Kind of a long cut this time, but not as long as the last one.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot - and the school too.
Every spare moment I had over the next month I spent trying to soak up as much knowledge as I could about this new world I was going into. An Introduction to the World of Sorcery was especially helpful. From it I learned that non-magical people were called "Muggles" by the wizarding world. If you were a wizard (or witch) with no Muggles in your family, you were called a Pure-blood wizard; if you had Muggle heritage of any kind, you were called Half-blood, and if you were a wizard or witch with no wizard heritage, you were called Muggle-born. From this I guessed that I must be Muggle-born, as there was certainly no magic in my family that I was aware of.
From that book I also got a rather more comprehensive explanation of all the magical disciplines and studies that wizards and witches busied themselves with. These included not only the classes that I would be taking that school year, but also disciplines like Divination and Alchemy and Apparition. Some magical schools even offered what was called Muggle Studies, which was exactly that - a chance for someone who knew nothing about Muggles to learn how people functioned in a world without magic.
Apparently there was a lot more to learning magic than waving your wand and saying a few Latin derivatives. I would have liked to try casting a spell or two, but was rather intimidated by the preface of The Complete Guide to Charms and Spells, Level One, which was full of warnings about badly handled spells.
There seemed to be numerous modes of travel that wizards used - flying on brooms, the Floo Network, Portkeys, and Apparating. There also seemed to be a special system of trains, shuttles, and boats that the non-magical (Muggle) community knew nothing about, built explicitly for wizard use. Apparently wizards didn't use cars or planes, which made sense to me if they could fly on brooms.
And no, before you ask, I did not get up the nerve to talk to Coach Bombay about what was going down.
On Saturday the 28th, Angus Baldwin showed back up at the house to show us how to get to Weston's, as apparently it couldn't be reached by conventional means of travel. I had to rush and pack all my clothes and wizard stuff into my expandable suitcase (I had discovered to my surprise that the actual inside space was a lot bigger than it really had any right to be in a suitcase that size). The only things I did not put in my suitcase were Thomas, my owl, and the pouch of Sickles and Knuts that I still had.
In answer to our queries, Baldwin said that there was one of two ways for me to get to Weston's: by train or shuttle. He said that a train ticket would cost four Galleons*, upon which I remembered that I had just that still in my pouch. Baldwin said we'd have to go to the train station in Minneapolis to access either the shuttle or the train, so we drove down to the station that day. Baldwin seemed to have ridden in a car only a few times before, and he didn't know how to drive, which amused Mom. When we got to the station I felt uncommonly conspicuous, what with my owl in his cage. I knew it wasn't actually that much out of place, but I was still nervous.
Baldwin led the way into the building and in the general direction of the restrooms. On the far side of the men's room we came on an unmarked door, which Baldwin opened. I don't know what I had been expecting, maybe a utility room that no one was supposed to enter, or some kind of tunnel, but once again I was amazed as we stepped through into what appeared to be an entirely different place. It was a train station, certainly, but not the one I thought I knew. As in Flourescent Boulevard, a fair number of the people on this station were in cloaks and robes and pointed hats. There were also quite a number of teenagers who had large trunks and suitcases and cages or even loose pets, and I knew we had come to the right place.
"Got to get a ticket first," said Baldwin, and he steered us to the ticket office. The man behind the counter merely asked in a bored tone, "Bus or train?"
"Uh, train," I said nervously. "Weston's Academy."
"Four Galleons," he said.
I dumped out my pouch of money on the counter, and got ready to sort it into all kinds of laborious piles; but Baldwin just said "Let me handle it, kid," and waved his wand over the pile. Instantly the coins arranged themselves into stacks, which the man counted out before giving me a blue ticket and saying, "Your train leaves in thirty minutes. Have a good day."
Baldwin hurried us along the platform where one of the trains was waiting. It was very crowded; if I wasn't mistaken, there were more people getting on the train than getting off.
"And this is where we must part ways, Charlie," said Baldwin. "I've got a bus to catch. Good luck at Weston's!" And he turned and began pushing his way through the crowd.
I started preparing to be embarrassed, and sure enough Mom hugged me so tight I thought my ribs would crack (how is it that moms can always do that?). "Write me twice a week, since you can't call me," she said. "Goodbye!"
"Bye, Mom," I said, letting her hug me one more time before pulling away and squeezing my way onto the train.
The corridor was filled almost completely with kids who had trunks and cages like me, and I guessed that they were all going to Weston's too. I wondered how big the school actually was; Baldwin had made it sound pretty impressive, but then again, he was a representative, so that was kind of his job. I remembered that Connie and Guy were going to Weston's too, and kept an eye out for them as I walked by the compartments.
