When I woke up, I turned over to my clock. It said 7:24.
Oh, shoot, I thought. Six minutes until lessons.

I got out of bed and put on a blue robe. I brushed my hair and went out to the living room. Marcia was sitting on a couch by the television.

"Lets go to the Dining Hall," I said to her.

We walked out and down multiple steps of stairs to the dining hall. We sat at the Blue table and began to eat yogurt. I looked at my phone and saw a text from my mom: Enjoy your first day of lessons!!! I texted back Thanks and put my phone back in my pocket. Marcia and I looked at the Blue First Years schedule, which was taped to our end of the table.

"Okay, so...We have charms first. With the Greys." I read.

We got up and walked along the corridors to the Charms room. We took our seats, and a woman at the front of the room introduced herself to the class.

"Good day, class. Please take out your wands. I am Professor Frogmouth."

We all took out our wands and set them on the tabletop.

"The first thing you will learn is a charm to make things float. The spell is: Floattikulous!" She said. She demonstrated the spell on an apple, and told us to try. There were already apples in front of us.

I waved my wand, "Floattikulous!" I said, "Whoa!"

My apple was now rising higher and higher in the air.

"Oh, glory me, look, class!" Cried Professor Frogmouth, "She did it! And on her first try, too!"

The apple hit the ceiling and, with a thud, fell back down, hitting me in the head.

"Ow!" I shouted.

Professor Frogmouth sent me to the Nurse, which was honestly more of a hospital. The nurse gave me a bowl of ice cream to eat.

"Best remedy there is" she told me.

My head felt better after eating it. Marcia walked in and told me it was time to go to Transformations. We walked to the classroom, but at one point got lost. When we arrived, the teacher scolded us.

"I'm sorry, Professor, Zoe was in the nurse, and I had to go get her. She had been hit in the head, see." Marcia informed the teacher.

"Oh, well, maybe I should Transform you into a helmet, to prevent these things happening," said the teacher humorlessly. We had never been quicker to sit down and shut up.

"Welcome, class, I am Professor Trifle. In this class, you will learn to Transform things from one thing to another with ease. Eventually, you will learn to Transform yourself. Alas, it is your first day of your first year. We might want to start small." She waved her wand, and apples appeared at each table. I leaned over to Marcia.

"What is it with this place and apples?" I asked, rubbing my head.
"I dunno...I reckon you hate apples now, though." She answered.

We were told to Transform the apples into pineapples. What we had to do was picture a pineapple clearly in your head, wave our wands, and say, "Transformatio!"

I just wanted to get rid of the apple. I pictured a giant pineapple that was as big as a lamp, waved my wand, and said rhe spell. There was a cloud of smoke. I coughed.

A man ran in with a fire extinguisher. "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" He shouted. He sprayed my apple (pineapple?) And, when the smoke cleared, there was a very big, very ruined pineapple in the place of the apple.

"Hey, kids. I'm Joe. I can sense fire from a mile away, and it's my job to put it out." He looked at the the ruined pineapple, "Well...gotta run!" He left without apologizing.

There was an awkward silence. The whole class sat there, staring at an overweight, ruined piece of fruit. Then-

"Don't mind Joe. He's a little... strange. Well, Ms. Perks, you did it!" Said Professor Trifle.

The class applauded.

It was time for lunch, so we went to the dining hall.

I ate a chicken salad sandwich. We then went out to the gardens for Carpet Training.

Shawn, who didn't have another class that time, taught us Carpet Training.

"Everyone, sit on your carpet." He said.

I raised my hand. "Excuse me...I just might have left my carpet in the dorms..."

He told me to hurry up, and that I had exactly five minutes. I ran quickly and got the carpet with only two minutes to go. I looked at the carpet and contemplated it. There was a big open window right next to me.

I sat the carpet on the large windowsill, sat on it, and shouted, "UP!"

I figured out that controlling it was an awful lot like sledding. You lean left to go right, and vice versa. I flew high, above the castle so I could see. Suddenly, a bird flew by and knocked me off. I grabbed the tassels and held on for dear life. I was right above Shawn and the other students by now.

"Help!" I shouted.

Shawn looked up and, quick as lightning, got on his carpet and flew up to me. He hovered directly under me, about five feet below.

"Zoe...just let go. I'll catch you on my carpet."

I still held on.

"Just let go! I'm right here."

