"Do you have siblings you're close to?"

"Only child."

"Sounds lonely."

"Yeah. Kinda."

"Do you want a hug or something?"

"I wouldn't turn one down."

Hug. "I feel really lucky to have my whole family."

Hug. She does not mention the family he feels so unlucky to have that he doesn't acknowledge them as being that.

Well, because they aren't.

This matter is why she is not bringing them up! "Thanks," she says, post-hug.

"Any time. We should do our actual homework or something, shouldn't we."

"Yeah, probably."

And they do that.

The girl on the Slytherin Quidditch team he's been singing to impress agrees to go out with him; they have a two-month long flaming disaster of a relationship that delights them both. He catalogues all of Timothy's exasperated facial expressions; someday Timothy'll learn reactions more useful than exasperated disbelief and then there'll be no more exasperated-Timothy-expressions except in his memory. He writes absurdly dramatic songs about losing the love of his life and then picks up a crush on a Ravenclaw sixth-year and starts contentedly pursuing her.

Necessary, but not sufficient, Finis writes Minor of candidates for marriage who can make a voltaic pile and have invented two alphabets by the age of eleven. You are also supposed to want to kiss her; wait to tell her until you notice that, if you do. The eels should arrive at the end of the week.

And the week ends, and the eels arrive, in little sleeves that are much bigger on the inside, with instructions for making them a tank. He races up to the common room and enlists help with the instructions and makes the eels a tank.

Karen is happy to help him make an eel tank. It can go next to the potato bunnies. Are the eels still alive?

They are!! Here's what temperature the water needs to be and how to make the mud at the bottom where the electric eels will want to hang out. They are electric. He checks by shocking himself repeatedly.

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"Yeah. But it's for science, so."

Karen carefully avoids being shocked by eels. "So they're alive, what other science are you going to do?"

"I want to see if I can conduct the current through metal, maybe that's the step Hogwarts objects to or something."

"Ooh. What if it'll go as long as it's from eels?"

"That'd be really weird. Don't know. I'd start researching the wards again to try to figure out what's causing that."

"There's probably a ward to keep lightning from striking anything on the grounds but that wouldn't explain why the battery wouldn't work and the eels would."

"Yeah - I wonder if there are spells that shock a person..."