"If you need to borrow an owl I don't expect to have mine sending letters all the time."

"We've got a couple family ones, but thank you. I'll probably write every day, might wear ours out."

"Yeah, might. What House do you want?"

"Ravenclaw was that not immediately obvious?"

"Some people are surprising! Mum was in Ravenclaw."

"It's the best house. Knowledge is the future - did you know that my dad built this train -"

"Yes, actually. Well, I didn't know which branch of the family you were but I know who built it."

"He's brilliant," he says proudly.

"It is a very impressive engineering project."

"He's done cooler stuff. And is working on even cooler stuff, there's lots of places you can go with integrating magic and technology - and he told me when he was my age he wanted to remake the Philosopher's Stone and I said 'wait, why don't you anymore' and he said 'who says I don't still?' and I think he might be able to do it -"

"That would be way better than the train."

"Yes, it would. But the train's useful, the proof-of-concept's useful, rails might be more efficient for infrastructure than Portkeying things, someday..."

"...hmm?"

"Well, the train's lovely but it would have been better if it didn't use a Muggle train station."

"Better how?"

"They had to work through and around the Muggles a lot to put in the platform, and now every year hundreds of witches and wizards are going to have to come through King's Cross."

"Okay." He shrugs. "That's logistics; Dad didn't do that part."

"Yeah, that's fair."

"We could have a rail network that didn't go near the Muggle ones. Or we could just lift the statute and work with 'em or something."

"Yeah, that'd work."

"Aaron's big on that."

"Which, not going near Muggles or working with them?"

"Lifting the statute. Gains from trade and everything. You don't have to think people are your equals to have positive-sum interactions with them."

"That makes sense."