’t any such person in Muggle London, just a cute little
//eleven-year-old boy going home for Christmas.

// 7167
//“Excuse me,” Harry said, his voice trembling, “I’m going to break down and cry
//now, it doesn’t mean there was anything wrong at school.”

// 7168
//Harry started to move forward, and then stopped, torn between hugging his
//father and hugging his mother, he didn’t want either one to feel slighted or
//that Harry loved them more than the other -

// 7169
//“You,” said his father, “are a very silly boy, Mr. Verres,” and he gently took
//Harry by the shoulders and pushed him into the arms of his mother, who was
//kneeling down, tears already streaking her cheek.

// 7170
//“Hello, Mum,” Harry said with his voice wavering, “I’m back.” And he hugged
//her, amid the noisy mechanical sounds and the smell of burned gasoline; and
//Harry started crying, because he knew that nothing __could__ go back,
//least of all him.

// 7171
//The sky was completely dark, and stars were coming out, by the time they
//negotiated the Christmas traffic to the university town that was Oxford, and
//parked in the driveway of the small, dingy-looking old house that their family
//used to keep the rain off their books.

// 7172
//As they walked up the brief stretch of pavement leading to the front door, they
//passed a series of flower-pots holding small, dim electric lights (dim since
//they had to recharge themselves off solar power during the day), and the lights
//lit up just as they passed. The hard part had been finding motion sensors that
//were waterproof and triggered at just the right distance…

// 7173
//In Hogwarts there were real torches like that.

// 7174
//And then the front door opened and Harry stepped into their living-room,
//blinking hard.

// 7175
//__Every inch of wall space is covered by a bookcase. Each bookcase has
//six shelves, going almost to the ceiling. Some bookshelves are stacked to the
//brim with hardcover books: science, math, history, and everything else. Other
//shelves have two layers of paperback science fiction, with the back layer of
//books propped up on old tissue boxes or two-by-fours, so that you can see the
//back layer of books above the books in front. And it still isn’t enough. Books
//are overflowing onto the tables and the sofas and making little heaps under the
//windows…__

// 7176
//The Verres household was just as he’d left it, only with more books, which was
//also just how he’d left it.

// 7177
//And a Christmas tree, naked and undecorated just two days before Christmas Eve,
//which threw Harry briefly before he realized, with a warm feeling blossoming in
//his chest, that of course his parents had __waited__.

// 7178
//“We took the bed out of your room to make room for more bookcases,” said his
//father. “You can sleep in your trunk, right?”

// 7179
//“__You__ can sleep in my trunk,” said Harry.

// 7180
//“That reminds me,” said his father. “What __did__ they end up doing about
//your sleep cycle?”

// 7181
//“Magic,” Harry said, making a beeline for the door that opened upon his
//bedroom, just in case Dad __wasn’t__ joking…

// 7182
//“That’s not an explanation!” said Professor Verres-Evans, just as Harry
//shouted, “__You used up all the open space on my bookcases?__”

// 7183
//Harry had spent the 23rd of December shopping for Muggle things that he
//couldn’t just Transfigure; his father had been busy and had said that Harry
//would need to walk or take the bus, which had suited Harry just fine. Some of
//the people at the hardware store had given Harry questioning looks, but he’d
//said with an innocent voice that his father was shopping nearby and was very
//busy and had sent him to get some things (holding up a list in carefully
//adult-looking half-illegible handwriting); and in the end, money was money.

// 7184
//They had all decorated the Christmas tree together, and Harry had put a tiny
//dancing fairy on top (two Sickles, five Knuts at Gambol & Japes).

// 7185
//Gringotts had readily exchanged Galleons for paper money, but they didn’t seem
//to have any simple way to turn larger quantities of gold into tax-free,
//unsuspicious Muggle money in a numbered Swiss bank account. This had rather
//spiked Harry’s plan to turn most of the money he’d self-stolen into a sensible
//mix of 60// international index funds and 40// Berkshire Hathaway. For the
//moment, Harry had diversified his assets a little further by sneaking out late
//at night, invisible and Time-Turned, and burying one hundred golden Galleons in
//the backyard. He’d always always __always__ wanted to do that anyway.

// 7186
//Some of December 24th had been spent with the Professor reading Harry’s books
//and asking questions. Most of the experiments his father had suggested were
//impractical, at least for the moment; of those remaining, Harry had done many
//of them already. (“Yes, Dad, I checked what happened if Hermione was given a
//changed pronunciation and she didn’t know whether it was changed, that was the
//very first experiment I did, Dad!”)

