CHAPTER 7
The next morning, I wanted to kiss Ophelia Blackthorn full on the mouth for her list of spells.
Or at the very least, send her a gift basket.
Professor Reynolds had been able to keep his dignity intact, and we were able to change diapers without the mess, smell, or sight of a dirty diaper.
I copied every single spell on the list into my grimoire and tagged them for future use.
The professor had woken up multiple times during the night, hungry for food or needing to be changed.
I was extra grateful for the boost of energy that the start of term gave us as I scrubbed my face in the sink. I had bags under my eyes, but none of the bone-deep exhaustion that had plagued me when the ley lines had been missing.
“Look what I made!” Aiden said proudly from the doorway of the bathroom.
I patted my face dry and exited the bathroom. He’d done some neat transfiguration on a chair to turn it into a stroller. “That looks great,” I said slowly.
“But?”
“Stairs?” I asked.
He grinned. “I thought of that!” He pushed a button on the side and the wheels changed positions. “The perfect distance apart to take each step one at a time.”
“Nice.” I beamed at him. “You thought of everything.”
“I hope so.” He fiddled with the handle of the stroller.
I regarded him thoughtfully. “You’re going to be a great father,” I said.
“I hope so,” he repeated, swallowing hard. “I didn’t have the best example.”
“Neither did I.” I grabbed my brush and started trying to get the tangles out of my hair. “I think that as long as we do what feels right and listen to each other, we’ll be okay.”
“ We might be, but what about our baby?”
“Our baby.” I bounced a little, giddy at the thought. “I shouldn’t be as excited about that as I am, right?”
“Probably not.” Aiden plucked the brush out of my hands and put it on the dresser. “I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to the conception, you having that pregnancy glow, or us having the baby, though.”
I chuckled and draped my arms over his shoulders. “You’re allowed to look forward to all three. We don’t have to wait for the attempted conception, though.”
His eyes widened, a splash of fear in them.
“No, I mean we can keep practicing the conception step.”
“Oh!” He relaxed, relieved. “I thought you were trying to tell me something.”
“Not at all.” I kissed his lips lightly, but he grabbed the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair, and absolutely plundered my mouth. “We don’t have time now !” I gasped when he released me.
“I suppose not.” He winked at me as he headed for the attached nursery. “Just something for you to think about all day until the professor’s asleep tonight.”
I gripped the edge of the dresser tightly, my knees weak.
How was I going to be able to hold off on climbing him like a tree until tonight?
“There’s the tiny professor!” Aiden said, carrying the baby out into our room. He’d transfigured the clothes into a little waistcoat and pants, complete with a bow tie. “Doesn’t he look cute?”
I stifled my giggles. “He’s still our professor. Hopefully, he won’t remember this when he grows up.”
“I think he’d appreciate my sense of taste,” Aiden said haughtily. “Besides, he’s my thesis supervisor. I know what he’d like.”
“He’d like to not be cooed over by the entirety of the female population of the school,” I muttered under my breath.
“What was that?” Aiden asked, looking up from buckling the baby into the stroller.
“I said it’s hard to resist cooing over him,” I replied. “I need to get changed. Can you take him out, please?”
“I’ll take him down for breakfast.” Aiden pecked me lightly on the lips, and then cheerfully started narrating his actions to the professor as he opened the door and started down the hallway.
I frowned slightly at the closing door, Aiden’s voice filtering back to me. He was treating the professor like a real baby. While it boded well for our future kids how quickly he bonded with him, I wasn’t sure the professor would appreciate it.
I sighed and got dressed before heading downstairs.
Professor Dunlop caught up with me on the second floor. “I didn’t find Emma last night.”
“She didn’t return to her room?” I asked, surprised.
He shook his head.
“Were the other professors able to get anything from the potion in his goblet?”
The professor snorted. “The one that spilled all over the floor when his transformation happened?”
“Shit,” I cursed.
“Language.” He sighed. “But I concur.”
“I have Qualitative Spellcraft first, and Emma should be in that class. What professor is taking over for him?”
