That got a smirk and the edge of a laugh, thank goodness. Walden was on much firmer ground when she could make her students laugh. “Did you want to, though?” Nikki said. “Um, unless that’s too personal. Just, you know … there’s not a lot you can actually do with a Sorcery degree, is there?”

So something Walden had said had got through. That was the question of someone who was back to thinking about doing the degree themselves. She didn’t leap at the implication. She didn’t want to push. Instead she said, “It’s quite all right. Yes, I wanted to be here. I love my career. Which doesn’t mean, of course, that teaching is the only thing a trained magician can do. A long way from it. There’s plenty of jobs for qualified magicians in government and in industry, both here and overseas. And if that doesn’t appeal, well, you’ll find that with an Oxford degree you can go almost anywhere and do almost anything. Most careers that want graduates don’t actually make direct use of what you studied. Or there’s the academic route, if you finish undergrad and can’t bear to stop. That was how I ended up with a doctorate.”

“Isn’t it weird, though?” Nikki said. “I think it would be weird, like getting stuck in a time loop—just school and more school forever.”

“School as a teacher is pretty different from school as a student,” said Walden. “Better, honestly, in the way that being an adult is generally a lot better than being a child. Though yes, there is a certain time loop element. Every year I look up and can’t believe it’s September again. I get older and the Year Sevens never do. Still, it’s a nice mix of routine and challenge. Classes might be the same, but individual students are always different. New problems arise all the time, and they need new solutions. I get a fair amount of use out of my elaborate education, and not just in the classroom. At the moment, for example, Mr Cartwright the Keymaster and I are working on the thaumic engines almost round the clock.”

“Because of that Year Nine who got possessed?”

Well, you expected children to talk about school drama, and turfing all of Year Nine out of their dorms for the evening had been dramatic. “Yes, exactly. We need to find the hole in our magical security and fix it, but the school’s wards are based on a maddeningly complicated nineteenth-century magical engine which barely anyone ever understood to begin with. So solving the problem is a fascinating magical challenge as well as an urgent security issue. I do sort of wish it hadn’t come up at the same time as mocks marking, but that’s school for you.”