"Okay."

The flat's apparently in three rough layers - the floo room taking up the full width, facing the street, then the stairs and kitchen, then the bathroom and Professor Reynold's room. They're on the third floor - stairs go up to the loft, or down to the street (past the family in the first two floors, who Ellie might sometimes see in the stairwell). The professor mentions a good sized park in walking distance.

The kitchen's small, though Professor Reynolds has expanded the inside of the cabinets so there's actually any pantry space. No washer or dryer - she does her laundry by magic.

Magic! Both saving space and adding more.

"It's pretty convenient. Makes being a pack rat in a city apartment much more feasible, honestly."

"I bet."

Nod. "Anything you want to do for the rest of today?"

"Maybe practice magic more? And some more reading."

"Sure. Do you want to learn a new spell? Right now you're mostly to the point you just need to keep practicing the levitation charm, which you can do alone - maybe as breaks between chapters."

"Sure."

"It's less my specialty, but it might help you to start on the basics of transfiguration." Small smile. "Especially as is foundational to the Animagus transformation."

"Okay."

Transfiguration! This is a lot more free form, and a lot more reliant on extremely accurate visualization. It's easiest to go between two things you can make a conceptual, mental link between - but that obviously varies by person. (Professor Reynolds does note than many textbooks are written to a normalized audience, assuming links that're culturally obvious to wizards - meaning muggle-raised students might struggle more with those specific exercises. Common links are 'puns,' 'function,' 'materials,' 'appearance'...)

The conceptual link with the Animagus transformation is one state of the self to another state of the self, as the Animagus form is thought to represent a wizard's soul. It often helps, there, if you don't visualize the biological details too much...

Biology is too gooey.

Smile. "One of the problems is that if you don't visualize it, magic will handle it for you - but trying to do the detail work yourself can make room for error."

"So a little bit of knowledge is more dangerous than knowing nothing or everything."

"Exactly so. Though you can usually focus away from areas your knowledge is incomplete."

Nod.

"You might want to take up meditation... I found it helped me a lot with the mindsets needed for magic."

"How do I do that?"

She walks Ellie through the basics - counting breaths, centering yourself... (Magic's influenced pretty strongly by emotion, as well as visualization - and meditation's good for awareness and control of both.)

She'll add it to her practice schedule.

"It does add up to quite a lot, doesn't it?"

"Good thing I've got some free time before school starts."

She nods. "You're using it well, so far."

Smile.