"You have pull with the Minister and you could convince him to allow you to throw one here. It would be, to be honest, also quite political. If you were allowed to have a party, in the Ministry and if you were to invite, for instance, Lucius Malfoy and...let's say Perenias Parkinson, that would be a sign for them. A clear sign. Potter invites former Death Eaters, or suspected Death Eaters..."

"And you would leave Bellatrix Lestrange's wand as it is now?" Harry frowned.

"With the proper precaution, naturally, but yes. We would have spells on it and around it..."

"Why aren't there spells around it now?" asked Harry.

Arthur Weasley sighed. "There are some around it. And so far, we only know that it hasn't been taken again... but maybe that was lack of opportunity."

"Lucky for the rest of us," he rolled his eyes. "It's risky and..."

"It's the only way. The Ministry won't do anything about this and..."

"What's in it for you?" interrupted Harry.

"Nothing," Arthur replied but Harry didn't believe him.

"Why would you work together with Malfoy? And why now? Why not sooner? I mean it wasn't like any of you were attacked. It was only Snape and Malfoy. A few Muggles here and there, nothing life-threatening..."

"Nothing's in it for me, Harry," Weasley said, smiling kindly. "I just want this to end."

"Want what to end? There hasn't been anything since this incident with Malfoy, has there?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Then end what?"

"End the threat. End the belief that..." he stopped.

"End what belief?" asked Harry suspiciously.

"This government isn't good enough. It's using the wrong methods and it's overzealous." Arthur Weasley sighed and scratched his head slowly.

"And that's your reason? The government isn't good enough as is overzealous?"

"Yes. A government like this will lead to another hunt on witches and wizards. It's just turned around..."

Harry frowned deeply. "Which means what? And why now? And...you were never ambitious, Arthur. I can't believe that...do you want the position? Do you want to be Minister of Magic?"

"No," he said immediately. "No, I don't want that. But I want a fair and unbiased government. One which doesn't subject my son to Verita..."

"What?" Harry's mouth hung open and he heard the older man sigh softly and put his face into his hands.

"Charlie was...you know how he is when he's had two or three glasses of firewhiskey. He starts talking and there is no barrier between head and mouth and while Kingsley was there, too. Charlie said," Weasley stopped, "that Malfoy deserved to be in Azkaban and that it was a shame that those Death Eaters — confirmed Death Eaters — came off lightly. A day later, Malfoy attacked this old woman...Severus's neighbour? And Charlie was questioned. He denied it, but he had no alibi. Under a false pretence, he was made to drink Veritaserum."

"Like Draco Malfoy?" Harry asked, utterly shocked.

"No, it was a bit...more familiar, you might say. He was invited to talk to the Minister about a position at the Ministry, a proper place to work in the Regulations of Magical Creatures office. You know Charlie, he likes the more hands-on approach and so he refused. But not before having tea with the Minister. The rest was the same as it was with young Malfoy. Kingsley dosed himself, shut his mouth, and let an Auror do the questioning."

"So that is why you're working together with Malfoy?"

Arthur Weasley sighed. "Yes. He wents to see revenge and I..."

"You want to see Kingsley stumble over his own feet? If you catch the...you can say that the Minister is incapable..."

"Yes. Veritaserum is a dangerous thing, Harry. And they are overdoing it."

Harry nodded solemnly. "Okay," he said. "I will try and see if I can get the Minister to have a party here."

"Good."

"But you already have a suspicion who it might be, right?" asked Harry, still frowning.

"Yes," sighed Arthur, "I do."

He felt relieved. And at the same time, not. At the same time, he knew he had to write a few papers still, two, to be precise and he knew that he should have never said yes to coffee with that woman. She was strange and looked at him all the time and he disliked it. She encouraged him to participate in her class. Encouraged! Nobody encouraged him to do anything. Nobody. Not even a woman of thirty-five.

