Chapter 2
Sirius woke up the next morning, after a shower and getting dressed he headed downstairs to where Ailith was making breakfast.
"Our new housemates will be arriving at ten." Ailith told him as he sat down at the table.
"Okay." Sirius responded, showing that he heard her.
Ailith soon came to the table with two plates of bacon and eggs, she sat down with him as they began to eat.
"I hope they agree to our timetable." Ailith said, looking over at a weekly chart with her and Sirius' names as well as the names Tech and Glitch on along with household duties.
"Man," Sirius laughed. "I remember when I first came here, I was so shocked with the prospect that I'd had to do things myself. I was so used to house elves doing the chores and making the food for me."
"Yeah, Tech and Glitch quickly knocked you back to reality. I still remember your face when they told you that you had to 'clean up your own shit'.
Sirius suddenly burst out laughing. "I will never get used to you swearing."
Ailith rolled her eyes.
After breakfast, with Sirius cleaning up since Ailith made the food, the two packed away their belongings, settling in properly.
At 10 o'clock there was a knock at the front door.
Sirius opened the door to reveal Tara and Darren with their bags.
"Nice seeing you two again." Sirius grinned, moving to allow them in. "Lith, it's the two from their train!" he called to Ailith.
Ailith came down the stairs to see the new arrivals.
"So, we're going to live together?" Tara asked. "What a coincidence."
"Not really." Sirius shook his head, leading the two to the living room. "The academy like the students to be as comfortable with their housemates as possible, which usually means friends and family end up together. But if a new student doesn't have either at the academy they monitor their interactions with others on the train to try and work out where is best to put them."
"And since we met on the train, and there's two of you and we had two spaces free, it's understandable that you ended up here." Ailith concluded.
"Okay." Darren said, dragging out the 'a'.
"Come one, we'll show you to your rooms." Sirius said.
After getting Darren and Tara settled in, Sirius and Ailith decided to give a tour of the Academy so that the two would know their way when classes started.
"What we're in now is the student village." Ailith explained as they walked. "This is where the older students, i.e. us, stay during our time at the academy."
"There's usually four students to each house. And other than being given a set sum of money each month, we're expected to fend for ourselves basically. Cooking, cleaning and all that." Sirius continued.
"It's up to us how we spend that money, such as on food and such. But we've got to make sure that money lasts the month. If it doesn't, students are expected to do jobs around the academy to make more money."
"Do they really expect us to be able to live like this?" Darren asked, being used to his parents always dealing with everything.
"It prepares us for how things will be in the outside world or something like that." Said Sirius. "Be glad we don't have play bills. Anyway, newcomers are usually paired with experienced students so they can learn about spending the money without running into problems. Besides, at least we're given more freedom this way, the younger students live in the dorms."
Sirius pointed at some building not too far away from the student village.
"You'll have stayed their last night until your placement was sorted." He said.
"When you live in the dorms you don't have to clean up after yourself as much, food is made for you and you're not expected to pay for it outside of your parents paying for tuition, but you also live under more rules such as curfew and you don't get much choice with your food or how much you get." Ailith explained. "Anyway, that way…" she pointed down a street going left. "Is the market place. It's where the students and teachers go to buy their food and other stuff."
The four kept on walking until they reached a wall with an open gate.
"Inside there it the academy itself, where we take all our classes and such. The dorms are also inside there as well. The gates open at eight in the morning and close eight in the afternoon, all older students are expected to be out while all younger students are expected to be in when the gates shut." Sirius told Darren and Tara.
"We'll show you the rest of Olympus before we show you the academy." Ailith said.
Sirius and Ailith led Darren and Tara around the wall surrounding the academy, passing some places along the way such as a large library, a church, mosque and other religious worship buildings, and the flats where the academy staff would stay. Then the buildings started getting sparser until there was nothing but field.
The two new students looked out in wonder at the vast field with a forest in the distance, there were many hills and trees decorated out among the field as well.
"This is where students can run around, practice their magic and just feel free." Sirius told them. "It goes on for miles, including the forest. It's also where many of the sports activities take place."
