"Quite frankly," Arthur said, thumping the book down on the table, "this was the poorest excuse for a postgraduate essay I've seen since last Thursday, when I seem to recall your last tutorial was scheduled."

The postgraduate in front of him was female, freckled, and nervous. Most students were nervous when they realised writing a thesis for Professor Kirkwald meant they would have to defend their half-baked Lit. Thaum. notions in front of the professor who had very literally written the book on the subject.

The student made a game effort to defend herself. "But Bruckenwald very clearly states, sir, in his De Thaumaturgicorum Philosophia, that the recoil effect from transubstantiation-"

"Ridiculous," Arthur snapped. "Bruckenwald is from the Continental tradition and predictably obsessed with threefold backlash. Your 'new' incantation is half plagiarised from him and half hogwash you appear to have taken from the graffiti outside Magdalene College. It would barely turn a stone into sand." He balled up the paper in his hand and dropped it on the desk. "Write a new chapter. Next week. Same time. Now leave my office and take your aura of incompetence with you before it stains the desk."

The student scurried out, and Arthur looked at the tea in the teapot, which he'd made and forgotten about and was probably stewed to within an inch of its life. He poured himself some anyway, diluted it with a healthy slug of whiskey, and took it to the leather armchair nestled by the bay window. His supervision hours were over for the day, and –

"Mr Arthur Kirkland?"

The voice that drawled from the doorway was light and somehow amused, as if everything was a joke, or at least had the potential for a joke. Arthur looked up, irritated.

"Professor Kirkland," he said, "and my office hours are over."

"Yeah," the man in the doorway said. His wide mouth quirked in a grin, and intense blue eyes met Arthur's from underneath a fall of sandy hair. "I thought you might make time for me."

"I will not," Arthur said coldly, although for some reason found himself distracted by those eyes and the way the stranger stood, leaning against the door frame with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. "Come back at two tomorrow, if you're a student."

"Aww, c'mon," the man said, with that grin that Arthur was finding it hard to look away from. "The name's Alfred. Alfred Jones. Heard you were good at this magic thing."

"I am a tenured professor," Arthur said. "Not a first-year or a hobbyist."

"Great," Alfred said, with unnecessary jauntiness. He raised a hand, and the pentagram inlaid in Arthur's study floor started to glow with violet light.

Arthur started, the tea slopping in the cup in his hand. The student hadn't even had muttered a preliminary incantation.

Nevertheless, talent was no excuse for intruding on a professor's private study. "I said come back tomorrow," he said irritably, and set down his tea. He waved a hand to negate the spell.

The light didn't even flicker. Alfred crossed his arms and stood there, grinning.

"How is that possible?" Arthur muttered. He stood up, shaping a negating incantation. As he did so, his teacup floated up behind him and gently bumped him on the back of the head.

Arthur spun violently, upsetting the tea and spilling it. "My jacket!" he said, dismayed. "Down!" He gestured and the teacup subsided, but the rug under his feet started tugging. As he frantically worked a spell to still it, the teacup came back and bumped his nose.

"BEITHREICATUS!" he howled, and at the Word of Power, the pentagram light flared blindingly and disappeared, and the rug flopped down in unravelled threads. The tea-cup shattered and splattered its contents on the floor.

A few steps into his study, Alfred Jones stood with his index finger raised and a look of innocent question in his eyes. "Hey, this some new Oxford way of drinking tea?" he said, surveying the puddle on the floor. "I'm just a hick from across the pond, I wouldn't know."

"How did you do that?" Arthur said. He was trying to parse the spell detritus from the rug, but the Word of Power had all but eliminated the traces of whatever Alfred had done. Arthur wasn't sure himself that he'd be able to keep three spells going with that level of fine control. "And what are you doing performing these in my study?"

He spun back, and suddenly Alfred was uncomfortably close. Nobody had been in Arthur's personal space for years, not since he'd given up drunken Formals as an undergraduate. Arthur had to tilt his chin up to look at him, and there was a strange, tight feeling in his chest as he met his eyes. This was ridiculous. This was –

"They told me you were a hard guy to get to see," Alfred said, his deep, easy voice derailing Arthur's train of thought like a sudden fall of rocks. "I was trying to get your attention."

Arthur struggled for coherence. "If you're a student—"

"But I'm not," Alfred said. "Alfred F. Jones, Professor of Experimental Thaumaturgy at MIT." He smiled again, that casual quirk of the lips which Arthur was starting to think was completely unfair in the effect it had on him."You could at least give me an interview." He took Arthur's hand.

Arthur froze. This hadn't happened before, this didn't happen, not to him. Alfred's fingers were linked through his, warm and sure and calloused. He leaned in without realising it, and found that they were kissing, which it turned out was rather like leaning over a balcony too far until suddenly there was a point where your feet weren't on the ground, but the sky was so blue you didn't even care you were falling.

"Well?" Alfred said, pulling away and tilting his head to one side. His eyes really were a ridiculous shade of blue, Alfred couldn't help thinking, just like the spring sky behind the spire of the chapel. "What d'you think? Dinner?"

Arthur found his voice, somewhere in the corner of his study. "I could spare an evening, maybe," he said. "On the condition you give me the research behind the incantation theory you used to wreck my study."

Alfred grinned and captured his hand again, tugging him gently out of his study. "Well," he said, as they walked along with their shoulder brushing. "How familiar are you with Bruckenwald?"