This time, the area they ended up in was a large room with two grand staircases that led to a balcony that hung over them. The ground was made from black marble with specks of silver, gold, and purple. People of all ages milled around talking and cracking jokes. Some practiced magic and others looked like students talking to a teacher. There was even a girl who transformed herself into a shrew and scurried away from what looked like a group of bullies. A few people here and there had extremely pale faces and giant cheeks. Chanyeol found them sketchy and made a mental note to avoid them if he ever was in a room with one.

The guards led Chanyeol up the left staircase. Chanyeol ran his hand up the metal railing. It was cool under his touch. As they went, teenagers, probably Chanyeol’s age, passed. When the saw the guards, they immediately moved out of the way. He could feel their curious eyes staring him down before moving on. A few times he met their eyes, but they quickly looked away and started murmuring. After that, he didn’t dare look away from the guards’ backs.

When they reached the balcony, three doors stood in front of them. The one in the middle was the largest. Above the doors were plaques in a script he didn't recognize. Probably the language of the magic world. He groaned inwardly, hoping he didn't have to learn it. Language learning wasn't quite his forte. He preferred either cooking or working the flow of money to his family’s shops.

Deran opened the largest. Inside was a group of teenagers milling around. Their heads turned when the door swung open. They stared at Chanyeol, but no reaction came out of them. After a moment of looking, they went back to talking as if nothing had happened.

“This is your class. It is taught by Seras. He should be here soon. You will be issued a wand and robes. Try to get to know a few students.” Deran smiled and shut the door before Chanyeol could protest.

Now, Chanyeol faced the group of teenagers and didn't move. They all looked like they were from high class families. Their robes seemed of the finest quality and they already had their wands. A few small games were being played with floating objects. They were creating a tower with various objects around the room. Books flew, pots and flowers were taken from their spots. On occasion, the students would levitate an object from another student’s hands, but just to play. They always gave it back. Some other students were showing each other certain spells that glowed purple. One boy was reading a large textbook while another pestered him. The first boy seemed quite annoyed with his friend. Chanyeol watched as the boy shut the book and stood up. He passed Chanyeol and went to go sit in another chair. The other boy followed. Chanyeol decided these two were the more easily approachable ones. Everyone else seemed to be in cliques already.

Chanyeol walked up to the boy reading the book. “Hi, uh, my name is Chanyeol.”

The boy looked up, expression bored. “So you're the one Prof rambles on about. Good to finally see the guy who doesn't even have robes and probably has zero knowledge of magic. Of course, these are only assumptions from observing the way you watched them play Chink.”

Chanyeol ignored the snide comment. “What's Chink?”

“A game where people try to fit everything together without completely transfiguring the object,” said the other boy, as if he were giving a speech.

“It’s a simple game every magician learns when they’re young, or should know by this age, but you obviously don’t,” the one reading the book sneered. He lifted his nose and dragged a chair to the spot in the far corner of the room.

Chanyeol could tell this bookworm wasn’t too fond of him. It’s not like he wanted to get involved with magic anyway. The whole reason he was there was because he was taken by force. If it were his choice, he would rather be putzing around with Jongdae. It was all Jongdae’s fault he was in this mess. Why couldn’t they have just taken Jongdae? Not like there’s anything more special about Jongdae than Chanyeol, but at least he could be in the comforts of his room. It was already hard enough to deal with making friends during the school year. Now having to go through the whole process with people he hadn’t grown up with was even more terrifying. At that thought, Chanyeol was tempted to turn and bolt. The guards weren’t around to stop him, so he would have no problem getting out. The only problem was that he had no idea where to go. So, for now, he was stuck in a place full of strangers, trying to converse with someone who clearly loathed him.

“Hey, don’t worry about that guy. He’s always salty, especially when a teacher praises someone more than him.” The other boy offered a kind smile and held out his hand. “I’m Suho. The one reading is Sehun.”

Chanyeol took the hand, grateful for Suho’s kindness, “I’m Chanyeol.”

“So we’ve heard,” Suho said and laughed lightly.

“What do you mean?” Chanyeol asked. The bookworm, Sehun, had said something similar.

Suho glanced around and leaned in close. He kept his voice low as he talked. “I don’t think Professor Seras will be pleased with me telling you this… but you’re supposed to be the one who is going to be the hero when the war comes.”

“Wait, what?” Chanyeol nearly shouted. The room went quiet and all eyes were on him. The objects on the tower from Chink were balancing precariously on each other. No more spells were being shot across the room. All books had been partially closed as they all looked at Chanyeol. He wanted to be invisible at that point. Whispers erupted once people realized they had never seen Chanyeol before. Out of the corner of Chanyeol’s eye, he saw Sehun roll his eyes and stand up. Suddenly, Sehun was in front of him, facing the rest of the class.

Sehun clapped his hands. “Go back to whatever you were doing. Nothing to see here, he’s just a new student.”

There was a pause, but eventually everyone went back to their friend groups. Chanyeol sighed in relief and was about to thank Sehun when he saw that Suho and Sehun were already in a heated conversation. He stood there between them awkwardly. In that moment, he felt like a small child standing between bickering parents.

“Suho, you did, didn’t you?” Sehun hissed and put his hands on his hips, dropping his book in the process. It fell with a heavy thud and the pages were bent against the floor. He didn’t bother picking it up. “When Seras hears this, he’ll be beyond pissed.”

Suho threw his hands up in defense, “I know, I know. But Chanyeol was asking and it’s technically his future. It shouldn’t be kept from him.”

“Seras was going to explain it all when he and the Descendant and Chanyeol were all together. Now you just screwed up Prof’s plans.” Sehun shook his head and bent down to pick up his book. He gave Chanyeol another piercing glare and went back to his corner.

