At the end of the school that was forever awaiting long promised renovations, a tall woman with fashionably cropped hair stood in a pitch black broom cupboard.
After five minutes, her face was briefly illuminated by her phone screen. She sighed gently.
After eleven minutes, there was a loud pop, a rush of air and a moment of silence.
Then, a ruddy voice that spoke of too many evenings with cigars and spirits said, “Lumos!”. Suddenly there was light.
The woman looked down on a bowler hat poorly containing a curly explosion of grey-tinged hair. From under it the ruddy voice introduced itself.
“Albus Scruggs, Minister for Magical Permits!”, bowler hat looked up, blinking in the light dancing at the end of a gnarled and lacquered wand, “Delighted to meet you!”. His walrus moustache quivered with enthusiasm.
The woman carefully shook his proffered hand, “Ms Hargreaves. Thank you for coming, Mr. Scruggs. Shall we?”
She opened the cupboard door and strode out into the deserted corridor. Scruggs emerged blinking behind her, tucking his wand into a flapping robe.
“Of course. How could I resist the opportunity to review the first Mugg.. er.. Non-magical school to attempt to teach the Magical Arts!” He waved generously at the bare, tatty walls as he trotted along behind Ms Hargreaves, “It’s a fascinating experiment, and one the Ministry is very keen to investigate.”
“Investigate. Yes.”, her strides lengthened imperceptibly, “Of course we welcome the Ministry’s support.”
They stopped at a classroom door. Ms Hargreaves placed one hand on the door knob and paused, “It’s a small class. Our first. But I trust you will find it… educational.” If the corner of her lips twitched slightly, Scruggs didn’t notice.
She thrust the door open sharply in the way teachers down the generations have learned. They were greeted with a clatter of arrested motion as a dozen students failed to arrange themselves neatly.
“Emily. Marcos. Please get off the desk and sit down. Marcos, tuck your shirt in. Emily, extinguish your fire-light.”
The students hurriedly reorganised themselves in a small group at the front of the empty classroom.
Albus Scruggs addressed them with the enthusiasm of an Uncle who has never had to deal with children, “Fascinating! You, child, that was exemplary! Perhaps you can show me the Lumos Spell?”
“Uh?” Emily looked confused.
Ms Hargreaves stepped in, “Ah, yes. As you will be aware, Mr Scruggs, we are an extension of the University’s Physics Research Department. Their thaumaturgical investigation slightly pre-dates our contact with your Ministry and the Magical world. We have, if you like, been working from first principles.”
Now both Scruggs and the student looked confused.
“In short, we never learned your ‘magic words’ to invoke a spell. Emily, the fire-light invocation when you’re ready please.”
“Oh!”, Emily exclaimed. The girl paused and raised her wand, scrunching up her nose slightly in concentration. She muttered briefly under her breath, and a sharp, crackling ball of light blinked into existence. Ice blue flames flickered coldly around it.
“Excelle..”, Ms Hargreaves began.
“Oh no, child!” Scruggs cried, “No, no, no. That won’t do. Watch me! Watch me!”
The rotund Minister puffed himself up and dramatically retrieved his wand from within the folds of his robe. Pulling himself up to not quite the height of the teenage girl before him, he waved the wand extravagantly in a wide arc. “Lumos!”, the word rumbled out of him and with a small pop a warm orb of light appeared at the tip. He emphatically swept the wand away and the light vanished.
“Yes, well. We find the, um, theatrical aspect rather impractical in the modern world.” Ms Hargreaves commented dryly.
Without looking away from Scruggs, she continued, “Emily, that was very good work, your confinement is excellent. Perhaps we can have another demonstration. Philip, can we see some levitation?”
From the back of the small group of students, a small, nervous boy emerged gripping a wand tightly. Eyes locked on the heavy bench at the front of the class, he walked within arms reach of the Minister who quizzically examined him.
“What’s this?!”, Scruggs reached out suddenly, swiftly plucking the wand out of the shocked boy’s hand, “This is… this is made of??” He held the wand up to Ms Hargreaves questioningly.
“Aluminium”, she took the wand from him with a precise motion.