At last I found them. Guy was sticking his head out of one of the compartment doors and looking around, and I saw him.
"Hey, Guy!" I yelled, and waved at him. He saw me and grinned at me. "Hey, Charl!" he said. "Come on in."
Inside the compartment I got another surprise. Not only was Connie Moreau sitting there, but so were Adam Banks, Jesse and Terry Hall, Les Averman, Greg Goldberg, and Fulton Reed - in short, all the in-state Ducks. It was a bit crowded for one compartment, but I was so happy to see all their faces that I didn't mind.
"Well, look who it is!" called Jesse Hall. "Welcome back, Spaz!"
Trust Jesse to yell my old team name at me in greeting after not seeing me since getting back from L.A. It felt like old times. Well, almost, except without the out-of-state Ducks (Ken and Portman and Luis and Dwayne and Julie and Russ).
"Hello to you too, Jesse," I said, rolling my eyes.
"Told you he'd show up eventually," said Guy, clapping me on the shoulder as he shut the compartment door behind us. In a moment the others were all jumping up to greet me, and Averman grabbed my suitcase and slung it up into the overhead compartment for me. I sat down between Fulton and Jesse, and for what felt like the next hour or so got caught up with my friends.
Guy and Connie were having one of their good periods, which meant that they were speaking to each other and that Connie wasn't flirting too conspicuously with other boys.
Apparently everyone else had had pretty much the same introduction to the world of magic that I'd had, which basically amounted to someone knocking on their front door around the beginning of August and inviting them to this special program at Weston's. Fulton said he'd heard that our program was so exclusive that we were actually going to have entirely separate classes and dorms from all the other students. He said that there were only twenty-five of us, thirteen boys and twelve girls, and that we were supposed to be getting more intensive training (i. e., working harder) than the regular students. Lucky us.
Eventually, the topic strayed to Quodpot, and it was Adam who had the most to say on that subject, having read the most about it. He told us that Quodpot actually had its roots in a sport that was all the rage in Europe called Quidditch. Quidditch had only seven players per team instead of eleven, and played with four balls instead of one. Quidditch rules were a lot more complex, too.
Sometime into our conversation a woman with snack cart stopped by our compartment and asked if we wanted anything. We all surged up to the cart to see what she had; but none of it was stuff that I recognized, though it looked absolutely delicious. There were Almond Wands in every shape and size, and gummy-worm-like candy that moved (they were called Gummy Snakes), and licorice that turned a different color every five seconds, and Caramel Crunches that apparently felt soft on the tongue but crunched when you chewed them, and Chocolate Frogs in decorative boxes, and many more. We must have bought a third of the stuff on that cart, we went so crazy over it. Eating it was even better.
The Chocolate Frog's "decorative box" turned out to actually have a collectible card inside the lid with a picture of a famous wizard or witch, and underneath was written a short blurb about him or her. The pictures seemed to be semi-alive, and moved around in their cards.
"Who knew Merlin and Morgan were real people?" said Connie, looking over her card, which had a picture of Morgana le Fay on it.
"You're telling me," said Fulton. "I'm starting to wish I'd paid more attention in school when they talked about the Salem Witch Trials - I hear there's a real live witches' social club in Salem."
"I'm sure it'll come up in our History of Magic classes," I said around a mouthful of Caramel Crunches.
The ride was a long one, and took several hours. We knew this because Adam had a watch that used magic to tell the time (advantages of being a cake-eater; you can afford basically anything, scholarship or no scholarship). Most of us ate and slept for the majority of the trip, or occasionally somebody would get their trunk down and explore one of their books. Jesse even tried mending Averman's broken glasses with the Mending Spell ("Reparo!"), and it mostly worked, except that the frames changed color from black to bright green.
Thomas seemed to take exception to Connie's owl, whose name was Eleanor, and Goldberg's little falcon Jeff couldn't seem to resist showing off (at least that was what Goldberg said he was doing, it looked to me like he was just ruffling his feathers and preening), but otherwise our birds seemed okay. Of course, that could have had something to do with the fact that we had just recently fed them.
At last the train began to slow, eventually coming to a grinding halt. We all jumped up, gathered our trunks and owls, and headed out into the now crowded hallway. We pushed our way off the train onto the platform.
Because there was such a crowd, we really couldn't see very well where we were. All I knew for certain was that this station was in a city somewhere in Washington state which was entirely populated with wizards and that the school was about fifteen miles away. We followed the crowd, as nearly all of them were going to Weston's, and ended up outside where the parking lot would have been at a regular station. Here a long row of honest-to-goodness carriages sat waiting, presumably to take us to Weston's. Each carriage seemed to seat eight people besides the driver, and each had a team of two large, powerful-looking horses. Students were already beginning to climb into them.
