Chapter 8

After the inauspicious start of alchemy, Minerva hoped that she would be able to throw herself into the classrooms with the same level of focused attentiveness she had given the books. The only problem was that these classes weren’t different from her time back in primary school. She had remembered and dreaded the rulers cracking against knuckles and the fierce, attentive teachers waiting for any lack of focus in their students. She remembered the memorization and recitation. But she had hoped that, perhaps, having to do so while dealing with magical reagents and mystical wands would have made it a bit easier to bear.

Minerva had been wrong. After the feather incident, Professor Ravenwood had gone into an exhaustive and intimidating series of quizzes on the parts and particulars of the British Isles and her colonies and their alchemical bounty. Any student that looked unsure, she had called upon. With an incorrect or inadequate answer? She had whipped her wand up and barked a single word: “Cidak!”

With that word, a beam of pale light congealed from the air before the student in question and cracked out against their knuckles or their backsides - with the thick robes, that was less painful than it might have been. But it was still humiliating and stinging, and left Minerva even more rattled, even if it never happened to her once.

And, to add insult to injury, Professor Ravenwood would then ding points off whatever House had had the luckless student.

Among the terror and tedium, though, something stuck into her mind like a splinter that refused to quite leave. Gina, called to her feet by the professor, had stammered out: “And widow wood can, when boiled in tannic acids, uh, produce a ... a...” Professor Ravenwood had lifted her wand, threatening - and the words burst forth. “A love philter?” Gina tensed and Professor Ravenwood scowled, then lowered the wand.

Correct.

A love philter.

Those three words stuck in her mind - though she was able to ignore it as she went on to Evocations. Taught by the formidable Professor Stevenson, Evocations took place in a two tiered room. The first was a series of desks and a chalkboard, which already had two diagrams of wands sketched out on it. The second, reachable by a small set of stairs that ran down the cliff-like edge of the class (there were no guide rails in the slightest) was a circular chamber with a brown dirt floor and a domed ceiling. Professor Stevenson’s introductory lecture laid out the purpose of the room with a single chilling phrase.

“Dueling in the astral may be untenable for modern wizards - but the Code Duello still is practiced in the mundane world, and there is little better to focus one’s invocational abilities more than the promise of defeat, eh?”

Minerva had gulped at that. She had also hoped that, perhaps, Stevenson might dole out less physical punishment ... and she did. But she was even quicker with a razor sharp barb and significantly more liberal with the demerits and additional classwork. One student - a Neil Bigsby-Melfandor - was trembling with such fright that being made to stand before the class and demonstrate he knew the proper wrist and finger control to direct the kind of evocation that Professor Stevenson was trying to instill in the students that he dropped his wand.

Thanks to that, the entire class had to practice the gesture ten times in their rooms.

“I’ll know,” Professor Stevenson had added.

The only part of the class that hadn’t been dreadful - or onerous - had been when Stevenson had actually introduced Minerva to something she hadn’t already known (at least in a theoretical fashion.) It was when, in the latter half of the class, she had begun to cover the fundamentals of wand construction.

“Each part of a wand focuses your will in a distinct and varied way - and often, in a contradictory one. This is why wands are fit to purpose. One component, say, the hair of a stone giant, will make it easier to work one’s will upon stone. But it will also render one less able to influence the flow of water. Thus, a neriad’s tear can be enclosed in another and it will have the inverse strengths and weaknesses. There has been significant advancements in the art of the wandmaker’s arts in the 19th century that has led to the creation of magical focuses and transmuters that allow one form of energy to be changed from one to another.”

She gave a rolling snap with her wrist and her wand shifted in her hand, the brassy steel becoming like white ivory with a hiss-snap and a pop of smoke.

“But even with these devices - which are expensive and not yet fully available to all save the most highly ranked war wizards of the Empire - an average wizard at work in a complex or sophisticated job will have two, even three wands that they will alternate between. Some of you will have your favorites, and ancient stories of loyal wands, but this is no place for sentiment. Evocation is, at the end of the day, as much about tools as it is about the wizard using it. We’re far past the age of wooden sticks with unicorn hair and making do with a tree branch scratching out runes in the dirt!” She sniffed.

