Avalon University was a grand institution. It's long history was seen throughout its buildings, all old but still there, unlike some other parts of the city that had been rebuilt. The university had somehow made its way out of centuries of war unscathed. Its campus had seen all sorts of rich history, from the aforementioned wars, to protests, to dead kings and queens, to the rise of democracy, the apartheid, and the end of it. It was its own part of history and Matthew quite liked standing in the middle of it.

It was a bright, early morning. He was going to make the best out of his first day of work.

Finding the room he was supposed to be in wasn't all that hard. His boss's office was… relaxed, to say the least; it was one of the most disorganized spaces he had ever stood in, and he had been in Alfred's room before. There were piles of paper strewn about, and he wasn't sure if the desk should be supporting the amount of books on top of it, not to mention, the bookshelf looked all kinds of out of sorts. All of the correspondence Matthew had had with Arthur Kirkland had been polite and formal, verging on sophisticated. But all of those initial impressions were being blown through the roof by the state of this room.

Thankfully, he didn't need to wait long for Professor Kirkland to come. "Ah, Mr. Williams," he said as he entered the office in a - surprisingly - English accent. "Sorry about the mess."

"No, problem," Matthew started as he turned to shake his new boss's hand, "It's nice to-meet-you…." Arthur Kirkland took Matthew's outstretched hand and shook it whilst Matthew stood dumbly.

Bushes. Caterpillars. Rugs. What was it that Alfred had said? Five stacked on top of each other to make a total of ten? Matthew felt a shiver flow down his spine. The world couldn't be this small.

"It's nice to finally meet you, too," Arthur Kirkland continued. "I look forward to our partnership. I teach advanced magical artistry, as I'm sure you know. I also have a small class of pentagonal spells. I understand that you've taken a few classes on the subject." Matthew nodded, still dumbfounded. "Great!" Arthur Kirkland moved to the other side of his desk to grab a stack of papers - how he knew which ones to grab was beyond Matthew - but that wasn't really what caught his attention.

It hadn't been so noticeable until he stepped into the beam of light coming from the haphazardly closed window, but now it was almost too obvious. Oh, sure, Arthur Kirkland had tried his best, that much was extremely obvious, and if Matthew hadn't known better, he wouldn't have noticed it all. But there was no denying it. Arthur Kirkland's skin was a pale shade of purple.

It took extreme amounts of effort to not burst out laughing uncontrollably.

Extreme amounts.

As the day went on in Arthur Kirkland's care ("Please, call me Mr. Kirkland; Professor Kirkland is for my students and we're colleagues."), Matthew noticed something about him. And that something was that he was a major, major, metagnosticist. He was friendly, polite, and respected by his students. On the surface, he was a perfect gentleman. But underneath, the little glimpses that shone through during his time with Matthew spoke volumes about his real character.

They were little remarks mostly. Things that a lot of people, especially fellow metagnosticists, wouldn't think twice about. Offhand comments about co-ed universities, inferior sciences, and general distaste for anything non magical seemed to be his biggest concerns. Maybe Arthur Kirkland didn't realize himself that he was a metagnosticist and felt that what he was saying was "common knowledge."

In any case, it was driving Matthew crazy. All he could do was smile and nod - first day on a job was not the time to get into politics and prejudice. Well, it would be except for the fact that he didn't want to get fired after having this job for only four hours.

By the time he goes home, all he wants to do is sleep - dinner could wait until breakfast tomorrow morning. He said a hello to Kuma who was snoozing in the living room and trudged up the stairs, knowing that he should have stopped in his kitchen for at least a snack, and that he probably should take a shower, at least call his mother, but he was so tired and-

Something crashed above him. Matthew stood ramrod straight and looked up at the ceiling. His breath was bated as he impatiently waited to hear more noise, or chalk it up to his imagination. But no there were little tiny footsteps scrambling across the ceiling, somewhere in the attic. Matthew hoped he didn't have rats or-

A chill shook down his spine as he remembered the dolls. Which was ridiculous because he dreamed them up; after all, dolls don't move and they don't talk and they definitely don't break things in your attic.

He approached the chair still in the hallway underneath the attic's trap door. He wondered if he should go up there. Well, he should. Definitely. Because it could be rats and not creepy dolls. So he's going up there. For the rats.

But, just in case it was creepy dolls, he grabbed a heavy book as a weapon.

He climbed atop the chair and carefully brought the door down. He stood the ladder against the chair (he hadn't put it back when he had fled from the attic the day prior) and slowly climbed one rung at a time into the attic.

