Magic School

By Uniasus

Part 4 of 5 of the In the Company of Others series

A/N: This series starts with The Big Three in the Life of Jack Frost, followed by Getting Reacquainted with the Family, and then Painting Candy. Painting Candy is the only one I would say you have to read before this one, as these events are in direct response to Bunny's observations in Candy.

Despite the recent truce as it was, Jack was still cautious whenever he came to the Pole. The yeti had not been kind to him over the years, and the amount of bruises Jack had received in the shape of Phil's fists had bypassed a thousand in the first few decades.

It had been painful and sad, but it had been real.

And then Jack had been forced by Mother Nature to become Old Man Winter's apprentice and he had discovered that well, he had magic. A lot of magic. Enough where sneaking past the Pole's defenses had been easy, but avoiding detection was not. Enough were he could heal his wounds quickly, and so only had an imprint of Phil's knuckles on his shoulder if he wanted them. However, he hadn't been able to do the Old Man's trick of making furry creatures fly. He could make a wooly mammoth travel on the wind, but Jack couldn't get the slimiest yeti to hover? Pathetic.

However, while Jack used his magic sometimes to get into the Pole it wasn't necessary any more. He'd just show up, be it via window, roof, or ice tunnel, and the yeti would let him in. No questions asked.

Well, they did often ask how he was doing and the like.

It was a little strange, being greeted with smiles instead of fists. Right, so habits die hard and Jack was more often greeted with grimaces and stern looks of warning, but the fists were gone. And since habits did die hard, when Jack went to the Pole on his own it usually wasn't to see North.

His goals in the past had always been to 1) sneak past the yeti 2) see the workshop and then 3) say hi to Phil. Jack had never achieved goal two until that fateful day he had been stuffed in a sack, and so every time he came to the Pole he set out to accomplish goals one and three.

Jack breezed in through the sleigh tunnel, stopping at a tower the yeti were working on. It was a support beam and Jack lighted on a balcony. They were startled to see him, so goal one of getting in unnoticed was met. With a paint brush here and a staff touch there, Jack helped them install a set of stairs. He melded metal and froze things in place, grabbing tools when asked only to require a silly song to have them actually be handed to the yeti who wanted it.

But eventually, he got bored and so Jack moved on to goal three – say hello to Phil.

Phil had never actually caught him sneaking in during those 300 years, others had and then brought Jack to him. As Workshop Overseer, his job was to make sure things went smoothly and to fix the things that didn't. Jack sneaking in had been an unsmooth thing. Phil was very good at fixing the problem of Jack's appearance by beating him up and then sending him out into the snow to heal. Jack was the sole security risk, and Phil had taken delight in taking care of him personally.

That care extended to his visits now that he was a Guardian. Jack was subjected to shoves, punches, and noogies that hinted at the previous violence of their relationship but now showed affection. The winter spirit much preferred it to Old Man Winter's habit of stealing his staff and locking him up somewhere as a lesson. Phil was a kind soul.

He also took a prank better.

Today, Jack found him at the Imagination Station. Which was really a room and not a station, but it didn't sound as cool. Phil was being shown new inventions, with the idea that they would be future toys. Jack buzzed around the room, hopping from place to place and getting underfoot, but the yeti just gruffly pushed him aside. He was wiggling the panels on a space craft when Phil pulled his ear. Wincing in pain, Jack backed off and ducked the telegraphed head cuff. Jack looked up at the brown yeti, grin on his face when North's voice boomed out.

"Phil! You know Jack is welcome guest. And we don't hit guests."

"North, it's no big deal. This happens all the time. It's -"

Nicholas St. North pulled Jack out of the room after shaking a finger in Phil's face that obviously said they'd talk later.

"I can't believe yeti still do that."

"North, it's not a big deal." He pulled his arm out of North's grip and raised himself up to float just over the older Guardian's head.

"Not a big deal? Jack, he was going to hit you."

Jack shrugged. "I don't mind."

