Percy listened to the story, smirking at first until it went into what happened when the krup exploded, at which point he felt a sort of horror imagining it happening to his own daughter. He nodded, happy to hear that the girl had been obliviated at least, and like Sally, felt the father had deserved worse for what he had done.
"It's as if the emotions come from a different place than the memories, so that while the memories are obliterated, the associated emotions remain." It was something he'd experienced a couple of times when working under Pius Thickness, and to this day he wondered if he'd seen something he shouldn't have which had resulted in his being obliviated.
"My daughter, Lucy, once asked me if I could transfigure her a kneazle. I said no, of course, though my own transfiguration skills are quite refined. Your example only reminds me how right I was to say no."
He took a sip from his glass, deciding he could segue into a story of his own - one of the less personally horrifying ones. "When I was first out of Hogwarts, I worked in International Magical Coooperation. One day, we had a visit from someone who was complaining because they were trying to export items to Argentina and they kept returning. When he showed me the package, he claimed it was a high-quality cauldron, yet inside the package was a dead rat. After a little interrogation, he finally admitted that he'd been transfiguring rats into cauldrons and then selling them to unassuming buyers overseas, claiming they'd been made by British cauldron masters. No wonder the packages had been returned, for the rats had been alive when first transfigured, but must have returned to their original shapes somewhere in transit and died on the journey."