Someone tugged on my elbow, and I turned around to see a tall, imposing woman that I was sure was a witch with dark brown hair pulled into a ponytail and grey eyes. She was wearing a long blue robe and holding a parchment that I was sure was a list. "Charlie Conway, I presume?" she asked.
"Uh, yes ma'am," I said. She seemed the kind of person one said "yes ma'am" to.
"Then you will be going to Weston's in a separate set of three carriages with the other students enlisted in our Power in Excellence program," she said. "You'll find them at the far end of the line down there." She pointed them out. Then she turned and began wading through the crowd, probably looking for more program kids. I turned and headed off in the direction she had pointed until I reached the last carriages in the line.
It was far less crowded down here. One of the carriages was already gone, and one was pulling away, with the most of the Ducks and a few other kids inside it. I hurried up to the last one.
"Need some help with that suitcase?" said a voice above me, and a familiar face under a cowboy hat leaned over the side.
"Dwayne Robertson?" I gasped.
"Charlie!" grinned Dwayne. "How's it going?"
"Great, just great," I said automatically, wondering if all the Ducks were going to be in this program. "Can I take you up on helping get this suitcase up there?"
"Sure!" Dwayne came around to the top of the steps going up the side and I heaved my suitcase up to him before climbing up myself. Once up there I sat down next to him, and looked around. Adam and Averman was also in the carriage, as were two very pretty and absolutely identical twin Asian girls and a girl with a great quantity of soft, curly red hair. But there was also a girl with a blonde braid over her shoulder. . .
"Charlie!" she cried joyously in her husky voice. "It's so great to see you!"
"Wow, Julie!" I was stunned. "You too? This is amazing!"
We were distracted for a few moments as the driver, ascertaining that he had the last of his eight passengers, whipped up the horses and we started off. Carriages move really slowly, and in one you feel every little bump or hollow in the ground. I began to appreciate cars a lot more.
We distracted ourselves by getting caught up again, and making friends with the three other girls - Emiko and Atsuko Londoh were the twins, and Vi Kendrick was the red-haired girl. Of the twins Emiko proved the more talkative and sociable, to the point of being bubbly, while Atsuko, though polite and gracious, was quieter and more reflective. Vi was soft-spoken too, but did not give me the impression of being shy.
Dwayne was himself exactly as I remembered him - dashing and bold and generous and just a little bit vain, while Julie was mostly excited about going to a school for magic. Between them they did most of the talking. [Notes by Julie: This is not quite true. Emiko talked just a much as I did, and Charlie himself got in more than a word or two.] And all this time the carriage bumped on, moving through a town that, like most other things in the wizarding world that I had seen so far, looked like a place from about a hundred and fifty years ago; and then out into the country, where there was literally nothing but streetlights on the gravel road. The line of carriages behind and head of us were the only signs of civilization around us.
After about two hours, Atsuko suddenly pointed ahead and said, "Look! Lights!"
It was true. Up ahead there now loomed what looked for all the world like an old university and a gathering of manor houses. The windows were lighted, and there were more lamps to light the numerous paths that now crisscrossed the one we were on. Our driver turned left onto one of them, and at first I thought that we were going to steer clear of everything altogether; but eventually we came on a big solitary building that was surprisingly far away from the rest of the others.
As we got closer, I saw that two other carriages were already parked (if that is the right word to use) in front - probably the two with the other program kids. Our driver pulled up next to the other two, and we climbed down one by one as he unhitched the horses and walked off with them. As we were unloading, the same witch in the blue robe that had earlier directed me to my carriage came out of the building to meet us.
"Lester Averman, Adam Banks, Charlie Conway, Julie Gaffney, Violet Kendrick, Atsuko and Emiko Londoh, and Dwayne Robertson?" she asked. I was impressed; she wasn't holding a list this time, and appeared to have memorized all our names. We must have been the last to arrive.
"That's us," said Averman.
"You will all please follow me into the dining hall for a meal and start-of-term announcements," she said. "Leave your trunks and cages inside the door - you will find them delivered to your dorms after dinner."
We followed her up a set of wide, shallow stone steps to a tall set of double doors which did not seem to have any doorknobs. There was a big knocker on each of the doors in the shape of the head of a beast, but our witch guide did not use either of them. Instead, she stopped a good six feet away from the doors, making the rest of us stop behind her, and drew her wand and pointed it at the doors. A stream of red sparks burst from the end of the wand, and the doors swung open.
*On ticket prices: Last I checked (November 2014), an Amtrak train ticket costs just over fifty dollars, which amounts to about five Galleons in wizard currency. I imagine that in 1994 it would be a bit lower, but I didn't know by how much.