Disclaimer: Characters off BtVS belong to Joss Whedon.
CHAPTER 15
Willow grinned in delight at the little robin fluttering around in front of her. This was so great. She had finally got the spell right. She had been working so hard at it for ages and it had finally paid off. Finally she could change one living thing into another. A few minutes ago that robin had been a butterfly.
Just then she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps outside the door. She started guiltily and quickly shoved her spell materials into her bag and shooed the transformed butterfly out the open window. Then she opened her book and pretended to read.
Willow wasn't supposed to practice her magick without one of the two adults of the house around. Giles had put the rule in place after one too many magickal mistakes.
But she just loved to practice the magick, loved how the power made her feel. So she did often practice without supervision, even though it went against her usual discomfort of breaking rules. And so far no one had found out, and she hadn't had any serious accidents so she figured she must have been doing the stuff right.
Giles smiled down at his young student, who was stretched out on the floor reading a book. A picture book version of Alice in Wonderland to be exact. That was a bit strange really. He had seen the child reading much more advanced texts than that. Maybe she just enjoyed looking at the pictures sometimes.
He hoped that Willow didn't notice that his smile was a bit forced. Today was the day he had been dreading ever since he had been told of it. The day Willow's magickal evaluation began.
Willow was his first true student in magick, so this evaluation was all the more important. He really hoped that the child performed well. If she didn't he could be judged unfit to teach and Willow could be reassigned to someone they deemed more suitable.
If that happened the child probably wouldn't fare too well. Most teachers would probably not take her young age into account. He knew from experience that treating her like the normal students who were generally twice her age when they started just did not work. Some things did have to be explained more simply, and some spells just were not suitable for a five year old to learn.
And if it went the opposite way and she was given to a teacher who would treat her like the very small child she in truth was, that would not go well either. He suspected if anyone did that to her she might just show them she was not as inexperienced as they thought by showing off with a more powerful spell. Either that or her talents would just go down the drain since she would easily get bored with being taught very simple magick's.
An image of Willow turning one of the more stuffy members of the council into a frog popped into his head, making him smile for real. He could just imagine her doing that, once she managed to master the spell to change living things, which they had been working on recently.
He brushed the thoughts from his mind. Willow was going to do fine. To do well. They would not take her away from him. She would prove he was a good teacher. So he didn't need to think about what would happen if she didn't do well.
"Willow, this is Lia Mariner," he told the child, gesturing to his companion. "She's going to be watching our lessons for a few days"
Willow looked up at the woman. People watching was bad. Even when it was nice seeming people. Whenever anyone other than Giles, Wesley or her friends watched her she got nervous and messed up.
"Does she have to watch?" Willow questioned quietly, already knowing the answer was yes.
Lia smiled down at the little girl. "Don't worry sweetie, I'm just going to sit here quietly. You'll hardly even know I'm here" she assured the child.
Willow didn't believe her about that. Whenever adults said they were going to watch quietly it meant they were really Watching. And that always made her notice their presence all the more.
Giles coughed gently to recapture his student's attention. "OK Willow, lets warm up your brain with the uses of crystals we did last time," he announced.
He wanted to show off Willow's academic aptitude before they moved on to the more hands-on part of the lesson. And it would give the child chance to get used to having Lia watching her. Plus the obvious fact that Willow needed to revise her previous lessons.
Willow couldn't help a small giggle escape. Giles could be so corny at times. 'Warm up your brain' being just one of the classic examples he had used which had caused her to giggle almost every time she thought about it. That type of phrase was just so out of date. In fact had it ever been in date?
She forced her mind away from that topic. She could ponder later. Now she had to concentrate on the crystals.
She sighed. She knew them all fairly well but the recitation of the uses and properties was kinda boring. But at least they would be doing practical later. Giles had promised her that. Lessons which were just theory were boring.
Crystal fired a crystal name at her and, after de- muddling the properties of all the different uses of the different crystals; she fired back the list of its uses and properties.
Giles smiled inwardly. She was getting good at that particular exercise. It wouldn't be much longer until she could do it without any mistakes. At the moment there was still the occasional few, but she was going even better than she had the day before.
