"You can hit on as many people of all species and genders as you please but I will probably not hang around listening. Especially not if they are better at music than me; if you hit on people who are not as good at music as me I might be content to amusedly watch."

"All right. Well, he hasn't taken me shopping, so there's that."

"Also his brother thinks he plans to spend a century moping."

"My home world was recently fed into a black hole."

"You should know that most demons really wouldn't do that," Amriac says, "not a planet with mortals on it I mean, occasionally planets in Hell get holed but that's nothing we can't fix."

"I don't take issue with demons as a species. I don't even take issue with the specific situation, I helped Cam look over the wording of the agreement. But I am still grieving."

"Okay," says Amriac, draping herself over Michael.

He sighs and then kisses her hair.

He looks away.

"Right, that's a thing, isn't it," he says. And kisses her hair again, not that his alt will appreciate it. 

Giggle.

"I'll go upstairs," he says, and rather sweeps off; Michael takes notes on the posture.

Eventually, Cam wakes up. This is signified with a sigh and his wing sliding where it's draped over Timothy.

Snuggle. "Wrote everyone with Dementor safety rules. I don't think they'll help you - most people don't have as bad stuff - and I don't think it could possibly happen again but at least it'll get dealt with faster if it does."

"That's good." Sigh again. Stretch, rearrange, recuddle. "Do you still feel the need to have a moral crisis, I could probably produce intelligent counterpoints now."

"Your answer last night mostly satisfied me that you'd feel comfortable saying if I'd wronged you, which was more my worry than the series of events per se..."

"You were under two different mind-altering spells and being manipulated by my alt. Without those conditions you literally couldn't cast the spell, I think I'm safe."

"Not exactly what I mean but yes, that is true."

"What do you mean?"

"- if a version of the Imperius that didn't require malicious intent towards the victim existed I would learn it, and I would take it just as seriously as I take the evil version, and I'd happily give up the ability to do it to you specifically if magic let you do that kind of thing but it's not, really, that I was worried you'd be worried I'd mind-control you casually? It's that I was worried that if you did feel like I should have done something differently - kept you stunned for a day while we tried to think of a gentler solution, or something, it'd come to mind and then you wouldn't say it because you would be reluctant to say that I ought to behave more ethically towards you, or that you were wronged..."

"That would only remotely resemble the nature of the thing I have if you were mind-controlling me specifically to prevent me from doing things. That being unrelated to your motive I would be definitely entitled to complain."

"Good." Kiss. "I don't expect it to ever come up again - I really really will not let it ever come up again - but - impaired snuggles okay, impaired kissing no? -"

"I wouldn't have particularly objected to impaired kissing but the conflicting instructions were actually really confusing."

"Sorry about that, I hadn't realized that being subconsciously conflicted would even do that - I really didn't want to, to - I'd agreed in advance and still felt vaguely bothered about it afterwards -"

"Should I have gotten you an advanced sex ed book."

"Does it have things about advance directives for mind-altering magic?"

"Not for mind-altering magic, but, like, people like Ister exist and it is considered irresponsible or at least high-trust risky stuff to get too deep into that genre without there being an out, and 'maybe you will learn to throw off this curse in a timely manner' would not meet anyone's standards for that."

"I didn't think it was okay, that's why I didn't want to kiss you -"

"...my point is that advance agreement or no you are entitled to anything from vague botherment to full-fledged post-traumatic stress disorder, not that it's a good idea to cultivate that if you don't actually have it but it wouldn't be weird or anything."

" - when I'm around Dementors I hear an argument my parents had over me when I was four. It's really just vague botherment, and I'd do it again, I just - I apologize for sending you conflicting signals, I didn't realize I was doing it or that it'd be unpleasant."

Snuggle. "It's not a big deal."

Snuggle. "Exams went well, for whatever that's worth."

"All the kittens survived?"

"My kitten survived. They might kill the cats afterwards, I'm really not sure, 1802 has more cats than we know what to do with."

"It becomes customary to sterilize one's pets eventually."

"That'd solve it. Can we perchance have some breakfast?"

"Course, what do you want?"

"Something exotic and surprising, I don't know."

"...hang on, let me look up some dates in food innovation."

Some date-looking-up later there are chocolate chip pancakes and kiwis.

Chocolate is so delightful!!! Pancakes are so weird! Kiwis are - he considers them carefully and then makes one sprout a head and wings and a fluffy tail and take bumbling flight around the room - "they look like small furry animals, see -"

"Actually they share a name with a flightless bird, not a furry critter." He produces a picture rather than an actual kiwi bird.

"Awww." He can make his kiwifruit look more like a kiwi bird. He leaves it flying around, then lets it split neatly open and skin itself. Munch. "Oooh, they're tart."

"Yes they are." Munch.

And after a while they can head downstairs. 

