"To do my duty." The kettle whistled then, and Harry got up to tend to it, but he continued talking as he did. "Or my brother's duty, I guess, technically, since he won't do it. The point is, to make sure she is taken care of." He paused his speaking for a moment to ready the tea, and to gather his own thoughts. It occurred to Harry, of course, that Avery had been "taking care of" her daughter this entire time, and he wasn't trying to insinuate anything--he didn't know her, there wasn't enough information for him to make judgments--but there was a reason conventional wisdom said a child needed two parents. It wasn't just a morality issue.

"At the very least," Harry said after a moment, turning around again, "I assume she's a witch." Given that Avery had pulled out a wand, and, to Harry's knowledge, that was the most common case with these things. Being muggleborn, he wasn't exactly an expert on how that worked, but he'd met enough people by now from different backgrounds that he thought his educated guess was, at least, sound. "I'd pay for her schooling. I'd like to pay for more than that. but at a minimum, seven years of schooling." It's not like he couldn't afford it, and Harry was an academic, of course education was among his top priorities in this situation.

"How do you take your tea?" he asked. He added two sugar cubes to his own cup. "And I would like to know her."

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