At her assent, Alfred started the chant, speaking slowly and enunciating deliberately. He paused so that she could follow. It took a few repetitions before there was any movement in the fabric, but it did eventually start to slowly patch itself back together. The seam was a little crooked, but it was serviceable. He let her work through about an inch of the tear before he stopped chanting, letting her go through the words on her own.

"You have to focus harder on wandless magic than you do with a wand," he told her. "A wand is like a... like a conduit, or a funnel. When you have a wand you don't have to work as hard to make something happen, because the wand does half the work. Without it, you have to really — I mean, can you feel it?" he asked, watching her face. "Can you sort of feel the magic inside you? I don't know — maybe it's just my imagination, but when I was learning this I felt like I was... more aware of what I was doing, I guess. More intentional about things than I was when I was learning at Hogwarts. It's like you have this whole well of magic in you and when you have a wand, it just sort of taps into it and you don't have to think about it. But when you don't, you have to do that, yourself. You have to reach in and grab it and pull it out, and push it into whatever you're trying to do. Can you feel that?"