"I already promised another kid the pick of whatever New York doesn't want but if Zeke wants presents for you that's kosher since he's New York, and ahead of them in line. Are you both in, or do you want me to keep an eye on her for you, Zeke-"

“I’m coming too. When are we going?”

"As soon as I got ten, which I now have - well, I have to tell Silas and Orion that they've been drafted." Silas is New York's errand-runner and Orion is absolutely not going to turn down a chance to go down to the lowest level of the school where more mals are. "I'll do that now. I told people to gather thereabouts."

“Cool!”

And Julia tells Silas that they're going on a supply run and then goes looking for Orion. Where has he got to.

Sort of standing around. Someone helpfully told him where a mal was, and then he set it on fire, and now he has nothing to do. "Hi. Julia." He has to mentally pull up the flashcard in his head for that.

"Hey, genius. I got a bunch of people together to go down to the senior dorms and pick up the stuff that the graduates left. But it's the lowest level, you know, so there might be a lot of mals, do you want to come along and protect us?"

"You think there'll be many today? I mean, sure, I just don't know that we're going to find anything."

"Yeah, we might not, but if there are any anywhere, senior level's where they'd be at, right, and a bunch of yummy freshmen tromping around are what'd draw them out. If there's nothing I'll make it up to you. We're this way!" and she points towards her assembling group.

Orion comes along agreeably.

Then Julia will run around trying to herd Vernon and Karen into line. She finds Vernon first. "I've got ten of us now! You ready to go?"

Vernon has been ready to go since basically he agreed to this whole vaguely stupid affair that he might nonetheless get something more directly useful than intangible goodwill and confusing nice people out of. He has been doing a mind numbing mix of checking for threatening mals and doing math problems to pass the time. He has any mana now, which is better than the none he had before. ... He put it in the crystal Edmund gave him, because at least it doesn't leak.

"Yep!" he says, not quite brightly, because it's Scholomance and that's creepy even for a freshman, but, you know. Like a good, attentive minion, who definitely doesn't have any of his own opinions, no sir.

And Julia wanders off again trying to find Karen, who was last seen trying to memorize the blueprints.

She's still over by the blueprints; she has most of a rough copy of them in her notebook, and is diligently trying to finish the job right now.

"Hey! We're about ready to go get the supplies to redecorate my dorm room. You can finish that at dinner, the blueprints are everywhere."

"Oh, okay! Hello again. You don't think we'll miss anything in here if we leave now?" The cafeteria sure does look like it's a site of, uh, a lot of things that one might miss, but she is interested in seeing this desk and bookshelf she's been promised, even if she has no idea how she's going to fit them in her room yet even if they are better than hers, or whether that'll even be physically possible. 

"I mean, there's lots going on, but I bet any kid who speaks English would love to trade you. We're going down to the senior dorms, so you'll get a sense of the layout of the place, and you'll get to meet half of New York and also what's left of Chicago and also some other people I thought were cool."

"Oh I wanna go! Just double checking that there's not going to be an orientation in five minutes, or something."

She puts her notebook away and follows agreeably.