The Exchange Programme

"Why do we have to do this?" I asked Brett, my locker partner.

"The school's short on space so we can't afford to have any new lockers."

Okay, hi. Who are you?

Oh.

Nice to meet you, I guess.

I'm Clyde, by the way. Clyde's a guy's name, but my parents thought I was a boy and then I came out as a girl so they decided to stick with the name anyway.

I live in Seventh Avenue, Heineland. Heineland's this small country somewhere west of the coast of California. We're made up of 5 million people and most of our population is Asian. I'm half-Chinese, Brett's Korean.

Don't ask me why most of our population is Asian. I don't know.

The country achieved independence 50 years ago and now we're pretty well off. The government's doing a good job, only that over here where I live... Let's just say we're not very rich.

We're part of an improvement scheme the government has set up. We're in the last phase, which means we have to wait for next month before the contractors hit our estates.

Heineland is so small that it doesn't have any states, but we have an area system. I live in Seventh Avenue, the western part of the country. Okay, it's an island. Country has connotations of 'big'.

The northern part is called Big Dipper, the eastern part is branded Orient and the south is called Josephyn. They're random; our government's pretty creative. Well, some people call the area system JOBS - acronym. The central is somewhat of a separate entity because it's high-end, and it's called... Central. (Not much creativity here, huh?)

Anyway, I'm part of the magical community here in Heineland. Yep, magic.

-x-

"I shouldn't have taken Modern Necromancy as a module..." I wailed at lunch. "It's so difficult."

"Yeah," Greg snorted, "You see dead people. And as if that's not enough, you see them all the time."

"Shut up, Greg."

"You taking a minor too right? What's that?" Brett asked, shoving salad into his mouth.

"Um, Moving Tapestry."

Everybody looked at me as if I was crazy.

A piece of lettuce dropped out of Brett's open mouth.

"What?" I defended myself. "There's nothing wrong with it!"

"How did you get into that?!" Fiona screamed. "Nobody has ever gotten into a Prophetic major and Architectural minor before! It's way too stressful! Do you know how many modules and electives there are altogether?"

"Relax, Fi. I can handle it."

"But it's your first year in here! Do you want to try for the post-graduate program in 3 years or do you want to die trying?"

"I'm with Fi," Brett nodded.

Greg shrugged. "The majority speaks."

I'm 17 this year. It's my first year in the University of Magic, Heineland. I'm going to be a legal citizen of the country (complete with full legal rights) after my 20^th birthday, which is, unfortunately 3 years away.

The school year in the university is very different because of our school. That's right, the premises. The school is permanently at room temperature and all the 5 campuses are dry and toasty and warm on cold or rainy seasons and cooling and airy and ventilated in summer. Unlike the kindergartens right up to the high schools, our university is privileged. We have classes from June to April with semester and term breaks in between.

One thing about Heineland is the magical community is very much accepted by the non-magical community, which we address as 'the normal people'. They address us as 'the other people', and when referring to ourselves, both parties use 'us'.

Of course, the magical community has its own consulate and all that, but we're pretty much run by the state government as well.

-x-

Brett, Fiona and Greg are 3 of my greatest friends on earth. Well, Brett and Fiona are, I'm pretty much stuck with Greg because he's my twin brother. Brett's a Biomythology major, he studies animals that possibly existed. We dissuaded him from taking it because all he can work as for the rest of his life would be limited to taking care of magical creatures, but he feels that it's his calling to respond to the call of nature, or whatever it is that he said.

Fiona is an Alchemy major, she studies a lot of chemical properties and whatnot. I've never been very suited to Alchemy, no matter how well I did in it.

Greg's the only one doing something from the School of Arts, and he's majoring in Sculpting. He's very artistic and his lecturer is this Greek guy - very ancient, made a sculpture and fell in love with it and the Goddess of Love made it come to life and he and that sculpture got married. Retired to Heineland but could not forsake his passion for art and well, the rest is history. Greg also takes a minor in History - what can I say, we have a great gene pool. Both him and I are here on scholarships and our parents are pretty proud.

-x-

"Mom? Are you there?" I walked into the School of Arts faculty lounge and called out for her.

Professor Gates, the Performing Arts lecturer, smiled to me and said, "She isn't here, Miss Thwaite. Do you want to leave a message?"

"It's all right Professor, I just wanted a ride home."

"No problem, anytime."

One good thing about this school is that they don't have very stringent rules. We are allowed to enter places like offices and lounges, but we can't use the stuff there, obviously. Even if we dared to, the furniture would probably go crazy and hit us on our heads or set off some alarm. It's like that in a magic school.

My dad is a surgeon at the Heineland Central Hospital - he's part of the normal side. He doesn't mind my mother being Chinese and magical, and we love him for it.

"Oh, Miss Thwaite! Wait!" Professor Gates called me to stop.

"Yeah Professor?"

"We have this exchange program with, um, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the UK, and I was wondering if you wanted to attend."

"Exchange program?"

Suddenly I wished I didn't have a Prophetic major and Architectural minor on hand. This was UK we were talking about!