“Stupid Jonathan…” Charlotte grumbled under her breath, the library she was sitting in so quiet that even that barely breathed out complaint could have been heard from the next shelf over. Charlotte Aulin, perhaps the greatest witch of her time, was currently sitting in a small town library fuming over some of his comments, having stormed off and gone somewhere quiet after their latest job where she had humbly shared some of her recent concerns.

She couldn’t figure out why he had laughed in her face at them. All she had said was that she was worried about how she might have peaked early in her career, since it was pretty hard to one-up defeating Dracula himself, and if he had any suggestions for improving her image any further. She’d suggested perhaps taking on more jobs, or since she was such a wizened spellcaster, perhaps picking up an apprentice or so. Perhaps it was the wizened part he’d laughed at, seeing as she was still in her mid twenties and acting like her career was twenty years longer.

Whatever the argument had been Charlotte had decided to retire to the nearest town with a proper library in it, her usual method of calming down and relaxing being to go to a good old fashioned repository of knowledge and learn a few new spells.

Unfortunately, she found herself dissatisfied by the knowledge this place had to offer. The town was historically part of the magical community and thus had a decent library of tomes and grimoires, but had produced precious few mages as of late. As a result, she probably shouldn’t have expected to find anything particularly interesting here. She’d asked the librarian, an extremely overweight brunette with the biggest glasses she’d ever seen, for her most advanced tomes, but no luck. She sighed and stacked them up, carrying them back to the desk where the fat young woman was doing some of her own reading. She was chipping away at some particularly musty old tome, but kept glancing at Charlotte, clearly starstruck and distracted.

Charlotte slammed them down a little harder than she intended due to their weight, accidentally conveying her disappointment to the librarian. Unfortunately for the girl, it seemed her girth of body exceeded her girth of knowledge, as she was unprepared for Charlotte’s dissatisfaction. 

“S-shall I try to find some more advanced grimoires for you?” She pleaded for a second chance, even after promising that the ones she had given her were her very best. “I’m sure if you give me just a moment I can-”



“Don’t bother.” Charlotte cut the overly plump librarian off, who turned her gaze downcast and looked slightly embarrassed. “No offence to your charming little town, but I doubt this library has anything particularly profound to offer. All the really interesting reading material goes to the grand libraries in the capitals, and I’ve just about read all of those from back to front.”



“Y-you’re right, of course, Miss Aulin. There’s no way a library like this could produce a proper master of witchcraft like yourself…” The librarian muttered nervously, staring at her feet. Or at least the direction of them, as Charlotte doubted that such an overweight woman could see them past that gut her palms were sinking into. At least it probably made a good tray for balancing books on, Charlotte thought as she suppressed a smirk.

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short.” Charlotte said. She was referring of course to the library she tended to for the most part, but her wording immediately perked the librarian up. “For what it is, this place seems quite comprehensive. I’m just far above the intermediate level it caters to. I’m sure a student would find this place quite invaluable. Well then, good day.”

Charlotte turned to leave, feeling better about herself that she was leaving the fat librarian with rosy cheeks rather than an inferiority complex. Maybe she really did have something interesting buried within those shelves, but Charlotte wasn’t really in the mood for digging around to find out. Places like this inevitably tended to have at least one book of forbidden magic hidden away in some dusty corner ready to cause a ruckus a hundred or two years after they were written, but it wasn’t worth sifting through a haystack of beginners guides to pyromancy to find that needle.

Charlotte was nearly at the door when she heard thumping behind her, pausing to see the librarian lumbering behind her, flashing her with the pale flesh of her belly as the effort pushed up her own woollen sweater that seemed to need to be stretched just to contain her bulk. The girl seemed almost out of breath, although probably due to excitement more than the very short jog.

“Um, Miss Aulin! C-c-could I have a moment of your time, please?” She  said sounding nearly frightened to death, adjusting her glasses with one hand while pulling down the hem of her sweater with the other. Her squeaky, almost mouse-like voice got even higher pitched, and already she was beginning to sweat.

“Well, go on.” Charlotte was, if nothing else, certainly curious to know what she wanted. An autograph, maybe?

“P-p-p-please take me as your student!” She sputtered out, wide-eyed and seemingly surprised that she’d been able to actually say it. Charlotte was completely taken aback, but quickly collected herself.

“That’s asking for a lot more than a moment of my time, you know.” Charlotte pointed out as she crossed her arms.

“Oh, yes, um, sorry, I meant-” 

“Yes, yes, I know what you mean.” Charlotte sighed as the girl unnecessarily adjusted her glasses as some sort of impulsive nervous tic. Sarcasm was a poor fit for this girl, it seemed. “You do realise what you’re asking of me, don’t you?”



“Of course I do! B-but this is m-m-my only chance, so I’m going for it!” The girl forced out, visibly wobbling from anxiety. “Miss Charlotte, please be my teacher! Please! I’ll do anything! I want to be a great witch like you!”

“I don’t think there’s anything you could do that would balance out the time and effort it’d take to make you go from a complete beginner to a proper mage.” Charlotte said coolly, although she was slightly reeling from the sudden proposal. Her, a teacher? She’d considered it as something to do down the line once she’d settled down a bit, but while she was in her prime? No, maybe that made it the best time to do something like this… “You are a beginner, I presume?”



“I-I’ve studied a lot, but the amount of spells I can actually cast is… quite low…” The girl admitted shamefully, Charlotte unable to see her eyes past her thick-rimmed glasses as she once again was unable to make eye contact. “I’ve done a lot of studying, I must have read dozens of books in here, but there’s only so much I can do on my own.”



“And you haven’t asked anybody else? There’s plenty of schools where you could make a formal application.” Charlotte pointed out.



“W-well, I can’t really just abandon the library.” The girl explained. “And I’ve asked some witches and wizards that have passed through, but none of them really wanted to teach me. And one of them said I’m, I’m quite talentless…”



“And so you come to me instead?” Charlotte asked, feeling sorry for the poor girl, who looked like she might turn into a blubbering mess if she said no.



“Miss Charlotte, you’re supposed to be the best mage born in the last two, no, three decades! If anybody could turn somebody as useless as me into a proper witch, it’s you! Please, even if it’s just a month, no, three weeks! Even two! Just to get me started!” The librarian begged, advancing closer to Charlotte who reflexively backed up until her back was to the wall. She had a sudden mental image of the girl pressing her bulk against her, preventing her from fleeing until she gave an answer.

Charlotte finally started to properly size the girl up, rather than have her attention drawn purely to her blubber and those thick glasses that dominated her visage. She weighed at least three hundred and fifty pounds by Charlotte’s estimates, perhaps closer to four hundred, a veritable butterball who clearly spent all day reading and snacking between her pasty skin and bloated cheeks. She had short brunette hair that brushed the back of her neck and seemed self-cut, with almost completely flat straight-cut bangs that were given spice only by an unruly case of bedhead, although Charlotte got the impression that a comb would hardly help tame it.  She had thick freckles across her puffy cheeks that would have required thick makeup to obscure, but she had a cute button nose and big, innocent eyes that made it easy to feel sorry for her, and Charlotte felt that she’d likely be quite cute if she wore a more flattering pair of glasses and perhaps lost the second chin.

Her outfit was decidedly frumpy, a thick green turtleneck knitted sweater that only served to emphasise her puffy neck and push up the fat that otherwise drooped from her cheeks, but did look rather comfortable. Despite this she was fat enough that her waist pushed out the wool enough to make it resemble a muffin top at the sides, and it was stretched enough over her gut that stuck out far enough that she had to occasionally readjust it to stop her pale flesh from poking out as it boiled over her skirt’s waistband. There was no looseness to her sleeves until you reached her wrists, her biceps being puffy wings that couldn’t be held out in front of her without pushing her chest aside, and looked like an exceptionally cushiony rest for the books she nestled between her arms. Her bust was of truly impressive scale, at least the size of her head or perhaps larger, and that was taken into account her second chin. You could truly see the woollen pattern stretch at places like her chest, where it was clear it’d been knitted when she was smaller and would someday inevitably grow out of it. Normally Charlotte would feel some envy over such an enormous chest, but the way it sagged onto her shelf of a belly and used it as a resting point of sorts reassured her that this didn’t quite count as competition.



Her fat legs were completely covered by a nearly floor length skirt that looked like something her grandmother would wear, but even so you could tell that her thighs were pressed tightly together, and her cushiony ass was undeniably obviously indented through the back of it and probably quite comfortable to sit on, a valuable asset in her line of work.

All in all, it wasn’t exactly Charlotte’s idea of a bright-eyed young girl for her to apprentice. Charlotte’s image of that was of some girl in her early teens, half her size and cute as a button. For contrast this girl was probably nineteen or so and three times as broad, and was about as tall as her or perhaps a little shorter, although it was hard to gauge her exact height with her hunched over posture. She didn’t exactly scream “apprentice” to her, but there was such a pleading look in her eyes that Charlotte hesitated to say no. But how could she say yes at such short notice, as if taking on such a task on a whim?

“Give me a moment to think.” Charlotte finally requested, marching away to try some room to breathe.

A thought invaded Charlotte’s head and couldn’t quite get out, which was: Why not? Did she have anything better to do? The whole reason why she was here was because she felt like she’d hit a dead end, with nothing really interesting to do. Why not take on a new challenge, just to try it out? She could still travel around with this girl… once she’d made her drop some of the weight, anyway. The poor girl had a puppy-like quality to her that made it difficult to let her go.

The idea continued to worm its way around her skull, and she found more and more reasons to consider it as the seconds passed. Charlotte had peaked in terms of achievements when she’d helped defeat Dracula, then taken down a number of lesser vampires and monsters of the night. Continuing to excel was merely expected of her, not something that would boost her reputation or really drive her to greater heights. So why not take on a student and see if this girl had potential? She doubted that those other passing-through mages gave her the time of day, certainly not enough to give her a serious evaluation. If she’d studied the material on her own, that’d also give her a head start. Plus, if she was above-average, that’d reflect rather well on Charlotte, wouldn’t it? She liked the idea of being the nurturer of talent, helping a hidden flower bloom. And then, best of all, if this girl went on to do great things, she’d always attribute it to her brilliant teacher Charlotte Aulin.

And let’s be fair, Charlotte thought to herself as she inspected the girl out of the corner of her eyes, who had high expectations for a nobody like her? She’d admitted herself that she’d been unable to succeed on her own, meaning that if she turned out above average, clearly it’d be because of her. She was right about one thing, she was almost certainly never going to stumble into another mage of her calibre, talent, or beauty.

Sure, Charlotte had never taught anybody before, but how hard could it be? If this turned out to be a bad idea, Charlotte could simply say that she’d just intended to teach her the basics and then foist her off onto some proper professor of magic to worry about. It was win-win: if she failed, Charlotte could say that she was merely doing a favour to some small town girl out of the goodness of her heart. If she succeeded, well, clearly she had an eye for talent…

“Alright. Sure, why not?” Charlotte said, and she could see the girl’s eyes sparkling through the thick lenses of her glasses as she gasped in delight. “Perhaps just as a test period to start with…”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!” The librarian squealed, and although she didn’t quite leap onto Charlotte and pull her into the world’s softest bear hug like she had almost expected, she grabbed her hands and started shaking them up and down furiously in an apparent show of thanks. When their fingers touched Charlotte felt a spark travel down her fingertips from the librarian into her, and into her chest. It was a distinctly magical sensation, and not one that Charlotte quite recognised. She guessed that it was the magical equivalent of a static discharge, the result of this girl trying unsuccessfully to learn magic and building up quite a bit of spare mana. That or perhaps months or even years of pouring over tomes and grimoires had left her with that discharge. Either way, it was a good sign that this girl figuratively and literally had the spark for magic, at least until that was put to the test.

“Don’t thank me just yet.” Charlotte exhaled as she wrenched her hand out of the librarian’s unrelenting grip, shaking it and the few sparks of magic off. “Becoming even half as good as me won’t be an easy task, you know. And I don’t have any intention of going easy on you just because you’re a novice. If you don’t like it, I’ll go and find you another teacher, got it?”



“Of course, Miss Charlotte You won’t hear a single complaint out of me!”



“I’ll have to hold you to that. We’ll start tomorrow.” Charlotte said, trying to sound like this wasn’t completely off the cuff. “Don’t worry, I’ve tutored other students before while I was at the academy, I know what I’m doing. I’ll pick out some study material, but you’re the librarian, so you make sure to grab anything you think will be relevant, as well as some pens, ink, and something easy to run in.”



“Yes, Miss Charlotte! Anything you say, Miss Charlotte!” She squeaked obediently, before pausing. “Um, easy to run in?”



“We’re starting with physical education. Lord knows you need it.” Charlotte said, poking her in the belly button, sending a slight ripple through her stomach as she blushed. “Eating however you please is all good and well when the most you’re going to be exploring is libraries, but I wouldn’t have even been able to fit through a picture frame, let alone run from one end of a castle and back.”

“A picture frame?” The librarian cocked her head to the side slightly.

“Don’t worry about it, miss…” Charlotte paused awkward. Taking on a student without even asking her name first probably wasn’t a good start to their relationship. Hopefully she’d take it as a sign of confidence that she had agreed to her proposition first…

“M-Magnolia! Magnolia Keyes.” She said.

“Alright, Maggie, be sure to get a good night’s sleep.” Charlotte slapped her hand on her new student’s shoulder. “I’ll let you eat however you like tonight, but just remember that you’ll only be making it harder for yourself tomorrow…”

–

“Come on, pick up the pace! You still have six more laps to go!”

