15Author's Note: I wrote this one a while ago, as a birthday present for FaithInHim4ever, and then forgot I had it. Whoops. Anyway, she wanted a little snippet between Paige and Chris on his first day of school. Takes place in the unchanged future, where Paige was a teacher at Magic School.
Strong Enough to Fly to the Moon
Paige walked into the classroom, and surveyed the room full of teenagers gathered around the lab benches. She listened to the noisy chatter that filled the lab for several seconds before letting loose a sharp whistle that cut through the din. The students fell silent almost immediately, falling into the seats at their usual lab benches and facing her at the front of the classroom.
"Welcome to Advanced Potions," Paige said, without preamble, as the last of the students were settling themselves in their seats. "I see a few, new faces; for those of you who don't know me, I'm Professor Matthews. You can call me Prof, Teach, Paige – I've heard it all. Just don't call me ma'am."
A couple of her long-time students chuckled at that, having heard her rants on the subject over the years. Paige allowed herself a small smile, and then she continued.
"If you're in this classroom, rather than Professor Carlon's Intermediate class," she said, "that means that you belong here, whether by graduating through the classes below this one, or by testing into it when you were admitted to Magic School. That also means that I expect a certain level of autonomy, common sense, and most of all, maturity, out of each and every one of you."
"No stink bombs?" came the mournful question, and Paige shot Dani Rogers an exasperated look.
"No stink bombs," she said, emphatically. "And, are we going to avoid last year's mishaps, or should I just save myself the trouble and separate you and Casey, right now?"
"Oh, come on, Teach," Casey Mullen immediately protested. "We weren't that bad."
Paige just shot the young man a look, wordlessly letting him know just what she thought of that little remark. After a few moments, Casey backed down with a quiet grumble. At her best friend's side, Dani at least had the good grace to look abashed at the silent rebuke.
"This is Quentin, my assistant," Paige went on, gesturing to the young man who was sitting in the chair beside hers, with his feet kicked up on the edge of her desk. With a small scowl, she swatted at his shoes until he plopped his feet back on the ground. "When I'm not in the classroom, Quentin is in charge; I expect all of you to listen to him like you would me. Moreover, I expect there to not be any situations that would require him to exercise that authority. Am I understood?"
"Yeah," someone muttered. "We're not allowed to have any fun."
Paige didn't see the speaker, but she had an inkling as to the source. Gideon had warned her about one of the incoming students, a boy with telekinetic abilities, who'd been home-schooled in the use of his powers for last three years. His parents had enrolled him in Magic School after his previously-minor powers had grown out of his control, and he'd started terrorizing the mortals in his regular high school with them.
A condition of his enrollment had been binding his active powers until he'd learned enough self-control to get them back, but Paige had already heard enough horror stories from her fellow teachers to figure out that he didn't need powers to be a troublemaker. From what she'd understood, he had tested extremely high, and he had the potential to be a gifted witch – if he just buckled down and concentrated.
"Declan Cassidy?" she guessed, and the boy smirked at her from the back of the room. "Mr. Cassidy," Paige went on, "I will not tolerate any attitude from anyone in this class. If you cannot behave yourself, you will leave, and you will not be allowed back in. The work we do in this lab is dangerous, and there are no second chances. Do you understand?"
The boy glared at her for a brief second, but finally subsided with a muttered grumble. Paige continued through the rest of her usual introduction, pleased to see the rest of her students paying attention to her.
"This term," she went on, after she'd finished her introduction to the class, "I'm going to be testing your ingenuity. For the next hour, I want each of you to take a standard potion from any of the previous years, and adapt it. You have free rein of the supply cabinet; Quentin will conjure more if you run out. No explosions," she added, sternly. "Go."
Like expected, there was a mad dash for the supply cabinet. Paige held out a hand, summoning a pair of orb shields into existence in front of the cabinet that funneled the teenagers into a single-file line and forced them to slow down. Quentin smirked without even looking up from the book that he was reading.
"Crossed, Double-Crossed," he said, by way of explanation, before she could ask what he was reading. "It's a pretty good book, once you get past the whole 'sucking people in and killing them' part."
"I thought the whole idea behind you being my assistant was that you were supposed to be doing some actual work," Paige scolded, as she dropped into her own chair.
"Hey," the young man retorted, "when there are papers to grade, I'm your man. But, I'm also working on some personal research."
"Involving forties-era spy thrillers?" Paige asked, with a raised eyebrow. Quentin just grinned at her, cheekily. "Well, don't get too caught up in things. I want you to keep an eye on the new ones, especially Mr. Cassidy."
"Yes, ma'am," Quentin retorted, with a grin, and Paige bit back a reluctant smirk. Despite her words to her students, Quentin was probably the only person in Magic School who was actually allowed to call her ma'am.
Paige sighed, turning her attention back to her own personal research project: a strengthening potion for Phoebe. Her older sister's third pregnancy was hitting her hard, leaving her with nausea so extreme that she barely had the strength to crawl out of bed in the morning. Paige was on her third refinement of the potion, hoping that she was close to finding a way of curbing Phoebe's rampant morning sickness.
