You all know it is not mine, or actually, quite a lot is mine, just Harry and the foundations on which I developed my wizarding world are not.

Chapter 6

Harry, being raised with Petunias packing schedules and very structured way of planning had his trunk packed and ready on the day before he had to take the ferry.
The multi-compartment trunk was neatly packed, clothes folded, stacked and spelled. Spelled with and anti-wrinkle charm he had found, that would save him the trouble of ironing later on, a chore he detested.

The other compartment was a bit more difficult to organize, and he was really happy that he had a separate book trunk. Although it was very good that that book trunk did not have any space expansions. Or else he would not have been able to store it in the other trunk, shrunken or otherwise. Since space expansions in space expansions had the habit of destabilizing, causing spectacular explosions, in this case the loss of his books. But how do you pack scales, cauldrons, potions ingredients, smaller equipment, gloves, paper, parchment, pens, quills and ink, binders and more, neatly in one compartment?

On the morning of departure he slipped his toilet bag in its place, put away his pyjamas and floated his trunk down the stairs of the inn. After breakfast, and saying his goodbyes, especially to the landlord and lady, who had been great when he needed any kind of help, he made his way to the docks.

He was a bit early, arriving in the docks half an hour before the ferry would leave. But he was not the first. One of his classmates, with her family, was already there; talking with her parents, laughing with her siblings. While Harry was there alone, sitting on his trunk, observing the family, and the others arrive.

It was not until the ferry had left and the parents were out of sight that he approached the other children. There were only five others, besides Harry. He had wondered about why it were so little and how that would translate in class sizes when the rest arrived in three weeks. But he put that aside for now and introduces himself. He had been listening to the conversations in the docks and now chooses to approach a French girl, or actually French Canadian which he found out when she introduced herself. Méri-Antoinette was one already there when he arrived and had, according to her ramblings, an older sister and brother as well as a younger sister. She was a muggleborn and had lived in various South-American countries over the years but they lived in Québec, where her parents came from, at the moment. And after five minutes it was already very clear that Méri-Antoinette had way too much energy and material to talk about, but that she was a very nice person. Yahel Evron was the only other person that joined their conversation, but he was quite self-conscious and didn't say very much.

After that they switched to English for the last part of the journey, so that everyone could join in. They had to almost force the name, Carmen Navarro, out of one of the girls who was very shy apparently. Emma Taylor and Nicholas Meijer were better conversationalists, although you can't say much after only one 15 minute conversation.

The passage only took 25 minutes, after which they were greeted by a teacher, Charles Terduyne. He was a charms teacher, as well as the fencing teacher and organized the introduction this year. He would spend the coming three weeks with them, and would be their class mentor for their whole class when the school year began.
The mentor for the first years dual programs class was also the teacher to organise the muggleborn introduction program, sacrificing part of his or her holiday to get them up to speed and able to join the wizard raised children in September.

The luggage was efficiently floated of the ferry and loaded on a chart while they were ushered into a waiting carriage. During the trip to the school the teacher told them a bit about the program for the day: they would play some games to learn something about the other children, eat in the kitchens at twelve, take an extensive tour of the building, visit the medical wing for a health scan so the Healer could start their magical files and have their first Latin class after that. Followed by dinner and a game and relax evening in one of the common rooms.

The school was impressive, beautiful and imposing, yet it had something friendly as well. It was standing on the summit of the isle, a rectangular white building with lots of windows. Two big arched gates in the long south wall, and they entered through the right one. The gate opened up in a big square courtyard, which the teacher called the East Courtyard. Some trees with benches around them made the space seem a little smaller, since it was at least 50m, squared. Open, column supported walkways ran around the buildings at the edge of the courtyard, it looked inviting, welcoming.

Their luggage was offloaded and stacked next to one of the trees, while they had a chance to look around. After they had gaped enough at the buildings, the group was taken to a common room. It was a big room with couches and chairs, organised seat many separate groups, tables to study on, or play a game. Some book shelves on the wall, with many books, left behind by previous students. A wall on which held many photo frames, year photos of each graduating class, and big doors to the next room. And all was done in greens and light wood tones.