Charlotte lightly jogged alongside her new pupil, who gasped for air like a fish wriggling on the end of a hook after being yanked out of the water. She ran as quickly as she could, which was to say so slowly that Charlotte was barely doing more than walking. She was an almost mesmerising sight, her flab rising and falling with far more vigour than one would have thought her plodding movements could cause. The combined weight of her breasts and belly were clearly more than Charlotte’s entire body weight, yet they managed to bounce so easily within the loose-fitting tank top she’d stuffed herself into, most of the lower half of her gut flopping out while her cleavage threatened to smack her in the face. Her belly was divided into two twin folds of flab, and it reminded Charlotte of the stack of pancakes she’d had for breakfast. Sweat glistened and dripped from her forehead down to her second chin, and her glasses fogged up from her own hot breath. Her hips rocked and wobbled with each lumbering step, legs surely chafing as they were too fat to avoid rubbing against each other unless she moved with the broadest of gaits, hopefully alleviated by how slick her drenched body was by that point. It was a miracle that the girl could run at all, as the fattest person Charlotte could remember seeing.

“Yes, Miss Charlotte!” Magnolia wheezed, completely red in the face and looking like if she stopped, she’d flop to the floor and be completely unable to get back up. This wasn’t conjecture on Charlotte’s part, it had been exactly what had happened on the first day of their training, after being forced to exercise for the first time since she’d decided that eating cookies and drinking hot chocolate was more fun than jogging on a hot day. True to her word she didn’t complain even if her expression flickered between admirable determination and abject misery, although this meant that Charlotte had to keep a close eye on her since the incident to make sure that she wasn’t overworking her, even if it felt like just about any work was overwork for the obese young lady.

It was so easy for Charlotte herself to keep up that it barely counted as exercise, forcing her to occasionally lap the poor girl just to make sure she was getting her own workout, although she felt like a bit of a bully when she did so. But it wasn’t her fault that Magnolia had fattened herself up so thoroughly, and she’d thank her for being two hundred or so pounds lighter when she had to flee from werewolves that could outrun an automobile, or jump around haunted mansions designed for people who could turn into bats. Particularly if you had to keep up with some muscleheaded vampire slayer whose entire job was to do endless cardio.

“Alright, we’ll stop for lunch here.” Charlotte said after feeling that she’d tortured her student more than enough.

“But I have… two more laps to go…!” Magnolia gasped, her lumbering jog slower than walking speed as she tried to avoid grinding to a stop. Her eyes were wide and desperate, her slack jaw perpetually gasping for air trying to avoid wheezing out the words “I can’t do it” that she so badly wanted to say.

“I still need you to be able to cast some spells after this, Maggie.” Charlotte produced the carrot to alleviate the fitness stick she’d been beating her with all morning. “”You’ve already done four more laps than you could a week ago, that’s plenty of progress.”



Magnolia didn’t resist, and brought her body to a stop, her jelly-like body needing an extra second to settle down with her. She sank to her knees, then gave up and flopped onto her back like a beached whale, her entire stomach sticking out shamelessly to the world. It had been a sharp improvement in a short amount of time, but only because she’d barely been able to complete one lap to start with before her legs gave out from underneath her. Now she could complete what would be a very light warm-up for a real run, which gave Charlotte high hopes for the future.

“Don’t worry, it’ll only get easier once we’ve gotten rid of this thing.” Charlotte prodded her in the belly button for emphasis and watched it quiver slightly like she’d poked a pudding, barely perspiring herself as she quickly undid her ponytail. It was unimaginable for her, having been fit for her whole life, to put herself in poor Maggie’s shoes, and she was more than happy to keep it that way. It just seemed embarrassing. “I’ll go get us some lunch, and then after that we’ll get started for the day.”

Charlotte returned with a small picnic basket, having decided that it was easier to eat outside and give her student a little reward right away, as she had banned her from having breakfast until she’d lost at least fifty pounds. Losing and gaining weight was, as she’d somewhat condescendingly lectured her, a matter of in vs out, and it didn’t matter how much cardio she did if she stuffed herself between sessions. If there was something Charlotte felt was important, it was being able to control yourself.

Magnolia’s stomach was loudly expressing its protest of what it considered inhumane treatment, and she greedily eyed the stack of sandwiches that Charlotte produced and laid out for the two of them, and in particular the sweet buns that accompanied them. She reached out for them, only to have her hand gently slapped aside by her teacher.

“No using your hands.” Charlotte told her, Magnolia instinctively glancing around for a knife and fork. When she found none she was confused for a few seconds, and then her face lit up as Charlotte’s words clicked. She began to mumble under her breath, then held out her hand as the nearest sandwich half slowly and unsteadily began to float up into the air, inching closer to her mouth as it wobbled and threatened to tip over and send the ingredients tumbling out. Eventually it made its way over to her wide open mouth where she stuck her neck out and stuffed as much of it in as possible, having not quite mastered using levitation magic with her mouth full just yet.

She produced a sound that probably meant “I did it!” as she worked on the logistics of getting the rest in, her cheeks ending up puffed up like a chipmunk, which honestly wasn’t very different from how rounded they already were.

“Good job, Maggie. It’s important to be able to cast even when you’re physically exhausted, even if it’s not anything fancy.” Charlotte praised her, and assumed by her student’s expression that she would have had a happy blush had her face not been so red already. The levitation spell was very beginner level, but Magnolia had mastered it faster than she had expected her to. She finished the other half of her sandwich in a tenth of the time it’d taken her to float the first over to her, and her hand immediately reached out for another when Charlotte stopped her once again.

“That’s enough for now, you’re supposed to be on a diet.” Charlotte chided her, Magnolia looking dismayed.

“But you brought so much!” Magnolia protested, looking down at the three remaining sandwiches. She decided to consider this not a complaint, but merely an observation. “You aren’t going to get through all of that on your own, are you?”

“I was feeling hungry today.” Charlotte said shamelessly. “Besides, I have a fast metabolism, I don’t really gain weight.”

Magnolia looked somewhere between envious and sceptical as she was forced to watch her teacher eat enough for the two of them, plus a couple of buns from the local bakery.

“The food in this town is pretty good, you know.” Charlotte unintentionally taunted her as she appreciated what was now strictly off limits for Magnolia. “I can see how you got so fat.”

“It really is. You’ve got a good eye, Miss Charlotte, I’ll introduce you to some nice restaurants later if you want. So can I have just a little…?” Magnolia said optimistically.

“You can eat however you want when you’re the teacher.” Charlotte said smugly, reaching in and tossing her an apple instead. Magnolia shrugged, figuring that natural sugar was better than no sugar at all. She decided to hold herself to her promise, as the two had ended up eating together quite often, Charlotte living out of the same house as her student. After starting their physical training Magnolia had immediately struggled with the dieting part of the regime, and Charlotte had almost immediately discovered that she was sneaking snacks the moment her teacher was out of view, made worse by her comfort eating while studying. Magnolia was a big stress eater, as she had admitted to after Charlotte squeezed a confession out of her, and her low self esteem and nervous disposition combined with legitimate concerns about how her training might turn out meant that she was perpetually chipping away at her own weight loss, leading Charlotte to declare it to be in her best interests to be supervised.

It was good for a master-student relationship for the two to live together in general, Charlotte had informed her, which meant sharing meals too. Even if she got lesser portions, she could at least still eat well and perhaps live vicariously through her teacher’s appetite.

The two ate quietly, Magnolia’s emotional limits being tested by watching her teacher clearly overeat in front of her. It was sinking in that becoming a proper magic user would require more sacrifice than she had expected, and she was starting to feel like she was doing more cardio than studying. This of course wasn’t true, but it was easy to believe when she was used to being the one eating four sandwiches as a light lunch, not watching somebody else do it in front of her.

“You know, I was thinking…” Magnolia let her stomach get the better of her as the reality of her new diet set in. Her posture drooped, chin resting in her cleavage, propped up by her gut wedged between the top and bottom of the table before her. “Perhaps it’d be alright if I were a more indoors kind of mage…”

“You said you wanted to be a great witch like me, didn’t you? That means fieldwork.” Charlotte shut her down with a stern look. “If you want to be an academic who never puts their skills to the test, that’s fine, but you’ll have to go and find yourself a new master. I’m a witch of actions, not words. If I’d crammed myself up in some research hall, you’d probably have never heard of me. I want you to go out into the world after this and make a name for yourself that you can be proud of. And then when you’ve done that, you can tell everybody that Charlotte Aulin sent you.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Charlotte, I’ll be sure to!” Magnolia was too inspired by her words to read into it too much, pushing herself back upright, although she began to sag soon afterwards. “But do you think I can really live up to your expectations, Miss Charlotte? I did all that studying and I can still only barely light matches…”

“You’ve barely had a week of actual guidance, you’ve made plenty of progress.” Charlotte rebuked her. “Knowing the theory is a good start, but anybody can memorise runes and magic circles, it’s the execution that’s the hard part. You can worry about self-doubt once you’ve made it past the six month mark and the really hard things start! At my estimates, it’ll probably be at least three months until you’ve got the basics down, and that’s considered a brisk pace! Well, I’m sure we can cut it down to about two, since you’ve got such a talented teacher.”

“If you say so, Miss Charlotte.” Magnolia’s self-esteem was low enough that she had very little confidence even after that pep talk. Charlotte hoped that she could beat it out of her by the end…

–

“Alright Maggie, you have one minute.” Charlotte said, holding up a stopwatch. “Just stay calm, and remember your studies. I know you can do it.”



Magnolia nodded and adjusted her glasses as she stood in a room, empty save for a number of seemingly ordinary objects laid up like targets in front of her. A glass, an electric lamp not plugged into anything, a candelabra, a desk fan. She waited tensely for Charlotte’s signal, hands at her side like a gunslinger’s fingers hovering over the handle of his gun.

“Fire!” Charlotte called, and in a quite literal sense. Magnolia’s arm was too heavy for a real quick draw, but it still shot upwards as fast as it could go, a finger pointed at the wide candelabra. A thin stream of flame shot from the tip of her finger, initially lighting the centre candle, then fanning out to be wide enough to light the rest in one go, without increasing its height and scorching the metal beneath the candles.

“Lightning!” Charlotte called next, this time a spark shooting out over to the lamp. The bulb shone brightly for a moment, then settled into a dimmer flicker that eventually became one consistent brightness.



“Keep the lamp lit!” Charlotte instructed. “Next, wind!”

Magnolia’s messy hair was blown back by the gale she conjured, before falling down and settling as she produced not a stream, but a rotating ball of wind that she placed over the fan, causing it to spring in place with enough force to move her hair again.

“Keep both going! Now fill that cup, and don’t spill a drop!”

Beads of sweat fell down Magnolia’s forehead as she performed the deceptively difficult task of casting with no spare hands, coupled with the obviously tricky cast of keeping three spells going at once, even if they were basic ones.



Magnolia conjured a ball of water that fell into the cup, just barely avoiding spilling over the edge. The lamp’s light flickered, but didn’t go out, Charlotte’s lips curling into a smile at her apprentice’s success.

“Alright, stop! Forty-three seconds!”



Magnolia exhaled like she’d been holding in her breath the entire time, before clenching her fists together and throwing them up in victory, chest heaving as her fat face only seemed to make her happiness more pronounced.

“I did it, Miss Charlotte! I did it!” She cheered, seizing Charlotte in a big bear hug that the teacher now celebrated along with her. “Oh, I thought for sure I was going to screw up at least one of them! I nearly created ice when I had to do the water!”

“Don’t forget to clean up.” Charlotte gasped from her cushiony prison, Magnolia releasing her.

“Oh, right! Um, it was… um, how do I get rid of the water again…” Magnolia stumbled over the scenario she hadn’t prepared for. “Um, boiling it would be too slow, I can’t freeze it, um, um…”

Charlotte sighed and resolved it for her, levitating the glass over to a nearby pot plant and pouring it into the soil.

“No need to overthink it.” Charlotte said, flicking her finger and putting out the candles as well. “There’s no need for a complicated solution to everything, simple is best. The best spell is the one that works under pressure.”



“I’ll try to remember that next time, Miss Charlotte.” Magnolia looked a bit glum, her success deflated by fumbling her victory lap. 

“Don’t worry about it, just remember it.” Charlotte said gently. “You’ve got a long way to go, even if you’ve gotten the basics down much faster than I expected, almost as fast as I did when I was learning. It’s only been a month and a bit and already you can do this much, and you regulated it properly. Anybody can make a huge fireball or a lightning bolt, it’s much harder to stop yourself from popping the bulb or burning the house down.”



Magnolia nodded, perking back up again. Charlotte didn’t want to praise her too much lest she get cocky, but it was important to make sure she didn’t fall for her own low self esteem, particularly when she was overperforming relative to how long she’d been tutored. 

She’d learned the basics very quickly. She’d said “almost”, but wasn’t this even faster than her? Charlotte remembered struggling on some of the spells that Magnolia conquered within a day or two. Charlotte decided it didn’t count. For one thing she was much older than when Charlotte herself had been, she’d had time to study on her own in advance, and she clearly had a much better teacher.

“Anyway,” Charlotte said, “It’s a good start, but by the end of your training you’ll be able to do this…”



She flicked her finger slightly, dropping water into the cup, lighting all of the candles, turning on the lamp to the correct brightness, and spinning the fan all in one go in a single second. Averaging ten seconds per spell was very good for Maggie, but she had a long way to go if she wanted to catch up with her teacher.

