Brakebills lets out for winter holiday and Q is nervous about going home. He was worried that if he left Brakebills they’d never let him back in. He would never find his way back again – they would close the secret door to the garden behind him, lock it, and its outline would be lost…

Some undetermined number of months later (four?) Q gets held behind after class with Alice (glass animal girl) and Penny (boy who ordered too much water during the test). They are all being offered the chance to take their exams early and advance to Second Year. Here’s yet another way that that montage really throws…

The very next afternoon March taught them a simple chant to say over their marbles in a crooked g****-sounding language Ew, book. Ew. […] accompanied by a tricky gesture that involved moving the middle and pinky fingers on both hands independently, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Those who completed it successfully could…

Q is still listlessly hanging out at the empty college, except sometimes he runs into Eliot, who smokes contraband cigarettes and blathers endlessly about wine and art in the most pretentious manner. Quentin had never met anybody so staggeringly and unapologetically affected. I mean…I guess you can’t technically meet yourself, so that statement holds up,…

Q is extremely tired from doing his first Real Magic ™ and so stays at the school, and the teachers assure him it’s all been squared with his parents so they won’t worry about him. Er…unless there’s some magic fuckery going down on his parents, I’m pretty sure they’d still be worried? I mean, if…