"I don't think there are boy veela, and I'm not sure how much they're actually good at singing and how much they're just magic."

"Well, Michael's just good at singing, it's not magic. Sometimes when it's a bigger crowd than this he'll charm his voice so it carries, but that doesn't count. It's been two weeks now so I've decided I need to start learning a language, d'you'still not want to teach Igbo? Because if not I'm going to go try to learn the language merpeople speak."

"Is that a real language? I've heard it sounds different underwater."

"Right which makes no sense so I'm going to go figure it out."

"Will you tell me what you figure out?"

"Unless it turns out to be an ancient magical secret of great importance! Then I'll resolve not to tell anyone and actually tell Aaron because I'm so excited and then write a letter to our father and then Timothy'll see me and guess but I won't just go around saying magical secrets of great importance even if I kinda know they'll get out."

"He can guess magical secrets of great importance by looking at you?"

"He can guess that I'm keeping one. Maybe he can guess the actual secret, too, maybe he's a Legilimens, wouldn't be surprising."

"...I hope he's not."

"Why not?"

"I can't help him take over the world if he goes around reading people's minds, that would be horrible."

"Are you planning to help him take over the world?"

"He might give me a continent!"

"That's a pretty good reason. Anyway, I bet he can't read minds, bet he's just that good."

"People shouldn't read minds."

"I don't think I'd mind very much if someone was reading my mind. I'd mind if they used it to do something bad, but that'd be minding the bad thing they did."

"Don't you care about having privacy?"

"No? I mostly think about ideas, not about anything I wouldn't want people seeing."

"What if somebody stole your ideas?"

"And did what?"

"I don't know, got famous for them or something."

"Then that'd bother me, but same as it'd bother me if they stole an essay I wrote for class and said it was theirs and got famous."

"Huh."

"Different for you?"

"Yeah, a lot."