Oh, this was maudlin. She was Director of Magic at Chetwood School and there was one job here that always needed doing. Walden went into her office to fetch her kit—salt and chalk, a nice set of marker pens, a neat little dagger—and then went next door to tune up the thaumic engines. The last person in—Todd, presumably, with his toolbox, handling the mechanical side—had left the door on the latch, instead of properly chained and padlocked. Even with no students on site, that ran contrary to the risk assessment. Walden went to get her own key out of the box where she kept it in the kitchen next to the teapot, and locked the door again. She made a mental note. She would have to have a word with Todd after Christmas.

SPRING I

chapter twenty-three BEFORE IT GOES BANG

Spring Term started quietly, especially for Walden. Without her A-level set taking up eight hours of her time every week, her timetable opened up dramatically.

Well, it opened up for about ten minutes. Then the time got filled up with meetings. It was at least nice to have them during the few hours of weak January sunlight, instead of having to shove something in at 7 A.M. or 6 P.M., in pitch darkness, to work around the demands of the school day. Meetings: strategic, operational, financial, academic, pastoral, departmental, faculty, twilight training, all hands. It never stopped. At the first all-hands briefing of the term, Walden delivered an update for everyone on the school’s magical security situation, which boiled down to ‘really, we are working hard on this and everything is under control.’ The relieved looks around the school hall told her she should have said it sooner.

Of course, all of that was just the official roster of things teachers needed to talk about. As much or more of the work was done in passing, in the breaktime drop-in Can I just have a word about, the catch-up over lunch And that’s what worries me, the rapid email exchange in the five minutes between lessons that concluded Better log it in the safeguarding portal. One of Walden’s commonest drop-in just-so-you-know encounters at the moment was I hate to be a bother, but I think we’ve got another imp …

On a Saturday morning five days into the Spring Term, Lilly Tibbett poked her head awkwardly round Walden’s office door—NQTs were seldom sure about how much or how little they were allowed to ask for help—and said, “Um, it’s a bit of a weird one. Something in the labs is just … off.”

Walden sighed, put down the examiners’ report she was reading, and stood up.