Hirschur/Story

Much to everyone's surprise, Professor Hirschur breaks with her habit of only interacting with the dormitory she is nominally in charge off due to Rozemyne managing to catch her attention to a degree that she visits the Ehrenfest facilities several times in the first few weeks - something completely unheard of from her.

This interest goes so far that she even starts to occasionally send actual reports back to Ehrenfest, instead of just repeating the message that basically says that nothing noteworthy happened over and over again at each scheduled time.

Her open mind to new ideas and propensity for experimentation is amply demonstrated upon seeing Rozemyne's drivable highbeast. Rather than resisting the idea due it going against tradition, she immediately embraced the concept for it's practicality and creates a shumil-inspired version of the same concept for herself, but with the reigns she is more used to rather than the steering wheel and pedals Rozemyne favors. It is also thanks to her that the rumors that Rozemyne attacked Fraularm with her "weird feybeast highbeast" were officially dismissed as a misunderstanding on Fraularm's part, with many believing that Fraularm tried to claim this to have been an attack to cover up her embarrassment over fainting upon seeing the weird wing-less construct fly perfectly well.

In the course of Rozemyne's first academy term, she even starts to consider moving to the Ehrenfest dormitory to not miss out on all the peculiarities surrounding the girl. This is further reinforced upon first eating Ehrenfest's new cuisine, which apparently is to her liking.

Having the opportunity to study the magic circles of the two library magic tools Schwartz and Weiss fills Hirschur with a lot of enthusiasm and she immediately volunteers to participate in the creation of new clothes for them, by researching, replicating and improving upon the magic circles that had been woven in the two shumil's clothes by their previous master. Unlike the ancient magic circles used on the shumils directly, the formulae on their clothes are something that she manages successfully transcribe and decipher. The circles on the bodies themselves however elude her, due to partially being on the insides, making it impossible gain the full picture without cutting them open, which neither their protective enhancements nor Rozemyne would ever allow.

Once she is engrossed in her research it is near impossible to wrest her away from her work. At one point even a direct summon by Prince Anastasius, a member of the Royal Family is not enough to make her abandon her workshop immediately, though thankfully Rozemyne manages to entice her to come by baiting her with the possibility of Schwartz and Weiss being stolen away, which makes her rush over in surprisingly short time.

Initially Hirschur kept in contact with her prize student Ferdinand after his graduation, but when he moved to the temple, this contact broke off completely. When Rozemyne prepares to go back to Ehrenfest for the Dedication Ritual, Hirschur uses the opportunity to have the girl - or rather her retainers - deliver entire boxes full of magic tools that Ferdinand built, but which have since stated to deteriorate to her former student, so he can repair them. She also sends all her notes on the magic circles of Schwartz and Weiss, along with her preliminary analysis and findings, hoping Ferdinand will be able to help further in deciphering them.

In Rozemyne's second academy term, Hirschur is in charge of the class on basic potion brewing and crafting. When during class Rozemyne approaches her unusually early with well-cut ingredients and confirms that she is already familiar with brewing, Hirschur co-opts her into her teaching plans. Instead of delivering a demonstration herself and then have Rozemyne brew her potion afterwards, she has Rozemyne's own brewing work as the demonstration to save time, displaying a devotion to efficiency very reminiscent of her former student Ferdinand.

She is very impressed with how neatly Rozemyne chopped her ingredients and surprised when the girl even drawn a magic circle to speed up the brewing process. She gives a cursory explanation of the circle to the other students, but due to the added difficulties of keeping the mana-flow steady cautions them against employing similar circles of their own until they are more experienced. After ascertaining the quality and efficiency of Rozemyne's potion with a magic tool, she gives Rozemyne a passing grade.

As the disciple of her former disciple, Hirschur considers Rozemyne to also automatically be her disciple, despite the girl's protestations to the contrary. As such she tries to have Rozemyne assist her like in the brewing class whenever she can. When Rozemyne tries to resist being used as an assistant during the second day of brewing and crafting class, Hirschur manages to entice her by promising to lend her a new book she is currently working on, making Rozemyne the first person to ever get to read it, once it's finished. This charms Rozemyne into acting as Hirschur's assistant for the rest of the class, mainly checking the magic circles the other students draw to create ordonnanz stones.

