And so the first month of summer holidays passed without incident.
Kate rose early, helped Cho Chang pack her bags, and walked her to the manor gates.
Cho Chang's parents had already been waiting for some time at a property near the HSBC branch in London.
According to Cho Chang, they had happened to be at the bank on business, and happened to have a house nearby, so they had simply come round to collect her while they were at it.
Happened to have a house nearby...
If Kate didn't own a manor herself these days, she'd probably have spent the entire walk silently cursing the evils of capital.
The land around the London HSBC was worth its weight in gold. Following the street signs, the two of them made their way to a villa tucked in the area.
Kate had barely pressed the front gate bell when a woman appeared from inside — mature and full-figured, dressed in a pale-coloured trench coat that gave her an effortlessly understated elegance.
"Oh, you must be little Miss Shafiq! Thank you so very much for looking after my Xiao Qiu all this time!"
Cho Chang's mother was unmistakably Asian — somewhere around forty, though thanks to excellent upkeep, she looked barely past thirty.
One look at Kate's white hair and dark eyes, and the woman was overcome with enthusiasm. She grabbed Kate's face and planted kiss after kiss on her cheeks, very nearly going further.
There really was something about white hair that had a special effect on Chinese people.
It was Cho Chang who intervened, pulling her mother back with a look of resigned helplessness. "Mum, you're going to frighten Kate..."
"Oh, I forgot myself," Mrs. Chang said, lightly patting her own forehead. Then she seized Kate's hand with just as much warmth and steered her straight into the house. "Come in, come in, Little Kate, sit down!"
This was... a very Chinese way of doing things.
Kate had lived in England for years, thoroughly accustomed to the measured courtesy of those around her — all gentlemen and ladies keeping their careful distance.
To encounter such warmth, such a familiar style of hospitality, was so disarming that Kate forgot to speak entirely. She only came back to herself once Mrs. Chang had already guided her inside.
"Kate, are you all right?" Cho Chang asked, still anxious beside her.
Her mother's brand of Asian enthusiasm had a way of unsettling people in Europe. She was worried Kate might come away disliking the whole family for it.
"Not at all," Kate said immediately, shaking her head. "I think it's wonderful. Your mother is so warm — I really like it."
Cho Chang let out a relieved breath and patted her chest. "I'm glad. The friends who used to visit always had a hard time adjusting."
"Maybe I was Asian in a past life," Kate said with a gentle smile, slipping off her shoes and following her inside.
Mrs. Chang bustled over with tea and pastries. "My husband is still at the bank finishing up — he'll be back shortly. Won't you sit and wait a while?"
"Thank you so much, Auntie," Kate said, taking a sip of tea. She glanced at the clock on the wall. "But I really should be getting back. I have another guest at home I need to see off."
Hermione was going with Katherine to her new home, and Kate simply couldn't let her leave without being there.
"Is that so? You've really gone to so much trouble." Mrs. Chang didn't press her. "Well, next time, make sure you come and visit us at the family home with Xiao Qiu."
Kate gave a small nod. "I will. Thank you, Auntie."
Cho Chang got up to see her out.
By the time they reached the entryway, with no one else around, Kate turned to her with a mischievous glint in her eye. "Xiao Qiu?"
"It's just what my family calls me at home." Cho Chang laughed, a little shy. "Don't you dare use it in front of anyone else."
A girl's nickname was a term of endearment, a mark of closeness — not something to be thrown around carelessly. At least that much, Kate understood.
"Understood," Kate said, deliberately pressing her lips into a smile as she reached up and lightly poked Cho Chang's cheek. "I'll only ever say it to your face. Xiao Qiu."
Predictably, Cho Chang's face went pink. She promptly shoved Kate out the door.
"See you then, Xiao Qiu." Kate produced her Portkey and gave her a cheeky wink.
Cho Chang's face turned scarlet. She leaned against the doorframe, pointedly looking the other way. "Right. See you at school."
The words had barely left her mouth before Kate vanished from sight.
Cho Chang snapped her head up and stared at the empty air where Kate had been standing. After a long moment, she let out a soft laugh, turned, and closed the door.
Back at the manor, Kate made straight for the castle without slowing down. She arrived at Hermione's room to find her already packed, mid-conversation with Katherine.
