Instructor Bren's after-class conversation lasted eleven minutes.It was not a disciplinary hearing. It was not a formal review. It was a young instructor standing across a laboratory table from a first-year student with an untouched potion bowl between them, trying to ask a question he had not yet fully formed. "The vapor from the contaminated vial," Instructor Bren said. "It destabilized the two bowls on either side of yours.""Yes," Kael said."Cassia Morne's bowl cracked at the base. The second-year observer's mixture inverted the reagent binding and produced a neutral waste compound." Instructor Bren looked at the bowl. "Yours stabilized into a variant formula with a silver resonance trace.""Yes," Kael said.Instructor Bren looked and asked him. "Did you do anything to the mixture between the contamination and the stabilization?""No," Kael said."Did you add anything?""No," Kael said."Did you alter the heat, the stirring sequence, or the reagent proportions?""No," Kael said.