"Well, the booklists might change. But still." Tug. He barely manages not to knock the trunk down onto both of them. "Divination, divination, can't wait until I can cast the Summoning Spell - Timothy does it all the time -"

"Mum does too! She loses things."

"Timothy just likes showing off. He'll have friends over and they'll be debating something and some papers that I don't even know how he got will come zooming in to answer whatever the question."

"...well, that does actually sound fun."

"Timothy's fun. I love my brothers."

"They sound great!"

"Unless you are a Hufflepuff you will definitely meet some!"

"I really don't think I'm a Hufflepuff."

"You don't seem very Hufflepuffy to me."

"Can you usually tell right away?"

"Nah. Timothy's probably as good as the Hat, but I'm not great at people. But all the respectable friends I have are hoping for Hufflepuff and you don't seem much like them."

"All the respect for the virtues of Hufflepuff but even if I squeezed my way in it just wouldn't work very well."

"I like cutting corners wherever I can. I abandon projects halfway though because I thought of something more interesting. I don't want to be respectable and virtuous and known for my reliability, I want everyone to know me by the amazing things I pulled off."

"You will probably have to finish at least some projects for that."

"I will! My dad does!"

"Then you should be all set."

"Yeah," he says happily, and, "ah-hah!" and he flops back into his seat with a divination book and starts scanning it.

...okay, fair enough. Miranda gets a book out too.

And a while later, "nah, north-finding doesn't count, but this book basically takes the stance that if it works it isn't divination."

"What does north-finding count as, then?"

"Charm." 

"See, this is why I'm specially excited about Charms, it seems like most everything really handy and some of the really cool advanced stuff is a Charm if it's not something else, and all the something else seems really specific."

"Yeah, that's reasonable. It's just too mix-and-match for me, I like when there are obvious underlying principles, even if they're specific and restricted..."

"Are there not principles to Charms? I only have the first year books and they've very little theory."

"There's got to be, but it's not like transfiguration, all the laws right up front."