Scions of Sorcery 01

"And that was the end of Voldemort. We've not had another 'dark lord' since then. Now then, let's see who was paying attention! How long ago was Voldemort killed?"
"Forty-three years, professor," answered a girl with wavy blonde hair in the front row.
"Very good, Miss Whitman," the balding, spectacled professor proclaimed cheerily. "You win a cookie," he continued, conjuring one onto the young woman's desk with a flick of his wand before returning to his lecture.
Jaster was only half paying attention. To be perfectly honest, he didn't care all that much about Britain's last dark lord. It's not like Voldie had ever menaced the world at large.
"-ister Woodrow?"
"Hng?" Jaster responded distractedly, returning his gaze to the front of the room from the doodle of a lion he'd been embellishing.
"I asked," Professor Bosco repeated with a smile, "if you knew why Tom Riddle chose the name 'Voldemort' as his appellation."
"Oh," Jaster stalled, quickly scanning his memory, "It was an anagram of his name, right?"
"Correct," the professor said with a nod. "Now then, what does that name mean? Mister Harper?"
The boy with the slight build sitting next to Jaster didn't react, proceeding to snore softly just as he had been for the past twenty minutes. Jaster kicked him, prompting Harper's head to drop from his hand to the desk with a loud thump.
"Wha?" he asked groggily, rubbing his nose while a few others in the class snickered to themselves.
"Voldemort, Mister Harper," Professor Bosco repeated, "What does it mean?"
"Oh," Harper responded, his eyes rolling to the ceiling as he wracked his brain, "Um. Something French?"
"It is indeed French," Bosco answered with a wry smile, "Is there anyone who could give us a bit more detail?"
"Flight from death," answered a girl wearing a scarf sitting at the left side of the room. Jaster hadn't realized the caramel-haired girl had been paying attention. She had been intently staring out the window over the Alaskan landscape for the past ten minutes at least.
"Very good, Miss Laurey," the professor responded with a nod, summoning another cookie onto her desk. He turned back to the board, not noticing as the girl vanished the cookie from her desk with a flick of her wand. "Now the reasons for Tom Riddle calling himself Voldemort are twofold. Firstly, he was named for his father, a muggle who abandoned his mother, causing him to detest his birth name and muggles in general. Second, his greatest fear was dying, an inevitable eventuality which he went through great lengths to postpone. Unfortunately for historians everywhere, Voldemort's ambition cost the world several priceless magical artifacts, most of which were thousands of years old. Currently the only known surviving artifact of the Hogwarts founders is the sword of Gryffindor, which remains on the premises. I am told that Headmaster Longbottom himself used the sword in the final battle against the dark lord. And the time is now ten-fifteen, so we're done for today."
Jaster yawned as he stuffed his notebook into his bag. He could go for a cup of coffee.
"Don't forget your homework due next week!" Professor Bosco called to his students as they  filed towards the door, "I want you to create a list of the remaining artifacts of our own school's founders! Next time we finish on Voldemort, then we start on Grindewald!"
Hmm. Grindewald was cool. He actually hit a couple of countries, not just one. Jaster shifted his messenger bag further up on his shoulder as he slipped out of the door.
"Hey," came a voice from behind him, the speaker patting Jaster's shoulder. Jaster turned to see the student who had been sleeping next to him in class.
"Hey," Jaster greeted, eyeing Harper's notably scruffy wardrobe. The guy was wearing a wrinkled t-shirt and plaid flannel pants that were obviously meant to be pajama bottoms. His wand was held in place over his ear by a tuft of sandy hair.
"Thanks for waking me up, man," Harper said with a grin, extending a hand, "I'm Andrew Harper."
"Jaster Woodrow," Jaster replied, shaking the offered hand.
"Nice to meet you, man," Andrew said cheerfully, retrieving his hand. "So anyway, whatcha up to next?"
"Breakfast," Jaster responded simply, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder before turning to head towards the cafeteria.
"This late?" Andrew asked, following Jaster whether he wanted him to or not.
"I start class at seven," Jaster explained checking his watch. Ten-twenty. He had about an hour and a half.
"Brutal, man," Andrew responded, hefting his backpack into a more comfortable position, "History of Magic's my first class today."
"Lucky you," Jaster responded politely, grumbling to himself in his mind. Seven AM was no proper time for a potions class. He turned left and opened the door to the stairwell.
"Well, I've got heavy Tuesdays and Thursdays to make up for it," Andrew said with a shrug as the two of them headed upwards to the first floor.
The stairwell ended at the first floor, opening up into the large space that was the student commons. There was an opening to the floor above through which the large staircase to the second floor passed. The stairs to the second floor of the commons were busy due to the doors on the south side which led to the dorms, students squeezing past each other as they headed back to their rooms or to class.
"'Scuse me," Jaster said as he pushed past a spectacled older student wearing a heavy coat. Jaster checked his watch again. Still an hour twenty.
"So where do you want to eat?" Andrew asked cheerily, slipping through the crowd after Jaster with ease.
"Well I am going to the cafeteria," Jaster responded immediately, "I don't know where you're going."
"Cafeteria," Andrew answered, following after Jaster every step of the way.
***
"Sho whuss your neckst clash?" Andrew asked through a mouthful of bread and eggs.
"What?"
"I asked," Andrew answered after swallowing his food, "What's your next class?"
"Magical Defense," Jaster answered as he mixed some ketchup into his eggs, "You?"
"Herbology."
"Herbology? I wouldn't have pegged you for a plant lover."
