The Royal Academy of Magical Baking

"Thank you all for coming. We're so glad you could join us for another 'Berry' wonderful evening, halfway through your vacation. And now, I would like to propose a toast."

Mr. Berry stood from his seat at the head of the table. Drawing himself up to his tall, lanky height, he raised a glass of sparkling cider. "To the Whisk Whizzes!"

Mrs. Berry, Boysen, Lyra, Mac, and Ginger followed suit. "To the Whisk Whizzes!"

"The brave three who are left," Ginger added after everyone had taken a large sip of cider and sat down. "That makes sense. The baking world is pretty fixated on the number three."

Lyra elbowed her in the side. "There are four of us left. You're still a Whiz, even if you're not there for every review."

"She's right, Crumble," Boysen said, passing a basket of rolls to Mac. "The Whizzes are a lifetime membership. No getting out of it, I'm afraid."

"That means there are five Whizzes left." Mac stared at the roll in his hand, eyes faraway behind his glasses. "Technically, Caramelle is still a Whiz."

Ginger snorted. "Technically, Caramelle is still insufferable."

"I'm worried about her," Mac insisted.

Boysen put a hand on his roommate's shoulder. "So are we, Macaron. Honest. Even Crumble is, deep down."

He glanced at Ginger, and she shrugged. "Sure. The Meringue looked rough at the exam."

"We all had a rough day," Lyra sighed. Then she smiled at Mr. and Mrs. Berry. "Except Boysen, of course. You must be very proud of him."

Mrs. Berry returned her smile warmly. "We are. We're proud of all of you, in fact."

"That's right." Mr. Berry's voice was softer than his wife's, but it still managed to fill the room. Lyra thought it was the sort of voice that would always make everyone stop and listen. "Second term is a difficult time. I didn't make it."

Boysen grinned. "You didn't need to, Dad. You'd already gotten all you wanted out of the academy, right?"

Mr. Berry placed a hand over his wife's. "Sure did."

"Me too!" Ginger said cheerfully. "Well, not the same. No eternal undying love or anything like that. But I do feel like I got everything the academy could give me."

"Including a tutor, apparently!" Mrs. Berry gave Ginger a silent round of applause. "I've never heard of Professor Genoise taking extra students. That's as impressive as a Stellar Enchantment Pin. Maybe even more so."

"Thanks, Mom," Boysen said dryly.

Mrs. Berry swatted her napkin in her son's direction. "You know what I mean."

"The Whisk Whizzes are certainly on a roll so far this year," Mr. Berry said, passing a large bowl of roasted potatoes to Boysen. "What are all of you looking forward to about third term? Any personal goals?"

"The goals were basically set for us," Boysen replied. "After the second term exam. The professors gave each of us 'lessons' to ponder over break." Helping himself to potatoes, he tried to pass the bowl to his roommate. "Right, Mac?"

Mac didn't answer. He was staring at the pile of brussels sprouts on his plate as if wondering how they got there.

Boysen ladled some roasted potatoes onto Mac's plate, banging the spoon around the bowl as he did so. "I said, 'RIGHT, MAC?'"

Mac jumped. "What? Yes. I'm sorry. What?"

Lyra laughed. "We're talking about the lessons we're all supposed to be learning over break. What did the professors say about you, Mac?"

"Oh…" Mac thought for a moment, then smiled. "They said I was a little… distracted."

"Imagine that." Boysen stretched his long arms across the table, handing the bowl of potatoes to Lyra. "What about you, Treble?"

Lyra focused on adding potatoes to the careful arrangement of brussels sprouts and sausages already on her plate. "I'm not sure. I mean, I remember what they said, but I don't know what to do about it."

"You just have to recover your joy." Ginger poured gravy all over her plate, then helpfully did the same to Lyra's. "Simple."

"Simple?" Lyra repeated.

"Sure. Just stop worrying about doing everything so right all the time." Setting the gravy bowl down firmly, Ginger grinned. "Stop being like Caramelle, basically."