// 7187
//The last question Harry’s father had asked, looking up from __Magical
//Draughts and Potions__ with an expression of bewildered disgust, was whether it
//all made sense if you were a wizard; and Harry had answered no.

// 7188
//Whereupon his father had declared that magic was unscientific.

// 7189
//Harry was still a little shocked at the idea of pointing to a section of
//__reality__ and calling it unscientific. Dad seemed to think that the
//conflict between his intuitions and the universe meant that the universe had a
//problem.

// 7190
//(Then again, there were lots of physicists who thought that quantum mechanics
//was weird, instead of quantum mechanics being normal and them being weird.)

// 7191
//Harry had shown his mother the healer’s kit he’d bought to keep in their house,
//though most of the potions wouldn’t work on Dad. Mum had stared at the kit in a
//way that made Harry ask whether Mum’s sister had ever bought anything like that
//for Grandpa Edwin and Grandma Elaine. And when Mum still hadn’t answered, Harry
//had said hastily that she must have just never thought of it. And then,
//finally, he’d fled the room.

// 7192
//Lily Evans probably __hadn’t__ thought of it, that was the sad thing.
//Harry knew that other people had a tendency to not-think about painful
//subjects, in the same way they had a tendency not to deliberately rest their
//hands on red-hot stove burners; and Harry was starting to suspect that most
//Muggleborns rapidly acquired a tendency to not-think about their family, who
//were all going to die before they reached their first century anyway.

// 7193
//Not that Harry had any intention of letting __that__ happen, of course.

// 7194
//And then it was late in the day on December 24th and they were driving off for
//their Christmas Eve dinner.

// 7195
//The house was huge, not by Hogwarts standards, but certainly by the standards
//of what you could get if your father was a distinguished professor trying to
//live in Oxford. Two stories of brick gleaming in the setting sun, with windows
//on top of windows and one tall window that went up much further than glass
//should go, that was going to be one huge living room…

// 7196
//Harry took a deep breath, and rang the doorbell.

// 7197
//There was a distant call of “Honey, can you get it?”

// 7198
//This was followed by a slow patter of approaching steps.

// 7199
//And then the door opened to reveal a genial man, of fat and rosy cheeks and
//thinning hair, in a blue button-down shirt straining slightly at the seams.

// 7200
//“Dr. Granger?” Harry’s father said briskly, before Harry could even speak. “I’m
//Michael, and this is Petunia and our son Harry. The food’s in the magical
//trunk,” and Dad made a vague gesture behind him - not quite in the direction of
//the trunk, as it happened.

// 7201
//“Yes, please, come in,” said Leo Granger. He stepped forward and took the wine
//bottle from the Professor’s outstretched hands, with a muttered “Thank you,”
//and then stepped back and waved at the living room. “Have a seat. And,” his
//head turning down to address Harry, “all the toys are downstairs in the
//basement, I’m sure Herm will be down shortly, it’s the first door on your
//right,” and pointed toward a hallway.

// 7202
//Harry just looked at him for a moment, conscious that he was blocking his
//parents from coming in.

// 7203
//“Toys?” said Harry in a bright, high-pitched voice, with his eyes wide. “I love
//toys!”

// 7204
//There was an intake of breath from his mother behind him, and Harry strode into
//the house, managing not to stomp too hard as he walked.

// 7205
//The living room was every bit as large as it had looked from outside, with a
//huge vaulted ceiling dangling a gigantic chandelier, and a Christmas tree that
//must have been murder to maneuver through the door. The lower levels of the
//tree were thoroughly and carefully decorated in neat patterns of red and green
//and gold, with a newfound sprinkling of blue and bronze; the heights that only
//a grownup could reach were carelessly, randomly draped with strings of lights
//and wreaths of tinsel. A hallway extended until it terminated in the cabinetry
//of a kitchen, and wooden stairs with polished metal railings stretched up
//toward a second floor.

// 7206
//“Gosh!” Harry said. “This is a big house! I hope I don’t get lost in here!”

// 7207
//Dr. Roberta Granger was feeling rather nervous as dinner approached. The turkey
//and the roast, their own contributions to the common project, were steadily
//cooking away in the oven; the other dishes were to be brought by their guests,
//the Verres family, who had adopted a boy named Harry. Who was known to the
//wizarding world as the Boy-Who-Lived. And who was also the only boy that
//Hermione had ever called “cute”, or noticed at all, really.

