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author's note – Thank you so much, leiselmae, for your particularly encouraging review. as much as everyone says you should write fanfiction to please yourself, it becomes a true joy to have other people enjoy it with you. Encouraging reviews are what drive me to make time in my week to write a chapter. I also thank Shadowbolt the Demon for reviewing. I'd like to finish this author's note by saying it's almost 11:00 pm, I've got a project due in ten hours that I have not yet started, and I'm just blissfully happy that I've posted another chapter up for Tyler Ridge. Please enjoy, oh few readers : )

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The next morning, Tyler woke to find out that his birthday wish had not been granted, and that he would be the youngest wizard-in-training ever. Well, not ever -- at least since the age requirement had been issued for all wizarding schools in the year 1789. Not only that, but when his father woke him up that morning to tell him, Tyler had another seizure, rendering him bedridden for the rest of the morning.

Trying to sort out his confused feelings was too much effort for Tyler as he sat in bed with the overwhelming prospect of attending school – a wizarding school – two years before he was supposed to. While his mother bustled in and out to give him soup and other made-up home remedies for the seizures, Tyler questioned her about Werdwall. He found out that kids went there until they were eighteen years old, twice Tyler's age.

"Do really I have to go, Mom?" he asked when she brought him a tall glass of orange juice late that morning.

"Are you feeling better?" She evaded his question ungracefully.

"I'm fine... I'm always fine after my seizures. I just don't want to--"

"Tyler," his mother said, "You might not want to go, but it really is for the best."

Tyler was trying not to get angry with her. "How do you know?"

"Remember when you started third grade, and you already knew all the multiplication tables before anyone else?"

"Yeah."

His mother smiled. "You got to go into the fourth grade math class with all the older kids and learn math with them because you were so smart."

Tyler never told her how much the kids in the fourth grade class made fun of him during those math sessions. If she knew that, she never would have tried to make him feel better with this particular story.

"Going to Werdwall early is kind of like going into that fourth grade math class a little early."

Tyler swallowed dryly, hoping Werdwall wouldn't be near the same as that math class. "But I knew I was better at math than the other kids; magic is really different. I've never even done any magic!"

"Just because you didn't see the magic, doesn't mean it didn't happen," she explained softly. "Your father didn't show any signs of being magical when he was young, and when he got the letter, he was as surprised as you were. Then he found out that he had magically made his baby brother, your uncle Luke, temporarily mute more than four times. He didn't even know it until he asked his headmistress after he had started school."

"Did Uncle Luke go to Werdwall?" Tyler asked.

"He went to Katoaki Academy in California."

"Can't I go there instead of Werdwall?" Tyler would rather be clear across the country than in a boarding school with Alex. His frustration of being forced to go to Werdwall on top of having another seizure started to emerge despite his best efforts to suppress it.

"No." She answered shortly. "Your dad went to talk to the people at Werdwall, and he thinks it's best—"

"I don't want to go!" Tyler said suddenly, pushing the sheets down and getting out of bed. "What if I have another seizure? Why can't I just wait two years? Nobody even really knows if I'm magical or not!"

"Tyler!" his mother reprimanded. "Get back into bed!"

"I don't want to get back in bed and I don't want to go to Werdwall!"

"Tyler William Ridge, get back in bed this instant!"

He sat down on his bed immediately; Estelle Ridge didn't pull out a middle name unless she had reached her last straw, something Tyler knew all too well from overhearing her battles with Alex.

She seemed like she was trying not to raise her voice as she continued: "You are always complaining about how everyone treats you like you're too young to do anything," she said quickly, as if she had been waiting to say it all morning. "For once your age isn't being considered, and you have the opportunity to do something that no nine year-old has done in over two hundred years."

Tyler was silent. His mother handed him the glass of juice she was still holding.

"I'm not going to tell you that it'll be easy," she continued, more sympathetically, "because it won't be. But they obviously know something you don't by inviting you to come. I promise that you'll understand the reason someday, but for now you have to trust their decision."

Tyler stared at his socked feet. There would be no weaseling his way out of going. He nodded his head to show his mom that he accepted his fate and would go without any more struggle. At least, with no outward signs of struggling.

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The long summer days turned into long summer weeks. The boys were shuffled from soccer practice to swimming lessons and all the other normal summer activities they did before they knew that they were going to Werdwall. Tyler tried to stay away from his older brother as much as he could, since Alex seemed to feel like Tyler was going to Werdwall just to make him angry.

The both of them were forbidden to mention magic outside of the house – even when in the house their mother encouraged them to whisper. The magical channel (called WBS) was only allowed on when their neighbor, Pamela Washington, wasn't home; she had a way of sneaking looks into the Ridge's house at inopportune moments. Since she was old and didn't have any real hobbies, Pamela was almost always home, so WBS was almost never on. Estelle supplied Tyler and Alex with as many magical books as they liked, but none that she gave them taught how to actually use magic. Most of them were comic books or short stories with young wizards as main characters who solved unlikely mysteries; the rest were dull books about the history of magic, which were only worth the few moving pictures within.

