"...I'm trying to figure out the most and least dramatically affected. Is the thing. Tintin would be like this anyway. Maybe a bit less randy about it. I haven't a clue what Tom's doing. Hywel... he really does treat just about everyone like that, you understand. I don't actually know Sophie very well. Honestly Susan might be like this anyway, about someone the light caught right. So, the most dramatically affected are Peter, who's euphoric about you, and..."

He sighs. "The hypothesis had not escaped me. My frame of reference is shot, obviously, but I still want to... go through the motions. And I do think there's every possibility I would be like this about anyone who was - impressive and attractive and showed an interest in me and had philosophical opinions and flaunted his torso a lot."

Pete reaches for Edmund's hand to squeeze it. "However you're being is however you'd be, just... the only real difference is that the elements of chance that can ruin or even slightly tarnish one's image of someone else aren't there, you know? But it's not really showing you someone who isn't me or making you be someone who isn't you. It's—I'm still the kind of person who realises he's being a bit overbearing when he suggests a date as a forfeit for losing a race and then starts blabbing because he doesn't want to come on too strong. And some people would find that kind of offputting and other people would find that endearing and you're the latter and that's a fact about you, not about the—framing."

"...yes. That's what you just said, more or less. But that doesn't... you have magic powers. They are explicitly affecting how I perceive you. And at the far end, right, that makes it impossible to determine anything about reality and I should just go with whatever happens forever. And at the near end, the one where you're telling me the whole truth and nothing but, fantastic. What I want is, if I'm in that middle space, if you can make yourself sparkle and give me the impulse control of a blushing schoolgirl but not rewrite my entire brain, and you gave me a nice friendly gloss because I noticed time bending around you, I want to know about it. In principle this means I should talk to other people who know about the whole... situation. Peter would be great. Unfortunately, no one else, especially Peter, knows. And if I just think about it, I'll get myself tied in knots. You're in the unenviable position of my rubber duck on the matter of whether or not you're fucking with my head. Sorry."

"Um, to the extent that this counts for anything, I swear that everything I just said is the truth as I understand it and I was not giving you a nice friendly gloss. I—might have missed some nuance because I don't remember the exact word-by-word description of everything, but I went to great pains to make sure that there is no mind control or impulse control or, or anything else like that going on, everywhere, with exactly one exception that doesn't apply to you or actually anyone other than Tom specifically and which I can tell you more about if you want and I realize that me saying that there's this exception makes everything more suspect but that's still better than me not mentioning it until it comes up later. I spent weeks going over everything with the help of a bunch of friends and family members and it's not unthinkable that we might've missed a loophole somewhere but if so that's what happened, I missed a loophole somewhere, not, not... you know."

"...it would probably help to have specifics on the exception? I-" He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. "It's really difficult, because - this whole thing involves kind of treating you as a hostile party but also I like you. And I don't think all of it could possibly be fake, but so much of my social processing runs on ineffable certainty of others' motives, and it would be so easy to fuck with that. So I'm trying to put things into words that really don't want to be put into words. But. Yeah, let's hear the Tom exception."

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and recites from memory the one power he knows by heart. "Regardless of how lost to darkness someone is, your love can save them, if they're willing to accept it. This power will not directly alter someone's mind except to allow them to believe a true thing they couldn't have believed otherwise, or to change something that their pre-alteration and post-alteration selves would hypothetically be able to agree was good if they talked it over honestly with full access to each other's perspectives. In cases where the outcome of the hypothetical is uncertain, it will default to not making the change."

"Huh. I'm going to set aside the intrusive thoughts trying to tell me I'm a puppet on your string, and the large part of my brain that thinks 'Tom Riddle' and 'love' belong on opposite ends of the English language, and say that's... oddly cute. It's so determinedly good, in spite of being the kind of thing that'd give Invictus night terrors."

Pete opens his eyes again and lets out the breath he'd been holding. "I'm not trying to be bad, you know. I just want to write Mary Sue fanfic of myself without the parts of the fic that make it fridge horror."

"...I never thought you were bad. I'm - guarding against a hypothetical person who could present as you and plaster over the cracks with magic. But that's the kind of thinking that makes people insane, after a while, or at least it would me. And it shows a lack of faith in you that probably hurts you, to no actual end I can think of. So... I'm going to stop thinking about it."

"I'm frankly looking forward to being in that harem you've mentioned," he says, abruptly much more chipper. "An organized unit means I can delegate the tasks I'm ill-suited to. Like thinking."

He chokes on air. "Tasks you're ill-suited-to—are you even listening to yourself, Pevensie?"

"...but also, uh. Back on that thing about... um... So I realized earlier today that I actually do need to love Tom. I spent all of yesterday and a lot of today sort of in a different mentality but it's, I'm meant to be saving him with the power of love not the power of having a huge dick. God, I hope he's not eavesdropping right now, though if he is I can only imagine it'll be in service of the greater narrative. But, um, yeah. I'm going to love him."

"...Good luck?"

"Oh, fuck me, I'm going to be in a bloody harem with Tom Riddle. Who will somehow be saved from the darkness, Jesus Christ. I'm going to kill you with a knife."

"Kinky."

"I'm going to kill you with three knives. And a hammer."

"Kinkier. —oh hey can we find a door somewhere I wanna go grab something."

"Yes, sure - here's Milton Hall, does the door need any particular characteristics, we can find you an empty classroom."

"Not transparent is the main requirement, I think, so that works."

"Great. Commit your sorceries, I'll be out here seething."

"Cool, back in a sec."

"Alright, I'm back, here you go," he says, offering Edmund a folded shirt.

Edmund takes it. Feels the fabric. There's something strange about it - it's silky, but even seeing that it's a shirt, his mind rebels somehow as he feels it. Shirts aren't really supposed to feel like this? Something's off. It's like it just sort of grew into shape, instead of being stitched together. There's no seams-

"You bastard! I was trying to seethe!"

He grins. "I was going to wait until some relevant date and then I remembered that I absolutely hate gift-giving dates and I keep telling people to just buy me stuff if it makes them think of me and not otherwise and I should actually live by my own words, so. Happy whatever the date is."

"Happy whatever day, indeed. Now I just need a dry well, an acre of tide pools, and a leather sickle and I'll be set."