Late July, the height of summer.
Kate walked out of her bedroom yawning, greeted the portraits along the corridor one by one, and settled into her seat in the dining hall.
Today's breakfast was fried dough sticks and soy milk, made exactly to her request. To get the proportions she wanted, the house-elves had been at it for a full two weeks.
Jingjing brought over a plate of soup dumplings; against the surrounding decor, all the food on the table looked utterly out of place.
But Kate couldn't have cared less. Cooped up for over a month, if she didn't find a little fun and give the house-elves something to do, she really would have been bored to death.
"Miss, you spent fourteen hours in the library yesterday. For the sake of your health, please manage your time more sensibly from now on."
Jingjing stood respectfully to one side, announcing it to her like a voice assistant.
"All right, I'll be more careful next time," Kate murmured, biting into a dumpling.
Before leaving, the old butler had instructed Jingjing to keep an eye on the time for her at all hours, so she wouldn't skip meals and sleep for the sake of her studies.
So over the past month, her schedule had stayed more or less normal — though her spirits had grown a little listless.
A whole month with no one to chat with and no way to reach news from the outside world; anyone would have wilted.
She'd even wanted to invite Horace Slughorn to the manor this year to tutor her, but that plan had fallen through too.
And she still had no idea whether Sirius had broken out of prison yet.
In the original works, it was because the Weasley family won the grand prize that the whole family ended up in the Daily Prophet.
In that newspaper photo, besides the Weasleys, there was also Peter Pettigrew, disguised as their pet rat, Scabbers.
When Sirius Black, locked away in Azkaban, spotted the photo, it triggered his escape and set the entire third-year storyline in motion.
She had originally hoped to make contact with Sirius early, around the time he broke out of Azkaban — but the way things looked now, that idea was falling apart too.
There were plenty of regrets, true, but after more than a month spent calmly immersed in the library, Kate's understanding of magic had climbed another step higher.
On top of that, while the old butler was away, she'd also gained a foothold in Alchemy — so she'd even slipped into the collection room once, and in its deepest corner turned up a few unexpected things.
[Family Side Quest 2: Find the Six Alchemical Items Crafted with Ariel Shafiq 3/6]
That's right — in the deepest part of the collection room, she had found two more pieces of alchemical jewelry made by Ariel: the Lover's Bracelet and the Lover's Ring.
Kate had already tested them, and both could likewise grant that +5 boost to Spirit and Mana.
Unfortunately, until all six were gathered, they could not be worn on the same person at the same time.
In other words, though Kate now had three pieces, she could only choose to wear one, leaving the other two to gather dust.
Given this quirk, it was no wonder the two items had each been tucked away in different parts of the collection room as separate alchemical items, their outward appearances altered.
Had Kate not studied a fair amount of alchemical lore and learned to roughly pick out the various auras within an alchemical item, she likely could have walked past them a dozen times without ever connecting them to what she was looking for.
But even after turning the manor's collection room upside down, she'd found only two matching alchemical items. The other three had probably already made their way onto the market, and who knew when she'd ever track them down.
This was, after all, the path to immortality Ariel had devised for her lover — who wouldn't want to try it for themselves and see whether this so-called immortality might truly come to pass?
With a quiet sigh, Kate finished her breakfast in a few bites and stood up. "I'm going for a walk in the yard. Don't follow me."
Besides visiting the library and the Training Room each day, she also took a daily stroll, counting it as part of her exercise plan.
Only, whenever she passed the vegetable garden, she'd remember sitting there with Hermione, watching the stars.
And passing the back lawn, she'd picture racing on broomsticks with Cho Chang.
Kate didn't know what had gotten into her. Her days were packed full, yet the moment she had a spare breath, her thoughts would drift all over the place.
She'd wonder how the old butler was faring out there, when Katherine would come to see her, and she'd think of Hermione, Cho Chang, Luna — even Malfoy.
Even just trading letters with Harry and Ron would have been something!
