"Yes, I want to make phoenixes too, but somehow I think they may count as living things."

Paint, crushed eggshells, a prism, salt, chicken feathers, an eyedropper, pine needles, an acorn, garlic cloves, sharp bits of wire, a knife...

This time Slughorn calls on him first, when it's time to go over their ideas.

"I'm compleeeetely making it all up, here, but what I wanted was a prismatic egg, or something, so. I was thinking I'd do something like completely cover the egg in paint, and then use enough the same colour of paint to sorta glue the crushed eggshells on the prism? And also paint it. So there'd be a prism covered with crushed eggshells painted the same colour as the actual egg. And then, erm, something to indicate that I want to make the prism be inside the egg and shaped like an egg? What I thought was waiting until the paint dried, and then filling the eyedropper with something, maybe water, then holding the prism above the egg, and dropping whatever on the prism so that it'd fall from it to the egg. Erm, yeah, that's it." And he grins.

"Haphazard," says Slughorn. "But not actually likely to be dangerous. You may try it provided your 'whatever' is water and you choose a color other than red."

"Why, what's the problem with red?"

"You might attract a result which had more to do with blood," says Slughorn.

"Oh. Fair, I guess," and partially answers one of my questions.

Miranda's decided to aim for the decorated wooden egg, but she wants a nested wooden egg, so she's incorporated a lot of repetitive steps and will be miming carving the shape of the egg with the knife around the shell. She is planning to roll the shell in various paint colors all mixed up for, hopefully, divinatory style results on her Matroyshka eggs. Slughorn approves her procedure and moves on.

So Sadde starts covering his prism and his eggshells in blue paint, using enough of it for the shells to get glued onto it and also completely covered by it.

"What exactly are you envisioning a prismatic egg as being?"

"I dunno! Sorta like an egg-shaped... crystal thing? Maybe with lots of, like, inner facets or something to divide light. I dunno, really, I wanna see!"

"You might get something else, your procedure's kind of random."

Shrug. "This is the closest thing to science we've had yet, it's fun."

"Because we all know that science is about making weird art projects and seeing what unrelated objects they turn into?"

"And then writing that down and trying it again until you get it right, in order to generalise principles from that!"

"It's still not that much like science." Carve carve.

Miranda rolls her eggshell gently in paint droplets. "No control group, sample sizes of one..."

"Well, it's not a psychology experiment, I'm pretty sure—" Pause. Blink. He raises a hand.

"Mr Woods?"

"Are these processes deterministic? Like, if I try the same thing twice, do I always get the same result?"

"If you do, yes. If someone else does, not necessarily, although often."

"Hmm, is that a mindset thing? If I try the same thing twice but wanting or thinking of different results do I get different things?"

"It seems not to be anything as ephemeral as that. Although there are occasional reports of someone getting different results if they perform a procedure twice with a few decades between attempts."

"That's very interesting," he says, writing it all down. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

He turns to Miranda. "So, as I was saying, this is deterministic so controlled trials aren't really all that necessary."

"As you were saying, because you totally knew that."

"Well I'd assumed it, and questioned it as soon as it came to my conscious attention and I turned out to be right, so!" He sticks out his tongue at her. "Besides, I'd totally have tried doing the same thing many times."

"Really? Exactly the same? Over and over?"

"Well, I'd've asked Professor Slughorn before trying the second time, probably."

"I'm just not ascribing you quite the patience, when you could instead try radically different things."

"I can be patient! I can totally be patient! Just watch me patiently waiting for the paint to dry, here!"

"While conducting a conversation..."

"If you want me to shut up..."

"Not especially. I'm not pretending to be patient."

"I'm not pretending!" he protests. "I just don't have a reason to be patient right now, but I could totally be patient for stuff I really wanted. Like making Slytherin nice again! Or making everyone immortal."

"There's a difference between being patient and not happening to succeed immediately!"

"Yes but both of those things are things I haven't even tried doing yet! The Slytherin thing is an ongoing project that will take yeeeears, and the immortal thing we won't even really try for a good long while."

"I still think it's different."

The paint is dry! Except under the egg, so he turns it around and paints the rest. "And even if it is I still think I'd be able to do it."

"If you say so."

"Do you think you wouldn't? If it turned out there weren't clever tricks like 'asking the Professor about it' available?"