Lia raised her eyebrows in surprise. The child was better than she had expected. Or at least had a better memory than she had expected. Lia had begun that particular exercise at 10, and she hadn't been able to complete it with a high degree of accuracy until well over half a year later. And here was a five year old, who couldn't have been working on it for more than a few months, answering most of the properties and uses correctly.
But being able to parrot memorised information didn't make the girl a witch. Nor anywhere near it. Lia was looking forward to seeing the child perform magicks. Giles had been reporting delightedly to the council on how powerful the child was and how fast she was learning.
Lia was rather sceptical about the powerful part. This small, rather shy child just didn't seem of the type to hold a very strong gift. She thought that Giles was probably exaggerating, out of his pride for his student. Or, since he was new to the teaching of magick it was entirely possible that a completely normal but untrained gift seemed powerful to him. Without the correct training wild bursts of power could occur. Willow had probably displayed a few bursts of power and her inexperienced teacher presumed that meant she had strong magick.
Well, she was soon going to find out. She wasn't expecting too much from the child but it would be interesting to see how exaggerated what Giles said was. Or even, just possibly, find out that he hadn't been exaggerating.
She was going to be watching with an open mind, whatever happened. Although unless the girl was much further along in learning than Lia thought the magick was not going to be very interesting. Levitation of very small items, possibly brewing of simple potions. That would be about all the child would have had time to learn, unless moving at a much faster rate than normal for young students.
Giles stopped his crystal naming. It was time they moved on to some more active magick. But what to do?
He decided that going through everything was probably a good idea, the perfect opportunity for him to prove to the council how good Willow actually was at magick. Start with the simple things Willow had known before he started teaching her and work up to the more complex spells they had worked on recently.
Of course it would probably take a couple of days at least to go through everything, but that tied in nicely with the evaluation.
"OK, today we're going to revise everything we've done Willow" he said, really more for the benefit of Lia. "Start at the very beginning and work our way up from there"
Willow grinned. This was actually good. Doing things she had already known for a while meant she was much less likely to get nervous because she was being watched. In fact that was probably why Giles had suggested it. He knew how much she hated people watching.
After pondering for a moment he left the room to get the object that he and Willow normally used for this type of magicks. He wasn't sure if they should use the object with a member of the council, who disapproved of such things, present. But he decided it was better not to change the normal routine, which could cause Willow to get even more nervous than it was obvious she already was.
The object in question was in fact Buffy's stuffed pig. Mr Gordo. And of course the reason he was wondering about using it with a council member present was that toys of any kind were not approved of for Potentials.
But Buffy had had the pig ever since she was very young. Even before Giles had been put in charge of Watching her, slightly after her second birthday. Giles knew she would be distraught if anything happened to the pig, but she had said that they could use him. In fact she had been rather pleased about her pig being exposed to magick.
The situation had come around when he had found Willow entertaining the others by performing small acts of magick on it.
He had noticed that the child had seemed much more at ease using the pig than she had with ordinary materials. When he asked her why she explained that it was because she didn't have to worry about breaking Mr Gordo, or hurting someone with him, unlike the materials they had been using before that.
So he had asked Buffy, she had given her blessing to use the pig, and they had. In fact the toy had been exposed to so much magick that he wouldn't have been surprised if it started flying around on its own. Giving a whole new spin to 'pigs might fly'
Lia raised her eyebrows again when she saw the object that Giles came back into the room with. A stuffed toy. No doubt belonging to one of his charges. Toys were generally not allowed to interfere in the training of the Potentials, but it was possible it was the werewolf or other boys. But she doubted it.
Well she would let it drop. If it was being used for magick maybe it belonged to Willow herself. But anyway the toy wasn't doing any harm.
Willow looked pleased. Good. They were using Mr Gordo. That was always more fun. Plus, unlike the glasses they had used before him, she didn't have to worry about smashing Mr Gordo if she got distracted.
But was it really good to use him in front of a council member? They never liked toys. What if they tried to take Mr Gordo away? Buffy would be really upset. She might even cry. And that would be very bad. Willow had never seen her friend in tears. And she never wanted to. That would mean that something really bad had happened.
