Dinner was laid in the small dining room adjoining the blue drawing room. A pristine white tablecloth covered the long table, and silver candlesticks held candles whose flames shifted in small patterns across the polished silverware.
The meal itself was simple: roast chicken, roast potatoes, seasonal vegetables, and a large bowl of steaming vegetable soup.
William and Harry were already at the table, attempting to present the appearance of good behaviour while their eyes kept drifting to the dark leather trunk beside Henry.
Charles came in from his study with the manner of a man who had been reading something important and had set it down rather faster than its importance warranted.
He paused when he saw Henry, cleared his throat with the restraint of a man who has been a traditional patriarch all his life, and said, "You're back."
His voice was level. He was clearly on the very edge of not being level.
"I'm back, Father," Henry said.
Charles sat at the head of the table, and his gaze moved briefly to Lucy, who was standing half a step behind Henry with the expression of someone who has arrived at a situation they did not fully anticipate.
His eyebrows shifted slightly, but he asked nothing.
"Lucy," Henry said, turning, "please sit down. You'll be dining with us tonight."
Lucy's eyes went very wide.
"Your Highness!" Her voice cracked slightly at the edges. "Lucy cannot eat with the master, Lucy is a house-elf, Lucy should be in the kitchen—"
"Lucy," Henry said, calmly and with perfect finality. "You attended to my meals, my tea, and my clothes every day at Hogwarts. That was your work. Tonight, you are a guest of this house, and guests are treated with courtesy."
Lucy's mouth opened. Something moved in her large eyes that she did not quite manage to name.
Diana rose quietly, walked to Lucy's side, and guided her to the chair beside her own.
"Come," she said. "Sit here. Do you know how to use a knife and fork?"
Lucy nodded with a very slight trembling and climbed carefully onto the chair, it was considerably too high for her, and her legs hung in the air.
She arranged herself with great deliberateness, sat upright, placed her hands on her knees, and fixed her spine at an angle of rigid formality.
William and Harry stared at her across the table.
"Lucy," William said, "you really do have magic, don't you?"
Lucy nodded.
"More than Henry?"
Lucy thought about this with genuine seriousness for a moment, then shook her head. "His Highness is very capable. He learns things very quickly, Charms and Transfiguration, both. Professor Snape also regards His Highness quite favourably."
"Professor Snape?" Harry frowned slightly at the sound of it. "That name sounds frightening."
"He is somewhat frightening," Henry said, settling his napkin across his lap. "But he is relatively lenient with Slytherins."
Charles cleared his throat. "Let's eat. The food is getting cold."
Throughout dinner, William and Harry sustained a nearly continuous stream of questions about Hogwarts, often overlapping one another.
How large was the castle? Were the ghosts alarming? Was there really a hat that talked and sorted people into houses? How exactly did Quidditch work? What colour was the Golden Snitch, really?
Henry answered each one with patience, occasionally adding a detail that launched a fresh round.
When he described the Quidditch match and the Snitch catch, William and Harry both came very close to rising from their chairs while brandishing their cutlery in demonstration, and were firmly returned to their seats by Diana.
"You'll both go to Hogwarts yourselves one day," she said. "You'll see it all then."
"We will?" William's face lit up completely.
Diana considered this for a moment, then nodded, carefully. "If you receive a letter."
Harry turned to Lucy with the solemn expression of someone making a formal request. "Lucy, will you teach us magic?"
Lucy looked immediately at Henry.
"William, Harry," Henry said, with the steady authority of an eldest brother who has decided something, "magic is not permitted before the age of eleven. Don't put Lucy in a difficult position."
Both younger brothers subsided, though their expressions made clear they were filing the question for later rather than discarding it.
Charles said relatively little, but he listened with close attention. He put occasional questions, about the curriculum, the professors, some aspect of wizarding philosophy that had appeared in Henry's letters, each one brief and specific.
Henry answered them in turn. Charles listened, and nodded, and did not say much more.
This, Henry had long understood, was how his father expressed that things had been received.
After dinner, William and Harry annexed Henry and the trunk and retreated to the sitting room to investigate the gifts from the wizarding world.
Diana settled by the fireplace with her tea, watching her three sons on the carpet, the smile on her face thoroughly unguarded.
Charles stood at the window, looking out at the snow still falling on the grounds of the Palace. After a moment he said, without turning, "Henry."
Henry looked up.
"You did well," Charles said. "What you wrote about in the letters. The Snitch. And pulling that Potter boy off his broom."
Henry smiled. "Thank you, Father—"
A sharp simultaneous gasp came from his left. William and Harry had somehow got into the bag of Canary Creams and eaten them, and were now staring at one another as small yellow feathers began to emerge along their arms.
Neither of them panicked. They pointed at each other and collapsed into laughter.
"Canary Creams," Henry explained to his parents, with some effort at composure. "A recent invention of the Weasley twins. They cause temporary feather growth on the arms, it falls away on its own within a minute."
Charles, who had been maintaining his paternal dignity with considerable discipline, turned around entirely.
He looked at William and Harry, who were now both pointing at each other with feathered arms and wheezing with laughter.
"Are there more of those?" he asked, with a particular quality of restraint that suggested this was not a casual question.
"Yes, Father."
"Save me some," Charles said, and the expression on his face was not quite a smile and somewhat more than one. "Your Aunt Anne will appreciate them."
Henry understood immediately. His father and his sister had always been close in the particular way that expresses itself through teasing one another.
The opportunity being presented here was not one Charles intended to waste.
Night deepened. William and Harry were eventually escorted to bed, turning back twice on the stairs to remind Henry to have extra Canary Creams ready for the following morning.
Diana kissed Henry on the forehead, said goodnight, and followed them up, one small hand in each of hers.