"My actions might resemble patience. My mental state wouldn't be."

"...I'm not sure I get it."

"I think patient people are sort of fundamentally okay with waiting in a way I'm not."

"Hmm. No I'm not that thing. That's not what I meant with it. I meant the other thing."

"I figured."

"Well, what's even the point of being... emotionally... patient like that? That sounds terribly boring."

"It seems like it may be more comfortable than our way of doing things in times of boredom."

"I guess," he says dubiously.

And Sadde drops water from the prism to the egg and tries cracking it to see what he got. "By the way, there's an implication there from what Slughorn said to our little project."

"Oh?"

Upon cracking the egg, quite a lot of blue paint starts leaking from it, and Sadde tries to find a place he can deposit an eggful of paint without making a big(ger) mess. Upon doing so he finishes cracking it and a much tinier blue glass egg falls from it. The glass is itself tinted and not painted. "Huh. This is actually pretty neat." He looks up at Miranda again. "Anyway, apparently the metaphor thing is kinda personal so it's very possible that in addition to finding something meaningful you have to be the kind of person that would produce something?"

"Right. But there's no obvious way to find out, and there's different ways to make stuff, so it might be that anybody can make anything if they find the right set of steps."

"Yeah, no, I'm taking that as encouragement, it's another piece of the 'how come no one else ever managed to do it' puzzle that makes it easier to understand while simultaneously not making our attempt doomed from the start."

"Wait, really? Can I try other things too?"

"Minor variants on procedures you have tried in class only, which I can verify are safe in less than a minute," Slughorn hastens to clarify.

"Oh. Yeah okay I guess. Oh, and we had a couple of questions!"

"Yes, Mr. Woods?"

"So the first thing is, how exactly does this metaphor part work? Like, is it a personal metaphor or some sort of consensus amongst everyone or some combination?"

"It seems likeliest to be a combination, although for obvious reasons it's difficult to examine directly."

"Does learning new things affect it on the same level waiting a few decades does? Like, suppose someone wanted to use a plastic model of an atom for something, but then they learn that in fact that model resembles an atom no more than a chihuahua does, would that change anything?"

"...Not knowing what a plastic model of an atom might be, I can't comment on the example, but all the examples I know of involved decades of interim between attempts. I've never heard of an alchemic ritual in more continuous use by a practitioner changing."

"Filed under things-to-test, then, somehow. Also what about wands? Can they be used as part of the metaphor? Can they be transformed?"

"I think some alchemists have experimented with the use of wands but can't off the top of my head recall any successful attested rituals known to involve them."

"Are they likely to be more dangerous than other rituals, or something?"

"Possibly. Wands can behave unpredictably, especially when used by people not attuned to them - and most people would not choose to give up their wand - or when destroyed."

"What kinds of safety precautions should we take when actually experimenting with this, which will of course only happen after at least the full two years this course lasts and we're not about to go trying it every other weekend?"

Sigh. "Perhaps I should tell you in two years."

"But then if we do end up being insane enough to try it before the two years are up, we won't actually know what to do and may end up exploding much more things than were strictly necessary."

Heavy mustache-ruffling sigh. "Well, if you were thusly insane, you would at least be advised to make sure the wand is never pointed at anything you don't wish exploded, or near anything you don't wish exploded, and does not begin the ritual damaged in any core-exposing way."

He writes this all down, grinning. "Are there any other general precautions for alchemical experimentation? We really aren't gonna experiment anytime soon, but knowing things in advance tends to be useful."

"Have your procedure written down in advance and do not make things up midstream," Slughorn says. "Do not rely on an untested ritual to contain high temperatures or volatile effects by itself and use appropriate crucibles, shields, gloves, etcetera. Avoid using live animals as a target effect or an ingredient until you are exquisitely confident in your general alchemical intuitions and to a lesser extent the same goes for live plants."

Write write. "What's likely to go horribly wrong using live plants? And are the things that are likely to go horribly wrong with live animals horribly wronger than torturing innocent animals?"

"Yes," says Slughorn dryly, "they can be, although even if they couldn't the advice would stand. Living things in general add a substantial element of unpredictability to a new ritual and may result in difficult-to-kill undesirable magical life."

Or, alternatively, difficult-to-kill desirable magical life. He writes something to that effect down. "Thank you, Professor, you're very helpful! Alchemy's fun."