Without thinking she set her mind into the right frame and started to levitate the stuffed pig. Before Giles had asked her to.
Giles shot the child a Look and she immediately stopped what she had been doing. Whoops. She wasn't supposed to do things until Giles had told her to. Apparently the council didn't approve of that either. In Giles' words 'they want a race of obedient human robots, they don't want people to think for themselves'.
Of course he hadn't known Willow had been listening. He had been complaining to Wesley, after a council meeting. Willow thought that the council had probably been telling him off for letting them get away with one of their pranks. Which wasn't fair, 'cause he had nothing to do with their pranks and stopped them if he caught them at it.
Which admittedly wasn't often any more. They were getting good at not getting caught.
Giles frowned. The child knew not to start before he had asked her to. Knew that the council expected all students to do things when told/ asked and not before. Why wasn't she thinking?
He shook his head. Now he was getting angry at Willow through his nervousness. He shouldn't take his mood out on the poor child. She was so young, couldn't be expected to remember things all the time.
He nodded slightly, indicating that now she could begin. Willow nodded back and levitated the stuffed pig over to her.
"Good, now animate it" Giles instructed. She followed his instruction and put the toy onto the ground. It ran around on its little stuffed legs until he told her to de- animate it.
Then she changed the pig into a stuffed cow, them into a live pig. And it continued from there with invisibility, colour changing and size changing.
Then Willow displayed invisibility on her self, as well as turning into a squirrel (which she had decided was her favourite transformed state) and into a kitten.
All this time Lia could feel her eyes widening. The child was much more advanced than she had presumed. She had expected the levitation yes, but hadn't expected Willow to be any further than the animation of inanimate objects. That she could already change her own shape was amazing.
But Willow wasn't done yet. She was having fun. And the look on Lia's face was just priceless. It was so funny that she felt like laughing, but controlled herself, knowing that Giles would just shoot her another Look.
She hated his Looks. They were scary, and it meant he was disappointed in whichever one of them was being Looked at. She really didn't like to disappoint him. She liked him to be proud.
Like he was now. Giles was very happy with the way she was going. She was doing, and undoing, everything neatly and efficiently. And she looked like she had got over her nerves and enjoying herself.
But from the look on Lia's face they should probably stop soon, before she fell over from shock. Obviously she had seriously been underestimating Willow's talents.
So he thought they might as well finish with the big finale, which they had been working on for a while. He thought that Willow nearly had it now. Transformation of one living thing into another. A complex spell, yes, but he was sure that Willow was up to performing it now.
And if she messed it up a little it wouldn't even matter. Lia looked like she was starting to believe the child could do anything. A slight mess would just convince her that Willow, while very talented, still needed to be taught to control her gift.
"Willow, go and get a butterfly please" he asked his student. They had a tank over in the corner of the room containing many types of bugs they had caught for this exercise.
She grimaced but did as he asked. No. This wasn't good. She could do the spell now, on her own, but she didn't think she could manage it in front of another person.
But she had to try. She could do this, yes, of course she could. She had manages everything else hadn't she?
"Thank you Willow" Giles thanked her solemnly when she came back and handed him the butterfly. "Now, I want you to turn this into a robin, just like we were practicing yesterday"
Lia looked up again. What? Surely the child couldn't... but yes, from what she had seen today all signs pointed to the fact that the child probably could.
But there was obviously some slight difficulty with this one. The spell didn't seem to be working. She let a small smile escape. Perhaps the child wasn't able to do everything after all. She had started to think that maybe she was.
But just then, the form started to change. Slowly the butterfly grew bigger, changed colour, morphed into a red- breasted robin.
Lia smiled nervously. "Thank you Mr Giles, Willow. I don't think I need to see anything more," she told them. And left the room in somewhat of a hurry.
Giles went over to his student and gave her a hug. He was so proud of the way she had handled herself. She had excelled even more than he had expected. And he told her so.
Willow just beamed up at him. He was happy with her performance so she was too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Authors note: yay! This chap is even longer. Sorry once again about the wait. I should go back to shorter chapters and more updates really I guess. Please review if you have read this chapter. And thank you to everyone who has reviewed the previous chapters.