And as he walked out of the building, into the windy sunshine, he saw her standing there, chatting to another student, or maybe another lecturer, he never knew for sure. Oh, how he was tempted to just turn around, leave through the back of the building and go home. But he had, sort of, promised he would go. Have coffee (well, he wanted tea) and whatever...he wasn't even sure what she wanted to achieve with this. And since he wasn't sure of that and since that had been a bad idea right from the start, he slowed his steps until he came to a halt and only stood. What a wonderful idea it had been. Having coffee with a lecturer. That would have been like him inviting Potter and Granger and Weasley into his office for pumpkin juice. And he would have never done that. Giving them good advice on their careers?

He had given career-advice once a year because it had to be done, because he had to do it. He had never given any of his students pumpkin juice or hot chocolate or tea or coffee. They were into his office, quick talk about what they wanted to do with their lives (and seriously, in Slytherin there were only a few who really wanted to be something but not knowing what it was exactly and how to achieve it. Most were trained, from infancy, to want this or that and how to best achieve it), out of his office. Nothing more, nothing less. Not going out for coffee with them. That would have been just the best idea to do that. Mollycoddle his students.

"Severus!" oh — it was too late. The woman cried out to him. And waved. And ran then towards him. Just wonderful. Just in case nobody had seen them, she was bouncing now towards him. Well, a blend between running and bouncing. "Oh, I'm so happy you showed up," she said.

"Yes," he drawled. "Obviously. And what a happy occasion."

She sighed almost — dreamily (wonderful) and grasped his right forearm (who dare she touch him?) and pulled him forwards. "There is the most amazing new cafè right down the street," she smiled.

"Wonderful," he snapped.

"Yes, isn't it? And it truly is wonderful. No need to be sarcastic," she smiled. "And other students don't go there."

"Wonderful," he nodded, and, strangely enough, just followed her. Not that he had much chance. She held his right forearm still in a vice like grip.

How wonderful.

36. Presuppositions

The projection problems is the problem predicting the presuppositions of complex sentences in a compositional fashion from the presuppositions of their parts. A simple illustration is provided by the following three sentences:

(1) The king has a son.

(2) The king's son is bald.

(3) If the king has a son, the king's son is bald.

Restricting our attention to existence presuppositions resulting from definite descriptions, we observe that (3) inherits the presupposition that there is a king, which both of its constituents carry, but doesn't inherit the presupposition that the king has a son, which its right constituent carries.

(Heim, 1995)

Eleanor hugged her granddaughter and her, well, flatmate, and eyed the young girl who had come in with them curiously. Hermione Granger — Aideen had mentioned her, had said she would bring her with her, and had explained, on the phone, that the girl had no parents (they lived somewhere else) and that she had just completed her A-levels and nobody to celebrate this with. Not that Eleanor had any intention of celebrating with the girl — but nobody should be alone after being done with exams.

Severus had his last exam as well that day, and he would be coming over for dinner. If the girl — Hermione — was still there then, he would have to deal with it. And she would have to deal with it. Eleanor, though, doubted it. The young people would probably want to go somewhere and it would do them good. As long as Draco was back at eleven and without Aideen. Twelve, if he was good.

But she had to admit it to herself, those two behaved better than the usual teenage mannerless heathens she saw on the street. Never acting with decorum and always pawing one another with as little clothing on as possible when it came to girls and as baggy clothing when it came to the boys.

"Mrs Callaghan," the girl, who, upon closer inspection, was almost a young woman, raised her arm and offered her her hand to take. Eleanor, surprised by such good manners this time, shook his steadily.

"Miss Granger, if I remember correctly," she said politely.

"Yes," she nodded and smiled. "Is your back better?"

"My back?" Eleanor frowned. "What do you know about my back? Draco? Aideen?"

"No, it's just...I saw you were in pain when I was last here and I thought..."

"My back is better, thank you," that young woman was rather perceptive. Eleanor was close to being impressed. No quite there yet though.

"Oh Gran, you have the washing outside," Aideen exclaimed. "Draco and I will bring it in."

Honestly, Eleanor sighed to herself, those young people thought she was born yesterday — but yes, she could see that those two were in love and nothing, absolutely nothing indecent could happen between them in the garden. Well, they could kiss and Eleanor believed they would but Severus was still gone, telling her he was staying a bit longer, then going to the library to pick some books for the summer and the house on the other side was empty, so there was nobody to see them if they did kiss. Not that she liked it but there was nothing she could do. Pay attention what they were doing, explain to Aideen that she did not yet want another grandchild and — she grinned inside — Draco had rather paled when she had told him that there was to be good behaviour and that otherwise the old dressmaker shears were still rather sharp and that not only cloth could be cut with them. That had, she thought, brought the message across.

