The next morning, after roll-call and the playing of the morning announcements, the students were allowed the remainder of the homeroom period as unstructured time. However, it was not long before Professor Hathaway summoned a guide-star which led them to the North Wing Needle Tower. It led them to a large room on the ground floor full of benches. On the walls there were far more locker ports than most other classrooms had. An open doorway gave everyone a view of the North Wing Courtyard, where thee days before most of them had arrived at school by landing on flying carpets.

  Next to the doorway, on the right, there was a whiteboard - but the teacher’s desk that had been present in every classroom Simon had been in up to that point was nowhere to be seen. Instead, to the right of the whiteboard was an unassuming office-style door — the kind whose upper half was a translucent window. On that window was printed: “Prof. Feng”.

  Simon sat on the bench between Jesse and Tom, his tension rising by the moment. Finally, after the three tolls of the bell sounded to start class, an Asian woman in her mid forties came through the open doorway. Her hair was tied in twin braids. She was wearing a grey robe with black outlines of compass motifs embroidered on it - each one with the ’N’ at the North side largest, and the ‘E’, ’S’, and ‘W’ letters somewhat smaller.

  “Good morning everyone,” said the woman. “I am Professor Feng - and welcome to Ouranourgy class - where you will learn the art of navigating the skies. Specifically, you will be learning to fly using magical flight vehicles - that is, objects enchanted specifically for the purpose of flight. In our fist unit, which is arguably the most important one, we will be learning how to fly using a broomstick.”

  Simon sat nervously, wondering if he should have gotten his broomstick from his locker. He noticed that most, though not by any means all of the other students had theirs.

  “Broomstick riding is very important because not all of you will need to operate magic carpets after you do so in this class.” Simon thought of the carpet he had flown on to get to Misty Peaks and was somewhat unnerved by the idea of having to operate one of those - even in class. He figured he’d much rather just let Mr. Johnson do all the carpet piloting for him, thank you.

  “Very few of you will need to operate flying cars or bicycles,” continued Profess Feng. “And though you will be learning to fly a mortar and pestle in this class, nobody has used those for practical flight in centuries. But riding a broomstick is an essential life skill for any witch or wizard to have. You can go lots of places with the etherian pathways, but not every place you’ll need to go will have an etherian portal handy for you. You’ll often find that to get where you need to go, there’s nothing but the basics.”

  Simon’s intimidation at the idea of having to pilot a flying carpet gave way to sheer bewilderment. He had no idea what these “etherian pathways” or “etherian portals” were.

  After that, Professor Feng went on to discussing the various units of study the class would go through over the course of the year, which included broomsticks for the whole first semester. This would be followed in the second semester by flying carpets, avian mortar and pestle, and the aerial cauldron.

  “Now I need each of you to get your broomstick from your locker if you haven’t already,” said Professor Feng, “and meet me out in the Courtyard. As you can see, we’ve got plenty of locker ports here if you need one. And just to be clear, you won’t need your book bag for this, so please leave that in your locker.”

  Simon got as up the Professor had instructed, went to one of the locker ports, fetched his broom, and went out to the courtyard.

  “Okay class,” said the Professor, after a few minutes. “I need you to stand about two broom-lengths from your neighbor.” She waited a minute or two, for everyone follow this instruction.

  “Okay now,” she said. “If you take a look, not far from the tip of your broomstick’s handle, on the top-side, you will see a dial with an arrow surrounded by numbers from zero to ten. Since you aren’t riding it right now, it should be set to zero - which means that your broom is turned off.”

  Simon easily found the dial that she was talking about - and sure enough, it was indeed set to zero.

  “This dial is only present on instructional brooms,” explained the Professor. “This is because when you start learning to ride the broomstick, you will be starting at level one, where it is controlled entirely by verbal commands. By the time you get to level ten, it will be controlled entirely by mental commands, just like a normal broomstick. If you’re feeling intimidated by having to command a broomstick that way, I should remind you that that’s how you command your arms and legs. You don’t have trouble moving them that way because you’re used to it. And eventually, you will be with a broomstick, too. And it’s to get you to that point that the broomstick has ten levels.

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  “Now, in a moment, I will tell you to move your dial to level one. After you do this, be careful what you say, because you don’t want to accidentally say something that the broomstick will take as a command. So anyway - that said - please turn your dials to position one.”

  The rest of the class went smoothly as Professor Feng guided the class on how to mount the broomstick and maneuver it. She even went over how to cloak it from individuals without magical sight — although, as these broomsticks were of an instructional model, the cloaking effect was only partial.

  “Okay,” said Professor Feng near the end of class. “Go put your broomsticks back in your locker and get your book bags. When you’re done with that, stick around inside so I can send you to your next class.”

