American Wizard

Chapter 2- First Impressions

"Is it just me or is it hot down here?"

--Dante

Annapolis was hot and muggy this time of year and as my father and I exited the silver BMW I found myself sweating in my large blue jeans and black collared shirt. Dad helped me grab my duffel bag and my suitcase. I had packed light because with the tuition the school provided food, shelter, clothes, school supplies and all other essentials. He put my bag down in front of a glass door and turned to look at me.

My father was a giant of a man, almost seven feet tall and very broad shouldered. When he smiled his gleaming white teeth stood out in sharp contrast with his skin. On that day he'd chosen to wear khakis and a T shirt that had Washington Wizards written on the front of it. He had always found the basketball team's name funny. His eyes seemed to be twinkling a bit as he gazed at me. I don't know what they saw, beyond my dark skin, chubby body and dreadlocked hair, but it must have made him happy. He placed a giant hand on my shoulder and spoke in his deep voice, "All right Wiley, don't cause too much trouble and send an owl to your mother at least once a week. I'll send Hellion over to make sure you do just that."

I smiled at my father and hugged him, my head resting on his stomach saying, "Dad, I promise I won't screw up."

This drew a great rumbling laugh I could feel reverberate through his body, he held me at arms length and said, "Boy, you won't screw up. You have enough magic in you to make Harry Potter cry. Plus, if you screw up, I kill you. Now get inside before these muggles wonder what we're doing.

I looked around at the muggles who were probably wondering why I was saying a tearful goodbye to my father in front of Locke & Co. Industries. Waving goodbye to my Dad I walked through the glass doors of Locke's ready to begin my magical education. I was disappointed to see a small lobby, looking very muggle like. A fan above me tried vainly to get rid of the humid air as I dragged my suitcases inside. The scuffed wooden floor creaked under my boots as I took a few steps forward. There were several doors and a staircase leading to a second story. All in all it was rather unremarkable.

"Welcome."

I flipped. Literally. At the sound of the unexpected voice my fat, ten year old body magically launched six feet in the air and turned two backwards somersaults. I landed on my ass with a big whump. Quite embarrassed I looked up to see a very severe looking witch standing behind a podium; I wasn't sure why I hadn't seen her. She had gray hair that was braided in a plait over her shoulder. Her cold eyes seemed to match her hair color and I immediately got the feeling when this woman told you to jump; you'd ask how high, I hoped six feet was high enough.

She gave me a hard look, which almost made me turn around and run back to my father, "I am Ms. Selena; I will be your elementals teacher this year. Welcome to Annapolis Mr. Dumas. You are the last one here; I hope your tardiness is not going to be a habit. Leave your bags here and go through the door on the right."

With that short little speech she looked away from me and back to the book she was reading. I gave the woman a nod and quickly deposited my things against a wall. The door she had shown me had a placard on it that said, "M. Dithers". Who M. Dithers was, and why I was going into his office, I had no clue, but when I walked into the door I knew something was magical.

Instead of the mediocre office I had expected to find stretched a polished wood hallway about twenty feet long, lit only by a couple torches on brackets. This was not only out of place, but impossible in the world of muggles. This hall way would have led into a completely different building, which I had noted was actually an ice cream shop. Apprehensively I walked the hallway, hearing my sneakers pad against the gleaming wood floor. Finally, at the end of the hallway, an old but sturdy looking wooden door stood. I reached for the golden knob on it and turned. With a click the door opened.

What I saw took my breath away, a vast and beautiful dining room with mahogany walls and a clean stone floor lay before me. The room, lit by floating fairies, was swarming with almost two hundred kids, milling about and talking. Some were already sitting at the table. The table looked like a gigantic letter O except that a small pathway existed so someone could get inside the O. One part of the table was taller than the others and the only adults in the room occupied it.

Unsure of what to do I took a look around at my fellow students. Most of the students wore the gray school cloaks I knew were part of the uniform, but the youngest ones were wearing muggle clothes like I was. On closer inspection I noticed that the hems of the cloaks were different. One Asian kid's robes had a red trim to them while an older girl had blue trim.

I would have investigated the differences in the colors but was distracted when a young blonde headed boy bumped into me. I may have mentioned this before but I am a big kid for my age, and the end result was that the blond headed kid hit the ground after bouncing off of me.

"You okay?" I said as I reached my hand down to help the boy up. He was wearing muggle clothes like me and his hair was now messed up. A first year, I thought.

The boy stared at me with big blue eyes. Very carefully he accepted my hand and I pulled him up easily seeing as he must have been half of my weight. "Um, sorry 'bout that friend, I wasn't paying attention."

His voice carried a southern accent, which at first I found somewhat off putting. My dad had an accent just like it while he was speaking to his brothers when they came to visit. He was about a head shorter than me and gangly looking. He looked somewhat frightened that I might break him in two, so I smiled to show him I had no hard feelings and said, "Name's Wiley."