"It's always rewarding to pique interest in a young mind," says Slughorn dryly, and he dismisses them.

"Well that was fun," he says, admiring his glass thing.

"Mm-hm."

"Bless you."

"Tryouts! Are you trying out? I'm trying out. There was a poster in my dorm about it!"

"Ooh! I didn't see! I wanna try out too!"

"I don't think so. I'm better on a broom than on the ground but catching things is not my strong suit even if the game weren't badly designed."

"I like watching more than playing. I'm not that good."

"Well you can only become good by practising!"

"The game may be badly designed but I get to throw evil metal balls at people, it's almost as if someone decided in advance to invent a position with me in mind!"

"I don't like playing enough to do it enough to get good," Karen asserts. "A little pickup every once in a while is okay. What's so great about batting Bludgers at people?"

Willow and—

—Sadde look at her like she's insane. "What's not great about it? You're the only player who can actually do something about the evil metal balls and you get to like strategise and protect your teammates and take everyone else out and the look on everyone's faces must be hilarious!"

"I'm sort of worried by your enthusiasm for violence."

"It's controlled violence! No one's gonna get seriously hurt with this much magic being thrown around, and it's a more direct outlet than psychologically pranking blood purists."

"People do get seriously hurt. They can get fixed after, but they do get seriously hurt."

"But they can get fixed after," she insists. "And being on a team selects for being willing to get seriously hurt to actually win. People get seriously hurt playing rugby, too!"

Miranda just looks disconcerted.

"Anywho," she says, "tryouts for Slytherin are tomorrow at nine, I think each House gets two hours on the Pitch. Dunno if you guys can come watch mine, or," she looks at Miranda, "if you'd want to."

"I'll see when ours is, and I'll try to come watch yours!"

"If you desperately want to be supervised, I can make time, but I wouldn't go on its merits."

"Tryouts are probably not as interesting as games."

"I think the Captains and Madam Hooch will be there supervising us."

"Cheered, then, whatever benefit you might derive from us attending." Shrug.

Shrug. "I like you guys, so I like it when we do stuff together."

"I'm not sure there's many affordances for interaction between Quidditch players and people in the stands."

"Well, no, but it's... Eh, nevermind me."

"Okay. Well, have fun, anyway."

Slytherin has the 9AM slot and Ravenclaw has the 3PM, so Willow shows up to cheer on her friend.

And the Slytherin team captain turns out to be someone whose underwear drawer Sadde's familiar with. "Woods," Nyle Arens greets Sadde with pursed lips.

"Arens," she greets him with a smile, and sits cross-legged on the grass.

He then proceeds to summarily ignore her until nine. One other person—a rather large fourth-year boy—arrives to try out for Beater, and four other people—Sadde's friend Jacob, a third-year, and two fourth-years—for Chaser.

At 9AM sharp he says, "As you all know, one of our Chasers and one of our Beaters graduated last year, and the Chaser—Urquhart, to those who've heard of him—was the previous captain. I'm captain now, and will be for the next three years. He was nice on you—I won't be. Which of you are trying out for Beater?"

Sadde and the fourth-year raise their hands.

Nyle raises a disbelieving eyebrow when he sees Sadde raise her hand but doesn't comment.

"Very well. We will start the day by running ten laps around the Pitch, and I do mean all of us—" The rest of the team—Astoria's the other Chaser, the Beater is a fifth-year girl called Gabrielle Dearborn, the Keeper is a sixth-year boy called Jeremy Prince, and the Seeker is a third-year girl called Ophelia Burke -, who had arrived earlier with Nyle, groans in response. He furrows his brows and folds his arms. "I'll hear no complaints, last year we lost to Hufflepuff."

The team groans again but gets up to obey.

Sadde's actually pretty in shape! She doesn't interact with her field operative Jacob, but she approaches the boy who's trying out for Beater, too. "Good luck!"

The boy narrows his eyes at Sadde suspiciously, but nods curtly, then starts running.

Well. Better than nothing, she supposes. She'll start jogging on her own, too. She has good relations with the third-year trying out for Chaser, and he gives her a smile as she passes by him.

Eventually they're all done, and Nyle's waiting for them in the middle, sweating a bit.