Then Gina raised her hand and asked a question. “Professor, what about the wand of silver?”

Professor Stevenson’s face grew set and her eyes steely. “The Wand of Silver does not exist. We are in this class to learn the practical arts of magery, not to discuss legends. And grotesque ones at that! Five points from House Glintfaire.”

Gina looked pouty, then grumbled under her breath. After class, walking between hallways, Minerva managed to catch herself up to Gina, and ask her: “What’s the wand of silver?”

Gina laughed. “Oh, right. Right! Right!” Her eyes gleamed and she leaned in close. “The story goes like this. Back in the War, both sides had cavalry, right?” She nodded. “But you know how they just got shot to bits by machine guns and such? Well, that held true for the wizards too. Before the War, there were two kinds of war wizard who got all the glory. Fliers.” She ticked the first off one finger. “And unicorn riders.”

Minerva’s eyes widened. “Unicorn riders?”

“Britain had thousands of them, four thousand to be exact, I think, a whole brigade of war wizards on unicorns, the largest of their type. They didn’t even have that much during the Boxer Rebellion!” Gina’s voice grew even more delighted with ghoulish relish. “And this brigade, the 1st, 2nd and 4th Silver Magisters, they went in hot in the Battle of the Frontiers, one of the first regiments that got on the Continent. They rode ... right into a mundane machine gun company. Before they could even cast their first spell...” Gina braced herself, then made a stuttering machine gun noise, sweeping her arm back and forth. “A thousand unicorns died in five minutes.”

“That’s awful!” Minerva exclaimed.

“And their blood soaked into the soil,” Gina whispered, in tones of telling a ghost story. “For four years, that blood slipped in as the war kept going - Verdun, Ypres, the Somme, all of them. And deep beneath the ground, in the mines of Mons, that blood congealed into a wand of pure silver. A wand with a drop of unicorn blood is the best kind of wand on the market - but this didn’t just have a drop. It was made of unicorn blood.” She stepped back, then grinned. “And they say that some British agent from the government snatched it up and bustled it back to London, right before the Armistice.”

“Is there any proof for that?” Minerva asked.

“Nah, but it’s a ripping yarn!” Gina said, brightly. “And, heh, if you were gonna keep anything secure in England, anything at all, Hexgramatica is the best place. Beneath the lake? In the cellars? Guarded by all the beasties and monsters we have around here?” She snorted. “Forget about stealing that!”

Then she was off, waving. “Bye!”

That left Minerva even more to think about.

After evocations, she hurried out to the grounds behind the castle for her beasts study. Since it was further out than most classes, she had to nearly jog to make it before switching over was finished and the class proper had begun. Professor Stengard stood out in the bright sunny day before the thickly wooded lands that sprawled beyond the castle proper, and glared at his students. He was the man with the three scars that Minerva had seen at first dinner she had - and he lifted his ghostly hand as the students arranged themselves before him.

“This,” he said. “I lost at the Somme. This was cut from my hand by shrapnel and shell while in the deepest Astral, torn from my hand while nightmares that we barely have names for tore two of my best friends to pieces before my very eyes.” His eyes squinted as he narrowed them, his scars twisting his features into a nearly daemonic expression. “That ... is the worst thing that can happen to a man.”

His eyes fell on the girls, segregated from the boys as they were in the other classes.

“Be glad that we won’t be conscripting any of you,” he said, his voice a gruff rumble. “Now, knowing the worst that can befall you, there shall be no sign of fear among you in this class. We shall be discussing, studying, and even capturing and dissecting the beasts of the magical world. No beast, ever, has been as terrible as a man with a wand. Remember that! Let it steel you against these creatures.” He frowned. “Any man that shows fear will be five points from their houses.”

