She was slender and slight and on the short side, so it was hardly much trouble to help pull her to her feet. Although she seemed very concentrated upon it, which seemed odd; now Elias felt obliged to survey her again more closely, under the hypothesis that perhaps she had hurt herself on her fall through the hedge, and was trying to brush it off as less than it was.

He had had a few too many ungainly broomstick landings not to be familiar with ignoring scrapes and grazes, anyway. But, whatever had happened, he did not think leaving the Scamanders’ apparent houseguest on the side of the street if she’d broken a wrist or a leg or something was particularly neighbourly behaviour. No more than setting hedges on fire would have been... but she sounded more insistent about that than he had expected.

“No, it’s alright, I - was only joking,” Elias admitted, wondering whether it might not have been more polite of him to keep up the pretence of having been serious, just to embarrass her less. “But your secret’s safe with me,” he said anyway, smiling lightly. “I’m sure it could have happened to anyone.” (He was not entirely sure about that, but the reassurance couldn’t hurt.)

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