Work Text:
If you had asked young Orion what he wanted to be when he grew up, Mal Hunter would have been first on the list. Enclave Entrance Guard would have been a close second—that was basically the same thing. Further down the list would have been Alchemist or an Artificer, either one: he didn't particularly care which, so long as it wasn't Incantations. Incanters always had their nose in a book, studying languages for hours on end. Orion couldn't hold still that long.
Way down at the bottom of the list would have been Academic or Administrative Professional, yet here he was, Headmaster of the Scholomance. Orion Lake.
Not that the Scholomance needed a headmaster—it had gotten along well enough for a hundred years without. But neither did it begrudge him the title either: It was not jealous of titles, and furthermore, it was open to persuasion. So when the newest freshmen came respectfully, mistakenly addressing him as "Headmaster Lake," the school had obliged.
That very day, the "Office of the Headmaster" plaque had appeared over his door, gleaming and official. El laughed herself to tears when she saw it.
She wasn't laughing now. "Have you lost your mind, Lake? Don't answer that," she thundered, the black-green aura of doom swirling around her.
"London has an agglo farm, why can't I have this?" Orion argued back, defiant and completely unafraid, in stark contrast to the cowering creature on his shoulder.
"Agglos are harmless. That is an amphisbaena!" El said incredulously.
"You don't need to remind me. I know an amphisbaena when I see one." Orion reached up to pet the larger of the two heads, and the amphisbaena rubbed contentedly against his finger.
El watched in disgust. "Clearly you do need reminding. That is a mal! It would eat you if you gave it half a chance."
"It would be dead before it got a nibble, wouldn't you, Amphy?" At that moment, the creature was in fact nibbling on Orion's outstretched finger. El groaned.
"He's got a point, El."
"Don't you take his side!" El whirled on Liesel, her aura flaring.
Liesel stared placidly back. "Think about it," she said, her voice taking on the tone of a lecture about to begin. "We label the agglos 'Mals', but what, really, makes a mal? Any magical creature who poses a threat to us? Think back to the first branching-off point of the cladistic tree: naturally-occuring mals vs. wizard-made ones.”
“I don’t care if a mal is—what do you call it—naturally-occurring,” El said, marking off air-quotes with her fingers. “It’s just as deadly.”
“An agglo scavenges, steals what it finds,” Liesel continued smoothly, as if El had not spoken. “It would just as happily take a gift—mana. It's not bound to malia the way a construct or a maw-mouth is, a creature made and imbued with a dark purpose."
"Oh, so you're saying an amphisbaena is just an uglier pet cat," El retorted, the words dripping with sarcasm.
"Yes, and I'm sure he's feeding it."
"Hey! Amphy here is gorgeous!" Orion protested. Both El and Liesel ignored him.
"I'm just pointing out that you're standing next to a maw-mouth," Liesel said. "No offense," she added to Orion.
"None taken!" Orion said happily. He was still scratching Amphy's feathered head.
"Ugh!" El shuddered. "Why did I bring you again?"
"Curriculum," Liesel replied sharply. Her bored expression vanished in an instant, replaced with a stern frown. "This year's graduates informed me that you have been giving, ah, impromptu Maleficaria Studies guest lectures. Is that right?"
". . . Yes?" Now, Orion looked terrified—more frightened than he'd ever been of El. El watched in fascination and envy.
"Am I correct that these. . . guest lectures. . . involved so-called field trips?"
"Hey, you can't learn to fight mals out of a book! Our class did practical runs in the gym all the time," Orion protested.
"Very true," Liesel agreed with deceptive, icy calm. Orion squirmed under her glare. "And what strategies did you demonstrate on these excursions?"
"Well. . . I—stop giving me that look, El! I didn't eat them! I swung my sword at them until they died."
In unison, Liesel and El folded their arms. Orion glanced between them.
"And is this a technique your students can replicate, Lake?" Liesel's voice grew softer and more dangerous, and Orion backed away a step.
"For the love," El interrupted. "Liesel, stop that, you're scaring him. Lake, stop taking kids from their classes! Most wizards who aren't superhuman mal-killing machines need to recognize a mal before they can kill it."
"I. . . yeah," Orion mumbled, looking at the floor with a surly expression. The amphisbaena pecked affectionately at his head.
Liesel sighed. "El, you know he's just saying whatever we want to hear. He'll go right back at it once we leave," she pointed out.
El frowned. "Of course I know that."
Together, they turned and looked at Orion, who stared determinedly at the floor. "The school won't give us obstacle courses anymore," he mumbled at last.
"What a loss for the school, now that students can't be eaten by a carnivorous vine or flattened by a glacier," Liesel said scathingly.
"I liked them until we got a hundred of us going at once," El mused.
"You were the only one who could survive them!" Liesel snapped.
"There was one other person," El said.
"Oh, now you're taking his side?"
They both turned and regarded Orion again, a silent, three-way stalemate.
". . . Fine," Liesel grudgingly relented.
Orion perked up, his face hopeful.
"You ask the school for obstacle courses. It listens to you," Liesel grumbled, turning to El.
"Alright. School, give this plonker what he wants," El pronounced, gesturing at Orion, and the office lights pulsed as if in agreement. Beneath their feet, the gears of the school clanked and creaked as the gym rearranged itself. A single beam fell upon the plaque over the door, highlighting the word Headmaster. "No need to rub it in," El added.
"I suppose I'll tell Alfie's father that physical education is key to a well-rounded curriculum," Liesel sighed. She held out a hand. "Truce?"
"Truce," El echoed, shaking Liesel's hand.
"Truce," Orion repeated, adding his hand on top of theirs. "Speaking of truces, what about Amphy?"
He was watching the creature with a bright, beaming smile on his face, looking for all the world like a happy child with a puppy. El sighed deeply.
“He’s good for scales,” Orion added.
"I guess you can keep it," El said morosely, but she allowed herself a small, affectionate smile. "I don't know how you always manage to get your way, Lake."