Someone is looking for minions! Getting her room decorated is going to be such a project and she'd rather get it done today before they all start having homework and before she has to fall asleep in a dreary box that looks like the inside of a shipping container. And many hands make light work, and right now she only has Karen, who seems sweet but isn't going to be doing heavy lifting necessary - she probably needs some boys - so she's scanning the room for suitable potential minions who are not weirdos. There's one!

"Hello!" she says brightly. "I'm Julia Sanderson, from New York; where are you from?"

The obvious answer to this is terror and also a perfectly polite immediate response! Also a little smile of why yes he's happy someone from New York noticed his existence! Why is someone from New York talking to him! Is this something that is going to get him killed?

"Vernon Durant," he says, with a little cordial bow of his head. "Little hamlet near Manchester, nowhere important."

"I like Britain! It's lovely when it's not raining, and the Indian food is almost as good as in New York! I was just getting a group of people together to go down to the senior dorms and haul up the stuff the New York graduating class left behind so we can decorate my room! I'll drag Orion along so it shouldn't be too dangerous. Would you like to come?"

Uh. Is this a smart thing to do? Pack of people on the first day, wandering around on a very stupidly motivated salvage mission? ... eh. Not definitely suicidal. It is the first day of school.

"Sure, if you don't mind if I pick over anything you and yours don't want?" he angles, because while he bets everything good has been taken already, it would still be better than the near nothing he has got right now. This is a decent in to get him extra stuff, and he could use some of that.

"Sure, if no one in New York wants it it's all yours. Great! I'll come get you when we're ready to go - it'll probably be pretty soon, I want to get the stuff before dinner so we can redecorate right after."

"Sounds good, thanks." It doesn't, it sounds rushed and badly thought out and for stupid reasons, but he knows his manners. At least this time he has a script and everything is about the way he expected it to be. This means that it'll be his job to make as much mana as possible in the short time before they all go on a trip out of relative safety. Sure, he will do that. There's a reason he picked math problems for making mana, you can do it anytime you like and if it kills you a little inside then that just means it's working.