Sam lifted her gaze from her lump of clay as her housemate joined her, and gave him a smile and nod to confirm he'd got her name correct. "Hey Jace," she replied, before squidging the clay between her fingers again. No gloves for her, nope. She was straight in there.

Having made little clay dishes as present before, Sam had naturally started making one of those again. First rolling it into a very long sausage, and then starting to coil it up. But then, where was the excitement in that? And what did a dish have to do with Defence Against the Dark Arts.

It was around the point of the first question that Sam decided to restart, working the clay back into a big lump and kneading as she listened to all of the answers. Seemed everything was covered, so she started to think about what else she could make.

A dark creature seemed the most obvious, but of the ones she could think of right now - the basilisk, acromantula and grindylow - the first seemed a bit too easy (just being a sausage), and the others rather inconvenient to mould. She needed a compromise.

...which is why she started making an elephant. It matched the grey of the clay, and it was a creature. Completely logical, yes?!

So focused was Sam on this new endeavour, that she'd barely noticed that it was now the visitor talking, until she'd looked up from her clay to brush some of the fringe from her eyes and leaving a grey smear across her forehead in the process.

She wasn't at all surprised to hear that he was a practitioner of dark magic; Sam had grown up on the fringe of Knockturn Alley, she knew worse. The mention of Azkaban got a frown though, bringing forward thoughts she'd rather ignore. Whilst her Pa hadn't done anything dark per say to be sent there, it was still a fact he was there. Sigh.

...and finally, a question. Sam raised her hand. "I know for most jinxes you need to maintain eye contact," she answered. "But I feel like there's an extra aspect to the intent also. It needs to have a 'who' and a 'why' rather than just a 'what'." Did that make sense?