“Aluminium?!.. Madam,” Scruggs huffed, “I cannot trust anyone can perform reliable magic with a.. a metal wand! This..,” he brandished his own, knotty wand, “This is oak heart, with a unicorn hair core. It is natural! It is the foundation of a robust spell, and a successful wizard!”
“No doubt,” Ms Hargreaves calmly balanced the aluminium wand across one outstretched finger, “but in our research we found the practices around endangered magical creatures to be somewhat questionable.”
Scruggs harumphed rudely.
“The Physics Department found the harvesting of cores challenging, some of the materials far from sustainable and the whole process of wand selection somewhat discriminatory and even, dare I say it, elitist.”
“Dear Lady..”, the Minister exclaimed.
Ms Hargreaves continued before he could form a sentence, “We are here to allow our students the opportunity to learn, not put up barriers. I will grant you that these wands tend to produce a somewhat… sharper invocation than the organic ones.”
“Organic!”
“But,” she flipped the wand effortlessly up into the air, caught it and brought it down sharply against the heavy wooden bench with a ringing crack. Scruggs yelped involuntarily. “But, they are more than functional, readily manufactured, inexpensive and as you can see… student proof. We find those excellent properties in a school.”
Ms Hargreaves calmly observed Scruggs, who had turned a deeper shade of purple.
She gently tossed the wand over to Philip, who had not dared move a muscle since Scruggs had first taken it from him. The boy fumbled and nearly dropped it, but recovered and shortly held it once more in a tight, pale knuckled hand.
“Go on, Philip. Levitation, as we practised.”
Philip lined the wand up with the aged bulk of the bench before him, sighting at a book sitting squarely in the middle of the scratched and scrawled surface. His lips moved silently. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the book seemed to vibrate briefly. Its top cover twitched. And stopped.
Scruggs shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. He began to raise his own wand as if to interject. The child did not appear to notice, still focused on the scene before him.
A couple of the students on the front row glanced at each other. In unison, they pushed their chairs back, away from the mass of the solid bench. Another one mouthed silently, “Three… Two.. One…”
Without any warning the entire bench lifted sharply up into the air with a dull “Whump”, and stopped just as swiftly a finger’s width away from the high classroom ceiling. It hung there, completely motionless. Someone clapped. Philip blinked owlishly at the bench, then looked to Ms Hargreaves.
“Well done. And down again, please.”
Once again the boy took sight on the bench, and mouthed a silent incantation. More slowly this time, the bench sank straight down to settle back between the teacher and her students.
A moment later, the book dropped from the ceiling, landing neatly in the centre of the bench with a bang. Silence returned.
“Yes. Well.”, Scruggs said carefully, “That was, ah, quite passable. Though of course the nature of the wand clearly affects the quality of the spell. The Ministry will want to examine this matter in some detail before we consider your permits Ms Hargreaves. Continue your demonstrations.”
“Thank you, Philip. Now, Sam, Max.”
In unison, two willowy girls dragged their chairs noisily to the bench, where they sat fiddling with their fingernails and studiously avoiding the penetrating gaze of their teacher. They looked perfectly identical, except for their long, poker straight hair - one girl having unexpectedly sky blue locks, and the other an equally unlikely shade of pink.
Ms, Hargreaves studied them carefully for a moment, her eyes narrowing slightly as she glanced from one to the other.
“Sam”, she addressed the girl with the blue hair. Both girls’ shoulders dropped slightly and they looked up together from their fingernail studies. The blue haired girl grinned ruefully. From the back of the class a voice muttered, “That’s five pounds you owe me.”. Another groaned, “How can she tell?!”
Ignoring the chatter, Ms. Hargreaves continued, “Has Ms. James seen you this morning? I seem to remember she talked about hair dye in the class assembly only a week ago.”
Sam looked up brightly, “I told her it was a side effect of the potion miss!”
“Did you now, Sam? Did you remind her, Maxine, that only one of you has taken the potion?”, Ms. Hargreaves raised a skeptical eyebrow, though her eyes were twinkling.
