Gideon fixed the pipe with a wave of his wand, then turned his attention to the water. Quite a bit had spurted out in the short time the pipe had been burst, but luckily it hadn't spread to anything except the floor behind the counter, which made it an easy thing to fix. By the time he'd finished that and turned his attention back towards the shop, Billie had caught up with him. The expression on her face was one he wasn't sure he'd ever seen before, and he hoped he didn't have cause to see it again any time soon. The suggestion, then, had not gone over well. He had expected as much, of course. If Billie had any actual inclination to put on a nice dress and grow her hair out and learn to dance with young men, she would have mentioned it herself at some point during the two years they'd known each other. He didn't really need to hear her insistence that she was a boy in order to understand what she was thinking.

"Except you aren't," he pointed out as gently as he could. The last thing he wanted to do was start a fight when they had serious matters to discuss, but that much was just a fact. No matter what she wanted, or what he might want for her, the circumstances of her life remained unchanged, and the Hogwarts record would reflect that even if no one else in the world knew. "And it might not be obvious now, but it likely will be, sooner or later," he continued. (Did Billie know about puberty? He hoped she had at least some inkling, because if he had to add all of that into this conversation he might become paralyzed with awkwardness before he managed to get through it all).

With a frown, Gideon pocketed his wand and crossed his arms loosely in front of him. "I'd meant to wait until after we found your wand to bring this up," he said with a sigh. It was obviously a little late for that; she'd set her last wand down and was standing between him and the rest of his stock, and he seemed to have earned her full attention with his last comment.