The first thing he noticed is that things had been moved around and, yes, there was indeed a broken lamp on the ground. He hadn't even known there was a lamp up here. The next thing he noticed was that there were only two dolls in the house.

"But there were six," he mumbled to himself. They were missing. "But where?"

Something shifted to his right. He jumped and turned quickly swinging the book along with him. It hit nothing and he saw nothing. Trembling, he faced the doll house again and saw a third doll on the table and it had definitely not been there before.

"Hello," it said.

Matthew shrieked.

"For the last time; I am Gilbert Friedrich Wilhelm Klaus, Prince of Prussia, hailing from the House of Beilschmidt, heir apparent." The doll Matthew had suspected to be the grandpa then pointed to the largest doll. "This is my little brother, Prince Nikolaus Ludwig Karl Albert; he goes by Ludwig, or, as I like to call him, Luddy." To the one with the glasses: "My cousin, Roderich Victor Wolfgang Edelstein." To the woman: "His wife, Elizabeta Maria Hédeváry." Then, to the one with the long blond hair: "My good friend Francis Louis Armand Bonnefoy." Then he started to look around. "Where's Toni?"

Matthew frowned. He glanced at the second story where a doll was still tucked into bed. "Toni? The one upstairs sleeping?"

Gilbert's doll face lit up. "Yeah! Sounds like him. Antonio Fernandez Carriedo de Barcelona." With that, he started for the dollhouse stairs. Matthew watched bemusedly as he ascended and started to scream in his friend's ear.

Antonio jumped expressively out of the bed with a loud shout; unfortunately, he got tangled up in the blanket and tumbled to the floor with a dull thud. "¡Ay, dios! ¿Gilbert, qué te pasa? Estaba durmiendo." He looked rightly angry, but the effect was being lost by his bed head.

Gilbert gave him an unimpressed look. "While you've been sleeping, we made a new friend."

It was then Antonio noticed Matthew staring at the exchange, looking for all the world a giant compared to the twelve inch tall dolls. His painted face fell slack as he gaped at him.

The air turned awkward (well, it had been awkward already; waking up from a curse induced sleep to find a giant would do that to a doll) and Matthew chuckled nervously. "So," he began, rocking back on his feet. He had all of their attention and he didn't know what to do with it. "You're cursed."

"Obviously," Gilbert scoffed, pivoting on his heel to face Matthew once more. He then made his way back down to the first floor to the rest of his friends, dragging Antonio behind him.

Matthew cleared his throat. "How, exactly? By whom? I can try to help you, but I'll need to know the parameters of the curse first." At this, the dolls began to shift uncomfortably. Finally, five tiny pairs of eyes directed themselves at Gilbert.

Gilbert attempted to look away and pretended like he didn't notice, but he gave that up quickly in favor of sighing and running his hands through his hair. "How?" he parroted. "Magic. By whom? I don't remember." He crossed his arms, visibly frustrated. "All I remember is that one day, I'm big and happy, and the next I'm here in this dollhouse, small, unhappy, and without as much as a clue as to what's going on as you are. I think I remember being cursed. I mean, I must because I remember some of the lines, but I can't remember them all."

Matthew looked hopefully at the other five, but they just shook their heads.

"We weren't there," Ludwig said. "We didn't see him get cursed, but we were close enough to be cursed with him."

Matthew sighed. This was going to be more difficult than he had hoped. "What are the lines you remember?"

Immediately, Gilbert stood at attention. He almost looked proud that he could remember something. "Bones and flesh transform to shine," he recited dutifully. "Eyes to marble and hair to twine / Shrink the size until it is little / Try not to break the skin so brittle."

Yeah. That was helpful. "That hardly gives me anything to work with."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that it tells me nothing about how to break the curse." Curses tended to have their anecdote written into them for simplicity's sake. But Matthew couldn't help if he didn't know the rest.

"So, what do we do," Elizabeta asked, looking saddened. "Are we just going to stay dolls forever?"

"No," Matthew said. "I'll still help."

Notes:

*co-ed universities here are defined as universities for both magical and non-magical students

*¡Ay, dios! ¿Gilbert, qué te pasa? Estaba durmiendo. = Oh, God! Gilbert, what is wrong with you? I was sleeping.

*I don't speak Spanish. Most of the Spanish I learned from high school has left me. I used Google Translate and Spanish Dictionary as my aide. If my translations are incorrect, please do not hesitate to set me straight.

Have a nice day, guys! :)