Anton wasn't entirely sure how to read Tessa's emotional shift.  It seemed, superficially, less explosive but that didn't afford him much reassurance.  He had to resist the urge to fill the emotional ebb with more words but he had just enough sense to realize that wasn't the wisest approach. 

So, he waited.  Trying to depict a patience he couldn't feel. 

Her question was both predictable and understandable.  It should have been the simple solution but, clearly, nothing about this world was as simple as he'd hoped.  "I tried.  He made some vague comment about it being dangerous and changed the subject.  He shares your lack of enthusiasm, it seems."  Understandably, of course, but Anton was convinced it was misplaced paranoia.

"He hasn't had the best of luck with life.  His sister was-"  Anton faltered a moment and sighed.  "She was the woman you were talking about.  And, the rest of his family ... he has good reason to be cautious.  But, I don't want Micha's experiences shaped by isolated bad luck.  Micha will already stand out as the kid who signs.  I want him to start meeting classmates so he's not that awkward transfer kid who knows nobody his first day." 

The pieces were starting to fit together, but the pattern that they were forming was mundane enough that Tessa couldn't quite place it into the urgent context that had caused Anton to barge into the Ministry on the day after a full moon. She could sympathize with Anton's concerns about his little brother. She'd never had to worry about not fitting in at Hogwarts, but the prejudice that Muggleborn wizards faced had inflicted a still-smoldering wound on her family.

It was...reasonable to ask about. If she forgot about the way that Anton had gone about making his request, it was even smart: the German teenager's first adventure in Diagon Alley had ended up with him nearly getting murdered in a dark corner by a vampire, which would have surely come about if Tessa hadn't happened upon him on Christmas Eve.  Asking for advice on how to navigate a place like Diagon was far safer than Anton fumbling around on his own as a Muggle.

It was just all the rest of this that wasn't so smart: If the wrong person got wind of a Muggle bold enough to barge straight into the Ministry, Tessa wasn't sure if Anton's familial connection to his younger brother would be enough to justify leaving him be.

The blonde witch glanced away, absently tucking her hair back behind her ears as she thought.

"We-ell..." she started slowly, "I don't know if it will help with meeting his classmates, but Diagon Alley isn't normally that dangerous." She hesitated for a brief moment, as if deciding whether she really wanted to go through with this, and then looked over to meet Anton's gaze. "If you really just want to start by taking him shopping, then I guess I could meet you there the first time. You know, to show you around."

Again, Anton didn't try to predict what response the maze of Tessa's emotional responses might bring.  Wrong guesses were too perilous and there was too much risk that a right guess might come with unintended gloating.  So, persisted with patience. 

A tactic which appeared to pay off in excess. 

Anton's eyes widened when Tessa looked at him, his usual cheery grin splitting his face.  The standard gut response was to blabber some sort of Really?  Are you sure?, just to make sure he hadn't suffered from some momentary seizure or hallucination.  Doing so risked giving her time to change her mind or back out.  She clearly held no qualms about putting him in his place, if he had heard wrong.  So ...

"Yeah, mate.  That would be fantastic!  I know he'd love it.  My mum might even be okay with the idea, given you're an important government official and all."  Anton absolutely planned on framing it as a government-official led tour of the local shopping center.  That would go over much better than the mates I met while drinking are going to show Micha around vampire alley. 

"Yeah - just tell me where and when and we'll be there.  You can-"  Actually, Anton didn't quite know the best way to end that sentence.  He had just enough sense to recognize that outsider misunderstanding had had something to do with her ire.  "So, I've gathered this place isn't here to help the likes of me.  Not officially, at least.  So, is there like a welcoming center?  Magical alien resource office?  Or, do we just sit back and wait for the powers that be to tell us the rules?"

Anton agreed so enthusiastically that Tessa knew she was going to regret this. His immediate framing of the situation -- "given you're an important government official and all" -- made her eyes widen.

"But I'm not --" she started to protest, before realizing that all resistance was futile.

As unsure about this as she was, it was hard to stay leery when the blond German boy was so eager. Tessa sighed, and then gave him an uncertain smile.

"No, um, I think normally a professor from Hogwarts comes to explain the basics to Muggleborn families when they deliver their Hogwarts letter," she said, a little cautiously. A distant memory flickered: sitting on her father's knee when he recounted how a stern-looking woman in a pointed hat had come to sternly tell his parents that he'd been invited to attend a magical school up in Scotland.

She felt a ping of sympathy for what Anton and his family must be going through. Tessa didn't know her family very well on her father's side; it always felt awkward visiting them when she'd been younger, when their awareness of witches and wizards and magic was only very vague at best. Knowing that Micah was about to be invited into a new world that they could only tangentially be part of had to be hard, especially when the only helpful tips that anyone ever had to share was that Muggles should stay away.

"What about next Saturday?" she suggested, glancing at the teenager. "This weekend's bad, because Gris's birthday party is tomorrow and we've only just gotten off our March full moon patrol." She gave a shrug, feeling a little more acclimated to the idea of playing tour guide now. "But any weekend is fine, really, as long as it's not around the full moon."

“But I'm not --"

“A minor distinction my mum doesn’t need to fully understand.”  Anton countered with the briefest of winks. 

He listened, curiously, as she explained the usual approach, trying his best to meld the ‘how it should be’ with what was playing out in his house.  It was all a rather confusing system - made even more confusing by the fact that it involved an entirely new world that he had no previous understanding of.  He imagined it felt a lot like getting dropped in the middle of the jungle among one of those uncontacted tribes and then being explained the finer details of some traditional ritual. 

All while hoping the locals didn’t grow tired of you and toss you out to flounder in the jungle.  Or kill you. 

With a shrug, he put that thought behind him.  “Next Saturday works fantastic!”  Anton confirmed.  “I mean, any weekend works for me.  But, I understand if vampires get extra moody on full moons.”  Anton offered, sagely, both oblivious to the real full moon threat and that their current meeting was anywhere near a full moon.  What normal person followed the phases of the moon?  “I’ll get Micha hyped up about it. 

But, there was one piece of this that Anton wasn’t sure he fully understood.  “Doesn’t muggleborn mean both parents are entirely non-magical?”  Anton asked, slowly, unsure of the question, himself.  “If that’s the case, I don’t think Micha is muggleborn.  Will that make a difference?  Will they still send someone?”

"No, vampires are more dangerous on new moons --" Tessa started, then cut herself off with a huffed sigh.

That seemed to happen quite a bit around Anton, who was off and running with such enthusiasm that it often didn't seem worth it to reign him back in. She ought to be more annoyed about it, but the German teenager was so exuberant that it was hard to stay irritated with him for very long.

His comment about Micah perhaps not being Muggleborn was curious enough to prick her interest, but they also had to be getting dangerously close to the ten minute limit that Bagnold had given her. On the heel of a long full moon, Tessa wasn't about to test her boss's patience by letting the conversation drag out.

"I suppose it depends, really," she said, glancing over at the office door. "We can talk about it more next Saturday."

Now, there just remained the problem of getting Anton out of the Ministry, back onto the lift and out past the Welcome Desk in the atrium, so that she could send him on his way without anyone being the wiser that there had been a Muggle in the Capture Unit office. At least the delay had given her a good excuse to miss the post-full moon gathering with her teammates at the Sword and Chant.

"Here, let me just grab my things from my desk and then I can walk you out," she said, flashing Anton a tired smile as she ushered him back towards the door to the main office. "Have you been to the Leaky Cauldron before? That's probably the best place to meet."