"Yes, I did, very much" replied Violet. Like Miss Howard, she meant. "I used to think she was the only person in the house who liked me at all, but since that battle here with the Neo-Alliance, I've come to realize that my grandfather and my uncles really do care about me, too." Most of her uncles, that is. She now wasn't too sure about Uncle Hamlet.

"I actually got Miss Howard fired," Violet went on, "because I ran away from home during what should have been my second year at school and went off to find my father. That's how I learned a little about Muggle life." And also how she learned more than she wanted to know about her father. Oh well.

"Miss Howard's really, really brilliant, though, and she got a job at the Ministry of Magic, which is probably more interesting for her than governessing me. But we're friends now, and my family lets me write her and see her sometimes, now that they've gotten over being mad at her for letting me run away. Which was their fault anyway, not hers. Well, actually I guess it was mine, but I was only twelve, so what did I know?"

Violet thought a minute about this and then remembered something Ashley had just said. "Why...why do you have...did you say bodyguards?"