The boy, obviously happy that I wouldn't be pulling a Chewbacca on him and ripping his limbs off, returned my smile, "I'm Ken, Ken Kensington."

I regarded him with a cocked head, not sure whether to comment on the redundancy of his name or the fact that his name rung a bell. Luckily, my mother has raised me to be a nice boy, so I chose the latter and said, "I've heard your name before..."

"My father owns the biggest flobberworm farm in the states," the boy sighed.

Then it hit me! Kensington Worm Products! It was no surprise that the son of one of the greatest entrepreneurs got into Annapolis. His father could have bought the school along with the connections it took to get in. While flobberworms may seem boring (they are) they also are extremely useful. Mostly in potions, you know, for thickening them or for neutralizing them.

"That's where I've heard it." I laughed, "Plan on going into the family business?"

Ken gave me a look that said, 'you're insane.' Luckily he gave me the benefit of a doubt and only asked, "Are you insane?"

Before he could elaborate on his dislike of flobberworms a bell began ringing. The noise came from above me and when I looked up I almost yelled. There, hanging from the crossbars of the roof was a green, monkey-like creature with what looked like a glowing pimple in the middle of its forehead and it was beating a bell with its tail. After the froglike monkey had beaten the bell six times, all the students wearing gray sat down, leaving about forty muggle dressed children standing, myself included.

"Welcome to Annapolis!" boomed a deep voice that sounded suspiciously like Patrick Stewart. The source of the voice came from the raised part of the table. He was a very pale man, wearing a black cloak with trim that shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow. His bald head glimmered in the fairy light and he smiled. It would have been a comforting sight, except for the fact that his canines were massive.

A little red headed girl next to me squeaked, "Vampire!"

The vampire laughed, "I am your headmaster, Edward Baiter, and as Miss Hilgard has pointed out, I am indeed a vampire. Don't worry, I don't bite. Much."

There was some nervous laughter as he continued, "Now, before you are classified I suppose I should explain the system here at Annapolis. We, unlike some schools, do not separate people by their personality, we feel that grouping people like that causes them to become rather one sided. We also do not group people by heritage because it is school and country policy that non-pure blood and pure blood should work together in harmony. What we do, is we classify you by what your potential indicates you to be best at."

Professor Baiter looked upon the first years with burning red eyes and gave his creepy smile, "When your name is called you will be asked to place your hand on the crystal."

I looked to where he pointed. In the space the table surrounded a pedestal rose from the ground with a grinding noise. On the pedestal, set atop an old green pillow, gleamed a white orb, about the size of a muggle baseball which looked a lot like a giant pearl.

The headmaster began speaking again, "While at Annapolis, you will gain a well rounded education, but all of you will be given a specialty. You may be chosen to specialize in medicine where you could learn to heal the almost dead, maybe you will belong in divination where the burdens of the future are thrust onto you, perhaps you'll be chosen for dueling where you will learn the ways of protecting the innocent and destroying the guilty or last but not least you could be chosen to be a beast master where you will learn to love the viciousness of even the most vile creature."

I wondered what all this had to do with the orb, and why exactly my hand needed to be placed on it. I got the funny image of the orb yelling out BEASTMASTER. Before I got the chance to ask though, the severe witch I had seen at the entrance, Ms. Selena, walked up to the crystal, holding a ledger. She read off the first name. "Jared Abrahms"

A rather twitchy looking boy with jet black hair stepped out of the crowd of first years. He approached the pedestal slowly and when he reached out his hand to touch it he seemed afraid the orb would burn off his skin. Finally after what seemed like an eternity Jared touched the pearl-like sphere. The effect was immediate, and the crystal turned from a dull white to a shocking purple and then became less and less purple and more and more red. Finally the globe stopped changing and stayed red.

Ms Selena announced, "Specialty, Divination!"

The effect was immediate. The room exploded into applause. When Jared removed his hand from the crystal it became the crystal white it had been before. When I looked at Jared again I noticed that he was sweating and looking very faint.

As the next few names were called out, I figured out the color code. Red meant Divination, Black meant Beast master, Yellow meant dueling, and Blue meant medical. I also noticed that while someone was touching the crystal they seemed unable to move until the final color was displayed and when they let go they looked as if they'd just been thrown headfirst in front of a dragon.

My name was called ninth. When I heard it I couldn't help but notice how quiet the room had gotten. I made my way through the first years and through the gap in the tables. I nodded to Ms. Selena but she did not acknowledge me.

I slowly reached out to touch the globe. I actually felt the magic pouring from it, as if it were charged with a static electricity. It felt warm and pure. Then without my consent the glowing orb sucked my hand to it. A shock ran through me and I tried to pull my hand away but the crystal had other ideas and held me fast. The whole room seemed to darken and soon I was standing in pitch black, the only visible things were my body and the orb. I looked up at the globe and saw it glow orangeish-gold, like a flame. It stayed at that color for a minute. I was frightened. The room had not gone completely black when anyone else had touched it. The orb flashed and actually seemed to speak to me.

