The first thing Leo learned about Peter Payne was that he was very easy to like.
That was the problem.
He was the kind of person who remembered your name after hearing it once. Who laughed at the right moments, not too hard, not too late, just enough to make the person who said the thing feel genuinely funny. He moved through the academy the way water moves, finding the path of least resistance, never forcing anything, always ending up exactly where he wanted to be. Students who had never spoken to him still somehow felt like they knew him. Teachers who should have been firmer with him somehow never quite managed it.
