There's a hum. The air feels somehow thicker, more present. David pokes James in the forehead.

It isn't the Cruciatus. It's got that going for it. But it feels like something fundamental, something foundational within him, is being burned and blasted and ripped apart inch by inch. It spreads through him, like molten iron in his blood, for what feels like much longer than the few seconds it takes for David to withdraw.

"One of these days I suspect you're actually going to regret something," David says, shaking out his hand. 

Okay this time he pulls away and falls over.

He does however straighten back up and grin widely again. "I wanna learn how to do that!"

"Well, I'll tell the research healers to get right on figuring out how to inflict it on people. They so rarely get to do that, you know, people usually want things cured."

"Well I guess it would be good if you could figure out how to stop it. At least sometimes. Kissing people is nice."

"So I'm told."

An extravagantly tiny blonde child wearing muggle clothing and a military surplus rucksack opens the door and clambers in. "Hello hello - may I sit here please, you seem friendly and I would not like to sit in an empty compartment -"

"I can't imagine a more conveniently sized fellow traveler. Feel free."

"Would that make you inconveniently-sized?" he asks David before turning to the tiny one. "Hello, I'm James."

"I am manifestly inconvenient. And my name is David," he adds to Tintin.

"But I am sure you will be magnificent when it is time to retrieve our luggage! Tintin," he introduces himself. "Henri Saint-Martin is my Christian name, but I do not often call myself that."

"What's a Christian name?" asks James. He also fetches another chocolate frog from his robes. "Want one? Also what are you wearing? —oh wait are you a muggleborn?"

"I am muggleborn, or at least that is what they tell me! A Christian name is one's first name, and I am wearing short trousers and a shirt, and I would very much like a chocolate even if it is frog-shaped."

"How many of those do you have?"

Here's a chocolate. "It jumps. Once. Make sure you don't lose it. Why is it called a Christian name, I thought Christian was a name?" To David: "I think I have another ten... I have other stuff, too."

"It jumps. Wizards have such ideas. Ah, it is the name you are given at baptism, the name you have in the eyes of God, thus your Christian name. I suppose it is not really my Christian name, since I have not found a priest who would baptise me again, but if God is paying any attention then He knows that my name is Henri, and if He is stupid enough not to know that then I see no reason to care."

Tintin opens the box one-handed, keeping his other hand by the opening, and snatches the frog from the air as it jumps. He bites it in half mercilessly.

"Who's God? What's a priest?"

"...I am not sure I am qualified for this," Tintin warns. "God is... the one who created the world, and who Christians worship. I suppose He is also worshipped by the Musulmans and the Jews, but it is mostly the Christians. Priests are people who have learned a great deal about God, and who tell people what He wants, and perform various rituals like weddings and baptisms."

"Someone created the world?"

"It is what the nuns told me. It seems the kind of thing that must have happened at some point, though I am not sure they are right in the details. - nuns are like female priests, but instead of always telling people what God wants they do more useful things sometimes, like taking care of orphans."

"I thought the world just... always existed. You know."

"I suppose it is possible! The nuns would say that nothing can be without first being created, but frankly that begs the question of who created God, and they have never had a satisfactory answer to that."

"How would the nuns even know that though."

"Supposedly many years ago God told some men wandering through the desert, the Jews, and they wrote a very long and very tedious book about it. And then He had a son, and sent the son down to the same desert, and His son wrote some additions to the book which were mostly also very tedious. And then the Jews killed His son, very unpleasantly, and for some reason this made God forgive the sins of humanity, except that we must still be very careful not to sin. It is a very confusing religion."

"What's 'sin'?"