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
