Mr. Bumble Reluctant Employment

Clover is twenty years old and has spent her entire life in Brimbottle, sweeping floors and stocking shelves at Hearth & Herb, dreaming of an academy that only accepts the magically gifted. She is not gifted. She was born non-innate, without mana, without a familiar, and without a place in the world of magic. But when her mother falls ill and the healers are days away, Clover does the one thing everyone told her was impossible: she opens a crumbling secondhand grimoire and summons a familiar of her own. What comes out is Mr. Bumble. He is a fat black cat with the voice of a disappointed uncle and the work ethic of a housecat who has never held a job. He talks. He casts magic. He has opinions. And he is the reason St. Ashwick's Academy suddenly sends Clover a scholarship, a mentor, and a shop apprenticeship she never asked for. Now she has to share her days with a cat who would rather nap than help, a professor who looks at her like she is the most interesting anomaly in the kingdom, and a delivery schedule that does not care about either of them. A cozy fantasy of potions, familiars, reluctant employment, and the slow, inconvenient pull of romance.