The Magicians

Professor March asks Quentin, Penny, and Alice to stay behind after “Practical Applications,” which is “the part of the day when the students worked on actual spellcasting” (59). Professor March and Professor Van der Weghe then offer to advance Quentin, Penny, and Alice to “Second Year for the spring term” (60), providing they can pass their “First Year exams in December” (60).

Quentin knows he has to study hard to succeed. He begins spending time after Practical Applications being tutored by Professor Sunderland, a “pretty young woman” (61) who “look[s] nothing like a magician [is] supposed to: she [is] blonde and dimply and distractingly curvy” (61). Quentin also “spen[ds] a lot more of his time with Alice and Penny” (61). In the evening they study together, though Penny tends to practice his magic by himself. By winter, Quentin, Penny, and Alice are an “exclusive club within the already close club of Brakebills” (63), studying and practicing their magic day after day to Quentin’s newfound “satisfaction” (63).

While all of the studying helps Quentin breeze through Professor March’s lectures, the accompanying stress begins to wear on him: “he recognized the irritable, unpleasant, unhappy person he was becoming: he looked strangely like the Quentin he thought he'd left behind in Brooklyn” (64). For a change of pace, he sometimes studies in the observatory, which is located on “top of one of the towers” (64). Quentin arrives at the observatory on a Saturday to discover Eliot sexually involved with another student, someone Quentin thinks he recognizes as “one of the Second Years” (65). Quentin decides to make a hasty retreat and do his studying someplace else.

On the night prior to the final exam, Quentin and Alice go for a midnight walk through the maze. Alice tells Quentin that she was never invited to Brakebills; instead, she chose to come on her own, and somehow had found a way in. Despite not being invited, the school let her take the entrance exam. Alice also mentions to Quentin that she had a brother who attended Brakebills and that he died. Talking with Alice, Quentin realizes that she’s more than just the competition: she’s also a person with her own problems, similar to Quentin himself. The next morning, Quentin, Alice, and Penny take the test. Quentin and Alice pass, but Penny fails.

Classes end and Christmas break begins. Quentin decides to return to the real world and goes “home for five days” (71). He meets up with Julia and James “at the abandoned boat launch on the Gowanus” (72). Quentin no longer feels inferior to James, and though he still feels something for Julia, it’s more “a dull, distant ache, still there but healed over—just the shrapnel they couldn’t remove” (72).

Quentin quickly realizes that James and Julia have been hurt by his abrupt departure to Brakebills. He also realizes that Julia has changed. She’s become a heavy smoker, and “there [are] dark circles under her eyes that hadn’t been there before” (73). Upon parting ways with the pair, Quentin can’t remember “whether [Julia had] even spoken at all” (73). Once home, Quentin rereads The Flying Forest, one of the books from Plover’s Fillory and Further series.

After his time at Brakebills, Quentin realizes that Plover knows very little “about real magic” (74). The Flying Forest is not one of Quentin’s favorites, but ends with the mysterious disappearance of “Martin, the eldest Chatwin child” (74), who “stalks away into the dense Darkling Woods” (75), never to be seen again. Quentin believes there may have been a clue about Martin Chatwin in the notebook given to him by the female paramedic on the day of his college entrance exam, but he no longer knows where the book is. The next morning, Quentin decides to return to Brakebills early.

With Christmas over, Second Year begins for Quentin and Alice. However, they are largely ignored by the other Second-Year students. This causes Quentin to look up “his old partner Surendra” (77), who is a fellow student, and go for a walk with him. They are joined by Gretchen, who “walked with a cane” (77). Their walk takes them to “a curious Alice-in-Wonderland playing field laid out in squares” (78). Quentin has seen the squares before, but doesn’t know what they’re for. Surendra and Gretchen explain to Quentin the squares are for playing the game “Welters” (78), a game similar to chess but played with magic.

As they continue to walk, Quentin learns from Surendra that by Third Year, students focus on a specific discipline of magic. Quentin learns that Eliot is a member of the “Physical Kids” (80), the students who “do physical magic for their Disciplines” (80). Gretchen is about to tell Quentin something about Eliot when Penny suddenly bursts upon them and punches Quentin. Penny and Quentin fight and they both wind up in the infirmary, where Quentin once more encounters the female paramedic who gave him the notebook. As they recover, Penny tells Quentin that he was angry at him and Alice because he felt they left him to study on his own while they worked together. He believes that’s why they passed the test, and he failed, and doesn’t find the outcome fair. Professor Fogg punishes Penny and puts both boys on probation.