"Maybe we can point Theodore's alt there."

"That the next youngest after Michael?"

"Yeah. You haven't met him yet because he'd want a demon too and I am less confident that one ends well."

"And his alt has a pet Maia."

"Who can talk to animals, apparently. Revelation'd love him and it might be good for him but."

"But I should probably not be involved."

"Yeah. If you have some masochistic impulse to know what he'd say I can just tell you."

"I'll let you know if I come over all self-destructive."

"And I'll probably decline to help if you do, so."

"It would be such a well-reasoned self-destruction though. I'd have charts."

"I would like to register in advance my skepticism of the charts. You'd have to be doing some seriously misleading accounting."

"I probably won't actually though. Seems silly."

"Won't self-destruct? No, I don't think so. Your opinion of yourself is too anchored in reasonable things like how much you have accomplished and have the potential to accomplish and how good at being correct you are and so on. I think I might, if it were me, but that's a thing wrong with me, the same thing wrong with me that made my alt worry I'd take love potions..."

"Was he wrong?"

"I was going to take over the world. I wasn't going to wrong anyone aside from me along the way. The rest of the details were sort of fill-in-as-you-go."

"Miranda took the assertion plus the information that you had a crush on me and the thing where we're alts and was briefly concerned but your alt said that wasn't ever on the table. I also figure you know Minor likes her. She doesn't; I'm not sure she'd appreciate it till fourteenish."

"Oh - what, no, that'd definitely count as wronging people other than me, there are women who wouldn't really care but she would and also yes Minor wrote our father within I think two months of starting at Hogwarts saying 'Miranda is smart and right about things most of the time and has the best insights on our Charms experiments and invented an alphabet, is that how you pick a girl to marry?' -

- our father said you should wait and see if you also wanted to kiss her, which is I think what he is waiting for."

"It's kinda cute."

"It's adorable. Michael was I think envious that he didn't think of picking the girl he was going to marry in the first two months of classes but that wouldn't have gone nearly as well."

"I mean, he still has to convince Miranda at some point."

"And he may well fail or either of them may end up inconveniently oriented but he can at least consult lots of people on how to give it a proper attempt."

"I wonder if he can pull off the half an hour of compliments thing."

"Does it count for less if he writes them up in advance?"

"No, it's different but in a way orthogonal to quality."

"Then I bet he can manage. - or if all half an hour gets one is an adorable smile, how long should he make it if he wants her to kiss him -"