"Hermione!" Kate's voice came out louder than she'd intended.
The little brown-haired lion cub looked up. Seeing Kate standing in the doorway, flushed and out of breath, she hesitated and glanced toward Katherine.
"Go on," Katherine said with a slight nod. "You still have time."
Hermione hurried out, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket to dab the sweat from Kate's forehead. "What's all the rush? I haven't even left yet."
"Can I come with you?" Kate asked, catching her breath, her eyes fixed on Hermione with complete seriousness.
The dabbing hand paused.
"Kate..." Hermione's gaze wavered. "I'm going to study magic with Professor Wynyard. You don't need to worry."
Katherine had said that with Kate present, Hermione would lose focus.
Besides, Kate's magical ability was already at a level far beyond the introductory material — there was really no reason for her to tag along.
"Then could I..." Kate hesitated, glancing at Katherine in the room. "Could I at least write to you?"
It wasn't as though she wanted to make a month's separation into some grand, tearful farewell.
It was just... she really wasn't used to life without Hermione.
Even during that year she'd spent at Newt's, she and Hermione had always written to each other regularly.
Before Hermione could answer, Katherine walked over of her own accord and placed a hand firmly on each of their heads.
"Absolutely not, Little Kate. She's going to my place to advance her magic studies — one month, that's all. If you write to her every single day, what kind of nonsense is that?"
Kate glared up at her defiantly. "Then I'm coming too!"
"Ha," Katherine laughed without a shred of mercy. "Kate, your surname is Shafiq. Don't forget you still have plenty to do at this manor."
With that, she took Hermione's hand and walked toward the fireplace in the room, her tone breezy and offhand: "Of course, if you really miss Hermione that badly, you can write once a week."
Wha — what did missing have to do with anything!
Hermione's cheeks flamed crimson. She walked along, glancing back over her shoulder — only to find Kate following right behind them, step for step.
"Kate..."
"I know," Kate cut her off, forcing a weak smile onto her face. "I just want to see you off."
Katherine clicked her tongue softly. She was doing this for both their sakes, and yet somehow she couldn't shake the feeling that she was the villain breaking up a perfectly happy pair.
She glanced back at Kate from the corner of her eye and shook her head.
In matters of the heart, she was exactly like her mother.
Kate watched them disappear into the flames of the fireplace, and her head drooped a little.
And now she was alone again.
Everyone had a duty to look after Kate, the empty-nester.
Kate almost wanted to hang that sentence from the top of the castle — but it wouldn't have done any good. With Hermione and Cho Chang both gone, the only souls left in the manor were five house-elves and old Grandpa Rand.
Grandpa Rand was as close to family as family got, but there were certain things he simply couldn't substitute for.
After tidying the guest rooms by herself, Kate grew too restless to do nothing, and went straight to the library.
By that point, her Phantom Clone had long since finished transcribing and binding all three hundred years' worth of knowledge obtained from Nicolas Flamel. The neat, tidy stack sat on the floor, nearly reaching her shoulder in height.
Kate flipped through it briefly. The notes looked voluminous, but the clone had sorted everything meticulously before copying it all out.
The collection covered alchemy, magical theory, a number of long-lost advanced spells, certain dark magic, and a miscellany of general practical knowledge.
Setting aside the material she had no use for yet, the alchemy and magical knowledge she could realistically absorb and master quickly came to roughly forty percent of the whole.
"And that's still a hundred and twenty years' worth of knowledge..."
Staring at the stack that now rose past her knees, Kate felt a headache coming on.
The saving grace was that all of it had been force-fed directly into her head, so she could skip the rote memorisation entirely and get straight to the actual learning.
Whether a single month would be enough time to work through every last bit of it, she honestly wasn't sure.
With no friends to play with, Kate slipped back into the solitary, absorbed state she knew from years of being on her own. Aside from necessary practice and rest, she spent nearly every waking hour in the library.
More than two weeks passed that way.
"Hermione, it has been seven days since I last wrote — I hope you've been receiving my letters..."
Kate finished the letter quickly at her writing desk, then headed to the owlery, grabbed the first available owl, and sent it on its way.
She glanced at the sun, just beginning to climb above the horizon. She was about to head down to the library to continue studying when she came downstairs to find Grandpa Rand directing the house-elves to seal off both the East and West Wings entirely.
