With her plans for the following school year finalized, she keeps working towards her studies for the final four months. Which are rewarded with near-perfect grades, with the lone imperfection being in Transfiguration.

  Which, of course, made no sense whatsoever to her parents upon her return to the family home in the mountains of Trabzon sanjak (read: county). Which is itself part of the Trabzon eyalet. start learning French, using a book she received second-hand from a newly minted graduate.

  I don't expect to get much French proficiency in two short months, even with a French wizarding merchant giving me lessons by correspondence. However, I mustn't let the onSultan down, any more than the faculty at Karakalem! she muses as she starts cracking the book open and start learning the fundamentals of French. Word types, verb conjugation, the auxiliaries (avoir and être) and verb groups.

  Nurcan's parents notice her reading said book in a corner of the home, in the pale moonlight, as bedtime is closing in on her.

  "What's the meaning of this?" Nurcan's dad asks her, not understanding anything in the book at all.

  "All you need to know is that my whole library is about stuff you have no right to know about!" Nurcan retorts, on the defensive.

  "What did we sign her away for?" Nurcan's mom asks her daughter.

  "Even if you could read these books these folk in Karakalem had the Sultan pay for me, I'm not telling you what I use them for!"

  Better let my parents think that I'm a spy in the Sultan's service than tell them the cold, hard truth! Telling it to them might constitute a breach of the Statute of Secrecy! But even then, I feel like a lot of reaya (commoner) Muggle girls my age would envy my position, if they knew about the life of witches at Karakalem. And certainly daughters of peasants. Not always rosy, but you wouldn't just stick to household tasks, Nurcan reflects on her first year at Karakalem, about how her prior life differed from her current one, as her parents leave her to her own devices to keep learning French.

  Which, to them, may as well be a form of charabia, thanks to their failure to understand it, even when she abstains from speaking it on front of them.

  But, as weeks pass, and her French proficiency improves, with the instructor's owl being sent to her at night several times per week, she seems to spend less time with her parents, or with the rest of the village's community.

  Her parents confront her when hijra (Muslim New Year) festivities are about to start, around nightfall:

  "It's time; you're about to miss the hijra feast!" Nurcan's dad whines while the parents get dressed.

  "Just get dressed!" Nurcan's mom yells at her, while she's putting the book away. "It happens once a year, surely you can take a break from... studying!"

  "Fine... maybe I can eat Cerkez tavugu for a change; I ate nothing but bread and apricots since I'm back here!" Nurcan comments about the food expectations of hijra festivities.

  "I hope the Sublime Porte has good reason to let you study whatever you're studying at home..." Nurcan's dad sighs.

  And we eat a much greater variety of better food at Karakalem than we do here. At times, we might be eating pilaf rice, with dishes such as, yes, Cerkez tavugu (Circassian chicken), but also kebabs and knafeh, with, of course, pide ekmek as a side dish, she runs down the culinary differences in her mind between her year spent at school vs at home, while she's getting dressed for the hijra festivities.

  In which the villagers are eating precisely what she remembered, but not necessarily at the same standard as she did at school.

  But once the festivities end, and she returns home, full as an egg, her instructor's own arrives with a new set of exercises, this time about reading an excerpt from a magical textbook, this time about the Geminio charm.

  This seems to be a little advanced for my current level, but I can't practice it here... she thinks while one of the questions is about the two versions of the spell. One being a charm, but the curse version is about infinite multiplication of items upon contact, with the copies having a finite lifespan.

  However, in late August, on the day before she's supposed to get to Constantinople for a final meeting at the Bab-I Humayun about this year's Nizam-I Cedid class, she's given one final lesson by this merchant, Stanislas, delivered by owl in the dead of night.

  "The time has come for me to leave this village to accomplish that which you signed me away for. But before I go, I must warn you: I might not come back. Just don't worry about me any more than you did for the past year!" Nurcan warns her parents while preparing her wand and other magical items.

  "Just don't do anything reckless, will you?" her dad asks, before they go to bed.

  Nurcan's mom starts praying for her safety as Nurcan waits for her parents to go to sleep before going to the secret bonfire that's the closest point to her home on the Floo Network. Which she needs to light so that she could get to Constantinople's Sihirli Mahalle, the wizarding neighborhood of the city.

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  As she lights the bonfire with the little wood she has on hand, she then pours the final scoop of Floo powder on it from the yearly allowance the Sultan gave her to all Muggle-born first-year students.

  Once the flame turns green, she steps onto the green flame, and says the magic words in a loud voice, but not so loud as to awaken sleeping Muggles:

  "Sihirli Mahalle!"

  Once she's whisked away to Sihirli Mahalle, the green flame is extinguished, and she arrives in the dead of night, right in front of the Diwan of Magic's main gate, by which the Ottoman wizarding community refers to it.

  Here it appears that Sihirli Mahalle is built in classical Ottoman style, with shops of all kinds, including but not limited to a bookstore, Kitap Ayraci. Which sells textbooks for not only Karakalem, but also Durmstrang and Uagadou, given that wizards come from all over the Empire to shop in the capital...

  At Kitap Ayraci, she recognizes two people waiting for it to open:

  "Taalia, Hamza, you both want to beat the rush hour for buying supplies?" Nurcan asks the duo, while more advanced students of all eyalets are waiting in line behind them.