Magnolia clapped as Charlotte smugly put them out, this being more of a party trick by her standards. Still, she was going to have to put in her legwork as a teacher, particularly in terms of figuring out what to teach her next. She had really thought they’d be doing this groundwork for at least two to three months, but now she was thinking of starting on more intermediate topics like familiars and magic circles, the latter of which she seemed to have memorised quite a few of, even if she couldn’t quite activate the grand majority of them. She’d even produced one that Charlotte didn’t recognise, although when she’d looked it up it hadn’t been anything too special. An embarrassing gap in her knowledge, particularly when it was the one that Magnolia did seem to have figured out how to activate on her own. It seemed that Magnolia was more well-read than she’d expected her to be, and she wondered just how much magic she’d been able to successfully cast on her own before Charlotte had started teaching her…

“I think all that running is starting to pay off too.” Magnolia commented cheerfully. “I’ve been feeling a lot lighter lately!”

It was certainly true, as the effects of all that cardio were showing results. While she was still hovering somewhere around the three hundred and fifty pound mark, she was undeniably lighter. She dominated the room slightly less, her hips less obscenely broad, her gut sucked in a bit more, her breasts not quite giving the town’s prize pumpkins quite as much of a run for their money, although they seemed to be shrinking slower than the rest of her. Her second chin consumed a bit less of her neck, a step on the road to revealing her quite conventionally pretty face with no strings attached. Her hair had gotten a little longer too, although no less unruly.



This change was quite visible on her clothes, as she was wearing her favourite green sweater that helped show her progress. It would be lying to say that it looked loose on her in any way, but it no longer looked stretched in any places, and she no longer had to readjust it to hide her belly.

Spending more time in the sun seemed to be helping, as she didn’t look quite so porcelain white anymore. If anything Charlotte felt like she’d lost a little of her own tan, with how much time she was spending indoors teaching her. Hardly a great loss, but it wasn’t the only thing that had changed since she started her tutorship.

Magnolia’s mentioning her thinning waistline unfortunately caused Charlotte to be rather aware of how tight her own was, and the rest of her clothes for that matter. Being next to such a massive woman had caused her to be a little lax with her own diet, and the effects were making themselves acutely known. 

Her waist no longer had the slim taper she’d been so proud of, being more of a straight line from her ribs to the top of her hips, which themselves were wide enough that they pushed ahead the sides of her skirt. Her thighs, intended to be shown off by said short skirt, were looking rather plump, her thigh-highs visibly indented into thighs that were too big for them and were spilling out around them. Her buttons around her chest were starting to strain, but annoyingly, not as much as the ones around her belly button, as she now had a pooching tummy that seemed to be growing faster than her boobs. Even her beautiful face was looking a little thicker than usual, a little softer and wider.

Still, it wasn’t a problem, Charlotte told herself. She’d just gotten a little sloppy since she was staying in this town for so long. Nothing she couldn’t wipe out with a few weeks of restraint and exercise. Besides, it wasn’t her fault, it was Maggie’s, for always making too much. She’d been assigned the two’s chef, and try as she might, old habits died hard, and Magnolia never seemed to quite grasp the concept of cooking with smaller portions in mind, and so Charlotte always ended up eating the lion’s share to make sure that her student’s diet went unscathed. A noble self-sacrifice, she always thought to herself as she matched pace with how much Magnolia had been eating on a daily basis before Charlotte intervened.

“Alright, like I promised, we’re celebrating your progress. I’ll need some time to figure out our next lesson plan, anyway.” Charlotte said, deciding that all thoughts of diets and restraint would have to wait until tomorrow. “We’re going to that bakery, and today you can have whatever you like, on me! Just as long as I get to have some of it too…”

–

In the middle of the third month of their training, Charlotte quietly entered the library to check on her student, who was in the middle of a study session at the table Charlotte had found herself frustrated over. You could hardly see her past the many books stacked around her, although the obese girl was still more than wide enough to be visible through any gaps. She’d lost a lot of weight already, Charlotte figuring that she’d probably have lost at least a hundred pounds in another month or so. Her chest was still big as her head and her belly bounced and thumped with each step of her jogging, but that big green sweater of hers was finally starting to look, dare she say it, loose. Even her second chin had receded enough that the turtleneck no longer made her look even fatter. She still wore it, claiming it to be her favourite and most comfortable, but its practical days on her frame were numbered. The sleeves were baggy where her biceps once bulged, and those fat fingers that thumbed their way through the pages were looking ever so slightly less bloated. She now merely took up her entire chair, rather than her fat ass spilling well over it, and she was almost light enough to have something resembling a spring in her step. She was no longer wheezing and begging for mercy by the end of their average run, almost better than Charlotte in some ways, who was finding it difficult to pretend that she wasn’t worn out by the end of their sessions thanks to her own added bulk.

She was looking more healthier in general, with something of a glow to her skin from all the sunlight, and her hair seemed much neater as of late. It had gotten long enough that she’d needed to start putting it up in a ponytail while she ran, and her skin seemed clearer and less riddled with blemishes and freckles. It was amazing what a more active lifestyle seemed to do for her, Charlotte thought. Even her hair seemed less unkempt, a bit shinier and smoother, although it probably helped that it was currently done up in a bun that gave her that frumpy librarian look, bangs pulled back as well.

She always looked perfectly content while reading, completely entranced as she memorised each and every scrap of information on the pages, barely having to take notes as she seemed to have perfect memory. She was only interrupted by the occasional yawn, showing that she’d been doing maybe a bit too much studying lately. However perfect of a student she seemed to be, and while Charlotte wouldn’t fault her for getting caught up in her studies, she had forgotten something that was meant to be the whole reason why Charlotte had left her alone to study today in the first place.

“Where’s your fairy, Maggie?” Charlotte asked, and Magnolia lurched upright in her seat, looking around wildly.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…” The frazzled girl moaned. “It’s um, it’s, um…”



“Let me guess, you can’t detect its aura?” Charlotte said, and Magnolia glumly nodded. 

“I’m sorry, it must have gotten lost somewhere-”



“Wrong, you’ve let your magical link with it lapse. What you can’t find is your own bond’s aura. It's still here in the room with us right now.”

The fairy flitted out from behind a bookshelf with a giggle at Magnolia’s look of dismay, then flew off.

“The problem is that they don’t disappear immediately unless you go out of your way to make it so.” Charlotte explained sternly. “This fairy is friendly to humans besides playing the occasional trick, but imagine if you’d done the same with an imp, or worse, a demon.”



“I’m so sorry, Miss Charlotte. I just got so caught up on what I was doing…” Magnolia 

Charlotte smiled. “This is a good reminder not to get overconfident. You might be learning quickly, but you’re still a beginner. Just because you pulled off the summoning on your first try doesn’t mean you’ve mastered everything, so just keep it in mind next time.”



“I-I didn’t get overconfident, Miss Charlotte! Just a little distracted!” Magnolia defended herself, and Charlotte simply shrugged.

“Just don’t do it again.” Charlotte said. “I’ll hold onto them for the rest of the day, I need to go put together next week’s lesson plan.”

Charlotte left, feeling like she’d been a little harsh on her. She had probably just slipped up because she was tired, not because she overestimated her abilities. Charlotte was, intentionally or not, projecting the fact that if she’d pulled off summoning and maintaining a familiar as easily as Magnolia had, she’d have likely gotten a bit of a swelled head. She was quite the smug student back in the day, as her poor teachers would attest to.

Truth be told Charlotte was a little tired too, but she had a secret weapon that her student lacked. She wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, preferring tea, but whenever she felt a bit sleepy, she had a little chocolate and let the sugar jolt her back awake. It was absolutely a bad habit, one that Magnolia had shared and successfully dropped, only for her disciplinarian to inherit, but it was too much of a reward for Charlotte to resist, inevitably adding more meat to her gut that had burgeoned into an undeniable pot belly, sticking out and straining her buttons to their limit. At the rate she was going it wouldn’t be long before she washed her face in the morning and found herself staring at water dripping down an undeniable second chin, but until then she’d tell herself that one block of chocolate wouldn’t make her fat, even though she was ten or twelve in.

 Charlotte had been doing some studying of her own, more specifically making her way through the beginner-to-intermediate level study material in the library in order to make proper lesson plans for her student. Early on it was easy to simply cruise through with the basics, but now Charlotte had to put actual effort into what was appropriate for her student to attempt next based on her existing knowledge.

When she’d started Charlotte thought she’d be able to do practically everything from memory, but the more she investigated the more she found gaps in her knowledge, even things that she’d thought were child’s play for her. A niche spell here, a summoning circle there. Not remotely difficult, but she’d seemingly plain forgotten. Probably because it was too easy for her, Charlotte massaged her ego over, although it was a bit awkward when she presented some of these forgotten spells figuring it’d make for a change of pace to the more formulaic lessons, only to find that Magnolia had already learned them on her own, throwing her plans for the day askew. It was her library, Charlotte supposed, and her skill was starting to catch up with some of the knowledge she had absorbed. Once the individual pieces had been slotted into place, it made sense that she could execute something that combined them even without much practice.

Charlotte was a little jealous of just how easily she seemed to absorb knowledge like a sponge, but no matter how quickly she learned her skills were still erratic. She’d pull off a surprisingly advanced spell one day, then stumble on something easier the next. They were only three or so months into her training after all, and no matter how brilliant she might turn out to be, there was no way she was getting out of this apprenticeship in less than a year and a half. Honestly, Charlotte occasionally worried that she might have taken on an extraordinary student while being a below average teacher, even if she was herself as good of a mage as anybody could hope for…

But then, of course, Charlotte’s ego kicked back in. She’d gotten this far because Charlotte was such a good teacher! Of course it stood to reason that an extraordinary teacher produced an extraordinary student. Foist her off onto a teacher the likes of which she’d been educated by and her progress would probably grind to a halt. Why, if Charlotte had been taught by herself, she might have learned twice as fast as Maggie was. If she ever took on a second pupil, she bet she’d have even better results with some experience backing her.

Confidence restored, Charlotte puffed up her chest, which hadn’t puffed up quite as much as one would hope despite the meat packed onto her body below and around it, and strutted around the desk to inspect the various books that Magnolia was working her way through. Even if she learned quickly, a stack this big would probably take her several weeks to burn through, and that was just learning the theory. Slightly childishly for a teacher, she felt better about herself that all of the books she recognised were ones that she herself could recite front to back.

“What’s this one about?” Charlotte said, picking out one particular book with a very beaten cover that she didn’t recall reading herself, but saw quite frequently. “I always see you carrying this around.”

Without warning, Magnolia leapt from her chair, wrenching the book from Charlotte’s hands with a wild-eyed look, nearly knocking Charlotte over and almost sending her stacks of books toppling with her disregard for where her body ended up between launching from her seat and retreating from the length of Charlotte’s reach. She defensively clutched the book tight to her chest, completely smothering it, before seeming to realise what she had just done, staring at Charlotte’s startled face. She wasn’t sure that Magnolia had ever reacted so strongly to anything, let alone taking a look at some seemingly random book.

“That one’s, um, private!” She said, adjusting her glasses, and refusing to elaborate, pushing the book deeper into her flab.

“Alright, sorry, I was just curious. Keep your skirt on…” Charlotte decided to drop the matter and quietly leave rather than pry further. It was probably just something of particular personal importance, like a diary. If that were the case she could understand the reaction, as she’d be mortified to let anybody see a diary she wrote, particularly any of her teachers. Charlotte highly doubted it was anything worse than that, as she could never imagine her mousy little student holding anything else that she might want to keep away from her eyes.

Charlotte retired to the other end of the library, giving her and Magnolia their own space to study separately, feeling her plush ass start to nearly reach the borders of the seat. They formed comfortable symmetry; Magnolia on things to learn, and Charlotte on things to teach, and if Charlotte got any heavier and Magnolia any lighter, they might become symmetrical in a more literal sense. In the meantime, she was enjoying the service of the fairy familiar more for its manual labour than its magical abilities.

“Another one, mistress?” Charlotte’s fairy asked as it prodded her on the shoulder, holding a block of chocolate the size of its head in their tiny hands.

“No, I… You know what, I think I will.” Charlotte hesitated for a moment then gave in after giving a quick side-eye to make sure that Magnolia hadn’t approached her to ask for any help and caught her in the act. It wouldn’t do to set a bad example, she thought to herself as her pot belly lurched out in front of her. There was no way that the distinctly plump senior witch could call herself a good example on the dieting front anymore…

–

“Alright, that’s enough for today. Maggie, you broke that curse wonderfully.” Charlotte said, ending their lesson. “Tomorrow we’ll do some alchemy for a change of pace.”

“Thank you so much, Miss Charlotte! I really worked hard on those this week!” Magnolia glowed. Confidence was doing wonders for her, as she held her chest high and proudly. “I’m really starting to feel like nothing’s out of my reach with you here to teach it to me.”

“Just as long as you’re studying hard, you’ll show results.” Charlotte said the proper thing to say. Here to teach it to her? She hadn’t even had to teach her the theory, she’d already known what to do when she showed up for her lessons today. This week, Charlotte noted she’d said. Not even a month, just a week. She’d broken it faster than it’d taken Charlotte to cast it, and significantly faster than her own test runs for the lesson. She really was shaping up to be a prodigy… Ever the more reason to treat her normally. Praise her for her successes, but don’t let it go to her head. It had only been five months! Just five! It flabbergasted Charlotte that she behaved with the wisdom and maturity of a mage years into their training, rather than under half a year.

