A/N: Hellooo! Been a long time. *Laughs nervously* Yeah, a lot of things ganged up on me all at once, and I got myself into a ton of art stuff for Fair, so all of the time I've been healthy/ not working on college prep/ doing hay/ etc, I've been frantically arting on a bunch of different projects. But, I finally joined a few writing sprints on a discord server I'm on and got this written in about an hour, so here it is! Hopefully it's a fun read.

EDUCATOR

Jamie Bennett groaned loudly and dropped his head onto his desk with a thud.

Jack glanced over from where he was sprawled on the younger boy's bed with a questioning expression. He had come over to play some games with the Bennetts, but was waiting until Jamie finished studying for a math test he had the next day. (As much as the Guardians would probably be surprised, Jack had a decent amount of patience, so he was fairly content rubbing Abby's head lazily while waiting in Jamie's room for the younger boy to complete his work.) "What's wrong?"

Jamie heaved a big sigh without picking his head up from the desk. "I just don't get it. This stuff is so confusing, and it's boring. I'm so tired of school, but my mom was really disappointed when I got a really bad grade last week, so she said I need to study harder this time."

Jack hopped up lightly from the bed, careful not to disturb Abby, who had drifted off as he petted her and was now snoozing with wheezy doggy snores, to peek over Jamie's shoulder.

He scanned over the worksheet. "Oh, prime numbers and divisibility rules? This stuff is cool, I had fun learning these."

Jamie peeled his face off the desk to give the Guardian a dubious look. "You like this stuff?" he asked incredulously.

"Yeah, it's actually really interesting. It lets you know how you can split things up into groups evenly, and which numbers you can't split evenly into any sort of groups. Those are called prime numbers. They're pretty neat," Jack said, leaning on his staff with one arm and tapping on the textbook.

"But I thought you loved snow days and snowball fights and no school," Jamie squawked, sitting up in disbelief.

"Yeah, I do like those things," Jack agreed. "They're important, too, even if Bunny might disagree. But that doesn't mean I hate school- learning is fun! Sometimes people just aren't good at making it interesting. And a lot of times there aren't enough breaks for your brain to work well. Sometimes if you're struggling on something, you just have to let it settle for a bit and focus on something else before coming back to it. That way when you come back to focus on it, your brain is fresh and less tired of it, and oftentimes I'll find that I actually knew more of it than I thought." Jack smiled, thinking of the numerous times he had set something aside in frustration and returned to discover that he was actually able to finish it.

"So you just stop studying something and then come back and you know it?" Jamie asked eagerly, clearly ready to shove aside his math book.

Jack chuckled, "Well, not quite, but something similar. Plus, if you take a break by studying something else, you can learn a lot of that other subject in the meantime. Actually, a lot of times I've learned something the best was when I was using it as a way to procrastinate on something else." He smiled wryly.

"So… I need a break from studying math to learn something else?" Jamie made a face at his math book.

"Probably," Jack agreed. "What other homework did you have?"

Jamie slumped. "I already did it- I didn't want to do the math, so I just did everything else first."

"Ah," Jack said, tapping his fingers nimbly against his staff. "For the future, if you start with your least favorite thing, you can give yourself a break from it by studying your other things if you need to."

Jamie wilted even more. "But that doesn't help me this time," he said in dismay. "And it is almost time for dinner, so I don't have time for a break," he added morosely. He brightened suddenly, straightening as his brown eyes lit up. "Could you get my math test tomorrow postponed for a snow day?"

Jack paused for a minute, thinking. He glanced back down at Jamie's messy handwritten problems, looking them over, then nodded. "Tell you what- I'll get you a snow day tomorrow, if-" he held up a finger to forestall Jamie's excited exclamation, "You invite your friends over tomorrow, and I'll show you some ways to make studying fun. How does that sound?"

"And then a snowball fight?" Jamie asked, his eyes rather resembling Abby's when she was begging for food.

Jokingly, Jack tried to look stern, only managing it for a moment before he broke into a grin. "Yeah, sure. After we study, we'll have a snowball fight. It can be our reward for studying."

"Yay! Jamie cried, getting ready to close his math book. "So can I be done for today?"

Jack glanced back at the practice sheet, which was mostly done (although largely wrong), and nodded. "What do you say we make a mini snowman before supper?"

"But there's only like an inch of snow, Jamie started, trailing off when he saw Jack's smirk to look out the window, where huge, fluffy flakes of snow fell thickly from the cloudy twilight sky. "Cool!" he cried, making Jack's smirk bloom into a full smile.

"Come on, let's go," Jack said, laughing a little as the brown haired kid stampeded past him with a loud whoop.

