"I wonder if it works on demonic animals."

"It wouldn't be very hard to fetch some real ones, if no."

"Yeah, but it would be interesting if it didn't."

"I can try it if you want."

Cam produces a demonic mouse.

He tries to make it run around.

It runs around. "Well, that's convenient," says Cam. "All right, so I want it to be my puppet and not do what it would otherwise do, namely flop over and overtax its mental capacity breathing and twitching its whiskers at the same time, is that it?"

"Yeah -" and he demonstrates the set of wand movements repeatedly, slowly and then at proper speed - once you have a spell down you can cut corners there but not when you're learning it.

Wand motions are annoyingly finicky. Cam practices that a lot. And then: this mouse is his and he made it and it will do what he wants. "Imperio."

The mouse will run around. Timothy beams at him. "People are harder - which is one reason to expect Maiar and Valar to be yet harder - but there you go, you have mind control powers, good job."

"I feel special." The mouse takes a bow. "Was the demonic mouse easier than an animal with more of a mind?"

"I didn't notice a difference but I wasn't paying a ton of attention - I expect demonic people'd never throw you off, obviously, and most people throw you off when you're starting out..."

"Do you have feelings about me getting ahold of Ister and the like?"

"By all means go for it - it doesn't even do anything for you, does it, and anyway we're trying to get Melkor dead and I find myself very vehemently in favor of anything that accomplishes that -"

"It does not. And yep."

Hug. "It'll be very satisfying if this works and you can pop around ending them all."

"How breakable are wands?"

"I mean, you won't trip and snap them, but I'm sure a Vala could do it trivially. Can you consider it part of yourself hard enough?"

"It'd have to be attached or encased. Will it work like that?"

"Fully encased no, attached should be okay..."

"It might not work, it's more made of wood than most parts of my body, but I'll try stuff."

Nod. "Let me know when you want to try to kill your mouse."

"What's the mindset for that?"

"I finally got it down the day Minor died. It's just - this is unworthy of life, I want it erased -"

"Is that one harder on human targets, do you know?"