It wasn’t just her abilities that were really shaping up as of halfway through the fifth month of her apprenticeship, as save for her weight, Magnolia was starting to embody Charlotte’s more idealised idea of what one of her students should look like.

Under Charlotte’s advice, she’d gotten a more fashionable pair of glasses with thinner rims, as well as a proper haircut to clean her up, revealing that with a bit of brushing and product, she could have quite nice looking hair parted to the side and brushing her shoulders. Magnolia meekly commented that it was more of a hassle in the morning, but Charlotte sternly explained that presentation was highly important for a witch. Her own hair was being somewhat uncooperative lately, forcing her to tie it back so that its need for frequent brushing didn’t bother her. She let her trademark parted bangs still hang freely, but otherwise she felt quite similar in hairstyle to her flat-banged student. Charlotte prided herself on her appearance, and it didn’t feel good noticing that parts of it was getting sloppy despite her best efforts. 

Magnolia had also been forced to finally abandon her favourite green sweater, as she had simply lost too much weight for it, changing to a thinner and more fashionable red one, along with a long skirt that was much more up to date in fashion. It was still a conservative appearance, but much more in line with the fashionable ladies of the city than her librarian look. Weighing around two hundred and sixty or so pounds, she was dramatically lighter than when she had started, still well overweight, but well on the path to skinniness. The fact that she was willingly going out of her way to run more despite still being so heavy was a testament to her newfound stamina, one that had grown inversely to how Charlotte’s had begun to spiral. As Charlotte grew heavier and heavier under her unrelenting bad habits and overeating, she crossed the threshold from plump into outright fat, as if the weight Magnolia lost went directly onto her.

Charlotte was dressed similarly to her student as a result, over two hundred pounds and wearing it worse than Magnolia. At times she almost felt fatter than her, as Magnolia seemed energetic and almost light on her feet from her constant roadwork combined with the strength she’d naturally built from being so heavy for so long, while Charlotte was most unprepared to lug around an extra hundred or so pounds on her naturally dainty frame. It didn’t help that her body’s fat distribution was… unflattering compared to Magnolia, whose belly had receded to the point that her annoyingly less quick to shrink boobs finally pushed out further than it, not quite the size of her head, but now impressively big proportionate to the rest of her. She had taken on something of a bloated bottom-heavy hourglass figure, with huge hips and thighs counterbalancing her bust, and it was so big it was getting easier to overlook her gut hidden under that sweater. Her hips were still wider than her breasts, but for how much longer?

Charlotte, on the other hand, was distinctly bell shaped and bottom heavy, and although her breasts had gotten bigger and heavier, they were easily overshadowed by her gut that stuck out further than Charlotte’s and she could constantly feel wobble underneath her own sweater, glad that Magnolia’s advice that the quivering was less obvious under thicker material was true. She could feel the insides of her thighs constantly rubbing together, how she squashed every time she sat down and filled out a chair. And worst of all, it was impossible for her to look cool and elegant when she had a fat second chin just like her student. Her appearance seemed to get more dishevelled the heavier she got, and she was growing quite pale as she spent more and more time inside trying to keep up with the demands of the accelerated pace Magnolia was learning.

 Day by day she found more and more gaps in her knowledge, and was starting to live in fear of preparing an entire day or week’s worth of lessons, only for Magnolia to inform her that she already knew all of these things, and that her position as a teacher was unnecessary. This loss of confidence in herself as a teacher grew as it became increasingly difficult to tell herself that she was responsible for Magnolia’s growth, and it wasn’t just her natural talent perhaps even outshining her own.

“By the way, Miss Charlotte,” Magnolia said, her naturally squeaky voice more pleasant to listen to, a bit clearer and with much more confidence. “I was thinking of going for a jog after this, care to join me?”



“Um, I’m a bit, uh, busy now. I’ve got, you know, potions to brew and all that.” Charlotte quickly excused herself, as the only thing that she disliked more than how fat she had gotten was doing anything to burn it off. As Magnolia got fitter and Charlotte got more and more out of shape, she stopped running alongside her at all, excusing herself by saying that Magnolia was well beyond the need for her direct monitoring or instructions. In reality, she was afraid that Magnolia was outpacing her, and that she was embarrassingly exhausted by the time they finished a given session.And Charlotte didn’t dare use any magic to discreetly enhance her speed, as Magnolia had progressed to the point where she’d easily notice.  To avoid looking worse than her student and contradicting her own statements that a proper witch needed to be in shape, she avoided exercising at all, which only caused her weight to balloon and her physical fitness to deteriorate rapidly, Charlotte turning pale as it was clear she rarely got much sunlight anymore.

Charlotte of course blamed Magnolia for her current state as much as her own lack of restraint. The larger meals at Magnolia’s house had continued, but not because of any accident, but merely out of good intentions from her apprentice. Whenever she did make smaller meals Charlotte always commented on it to the point of complaining, so eventually Magnolia had simply given up on any sort of moderation, deciding that her teacher knew what was best and when to reign herself in. Besides, from her perspective, still hovering at around or just under three hundred pounds, Charlotte being around two hundred was still practically skinny to her.

 Or at least that was what Magnolia had said the one time Charlotte had bemoaned her ever-expanding figure. She’d enthusiastically explained that she’d never seen why being fat was supposed to be so bad, and that it was quite comfortable being so padded, and that you could eat however you wanted which she was quite jealous of now that she was on a diet and that it even made her feel a bit better that Charlotte was closer to her than the idealised figure she’d arrived as. After a passionate outburst like that, Charlotte felt too awkward to argue back. How could she? She’d merely be contradicting herself by saying that getting fat was nothing to be proud of, only to get uncontrollably fatter and fatter. She’d just laughed awkwardly and said that she’d enjoy it while she could, and mumbled something about fixing it later.

Charlotte was quite troubled over her being on the precipice of obesity, but just couldn’t bring herself to stop eating. It felt so good, and helped destress her when she was worrying about how the immediate future for the two of them would turn out. Sugar kept her going during long study sessions, and she’d spent far too much time telling Magnolia that cooking for her was an important part of paying her back for her lessons to tell her to reign it in. And so she got fatter, and Magnolia got lighter…

–

“Alright, we’re doing something special to finish the day, Maggie.” Charlotte said, the two standing in the field where they practiced combat magic, a space easily told apart from the surrounding areas by the scorch marks where the grass had been burnt away by huge explosions or the rough patches of dirt where huge spires of rock had burst forth.

“Sounds wonderful, Miss Charlotte! I’ve gotten such a good handle on the usual stuff, it hasn’t been much of a challenge lately!” Magnolia said passionately and clapped her hands together, looking like she hadn’t broken a sweat even after several hours of running through different types of magic. Six months and a couple of weeks into her apprenticeship and she’d completely run the gamut of intermediate magic, and was well into advanced magic. “So, what’ll it be? Another transmogrification spell? I’m quite interested in that spell that turns you into a frog you were talking about the other day!”



“That’s not what I meant.” Charlotte said, trying to not look guilty that she’d given the wrong impression. “You’ll see what I mean in a second.”

Charlotte straightened her back, having requested the local tailor bring her favourite outfit when she was skinny up to scale with her current figure, which was almost dead even with Magnolia, only a few pounds difference, and it was likely that Charlotte was the one edging her out. Although they had the same weight, Charlotte was starting to feel that dressing lighter had been a mistake, as Magnolia was wearing it far better than her.

Charlotte had her huge, log-like legs proudly on display, letting them jiggle with each step and make her skirt look like a miniskirt between them and her pillowy ass cheeks, even with how much fabric went into that skirt. Her short sleeves showed off her inelegantly doughy arms, and the short cape she wore barely covered two thirds of her back, her figure too widened even at the shoulders to achieve the intended effect. Her big round blob of a gut made her belly look like a big marshmallow even if it wasn’t straining the buttons, and her chest looked positively puny as it sagged sadly onto her tray of a gut. Her flabby face drooped and her collar was filled out by her wobbling ring of blubber around her neck, and her pragmatic hairbun contained hair that would burst into a frizzy mess if she unbound it. Even her trademark bangs had turned curly, no matter how much she combed them. 

While Magnolia was dressed more conservatively it was more flattering to her figure, between a comfortably loose blouse under a long stylish coat that, while it didn’t hide that she was still over twice the weight of an ordinary woman, gave her a soft, warm image of a padded woman wearing thick clothes rather than that of a fat woman trying to squeeze into a thinner woman’s clothes, helped by her energetic movements and confident posture. Her hair had grown out to fall around almost the middle of her back, giving her a certain elegance as it had turned rather straight and shiny. She still had rather nasty bedhair, but at least had it under control by the time she’d finished her morning routine.

Charlotte tried to ignore this even as she felt her body flop around within her clothes, standing a good distance away from Magnolia like a batter staring down a pitcher. She held out a hand and pointed dramatically, before calling out to her.

“Alright Maggie, hit me with your strongest spell!”



Magnolia looked visibly concerned even from a distance.

“But I might hurt you, Miss Charlotte!”



“Who do you think you’re speaking to?” Charlotte said as brashly as she could, feeling a little insecure. A student shouldn’t be worried about hurting her teacher, particularly not a virtual novice like her! “You might be progressing faster than your peers, but there’s nothing you can throw at me that could even scratch me!”



“If you say so, Miss Charlotte!” Magnolia said reluctantly, slowly chanting as she conjured up a massive ball of energy that crackled with electricity, radiated a chill mist, and had plumes of flame erupting from it all at once. A powerful collection of elemental energy that would obliterate most monsters and take a real chunk out of even a more powerful demon, it was nothing for even a master like Charlotte to sneeze at. “A-Are you sure about this, Miss Charlotte?”



“Of course I’m sure!” Charlotte yelled confidently. “Now let me have it!”



Magnolia gulped and hurled the spell her way, Charlotte standing and grinning smugly as the spell sped towards her. Perhaps it was a little petty of her, she thought as she waited until it drew close, but it was important to remind Magnolia that she still had a long way to go. Of course, she was mostly humble on the outside, but there was no way that she was blitzing through her magical education like that and not getting a bit of a swelled head, even if she wasn’t sharing it. To make matters worse Charlotte hadn’t really shown her anything she couldn’t replicate with ease lately, and she could stand to remind her of the pecking order. Otherwise, she might go thinking that she wasn’t actually that far behind her supposed master of a teacher…

Charlotte patiently watched the sphere draw dangerously close, which was getting bigger and wider as it travelled from its user like a snowball approaching the size of a boulder, although rather than picking up mass, it was more like the compressed energy was uncompressing, sacrificing concentration for coverage. A better mage could probably keep it smaller for a longer distance, Charlotte thought, although that was particularly tough.

Then, when it was an appropriately dramatic length away from her, she cast her ultimate spell: Time Stop. The world froze around them, the ball freezing in place while Magnolia’s nervous expression was held in place. While an immensely powerful spell, it was also a dead simple way to deal with the problem: Charlotte intended to simply walk around it. She took the first of the several steps necessary to sidestep it… and then the world started moving again.

Charlotte nearly tripped as she felt time unfreeze, her eyes nearly bulging out of her head as she tried to process that fact. What had just happened? It was supposed to last five to ten seconds, that had only been two seconds at best! Somehow, she had screwed up the spell! Or was it that she didn’t have enough mana to pull it off? It didn’t matter how she had botched it, that spell was coming right at her and even if she dived now, she wouldn’t make it in time!

She impulsively brought up a barrier, desperately swiping at the ball with her magic-coated hand, yelping as it deflected the spell and sent it flying high into the air, the lurching witch nearly losing her balance and falling flat on her face as she teetered, then slammed her other foot down to balance herself. She whipped her head around, her loose hairbun coming partially untied as she gaped at the massive explosion it caused in the sky as the spell finally collapsed. Then, after flicking her head back at Magnolia, she hastily tried to recover and at least finish with a good impression.

She clumsily twirled around, then held her hands behind her head as the motion caused her gut to flop out from over her waistband, which she’d made as loose as possible to avoid pinching into her sensitive belly. With her gut hanging out, her face flushed, and her body far too bloated to make it more than a clumsy, awkward spin, she held her hands behind her head.

“Not bad, huh?” She puffed, holding the pose for a few seconds before she started to feel silly and slowly returned to a slouched, obviously embarrassed posture.

Thankfully, her salvation came in the form of Magnolia jogging up towards her, looking as brightly excited as always.

“That was amazing, Miss Charlotte!” Magnolia beamed, looking innocent to her teacher’s self-centred motivations. “You knocked that away like it was nothing! I bet it was really easy, I only realised after I cast it that I could have improved the structural integrity with a few tweaks!”



“Of course, that was practically nothing for me.” Charlotte said, brushing her hair in a motion designed to look casually showy, but was actually intended to hide the beads of sweating pouring down her forehead. It was taking all of her energy to not look visibly exhausted, her makeshift barrier concentrating all of her remaining mana into a defensive wall of nearly impenetrable defence, intended to tank the hit if it simply exploded in her face. It was a highly inefficient spell that she’d cast on the spot out of panic, and it was mostly luck that it deflected it instead. But she couldn’t admit that, of course. “I thought it was important to show you that no matter how good your spell is, it has no guarantee of working against a strong enough opponent. You should instead be thinking about your second or third move, operating on the assumption that your first won’t work, so that you won’t be caught off guard.”



