Work Text:
The classroom is well-organised, despite the fact that the children left a mere ten minutes earlier. It’s a class of only a dozen children, they’re all well-behaved, and there’s one teacher and two assistants, so perhaps it’s to be expected that there’s little mess.
One child has come back, along with her parents and the teacher. They’re sitting next to the bookshelf and reading nook, with the teacher’s chair pulled out from behind her desk. The parents have had to be brought chairs from another room – the children’s chairs in the classroom are too small for them, after all.
“To what do I owe this visit?” the teacher asks the parents. She’s wearing her robes, made of a thick plum velvet and free of any stain or speck of dust. The tools of her trade, a wand and an orb and a censer, hang from her waist.
The parents are dressed formally. The mother is in a blouse and slacks, while the father is wearing a suit. It’s clear neither of them has worn these outfits in a while; the suit is cut for a slightly slimmer man, while the blouse has been safety pinned to reduce the cleavage on display from almost-nothing to nothing.
“We’re concerned about the curriculum,” the father begins. “About whether it’s too– advanced for our daughter, and possibly the other children.”
“The students,” the teacher emphasises, “aren’t struggling with the material. Your daughter is definitely in the upper half of the class, and doing very well indeed. Perhaps you could elaborate, because whatever’s brought you here, I’m not seeing it in the classroom.”
“It’s not her ability that we don’t trust, it’s her judgement,” the mother cuts in. “She’s only seven, and you’re teaching her such dangerous magic!”
The teacher adjusts her glasses and turns her chair to the side a little, so she can use the corner of the desk. She pulls out a pen and parchment. “We take safety very seriously at the Academy, including and especially for our younger students. Could you elaborate on your concerns?” It’s clearly a formulaic response that’s been drilled into her by a more senior member of staff at the Academy, but the parents are relieved anyway.
“Well, there’s been a few new spells this year…”
The teacher nods. “Whisper, a simple messaging spell, to teach the basics of mind-to-mind communication. Blink, a short-range teleport, for the fundamentals of more complicated teleportation and conjuration magic. Rock’s Sky, a gravity inversion charm, so that students learn how to manipulate and control physical forces. Standard for their age, and by the end of the year we’ll have added Flash Freeze for elemental magic and Farsight for divinations.”
“It just doesn’t seem safe!” the mother cries, the father nodding beside her. “What if our darling daughter gets angry and just wants to make someone go away, and then ends up hurting them? We hire babysitters on occasion, and she doesn’t always get along with them so well. Or other kids that are mean to her, and she then makes them pay?”
The teacher nods. This, at least, is familiar ground. “We understand that it can be a strange and upsetting experience to have your child play around with what is, at the end of the day, deadly magic if used incorrectly. But this is a place for the future of our country, and those who attend will one day be soldiers and researchers. The latter is the more dangerous career path, as far as the statistics go. I don’t mean to alarm you, and graduates of this institution have better career and health prospects than any other group you could care to name. But part of that comes from laying the foundation early.”
“We’re not worried about our daughter in thirty years’ time, we’re worried she’s going to make another child float away tomorrow!” the father snaps.
“Float away?” the teacher asks. This, at least, she wasn’t expecting. “I’m sorry to be blunt, but neither of you are mages yourselves, correct?”
“I’m a seamstress,” the mother says gruffly. “And my husband’s a baker, but I don’t see what that has to do with the safety of our child and those around her! She showed us Rock’s Sky last week, and I haven’t been able to sleep properly since.”
“I thought you were worried about Blink,” the teacher admits. “Rock’s Sky has a fixed duration, so the only way to seriously injure or kill with it is if the child is truly malicious. At that point you may as well worry about your daughter strangling another child – that’s more likely to be successful.”
“I suppose that’s a relief…” the father says, calming down again.
“The version of Rock’s Sky we teach in class lasts exactly one half-second.” The teacher is lecturing now, and back on familiar ground. “Within one second, you would fly into the air a short way and then fall down again. Our most able students will be able to lift an adult by the time the year’s over, and for our least able it will take at most a year after that. But unless cast on someone already physically vulnerable, it should cause bruising and at most a fracture. We make sure students know that such behaviour is punished severely, besides. If someone casts it several times in quick succession it can increase the drop at the end, or if it were modified to last longer, the same applies, but there’s no danger of your daughter doing either of those things. Back-to-back casting requires extreme skill and modifying the spell equally needs a great deal of talent, by which point in their development our students will be entrusted with far more dangerous magic already.”
“Thank you for explaining it to us,” the father responds, now polite as can be. The teacher has worked hard to not appear condescending and it’s smoothed his ruffled feathers. “And we appreciate your time.”
“Yes, wonderful work you’re doing with our daughter, she loves your class,” the mother adds. The parents gather themselves and leave to collect their child, who has been waiting in another room with one of the classroom assistants.
The teacher breathes out after they’re gone. She’s very glad they didn’t ask her about Blink, and angry with herself for even bringing it up. It’s a short-range teleport, and can easily be used to only move half a person, or to move something into a person.
She shakes her head on the way to the teacher’s lounge, not looking forward to when the same parents inevitably come back. The non-wizard families always freak out when the first student of the class dies, after all.