Kareen doesn't feel like that necessarily makes it okay to rub her continued survival in the noses of people who may well have already lost siblings to the horrid survival rate, but she and Bella don't seem to really be on different pages about the actual facts, so it's not worth arguing about. 

"Anyway, that was everything I specifically wanted to talk about, if you'd rather go back to the cafeteria."

"I have a spell swap group soon, yeah, if you don't have more native-guide-y questions."

"Not off the top of my head. Good luck swapping spells." Hand out. 

And off goes Bella.

With another donut. Everybody in the Scholomance looks excited to gain twenty pounds and most of them could use it.

They sure could. 

Once breakfast is over and the cafeteria is closed Kareen goes to find New York in the library.

New York is actually to be found on the eastern seaboard of the United States in their corner of the library with all their hangers-on as usual. Orion looks up from his flashcards. "Hi Kareen!"

"Hi Orion! Do you know why you can take mana from dead mals?"

"It's my affinity."

"I thought affinities just made you really good at related spells, not gave you bonus superpowers." Although El's Aura of Spooky might contradict that, come to think of it. 

"I guess? I don't know a lot about other people's affinities."

"I'm asking because I was able to copy that ability off you and if it has any downsides or anything I want to try to figure it out before I start sharing it with other people."

Magnus Tebow chokes on his cup of tea. 

"I mean it seems fine to me but I've been like this forever?" he shrugs.

"I definitely didn't get your whole deal, anyway, even after I copied you the mals were still definitely more scared of you than of me." 

"Huh, you seemed to be doing fine, maybe they'll like, learn."

"Oh, I was absolutely killing them, but you had a whole thing going on that made them scared of you separate from the violence each of us was dishing out. Like, vibes-wise." Like they recognized that he was a Hunter and she was just a Watcher, regardless of what actions they were each taking. 

"Yeah I dunno why that would be."

"Okay. I did want to check in, because, you know, I haven't been here very long, if it was a known fact that for example wizard children born under the second full moon of a February have cool superpowers, I wouldn't know." 

"No? I wasn't even born in February..."

"Didn't know that either! It was just an example."

"Okay. Well, I guess you could ask my parents or something but I dunno."

"I'm not waiting that long. Happy hunting, anyways."

"Thanks!"

"Any of the rest of you have any ideas?"

"...Orion's always been like this," Chloe says. "Even when we were just little kids. If a mal managed to sneak in he would find it and kill it. When he got older he would try to sneak out; his parents would let him have gate guard duty, sometimes, to keep that from happening."