  The guide-star that Professor Feng summoned took the students all the way to the third floor of Wright Tower in the southwest corner of the East Wing. This class was Magical History. It was taught by Professor Eleanor Whitfield, a woman with fairly short greying hair that had once been a reddish brown, and still had enough of that color remaining that the students could clearly see it.

  Professor Whitfield was very soft-spoken — too soft-spoken. Simon often found that he had to strain to hear what she was saying — and this distracted him from being able to really make sense of the meaning behind her words.

  “Great,” he thought to himself, as he followed the guide star to the Great Hall for lunch after class. “I’m going to have a hard time passing this class.”

  After lunch, he went back to his dorm room to grab his last set of books for the day. He then joined the other first-years of Hemlock Tower in the Common Room. It wasn’t long before a large Black man with a trim beard came in wearing a dark-blue robe with unfamiliar symbols embroidered on it in bright silver.

  “Greetings, first-years!” said the man. “I am Professor Gideon Thorn, and I am here to teach you all the basics of Warding magic. All the way from what yer gonna need to protect yourself from the little stuff that everyone’s gotta watch out for — to the big stuff that you hope you’ll never need, but better know just in case. Everyone here excited to learn how to protect yourselves and those you care about?”

  Some of the students in the crowd began murmuring “yes”.

  “That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic,” said Professor Thorn.

  “Yes!” shouted Simon.

  Professor Thorn pointed at him with a smile.

  “Anyway,” said the Professor to the whole class. “Follow me, and I’ll take you to my classroom. And do pay attention, because these little things we do to help first-years find their way around here - like guide-stars and teachers showing up to your residence towers? That’s just for the first two weeks. After that, y’all going to be expected to find your way around the castle like everyone else.”

  He took the students all the way to fifth floor of Redmond Tower in the South Wing. Once there, after quickly calling roll, he distributed the syllabus as most of the other teachers had done and went over what would be covered in class that year.

  “This year, of course,” he explained at one point, “you will only be learning the basics of Warding. There’s a lot more that you’re going to learn here at Misty Peaks than just what you can learn in the first year. That’s why we have you here for seven years. But this is the basics - and it’ll be the foundation for everything you learn in years two through seven and after that.”

  * * *

  After class, after putting his books back in his dorm room, Simon went down to the Common Room to relax and unwind. Aside from finding that his history teacher was someone whom he would have a hard time listening to, it had been a pretty good day. But everything was extremely new to him, and he needed a little bit of down-time to process it.

  He sat on a couch, stared out at Drippidy Falls, and didn’t do much of anything. He just sat there — relaxing as the water poured into the lake. It wasn’t long before Luna, out of nowhere, leapt on him and started kneading his lap, purring. He scratched her on the ear and she purred even more loudly before finally sitting down on his lap to enjoy even more pampering.

  Shortly after that, Amy came by.

  “How was your day, Simon?” she asked.

  Simon tensed. He was used to everyone else calling him by that name - but somehow, he couldn’t explain why, felt sad that Amy was calling him by that name as well.

  “Pretty good,” he said. “Can’t wait till Thursday evening.”

  “Well good news,” said Amy. “It looks like it’ll be ready by tomorrow.”

  Simon beamed.

  “Happy?” she asked.

  Simon nodded. “I have a question,” he asked.

  “What is it?” asked Amy.

  Simon looked at Amy, showing his hesitancy to ask the question aloud - so she came and sat beside him. “What’s your question?” she asked more quietly.

  “What about my clothes?” asked Simon.

  “Your clothes?” asked Amy.

  “I can’t go around as - well - the other me,” he said. “Not dressed in these clothes.”

  “Oh I see,” said Amy. “Would you like to go somewhere to talk about it?”

  Simon looked at Luna, who quickly got up and jumped right off his lap. “Yes,” he nodded at Amy.

  She took him to the hallway that led to the dormitories. But instead of going up the stairwell on the left, she took him to the one on the right and when two flights of stairs up, Luna following in tow. Then, she took him one flight down on the left stairwell. The floor they arrived at was unlike the others. Instead of having doorways on the outside, the perimeter hallway was far more spacious, and the outer wall was covered with windows. There were even a few benches against the walls. Simon could even see some of the castle walls, as well as some of the other towers through the windows.

  After going a little while down this hallway, Amy sat down with Simon at one of the benches.

  “So,” she said, “you’re wondering about girl clothes?”

  “Yes,” said Simon. “I can’t go around as a girl wearing boy’s clothes. They might not even fit on me!”

  “Well about the part of them not fitting on you,” said Amy, “you’re only about ten, so they might. We won’t really know until you first transform.”

  “But even if I fit in them,” said Simon, “they won’t be right. I mean, even the uniforms are different!”

  “Well,” suggested Amy, “I know someone who can help, but —”

  “But what?” asked Simon.

  “Well,” said Amy, “to be able to do anything, she might need to know why.”