Karen answers: "I think gold and a few other things - I know food's one - are things you can't conjure up and can't or shouldn't transfigure things into. Or, not real gold, anyway, leprechauns can make fake gold that vanishes later."

"Magic has some really weird limitations," he comments. "The book also mentioned something called a 'Philosopher's Stone' that could turn base metals into gold, but it said that the only known maker of this Stone thing died a few years ago and that the Stone was destroyed." He looks up from his notepad, pocketing it. "I wonder why no one ever made another one of it? Apparently that's not a hard limit of magic, if there's some workaround."

"Well, is that really useful anyway? If you tried to sell all that gold you'd have angry goblins after you and the value would drop anyway. Maybe it's hard and nobody bothers."

"If I tried to sell all that gold in a wizarding market, maybe, but I bet I could sell enough to muggles to be rich enough that any other projects of mine would be significantly easier, and no richer. But in any case, my interest is mostly academic, circumventing rules of magic sounds fun."

"I think I'm starting to see why you think you were about evenly divided between Ravenclaw and Slytherin," Willow comments innocently.

Sadde grins. "The Hat agreed, it was pretty surprised when I chose to go to Slytherin anyway."

"Why'd you do that?"

"Because it sounded fun!" he says brightly. "You should've seen the look on this one Slytherin boy's face this morning when he caught me talking to Turvy and I told him I was muggleborn."

"...Well, I hope that works out for you. You don't get to change your mind later."

He shrugs. "I've been mostly hanging out with you three anyway. And there's this one other boy our age who doesn't seem to mind I'm a muggleborn. He's mostly—confused about a lot of stuff, really. His name's Jacob. The other girls our age seem nice, too."

"I'd worry more about the older years."

"I'm pretty used to bullies who are older than me. Granted, not like five years older, and without magic, but this time I can hit back with magic as well! And I can do it with magic they're not expecting, even! Like yesterday, when I was in the Wing, I think I creeped out this Hufflepuff kid by doing this." And he does the lizard tongue-flick thing to illustrate.

Willow eeps and giggles.

"Did the Hufflepuff kid hex you?"

He laughs. "No, Madam Pomfrey was poking him with a wand and I think he thought it was just his imagination."

"So why did you want to freak him out?"

He shrugs. "Because it'd be funny? It caused him mild temporary discomfort that he'll likely forget if he hasn't already, and made me giggle then and now, and I'll probably giggle about it some more in the future."

"Okay, now I'm more worried about you being in Slytherin. People in other Houses are going to be predisposed not to assume anything you do is intended harmlessly."

"Mmm, even if most things I do are in fact actively helpful? Make it more than twice as many things, since apparently people tend to focus on a bad thing about twice as much as they focus on an equivalent good thing."

"I think a reputation as being a minor trickster figure even if you're usually trying to be a benevolent one is dangerous if you're a Slytherin. We know you, but random Hufflepuffs don't, and Gryffindors might think they do, which is worse."

He giggles. "You know, the idea of Gryffindors randomly hexing me in the hallways is kinda funny. It'll probably not be as funny when it actually happens, though. How about I'm only a trickster to Slytherins and benevolent to non-Slytherins? Or at least, Slytherins I dislike, Jacob's okay."

"I mean, I don't think other Slytherins are necessarily safe either, but it's better, anyway."

"Yeah sure, but I think they're bound to hex me in the hallways anyway just because I'm muggleborn, so I get to keep my fun at only a slight increase in the total amount of hexing going on."

"Yeah."

"And at least some types of hexing are bound to be fun, right? It can't all be blood-pouring-out-of-your-ears or people wouldn't do them ever at all, and I like frustrating bullies so the thought of not minding the milder ones when they try to bully me and get confused when it fails is funny all on its own. I speak from experience here," he says, and giggles some more.