Her dad always said, if you don’t like something, you accept it and you adapt, or you fight and you change it. Whining doesn’t help.

Her mother mostly stuck to "read this" and "do it again" and, sometimes, "I love you".

Mals incessantly preying on teenagers, the way the Scholomance works, the fact you can only build arcane energy through difficulty: those are things no one in the world can change. She doesn't whine about it; neither do they. But they didn't like not having children and they didn't like near certain death, so they got into the Oxford enclave and they got her prepared in every way that you do when you're a proper enclave that understands very thoroughly how the Scholomance works.

She's the only one in this year, which is a problem; Elias was solo, and he survived three years then didn't graduate, last year. But it's a problem she has four years to work on, with connections to offer on the other side and definite allies to help her long enough to manage it, Martin and John the year ahead of her and Sasha and Tim and Daisy the year ahead of them and Gertrude and Emma seniors and all of them, last they heard a year ago, still alive.

They cut her hair last night, so she wakes at 5 am for a quiet walk to warm her up before the final weighing and checking and fussing. It's her parents and her classmates' and Melanie, here to learn the procedures because its her turn next year. Her and not Georgie; Oxford will sell the slot, but they haven't picked yet. Both options have useful parents, so they're stringing that longer than they should.

Fiona and Adelard should be back any minute now, with old clothes and fresh injuries and new contacts-slash-obligations to follow up on. But they're not, and they're not, and when the pull comes she knows it's taking her to place none of her people have come back from two years in a row.

Her dad always said, if you don’t like something, you accept it and you adapt, or you fight and you change it. Whining doesn’t help.

Her mother mostly stuck to "read this" and "do it again" and, sometimes, "I love you".

Mals incessantly preying on teenagers, the way the Scholomance works, the fact you can only build arcane energy through difficulty: those are things no one in the world can change. She doesn't whine about it; neither do they. But they didn't like not having children and they didn't like near certain death, so they got into the Oxford enclave and they got her prepared in every way that you do when you're a proper enclave that understands very thoroughly how the Scholomance works.

She's the only one in this year, which is a problem; Elias was solo, and he survived three years then didn't graduate, last year. But it's a problem she has four years to work on, with connections to offer on the other side and definite allies to help her long enough to manage it, Martin and John the year ahead of her and Sasha and Tim and Daisy the year ahead of them and Gertrude and Emma seniors and all of them, last they heard a year ago, still alive.

They cut her hair last night, so she wakes at 5 am for a quiet walk to warm her up before the final weighing and checking and fussing. It's her parents and her classmates' and Melanie, here to learn the procedures because its her turn next year. Her and not Georgie; Oxford will sell the slot, but they haven't picked yet. Both options have useful parents, so they're stringing that longer than they should.

Fiona and Adelard should be back any minute now, with old clothes and fresh injuries and new contacts-slash-obligations to follow up on. But they're not, and they're not, and when the pull comes she knows it's taking her to place none of her people have come back from two years in a row.

Her dad always said, if you don’t like something, you accept it and you adapt, or you fight and you change it. Whining doesn’t help.

Her mother mostly stuck to "read this" and "do it again" and, sometimes, "I love you".

Mals incessantly preying on teenagers, the way the Scholomance works, the fact you can only build arcane energy through difficulty: those are things no one in the world can change. She doesn't whine about it; neither do they. But they didn't like not having children and they didn't like near certain death, so they got properly into the Oxford enclave and they got her prepared in every way that you do when you understand very thoroughly how the Scholomance works. She knows English and Middle English and Old English, a dense etymological history that reaches out to Latin and its descendants, Old French, Old Spanish-Italian-Sardinian-Occitan. She has a power-sharer and graduation-grade shield holder and three sets of clothes and shoes enchanted to fit around her and resist damage, pills and salves and bandages for healing better than teenagers can make; a little pouch of stimulants that she can't count on not needing, a copper IUD for the same reason. She knows the school map and where to spend her time and warning signs of maleficers and how to mend and crush and a neat Old Occitan rhyme for checking things are as they seem.

Her affinity is for improvisation: spells that adapt to the circumstances, alchemy with broad use cases, artifice... she avoids religiously. Her preference is to read, full stop. But she has this occasional problem, of running into a spell built on metaphors that simply do not make sense to her: she can't believe they do what they're supposed to, so they don't. Her mind has a weight, there: she can make herself believe useful things more thoroughly than most, but if she can't find the logic she just can't. It doesn't work. And most spells are literal, direct, but as long as a jealous void is her primary source of spells she is supposed to lean into learning to write her own.

She's the only one from Oxford in this year, which isn't a problem, they tell her. She knows Angus was solo but Fiona wasn't, and those are the only names she's overheard when adults think she isn't listening to the talk about who didn't come back this year. It's a not-problem she has four years to work on, with connections to offer on the other side and definite allies to support her long enough to manage it, Martin and John the year ahead of her and Sasha and Tim and Daisy the year ahead of them and Gertrude and Emma seniors and all of them, last they heard a year ago, still alive.

They've been adjusting her sleep cycle, slightly, so she wakes at 3 am for her haircut. Takes a quiet walk around the library to warm her up before the final weighing and checking and fussing. It's her parents and her classmates' and Melanie, here to learn the procedures before her turn next year. Hers and not Georgie's; Oxford will sell the slot, somewhere overseas.

Elias should be back any minute now, with old clothes and fresh injuries and new contacts-slash-obligations to follow up on. But he's not, and he's not, and the graduation return just does that sometimes but when the pull comes she knows that even she can't believe that.