Suho shook his head and turned back to Chanyeol. “Sorry about that. I don’t know why Sehun is so defensive of Professor Seras and his plans. Seras is also quite forgiving. I hope I don’t get into too much trouble,” he said, almost to himself. He shrugged and patted Chanyeol on the shoulder. “C’mon, let’s see if we can’t get Sehun to get his head out of his book. Maybe if he conversed a little more, he would stop being such a sour puss. He’s always been like this since he was a kid. Sometimes his dad jokes about him being born with a scowl, but I promise, he’s a very kind person.” Suho nudged Chanyeol over to Sehun’s corner.

Sehun scoffed and shut his book. He crossed his legs and leaned on the book. “What do you want, Suho?”

“We’ve come to hang out, and we -- no, don’t try to get out of this. Sit your skinny back in that seat.” Suho shoved his friend back into the chair with much more force than Chanyeol expected from such a scrawny person.

“Like you have much muscle to talk about anyway,” Sehun mumbled. “You know I don’t do ‘small talk,’ Suho. I’ve never done small talk. Especially not with a person who doesn’t even know magic, but the professor still fawns over them and they aren’t even here. Well, now he is, but that’s not my point.” Sehun refused to look Chanyeol in the eyes and opted to look at his forehead. He met eyes with Suho who gave him a pointed look.

“Sehun, you can’t keep ignoring the prophecy! The prophecy is literally standing right in front of you,” Suho said, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

Chanyeol coughed, “Uh, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t even want to be here. I hardly know what I’m supposed to do as the ‘hero’ or whatever you said. I’d rather be at home, actually, with my family. I was taken against my will, you know.”

“Exactly!” Sehun exclaimed. “Why would Seras think this ignorant imbecile -- no offense -- would be able to save us? Don’t get me wrong, I completely trust Seras’s judgement, but this time around, I think he has chosen incorrectly.”

Suho sighed and rubbed his eyes. “We’ve gone over this, Sehun, it’s the prophecy. Seras didn’t choose poor Chanyeol. Just because you're not the hero doesn’t mean you have to hate Chanyeol.”

“Yes it does.”

“Sehun,”

“Shut up, Suho. Did you come over to bother me, or actually have an intelligent conversation?”

“You started it.”

“Clearly conversing like civil people isn’t working, so we’ll try some magic. Let’s see what the prophecy child is made of.” Sehun looked down at his lap. Instead of reopening his book, he pulled a wand out of his robes and muttered under his breath. Purple light came from the tip and enveloped the book. Suddenly it was a handkerchief, which he proceeded to fold neatly and place in his robes.

“If you’re in this advanced spells class, then Seras must know you have some sort of natural talent for magic. Maybe you can do wandless spells.” Sehun tapped his chin. He pulled a pocketbook from his robes and began flipping through it. A few times, he muttered, “Maybe this one.”

Chanyeol looked over to Suho who was shaking his head. “Uh, what?”

Sehun sighed. “Wandless spells, you know, spells without a wand. It’s kind of self explanatory.”

“Ok, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I am not that stupid.” Chanyeol huffed and crossed his arms. “I meant, what did you want me to do?”

“I want you to focus all of your energy on this apple,” an apple flew from a shelf and placed itself gently into Sehun’s palm, “and turn it into a mandarin orange. Before you ask me how, you must say the latin word while imagining it in my palm.”

Chanyeol blinked, “What is the latin name for mandarin orange?”

Sehun groaned. “Citrus reticulata.”

Chanyeol nodded and proceeded to stare at the apple. He imagined the apple suddenly becoming a small, orange fruit. Once he actually got the image to stay in the forefront of his mind, he scrunched his eyebrows in concentration as he began to mutter citrus reticulata under his breath over and over. After a minute of nothing happening, Chanyeol squinted and concentrated harder. He heard Sehun scoff and Suho sighed.

“Lay off him, Sehun, you can’t expect him to do this right off the bat. Wandless magic is hard for even the best,” Suho said. His voice was soft, and Chanyeol could tell he didn’t want to offend anyone.

Just as Sehun was curling his fingers around the apple, the fruit began to shake. Chanyeol could see a part of the apple becoming orange and the smooth texture of the apple’s skin was becoming a rough peel. When it seemed that Chanyeol would actually accomplish his task, Sehun dropped his hand and sent the apple back to the shelf it came from. The orange had disappeared and it was a regular apple, once again. Chanyeol looked up and met eyes with Sehun who looked like he was fuming. It wouldn’t be a surprise if steam came from his ears. His face was already redder than the apple. Sehun ignored Suho’s attempt to calm him down and stormed out of the room. Even though Chanyeol wasn’t sure what he had done to piss off Sehun, he felt guilty anyway.

Suho sighed. “Don’t worry about him. He just needs to cool off. He’s not used to someone being better at magic than him.”

Chanyeol nodded. He hoped he could make amends with Sehun at some point, but he didn’t have time to come up with how to do that when a familiar man opened the door. Seras had Sehun by the ear, dragging him in, and almost concealed by the large robes was another new face, but it was one that Chanyeol was quite used to.

A/N: Hey! Long time no see, you guys. A lot has happened since I was last on this site, goodness gracious me. Currently I'm doing a study abroad year in China and being this close to EXO and Lay and Luhan has made me miss the k-pop world a lot. Since I last updated, EXO released their winter album, KoKoBop album, and Power and holy cow. Every time I see them I just fall more in love. Anyway, I plan to finish this fan fiction and I actually have had it planned out for a while. Recently I've been going through some stuff and I'm trying to return to the times when I was a simple fan girl obsessing over EXO, watching anime, and very content with my life. So expect chapters at least once every two weeks. I'll also be going on winter break soon, so I'll have more time to write. I hope you guys will continue to join me on this journey.