North looked like he himself had been hit, and Jack wanted to explain but the words wouldn't come to mind. How could he say that he didn't mind the playful violence the yeti engaged in with him because it was familiar? That is was a constant thing, a reminder that their opinion of him wasn't much different than it had been for three hundred years while the Guardians were a bit more fickle? That he was more comfortable with the shoves and ear pulls than he was with North's hugs? Tooth's smiles? He couldn't.

"Jack, you should mind."

"But I don't. Drop it."

North obviously wanted to protest, but Jack's stern look stopped it.

"Why were you with yeti anyway?"

"Why wouldn't I visit them?"

"Because-" North cut himself off, for which Jack was glad. Honestly, Jack himself couldn't pinpoint why he came to visit the yeti all the time. He wasn't sure friends was the right term for them. The other Guardians were Jack's family, he knew that and was getting used to it. But while he was a recent addition to the family, the child given up for adoption and only recently found centuries later, Phil and the other yeti had been there from decade one. Not friends, but maybe neighbors. Kids he would run into from time to time in the park and play with.

"North, they don't seriously hurt me. It's a game." He ignored North's frown and continued. "They...are fun. And like the input from a child."

With a sigh, North seemed willing to not only drop the subject but banish it from his mind. Jack was sure it would come up again later, but before that there would be a conversation between North and the other Guardians. Jack knew they talked about him behind his back. He didn't entirely mind. Some good had come from it.

North led the way to a lift and before Jack knew it he was crouched on the window sill in North's office sipping chilled eggnog. Complete with candy cane hooked over the goblet's lip. Jack listened absently to North's chatter; small talk and the idea of 'catching up' on events that happened between the last time people meet each other was still something he was trying to understand and pin down. He had however, perfected the art of giving the impression he was listening. Jack hmmed and oh reallyed and tell me mored, not really paying attention to North's words but to his hands instead.

The Russian was ice carving, nothing new there. Today, it was a foot high reindeer that looked a lot more gentle than the six living in the stable below them. Skinny legs, slim shoulders, and a round nose at the end of the muzzle that reminded Jack of Pluto the dog.

"So, Jack." Jack could just tell, by the pause before and after those words, by the switch in tone, this was a serious issue so the frost spirit moved his attention to North's face. He was still working on the ice reindeer, but using a soft brush to clear off the chipped and shaved ice. "Bunny tells me you have fair bit of magic."

"Don't all spirits?"

North put the brush down and crossed his arms, staring at Jack.

"Yes. But amount of magic is range." That, Jack knew. Old Man Winter had a lot more than him. "Bunny says you are very powerful magician."

"I'm really not, Old Man's got a lot more power than me."

"But you have a lot more power than Bunny."

Jack laughed. "No way. He delivers all those eggs pretty much single-handedly in a day. I can't do that."

"Has nothing to do with Bunny's magic and everything to do with creepy eggs. He said you turned ice into candy. That's transformation. Very hard and very powerful."

Jack frowned. "It can't be that hard. Old Man Winter and Mother Nature can do it."

"Your knowledge of other spirits is limited. It is just the Seasons, Peter, and us, yes?"

"Yeah."

"Jack, I can do this to ice." North tapped the head of the reindeer and without warning it started prancing around, the nose glowing red. "Tooth can't. Bunny can't. Sandy can't. Just me."

They watched it dance a lap around the desk in silence before North spoke again. "I can make things move, there is wonder in that, but you could do more, yes?"

In answer, Jack held out his palm to the little reindeer and it totted onto it. He stuck his hand into his hoodie's pouch and pulled out his paintbrush and a few oil paint tubes. His staff was his main magic tool, but Jack usually used it for elemental magic. For other types, like this, he had the most practice with a brush and thus used that during the rare times he had to use non-elemental magic.

At the moment however, he was a little loss as to how to get the paint on the brush when one hand held the ice reindeer and the other his painting supplies. He looked up to North, who understood and took the paint tubes from him.

"Which one should I open?"