"So, I'm not going to go over the rules of Quidditch, if you don't know them you have no business being here. The four of you are going to each show me what you can do," he tells the prospective Chasers. He kicks the chest with the balls open, and the chained Bludgers immediately start twitching and trying to get out. "You be quiet," he snaps at them as he grabs the Quaffle. "Prince's going to Keep," and Jeremy mounts on his broom and flies towards the hoop, "and you're going to each try to score against him. You'll each have five minutes to score as much as you can. Any questions?"

Everyone shakes their heads.

Nyle gives Sadde a look which basically says 'I wasn't asking you,' then looks at the other four. He throws the Quaffle to Jacob and says, "You first." Jacob catches it, and Nyle almost imperceptibly nods in approval, even though the ball's enchanted to be less affected by gravity than it ought to be.

So Jacob takes off.

Prince's actually not bad, and the only prospective Chaser who actually scores is one of the fourth-years, using an elaborate feint and no small amount of luck. Nyle watches it all and congratulates the four of them as their five minutes end.

"Now, you two. I want you to try to score one goal per hoop each with a Bludger. Heads up." He releases two Bludgers and throws two bats at Sadde and the fourth-year.

Neither of them fumbles with the bats, and both of them are off the ground. The fourth-year, James Hosterforth, clearly has more experience than Sadde and takes to the bat instantly. Sadde herself has to hit her Bludger a few times before getting the hang of it, and by then James has already managed to bully his Bludger into one of his hoops. She quickly catches up, however, and seems to predict where the Bludger will turn to before it does. She scores her third goal only six seconds after James scores his, and flies back down to the middle of the Pitch, sweating and panting and grinning.

"Very good, the two of you," he says, and if his tone is a little bit disbelieving, well, no one would expect the second-year muggleborn to be any good at a wixen game, right? "We're going to have a mock match with two incomplete teams. Greengrass, Norton," (that being Jacob) "and Burberry" (one of the fourth-years) "will Chase for team one, Woods will Beat, and Prince will Keep. The other team will be me, Fawley," (the third-year) "and Shafiq" (the other fourth-year) "as Chasers, Dearborn and Hosterforth will Beat, and Burke will Seek. We'll play until Burke catches the Snitch. Questions?"

Sadde—

—shakes her head. Nyle already hates her, she doesn't want to give him any more cause not to pick her for the team.

No one else seems to have questions either. "Each team has ten minutes to go over formation and strategy." He mounts on his broom and leads his team to a trio of hoops, and Greengrass does the same to the other trio.

"So," she starts, "I've been watching you. Norton, you got good aim, but you need to make better use of your size and agility. Burberry, your aim's crap—"

"Hey, come on—"

"It's utter crap, but if you make the team you can work on it. For now, you pass the Quaffle, either to me or to Norton. Norton, your job is to not be Bludgered to death. If you think you got a clear shot at the goal and the other three aren't likely to steal the Quaffle from you and there's no Bludger coming, take it, but otherwise, wait for me and pass me the Quaffle, got it?"

Jacob nods.

"Good. Now, Woods, those were some beautiful moves, there. Hosterforth's more the stereotype of a Beater, but you play like you knew where the Bludger was gonna be."

"Thanks! Yeah, I kinda—"

"Na na na, you'll tell us what your secret is after you make the team, now you shut up and listen."

She nods.

"Good, you can listen sometimes, that's good to know, I wasn't sure. Anyway, like I said, beautiful moves, but you're not strong, and both Dearborn and Hosterforth are. They got range, Arens put them together because their team doesn't have a Keeper so the only way they can prevent a slaughter is by slaughtering us first. You will protect us. Do you understand that? No trying to be a hero and take Burke down, no revenge, you just keep those bloody Bludgers of our arses, understood?"

She nods again.

"Say 'yes, ma'am.'"

"Yes, ma'am."

Astoria squints at her and says, "Now repeat what I just told you to do."

"I am to protect all of you against the Bludgers. I am good at predicting where they will be but I am not strong, I am not to be a hero and try to take Burke down or get revenge."

"Can you generalise from that? What else are you not supposed to do?"

"I am not supposed to try to take any of them down. I am not supposed to go after the Bludgers no matter how tantalisingly close they are. I should stick to you and make sure you are all covered."

