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"I'm sorry," Dominic said haltingly, "But I still don't know why you're here."

Professor McGonagall frowned at him. Then flicked her eyes to Christine. She was equally clueless, and that seemed to perturb the teacher further.

"It came to my attention that there was some trouble with the owl which was supposed to deliver your daughter's letter. It returned to Hogwarts with the letter," she said, as though that explained everything.

It didn't.

But Christine decided to take advantage of the silence that followed her 'explanation' to prove a point.

"I told you it had a letter," she said to her father triumphantly.

He looked away from the professor finally, and gave her an exasperated sigh. He hadn't believed her when she told him about the incident. Not entirely. He believed that an owl had infiltrated their home. He didn't believe that it was acting as some sort of carrier pigeon. She smiled at him. With a last unimpressed look, he turned his attention back to their guest.

"You couldn't just use the post?" he asked, and Christine thought it was a very good question.

Professor McGonagall didn't appear to agree with that sentiment. Her frown deepened, and she started to look rather confused as well.

"Wizards don't usually use the muggle postal service," she said slowly, as though she was speaking to a very slow young child.

Wizards? Muggle? What on earth was a muggle?

This meeting had taken a stranger turn than even Christine had expected it to.

Christine and Dominic looked at her in turn, as though they'd just realised that they were speaking to an escaped mental patient. They looked at each other warily. Each wondering what to do now that they'd let a mad woman into their home.

"Ma'am, I think you're confused," Dominic said gently, leaning forward so that he was within arm's reach of the phone on the counter, "Wizards aren't real."

McGonagall's eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. She didn't say anything to that. Just looked from one of them to the other, like she was sure they were playing some king of trick on her.

They weren't.

So, for a while, the three of them sat in silence. All thinking they were speaking to a crazy person. Until McGonagall relaxed a trifle. She let out a small sigh through her nose and adjusted her glasses. She leaned forward, looking serious and worried.

"Your mother never told you about us?" she asked sympathetically.

"My mum?" Christine repeated, more baffled than ever.

Did this woman know her mother? Was she just nuts and off her meds?

Christine looked to her father, searching for an explanation from him. But he was just as mystified as his daughter was. Looking at McGonagall with the same alarmed expression.

"I'll take that as a no," McGonagall said, mostly to herself, then looked at Christine and her father again, "This wasn't what I was expecting when I came to see you both. But I assure you that witches, wizards, and magic are absolutely real."

Before either of them could say anything in reply, McGonagall pulled out a long thin piece of wood from her sleeve. It had a handle with prettily carved little spheres. It looked like ... It was ... A wand? Christine could hardly believe her eyes. Either that was a real wand, or McGonagall was really committed to her delusions.

She pointed it at the battered old coffee table - well that was being generous, it was a wooden pallet on cinder blocks. And with a precise little movement of her hand, and the wand, it transformed into a pot bellied pig.

An actual, real live, pig was standing, and snuffling, right where their table used to be.

Christine exclaimed in shocked delight. It was the single most amazing thing she'd ever seen. She could hardly believe it. Still, she launched herself off the beaten up old couch and flung her arms around the pig's neck. It stuck its wet nose into her face and snuffled around her neck in return.

"Dad, it's real! It's a real pig!"

"Yeah," Dominic replied weakly.

"Can we keep him? Can we?"

"Yeah," he agreed.

Though it was clear he was too shocked and distracted to really know what he was saying, Christine was going to take it as an agreement. The pig was hers now. And there was no way she was going to let him go back on that. She was going to call him Floyd.

Her father's brain seemed to completely skip over the fact that he'd just adopted a magical pig. He was far more focused on the fact that McGonagall had just turned his table into an animal. And that she apparently really was a witch. Who'd just used real magic right in front of them.

Christine thought it was absolutely amazing.

Her father seemed to be thinking along very different lines. And whatever he was marinating over didn't look to be bringing him the same delight his daughter was experiencing.

Quite the opposite. He looked like he was having a bad stomach ache.

Eventually, he found his voice again.

"Cyllene was ... she was a witch?" he asked quietly, with clear disbelief, "She never said anything about it. I never saw her do anything ... magical. I don't believe it."

McGonagall looked sympathetic again. It was an emotion which usually annoyed Christine. She didn't want or need anybody's pity. It was a useless waste of their energy, because they never did anything other than feel miserable for a few minutes. Then they forgot all about what made them sad in the first place.

But McGonagall seemed genuine. Sincere. It wasn't something she often saw in authority figures outside of her parents. So, Christine refrained from snapping at her. Besides, she'd just given her a pig. She didn't want to seem ungrateful.

"Cyllene Blake wasn't a witch," she told them softly, "She was a squib."

"What's a squib?" Christine asked curiously.

It was a strange word. She'd never heard anything like it before. Well, it sounded like squid. But while Christine evidently didn't know everything about her mother, she was absolutely certain her mother wasn't a squid.

McGonagall used a lot of strange words. Hogwarts. Muggle. Squib. To Christine, and likely her father, they were pure and utter nonsense. To McGonagall they were probably meant something. Christine didn't have a clue what they could mean. But she doubted anyone as serious as the professor would use gibberish for fun.

The professor took a steadying breath. She'd said that she hadn't been expecting to have to explain anything to them. It was clear in that moment just how unexpected this was to her. And that her mother was a lot more complicated than Christine had ever imagined.

She felt a bit sorry for McGonagall. But her curiosity far outweighed any other emotion she was feeling.

"This is going to be quite complicated, Miss. Blake."

Oh, this was going to get weird.