Charms in September. Nowhere else in Hogwarts did the sun fill the room with air as swollen with its heat as it was cloying with its heaviness. The magic that so often trilled about the room congealed in a lazy mist that clung to the floorboards. The 7th-year Hogwartians that busied themselves coaxing magic from their wands began to wane in their fervor. For such bright witches and wizards, the latest crop of Slytherins to make it to Advanced Charms, diligence was noticeably scarce and in its stead was a rash of fidgeting limbs and fingers pulling at itchy wool and ties.
The unspoken assent among the students that class should be dismissed, or at least a window opened, was palpable and most unwelcome to Jacqueline Delacroix. She found herself defending the stagnant summer air as a pleasant sauna, the musty odor of The Advanced Book of Spells a homecoming to her beloved school.
She looked down at the stack of grubby parchment squatting on her desk. Ha. Beloved.
Yes, the position of Professor's assistant stifled her passionate spirit to the point of agony. Year after year she devoted to herself to excelling in Charms. Now, in her seventh year, she found herself sculpting and refining some semblance of Charms acolytes out of students who were somewhat inept and wholly uninterested. She almost physically ached to be graduated, out there with the Aurors and other greats, using her considerable talent to aid those who would recognize and appreciate.
And yet, the Professor's plea for a decent witch to fill the position had been too compelling and Hogwarts was far too dear to her heart. It seemed strange that she should now find herself at the beck and call of the leader of the Ravenclaw community, a Slytherin herself. The melodramatic swots were frustratingly good at this breed of magic, and her fellow Slytherins could not do more to fail her if they tried. It seemed as if they were spiting her, casting her out for her exceptional gift. Not that she minded. She might not have friends, but one day those glassy-eyed idiots slouching before her would do so in cramped offices miles below her own lavish perch in the Ministry.
Her brow knotted as the sight before her continued to vex. A fly bumbled most annoyingly around the golden heat of the windows behind her. Ah, Charms in September. She lifted the uncomfortable warmth of her heavy red hair from the nape of her neck and checked the clock facing opposite her desk.
She would not begrudge her fellow students their doldrums, their disrespect, and in fact relished the thought of their apathy turning to shock in approximately ten minutes. Filius Flitwick was not the forerunner in his field and Charms professor at this institute for nothing. His writings on the emergence of Charms in the wizarding world had gained renown in more universe than one.
It had been years since the Bifrost connecting Earth to Asgard was open for travel, and yet very few wizards had persuaded these new and strangely aloof neighbors to pay visits. It seemed that the appeal the Viking people held for the Asgardians had not resurfaced in the modern wizard. Luckily, this disinterest seemed to have stayed their mighty hands, though they seemed a generally wise race and one lacking in outright aggression. But Professor Flitwick had managed to catch the attention of one of the Old Ones: Loki Laufeyson. If the students didn't care much for the words of the witch for whom the position of professor's aide had been created, they damn well would care for the ones of a Norse God.
Of all the students in the drowsy assembly of the South Tower, Cecilia Robinson was the most attentive. Her thoughts were spent almost entirely on the task at hand, though she certainly did not number among the more successful of her Slytherin brothers at producing an Aguamenti charm. The empty crystal goblet glittered mockingly to the side of her copy of The Advanced Book of Spells, open to a page of incredibly unhelpful instructions. No matter how hard she thrust her wrist into the motion, she never could seem to produce the twisting the spell required.
Leaning back into her seat, she blew a strand of milk-white hair from her eyes with no small amount of contempt. The seventh-year missed the days when Goshawk's Spells were Standard, but found comfort in the word "excellent" scribbled in green ink on the scroll Flitwick had returned to her as class commenced. It had been the same word written on her Charms paper for the past six years.
Her frame relaxed along with her attitude at the thought of her first days at Hogwarts, the first time she really knew where her academic dreams were headed. It was the author of the text they were scouring now, Miranda Goshawk, who had inspired her awe for the elegance of Charms. Charms, Miranda had explained in its pages, was the most natural form of magic. Where Transfiguration was haughty with the power of change, and Herbology humble in its passively borrowed magic, Charms was a gentle exertion of the wizard's will on the word around it. It altered, subdued, and blighted, even, but it was neither cruel nor yielding. It was the oldest magic, the magic of will.
Anansi of the Old World, Kokopelli of the ancient western tribes, and Loki Laufeyson of the Nords knew and manipulated the core magic of enchanting back when the first humans experienced the world around them only as some unknownable dream. The first wizards who crafted the spells that bound the raw power of charms only scratched the surface of what the first gods knew. What wizards knew today was a mere vapor of the possibilities charms promised. If she could crack that knowledge…
But the point was moot. Her dexterity in the craft of magic came to a dead halt when it came to the minute ministrations of Charm work. Her mind, though quick, lacked the precise concentration it took to cast the painfully specific patterns of hexes and jinxes. Beyond the most elementary movements, she was hopeless. It was only through her iron resolve to excel at everything but the field-work aspect of Charms that she had budged into the upper division courses.
Stupid wand. She frowned at the instrument in her hand: pear, 13 ¾ inches, phoenix feather core, slightly swishy and massively shite at Charms.
The frustration sparkled on her pale face to rival the glint the sun imbued in her perspiration.
Jerking her out of her maudlin thoughts was the anxious wail of the oak doors to the classroom gaping open. Prof. Flitwick shuffled in at a remarkable pace for a man older than Quick-Quotes Quills, a merry smile on his face.
Neither Jacqueline nor Cecilia noticed the oddly horned shadow playing at the entryway as Flitwick roosted on his stool to make an announcement to the class.
"Students," he squeaked, "I present to you for the first time at Hogwarts a being of profound celebrity in all nine realms. He has agreed to address my advanced students as a personal favor, and I expect you all to give him the respect he has earned from both our societies. Remember, you are representing all wizarding kind! It is my great honor and deepest esteem to welcome Lord Loki Laufeyson of Asgard!"
The shadow became corporeal.