"Good. Remember, there are two Bludgers and they have two Beaters. And I don't know about Hosterforth but Dearborn will try to take Prince down, and that must not happen under any circumstances, understand?"

"Yes. What if it happens anyway?"

"It won't happen."

"Oh come on, you can't call yourself a Slytherin if you won't come up with contingency plans, you don't just assume everything works out fine!"

Burberry blinks and looks at her like she's just imparted infinite wisdom on her. Jacob's just used to it. Greengrass is, too, to some extent, but she eyes Sadde appraisingly nonetheless. Prince looks annoyed. "If Prince gets taken down," Astoria says, "you go on the offensive. Use your Bludger-whisperer powers to get them down, Arens is your priority target, but if you can distract the Beaters all the better. Don't bother with Burke unless you're really sure you'll succeed."

"I have to ask—do people get taken down that often normally?"

"Not permanently," she admits. "But temporary's good enough. I know you're a muggleborn—" Prince grimaces. "Prince I swear to Merlin I will fuck you up if you let this get in the way of us winning in any way, shape, or form, am I understood?" Prince nods glumly. "Very well, as I was saying, wixen are much sturdier, so are you, don't be afraid to crack some skulls."

Sadde raises a hand.

Astoria sighs. "Yes, Woods?"

"Why aren't you the Captain?"

She snorts. "I'm content being vice-Captain, suits me better. Now are there any more questions? Of the useful kind, please, Woods."

She shrugs and shakes her head.

The game proceeds more or less at this pace. Sadde's really good at predicting where the Bludger's going to be, even when it uses its limited intelligence to try to feint, and consequently Hosterforth and Dearborn are way less effective than they would otherwise be. Team two only manages to score twice before Burke catches the Snitch, and the final score is 140-170. When they land, they're all panting, sweaty, and more or less exhausted.

Arens doesn't lose his composure, though. "You all did very well," he says diplomatically, not looking at any one of them with particularly meaningful looks. "I will talk to Greengrass, we will both discuss your performance with the rest of the team, and we will be announcing our picks tonight after dinner. Thank you all for coming."

Willow arrives at the Great Hall with Sadde, chattering excitedly.

"How'd it go?"

"It was so cool! They had a mock match, and they had Sadde protecting everyone and she was awesome and the Bludgers were like 'rawr!' but Sadde was like 'nope!' and Arens was like 'gonna score!' but then Greengrass was like 'nope again!' and Sadde's Slytherin friend was really fast and it was awesome you two should've come."

"Our team had a Keeper and me but no Seeker, they had two Beaters and the Seeker, and we scored fourteen times but they scored twice and got the Snitch and the fact that the Snitch is a thing really annoys me."

"It's pretty dumb. You are going to be playing a dumb game. Get used to it."

"Yeah," she sighs. "I mean, if I make the team. I think I will, Hosterforth—that's the other person trying out for Beater—wasn't very good. But in any case on a normal game I'll be allowed to Bludger the other team's Seeker, so."

"I think that's like a maxim of the game, take out the Seeker."

"Yeah! But today my team didn't have a Seeker and had a Keeper, while theirs didn't have a Keeper but had the Seeker and two Beaters, so my job was protecting the rest of the team from Bludgers so they could actually score. And given that Seekers don't really need to do anything other than fly around, it's much easier for them to evade Bludgers. I think." Shrug.

"That's a weird way to lopside the teams, but I guess it makes sense if you have weird numbers of people trying out..."

"There were two of us trying for Beater, and four trying for Chaser. 'Parently they don't even have reserves."

"I think school teams often don't, they just sort of scramble if somebody's out."

"I think Ravenclaw has a reserve Seeker."

"If you're only going to have one reserve then in any sane game you'd want it to be a Chaser with three times the odds of needing them, but that's probably smart tactics," sighs Miranda.

"But well it's not like the Chasers actually make that much of a difference in the end for who wins the game, the Seeker is a single point of failure."

"Like I said, in any sane game."

"I contemplated coming up with some plot to convince people to get rid of the Snitch altogether but honestly even becoming an animagus is higher priority than that, and if I wanna get social capital there's a significant difference between being a trickster and claiming an international sport is absolutely insane in public."

"Yeah, pretty much. It's not worth the time."

