Welcome to Wattlegum

The slope grew steeper, and we caught glimpses of Wattlegum through the treetops. It sat on a hill overlooking the forest, invisible to satellites and repellent to hiking muggles. I moved faster in my keenness to get a better view, leaving Harry and Ms Mathers behind. My friends hurried to keep pace with me.

We rounded a curve in the path, and there it was – my beautiful, stone-walled school, moss growing in clumps, ferns peeking out through the cracks. The roof was powder blue, and two round turrets stood at the northwest and southwest corners.

The first time I had seen the school, I was ten, turning eleven that year. I'd already witnessed magical things thanks to my morphing abilities and accidental spells, and the Antipodean Odyssey had been a majestic surprise, but I had grown up in a muggle household, attending a muggle primary school until that point.

To come upon this… well. It was something else. To clap my eyes upon a real castle hidden in the depths of the Tasmanian forest, to clamber up those mud-caked, slippery stone steps for the first time, to see the dining hall in all its glamour, and teachers using wands to perform various menial tasks…

I realised I had never imagined magic as magical until that moment.

My breath rushed from me in a whoosh as a smile crept across my face. I still had a year to go, and I would make sure to enjoy every moment.

"There it is," Evie said with a tinge of dread.

Kooky jabbed his beak through the bars of his cage. I only just moved my leg in time. "Calm down, Kooky! A little longer, and then I'll let you out, okay?"

I always had to settle Kooky into the roosting tower – he was terrible-tempered, and very antisocial. He was especially narky at newcomers, which meant any first years who brought birds meant added agitation for him. It usually took a bit of yelling, a bit of waving my arms, and a cut of bacon to appease him, and only once I was certain he was getting on with the other birds did I feel safe to leave him.

The welcome ceremony had already commenced at the foot of the main staircase. Aunt Shelly had, as always, invited family from the mainland to perform a traditional dance to start the new year. The digeridoo droned beneath the sharp clack of the tapping sticks, and three dancers moved around a small campfire that smelled of greenwood and sweet herbs. The dancers moved in respect to various Australian animals, the dust stirring and creating cloudy ghosts of the creatures to move with the dancers, and the digeridoo changed texture and rhythm to match the animal. I'd had nightmares of the digeridoo's eerie version of a dingo's howl for weeks in my first year here.

"Crumbs, there's Mr Stone," Pippa said, ducking behind Chelsea before we could reach the main crowd. "Hide me!"

Mr Stone was the Charms teacher – a shrivelled old man who walked with a cane and didn't mind whacking people on the legs with it when he wanted them to move out of the way. Half the time he forgot what he was teaching, and often demanded we hand up homework he'd never assigned. He refused to retire, and Ms Mathers felt obligated to keep him, considering he'd been there longer than any of the staff.

"Why are you hiding from Mr Stone?" Cheslea said, trying to look over her shoulder at Pippa. "He probably can't see past his own nose by now, anyway."

Pippa refused to get up from her crouch. "That's right, I forgot you weren't with us when it happened."

Evie and I laughed as we remembered what had caused Pippa's sudden panic.

"There was a massive cockroach in the entrance hall while the seventh years were lining up for the graduation ceremony last year," I said, and Pippa shuddered. "Pippa freaked out and whacked it with a stick, only the stick turned out to be Mr Stone's cane. He'd left it to change into the ceremony robes in the alcove, and when he came back it was covered in cockroach guts."

"So of course all the seventh years told him it was me," Pippa said, sulking. "Dirty rats." She peeked out around Chelsea to check where he was. "He didn't manage to catch me before we hopped on the boat on the way home, but I just know he's spent all summer cooking up some horrible punishment for me."

"You should've gotten it out of the way last year, then," Evie said.

"I was hoping he might've forgotten by the time we got back!"

But it was clear he hadn't forgotten, unless he was searching for another misbehaving student in the crowd as people milled towards the entrance hall.

I patted Pippa on the shoulder as I passed. "Tough luck, Pips. I'll see you later. I have to put Kooky in the roosting tower before he pecks my leg off."

"Hide me, hide me, please!" Pippa said to Chelsea and Evie as I walked away.

The roosting tower was in the southwest turret. I had only just started up the small staircase to the back entrance when an invisible force had me flying through the air. I yelled, my luggage and Kooky's cage slipping from my grip, and I hit the ground hard a good twenty metres from the castle.

Kooky's cage burst open when it hit the ground. He fluttered up, making all sorts of angry noises, and flew to the roosting tower on his own.

Great. He'd probably start a fight the moment he got there.

"Romy Moon, what on Earth do you think you're doing?" Miss Depraysie, the Alchemy teacher, hurried over and helped me up.

I couldn't answer. I felt like someone had punched me in the solar plexus. Harry and Ms Mathers hurried around the corner too. When they saw me, they both stopped.

"Romy?" Ms Mathers said in surprise.

I finally caught my breath, but continued to clutch my aching ribs. "Have… bad-tempered… kookaburra. Tried… putting… him… away."

Harry frowned at the small set of steps I'd tried to climb. "I put an Impediment jinx on them yesterday, but they weren't supposed to have that much of an impact."

"Aunt Shelly would've added her Dreamtime magic to the jinx," Ms Mathers said while Miss Depraysie dusted me down.

"She did tell students not to enter the castle until the welcome ceremony was over," Miss Depraysie said.

"Romy was one of the last to arrive – she wouldn't have heard it," Ms Mathers said.

Harry was still staring at the distance between the castle steps and me, as if mentally measuring how far I'd been thrown. "What's Dreamtime magic, and how can I get some?" He frowned. "Wait… isn't it Indigenous Australian spirituality?"

"Muggle Dreamtime is," Ms Mathers said. "A parallel time stream to our own, when the universe was created, and society values and laws were laid down." She used her wand to repair the zipper of my suitcase, which had broken open on landing. "But the Dreamtime we use here is different. Magic from the deepest earth. You right, Romy?"

My hip ached from where I'd landed on it, but I'd live. "Yep. Although maybe give me a list of all the other defensive magic you've put on the castle, okay?"

I glanced up at the roosting tower, where I was certain I could hear the faint sounds of a bird fight.

If my welcome to Wattlegum was anything to go by, this year promised to be unexpected at the very least.