"...It can happen," Severus says, a little reluctantly in defense of his godson and many of his students, if Holmes only knew it, "that children are made so strongly to feel their gifts taboo that they cannot think of using them."
Severus shakes his head, too, and points at the sights that Holmes's markers have and his don't. "The larger ones do a good bit of the work of aiming for their wielders; I wanted to be able to do it myself." He starts a little bit when Holmes says very, by itself, in so very nearly the same emphatic tone Eileen used to use to get his attention as a child, gives him a weirded out look, and shakes it off. He's inclined to resent the instructions, but takes Holmes at his word instead, and so says, "Yes. I'm accustomed to hold my weapon in perfect readiness to be used, but the release mechanisms on these are simpler, of course." He pauses. "The ones you brought... are they mechanical, or are they of the 'electropneumatic' type?" Another pause. "Which sounds rather like an Iron Lung machine, to me."