Minerva noticed he didn’t offer the same threat to the women. She wondered what would happen if she screamed. She clenched her jaw and stood a bit straighter.

“Now, who can tell me how to tell the difference between an ettercap and the average spider while the ettercap is in their disguised form or glamor...”

And thus, beasts went on. The professor used magic to summon from the forest a few examples of the creatures he was discussing - and a few people to cringe backwards from the first of the hideous ettercaps, but Minerva remained standing at the front of the class and managed to identify several of the tells once, under ensorcellment, the ettercap had been compelled to transform into a spider that looked as normal as any other.

Professor Stengard grunted and said: “Ten points for the plucky lass from Sildanus.” He glowered at Neil, the poor boy who had barely held his wand straight back in Evocations. “What’s your excuse, you fat blubberer?”

Thanks to Beasts being so far out from the school, Minerva was nearly late when she burst into the classroom for Crafts, which was located on the top of a winding spire. She panted heavily as she stumbled into the form room, and was able to announce herself as present without too much trouble. Professor Harlington Tweed - the fellow without eyes from her examination - had everyone take their seats and then launched into a meandering, oft interrupted lecture on the nature of magical machinery and the crafting of various components of wands, brooms, and self stirring tea pots.

The reason why it was oft interrupted seemed to be that Tweed never found a tangent he wasn’t eager to follow down - and when he discussed things, he would begin to stand and pace - and as his back was turned to the class and he spoke on and on, older students would actively begin to pass notes to one another. Minerva quickly realized that this class might not be as rigorous as the others.

She should have been offended at the waste of her time.

Instead, she laid her head on the desk, closed her eyes, and tried to ease the tension out of her brain and body. As she closed her eyes, Tweed droned on and on about gewgaws and Minerva wondered if this school would be worth it. No, she thought to herself firmly. She forced herself to sit back up again and flipped through her notes - her eyes roving along the evocations and the alchemical notes. Nothing would directly fix the damage inflicted by polio, but she was beginning to see the shape of the magic she’d need.

Minerva nodded, grimly.

“I can do this,” she whispered.

“What was that, Miss Schross-Sableknight?” Tweed asked, sounding more bemused than anything else.

Minerva coughed. “I said, uh, what about the function of, ahem, mundane artifice on, say, the creation of relatively small clockwork machinery? Say ... the tiny gearing in pocket watches or combustion engines?” She asked, hoping that would divert Tweed.

“Oh fascinating question!” Tweed said.

And then he was off once more. Minerva tried to write down what sounded useful, she always tried to keep good notes, but it was impossible to follow his train of thought as it thoroughly derailed in the middle of a densely populated neighborhood of unrelated concepts; they’d be finding bodies for days. She found her own mind wandering, and her eyes in turn.

She watched Kat’s finger scraping out words. She cut them like she was carving with a knife - fierce, sharp lines with her pen. Her hand was gripping that pen like it was a weapon. She was so ... strong. Minerva’s cheeks heated as she imagined that pen pressed to her cheek. What words might she write on her? She shook her head, trying to cast the image aside, but it kept going: The cool metal tip of the pen, the ink soaked ball rolling along her skin, drawing a black line along her throat, down to the cleft of her breasts, Kat’s insolent smirk.

Minerva bit her lip. She imagined sliding down before those knowing eyes. Those fierce eyes. She imagined...

Yes.

She imagined sliding under that desk. Marked. She imagined taking hold of Kat’s knees. Would she resist, just to mock her, just to force Minerva to have to push more. She imagined pushing, she imagined leaning in. Would Kat be wild and untamed, a thick bush above a slit as eager and moist as her own? Minerva imagined burying her nose against her pubic hair. She imagined letting her tongue sliding out, tasting her, tasting her all over. She imagined how thick, how rich, she would smell against her, tickling her nostrils, tickling her all over. She imagined the thighs closing tight around her, holding her in place.

Minerva’s pen creaked as she realized she was gripping her pen tightly. Too tightly. She breathed in - and found her mental image souring. She ... she...

