Aylia loves books.  She likes learning.  And she's particularly obsessed with books of magic.  So of course she's upset when her parents announce that they're going to send to college in our non-magical world, instead of to the wizarding school they'd promised she could go to. Adding insult to injury, her parents choose to send Alassa, her bratty younger sister, to the wizarding school instead.  And then Aylia meets her new roommates in our world: Nicole, who's terrified of anything abnormal; Jenny, who's rather naive; and X, a chemistry major who loves blowing things up.  Aylia isn't thrilled.

Then her cousin Albert drops by, sheepishly admitting that he's just become a werewolf.  There's no cure for lycanthropy, but while Aylia searches to find one, Albert meets one of her roommates, Jenny.  Jenny isn't impressed with him at first, but Albert does convince her to go on one date with him, a date that goes so surprisingly well that they decide to stay together as boyfriend and girlfriend. A few weeks later, Albert's ex-girlfriend, the werewolf who originally bit him, appears.  Albert manages to evade her revenge, just barely, but Felincia does show up periodically later, such as for a group date Jenny plans for all the roommates that Aylia doesn't want to attend.

Over Thanksgiving Break, Aylia meets X's twin sister, Alexis.  Alexis is much more normal than her "evil twin," but she does have a tendency to accept strange things much more quickly than your average person. As the first semester ends, Nicole announces she's going to move to a new apartment.  Jenny tries to convince her to stay, but Aylia and X are eager to see the back of her.  They never got along with Nicole that well in the first place, after all.

At the start of the second semester, they meet their new roommate, Loretta.  She's nice, rich, interested in fashion, and frighteningly obsessed with swords.  It takes Jenny a while to get used to her, but Aylia gets along with her from the beginning. On Valentine's Day, Albert proposes to Jenny, and she decides to accept.  Aylia's stunned by this, since she doesn't think her cousin is mature enough to get married.  Her aunt finally convinces her that it isn't her business, however, and she backs off reluctantly.  Then Jenny's stressful protocol lessons begin, and she struggles to find the courage to tell her control freak mother that she's engaged.

Aylia meets Alassa's two roommates at the wizarding school, a Gorgon who's far away from home and a pink fairy who's studying to be a fairy godmother.  Loretta meets an old friend from high school who has a crush on the werewolf Felincia, and has been trying to track her down for months.  And Alassa tries to blackmail her older sister into doing magic homework for her several times, often less than successfully. As the second semester draws to a close, Jenny prepares for her scarily-soon wedding, Loretta ponders the meaning of summer break, and X steals quite a few of Aylia's books.  Then Aylia transports home, eager to be done with school for a few months . . . and finds out that her mother thinks she's a child of prophecy.

The Oracle who made the prophecy turns out to be an absent-minded fifteen-year-old girl who barely learned she was an Oracle a few months ago.  To Aylia's delight, she learns she's not the only possible girl who could fulfill the requirements of the Child of Prophecy.  Unfortunately, the only other girl who seems to fit the requirements is Alassa, which means her younger sister starts acting like more of a brat than ever. Jenny and Albert's wedding goes well, although the celebration afterwards is interrupted by a large dragon appearing.  That dragon turns out to be Albert's older sister, who got accidentally turned into a dragon a year ago, and has been missing ever since.  Now she's back, with an adopted baby dragon by her side.

Cecelia and Gavin, the two dragons, decide to stay with her family while Albert and Jenny are off on their honeymoon.  They're soon joined by Daria, Gavin's aunt and Cecelia's friend.  Daria happily wreaks havoc around the castle as she tries to figure out how human society works, and she winds up deciding that human machines are her new passion.  This is rather dangerous, since Daria's both brilliant and highly distractable. Kuralla, the Oracle, turns sixteen and begins a year-long trip around the world to introduce her to many of the world's leaders.  Albert and Jenny come back from their honeymoon.  And Cecelia, Gavin, and Daria fly back home, ending their long family visit.

Aylia's not happy when she meets her new roommate, a neat freak named Sissy who's rather a spoiled brat.  She and X try to scare Sissy away, but unfortunately, it doesn't work.  So, to the annoyance of all four girls, they're stuck living together for a long, trying semester. A month or so later, a mysterious girl named Stefanee pops in from Aylia's world, following one of Alassa's roommates.  Her focus at school is shapeshifting magic, she loves annoying people, and nobody knows what species she really is.  Aylia finds this a source of aggravation.

Sissy manages to anger Loretta enough to make all three of the roommates kick her out, even though this upsets the head of housing enough for them to all wind up on probation.  Soon after this, the werewolf Felincia comes back, announcing that she's decided to move in with them.  Aylia doesn't like that idea, but Loretta and X don't mind it, so Felincia becomes their fourth roommate for the rest of the semester. Felincia finally meets Loretta's friend Reg, who's been looking for her for almost a year now, and the two start dating.  They get along so well, in fact, that it leads to a few awkward moments when Reg gets to meet her family.  Fortunately, Reg doesn't doesn't intimidate easily.

And then there's the day X wakes up with gigantic fairy wings, which appear as a result of her twenty-first birthday.  That's when Aylia finds out that X and Alexis are not entirely human -- their mother is a black fairy who's been using shapeshifting magic to stay human most of the time, and their father is a human from Aylia's world.  And not just any human, oh no -- he's Aylia's father's brother who's been missing for over two decades! This means, of course, that X and Alexis are Aylia's cousins -- a fact which X has apparently known almost from the beginning, and Alexis has been aware of for several months now.  Aylia is less than pleased that they didn't feel the need to share this knowledge with her.

Soon after all that, Kuralla visits Aylia with some news she finds worrying.  She's been looking over her prophecy again, discovering that Aylia actually doesn't fit the Child of Prophecy requirements -- and nor does Alassa, for a different reason.  Kuralla leaves baffled, but it soon occurs to Aylia who the child of prophecy probably is: one of her very own roommates.  She and X agree to keep that idea a secret, though, for some pretty good reasons. The third semester ends, and Aylia goes back home for a few weeks.  While she and her sister are at home, Alassa gets mad at her boyfriend and decides to turn him into a rat and feed him to a cat in revenge.  Aylia catches her in time, and is left horrified that her little sister seems to see nothing wrong with such actions.

Finally, Aylia's able to escape her family and run back to college, even though she still doesn't like the school.  And just as she's wondering what her new roommate will be like, she hears a familiar voice . . .