"In the meantime I'll have fun with evil metal balls and with securing Slytherin the Inter-House Quidditch Cup so that everyone loves me. All part of my diabolical plan. Mwa ha ha."

"I'm not sure everyone will love you if you win the Quidditch Cup."

"Well, not everyone, but the ones who currently think I'm scum are the Slytherins, being generally awesome's good but being specifically awesome at something they care about in particular is better."

"You'll probably make Gryffindors mad at you. Maybe some of the other houses too. But less as a Beater than if you were a Seeker, probably."

"Yeah, and I'm trying to get Slytherins to not hate me and be less horrible, I'm definitely not equipped to fix whatever Gryffindor's problems are."

"Good luck."

"Thanks!"

Willow shrugs. "I just wanna play, even if the game's dumb it's still fun."

"I can't claim to understand the sentiment. Flying around is fun, but you can just do that without the evil balls and the mad scoring system."

"Flying around is fun, but flying around chasing evil balls is more. Chasing evil balls without the flying would already be fun, so it's only fair that they compound!"

"I think you two and Miranda just have different ideas of fun!"

"Probably!"

"I think that's been clear for about a year now."

"But I can see both sides because I'm so great."

"So great," she nods.

"I'll just have to console myself with being right."

"Of course, because this is a factual, objective matter."

"I'm glad we can agree on that much."

"Riiiight, anyway my tryout's at 3, and they need a Beater and a Keeper."

"I'll be there!"

"Have fun."

"I might actually go watch. But I'll probably have a book."

"The first parts are actually kinda boring," she admits.

"Well, they might not all do the tryouts the same way. But yeah."

"Probably won't, but I can't imagine spending however long watching people try to be good Keepers will be the most engrossing of activities."

"I liked watching you guys try to score with a Bludger."

"Yeah but the other part with Prince wasn't nearly as much fun."

Sadde's there! She also has a book. "Hiya."

"Hi!"

"Which book did you bring?"

"History textbook. I get through the class better if I read ahead before Binns gets his Binnsness on everything we're covering."

"His Binnsness," she giggles.

"Yes."

"I don't mind it much, but that might be a better idea, I should've thought of it."

"It's not too late to start."

"Yeah, no, I definitely will." She squints at the Pitch. "They're probably about to start. There's Willow," she says, pointing.

Willow is, indeed, there! There are three groups: one containing Willow and two other people, one containing another two people, and one being the actual current team.

Karen puts her book down to see if they're going to do anything interesting.

"Ouch," Sadde says after one time Willow misses and is unseated from her broom. The three of them are barely hovering above the ground, so it's not a huge fall, but still.

"She looks okay..."

"Yeah, she probably is."

Karen puts her book away and gets up.

Willow's waiting for them on the way back to the Castle, looking antsy. "What did you think? Slytherin's was much cooler than ours. I dunno if I made it, I dunno what they wanted."

"Well, I don't know either, but you looked pretty good to me!"

"Yeah, you did great! You definitely have more reach than I do."

"Yeah. Well, I had fun, anyway."

"Good!"

"When do you find out if you made the team?"

"Tomorrow morning!"

"I wonder why they need that long to decide."

"I think it's just to mess with us."

She giggles. "I dunno, maybe they're trying to figure out fit, or whether the person's style fits the team, or something?"

"I'd still think they could have that conversation in time to post the results in the common rooms after dinner."

"Mine will be posted after dinner."

"Everyone thinks Slytherin's evil, but it's the Ravenclaws that are the really twisted ones."

"Well, Sadde's were early," says Karen reasonably.

"And maybe Ravenclaws just spend a lot of time debating the merits of one or another player."

"I could see that."

"And from what I saw of the dynamics I'm not sure Arens listens to anyone other than Astoria, if he even listens to her, so maybe it's faster to decide."

"Is our team more democratic about it?"

"It looked that way, everyone had an opinion about what we should have to do."

"I wonder which actually works better for Quidditch teams."

"Well, last year I think Hufflepuff won, and before the war Harry Potter was part of the team, but apparently before he joined Slytherin used to win most of all Houses."

"But they might have been using different strategies, they'd have had all different captains in that time."

"Yeah, and I'm on the team this year so there's an obvious confounder for which strategy's best."

"Well, I'm on the other team this year so neener neener."

"And who knows who's on the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff ones, it's not just us."

