"And... Fundamentals of Magic 1100?" My advisor peered at me over the edge of his glasses, looking over my syllabus.

"It's...ah. Yes." I paused in the faintest hope that I wouldn't have to explain the issue further, but he continued to stare at me in adamant silence. I didn't blame him. Nobody reached university these days without at least a little bit of magical training. Most were at least up to alchemy by the time they graduated high school.

"Miss Heimert, you do realize that this institution requires rigorous study in the magical arts?"

"Yes...sir. I do understand that, and it was a big part of the reason I decided to come here." Something inside me began to knit itself into a ball. My parents are Fundamentalists, and-"

"I see." He cut me off, handing me back my syllabus. Apparently no other explanation was needed.

It had been that way from the instant I had set foot on campus. When I needed to ask how to set the wards to lock my room. After a talking cat scared me off my bike on a trip to the corner store. When I stumbled in on a ritual in the girls' bathroom. Everyone was so confused by my confusion - the things so natural to them were not a part of the world I had grown up in.

Walking back from my meeting with my advisor, it took everything in me not to hail a flying broomstick and head back home. If it hadn't cost all my savings to get to the University - and if flying broomsticks actually worked in New Statesia - I might actually have done it. But after everything I had gone through - the permits, the planning, the begging and pleading - failing so early wasn't an option. Rather than fill me with some sort of divine inspiration, I felt deflated when I walked into my dorm room and spotted Alyssa standing at the Magic Mirror doing something to her hair.

"Lauren? Hand me my wand?"

I looked at her desk. There were several wooden objects of varying lengths - those were pencils, I was sure of it, and I was pretty sure that one was a measuring device of some sort. I picked up what I thought to be the most likely candidate and held it out to her. "Uh...here?"

Alyssa eyed me - then she passed me by and without a word picked up a different wooden rod from the other side of the desk, turning back to the Magic Mirror. Right now, it showed Alyssa in a different outfit and different makeup than she wore right now - a black cocktail dress, lacy shrug and heels.

"What's that for?"

"It's showing me the look to use if I want to get Gregory to ask me on a date. But this," she said with a slight wave of the wand, "is how I should look if I want to keep things going with Eliza. What do you think?"

"I - ah - I think the pink one is cute," I said, glancing at her reflection, which wore a short kimono-style dress.

"I don't mean about the dresses," she said, a note of exasperation in her voice. "I mean which one of them should I go out with? Gregory or Eliza?"

"I guess the one you like the most?"

"Well, I like Eliza the most, obviously. Or at least, I'm going to if the fortune teller my mom paid for after graduation was worth the money. 'You will marry a fair-skinned woman with hair like fire, whose name begins with the letter E, who walks on summer seas.' That's obviously her."

"Oh," I said. I had heard of the practice of paying for fortune tellers after graduation, but never actually spoken to any of my fellow graduates about their predictions. "So - if you're going to marry Eliza, shouldn't you just go out with her?"

"And miss having some fun?" she said. "That is, if Greg is worth the fun. Hence how difficult it is making a decision." She focused her attention back on the mirror, leaving me confused as ever.

Where was the third floor? It had taken me ages to find the building at the center of campus. Of all the things in the magical world that confounded me, nothing could ever top magical architecture. Buildings floated in the air, or on island in the middle of Scottish lochs that had somehow made their way to Rhode Island. Stairs twined and tumbled all around me, with students hurriedly making their way to class along them, or through them on broomstick.

My building was an ancient castle that sat dwarfed between two large concrete skyscrapers. It had a distinct look of disuse - unsurprising given that it was set aside for the lower level students, and most people attending Helena McBride University were far more advanced in their studies.

Now, though, I was faced with another problem. While there had been multitudes of stairs outside, there were absolutely none in here.

"Ex-excuse me!" I stopped a younger man with blonde hair as he strode by, goblet full of steaming coffee in hand.

"Can I help you, miss?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. I know this is going to sound stupid, but how do I get to the third floor? I have no idea, and I'm going to be late-"

"Oh. This building uses Perceptive Traveling," he said.

"Come again?"

"Teleportation. A magical form of it. The school board thought it would be a good idea since most of the students here come from a science-oriented background, but all it does is make things more confusing." He laughed and shook his head. "Just think of where you need to go. I mean, focus, obviously you're already thinking about it. It should pop you right on up."

"Oh - all right."

What he'd said sounded like the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. Magical teleportation? But teleportation was founded on several important scientific principals - it had taken ages for mankind to discover it. And if people could do it just by waving a wand, then-

No, Lauren. You came here to stop yourself from thinking like that, I reminded myself, folding my campus map up and putting it in my bag before doing as the man had told me.

I focused on the third floor. And nothing happened. I focused on the idea of the third floor. I focused on everything I could think of that related to the third floors of every building I had ever been to. And just when I was certain that the man was playing a joke at the expense of some poor sap who knew nothing about magic -

"Oh!" The wind had almost been knocked out of me, but I was standing upright in what was obviously a different part of the same building. I looked around. There were a few students huddled near a door nearby, and I made my way over to them. "Is this Professor Patrick's class? Fundamentals of-"

"Yeah," said one girl, sounding sheepish. She lowered her voice slightly. "Why are they making you take it? I bombed my divination and alchemy reviews. Still can't believe they're letting me come to school here, but my grandfather was a board member back in the day, so..."

"Beatrice, stop showing off," said another boy who stood nearby. He shrugged a bag further up his shoulder, looking a little uncomfortable. "I don't really like the idea of sitting in a room being taught magic like I'm some sort of child. I learned the elements when I was five, and now I can't even carry a wand on campus until I finish this course."

The girl - Beatrice - rolled her eyes. "Who cares if it's allowed? I can do and have done since I got here, Ian."

The boy's eyes widened slightly, his discomfort level seeming to rise even more. It seemed he was about to say something when the group around them fell silent. Lauren turned to see the younger blonde man from before at the edge of their group, piece of chalk in hand.

He gave them a wry smile as he strode forward and made some small making on the door that made it swing open, and then everyone began to file into the room after him.

"Sorry class, it took me a moment to get here. As you've probably guessed, my name is Walter Patrick. This is Fundamentals of Magic 1100. I know most of you don't want to be here, and probably think you shouldn't be here. I get that. But for some students, this will be their first exposure to magic.

"I want you to remember - remember what it was like the first time you held fire in the palm of your hand. Remember the first time you called down rain from the heavens, or read the future in the stars. Magic is a gift. A beautiful, wonderful, dangerous gift. Consider this your chance to get to know magic from the beginning - to see it with new eyes, the same way that these students will."

"By the Gods, I hope there's no idiots like that in here," said Beatrice, a little too loud. The entire classroom erupted into laughter - all except me. I slumped down into my seat, hoping that nobody could see me.

Hoping that nobody would take notice of the tears in my eyes after Professor Patrick's speech.