These were the common rooms of the 'Greens', the students following the double track of both magical and non-magical subjects. The Reds and Blues took only magical subjects, most are children living in Atlantis, although Nikolaas admitted he would join the Reds when they arrived as well and he was not the only one according to Charles. They had their common rooms, as well as bedrooms, at the other side of the building in the West wing.

In this room they would do all kinds of activities the coming three weeks and would spend their evenings when they were free to do as they wanted. They started with a quick game to learn the names: tossing around a sphere of magical energy and naming the next person who has to catch it. Followed by a game of something called exploding snap, and if the cards blew up in your hand, you had to tell something about yourself like where you had lived, siblings, school, the standard introduction things. And a game where they had to write a couple of notes with what they loved, what they hated, what they would never do and put them in a bin, after which they had to name the person to whom they thought the note to belong when it was drawn.

Around twelve they went downstairs, for the kitchens are on the lower ground floor. Here the light in the walkways came from above, through the matted glass floors of the ground floor. In the kitchen they saw the food being prepared with magic: someone was standing near the stove, directing multiple spoons, pans and knives with her wand. The only other kitchen help that was at the school at the moment was busy counting the food stores and listing what was necessary for the next year, which was not all that interesting to see.
They got to wander around in the big kitchen, look at the different, antiquated implements like a butter churn which were operating on their own due to the magic. They each got some spoons to play with, since the implements were charmed so that with a wand tap they would activate and follow instructions.

After lunch they were thought a soap charm which was used to do the dishes, and got to direct the sponge to was the dishes. Harry thought the differens between them very interesting: he managed the charm in one try, Méri-Antoinette enthusiastically tried a couple of time and managed, more or less, while Carmen needed some help and was so uncertain that she made it more difficult.

The tour was useful, and since the building was set up and numbered in a logical way Harry had great hope of being able to find what he wanted, when he wanted. The north side of the building contained the classrooms, the specialized ones like potions, duelling and woodworking on the lower ground floor and the general classrooms on the 1st and 2nd floor. The ground floor contained the infirmary and library, as well as some general classrooms. The East side was for the greens, and the West side for the reds and blues. The common rooms were on the on the ground level and shared bedrooms and baths on the other levels. The South buildings had the gates, stables, gym halls on the ground floor, music halls, metal working classrooms and teachers' quarters on the lower ground level and more teachers' quarters on the 1st and 2nd floor, with some extra rooms for the reds and blues as well.

The library was equipped with really nice cataloguing spells, and there were catalogues on a stand in front of every row. They could manually search through the catalogues for the location of the category in with you were interested, or by using your wand as a pen you could write down keywords on the search page, and it would show a list of books with those words or subjects. The restricted section was accessible only for 7th and 8th years, but a teacher could check a book out for a younger year.

The visit to the infirmary was not all that long: the healer did some spells on each of them, while a quill wrote down whatever those spells told. And after that they were allowed to go again and were directed into a classroom for their Latin class.
During this class they would especially learn how to pronounce the Latin words, since that would be the most important to begin with, and some basic vocabulary. If they wanted more they should choose it as their 2nd or 3rd language, which five of the six children had chosen.

That evening they were introduced to a specially adapted version of Trivial Pursuit, with questions that could not be from a normal wizarding edition since any child raised in the magical world would know many of the answers. But it was a nice way to learn, and test knowledge.
Obviously, Harry had a great advantage. They hadn't had any lecture on wizarding culture yet, or daily life, magical creatures, or common household spells, so everything Harry already knew through books was more than the others knew. And the next days they would form teams, two or three others versus Harry alone. One day it actually was all versus Harry and he still managed to win. But how could it be different, with his eidetic memory and head start in knowledge? Although some of his terminology was something he had to change quickly, since they didn't like the negative sound of muggle, muggleborn, and squib, even though it was a lot more efficient than mundane and non-magical.

