Mundane-ish

Induction

     If I knew then, what I know now I could have shredded the Scholomance out of existence as soon as I was inducted. If I knew that not believing in magic was stronger than believing in it, I would have immediately thought, 'Oh great what a crazy dream,' and watched as the walls of the Scholomance began crumbling around me. The kids who were inducted in the rooms next to mine, wizard or not, would wonder why one of their walls were crumbling and think that maybe something had gone wrong during the induction, and all their walls would start crumbling. After that, they would run into the hallway screaming, spreading alarm, and before you knew it everyone from the greenest freshman to the saltiest senior would know that there was something egregiously wrong with the Scholomance, and then there would be something egregiously wrong with the Scholomance, because that is what everyone would believe. Okay, maybe not the saltiest seniors but I don't think they could have calmed enough of us down before the school crumbled off into the void. They would have probably cut their losses, found some way to get down to the graduation hall , fight their way through the mals to get to the gate, possibly by trying to push them out into the void that would certainly be enveloping school, hope that Patience and Fortitude fell in said void, and then they would huddle at the gates hoping someone from the outside world would figure out something had gone wrong and come to rescue them. Everyone else would be lost to the void forever, which may have been a better fate than what the next four years would be like.

     If I was just a normal, non-believing, mundane with friends I'd probably not been inducted at all, because I would have been hanging out with friends instead of alone tinkering around in my dead dad's workshop. If I was normal, I wouldn't have hoped every single day that something fantastical would scoop me up and take me away from, what I thought was, my horrible life. I wasn't normal however, I had exactly zero friends in the small town I was growing up in, and I spent most of my day reading sci-fi novels and building things with my dad's old tools and random junk I found around our and other nearby defunct farms. I didn't talk much at the small school I attended, not even to answer questions that I knew the answer to, or at lunch and recess where I sat alone reading or figuring out what parts I needed to actually build a robotic like suit of armor that I really wanted to create. The only person I talked to was my grandmother. My dad's mom, who had taken me in after my parents had died. Technically I had taken her in because she left a pretty sweet retirement community to move in with me. She brought my great grandmother too, her mother, who didn't talk at all or get out of bed. A nurse practically lived with us to take care of her, and sometimes I would sit at the end of her bed and watch whatever soap opera the nurse had left on for her because I thought maybe she needed company, but I didn't know what to say to her, so I just sat there and watched. I could have continued doing these things too if I was just a little bit normal.

     But I wasn't normal, and I didn't know what I was in for at the time, so I just stared off into the endless black that was one side of my room beyond the old wooden desk which seemed unsettling close to the nothingness. I had my dad's largest wrench that he owned, a 2 3/4-inch monstrosity I needed to take apart an old train bogie I had come across at the tracks near my house, the caliper I used to size the bolt, and my dad's old compass which I always kept with me -- and my phone. I had my phone. I placed the caliper and compass on the desk next to a lamp and reached into my pocket to grab the latest flagship from Samsung. My eyes quickly flittered toward my status icon. 'No signal, no data.' I opened it up and check if there were any Wi-Fi networks to connect to. 'No Wifi Networks.' I sighed and I felt myself begin to panic, my heart began to beat faster and my breathing sped up. I instinctively tilted my head down to calm myself in one of the many ways my dad had taught me too. Back when I would get panic attacks out of nowhere multiple times a week. I didn't have time to start reciting some of the many quotes about fear not being real that he had me memorize before I started to hear doors clanging up from outside my room. I lifted my head up and looked toward my own door. After the clanging of doors, I could hear footsteps, a lot of footsteps and the voices of kids some calling for each other loudly, the rest just drowned out by sheer number that had to be out there. I walked over to my door and opened it to reveal a stampede of kids, all heading off in one direction. A whole mob of kids, all shapes, size, colors, both boys and girls all talking nervously to one another.