She was keeping one eye on her students when she caught a flash of orbs in the back of the classroom. She wasn't too concerned; Gideon sometimes orbed in to check on her class, or she collaborated with other Whitelighters on spell work, potions, or advice on their various charges. It was a common enough occurrence that her students weren't even bothered by it.
But, when she didn't see anyone at the back of the classroom, she got up to investigate. And standing by the door, watching her with wide eyes, was her five-year-old nephew.
"Hi, Aunt Paige," Chris whispered, and Paige sighed as she crouched down in front of him, wincing at the way her knees cracked in protested.
"Hey, kiddo," she greeted the boy. "Whatcha doing here?"
"I'm sick," Chris said, all wide-eyed innocence as he let out a completely unconvincing cough. "I didn't want to get everyone else at school sick-"
"So you came straight to the one person who could heal you and send you back to class before anyone knew you were missing?" Paige asked. Chris's face fell, comically, as she pointed out the flaw in his grand plan. "Come on, kiddo. What's really going on?"
"Can't I just want to come see you at work?" Chris asked, hopefully. Paige shot him a look, and his shoulders slumped. "Okay, okay, I ran away."
"Care to tell me why?" Paige asked, but Chris had clammed up, staring mournfully at her like he was hoping that he could make her change her mind simply through the power of his puppy-dog eyes.
"Come here," Paige said, fondly, and Chris ran into her arms for a brief hug. "Let's get out of here, huh?"
"What about your class?" Chris asked, pulling away and looking at her with a confused look on his face.
"Hey, Quentin?" Paige called out, as she straightened up and took Chris's hand. "You've got the room."
From the dismayed groans of her long-time students – and the entirely-too evil laugh from Quentin – some were happier with this news than others.
"No explosions," Paige repeated, emphatically, looking over the classroom, one last time, and then she and Chris orbed away.
Chris let out a dismayed groan of his own when he saw their destination, an adorable pout creeping onto his face as he stared at the brick building of his elementary school.
"I thought we were going somewhere fun," he told Paige, a hint of a whine in his voice.
"School can be fun," Paige said, but Chris just sighed, melodramatically, his feet dragging against the grass as they walked closer to the school.
"Yeah, Magic School," he muttered, under his breath. "Regular school is boring."
"Now, how can you know that?" Paige asked. "This is your first day. And you ran away during the first hour."
Chris was silent for several long seconds, and then he muttered, softly, "I was scared."
"Scared, huh?" Paige asked, knowingly, and Chris scowled up at her.
"Are you going to make fun of me like Wyatt did?" he asked, a mulish tone in his voice, and Paige stopped him, swinging him up into the air and settling him on her hip.
"Oof," she grunted, as his weight settled on her. "Getting too big for this, kiddo. And, no, I'm not making fun of you for being scared of your first day of school. I was scared of my first day of school, you know."
"You were?" Chris asked, wonderingly. "But, you're not scared of anything."
"I was," Paige told him, to his obvious amazement. "I even ran away from my class."
"Where did you go?" Chris asked, already riveted by the prospect of a story.
"I managed to get all the way to the fire station where my dad worked," Paige said, with a fond smile for the memory.
"Was he mad?" Chris ventured, but Paige shook her head.
"He called my teacher, and told her where I was," she replied. "And, then we took a ride around town in the fire engine. And he told me about how scared he was the first time that he faced a burning house. He said that he still was, but he got the courage to go into the burning buildings from me and my mom. That he felt stronger knowing that we loved him."
"And you were stronger because he loved you?" Chris finished for her, and Paige nodded.
"I figured that if my dad could find the courage to run into a burning building, that I could find the courage to face all the other kids at school. And you know what? It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Especially when the other kids saw me riding up in a fire engine," she added, with a grin.
"Can we go get a fire engine?" Chris asked, his eyes wide with amazement, and Paige laughed.
"Maybe another time," she told him. "For now, will you settle for being walked back to class by your awesome Aunt Paige?"
Chris's blinding smile was the only answer she needed. She walked him into the school and to his kindergarten classroom at the end of the hall, knocking lightly on the door and meeting the relieved gaze of the teacher when she saw Chris standing in the doorway.
"We got a little lost," Paige said, by way of explanation.
"Well, I'm glad that you found your way back," the young woman said, as she walked over to greet them. "Christopher, are you ready to rejoin your classmates?"
"I guess," Chris said, a reluctant look creeping over his face. Paige knelt down next to him, taking him by the shoulders and looking him in the eye.
"I want you to keep this with you," she told him, as she took a small, polished stone out of her pocket. "And every time you look at this stone, I want you to remember how much I love you, okay?"
"Okay," Chris said, a small smile on his face. "Aunt Paige? Does my love make you stronger?"
"Strong enough to fly to the moon," Paige reassured him, as she wrapped him in a tight hug. "What about you? Does my love make you strong?"
"Strong enough to fly to the moon," Chris echoed, solemnly. "And straight to the stars, too."
