"It is reasonable not to want werewolf neighbors and this sucks a ton for werewolves and everyone involved dies if we set the balance wrong and is accordingly really really upset if anyone tries tipping it."

"Sure, and it's reasonable to want your neighbors to be fully legally responsible for the behavior of daeva they summon so they're incentivized to get the bindings right, and that leaves daeva with no legal responsibilities of our own... and if you get it wrong an inhabited planet gets sucked into a black hole..."

"Is bad incentives really the reason people get the bindings wrong?"

"Not explicitly, but they do double-check them better when they'll be on the hook if something happens."

"There seem like a lot of ways to achieve that which aren't 'daeva have no legal responsibility' - "

"And yet this is the one we landed on. And there are ways to deal with the werewolf problem, too, like, 'werewolves are obliged to lock themselves up when they're going to turn into out of control wolves, everybody gets over themselves the rest of the month'."

"It is hard to restrain yourself well enough. Not impossible but resource-intensive. Maybe the future has a solution there, though, don't know -

- are, uh, the events of the war known in Hell and your native Earth -"

"I'm not sure about Hell. It depends on how much various demon curators have been conjuring for the news. News does not get from Hell to Earth particularly efficiently because demons are typically summoned with a binding that doesn't let us talk, and there haven't been Hell concordances recently to let it filter to Heaven or Fairyland or Limbo yet either."

"It going to make things worse?"

"Make what worse? Daeva rights? Not sure, probably not much. Could even have the opposite effect if policymakers decide that only people commit atrocities or something."

"- oh, I guess you can't bring back the elephants. They'll be so upset."

Snort. "Yep. Also Valinor had dinosaurs, although at least those laid eggs, I can do eggs."

"What's a dinosaur?"

"Extinct clade of animals known to Earths only in fossil form."

"Huh. Okay. You can steal some of our elephants, if the new Valinor wants them."

"They might be challenging to get through the door."

"I have never shrunk an elephant but have no reason to expect it'd be damaging to their health."

"Well, then, by all means. But we'll have to be careful, elephants have close-knit family relationships."

"Hogwarts teaches transfiguration by experimentation on small mammals. Just so you know. Start with mice, get proficient with kittens."

"This will complicate your relations with 2179 Earth but I really have other things I'm more inclined to worry about."

"We don't even have a way to get there yet, do we?"

"No, so it's really not a big deal."

"The immunologists won't get upset?"

"I was thinking of demon immunologists most of whom are at least twice my age."

"Okay. I'll stop transfiguring kittens, I do in fact care a lot about what people on another planet think, but it's not among the first ten fights I want to pick. I am glad you have old demon acquaintances."

"What do you even transfigure kittens into?"

"Dishware, usually. If you can untransfigure it and still have a live kitten then you're doing the precision work correctly."

"Dishware. Huh. Are kittens actually harder than rodents -?"

"No - new species are harder than familiar ones, larger creatures harder than smaller ones, but mammals are all about as complicated."

"Gotcha. How many kitten casualties are there usually?"

"Uh, it takes most students a couple tries and there're always one or two who can't get it for the life of them. - even if future people feel very strongly about kittens I assume they feel more strongly about slavery, right, I can stop personally and mysteriously hint that scrupulous avoidance of kitten death will advantage people but it'd be a silly battle to pick beyond that -"

"I mean, you ask people to rank a list, sure, if they hear about the kittens first they maybe make that their life mission and don't drop it in the face of other priorities."

"- really."

"Animal lovers. Very susceptible to kittens. On account of they're so cute."

"I will advise everyone not to mention the kittens to people from 2179."

"Rodents are more defensible."

"Which is to say, less cute?"

"That and they're prey animals and some animal lovers aren't that hypocritical."

"- okay. Dare I hope we can safely continue chopping up Mandrakes?"

"Dunno, what's that?"

"They're plants with roots that look - and cry and so forth - like human children."

"You may need to maneuver around champions of mandrakes even if you are very sure they are nothing more than eerie facsimiles."

"We're not really very sure. I looked into it for a while and they're definitely not smarter than human babies, which is good enough for me, but -"

"Infanticide is also unpopular but abortion is okay but mostly on bodily autonomy grounds..."