She shot both of them a glance, then smirked at Draco. "Dressmaking, Draco," she said, just loud enough for him to hear and the boy paled slightly again and nodded before he put his hand on Aideen's back and followed her outside.

"Sorry, Severus," the woman said suddenly, having sat at a quiet table in the corner and basically pulling him there as well, shoving him onto a chair. She took a deep breath and smiled. "I am not usually that giddy, I just...I thought you wouldn't come."

He said nothing. What could he say? There was nothing to say. So she wasn't the pulling type? She wasn't the squeaky type? No. At the moment, her voice sounded almost pleasantly calm. And she smiled calmly. Not that huge grin she had worn before.

"Really, sorry. I just...I mean you were always so stiff in the emails and I thought, even after you said yes, that you had maybe changed your mind. Nevermind, I'm talking too much again already," her smile almost widened to the grin again. "How did the exam go?"

Severus cleared his throat. This was too too confusing. She seemed honestly interested. Seriously interested in what he had done. Eleanor listened to him, yes, she asked him about University, about his courses, Aideen asked if he got along, Draco from time to time, but that was different.

"It went well, I think," he said slowly.

She chuckled gently, her voice low and her fingers splayed on the top of the table. "I never expected anything. You're...something of a shall we say, mystery, to all of us."

His eyes widened. "Excuse me?"

Dr Deveney cleared her throat, then the waitress interrupted them.

"Cappuccino for me," she said, "Severus?"

"Tea," he answered, and stared at his lecturer, willing her to answer. A mystery? Him? Of course he was a bloody mystery. If he hadn't been a mystery, he couldn't have done his job. If he hadn't been a mystery, he wouldn't be alive. Not that that had much to do with him being a mystery but rather with him being prepared for everything. But now? He was only one of those mature students, doing his best in the courses he took. And enjoying, to a certain extent, what he was doing. There was no mystery about it.

"You were saying?" he said, almost annoyed after a minute of silence.

"Ah, the mystery, yes. You are obviously rather more experienced than the usual students..."

"I should think that is obvious," he interrupted.

"No," she chuckled, "I meant most mature students we get...they all want to study very much but if you read their essays, you notice, most of the time, that they've left school a long time ago. Your essays are always perfectly structured. You have a choice of words that is uncommon and those essays are always well researched and there is material in there which we haven't covered. I know you did probably a lot of background reading, a lot of my mature students do...but how shall I put this? It's...do you come from an academic background?"

He swallowed. He hadn't wanted to be so obvious. He had kept his words simple in the essays. He hadn't...were standards so low? Academic background? No, he had only graded imbeciles' essays for longer than he cared to remember. And for that, he had to know how to structure it, what kind of literature to include. But academic background? No. His father had been working at the mill. Certainly no academic background. And his mother...she hadn't done much after Hogwarts, had she? He didn't even know for sure what his mother had done before she had become his mother. Academic background? Certainly not.

"No," he said, shaking his head for good measure.

"And Felix tells me..." she stopped herself when the waitress came and put their drinks in front of them. "What classes are you taking next term?"

Severus had to keep himself from frowning. What was she after? Academic background? What classes next? How the exam had gone? What did she care? And what had Dr Smith told her?

"A further syntax class, morphology and phonology."

"What about speeding it up a little? Take another one of mine, I'm having a Chomsky class, I think you'd enjoy that," she smiled. "And it seems it's a good thing to have you in the room, actually," she chuckled and her eyes took on a certain form of mischief.

"What do you mean?"

"Felix and I agree...there is...another part of the mystery, I suppose, something about you that commands the attention of everyone. Haven't you noticed? Everyone is silent when you speak or look around. You have a sort of...presence which compels the entire class to be silent. Not only mine but Felix's as well, he said. Quite frankly, I enjoy that silence. Haven't had such a well-behaved class in years. Usually, I don't mind, they can do what they want but I had less problems with my throat that term. Thanks to you, I think."