// 7208
//The Verreses had said that Hermione was the only child in Harry’s age group
//whose existence their son had ever acknowledged in any way whatsoever.

// 7209
//And it might’ve been jumping the gun just a little; but both couples had a
//sneaking suspicion that wedding bells might be in the offing a few years down
//the road.

// 7210
//So while Christmas Day would be spent, as always, with her husband’s family,
//they’d decided to spend Christmas Eve meeting their daughter’s possible future
//in-laws.

// 7211
//The doorbell rang while she was right in the middle of basting the turkey, and
//she raised her voice and shouted, “__Honey, can you get it?__”

// 7212
//There was a brief groan of a chair and its occupant, and then there was the
//sound of her husband’s heavy footsteps and the door swinging open.

// 7213
//“Dr. Granger?” said an older man’s brisk voice. “I’m Michael, and this is
//Petunia and our son Harry. The food’s in the magical trunk.”

// 7214
//“Yes, please, come in,” said her husband, followed by a muttered “Thank you”
//that indicated some sort of present had been accepted, and “Have a seat.” Then
//Leo’s voice altered to a tone of artificial enthusiasm, and said, “And all the
//toys are downstairs in the basement, I’m sure Herm will be down shortly, it’s
//the first door on your right.”

// 7215
//There was a brief pause.

// 7216
//Then a young boy’s bright voice said, “Toys? I love toys!”

// 7217
//There was the sound of footsteps entering the house, and then the same bright
//voice said, “Gosh! This is a big house! I hope I don’t get lost in here!”

// 7218
//Roberta closed up the oven, smiling. She’d been a bit worried about the way
//Hermione’s letters had described the Boy-Who-Lived - though certainly her
//daughter hadn’t said anything indicating that Harry Potter was
//__dangerous;__ nothing like the dark hints written in the books Roberta
//had bought, supposedly for Hermione, during their trip to Diagon Alley. Her
//daughter hadn’t said much at all, only that Harry talked like he came out of a
//book, and Hermione was studying harder than she ever had in her life just to
//stay ahead of him in class. But from the sound of it, Harry Potter was an
//ordinary eleven-year-old boy.

// 7219
//She got to the front door just as her daughter came clattering frantically down
//the stairs at a speed that didn’t look safe at all, Hermione had claimed that
//witches were more resistant to falls but Roberta wasn’t quite sure she believed
//that -

// 7220
//Roberta took in her first sight of Professor and Mrs. Verres, who were both
//looking rather nervous, just as the boy with the legendary scar on his forehead
//turned to her daughter and said, now in a lower voice, “Well met on this
//fairest of evenings, Miss Granger.” His hand stretched back, as though offering
//his parents on a silver platter. “I present to you my father, Professor Michael
//Verres-Evans, and my mother, Mrs. Petunia Evans-Verres.”

// 7221
//And as Roberta’s mouth was gaping open, the boy turned back to his parents and
//said, now in that bright voice again, “Mum, Dad, this is Hermione! She’s really
//smart!”

// 7222
//“__Harry!__” hissed her daughter. “Stop that!”

// 7223
//The boy swiveled again to regard Hermione. “I’m afraid, Miss Granger,” the boy
//said gravely, “that you and I have been exiled to the labyrinthine recesses of
//the basement. Let us leave them to their adult conversations, which would no
//doubt soar far above our own childish intellects, and resume our ongoing
//discussion of the implications of Humean projectivism for Transfiguration.”

// 7224
//“Excuse us, please,” said her daughter in a very firm tone, and grabbed the boy
//by his left sleeve, and dragged him into the hallway - Roberta swiveled
//helplessly to track them as they went past her, the boy gave her a cheery wave
//- and then Hermione pulled the boy into the basement access and slammed the
//door behind her.

// 7225
//“I, ah, I apologize for…” said Mrs. Verres in a faltering voice.

// 7226
//“I’m sorry,” said the Professor, smiling fondly, “Harry can be a bit touchy
//about that sort of thing. But I expect he’s right about us not being interested
//in their conversation.”

// 7227
//__Is he dangerous?__ Roberta wanted to ask, but she kept her silence and
//tried to think of subtler questions. Her husband beside her was chuckling, as
//if he’d found what they’d just seen funny, rather than frightening.

// 7228
//The most terrible Dark Lord in history had tried to kill that boy, and the
//burnt husk of his body had been found next to the crib.

// 7229
//Her possible future son-in-law.