Tyler had never seen Alex read so much in his entire life. He was even reading the history books, not just looking at their pictures. He became a walking, obnoxious and loud encyclopedia of all things magical, or at least all things magical mentioned in the few history books.

"The wizards in the American Indian tribes were so different than the English wizards," he spouted off at dinner one night in late August, trying his best to sound intelligent. "They knew a lot more about making potions because a bunch of the most magical plants are in America."

"Very good, Alex," their father said idly while chewing his meatloaf and reading The North Star, a wizarding newspaper.

"Chris, don't read the paper at the dinner table please, honey," Estelle said, dishing out more mashed potatoes onto his plate.

While his father ignored his mother's commands, Tyler eyed the moving pictures on the back of the newspaper. One of them caught his eye: a wealthy-looking wizard who grinned slyly out at Tyler. His nose was abnormally small in comparison to the rest of his face and somehow looked tall, although Tyler couldn't be sure since the picture was only of his face.

"Who's that man?" Tyler asked, pointing at the picture. His father turned the newspaper over to look. His expression became hard to read, something between confusion and surprise.

"Why do you want to know?" he asked, eyeing his son somewhat suspiciously. This reaction wasn't what Tyler expected, and he didn't know how to answer. He wasn't going to tell the truth – that he felt like he somehow knew the man very well.

"Just curious," Tyler lied, trying not to look like he really wanted to know.

"Well," his mother said loudly. "I think it's about time we think about getting you kids your school supplies."

"Yes!" Alex yelled gleefully; he had been waiting to get his supplies since the day the list had come. Tyler wasn't so eager, because he had still been secretly hoping that he would somehow get out of going to Werdwall.

"Where are we getting our stuff?" Alex asked fervently. "I saw a commercial on WBS for wands and they said the store was—"

"Alex!" his mother hissed, "not so loud."

"Can't you just pick up my stuff, and I'll stay here?" Tyler said dejectedly.

"Don't start that attitude, young man," his father warned. "We're going as a family."

"You're going, too?" Tyler asked skeptically. His father was almost always too busy with work and leading the community watch program to do anything with the whole family.

"Yes, I'm going too," he answered with a smile.

"Do we have to go all together?" Alex spat, glaring at Tyler.

"Why?" Tyler sneered, rising to Alex's taunt. "Don't want people to know that your little brother might be better than you at something?"

"No, I just wouldn't want anyone to accidentally step on you, runt."

"Boys!"

Tyler ignored their mother. "They won't be close enough because they're afraid you'll lecture them on the properties of dragon hide!"

"Tyler!"

Alex's face was sour, and after quick contemplation decided he wouldn't let Tyler get the last insult in this fight.

"At least I can DO magic! You're too busy having seizures and not growing to know if you can even BE a wizard!"

"That's ENOUGH!" their father shouted, his angry voice ringing in the newly silent room. "If either of you say another word your mother and I will go to The Palace without you and won't buy the gifts we were planning to get you."

Neither of the boys spoke, and both of them forgot what they had originally been fighting about. Even Tyler was filled with instant enthusiasm at the prospect of getting a magical toy or magical candy. While they silently made faces at each other, their parents arranged to leave for what they kept calling "The Palace" in the morning.

Late that night, Tyler pressed his ear against his bedroom door, confirming that his parents had gone to bed and wouldn't hear him sneaking around. While talk of going to The Palace had distracted Tyler, he never fully forgot about the picture of the man in The North Star. The entire evening his father held onto the newspaper, almost as if he knew that Tyler was waiting for him to put it down so he could sneak a glance at the story accompanying the man with the small nose.

Tyler watched him roll up the paper and put it in the bright red recycling bin in the garage just before bedtime.

Hoping that Pamela Washington wasn't snooping around their house, Tyler turned on the garage light and kneeled next to the recycling bin and fished out the slightly damp paper. He quickly flipped through the pages searching for the inexplicably familiar face, but the man was nowhere to be found. Tyler searched through each page, looking at them all carefully, but the page with the man's picture simply wasn't there.

Tyler furiously threw the paper back into the bin. His father knew; somehow he knew that Tyler would go looking for the wealthy- looking man. He hated secrets being kept from him. He hated that his father deliberately kept him from finding out about the man. Tyler's anger became red-hot, and it took everything he had to keep from picking up the recycling bin and throwing it out the small garage window.

Tyler knew that this man was the key to why he was going to Werdwall. If he could find out more about the man, Tyler would discover what, if any, magic he possessed.