CHAPTER 15
Willow grinned in delight at the little robin fluttering around in front of her. This was so great. She had finally got the spell right. She had been working so hard at it for ages and it had finally paid off. Finally she could change one living thing into another. A few minutes ago that robin had been a butterfly.
Just then she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps outside the door. She started guiltily and quickly shoved her spell materials into her bag and shooed the transformed butterfly out the open window. Then she opened her book and pretended to read.
Willow wasn't supposed to practice her magick without one of the two adults of the house around. Giles had put the rule in place after one too many magickal mistakes.
But she just loved to practice the magick, loved how the power made her feel. So she did often practice without supervision, even though it went against her usual discomfort of breaking rules. And so far no one had found out, and she hadn't had any serious accidents so she figured she must have been doing the stuff right.
Giles smiled down at his young student, who was stretched out on the floor reading a book. A picture book version of Alice in Wonderland to be exact. That was a bit strange really. He had seen the child reading much more advanced texts than that. Maybe she just enjoyed looking at the pictures sometimes.
He hoped that Willow didn't notice that his smile was a bit forced. Today was the day he had been dreading ever since he had been told of it. The day Willow's magickal evaluation began.
Willow was his first true student in magick, so this evaluation was all the more important. He really hoped that the child performed well. If she didn't he could be judged unfit to teach and Willow could be reassigned to someone they deemed more suitable.
If that happened the child probably wouldn't fare too well. Most teachers would probably not take her young age into account. He knew from experience that treating her like the normal students who were generally twice her age when they started just did not work. Some things did have to be explained more simply, and some spells just were not suitable for a five year old to learn.
And if it went the opposite way and she was given to a teacher who would treat her like the very small child she in truth was, that would not go well either. He suspected if anyone did that to her she might just show them she was not as inexperienced as they thought by showing off with a more powerful spell. Either that or her talents would just go down the drain since she would easily get bored with being taught very simple magick's.
An image of Willow turning one of the more stuffy members of the council into a frog popped into his head, making him smile for real. He could just imagine her doing that, once she managed to master the spell to change living things, which they had been working on recently.
He brushed the thoughts from his mind. Willow was going to do fine. To do well. They would not take her away from him. She would prove he was a good teacher. So he didn't need to think about what would happen if she didn't do well.
"Willow, this is Lia Mariner," he told the child, gesturing to his companion. "She's going to be watching our lessons for a few days"
Willow looked up at the woman. People watching was bad. Even when it was nice seeming people. Whenever anyone other than Giles, Wesley or her friends watched her she got nervous and messed up.
"Does she have to watch?" Willow questioned quietly, already knowing the answer was yes.
Lia smiled down at the little girl. "Don't worry sweetie, I'm just going to sit here quietly. You'll hardly even know I'm here" she assured the child.
Willow didn't believe her about that. Whenever adults said they were going to watch quietly it meant they were really Watching. And that always made her notice their presence all the more.
Giles coughed gently to recapture his student's attention. "OK Willow, lets warm up your brain with the uses of crystals we did last time," he announced.
He wanted to show off Willow's academic aptitude before they moved on to the more hands-on part of the lesson. And it would give the child chance to get used to having Lia watching her. Plus the obvious fact that Willow needed to revise her previous lessons.
Willow couldn't help a small giggle escape. Giles could be so corny at times. 'Warm up your brain' being just one of the classic examples he had used which had caused her to giggle almost every time she thought about it. That type of phrase was just so out of date. In fact had it ever been in date?
She forced her mind away from that topic. She could ponder later. Now she had to concentrate on the crystals.
She sighed. She knew them all fairly well but the recitation of the uses and properties was kinda boring. But at least they would be doing practical later. Giles had promised her that. Lessons which were just theory were boring.
Crystal fired a crystal name at her and, after de- muddling the properties of all the different uses of the different crystals; she fired back the list of its uses and properties.
Giles smiled inwardly. She was getting good at that particular exercise. It wouldn't be much longer until she could do it without any mistakes. At the moment there was still the occasional few, but she was going even better than she had the day before.