"Well," Andrew responded with a shrug, very nearly sloshing some coffee from his mug with the motion, "I don't really love plants per say, but I think it's pretty cool to see how some potions ingredients are grown and stuff. I've got Care of Magical Creatures tomorrow, too."
"Wait, you like potions?" Jaster asked.
"I gessh," Andrew responded through another forkful of egg, completely missing the interested look in Jaster's eye, "I men, my dad dush it, sho-"
"Great! Can you tell me what I did wrong here?" Jaster cut him off, "When we were doing it this morning mine turned green, and I had no clue why..."
***
There was no teacher in the Magical Defense classroom when Jaster arrived. There was still no teacher there three minutes after class was scheduled to begin.
Jaster sighed and propped his head up with his right hand, passing the time by checking out the other students in his class. Up near the front there was a redheaded girl talking rather animatedly with a guy wearing a hat. She had a blue streak in her hair, but otherwise looked fairly normal. Jaster looked to his left and saw a blonde boy who looked like he didn't belong in university yet waving his wand awkwardly while reading something in the class textbook. He probably had the right idea, getting a head start before the professor showed up.
Right after Jaster thought that, the boy's wand spat a small stream of fire from its tip and set his book aflame. This naturally caught the attention of the entire class. This also meant that no one saw the teacher arrive with a crack as he appeared behind the desk at the front of the room. The fire was extinguished with one wave of the professor's wand, and with another the book was returned to its unscorched condition.
"Class just started and we've already got something on fire? I think you just set a new record," the professor remarked, hanging his jacket on the back of his chair.
Jaster's first impression of the defense professor was that the man was intimidating. He was a well-built man with a hard face, sporting close-cropped hair and beard as well as a jagged scar crossing his scalp from his left temple.
"Well then, we're on the clock. My name is Henry Fairfield, and I will be your Magical Defense teacher this semester. I take this class very seriously, and you should, too. I do not want to be disappointed in any of you."
Professor Fairfield passed his eyes over his now silent students. Jaster thought he heard the blonde boy who had just set his book on fire gulp. Then the professor cracked a smile.
"Aright, lighten up you lot! Just because I don't want you to slack off doesn't mean the class won’t be enjoyable," he said while propping his feet up on the desk and twirling his wand between his fingers. "Now I know some of my colleagues are probably already giving you homework, butyou won’t be getting any in this class. However, I do want you to practice as we'll be having practicals. So I guess that's kinda' homeworkish."
So much for first impressions.
"Anyway, we didn't meet on Monday so today's not going to be a big lecture, you can relax. Now how many of you have ever been in a magic fight?"
Five students raised their hands. Jaster's was among them.
"School sanctioned duels don't count, I'm talking a real fight," amended Professor Fairfield.
Three of the students lowered their hands, Jaster included. The professor nodded.
"Okay, two of you. That's less than I was expecting, so I'm assuming I've got a class full of liars." The professor shrugged. "But that doesn't really matter. So you with the hat, what's your name?"
"Fred," answered the student who had been talking to the redhead up in the front.
"Full name, if you wouldn't mind?"
"Frederick Black."
Professor Fairfield jotted something down on a sheet of paper on his desk. "Alright Fred," he said, looking up again, "So did you win or lose your fight? Your first one, if you've been in a few."
"Uh, I lost?" Frederick answered with some hesitation.
"Is that a question or an answer, Fred?"
"It was an answer, sir."
"And why did you lose, Fred?"
"I couldn't dodge a hex. And uh, why do you keep saying my name, sir?"
"Oh, I'm trying to remember it. I try to learn my students' names by the end of the semester." The professor dropped his feet to the floor and stood, holding his wand steady now and tapping the board. "Anyway," the professor continued as a detailed picture of a knight's shield drew itself on the board, "Frederick just told us an important point in magical defense. Which would be that you need to defend yourself. If your opponent can't hit you, he can't beat you. That's important, and I'll be reminding you of it periodically."
A few students wrote notes on what the professor was saying, but Jaster was pretty sure he could remember that an important part of magical defense was actually defense.
"So," Fairfield continued, "Assuming that Fred and..." He motioned towards the girl in the row behind Jaster.
"Regina Landon."
"Assuming that Fred and Regina are really the only ones who've been in a fight in this classroom, the rest of you have probably only cast in a classroom environment, right?"
"Right!" someone yelled from the back of the classroom.
"Right," repeated the professor, clapping his hands together. "Well I'd like to change that. Headwall has a dueling club, and I offer extra credit to regular members. I have some information pamphlets if anyone's interested."
***
It was four twenty-five by the time Jaster reached the top of the stairs to the second floor of the ever crowded student commons. Ahead of him were three double doors, the entrance to the dorms. Jaster paused and took one last look at the Alaskan landscape through the tall windows around the commons before walking through the doors.
The doors led into a large room with four sets of double doors each marked with one of the cardinal directions: North, South, East, and West. Jaster passed through the doors marked West and into a wide corridor, the sounds of the student commons instantly fading into silence. On either side of the short hall were doors, each with the name of a city printed on it. Jaster opened the door marked 'Reno' and stepped through. An electric tingle passed over his scalp as he crossed nearly three thousand miles with a single footstep.
The lobby of the Reno dorm looked a bit like a large living room. There were three tables surrounded by chairs located around the room, along with three couches facing a large television on the wall. Only one person was watching the large TV; many of the students had their own sets in their rooms.
"Anything good on?" Jaster asked, plopping himself down on one of the empty sofas.
"Nothing re- Oh, hey Jaster!"
Jaster gave the other student a quick glance. His face split into a slightly strained smile.
"Hi there, Harper."