At Watford, there are fresh-baked cherry scones for breakfast every day if you want them. And again in the afternoon with tea. We have tea in the dining hall after our lessons, before clubs and football and homework.

I always have tea with Penelope and Agatha, and I’m the only one of us who ever eats the scones. “Dinner is in two hours, Simon,” Agatha will tsk at me, even after all these years. Once Penelope tried to calculate how many scones I’ve eaten since we started at Watford, but she got bored before she got to the answer.

I just can’t pass the scones up if they’re there. They’re soft and light and a little bit salty. Sometimes I dream about them.

No. 2—Penelope

This spot on the list used to belong to “roast beef.” But a few years back, I decided to limit myself to one food item. Otherwise the list turns into the food song from Oliver!, and I get so hungry, my stomach cramps.

I should maybe rank Agatha higher than Penelope; Agatha is my girlfriend. But Penelope made the list first. She befriended me in my first week at school, during our Magic Words lesson.

I didn’t know what to make of her when we met—a chubby little girl with light brown skin and bright red hair. She was wearing pointy spectacles, the kind you’d wear if you were going as a witch to a fancy dress party, and there was a giant purple ring weighing down her right hand. She was trying to help me with an assignment, and I think I was just staring at her.

“I know you’re Simon Snow,” she said. “My mum told me you’d be here. She says you’re really powerful, probably more powerful than me. I’m Penelope Bunce.”

“I didn’t know someone like you could be named Penelope,” I said. Stupidly. (Everything I said that year was stupid.)

She wrinkled her nose. “What should ‘someone like me’ be named?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t know. Other girls I’d met who looked like her were named Saanvi or Aditi—and they definitely weren’t ginger. “Saanvi?”

“Someone like me can be named anything,” Penelope said.

“Oh,” I said. “Right, sorry.”

“And we can do whatever we want with our hair.” She turned back to the assignment, flipping her red ponytail. “It’s impolite to stare, you know, even at your friends.”

“Are we friends?” I asked her. More surprised than anything else.

“I’m helping you with your lesson, aren’t I?”

She was. She’d just helped me shrink a football to the size of a marble.

“I thought you were helping me because I’m thick,” I said.

“Everyone’s thick,” she replied. “I’m helping you because I like you.”

It turned out she’d accidentally turned her hair that colour, trying out a new spell—but she wore it red all of first year. The next year, she tried blue.

Penelope’s mum is Indian, and her dad is English—actually, they’re both English; the Indian side of her family has been in London for ages. She told me later that her parents had told her to steer clear of me at school. “My mum said that nobody really knew where you came from. And that you might be dangerous.”

“Why didn’t you listen to her?” I asked.

“Because nobody knew where you came from, Simon! And you might be dangerous!”

“You have the worst survival instincts.”

“Also, I felt sorry for you,” she said. “You were holding your wand backwards.”

I miss Penny every summer, even when I tell myself not to. The Mage says no one can write to me or call me over the holidays, but Penny still finds ways to send messages: Once she possessed the old man down at the shop, the one who forgets to put in his teeth—she talked right through him. It was nice to hear from her and everything, but it was so disturbing that I asked her not to do it again, unless there was an emergency.

No. 3—The football pitch

I don’t get to play football as much as I used to. I’m not good enough to play on the school team, plus I’m always caught up in some scheme or drama, or out on a mission for the Mage. (You can’t reliably tend a goal when the bloody Humdrum could summon you anytime it strikes his fancy.)

But I do get to play. And it’s a perfect pitch: Lovely grass. The only flat part of the grounds. Nice, shady trees nearby that you can sit under and watch the matches …

Baz plays for our school. Of course. The tosser.

He’s the same on the field as he is everywhere else. Strong. Graceful. Fucking ruthless.

No. 4—My school uniform

I put this on the list when I was 11. You have to understand, when I got my first uniform, it was the first time I’d ever had clothes that fit me properly, the first time I’d ever worn a blazer and tie. I felt tall all of a sudden, and posh. Until Baz walked into our room, much taller than me—and posher than everyone.

There are eight years at Watford. First and second years wear striped blazers—two shades of purple and two shades of green—with dark grey trousers, green jumpers, and red ties.

You have to wear a boater on the grounds up until your sixth year—which is really just a test to see if your Stay put is strong enough to keep a hat on. (Penny always spelled mine on for me. If I did it myself, I’d end up sleeping in the damn thing.)

There’s a brand-new uniform waiting for me every autumn when I get to our room. It’ll be laid out on my bed, clean and pressed and perfectly fitted, no matter how I’ve changed or grown.

The upper years—that’s me now—wear green blazers with white piping. Plus red jumpers if we want them. Capes are optional, too; I’ve never worn one, they make me feel like a tit, but Penny likes them. Says she feels like Stevie Nicks.

I like the uniform. I like knowing what I’m going to wear every day. I don’t know what I’ll wear next year, when I’m done with Watford.…

I thought I might join the Mage’s Men. They’ve got their own uniforms—sort of Robin Hood meets MI6. But the Mage says that’s not my path.

That’s how he talks to me. “It’s not your path, Simon. Your destiny lies elsewhere.”

He wants me to stand apart from everyone else. Separate training. Special lessons. I don’t think he’d even let me go to school at Watford if he weren’t the headmaster there—and if he didn’t think it was the safest place for me.