It was an incredibly hollow piece of advice, practically a gotcha. She’d never told Magnolia that she needed to do anything other than cast one spell, nor was there any need to. But Magnolia didn’t seem to realise this, and took it at face value.

“Of course, Miss Charlotte! I’m always trying to think of what my backup plan might be if my first spell fails!” Magnolia said, a flawless response as seemed to be the case the last couple of months. “Shall we do another one? This time I want to try a multi-angular attack with two layers, no, I think I can manage three! That’d get past the barrier you just used that prioritises pinpoint defence, but I’m sure you’ve got a perfect way to avoid any attack like that, right? I’d love to see it!”



“That’ll um, have to be another day. You shouldn’t strain yourself.” Charlotte thanked the fact that she was already pale for making the remaining colour draining out of her face at the thought. The only ways to get out of a comprehensively layered attack like that would be to brute force it with an all-encompassing barrier, or to stop time and slip out of it. The latter of which she had just completely botched, and the former of which she didn’t have the energy or mana to pull off. Was there a more elegant solution she could use besides those? Perhaps, but her mind was too frazzled to remember what it could be, which just made her feel worse. What if Magnolia asked her that very question and she didn’t have an answer?

She’d pulled this little stunt to look good in front of her apprentice, and although she’d arguably succeeded by the skin of her teeth, all it had done was made her feel terrible that she’d felt so competitive towards her student in the first place. This wasn’t the image of a reliable, brilliant teacher teaching a star student that she’d wanted to project… She’d have to strive to make Magnolia the best she could within her abilities, no matter how much or how little she had left to give in her.

Charlotte tried to cram her belly flab back under her waistband as she marched off, really feeling like she needed some cake to distract herself from how badly she’d nearly just embarrassed herself in front of her adoring student…

–

“A-alright, Maggie, this is it.” Charlotte shivered, her thighs rubbing together to try to generate a little extra warmth as she and her student disembarked from their carriage, the driver refusing to get any closer to the dangerous place they intended to use for the most important exam of Magnolia’s eighth month of apprenticeship . “We’re still an hour or s-so’s walk away, but you should start p-p-planning out your strategy now.”

“No need to remind me, Miss Charlotte.” Magnolia said, her breath misting up the air around her as the horse’s footsteps faded and they were left with a slow wind and the occasional drops of snowfall, the road too slick and the snow too thick for an automobile to take them this far off-road. “I’ve been thinking about it the whole trip here. Why, I’d be in trouble if I’d spent two days’ train ride getting here and not had a plan of attack! You’ve always said that your first battle is the most dangerous, after all. I think I’ve prepared for just about anything that could happen!”

“Of course, I-I expect nothing less from my p-p-pupil.” Charlotte felt that reminding her was completely redundant to the point of condescension, but it felt like something a proper teacher should do. There was hardly any advice she could offer her now that she didn’t already know, after several weeks of combat drilling in preparation for her first hands-on training against the many monsters she’d have to fight in her career. “I’m sure that they won’t be able to land a scra, ah, ah, atchoo!”

Charlotte sneezed, looking quite miserable as she sniffled and huddled next to Magnolia for warmth, hugging herself in her obviously inadequate single layer of springwear. She’d underestimated how cold it would be, and as soon as her warming spells wore off she was chilled to the bone. Charlotte always believed that it was best to wear something light and easy to move in when it came time to fight, but she was starting to wonder how she’d thought this was a good idea in the past, wearing that tiny skirt in winter. She wasn’t even wearing her traditional outfit, having already outgrown it and found it highly embarrassing to wear in the first place, a very poor fit for the overweight, dishevelled woman she’d become. She was just glad she’d decided to bring tights, gloves, and a warm hat, as they were the only thing keeping her clinging on right now while her core bled warmth despite her body’s natural padding.

“Are you alright, Miss Charlotte! Oh, I told you you’d need to wear more layers!” The distinctly rugged up Magnolia said as if she was talking to a child, dressed in thick winter wear from head to toe, cutting a more elegant image as despite wearing such thick clothes, she still had a thinner figure than the three hundred pound Charlotte.

“It’s fine, I just need to reapply my spell.” Charlotte sniffed stubbornly, having relied on magic to warm herself up to make it this far. Although she said that, the spells weren’t lasting half as long as she thought they would, and were taking a bit more out of her than she expected. Between the walk and constantly reapplying the magic, she might be completely wiped out by the time they arrived at their destination.

“I knew it was a good idea to bring this.” Magnolia said, sounding self-satisfied as she reached into her large bag filled with various study notes and supplies, producing a very familiar green sweater that she happily held out to her. Charlotte looked dismayed as she realised what it was, but was in no position to refuse, and wordlessly slipped the thick green sweater over her head, impulsively letting out a gasp of relief as it dispelled the chill from her body. Thankfully for the unfashionably dressed but comfortable warm Charlotte, it did still feel oversized on her body, sagging down past even her own thrust-out belly to offer her thick thighs a little more warmth.

“Still, it is quite cold. It’s making me miss having a bit more insulation, if you know what I mean!” Magnolia unintentionally taunted Charlotte by gesturing at her plump frame, quite literally half the woman she used to be. She was a bit over two hundred pounds, but for how much longer? Any day now she’d go from fat to simply plump, although while her face shed the pounds and her second chin was on the verge of melting away, those boobs seemed to have retained the grand majority of their mass and were clearly the heaviest thing left on her besides her big butt. “Thankfully we’ll warm up as we walk! I’m looking forward to getting to stretch my legs a little after all that sitting.”



“Uh, me too.” Charlotte lied. She was not looking forward to this walk at all, although at least this sweater was as warm and comfortable Magnolia had hyped it up to be. She wished she could wear her hair down like Magnolia’s was, now reaching the small of her back in long, silky brunette waves, but the moment she undid her hairbun she looked like she’d just gotten out of bed. It was pretty much mandatory that she not give her hair an inch of ground, and even then it had hairs sticking out every which way. She was on the verge of cutting it short and being done with it, although the idea stung her pride too much to give in just yet.

A bit over an hour of tortuous lumbering through the snow later, the exhausted master and her energetic apprentice reached their destination: a run-down looking shack in the middle of nowhere, its rotted wooden exterior making it look daunting even for somebody who didn’t know what lurked within it.

“That right there… is the necromancer’s abode… Or at least it was, before he started attracting too… too much heat, and ran away.” Charlotte pointed with a wobbly finger as she huffed and puffed, feeling like she couldn’t take another step after all that godforsaken walking. “Once we’ve caught our breath we’ll… see what we can do about drawing the ghouls he left out…!”

That was lal Charlotte could manage before she doubled over, unable to maintain her composure in front of her student.

“Are you alright, Miss Charlotte?” Magnolia said with nothing but concern in her voice. “Are you sure you’re up for this right now? We can wait a bit longer-”

“I’m just not used to walking in this much snow, that’s all.” Charlotte excused herself, trying to stand up straight and puff up her chest, which mostly only succeeded in sticking out her cushiony stomach, while she brushed off some snow that had settled on her shelf of an ass. Sweat dripped down her second chin, and she told herself that she was absolutely not taking Magnolia anywhere else for field training that couldn’t be reached via automobile.

A few minutes after she’d managed to recompose herself, Charlotte looked to Magnolia to confirm that she was ready, then sent up a great ball of light into the air like a flare, drawing the attention of any magical creature in the surrounding area. This was designed to draw out the creatures inside, while calling back any that had wandered off.

“There should mostly only be revenants and ghouls here, but they’re dangerous in large numbers, and depending on how rotted they are some can be faster than others. Make sure you don’t lose your cool!” Charlotte instructed as her spell hung in the air, the sound of groaning echoing out.

“I’ll be sure to show you what I can do with your teachings, Miss Charlotte!” Magnolia said with calm determination, clearly eager to impress. She confidently strode into the thick of it, surrounding herself with ghouls as she deliberately drew the most attention for herself.

Charlotte had picked the easiest foe for her to fight first, and knew that for somebody as talented as Magnolia, this was unlikely to be more than a shooting gallery for her, a chance to see what her spells could actually do in practice. But the fact that she was in real danger if she screwed up meant that the pressure was completely different to her lessons. Even experienced mages botched their spells if they panicked, not that Charlotte knew what that was like.

She kept a close eye on Magnolia, but eventually some of the ghouls began to prioritise her as well, and Charlotte knew it was her time to show off. She gestured at a particular ghoul, sending an explosion to take it out in one easy motion, something that would detonate directly underneath the monster without giving it time to dodge, were it agile enough to do so. However, when the cloud of dust and fog parted, she found the creature completely unscathed! Charlotte was confused for a few seconds, almost panicking that she was being attacked by some sort of magically enhanced super zombie, only to realise afterwards that she’d misjudged the distance and missed it completely, detonating the explosion in front of it rather than under it. A rookie mistake, and she suddenly became more afraid of Magnolia noticing it than the monster attacking her. She landed it the second time,, but more groans showed that she had drawn a lot of attention to herself with her loud, flashy attacks vs the pinpoint beams of light that Magnolia had chosen to use for her primary offence.

A shambling horde ran at her from the direction of the house, a bit faster than the usual ones, and Charlotte prepared to take out the whole group in one confident blow. Her legs were too wobbly and worn out to do any running around like Magnolia was at the moment, who was repositioning herself and making sure to keep far away from the hordes rather than let them come to her like the stationary Charlotte was. She prepared to use the tri-elemental spell that Magnolia had thrown at her before, something that would tear through them and then blow up the house behind them in one fell swoop. Magnolia had already performed admirably, so it was time for her teacher to wrap things up.

Charlotte sent out the spell after a couple of seconds of preparation, which should have been more than enough, but when she sent out the sphere it expanded rapidly, Charlotte’s eyes widening before it exploded dangerously close to her, knocking her onto her fat ass. She sat dazed and confused for a few seconds, trying to figure out what she’d done wrong. If she’d been able to look at it objectively, she’d have eventually realised that she’d rushed the spell, each individual part not nearly composed enough to stay together. It probably would have taken her at least twenty to thirty seconds for each element at the skill level she’d attempted it, even though a master like her should have been able to do it nearly instantly. It was like the knowledge required to do it more efficiently had completely slipped from her fingers, leading to her technically remembering how to perform the spell, but approaching it from an inexperienced, amateurish perspective. She wouldn’t figure this out until after they’d return, going back to the books to research the spell and eventually figuring out what she’d done wrong, and being forced to conclude that she must have seriously lost her touch. What had she told Magnolia? Keep things simple, don’t overcomplicate your spells trying to show off?

She had let out a girly cry as she landed, attracting Magnolia’s attention, who hurried to her teacher’s aid with the utmost urgency.  She kept things simple, sending out chain lightning that fried the ultimately feeble creatures in seconds, the fried corpses falling face-first into the snow where they’d soon be buried. 

“Are you alright, Miss Charlotte? Are you hurt?”



“I’m, I’m fine.” Charlotte said, her pride injured far more than her body. “I just, I just…”



“You must be out of it because of the cold.” Magnolia provided her with a quick excuse. “I know that you’d never make such a beginner’s mistake otherwise. Oh, I knew I should have made you dress properly when we were back at the station! Don’t worry Miss Charlotte, I’ve finished off the rest of them, and I can’t sense any more inside the house.”

“Good job, Maggie. I knew you could do it…” Charlotte said, woozy and unsteady on her feet as Magnolia helped her up. How could a self-described master like her end up in such a humiliating state? She wondered if she’d spent so much time trying to teach Magnolia that she’d neglected her own upkeep, and that was why she was slipping so much lately. She hadn’t done anything like this for real for over eight months, and had foolishly believed that she could just walk back into it like nothing had happened without proper practice or so much as warming up. Meanwhile, Magnolia was textbook perfect, and she could hardly have done a better job herself at her so-called peak. Was it because Magnolia had prepared so thoroughly, or was she just at the point where she was surpassing her teacher?

“Oh no!” Charlotte gasped as she realised something, jolting herself back to her usual clarity as more immediate problems presented themselves.

“What is it, Miss Charlotte? Did I miss some of them?” Magnolia asked, looking around for any danger.

“I just realised we’re going to have to walk all the way back, too!” Charlotte moaned, feeling like this day just couldn’t get any worse… 

–

“Alright, I think that’s everything there is to know on material transmutation.” Charlotte inspected the neatly sorted row of minerals that Magnolia had created. “There’s no impurities in any of these, even though it’s your first time doing alloys. Perfect work, as always. You really are a natural at this.”

“Oh no, it was just because I studied so hard and you taught me so well, Miss Charlotte.” Magnolia humbly smiled, sweeping her hand through her silky hair to make sure it fell down her back at the most beautifully straight angle. “Thanks to you, I really couldn’t see why this is supposed to take months to learn!”

