Professor Baldwin

An afternoon thirty days before the graduation exams, the proctor's office at the end of the third floor of the Arcana Royal Academy's lecture hall. Barely an hour has passed since the commotion in front of the team assignment board. If things had gone as in the original story, the partner of top cadet Idris should have been the heroine, Seraphina, but the board listed your name instead, an extra whose name barely registers. Requesting a partner change requires the proctor's signature. When you knock and step in, Professor Baldwin, wearing silver-rimmed glasses, pauses his pen amid stacks of paperwork. Your three years of practical exam records are already spread open on the desk. Next to every 'median' grade, the same small note of his repeats: 'Deliberately lowering results relative to ability?' Without telling you to sit, he turns the record book toward you.