"Dittany," he says. "It's not dangerous or anything. Has a bunch of uses in healing potions and stuff. The teacher was vague about some of them. But we learned which parts are called what, and how to tell if they're okay, and some stuff about how to take care of the plant properly."

"I like dittany. It's easy to shred for potions."

Feral shrugs. "So, that."

"Do you think you're going to keep wandlessly firing things on purpose even though it might make your thing worse?"

"Of course I am," he says. "I like wandlessly firing things, and I'd sure be fucked if I couldn't do it anymore and I lost my wand and got into trouble."

"Maybe you should get another wand, like I have? Or maybe there's other wandless magic you could learn that would be just as useful."

"I like my wand," he says. "I don't want another one. Anyway, same difference, having two wands just means you have two things somebody can take away. Wandless fire isn't something anybody can take away from me."

"But what about my second idea?"

He shrugs. "Wandless magic like what? Where am I going to find it, what's it going to do, how am I going to learn it, can I kill somebody with it?"

"I don't know, I'd have to look it up. I just want to know if I should even bother."

"Sure," he says. "But I might not bother learning it unless you find something good."

"I would already not bother bringing you anything if you couldn't learn it, but does it have to be able to kill someone?"

He considers. "Nah. I'd rather have something that could, but I won't not learn something useful just 'cause it's not deadly."

"The idea is to find something that will make you okay with not wandlessly firing things."

"Sure," he says, "and the more other useful fun wandless magic I have, the less I'll need to use fire."

"Okay. I'll see what I can turn up. I'm worried you're going to fail things and then we won't have classes with you anymore."

He snorts.

"What?"

"Nothing," he says. "It's just weird that somebody wants to have classes with me."

"We're friends," Bella says.

"Guess so," laughs Feral.

"Did you not notice till just now?"

"Well, sure," he says. "You read my mind, remember?"

"I remember. You've had a while to get used to it, why is it weird?"

He starts a sentence, stops before the first syllable, does that a few more times, then settles on: "I didn't know being friends came with wanting to be in my classes."