***0***

Jack exercised some of his abilities in covert operations that evening when he got back to the Pole, carefully avoiding Tooth, who could be far more intimidating than most would assume when something she cared about was threatened. (And she definitely cared greatly about dental health!)

North was (loudly) amused by his request for help, and gladly supplied him with several bags of small colorful candies, "always happy to donate for the sake of education!"

Jack was careful to keep his collection mission a secret from Bunny, too- the giant rabbit wouldn't think twice about using Jack's sugarizing children as blackmail if he was too annoying, and Jack didn't really want to deal with Tooth's irritation. It was a specific occasion thing, anyway, and it was for educational purposes.

A smirk crossed his face as he mentally reviewed the divisibility rules and lower primes and thought of candies to assign each rule. Sometimes it just helped to have a tangible representation.

***0***

Mrs. Bennett folded a blanket that had been strewn across the rug and laid it neatly over the back of the couch, appreciating the unexpected day home as her work had closed from the poor condition of the roads. She intended to use it to catch up on some cleaning, and maybe finally settle down for a while and finish the book she had been "halfway through" for several weeks running. (Ah, well, such was the life of a working mother.)

Several very loud thuds and a bout of overlapping excited shouting came from upstairs, where the kids and their friends (who had come over for the snow day) had closested themselves into Jamie's room as soon as they had arrived. Making a fondly confused face, she started upstairs. The snow was fluffy and fresh and inviting, and as the winter lovers the children had become since the late snow last Easter, she would have thought they'd be outside making excellent use of the unseasonably thick snow.

Ms Bennett tapped on the door cursatorily befor poking her head inside to a barrage of noise. The kids were split into groups (Sophie was dancing between two different clumps, making it unclear which one she belonged to) and were talking over each other as they pointed at a paper with a diagram of numbers and lines drawn on it. (Surprisingly neatly, she noted absently.) "Hey, what are y'all up to?" she asked, smiling. The noise quieted down as Jamie saw her.

"Oh, hi mom! We're studying for our math test that was supposed to be today!" he explained happily.

"Studying math? On a snow day?" Mrs. Bennett said dramatically, only slightly exaggerating her surprise. "I would have thought that you all would have been outside having a snowball fight in this weather!"

"Yeah, Math is fun!" Jamie exclaimed, prompting sounds of agreement from Pippa and the twins and making Mrs. Bennett's eyebrows shoot up. That was new. "And we are gonna have a snowball fight- we're going out after we study to reward ourselves!"

Mrs. Bennett nodded dubiously. It was weird- Jamie had cried frustrated tears and vehemently announced he hated math less than a week ago. But, she was hardly going to discourage them if they wanted to study voluntarily.

"Okaaay, well, have fun," she said, closing the door as the kids went back to talking at their natural volume of shouting.

She stared at the door for a moment, then shook her head and started down the stairs. Jamie's behavior surprised her increasingly often over the past few months, but since most of the surprises were changes for the better, she wasn't going to question it too much.

For now, she was going to read her book. And maybe she would finally get to finish it.

***0***

About an hour later, a hoard of noise and excitement tumbled down the stairs, whooping happily and already pulling on their sweaters.

Mrs. Bennett looked up from the second to last page of her book, smiling fondly. "Don't forget hats," she reminded, mostly out of habit. She shivered a little at a cold draft that gusted past and made a mental note to make sure all the windows were securely closed.

"We won't," Cupcake said over the noise, her round little face glowing with a ruddy smile of excitement that Mrs. Bennett had seen frequently over the past several months, but still warmed her to see on the young girl's formerly brooding face.

Mrs Bennett listened as the zone of noise finally got on their snow clothes and grew muted with the slamming of the door, then returned to the end of her book, a softly warm smile settling on her face.

Outside her window, giant flakes of fluffy snow continued to fall down onto the heads of six excited children as they gathered piles of snow, and rested gently in the white hair of the unseen teen who led them into an enthusiastic charge of snow valor.

It was, for all, the perfect snow day.

A/N And fin! Hopefully that was cute enough to make somebody smile. It feels a bit more like a placeholder than some of the other chapters, but it does further my Mrs. Bennett plotline a bit, and really, I see so many stories about Jack hating that Jamie has to do school, and felt like writing something where Jack is actually a really good influence in that case. As the Guardian of Fun, and a resilient person with a lot of hidden maturity, I think he'd be really good at making things fun while still being responsible. Plus, my version of Jack is a learning enthusiast, and I had fun with primes and divisibility rules once I memorized them, so, so can Jamie!

Not sure when I'll be able to post again, but I'm not done yet! Even if it takes a bit, I will be back with more one-shots! Thank you so much to everyone who favorited/followed and left reviews, and have a great day, all! Elen out.