On a 10+, Tess blazes through her copying task.

⚅⚄ + 2 = 13

On a 10+, Tess is successful with House Service. Gain +1 XP and proceed.

Beavertail's Tutor, Miss Hemstitch, gently lays out the various ways you might perform House Service to get acquainted with the pace, patterns, and personages of your new House. Your mind wanders as Miss Hemstitch describes the various cheerful, caring little chores that all of House Beavertail's scholars and staff contribute to in one way or another. Animals might not be so bad. Crèche babies are just not on. You struggle to keep your attention on the Tutor as she talks about cleaning and polishing and kitchen chores.

Your ears perk up a little when she discusses renewing the interior wards. Renewing the wards might give you good case to, well, case the joint, to discover all sorts of interesting places to investigate for their own sake, that you wouldn't see in the course of regular study, supper, sleep, self-pleasure and snogging that's a student's life. Sneaking back inconspicuously in a transformed shape might let you take the true measure of Boarbristle's scholars and staff. Perhaps you might observe some hanky-panky.

But when the Tutor offhandedly mentions copying spellbooks, you startle into full awareness.

"Copying spellbooks?" you ask.

"Yes, Miss Lectura," Miss Hemstitch says. "Novice spellbooks take a good deal of hard use, and House Beavertail finds it the best policy to start first-years with a study-book in which are inscribed the most appropriate practice spells in an accessible idiom suitable for emulation." The Tutor goes on to describe why House Beavertail does a great deal of copying and undoing of spellbooks.

You're all ears. Your foster mum put you to work copying spellbooks -- often musty tomes, with blurred ink. After you showed talent in correct, clear, and capable copying, she gave you more work. It was one of the ways you felt most competent, one of the best ways to get actual appreciation from the old witch with failing eyes when you rescued an old spell for her use, and one of your refuges from her bitter moods. She rarely bothered you when you were copying, and you spent hours hunched over the books, in a trance.

It had ruined your eyes in a very particular way that magical remedies tended to run at cross purposes to.

Thus your glasses, almost more part of you now than your hair. More responsive to your wishes, your whims. You resist touching them and transforming them. You hope you haven't tried the Tutor's patience too much already with your wandering attention.

The Tutor clears her throat.

"But I'll not go on at length about the desirability of good, fresh exercise books for spells, and the difficulties and dangers of such books after being used, abused, and set aside," Miss Hemstitch says. "Suffice it to say that novice spellbooks are best made fresh and diligently disposed of when they pass beyond a few terms of use. I take it that you are interested in House Service as a copyist?"

"Yes, Tutor," you tell her. "I've done, well, before I came to Boarbristle, that was most of my magical education. Being a spellbook copyist."

"Interesting," the Tutor says. "Headmistress Iris Amethystine did not go into great detail on your background, instead favoring detailed advice upon your needs and House Beavertail's suitability for making a fresh start after your difficult circumstances in House Minerval. I see how your copyist work could have inclined you toward House Minerval when starting at the Academy. You and I should talk more about your origins in magic, or perhaps the Housemistress would take an interest."

Miss Hemstitch ponders, running her thumb from the tip of her nose down across her lips to her chin. "There is an unclaimed bedroom in your suite. I have some thoughts upon who might be suitable to join you and your other dormitory companions. Variety seems indicated. Ah, well, let us get you started."

Sandevin, a weedy-looking second-year with a patchy blond beard, helps get you oriented to the task. It's not trifling, to be sure, but there's a good deal of repetition, and it helps, at first, to have a partner in scribing to help you get into a rhythm. Sandevin finishes his stint after a few days. Other students come and go, and you breathe in pages, breathe out ink, for hours and days on end, arriving back in your dormitory after the others have retired to their bedrooms, leaving early, having a bowl of honeyed gruel from the ever-simmering pot, ladled out by Beavertail's taciturn Second Cook as Cook herself presides over the bakings and fryings and steamings that make up the breakfast that you never see.

"Tess?" you hear. Your head is resting comfortably on your folded hands.

Two fingers guide your chin up. You open your eyes to meet the broad, motherly face of Bertha Beeblossom, your Head of House. Her deep décolletage bares most of her breasts, letting their warmth radiate directly upon your face. Her mass of frizzy hair surrounds her head like an aureole set aglow by the low-angled morning light from the window behind her.

"Housemistress?" you say.

"Your House Service is done, and more than done," Mistress Beeblossom says. "Would you favor me by joining the House for breakfast?"

"I-I'm..." you stammer, looking at your fingertips. But they're not ink-stained. You sniff self-consciously at your sleeves. They smell of fresh air and flowers. You run your fingers through your hair. Smooth and silky. You blink in confusion. Shouldn't you be a stinky, greasy mess?

"I took the liberty of casting a trifle of a spell upon you," your Housemistress says. She laughs. "Though Mistress Amethystine commends your own expertise in that very area, I didn't want to put you to the trouble."

Put me to the trouble.

"Come, you and your suitemates are joining me at my table," the Housemistress says. She offers her hand.

You take her hand. Its warm glow suffuses your body.

"You've done such work, Tess," Bertha Beeblossom says. "I'm afraid you've gotten quite ahead of the task, and any would-be copyists will have to wait for next term."

"Thank you," you tell her. "M-my pleasure."

Your Housemistress squeezes your hand. "I honor your gift. Now, let's step lightly, I understand that Cook has laid on something special for breakfast today." Mistress Beeblossom raises her wand, tracing an incomprehensible symbol toward the early morning sun outside the window. "Follow my footsteps."

Mistress Beeblossom treads lightly on the bright sun-dapples washing into the room, and in no time at all, you're outside in the brisk air of the courtyard, skipping from sun-dapple to sun-dapple cast by the gently shivering leaves of the courtyard trees, until you reach the arched door leading to Beavertail's refectory. You were there, and now you're here, and you don't rightly have a sense for how it all happened, except it did happen upon your own feet.

Mistress Beeblossom has a twinkle of mirth in her eyes at your expression. "I do like to show off, now and then," she admits.

You match her smile. Touching your fingertips to the rims of your glasses, you transform them into wide circles of green shade spotted with golden sun-dapples.

Bertha Beeblossom laughs, her breasts shaking with laughter, and leads you in to breakfast.

Gain +1 XP. You have 1 XP.
Traits: Ambition -1, Bravery +0, Cunning +1, Diligence +2.
Talented Transformer: +1 to Move rolls including casting a Transformation spell.
Unpurged Minerval: Tess can use MIND MELD or STAMINA as House Sex Moves.

Describe breakfast with the Housemistress. Describe your roommates -- perhaps Miss Hemstitch has picked out a particular one to fill the empty spot in your suite? Start unwinding yourself as a Minerval and rebuilding yourself as a Beavertail.