"Of course but we're the best so it doesn't really matter."

Willow nods sagely.

Snort.

"My, I wouldn't know, but whoever it is I'm sure the newest Beater for the Ravenclaw Quidditch Team will have no trouble dealing with them!"

"Just don't hit each other directly with the bats, that's all I ask."

"What do you think we are, barbarians?"

"I'm sorry, what distinguishing characteristic did I miss?"

"Us civilised people don't hit other people, we make other things hit other people, or we hit other people indirectly."

"My mistake."

"It's okay, you stay around us long enough and you'll learn these things."

Giggle.

"Anyway," she says, looking at Miranda. "D'you wanna practice Patronuses today during free period?"

"Sure."

"How far did you two get?"

"I didn't really get much more than mist but the last time I tried was last year, and maybe there's something to do with age, or I could try some new memories."

"That's about how far I got too."

"Oh, well. If you guys manage it I might try."

"I just can't quite figure out why it's so hard."

"Granger said it was pretty idiosyncratic last year, but it kinda feels like, 'hey, you're not happy enough, try again!' Not the most heartening of thoughts."

"Well, maybe you'll figure it out when you're closer to the age people usually learn it?"

"Harry Potter learnt when he was thirteen. He cannot be that special at that many different things."

"I mean, they could be correlated, somehow, although it beats me how."

She starts listing. "Killed You-Know-Who when he was one. Star Quidditch player for Gryffindor. Figured out how to cast the Patronus when he was thirteen. Won the Tri-Wizard Tournament when he was fourteen, three years younger than his youngest peer. Killed You-Know-Who again when he was seventeen. Am I forgetting anything?"

"I think that's more or less it."

"Bleh. I dunno, maybe you have to have had horrible things happen to you so you can compare to your happier memories?"

"Because that's not horrible or anything."

"It's a little horrible. Should we try that? I don't think we've tried comparison type stuff."

"Maybe? I'd meant that maybe it won't work for us until something horrible enough happens to us that we can 'truly appreciate' happiness or something," she says, air-quoting with her fingers. "That'd explain why some people manage to go from nothing to full corporeal Patronus when they see a Dementor."

"Sure, but we could still give it a whirl juxtaposing whatever we've got. ...I'm not very well equipped there either, but, still."

"I'm a little bit well-equipped, if the bullying counts."

"It might. Depends how it works."

"Still kinda horrible."

"Not very, and it might be useful."

"Yeah, definitely be good to get something out of the bullying."

"If you say so."

"I mean it will have happened anyway, so."

"My point exactly!"

"It's just efficient."

"Either of you wanna come with?" she directs the question to Willow and Karen.

"I was planning on using free period to practise Charms, but I could do that around you two."

"I concentrate better when nobody's going 'expecto patronum' across the room repeatedly..."

"Oh, yeah, that's a good point, it could get distracting."

"But we'll be with you in spirit?"

"Alright. If I manage it I'll bother you with a Patronus message."

"I wonder if the Patronuses pass through all the intervening space. We might alarm people wandering the halls if we did that."

"I think Spukhafte said if the target's too far the Patronus just disappears and appears there. I wonder if it does FTL, it'd be just like magic to do FTL without telling anyone."

"Well, I don't think we can easily test that on Earth unless one of us goes to Australia and we have hyper-accurate clocks that work around magic."

"I wonder if Patronuses can be used to collect information other than relaying messages. Like, 'Go to this address then return and tell me what you see.'"

"If it does all that I'm definitely learning it."

"I feel like that's the sort of thing Professor Spukhafte would have known, unlike the FTL thing."

"That's true. ...I wonder if apparition is FTL. Actually I wonder what-all even goes on with apparition, from what I've read we go through some bizarre non-space to get there and it feels weird, so if there's some wormhole or something going on it'd totally be possible for it to be FTL, too."

"I think you can't Apparate all the way around the world in one go, so it'd be hard to tell if that was FTL at all."

"Oh. Well, that's a bummer."

"Yeah."

"We should write this down to test in the future, anyway, it could help with space colonisation."

Write write.

"If you use magic to colonise space that'd be, like, the best of both worlds. Sci-fi and fantasy!"

"I think things that happen in real life aren't either of those."