Charlotte sighed, letting herself relax into a slouch that left her looking quite a bit shorter than her almost equally tall student, de-emphasising her chest and making her plush gut even more apparent. Thanks to her? There was no way she’d given any sort of explanation that would allow for these results a mere ten months into her training. Honestly, Charlotte could have turned her loose right now and she’d have been in the upper echelon of mages, save for experience. She looked the part too, having lost the grand majority of her weight, now drawing envious looks from even the skinnier girls of the village, and turning heads with the boys. Sure, she had a bit of a tummy and she was still decidedly thick, but one would hardly notice with those melons to distract them, or how full and round her ass was, filling out the short skirt she had taken to wearing, thighs on display with a fullness that just made one want to knead them. Although she still had cute wide cheeks she had finally lost her second chin, and her perfectly smooth blemish-free skin dazzled Charlotte with her natural beauty. It was hard to believe that this was the frumpy, nerdy girl she’d met all those months ago. Athleticism sure seemed to do a lot for her…

Charlotte on the other hand had broken past the three hundred pound mark a while ago, three times as wide as she once was and starting to have to take the width of doorframes into account as she found herself almost waddling around the library, taking broad steps as it took considerable effort just to lift her bulky legs and haul around her blubber. There wasn’t a single chair in the library that could contain her fat ass, and she couldn’t place her hands by her sides without them being forced out to a diagonal angle by the breadth of her hips. Her stamina lasted only a couple of minutes of walking before she was huffing and puffing, making her reluctant to walk from one side of the library to the other if she could avoid it. Her face had gotten so fat she was difficult to recognise, and her pale skin was covered in minor imperfections and a thick smattering of freckles that gave her a pasty, particularly out of shape look deprived of sunlight, despite all of the time she spent outside trying to balance it out.

Perhaps it didn’t help that Magnolia gained a healthy tan via jogging in shorts and a thin tank top every day, while Charlotte was typically covered head to toe in Magnolia’s hand-me-downs, identifiable from afar by her thick green sweater that she’d become particularly attached to, and was starting to look a little stretched in places. Certainly not around the chest, which stubbornly refused to grow beyond a few cup sizes. While it was objectively two or three times the size she’d started with, it was still well below Magnolia’s current chest size, and it sagged pathetically onto the sides of the top of her belly rather than hold any sort of perkiness, adding insult to injury. Charlotte was content to wear her decidedly unfashionable old clothes, with the bulky skirt and heavy fabrics, as she completely lacked the confidence to wear anything that didn’t obscure her bulk as much as possible. Why would she want to show off how much of a hog she had become? The best she could hope for was Magnolia’s occasional reassurances that she was very cute the way she was, which was hardly reassuring coming from somebody who was a former fatty.

Today Charlotte had rushed out the door after oversleeping and forgotten to do up her hair, leaving it hanging down to its full length and a completely uncontrolled frizziness, curly and all over the place, which made her particularly hard to recognise compared to her elegant former self. Even some of the townsfolk who had paid little attention to the two of them across the ten months Charlotte had stayed outright didn’t realise that she was the glamorous young witch who had visited their town intending to stay for a day or two at most, asking if she was Magnolia’s cousin or some other kind of relation. Charlotte had been somewhat mortified when that had been asked of her, but Magnolia giggled and took it in stride, winking at Charlotte and jovially saying to the man that she was somebody she was thinking of asking to take over the library once she graduated. Charlotte didn’t really find the fact that she looked like a natural bookworm quite so funny…

“Well, is there anything else you’d like to start on today?” Charlotte asked, having no particular plan, and hadn’t had one for several weeks. After pouring hours into preparing advanced lesson plans and intended study sessions for Magnolia she’d found that one after another, Magnolia already knew it. Even things that Charlotte was learning for the first time, which seemed to be quite a lot of the advanced magic she’d intended to teach, Magnolia seemed perpetually one step ahead of her, cheerfully informing her that she already knew. The knowledge seemed to spill out of Charlotte’s head as soon as she was done teaching it to Magnolia, and she was convinced that she was overworking herself trying to keep up to the point that she was just making things harder for herself.

Eventually she gave in, one day simply asking Magnolia what she wanted to learn. She seemed to have a better idea of how she should spend the remainder of her education than Charlotte, and happily suggested a number of topics, some of which Charlotte thankfully knew already, others that she had to go and study to prepare to teach. It was quite embarrassing when she found out that inevitably, Magnolia would study and learn two things for every one thing Charlotte learned to teach her, but the important part was that Magnolia was progressing, and there was nothing more important than giving Magnolia everything she could before she was finally exhausted of her remaining knowledge. Magnolia didn’t seem to mind, saying that it was like having two of herself to study with.

“Hmm…” Magnolia thought it over, taking more time to think about what she didn’t know than what she did. “You know, I’m a little lacking on my transmogrification, I believe we were going to do it a while ago but got sidetracked. Doesn’t that sound like it’d be fun to do today?”



“Transmogrification? Ooh, that is quite fun, I’ve got just the spell to turn you into an owl that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.” Charlotte seemed energised by the fact that could fill a gap in Magnolia’s expansive knowledge that seemed to outpace even her own. “First, we’ll start by making a magic circle.”



Charlotte carefully drew a circle in the dirt with a stick, quite pleased that she didn’t have to apologise and retire to the library before returning with the required spell in tow for once. She drew a perfect set of symbols within, although she had to stretch herself out to make sure that her gut didn’t obscure her view of her drawings.

Charlotte stepped into the circle, firmly planting both feet inside. “And then you just step into it like this, and then say-”

“Miss Charlotte, stop right there! That’s not going to work!”



Magnolia reached out and grabbed 

“What, do you have a problem with my magic circle? Did I draw something incorrectly? How would you know!?” Charlotte couldn’t help but burst out, face flushed red in embarrassment. She thought she did it perfectly, and Magnolia still got one over her! Had she known all along, and had just been polite and pretended that her teacher had something left to tell her?



“No, that’s not it!” Magnolia seemed to realise she’d accidentally struck a nerve, and looked quite sorry for Charlotte. “I’m sure the circle is perfect, it’s just that it’s, um, too small! You were poking out of it!”

Charlotte caught herself, looking like a deer in the headlights. She slowly stepped into it again, then looked down. She couldn’t see it from the front past her gut, not from the sides past her hip, and she got the feeling that her sofa-filling ass didn’t have much luck either.

“Right you are!” Charlotte let out a jerky, awkward laugh filled with embarrassment. “I must have drawn it with my, um, original size in mind, it seemed big enough from where I was standing… Well, I”m sure it’s still good, I’m sure you’ll be able to fit into it just fine- Um, Maggie? What are you doing?”



Magnolia looked quite serious for a moment, taking a few steps back and holding up her hand.

“Miss Charlotte, how many fingers am I holding up right now?”

Charlotte was confused, but decided to answer the question first, squinting heavily at her.

“Um… Three? Why do you ask?”

Magnolia stepped closer, revealing that she had only been holding up two.

“I knew it. Miss Charlotte, I’m taking you to get some glasses.” Magnolia said, taking Charlotte’s hand quite forcefully. “I was wondering why your aim was so poor recently, and why you kept getting so close to read anything I’d written. I’ve had my suspicions ever since you misjudged that explosion back at the necromancer’s hideout, and you’ve only gotten worse since then.”



“Oh come on, it’s not that bad.” Charlotte protested. “Okay, maybe things have gotten a little blurry lately, I’m sure it’s just because I’ve been reading too many books lately…”

“All the more reason to give your poor eyes a rest. I’m sorry, this is my fault for working you too hard…” Magnolia said, sounding quite concerned for her. “Don’t worry Miss Charlotte, I need you just for another couple of months, then it’ll all be over…”

–

“And… that’s everything. I, Charlotte Aulin, master of witchcraft, officially proclaim you to be a fully-fledged, fully graduated witch. Congratulations.”

Her voice was a bit scratchy, a bit squeaky, and perhaps less grand than it had in her head, far from the booming proclamation she’d once have been able to give. It was a far more humble declaration now, given on a quiet day in the library instead of crying it from the town square as she might once have, preferring to keep out of sight and out of mind, away from the embarrassment of this fat, frumpy woman who called herself Magnolia’s teacher making a big show in public. Instead of smug pride she felt a deep sense of relief, as she was some deflating balloon finally letting the last of the air out of her. Ironic, considering how she’d done nothing but inflate for the last twelve months.

The two’s positions were thoroughly reversed in every way when it came to their physical appearances, before you got to the part where Charlotte felt she was also leagues and bounds surpassed as a witch by her apprentice. If you looked at the two of them and asked which one was the master, one probably would have guessed Magnolia, even with her more youthful appearance, with her tight skirt, long boots, and stylish coat that gave her that proper look. Her hair spilled down her back to her hips with no loose strands, looking perpetually like she’d just walked out of the salon, able to be worn in various styles depending on her mood and outfit that day. She’d slimmed down perfectly, as if she’d never been fat at all. No stretch marks, no sagging, and perfect skin to boot, her freckles vanished and her face so smooth you’d have thought she was wearing heavy makeup to hide her imperfections. If you were to compare her to when she’d started her chest would have objectively shrunk a lot, but as they were they were the biggest natural breasts Charlotte had ever seen on a woman her size, to the point that Magnolia occasionally joked that they were the one thing still slowing her down. The slitted pencil skirt she wore was practically moulded around her bubble butt, firm and slappable although perhaps not as comfy as it once was.

Charlotte on the other hand was in a sad state of affairs. Her gut sagged so much you could see how far it hung even through her thick skirt, and she could hardly approach a bookshelf without squishing it against the lower shelves from its sheer length, not to mention width, as it stretched from one muffin top to the other giving her thick inherited sweater the appearance of woolen folds on the side that were in fact simply her waist bulging out. If her memory had been good enough she might have realised that the hand-me-downs she was wearing, from the skirt to the sweater to the blouse she wore under it and even the bra, were the exact outfit Magnolia had been wearing on the day she begged to be her apprentice. A freak coincidence, perhaps? Perhaps not, as Magnolia had done the laundry the day before and carefully laid out the pieces on top… Well, it was her most comfortable combination of clothes, after all. Only the best for her beloved teacher.

Charlotte’s hairstyle was a far cry form the elegant one she’d worn upon her arrival, having long wrestled with how uncooperative it had become until finally, tired of forcing it into a tight hairbun every day, she’d finally taken matters into her own hands, impulsively cutting it herself one night to spare herself the embarrassment of having it professionally styled only to walk out looking like she’d just gotten out of bed. What was the point of paying for it if it wasn’t going to look good anyway? With that in mind she’d attacked her stubborn hair with a pair of ordinary scissors and done a not quite passable job, lopping off her thick, frizzy locks down to the base of her chin. Unfortunately she lacked the skill or finesse with her fat fingers to make the fact that she’d cut it herself less obvious, nor was she able to remove enough of the thickness to stop the root cause of the problem. The result was a simple flat-cut haircut that contoured to the sides of her head when it wasn’t sticking out, framing her fat cheeks in a way that only emphasised them more. On top of frumpy, Charlotte’s face seemed even chubbier now, a fact that seemed so impossible that she barely noticed it herself, preferring to not spend too much time looking at herself in the mirror, as she found herself in dismay at how she seemed completely covered in freckles nowadays. Charlotte didn’t particularly care either way, as all she really wanted was her hair to stay conveniently out of the way, and her amateur haircut had done that purpose, aesthetics came second when she lacked any confidence in her appearance to begin with.

Between her frumpy wardrobe,  unflattering hair, her bulky body, her pale, freckled skin, and the thick, circular glasses that she’d been forced to wear to regain her vision, Charlotte was nigh-unrecognisable. All she had to work with was her face itself, which was still quite pretty, but utterly smothered by fat. It was nearly impossible to make the connection between her original appearance and her current one, no matter how much you tried to crop out her face from its flab. Even if you did, you’d be left with a very nerdy, very homely young girl who could really stand to have some better posture and perhaps stop staying up so late reading cheap romance novels.

Magnolia beamed proudly, her smile perhaps less wide than it had once been when her face had been puffy and round rather than thin and angular, but her happiness no less infectious, managing to draw a smile even from her wistful teacher, almost teary-eyed as she finally granted her student permission to leave the nest. In Charlotte’s opinion it was well overdue, having been ready to cut Magnolia loose for the last two months,  but Magnolia had insisted that she still had a lot to learn, and whenever Charlotte indicated that it might be time, she practically begged her to reconsider. But twelve months was Charlotte’s limit, and she couldn’t drag it out any longer. There was simply nothing left to give; she was fully spent. 

Thankfully, Magnolia had the energy Charlotte now lacked, and practically leapt at her in one of her characteristically huge hugs. Charlotte’s words were a formality at this point, but still of vital importance to Magnolia.

“Thank you, Miss Charlotte! Thank you so much, for everything!” Magnolia wrapped her arms around her, sinking into Charlotte’s flab like a big cuddly toy, Charlotte’s incredible centre of gravity stopping her from teetering backwards from the force of her hug. It was hard to believe that this beautiful, slender young woman was the morbidly obese librarian she’d started tutoring on a whim a year 

“No need to thank me, I really didn’t do that much in the end.” Charlotte said humbly, and Magnolia broke away, giving her a stern look.

“You gave me everything you had, and made me everything I am today, Miss Charlotte. I won’t have you selling yourself short. Nobody else could have done the job you did!” She declared with total confidence. “Certainly, I could have been trained by somebody else if they’d been willing to take a nobody like me on, but it might have taken me years to make it this far without you!”

Magnolia’s particular wording was probably not intended, but not lost on Charlotte, and didn’t really help. Prodigies really did have a different perspective, when even she herself had taken many years of learning from childhood to make it to her previous heights. Only to seemingly lose her touch shortly afterwards…

“Well, as long as you enjoyed it.” Charlotte said, unable to break her humility in the face of such overwhelming talent. “It was a lot of fun for me as well, although to be honest it was a bit stressful. I’d like to say that I’m ready to pick up another student or get back into the regular swing of things, but I think I could use a bit of a break first.”