// 7230
//Roberta had been increasingly apprehensive about giving her daughter over to
//witchcraft - especially after she’d read the books, put the dates together, and
//realized that her magical mother had probably been killed at the height of
//Grindelwald’s terror, __not__ died giving birth to her as her father had
//always claimed. But Professor McGonagall had made other visits after her first
//trip, to “see how Miss Granger is doing”; and Roberta couldn’t help but think
//that if Hermione said her parents were being troublesome about her witching
//career, something would be done to __fix__ them…

// 7231
//Roberta put her best smile on her face, and did what she could to spread some
//pretended Christmas cheer.

// 7232
//The dining room table was much longer than six people - er, four people and two
//children - really needed, but all of it was draped with a tablecloth of fine
//white linen, and the dishes had been needlessly transferred to fancy serving
//plates, which at least were of stainless steel rather than real silver.

// 7233
//Harry was having a bit of trouble concentrating on the turkey.

// 7234
//The conversation had turned to Hogwarts, naturally; and it’d been obvious to
//Harry that his parents were hoping that Hermione would trip up and say more
//about Harry’s school life than Harry had been telling them. And either Hermione
//had realized this, or she was just automatically steering clear of anything
//that might prove troublesome.

// 7235
//So __Harry__ was fine.

// 7236
//But unfortunately Harry had made the mistake of owling his parents with all
//sorts of facts about Hermione that she hadn’t told her __own__ parents.

// 7237
//Like that she was general of an army in their after-school activities.

// 7238
//Hermione’s mother had looked very alarmed, and Harry had quickly interrupted
//and done his best to explain that all the spells were stunners, Professor
//Quirrell was always watching, and the existence of magical healing meant that
//lots of things were much less dangerous than they sounded, at which point
//Hermione had kicked him hard under the table. Thankfully Harry’s father, who
//Harry had to admit was better than him at some things, had announced with firm
//professorial authority that he hadn’t worried at all, since he couldn’t imagine
//children being allowed to do it if it was dangerous.

// 7239
//That wasn’t why Harry was having trouble enjoying dinner, though.

// 7240
//…the problem with feeling sorry for yourself was that it never took any time at
//all to find someone else who had it worse.

// 7241
//Dr. Leo Granger had asked, at one point, whether that nice teacher who’d seemed
//to like Hermione, Professor McGonagall, was awarding her lots of points in
//school.

// 7242
//Hermione had said yes, with an apparently genuine smile.

// 7243
//Harry had managed, with some effort, to stop himself from icily pointing out
//that Professor McGonagall would never show favoritism to any Hogwarts student,
//and that Hermione was getting lots of points because she’d earned
//__every, single, one.__

// 7244
//At another point, Leo Granger had offered the table his opinion that Hermione
//was very smart and could have gone to medical school and become a dentist, if
//not for the whole witch business.

// 7245
//Hermione had smiled again, and a quick glance had prevented Harry from
//suggesting Hermione might also have been an __internationally famous
//scientist__, and asking whether that thought would’ve occurred to the Grangers
//if they’d had a __son__ instead of a __daughter__, or if it was
//unacceptable either way for their offspring to do better than them.

// 7246
//But Harry was rapidly reaching his boiling point.

// 7247
//And becoming a __lot__ more appreciative of the fact that his own father
//had __always__ done everything he could to support Harry’s development as
//a prodigy and __always__ encouraged him to reach higher and __never__
//belittled a single one of his accomplishments, even if a child prodigy was
//still just a child. Was this the sort of household he could have ended up in,
//if Mum had married Vernon Dursley?

// 7248
//Harry was doing what he could, though.

// 7249
//“And she’s really beating you in __all__ your classes except broomstick
//riding and Transfiguration?” said Professor Michael Verres-Evans.

// 7250
//“Yes,” Harry said with forced calm, as he cut himself another bite of Christmas
//Eve turkey. “By solid margins, in most of them.” There were other circumstances
//under which Harry would have been more reluctant to admit that, which was why
//he hadn’t gotten around to telling his father until now.

// 7251
//“Hermione has always been quite good in school,” said Dr. Leo Granger in a
//satisfied tone.

// 7252
//“Harry competes at the national level!” said Professor Michael Verres-Evans.

// 7253
//“Dear!” said Petunia.

// 7254
//Hermione was giggling, and that wasn’t making Harry feel any better about her
//situation. It didn’t seem to bother Hermione and __that bothered Harry.__

// 7255
//“I’m not embarrassed to lose to her, Dad,” Harry said. Right at this moment he
//wasn’t. “Did I mention that she memorized all her schoolbooks before the first
//day of class? And yes, I tested it.”

