Sure, why not. "Hey. Did you need something?"

"Just getting to know people, though if you want to sell some of what you got down there I'm not inherently opposed to buying."

"I have six notebooks, and I will absolutely use six notebooks, but I will not use them this week, so I'd sell if you have something cool."

"I'm pretty okay on paper for the moment but I'll keep it in mind." She's been taking notes in a mixture of languages for years, using whichever one can convey any given concept the most quickly, with the main benefit of saving on paper and the ancillary benefit of being very hard to shoulder-surf. "Anything in particular you're hoping to get some of?"

"I'm mostly set - as set as anybody is - but one can always use spell swaps and basic supplies and study groups. There happened to be a lot of sandpaper and screws so I got some, if that's more appealing than paper."

"I'm definitely looking for study group people; what are you planning on taking?" The rest of Boston will be great for the mutual back-watching aspect of study groups, but Abigail is alchemy track and Kevin is an awesome person Marcy would kill for and vice versa, with the situational awareness of Argus himself, but there's a reason he's going to be doing all four maintenance shifts and zero of his own homework.

"All the usual freshman stuff, math in Mandarin if I can swing it, but if you mean what's my track I'm going creative writing. My affinity is metamagic."

"Oh, that's a cool affinity! Mind's projectiles and I love it but yours is objectively very cool. Probably lends itself well to creative writing, too."

Marcy will admit in the privacy of her head that she's crap at creative writing, and if she was in the first generation of mages ever to exist this would be a serious problem. Fortunately, she isn't, and there are more spells already invented than she can learn in a lifetime let alone four years, and if she focuses on what comes easiest instead of chasing every new and interesting challenge then she'll live to have decades and decades of indulging impractical curiosities. 

"It might lend itself to spell translation, but it doesn't seem to enter into it when I just write one, I'd just rather be coming up with specs than trying to decipher other people's handwriting and prefer thesauruses to multilingual dictionaries."

"Fair enough; I do plenty of stuff that has nothing to do with my affinity. I'm a bit surprised it doesn't help with figuring out how a spell is trying to come out."

"I guess it might and I just don't know the difference because I've never been someone else trying to write a spell."

"That's true. Whereas I can try spells that are about throwing things and otherwise-similar spells that aren't about throwing things. Incidentally, I have a hypothetical question . . . " conveniently Bella was off on the supply run and isn't likely to have heard it already.

"So there's like, probably divination involved, right? My understanding is divination isn't perfect but I don't off the top of my head have a 'fuck off, divination' spell and presumably whoever is setting this up doesn't show up if their spell gets a null result anwyay?"

"What would you be trying to accomplish with a 'fuck off, divination' spell if you had one?"

"I mean, nothing for this scenario in particular but in general I don't want people reading my mind or anything, because eugh."

"Yeah. I can see some uses for mind-reading--verifying people's statements, transmitting complicated things that are hard to explain, getting around language barriers--but on net I'm glad it's rare."

"Yeah. Anyway, since if foiling divination without an actual spell to do that were a thing they would probably not have such a success rate I guess I take the one box."

So she'll screw someone over if they're a space alien doing divination she reads as hostile, but only if it leaves her better off. A very sensible balance, when she puts it that way.  "Makes sense. Oh, hey, what's your room number? I haven't met a lot of people in my section yet."

"563A, you?"

"429A, so we're not on the same hall but we're pretty close."

"I don't have the layout yet, that'd be - next section over, same floor?"

"Yup!" Illustrative hand gestures. (Marcy has memorized the blueprints because she expects it to come in handy and because memorising things is comforting.)

"The numbering system is weird. But if you'd like after dinner we can head for the stairwell together, get in the habit!"

"Sounds good! Speaking of dinner, we should get in the food line."

"Yeah, I should get a tray so Suze can pass me her table, she looks almost done. You can come sit with me after if you want."