All fifth year students of Hecate had five classes. Moreover, tutors had to oversee an Exercise class, which added up to a total of six classes daily.
Chervil, who wasn’t known for her attendance, had attended today her three morning classes: Process of Magic, Theory of Magic, and Magic of Blessings. She ignored the Exercise class, because it was Sage's turn to oversee it on Fridays. And she spent that time slowly eating her lunch, before she headed to the Western Park in order to read.
However, she was unable to read, because the pleasant wind, the warm sun, and the quiet rustling of the leaves, made her feel sleepy. She lay down with the book on her face, and was napping until Aspen grabbed the book away, and the sharp sunrays woke her up.
As scheduled, he came in order to return the books, which he had already finished reading.
Chervil had several more books for Aspen in her backpack, but the boy seemed too interested in the book titled «Effects of Herbs on Magic Spells» to even consider other books.
She was in the process of reading that book, but she didn't care that Aspen took it. He was a fast reader, and he'd return most books in less than three days. Whereas, Chervil liked to read her books slowly, while enjoying every word, which meant spending weeks instead of days on the same book.
After he left, Chervil headed back home.
Once at the cottage, she quickly finished her homework, then having nothing better to do, she just lay on the sofa staring at the ceiling. After some time, she stretched out, and looked at the clock on her desk.
Her roommate, Sage Moss, had long since finished tutoring the first year students in the Exercise of Magic class, yet she still hadn't returned back.
Chervil only cared to notice that Sage wasn't back yet, and wasn't interested in whatever her roommate was doing, when she wasn't home.
Feeling a bit drowsy, she turned around on the sofa, and decided to take a nap before her next classes.
She woke up an hour later right before her major class was about to start, but she chose to skip it. She didn’t feel like going now, since she wouldn’t make it on time anyway. However, she did get up from the sofa, stretched out, and went to the kitchen to grab some snacks.
An hour and a half later, she got dressed and left the cottage ready for her last class of the day - History of Magic.
Since this was the last year of studying History, she decided to attend each History class throughout this year without skipping any of them, unless she had a good reason. It was a surprising decision, because among all the classes, she disliked History the most, and has been skipping it a lot in the past four years.
When she entered the class, Maca and Sage were already inside, but that was what she expected to see.
Today, Chervil wasn’t in a hurry. She even travelled at a slow pace from the cottage to the classroom, as if she was still sleeping. Therefore it did surprise her that she actually made it to the class before the teacher.
Several minutes later, Cacao Bark entered the classroom and he was also confused to see Chervil Sun diligently attending his lecture again. Unlike the last four years, Chervil had been repeatedly attending History of Magic since the very beginning of her fifth year. Cacao didn’t believe that people would change that suddenly, so he was expecting some ulterior motive behind Chervil’s perfect attendance record.
Cacao taught Chervil’s class last year and four years ago, when all the girls in the class were just first year students, and he never had a more problematic class in all of his time as a teacher. Furthermore, it was a girls’ class, which made it even more unusual. Typically, the boys’ classes had more troublemakers.
However, when speaking of troublemakers, one’s image of a troublemaker is often that of a student disregarding the rules and refusing to show manners. However Sage and Chervil were a totally different type of troublemakers.
When Cacao first started teaching their class four years ago, he was strict like usual, and it was working for most students, except for two: Chervil Wandflower Yidianhong Sun and Sage Solhatt Spurge Moss. In his first lesson, Sage, being fairly powerful in magic, changed the score, which he had written in her book. Chervil just outright set her notebook on fire in front of everybody, and called it an accident.
This form of troublemaking was rare. Instead of disobeying or disregarding the rules, the two girls weren’t even paying attention to the rules. Both of them lived as if rules didn’t exist and they did whatever they felt like doing. Even though, neither Sage nor Chervil had any evil intentions, their behaviors were certainly troubling.
He tried punishing the two, but no punishments worked. The girls treated punishments like bad weather. They just endured until it was over, and returned back to the way Mother Nature created them. Even the chairman of Hecate came to talk with the girls, but couldn’t get them to regret their actions. Eventually, after explaining to the girls, that they will be expelled from the school, if their misconducts continue, the two of them conceded to behave better.
And yet, «behave better» was not the same as «behave like good students». Thus both Chervil and Sage were often balancing their actions on a thin border between right and wrong. However, as the girls grew older and as they learned more about the world, they both became better at hiding their actions, which made it harder for the chairman and for the teachers to know, whether they did something wrong or not.
When the list of the best students was announced last year, Cacao wasn’t surprised that the names of Chervil Sun and Sage Moss were among the top ten studentesses of the fourth year. The two were fairly talented, and neither one was hiding it. However, he almost fell out of his chair, when the girls came up to him and offered to become tutors for the first year students. Or to be more precise, Chervil came to see him, and dragged Sage with her.
In the beginning, he didn’t know how to react. After talking it out with the other teachers and with the chairman, the final decision was made. The adults came to the conclusion that tutoring may be a good experience for the girls, who would be able to learn responsibility and duty, which may improve their behaviors.
Cacao broke away from his recollections, and focused his mind on the present.
He approached his desk, and stood right next to it. He looked at the class in front of him, especially at the two troublemakers. He knew that both girls were already involved with tutoring, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think that it miraculously fixed their attitudes toward education. Instead, he was vigilant, expecting that at any time, either Chervil or Sage, or worse, both at the same time, would do something, which shouldn’t have been done.
“As many of you know, this is the last year you study the History of Magic,” he said to the whole class. “You won’t have any more History classes next year, and instead the Theory of Magic will take over. Up until now, I have taught you all about the origin of magic, its definition, its history, its terminologies, and the meaning of its existence in our world. I taught you all about the historical use of magic, and how it affected our world over many centuries.”
He cleared his throat, and continued, “the Theory of Magic will continue, from where this class ended last year. It may feel a bit odd, but during this one year, you will have both History and Theory classes, which is intended to smoothly transfer you from the past to the future.”
Chervil rolled her eyes. She already heard all of that in the Theory of Magic class.
Cacao continued speaking, “the History of Magic is meant to teach you all about the past, or in other words, it retells you all which is already known. The Theory of Magic is a class, as its name implies, to teach you about the future, or to be more precise, to tell you about the unknown possibilities, which lie ahead of you.”
Maca was taking notes, like most studentesses. Chervil listened with her head leaning on her left hand, but her countenance showed that she was bored. Sage was staring back and forth between the teacher and the ceiling. And Cacao calmly spoke, while observing the class.
“In the last two weeks, we’ve been reviewing all, which you've learned in the past four years. And today we will start reading the new textbooks.” Cacao clapped his hands, and a textbook appeared in front of each student. “As all of you know, a history of magic is no different from a history of any other subject. Whether it’s science or art, everything has its history.”
Sage took a very disinterested look at the book, then yawned, while covering her mouth with her hand.
“Up until now, you’ve been learning all the good things, which have happened in the history of magic, but…” Cacao paused for a moment, and took a deep breath, “but the history isn’t that easy. There were times, when new magic failed; times, when new magic killed; times, when magic was intentionally used to destroy.”
Chervil opened the book with a dark brown cover, and read the title on the first page: The Ugly History of Magic.
Meanwhile, Cacao never stopped speaking. “Magic is a tool in our hands. And just like any tool, we can use it to do good, or we can use it to do evil. If you have a knife, you can use it to prepare food, or you can use it to stab someone. The power of a tool is in the hands of the user, and sadly throughout history, there were some very foolish men and women, who used magic in a way, in which it should have never been used.”
Maca continued to take down notes rapidly, trying to write as quickly as humanly possible.
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