[Harlan would classify math as harder than magic, but he's a bad person to ask; they both come pretty naturally to him. He and Laura should be math nerds together at some point, though.]

Yep.

[He has no fucking clue if that's actually how it works at the molecular level, but sounding doubtful isn't going to help her learn.]

You can think of it in whatever way makes most sense to you. When I was relearning magic, it helped me to think of it like a math equation you already know the answer to. All the pieces you need to solve it are right there, you just have to figure out how to move the numbers around to get it to do what you want it to do.