"Maybe. Grandfather certainly acts real."

He eats his pastries quietly after that.

Sadde does not do quietly.

"Do they... want to be paintings?"

"I've only met one, and he seems like he's happier being a painting than not. Most portraits are made of wizards when they think they're going to die." 

"Well, but what if he could be a person in a body again?"

"I don't know. He didn't like being old, and being a painting means he can be old without having an old body."

"Hmm... I'll figure out if paintings are people and if they are I'm gonna fix that."

"How are you going to fix that? Paint magical sculptures, maybe? Make the canvas bigger? Use better paint?"

"I dunno, I'll figure it out! But magic, probably."

"Wizards do most things by magic, you should probably get used to it. I don't think I've met someone this excited about magic in a while. Well, doing magic, yeah, but not...everything."

"Have you met many muggleborns? Or informed muggles?"

"I'm not sure I ever met a Muggle. I guess you've met at least one?"

"Well yeah my parents, and everyone I've ever interacted with before."

"Really? That's amazing! What was that like?"

He sporfles. "I haven't interacted with many magical people to compare! Lots less robes, people think the world follows the laws of physics?"

"What are the laws of physics?"

"Like... if you ignore magic, everything follows these strict equations all the time. Like, everything falls at the same acceleration no matter how heavy it is, and this happens because of a force called 'gravity' that bends spacetime in a certain specific way, and there is very precise mathematics that makes lots of predictions about stuff like the movements of planets and stars due to gravity and stuff."

"Oh. A lot of that is probably true, Astronomy probably has the same stuff about planets and things. You should talk to Professor Sinistra." 

"Yeah. But magic breaks all of it, like how I'm a metamorphmagus so I can change my shape and even get heavier or lighter when I do, and like, where does all that mass go?"

"I don't know, I'm not the expert on magic or laws of physics. What do you mean, mass?"

"When magic isn't around, there are some laws of physics that are called laws of conservation. Like, if a thing weighs two kilograms and you burn it, then its weight plus the weight of all the smoke it produced must remain at two kilograms. And they've tested that, and there are some other laws of physics they discovered that imply that one, so it's pretty set in stone by now... except—"

"—I'm lighter when I'm a girl and I definitely did not breathe out all that mass."

"Maybe the magic can store the mass somewhere? There are Extension Charms...a bag can hold more things than it should."

Back to boy. "Yeah, maybe, but where? And even that, if it doesn't break the laws of physics, bends them like no one's business—like the Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, that makes no sense."

"There are supposed to be laws of Transfiguration. And I think Potions will probably be interesting to you." 

"Yeah! I read the whole Transfiguration book and Charms and I'm almost through Potions!"