The first thing Harper decided about Tidefall Academy was that it needed more lifts. She announced this halfway up the harbour stairs, after the luggage charm attached to her suitcase refused to help with steps and bounced uselessly against the third one in a row.

"This is a magical school," she said. "They have had centuries to solve stairs."

"Maybe stairs are educational," Jasper suggested.

Ava, breathing slightly harder than she wanted anyone to notice, said, "About what?"

"Regret."

Harper pointed at him. "Exactly." The path wound upward inside the cliff beneath stone ribs open to the sea. At each landing, first-years pretended they did not need the benches before sitting on them anyway. Jasper's arms were beginning to ache by the time the stair opened into a broad courtyard paved with pale stone.

The Academy felt larger from inside than it had from the harbour. Covered passages disappeared in four directions. Towers rose behind tiled roofs. To the west, an open wall framed a view of the ocean so wide that Jasper had to remind himself they were still in Australia and had not somehow sailed off the edge of it.

Older students moved everywhere. Some wore coloured trim on cuffs and collars. One girl crossed the courtyard with three books floating beside her shoulder. A boy snapped his fingers and a dropped scarf jumped neatly into his hand. Harper's face lit up. "Do that."

"I don't know how."

"Learn faster."

Ava was staring at a row of lamps hovering beneath an archway. "Those aren't attached."

"We can see that," Harper said.

"I was confirming."

A bell rang inside the Academy, deep enough to carry through the courtyard. A man stepped onto the low stairs before the main doors. He was tall, dark-haired, with grey beginning at the temples and a plain black coat that looked far too warm for the day. He did not have to raise his voice when he introduced himself as Headmaster Alaric Thorne. Conversation simply stopped around him.

"Welcome to Tidefall," he said. "Most of you have spent the past few months listening to adults explain that your lives are about to become very different. They are correct, although they have probably made your first week sound far more dramatic than it needs to be."

A few parents laughed from the back.

"You will not duel anyone tomorrow. You will not be expected to perform advanced magic by Friday. You are seven, and your first task is considerably less exciting: learn the school, learn the rules, and learn which mistakes are annoying before you discover which ones are dangerous."

Harper whispered, "I can do annoying." Ava murmured, "We know." Thorne's expression barely changed, but Jasper had the odd feeling he had heard them.

"Tidefall was built where land and sea meet because both are useful teachers," the Headmaster continued. "One teaches stability. The other teaches change. Neither is especially interested in your excuses."

His gaze moved across the first-years. For half a second, it stopped on Jasper. The pressure behind Jasper's ribs returned. Thorne's eyes shifted toward the sea. It happened so quickly Jasper might have imagined it. Then the Headmaster went on as though nothing had occurred. "Today, however, your greatest challenge is finding your room before dinner." Residential cards were handed out. No magical ceremony decided where first-years lived. No ancient object shouted names. Jasper found this strangely reassuring. His card read WEST RESIDENCE, ROOM 14. Harper checked hers. "Fourteen." Ava held up the same number. Harper grinned. "We're stuck together."

A prefect named Mae led their group through the west wing. She explained that first-year rooms were assigned by staff and had nothing to do with the Academy's four Orders, which students joined only after the Choosing Tide at the end of the year.

"So West isn't a team?" Harper asked.

"No."

"Secret team?"

"Also no."

"That's what the secret team would say."

Mae had clearly survived people like Harper before. Room Fourteen stood at the end of the upper corridor overlooking both the inner garden and a slice of sea. Inside were four wooden beds, four chests, two wardrobes and a broad shared desk beneath the windows.

Harper chose the bed nearest the door with the speed of someone claiming territory during an international crisis. Ava selected the one beside the desk. Jasper took the bed under the eastern window. That left the fourth bed empty. They waited for another student. Nobody arrived. Mae checked the list. "Three in here this year." Harper looked at the unused bed. "Can we use it?"

"Within reason."

Ava immediately asked, "What does within reason mean?" Mae looked at Harper. "You'll know when you've crossed it."

"That's not a measurable boundary," Ava said.

"It becomes one surprisingly quickly."

Mae left them to unpack. Within ten minutes, Harper had placed her school bag on the spare bed. Ava noticed. "Why?"

"Because mine is over there."

"Your bag has a hook."

"It prefers the bed."

"It doesn't have preferences."

"You don't know that."

Jasper was beginning to recognise this conversation pattern. Harper patted the mattress. "Bag Bed." Ava closed her eyes. "No."

"Too late."

By dinner, Bag Bed had acquired Harper's spare shoes, Jasper's map and a packet of biscuits his mother had hidden in his suitcase. The dining hall turned out to be less enchanted than Harper had hoped and much larger than Jasper expected. Food arrived from actual kitchen doors carried by actual people. Older students sat loosely by Order around the edges, while first-years filled the centre tables.

After dinner, prefects showed them the bathrooms, common room, study rooms, emergency stairs and the nearest route to the infirmary. By the time Jasper returned to Room Fourteen, his legs hurt and his head felt full. He changed into pyjamas and climbed into bed. Harper continued talking for another fifteen minutes. Ava told her to sleep three times. Eventually the room quieted. Through the open window came the distant crash and retreat of the sea against the cliffs. Jasper lay listening. He expected the dream to return. It did not. For reasons he could not explain, he was slightly disappointed. Across the room, Harper rolled over and murmured, "Bag Bed is a good name."

Ava's sleepy voice came from the dark. "It's terrible." Jasper smiled into his pillow. Before dinner, Mae gave Room Fourteen a short orientation of its own. The windows were warded against accidental opening during storm alerts. The wardrobes had ordinary locks because, as Mae put it, "privacy does not need to become magical simply because magic exists." A small metal plate beside the door carried emergency symbols that first-years would learn properly in Safety the following week. Harper inspected every shelf. Ava checked the desk drawers. Jasper opened the western window as far as the safety latch allowed and felt salt air move through the room.

"Best bed wins," Harper announced.

"You already chose," Ava said.

"I am confirming the victory."

Their first real disagreement concerned storage. Harper wanted one shared shelf for snacks. Ava wanted snacks sealed because ants remained unimpressed by magical education. Jasper suggested a tin. The compromise was accepted only after Harper declared the tin "Room Fourteen property" and wrote 14 on the lid in pink marker.

It was an absurdly small decision, but the room began changing around such things. Three people who had met that morning were deciding where food lived, which window opened first and whether the bathroom rota needed to be written down. Ava wanted the rota. Harper said anyone who needed a written rota to remember showering had larger problems. Jasper stayed neutral until Ava threatened to assign him the earliest time slot.

Dinner introduced more names. Mia sat across from them and talked fast enough to challenge Harper. Soren listened more than he spoke. Theo asked whether any of them had seen the lower harbour from the boat and immediately began a rumour about secret underwater classrooms when Harper said yes. By the time the first-years were sent back to residence, Jasper had forgotten to be nervous for nearly an hour. That was the first sign Tidefall might become more than the strange school on the letter. For the first time that day, Tidefall felt less like an enormous mystery and more like a school he might actually learn to live in.