“Nope”, Lyra smiled mischievously. “Only Harry is allowed to tickle me in my tickliest spots. You’re allowed to hold me while he does it, though”, she winked at Hermione while both she and Harry blushed like two tomatoes.

“What are you people up to so early in the morning?”, Viktor came with his coffee cup, finding Lyra in a very good mood while Harry and Hermione looked like they wanted the ground to swallow them whole.

“What did you do to them, sis?”, he laughed.

“Oh, a little payback”, she played innocent. “You know how she likes to tease me until I hide my face under something”.

“Oh”, he realised it must be about the goddess thing. “Well, serves them right. I’d never call you my goddess to your face. I just pray to you at a private altar in my room”, he snickered.

Hermione gave him a high five. “That’s my husband”.

Lyra hid her face into Harry’s chest and whispered “It’s all your fault”. He snickered and kissed her head.

“Lyra was actually leaving us dumbfounded with her understanding of things and I couldn’t resist, because honestly and jokes aside, she’s so impressive I feel like melting into a puddle at her feet, and I was teasing her to hide my embarrassment”, she told Viktor.

“I just figured out something else, while we’re at it”, Lyra was now more serious. “The muggles have the concept of meaning inverted, from us”, she mused. “To them, meaning is an emergent property of human brain, which is an emergent property of chemistry and physics, and the physical world is a reality, that they almost figured out, and there’s just a few minor details left to deal with, like making the theory of quantum gravity. To us, however, the physical world is an emergent property of meaning, that manifests our souls first, then our minds, and then we use our minds through wands to wield magic in ways that change the manifestation according to how we perceive meaning, as persons”.

Hermione was deep in thought. “They used to believe the same as we, you know. It’s just in the last few centuries that they turned it all around. Can it be that our Statute of Secrecy caused it, by removing us from their world?”

“It’s actually very likely”, Harry agreed. “Not knowing about magic and what they would call miracles, they were free to formulate theories around the most vulgar materialism, where physical world is a reality and everything else is either an emergent property, or a figment of imagination”.

“We never had that luxury”, Viktor nodded in assent. “Anyone seeing or doing conjuration or transfiguration is permanently inoculated against materialism. It’s simply not a sustainable theory”.

“Oh, you stopped playing the dumb guy”, Hermione took his hand and snickered.

“I figured I can’t win so I might as well join you”, he kissed her palm.