"Not helping," Boysen observed.

"Boysen told us about your exam," Mr. Berry said gently. "A 'too right' cake… I can see how that kind of feedback would be confusing."

Mrs. Berry patted Lyra's hand. "Maybe you were just tired, my dear. You'll have the spice back in your step after break."

"I'm not sure," Lyra said again. She fiddled with her knife and fork, halfheartedly digging through the gravy to assemble a bite of sausage and potato. "I really thought I was making progress. Becoming a 'serious' baker."

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Ginger poked her finger into Lyra's shoulder. "See? That. THAT. A 'serious' baker? What does that even mean?"

"Someone other bakers will take seriously," Lyra shot back.

"But that will look different from baker to baker," Mr. Berry said calmly.

Ginger nodded. "Exactly. Think about the professors. They're all 'serious' bakers. They respect each other. But they all have very different styles."

"'Style' is a key word," Boysen agreed. "What term did Professor Genoise give your style, Treble?"

"Joyful," Mac supplied. His eyes still looked faraway behind his glasses, but Lyra suspected that had more to do with Mrs. Berry's exquisite gravy than with any absent auburn-haired perfectionists. "Lyra's style is joyful."

"So that's what you should focus on." Boysen pointed his fork dramatically across the table, like he was pronouncing sentence on Lyra's gravy-soaked plate. "You, Lyra Treble, need to get serious about JOY."

"But how?" Lyra asked, unable to keep a pinch of desperation out of her voice. "How do I 'bake joyfully'? How am I supposed to learn how to do that on top of all the other things we're expected to learn?"

"I know the academy can be a bit of a pressure cooker," Mrs. Berry said sympathetically. "Not the most conducive environment for joy. But I don't think you need to worry about learning this. You already know it. You just need to remember it."

"You said Professor Genoise assigned you that style term, yes?" Mr. Berry broke in. "He called your baking 'joyful?'"

Lyra nodded.

"Then you were already baking joyfully when you came into the academy." Mr. Berry held up his well-buttered roll as if flourishing a magic silver baking spoon. "So focus on that. Try to remember what baking was like before you got in."

"But I can't do that," Lyra protested. "I can't bake like I did before I got into the academy."

Mr. Berry chuckled around a bite of bread. "Whyever not?"

Lyra could feel Boysen's eyes on her from across the table. She put down her knife and fork, took a deep breath, and summoned her courage.

"Before the academy… I sang."

"Of course you did, dear." Mrs. Berry beamed. "You're from a family of bards."

"No. I mean, yes, but…" Lyra glanced at Boysen. He gave her the tiniest nod, and she went on, "I mean, I sang while baking. I made up tunes for all the spells, and I sang them. Out loud."

Mr. and Mrs. Berry just looked at her expectantly.

Lyra struggled to clarify. "I didn't just make up songs to help me learn the spells. I sang the spells. While I performed them. That's how I used baking magic."

She waited. Mr. and Mrs. Berry glanced at each other, shrugged, and looked back at her.

"So I can't just go back to baking like I did before the academy," she explained. "I can't sing the spells. That's not allowed."

"Whyever not?" Mr. Berry repeated, while his wife sharply inquired, "Who said?"

Lyra looked back and forth between them. "Professor Puff said so. She didn't even want me to think the songs while using the spells."

Mr. and Mrs. Berry sighed simultaneously.

"Oh, Praline Puff." Mrs. Berry shook her head fondly. "If ever there was a born Texturist…"

"That's just it," Mr. Berry said. Suddenly noticing the half-eaten roll in his hand, he stuffed it in his mouth and somehow managed to speak around it coherently. "Texture is all about rules. Praline Puff let those rules sink way too deep into her soul."

Mrs. Berry placed a hand over his mouth. "Don't talk while eating, dearest. You're setting a bad example for the children."