... remembered the Trial and all their awful questions, their awful ... insinuations. The accusations had felt like lies when they’d said it, but now that it had been spoken aloud the thought echoed through her head. It was so wrong, everything about it, none of it fit her.

She didn’t hate men, most men anyway, nor did she particularly want to be one or anything sick like that. She didn’t want to wear men’s clothes and she wanted to get married, someday, when she found the right man. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to be a lesbian.

But right now, what she wanted was to kiss that infuriating, mannish blond bitch two seats over. Be kissed by her. To touch her and be touched. She’d felt it before, but it was always dismissed as just ... normal affection between friends, or a fleeting insanity brought on by the absence of male attention, the result of desperation or drink or boredom, not representative of who she was in the slightest.

Because if it was, she was a lesbian, and she couldn’t be. She didn’t want to be. Absurdly, sitting in a school for wizards ignoring a lesson about magical machinery, she wanted to be normal. Please, God, let her be normal. Make her normal.

The bell jangled and she yelped in surprise.

Lunch was a hurried affair - but the food was just as high quality and plentiful as it had been for breakfast. She sat beside Millie and had to endure her tutting her tongue.

“We’ve heard you’ve been spending a lot of time with Virginia Blythe.”

“What of it?” Minerva asked, her voice flatter and sharper than she might have wanted.

“Well, she’s not in House Sildanius, is she?” Millie shrugged, her voice chipper and bright. She spread marmalade liberally over her bread as she continued. “Some people who are less understanding than me - not me, of course, but, you know, other people - they might think that you wish you had been sorted into some other house.” She smiled slightly. “Not that I think that’s the case.”

“I have no complaints about House Sildanius right now,” Minerva said, trying to remain polite. “But I don’t see any reason why I have to stop being friends with someone just because they’re in another House. I mean ... we’re all students in the same school, no?”

“W-Well ... I ... I suppose,” Millie said, having no good response to that, it seemed.

Minerva felt better.

Before lunch was quite finished, Minerva stood - explaining to Millie that she needed all the extra time she could to navigate her way through the school to the Runes classroom - and started to walk. She took her time, enjoying the change to just stretch her legs and not to hurry anywhere. Then she heard a scuffling noise - and a quiet grunt. The voice was male, and it aroused her curiosity. She stepped forward and leaned around the corner, ready to spring out if need be - but what she saw arrested her at once.

There were two students, both male. The older was a bit taller and stronger than the younger - he was gorgeous, with a firm jawline and short blond hair and bright blue eyes. A pure perfect picture of the Anglo-Saxon ideal, strong enough that his muscles were visible through his robes. He held in his hand the wrist of one ... Harry Arthur-Perry, who was pinned against the wall as the two boys stood quite close to one another.

“Don’t,” the older boy said, his voice soft, his eyes boring into Harry’s. “Don’t even think about it.”

Harry was trembling. Minerva bit her lip, frozen between an urge to spring out...

But then Harry turned his head aside. “I won’t. Sorry, sir. I just ... I wish they’d just shut up.”

“It’s okay, Harry,” the older boy let go of his hand. He cupped Harry’s cheek, turning him to face back. “They don’t know what they’re talking about, is all. I’ll talk to their seniors, we’ll set this straight.”

Harry looked almost pathetically grateful. He nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

Minerva felt a confused lurch in her belly. There was something ... disquieting in the servile tone that Harry had on. Seeing this older boy treating Harry like he was some ... lickspittle feudal servant grated.

The older boy chuckled. “Now, I want my boots shined properly this morning. You did a fairly decent job, but they need to gleam, understand? And we can go over your homework. And...” He paused for a moment, then glanced left. The only reason, when he glanced right, that he did not see Minerva was because she withdrew her head at the last second. Her heart thudded in her chest. She did not see what happened - but she heard something ... soft. Then Harry’s whispered word, not quite audible to her. It sounded like a name.