Lia raised her eyebrows in surprise. The child was better than she had expected. Or at least had a better memory than she had expected. Lia had begun that particular exercise at 10, and she hadn't been able to complete it with a high degree of accuracy until well over half a year later. And here was a five year old, who couldn't have been working on it for more than a few months, answering most of the properties and uses correctly.
But being able to parrot memorised information didn't make the girl a witch. Nor anywhere near it. Lia was looking forward to seeing the child perform magicks. Giles had been reporting delightedly to the council on how powerful the child was and how fast she was learning.
Lia was rather sceptical about the powerful part. This small, rather shy child just didn't seem of the type to hold a very strong gift. She thought that Giles was probably exaggerating, out of his pride for his student. Or, since he was new to the teaching of magick it was entirely possible that a completely normal but untrained gift seemed powerful to him. Without the correct training wild bursts of power could occur. Willow had probably displayed a few bursts of power and her inexperienced teacher presumed that meant she had strong magick.
Well, she was soon going to find out. She wasn't expecting too much from the child but it would be interesting to see how exaggerated what Giles said was. Or even, just possibly, find out that he hadn't been exaggerating.
She was going to be watching with an open mind, whatever happened. Although unless the girl was much further along in learning than Lia thought the magick was not going to be very interesting. Levitation of very small items, possibly brewing of simple potions. That would be about all the child would have had time to learn, unless moving at a much faster rate than normal for young students.
Giles stopped his crystal naming. It was time they moved on to some more active magick. But what to do?
He decided that going through everything was probably a good idea, the perfect opportunity for him to prove to the council how good Willow actually was at magick. Start with the simple things Willow had known before he started teaching her and work up to the more complex spells they had worked on recently.
Of course it would probably take a couple of days at least to go through everything, but that tied in nicely with the evaluation.
"OK, today we're going to revise everything we've done Willow" he said, really more for the benefit of Lia. "Start at the very beginning and work our way up from there"
Willow grinned. This was actually good. Doing things she had already known for a while meant she was much less likely to get nervous because she was being watched. In fact that was probably why Giles had suggested it. He knew how much she hated people watching.
After pondering for a moment he left the room to get the object that he and Willow normally used for this type of magicks. He wasn't sure if they should use the object with a member of the council, who disapproved of such things, present. But he decided it was better not to change the normal routine, which could cause Willow to get even more nervous than it was obvious she already was.
The object in question was in fact Buffy's stuffed pig. Mr Gordo. And of course the reason he was wondering about using it with a council member present was that toys of any kind were not approved of for Potentials.
But Buffy had had the pig ever since she was very young. Even before Giles had been put in charge of Watching her, slightly after her second birthday. Giles knew she would be distraught if anything happened to the pig, but she had said that they could use him. In fact she had been rather pleased about her pig being exposed to magick.
The situation had come around when he had found Willow entertaining the others by performing small acts of magick on it.
He had noticed that the child had seemed much more at ease using the pig than she had with ordinary materials. When he asked her why she explained that it was because she didn't have to worry about breaking Mr Gordo, or hurting someone with him, unlike the materials they had been using before that.
So he had asked Buffy, she had given her blessing to use the pig, and they had. In fact the toy had been exposed to so much magick that he wouldn't have been surprised if it started flying around on its own. Giving a whole new spin to 'pigs might fly'
Lia raised her eyebrows again when she saw the object that Giles came back into the room with. A stuffed toy. No doubt belonging to one of his charges. Toys were generally not allowed to interfere in the training of the Potentials, but it was possible it was the werewolf or other boys. But she doubted it.
Well she would let it drop. If it was being used for magick maybe it belonged to Willow herself. But anyway the toy wasn't doing any harm.
Willow looked pleased. Good. They were using Mr Gordo. That was always more fun. Plus, unlike the glasses they had used before him, she didn't have to worry about smashing Mr Gordo if she got distracted.
But was it really good to use him in front of a council member? They never liked toys. What if they tried to take Mr Gordo away? Buffy would be really upset. She might even cry. And that would be very bad. Willow had never seen her friend in tears. And she never wanted to. That would mean that something really bad had happened.
