Chapter 28
The run-up to the MSEs was intense and exhausting.
Having only experienced it once from the student side of things, Bryn hadn’t realized all the effort and time that teachers put into prepping for exams. Even though it seemed like Amelia had won her job fair and square from the governors (who had capitulated and granted her a four-year contract beginning the following term), Bryn knew she wanted to be able to throw the exam results back at them as if to say, “Even by your standards, I deserve my job.”
Bryn wasn’t sure at what point all of the professors realized this was a thing.
She didn’t think Amelia had been telling people, but it was more than obvious that all members of staff understood at least that exam performance would be evaluated by the governors.
They might have been forced to give in, but weren’t going to do it gracefully, and certainly not if it appeared that Amelia’s work wasn’t paying off for the students (and the school’s financial bottom line).
Bryn’s work hours grew longer and longer in the next week.
Some of the students who lived in town had applied for temporary residence in the dormitories—enough of them so that Amelia had hired another resident advisor, a job for which Luna had applied (without telling Bryn) and Mr Wicks had hired her (also without telling Bryn).
Although she liked working at the spell shop, she only worked two shifts a week.
She wanted more, and when she’d heard from some folks who were buying potion ingredients that the school was hiring, she’d applied.
When Bryn asked Amelia how the whole thing went down without her knowing about it, Amelia pointed out that Mr Wicks was the head of the human resources committee, and they needed someone responsible who could move on site immediately.
The owner of the spell shop—an Academy graduate, naturally—gave Luna a brilliant reference.
At first Bryn was annoyed, thinking her sister had gone behind her back, but Luna hadn’t even mentioned they were related.
“No one made the connection, as far as I know,” Amelia said, “and I didn’t want to put you in a weird position by asking you what you thought.
Plus, we didn’t get that many applicants.
Surprisingly, not a ton of people want to temporarily live with a group of teenagers.
Luna is perfect for it. She’s already graduated, and she didn’t go to school here, but she understands the pressure they’re under, and she knows enough about witches and spellcasting to not be completely done under by them. ”
All of which was true. And after Bryn got over herself, she admitted it was kind of fun knowing Luna was around.
Both of them were busy, but they did get to see each other at mealtimes, which was something that hadn’t happened in years.
Not since Luna was too young to be a pleasant eating companion.
Faster than Bryn was expecting, the MSEs were upon them. On the Monday morning of exam week, Bryn thought she was going to fall apart long before Friday afternoon arrived. Mr Wicks took the seat next to her at breakfast and leaned over to say, “The first time is always the worst.”
“Am I that transparent?” she asked.
He smiled. “Yes, but I remember it. The exams are not a measure of how well we teach. Remember that. Whatever happens, your impact on the students goes much deeper than any exam can ever show.”
She thought about that for a long moment before saying, “I think that might make it worse.”
Mr Wicks laughed. “Just, whatever you do, promise me you won’t watch the practicums,” he said, and offered a theatrical shudder. “Really, the practicums are agony.”
Since this kind of melodramatic language was uncharacteristic for him, she said noncommittally, “Um.”
He only shook his head. “Really, I snuck in my first year, and seeing them all so nervous, stumbling over things I knew they could do … It’s not worth it, Bryn. Whatever else you do, don’t do that.”
Bryn, who had been planning to do exactly that, nodded. “Okay, I’ll try to resist.”
Resisting was harder than she’d anticipated, and she still had all of her other classes to teach.
It wasn’t as if exam week was a week off for everyone else.
They all had to go about their business and pretend that each day was the same as any other day of the year.
It was much harder than she expected. She confessed to Piper later that she thought she’d had it bad as a student, but this was way, way worse.
“I know,” they said. “My subject doesn’t even have an exam session, and I’m so nervous for them.”
Of all of them, Amelia was pretending the most effectively.
People kept telling her that she looked so serene, that she clearly wasn’t troubled by the exams at all.
Some of the professors even grumbled that she wasn’t taking the exams seriously, which Bryn knew for a fact was not true.
By midday Wednesday, Amelia had sought out Bryn’s office and hidden there for the last two classes with her nose in the considerable stack of Professor Herringbone’s books that Bryn had brought back with her from Denver.
Bryn had been pleased, happy to offer whatever calmness she could, but of course Amelia had not been relaxing.
She’d been studying. She burst out of the study the second classes were over for the day.
There were still three students in Bryn’s classroom, but Amelia had two books in her arms and a third on top of them, open.
“I think I figured out your scaling issue,” she said to Bryn, then smiled and waved at the first-years, who looked back over their shoulders at her.
“My scaling issue?” Bryn asked.
