Ford offered her an overblown grimace in response to her lauding him as the man who'd cracked the case. The truth was he'd had no idea what he was doing, and it was pure luck that his misfired spell had caused the transfiguration spell to fail without doing any other damage. That was what had actually happened, someone from Magical Accidents and Catastrophes had later explained; he hadn't un-transfigured her at all, just conflicted with the existing spell enough that the magic had collapsed under its own weight. As he'd been initially trying to cast a restraining spell, this was not so much impressive as it was impressively bad — which was why he had been avoiding bringing it up to anyone. He was quite happy to fade into anonymity regarding his involvement in the missing persons debacle... but enough time had passed that he suspected public interest in the case had waned, so it was probably safe to mention it now. At least to her. For some reason he found it unlikely that anything he said to her might later be dragged up in an introduction to someone else. He would hardly call Miss Chang a confidante, but in terms of random women to converse with in ballrooms, she seemed safer than some.

"She was a Lestrange, too, that first one," he recalled. "So it's very fortunate it all worked out, because I've no doubt they would have had my head if I'd botched it somehow. Though if anyone could get a girl with feathers successfully married, it would probably be the Lestranges," he joked, a little under his breath so as to reduce the risk of being overheard; this was not the place to be heard insulting one of the most powerful families in Britain, and he didn't have his friendship with Cash to fall back on now as an excuse for over-familiarity.

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