Without thinking she set her mind into the right frame and started to levitate the stuffed pig. Before Giles had asked her to.
Giles shot the child a Look and she immediately stopped what she had been doing. Whoops. She wasn't supposed to do things until Giles had told her to. Apparently the council didn't approve of that either. In Giles' words 'they want a race of obedient human robots, they don't want people to think for themselves'.
Of course he hadn't known Willow had been listening. He had been complaining to Wesley, after a council meeting. Willow thought that the council had probably been telling him off for letting them get away with one of their pranks. Which wasn't fair, 'cause he had nothing to do with their pranks and stopped them if he caught them at it.
Which admittedly wasn't often any more. They were getting good at not getting caught.
Giles frowned. The child knew not to start before he had asked her to. Knew that the council expected all students to do things when told/ asked and not before. Why wasn't she thinking?
He shook his head. Now he was getting angry at Willow through his nervousness. He shouldn't take his mood out on the poor child. She was so young, couldn't be expected to remember things all the time.
He nodded slightly, indicating that now she could begin. Willow nodded back and levitated the stuffed pig over to her.
"Good, now animate it" Giles instructed. She followed his instruction and put the toy onto the ground. It ran around on its little stuffed legs until he told her to de- animate it.
Then she changed the pig into a stuffed cow, them into a live pig. And it continued from there with invisibility, colour changing and size changing.
Then Willow displayed invisibility on her self, as well as turning into a squirrel (which she had decided was her favourite transformed state) and into a kitten.
All this time Lia could feel her eyes widening. The child was much more advanced than she had presumed. She had expected the levitation yes, but hadn't expected Willow to be any further than the animation of inanimate objects. That she could already change her own shape was amazing.
But Willow wasn't done yet. She was having fun. And the look on Lia's face was just priceless. It was so funny that she felt like laughing, but controlled herself, knowing that Giles would just shoot her another Look.
She hated his Looks. They were scary, and it meant he was disappointed in whichever one of them was being Looked at. She really didn't like to disappoint him. She liked him to be proud.
Like he was now. Giles was very happy with the way she was going. She was doing, and undoing, everything neatly and efficiently. And she looked like she had got over her nerves and enjoying herself.
But from the look on Lia's face they should probably stop soon, before she fell over from shock. Obviously she had seriously been underestimating Willow's talents.
So he thought they might as well finish with the big finale, which they had been working on for a while. He thought that Willow nearly had it now. Transformation of one living thing into another. A complex spell, yes, but he was sure that Willow was up to performing it now.
And if she messed it up a little it wouldn't even matter. Lia looked like she was starting to believe the child could do anything. A slight mess would just convince her that Willow, while very talented, still needed to be taught to control her gift.
"Willow, go and get a butterfly please" he asked his student. They had a tank over in the corner of the room containing many types of bugs they had caught for this exercise.
She grimaced but did as he asked. No. This wasn't good. She could do the spell now, on her own, but she didn't think she could manage it in front of another person.
But she had to try. She could do this, yes, of course she could. She had manages everything else hadn't she?
"Thank you Willow" Giles thanked her solemnly when she came back and handed him the butterfly. "Now, I want you to turn this into a robin, just like we were practicing yesterday"
Lia looked up again. What? Surely the child couldn't... but yes, from what she had seen today all signs pointed to the fact that the child probably could.
But there was obviously some slight difficulty with this one. The spell didn't seem to be working. She let a small smile escape. Perhaps the child wasn't able to do everything after all. She had started to think that maybe she was.
But just then, the form started to change. Slowly the butterfly grew bigger, changed colour, morphed into a red- breasted robin.
Lia smiled nervously. "Thank you Mr Giles, Willow. I don't think I need to see anything more," she told them. And left the room in somewhat of a hurry.
Giles went over to his student and gave her a hug. He was so proud of the way she had handled herself. She had excelled even more than he had expected. And he told her so.
Willow just beamed up at him. He was happy with her performance so she was too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Authors note: yay! This chap is even longer. Sorry once again about the wait. I should go back to shorter chapters and more updates really I guess. Please review if you have read this chapter. And thank you to everyone who has reviewed the previous chapters.