The week struggled by, with as much anticipation in Friday as there was dread. Calculus lessons still went soaring over Victor's head, like miniature planes that were breaking the sound barrier. Professor Holmes lectured, Professor Holmes pointed, Professor Holmes wobbled on one good leg, one bad, and one cane. Nothing he said resonated with Victor, and for the majority of the class period the boy spent his time trying his best to keep up with what was being explained on the board. Trying his best, but often times failing, Holmes's lectures speeding up with the man's personal excitement. So quickly did he talk that oftentimes Victor's writing turned to scribbling turned to lines, mere lines on the paper that would serve to fill space. He was helpless to understand, and he was thankful to see that at least some of his classmates were also staring with glassy eyes, staring at the chalkboard they might never hope to understand. Perhaps next exam Victor won't be the only one below 50%.
By the time Professor Holmes's office hours came around Victor wanted to be the first one there. He wanted to show his dedication to extra help, in the hopes that he would get on good terms with the professor. Certainly he would do better to make use of these office hours, that way he wouldn't have to revert back to those horrible Tuesday night tutoring sessions with a girl who oftentimes referred to his mathematical skills as 'adorable'. Clambering up the stairs which were hastily carpeted to hide the slippery original marble, Victor felt the entire building creaking under his weight as he tried to beat the clock to the top. The bell tower oftentimes rang at odd intervals, as it was still traditionally rung by volunteers who would climb to the top and jump around with the ropes. Their timeliness was questionable at best, and a bell ringing through campus meant it was most likely near to the hours, give or take two minutes. No one used it as exact measurements, merely testaments of time passing, though as Victor checked his watch he could see that 2:00 had come and gone, for it was three minutes past the hour and he was still struggling his way up the last couple of stairs before the landing.
Professor Holmes's office was on the third floor, and unless Victor was severely confused as to the layout of the building, he was quite sure there was not an elevator. He had seen the old man struggle up the meager three stairs that led into the building itself. He held onto the railing as if his life depended on it, staggering with his walking stick and hardly making it to the top with both his life and dignity. If that was the challenge three stairs presented, how on earth could he manage three stories? It was a cruel joke on the administration's part. Perhaps Professor Holmes had done something to irk them early on in his career, something that had landed him in the least accessible office on campus.
The hall was nearly silent, with thin carpeting absorbing all sound and the bulletin boards on the walls keeping tight hold of their advertisements against the slight breeze produced by the blowing heaters. Most of the doors were closed, about ten offices on either side, as many professors felt their Fridays were wasted in trying to motivate students. Most of the campus body awoke on Friday with nothing but alcohol on their minds, and it would seem as though many professors gave up the fight of trying to convince them otherwise. Professor Holmes, it would seem, had never noticed the difference. Perhaps he had never had student traffic enough to realize Fridays were less populated than any other day of the week. That, or he understood that his office hours were near to mandatory for anyone who wanted to pass his class. Perhaps he had grasped the understanding that many students had no choice but to ask for additional help, their fear of failing the class far outweighing their want for a good, chaotic party.
Victor stood in the doorway of the office, knocking his knuckles a bit awkwardly against the doorframe in an attempt to catch the attention of the very focused man in his desk chair. The office was smaller than most, though perhaps the size was distorted by the sheer amount of things that had been crammed inside of it. The desk stood in the middle of the room, a proud oak desk that had a shining top nearly lost by the accumulation of papers that stacked on top of it. Filing cabinets were shoved into all four corners, one blocking the opening of the door and leaving it awkwardly ajar, just wide enough to admit a person but not nearly open enough to seem hospitable. It would seem as though Professor Holmes kept records and exams of every student he had ever taught, leading right up to the end of the Second World War. For a split second Victor wondered if the test he had received back had really been his after all, or instead it had been some lost document from decades past, a fool in the forties having been graded harshly and passed on in Victor's name. It was a wonder Professor Holmes could even find himself in such a mess!
The only things that were uncluttered where the window sill, which was surprisingly clean and letting a fair amount of the autumn light in, and a bulletin board hanging on the wall near the desk. Other than a syllabus, a calendar pinned to the corner, and a single photograph that must have been older than the building itself, the bulletin board remained empty.
"Professor Holmes?" Victor muttered, announcing his presence a bit more adamantly when he saw the Professor unmoved by his initial knocks. The man stirred, shaking his head for a moment as if trying to fight off sleep, not mere distraction. He lifted his curly head, his eyes wide and his mouth tight, looking towards his newfound company as if he had never seen a human being before in his life.