"Oh, hello, you came inside."

They are planning the excursion to Ireland! He has been animating little model dragons for her.

They're so cuuuuute!

"It took Amriac a while to notice that Elf me was not just oblivious but actually disinterested," he says. Look, this one breathes fire. "Am I kind of annoying?"

"I haven't found you annoying since you were five but I'm probably biased."

"Well I should be biased on the topic of my alt but he's kind of annoying."

"Ah, that. I think it's the Elfiness. I have occasionally been annoyed with mine as well - he is not being at all nice to Fredrick -"

"I would've angled for a threesome," Amriac protests.

"What's he doing to Fredrick?" asks Cam.

"- he's just automatically settled into treating him as a trusted confidante who will naturally have lots to say on this two-hundred-page package of humanitarian interventions and Fredrick clearly has such a crush on him and he was definitely serious about the century of moping and should be endeavoring harder to be less crushable."

"...yeah kind of a dick move."

"Yup."

"Is, like, everyone secretly gay, is that why I have dated all the girls in Hogwarts."

"Don't you bring it up with him."

"If everyone were secretly gay presumably this would include the girls of Hogwarts?"

"Girls come in gay? What do they even do -"

"...this level of ignorance had not previously occurred to me," says Cam.

"He's not bad in bed for someone who'd ask that," says Amriac.

"Didn't ask."

"Let's just go back upstairs."

Stairs. Ascension.

"I will probably say something to my alt but I'm not sure what."

"Can't really help you there, I don't think."

"I am not clear on whether a fuller account of 'they were sniping at each other' would help me but I suppose I can also ask my alt for that - it's also plausibly partially a cultural difference but he's a me, he should have noticed the cultural difference -"

"I didn't anticipate a need for detailed notes on the sniping, unfortunately, so I don't have anything more comprehensive than 'god that's annoying'."

"I'm not sure if I'd be less or more vaguely annoyed if I thought my alt was going to go for it."

"More annoyed less vague?" suggests Cam.

"Sounds about right. It's not that consulting Fredrick on humanitarian projects is wrong it's just that I can't shake the feeling he ought to be able to do it more optimally, whereas if I didn't think he meant it on the moping I could have real complaints."

Nod.

"Anyway."

They were working on quite a few projects. They get to work on them.

One of those projects is getting every Dementor left in the world. "Can you conjure for them?"

"...might be able to get the cloaks or something even if the Dementors are too magic..." He tries. He gets a bunch of little dioramas of Hogwarts before he stops short of making more surroundings-of-Dementors. They're missing chunks, some of them, presumably too magic.

" - so we can get some fairies and go fetch them all, then."

"I bet Miranda would be happy to kill them too but yes, the fairy method works."

"Trust me, I'd love to have Miranda murder them all but that is probably wrong when we have a nonlethal solution."

"Yeah. It's possible they'd rather die than starve indefinitely in space but I'm not going to ask them."

"I could look into how the Ministry negotiates with them and figure out a way to ask, but we'll default to not-murder. Are there any other demons interested in being mind-controlled, I don't want to bore Ister - do you mind if I keep doing that -"

"You'd have takers. I don't know, are you kinking on it as much as he is?"

"Not that much but not, like, zero."

"So maybe don't summon him up recreationally or make a point of giving all his friends a turn but it's fine for boxing invisible monsters."

"Okay." Interested demons off the mail server?

Several. Ister positively reviewed the experience in uncomfortable detail.

Well, it's going to be a couple day's work conjuring for and fetching and boxing all of the Dementors in the world. He gives Cam a name - "can I have a circle? And one for a fairy, too -"

"Random fairy or do you want to try Treeleess again?"

"I'll ask her first, she was great."

Circles!

Miscellaneous demon interested in being mind-controlled? - he should have mentioned to Cam that if it was a girl he probably wouldn't find it interesting in the slightest.

Either Cam guessed or he randomly selected a girl. She's got a long saw-edged tail and curly horns. "Hi," she says shyly.

"Hi! I can do the mind-control magic Ister's been telling people about, I have a project that'll take a few days, you probably won't be able to stop me once we start but if you want check-ins every eight hours or so I can probably do that, are you interested?"

"- check-ins would be good. Um, yes."

"Okay. Imperio."

And she dazedly smiles.

And is Treeleess free?

Doesn't answer her summons.

Ah well. Random fairy?

Here's one!

"Hi! I'm Timothy. I'm taking these horrible nightmare monsters and putting them somewhere far away in space, we already successfully pulled this off in one country but there are more of them. Are you interested?"

"...nightmare monsters?"

"You can't see them, they're magic, we put them in boxes and then you just move the boxes. But they feed on positive emotions and make everyone in their immediate vicinity miserable."

"Th...that sounds bad... uh, are they going to give me nightmares or do they not work on daeva -?"