Al grinned, taking the watch glass carefully like a dislodged lense of his glasses, trying not to leave a smudge on its surface.
"Septimus? Yeah, sure. I'll be back in..." Al considered, "forty-three minutes and thirty seconds."
So Al went home and sat in his own bed, fingered his books and quills and freshly delivered newspapers and the blue ornate phial on his nightstand, all the while a very delighted Septimus reinforced Al's new bootlaces with a sticky-white cocoon on each boot.
He needed this. The silence of his own room. "Thank you," he told Septimus, smoothing the fuzz on Septimus' pseudo-kneecaps, and as the cocoons grew to the sufficient size, collected them into the watch glass and went back.
It took Al forty-two minutes and fifty-five seconds to return.