A loud bell woke him up at 6:30 the following morning. A few minutes later, Grell banged into the cabin, clapping his hands.
"Up and at 'em!" he shouted to the sleepy eleven year olds. "First day of classes! You'll be needing some food if you want to impress your teachers!"
Everybody begrudgingly began to get ready for the day. Seeing the long lines in front of the three bathrooms, Jack got changed inside his sleeping bag, with only a small struggle.
Sitting up with his brown hair sticking out in seemingly random directions, Jack noticed a tapestry on the wall, and looking around the cozy cabin he saw that it was repeated all over the place. It showed a green pegasus in flight, set to a red background, and looking closer Jack noticed that its wings and entire body was moving subtly. He jumped up when the pegasus gave a great flap that even made noise.
"That's the seal of Mekkler," Gavin said from behind him, also dressed. "That's why our sleeping bags are green and red too. Now let's get off to breakfast. I'm starving."
The boats took them back across the lake, although Jack noticed that some kids were flying across on broomsticks or flying carpets (they seemed to be going much faster than the boats).
"Do you have a broom?" Jack asked Gavin.
"Nope," he answered. "I never played any broom sports and my mom could take me anywhere by side-along-apparation. That's apparating with somebody else."
"But what's apparation?"
"Kinda like teleporting," Gavin said after a few seconds. "Only it gets dangerous over long distances. Only really skilled mages attempt more than a hundred miles or so. And only the very top mages go transcontinental."
"How do you do it?" Jack asked, eager to see if he could do it.
"I dunno. You have to be seventeen to get a license."
The food at breakfast was mainly cereal and bagels, with bacon and scrambled eggs. Jack took a bit of all options except bacon, which he found disgusting.
Their first class of the day was charms, which Jack was really excited for. But he was let down, all that they learned was the basic background. Their wands were never even taken out, not even to practice the wand movements that Professor Dregyn kept saying were so important. It came as a relief when the class was over, and they went to a history of magic.
The subject was slightly more interesting, they went quickly over what they would be learning (goblin rebellions and the like) and went straight in. Jack was intensely interested at first, although he soon became bored as it was purely a lecture class. Gavin and Jack passed notes to each other the entire second half of the class.
Jack and Gavin walked into lunch complaining about the boredom both classes had induced. "It's just like muggle-school!" Jack exclaimed. "Only with different subjects!"
Gavin agreed with him, and the two spent the entire meal complaining with the other first years.
When they were walking out the door for their afternoon classes (hoping they would show some improvement). Jack realized that Grell, who had been talking with some seventh years this morning, had never shown up.
The afternoon classes were just as boring as the morning, and now they had a small pile of homework to contend with. Making up their minds to teach themselves, and still get perfect marks, Jack and Gavin did the homework during dinner, and were practicing charms well into the night. They had yet to master any but wingardium leviosa, but they were a good deal ahead of all the other students.
Author's note: When Jack gets reviews he learns new spells!