"I'm sorry, were you sleeping?" Victor wondered, trying to feign apology when he nearly felt the urge to laugh. He moved into the office, shuffling across the visibly unkempt carpet and making himself comfortable in the only piece of furniture that was not dedicated to either the permanent occupant or a myriad of papers and files. A single wooden chair was offered for guests, and Victor figured he fit that description well.
"No, no I was merely...daydreaming." The professor looked embarrassed to admit it, though he shuffled in his chair and tried to look more alert, blinking a couple of times before giving a hesitant smile. "I'm happy you've come."
"I may be untalented, but I'm not unmotivated," Victor admitted. "And I'll admit your assignment intrigued me."
"It's not oftentimes a professor asks you to be wrong," Professor Holmes agreed, grabbing for his pen if only for something to roll between his fingers as he spoke. He was a wiry man, a frame made for an impressive stature left unfilled, as if his muscles had shrunken long ago and his skin was hanging loose and deflated overtop of his skeleton. Even his clothes looked baggy, as if he had chosen larger sizes if only to give the impression that he had once filled them. As he spun the pen even his fingers looked condensed, his skin tight around the knuckles and his fingernails unusually long towards the base, as if they were being rejected from his body all together. He was the sort of man some would cross the street to avoid, though it just so happened Victor would sacrifice his Friday afternoon to spend time in his office, in close quarters, alone. If the man really was a specter he might have the decency to wait until after Victor understood the exam before stealing the boy's soul.
"So, did you find where you had gone wrong?" Professor Holmes wondered, clearing his throat before leaning forward in his chair, attempting to peer at the stack of papers victor was holding gently on his lap. He had dedicated almost two sheets of notebook paper, front and back, to explain the issues with his exam questions. The boy had stayed up nearly to sunrise in the effort, though he couldn't claim he had any regrets. For once Victor felt accomplished, for once he felt proud to pass something to a professor, something that would reflect the true work ethic he possessed.
"I did," Victor admitted. "I cross referenced my work with some step by step problems in the textbook."
"Very well done, Victor." The professor accepted the papers thankfully, pausing as he settled a pair of thick reading glasses on the brim of his crooked nose so as to read the fine lines traced by Victor's pencil. He nodded for a moment, looked over the test here and there, confirming what he saw and what Victor had diagnosed. His eyes still shone with intelligence, and Victor was happy to see they remained clear and optimistic throughout the entire report, thankfully going without that glazed and shadowed look that oftentimes clouded a professor's gaze when they saw something hopeless. It would seem as though Victor's work, however misled in the beginning, was at least not disappointing to him.
"You've done exactly what I hoped," the professor admitted, finally tilting the papers down so as to study the student, not just his work. "And now I think it would be easier for me to answer your questions, seeing as though you know what to ask."
"Indeed," Victor paused for a moment, rustling in his backpack to produce another folded piece of notebook paper, this time penned with the specific questions he intended to ask. "I brought a list."
"Excellent." Professor Holmes could not hide the satisfaction in his voice, that which spoke to a renewed confidence in his most poorly preforming student.
Victor laid the questions down on the table, allowing Professor Holmes to tear a couple of pieces of scrap paper from his own notebook, covering what little free space he had on the desk with his scratch papers and detailed notes. Together they went through each of Victor's questions, referring to the exam and then to his observations of what went wrong. Mostly they began with the numbered question and went through how to solve it, pointing out exactly where the correct answer deviated from Victor's nearly pathetic attempt in the past. Professor Holmes took his time with the explanations, allowing time for Victor to stare at his scribbles and point out things which didn't immediately make sense to him. Sometimes numbers moved without logic, sometimes variables vanished, sometimes signs flipped without a clear explanation as to why. Though with a question always came an answer, and Professor Holmes explained in that deep voice of his, slowly and methodically, using the back of his pen to point at the equations and oftentimes consulting the textbook and assigning some pages and paragraphs of interest for Victor to read over the weekend. The man seemed overjoyed to have such a dedicated student, and the hours went by at a pace that didn't seem quite logical. It was as if someone had paid the boys in the clock tower to make the hours shorter, for before Victor knew it he heard another bell toll, the second he had heard since he first sat down, the school's announcing that it was now four o'clock. The end of office hours.

