An Unused Classroom, Brunnhold
Did hugs always make you cry? Madeleine wasn’t sure. She didn’t think they were supposed to. Or was it that people only hugged her when she was already sad? People – Maddens. Or – Niamh and Fionn, because… Madeleine knew that they were related, but she didn’t quite think of them the same, or maybe it was just that it was strange, somehow, for her to think of them together. She didn’t quite know why.
Madeleine waited after she made her offer to Fionn, and even she couldn’t mistake how excited he was. It felt – good, and the middle Gosselin’s face had slowly lightened – lit up – her shoulders straightened out, and there was something straight and even in her posture, like when she danced, at the look on Fionn’s face. She wasn’t exactly sure why he was so happy – it wasn’t like he could do magic himself, poor thing – but he was, unmistakably, and even if Madeleine didn’t know why, it made her smile too. She didn’t know the why of that either, but she was very sure that she was smiling.
“For dancing!” Madeleine confirmed, enthusiastically, because Fionn seemed confused. She hopped to her feet, then remembered she was a lady, and walked carefully across the room to get her notebook, crouching and picking it up from where she had left it across the room.
“That’s right!” Madeleine said, enthusiastically, and beamed proudly at Fionn, as if he was a particularly intelligent child who had mastered the saying of a very difficult word, at his suppositions about balancing her weight.
“For glorification, of course,” Madeleine said, dismissively. She shook her head a little, as if it was a very silly question, and bit her lip, sitting back down and setting the notebook on the desk. “But your other questions are very good!” She said, more than a little kindly. “That is, I – ” Madeleine hesitated, then, a little, her bright smile fading slightly.
“It’s tricky,” Madeleine said, slowly. “I mean, it should – it should… be possible. I’ve done a lot of research – but – I – you wouldn’t understand without lots of physics, there’s – quite a lot of thinking about gravity, of course, and it’s terribly complicated, but there are different ways to…” Madeleine scrunched up her nose. “I suppose it won’t make sense when I cast either,” she said, slowly, and frowned slightly.
“It’s – um – ” Madeleine sighed. “There are different ways to do the same thing? I think? And so – it’s – I know that some ways would be bad and I couldn’t cast them on myself because if you make one part too heavy, then it – your bones could…” Madeleine glanced down at the small hands curled together in her lap, and made a worried little face, glancing back sheepishly up at Fionn. “But there are other ways, I think, and I think I’ve found them, and I…”
Madeleine’s shoulders slumped back down, slowly, and hunched in a little. She glanced at her notebook.
“Nobody’s ever done it,” she said, slowly, and looked back up at Fionn. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It doesn’t. It doesn’t! But it – that’s why I was crying,” she swallowed, hard, and continued on in a small voice. “Because you scared me - because - because I think it will be hard and I don’t… I don’t know if I’m brave enough.”
It was funny to say it aloud. She couldn’t have said it to a real person, of course, but Fionn didn’t exactly count, not really. He was only a passive, after all. She couldn’t have hugged him if he was a real person, and so – somehow – it didn’t feel bad to tell him these things. Madeleine was very sure that she would have died of embarrassment rather than say any such thing to one of her classmates or professors or anyone else, but she could say it to Fionn, somehow. Maybe she would be able to say it to any passive? But, of course, she didn’t think most of them would understand even this much, like Fionn had. He really wasn’t as stupid as she’d thought! If only he’d been born a galdor; it seemed very sad to her, that he had to live without the mona.
"You won't tell anyone about any of this either, will you?" Madeleine asked, worriedly, looking back up at Fionn. "Please," she added, very politely.
Only once Madeleine had secured Fionn's promise would she flip her notebook open, and turn carefully back to the spell. She took a deep breath, and began to cast, reciting the mona in a high, clear voice, her gaze fixed on the weights before her. The spell seemed to flow easier this time; she could feel the mona stirring in the air around her. One of the weights grew lighter, and the lefthand side of the scale lifted, slowly, steadily, and held.
Madeleine curled the spell, and she held too, holding her breath without even realizing it, the spell trailing out in her mind, the upkeep easier this time. She ran out of breath and gasped, and lost the upkeep, and the weights leveled out again. She giggled, reaching out to touch the scale, slowly, gently pressing on the weights with her fingers, and turned back to Fionn, bright-eyed and excited.
"Did you see?" Madeleine asked, happily. "It worked!"