"Yup! It doesn't usually do anything to time, though, that must be something about this place. And I can't go to places I haven't been before except by luck - if I'm making a portal that'll go to a random place, I can set what I want in terms of light and temperature and air and things, but it's like... if you're traveling in a cave and you're going someplace you know, you know what turns to make to get there, but if you make different turns from that, you'll definitely wind up someplace but you don't know where until you get there? It's like that, kind of, except I have to pick all the turns when I cast the spell, without getting to see what each part does."

"Can you teach me?" she asks, the other questions—not forgotten, but neglected for the time being.

"I can teach it, but someone with my kind of magic - even just teleportation - can do a lot of damage to the people around them, particularly if those people aren't expecting it and don't know how to defend themselves. If there's a problem you're thinking about trying to solve, I might be able to help without actually making you a mage, though."

"Oh, damage's bad. Why can it do a lot of damage? Do I need to learn a lot of non-teleportation-related things or do I get the potential to learn those things or something?"

"...let me start from the beginning, I've gotten a little bit ahead of myself. With my kind of magic, I can cast on things, like the twine, but I can also cast on people, and casting on people is a little bit different. With something that isn't living, as soon as the thing is broken," she demonstrates by peeling a strand of fluff off of the twine, "the spell breaks, too." She holds it up for Sadde to see, and then wraps it around her wrist again while she talks. "But with people or animals, that doesn't happen; if I cast a spell on someone, it's on them forever. And the spell is whatever I set it to be - a lot of my tribemates have spells where if they want to be back in our cave, they teleport there, neat as you please, but they only go where they want to because that's what I made the spell to do; I could just as easily cast one that, say, sent them to the edge of a cliff when they wanted to go home, or back to the cave every time they sneezed. I wouldn't, ever, but there's nothing in the magic that would stop me."

"Oh. Yeah, that's worrying. And I understand you probably can't trust me with that. There wasn't any particular problem I wanted to solve with that, though, I just really wanted to be able to teleport places. And have more, different magic, that's always a plus. Oh, yeah, I have magic as well—and time's paused so I guess I can cast it here!" She reaches inside her robes for her wand, swishes it and flicks, calls "Wingardium Leviosa!" and now her chocolate milk's levitating. "Technically I'm going to learn how to apparate—that's personal teleportation—when I'm seventeen, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work across universes."

Nod. "It's not impossible that you could convince me to teach you, but, yes, my kind of magic isn't the sort of thing it's a good idea to teach to strangers. I could cast spells on you, if you wanted, though, that's safer at least from my perspective." She peers at the floating milk. "That's pretty neat. My kind of magic mostly can't do effects at a distance like that."

"That's interesting! Mine's mostly effects at a distance." She lowers the milk. "There are exceptions, like Lumos," wand tip lighted up, "Nox," and no longer, "but most stuff is like the levitation spell. Bublio," she calls and soap bubbles that don't burst when you poke them start leaving the tip of her wand. "A lot of the stuff is hexes and jinxes, though, and most of the non-distance stuff is Transfiguration." She touches her wand to her glass of milk, and it slowly turns into a wooden cup.

The kobold looks briefly displeased at the soap bubbles, but when blowing a puff of air at one turns out to be effective at making it shoo, she relaxes again. "Yeah, your magic is very different than mine - it's a lot more active while it's working; mine just kind of exists. ...can you see it directly, actually? I can, yours and mine and the background stuff, I have a spell for that."

"See it directly? No, not really. I mean, some magic has visible effects, like Lumos and Bublio" (she doesn't cast them this time) "but most spells don't. What does it look like?"

"Enspelled things appear to glow, basically. Different sorts of magic can have different colors, depending on how the spell is cast - magic-detection is one of the kinds of magic I don't know as much about, so the colors aren't very meaningful, but it's still useful sometimes. And for your magic, I can see how it goes from your wand and moves around the thing you're casting on, or stays with the things it's made."

"Oh! That's really interesting. Hmm... I wonder what you see when I—"

"—do this?"

The kobold blinks, and spends a few moments peering at Sadde. "That's definitely some magic, yep. Are those both natural forms, or both magic, or something else? You've been little bit magic all the time, and you still are, but I don't know if that's got anything to do with this; it might not, it didn't change when you did."

"Both natural forms is a good way of describing it, I guess. I don't have to actually pay attention or spend energy or anything to keep a form. Some forms are uncomfortable to keep, like clothes that don't fit very well, to varying degrees. Like age, if I change my age it feels uncomfortable, more the longer I keep it or the farther that age is from my actual age. Species, too." Duck beak! Then human mouth. "I can't change species completely, but I can adopt certain characteristics from other species at will." Kobold ears!

Huh. That's.... kinda weird. (She is not going to say that.) "Is that something your whole species can do?"

"No, that's a thing very very few people can do. In fact most of my species is not capable of magic, only a tiny minority is, and of that tiny minority, only a tiny minority can do this at will. Everyone else has to rely on spells with their wands or potions. Also magic tends to be hereditary, in that most humans with magic—wixen—have children with magic even if their spouses aren't magical—are Muggles. Then some wixen parents have non-magical children, called Squibs, and some muggle parents have wixen children, called muggleborns. Yours truly is one."

"That sounds like it'd make things really complicated."

"In multiple related and relatedly annoying ways, yes. I'm working on it."

She chuckles. "Good. And that sounds like the sort of project I might be willing to help with, too."

"Really? Now I'm interested. How do you plan to do that?"

"I don't know. If it was just me, and I wanted to try to fix it on my own anyway, the first thing I'd need to do would be to just watch for a while, to figure out what the exact problems are and what's causing them and if there's anything I can do to fix those causes - which there may or may not be, especially with me being an outsider - or anything I can do to to make the problems hurt people less. But it sounds like you already have a plan, so I'd probably just help with that, once I knew enough about your plan and your world to know that it's a good plan and not going to hurt anyone unnecessarily. Or not do anything; it isn't my world, after all."

"Well I'd accept help, but I'm not entirely sure someone who doesn't look human would help with that particular problem. Non-human sapients have been a productive part of society for a while and human purebloods—that's wixen who come from a wixen family—still look down on them and treat them as inferior. Mostly I've been trying to combat muggleborn hate by being particularly awesome, networking, and making bigots' lives more miserable. I'll probably want to work in the Ministry—that's our government—to try to change relevant laws. And of course there's still my standing project of eliminating death and disease but that one's easier."

The kobold goes still as Sadde explains how nonhumans in his world are treated, and doesn't quite listen to the rest of what he's saying. "Well, good luck, then." (Quietly and without comment, she takes her bracelet off and perhaps begins casting on it - her eyes are open, unlike last time, and she already had a far-away look, so it's really not clear, perhaps she's just holding it.)

"Er. Did I say something wrong? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend."