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"It never is," Daphne mutters under her breath.
I stifle a laugh. She has a valid point as far as I'm concerned, but I'm not about to go broadcasting that. That would be a quick way to bring another professor's wrath down on me, and Miss Feathertop is one of the only ones who doesn't penalise me for having trouble with magic. Probably because the highlights of her lessons are always Daphne being a smartass when she's answering questions.
"Turn to page three hundred and sixty-four please," Miss Feathertop asks.
I pull my tablet towards me and flick through. I could use the table of contents at the beginning and just click for what I want, but where's the fun in that? I land on a page of the textbook I've never seen before. A groan escapes me.
"What is it?" Daphne asks.
"Caspian and I were going to do our report on kelpies." Before he pissed me off anyway. Even if I forgive him sooner rather than later, we won't be able to now. Not when half the class will do theirs on them too thinking Miss Feathertop is giving them some hint about how to get good marks in her latest assignment. She's not, but only the smart students know that.
"It's a shame we're learning about them now," Daphne whispers. "It would have been a great topic."
I make a non-committal noise. I know it's a good topic, that's why I picked it.
Miss Feathertop dims the lights and flashes up her projector, pulling up a slide of the slimy looking water horse. She bleats on for at least ten minutes about all the legends surrounding the creatures.
I scribble down notes on the same page I had before. If I can't use kelpies for my project, then I'm going to use the research I did to at least sound smart when I talk about them. By the time she's about finished, I actually feel kind of sorry for the creatures, and suspect they're just misunderstood more than anything. If I ever meet one, maybe I can tell them that.
Thomas flicks the lights back on once the presentation has ended.
"Thank you, Mr Smith." She pauses, probably to make sure she has all of our attention. I don't think she does though, at least one person looks like they dozed off during her talk. "As many of you may know, Mr Smith here is my teaching assistant. He'll be handling the marking of your current assignments."
Whispers travel through the class, though I'm not sure if they're because Thomas is traditionally handsome, or because Miss Feathertop isn't marking the assignments herself. Probably the former, I know what my fellow students are like.
Plus, I'm also thinking about how great Thomas' jawline looks.
"At least we can be sure of good marks now," Daphne whispers.
Heat rises to my cheeks. "I'm not using him to inflate our grades," I respond. I'd never dream of doing that. Equally, I can't ask Miss Feathertop to assign someone else to mark my paper without revealing that there's a conflict of interest if he does it.
I should never have gone back to his office in the first place.
"Mr Smith, if you would." She gestures to the front of the classroom.
Thomas steps forward, clearing his throat. "Hi everyone, I'm Mr Smith." He shifts uncomfortably, and I have no doubt it's due to him having to use his last name. He's going to have to get used to that if he wants to be a doctor though.
"He has a nice voice," Daphne observes.
I shush her, not wanting to get distracted by her talking about how attractive he is. Or anything else about him.
"I've talked with Miss Feathertop and we've decided that letting you pick your own creature could cause too many issues. So for this assignment, you're going to be given them. There will be no swapping, and no collaboration between students. We will be using a spell to determine when this has happened."
Students around the room mutter and groan to themselves at this development. I get it. Their tough assignment just got worse.
"I've nearly finished mine already," Daphne whines, more to herself than to anyone else, I'm sure.
"I'll be coming around the room during the next part of the lesson and giving you all your assigned creature."
"Thank you, Mr Smith." Miss Feathertop waves him to the side and retakes her position in front of the rest of the class. "There are worksheets going around, please spend the rest of class working through it. All the information you need can be found in your textbooks."
Daphne sighs loudly. "Don't you just love working on stuff in class that you could have read up on at home?" I can hear the bitterness in her voice, but don't have a good response to it. I feel the same way sometimes, but we're not the ones in charge of the curriculum. Clearly, whoever runs the academy is fine with the way Miss Feathertop teaches or she wouldn't have three different classes of first years.
"Let's just work through it and then we can start looking into stuff for our projects," I suggest. The latter does depend on whether Thomas gets around to us, but I can already see him heading our way, so it seems likely he will.
The worksheets that land on our desk look dreadfully dull, and I'm close to repeating Daphne's sentiments on the whole thing. I don't want to have to work on this when I could be comfy in my room, surrounded by my kittens and doing it. Rhubarb would definitely be a welcome distraction from having to answer stupid questions like how many feet does a kelpie have?
The answer's none. It has flipper-hoove things. It's just a trick question so Miss Feathertop can see who pays attention and who doesn't. Because apparently, we need schooling like five-year-olds sometimes.
