He smiles.

"People shouldn't mess with my things. Anybody else makes trouble with you like that, you can tell me about it."

She smiles shyly at him, then a little brighter. "Oh! I, um, I found something again--I had to hide it, but--" and she reaches into her clothes and pulls out a slightly crumpled piece of paper. It's a picture of someone being vivisected that looks like it might have fallen out of an anatomy book.

...He grins.

"Thanks!" he says, taking it.

"You're welcome!" she says.

It is a good picture. He keeps it inside the front cover of his poetry book so it'll uncrumple a bit.

That works!

In a little while longer he manages to make his mechanical frog.

Good. He doesn't carry it around with him all the time like his drakelet, but he keeps it by his bed and pets it sometimes and is very proud of it.

And then Savaross would like it confirmed that he hasn't just memorized it by rote, he can apply the principles to these related magical effects.

He can totally do that. He is good at magic.

Excellent. Now let's look at healing magic; not very exciting, to be sure, but invaluable if you get injured or need more time to get information or compliance out of someone than their natural physical limits would allow.

Healing magic sounds very useful! He practices on squirrels.

Healing magic is super complicated. He's going to need a lot of practice.

His supply of squirrels is not limited.

He's going to need to get a little more creative about catching them, though; squirrels have survival instincts and learning capabilities.

The supply of stupid squirrels is getting a little thin. He adjusts his approach accordingly.

Then he will have plenty of experimental subjects. It's still going to take him a good while to get reliably good at healing.

The solution to this is to work harder.

Then he should be able to heal basic wounds within a month, and earn dessert in so doing.

That is his due, because he is the best.

There are other parts of healing! Don't ask where Savaross is getting these diseased animals to practice curing disease on, just work on it, preferably while immobilizing them so the rabid ones don't bite.

He can do that. Once he has healed the diseased animals can he also practice other things on them?

Sure; they're common animals like foxes and raccoons and so on; once they're not diseased there's nothing special about them.

Great! It's always nice to have some variety for his experiments.

It takes him less than a week to master basic infectious diseases; after that he can start on broken bones.

Ooh, broken bones.