2. So-Called ‘Best Buds’ #2
Briar was a believer. Seb’s brothers had kept to the code and reported nothing to him of their school days, but the fact that they had been genuinely magical was undisputed. Later, despite life’s disappointments, Briar held on to that belief - that life could be more than this - like a sworn vow.
The school website was criminally vague and somehow looked like it had been made in PowerPoint, the name listed as The Temple School with the of Thaumaturgy part silent, and the current cohort of students and decorated alumni would only talk in very broad strokes about what a lovely time they’d had there with all their chums. At Temple, secrecy was law.
But there were plenty of message boards dedicated to second-hand stories, rumours, obsessing.
Briar yearned for a phone of their own, so that they could stand on the slope outside Sean’s goat shed, where you could get two bars of signal if the wind was blowing right, and trawl those message boards at their leisure.
I heard it costs like ￡20k a TERM. Not even Eton charges ￡20k a term!!!
Eton doesn’t teach magic it just teaches you how to be a prick
I think you mean how to be a Prime Minister
same thing
There have been more Temple PMs than Eton PMs just FYI. Some of them are cagey about it but you can see the signs if you dig
my cousin got in. didn’t even tell me he’d applied.
now when I see him at family things he acts like the biggest dickhead, like he knows every secret in the world, and he’s just sooo sorry he can’t tell the rest of us.
he can’t even tell us what his job is now he just says ‘marketing’ I think he must be a spy
Not to burst your bubble, but he probably does know a lot of important secrets, and I’m sure he is sorry he can’t tell you? Why would you assume that in bad faith, there are probably good reasons they can’t just hand magic out to whoever, some people wouldn’t be responsible
oh yeah imagine how bad it would be if power was accessible to everyone equally. nightmare
Well exactly!
whooosh
There’s no way it’s real magic. We’d have noticed some cunt flying by on a broomstick. It’s just a cult for posh people. Just a secret handshake and maybe some weird religious stuff like a ceremonial dress
Wouldn’t you be embarrassed though if you were a politician and had a really serious job and everyone knows you went to a fake magic school?
you could have ended that sentence at ‘wouldn’t you be embarrassed if you were a politician’
Sorry if I’m not posting this in the right place but I just found out I didn’t get in. I didn’t get in and I thought I did everything right and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now this was everything
mate I’m not being funny but you’re literally 10
What’s that supposed to mean??
go outside and play with a ball
?? This isn’t the Victorian times
Briar could have spent weeks reading these, but Seb usually got bored after an hour or two of research - his family had been going for generations after all, his father somehow involved in the school’s administration, which made it less novel although no less mysterious - and wanted to talk instead about what he and Briar would do together when they got in.
Briar was fixated on heroism, grand quests, proving their mettle; Seb liked sorcery, magic-carpet rides, talking cats, escapades in the dungeons.
Briar once pointed out that they didn’t know if there even was a dungeon.
Seb said, ‘There’s always a dungeon. It’s got chains on the walls.
And there’s a vampire in it without his shirt on. ’
‘Stop reading your mum’s weird books.’
‘I’m doing research!’
‘Into what? Shirtless men?’
‘Shut up, no,’ Seb said, wrestling his phone out of Briar’s hand and jamming it into his pocket. ‘Into what we’re going to find in the dungeon. You’re going to feel like such an idiot when you don’t know what to say to the vampire without his top on.’
‘Sir, please put some clothes on, this is a school for children.’
‘That’s definitely not what they say in the books,’ Seb had intoned, very gravely. Then they had gone back to the house to jump around on the patio to trip the motion-sensor light, which attracted moths, and usually led to bats.
The truth was that Briar was obsessed with Temple, and Seb was maybe a little obsessed with Briar.
For reasons Briar had never fully understood, Seb hadn’t managed to make other friends.
Certain boys in the village gravitated towards him, but only because they found him so deeply punchable.
Briar had learned to land a hit early in life as a direct response to this, a natural evolution for their joint survival.
Seb’s brothers were no help. They were already working in London, and their exact relation to him was always half a mystery, because he might have been half a brother, but never wanted to talk about it.
Seb’s father was very proud of Alexander and Hugo.
He showed up at the house about twice a month, bringing chocolates and vodka in a cloud of woody aftershave, and told everyone so, loudly.
He didn’t seem entirely sure what he was supposed to do with Seb.
He didn’t understand Seb’s love for entomology, or poetry, or Briar.
He made a few bleak attempts at toughening Seb up with blood sports and roughhousing, which had the opposite effect.
Seb took life very personally. He had a tendency to become withdrawn and untethered when he was upset, and the time he spent upset could last from hours to weeks. Mr Wolfe hated this.