Unlike the world-famous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Melite Magic School was little known, a white marble complex built against the foothills of Mount Parnassus in the heart of the distant Greek peninsula. From above, the waters of the Gulf of Corinth could be seen gleaming verdigris in the sunlight. An ancient magical barrier enveloped the school, its refracted halo hanging among the mountains like a flattened rainbow.
At six in the morning, the students of Demotika Academy were woken by a bronze bell. Its chimes descended from the tower atop the main building, filtered through three tiers of galleries, and had grown dull and monotonous by the time they reached the stone floors of the dormitories. The students rose from narrow iron-framed beds. Their school robes were dark gray, without trim, their initials stamped in black ink inside the collars. After a few washes, the lettering had already begun to blur.
The washroom was at the end of the corridor, with four rows of taps arranged along the walls. A few Demotika students washed while discussing, in hushed voices, the footsteps they had heard in a corridor the night before. Halfway through their conversation, a younger student in white robes peered through the doorway, and their voices cut off.
The younger student did not linger. He merely withdrew his gaze, turned, and left. Only when his footsteps had faded completely did their conversation resume, quieter than before.
The students of Aqion Academy rose an hour later than those of Demotika.
Their dormitories occupied the upper floors of the main building, with east-facing windows. Each morning, sunlight spread across the sea all the way to their windowsills. They washed in private bathrooms, each cubicle supplied with hot spring water piped down from the mountainside. Their school robes were ivory,