"We're not children," Boysen said automatically.

Mrs. Berry shot him a warning look even more effective than the napkin-swatting she'd employed earlier. Then she smiled at Lyra.

"We shouldn't be too hard on Praline. Texture is the trickiest baking principle, in my opinion. It absolutely depends upon structure. When your work requires that much rigidity, you can't be blamed for a little extra strictness in your instruction."

Lyra's heart was beating strangely fast. That song she had started to hear when she spoke to Ginger on the day of the second term final was spinning into life again and growing in volume by the second.

"So… you're saying it's okay? To sing the spells?"

"Definitely okay," Mrs. Berry confirmed cheerfully. "And definitely worth a try."

Mr. Berry swallowed noisily, prompting Mrs. Berry to remove her hand from his mouth. He gave Lyra a grin that reminded her forcibly of both Boysen and Razz.

"We were saying earlier that every baker has different styles. Praline Puff may not like the idea of a student trying something outside her box of rules, but I think I can say confidently that the other two professors will. They'd at least be open to it."

"Really?" Lyra realized her hands were shaking and moved them under the table, clenching them tightly together. "Even Professor Genoise?"

"What have I been telling you?" Ginger had been focusing on her plateful of food, but she paused with a laden fork halfway to her mouth long enough to glare at Lyra. "Professor Genoise is very open to experimentation."

"Not within the academy curriculum," Lyra countered. "That's what he told you, right? Stability over freedom?"

"There's nothing unstable about your songs." Boysen picked up his roll as if to throw it at Lyra, then caught his mother's eye and began buttering it instead. "You're not writing new spells, or trying to rewrite old ones like Crumble here. You're just finding a new way to do the spells that already exist."

"A joyful way," Mac added. He looked at her, his gaze suddenly sharp and focused. "I miss your songs, Lyra. They helped me learn and all, but really, I just felt happy whenever I thought of them. They even made Texture fun."

Boysen raised his butter knife into the air and waved it around like a torch. "FUN!"

"And that was just when we were thinking about them, or using them as learning tools," Mac went on, ignoring his roommate's silent victory dance. "I can only imagine what a difference it would make to SING them."

Lyra gazed around the table. She saw nothing but smiling, eager faces staring back at her.

"Maybe…" She forced her hands to unclench and picked up her knife and fork, determined not to let any of this delicious meal go to waste. "I'll check with the other professors when we get back. Just to be sure if it's okay that I… sing in class."

The cheer that went up sent her internal song into a double-time round.

The music was still playing in her head when she left the Berry household later that evening. It provided a fitting soundtrack as she danced all the way home, reaching another crescendo when she burst through the front door of the Treble brownstone. Skipping up the stairs, she knocked on her younger brother's door.

"Rondo!" she called. "Grab your mandolin and your lucky songwriting pen. I've got some melodies to workshop with you!"

—

A week later, Lyra returned to Zester. The room seemed awfully big without Ginger there, but Lyra tried to keep her spirits up as she unpacked from vacation. She would see her old roommate soon. Ginger planned to visit every weekend.

Besides, it was hard to feel gloomy about class starting the next day. Lyra had spent the second half of break going over all her baking magic songs with the Trebles, expanding and enhancing the rough melodies she had thrown together on her own. Her entire family had contributed something. Most of the credit went to Rondo, the budding prodigy songwriter, but every member of the Any Weather Bards was represented somewhere.

And working on the songs with them hadn't just enriched the music. For the first time, Lyra felt like her family understood what she was trying to do. The melodies had given the Trebles an entry point into Lyra's new baking world. They had always been behind her, all the way, but now they were with her. She could feel their support carrying her into this final, crucial term.

Humming the new tune Rondo had invented for Madame Brioche's Proofing Chant, Lyra twirled into the bathroom, arranging her towels in preparation for the next morning.

Then a truly horrendous BANG sounded from beyond Pestle's closed door, followed by a high, trembling wail.