I did something really stupid. I let go.

For one second, a single thought flew through my mind-I'm going to die-Before I landed on the warmness of Shawn's carpet. We flew up, and Shawn reached out to grab my carpet. We flew down and landed on the ground.

"Thanks," I said.

Shawn told me to spread out my carpet close to his. I didn't blame him.

"Okay...everyone, sit on your carpets."

We all sat.

"Now, hold on tight and say UP!"

There was a loud collective "Up" as we flew up into the air.

"Now...it's a lot like sledding" (ironic, huh?) "Just lean the opposite direction of where you want to go. Follow me!" Said Shawn gleefully.

We flew up above the castle, swooped under the castle, and came back to the Great Lawn. We hovered over the ground.

"To land, simply say DOWN!" Said Shawn.

We all said "Down" and landed on the grass. It suddenly struck me as strange that there was grass on a cloud. I realized that it was one of the lower clouds above Michigan, and that we still got precipitation.

"Okay. Roll up your carpets. Class dismissed!" Said Shawn.

We walked to the dorms, put our carpets away, and walked to Magical Self Defense class.

"Why did you fly to class?" Asked Marcia.

"I would've been late if I hadn't," I replied defensively.

"Oh, yeah...so, you'll be dead from a carpet crash before your first flying lesson, but on the bright side, you'll make it to class on time!" Marcia said sarcastically.

"Yep, that sounds about right."

When we got to class, Shawn was standing in front of the class.

"He teaches two classes?" I muttered.

Shawn smiled at me. "Well, I see you've made your way to class without having a near-death experience!" He said.

The members if the class who had been in the flying class laughed. The others simply looked confused.

We were in class with the Yellow students. I scanned the crowd of yellow in their side of the room. Marcia elbowed me and pointed to a boy in the front row.

"He's cute, but not boyfriend-cute...Get what I'm saying?" I said to Marcia.

"Yeah...I wouldn't mind him being our friend, though." She replied.

He had short black hair, yellow eyes that were an awful lot like a cat's, and yellow robes (obviously). The boy behind him was talking to the girl sitting next to him. I looked closer. The boy was pointing at the cat-eyed boy and smiling...no, laughing! I saw his face, and realized that it was humorless. The girl whispered something in his ear, and he laughed more.

"Welcome, class! I am Professor Shawn. You will learn this year that some magical people are not good. Some go bad. Rotten, in fact. You will learn about them, their weaknesses, and how to use them. You will also learn what to do when confronted by them, as I am sure some of you will be." His eyes, for some reason, lingered on me. "Today, you will learn a simple protection spell. One that will create a shield that wards off most spells. This version of the spell requires multiple wizards to perform. The spell is: Summanio Shieldalous. You all must put your wands together above your heads and say it. Please split into groups of five people."

Marcia and I looked around. We walked over to the twins.

Who else...I thought hard. I saw that the cute boy from Yellow was alone.

"Be right back," I said. I walked over to him.

"Hi. I'm Zoe. Want to join our group?" I asked the boy.

"Sure. And my name is Ethan."

We walked over back to my group.

"Everyone, this is Ethan." I told everyone. Marcia's eyes met mine, and we both stifled a giggle. We all walked to an empty space and put our wands together.

"On three." I said. "One...Two...THREE!"

"SUMMANIO SHIELDALOUS!" We all shouted. A blue mist surrounded us. The other groups began surrounded by mist as well. We lowered our wands. Shawn vegan to walk around. When he came to us, he said, "Don't worry. I am going to cast a small spell that makes you float in the air. If you did the spell properly, my spell will bounce off and hit me. I hope you did it right," he said with a grin, "Zoe doesn't need any MORE experiences in the air today!"

I blushed.

He waved his wand and mumbled something under his breath. A green light flew towards us. We braced ourselves. The impact never came. The light bounced off the mist and hit Shawn, who flew up in the air. He slowly sank, then went around to the other groups.

"We did it!" I said, "We avoided being humiliated in front of the whole class! We actually didn't turn into the Amazing Floating Students!"

From that moment on, the five of us knew we would be good friends. We exchanged cell phone numbers.

"Class dismissed!" Shouted Shawn.

We went to dinner, then straight to bed. First, I texted my mother: Sorry I doubted you. You were right. I love this place. I then fell asleep quickly after reading tomorrow's schedule.