I quickly fell into a routine, and the weeks started to blur past. I spent pretty much all of my free time the first two weeks on learning all the names and faces of the first-years, as well as adapting to having to take care of another living being. It’s something I hadn’t done for almost as long as I had been alive.

  This meant that it wasn’t until the start of the Undecember, the eleventh month and the last one of autumn, that I had time for some of my usual hobbies. Of which, I had acquired quite a few over the centuries, from baking to smithing to hunting to sewing. Honestly, I tried just about anything in the time before I helped found Paideia, all in a search of what I wanted to do with my undead life.

  So it was that I found myself sweeping one of the many hallways of the school complex in the early hours of the day with a broom that was so old that it had actually managed to go out of fashion. Or rather, I was doing so in the middle of the night.

  Sweeping the entire complex on my own would have taken me longer than there are hours in the day. Because, aside from the main building where most classes were held, there were the four wings housing the student dormitories, faculty housing and offices for four of the school’s five departments, the artificery workshop outside of the walls, the housing and offices for those in the tender department, and various outhouses scattered around the school.

  Which meant that if I wanted to sweep all of this before morning, I had some serious sweeping to do. The school didn’t employ a single maid, after all, and I was still in the same building I had started in.

  Suddenly I felt some people approaching and a few minutes later I could hear hushed voices that tried to, and failed to, be quiet whispers. Maybe I ought to inform Eweleanor that we should offer stealth classes to the first-years?

  “Why are we doing this again?” a deep voice asked with a hint of irritation. “We’ve been doing this for weeks now. Surely, we would have found this supposed ghost by now? If it even exists.”

  “Come on, Mo,” a light and chipper voice said in a tone that’s halfway between a whine and a plea, that utterly fails to be a whisper. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Where’s your thrill for discovery? The school is huuuge, it’s not unreasonable that we simply haven’t encountered it yet.”

  I heard a soft chuckle echo closer, due to the empty corridors.

  “You know he just doesn’t want to admit he likes it, Kass,” a third voice teased, the only one of the three that managed to make a decent attempt at whispering. “It wouldn’t fit his esteemed image to be seen enjoying sneaking out with us troublemakers.”

  Both this ‘Mo’ and ‘Kass’ exclaimed in unison, though I doubt it was for the same reason. In either case, if they had been successful in sneaking about, they would have just broken it just now.

  “I’m here because I know how to treat my friends properly, unlike a brute like you, Lopez,” ‘Mo’ grumbled, though I could detect his half-heartedness. “Same goes for you, Kass. I don’t want to get into trouble over something like this. You both know how my parents are.”

  I could hear a sigh, though not from whom, and two distinctly different sounds of patting cloth.

  “Alright, if we don’t find it tonight, we’ll give up,” the chipper ‘Kass’ acquiesced. “And Lopez will stop ribbing you, right?”

  “Right,” ‘Lopez’ said, after, I could only imagine, a nod. “I’m sorry for causing so much beef. We’re friends and I should respect that. I’ll try to do better and not behave like my family does.”

  “Thank you,” ‘Mo’ answered both of the others’ apologies. “Both of you. Now, come on, let’s find this ghost of yours. Quietly.”

  I could hear a final squeal from ‘Kass’, before the trio grew silent. Well, they stopped talking to each other, but their footfalls still spoke volumes to me. They were just about to round the corner to where I was.

  “Goodnight, students,” I greeted them with a slightly tilted incline of my head, from where I was silently sweeping in pitch black darkness. The gesture caused my bone-white hair to fall over my face and partially obscure my black eyes, making me appear more like a ghost. “Shouldn’t you be in bed at this hour?”

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  All three of them shrieked upon seeing me with the dim light of a basic magical lantern. I simply resumed my sweeping as if I hadn’t just scared them.

  “U-Um, miss... ghost?” ‘Kass’, who I could now recognise as Kassandra, asked cautiously. “A-Are you, um, the ghost maid of the school? You, um, know, the, um, one that, um, cleans everything during the night.”

  I slowly turned to face them and raised an eyebrow. Sometimes I really enjoyed how my too-pale appearance could cause misinterpretations. But at times like these, because normally, people looked at me as if they wanted my head on their silver platter.

  “Did you find some urgent fault with my work that would bring you out here at this hour?” I asked, whilst holding back my amusement.