The other girl squeaked guiltily, “I…”
“Potion?!”, Scruggs, who had been absently examining his wand whilst school business flowed around him, was spurred into attention, “What potion have you been attempting to recreate? This is advanced stuff, very delicate even for our much more naturally gifted students. You, girl, Sam..”
“Max”, the pink haired girl corrected him.
“Max, indeed, of course. What potion have you been trying to make?”
Max fumbled nervously inside her blazer, producing a slim vial that she held up to the light. Within it, a hazy, rainbow hued liquid flowed in unnatural slow motion. Iridescent sparks reflected odd light on the girl’s face.
Scruggs fiddled with his glasses, craning closer to squint at the contents of the tube.
“Are you sure that is correct?” he muttered disapprovingly, “That doesn’t look like any of the known potions we deal with. No. There’s something wrong there, child.”
Max looked terrified.
Ms. Hargreaves stepped in, “Ah, this is quite interesting. The Department of Physics proposed there should be a complement to one of your more… notorious potions. The law of conservation of thaumaturgical energy suggests an inverse in this case. They developed this, and Maxine appears to have done an excellent job in following their guidance.”
“Guidance? Complement?”, Scruggs looked baffled.
“An antidote if you like. Sam, perhaps you could..?”
The other girl took the vial from Max. Without hesitation, she popped off the lid and drank down the contents, grimacing slightly. “Eww… “, she laughed at Max, who was grimacing in sympathy, “See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya!”
Nothing happened.
“Ah, well.”, Scruggs did not hide his disappointment, “I can only assume your Department of Physics spent a little too long staring at their slide rules. There’s nothing quite so informative as real worl.. Good grief!”
Sam had shivered, as though some last drop of the rainbow liquid had chilled her. But the shiver didn’t quite.. end. The motion through her body continued, not violently, but persistently rippling from her core. Almost as soon as it started, and just before it was possible to understand the strange distortion, it stopped.
And where the willowy girl with long blue hair had been sitting, there was an awkward angular boy with a short curly mass of stubbornly blue hair topping a grinning face.
Scruggs exploded, “Polyj… You made… This is outrageous! And an antidote?!.. I have never seen something so… Totally irresponsible, and unnatural! I am disgusted! You let a boy turn into… into.. a girl!”
“Yes.” Ms Hargreaves replied calmly. As an aside to her pupils she continued, “Well done Sam, well done Max - an excellent demonstration.”
But Scruggs was not done, “This is completely unacceptable.. unnatural.. Unconscionable! We shall revoke your permits immediately! This is gross negligence… abuse… what have you done to these children?! Magic is too precious to be allowed in such.. Such.. primitive, ignorant hands!”
The bare tip of ice in Ms. Hargreaves voice flowed with the force of a million tons of iceberg just below the surface, “This, from a Ministry that treats unsupervised children accidentally performing cross-species transfiguration as an amusing little side show?!”
“Cross-species?”, Scruggs was momentarily distracted.
“The cat girl incident, Mr. Scruggs, was widely reported, in one of your best schools. Frankly I don’t care whether it’s cat girls or bunnies..”, there was a yelp from the back of the class, but Ms. Hargreaves continued coldly, “Not now, Anya. …Your pupils are frequently unsupervised, regularly placed in danger, risk both permanent physical and psychological harm and left to navigate their most challenging years without meaningful adult support or guidance. And you dare criticise us?”
“Rubbish!”, Scruggs puffed, trying to maintain his fire as the temperature of the room plummeted, “Boys into girls! That will break their minds!”
To the surprise of her pupils, Ms. Hargreaves barked a harsh laugh, “Victorian nonsense. This is the twenty-first century, Mr Scruggs, and my students have a very firm grasp on their minds and gender. They are not mushy-brained infants to be pushed around when they suit your whims.”
“But your duty of care!”
“My duty of care is more than adequately met. Every step of our programme has been discussed in person with both student and their parents. We work closely with parents to ensure the child’s safety and support.”, she started ticking off on long fingers, “Monthly psychological evaluation. Physical check up. MRI scan. Debrief with the Physics Department. Educational review. Students’ personal statement. Weekly scheduled one on one time with a senior member of staff… We may be new to magic, Mr. Scruggs, but we treat education as a science and social duty, not some arm waving mumbo-jumbo to make adults feel warm and fuzzy!”