She'd probably just been shut in too long and grown too lonely.
After wandering around for a while, once her breakfast had settled, she shut herself back inside the Training Room.
"Expecto Patronum!"
Silvery vapor gushed from the tip of her wand and took shape as a massive silver dragon.
In fact, ever since she'd raised the Patronus Charm to Level 3, Kate had watched her Patronus's form grow steadily more defined.
Its frame rivaled a three-story building in height, paired with the bat-like wings that, in legend, only demons possessed. It closely resembled the fire-dragons of the magical world, yet she couldn't say exactly which species it matched.
Directed by her surging Mana, the silver dragon rose nimbly into the air, its slender form gliding freely, letting out the occasional draconic cry.
Kate stopped waving her wand and stared blankly at the silver dragon overhead.
All at once the dragon froze, then loosed a furious roar toward some spot on the ground below.
Someone had come?
Kate started, dismissed the Patronus at once, and in a few quick steps reached the window to peer down — where she saw Katherine, a pair of sunglasses on her face, coming up the tree-lined avenue.
"Auntie!" Delight leapt through Kate — this was the first living soul she'd seen in a whole month!
She quickly cast a Levitation Charm on herself, then jumped straight out the window, landing just a few steps ahead of Katherine.
Kate steadied her footing, then flung herself into Katherine's arms. "Auntie, it's been so long!"
"Seems your spellwork has sharpened again this past month." Katherine glanced at the giant dragon wheeling in the distant sky, then looked down at the little one who now reached her chest.
It probably wouldn't be long before Kate's abilities firmly surpassed her own.
Only then did Kate remember her Patronus was still floating up there. She hurriedly recalled it and tugged Katherine excitedly inside.
"Auntie, are you here to take me out this time? And where's Grandpa Rand? Why didn't he come back with you?"
Katherine let herself be dragged along helplessly. "Rand made a trip to Austria and came up empty. He's still out there tying up some loose ends. As for the man we've been searching for, he's most likely already left England — so the alert is lifted. You're free."
"Left?" Kate's steps halted, and she turned her head in surprise.
He'd made a trip all the way to England and gone again without doing a thing?
That didn't sound like the style of a dangerous man at all.
Katherine spread her hands. "We're not sure either. All we know is that he never stays away from Austria for long — a month at the most before he heads back."
For some reason, hearing this left Kate with a faint sense that something was off, but with Katherine right in front of her, all she could do was venture a guess: "Maybe he has a family back in Austria."
It was just an ordinary, comforting remark, yet somehow Katherine's expression seemed to darken in an instant.
Finding it strange, Kate decided to skip past the subject. "Right — you said before that you'd take me out. Now that the alert's lifted, I can go out for a bit, can't I?"
She'd been shut in here so long she was practically growing mushrooms.
Katherine's lips curved slightly as she ruffled her hair a few times. "And here I thought you'd be so delighted to have the place to yourself that you'd forget all about us."
Ha — if Hermione or Cho Chang had been here to keep her company, maybe she'd have felt more at ease.
Kate's face twitched, and she said with a forced smile, "I was only worried about you working so hard out there, that's all — so I fretted a little too much."
"Tsk, spare me the flattery — it won't work on me." Katherine withdrew her hand, exasperated. "Rand has reopened the passage, so you can come and go by Portkey now. You'd better go wash up before you visit Granger, or I'm afraid her family will think you've been carted off to do a month of child labor."
The reminder made Kate realize she was apparently still in her pajamas, her hair a tangled mess, looking thoroughly worn out.
"Hmph, Hermione would never mind!" she argued stubbornly, but she still trotted obediently back into the castle to make herself presentable.
Katherine shook her head helplessly and took out a copy of the Daily Prophet. Its front page carried the news of the Weasley family winning the lottery and deciding to take a trip to Egypt together.
She flipped through it idly. The magical world today was as peaceful as ever.
This was the kind of life that suited that little one.
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