"Doesn't matter." Jack flipped the brush between his fingers till it resided between his first three. North unscrewed the cap of the navy paint and Jack rolled the bristles into it before starting to paint the ice sculpture which was standing as still as it had been before being animated.

Jack sucked at painting. He could only do broad strokes, nothing like the detailed murals Bunny could create, and so he was skeptical again as to why Bunny thought he had a bunch of magic power. It made no sense. Why would he, little Jack Frost, have more magic then any of the Guardians with their thousands of believing children? He had two hundred, maybe. And it made sense that the Seasons had more power than him too. They were Seasons. Protectors not of children, but Gaia.

North was probably just surprised he had non-elemental magic period. And Jack didn't quite believe North's power stopped at making ice move. The snow globes begged to disagree. Determined to show the limits of his power, so he could then tell North that was it, he's done, Bunny's rumor of his vast power false, Jack did the hardest thing he could thing of.

The paint went on navy, but soon turned to brown on the reindeer's body, ivory on the antlers, and red on the still glowing noise. The brittle ice filled out, the reindeer becoming stockier with broad hooves and soft. When Jack finished with painting the eyes, he was holding not an ice reindeer, but a plush one. The glowing light had disappeared, but North's magic still animated the toy. With a shake of it's head, the reindeer trotted off of Jack's palm and to the work table.

"There. That's all I can do. And I find it hard to believe you or the others can't do that." Guardians were powerful. They had to be to protect children.

The wind whispered a reminder that the power horse of the recent fights with Pitch had been him. Jack shook the words off, Sandy had been pretty powerful too.

"Jack, you animated the reindeer and turned it into fabric."

"What? No. You animated it. I just turned it into a plushie."

"You worked your magic over mine? Keeping it intact?"

"Yeeaah." Jack was beginning to think maybe he did have a crazy amount of magic. Because North's eyes were huge and the few yeti who had peeked in were muttering in surprise. "The nose glow had to go though." Really, the few elves bowing to him was disconcerting.

"North, what's the big deal?" Because this attention was really getting uncomfortable.

"Big deal is, like said before, I can't do that." He pointed a thick finger at the prancing reindeer. "I have not met anyone who could since before I was Guardian."

Hastily, Jack capped the paint and put it and the brush in his pouch. He flew to the window sill, clutching his staff to him, and considered bolting.

North picked up the reindeer and cradled it in his arms like a small kitten. It kept it's plush form. With a head shake, he moved his attention from the toy to Jack.

"Where did you learn this?"

"I told Bunny, Old Man Winter taught me. I was his apprentice for a century."

"Bunny said something about ice cages." There was that frown again, like the one that graced North's face an hour ago.

"Old Man didn't like my pranks. The ice giants thought they were hilarious, but he would just make this box of ice that was cold to the touch and then throw me into it without my staff. It was learn how to get out by myself or stay there. I couldn't actually touch the ice, too cold, so I had to learn how to do it indirectly. Through my staff, or paintbrush."

"You can't do magic with out them?"

"No. But I know you can. I've ridden with you on Christmas remember?"

"Hmm." North put down the reindeer and picked up something Jack had overlooked before. One of the Old Man Winter's ice bars that he had turned into candy a few weeks ago. "Here is thing Jack. You know powerful spirits. And that makes you underestimate your power. But truth is, you have more magic than me. You can do magic not linked to an element, you can work around others' magic. You use staff and brush, which is little strange. But you are very powerful Jack."

Again, the wind showed him an image of a fight with Pitch. The nightmares coming at him freezing then exploding to fall to the ground like firework ash. With two people gaining up on him to push the issue, Jack had to think that maybe he did have a good deal of magic.

"So let's say I do have a bunch of power, so what?"

"So what? Jack you are the most powerful Guardian!"

"Again, so what? It doesn't change anything."

"It does mean you should not be letting yeti hit you."

"Look, North, like I said, I don't mind - "

"It also means, that since you are so young as a spirit, you can be so much more powerful. You have much training to do! You could be a good as Old Man Winter!"

