"Probably," he agrees. "But I knew that already, and I don't wanna murder you, so what difference does it make?"

"It's just disturbing." Pause. "And that girl who decided to warn me about you seemed to care if I got murdered. Maybe she doesn't know I'm Muggleborn or maybe you're just wrong about that."

"Did I say people wouldn't care? I didn't say people wouldn't care," says Feral. "It's the whole system that doesn't. People are people, they care about all different stuff."

"Is magical law enforcement not done by people?" asks Bella dubiously.

"...It's like the mice," he says. "I bet you when you start on live Transfiguration, if you walk up to the cages and say you're gonna set the mice on fire, you'll get in huge trouble. But when we start on it in my class and I say I'm not gonna point my wand at anything I'm not willing to light up, I'll fail the class again. Caring about mice getting set on fire isn't one thing that works the exact same way everywhere for everybody all the time, or even the same way for the same person all the time, and neither is caring about people dying."

"Hmmmm."

He lets her think about it.

"There are a lot of things I am going to have to learn how to fix," sighs Bella, taking down some notes. "I better learn to live forever. I think that would be nice anyway."

"Sure it would," snorts Feral.

"It would! Then I could learn everything I want to know, and by then, there would be more things to know about," Bella says.

He giggles.

"Some magic animals can do it, right? So it's not impossible."

"Sure is impossible for people, though," says Feral. "Or at least I've never heard different."

"People invent new things all the time. I bet someone can invent a way to live forever and maybe it'll be me. Or maybe somebody did it already and then I can get to work on everything else that much sooner."

"If somebody did it and it worked, wouldn't that be big news?" says Feral.

"Well, it would be if I did it, 'cause I'd want to share, but maybe somebody did it and doesn't want to share, or even can't share, or something," says Bella.

"Maybe," says Feral.

"I'll work on it," Bella says firmly. She eats the last of her mushroom soup and then she is off to Charms!

Well, so is Feral!

Tony and Sherlock join them on the way.

Hurray, friends! Also teacup-dancing! Bella is not in the five best kids in class anymore, since she missed half of the previous lesson, but she's not bad, and she sets about catching up with a will and will, if Sherlock looks like he wants, attempt to help him since he missed the entirety of the last lesson.

Sherlock's teacup executes an elaborate dance routine across the surface of his desk.

Well then! He does not need help. Bella concentrates on her own work. "Were you practicing all night or something?" she murmurs to him in an undertone when she starts paging through her textbook to look at the diagrams on wand motions again.

"I practiced until I got it right," he murmurs back.

Well, she supposes he had plenty of time to do it in. She looks at the wand motions and convinces her teacup to spin on the tip of its handle and right itself with a flourish.