Crushing in College

by Freybli

Class is in Session

Draco awoke bright and early the next morning, basking in the comfortable warmth that the sun brought him as sunlight streamed through his bedroom windows. Remembering that today marked the resumption of classes back at the school, he jumped out of bed with a wide smile on his face, hurrying to wake up his still-sleeping co-professor.

Needless to say, Draco was quite surprised to find Qibli already up and sitting at the dining room table. Said dragon had a cup of coffee in one claw and a copy of the Canterlot Courier in the other. He stopped reading as he heard hoofsteps from the other side of the room, looking up from the paper to see Draco standing in the doorway. The dragon took another sip of his coffee before acknowledging the pony in the room.

“Mornin’, Draco,” he said cheerfully. He set his cup of coffee down to point over at the kitchen counter where a similar mug stood. “I made you a cup of… whatever this stuff is,” he said, gesturing at the cup he held in his claws. “It's pretty good. What do you call this stuff anyways?”

Draco tilted his head in confusion. “What, you mean coffee?”

“Aha! So that’s what it’s called!” Qibli exclaimed. He threw his head back and dumped the rest of the contents of the mug into his maw. “Ah, delicious. I found a glass pot full of coffee in that little device over there on the counter,” he said, pointing at the machine he was referring to. “I don’t suppose you wouldn’t just call it, say, a coffee maker, would you?”

“That’s exactly right,” Draco replied. “Mine runs on automated magical input, so it can already have a cup ready for whenever I wake up.” Draco picked up the cup that Qibli made for him in his magical grasp and took a sip of the coffee, making sure not to burn his muzzle in the process. The Prench vanilla coffee creamer that was added into the coffee was doing its job wonderfully, adding a burst of milky flavor to coffee’s strong taste.

Draco sighed contentedly as he brought the now half-drained cup to rest on the table. “Nothing quite beats a fresh cup of joe in the morning, eh, Qibli?”

“Huh?” the dragon asked, confusion written clearly on his face. “I thought you said this was coffee...” He narrowed his eyes at Draco. “We’re not drinking someone called Joe, are we?”

Draco stared at Qibli for a good minute or so before starting to break down. Little by little, tiny bits of laughter escaped from his muzzle until he couldn’t hold it in anymore. He laughed with abandon as he fell to the floor in a heap, his chest heaving with mirth.

“Hey, what's so funny?” Qibli asked. The dragon had no clue as to why his question would send Draco into a laughing fit. Coffee was very serious business. At least, it was when it was made of something — or someone — called “Joe.”

Oh well, Qibli thought to himself. He was delicious while he lasted. May he rest in peace…

In the meanwhile, Draco finally managed to recover from the source of his humor. He chuckled a bit as he got back in his four hooves, still struggling to keep a bit of giggling under his breath.

“Okay, we should probably get going,” Draco managed to say, albeit with a poorly hidden snort of laughter breaking up his words. “Are you ready, Qibli?”

“Well, I’m a more than a bit concerned as to how I’m going to help you teach when I barely know the magic myself, but other than that, I’m good, I suppose.”

“Eh, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Draco replied.

Qibli snorted doubtfully. “That, or we’ll fall straight into the water.”

“Well, I hope you can swim,” Draco said as he began moving for the front door. His magical field surrounded the door as he pulled it open. He then made a show of dropping into a deep bow, waving a hoof forward to gesture out the door. “After you, my good dragon,” he said, adding a faux-cultured accent for extra effect.

“My! What a… gentlepony? Gentlestallion?” Qibli wondered. He waved a claw dismissively. “Uh, you get the point.”

Draco chuckled lightly. “I think I’ll take that as a compliment. Quickly shutting the door behind him, he broke into a brisk trot to catch up with the dragon and his larger-than-average gait as they made their way to the school.

---

“Morning, Celestia!” Draco called out cheerfully as he and Qibli approached her on their way to their classroom. The alicorn seemed to be running her normal rounds, making sure everything was ready for the students’ first day back. She had been talking with another one of the professors when she heard Draco’s voice from down the hallway.

“Ah, Good morning Draco!” Her smile was as radiant as the sun itself, lending her a pleasant air of warmth and kindness. Her smile only widened further as she noticed Draco’s draconic companion. “And good morning to you, too, Professor Qibli! I trust everything has been well with you these past few days?”

Qibli bowed his head respectfully. “Everything has been absolutely wonderful, princess.” He smirked as he nudged the unaware pony next to him, almost knocking him off his hooves. “Of course, someone has been doing his best to show me a good time, eh, Draco?”

