Vanya sighs and looks very miserable and put-upon, but starts poking at his applesauce. 

"Raleigh, try to make sure he eats, please? Thank you. I'll send Cassie or Justin as soon as I can." 

"Mmm-hmm." 

Raleigh watches Vanya push his food around without really eating it, and feels agonizingly awkward about this entire situation. To make matters worse, of course the others are going to be curious what happened, and he doesn't know. Larisa promised a full explanation later but later hasn't happened yet. 

If he finishes the applesauce before he gets to anything else she'll offer him some of hers in exchange for some of his meatloaf; she wants Protein and he looks like he needs Literally Any Calories.

"So, uh, what's your affinity?"

Vanya does, in fact, make significant progress on his applesauce without touching anything else except for the milk, which he drinks. 

...It seems to take him a while to realize he's been asked a question. He lifts his head. "Sorry, what was that," he says tonelessly. 

"I asked what your affinity was. Uh, it's cool if you don't want to tell me." She wants to know what his deal is but she doesn't want to exchange Sad Upperclassman for Pissed Off Upperclassman.

"Music." He sounds incredibly unenthusiastic about it. 

"But you've figured out how to do combat sung-spells, yeah?" Raleigh says. "Tristan mentioned you exploded a mal just before end of term. He said guts went eeeeverywhere!" 

Vanya does not want to talk about that even a little bit. He is looking slightly at risk of tears again. 

Marcy grins and hides it behind a hand. Guts everywhere is unhygienic and she shouldn't enjoy the image as much as she does but mals suck and it's so satisfying when they die. Too bad Vanya doesn't seem to agree.

Conversation conversation conversation how do you do small talk with someone that sad aaaaaaah - 

"So what track are you in, Vanya?" 

"Creative writing." He's started absently tearing his bread roll into tiny bits without eating any of them. 

"And you - compose song spells?" 

"Yeah." 

"Including spells for exploding mals? That's really cool!" 

Shrug. 

"Composition is neat! Hey, if you don't want that bread I'll trade you for more applesauce." She can hear her mom's voice saying "waste not want not" in her head.

"I overheard someone saying one of the muggleborns has that affinity too. The one who came in wearing music-note pajamas."

"Speaking of which, does anyone have a theory about what happened to Chicago?"

"I don't know that speculating is productive. I don't know who would even have wanted to."

Vanya looks SO MISERABLE about this choice of topic! Though this is really only a slight change from his default level of radiating misery! 

Clearly this calls for changing the subject! "So, did you ever end up being able to get a new instrument in here?" 

Heck. Better topic, better topic, okay yes instruments, that's a good one.

Vanya shrugs, looking very tired. "Yeah. But it - got broken." He blinks hard a couple of times when he says this, but does not actually burst into tears. 

Okay damn it is there literally any conversation topic that won't make Vanya look like a stepped-on puppy. 

"....You should trade your bread for Marcy's applesauce," he says, which is probably Nagging but is clearly needed.