  "Yes, and good riddance: I can spend a year without having to endure your Muggle mumbo-jumbo in History of Magic!" Hamza sneers at Nurcan.

  "There's a book I'm missing. They didn't have the Divination book yesterday!" Taalia laments about a textbook.

  "My parents act as if I was a spy trainee, but because, as Hamza is hinting at, I'm going on exchange, I'm also buying my supplies elsewhere, too! They probably think they signed the release form to get me started on the field as a spy, or some such thing. Nice talking to you, but I need to get to the Ministry's offices!"

  "See you next year then..." Taalia tells her before Nurcan gets elsewhere.

  Speaking of which, she stands in line in front of the Bab-I Humayun proper, waiting for it to open. With other Nizam-I Cedid recipients arriving by dawn, a Department of International Magical Cooperation employee herds all 13 Nizam-I Cedid recipients into a meeting room.

  "Greetings. I'm Saleh, the international education coordinator, and I'm responsible for the Nizam-I Cedid. It's the inaugural class of the Nizam-I Cedid program, you were chosen among the best and brightest wizarding students in the Empire. It will probably be the last time you'll meet each other for a year, so please state your names, educational status, your origin and destination institutions..."

  "Nurcan, second-year, originally at Karakalem, attending Beauxbatons!"

  What becomes clear is that the majority of the Nizam-I Cedid recipients come from Karakalem, albeit a narrow one: 7 of the 13 originally went there, with 3 apiece from Durmstrang and Uagadou.

  Turns out the next-youngest is a Uagadou student planning to sit for the OWLs at Hogwarts, but Castelobruxo was the most popular choice, with 4, and Hogwarts second, with 3. And, as she suspected, everyone else was pretty advanced.

  I guess I'll be on my own at Beauxbatons... hopefully some other Muggle-born would befriend me once there! Nurcan sighs, while Saleh distributes the supplies lists along with their supplies allocations, in private.

  When Nurcan's turn arrives, she asks the questions that she put off asking for months to focus on studying:

  "I wonder why the Diwan saw fit to pick me over other more advanced students, is it because of my background as a Muggle-born from peasantry and poverty?"

  "I know what you might think: the Diwan might score political points off you, by showing the wizarding population of the Empire that opportunities are available to everyone on merit!" Saleh retorts.

  "It's not that. I feel like I was chosen because money is tight, and you couldn't afford someone more advanced!"

  Upon hearing Nurcan's accusation, Saleh gasps. "What?"

  "I'm the cheapest student in the program!"

  "What do you mean?"

  "There's a baseline of costs the Bab-i Humayun incurs to educate me at Karakalem, that must also be paid to the host institution. And there's the supplies allocation paid for me irrespective of where I go, which wouldn't be the case for everyone in the program!"

  "Stop beating around the bush, Nurcan!" Saleh's face turns red.

  "I have the lowest program-specific cost of anyone on the program, and, well, the lowest total cost because fifth, sixth and seven-year students cost more to teach than a second-year one!"

  I never expected a rising second-year student to have her level of understanding of government budgeting! I feel like she'll become a great arithmancer... One of the branches of magic you can become good at without needing a lot of power, Saleh reflects on how she makes him feel, based on the discussion of the costs of public education to the state.

  "Don't forget; there were more advanced students who declined before we got to you. The usual stuff: parents who fear for their kids' safety, who feel like they're going to learn undesirable material, or fall behind in other areas, even if their safety was assured..."

  It feels as though a Lumos spell was cast in her mind. "I guess, the Bab-I Humayun had more pressing matters..."

  "Such as how to ensure the safety of the wizarding population on the Serbia and Yedisan frontiers!"

  Damn it! If that's what I think it is, it means the Muggles are at war in these regions! With all the consequences this carries: Muggles killing indiscriminately! Nurcan has come to a grim realization. But at the same time, she gets some semblance of relief upon hearing the whole Nizam-I Cedid program has no real propaganda aims, at least short-term. I earned it, all right, but I must show that I'm worth my spot, a discount one though it might be!

  But when she collects her allowance for supplies, she starts dreaming of one day owning an owl and a flying carpet. As would, in the minds of so many, be milestones in many an Ottoman wizard's life.

  And yet, after collecting her supplies allowance and supplies list, along with the Floo powder allowance of six scoops, she starts reviewing the list of supplies. Starting with what she already have: the telescope, wand, size 2 collapsible cauldron, glass vials, protective gloves and set of scales. Which, in her mind, can only mean one thing: her core expenses, before the school year starts, are going to be the uniform and books.

  Yet, because she knows that she's going to buy these things in France, as opposed to here in Constantinople, she decides to go to Gringotts for the first time in her life.

  She then goes to the serraf (money exchanger) office upon entering the bank branch, with an Armenian employee greeting her at the teller window.

  "What can I do for you today?" the Armenian serraf asks her.

  "Since I'm going on exchange to Beauxbatons, I would like to exchange the Sultan's allowance for school supplies..."

  Nurcan then presents the pouch containing the Sultan's supplies allowance, full of wizarding tryrinats, themselves subdivided into 100 akces, to the serraf.

  And the serraf comes back to her with another pouch for its equivalent in French bezants and centimes.

  Once she leaves the bank branch, she reviews the instructions given to her by the Ministry before she gets to the city's Floo network station to ensure that her trip goes on without a hitch. Go to Paris' Métro-Floo, and then head to échange Scolaire Officielle to register your entry to the local authorities.