"It's made to accommodate all sorts of students." Ailith said. "Though there is a separate fenced off part for the werewolves during full moon, the academy wants them to be free and safe, but it also wants the other students to be safe."
"There's also a large lake around that way." Sirius pointed to the left where a hill cut off any sight of a lake.
There were many students running around in the field, there was a wide verity of magical creatures and users present. There were fawns, fairies, elves, students with wings, tails, horns or all three, students with more animalistic looks to them, normal-looking students, etc.
But what caught Darren the most was that many of the students with wings were flying.
"I can fly here?" he asked.
"Go ahead." Ailith grinned. "Though, there is a limit for how high you can go, a magical barrier will stop you if you do."
Feathered wings suddenly burst out of Darren's back, phasing through his shirt so it didn't end up ripped, he took a few steps back before running forward and leaping into the air, his wings flapped powerfully and his took off into their air.
"Whoa!" the three on the ground said as they watched Darren fly through the sky.
Others on the field stopped to watch the Angel as he flew up high before dropping down and catching himself before he hit the ground. Other winged students joined him in the air and it soon became a game between all of them, though what that game was they had no idea.
"I'm sort of jealous." Tara admitted, watching the fun from the ground.
Sirius and Ailith nodded their heads in agreement.
Eventually, Darren broke off from his game with the other winged students and flew down to the ground. He hit the ground hard, causing him to stumble and eventually fall over.
"Haven't quite got a hang on landing, have you?" Sirius laughed.
"Maybe." Darren ground, sitting up as his winged shrunk back into his back.
"Come on." Ailith said. "Time to see the academy.
There was another gate not that far from where they were, so they went through it. Inside there were several buildings, which Sirius and Ailith identified as the main school building, the cafeteria, the dorms, the gym, the staff building, a large courtyard with a fountain in the centre, and something called 'the bunker'.
"What's the bunker?" Darren asked in confusion.
"It's where students with more destructive magic go to learn how to control their magic." Sirius answered. "Ailith and I are taught how to use our light and dark powers to their full capacity in there. It's the strongest building on the island and most of it's underground, many speculate it can double as a bomb shelter."
"When I started out I couldn't stop blasting light beams everywhere." Ailith admitted.
"And I kept accidently making shadows do things by just moving."
"Will we end up in there?" Tara asked nervously, not too keen on going underground.
"Probably not." Ailith answered with a shake of her head. "As far as I know, neither of you should have destructive enough magic or abilities."
Tara sighed in relief.
The four teens spent the next hour touring around the main school building, which was huge, with Sirius and Ailith showing Tara and Darren the class rooms and what subjects usually took place in those rooms. As they left Ailith collected a leaflet and gave it to Darren and Tara, it showed all of the extra-curricular activities that the academy provided, there were the standards such as art, drama and football, but there were also several different martial arts classes, sword fighting lessons, archery, etc.
"I can accept archery. But, sword fighting as an extra-curricular activity?" Tara questioned.
"And all these different fighting styles being taught?" Darren said.
"Like we said, the academy likes the students to be prepared." Sirius said with a shrug. "And you don't have to sign up for any of them."
It was lunchtime when the four students left the main school building, so they headed to the cafeteria for lunch, older students could still get food from the cafeteria, they just had to pay for it.
"So, you got any more questions?" Sirius asked before taking a bite of his lunch.
"What's a crystal mage?" Tara asks, remembering what Ailith had said she was on the train.
"Crystal mages are magic users who channel their magic through different crystals and gems." Ailith explained. "We're basically just like witches or wizards only our magical conducts are crystals rather than wands, and how or magic acts depends on what crystal we're using. It means we have less verity in our spells but our spells are more powerful and require less magic put into them to work. Crystal mages are also rare as it's a realm of magic you're required to be born into, not convert to, like some other realms of magic."
"What about the Muses? I only get that they're powerful and run the Academy." Darren asked.
"You'll learn it in full during history. But the basics are that the Muses are five women in possession of five amulets that grant powerful magic, and each time a Muse dies the amulet and power along with it are passed onto a new woman of good virtue. And long ago the academy was started by a group of Muses to help powerful and unique magic users master their magic while giving them a safe place to learn."