“That would be me.” Professor Dunlop looked worried. “I think you’ll be a little busy, though. We’re going to research spell cures.”
“Fun!” I said enthusiastically.
“I’m glad you think so. Get some food in your belly. You’re going to need the energy.”
I continued down to the cafeteria, getting my breakfast and joining my friends at our table. There was a parade of girls that kept walking past, distracting the infant from his food.
“Should we be giving him solids?” I wondered halfway through my bacon.
“I think it’s okay. He has teeth,” Rhiannon said.
“I’m cutting the hashbrowns,” Aiden added.
The professor grabbed for the food in front of him and managed to get half of it into his mouth. The rest went into his hair.
“Thank goodness for cleaning spells,” I said. “That would be a pain and a half to get out the human way. How do parents manage without spells?”
“Good question, and I’m glad we won’t ever have to find out,” Bruce said.
Clarissa chuckled behind her hand. “We might when we travel in human-populated areas.”
“We can just bring the baby into the bathroom and perform the spell there,” Bruce argued.
“Hang on—” I cut myself off as a fourth year got in the professor’s face.
“Aren’t you just the cutest!” she squealed, squeezing his cheeks. “Cutie-wittle-baby!”
“What are you doing?” I demanded, standing up. “That is your professor! You don’t talk like that to your professors, no matter their current form!”
The girl flushed and tried to hurry away, but Headmistress Blackthorn stood in her path.
“Well said, Ms. Doyle,” the headmistress said. “Detention, Ms. O’Connell. My office, four o’clock.” She moved out of the way, and the student bowed and ran away. “I knew I had picked well when I chose you to take care of him. How was your night?”
“Exhausting. Babies have tiny bellies,” I said honestly.
“They do.” The headmistress pinched her lips together as she regarded the professor covered in his breakfast. “We have come up with a variety of spells to attempt, and would like to borrow Professor Reynolds for the morning.”
I resisted the protective urge I felt, shaking it off. I was surprised at its intensity. The other professors had his best interests at heart and wouldn’t hurt him.
“Of course,” I said. “Just let me clean him up for you.”
“Ingenious contraption,” she said, admiring the stroller behind the highchair. “I saw Mister Evans using it on the stairs. You’ve got the head for ingenuity,” she said to him.
I handed her the clean baby and she tucked him into the stroller. “See you at lunch.”
Aiden put his head in his hands. “Why did I feel like saying no?”
I patted his shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, so did I.”
Professor Dunlop greeted us at the door of the Qualitative Spellcraft classroom. “I need you to go to the library. Emma Donahue comes from an older witch family.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully.
“The hidden study rooms,” I whispered. “But I don’t know where hers is.”
“Mister Brecken is aware of every location in the library. He wouldn’t be able to access them without the master key.” He handed me an ornate brass key.
“A little on the nose, don’t you think?” I said, examining it.
“Simple is often as satisfying as the most complex spell,” Professor Dunlop said dryly. “Please retrieve Ms. Donahue. She won’t want to miss her first class.”
“Yes sir,” I said.
I trotted down the stairs to the basement and found Mister Brecken behind the main library desk easily. I explained the situation, and he nodded.
“The hidden study rooms are all around the library. It shouldn’t take long to find Ms. Donahue’s.”
He cleared the desk in front of him and drew a symbol with his finger. The magic left behind faded into the wood after he completed it, and then I was looking at the floor plan of the library.
“Fascinating!” I said. “Which one is hers?”
We studied the design for a moment.
“There,” Mr. Brecken said, pointing at a room off to the side. It wasn’t in the restricted section like mine. “I’ll lead you there.” He wiped his hand over the magical floor plan and it vanished.
“Can you make it on any surface?” I asked. “Or is it tied specifically to the desk?”
“I could make it in the air if I wished,” Mr. Brecken said, picking up his cane and walking slowly around the desk. “It’s easier to see on flat surfaces, though.”
He led me through the stacks to a back corner. “Here you go.”
I looked at the portraits on the walls, but couldn’t see a door. “Umm...”
