"When is it most useful? Will I scare Emily if I start experimenting with things?"

"There haven't been any major disasters on campus since I've been there for local standards of major, so nothing as dramatic as a forty-year war you can drop in on... And yeah, that would freak her out, she'd probably call somebody to stop you."

He nods solemnly. "It probably isn't the first thing I'd do anyway, I'd probably explore and find good places to hide."

"When Emily's not in a mood or making shortcuts or anything her floorplan's like so," says Bella, sending it. "She could do a good place to hide, but she's not used to little children since she's on a college campus and might try to find somebody to look after you. Somebody with hands and stuff."

"And how would they react if I said that I don't want to be bothered and won't cry loudly or anything?"

"That's not really why people worry about unaccompanied children, it's not that they're loud, it's that something might happen to them - not even necessarily something all that horrifying, but being lost from your parents is considered pretty bad all by itself; they'd probably assume you were scared and pretending not to be and that they owed it to your parents to bring you back wherever you came from."

He nods. "And if I didn't tell them who my parents were?"

"...I'm not actually sure if it's legal for them to have somebody read your mind. It wouldn't be normally but you're a minor and not an Imperial citizen..."

"...how do I stop someone from doing that?"

"Uuuuum, well, maybe you can say you found me first and I stopped them? I'm good at shields. Except I'm really scared of the vice-chancellor. I doubt he'd wind up involved but still."

"Why's he scary?"

"I'm not allowed to say."

"Am I allowed to try guessing?"

"...I can't tell you if you guess right."

"Can you tell me if I guess wrong?"

"...I'll tell you if you guess impossible but not if you guess something that could have happened but didn't."

"...are you scared of him because he's bad, like Melkor, or are you scared of him because he has enough power he could be bad and doesn't think you're a person, like your gods even the ones that don't kill people randomly, or are you scared of him because he's powerful even though he's good, like the Valar?"

"Any of those things could happen."

"Well in my story I have to make something actually happen."

"It'd be perfectly normal for him not to feature at all in a case of an appearing child," Bella assures him. "The chancellor's fine, she's not scary, the professors mostly aren't scary."

"But if he's bad and I'm going to fix things, he's one of the things I have to fix."

"Sorry. I can't tell you."

"I think he's bad," Fëanáro says. "I should probably just become a very powerful wizard and then I can use spells to figure out what kind of bad."

"Sure, wizards can learn divination spells for finding things out."

"And then even if he turns out not to be bad I'd be a powerful wizard which I'm going to need to fix everything anyway."