"Well, I'd have to relabel everything I grew up thinking was imaginary, it's easier to just call 'the things muggles don't know about' fantasy and 'the things muggles know about but can't do yet' sci-fi."

"I guess."

"But not everything you grew up thinking of as fantasy exists, and not everything you think of as sci-fi will ever exist, either, so it's still not a very good set of categories. Not that they're very good for categorising fiction anyway, soft sci-fi is basically science-themed fantasy."

Shrug. "I suppose, but I don't have a better idea."

"What's wrong with 'magic' and 'technology'?"

"Well, technology works, I guess, but 'magic' also includes a lot of stuff I still think doesn't exist."

"So does 'fantasy', that's half the problem."

"Exactly! That's why I don't have anything better, 'magic' is exactly the same as fantasy."

"No it's not, because 'fantasy' implies 'not reality'."

"...I gueeeeeess."

"It does, that's what it means! It's only even as a book genre that it means magic in particular."

"Well, okay, then, combining magic and technology still sounds cool. Magitech!"

"That would be neat."

"Enchanting spaceships to not need fuel. Terraforming planets using Transfiguration. Shielding charms to hold an atmosphere in place."

"But first we have to discover the hexons and phlogistons and so on."

"The who now?"

"Hypothesized magic-generated particles that interfere with technology."

"Oh." Pause. "That actually makes sense. I wonder if I could do magic around one of Dad's sensors and see if they pick anything up before they break."

"Well, I wonder that, too, but if you want to do it legally you have to wait until you're seventeen."

She sighs. "That's really annoying."

"It really is."

"Yeah, but thinking about it like that, it actually does make fundamental magical research more appealing, combining magic and technology would be great."

"I have no idea how long it takes to set up covert experiments, so maybe you should mention to your dad we want to do this in a few years, Willow."

"Yeah, I'll owl him about it!"

"I don't totally understand what her dad's stuff would... do."

"Normally, or when magic's around it?"

"Either way, I guess."

"I mean, it's not my dad's stuff, the really sensitive sensors are really huge, and CERN doesn't have one of those yet, they started building it last year. I dunno what'd happen with magic around it, but the way these things work is that like... The physicists have this model of how particles work and what they do, and then they're like, 'if we're right about this and we do that, then this will happen,' so they go ahead and do that and see if the thing happens. Like, throwing one particle at another and seeing how much energy's released, I guess, or something. And if they get it wrong they spend a while trying to figure out why and coming up with new things to test."

"We don't have anything resembling a model of how hypothesized phlogistons work..."

"Yeah, but we don't even actually have any observations in order to make a model. Like, we're told technology doesn't work here, but doesn't work how? Does it stop working and resume when away from here? Does it get fried? Does it do different things? Does it become sentient? If it gets fried, where does it get fried, how long does it take to get fried, what gets fried first, how much magic is enough, is long exposure to weak magic the same as short exposure to strong magic, et cetera."

"So, Willow, get your dad really excited about all these questions and promise him we'll make careful observations if he mails us gadgets."

"Deal!"

"Does Hogwarts even allow tech on the premises?"

"I don't think there's actually a rule against it, just, you know, it'll break so why would you."

"Hmm, we should probably make a list of gadgets to ask for."

"I think Mr. Maxwell will probably have a better idea than us about what things are easy to observe and cheap enough that he doesn't mind owling them to Hogwarts."

"I suppose so. I'm wondering if small things like electronic watches are affected or if it's only more sophisticated tech."

"And, um, being expensive really really isn't a problem for my family."

"Well... yes, but there might be a limit to how much he wants to spend on miniaturized electronics for twelve-year-olds to take apart in the hopes that we produce adequate notes."

"There probably is but we won't reach it. He'd be the last to say no to experimentation."

"Anyway, I'd rather let him design the experiment at least to start since he's a real scientist but as long as there's things we're curious about we may as well ask."

"Well, he says that the only difference between being a 'real scientist' and not is that real scientists need peer review."

"My point is he has practice."

"Yeah, I'll ask."

"Thanks!"

"Tell him to include different types of gadgets. Like, calculators and electronic watches and torches and stuff."

"Mmhm. A mobile phone, too."

"Er, yes, sure."

"Maybe with the batteries sent separately in case that helps, so we can watch the whole fizzling process."

"Mmhm."

"Anyway," says Miranda to Sadde, "Patronuses?"