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The only thing that sucks more than the Scholomance is not going to the Scholomance
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She smiles back! It's perfectly reasonable for him to smile a bunch this day (even if it was a bit of a shit day, for her in particular), because they are in an alliance! She's very pleased about this, and he seems to be, too.

But for now she's going to go back to cooing over her pretty pretty grimoire, and cleaning it of dust, and murmuring something about making a sling for it so she can literally carry it around forever instead of just in her satchel, and introducing it to her knife and musing about if they seem like they'd accept being aesthetically coordinated, and so forth.

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He wants to kiss her it is now time for him to go.

"I should probably go. Will you... be okay?"

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Yvette looks up from her crooning. Why wouldn't she...? Oh. Right. Everything is horrible and maw-mouths exist. And she killed one. Yes. She'd, uh, forgotten. It had probably been good for her.

"Yeah. I think so." She makes a face. "As long as I'm... doing something, anyway?"

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He nods. "Do you have any concrete plans for the book? So I can procure materials."

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"Um. I'm going to need gold for decorations and gilding regardless, for both my athame and my grimoire." She is not going to let her precious dagger get jealous of how lovely and decorated her new grimoire is, no sir. "And... some sort of hardwood, probably, for the sake of protection?"

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He has some suggestions for what kinds of wood she can use, and ideas are already sprouting in his mind but he'll wait for Yvette to come up with a design she likes and start figuring out what they'll need in more precise quantities. But for now, though, he'll get going. Except... he stops at the door and turns around to look at her and say, "If you need anything you know where my room is." Right next to hers, and he is now blushing again what is wrong with him.

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This earns another brilliant smile, pointed right at him. "I do! Thank you, Alexei."

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"You're welcome, Yvette." Aaand she's smiling at him which means he will now go back into his room thanks muchly goodbye.

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So there's still some more school work that she's got to get done, but all of it is hers, and none of it is due by Monday, and, well. It's really very important that she persuade this grimoire to stay. So she very carefully cleans it of all dust and sets it on her lap while she begins sketching plans for the book chest. She's going to need to see if the void can cough up anything about common decorating preferences from Purochana's time, it seems appropriate to nod to her book's history when creating something to house it, and it'll really highlight how it's just for it. Hmm, it'll probably need to hook onto her belt, too, considering how much she's going to be carrying it around everywhere she goes. Which of course means that she probably should make sure the aesthetics of her dagger and its sheath match at least the book's holder, and she'd had some plans for that already and...

She will keep herself quite occupied until dinner.

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"Oh, goodness," says Nkoyo when Yvette shows her the book. Most of the juniors—most of the students—went back to their rooms after the attack in the library, although some got together in groups rather than be alone, the enclavers and the people who have something resembling friendships (does Yvette have friendships now? she might, actually). So when the dinner bell rings, pretty much everyone leaves to go eat together. Well, not together together because being in a huge group is almost as dangerous as being alone—there's a sweet spot in group numbers when there's enough people to be able to deal with most mals but not so many that they start attracting the really big ones—but in larger clumps than usual.

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The loose little loser-group that Yvette's been sort of subsumed into—Nkoyo, Cora, Jowani, Alexei, Sofia, Natalya, Ibrahim, Yaakov, and Nadia—all go together. Sofia is now resolutely pretending Yvette does not exist, and Natalya is sort of anxiously trying to stay between them and looks ready to break up any potential budding fights.

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Don't worry, Yvette will be ignoring Sofia right back. Instead she will be downright bubbly about her new book and the really excellent spell she's learned from it, and if she is perhaps forcing this cheer a bit, who would know. ... Besides Alexei. Alexei would know, obviously. This bit of theater is ultimately for her own benefit, not so much convincing others.

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"Are you doing trades? I know a couple of Somali girls doing Sanskrit."

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"We will be doing an auction."

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"Oh I saw your names by the bathroom, you're allied now?"

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There's a round of congratulations at that news, with one notable absence.

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No there isn't, because Sofia doesn't exist!

"We are! Thank you," she says, brightness a bit less forced this time. She's really tempted to hook her arm through Alexei's and make a very obvious statement of Mine, but that would be silly and unproductive and not accomplish anything more than petty spite.

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"Well, I can find some people who'd be interested in this auction, if you're auctioning. My Somali friends probably know some people from their Sanskrit spell trading group..."

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"Thank you! That'd be appreciated." Nkoyo: is excellent, honestly. She'd known this already, but it's nice to have it pointed directly at her.

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She doesn't sit with them at dinner, this time, because instead she goes to spread the news/gossip to others, and they have people coming over to admire the book very quickly.

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Alexei is being point person for the organisation, since he already has an established trading network and also everyone instinctively dislikes being around Yvette or interacting with her in any way. They can schedule a demonstration of the phase-change spell for when Yvette has it down, to prove that the spell does in fact do what it says it does, and lots of people are interested.

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Scorpius arrives two minutes before the junior queue closes—unlike the other students, he didn't go to his room after the library attack, and instead decided to go patrolling for any more enormous mals that might have been around—and makes a beeline to their table with his half-empty tray.

"Do you have an intact crystal on you?" he asks Yvette. He is still glowing a little bit. He might be glowing more than he'd been earlier, actually.

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... Scorpius why are you doing this here in the cafeteria. In front of everyone. Like your enclave. Like them.

"Yyyyyyyyes? But I'd rather you didn't break another one?" There, look everyone, he is doing this for logical reasons! He broke one of her crystals. "Scorpius I am not the sole person that is capable of dealing with you overloading with mana."

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"So long as I don't get distracted I am sure I won't break any more crystals. And everyone else looks at me like I'm crazy and like I must have some ulterior motive if I try to offer them free mana. Not even my reputation can save me, here."

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