"WHERE DO YOU BELONG?" it asked in a loud voice that just appeared inside my head, "Extremely difficult to classify, you are. Such great potential, I can see that."

The voice was chilling me to the bones and I shouted at it, "Just choose! I don't care!"

"How disrespectful, now... where do you want to go?"

I growled, "Surprise me."

There were whispers and murmurs all over as the room as it seemed to come back into the light. I was suddenly aware that none of the other children had taken this long with the crystal. To tell the truth I was pretty embarrassed, maybe I wasn't cut out to be a wizard; maybe I didn't have the control for it. I willed the crystal to change.

"Hurry up you dumb orb," I whispered, "This is not the time to be indecisive."

The orb must have heard, or sensed me because as I spoke these words it turned to a yellow, a very bright yellow that reminded me of a miniature sun.

Ms Selena cried out, "Specialty, Dueling!"

The room burst into applause, and I felt blood rush to my face as I took my hand from the crystal. Like it had for everyone else, the crystal went back to the pearly white it had been as soon as my hand lost contact.

As the classifying went on I couldn't help but notice that most people seemed to be sorted into medical. As I looked around the room I noticed half the students in the room were wearing blue. Finally the classifying ended with Alexander Yates and we were ushered by Ms. Selena to the empty spaces at the table.

As soon as we sat down the plates in front us were filled with food. Hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken of all types materialized. To my left a plate of vegetables steamed into existence. With a cry of joy I grabbed at the food, not realizing how hungry I had been. Next to me Ken Kensington laughed as he grabbed at some polish sausages. Suddenly, in mid-bite of a beautiful hamburger, I realized I had no clue to what specialty Ken had been put in.

"My dad's going to be mightily disappointed," Ken grunted between bites of his sausage, "He would have loved for me to be in the Flobberworm business, but the crystal says I'm suited for dueling."

"I thought flobberworms were best left to their own devices. You don't exactly need to specialize in magical creatures to know that," said another duelist to be whose pale mocha skin was several shades lighter than my own dark ebony skin. I remembered that his name was Louis Jax. I recognized the name; his mother was currently the head of magical law enforcement and a co-worker of my father's. She would be happy to see her boy going into her line of work.

I laughed, "Lou, don't crush his hopes."

Ken shook his head, the thought of working with the most boring creatures in the world causing him to stop eating, "So, tell me Wiley why did the crystal take so long with you? You were standing there almost for five minutes."

I was aghast, "I was?"

Lou nodded his head, "Yeah, I've read that the crystal can tell the possible futures of whoever touches it. I guess it had trouble with you."

Ken furrowed his pale brow and grunted as he bit into another bite of sausage and asked with his mouth full, "So what do your parents do for a living? It has to be more exciting that managing a flobberworm farm..."

I laughed and answered, "Well, my dad works for the American ministry of magic; he's the head of international relations. My mom is a pretty popular writer; you might know her pen name, Cassie Nova."

Lou choked on his drumstick and stared at me, "Your mom wrote Simple Spells: Complicated Situations! My mom has that whole series! Because of your mother, my mom used summoning charms to find the pet puffskein I was hiding! Poor guy... shame that it wasn't registered..."

Other than Lou blaming my mother for every miserable spell that came from his mother, dinner went well. We were excused after a dessert of hot apple pie and given directions to our dormitories. As I walked into the next room that used to be a plain office building I was startled to find that instead there was a corridor that forked.

A third year explained, "First years should go left corridor, left again, right corridor and then in the middle. That'll take you to the dormitories."

Honestly, his directions left me dumbfounded. However, with Lou and Ken by my side we followed them. Every time we took a corridor we ended up in what looked like a very similar room. In fact, the room would have been exactly the same if it hadn't been for the different paintings.

The paintings all showed wizards of the colonial era. Some looked like the muggle versions of witches, with long noses and green skin, while others showed dignified people of the 1700s. Every once and a while one would wave at us and shout a greeting.

When the three of us took the final center passage way we did not enter a room with three more passages. Instead it had a fire place, burning with a soft glow, big overstuffed furniture that looked very comfortable and a golden plaque above the mantelpiece that said First Years. The walls were adorned with paintings and pictures of Annapolis and there was a big white poster board that gave directions to all the class rooms. Soon the room was crowded with all thirty first years.

I decided to check out my new room and entered the dark blue of the two doors on either side of the fireplace, fairly certain the pink door was for the girls.

Ten beds were decked out with silver bed sheets and more interestingly, each bed had a black wooden trunk at its foot. Over each bed read a name, and the one next to the window read, "Dumas". With a great sigh I tossed myself down on my new bed, letting myself sink into the comfortable mattress. It had been a long day and I was excited to start my classes and soon I found myself wishing to fall asleep. Much to my surprise, I did.