"Can you teach me a spell now that I have a wand?"

"Yes," she says. "Though there's restrictions on underage magic use outside of Hogwarts - still, the tracking spell for that isn't very smart, so it won't catch you using magic somewhere like this, and won't be in place until the summer after your first year."

"What's the point of that?"

"It's - a bit of a tangled mess, politically. Some of it's about safety, like preventing children from casting magic unsupervised. Some of it's about secrecy, like preventing children from revealing magic to muggles. Some of it's about disadvantaging muggleborns, since the restrictions are much easier to get around for those with magical families. Some of it's simply bureaucracy being incredibly stupid."

"I see."

"The safety concerns are legitimate - magic is an incredibly dangerous force, even if it's somewhat harder to accidentally hurt yourself than to hurt others, though there are far better ways to manage that than 'no magic outside of school.' The secrecy concerns... Given that there's international treaties about keeping the existence of magic secret, it is politically advantageous to not break those first."

"Can't you just teach that attention-deflection charm first? Or do some ritual version of it?"

"It's advanced charm work most first years can't manage, for one, though it'd probably be possible to anchor to the students themselves or something they wear - or at least their houses. Still, politicians aren't known for trusting children's judgement."

"...I guess I've known a few children with questionable judgement."

"Certainly not yourself."

Smile.

She grins back.

"But, digression aside - I can certainly teach you a basic spell or two. Do you have an idea of what types of things you want to learn?"

"Levitation?"

"You do seem to have a knack for it. Alright."

Yesss.

She laughs, a little, then walks Ellie through the basic theory, wand motion, and incantation for Wingardium Leviosa - one of the earliest spells she'll be learning in her Charms class, actually. ("Be careful about your focus, with this, since it's easy to send things flying, and overloads can set your target on fire... Usually your black walnut wand will be better for charms, but I'd actually recommend the fir, here - the extra precision will help...")

Professor Reynolds sets out a pen for Ellie to practice on.

That's not slightly alarming at all, that levitation can set things on fire.

She takes out the fir wand and carefully mimics the motion, pointing at the pen. "Wingardium Leviosa."

It shivers and - rises a teensy bit, wobbling, before flipping over and falling.

Professor Reynolds corrects her pronunciation a bit - her motion's pretty accurate. "This can be harder to do on purpose, ironically... There's a trick to visualization, though, and to being confident it'll work..." (She walks Ellie through some of the visualization.)

It's a lot of moving parts to keep track of. Still, she almost got it already, so she can do this.

It rises! Not entirely smoothly, and not very far, but it also doesn't immediately fall back down.

"Congratulations," Professor Reynolds says.

"I did it!"

"You did! Rather impressive, Miss Potter."

"Thank you, Professor."

Soft smile. "Sadly, I can't give points to your school house - Hogwarts has four houses that compete each year to earn the most 'points,' and exceptional academic achievement is a common reason for points."

"What are the houses?"