September came quickly with temperatures remaining in the 80s. Evergreen found himself more and more grateful for the Mediterranean charm he had used on his clothing. Wearing long robes in summer weather was a recipe for disaster. Some of his classmates who looked visibly uncomfortable Evergreen actually offered to teach the charm to. Out of desperation, probably, they followed his directions and they felt obviously much better about that. Why they couldn't have different uniforms for the spring/summer and for the fall/winter, he would never know.

Classes that year were all the same as in previous years, just somewhat out of order. Day 1s held on Monday and Wednesday had Defense Against the Dark Arts at 9 with the Wampus eighth graders, History at 10:30, Charms at 1, and Transfiguration at 3. Day 2s held on Tuesday and Thursday had Creature Care at 9 with the Wampus 8th graders, Flying at 10:30, and Potions and Astronomy with the Horned Serpent 8th graders, at 1 and midnight, respectively.

The whole first week of school involved lots of homework. With it being their eighth-grade year, it meant that next year, they could choose a lot of their own classes and start to work on whatever magical discipline they might find interesting. Evergreen had no problem with the workload as he had already read through and took some notes on each of his textbooks. He also spent a lot of time deliberating on whether or not he would write his name down in an audition slot for the middle school musical. The question that plagued him was "Is it gay, to sign up for a musical?" All that he knew about the theater was a small snapshot of Broadway. There were people in flamboyant costumes wearing makeup and singing songs about falling in love. That just all seems quite soft and feminine, if you ask me. He had talked to Diva about it because he just wasn't sure about it and her words of wisdom really helped put things into perspective.

"Soft and feminine?" Diva had asked him, as they were seated in the nest by the window. "Gay? Like that's a bad thing or something?" Diva turned herself to be looking directly at Evergreen. "Look at Professor Woods and Miss Agatha. They are both gay and feminine. Do you feel anything bad for them?"

"I guess not." Evergreen mumbled, not willing to meet his friend's eye because he realized how silly his reservations were once he voiced them and she repeated them.

"Of course not. I know you're a guy who was raised by a real guy's guy. But, dressing flamboyantly and singing about your feelings might do you some good."

She was right of course. There was some patriarchal idea of masculinity that was ingrained into Evergreen because of his family. Not necessarily due to Dad, but his grandpa and uncles all were fishermen and hunters who watched football and worked for a living, all but prohibiting their spouses from doing anything other than housework and rearing their kids. Perhaps looking at life through glasses that color wasn't the best way to go about it. During his first year, he had been saved by Diva and Professor Woods from a crazed flying monkey that wanted to eat his face and he started learning something then that he guessed Diva was still trying to teach him. He figured that he would throw caution to the wind and audition for the musical.

He didn't know who he'd like to audition for, so he just figured that he would choose a song to present that he knew was a well-known Disney hit. It was Phil Collins' You'll Be in My Heart. His voice was still changing, so it was a bold choice for an audition, but he worked on it every day a few times a day with Seta to be extra sure. The day of the audition, he went in with Seta, of course, and Victoria was there with Amaya. Two girls sat between them. They were both taller than Victoria, but still shorter than Evergreen and had the same strawberry-blonde hair and sapphire-blue eyes. Evergreen felt kind of intimidated because all four 17-year-old girls were quite attractive in kind of an intense way, so he was glad that Seta was there with him or he wasn't sure that he could manage to sing a-Capella in a room alone with them.

His voice almost cracked, but as he fingered his wand that was held in his leather hip-holster, he managed to magic up some more confidence. The girls let him know that they really enjoyed his song and asked him to speak one line of dialogue in any way that he would like.

"It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then!"

"Okay! Thank you Evergreen!" Victoria said. We will let you know."

"Tori, if I may." Amaya said, holding up her hand. "Evergreen, I know your familiar speaks, but can he sing?"

Before Evergreen could respond, Seta himself spoke up.

"My name is Seta, little miss, and you can always speak to me directly." Seta said, a small grin, playing across his whiskers.

"Of course." Amaya said, standing up and moving around the table they were seated at in the middle of the large choir room they had borrowed for the afternoon. "But can you?"

