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I'm pretty sure no one's ever said that about me. [ Kate flashes Sirius a grin in profile, but her attention follows his wand, and the cloud that spills from it above their heads. ]

You can make a tent? You mean you can build one out of stuff that's around or you can just make one magically appear out of thin air? I haven't really gotten a sense of the limits of your kind of magic yet.

[First time for everything, Kate. He does an ehhh one-shouldered shrug as he works, to indicate as much. The cloud seems quite content to grow on its own now, and Sirius drops his arm for a moment, surveying his handiwork with a slightly critical eye.]

I can do either, really. Transfiguration is easier than anything else, here. It's not really that it's got limits, it's just that there's loads of ways to get to do what you want to do, you've just got to work out how to get there. With some small exceptions.

[Satisfied with the cloud's progress, he gives it a little nod. Right.]

Now, it's easier if we get a seasonable cold going in here. Shall I conjure up some mittens for you, or will you manage without?

Sure, mittens. Why not?

[ Kate pretty clearly just wants to see more magic and as much as she's keeping an eye on the cloud she's also watching Sirius work with open curiosity, eyes a little narrowed but not in skepticism, just thought. ]

So transfiguration is just you can turn a thing into anything else? There's no limit on, like, the parts having to exist within a certain range or anything? Like even if there's no yarn on board you can make mittens? Or is someone's sweater in their locker somewhere unraveling to make this happen?

Not exactly. Transfiguration is all about exchanges. Things want to keep the shape that they're in, right? A mouse wants to stay a mouse. He doesn't want to be a teacup. So when you transfigure a mouse to a teacup, he'll always look a little like a mouse, 'cos that's what he wants to be. And he's always going to want to go back to being a mouse, so he won't stay a teacup for very long.

[He reaches behind him, somewhat absently, and tugs the blanket off of the bed toward him as he talks. With his wand, he severs the corner of the blanket--a silent invisible burn--and the same spell, then, to bisect that corner, so he's got two pieces.]

But a mouse transfigured to a mole, that might be easier. A mouse transfigured to a very tiny furry jumper--also easy. A blanket, transfigured to a mitten--

[He taps the severed corner of one bit of blanket, and it curls up on itself, rolls into a narrow tube--and then one end inflates, puffing up into a space for a hand--a tube for the thumb, sealed at the top--]

So easy it barely takes any work at all.

[ Kate's fascination is obvious, she's all but set her chin on her hands to listen, rapt. When the blanket turns itself into a mitten she grins and reaches out to take it, wiggling fingers inside. ]

That's so cool. And so useful, especially around here. Are there limits, like-- do you have to have seen a thing before, or need to know how it works? Like if I asked you to turn some pile of plastic into a laptop, could you? --I don't need one, just hypothetically.

[lap... top...

All these years aboard the Tranquility have given Sirius a rough working knowledge of a great many muggle concepts, even weirdo future concepts, but, strangely, laptop is not one of them. Or else they were called something else. He shifts his wand as the second mitten begins to grow out of that second bit of blanket, and scratches at his nose with his thumbnail.]

Lap Tops are probably too technologyery to be made with magic. [A bit too formal on 'Lap Top', a bit too enthusiastic with the suffixes on 'technologyery', but he says it smoothly enough that he could nearly pass.] I dunno, no one's ever asked for that sort of thing before. If I knew the bits that went in it, I could make the inner bits, probably.

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