There are many characters in The Seven Magpies, rather more than would be expected for a young adult novel, and notably more than is usual in novels by Monica Hughes.

Maureen Frazer and her mother are introduced in the opening chapter; her father has already gone to France as a soldier.

Maureen chats with farmers and an old woman on the train, and with the bus driver and taxi driver on her way to the school.

Later she meets Mr. MacDougall, the factor who tends the land of Kintray Lodge for the absent laird, and his wife Mrs. MacDougall, who keeps their cottage. The red-haired man Maureen glimpses in the bracken is later revealed to be their son, Jimmy MacDougall. That is over a dozen characters already, not counting anyone Maureen meets at the school.

Among the school's faculty only Miss Priestley, the headmistress...