The Price of a Good Education
I was never a good student, you know.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have stayed at Wizlock’s School for Good Witches and Wizards. I never fit into either category.
Too many spells to be a witch. Too many potions to be a wizard.
(Too many ideas to be good.)
The headmaster kept telling me I had to pick. That I could only be one or the other. That I had to stop switching between classes. That I couldn’t wear the witch’s dress and wizard’s robe uniforms as I pleased, even if they looked nearly the same.
(That I certainly couldn’t rip the bottoms off them, even if it did make them more practical.)
The dorm keepers never knew what to do with me. Neither one nor the other, they’d say, shaking their heads. No place for you here.
I suppose they were right, back then. There was no place for me there. It just took me too long to see it.
So many others were hurt, just as I was, because I could not see it.
I was so naive back then. But I learned. I learned more than the school ever taught me. And they paid for it.
The survivors of the Tragedy at Wizlock--
(That’s what they call it, anyway. A tragedy. I don’t agree with that.)
The survivors call me the Destroyer of Tradition. I think they mean it as an insult, but I rather like it. What was so great about tradition?
I will build a new school here, I think. In the ashes of the old one. Fitting, right?
A school for everyone with magic in their hearts, regardless of how they want to present it. A school without so many rules.
I don’t think people will like that.
I don’t think I care anymore.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have stayed at Wizlock’s School for Good Witches and Wizards. I never fit into either category.
Too many spells to be a witch. Too many potions to be a wizard.
(Too many ideas to be good.)
The headmaster kept telling me I had to pick. That I could only be one or the other. That I had to stop switching between classes. That I couldn’t wear the witch’s dress and wizard’s robe uniforms as I pleased, even if they looked nearly the same.
(That I certainly couldn’t rip the bottoms off them, even if it did make them more practical.)
The dorm keepers never knew what to do with me. Neither one nor the other, they’d say, shaking their heads. No place for you here.
I suppose they were right, back then. There was no place for me there. It just took me too long to see it.
So many others were hurt, just as I was, because I could not see it.
I was so naive back then. But I learned. I learned more than the school ever taught me. And they paid for it.
The survivors of the Tragedy at Wizlock--
(That’s what they call it, anyway. A tragedy. I don’t agree with that.)
The survivors call me the Destroyer of Tradition. I think they mean it as an insult, but I rather like it. What was so great about tradition?
I will build a new school here, I think. In the ashes of the old one. Fitting, right?
A school for everyone with magic in their hearts, regardless of how they want to present it. A school without so many rules.
I don’t think people will like that.
I don’t think I care anymore.
Originally Published in Innovation: Queer Sci Fi's Seventh Annual Flash Fiction Contest