Free Schooled in Magic by Christopher Nuttall Page A

new roommate,” she said. “She doesn’t have a name yet.”
    Emily heard her tone and understood, instantly, that Aloha considered herself the Alpha female in the room. She was a second year, whatever that meant. The mushy girls boarding school books her mother had owned had suggested that senior girls could punish younger girls at will. They’d also included suggestions of lesbian affairs among the girls.
    “Right,” Aloha said. Up close, she reeked of magic ... and of something Emily couldn’t identify. “I would prefer not to be bothered by any junior students. Keep to your side of the room and I will keep to mine–and don’t even think about touching my books.”
    She dumped a bag onto her bed and stalked past them, into the bathroom. Emily watched the door close and then glanced at Imaiqah, who looked a little frightened. No doubt her roommate bullied her, she decided, or at the very least considered associating with a first year to be undesirable. Aloha might have magic, but she was still very human.
    “She means it,” Imaiqah said. She sounded as if she were trying to make light of it, but couldn’t quite pull it off. “Everything she owns is covered in protective charms. I once picked up one of her books and ended up frozen to the floor until she came back and released me.”
    Emily stared at her, and then looked down at the stone floor. If she’d touched any of the books ...
    A dull gong echoed through the building and she looked up. “Dinner,” Imaiqah said, with some relief. “Do you want to come with me to eat?”
    Emily wanted to say no. She wanted to stay and hide in the room until the sense of weirdness - of being out of place - faded away, but she was hungry. Besides, the world wouldn’t change if she hid herself under the blankets. She nodded once, pushing the book of spells Void had given her under the bed, and then picked up her new robes, pulling them over the robes she already wore, even though Madame Razz had effectively stated that non-school clothes were forbidden. But there was no time to change.
    She should have changed while waiting for her roommates, but the sense of weirdness had just grown stronger and stronger.
    Imaiqah picked up a book from her bedside table, then led the way back out into the corridor. There were dozens of students outside, all wearing robes of different colors, several old enough to be adults. In fact, Emily realized as she looked from face to face, some students looked to be barely entering their teens, while others seemed to be in their twenties. A handful of them carried wands, or staffs; a couple carried broomsticks and one carried what looked like a gnarled club of wood. Their chatter didn’t fade away when they saw Emily; they didn’t seem to be surprised by an unfamiliar face.
    Or maybe there were so many pupils at the school that no one could hope to know them all. Emily had spent two years at her last school and she’d barely known anyone outside her grade.
    “That’s Marcus,” Imaiqah said, pointing to a taller male student wearing a green robe and a red badge that seemed to glow with an eerie light. “He’s one of the prefects assigned to keep us all in line; he isn’t a bad person, but he takes his responsibilities seriously. Don’t go running in the corridors in front of him.”
    They walked out of the dorm and down a long flight of stairs. Emily said nothing, staring around her. Every time the castle seemed to make sense, something happened to confuse her again. The corridors seemed to be rearranging themselves at will; worse yet, some of the students didn’t even look human. One of them had pointy ears like an elf, reminding her of one of the Star Trek characters she’d watched as a younger girl. Another seemed to be a living plant, with green skin and twigs in place of hair. And a third ... Emily realized in shock that the strange girl’s head was surrounded by living snakes that moved of their own accord. She looked like the