Love Potion

Lessons on Swear Words and Potions

When I closed my eyes that first night at Greamelts, I was terrified that when I opened them, I would be in Mathilda's squalid grey bed again. You couldn't imagine the relief that flooded through my veins when I blinked up to the sparkly silver stars that lined the canopy of my four-poster bed. I sat up in a daze, my heart beating rather fast, and blinked the blurry room into focus. Everyone was already up, apart from Persephone, who was snorting groggily in her bed.

Morgaine was already dressed and neatly packing her satchel with spellbooks. She was obviously a morning person; couldn't be me.

"Morning!" She said brightly, though it was slightly forced. She wasn't quite comfortable with me. "First day of school for you, I suppose."

"Yeah..." I croaked. Hell! It was my first day of school. My first day of school at Greamelts School of Magic. My heart was chiming like a beaten bell. I peeled my bedsheets off of me, stomped one excited leg out of bed and almost broke my bloody neck when a round object rolled out from under my heel and sent me sprawling. "SHIT!" I screamed. It was the wine bottle! I had almost forgotten about that!

"Schinkes!" yelped Morgaine. "What did you just say?"

"Right... sorry..." I muttered, as I grabbed the bottle and shoved it under my bed, burying it in the book bag. "Language..."

Her reaction was not what I expected. "Fascinating!" she breathed. "Is that some sort of swear word that voodonts use? Not that you are one, but you were brought up in that life..."

I blinked at her. "Uh..." I said, "Yeah..."

"What does it mean? Shit? What other words do you use?"

And so, as I awkwardly got dressed into my crummy uniform (firmly facing the wall, as the other girls just stripped all their clothes off like it was nothing), I educated the strangely intrigued girls on 'shit' and 'fuck' and 'crap ' and 'cock' and I was just informing them of 'bollocks' when I remembered I still Fae's clothes she had lent me. It was still early for breakfast, so I just left the dormitory in my slippers and raced along for Fae's room. I hoped she wouldn't mind me just turning up.

I got to the hidden quoin of wall where the ladder to her room would roll down, but when I tapped my wand against the same slightly blue brick she had done, the ladder did not come. I knocked on the wall and called, but still to no avail. Befuddled, I folded up the britches and bodice, left them in the nook for her, and skippered back to our bedchamber instead.

And guess who I bumped into, carefully loosening his tie at the bottom of the staircase in the corridor!

When I intentionally let out a groan, Killian Viper noticed me. He dropped his tie, immediately sneering.

"Still sneaking and peeking, are we?" he gloated. "I thought you 'didn't even go to this school'." He scoffed. "Or 'world'."

The corridor was cool, but I got very suddenly very warm. "I didn't," I said hotly. "I only joined yesterday. Trust me, I didn't expect to stay here. Or that I was a magist."

He jutted his lip and snorted. "And I should believe that?"

"Yes. It is the truth."

"And you just happened to turn up in my bed?"

He was gloating. He didn't believe me. My head was hot and tumid again. "It was a spell gone wrong. I didn't mean or want to-"

"I thought you didn't know you were a magist?"

"I didn't know it was magic!" I howled.

He put his fingers in his ears, and clutched his chest dramatically, as if I had deafened him. "Frinxing fishsticks! Don't get your knickers in a twist."