A little later Rozemyne surprisingly requests a meeting with Hirschur to discuss magic tools she is currently developing, scheduling to visit Hirschur in her laboratory. Upon entering, Rozemyne's attendant Lieseleta is appalled, but not surprised at the state of the room. The floor is covered in dirt, scraps of food and research papers that appear to have fallen from the chaotic stacks of papers all over the tables of the room. Solely the table on which Hirschur and her disciple Raimund are current working at is kept meticulously clean and orderly to prevent any accidental contamination of the materials.

Lieseleta having expected this comes prepared with a cleaning magic tool stating that the room was not fit for Lady Rozemyne to visit. When she pulls it out, Hirschur and Raimund quickly rush about the room evacuating all of the fallen documents to one of the tables, before Lieseleta unleashes the tool to clean the floor. While this is going on, Rozemynes other attendants set up the tea, cookies and crepes Rozemyne brought on one of the tables. Not content with just cleaning the room, Lieseleta scolds Hirschur for how dirty she herself is, causing the professor to cleans herself and her disciple quickly with waschen, though Rozemyne suspects it might also be to overplay how much Hirschur's stomach started to growl upon seeing and smelling the food.

Between her work obsession and hunger, Hirschur entirely forgets to introduce her disciple until Rozemyne herself asks for an introduction. At this point Rozemyne and her retainers learn that Raimund is from Ahrensbach, causing her guardknights to jump between them and Cornelius to question Hirschur's loyalty and mental state, wondering out loud whether she has any idea what has been going on between Ahrensbach and Ehrenfest the last couple of years. Hirschur calmly explains that while she was born in Ehrenfest she is a citizen of the Sovereignty now and as a professor of the royal academy she has a responsibility to nurture talent she find for the good of Yurgenschmidt as a whole and can not afford to be limited by inter-duchy politics. She goes further to state that if she was that kind of person, she never would have taken Ferdinand under her wing, since doing so received considerable pushback from the Veronica faction and earned her many toxic messages from Lady Veronica herself back in the day. Hearing all this, Rozemyne manages to get her guardknights to back off, though they remain on guard against the Raimund.

With both Hirschur and Raimund appearing to have skipped at least one meal due to being immersed in their work, they both dig in once the obligatory exchanging of first sips and bites has been finished, eating as fast as they can without violating noble table manners.

Following the snack, Rozemyne asks Hirschur to evaluate a magic circle she developed for the purpose of books returning to the library on their own once the lending period has expired. Much to Rozemyne's disappointment Hirschur calls it outright useless, only going on to go into more details when prompted. There is nothing wrong with the circle itself and it will fulfill the desired function just fine, but due to it's complexity it will require far too much mana for anyone below archduke candidate levels of mana capacity to use them, which would include Professor Solange, the currently sole librarian of the royal academy's library, who is only a mednoble. She passes the paper on to her disciple and tells him to demonstrate his talents in simplifying and optimizing formulae by turning Rozemyne's work into something even he as a mednoble could use.

After commenting on how impressed he is how much functionality Rozemyne was able to cram into a single magic circle, Raimund begins breaking it down and splitting the functions into two separate circles and stripping out all the extra elements that were necessary to combine all the functions into a single circle, cutting down drastically on the complexity of the project, which will reduce not only the mana consumption, but also the potential for errors.

During his work he offhandedly mentions that in all likelihood using verification paper will further cut down on mana use, which catches Rozemyne completely off guard, since she believes that only duchies with which they are trading with and the sovereignty would know of verification paper. But as it turns out, Professor Gundolf from Drewanchel had been talking quite passionately about it and his eagerness to research it during one of his classes, spreading the knowledge to essentially every duchy of the country.

Hirschur uses this opportunity to try to buy ehrenfest and verification paper from Rozemyne, but with her being a sovereignty noble, Rozemyne is not authorized to do so on her own. Not being deterred by such a technicality Hirschur keeps pushing, trying to use the two coming from the same duchy as a lever, but is ultimately shut down by Rozemyne who goes so far as to threaten not allowing Hirschur to be present when they change Schwartz and Weiss's clothes if she keeps asking, which finally makes the professor relent.