“Yes, you know, for the pressure washing, remember?”
It took a moment, but Bryn did remember. “Oh right, spell scaling. It’s not just the pressure washing, though. I think it could have applications—”
“It can,” Amelia interrupted, then bit her lip. “Sorry, sorry, but look.” She passed the book over to Bryn, who began reading the text until Amelia pointed at the professor’s scrawl in the margins.
It was a simple yet elegant solution. Bryn had been focused on trying multipliers on the spells, expanding their scope by essentially repeating the spell for as long as it needed to be repeated.
There were a couple of problems, such as not knowing how to stop the spell from repeating endlessly, and how to limit the physical space the spell applied to in a way that could be duplicated for other spells in other environments.
She could, of course, simply craft a spell for the exact area of the courtyard that needed to be washed, but then it would only work for that space in those dimensions, and only if she cast it from roughly the same spot.
What Amelia had discovered was a note in the professor’s distinctive handwriting that amounted to something much simpler, something so obvious that Bryn couldn’t really believe she hadn’t figured it out herself.
She looked up at Amelia. “Boundaries,” she said. “We have to set the boundaries.”
“Exactly,” Amelia agreed, eyes alight.
And that’s what they did for the next two days.
Bryn taught her classes and Amelia did the many, many things the headmistress was expected to do all day, and in the evenings they practiced this new form of scaling magic.
It didn’t work perfectly the first few times.
It took the entire evening on Wednesday for them just to figure out how to effectively cast their boundary spells.
Bryn resented the fact that she actually needed to draw them out by walking the perimeter of the area with her wand, which seemed like cheating.
When she said this to Amelia, Amelia only laughed, reminding her about all of the things they’d had to do when they were younger in order to ensure that spells worked.
The precise enunciation of words, the exact syntax of each spell, the wand motions that had not come naturally, and which had to be modified to do different things.
“Remember when it was all confusing?” she asked. “And you know how now it’s not? I bet this is the same. Give it a couple of weeks and you’ll be flicking your fingers in the general direction and the magic will know what to do.”
Bryn wasn’t so sure of that, but Amelia’s confidence in her made her feel warm and fuzzy anyway.
The last day of exams dawned rainy and warm. The humidity was stifling. Every openable window in the castle was open, and every door was propped. She felt bad for her students taking exams because the exam rooms, in order to prevent cheating, were kept tightly shut.
“It must be like taking exams in a swamp,” Piper murmured.
Indeed, when the students finally emerged, many of them were sweating, not only from the anxiety, but also from the somewhat rainforest-like conditions of the hall.
The traditional end-of-exams meal, to which all the students who had already taken their MSEs were invited, commenced in the afternoon and went on until evening.
Amelia had brought in pillows and blankets and set up a nest area, which she called the chill-out zone.
Piper leaned over to Bryn and murmured, “Worst rave ever.” Bryn laughed.
When Amelia saw them laughing, she came over.
Piper gestured to the chill-out zone. “Nice touch.”
Students were already gathering in small groups, some of them pulling blankets over their shoulders, two or three at a time, others gripping pillows, holding them to their bellies, as if clinging to life rafts.
Even aside from the theatrics, Bryn was pleased to see that the second-years looked shell-shocked and weary, but also proud.
Every magical child enrolled in magical school had to take the MSEs.
There were different exams for different types of people, but everyone took them.
Bryn could see Luna describing her own siren MSEs to a group of fourth-years who were only one year younger than her, waving her hands around, illustrating some siren feat that, Bryn realized, she knew nothing about.
Amelia’s idea of integrating all of the magical kids was a good one.
Wouldn’t it be better if they all knew the challenges the other ones faced, even if they weren’t facing them themselves?
Amelia looked at her phone, touched the screen, and then her eyes raced across it.
“No cheating,” she reported with an exhalation of relief.
“No cheating incidences reported. No behavioral incidences reported. Everyone took their exams and, as far as the proctors are concerned, did as well as they could.”
“Nothing on fire?” Piper asked. “That actually happened at my school, not the year I was taking MSEs, but two years later, when I was still at school.”
“No fires,” Amelia said, “or at least none that have been reported to me.” She put away her phone and took another deep breath. “Of course, we don’t know their scores yet, but whatever happens, I think we did well.”
Piper and Bryn traded a look, and Bryn suspected they were thinking the same thing. They had done well, yes. The students had made it through. The school was still standing. But there would be so many more problems to deal with if the students had not passed their exams.
She looked around, told herself there was nothing she could do about it now, and focused on the celebration.
There were only a few days left of school and she had been teaching for four whole months now, and it was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
Knowing that, if nothing else, was a triumph.