The scenario she described was so amusing that Ford almost forgot about the mental scorekeeping he'd been doing all night — almost. In any case, his smile and chuckle in response were genuine. The mental image of a young woman commanding a hoard of small woodland creatures was quite amusing, though he couldn't help but poke fun at the wild inaccuracy of it: giving people the ability to turn into animals at will hardly meant they would be any more likely to command than they otherwise would be, and so far no one had persuaded the diverse population of Hogwarts to turn into one militant swarm.

"I assume, then, that a second arm of your research is finding spells to persuade animagi to do your bidding?" he teased. "If you've already mastered that, you'll have to share your secrets with me."

He had added this last remark without thinking it through; it was only supposed to be something funny to say, and on one level it seemed to work in that context. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, though, Ford couldn't help overthinking them. Did it sound too much like he had a vested reason to care about persuading animagi to do things? Would she guess that he knew someone who had undertaken the process in real life? Merlin, if she asked him about it he was going to have to tell her about Ty, and he had been very pointedly avoiding even the vaguest allusions to Tycho in literally every conversation since he'd been confronted by Noble.

"I never met Professor Foxwood," he said, jumping in quickly enough that she wouldn't have time to respond to what he'd just said. "He must have been after I graduated. I was — pretty mediocre at Transfiguration, and that's probably being too generous," he said with a self-deprecating smile — distract, distract, distract and hope that she didn't want to linger on his earlier comment. "Maybe I can blame a poor teacher, if the one who came next was excellent."

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