// 7256
//“Is that, ah, __usual__ for her?” Professor Verres-Evans said to the
//Grangers.

// 7257
//“Oh, yes, Hermione’s always memorizing things,” said Dr. Roberta Granger with a
//cheerful smile. “She knows every recipe in all my cookbooks by heart. I miss
//her every time I make dinner.”

// 7258
//Judging by the look on his father’s face, Dad was feeling at least some of what
//Harry felt.

// 7259
//“Don’t worry, Dad,” Harry said, “she’s getting all the advanced material she
//can take, now. Her teachers at Hogwarts know she’s smart, __unlike her
//parents!__”

// 7260
//His voice had risen on the last three words, and even as all faces turned to
//stare at him and Hermione kicked him again, Harry knew that he’d blown it, but
//it was too much, just way too much.

// 7261
//“Of course we know she’s smart,” said Leo Granger, starting to look offended at
//the child who’d had the temerity to raise his voice at their dinner table.

// 7262
//“You don’t have the tiniest idea,” said Harry, the ice now leaking into his
//voice. “You think she reads a lot of books and it’s cute, right? You see a
//perfect report card and you think it’s good that she’s doing well in class.
//Your daughter is the most talented witch of her generation and the brightest
//star of Hogwarts, and someday, Dr. and Dr. Granger, the fact that you were her
//parents will be the only reason that history remembers you!”

// 7263
//Hermione, who had calmly got up from her seat and walked around the table,
//chose that moment to grab Harry’s shirt by the shoulder and pull him out of his
//chair. Harry let himself be pulled, but as Hermione dragged him away, he said,
//raising his voice even louder, “It is entirely possible that in a thousand
//years, the fact that Hermione Granger’s parents were dentists will be the only
//reason anyone remembers dentistry!”

// 7264
//Roberta stared at where her daughter had just dragged the Boy-Who-Lived out of
//the room with a patient look upon her young face.

// 7265
//“I’m terribly sorry,” said Professor Verres with an amused smile. “But please
//don’t worry, Harry always talks like that. Aren’t they just like a married
//couple already?”

// 7266
//The frightening thing was that they __were.__

// 7267
//Harry had been expecting a rather severe lecture from Hermione.

// 7268
//But after Hermione pulled them into the basement access and closed the door
//behind them, she’d turned around -

// 7269
//- and was smiling, genuinely so far as Harry could tell.

// 7270
//“Please don’t, Harry,” she said in a soft voice. “Even though it’s very nice of
//you. Everything’s fine.”

// 7271
//Harry just looked at her. “How can you stand it?” he said. He had to keep his
//voice quiet, they didn’t want the parents to hear, but it rose in pitch if not
//in volume. “__How can you stand it?__”

// 7272
//Hermione shrugged, and said, “Because that’s the way parents __should__
//be?”

// 7273
//“No,” Harry said, his voice low and intense, “it’s not, my father
//__never__ puts me down - well, he __does__, but never like that -”

// 7274
//Hermione held up a single finger, and Harry waited, watching her search for
//words. It took her a while before she said, “Harry… Professor McGonagall and
//Professor Flitwick like me because I’m the most talented witch of my generation
//and the brightest star of Hogwarts. And Mum and Dad don’t know that, and you’ll
//never be able to tell them, but they love me anyway. Which means that
//everything is just the way it should be, at Hogwarts and at home. And since
//they’re __my__ parents, Mr. Potter, __you__ don’t get to argue.” She
//was once again smiling her mysterious smile from dinnertime, and looking at
//Harry very fondly. “__Is__ that clear, Mr. Potter?”

// 7275
//Harry nodded tightly.

// 7276
//“Good,” said Hermione, and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

// 7277
//The conversation had only just gotten started again when a distant high-pitched
//yelp floated back to them,

// 7278
//“__Hey! No kissing!__”

// 7279
//The two fathers burst out in laughter just as the two mothers rose up from
//their chairs with identical looks of horror and dashed toward the basement.

// 7280
//When the children had been brought back, Hermione was saying in an icy tone
//that she was never going to kiss Harry ever again, and Harry was saying in an
//outraged voice that the Sun would burn down to a cold dead cinder before he let
//her get close enough to try.

// 7281
//Which meant that everything was just the way it should be, and they all sat
//back down again to finish their Christmas dinner.