After the Ehrenfest gathering spot was attacked by a ternisbefallen, Hirschur as the supervisor of the attacked duchy's dormitory has to participate in the investigation of the incident. She alongside professors Fraularm, Gundolf and Rauffen and accompanied by two knights of the Sovereign Kight's Order enter the dormitory building of the former duchy of Werkerstock to search for any clues as to how such a beast came to be at the royal academy, since the trail of destruction it left behind started at this dorm.

On the scheduled day Hirschur insists on working on her research to the very last second, at which point Rauffen practically drags her to their destination. Naturally they arrive a little late. Once there they witness the tail-end of a confrontation between Gundolf and Fraularm and learn that Fraularm upon entering the Werkerstock dormitory used waschen on the entry hall and the connected hallway, stating that she couldn't be expected to walk into such a filthy place since it would ruin her clothes.

After this discussion has come to and end the present people split into two teams of two professors and one knight each. Hirschur and Rauffen investigate the cellar, while Gundolf and Fraularm go to the second and third floors. There she voices her thoughts on the incident to Rauffen, including the current hostile climate between Ahrensbach and Ehrenfest and how during Ferdinand's time at the academy someone from Ehrenfest once brought a young ternisbefallen to the academy to attack him, which due to it having been resolved internally never became known outside of Ehrenfest itself until this point. She also comments on Fraularm's waschen being rather suspicious, since it might well have erased evidence, whether intentionally or not.

Neither team finds any sign of someone having disturbed the thick layer of dust and thus return to the entry hall. There Gundolf offers to assist the Sovereignty knights in compiling the report for the king and says that Hirschur and Fraularm may leave if they so choose, since only Rauffen will have to remain due to being the one who called upon the knights in the first place. Both Fraularm and Hirschur eagerly take him up on this offer, with Hirschur being particularly glad, since she considered the whole investigation a waste of time that cut into her precious research time and rushes back to her lab to continue her brewing.

A short time after the archducal couple's visit Hirschur receives an Ordonnanz from Rozemyne. The girl explains that she tried to contact Professor Fraularm to arrange a date for the last exam she need to pass this year, but that so far the professor failed to even acknowledge receiving her messages and she asks what to do about this. Hirschur then approaches Fraularm and casually mentions how Ehrenfest is going to cooperate with both Dunkelfelger and Drewanchel this year. She wonders out loud why only Ahrensbach seems to be left out, despite how close they are to Ehrenfest thanks to Ferdinand's recent engagement and whether it might be a sign of Fraularm's communications skills. She then informs Rozemyne about what she did and advises her to summon her to the exam under some excuse so she can assure a fair grading. Almost immediately an answer from Rozemyne arrives informing Hirschur that the girl has already been contacted by Fraularm with a date for the exam, showing how effective the prodding was.

On the day of the exam, as advised Rozemyne summons Hirschur under the excuse that she requires the presence of her duchy's dormitory supervisor to discuss a research cooperation with Ahrensbach. That Rozemyne would talk about the cooperation right after the test makes Fraularm suspicious for a moment, until Rozemyne tells her that this was the last subject she had to pass this semester and that once the professor finished grading her, she would be free to consider the research and so Fraularm moves to grade the test with Hirschur looking over her shouler. It is at this point that Hirschur points out that Fraularm "accidentally" gave Rozemyne the wrong test, since this one is meant for fifth-year students. Hirschur asks how Rozemyne managed to answer the questions and Rozemyne replies that Ferdinand had drilled the entire syllabus into her at once to the point where she doesn't even know which part is supposed to be taught in which year. Hirschur is impressed that Rozemyne was able to keep up with Ferdinand, while Fraularm only mutters "this isn't normal" over and over in befuddlement. Rozemyne is worried that she needs to re-take the correct test, but clearly frustrated with how spectacularly her ploy failed Fraularm gives Rozemyne a passing grade to be done with the sorry affair.

With some team-work Rozemyne and Hirschur are able to get Fraularm on board for the joint research to be a cooperation between Rozemyne and Raimund in Hirschur's laboratory, with the communication to Ahrensbach going through Fraularm. Rozemyne is also able to get Fraularm to agree to have Ferdinand involved under the not entirely wrong excuse that Hirschur and Raimund will very likely get so engrossed into their work that they'll surely fail to file proper reports sooner or later, something Fraularm has already experienced personally and thus readily accepts.

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