"Maybe you have better antidotes and we can phase the Mandrakes out."

"That's what they're for? Antidotes to what?"

"All kinds of magical effects - undoing all kinds of curses and transfigurations, petrification, most kinds of poisoning -"

"We do not have anything on deck for the curses, transfiguration, or petrification, for, uh, obvious reasons. I mean, angels can do transfiguration and petrification type things but that's different."

"I wonder if our counters work on things that angels changed."

"Could get awkward, since if an angel turns somebody to stone they are then just stone, i.e. dead and waking up in Limbo."

"In that case it would be unwise to try saving them. ...is there a way you can check if we've got a Limbo -"

"If conjuration therefrom works normally, but it is notable that people trying to conjure the complete works of Limbo and specifying no further than that have only ever got our Limbo..."

"Which only has people from your world, I assume they've checked that -"

"Oh yeah it would've been noticed if there were extras."

"Conjuration works fine from our world, and the one you fought the war in?"

"Name something which is definitely not magic which probably exists only in your world and not mine. But yeah, works in Arda all right."

"Transfiguration essay next to my bed?"

...essay? Essay.

"So odds are we don't have a Limbo or anything akin to it."

"Could just not be called that and we could've missed it."

"- but then you could get posthumous works, right -"

"Name somebody dead who'd definitely write were it at all possible."

"Our grandmother - on my father's side -"

Posthumous works thereof -? "Nothing. Which means only that you don't have an afterlife where people can produce nonmagical writing to which your grandmother went, not anything stronger than that, but it's suggestive."

Nod. "Okay. We should draw up a list of experiments - of which the most urgent are whether our magic can harm you, since if it can't we have a lot more freedom to do everything else -"

"Except for the part where some of it's intractable to actually test."

"It's mostly not intractable so much as 'debatably a good idea'."

"You were guessing fifty-fifty on one of those curses that can't be cast without malicious intent."

"Yeah, I can think of ways to check that but they are all very debatably a good idea."

"Do any of them not involve finding someone with malicious intent and inviting them to mind-control me."

"Yes, some of them involve altering my beliefs temporarily. Or same with a daeva who would be less bothered by it and less difficult to contain if it worked."

"I'm not actually sure how I'd bet on bindings versus mind control curse."

"And Limboites have the invulnerability without powers but we have no way to go and chat with them." 

"I can send them letters but not a wizard."

"There might not be a safe way to check it. Which - is a problem, because it would not surprise me at all if it were attempted."

"Is there some standard defense besides 'don't be somebody people want to mind-control'?"

"You can fight it off with practice. The problem is that arrangements to practice are hard to come by because of the 'life sentence for casting it on another person' thing."

"Seems like a coordination failure."

"Little bit. To be fair, right now there are considered no legitimate reasons to learn it, if 'practice' were a legitimate reason to learn it then lots more people would know it."

"...it takes a substantial time investment to pick up a spell and you learn to turn kittens into dishes?"

"Transfiguration is the practice of turning things into other things without, say, a particular kittens-to-dishes spell; if you master the principles which kittens-to-dishes is good practice at, then you can do arbitrary transfigurations. Charms and curses you mostly learn a spell and practice that spell."

"Which takes how long?"

"Depends on the spell, but days to months, typically."

"Okay then."

"Much longer than that to rederive them just from knowing they exist, so controls on knowledge of the Imperius probably makes sense."

"Where would one pick it up?"

"Personal instruction from someone else who knows it, usually."

"So all I need to worry about are evil intellectual dynasties which like collecting powerful magic, grand."

"Most people go through their whole lives without ever getting Imperiused, but it seems like it's worth being paranoid."

"I am not most people."

"That too."

"We could still make lots of progress if I never actually ventured into your world."

"Might in fact be the safest way, yep."

"Maybe I could terraform your Mars. I always wanted to terraform Mars."

"Um?"

"I guess it's not the most efficient use of my time."

"I just haven't the faintest idea what terraforming is."

"Putting air and water and plants and stuff down on it."

"Oooooh. I take it there's also a means to get there with Muggle technology -"

"Yeah, sure. Takes a few days, it's far away."