The incantation begins and continues even when she stops turning it.

So far so good; that's what she was going for. She disenchants it and tries again, expanding the incantation to "Cause the cassette to produce the sound of the first incantation used to enchant the medallion, at sixty decibels, whenever the tape starts turning, and to fall silent whenever the tape stops turning."

Now it stops when she stops, but it starts over again at the beginning when she resumes.

Hmm. She has a different idea whether it's a better idea remains to be seen. Disenchant and back to the French dictionary for a bit.

Before that's done, Wednesday rolls around and she has her meeting to go over her report on the lack of side effects of the healing spell.

The council isn't impressed with her statement that some of the subjects declined to provide information. "If," says one of them, "the subjects didn't want to participate in an experiment, it was staggeringly irresponsible to experiment on them anyway."

"They were happy to participate in the experiment. They just didn't want to answer the unexpected extra questions afterward. If someone wants treatment and I give it to them, and then a month later they refuse to take the survey, I haven't done anything to them they weren't okay with."

"You don't seem familiar with what are conventionally termed human research protocols."

"I'm not. I've never done any kind of research before; I was just helping anybody who wanted it and only turned it into a research study when people expressed interest in that. Any future studies I do are going to be designed as research from the start, and I'd be happy to take advice on protocols from anyone interested in addition to what I can find in the library."

"But it was a new, untried procedure," says the councilmember. "It was by nature experimental."

"I guess that's a reasonable way to think about it. I certainly agree I'd have gotten better data if I had set it up as a formal study from the start and made people promise to fill out the whole survey before letting them try the spell."

"It's not solely a question of the quality of data, it's a question of whether there was informed consent to a high enough standard."

"They knew it was a new procedure and that I didn't know everything about how it would work, and they consented to trying it at the time. My taking a survey weeks later doesn't change that retroactively."

"No one can verify that, since some of them don't have responses recorded in your data."

"I have the waivers they all signed. Also, just to clarify--what are you asking for, going forward?"

"We're not sure if you're competent to handle your own research arm."

"Can you recommend someone who is competent, either to run the research or to review my study designs? Maybe I should get an internship in a human scientist's lab, I could learn how to run a study and it would probably generalize to magic research pretty well."

"That might be prudent. You'll need to find someone interested in helping with your work in this capacity yourself."

She now has two completely unrelated problems being exacerbated by the shortage of critter academics. Stupid tiny critter population. On the other hand . . . "Are there any particular qualifications you'd want the other person to have, besides knowing about critters and knowing how to run a study?"

"Any other qualifications necessary to administer the treatment."

"Um, administering the treatment is literally just letting the patient touch the enchanted rock. Anybody who can do the consent forms beforehand can do that part. Is there any particular qualification you had in mind?"

"If there are any reasons not to touch the rock the person will need to handle it carefully themselves and store it carefully between uses," says a councilmember.

"They'll need to be qualified to assess before and after states," says another.

Okay, so she probably can't just do a lot of reading and then ask Bella to do it. Maybe Dr. James can do it or knows someone who can, or the library has critter medical journals.

"Okay," she says. "Anything else you're likely to need before I come back with a detailed proposal?"

"A detailed proposal seems like the next step."

"Alright then, if that's all I guess I'll head out. Have a nice day!"

Assuming nobody thinks of anything else, she heads to the Avalon library.

It is cozy and quiet. The holds shelf takes up an entire (small) wall.