"I wouldn't say no to being able to make a wooly mammoth fly." At North's confused look, Jack dismissed the comment.

"What type of training are you thinking?" He jumped down from crouching on the window to sitting on it, swinging his heels so they tapped on the ice wall.

"We must wean you off staff and paint, relying on them can get you into trouble. First, you study. Is obvious you have great power, but know little of magic. Come, library is this way."

#####

"Is that...French?" Jamie guessed, looking over at Jack's book as they sat side by side against the nine year old's bed.

"Hmm, yeah. Be very happy your teacher only gives you homework in English."

"You read French?"

Jack marked his place with a thumb before turning to look at Jamie. "I speak it better. I learned it so I can speak with the European division of Tooth's fairies. Which are actually mice."

"Huh. So what's it say?"

"I'll explain my textbook if you can explain yours."

Jamie looked sadly at the science book on his lap. "I can't even pronounce most of these dinosaurs, but I can tell you T-Rex was a meat eater."

"And I can tell you magic is...way more confusing than I thought it was. This book is talking about spirits, and I don't mean spirits like me, and souls and nature and cosmic forces. I know North is trying to be a good teacher, but I much prefer Old Man Winter's methods."

"Didn't he lock you in ice that ripped your skin off?"

"Yup."

Jamie gave him a look similar to the one North had a week ago when Jack had been talking to the older Guardian. Really, so Jack was okay with violence. Why was it a big deal? It gave him practical experience, which was really more important than all this theory stuff.

There was a knock on the door and Mrs. Bennet popped her head into Jamie's bedroom. Like Jack had been noticing more and more since he started spending holidays with the Bennets three years ago, it seemed like she couldn't see him but did sense him. At the very least, her eyes flicked around the room before landing on her son.

"Time for bed Jamie, did you finish your homework?"

The kid hastily scribbled something on the last line of his worksheet and held it out to his mom. It amused Jack to watch Mrs. Bennet give ample room to her right, where Jack was sitting, to approach her son and check that yes, the homework was done.

"Kay, brush your teeth then into bed."

Jamie groaned, and not minding his mom turned puppy dog eyes on Jack. The frost spirit ruffled Jamie's hair, but echoed Mrs. Bennet's command. "You heard her, bed time."

With a sigh, Jamie put aside his book, paper, and pencil and plodded his way to the bathroom. Jack took the time to check the worksheet, one question wrong that he erased so Jamie would redo it in the morning, and then started gathering his own study materials together. North had gone on and on about Jack being something called a kinetic learner and so insisted he take notes and not just read the books. The Cossack checked them every time Jack had a lesson.

"Night Jamie," Jack said as the kid settled into bed.

"Night Jack."

Jamie might have been done with his homework, but Jack wasn't. So he set himself up in a tree and had gotten through a whole five pages before a tinkling sound and a crow of laughter caught his attention.

"Peterbird!" he called out as Peter Pan came flying in low to knock Jack out of the tree. Jack conjured a snow drift for them to land in, and before he knew it they were both panting heavily from wrestling.

"What's this?" Peter pulled up the magic book by a corner.

"A book," Jack answered, taking it from the younger spirit and stuffing it in his hoodie.

"Like for school?"

Jack laughed. Trust Peter to show distaste for anything that was linked to adults and a lack of childhood freedom. "Yup, the Guardians forced me go back. Don't worry, I skip a lot of classes." Listening to North lecture was only enjoyable because of the elves imitating his arm waving in the background, and he never said things other than what the books did. He was pretty good at answering questions Jack had though.

"In fact, why don't I skip now? Wanna race?"

In a flash, Tinkerbell was zooming around Peter's head and dumping a lot of fairy dust. They tagged teamed, the spirit flying and the fairy doing her best to distract and annoy Jack to force him to lose. Last time, a sharp bite on his ear had him smacking into the face of Big Ben.

"Ready, set, go!"

A/N: This series was originally posted on AO3, and is completed there. There's also links on my Tumblr page. My username is still Uniasus for both of them!