It was uncommon for any professor to hold office hours on a Friday, even less common for a professor to dedicate the entire time block to a single student, and troubling to see that in the span of two hours not one other person had come to his door for help. The entire building had been silent throughout the duration of their conversation, though Victor may be able to blame such a phenomena on the fact that he was laser focused to the task at hand. It was not until the bell rang that he heard anything at all, as if each of his five senses had been dulled to allow for his brain to operate with increased strength and attention. He felt as if he had learned a whole month's worth of material in a single hour, and before he knew it there was a stack of scratch paper piled all over the professor's desk, scrambled about in as much of a mess as the rest of the office.
Victor didn't remember standing up, though when the bell rang and his surroundings fell into perception he was leaning against the far end of the desk, with his hands having settled in the rare spots of exposed wood, his fingers now hidden under pieces of paper and his arms numb with the effort of sustaining his weight for so long. The professor was crooked as well, bent over the desk like a man possessed, his nose nearly touching the textbook as he searched for the exact sentence which explained the issue in one of Victor's last inquiries.
"It's here, page 84, paragraph....five. In the middle. See?" Professor Holmes craned the book so that Victor could read the sentence over himself, one which was hidden underneath a rather jagged illustration of a curved line, graphed so that it had the context that a calculus scholar would search for.
"Right," Victor muttered, finally straightening himself and rubbing blood back into his now sore wrists.
"These authors know what they're doing, believe it or not." Professor Holmes sighed heavily, setting the book on one corner of the desk without finding any other obvious place for it. By now the entire office seemed so buried in papers it felt to be a fire hazard. Victor wondered how the man's supervisors could handle such a scattered mess; much less appreciate the view from the hallway.
"I know I have one more question, though it's four o'clock already. I won't keep you any longer," Victor assured, pulling his list of questions back to his chest before the professor could protest. Victor had a suspicion the professor would have be thrilled to dedicate more time to the matter, though by this point Victor's head had turned to radio static, and now that he could focus on his surroundings with more clarity he realized that he was quite exhausted from the efforts of concentration. Another question would mean another scrap paper, another equation, another book chapter...the list of recommended paragraphs had already overflowed from one page to the back of another, an overwhelming list that Victor felt nearly obligated to read, being that the old man had taken so much of his time to find the exact sentences that pertained.
"I have nowhere to be," Professor Holmes assured. "We can take five minutes to look it over."
"I'd rather save it for another day," Victor admitted a bit shamefully, folding up his sheet of questions in a final resolve against continuing. Professor Holmes blinked, obviously not understanding very well why the boy would give up at the very last stretch, though he was polite enough not to argue. Adjusting his stiff collared shirt and removing his glasses, the man looked as tired as Victor felt. His eyes had acquired dark bags underneath, his head hung rather low to his chest, and his back looked to struggle with the weight of his frame, the man now leaning into the stiffness of his desk chair just to maintain the posture he was expected to have as an academic.
"Very well," Professor Holmes shrugged. "I hope you found this process helpful?"
"Oh yes. Though it may be ill timed. How can I show any progress if I'm always one lesson behind?"
"I would be happy to go through similar processes with you about the week's homework assignments. I grade them less harshly, though the errors are still relevant."
"You mean like...like a weekly tutor?" Victor presumed, hesitating to use such a word to describe a doctoral professor. Tutors were often peers, and this man was one of the best in his field. Nevertheless, he seemed not to take offense. The man grinned, bowing his head in agreement.
"You are incredibly motivated, Victor. I can see promise in you, even if you got off to a rough start."
"Rough hardly describes it. More like pitiful. Pathetic."
"Use what word you would like, Victor, though it is still used to describe the start. Not the finish. Whenever there is a renewed effort in the middle there are always much better results in the end. You may have begun in the back of the class, though you are reacting to such determent with the sort of motivation I would hope to see in all the students. Some are happy with the 70's they received, and will not make significant strides to improve."
"You're saying I was better off to get a thirty, so it gave me a kick in the pants?" Victor presumed. The professor chuckled, leaning back into his chair if just to flick his hand in amusement.
"If that is how you'd like to view it," he agreed. Victor nodded, turning his attention to the almost outrageous amount of papers that were scattered across the table, all of which would be helpful to him in the process of catching up to the rest of the class.
"I wonder if I could have those papers, to keep practicing?"
"Yes of course," Professor Holmes agreed, nodding in an exaggerated enthusiasm, as if he felt the need to obey even the simplest command if he would help Victor to succeed in the future. He gathered the papers anxiously in his arms, pulling from piles Victor didn't recognize to be his, and bundled them up in his arms. There was no order, no organization, in some cases the papers were sideways, folded, or hanging merely by the pressure of his hand against his chest.