Scruggs pulled himself up to his full height, still inches short of Ms. Hargreaves' shoulder, “This will not be tolerated! We shall revoke all permits immediately. These children will be harmed for life!”
“I do not think you care a moment for these children, or their wellbeing. You appeared completely unconcerned with an unsupervised student turning herself into a cat. Did she ever receive support or counselling after the incident?”
“How dare you! We shall close down this entire school, and your ridiculous Physics Department. Magic does not belong in the hands of… of… “
Ms. Hargreaves’ lip curled menacingly. “You have no authority here. This is a modern school, not your patriarchal, authoritarian, outdated institution dressed up in twee nostalgia to hide its manifest lack of rigour and empathy.” With each word she prodded at Mr. Scruggs’ ancient robes.
“What sort of freakish ideology is this?!”, Scruggs exclaimed. There was an audible gasp from the cluster of students. A few pulled their chairs back, extending the space between them and the mismatched pair. A couple leaned forwards, fascinated by the conflict.
If Mr Scruggs noticed the small gesture Ms Hargreaves made to the students, he didn’t show it. His disapproval radiated so vehemently that his moustache appeared to vibrate beneath his florid nose. He started a step towards the taller woman to invade her space, but as she stayed implacably still only ended up having to stare furiously up at her calm face like an angry ferret.
“Madam! Our magical Ministry has been in place for centuries to prevent people like you from perverting a higher society with your thuggish…”
She calmly cut him off, “Gatekeeping access to life-changing magic, whilst clinging on to outdated social hierarchies is sadly what we’ve come to expect. It is a shame our magic is wasted on you.”
“Wasted?”, confusion swam across his face.
“Quite.”, her lip twitched slightly, “We always like to end with one final demonstration. Marcos, if you will?”
Suddenly there was a nondescript child standing calmly next to Mr Scruggs, smiling awkwardly, “This doesn’t seem to hurt much.”
“What are you on about, boy? Are you in pain?”
“I meant you, not me.”, the boy apologised with a small shrug, raising his hands in a complex gesture.
Ten minutes later Scruggs and Ms Hargreaves walked slowly down the deserted corridor towards the broom cupboard. Somehow, despite the leisurely pace, Scruggs still had to trot to keep up with the taller woman. He made little effort to hide his smug disappointment.
“I fully understand, Madam, your attempts to perform magic are well meaning.”
“Thank you Minister”
“But of course, you must accept it may take years to reach even a basic ability. I believe the previous Minister oversaw your attempts for five years?”
“Indeed. We always… looked forward to her visits.”
“And in all that time, not a single successful magic spell!”, he attempted an air of paternal encouragement, “You should not feel downhearted at your failure!”
“It is a burden we must bear. There are no magical arts at this school…”,
Obediently, Scruggs muttered “..no magical arts at this school..”, as his eyes slightly lost focus.
Ms Hargreaves continued, glancing down at the man with glittering eyes, “..yet. I am sure, with your patience and our perseverance, we may someday justify the Ministry’s attention. Perhaps not for years.”
“Not for years!”, this seemed to please Scruggs, but he hastily drew his face into a concerned frown, “Though of course, I am sure your hard work will pay off, eventually.”
“It seems to. And, here we are.”, she gestured at the nondescript cupboard door, “I look forward to your report, of course.”
Scruggs opened the door and marched into the broom cupboard with the confidence of a man who has done a very satisfying job. He turned and raised a finger to instruct the woman before him, “The Ministry will continue to observe, of cour..”
Ms Hargreaves shut the door calmly and walked away, allowing herself a small smile. As she walked, she raised one hand to examine immaculate fingernails. A tiny gesture conjured a crackling ball of blue light that danced in the palm of her hand. A slight twist turned it yellow, then orange, then a deep angry red that threw off ancient, dusty heat. From behind her, there was a faint clatter of a mop falling over in the cupboard, a muttered curse and a dull pop.
She tossed the fireball into the air and let it evaporate into nothingness, then turned down the next corridor back to her students waiting for the rest of the lesson.