In the silent morning after a long strange day with the Headmistress

The morning light found you packed and ready, gazing out the window as the stars faded. Once the last star had been lost in the dawn, the Headmistress' messenger, a rainbow-winged flutterby, alighted upon your hand. From its touch spread the warmth of Iris Amethystine's presence. The Headmistress, and until today your Housemistress, was a distant star, but when the bullies and liars sheltering under Whiplash's favour had perjured you into detention once too many times, the Headmistress had descended from her tower and took on the duties of her lesser title, Housemistress of Minerval, for one, long, terrifying day. With you at her side, Iris Amethystine had interrogated each of your accusers.

The ringleader had departed Boarbristle in disgrace, though his family had pull, and perhaps he would be readmitted. But never to Minerval.

And you would be moving to House Beavertail upon the morrow. The Headmistress had been brusque and unmovable upon your pleading that Minerval was the best place to build knowledge and mastery.

"Of spells, perhaps, Tess," she had said. "Spells are built upon the witch, and Minerval has served this witch, yourself, has served you ill." Her gaze bores deeper into you, appraisingly. "The Librarian adores you."

You shrink back into yourself. You and Miss Caldwell. Forbidden love. Or was it love? It felt like it. Intense, furious connection. Each time, the Librarian had paused to fix your gazes together, each magnified and doubled by your glasses, and then called on the Forbidden Spell CLIMACTICUS, hammering you both into ecstasy at the same moment, your minds exploding into each other. Once. coming back to yourself, you had thought you were Miss Caldwell. Your recollection of the sexual encounter was completely hers, holding soft little Tess so tightly, kissing, embracing, hearing her whimpers and her shuddering breaths, kindling her desire, kindling yours until you were so hot for her that you couldn't hold back the magic word a moment longer. And then you had seen the Librarian across the room and had fallen with a shock back into yourself. I'm Tess. I'm Tess. I'm Tess, you had mumbled to yourself over and over.

"You need no adoration, Tess," Iris Amethystine had said. "You need love. You will find it at House Beavertail."

You had sat by her side miserably as afternoon's embers became the fiery glow that heralded evening. She had lowered her quill, blotted her writing, folded the missive, sealed it with wax impressed with her Witch Mark, and dispatched it to its destination with a flourish of her wand.

"Come, Tess," the Headmistress had commanded.

After sunset, the Headmistress had taken you to the peak of her tower. A meal had arrived, floating up over the parapet, a curved, horn-shaped basket wrapped in bright green cloth threaded with gold.

"Sophronia has outdone herself," Iris Amethystine had said, after the basket had unwrapped itself, the wrapper cloth unfolding into a picnic blanket, and the cornucopia spilling out across the cloth.

It was a picnic under the stars. You'd read about picnics, you'd been on one? two? For a long time you ate, answering the Headmistress with one or two words. At length, Iris Amethystine had drawn you out on your talents, your interests, and your curse of shortsightedness. She laughed when you demonstrated how your glasses became a finger ring, then spooled out into lenses again. The Headmistress asked for your glasses, did something to them, and handed them back.

"Look up at the sky, Tess," the Headmistress had directed.

The night sky in its glimmers and glows and points of light placidly sailing the dome of sky, came alive in your sight. Stars streaked with trails. Rippling curtains of light swept across the sky like waves upon a pond. Shooting stars punctuated the rhythm of the rippling light curtains, and actinic flashes high overhead flickered into cascading skirts of electric blue, dimming as they spread and descended.

"What is it, Headmistress?" you had asked.

"It's alive," Iris Amethystine had said. "All of it."

When you lowered your gaze to look into her face, something occupied her outline. It was nothing you could place or recognize, but if the sky danced with living motion, this something seethed, throwing off sparks from the center of a swirling cauldron.

"Headmistress?"

Iris Amethystine's voice comes from this strange entity of jewels and fire.

"All of it. Most powerfully alive, witches such as you and I. Look."

She raises an empty plate from your meal and passes a hand over it, conjuring it into a mirror.

In your reflection is a storm of light and stars surmounted, incongruously, by a pair of large-rimmed glasses.

"Behold the face of yourself, the goddess. Love her and believe in her. She is yourself, in the eyes of magic."