"Get your bag, Victor. We may as well just dump them in together."
"I see why your office is so disorganized," Victor chuckled, though he obeyed. Grabbing his backpack and opening it wide next to the man's chair, allowing Professor Holmes to shove the papers in one jumbled mess into the bag. Victor pulled the drawstring to keep them contained, and the old man gave a nod of enthusiasm, seemingly proud of himself for managing to clean up so efficiently.
"Nothing about my brain is organized, so I figured my office should be held to no higher standard."
Victor nodded, snapping his backpack's clips in place and pulling it onto his back with a heave. It was no heavier for the load of papers, though perhaps there was some weight to the knowledge he now carried. Either way, he felt exhausted in the effort. As he turned, Victor's eye caught the photo on the bulletin board, something so commonplace within an office yet so jarring when seemingly designated as the only true decoration available. He could tell upon further investigation that it was a photocopy of a picture, not the original, though the copier had not done anything to hide the wear and tear the original must have suffered. The ends were yellowed and jaggedly cut and the entire photograph was folded many times in the middle, betraying its original home of a wallet or a pocket for years on end.
"Is this you?" Victor wondered, more intrigued by the strange photograph than what might have been polite. Had he not spent two hours with this old professor he may have felt it was none of his business to inquire, though now his brain was too tired to remember his formalities.
The photograph was of a wedding day, a bride and a groom, taken seemingly before colored photographs had become normalized. Before the war, undoubtedly. The man was a bit shorter than the woman, which should have immediately signaled to Victor that Professor Holmes was not the one shown. He was stockier, too, built more like a football player than an academic, sharp but awkward in his formal suit. The woman was beautiful, her hair hidden in a veil but her smile immaculate, her dress modest and lacy, her hands folded across her new husband's arm like the happiest woman in the world. The man looked pleased as well, though rather stiff, as if he was still hesitant to believe any of the past couple of moments had been real. Perhaps he wondered how he had gotten so lucky, to have such a radiant woman on his arm.
"No, that's not me." There was a clamor behind the desk, and Victor turned suddenly to help, worried for a second that the man had fallen out of his chair and was hurt. In reality the chair had merely rolled into the wall, having been pushed out when Professor Holmes had risen to his feet, tired on his legs but happy for the chance to stand. His cane was heavy underneath him, and as he tried to stand straight his pain was evident in his face, the wrinkles on his otherwise soft face squeezing in momentary agony as his old muscles remembered their even older wounds.
"That is a man I knew in the war," he admitted. "That photograph was passed to me when I left for the military hospital in the states."
"That's very kind of him," Victor offered, unsure of what else to say. Something about the photo seemed misplaced in this mess of an office, the very fact that he could see it at all spoke to its importance. It was unmarked, uncluttered, and unchallenged where it was pinned to the pegboard. If Professor Holmes's office really was a reflection of his scattered mind, then perhaps he held this photograph to the same standards within his head. Perhaps he held this man to a higher regard than most.
"It was a long time ago, Victor. It's...well it's forgotten by now."
"It's still good of you to memorialize it," Victor insisted, bundling his coat in his arms as he stepped towards the door for his final farewell. Professor Holmes stayed hesitantly at the corner of his desk, wobbly enough that he was happy for something study to cling to with his free hand.
"If that is all, Victor?"
"Yes, I think so," Victor agreed, nodding his head in final agreement. The old professor smiled, bowing his head in respect for his time.
"I appreciate you coming to me for help, Victor. You were right to do it."
"Thank you for your help, and for your offer of more when things get tricky."
"I will be here if you need," Professor Holmes assured.
"Don't be too open with your time," Victor teased. "I may end up taking permanent residence in this office."
"Whatever is needed for you to pass the course, Victor. To pass, or to excel."
"Thank you, professor." Victor gave one last smile, and with those final words excused himself from the office. Stepping into the hallway, Victor felt as if the entire world had been changed just slightly. The building seemed less foreboding, as if a brighter tint had been applied to the walls and ceilings. It seemed more cheerful, less like his own personal purgatory. Perhaps there was hope still left for the boy, hope for his academics, hope for his future. Perhaps Professor Holmes was not the obstacle on his way to a degree, but the bridge that would help him cross the more tumultuous waters. Could it be that Victor had found an ally in this hellish university, one who, unlike Reginald, would actually be of some use?