"Well," Miss Corliss," Seta responded to the girl, hopping in her direction, her skirt (that she for some reason wore much higher on her waist than the uniform required) flaring up slightly at his swift motion, causing Evergreen to avert his eyes slightly with a blush. "I don't have anything prepared, but I can present something off the cuff if you'd like."

After Evergreen's audition and Seta's impromptu one, they left feeling pretty confident about what they did. It was only a few days later that they saw the cast list posted. Evergreen didn't recognize a lot of the names on the list other than his own, listed as the Dodo Bird, Aaron Talbot of Pukwudgie house as the King of Hearts, Cianan Freeman, his fellow 8th grade Thunderbird as the Caterpillar, and Seta as, he guessed it, the White Rabbit. It made sense, if one had an opening for someone to play a rabbit, why not get someone to do it that was a literal rabbit, after all? In the company list, he did see Trish's name and a few others that he felt he recognized from the sorting over the past two years.

"So Seta," Evergreen started, as they made their way away from the choir room that they had auditioned in, where the cast list had been posted, "How does it feel to be the White Rabbit?"

"Typical that they'd typecast me." Seta replied with a good-natured growl.

They skipped down the corridor up to the third floor, heading toward the Thunderbird spiral staircase. Evergreen had eaten his breakfast quickly that morning, so he could make his way to the cast list before his first class of the day. It was Defense with Professor Woods. They were just starting their second week of classes and Evergreen was thrilled to be able to see and spend time with Professor Woods again. He had a feeling that it would be helpful to the two of them, considering all that had happened.

"Good morning to all of you!" Professor Woods began after everyone got seated.

Her classroom, set up kind of like a mix between a lecture hall and an old Catholic choir stand, was dark as it had been every day that year so far. The previous year, when Evergreen just happened upon a possibly romantic encounter between Professor Woods and Miss Agatha, the shades were pulled down on the windows. That was for Miss Agatha's sake. Now, they were drawn every day and all day until sundown.

"Now, as I mentioned previously, we will be spending this year delving just a little bit deeper into the dark creatures and the dark beings within the text. When the vampire portion comes around, I'll have no problem answering your questions to the best of my abilities. Sure, I'm not just a vampire, I am still your professor and an ex-auror, but I am part of that community now."

She was radiant, really. Professor Woods was still dressing the same way that she did before her change, with spring colors underneath and dark-colored robes on top. However, she had been letting her hair down. Typically, she would wear it in a ponytail or a tight bun, but ever since school started, Evergreen noticed that she didn't wear it up even once. With her perfect alabaster complexion, it really had quite an effect.

"Until then, please turn your textbooks to page 11 and start reading about boggarts. In five minutes, please discuss anything you find interesting with your partner." Professor Woods said, which the Thunderbirds and Wampuses did straightaway.

Beatrice was Evergreen's partner in that class. He figured that he should keep her close for the upcoming months because he never knew when the Scarecrow, Tin Man, or Lion would come back into town to take him off to save Mom. He figured that out of anyone else at Ilvermorny, Beatrice, with the magic she inherited from her mom, would be the best person to take with him, other than Dad, of course. Chances are Link would eventually convince them to let him tag along with them, but they would cross that bridge when they get to it.

"What d'you reckon you'd see, face-to-face with a boggart?" Beatrice asked him, adjusting her headband which had slipped down just a little.

"I don't really know. Maybe my dad hurt? Maybe Elphaba?" Evergreen answered honestly.

Boggarts were shapeshifters that fed off of the irrational fears of whoever was before them. With those irrational fears, they change their shape to terrify anyone nearby. No one knows what a boggart actually looks like because the boggart always transforms into whatever one fears the most. No one without fear had ever encountered a boggart, after all. Or perhaps they did, but they couldn't really tell because they didn't know what they were looking at, as it wasn't transforming. If he was being honest with himself, Evergreen didn't know what he would see. Perhaps he would see Dad hurt, or Elphaba. Perhaps he would see bloodstained lethifolds and the lifeless form of Professor Woods. Perhaps he would see Professor Habitatio's impostor, threatening to skin and disembowel Beatrice alive. Perhaps he would see the cannibalistic dwarves he and his friends fought and hear their screams as their flesh melted from off their bones. It was a surreal thing, not knowing the difference between one's most desperately irrational fears and just what could be considered bad days.

"What do you think you'd see?" Evergreen asked.