"But lately the academy's applicants are beginning to drop in quality." Sirius snarked.
"Sirius!" Ailith chastised.
"What? I'm sorry but it's true. Many of the students here don't have powerful or unique enough magic to be here, but they are because the Muses want them to have an education."
"I don't understand." Darren said, confused.
Tara had some inclination of what they were talking about, a cousin of hers was kicked out of her magic school because she got bitten and turned into a werewolf.
Ailith sighed sadly, she shared a look with Sirius and they both nodded their heads.
"It's a difficult thing to talk about but it needs to be addressed." She said.
"Many children are being denied entry to other schools due to their differences, even though it's their right." Sirius said in a subdued tone. "If they don't fit the perceived 'norm' then they're told that they're 'too dangerous' to attend a 'normal school'. Discrimination at its finest."
"The Muses can't do much to stop this from happening without breaking laws, so they allow those rejected students to come to the academy instead so that they'll have an education, even though the academy is tailored to high powered students."
"And you're against that?" Darren asked.
"No, I'm not." Sirius defended. "I just think that this shouldn't be a problem in the first place. And the problem is only getting worse, many witches and wizards believe that muggle-borns shouldn't go to schools either, despite the only difference between purebloods and muggle-borns being the difference in the parent's magical prowess."
"But that's stupid." Tara said.
"Tell that to the monkeys who run the ministry and most of the purebloods." Sirius groaned.
"You're getting a bit passionate about all this." Darren observed. "Did this happen to you."
"No, but it's happened to people I care about. One of my friends from Hogwarts has to hide who he is so he won't be kicked out for the 'safety of the students', and many others I know get picked on and called names on a constant basis because of who their parents are. It doesn't help that my parents are some of the biggest supporters of this ridiculous philosophy."
"Your parents?"
"Yep. My parents, and the rest of my family for that matter, believe that purebloods are the only ones who deserve to use magic and that everyone else doesn't deserve life. Thankfully, I realised that that was a load of shit and decided to think for myself."
"Harsh."
Sirius didn't comment. Ailith looked at her counterpart with sympathy, only she knew the true extent of how Sirius was treated by his family for his separate beliefs, since they could never hide anything from each other.
The four housemates continued to walk around for a while after lunch before finally heading home.
"Our new timetables have come." Ailith said as she picked up the post, handing the different letters to the person they were addressed to.
"Typical." Darren complained, looking at his timetable. "It still starts at nine."
"Well, you better have your alarm set tonight. Today is the grace period, tomorrow lessons start." Ailith told him.
Darren groaned.
"Hey, it's more than we get at Hogwarts. There lessons start the day after they arrive, unless it's a weekend the next day, no time for new students to settle in at all." Sirius said.
"When'd you leave Hogwarts for the academy then?" Tara asked.
"I haven't." Sirius said with a shrug. "I should be on my last lesson of the day right about now."
"What?" Tara and Darren asked, confused.
Sirius sighed before explaining.
"Because of my uncontrollable magic it was sort of urgent that I come to Muse academy to learn how to control it. But the Muse who was put in charge of me, Miss Wild, knew that if my parents found out about my true potential not only would they not allow me to come to the academy, but they'd try and take advantage. So, Miss Wild managed to set something up so that I would still attend Hogwarts so as to not arouse suspicion, but still come the to the academy to learn. Using some powerful time travel so I would spend a week at Hogwarts then go back in time to spend that same week at the academy. It is kind of taxing to go through my school year twice but it's either that or staying on the island permanently, which I can't do as I'm heir Black and my disappearance could cause trouble."
"Is that legal?" Tara asked.
"Probably not, but as long as my folks don't find out it doesn't matter." Sirius said with a wave of his hand.
Darren and Tara decided to let the subject matter drop.
The rest of the day was spent with the housemates working out who would have what household jobs and when, it was expected they clean up after themselves but there were things such as cleaning and shopping that would have to be delegated. And when it turned ten at night, they reluctantly went to bed, ready for the next day.
Exposition heavy chapter, but that means most of it is out the way.