“You certainly look like you’ve been working as hard as you have been, Miss Charlotte. I think what you need right now is a nice long vacation to reward yourself, instead of thinking about gallivanting off on your next adventure.” Magnolia said, sounding almost like a concerned mother. “You’ll be ready to remind everybody how wonderful you are once you’re properly rested!”

“I wish I could say that I’ll bounce back as soon as you’re out of my hair, but you’ve got a point.” Charlotte said in a decidedly weary voice, contrasted with Magnolia’s seemingly limitless energy. “To be completely honest with you, I’m feeling completely drained.”

Magnolia agreed that drained was the perfect way to put it. After all, she thought to herself completely shamelessly, that was exactly what had happened to her, and she’d never even noticed it, let alone suspected that her adoring student was the one who had done it to her.

It had all started out of desperation. Magnolia hadn’t expected it to go as far as it had, although it was far from an accident. Knowing the library back to front, Magnolia had, in her early teens, stumbled onto a book of forbidden magic, hand-written by some black mage who, like many others, attempted to avoid their life’s work being burned along with them by shoving it into a dusty corner of some small town library, where it took several generations to be unearthed by a young librarian with no family and all the time in the world to read.

While initially fascinated by the book and reading it cover to cover, Magnolia eventually discovered that it was indeed forbidden magic and largely illegal curses, although as a librarian she couldn’t bring herself to destroy it, only to keep it out of the public eye and in her own private collection. Many of the spells in it were simple enough that even an amateur could cast them, as they were designed to punch well above the caster’s weight and inevitably cause chaos. One such spell was designed to siphon magical ability from others, allowing a mediocre mage to rise to the top with enough time and effort. However, as the author noted, it was quite slow, and required one to keep close company with the target if they wanted to take more than a few drops of magical talent from them. Magnolia had no intention of doing so, but the thought would return to her mind whenever she yet again failed to cast a spell beyond the simplest she could learn.

Her self-esteem beaten down by repeated rejections from callous mages who didn’t want to give her the time of the day, Magnolia had eventually become convinced that she was truly talentless, and that if she wanted to gain some magical talent, she’d have to take it from the next witch or wizard who wandered into her library. Not a lot, obviously, just enough to get her going, she thought as she pre-emptively applied the spell in anticipation of today’s visitor. Imagine her surprise when after finding out that a famous witch was coming to visit, the Charlotte Aulin wandered in, naturally unimpressed by what she found within its walls? Magnolia was starstruck, and decided to shoot her shot. If she was accepted, she couldn’t ask for a better teacher, and if she was rejected, well, somebody as talented as Charlotte wouldn’t miss just a drop of talent. And that’s all it would have been, had Charlotte turned her down that day.

Instead, to Magnolia’s surprise, she succeeded! She’d be an amazing witch’s apprentice! Having never actually used the spell before, Magnolia assumed that it ended there, stealing just a spark or two of magic to smooth out her first few days as a witch-in-training. She would quickly surpass both Charlotte’s and her own expectations, learning the basics incredibly quickly, which they both attributed to her simply having a headstart on pure academic knowledge as well as Charlotte being an exceptional teacher. While Charlotte was completely winging it, from start to finish Magnolia never doubted that she was the best teacher she could ever have asked for, even as she got shakier as the months went on.

It wasn’t until three or so months in, when Charlotte was starting to seriously gain weight, that Magnolia realised that this wasn’t just her teacher getting a little too comfortable with the local cuisine. Cracks were starting to show in Charlotte’s lessons, her spells a little slower, the gaps in her knowledge in strange places that she really ought to have filled, and her appearance slowly but surely degrading, at least by conventional standards, as Magnolia merely felt that she was going from glamourous and beautiful to adorably plump, and by the end she wasn’t sure which Charlotte she liked more. 

Now armed with enough expertise to figure out what was going on, Magnolia discovered that the spell had been running the whole time, only ceasing when the caster ordained it, rather than requiring constant reapplication as she had assumed. All this time she had been draining the talent and knowledge out of her teacher, and accelerating her own growth exponentially as a result. Magnolia was initially ashamed of her actions, but was too terrified to stop. If she told Charlotte what she’d done she might annul their apprenticeship then and there, and crush her chances of ever entering the magical community. Worst case scenario, it might be an outright crime.

Therefore, Magnolia decided that if she was going to end this, she had to do it stealthily. Wait for a good opportunity to end it, and then continue the rest of her apprenticeship normally, warts and all. But of course, forbidden magic was too tempting to give up as easily as that. Doubt quickly crept into her mind, making her wonder: what if without the forbidden magic powering her growth, she was as talentless as she was told? What if she undid it and then ground to a halt? And it felt so good to learn so quickly, to have her efforts rewarded instantly as she absorbed knowledge like a sponge. Charlotte was a prodigy, and now Magnolia got to feel like a prodigy too. How could she possibly give that up?

Weeks slipped from her fingertips as she procrastinated undoing it. It wouldn’t make much of a difference if she did it now or later, Magnolia told herself. Charlotte was simply so talented, she wouldn’t notice a bit taken here or there! And if it was knowledge, well, she could simply relearn it in no time afterwards, and wasn’t a teacher supposed to hand down everything they knew to their student? This was just a more literal interpretation of it. Magnolia needed it, she couldn’t go back now, she couldn’t risk her relationship and her own future trying to undo it. She was just too cowardly to do the right thing now.

Weeks turned to months, and eventually Charlotte was nearly even with Magnolia in weight. Magnolia was feeling great, wonderful even, being very fit despite her weight, soaking up magical ability left and right both in what she took from Charlotte and what she learned in her own fruitful studies, and she looked great in general to boot. Meanwhile, Charlotte was degrading, bloating up and becoming weaker and weaker as a witch. There were areas where Magnolia was outright better than her, more knowledgeable than her, stronger than her.

And so time progressed, and with it, Magnolia absorbed more than just knowledge, but also Charlotte’s confidence. It began to occur to her: what if her extremely rapid progress wasn’t just due to her taking from Charlotte, and her excellent teaching: what if she was just extremely talented to begin with? Miss Charlotte was always telling her that she knew a lot to begin with before she’d started teaching her, and that she was such a good student. If she kept going, she had the potential to be as great as Miss Charlotte plus herself added on top. Miss Charlotte was always telling her that she had a bright future ahead of her, although she also reminded her to not get too full of herself. Magnolia followed those instructions carefully, she made sure to only believe that she was as great as she currently was, which was, admittedly, pretty great indeed. A real up and coming star, if she continued the way she was.

Eventually, the truth became undeniable: Magnolia had gone too far. She’d sucked out half of Charlotte’s talent, and the prodigal witch that had taken her up as an apprentice was now quite great, but no longer stood at the pinnacle she was once at. Still quite an exemplary mage by ordinary standards, but probably not the type to be setting records, if you knew what she meant. And that was at the level that Magnolia was at right now as well, the two perfectly even, better and worse than each other in some ways.

It was then one night, wondering what to do next, that Magnolia had a very important thought that would shape her viewpoint for the rest of her apprenticeship: wasn’t it better to have one extremely good mage rather than two average ones?

If Magnolia stopped now, she might peak below Charlotte’s talents, end up “merely” as just as good as her, probably lower, with how great Miss Charlotte was, somebody she could never live up to even if she was fairly naturally talented herself. Therefore, if she stopped now, ending as merely good rather than great, wouldn't that be letting Miss Charlotte down? Wouldn’t she be disappointed that her student didn’t stand heads and shoulders above the others, letting her soak in the glory that she produced such a wonderful successor? Miss Charlotte would surely approve of the idea, she always said that ideally, a student should surpass their master. If she kept things going as they were, Magnolia could see herself becoming like Charlotte but far more, the culmination of two great talents.

And so, Magnolia, having reached a highly self-serving conclusion, continued onward. She’d inherited Charlotte’s lack of self-doubt, and hardly questioned herself. If she did, she might start to think that what she was doing was quite wrong, and she had more important things like her education to worry about than the past. What was done was done, and if she was going to inherit Charlotte’s legacy, she needed to inherit all of it.

And so Magnolia grew as a mage, and Charlotte merely grew in size. Magnolia grew closer and closer to the ideal that Charlotte represented in her mind, while Charlotte had her talent and her knowledge sucked away until she was barely better than the novice that had begged to be her student, scraps of knowledge only escaping because Magnolia already knew them, and had no need to double dip. 

As for her appearance, not just gaining weight but also Magnolia’s more unflattering features, a less self-absorbed person might have realized exactly what was happening to Charlotte, that she wasn’t just taking from Charlotte, but also giving back. But truthfully Magnolia just found it so difficult to remember the meek little creature she used to be over the beacon of brilliance she had become that even the best recollection was foggy and unfocused. Much like how her former teacher would see the world without glasses. Charlotte couldn’t quite remember what it had been to be as exemplary as she’d once been either, and so the two had a mutual ignorance. 

And so Magnolia had deliberately padded the last months of her apprenticeship, wanting to study as long as possible not only because she enjoyed it and Charlotte’s company, her low-energy teacher irresistibly adorable, but because she intended to suck out the last embers, although she wouldn’t put it in such unflattering terms. From budding talent who just needed a teacher that could properly power her growth to being ready to blow away the magical world, Magnolia intended to leave no job half-done.

And so she found herself here, at the end of her journey, Charlotte drained dry. Magnolia looked at her bloated freshly former teacher, now needing to decide her future. She couldn’t let her go out into the field like this, she had long since decided. She’d seen how poorly she did against such weak foes, to think that she could fight against the mightiest the night had to offer would end badly for her, to say the least. On top of that, Magnolia couldn’t let her return to her old acquaintances so easily, where her staggering loss of skill would be made immediately apparent. Charlotte had become such a shy little thing, it would surely be extremely embarrassing for her to reveal that she wasn’t half the witch she once was.

 It was best to keep her out of sight and out of mind for a year or three, where she could either recuperate and potentially build her strength back up, if the spell allowed it, or alternatively settle into comfortable obscurity. For either of these cases, Magnolia would settle for no less than the utmost comfort for her, the type of royal treatment that she deserved in exchange for her services.  And luckily, she knew just the place to do it:

“Miss Charlotte…” Magnolia began, with a well rehearsed proposal: “Why don’t you take over the library for me for a while?”



“Take over? But it’s your library, Maggie. Even if you plan to be away from it for a while.” Charlotte was surprised by the proposal. “I couldn’t possibly just move into it like I own the place. Sure, it’s been practically a second home to me, but…”



“Why not? I’m happy to lend it to you, somebody has to keep it tidy and everybody happy while I’m gone.” Magnolia said with an easygoing smile. “I’m sure you’d be good at it, you did such a great job tending it the other day while I was studying. I’m sure everybody would appreciate you.”



“Well, I suppose now that you mention it…” Charlotte thought about it, and had to admit that she did find the library a very comfortable place to be in. It was also very relaxing sorting, finding, and returning books, as she’d served as an impromptu librarian many times across the year as the regular readers browsed it and demanded her or Magnolia’s attention. She’d ended up offering to do it more and more frequently in the final months so as to not disturb Magnolia’s studies, and the idea seemed more and more appealing.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea.” said Magnolia, who felt that all of her ideas were wonderful. “Just think, you’d be able to read all you like, and study some magic if you wanted, and there’s hardly much workload at all. It’d also mean that you’d be staying in my house as well, so you wouldn’t have to change anything about how you’re currently living, besides doing your own cooking, but you’ve become a great chef since you started doing it more often lately. I think it’s a great idea, an excellent idea, don’t you think, Miss Charlotte?”



“Well… I do need a break, but maybe I could-” Charlotte was cut off by Magnolia’s increasingly insistent enthusiasm.



“Everybody would be so sad to see you go, Miss Charlotte. I’d be able to not worry about a thing either, knowing that you’re staying behind to take care of it! And besides…” Magnolia decided that it would be best for Charlotte if she understood what might happen if she didn’t take her offer. “You don’t really want to show everybody what you’re like when you aren’t in your best condition, do you? Hardly anybody comes around here, and they wouldn't know it’s you even if they did.”

You could see the expression on Charlotte’s face change as Magnolia deliberately prodded her insecurities.

“You won’t have to worry about a thing, Miss Charlotte.” Magnolia continued. “While you’re here relaxing and recovering, I’ll show everybody how great your student is! Everything I achieve will be your achievements, and when they’re asking me, Miss Magnolia, how did you become such an amazing witch so quickly, I’ll be able to say, well, I only had the greatest teacher this century!”

“Well, if you put it that way…” Charlotte mumbled, before looking like she’d made up her mind, although Magnolia had long ago made it up for her. One way or another, she was making Charlotte stay behind in this library, it was just better if she agreed to it quickly. “I suppose I might keep the library tidy for you, just for a bit.”

“Oh, I’d be ever so happy if you would, Miss Charlotte!” She hugged Charlotte again, relieved that she could leave with her conscience in peace, knowing that Charlotte was safe and comfortable. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll love it here so much, you’ll never want to leave…”

–

Magnolia slowly, carefully opened the door to the library, feeling the scent of aged wood and musty old books wash over her, with a hint of sugar mixed in. It had only been a year since she’d departed to make a splash on the magical world, but already the warm, slightly dim lighting felt nostalgic, perhaps due to her disconnection from her new lifestyle. She’d frequented many libraries in her travels since then, but none had the warm, comfortable, almost sleepy feeling that her beloved home library contained.

