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Fizz's whiskers prickled with pleasure. "Good. I was waiting for this. I did not tell John that I am also his professor. It will be fun to watch his face do the thing. He has a face he does when the world insists on being bigger than he scheduled."

Snake tapped the pipe stem once on the desk. "Try not to break my disciple with surprise."

"I will break him only with knowledge," Fizz said, puffing himself up. Then he narrowed his eyes. "By the way, you told me you would send someone with a gift for John. But at the party nobody came. Where is John's gift. Did that courier steal it. Shall I hunt them and roast them gently."

"I sent no one," Snake said. "I thought to. Then I thought better of it. I would prefer to give him something in person. I will ask for him soon and do it properly."

Fizz accepted that with a regal nod. "Owww. Very well. When is my class."

"In thirty minutes," Snake said. "I will make the announcement now. Please do not eat the podium."

Fizz held a paw over his heart. "Never. I only nibble podiums."

Snake rose, touched two fingers to the hollow of his throat, and whispered. The spell settled like a scarf. His voice, when he spoke, walked out of every corridor and cup and lamp in the academy at once.

"Students of the Heart magic academy," it said, calm and old. "A special lecture in the great hall begins in thirty minutes. First years must attend. Others may attend. The subject is elemental magic. Bring your ears. Leave your mischief. Learn what you can. Magic is more vast than you imagination. I sending someone who can teach you a lot. It's open class for all."

Fizz grinned. "Leave your mischief," he mimicked softly. "I shall bring mine."

"Do," Snake said in the tone of a man who thinks mischief, properly used, is just another broom. He tipped his head toward the door. "Go make a reputation that will be hard to live down."

Fizz saluted with two paws and zipped out.

The bell whispered the half-hour. The great hall woke like a sleeping theater that loved applause. High windows breathed light over rows of benches. A broad stage waited under banners the colors of old houses and new arguments. Proctors lined the sides with the faces of people who had measured too many boys with their eyes and were not sorry.

Students poured in. First years came in groups, the gray of their coats like stone when the tide goes out. Upper-years drifted in pairs and trios, clever smiles, lazy strides, a few with notebooks because habits are stronger than pride. Voices climbed the walls and stacked there, a tower of guesses.

"Who is teaching."

"A name I heard once."

"A foreigner."

"A retired general."

"A ghost."

"A demon."

"A carrot," someone tried, and got a stare for their trouble.

John stood near the back, Fizz-shaped absence on his shoulder. He felt strange without that warm little weight there. His hand kept trying to touch air where the round fluff should be. He looked over the crowd and, without meaning to, sorted faces the way a farmer sorts grain: good grain, stones, surprises. Hot and cute girls in ribbons.

Boys built like they wrestled logs for fun. A few thin students with sharp eyes that said their mana lived in their heads and wrote letters to their hands later. He found Ray at the far side, hair slicked down to look serious and failing at it, a faint blue smear still haunting his cheek from Fizz's ink prank. He found Rhea Flame among upper-years, coat marked with a small flame sigil above the heart, red ribbon at her temple like a banner that had decided to be soft.

He also found people like himself. Quiet coats. Narrow shoulders. Hands that knew work. Eyes that did not flinch when they had to choose.

He kept thinking of Fizz. Where did the little tyrant go. How long until he reappeared with a cake or a trumpet or a complaint.

"Settle," a proctor called.

The front hush rolled backward. The last of the whispers crouched behind teeth and sat still.

A side door opened.

Fizz entered like an idea that had been waiting its turn and suddenly found the stage clear. He wore a pair of round spectacles perched absurdly on his nose, a ribbon tie knotted too large for his body, and a tiny vest that looked like it had been cut down from someone's favorite handkerchief. He carried a slate under one arm and a pointer that was definitely a chopstick he had bullied into a new identity.

He rose to chest height above the stage and hovered there, small and bright, a candle with opinions.

For a full heartbeat the hall did not understand what it was seeing. Then recognition ran through a third of the room like fire up a dry hedge.

"It is him," a girl whispered from the Fizz fan club.

"Lord Fizz," a boy hissed, too excited to keep quiet.

A knot of first years — the same ones who had formed the League of Fizz in the yard a few days ago — leaped to their feet and clapped without permission. A smattering of upper-years joined, because laughter is a tide and nobody wants to be the only rock. One proctor cleared his throat as if to say we do not clap for adorable chaos, but the sound got lost in the ripple.

John forgot to blink. He felt his mouth pretend it wanted to smile and then sit to think about it. He could not decide if he should be proud, worried, or both at once until the sums evened out.

Fizz waited, soaking in the adoration like a plant that misread the watering schedule on purpose. He raised one paw, and the hall grew quiet by inches.

"Ahem," he said, and the tiny glasses slipped a finger down his nose in a scholarly way. He pushed them back up with exaggerated care. "Good. You have taste. Welcome, pupils of the Heart magic academy. I am today's guest lecturer. Address me as Lord Fizz. If you address me as anything else, I will assume you are calling to a nearby loaf of bread."

A snort of laughter sprinted across the benches and tripped. Even a proctor coughed into his sleeve to hide a smile.

Fizz spun in a slow, dignified circle, so every row got equal time with his glory. "I see many faces. Curious ones. Sleepy ones. Skeptical ones. You," he pointed his chopstick at a boy in the second row, "are wondering if I am a overdose of cuteness. I am not. I am better that too. I am the future's favorite teacher, inconveniently early."

The boy turned pink. His friends smacked his shoulder in delight.

Fizz set his slate on the lectern like a treaty and smoothed a sheet of paper flat with both paws. The spectacles made him look like a librarian who had eaten a lantern and liked it.

"Some of you are thinking a talking orange spirit should not teach. Very rude. Some of you are thinking it is a miracle and you will remember it forever. Very correct. Some of you," his eyes twinkled, "are in my fan club and are trying not to swoon."

A half-dozen girls and two boys raised tiny, guilty hands and then hid them again.

Fizz smiled. It was impossible not to be caught by it. Even the skeptical faces softened a hair, the way cold butter gives up under a warm knife.

"Elemental magic," he said, and the little voice went steady and clean. "Let us begin."

John did not sit. He stood with the others at the back and tried to put together all the versions of his friend at once: the fuzzy menace who sang about pancakes when bored, the fierce defender who would bite a mountain if the mountain insulted him, the solemn little shape that had carried John's token through the last bell, the joker who drew mushrooms on Ray's face, the professor hovering above a thousand stares as if he had been born to be stared at. Surprise fought with pride in John's chest. Pride won by one vote.

Near the front, Ray leaned forward as far as his long limbs would allow, a wolfish interest on his face. He whispered to a cousin beside him, and the cousin almost laughed until Fizz turned his head that way and the cousin found himself sitting straighter for reasons unknown.

In a corner row, Fartray's eyes narrowed. He did not clap. He did not smile. He made a note in his head that tomorrow's note would be uglier.

At the side wall, a line of upper-years who had come to heckle found themselves holding their jokes by the scruffs because their jokes did not know what to do with a teacher who looked like a rumor and spoke like a bell.

Fizz cleared his throat again, full of ceremony. He laid the chopstick on the slate like a scepter and gave the hall his best professor stare.

"I will tell you all about elemental magic," he said. And the room leaned in.

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