Draco was abruptly reminded of his initial (and very much unfounded) distrust of a dragon teaching at a school for ponies as he was subjected to the intensity of Celestia’s smug grin. “Uh, yeah.” He cleared his throat awkwardly, looking anywhere but at the alicorn. “What he said.”

Of course, Draco left out the part where he managed to develop a crush on his mysterious, yet lovabl- err, likable co-professor.

Yeah, Draco thought to himself. I might want to leave that little detail out.

“In any case,” Celestia began, “I’ll let you two be on your way. Wouldn’t want you to arrive after your students, now would we?” She turned towards the way that Draco and Qibli came from and began her trek down the hall. Nearing the end of the hallway, she turned around and, while waving a hoof in farewell, called out, “Have a good day you two!” The clacking sound of her golden horseshoes meeting the tile floor faded away as she turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

“Hmm. She’s right, you know,” Draco said while looking at his watch. “If we don’t hurry up, we’re going to be the ones late, and not the students.”

“Good point,” said Qibli. He stretched a leg out invitingly, motioning for Draco to take the lead. “Shall we?”

Draco nodded his assent and strode forward. With Qibli in tow, the two of them made their way down the hall to their classroom, where they waited for school to begin.

---

Qibli watched as Draco took up the piece of chalk in his magic, looking on with fascination as the pony began drawing various symbols on the blackboard. The students were much the same, a few even jotting down a few notes in their notebooks. After a minute or two, Draco stopped drawing and turned to face the class.

“Now, class,” he began. “I assume that we can identify the four elements that I’ve drawn on the board, correct?” He pointed back towards the drawings he had made a minute earlier: a flame, what appeared to be a large rock, a tidal wave, and a gust of wind. A collective “Yes, Professor Draco” was heard from the congregation of unicorns sitting in the desks before him.

“Excellent. These four elements of fire, water, earth, and air make up the entire core of elemental magic,” Draco explained to the class. “Without them, any spells that rely on the power of the elements couldn’t exist.” He paused to let a few students finish writing their notes.

“What I have planned for today is only a demonstration,” Draco began. “We’ll start delving into the intricacies and behaviors of the four elements tomorrow, but for now, we get to have a little bit of fun playing with fire, as it were.” Draco suppressed the urge to smile as he saw faces of his students light up at the prospect of a laid-back first day of school. Even Qibli seemed happy that the real lessons would begin tomorrow.

“Now, class, it is extremely important to remember to never utilize fire magic without a very clear understanding of how it works.” A couple of the students gasped as Draco’s horn began glowing fiercely. “Luckily for me, I’ve had more than enough time to understand how a flame works.”

As the light from Draco’s horn grew even brighter, he steadied his stance in preparation to cast the spell he had been charging. In a flash of reddish and purple light, he released all of the pent-up energy that was being stored in his horn and condensed it into a tiny speck of purple light. The orb of energy, no bigger than a marble, constantly shifted its color between purple and red.

Checking to make sure he had the class’s — and Qibli’s — attention, Draco tossed the orb of light into the air, where it expanded until it exploded into a shower of lavender and crimson sparks. The group of unicorns (and one draconic professor) stared in awe at the magnificent light show, marveling at the beautiful hues of the falling sparks.

“And that,” started Draco, “was just the power of fire alone. Tomorrow, when we begin in earnest, you’ll get to see what happens when you combine the elements. That’s where the true power of elemental magic is.” Draco looked around at the class, taking in the awestruck expressions of many of his students (and one particular dragon). It was the look on Qibli’s face that gave him the most enjoyment; the dragon’s maw was wide open, and his eyes were as wide as saucers.

“Well, I think that pretty much covers it for today,” Draco began. “Since it’s just the first day back, I’ll let you have the rest of the class period off.” Draco’s ears splayed back as he winced from the sudden eruption of cheering from the students at being given a free day in class.

“Heh,” Draco laughed softly to himself. “I guess I didn’t earn those Teacher of the Year awards for nothing…”

---

After school ended, Draco and Qibli stayed behind to gather their belongings and to make sure nothing was scorched after Draco’s fireworks spell. As Draco made sure everything was good to go, Qibli took the time to explore their shared workspace. Seeing something on Draco’s desk that caught his eye, Qibli’s curiosity got the better of him as he moved closer to take a better look.

