Dear Bea

Dear Bea, dear Helen,

I miss you!

I've been here for three weeks now, and even though life at the Dragon School and in the dorm couldn't be more different from Mill Grove, it keeps making me think of you.

There may not be a Helen here, but there are plenty of lecturers and teachers who remind me every day how lucky I was to have you these past few years. They do what is expected of them, but they don't do it with the same heart you did.

There isn't a Beatrice here either. Instead, there are plenty of little rich kids who seem to think the world revolves around them. Sometimes I only have to listen to them for five minutes before I start thinking of you.

You were exactly the same! :)

Funny enough, I've found someone here who makes my life unnecessarily difficult just like Sister Margaret does. Please don't tell her I wrote that! I'm serious, don't tell her!

I call him Filch. He's our housemother, and he doesn't like the fact that I have certain freedoms here at all.

Can you believe it? I asked him for a bicycle so I wouldn't have to walk the long, exhausting way back from the university every time. It's simply too much for my little legs. And guess what? I actually got a bicycle. A little pink bicycle with training wheels! You should have seen the looks I got when I arrived at the university on it. I think I lost my dignity somewhere along the way.

Next week, our theatre group has a performance where I'll be accompanying them on the piano. I wish you could see it. It'll be my first proper performance that isn't in a church.

But enough about me. How are you? How is Nottingham, and how is Bea's study going? I hope you've settled in a little by now.

I'm looking forward to your reply and to seeing you both again soon.

Yours,

Oliver

***

September 19 | Oxford, England

POV Oliver

"I hate it!" Oliver cursed as he rode his new bicycle onto the Oxford campus. Of course, the first thing he'd done was remove the training wheels—but it was still a small pink bicycle, and the students seemed extremely interested in it. Some even went to the trouble of looking up from their books to follow Oliver with their eyes.

God, this is embarrassing!

Today would be his first psychology lecture. Not because he'd skipped the first three weeks, but because the professor had apparently had better things to do.

When Oliver entered the lecture hall, he immediately started his internal countdown. It was the first lecture, after all, and even though word had gotten around by now that two children were taking courses at Oxford, things had always followed the same pattern so far.

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"Hello, little man. Are you lost?" one of the students asked just as Oliver was about to sit down.

He rolled his eyes and looked at the young man, who clearly thought he didn't belong here.

"Six seconds," Oliver said dryly.

"Six seconds?" the student asked, looking confused.

"Six seconds before someone asks if I'm lost, if I'm a professor's son, or—even better—if one of the students here is my parent," Oliver said before adding, "I'm in the right place, thank you!"

His response might have been a little harsh, but after three weeks, he'd slowly had enough of it.

The student seemed somewhat overwhelmed by the situation. He gathered his things and moved to another seat.

Far away from Oliver.

That was another reaction he'd experienced quite a few times over the past few days. In most lectures, the seats next to him remained empty, or …

"Oh, aren't you adorable!" a young woman said as she sat down right beside him.

Oliver let out a long sigh.

Before Oliver could say anything, the door to the lecture hall opened and a man walked in. The conversations didn't die down quickly enough. He walked to the front and slammed his papers down on the desk with all his strength.

BAM

The room fell completely silent.

"David Canter," he introduced himself briefly, letting his gaze sweep across the room. "I'll be running this course, and I have neither the time nor the patience for games."

He paused.

"I won't be here often. So when I am, I expect you to be prepared."

Nobody said a word.

"If you're not prepared, you're wasting my time. If you waste my time, you leave the course, because as I said at the beginning: I don't have any to waste."

Another brief pause.

"If you're late, you're better off not coming at all. Questions?"

His gaze swept across the students once more before stopping briefly on Oliver.

The entire room remained silent. Oliver straightened slightly in his seat while Professor Canter's eyes remained fixed on him.

He started to smile, and a chill ran down Oliver's spine.

Whatever was coming now was new!

"Interesting," Canter suddenly said, pointing at Oliver.

"Stand up," he ordered.

Fuck.

"What can you tell me about him?" he asked the students in the room.

Several of them looked at Oliver. Nobody answered.

"You don't know him," Canter continued. "Neither do I. That doesn't mean we know nothing about him."

"Almost every seat in this room is occupied. Several around him are empty," he explained, pointing at the empty seats around Oliver. "You're avoiding him."

"Not you," Canter said, pointing at the young woman beside Oliver.

She looked at him in surprise.

"You deliberately chose to sit next to him," he observed. "You're used to being around children. Do you have younger siblings?"

"I have two younger brothers," she said, surprised.

Canter nodded before continuing. "And he's used to adults underestimating him," he said, pointing at Oliver again.

"How did you come to that conclusion?" one of the students asked.

"Because the young man who was sitting beside him earlier is now sitting all the way over there," Canter said, pointing at the student from before.

Wait a minute. How does he know that?

Canter smiled at Oliver and watched the reactions of the other students before saying, "Well spotted. You seem to be the only one who noticed that I shouldn't actually know that."

"But let's continue for now." His gaze returned to the student from earlier. "You moved because he said something to you. Something that made you want to sit as far away from him as possible."

He paused and studied the student carefully.

"He didn't insult you, or you would have reacted differently. He said something that made you uncomfortable, but nothing that made you angry with him." Canter tilted his head slightly. "So, something that embarrassed you?"

"I asked if he was lost, and he told me I'd set a new record. It only took me six seconds to ask," the student said.

Canter laughed out loud.

"You see, ladies and gentlemen—a boy, perhaps seven or eight years old, walks into a lecture already expecting every one of you to underestimate him! He even counts the seconds until you prove to him that we all follow certain patterns."

He paused.

"That, ladies and gentlemen, is psychology." He slowly let his gaze travel across the room. "Observing people. Recognising patterns. And understanding what someone is going to do before they know it themselves."

He paused once more.

"And that is exactly what I'm going to teach you."