Then Simon, the Head of Evocation, introduced Lilly Tibbett’s NQT project: a fun new magical sports approach to Year Eight Evocation, with outdoor lessons. Everyone made interested and supportive noises and Walden made another note: refocus the school’s outdoor demon defences next time she tuned up the thaumic engines. Any loose magic attracted demonic attention, and she couldn’t think of anything more likely to produce uncontrolled bursts of magical energy than a gang of middle schoolers doing competitive spellcasting. Then she nodded to Ezekiel, not as Head of Invocation—with only two of them officially in the department, they didn’t need to waste meeting time, they could just email each other—but as senior house staff.

“Just a short one from me,” Ezekiel said. “A reminder to check the register codes for sorcerers in your lessons. We have seven living in School House at the moment, one at the local primary and the other six Chetwood pupils, and there are a few others in all year groups except the current Year Ten. Remember to use your judgement when you respond to misuse of magic around the school, with these students in particular. Be aware that the youngest ones, especially, often aren’t doing it on purpose. That doesn’t mean be lenient—they need to learn!—but do be kind. And I’ll be running my session on childhood sorcery, what it means, and how it develops at the twilight INSET before half term; if you haven’t heard me talk about it before, this might be a good time.”

‘Sorcerer’ was the current term for the people who had once been called ‘rogues’ or ‘erratics’: people who would find themselves doing magic without ever having been taught any, who attracted demons before they knew what demons were. They were much, much rarer than laymen thought. In Walden’s opinion, most of the children noted as potential sorcerers on the school’s register were probably just reasonably talented to start with and then came from families where they saw other people casting spells. People like Nikki and Mathias—strong, wild magical talents, capable of summoning demons by accident before they ever finished primary school—were rare enough that the dozen or so currently studying at Chetwood, half of them fostered at School House and nearly all of them on scholarships or bursaries, probably made up most of England’s current population of sorcerers under eighteen.