“Hey, what’s this thing?” Qibli asked. Draco turned around to see the dragon trying desperately to hold onto the slender wooden pointer that he had grabbed off of Draco’s desk. The stick stubbornly refused to stay in Qibli’s grasp, opting instead to slip out of his claws and land back on the desk. He pouted for a moment, then attempted to clutch onto the tool again with renewed vigor.

Draco trotted over to Qibli’s side, looking on with amusement at the dragon’s antics. “Having fun, are we?”

Qibli fumbled for a moment but managed to retain his grip. “Argh! This stupid-” His eyes went wide as he accidentally tossed the pointer stick upwards. Before it could get far, however, a violet cloud of magic surrounded it, bringing it down to rest idly on the desk. “Ah, thank you, Draco. As I was saying before that thing decided to grow wings, I just can't seem to get a grip! ...on the stick, that is.”

Draco hummed quietly to himself before coming up with an idea for Qibli’s conundrum. “Have you tried using magic yet?”

The dragon shook his head. “Don’t think that’s gonna work, I’m afraid. It’s the same problem I had when I was out and about in Canterlot yesterday,” Qibli said, thinking back to how he had to use his claws instead of magic to pull out the bits for the chocolate. His face fell slightly, a small frown appearing in the curves of his mouth. “I just don’t think my magic is accurate enough to pick it up…” Qibli’s ears and tail began to droop as well, adding to the dragon’s already crestfallen expression.

“Aw, don’t say that!” Draco nudged Qibli in his shoulder, trying to elicit some sort of reaction from the downtrodden dragon. “Hey, you caught that piece of haybacon yesterday, right?”

“Flying food is much easier to handle than a stick as small as that one, I would think,” Qibli replied.

“C’mon! How are you going to find out if you can do it if you never try?” Draco moved from where he was by Qibli’s side to stand directly in front of the dragon. He reached out with a hoof and placed it on top of Qibli’s claw. “Do it for me, please?”

Qibli’s ears perked up a bit at the unexpected contact. He brought his attention forward to see Draco beaming up at him, attempting to encourage him through his smile and touch. “Goodness,” Qibli sighed. “It’s always the cute ones that get me, every time. I just can’t win, can I?”

Draco tilted his head in confusion. “Uh, what was that?”

Qibli chuckled softly. “Oh, nothing, my dear Draco. Let’s see about getting this thing airborne, shall we?” The dragon closed his eyes and concentrated on the stick that lay before him.The ruby glow of Qibli’s magic surrounded the thin rod of wood, lifting it, albeit with a good bit of shakiness, into the air.

Draco laughed triumphantly as he watched the stick rise higher and higher into the air. “Look, Qibli! You’re doing it!”

Qibli dared to open one eye to see his progress. “I’m… I’m doing it?” he asked in amazement. “Hey! I’m actually doing it! Not too shabby, Qibli!” At that moment, as he completely took his attention off of the process of channeling his magic into the wooden pointer, it began to shake violently, then fell altogether, hitting the floor with a small clatter. “Oops. I guess I should have stayed focused, huh?”

“That would have helped you maintain the spell longer, yes,” replied Draco. “But other than that, you did pretty well!”

Qibli couldn’t help but smile as he lavished in the pride he felt from Draco’s words. “I did, didn’t I?” Qibli asked. The pony nodded in confirmation. “Well, I’d better get that pointer back. I think it rolled under your desk…”

And then, it happened. And Draco couldn’t help but stare.

Qibli suddenly bent over to search underneath the desk, giving Draco a full view of the dragon’s posterior. Draco’s mouth was wide open as he stared openly at Qibli’s rump. The smooth scales of the dragon’s hindquarters wiggled slightly as Qibli adjusted his position to better see under the desk. As much as he wanted to stop looking, Draco found that he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried, so he opted for ogling the dragon while he had a chance.

“Uh, Draco?” Qibli called out from underneath the desk. “I don’t see the pointer anywhere. Do you think it might have rolled somewhere else?”

After a quick inspection of the area surrounding the desk, Draco found the wooden pointer. Making sure Qibli wasn’t looking, he picked it up with this magic and stuffed it inside of the pocket of the coat that was hanging from the coat rack. “Nope. Keep looking. You’ll find it eventually.” He paused for a moment, a mischievous smile creeping onto his face.

“Or… maybe not.”

Comments

[VikkiMare]

This story is nice! The description of the Canterlot School of Gifted Unicorns is interesting, and, sadly, this story is cancelled. Sometimes learning can be hard and takes a lot of time, so I use https://assignmentbro.com/uk/assignment-writers to make my academic tasks faster. Professional assignment writers do their best to provide good content. I hope to see the development of this story.