Induction: Lucy (and Wilbur) | Glowfic Constellation

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The best strategy for having at least one child who survives their adolescence is to have lots of them. Lavinia rejects this strategy before it can even suggest itself. She made it through the Scholomance alive, but neither of her younger brothers did. Lavinia doesn't have an enclave; doesn't have a clan bigger than herself and her parents. She is willing to make the gamble once. She starts preparing for years beforehand, writing up everything she can remember about how to survive in the halls of the school, writing up lists of the most advantageous per unit weight potions she can brew, taking high-paying mundane jobs she hates to build mana and money and living without spending a drop more of either than she has to. Thirty well-made crystals full of mana will only buy you another quarter-kilo of weight allowance, but a quarter-kilo of valuable trade goods could save her child's life.

She makes it clear to her parents that while she forgives them for choosing the strategy they did--can't blame them, really; they only had three children, lots of enclaveless wizard couples have lots more--if they want a grandchild, if they want to be part of that grandchild's life, they can get in line with her plan. They agree, which is good; even if she hadn't forgiven them, three people building up mana and other resources is better than one.

It would be better to have more than three. Lavinia looks for a husband. She doesn't intend to marry for love; love is a lovely idea, but she is saving all of hers for her child. If she happened to fall in love anyway, that would be nice.

It doesn't happen. Lavinia isn't surprised. She isn't really the falling-in-love type; she's had flings, and enjoyed them, but love songs and gooey looks have always struck her as faintly dull.

She rejects three promising prospects with more relatives, more power, more resources than she has because they make it clear to her that they aren't going to be satisfied with only one child. Tripling the available resources isn't a good deal if she has to divide them again by a quarter.

She doesn't find another wizard who's onboard with her plan to have exactly one child and then spend the next fourteen years of their lives working their assess off about it, but she does find a remarkably open-minded mundane linguistics professor who speaks fourteen languages and has a gentle personality that she will have no problems living with named Harry. They marry in a quiet civil ceremony, and when Lavinia is satisfied that she's built up enough mana and information resources, she stops taking birth control.

She gets pregnant with twins. Blast it. Harry tentatively suggests reductive abortion, which she vetoes; the whole point of the endeavor is that she cannot bear to see her children die, and by the time they find out the fetuses have brains and can dream. No. She'll just have to work that much harder.

Being pregnant is like being chronically ill, which is convenient, because everything being that much harder makes it that much easier to build mana. Labor may be the most mana-building-intensive activity she's experienced since she was a desperate senior.

Lucy is five years old before she understands that her life is different from other children's.

She knows abstractly, of course, that her family is magic (except for Daddy) but Mummy is strongly against wasting magic, so it doesn't impact their day-to-day lives much.

She knows that English is the Outdoors Language, so she doesn't realize at first that everyone else's Mummy and Daddy don't speak to them in Mandarin and Welsh and Gaelic and Basque and Arabic and a dozen other languages.

She doesn't realize that everyone else's Mummy doesn't quiz them on situational awareness every time they go someplace unfamiliar; doesn't realize that everyone else's Mummy doesn't insist they take the stairs instead of the elevator every time it comes up.

"Mummy, Danny at the park says he only speaks English, how come?" Wizards need languages for spells.

"Mummy, Emmy from the library says she uses the elevator all the time and she's not handicapped, how come?" Doing things the inconvenient and annoying way builds mana. You can't build mana yet, but being used to stairs will serve you well at the Scholomance.

"Mummy, what's the Scholomance?"

Lucy's Mummy sits her and Wilbur down and explains that when they're fourteen, they're going to be swept away to a magic school called the Scholomance.

Lucy's Mummy explains that only one in four children survive the Scholomance, from induction to graduation. She explains that outside the Scholomance, only one in twenty wizarding children survive those same four years.

Lucy nods solemnly, and hugs Wilbur, who is crying.

The next time they go to the library Lucy picks out a book on introductory Spanish. Neither of her parents speak Spanish.

Over the course of the next nine years, Lucy and Wilbur get formal tutoring in a number of languages their parents don't speak, including Spanish, Cantonese, Japanese, and Urdu. Lucy spends most of her recreation time reading novels in languages she's not fluent in yet while doing leg-lifts or some other form of exercise she doesn't really have to pay attention to; Wilbur multi-tasks with practicing crocheting instead.

Mum presses on them, over and over, you are each other's first and best allies. Most of the other students won't have solid alliances until they're seniors (unless they're enclavers); it's an advantage that will help make up for the fact that there are two of them, that Mum and Dad can't pour everything they have into keeping just one person alive. They specialize. By the time they're twelve, it's become apparent that Wilbur has an affinity for thread. Mum does research into different spider types and then calls in a handful of favors (through her husband's academic contacts, not her own wizardly ones) to acquire a breeding pair of Darwin's Bark Spiders for the twins to make into familiars. They're small and lightweight, and won't detract much from their weight allowance, and they can feed them on mal grubs instead of having to sacrifice calories from their own food for it. Even if they do have to, they're small enough it won't take many calories. And they'll have the babies as a backup in case something happens to one of the parents, and to sell to the other students; either for familiars of their own or for malia.

Lavinia sells letter space in her children's weight allowance. She won't take money in payment; she takes spells she doesn't have that aren't in common use or alchemical products she can't make or little lightweight artifices that she can't manufacture and don't fall within Wilbur's affinity. She packs their induction bags with enough mana-filled crystal to buy them an extra kilo between them, the tiny delicate enchanted thread scissors she managed to trade for for Wilbur, a crochet hook apiece, a handful of other maximally lightweight fiber crafting tools for Wilbur, a pair of watchbands that will let the twins know where the other is and if they're in danger, and every other maximally useful-per-weight unguent or trinket she can get her hands on.

The twins turn fourteen. Wilbur crafts them each a maximally lightweight induction outfit out of silk from their familiars. Lucy memorizes every spell her mother has access to and double-checks her competence in every language she speaks.

Induction day approaches. The twins drink--not so little water it'll cause problems, but little enough to be on the low end of hydrated. They eat food calibrated to have the highest nutritional value per mass possible.

The day before, they shave everything, even their eyebrows. They double-check their bags. They hug their parents and their grandparents a lot. They fast.

They wake up at four the morning of. They use the bathroom one final time. Lavinia weighs them and tucks a few extra things into their bags and pockets. They hug her.

"I love you. Come back to me. I would rather you didn't become maleficers and kill your classmates, but I would not stop loving you. Make me proud."

"We will, Mum," Lucy says, squeezing her hand. She steps back, Atlach scuttling over her shoulder and the front of her shirt in nervous excitement. Nacha quivers almost imperceptibly from her perch behind Wilbur's ear.

The magic sweeps them violently away.