It were interesting weeks and they certainly learned much; in the mornings they had a lecture on an aspect of the wizarding world, followed by a latin class. Even Harry learned a lot during those lectures. While he knew about Moondays, he never understood the why. And Harry is a child who always wants to know the why as well as how of things. But once they had a lecture on it, it was quite obvious that the dark moon had been the day with the smallest chance of discovery which what why it was chosen as the 'Witches Sabbath', the day of celebrations, of rituals and of purple ribbons. It was funny that while he had read about it, he suddenly realised that he had seen a lot of purple in Atlantis city one of the days. He had not realised it was a Moonday and completely missed the signs. So he paid attention to the lunar calendar and wore his own purple ribbon the next new moon for the celebration.

And there was a lot more; Other major holidays like Firefest or Halloween, to capture roaming souls in the fires for the night; Midwinter, the national holiday with fairs, games and everything; Midsummer, day of mourning, day of passing, where the people who had died the past year were mourned for a last time before being set free; full moon, days of contemplation and mourning. Things like blue mourning ribbons, they now made so much more sense. How could he have known that the spell that entrusted the bodies of the dead to magic flashed sky blue and thus that had become the colour of mourning? Or religion; most of the wizarding world agreed that magic itself was partly sentient and had build their religion around that.

Of course his knowledge was based on British society. Many aspects, like history and religion, were the same in Atlantis since wizarding customs were far more widespread due to their travel methods, especially in times that the non magical population did not travel much at all. But there were also differences; Atlantian and international government; influences form other cultures, acceptance that non magical could produce useful things and more. And he knew not much about common household and personal grooming spells, which were also included in those lectures, as well as primary, secondary and tertiary education, art and children's games.

In the afternoons they were often taken on excursions or introduced to new activities. Starting with flying on both brooms and carpets, were most of them were much more confident on a carpet than on a broom. Moving up on a flimsy broom…, rather not. Especially Emma, who was afraid of heights.
And while Harry and the others were not afraid of heights, they were afraid of not succeeding, about falling off and doing bad. And in Harry's case: afraid to disappoint his father who had really liked quiddich and flying. But he should not have worried, for he took to the air as a fish to water. He managed to call up his broom in one try, unlike the rest. But Harry had believed in magic almost all his live, he really believe in it, he knew the broom would respond, unlike the muggleborn.

Another trip went to the nearby nature reserve, with many kinds of magical plants and fantastic beast like unicorns, dragons, bowtruckles and much more. The island was huge, or actually it were two big islands and some small ones connecting them with a land bridge during low tide. All day long a guide from the reserve pointed out plants that could be used in potions, creatures so amazing and told lots about the animals and plants hidden in the deeps of the forests.
The second island, with the dragon reserve they visited on a separate day; there was too much to see in 4 short hours.

They saw a quiddich game, went into town for a play, visited the court buildings and attended part of a trial, had a class on how to hide their magical aura since a noticeable aura was a no go in polite company, went to a museum of magical history, visited a magical shopping district in China, America, Russia and India, which each had very different atmospheres, shops and people. And some less heavy days, in a meadow, forest or orchard or beach on the island. And Harry was promised swimming lessons at that beach, with one of the PE teachers.

Many of the evenings the spent reading, were Harry got them to read novels which told a lot about daily wizarding life, as he had done in the past. Or they played another game of Trivial Pursuit, or the games like exploding snap, wizarding chess and some dice games which they were taught. It were nice, friendly evenings, although the games could become quite competitive.

During the weeks, Harry had made a great friend in Méri-Antoinette and went on okay with the rest, Emma was a bit girlish in his opinion, and Carmen really quiet.
Nikolaas was lazy and Yahel okay, nothing annoying, nothing special.

The weeks were great fun, they learned loads, and ended far too soon. But with the end of the introduction camp, the start of the school year came, which was something they all were looking forward to.

A/N I finally finished this chapter, I had most of this chapter written before the crash but had nothing left of it after. And that kind of hampers your writing: knowing you had written something like that, but not knowing what it was. And it is kind of a lot shorter than my previous chapters, but I only planned to do those 3 weeks, and this is it. So I'm posting it as it is and hope you like it.

My next chapter is going to take a while, I've got to write my bachelors thesis, write some more literary research reports in between and I hope to have it done by the end of June.