"I dunno, myself. Probably Elphaba. I used to have the worst nightmares about her and about how she wanted to get my ma's slippers by any means necessary."

Her green skin, complete with a rough, sandpaper feel and dark burns everywhere plus her hair that was so coarse, it was like thousands of tiny needles. She was the picture of what No-Majes likely think when they hear the words "wicked witch."

That was a disturbing picture. Evergreen had only seen her briefly in his visions and it was usually from a distance, so he didn't know exactly the state of her body and how the Wicked Witch wasn't just wicked on the inside, but cursed six times to Sunday on the outside. The green skin was only the tip of the iceberg. He briefly considered the idea that if he looked like her, he'd be in a bad mood too. He let out a light laugh at that thought.

"Huh?" Beatrice stopped, looking up from her book. "Oh. I forgot that you were reared in the No-Maj world."

She thought that he had let out a laugh in response to what she said versus what he had thought.

"Yeah. Every Halloween, all of our neighbors back home decorated their homes with those kinds of witches. When I first got my school letter, that was all I could think about. Then I came here to realize that no one but Elphaba really looks like that. It's a good thing too."

It was good having Beatrice in class with him every day, with Defense on Day 1 and Creatures on Day 2. Something about being near her was quite calming. It was like her magic was slightly different. Perhaps it was the magical influence from when her mom went to Oz decades ago. Dad did tell him that magic was different in Oz. It was more free, less controlled and for that reason, anything or anyone who goes to Oz gets touched in some way by it. That meant that Dad was also changed by the magic, but he never disclosed how. Perhaps he would someday.

Their history class was shaping up to be quite interesting. They were studying what was called "The First and Second Wizarding Wars of Great Britain". That was a time that stretched between 1970 and 1981 for the first war and between 1995 and 1998 for the second. It all started because of a wicked wizard by the name of Tom Riddle. It didn't escape Evergreen how his last name just so happened to be a synonym for Riddle.

"What I wantcha'll to understand are the reasons the wars started in the first place." Miss Agatha said during that day's class. "Certain people thought they were livin' in high cotton, when really they were a rooster one day and a feather duster the next. Bein' a so-called "pureblood" witch or wizard carried quite a bit of weight and if ya weren't half-blood at best, it was a dangerous place to be. What will be your midterm project this year is to study these wars and to write an essay about how exactly everythin' started fallin' apart to set the stage for such a crisis. Me and the school board agree that it's important that y'all understand this, to see that nothin' like that happens under your watch over here in the good ol' U S of A."

It was interesting to read into. How Riddle had turned an entire nation on itself twice during his lifetime. How many of the "pureblood" Ancient and Noble wizarding families were weaponized against the "new blood" individuals who deserved their magic as much as the next person did. They were viewed as second class and other beings such as elves, goblins, and vampires were viewed as absolute vermin. It really left a bad taste in Evergreen's mouth as Riddle's reign of terror did nothing but end in violence. If he were honest with himself, Evergreen hated violence. He was a self-proclaimed peacemaker and did his best to de-escalate any and all conflict that was within his power. In his opinion, it was less effective to be feared than it was to be loved and respected. Apparently, Riddle didn't see it that way at all.

The last class of the day was Transfiguration and they had just begun their unit on animagi. The entire time that Professor Graves taught about it, he was staring Evergreen down and it was actually quite disconcerting. The previous year, the wild-faced Professor Graves had challenged Evergreen to become an animagus, meaning, a wizard that could turn himself into an animal at will without a wand or potion. Evergreen considered starting the process to become one the previous year, but it shaped up to be a bear of a project, so he figured that he and Aaron Talbot, his Pukwudgie friend who was brilliant in potions, would start brewing the animagus potion in September and they would go from there. It was supposed to be one of the more difficult potions to get right. Professor Graves, however, was confident that they could manage it. Sure, he was crazy, but he knew Transfiguration like the back of his hand, so his optimism was indeed a vote of confidence between Aaron and Evergreen. The only thing that Evergreen found especially daunting was the idea that he would need to carry a mandrake leaf in his mouth every day for the entire month that the potion was brewing, as the leaf infused with his saliva is the most important ingredient. Magic was weird sometimes. Here was for hoping that the mandrake leaf didn't taste too bad.