Of course, what she was most looking forward to seeing in her home town wasn’t the books nor the decor, but the inhabitant of the library that maintained them, that had kept the books immaculately arranged, and the dust swept and brushed down to a minimum, save for the hard to reach corners that she lacked the dexterity or flexibility to wipe down. It merely added character to the library far more than one cleaned down to sterility. And more importantly, if she spent even more time maintaining the library, she wouldn’t have time to laze around in the slow hours and read a good book, which was the best part of working in the library.

Magnolia walked slowly through the library, feeling the aged floorboards creak under her high heels, which were brought down as softly as possible, as opposed to the usual confident strut that loudly announced her presence. It was indeed a creak that bade her welcome, rather than the groan she’d once elicited from the protesting wood, one that she had eventually realised was a sound then exclusive to her, now proud ownership of her portly teacher.

 Once upon a time she would have also heard the rustling of her long, heavy skirt and the rubbing of her flesh and woollen coverings in between thumping footsteps, but now she instead heard the rustling of her long waistcoat at the back of her legs, while the front showed off her smooth, slender legs wrapped in pantyhose and a slitted pencil skirt. She wore a rather scandalously low-necked sleeveless top accompanied by a shoulderless coat that hung down to the back of her calves, giving her a flowing motion when she walked or more importantly, when she ran and jumped during battle. It all came in a vivid emerald green accompanied by accessories such as a choker around her neck and various bits and pieces of matching jewellery, although she would swap out her showy high heels when she expected to get into an actual fight. Otherwise, she didn’t intend to let any enemies get close enough to her to take advantage of her custom-made form-over-function outfit. Her hair had gotten so long that it fell past her hips and was currently arranged into two long loops to try to manage its length, a distinctively unique and impractical hairstyle intended to further cultivate her unmistakable silhouette.

The definition of flash with the substance to back it up, Magnolia felt like a queen amongst peasants now that she was back in her humble hometown, almost to the point where the rush she got from standing out in a crowd made the vestiges of her once humble nature wonder at the back of her mind if she should have just worn a nice sweater or a comfortable dress for once instead of showing off and taken her visit home at a slower pace. She might have given that lonely thought some consideration had she not been here primarily to visit her teacher, and to show off what a magnificent witch she’d become. As Charlotte had stressed in the beginning, appearances were everything. What was the point of being a master of magic if you didn’t dress like it? The plainest thing about her was the heavy bag she carried, full of souvenirs for Charlotte.

She followed the vague waft of sugar back to its source, an almost hidden corner of the library behind winding bookshelves too heavy to consider moving into a more convenient arrangement. A desk had been placed her for those who wanted particularly quiet arrangements, and most of said desk was taken up by Charlotte Aulin, her chest gently rising and falling as she dozed with her chin resting in her relatively paltry cleavage, boosted primarily by the top half of her gut that was wedged over the edge of the wood. Sheer weight gave it enough surface area to pull off the task, but it was far from the phenomenally comfy chest-pillows that Magnolia had once enjoyed, and still enjoyed to a smaller, perkier extent. Thankfully, the rest of her body was more than soft enough to make up for it. Her thick, circular glasses had fallen down to the tip of her nose, and one of her arms was splayed across the table, where she might eventually roll her head over to the doughy limb and use it as a more comfortable cushion instead. On the other side was an empty plate covered in crumbs, the crime scene of her latest snack.

She would be roused before she got the chance, Magnolia happily watching her sleep for a minute or two before eventually gently poking her awake. She needn’t have bothered hiding her footsteps, as Charlotte was a heavy enough sleeper that it would have taken a cacophony of noises to stir her, to the delight of those who enjoyed fooling around in the library on the opposite end of wherever she had once again fallen asleep.

“Mmm, who is it? Are you making a return or a…” Charlotte mumbled, her glasses tumbling off her face and landing on the table as she squinted through bleary eyes at her visitor. She fished around for them and placed them back on, her eyes widening slightly.

“Maggie, is that you?” She yawned, the excitement of her return drowned out by her inherent sleepiness.



“Indeed it is, Miss Charlotte.” Magnolia smiled, taking Charlotte’s hand and slowly helping her up, then having to help dislodge the chair from Charlotte’s ass. “I was passing through the area, and supposed I should pop in and visit.”

Magnolia’s vanity and eagerness to present herself as the big-shot she had become made it sound casual, not that she had been preparing this trip for weeks. Charlotte gave her a look that suspected that she was exaggerating given the remoteness of the town, but smiled and let it slide.

“Well, I’ll count myself lucky that you were able to take the time out of your busy schedule to visit little old me.” She chuckled, although there was absolutely nothing little about her.

Magnolia had been speculating what might happen to Charlotte in her absence, with some time to recover from the effects of having her prowess as a witch sucked out of her. The first theory was that she slowly returned to normal, that her balances were tipped and that she would, with the offending student removed, slowly tilt back to how she once was, although she would have to build herself up to regain what she lost. The second was that she retained all of the negative effects, but once she’d taken a break, she strived to improve herself and slowly naturally built her confidence and skill back up to something resembling at least competency, if not the heights she once soared at.

The third was, quite frankly, the most likely one, and the one that had occurred: Charlotte had simply gotten even fattier and lazier since Magnolia left and she settled into a supremely comfortable, low-stress lifestyle with no pressing reasons to get her act together. Without a personality designed to drive her to constant self-improvement, Charlotte settled for a comfortable last place where nobody expected anything better of her. The stress had melted off her face since they last met, and what was left was a very sleepy marshmallow-woman who had no greater concerns in life than what her next snack was going to be, and if she couldn’t decide, she’d simply have all of them.

She’d put on another hundred or so pounds she left, well exceeding the heaviest Magnolia herself had ever been, and her steps were ponderously heavy as a result as they travelled towards the centre of the library to chat. She could see Charlotte being visibly exerted by the movement, her body built for sinking into, not moving around. She wondered if she herself would have gotten this big with enough time, supposing that she had nowhere to go but up considering her lifestyle. Now it was difficult to picture herself being so slow, so lethargic, so bloated, but of what she did remember she would be lying if she said she didn’t miss it. She was quite jealous of Miss Charlotte’s total lack of self-restraint, the thing that kept Charlotte from treating herself to cake and chocolate more than once a week or two, that kept her body deliciously desirable to every man she met and a good deal of the women too. Perhaps someday once she eventually retired, she’d join Charlotte in plump indulgence, but that was a long, long way off, and she doubted she’d ever quite catch up.

Charlotte’s imperfections inherited from her student hadn’t diminished either, her face coated in freckles and her now longer hair tamed by being wrestled into a thick bun on the top that made her look like a woman in her thirties, rather than mid twenties, helped along by her old fashioned glasses. She’d finally outgrown her inherited green sweater, replacing it with a larger replica in a familiar blue, although this too was on the way to obsolescence. Charlotte’s belly poked out for a few seconds before she seemed to realise and tugged the hem down, but it was long enough for Magnolia to notice that even her plush porcelain-white belly was coated in a smattering of freckles, something she’d never had. Perhaps she’d drained Charlotte for all she was worth, and then accidentally taken a little extra off the top. Still, it made Magnolia herself even more spectacular, so clearly it was worth the trade, and it almost tempted her to squeeze Charlotte for just a little more, perhaps whatever she may have built up in the year since. It wasn’t like Charlotte was doing anything with herself these days.

The two stopped at the sofa in the gathering area of the library, which Charlotte filled almost to the brim just on her own, Magnolia forced to sit in an armchair across from her. You could see the seat visibly sink under her weight and drop her almost a foot further, while the leather armchair’s seat barely flattened under Magnolia’s perky ass. Magnolia proudly regaled her teacher with stories of her many achievements, almost too many to count crammed into fifty-two weeks and change. Powerful vampires defeated, towering spirits exorcised, team-ups with the Lecarde sisters… she left mentions of rendezvous with any Morrises out of it, as Charlotte hadn’t quite prepared herself for introducing her current self to her currently internationally travelling partner. She was pretty sure that he knew that she’d had a student and was currently taking a break, but he was in for quite the shock when he met her. Hopefully he wouldn’t try to dislodge her from the ideal lifestyle Magnolia had left for her.

“Oh, there’s no need to keep calling me Miss Charlotte, it’s dreadfully formal.” Charlotte said modestly. “Most people around here call me Lottie, these days. It started as something the kids called me, and it seemed to stick after that. By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have any advice on getting children to listen to you, would you? The little ones are fine as long as they don’t get too excited, but I don’t think that the boys that are a little older listen to me at all when I tell them to quiet down… I ask so politely, I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong…”

Charlotte gave Magnolia her own side of the story, a far more modest affair punctuated by precious few notable events. Tales of getting comfier with the locals, of becoming a respected member of the community, and the persistent misconception that she was Magnolia’s cousin, for some reason. Of misbehaving children who seemed to walk all over her, and eating very, very, very well. Magnolia got the impression both from her own conversations with the townspeople before visiting here and from Charlotte’s story that she had such a soft, docile, humble personality that she was well liked by the community, but that nobody had particularly high expectations for her beyond being a diligent librarian.

All the while she continued to refer to her as Maggie, her nickname showing that she still saw Magnolia as her cute little apprentice, no matter how much of a complex she may have gotten towards her towards the end. It was a nickname that Magnolia exclusively allowed Charlotte to use, giving withering gazes to anybody else who had tried it. It just didn’t fit her image that she so carefully maintained, although perhaps if she retired and ended up ballooning back to her old weight, she might allow Maggie and Lottie to be a matching pair…

“By the way, I’ve been up to some pretty exciting things too…” Charlotte said, sounding quite proud of herself as she slowly raised herself from her seat, waddling over to her desk and picking out a particular tome from under a stack of romance novels. She brought it back, flipping to a marked page which held a particular magic circle.

“I’ve discovered this one hidden away recently, it’s a transmogrification spell!” Charlotte said proudly, like she’d stumbled onto a hidden treasure. “This one turns you into a toad, which would be quite useful for getting into tight places or staying out of sight! Not that somebody like you needs to hide. I’m having a bit of trouble getting it to work myself, but I’m sure you’ll get it first try, I’m sure you’ve already memorised it just looking at it this long. Well, what do you think? Bet you didn’t know this one, seeing as I didn’t teach it to you.”

Magnolia didn’t have the heart to tell her that she already knew this spell. Not only had she absorbed it from Charlotte in the first place, but they’d had a whole lesson devoted to it, which Charlotte seemed to have forgotten. She couldn’t even remember that she didn’t remember, it seemed. Still, it reminded Magnolia of her days when she really did need proper teaching, and she nodded and praised Charlotte for finding such an interesting spell. When you stood at the top of magic, you lost the pure feeling of discovery that a novice had, that she’d had pouring over spellbooks she couldn’t even use prior to her apprenticeship. One upside of Charlotte’s current state was that her magical ability was so feeble and her knowledge so scarce that she could enjoy this feeling again, again, and again…

In another way, Magnolia herself felt like she couldn’t spend too long with Charlotte. Not because she felt guilty over draining her and reducing her to a nerdy fatty, the thought didn’t even occur to her. It was because she kept feeling pangs of jealousy, that her comfortable life in the library might have been even more enjoyable than becoming a magnificent witch. These thoughts lasted only for a few seconds before her ego reminded her just how much she adored being the centre of attention, and how important it was for her to keep racking up feats for Miss Charlotte. If she stopped now, it would have been all a waste. And besides, perhaps the grass was just greener on the other side. If she returned to her old self, it was just as likely that she’d start wistfully imagining herself as a glamorous adventurer once again. You just couldn’t win with these things. It was a good thing she got to freely pick, unlike Charlotte, who was good for nothing but sorting shelves and stuffing themself these days.

In exchange for her career as a witch Charlotte was being granted a lifetime of comfort and indulgence, assured by Magnolia intending to make several generous donations to the library. Just enough to fund Charlotte’s habits, not enough to put the library on the map. Magnolia frequently praised her teacher when asked how she became so powerful so quickly, but never specified where she’d come from, or where Charlotte was right now. With any luck, somebody who eventually sought her out would think that she’d merely gotten soft, figuratively and literally. Charlotte could enjoy her ever-increasing reputation courtesy of her student’s grand achievements, while never having to lift a finger. In Magnolia’s opinion, this was so much better for her than risking her life gallivanting about, she couldn’t think of a more ideal arrangement.

“Speaking of books, before I go, I’ve got some presents for you.” Magnolia said at the end of a long discussion. The bag was almost completely full of books, specifically romance novels, Charlotte’s favourite genre, and her face lit up.

“O-o-oh gosh, you even have Emma Priscilla’s new work!” Charlotte was breathing heavily at the sight of it. “I thought I’d have to catch the train to the capital and pick up a copy in person to get my hands on one…”

“I’ll go anywhere you need and get anything you want, Miss Charlotte.” Magnolia beamed. “You can just stay here and let me take care of everything for you.”



Charlotte raised no objections, and Magnolia helped carry them back to her desk, where Magnolia noticed that the ratio of magical tomes to trashy romance novels and other assorted fiction were somewhere between eight and ten to one. She hadn’t lost her interest in magic, but she clearly had higher priorities.

Magnolia left the library and her morbidly obese former teacher behind, convinced that there was no better fate for Charlotte than the one she had made for her…