"What's happened?" she asked, hurrying over.
Grandpa Rand turned around. "I've just received a notice from the Ministry of Magic. They're conducting raids on dark magic items in every household — ours should be next, within a day or two."
Kate blinked. "Do we have dark magic items here?"
"As you know, the library holds several books that touch on dark magic. And over the generations, the family's collection has accumulated a fair number of dark magic artefacts as well..."
Grandpa Rand shifted his tone and gave her a reassuring smile. "Which is why all we need to do is conceal both wings before the Ministry arrives."
"The Ministry receives a very generous donation from us every year, and the officials inside have all manner of ties to the family. So as long as things are hidden, they won't be too thorough."
That, Kate wasn't so sure about.
She remembered from the original works — it was precisely because of a Ministry raid that Lucius Malfoy had been forced to hastily relocate his dark magic items. Among them had been Voldemort's diary.
The main villain of Year Two. And a Horcrux, no less.
She looked at the two wings that had already been fully concealed and couldn't help but frown.
"Grandpa Rand," she said, stepping forward. "Let me take all of the dark magic items. I'll handle moving them."
Grandpa Rand paused mid-movement and turned back, hesitant. "You mean to say this inspection will be more stringent than usual?"
"As far as I know, my classmate Ron's father works in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office at the Ministry of Magic, and he's involved in this raid."
"If even an obscure department like that has been pulled in, the Ministry must be applying considerably more pressure than in previous years."
Kate met his startled eyes with a steady look. "So please pack up every item connected to dark magic and hand it all to me. I'll take it somewhere safe for the next few days until this blows over."
After all, she was just a child. Even if she wasn't home, none of the Ministry officials conducting the raid would think twice about her.
Having her personally take the family's valuables into safekeeping during an emergency — it was, by any calculation, the best option available.
"But many of those items carry considerable risks." Grandpa Rand looked at her calmly and steadily. As a butler, he would unconditionally defer to any decision his mistress made.
But beyond his role as butler, he was also Kate's elder.
"Before anything else, you must promise me you'll keep yourself safe."
Kate curved her lips into a smile. "I promise. We'll both come back in one piece."
Grandpa Rand held her gaze for a long moment, then slowly turned to face the house-elves still bustling about and said, "Stop what you're doing, all of you. Do as Miss Shafiq says."
The house-elves nodded without hesitation. They dismantled the concealment barriers over both wings and filed inside to begin packing.
"And where do you intend to go next?" Grandpa Rand asked her kindly.
Kate thought for a moment. "A while back, I wrote to Dumbledore asking him to introduce me to Nicolas Flamel."
The letter had also mentioned that she'd found an ancestral alchemy manuscript in the manor's collection room, and had copied out a portion of it for him to see.
The manuscript was, of course, fabricated. She had no intention of exploring the family collection room on her own until she'd fully digested and integrated Nicolas Flamel's half of the alchemical knowledge.
But the content she had written was reproduced verbatim from Flamel's own notes.
Taking the old man's own material and showing up claiming she wanted to meet him — it was admittedly a bit of a low move. But as long as it achieved the goal, any method that worked was a good method.
"But as far as I know, Dumbledore hasn't sent anything to the manor recently. He most likely won't agree," Grandpa Rand said, still a little doubtful.
Kate raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Which is exactly why I'm going to Hogwarts to find him in person."
The Ministry could raid families for dark magic items, but surely they wouldn't raid Hogwarts.
Even if she didn't manage to meet Nicolas Flamel himself, at the very least she'd be keeping the family's assets out of harm's way. Any way she looked at it, she came out ahead.
"Mm. That does sound like a rather good plan."
At the thought of having to trouble Dumbledore, Grandpa Rand's smile grew especially radiant. "Very well. I'll write to him and let him know you'll be staying there for a few days."
After all, with that old fellow Dumbledore around, he needn't worry about Kate being led astray by any of those dark magic items. Two birds, one stone.
The old man and the young girl looked at each other and broke into matching smiles of perfect satisfaction.
Meanwhile, far away at Hogwarts, a certain White Dark Lord seated in his office selecting new teachers felt an inexplicable shiver run down his spine.
Now who on earth was talking about him behind his back?
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