"So," Neville says, already frowning in thought, "accessing magic. I can walk you through the basic steps, but you have to find it for yourself, and that might not happen today."

"Let's hear it," says Bella. "Soph, you gonna play along this far?"

"Yeah, sure. And," she adds to Delilah, "you're welcome."

"It's mostly a matter of - not quite meditation, but you want to try to clear your mind and feel power - or energy's a better word, maybe - flowing to you from somewhere. It's a little different for everyone. For me it's like reaching down into the earth and pulling from something bigger than me, but for a lot of people it's more internal than that."

"For almost everyone," Delilah puts in, and puts a fist against her solar plexus. "I feel it here, but our sister Chloe says it feels like opening her shoulders, which makes no sense to me, but there you have it."

"Clear our minds like - meditating or what?"

"And how does one confirm that one has located it for real and isn't producing a placebo effect?"

"Purposeful meditation, if that's a thing? I mean, you're not just clearing your mind. And once you find it, you try to do things with it, and if you can't, then you didn't really find it, I guess."

"Okay. Any other tips before we start closing our eyes and attempting to do this?"

"Don't set anything on fire!"

Delilah flicks a flame back and forth across her fingertips.

Neville rolls his eyes at her.

"It might. What do you feel?"

"Sort of like - standing under a waterfall. That springs into existence on top of my head." She opens one eye, then the other.

"That's probably it," Neville says, still keeping an eye on Soph.

Soph makes a frustrated noise.

Bella sighs and pats her sister on the shoulder.

"Relax," Neville says. "Don't try to force it."

"Why is it that people don't find these things when they're just zoning out in English or something?" wonders Soph.

"I bet some people do. They just don't know what it is or what to do with it."