"Will I remember?" you lament. "I don't know how to do it. And you're going to, you're going to purge me when I leave Minerval, I'll forget this, I'll forget everything." The face of my mother, unknown. The name she called me, lost. Why she gave me away, forgotten.

She laughs. "Fiddlesticks. Nonsense. None of that. To the contrary, Tess." A web of stars and lightning reaches toward you. You feel her fingertip upon your forehead. "REMEMBER."

You had woken in the darkness of night, wearing a plain white robe of no House colors, sitting in a chair at the shared study table in your dormitory room. Juno Glitterclaw, as usual, slept like a stone in her bed. Decent enough roommate. Never caused each other trouble. Had her own obsessions. Did a lot of dreamwork divination, so sometimes she was studying as she slept.

Your glasses are on your face. The world looks normal through them.

As you sit, the day arrives, and with it the rainbow-winged butterfly. It's time.

For a lark, you take up your wand and transform your hands and feet. Out the window you go, headfirst, your squirrel-clawed hands and squirrel-jointed feet walking you straight downward until you reach the courtyard. Standing a little unsteadily, you reach up and beckon to your window. Your faithful, ancient cradle basket which had seen you into Stepmother's care, is by your craft an ambulatory construct, climbing down the wall, its contents your scarce personal possessions, diminished by the black-and-white robes of House Minerval which are no longer your own. Once the basket has climbed down and set itself back up in walking position, you whistle for your flying broom. It sails out through the window and into your hand. You leave your broom in the charge of your faithful walking basket.

In the cool silence of predawn, back to your own hands and feet, you thread your way from courtyard to courtyard, following the Headmistress' butterfly, until you reach the oil-rubbed, gleaming wooden gates of the domain of House Beavertail. The butterfly lights upon the gate, and it swings open.

As your path clears, you hear singing from inside, strengthening as the gate opens wider, until you feel compelled by the music to move forward, to dance forward, skipping from one foot to another as the singing fills your waking world and pulls you into its rhythms.

From then on the rest of the day is fragments, confusing pieces, warm embraces from the staff, a senior student or two, a glimpse in a mirror at your tearful eyes, Miss Hemstitch and her aide, the glowing mote, initiating you into the membership, mysteries, and magical society of House Beavertail.

I'm not in Minerval anymore is your first thought, waking on the second full day of your life as a scholar of House Beavertail. What does that mean?

It meant roommates. You tiptoe to the door of your little broom closet of a bedroom -- with the flying broom you rarely used, so justly a broom closet -- and survey the common area. There's a broad table for study or snacks or games. If this was Leontes you'd guess arm-wrestling. Here it was probably card games. Knitting. Little finger games to teach you rhythm and coordination. Tutor Whiplash had scorned House Beavertail as a kindergarten, soft and simple, steering scholars away from true challenge and attainment. Maybe that was what you needed, why Headmistress -- no longer your Housemistress -- had sent you here.

It meant a brown robe trimmed with gold. You close your door, don your new robe, and inspect yourself in the mirror. It's not a flattering color to your coppery hair and pale complexion. You're sallow against the brown and gold. Mostly you don't care. You could fix it if you wanted. You rub your fingertips together, feeling a sparkle of magic in them. You are Tess the Transformer, Terror of Minerval...no. Terror if need be, but better not to need terror.

You tiptoe out into the corridors and follow your nose to breakfast.

It meant House Service. The tiny glowing mote that was Miss Hemstitch's assistant catches you at the end of breakfast to direct you to House Service.

I spent two weeks solid working as a spellbook copyist. - Tess, to Fay

Traits: Ambition -1, Bravery +0, Cunning +1, Diligence +2.
XP: 0.
No friends or favors.
Talented Transformer: +1 to Move rolls including casting a Transformation spell.
Unpurged Minerval: Tess keeps MIND MELD as an alternative Sex Move alongside Beavertail's STAMINA.

Roll +DILIGENCE(+2) using GET OUT OF DETENTION for House Service. When you complete it successfully, gain +1 XP, describe your roommates, and start unwinding yourself as a Minerval and rebuilding yourself as a Beavertail.