“You’ve got the key,” he said impishly. “I can’t give you all the answers!” Chuckling to himself, he left me alone in the corner.
I took out the key and tapped it against my palm. “A keyhole would be at a specific height, usually,” I said to myself.
The walls looked flat everywhere I could see.
“Maybe magically?” I muttered, casting the spell on my eyes the next second. Still nothing stood out to me.
“I am not going to be beaten by a door,” I huffed, removing the spell.
Rather than letting my eyes do the work, I ran my fingertips along the wall around the frames. I couldn’t feel anything, and was starting to get frustrated before I finally looked at the portraits themselves. They were both old witches, with long beards and old-fashioned clothing. But the background of one had a door.
My eyebrows rose. “It can’t be that obvious.” Then I laughed to myself. It certainly hadn’t been obvious to me.
I fit the key to the lock and turned it. Something clicked, and the portrait swung off the wall.
It was a bit of a step to get up into the hole behind it, but I managed, closing the portrait behind me. As was usual, there was a hallway, several hidden doors off it. I had no idea which one would be Emma’s, so I started opening them all, closing them once I knew they were empty, despite wanting to explore them.
The fourth was the one I sought.
Emma squeaked and cast a clumsy invisibility spell on herself, but I stood in the doorway calmly.
“We need to talk,” I said.
She gave up on the pretense of not being there after a few tense minutes. She dropped the invisibility spell and sank onto the makeshift bed she’d set up on the floor. “How did you find me?” she asked.
“That’s your first question?” I was shocked. “Not, ‘How is Professor Reynolds?’ or ‘I’m so sorry!’”
Emma put her face in her hands. “I didn’t know this was going to happen.”
I snorted and entered the room, sitting in the desk chair. “Obviously.”
“I just wanted him to love me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is that really love?”
She sniffled. “No. But maybe it could become love?”
“You know it wouldn’t.”
“I suppose not.” Emma sighed heavily.
“What’s your plan?” I asked. “Hide in here for the rest of the school year?”
“I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”
I wanted to groan. “Well, Professor Dunlop sent me to retrieve you for our lesson. He knew you’d be here. He probably let you have last night to yourself to let you think about things. Now, are you ready to get to work?”
“Work?”
I wanted to shake her. “Yes, work. We need to try to cure the professor. He can’t stay a baby forever, and it’s not fair to force him to go through puberty a second time.”
Emma chuckled weakly. “No, that wouldn’t be nice. But how can I help?”
“Well, having your love spell would help immensely. Do you have any leftovers? The written spell would help as well.”
She nodded. “I can get you the written one, but I don’t have any leftovers.”
I stared at her. “How much did you put in his tea?”
“I only had a tiny vial,” she protested.
“What did you do with the rest?”
“What rest?”
I rubbed my temples. “You made the potion in a cauldron, didn’t you? A tiny vial wouldn’t fit the entire contents.”
“Oh! No, I was told to... Hang on, let me get the instructions.” She rifled through her course books, pulling out a thin folder. “These are my grandmama’s spells. She said her love spell works every time, and it’s very potent.” She flipped three pages until she got to the one she wanted, and brought it over to her desk.
I leaned forward, reading through it. “It says to discard the excess by watering your plants.”
“No, it says to distill it,” Emma insisted, and joined me in reading the page. Her face turned white. “This is different! I swear!”
I took a deep breath. “May I?” I asked, and she nodded. I flipped slowly through the rest of the pages, stopping when I got to one about distilling the potion. “Is this it?”
“Oh God!” Emma cried. “I poisoned our teacher!”
“Stop being so dramatic,” I said with a sigh. “He’s not poisoned. When did the pages change? Had you already gathered the ingredients?”
I had her walk through the potion she had made, although her memory was a little fuzzy on the details, since she had made it two months prior.
By the end, it seemed like she’d mostly made the love potion, but finished it off with the new spell.
“Now we just have to figure out what a love potion combined with a nostalgia potion would do,” I said dryly. “I think it’s time to go see Professor Dunlop.”