Gideon frowned at the word dollymop, but didn't comment on it. That was what he was getting at, after all, in his roundabout way, and he supposed he ought to be glad that she'd picked up on it and put the pieces together, even though in an ideal world he would have preferred she not know about such things at all. The fact that she'd been living on the streets for Merlin knew how long before he'd even known she existed, however, was far from ideal in terms of raising a child. She'd been exposed both directly and indirectly to all sorts of things that he wouldn't have chosen for her, if he'd been an involved father from day one.

He sighed in response to her last question. How he wished there was! Wouldn't that have simplified things, if all they needed was a certain spell or a potion in order to ensure that nothing they decided in the next two months would come back to haunt the both of them in a matter of a few years? Unfortunately, things were never that simple. "Magic can't solve everything," he pointed out. "As a matter of fact, a lot of what you'll learn in Hogwarts is what it can't do, or what it shouldn't. If there's some magic that might help us out of this, I don't know it."

Gideon paused, running his tongue over one canine while he considered what to say next. "The way I see it, we've got three choices. You can go to Hogwarts as a girl — a girl who likes adventures and Quidditch and interesting things," he amended with a half-smile. "Or as a boy — but that means we have to be careful the entire time you're there, to make sure no one finds out and nothing bad happens. Or..." he hesitated slightly, sure that she would not be particularly fond of the last option but feeling obliged to mention it all the same. "You don't have to go. If you'd rather stay here and keep on the way things are, we could find a teacher to do magic lessons."