  Kassandra frantically flailed her hands, whilst the other two, who I recognised as Muhammad and Alisa, looked equally spooked and panicked.

  “N-No, no!” Kassandra tried to frantically reassure me. “We, well, I, was just curi–“

  “Fluminix!” I abruptly interrupted her, breaking me out of my ghost persona as I quickly swirl around and rush of to where the baby dragon had started munching on a banner. “I thought I’d told you not to try to eat that!”

  Fluminix blinked her electric blue eyes at me innocently, before she tried to take another bite out of the now chewed-up banner. Honestly, her eyes, which emitted a soft electric blue light, might have made the whole interaction with the trio of students more haunting.

  I started swearing in Vesperan, which I was fairly certain no-one present knew. I swore up and down that I would kill the rascal if she tried that one more time. This was, unfortunately, not her first ‘innocent’ act. If I’d known how much trouble raising her would be, I would have left her to die on the mountain I found her on.

  I took a deep and calming breath. Right. Of course, I wouldn’t actually kill her. She could just be a... pest and it’s starting to get on my nerves, because I knew she was smarter than she’s letting on. She really did resemble her namesake.

  “U-Um, miss Morgana?” Muhammad asked hesitantly, and too politely. “Is that you? Were you... pretending to be a ghost?”

  I sighed and picked Fluminix up, ripping a tear in the banner.

  “Yes... It’s me,” I confessed reluctantly, before I narrowed my eyes at the boy. “And I thought I’d made it clear I didn’t like people calling me ‘miss’, didn’t I?”

  The boy nodded quickly, perhaps a little too quickly for how put-together he was trying to act.

  “You did, miss. But...” he said sheepishly, whilst he averted his gaze.

  I sighed again, not having wanted to discomfort the boy.

  “It’s fine,” I relented. “Let’s just pretend this whole night never happened and the three of you head straight to bed, and I’ll let you call me ‘miss’.”

  Muhammad let out a breath of relief, and I could see the tension drain from him.

  “Thank you for your generosity, miss,” he said, whilst he bowed to me. “I’ll drag these two blockheads with me at once and make sure they won’t break curfew again.”

  He started to drag his friends back to the dormitories. However, I cast a barrier in front of them, causing them to stop and turn around with confused and frightened looks. Ironically typically, the most frightened was the previously blustering Alisa.

  “I wanted to clarify,” I began. “I’m not some ruler you need to kowtow to, and I was only referring to the whole me pretending to be a ghost, not the sneaking out part. I don’t care one bit about that.”

  “But you are the Morgana,” Muhammad said for the trio, and the most confused looking of them. “Of course, I would treat you with the proper respect.”

  I regarded him for a moment and suppressed the sigh I wanted to exclaim.

  “I am ‘the Morgana’. Or rather I used to be,” I explained. “Now, I’m just Morgana. A simple teacher.”

  The boy still looked troubled and as if he wanted to refute my claim, but was interrupted when, the still frightened, Alisa slung her arms around both of her friends.

  “We’ll get back to bed then!” she nearly shouted, as she turned her friends around and rushed them off.

  I couldn’t help but chuckle and shake my head in amusement.

  This was another reason why I spent some nights sweeping the corridors of the school. It may have started as me needing something to do in the quiet hours, but after a few incidents of students running into me it had turned into a school legend.

  And who was I to spoil their fun? So, I strove to keep the legend alive to help the students enjoy their school life. Which is also why I didn’t even bother scolding them for being up in the middle of the night in the middle of a school week. Though, I would have preferred if students went ghost hunting when they didn’t have classes the next day.

  Oh well, I had my fun for the night. I slung my broom over my shoulder and headed back to my chambers with a struggling Fluminix in my arm.

  I spent the remainder of the night reading on my balcony and watching over Fluminix. Early in the morning, before the late-autumn sun could rise, I headed over to my front door and pressed my hand against a protruding gemstone next to it.

  The gemstone itself was mainly there for decoration; however, its location was where the activation circle was for the school-wide cleaning and repair enchantment. In one instance all public areas of the school would be cleaned and all furniture and decorations repaired.

  As if me sweeping the floors every other night would be enough to ensure the school was squeaky clean every day, without a large cleaning staff?