Isis Wright stood up before her Basic Alteration class at the Magnolian Academy to perform a simple levitation. It was a simple spell, and a dozen of her classmates had performed it flawlessly. There was only one problem confronting Isis as she felt her eighth-grade classmates’ gaze upon her and her hand tightened around her yew wand.

She couldn’t use magic. Not a single solitary spell. In fact, Isis Wright was at the Magnolian Academy for Sorcerers and Sorceresses under entirely false pretenses, and she was already beginning to feel sweat pricking the back of her neck. She was one public blowout away from revealing her status as a dullkin, the sort of mundane folk that the wealthy students of Magnolian lorded over.

“Come on now, Ms. Wright,” said the Alterations teacher, Ms. Maxine, peering over her reading glasses. Every few minutes she’d flick her own wand at her face to cast a spell of Myopia Ward, only for it to wear off and force her to use the glasses again. “Let’s see your Elementary Levitation.”

“She’s got stage fright, Ms. Maxine!” cackled Mamie O’Sullivan, seated in the back with her posse as always.

“Can’t get it up,” giggled Holden Buford, sitting nearby.

Ms. Maxine silenced them both with a flick of her wand, silver-wrapped ebony as it was. “You passed the written part of the exam with flying colors, so come on now,” she said. “I’d hate to fail you over a case of simple stage fright, Ms. Wright.”

Isis could only look around as she felt the class examining her under a microscope. It was an unpleasant, burning feeling, one she knew all too well from her previous school. Public schools might have been underfunded and falling apart compared to Magnolian, and with not a wand or magic-user in sight, but they did have that much in common at least.

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