Oh, God. Harry felt even sicker, hearing that. "You don't mean she's like the Dursleys and thinks it's evil, do you?"
"Oh, no." Draco's teeth glinted. "She just doesn't think it's real, and if I just come right out and claim it is, she'll think I've gone 'round the twist."
Harry cleared his throat. "Oh. Er . . . well, I found out it was real when Hagrid showed up with my letter. That probably wasn't the best way. Not sure what to tell you."
Draco shrugged. "Just talking over what it was like for you at Muggle school and such would probably help me. She went to regular schools before she entered Chatham. Oh, that's the music academy she just finished at."
"Sure. I'll tell you what I can," said Harry, mostly because he wanted to please Snape by appearing supportive. Then he remembered Hermione putting on a show of support about the adoption, when she really didn't mean it at all, and he felt ashamed of himself. "Yeah. I can explain a bunch of Muggle stuff to you," he added, trying for more sincerity, that time.
"Good." Draco rubbed his hands together. "I wish now I'd taken some Muggle studies, but who could have guessed I'd ever need it, right? Never thought I'd be in love with a pureborn witch who thinks like a Muggle."
Harry cast their father a desperate glance, but only received a bland expression in return. Clearly, Snape was going to let Draco make his own mistakes. And he expected Harry to do the same.
"About the wires," Draco went on, his voice a little tentative, that time. "I appreciate that, Severus. Um, gold, right? That's quite an outlay so do you think . . . I mean, can I--"
"No," said Snape, the word short and clipped.
"But I wouldn't miss the money and I'm sure it had to have made a dent in your--"
"Do you want to fund your own Christmas present, too?" asked Snape, cuttingly.
"Give it up," said Harry, remembering when Snape had asked him that same thing. "He likes being our dad, Draco. He likes spending money on us. You should have heard him when I offered to pay for my own adoption."
Now Draco was the one gaping. "You didn't. That's idiotic."
"I was mixed-up."
"Yes, you were," said Draco, looking him over. Harry wondered if he was thinking about the vault key that Harry had given Snape. But perhaps that wasn't on his mind at all. "Well, you're better now, I suppose."
You're not, thought Harry. You're as mixed-up as they come. But all he said was, "Come on, then. I'll tell you about Muggle schools, and try to think of all the basic things Rhiannon would expect you to know."
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Comments very welcome,
Aspen in the Sunlight and Mercredi
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Chapter 11: Muggle Studies
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A Summer Like None Other
by Aspen in the Sunlight
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Chapter Eleven: Muggle Studies
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"Wait," said Draco, frowning as he lay on his stomach, his chin propped up on both his hands. In a lot of ways, Muggles were even stranger than he had expected. "You had to sit there and count your words, really? And make sure you had exactly five hundred?"
Harry chuckled. Draco had noticed him doing a lot of that the evening before, and even more of it today. But Harry didn't seem to be making fun, so that was all right.
"When a teacher would say to write five hundred words you could always write a little more or less than that. And nobody would usually count them. You'd just estimate how long five hundred words would be, and you'd figure it works out to a couple of pages. More, if you skip lines."
Sometimes it seemed like the more Harry explained, the more confused Draco felt. He hadn't expected this to be so difficult. After all, he'd done well enough reading that Muggle psychological book. He'd figured most of that out on his own.
But then again, most of that had been about violent trauma, a pretty broad concept to catch onto, especially since Draco had personal experience of it. Bloody wizard's beatings.
Understanding Muggle schooling was a lot harder. This last bit about lines, for example, didn't make any sense at all. "You mean that whenever they set you an essay, they also assigned lines?"
Another chuckle. "Not that kind of lines. See, if you're writing something by hand in the Muggle world, the paper you use usually has lines drawn across it. To help you write straight."
Draco couldn't help but scoff. "How else would a Muggle write except with his hand?"
"I told you already. Typewriters, remember? Computers?"
Oh, right. Those words did ring a bell, but Draco hadn't understood them so well. The computer sounded like it should do maths, but it was actually a lot more like a telly. Draco had finally seen one of those when they'd visited Harry's cousin. And the typewriter sounded positively daunting. How could Muggles remember which button to push for each letter? Draco was sure you'd need a memory charm for something like that. Harry had said that the buttons had the letters written on them, but if you had to look for every letter before you could push it, wouldn't it just be quicker to use a quill?
Pen, he reminded himself. Pencil. Don't say quill in front of Rhiannon.
"All right, but I still don't see why you need paper with lines across it," Draco said, sighing. "Don't they teach penmanship in Muggle schools?"
"Yes, they teach penmanship. But we don't have charmed quills to do our writing for us, you know."
"Most wizards don't have those either," said Draco, holding back a smile. Harry might think he was making fun of Muggles, and whenever he'd thought that in the past day and a half, he'd stopped wanting to explain things. Draco couldn't help but be proud of his special quill, though. The spells on it had been tricky to get right. It had taken him most of a summer, actually, but he usually didn't mention that part when people were impressed with his quill.
"Anyway, why don't they just measure in inches like us when they're setting an essay?"
Harry shrugged. "No idea."
"But if the teacher wanted two pages why wouldn't she just say so to begin with?"
"Because then a lot of people would write extra large so they have to write less. A word count is actually a lot more fair than inches or pages, if you think about it."
"Oh, it is not." It kind of was, come to think of it, but Draco wasn't about to admit that anything in the Muggle world might be superior.
"Oh, yes it is--"
"Imagine that," interrupted Severus dryly from the doorway of their bedroom. "Students writing in large script so they have to write less."
Draco wondered how long he'd been lurking outside the open door, listening.
The interruption obviously didn't bother Harry, who sat up on his bed and chuckled. "See? There you go, Draco. Muggle school's not so different from ours, after all."
Easy for him to laugh. It sounded extremely different to Draco. But he had to wrap his mind around it, strange as it was. Nothing else to do, not if he wanted to understand Rhiannon Miller. He'd never be able to convince her that she was a witch unless they developed some rapport first. And if that meant learning about Muggles . . . well, so be it. She was worth it. She was worth every second.
"I still think Rhiannon's been horribly deprived," he said, sniffing a bit. So tragic that she'd never known her true heritage. "But I'll get it sorted."