Karen doesn't read into it. "You're welcome."

He grins, and starts concocting nefarious plans. Because nefarious plans concocted at breakfast are clearly the best nefarious plans.

"There goes my attempt to reform you."

"Why do you like getting into trouble so much anyway?"

"I'm sure there's some Freudian explanation but I have no idea what it is. Hm, well, thinking about it it may have something to do with the years of bullying and the defence mechanisms created, where I'd become scarier than the bullies were and more frustrating than their other targets until they either gave up or something bad like the Hulk incident happened. I mean, I don't want to cause trouble per se, I just think it's funny to be a wild card and I really really dislike bullies."

"Hulk incident?"

"There was this one time this bully was, well, bullying me, calling me freak and he-she and other worse stuff, but he pushed some very specific buttons he was not supposed to know about, and I was not quite able to not, erm, morph into something very scary and then hit him a lot." He doesn't blush, but he looks suitably embarrassed. "That's the one time I'm very certain the Ministry actually erased a lot of time from the minds of a lot of people. And, er, that won't happen again, promise. I don't, er, have temper problems anymore."

"That's... good..."

He purses his lips. "It's true!" he says, for what it's worth.

Willow pats his back again. "I believe you," she says, kindly.

"I'm not sure why this all adds up to deliberately making room in your schedule to provoke people."

"If you say so."

"Yeah, I do. And I usually try to offset that by being extra-nice to other random people. This has helped before! Not as much as I'd like, but yeah."

"I think this might just make you seem weird and inconsistent and constantly up to something."

"Mmm, I don't think I'm inconsistent. I can consistently predict the kinds of stuff I'm going to do, usually! Like, I think if someone had told me beforehand that Rufus would mention my parents' situation to me I would probably have noticed this would make me unreasonably angry and then taken steps to prevent myself from being angry. The surprise was a decisive factor, there. And I can totally predict that I will sometimes tongue-flick at random people just to watch them go 'eep.'"

"I said seem."

"Hmm. I'm not entirely sure that's an outcome I dislike."

"I didn't think it was, but it sounds inconvenient to me, especially if you ever want to have more friends than the three of us."

"Why would I need more, you three are awesome," he giggles.

"Sounds like you know what you're doing, I guess."

He laughs. "Besides, I can totally get more friends. I predict Jacob and I will become friends byyyyyy the end of the year. Jacob's another firstie Slytherin, by the way."

"Is he the one who came and told us you were jinxed?"

"Ooh he might just be! I was wondering how you'd found out. Oh man he is in so much trouble, I'd better help him out. Tentative prediction change: friends before the winter holidays."