They made small talk for a little while longer, before Hermione excused herself. The research project really did need her attention, and she hadn’t been making any headway up in her office. The piece of Wizarding law she was trying to pick apart was nightmarishly complex and circuitous: to cover all her bases, she was working to track down each and every anecdote, case-in-point, and exemplary exhibit mentioned in the text. Given its connection to pureblood history, it often led her down unsavory roads in the literature, and her current garden path had several mentions of one particular artifact.