An Unused Classroom, Brunnhold
But she hadn't lied, because it was true that she wanted to do some experiments. It was just that they weren’t for physics class. If someone had asked - but no one had asked. She had gone to the department materials counter and she had asked for the weights and the scale and she had said she wanted to do some experiments. She had waited, practically holding her breath somewhere, because - wouldn’t they ask?
But the student who was managing the supplies closet had just shoved the ledger at her and gone back to his book, and Madeleine had signed the supplies out with a shaking hand and clutched them tightly to her chest as she rushed away. She had nearly run - but of course she hadn’t, because one wasn’t meant to run through the halls of Brunnhold. Even first formers knew that.
Madeleine had thought she would do the experiments in her room, but she had gotten all set up and then Cassandra had started talking loudly outside and Madeleine had utterly lost her focus and couldn’t even begin to try the spell she had copied, carefully, into her notebook. She had just sat there, tongue-tied and trembling, and stared at the little scale.
And then, hastily, Madeleine had packed up the scale and the weights - wrapped the scale up in her scarf so it wouldn’t make any sounds - and put them carefully in her bag and the notebook too, and she had fled past Cassandra and her friends, who had all been laughing loudly, and made her way out of the dormitories.
The classrooms were locked. Of course they were locked. Madeleine had stood in the dark empty halls with her hand on the door, and she had tried again, conscious of a sharp sense of disappointment, bitter on her tongue. It wasn’t meant to be, she told herself. She had tried.
She thought of Ekain Da Huane then; she thought of how he had assumed that proved the principles of her gravity spells already. She was only a sixth former, she wasn’t - and she thought of having the chance to talk to him again, and of having to say that she had meant to try but she couldn’t find a room, and so she had -
Madeleine had hurried down the dark hall then, and kept trying doors. She found a room, finally - it looked like it wasn’t used as a classroom anymore, because there weren’t very many desks, and the ones that were there were arranged in a strange semi-circle, not at all the proper shape for desks. Very strange.
Madeleine had gone to one of them and sat down at it, and she had unwrapped the little scale and set it on top of the desk. She had stacked the weight, carefully, one little one on each side.
Then, slowly, Madeleine had taken her notebook out. She had a candle too, and she propped it on the desk and lit it with matches, and so that she could see the monite she had written in the trembling little flame.
And with a deep breath, Madeleine had begun to cast. She had meant to just say the words aloud first as a practice, but when she began them she wanted it too badly to wait, and she found herself bringing her intent to the magic almost without meaning to.
For a moment, when it had finished, she thought it hadn’t worked. The principle was so simple - modify the gravitational constant that governed the relationship between the little weight and the world below - and she was sure the spell wasn’t wrong, so why -
Then the scale shifted, slowly, and eased down on the right side, lowering just a moment. Madeleine gasped aloud and it promptly raised back up. She stared at it for a long time, and then grinned, her whole face lighting up.
“Oh,” Madeleine whispered, and sighed happily. She bent over the notebook, and tried it again, and again she watched wide-eyed as the scale lowered, for just a moment, and held.
“Oh!” Madeleine leapt up out of her seat and spun in a circle - spun as many times as she could until she was giggling too hard to continue and stumbled to a stop. Her hair had wisped out of its once-neat little braid, hovering in a messy cloud around her head, and she was smiling so widely she could feel it glowing in her chest, echoing all through her.
It had worked!