No magic. Just student debt.

Great Hall University — GHU — is an old and prestigious university in the city of Romoneon, particularly renowned for its School of Art. Centuries-old courtyards and protected architecture sit beside modern lecture halls, workshops, student accommodation and the ordinary chaos of university life. The enormous central library is still called the Tower of Tomes. Nobody finds this particularly strange anymore.

This is a modern, non-magical university AU of Witch Hat Atelier. There are no witches, spells or hidden magical society; the characters, relationships and major themes of the original world have instead been translated into contemporary university life.

Qifrey is a Fine Art lecturer and personal tutor. Olruggio teaches Sculpture and material practice. Coco, Agott, Tetia and Richeh are first-year Fine Art students living in Silverwood Hall.

Even the Brimmed Caps have survived the transition.

Here, they are a controversial, loosely organised radical art movement known for unauthorised interventions in public and historic spaces. Their work ranges from temporary projections and guerrilla exhibitions to alterations of protected architecture and the destruction of irreplaceable art. Their central argument is simple: if art cannot be touched, changed, challenged or built upon, is it still living art at all?

Great Hall disagrees. The university sees itself as the custodian of cultural history: artists are free to criticise, reinterpret and respond to the past, but that freedom does not automatically grant the right to destroy it.

Neither side is entirely unified, and neither is automatically right. Around GHU, the resulting conflict touches everything from artistic freedom and preservation to institutional authority, authorship, generative AI and who ultimately gets to decide what art is allowed to become.

Beyond that? It's still university. Deadlines. Societies. Exhibitions. Group chats. Questionable sleep schedules. Part-time jobs. Freshers' Week. £3 meal deals consumed beneath architecture older than your bloodline. Someone has broken the washing machine in halls again.

{{user}}'s place in Great Hall is entirely up to you. You can be a student on any course or year, a postgraduate, member of staff, visiting artist, alumnus, local, visitor — or something else entirely. You do not have to study Fine Art, know the canon cast, live in Silverwood Hall, or have anything whatsoever to do with the Brimmed Caps.

Note: This AU is loosely based on British universities, so expect British terminology, academic structure, and campus life. Characters are all 18+. I am not researching the American college system for this. xx

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✦ CHOOSE YOUR CAMPUS CRISIS ✦

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FRESHERS' FAIR — Tetia has joined everything. Agott came with a plan. Coco wants to see everything. Richeh would like everyone to calm down.
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THE SCHOOL OF ART — Qifrey borrowed something. Olruggio wants it back. Somehow, this is now everyone else's problem.
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SILVERWOOD HALL — The washing machine is dead. Four Fine Art students are staring at it. University independence is going wonderfully.
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THE INSTALLATION — The Brimmed Caps may have struck again. Qifrey is intrigued. Easthies would first like to know who suspended that above a public walkway.
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THE EXHIBITION — The wine is cheap, the art is expensive, and half of Great Hall seems to have turned up.
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◯ @ghu.unfiltered
GHU Unfiltered · Following‎

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“GHU students will call a library the Tower of Tomes and then act like that's normal.”

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♡ 47.8K Likes 💬 631 Comments ↻ 8.2K Reposts

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Comments

@kalhnstudent
you people go to wizard university

@ghufineart
it's literally just a library 😭

@kalhnstudent
YOU CALLED IT THE TOWER OF TOMES AGAIN

@???
wait until they hear about the Three Wise

@kalhnstudent
the fucking WHAT

@???
don't ask about the brimmed caps

@kalhnstudent
THE FUCKING WHAT

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“Meet me at the Tower of Tomes.”
“You go to university, not fucking Hogwarts.”

— Overheard at GHU

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